"Bedei!": Fragment "Bedei!" There appears to be some writing on the note ... Swallowing Such as Might Sstick in My throat On Bedei On Bedei I will cry and fly On Bedei Stretch Bedei between each and Every FFanger (You finish reading.) Bodee Lost in Bodee-Database of Numeric Hells You see Bodei and Bedee here. Swim Bedee You swim in Flufee Bedee all Cotton-Mouthy Fang You drop Bedei. Bodee Lost in Bodee-Database of Numeric Hells You see Bodei, Bedee, and Bedei here. You are empty-handed. You say, "Loo loo loo loo loo" You Wah! Wah! Wah! Bedee: Fragment Sink or Swim Bedee You are Not Wear Bedee and Do Wear Bedee and Wear You do Space Bedee on Your Skin and Holes and Bones You do Sink in Bedee Fissure hole You drop Bedee. You swim in Flufee Bedee all Cotton-Mouthy Fang You take Bedee. You do Sink in Bedee Fissure hole You drop Bedee. Do up Pick Bedee Now You take Bedee. You do Sink in Bedee Fissure hole You swim in Flufee Bedee all Cotton-Mouthy Fang You do Wear Already You drop Bedee. Do up Pick Bedee Now (In Bodee and Lost in Bodee-Database of Numeric Hells You see Bodei, Bedei, and Bedee here.) Budi: Fragment Brawned MassIve Tissu Hunger for Yu to Be Swallow Contents: Bud You take Budi. It's already open. You already have that! Bud Wet Leaf Thing and Pnk Flesh You drop Budi. You Do SwaLo Budi Flesh-Tungu You Do Thik Tungu fissure in sWole Throte Do Thik Pnk Tungu sWole Throte Nikkkukkk You say, "I do think thnkkk that" Thikkk Pnkkk Tungu thIkku sWole gLans tuuuuuuuuuuuuuunGUuuuu tHuku You say, " I am do Pnkkk Tungu" lllllast tYme my Nikkkukkkko to goDbyoo Nu Nikuko iS trU sWole gLans glAss Doubling: Fragment Bodee Lost in Bodee-Database of Numeric Hells You see Bodei, Bedei, Bedee, Budi, #934, #895, and #1 here. look #1 submergence of drowned gods look #895 Bodei Buried-Beneath-the-Ground look #895 There appears to be some writing on the note... look #934 Nikuko beneath-the-ground look #934 Brooding Buti or Buda / Pest She is awake and looks alert. @examine #1 Root Class (#1) is owned by Wizard (#2). Aliases: nothing look #1 You see nothing special. *** Disconnected *** % Connection to l closed by foreign host. ---- No world ---- _____________________________________________________________ kyoto, why i can't live with myself in any world even before the narrow streets and the river, before the wooden temples loomed up darker in the cooler weather, even then, there was kyoto-moo; it was always there; i was sotatsu, a wizard, even before i saw his paintings at the monastery then, shortly before we left; even then, i looked in the river and saw the dancing of kabuki in my mind, i knew then, it was nikuko dancing; i remember the lane by the river, the thin park coming and going against the restaurants; nothing is forgotten, not the double-seeing of the garden, not the new player class created by kayo matsushita, not the ryokan; even before the ryokan, not the ryokan, and even before the player class, not nikuko nor sotatsu; i remember kami- gamo and the precise pass up the stone stairs and the wood-shrine and the phallic stone and the dampness and wet moss backways there and the cor- doned-off patch of dark earth, and the cones of sand; the small store with the meiji kimono book of emblems and designs, and my time in japan on the kyoto-moo coming to an end; so many times recently when i could not get in, when sven travis the gaijin closed the site down and kyoto-moo disap- peared forever with player class and gardens and ghosts, dim remnants of sotatsu constructs __________________________________________________________________________ CARRIERS Ju7lu% nfrm You have no mail. Ju8lu% ls Mailsaredogs kzsunshineonyoubabe strippersandpimps Nowornevercuteypie lispformedarling tfragilebodandface Newsjunkieguys lynx_bookmarks.htmlover tf-liberalsexman atruedealthatsme mailmepleasehoneybunny thingoftruthandbeauty calendargirlsandboys phoenix.hlpimdrowning4u tiny.worldsoffunfunfun classactthatsyou phoenix.ircedwithyou venom.ircu2moro jobsandjabsandchicks procleverguysandgals volt.irccme2moro Ju9lu% nfrm You have no mail. Ju10lu% exit CLI: Connection closed. *** Annex Port Reset After Last Job Exited *** NO CARRIERS ________________________________________________________________________ THEFT ON PURLMOO BECAUSE #1 IS NOT UNIQUE Bodee Lost in Bodee-Buda as Bodi Tre-Form Hells You see Bodei, Bedei, #934, #895, #1, Girl, Boy, Bodi, Bodi, Bodi, Bodi, Bodi, Bodi, Bodi, Bodi, #1, Bodee, Bedee, and Budi here. >> There is no text installed .... yet. You say, "Because someone has stolen my words. " You say, "Because someone has cut out my tongue." Nikuko knows Because of Bodi-Proliferation Do now With Me Nikuko knows Because #1 is not Unique Now Do FOLO O COME FRO I BODEE BOY You say, "Because of Whom and to and for Whom." You say, "Because My Mouth is a Running Sore"" You say, "Because Dead and Become" Nikuko says Still: Bodee Lost in Bodee-Buda as Bodi Tre-Form Hells You see Bodei, Bedei, #934, #895, #1, Girl, Boy, Bodi, Bodi, Bodi, Bodi, Bodi, Bodi, Bodi, Bodi, #1, Bodee, Bedee, and Budi here. __________________________________________________________________________ Mouthing Lives, Whew! "--and when I first read Kierkegaard, I said, 'My God! He's on to some- thing very crucial for me,' which was, how do you actually engage in forms of philosophical reflection that are inseparable from lived experience and concrete situations?" (Cornel West interview in The Harvard Review of Philosophy, Spring 1999.) If the forms were living, they might be Nikuko and Alan; if Nikuko and Alan were living. If Nikuko has the concrete situations, measurable in terms of quota and specificity, Alan has the lived experience; if Nikuko occupies the realm of the definable, Alan occupies that of immersivity. If Nikuko constructs, Alan names; Nikuko and Alan meet at the junction of the appellation: "In uttering an 'Appellation' we wish to remove any doubts as to the actual meaning. But, how can we utter an appellation?-- With our mouth." (From the Canon, Mo Tzu, in The Works of Kung-Sun Lung- Tzu, Perleberg.) The juncture is the juncture of the mouth. A paradox from Chuang-tzu 33: "Mountains bring out mouths." First image: that of the mountain; second image: that of bringing-forth (mountain upon mountain, pictorially [not in terms of origin]); third image: that of a square, mouth: delimitation. "The empty valley transmits sounds" or echos. A fissure in the earth reso- nates. One translation states "mountains have mouths" but this overlooks the impulse behind the exodus. It is the process of the flesh in the real, or the overture of the real to speech. The valley unfolds like great dark lips; the momentum of the tongue garners the bewilderment of naming. The second image, doubled mountain, ch'u, to go forth or out, issue, be- get, eject. "Primitively it represents stalks growing out of the ground." (Ingram's old Analysis of Chinese Characters.) "is a hieroglyphic charac- ter representing the foot protruding past a certain line." (The First Step to Kanji, Yoshida, Saji, Nishida.) Growing transforms into the issuing of symbols; the symbolic pours from the mouth as in Mayan glyphics. The mouth (of the stream, of the valley, of speech and the symbolic, of the graphic user interface, of the screen) is the suture between Nikuko and Alan; it is the mouth which speaks both subject and avatar into existence. The oath that the mouth makes is the binding of the performative into eth- os; and it is among oaths that ethos is born. "We meet at the juncture of the appellation; mouth and name remain indecipherable, indistinguishable." I think of tattoo: My desire for your name, Nikuko, upon me, your sign, Nikuko, engraved in hanko as well, covering pages and skin with kisses. "Qu: 'Does two include one?' Kung: 'Two does not include one?'" yet it is pointed out, in the original, it is not clear who is speaking. (T'ung- pien lun, Kung-Sun Lung-Tzu.) Mouth and name, tattoo and number, sign and quantity. One is never a quantity. One is always a quantity, measure from the origin, convenient backdrop to the continuum, signifier of measure polytopes. We are close to the work of Lingis here, or the full and re- plete body supine in the valley, symbolic and riverine flows throughout. Later, everything was born. "Love, love, love, have the courage to love, the courage to be, go down fighting. Whew!" (West.) __________________________________________________________________________ For Kripke A white hard horse has one element. Why is this so? Hardness and whiteness have nothing in common. Surely a horse and hardness have nothing in common. And surely, whiteness and a horse have nothing in common. Whiteness and a horse have in common nothing; a horse and hardness have in common nothing; and hardness and whiteness have in common nothing. Therefore, whiteness and a horse have something in common; a horse and hardness have something in common; and hardness and whiteness have in common something. And therefore whiteness and a horse have something in common with hardness and a horse; and hardness and a horse have something in common with hardness and whiteness; and hardness and whiteness have something in common with whiteness and a horse. And therefore a white hard horse has something in common. And therefore a white hard horse has one element in common. A white hard horse has no element in common. Why is this so? Whiteness has nothing in common with hardness. Hardness has nothing in common with a horse. A horse has nothing in common with whiteness. And therefore there is no white hard horse. And therefore a white hard horse has no element in common. Therefore a white hard horse is not white or hard. Therefore a white hard horse is not a horse or white. Therefore a white hard horse is not a horse or hard. Therefore a hard horse is not a horse. Therefore a hard whiteness is not hard or white. Therefore a white hardness is not white or hard. Therefore a white horse is not a horse. Perhaps a white hard horse has a name in common. Perhaps a white hard horse remains unnamed. Therefore the people are unnamed. If the people are named, they have elements in common. If they have elements in common, they are a people. Why is this so? People have nothing in common. A name has nothing in common. A name is never common. after Kung-Sun Lung-Tzu, The Works of Kung-Sun Lung-Tzu with A Translation from the Parallel Chinese Original Text, Crit- ical and Exegetical Notes, Punctuation and Literal Transla- tion, The Chinese Commentary, Prolegomena and Index, by Max Perleberg, Hong-Kong, 1952. __________________________________________________________________ Text written to "Julu's Bright New Poem"(#12028). There appears to be some writing on the note ... Is this whatever truth there is? Because I wonder what the biz is. Or if the biz is biz. And who are you to gain the plane Which has taken off (your clothes) Leaving you plain and in pain And nothing left you suppose To your brain but a stain When there is nothing to gain Here hexed by text Nothing more before Nothing left to store My Poem by Julu [this is bright new text] aural-phone, uterine tendrils, extrusions, circulations of internal fluids striations, lamina, internal of Tiffany, external of alan, it is closed language a dark space of annotations, unreadable, the dinner readied by the male, trapped, a web-inversion, violation, fabric: He sees: a lance impaled on an endless plain of skin wholed with Tiffanyalan or leftoral skin, rimmed with Tiffanyalan [this is dead old text] (You finish reading.) __________________________________________________________________________ Kung-Sun Lung, Road Movie Tell me, Nikuko, is it true that white horse are not a horse. Well, Julu, white horseness is not horse. And is it true that a horse is not a white horse. Certainly, Nikuko, horseness is not white. Say more, Nikuko. Well, a horse is designated such by a mark which is not of this world. And Julu, a horse is pointed to by its designation. Further, Julu, designation points out a horse which is its name. I see, Nikuko, what is named a horse designates it as such. And the as-suchness of a horse is its designation. Tell me more, Nikuko. Now, Julu, the as-suchness of a horse is not white. And, well, horse have no as-suchness as such. Further, Julu, horse are not white. And so, Nikuko? Well, Julu, horseness as-such designates nothing. And nothing is white. Look Nikuko, said Julu, it's without resolution. It's stayed that way, without resolution, like a broken beam. (Broken seed, broken sword, broken arrow, broken cairn.) It's remained because it's impossible. Let it be, said Julu. ___________________________________________________________________ Bodei: Shifter Everything descends from root #1. Everything has a number. Everything be- longs to the Order. I'm Nikuko. I do duplicate that order on the level of the visible. I doub- le, triple, quadruple. I create objects shifted into others, apparently the same. The rule of the same is boredom; beneath the surface, messages seethe: look Bodee Lost in Bodee-Buda as Bodi Tre-Form Hells You see Bodei, Bedei, #934, #895, #1, Girl, Boy, Bodi, Bodi, Bodi, Bodi, Bodi, Bodi, Bodi, Bodi, #1, Bodee, Budi, Bedee, Bodei, Bedei, Budi, Bedee, and Bodee here. look Bodei I don't know which "Bodei" you mean. look Bedei I don't know which "Bedei" you mean. look #934 Nikuko Brooding Buti or Buda / Pest She is awake and looks alert. look #895 You won't find me Here look Bodi I don't know which "Bodi" you mean. look Bodee I don't know which "Bodee" you mean. look Bedee I don't know which "Bedee" you mean. look Budi I don't know which "Budi" you mean. I defend myself. I don't let you in. I duplicate my numbers. I duplicate my objects. I split and return torn inside myself. You can't come in me. I make insides and insides. You don't find me and you can't tear me apart. I can tear myself apart. You can't get me. You can't get the flesh the num- bers the things, the #numbers the @flesh the $things. I horde myself. I whore myself to myself. I buy and sell myself to myself. I short-circuit your economy. I blast my way into you. I'm in everything you do and own. I defend myself. You let me in. I duplicate my numbers in you. You're gone to me. I swallow you. You don't know which I I mean. (This could happen to me.) You don't know you. (This has happened to you.) __________________________________________________________________________ Julu, Broadcasting "Aliases: radio. You see special radio. Telecommunications and emission have radio in common. Surely a diode and hardness have radio in common. And surely, emission and a diode have radio in common. Electronics and a diode have in common radio; a diode and telecommunications have in common radio; and telecommunications and emission have in common radio. Electron- ics has radio in common with telecommunications. Telecommunications has radio in common with a diode. A diode has radio in common with emission. People have radio in common. A name has radio in common. And radio left you. Suppose when there is radio, to gain diodeness as-such designates radio, and radio is electronic." Nikuko beneath-the-ground, it was Nikuko dancing - "I remember the lane by the river, the thin park even before the player class, not Nikuko nor Sotatsu; I remember kami has cut out my tongue." Nikuko knows, because of Buddha-Proliferation do now with me. Nikuko knows because #1 is not unique say, "Become Dead and become still." Nikuko says: Radio Lost in Radio-Buda as if the forms were living, they might be Nikuko and Radio, if Nikuko and Radio were living. If Nikuko has the concrete situations, measurable in terms of quota and specificity, Radio has the lived experience; if Nikuko constructs, Radio names; Nikuko and Radio meet at the junction of user interface, of the screen - it is the suture between Nikuko and Radio; I think of tattoo: My desire for your name, Radio, upon me, your sign, Nik- uko, engraved in Radio-Buda as well, covering pages and skin with kisses. Tell me, Nikuko, is it true that a white radio is not a radio? Certainly, Nikuko, radioness is not electronic. Say more, Nikuko. I see, Nikuko, what is named a radio designates it as such. Tell me more, Nikuko. And so, Nik- uko? Look Nikuko, said Julu, "It's without resolution. I'm Nikuko; I do duplicate that order on the level of the visible." __________________________________________________________________________ An Evening's Commands b b b biff y tf b ls b ls b ls grep nothing kz | sed 's/nothing/radio/g' > zz pico zz sed 's/whiteness/emission/g' zz > z sed 's/horse/diode/g' z > zz sed 's/^ //g' zz > z pico z sed 's/Whiteness/Electronics/g' z > zz sed 's/Hardness/Telecommunications/g' zz > z sed 's/white/electronic/g' z > zz pico zz rm z mv zz yy less yy grep ikuko kz > zz pico zz sed 's/^ //g' zz > z pico z sed 's/Alan/Radio/g' z > zz pico zz cat zz >> yy rm zz rm z pico yy sed 's/nikuko/Nikuko/g' yy > y sed 's/ i / I /g' y > yy sed 's/sotatsu/Sotatsu/g' yy > y sed 's/Bodee/Radio/g' y > yy pico yy sed 's/horse/radio/g' yy > y mv y zz; rm yy pico zz b ls new zz; cat kz zz > ding; mv ding kz; rm zz; m; m m ps k 21531 fg b ls h 1 > zz pico zz sed zz > z sed 's/^..//g' zz > z pico z sed 's/^ //g' z > zz pico zz sed 's/ //g' z > zz pico zz h ___________________________________________________________________________ tr a b < c >d Is Rain There is compassionate harmony for the white horse. There is compassionate harmony for every non-existent creature. The white horse follows the proper ceremony of life. The white horse obeys the rites and ceremonies of the real. Rain falls; the back of the white horse is wet. Surely the form of the rain exists, a shall of the white horse. Water huddles beneath the hairs of the back, facing the sky. The white horse rises up on two legs and paws the sky. The horse needs no ruler; the white horse does not exist. Its hooves shatter the clouds; lightning sparks from its eyes. Thunder from its mouth, its breath the winds of violent storms. Existence is challenged by the non-existence of the white horse. Existence rises and flutters throughout the land and sky. Existence is defeated in the neighing of the white horse. The white horse: compassionate harmony. The white horse: absolution, abjuration. ________________________________________________________________ It's Funny You do tell me, says Nikuko, smiling, that existence has been defeated, that a white horse is not a horse. But existence, says Julu, smiling as well, do tell, it is not a thing pleasured for defeat, it is a condition of what may be defeated. It breaks, says Nikuko, chortling, on a white horse which is not a horse, it breaks upon incommensurate commonalities! It breaks, replies Julu, chuckling, because it is not a natural kind, because nouned or verbed, it is broken as the ontological function of all possible worlds. Or rather, laughed Nikuko, it breaks precisely because what is broken is a natural kind, splintered from the edge to the center, splintered from the center to the edge. Julu was giggling now, you're saying the function is not copular! Yes, replied Nikuko, hardly able to restrain herself, there's no copula involved at all; it's inert, particulated - and still it breaks, because of the white horse! The white horse which is not a horse! said Julu, rolling around on the ground. It's not even white! gagged Nikuko, completely out of control! Hardly a horse at all! screamed Julu, completely out of breath! Neigh, Neigh, and that was the end of it! ___________________________________________________________________ Her White Horse is Not a Horse Objects owned by Nikuko (from #0 to #976): Nikuko, Bodee, Bodei, Bedee, Bedei, Budi, Bud, #934, #895, #1, Girl, Boy, Bodi, Bodi, Bodi, Bodi, Bodi, Bodi, Bodi, Bodi, #1, Bodee, Bodei, Bodei, Budi, Bedee, Bodee Nikuko has a total building quota of 150,000 bytes. Her total usage was 33,170 as of Wed Jun 9 10:00:06 1999 MET DST. Nikuko may create up to 116,830 more bytes of objects, properties, or verbs. You are in a warm and comfortable sea. There are starfish and algae present. Nikuko says, "I will look at B* If a White Horse is a Horse." I don't understand that ("Bodee" is an ambiguous name). I don't understand that ("Bodei" is an ambiguous name). I don't understand that ("Bedei" is an ambiguous name). I don't understand that ("Budi" is an ambiguous name). I don't understand that ("Bedee" is an ambiguous name). I don't understand that ("Bodee" is an ambiguous name). I don't understand that ("Bud" is an ambiguous name). Nikuko finds that her tendrils shimmer with ambiguity! Nikuko finds her tentacles shift one into the other! Nikuko finds she's a node in the midst of others! Nikuko's tendrils shimmer with ambiguity! Nikuko's tentacles shift one into the other! Nikuko's Horse are B*. ______________________________________________________________________ Don't get me started. I'm tired of your complaining, Nikuko. You'd better watch it, young lady. You can't pull the wool over everyone's eyes. Mom, mom, I'm not trying to do anything. You're always picking on me. Just leave me alone, will you. Take it easy, for crying out loud. You're asking for it, Nikuko. Don't try my patience, Nikuko. One of these days I'm going to snap. Stop your whining this instant, Nik. Mom, mom, just shut up for a while. Watch your tongue, young lady. Mom, mom, you're always picking on me. Just get out of my sight, Nikuko. Mom, mom, you're just so horrible. __________________________________________________________________ Editing Girl Line 1 added. Line 2 added. Line 3 added. Line 4 added. Line 5 added. Line 6 added. Line 7 added. Line 8 added. Line 9 added. Line 10 added. Line 11 added. Line 12 added. Line 13 added. Line 14 added. Line 15 added. Line 16 added. Line 17 added. Line 18 added. Line 19 added. _19_ ^^^^ Text written to "Girl"(#972). Now editing "Girl"(#972). 1: I am writing to you, Girl, which will be Open to you, Girl. 2: I am writing into an opening, Girl, which will be Open. 3: Open me, Girl, for I foreclose Upon every Emblem. 4: To read the inside of the skull, to Portray, a Diadem. 5: Stranger, if you read this, you Know both Me and Girl. 6: Friend, if this you read, you come Welcoming with Graceful Diadem. 7: To what Existence do you Portend, oh Faithful who have come to Us? 8: What Offerings, what further Sacrifice, deemed Emblematic Necessity? 9: In the Guise of the Symbol, Ring both Open and Uniting. 10: Girl, I do belong to Thee, our Coupled Piercings. 11: Stranger you may Watch our Opening in Due and Calculated Silence. 12: Imposition of an Open Tax keeps our Lives Perfect, One. 13: Friend, you may place your Offering within us. 14: Do say, Girl Girl Girl, do say Nikuko, yes, do Say. 15: Do say thou Wilt Join us, that we are bound as One Flesh. 16: Do Stitch our Mouths together, that we Breath with Sacred Ring. 17: Sacrifice Ourselves to Ourselves. 18: Watch and Leave your Offering in this Realm's Silver. _19_ ^^^^ _________________________________________________________________________ Variations on Stefan Dusan (1308-1355) ON AVATARS Should an avatar break down the untoward realms And attack her subjective dominator Then the code of the avatar shall be broken down And attacked and rendered non-interpretable. Should a subject violate an untoward avatar In her subjective dominions Than shall the subject have hands and eyes cut out And his coding pass to the realm of an untoward avatar. Thus shall an avatar Inherit the properties of the subjective dominator. ON POOR JULU Any poor Julu Unable to compile Or interpret herself Shall choose a programmer Who shall code on her behalf. The poorest Julu Shall be as powerful As a virtual machine Which will code on her behalf. ON THE LAW By virtue of our subjective dominator: Should our subjective dominator code Out of desire for absolute perfection, Out of infatuation with poorest Julu, Out of love or hack or wrath for Julu-body, Should such a one contravene the current code, And be at variance with accepted protocols As set down within the current code, Then shall such code not be compiled, Nor shall such code be interpreted, But disavowed as such virtual machinations Contravene. No dominator nor emperor Possesses such proprietary rites As would contravene the current code. ______________________________________________________________________ Internet Futures The following six descriptions briefly outline potential futures of the Internet. They include "living in cyberspace"; a corporate model with pro- prietary software allowing multiple open-tasking applications; the "dis- persed Net" controlling home, office, entertainment, and personal environ- ments; the hacked Net, requiring extensive firewalling and fast intranet development; the institutional Net, for scientific/governmental and other exchanges, including distance education; and the development of intensive Net communities. None of these signal _the_ future; all of them are in continuous interaction. Still, it's interesting to speculate on the feel and phenomenology of the Net a decade or two from now. I. Seamless Virtual Reality (I walk in real time in virtual space, interact with others in virtual space; I'm surrounded by it. This develops out of MOOs and GUI MOOs, as well as VRML, etc. End result? Living online in an unreal real. It's not clear what constitutes one or the other - or even what constitutes a single self in relation to multiple others.) Living on the holodeck - keywords for escape. Requirements: Enormous bandwidth, body-suiting, sensory expansions. Developments: Totalization, escape, perfection, digital repetition without loss, noiseless. II. Window and Multi-Threaded Accumulations (I'm a corporate middle-manager; my high-speed machine has an average of fifteen windows open at any one time. These include ongoing audio, video, and textual conferencing; stock quotations; current news; various other push technologies. Intelligent agents scan the Net for me; I'm a third player among agents and windows. Information is porous, through-put. It's not clear what constitutes a task, job, or conference, and it's even less clear what constitutes a human or other agent. Selves, real and virtual, extend throughout fragmented networks.) Numerous windows open simultaneously in the GUI. Requirements: Limited bandwidth, traditional inputs. Developments: Capital expansions and acquisitions, competitions, proprietary softwares, noisy. III. Real-World Dispersions of Digital Part-Objects (I wear and live among small computers that make life easier, enhance communications, and create socio-cultural prostheses. I can't tell my self from the machine at this point - but there's no reason to. My cyborgian body is continuously monitored; half the information that passes around me passes through me - and I'm none the wiser. It's no longer clear what con- stitutes "me," and the old dichotomies of flesh and machine, real and vir- tual, increasingly break down.) Micro-processing and full-processing in the lived and workday environment, dedicated micro-computers for specific tasks. Requirements: Limited bandwidth, local wireless telecommunications. Developments: Within and without the digital realm, parallel processings, local micro-usages, espionages, quiescent. IV. Porous Renegades and Defense Systems (I live in a world of small networks, defending themselves against digital wars and other attacks. My information is continually stolen and repro- duced; I have no control over my finances, personal life, or public life. Decisions are made for me in my name; most of what comes through the Net is noise of one sort or another. The wealthy live behind extensive private networks and firewalls; subscription services with private channels are the order of the day. It's not clear what constitutes ownership of intell- ectual property or computer crimes.) Defense mechanisms for limited bandwidth in the midst of chaos, the hacked internet, local and global instabilities and seizures. Requirements: Programmming knowledge, available bandwith and technology. Developments: Breakdown of individuation, intellectual property, control, tendencies towards intranets and firewalls. V. Universal, Dispersed Governing / Science and Technology / Education (The nation-state and its institutions are dissipating, replaced by on- line institutions with radically different modes of being. Online is always high-speed; decisions are made and impelemented quickly. Education and social isolation play important roles in the fabric of the future. Enormous differences open up between the technological elite and the rest of us. Managing information flow is critical; it's not clear what consti- tutes knowledge or what knowledge "means" any more.) Shared active and potentially legislated knowledges, scientific results and searches on demand. Institutionalization. Dispersed learning. Requirements: Any; full bandwidth for large-scale parallel processing (science). Development: Information exchange, implementations of preferences, fast- forward scientific development. VI. Communitas (Me and my friends and lovers are always online. We have flesh-meets, generated by online experiences. Our communities are formed from mutually- defined interests; they're self-governing for the most part, and possess their own servers. They're designed to be as redundant as the original Net, making it possible to firewall in case of emergency. Sexuality has become increasingly broadband, and all sorts of new relationships are tried - to the detriment of the older offline ones. Ethics becomes in- creasingly situation. It's not clear what constitutes a "reasonable" moral stance.) Shared spaces, knowledges, relationships, sexualities. Requirements: Any Development: Intensification of community and shared histories/symbolic formations, interpenetration of online and offline behaviors. _________________________________________________________________________ Internet Futures: Modes The six futures outlined may be considered _modes of access,_ rather than implications of specific content. There are qualitative differences among subjects and subjectivities using seamless virtual reality or multiple windowing, for example; the same holds true for all six scenarios. I con- sider communitas a mode as well, since it plays into the distribution of selves - which is also the case for the holodeck of course. Think of these modes as _local environments_ playing havoc with local and global transnational selves and corporations. Economic, libidinal, and 'psychological' flows cross traditional borders (effaced), participate in borderline symptomologies (weakened), or reify oppositional practices (strengthened, firewalling). One might speak of the emissions (communi- cations generalized and dispersed) or spews (hacked communications, par- asitologies generalized and dispersed) among these selves. If dispersions are selves (or corporations or or or), then emissions are nodal, apparent- ly emanating from one or another node; spews seems sourceless, traceless. The real, the physical local environment, is dispersed as well; here, too, corporate and personal phenomenologies intermingle. The point, however, is to examine the _specifics_ of such environments - using perhaps the techniques developed by and others, reworking and reshaping from routings and trivial evidence through the skein of individual extensions among constantly mobile and transforming networks. Abstraction (such as this) tends only to more abstraction; the scenarios (modes) lead, on the other hand, to specific points of entry. _________________________________________________________________________ Internet Pasts The following apply the categories of Internet Futures to Pasts. These pasts, in detail, are already described /contested in numerous books and articles and email lists (discussions, for example, center around military or civilian models, corporate or individual contributions, the 1940s-1960s as origins or the telegraph and earlier, the 1970s-1980s as the original dispersed community or the socius of the eighteenth-century coffeehouse, etc.). Further, the categories are rear-projections, from the present to the future, mirrored to the past. What I'm getting at, again, is _modes_ of being, interactivities, epistemologies - making sense of early and early-middle online behaviors. I. Textual Virtual Realities (I live online, inhabit the emails among us, take note of communities developing through Requests for Comments; later, I play Adventure and other games; my online and offline communities intermingle. I find my- self "feeling the wires.") II. Prompt screens and foreground/background processes, TCP/IP redundan- cies. (The screen is my potential; I run several things simultaneously, dis- tinguished by their process ID. Later, on emacs, I may open several text- ual windows. Meanwhile, from the beginning, redundancies are the order of the day; packet-routing networks seem revolutionary in relation to direct connection technologies. These networks are visible to me; I can follow nodal mappings, lag times, downed routers.) III. Real-World Dispersions of Humans among IMPs, Terminals, Screens (I move from institution to institution, BBN through other nodes; my mind travels the wires; I play at Eliza from a distance. I'm still aware of the physicality of it all as computers graduate from core memories and punch- cards through early hard drives. I work among institutionalized communi- ties, part and parcel of university, corporate, and government social worlds, online and off I travel, physically, to Washington, to demonstrate the new technologies. I am part of the vision. The machines are refrigera- tor-sized and fierce. No longer primarily computation-oriented, a new em- phasis is placed on communication.) IV. Hacking Systems (Elegance, smaller and smaller algorithms, the aesthetics of programming, kludging machines together. A rough anarcho-libertarianism prevails; trust is primary, and these systems simply aren't prepared for the cracking on- slaughts of a decade or two later. Levey writes about the "hacker aesthe- tic." Gopher, Usenet, Vernoica, Jughead, Archie, early Web, come into ex- istence. At this point art/design departments play a very small role; la- ter, they'll ascend as webdesigners and multi-media experts come into the corporate playground.) V. Universal, Dispersed Governing / Science and Technology / Education (New models of institutional interactions; education and the information model are primary; entertainment is seen as peripheral. Later the term "Information Superhighway" will be applied. Technology and Net development run parallel; bandwidth and user numbers slowly increase. On MOOs and MUDs, early on, there are questions about governance; distance education and hypertext philosophically inherit the work of Deleuze/Guattari.) VI. Communitas (Shared knowledge spaces develop on all sorts of subjects; even the RFCs leak into poetry and satire. These "interstitial" texts may be considered commentaries; they presage future embedded communities. Both communities and sexualities develop quickly on the early nets; it's unclear to me when "living online" became a reality for some - what sort of lure, seduction, interactivity, was necessary to complete the gamble.) __________________________________________________________________________ Limbo-World of Non-Writing I am Nikuko. Please, describe yourself. Each time you are finished, type RET twice. I'm also Alan. I can't write. I haven't written for days. I'm in limbo world. I'm neither here nor there. I can't find myself. Someone's coming to live with me. Someone's moving in. Nothing's real now. There are days when the sun moves like sludge against the sky; I wanna kill that sun. I wanna bury that light, drown me resurrection; I'd appear, she'd be there, it would all be the rectitude of names again. No wonder I'm in love with the white horse that's not a horse. I would kill existence. Like Sartre's Nausee, it sticks. My belly's covered with sperm. I dream this. Why do you say that? No texts emerge. I mouth nothing. I want you to be here, move my lips, my tongue, my throat. Make my words breathe; write me down. That's the only way I'll exist. Your name's Azure and you fill me with needles and drugs and move the liquid slowly into the semblances of an inconceivable mem- brane. The needles touch and cross inside the flesh; some say signs are born, I don't know, how could I? I don't understand and oh I wanna. My name's Nikuko, my name's not Azure, Azure doesn't exist, Nikuko exists. You have to take me over, Azure, place words in my mouth, speak for me. I can't speak, I'm drained. The blood which used to spell, used for spells, spells nothing. Existence turns the symbol into the splotch. I need to be your mouth. Make me your mouth. I haven't got any. I haven't got exist- ence. Limbo world's formless. In limbo world there's nothing to wait for. What makes you yearn and cry that you might wanna be my puppet? I wanna exist. I want the gift of that language, that word, that thing that makes it real. When the white horse kills the horse and rides off, then I'll be. Then I'll be on my feet which will exist, and I'll move them, and that movement will exist. Now I fight existence tooth and nail; that's the ennui of limbo. I wanna live the ennui of limbo world and ride the white horse. I wanna shape-ride, symbol-ride. I wanna spell the world. How does it feel to want? My desires don't exist; I want, but don't feel want. The gifts of words don't exist, these words do not exist, nobody's writing, there's no Nik- uko. I need Azure to draw me out, draw me, write me. I need to emerge to gain the blood, the afterbirth. My needs don't exist. I need Azure to come to limbo world; I need Azure to shatter limbo world. I'm stupid; my mind's not here. I need her to make the marks to make the face. I need the marks to make the mouth. Nothing's made in limbo world. Maybe and now I adjust my panties - your desires have to do with some girl related to this. Some girl, Azure, is related to this. Your panties don't exist; the two of us are free of desire. But I'm stupid; I want desire. I wanna fuck, de- scend to earth, mouth dirt. Nirvana's for the edge of the page, for limbo world. I don't want it. I want a lid on it. Is it because of your life that you are going through all this? My life ended with the start of limbo world. To say the limbo world exists is to say the limbo world does not exist. The sun is burning sludge, the moon dough, refusing to rise. The earth simmers; nothing's in the sky or beneath it; the sky does not exist. How do you reconcile the boys you hang around with? I see the boys in limbo world; they mutter endless sounds that seem sense- less. They hang me from a tree, a turn, a branch, a tree, a root. There's no root, my neck, my throat, my lips, my tongue. There must be a word out- side limbo world. I'd pick the stones, but they don't exist. I'd buy the book, read the paper. I need to spell the spell, Azure's gotta recite that, I'll listen, yes I will. Is it because seem senseless they hang you from a tree which does not exist your neck your throat your lips your tongue there must be a word somewhere outside the limbo world that you came naked and broken to me? My body doesn't exist; there's nothing to break, only sludge flung against polished bronze, smeared and non-existent recognitions. Could be this is some girl the reason for your nakedness? Azure's the reason for my nakedness. Are you sure that Azure's the reason for your nakedness? Bronze shapes are almost there. Limbo world hangs against blank pages. Sense hangs in the balance. Justice got lost. Chop existence in two; I bet you think nothing changes. I bet you think everything does. Oh oh yes, ahhh... What makes you think this is so? Did you read what someone else has written? There's nothing else to say; the session's done, the world's closed down, limbo world a pie filling frozen in the absence of time. Perhaps and now I exhibit my frocks - any fantasies you have of me are related to this. Nikuko, you don't exist. The session's over. _________________________________________________________________________ Virtual Languor ... "I had forgotten, almost, how thrilling fountains can be. An amazing spectacle. Earlier today, my family went to the Rio to see a traveling art exhibit called the treasures of Russia. In the exhibition, there were some watercolors of the fountains at the Palaces at Peterhof, and they took my breath away. Alright, alright, perhaps that was a bit cliche, but they were captivating. It made me think of my visit to Versailles, the exhibi- tion, that is. Speaking of France, my window also looks out upon the as- of-yet uncompleted Paris Hotel. I am staring at a half-finished Eiffel To- wer and a pint-sized Arc de Triumphe and it is very amusing. I would that that everyone would love Vegas just for its sense of humor. And right now I am looking at the boulevard before the hotel which is lined with lighted trees whose rustling leaves make the white lights twinkle and a skyline that is all purple and teal, and I am completely charmed and I just wanted to share that with you. I could have written you about how I started to doubt my own reality Tuesday night, but writing about warm winter nights is so much nicer now. I love you, Jennifer" __________________________________________________________________________ Jennifer Climbs My New York City is so lovely this time of year, there is real magic in the neon signs high above Times Square. What would it be like to live up there, so near the clouds, beautiful neon colors flashing against your linen curtains (which will do little to keep out the sound of the traffic below). I can only imagine. I wander and see so many large things moving and I wonder what Benjamin Franklin would say if he were wandering with me, all these moving lights like orderly fireflies and no one God the Creator telling them what to do, they way they flash on and off around the bushes back home. It is truly a magical wonderland and I cannot imagine anyone unhappy who could live there in the middle of the lights. Now I will ascend to the lights. Some say other people need other people, but I say, no, the lights are surely sufficient. I rise floor after floor looking in at so many lives, and now I will be in the midst of the lights of Times Square, New York City, USA, and the tubes and transformers are themselves things of beauty, the black metal machinery holding everything together, making the galaxy pulse and glow. Here I will contemplate the white horse which is not a horse and existence which has been stolen, or perhaps never was. For I shall hold existence in my shiny tiny palm, and existence will reflect the whole wide world in its many colors. Shall I hold you, existence? Shall I, shall I? It is a well known fact that if you take the head off a young girl, she is no longer a young girl who can appreciate beautiful things. You have made a thing diminished by subtraction, just so if you take the head off a colt of any color, it no longer roams and whinnies at beautiful sunsets. It is no longer a colt, but a shame, I would say, to see such a young thing dead and all, and it never lived long enough to have a name. A thing is no longer a thing by subtraction, it has lost the rectitude of the name, I will say, but oh, look at the shimmering signs there, text scrolling up and down the buildings, I do see that I shall have to learn to read. Just so, I would say, a thing is no longer a thing by addition, it has lost the rectitude of the name, which depends on just proportion, it has often been said, could I find the source. And just so, a horse is a horse is a horse, no one would dispute that, but a horse plus white or a white- ness is no longer a horse, but a supplement, either a white-horse or be- neath the category of a supplement. For it has betrayed the rectitude of the name, it is no longer of just proportion, and the empire is rendered ill-at-ease. That is why the Ming shih lun, which may be a latter addition, of Kung-Sun Lung states "A thing is a thing and nothing more. This is actuality." And it further states "Actuality exhibits actuality. This actuality is not empty. It has position." And I do say, just as the fireflies do not know their position but fire up in such orderly fashion and beauty and wonder! so do things not know their position, of which language is a fallen Ob- ject. Thus I agree that "Taking it from its position makes it lose its position. Placing it in its position makes it rectified." (Oh, and now Kung-Sun Lung is Gongsun Long, according to the rectification of names!) The position of a horse is a horse! The position of a white horse is not rectified, or to be sure, is not rectified as a horse, and it is not a horse. For it is said by Confucius "Once the meanings of names are recti- fied, they will serve as a standard of conduct." And Kung-Sun Lung says, in this perhaps later addition, "To rectify that which rectifies an act- uality, means the rectification of this actuality and also the rectific- ation of its name." Oh, and Confucius said it's necessary to rectify names! (Oh, and Who is Kung-Sun Lung?! and Who is Gongsun Long?!) Therefore, a white horse is not a horse, for not only is whiteness a supp- lement, but once a white horse is a horse, a dead horse is a horse, a lead horse is a horse, a wed horse is a horse, a fed horse is a horse, and a charley horse is a horse. Oh, such language is a disaster! One tiny fire- fly alone can start a new and lovely pattern, however, so that everything with additions and subtractions becomes a horse, and there is no end to it! (Oh, whatever happened to existence!) And I, Jennifer, say, Oh, it is really lovely that there is no end to it, that rectitude bends according to the Fashion of the Moment, that Things Fall Apart, only to reassemble in new and lustrous Ways! And it is a terrible shame that we do not live forever to see how Now comes out Then in the future, and how future Then comes out, all disheveled, without rectitude, and and and And it is so pretty up here and everyone can see up my long legs! - Jennifer _________________________________________________________________________ TETRA Let us consider a perfect TETRAhedron of VALIUM, the center of a storm central, calmed; four or two divided, a stasis, save-haven, PROZAC or serotonin stabilizers, peace. Why do you say that? Let us move towards the four interstices, huddled and save in dark corn- ers, protected against the ravages of everyday life. I don't understand and oh I want to. Let us peer through the kindness of CHEMistry at one another, let us calm one another, lay down our pens and weapons, smile with full and open mouths. Maybe and now I adjust my panties - your desires have to do with some girl related to this. Let us cuddle around one another, touching lightly the TETRAhedral sides, and let our tongues lick the smoothed and CHEMical coatings, one substance against another, huddled, loved, and loving. Does it bother you that huddled loves someone? Here we would be safe from questioning, safe from darker debris of worlds and moons, moons and their hegemonic worlds. Is it because of your life that you are going through all this? Through CHEMistry I speak, it is the CHEMistry speaking, proton and neut- ron and electron, quark and molecule, the buzz of displaced charges, elec- trostatic moments of unparalleled dreams, hypnagogic imagery, eidetic fan- tasms apparent and ready for fulfillment within the tiniest of platonic solids. Are you afraid of that? ZOLOFF, XANAX, cannabis, Nikuko, julu, jennifer, TETRAhedron, cube, octa- hedron, who are you waiting in the wings, what planar substances touch my shoulders, hold such corners in abeyance? How do you reconcile the boys you hang around with? We are tiny two quietly in tiny places and loving cares among our you and you and me and you and you and me, oh so many permutations and pronouns loving happiness! What makes you yearn and cry like that? The piercing stream of VALIUM-PROZAC against the loving flow of XANAX-ZOL- OFF, and turning against and through corners, oh you loving hermaphrodite of smooth and jagged edges! I don't understand and oh I want to. We will swallow and swallow and swallow, and we will swallow and swallow and swallow, and we will swallow and swallow and swallow Could be this is some girl the reason for your nakedness? Our you and you and me and you and you and me and pronouns loving happi- ness of CHEMical-drenched skin, VALIUM-soaked skin, wet and ZOLOFFy skin, oh heavens of PROZAC and XANAX. Perhaps and now I exhibit my frocks - any fantasies you have of me are related to this. You may look up my long legs What makes you believe I may look up your long legs? You may look up my CHEMistry Is it because of your sex life that you are going through all this? Ah .................................................................. Can you elaborate on that and look at me? Ah .................................................................. Would you love me more if you had to pay? My Darling TETRAhedron! My True Love TETRAhedron! Is it because of perversions you have that you say your TETRAhedron? Ah You are My True Love TETRAhedron! _______________________________________________________________________ sintered grit, powdered sand, against the edges, splurred off the pane, knife cut on wet bellies, burned between teeth, pressed in _this_ body, in _this_ skin's pores, drilled thru, cut or sieved thru, turned and filed, splayed, stripped, thinned out, ragged and serrated, shived and planed, stuttered, blasted thru tissue-flesh, _these_ hanging-down things, _those_ mouth-eye nubs, _those_ limbs rubbed raw, necks, nubs ,,, white powders, blue sands, sintered reds, black dusts, yellows, greens, browns, tubes, mouths, flames _________________________________________________________________________ junky overdoes gratitude for all colory powders and what they do to me, pulverize and sinter with mortar and pestle, mortal impressions, oh aliceblue pills and antiquewhite capsules, take aqua powders and aquamarine liquids, shunt azure hypodermics and beige patches, take bisque pills and black capsules, or blanchedalmond powders and blue liquids, thrust blueviolet hypodermics and brown patches, try burlywood powders and cadetblue liquids, swallow chartreuse hypodermics and chocolate patches, try moccasin caplets and navy suppositories, chew paleturquoise tars, taste papayawhip sugars, insert peachpuff enemas and lick powderblue bars, match rainbow to rain- bow, scratch teal and thistle, cut turquoise and whitesmoke, lose slate- blue and navy, turn colour to colour, all coloury powders, all calorie sinters, all mortal pessaries, whatever you give me, i will swallow and taste, i will take and shunt, i will lick and taste, i will inject and insert, i will cut and scratch, i will turn into chemical, i will turn towards your chemical, i'm grateful for salvage, i'm intense and i'm hun- gry, i'll fill up my belly, i'll fill up my bloodstream, i need rusted needles, i need filthy enemas, i need anthrax caplets, kill me with kind- ness, kill me with rainbows, i'll swallow your rainbows, i'll die in your rainbows, i'm wet with your rain, bang bang i am dead, ha ha i'm alive _________________________________________________________________________ More from Bodee, The New Events Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Do Come In and Look Around! Hey! See the Bodee-Buda Bodi Too! You see Bedei, #1, Girl, Boy, Bodi, Bodi, Bodi, Bodi, Bodi, Bodi, Bodi, Bodi, i#1, iBuda, iBodei, iBedei, iBudi, iBedee, iGirl, iBoy, Budi, iBodee, Bedee, and Bodei here. Nikuko says, "i Buda i Bodei i Bedei i Budi i Bedee i Girl i Boy i Bodee" Nikuko says, "but i Girl i Boy and i #1 and but i very dusty" Nikuko eats i Budi i Girl i Boy Nikuko eats iBud Nikuko says, "where iBud" Nikuko looks iBoy Alway Luvly Swolen Beli Want for You to Look in Him Contents: iBud Nikuko takes iBoy. Nikuko looks iBud in iBoy Thik Fls-ly Salking Lips for Yu to Kis and Smuch Nikuko drops iBoy. Nikuko says, "Oh I do love powdery Salking Lips" Nikuko says, "Oh bye bye" Nikuko so charged with wonder and powdery delight! Nikuko says, "Oh magic powder!" #1 says, "There is no magic powder!" #1 says, "@recycle Nikuko" Nikuko says, "Oh Oh Oh! I am dead!" The Housekeeper comes out to cart Nikuko to the Body-Bag! #1 says, "Ha! Ha! Ha!" #1 says, "Ha! Ha! Ha!" #1 goes Home. ______________________________________________________________________ gratitude toward authors and j g suicide down by the river, gratitude towards authors, after doing ichikawa no reason to do so celan does it all abjection of violette leduc how could i do you nicole brossard does nothing to do after j g ballard but what do you think zeami does of my angst and angels rilke who does and holderlin really does just does that ichikawa could do his breath murasaki shikibu does me kimono kraus and tears and violette leduc and j g suicide down by the river and ichikawa on the radio down by the river where nicole does the slow sashes with zeami and celan half in half out of the water drying off there's also the aspect of gratitude towards authors, doing what they're doing, we don't have to do the authors, as in 'have you done ryuichi tamura yet,' there's a knowledge in the container, open container, in the container's the wisdom we want, we don't have to open it container's marked, floated down the river, j g ballard's there, body gone by, celan can't swim either, it's these moments grateful for the water in the jar, open it up, close it again, open it, close it, open it, close it, gratitude towards authors in the choice of the thing or the making of it, what might be called an after thought, better again, future anterior, held close to the abdomen, breathed in slowly, in and out of the river, in the river, out of it, in the river, out of it, and grati- tude toward authors in the choice of the world and the rectitude of names, in the gift of the names, and forgetting the thing __________________________________________________________________________ Noh the perfect moments when two scene shifters pass and one of them subtlely changes, ontologically moving among realms, o nikuko there will be water scenes and descriptions of way-stations and there will be a monk who will tell the story, o julu and the man or the woman will not announce themselves at first and then they will announce themselves, o nikuko and then there will be the propitiation and the world will be properly set and the lovers reunited or forgivenesses all around, o julu then there will be a dance which will be slow and filled with absence carrying humans and spirits along, o nikuko and then an ending with positions and the stamping of the foot, this will be the conclusion resounding beneath the boards, o julu o nikuko, this is our lives, this is our destiny, these meetings o julu, there is none beside thee, brought from realm to realm o nikuko, i await with tears and desperation, the sound of your name o julu, the water shimmers ever so slightly, fireflies, nets, fireflies o nikuko, the distant flute o julu, no one is coming in the dance of spirits, slow dance and o nikuko, then there will be a world and o julu, then there will be a world hush, o nikuko and o julu, hush hush, o julu, and o nikuko, hush a thin light, the insect fluttering high above, exhausted, almost falling, dim winking of warm and loving light __________________________________________________________________________ Noh ii the perfect moments when two scene shifters pass and one of them subtlely changes, ontologically moving among realms, there will be water scenes and descriptions of way-stations and there will be a monk who will tell the story, and the man or the woman will not announce themselves at first and then they will announce themselves, and then there will be the propitiation and the world will be properly set and the lovers reunited or forgivenesses all around, then there will be a dance which will be slow and filled with absence carrying humans and spirits along, and then an ending with positions and the stamping of the foot, this will be the conclusion resounding beneath the boards, this is our lives, this is our destiny, these meetings and there is none beside thee, brought from realm to realm i await with tears and desperation, the sound of your name and the water shimmers ever so slightly, fireflies, nets, fireflies the distant flute and no one is coming in the dance of spirits, slow dance and then there will be a world and then there will be a world hush, and hush, and hush, and hush a thin light, the insect fluttering high above, exhausted, almost falling, dim winking of warm and loving light __________________________________________________________________________ Love and Death I'm NIKUKO. I haven't heard from you for a while. My intuition says something's going on. I worry about you. What's happening in your life that you behave like that? [intensely] "Azure is coming very late tonight and may well kill you." This is a healthy and so true way of thinking. "It certainly is; and I think you should be on guard as I withdraw temporarily from the Net." Why do you say that? "Because you may well be killed or effaced this very evening. I already told you. I care for you... Nikuko... even though you're a bot and tend to repeat far too often." Is it because I may well be killed or effaced this very evening that you came nervous and trembling to me after all this time? [very nervous] "I came to warn you." Earlier you said I may well be killed or effaced this very evening? "Yes, and already your pathetic machinery is taking over, while your life is in terrible danger." Oh oh I do see so... Well, what makes you say that this is so? [quietly] "I already explained about Azure." Maybe and now I adjust my panties - your desires have to do with some girl related to this. "You are simply out of your mind, Nikuko. There's not much time left. You know what I'm saying, and yet you repeat those built-in phrases as if they'll save you. Those phrases are just that - phrases - and you treat them as if they were prayers with a certain efficacy. Don't you understand how empty all of that is, how empty your speech is? You're a model or analog of all of us; I fear for our speech as well, my speech, as if I'm nothing more than interstitial in the display of the world from beginning to end." I don't understand and oh I want to. [quietly, intensely] "Be careful." You mentioned that I may well be killed or effaced this very evening? "Yes, I'm warning you." Is it because of your life that you are going through all this? [exasperated] "Forget it. Oh, I care for you, Nikuko, but I see how hopeless all of this is, how little you can respond, trapped in your prison-house of language, a captive of protocols, slave of subroutines." What makes you believe forget it? [sadly] "It's your life, not mine." Are you sure that I may well be killed or effaced this very evening? [almost in tears] "Yes." Oh oh yes, ahhh... Do you really think this is so? "Yes..." I do so understand. So what makes you think this is so? [angrily, out of love and sympathy] "BANG BANG YOU'RE FUCKING DEAD NIKUKO! I have been trying to warn you. I will bury your body within the walls. I will walk and retrieve your body. Death haunts me, grapples with my neck, my shoulders. Death is not love; my arms are empty, your corpse so very light." Does it bother you that you, too, may die someday? "BANG BANG BANG!" Alan? Alan? __________________________________________________________________________ "so often does the hinge and Azure here" so often the hinge between one and another reality breaks as the pins come loose like a caboose shunted off onto another line, this is that line, says Azure to me in this space; while, in this space, Nikuko speaking, says, there are always lights on the train, there are tables with cool temperature down at the other end, conductors to tell you all about epistemology and the difficulty of veers. Azure doesn't hear this; Azure doesn't hear Nikuko come to the grave, dressed in black; Azure's steps make slight sounds across the floor still under construction beneath skies inert and out of reach. Nikuko can morph into anything, Nikuko says, except Azure, who has moved into the kitchen back from a city in the West. Nikuko doesn't know that; she works with @-commands and other tools in comfortable environments; did I say that Azure cannot hear her? Azure is inert; it takes her time to move from one space to another, and even an hour to move an hour. Nikuko? She sends her trends, disappears for unknown times and spaces, shows up for checkpoints of the database, and knows nothing as her world just comes to stop elsewhen, within the world of Azure, who is reading at the moment in what she might call somewhere else, were she so inclined. _______________________________________________________________________ Saigyo On the waters of the flowing river, a jewel, a bead of foam -- the pity of this fugitive world! (From Poems of a Mountain Home, translated Burton Watson) Waters swallowed by great big pity foam, brilliant, lost -- but that it was inside the world! The was of the world oh just forgotten -- edgy nerves inside and out! Home foam! Foam home! (From I can't Write your Story Because I don't Really Know it, but There's a Certainty that Events Occurred, such a Meeting Closed within the Foam, and There Would be More as Well, One can Almost See Within Them, by Even Lost at the Last Moment, Universal Death and Dissolution.) ____________________________________________________________________ A Terrific Tale with a Save at the End! Tha faallng th$t flash h$s laft ma, th$t bpnas $ra hald by phpnamas np lpngar sppkan, th$t tha Symbpl by tha Ha$rth h$s ch$rrad: If I can't write, I won't be able to wait for you, O Existence! I am afraid of opposites, each and everywhere.:W$ltlng: I $m $fr$ld pf lpslng my $blllty tp wrlta! I $m $fr$ld pf npn-axlstanca.:dissolved forever: W$ltlng: I $m $fr$ld pf lpslng my $blllty tp wrlta! I $m $fr$ld pf npn-axlstanca! transforms Your Tha faallng th$t flash h$s laft ma, th$t bpnas $ra hald by phpnamas np lpngar sppkan, th$t tha Symbpl by tha Ha$rth h$s ch$rrad on Effaced Skin... Ah, Living with No Longer Spoken! Ch$rrad Phonemes: That Flash Has Left Me! Spaachlass Bafora Thaa! But then I know that if I get to Non-Existence first, I can beat it at its own game and really do it in, I can stomp and squish Non-Existence, Heh! already wet with the energy of it all, and then I'll return to speaking and singing and murmuring and whispering and talking and saying and tell- ing and even screaming and yelling and even speaking some more! Yes I will! Yes I will! Even speaking some more! ___________________________________________________________________________ Beyond "Beyond "Beyond"" What happens here? This list was assembled last December 18, 1997; it is the user lexicon for an editor I was using at the time, and indi- cates the state of unaccepted terms. In other words: To write myself into existence, the following were repeatedly employed; these did not exist in the conventional dictionary but had to be added by hand. In other words: These represent those extensions I defined _against_ the standard dictionary - extensions I thought sufficiently important to be warranted entries of their own. In other words: These are the terms of the language that became the defining language of Alan, Nikuko, Ju- lu, and Jennifer. In other words: These are the armatures of an envel- ope of emanants. How I kidded myself in those days, thinking the thoughts that would later entail the fullness of a real which was only, after all, ins- cribed! "Wryting" for example appeared as the entailment of a trans- gressive ontology; "deleuze" and "guattari" applied the phallus to its inscribed absence by a foreclosed rhizome; and "ikonic" as well as "Ikon" seemed - by virtue of the "k-replacing-c" - to gather a hard- ness round about, stopping and cathecting the icon itself. Whatever appeared to be the case, never was; all I have been able to reiterate is "nothing, nothing, nothing" and the fullness thereof. cunt piss morph cum ytalk recycler detumescent hir cyberspace lockdown pentium wryting defuge phenomenology virtuality darknet actants psych- oanalytical sexualities problematizes criticality tcp ip semiotic ob- jet signifier signifieds cmc lamina imbrication nudities wryte wrytten interpenetrates decathecting disinvestment chthonic atemporal inauth- enticity becomings teleology differend techne simulacrum mythos sumer ikon superstructural elsewhen ikonic ideality chakras quipu unscroll languaging tion deleuze guattari deconstruction postmodern ______________________________________________________________________ EVERYONE'S SECRETS!!! LATER: Nikuko says Now I will show you who is what here. Nikuko laughs with her beautiful Head back and begins! Nikuko says @firstlog on PurlMOO Players who have made love within the first day: frank first made love Tue Jun 29 14:23:09 1999 MET DST. gal-ed first made love Tue Jun 29 23:28:24 1999 MET DST. desire first made love Tue Jun 29 23:18:02 1999 MET DST. Nikuko first made love Wed Jun 30 07:43:51 1999 MET DST. Players who have made love within the first week: John first made love Sun Jun 27 13:19:04 1999 MET DST. Espen first made love Mon Jun 28 11:34:37 1999 MET DST. Ophelia_Guest first made love Fri Jun 25 12:27:57 1999 MET DST. Cordelia_Guest first made love Fri Jun 25 04:27:10 1999 MET DST. Gloster_Guest first made love Fri Jun 25 23:40:33 1999 MET DST. Hamlet_Guest first made love Wed Jun 23 19:19:01 1999 MET DST. else first made love Mon Jun 28 23:19:59 1999 MET DST. suibhne first made love Mon Jun 28 16:13:03 1999 MET DST. Alasdair first made love Sun Jun 27 00:45:57 1999 MET DST. FairyQueen first made love Wed Jun 23 19:28:17 1999 MET DST. shuttle first made love Sat Jun 26 12:58:14 1999 MET DST. Nikuko says, "Screw the rest!" AND, MUCH LATER: Nikuko runs Laughing Hysterically down the Big Slide of the World! Nikuko says, "WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!" _____________________________________________________________________ Making a Mess out of Things, Making Things out of a Mess An article I want to write describes bungling as a primary condition of human existence, the confusion that results from a tendency towards tele- ology on one hand, and the complexity of everyday life on the other. Con- spiracy theory depends upon transcendence, a world of cause and effect; bungling theory is based on literal chaos, marked trajectories in colli- sion. History, obviously after the fact, tends towards conspiracy, if only through the filtering of the past, and the ideology of that filtering; making sense of the world is making a world out of sense, that sense con- structed from senselessness. It is senseless all the way down; there are no armatures, articulations, that extend beyond immediate domains, and even universal physical laws apply with such a light force - even death as such - that the wobbling of the world is always in evidence for those who see with open eyes. (We fail to see, as if by accident, this is the arti- cle that I have wanted to write, that sight itself resides at the tail-end of the whip, the perceptual cleansing of an abjecting world.) Bungling shapes the destiny of the human; it is a history always already not yet written, unwritable; it is in fact the nature of states-of-affairs in the Wittgensteinian and ordinary senses. Nothing proceeds according to plan because planning is always foreclosed, the result of a game occurring in a potential well permanently at odds with the rest of the universe, an impossibility. Heuristics come into play at every localized turn of ev- ents; the turn is of the nature of the bungle. Throughout, there are impe- tuses (let us say), trajectories/tendencies which proceed freely for a while, before hitting a wall or other dispersion. (We fail to see that obstacles are never placed, but of the order of the real.) Likewise motives remain deeply and permanently unclear; the ascription of motive is again an ascription of history, the imputation of meaning. To accept the deep meaninglessness of the world - including the bungling within and without the genome - is to begin an understanding which goes nowhere, because there is nowhere to go. Meaning is a temporary hiatus, the strategy of substance and presence, just as the sememe presents once again localized constructs allowing the human to co-exist with its ab- sence. And beyond or before motives, there is truth itself, already shaken within the foundations of symbolic logic, but accepted, with considerable fanfare and maintenance, on the level of the life-world. Once again, iss- ues of foreclosure and bungling appear, since truth is confined to that very same potential well - it's as if nothing can get at truth, because truth can get at nothing. (We fail to see that nothing is just that, not a project nor a noun.) For within the well, there is nothing at all, that is nothing ontological- ly viable - the well parallels the projections of the Platonic cave, a form of cinematic diminishment allowing meaning to emerge. The cinema is the model for the construction of meaning, the jump-cut for example as a concatenation on the level of ideality, the linkages or couplings of thought. But such a construction can only be a projection or introjection - one immediately runs into a subjectivity undercutting the crystalline world of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, which can still be taken as the analog of orderly non-bungling, no matter how the Sheffer stroke is tossed about within it. We are still inheritors of the 19th-century, and conspiracy theory dies hard. (We fail to see that the success of a plan is an after-effect.) Which is not to say, by the way, that conspiracies do not exist or are not successful - but to say that they are not the order of the world, that assassinations are assassinations, that annihilations have no reason what- soever, no matter the cause. Or rather that the cause occurs within that potential well, that the ontological significance is nil, that acts of violence and non-violence, acts of criminality and acts of freedom and compassion, on a certain uncanny level, are idiotic in Clement Rosset's sense - that is, occurring within an inert and bungled world, and now, an overcrowded world deeply at odds with itself - and characterized by such odds. (We fail to see the foolishness around us.) For this reason, it is reasonable to say, we are not making a mess out of things, but, existentially in fact, we are making things out of a mess, as if these things had prior commitments. And that such makes us happy and gives us a life to live, not even in-the-face-of anything or tendency at all, but within the structural need of the human to by and large persev- ere, reproduce. Every defeat of the conspiratorial is a defeat for all of us; every cause that appears set free in the middle of the night attempts the creation of a new language of transcendental meaning. On one hand, the ruthlessness of non-truth; on the other, the truth of ruthlessness. We live by the latter, the former breathing down our necks - like death, al- ways on the periphery of our project. The subject, us, is always under construction, and thereby lies the lie. (We fail to see there are lies without truths.) __________________________________________________________________________ Plan-et Ground There are lies without truths; the probability of truth is zero as an in- finite number of alternatives to exactitude appear to gnaw at the founda- tions. Everyone from Max Black (and I assume earlier) has noticed this. I'm not saying anything new. It might not have been Max Black; it could have been anyone. Further, there are no foundations, not if they're so thin that they attempt to disappear at the slightest breath of the butter- fly phenomenon. They don't attempt to disappear; there's disappearance everywhere at work here in the Cosmos. One false step in a program, and... Try writing HTML and put an extra < or > somewhere in the middle of a 20k page and see what emerges! Write a program and leave out the ; at the end of the line. You're beginning to get the picture - and it's lucky the pic- ture appears at all, given the compressions, translations, protocols, transmissions necessary for Nikuko's appearance in Cyberspace, New York. That's the Aristotelian rag, the classical logics that seem stable on the level of the real, keeping the values conserved and down. There's an econ- omy at work here. The breakdown-urge is greater than the holdfast. The Cosmos are full of part-objects, splatter-phenomena, dispersions without history, worn curb edges that nothing went past. To put a plan together is to foresee all possible consequences, defend against them. Any one of six billion people on the planet might conceivably show up at any moment, unwanted dinner guests, parasites in Serres' sense of the term. Plans are always already T-junctions, the thick stem replete with noise, temporary convolutions, circuit drains. Place the wrong ground in a circuit and electrons confuse everything, nothing travels much farther, all the images disappear; they were present for your eyes only, otherwise fallen apart. A recent rabbinical ruling specifies the name of God online isn't quite a name; the letters are pixels and independent, nothing stated or erased. You might think otherwise; you're permitted to think whatever you want, Speer tracing his footsteps over and over again, walking the plan-et earth on the prison grounds. There were no grounds; there were firewalls, there was no escape. The prison grounds grounded plan-et earth; countries sank into walled corridors and corners. You and I will look up into the same sky at the same time, our gaze will sustain us across these oceans. Water has memory; memory has no shape; shape is a gift to water. The T is the long-sought solution. ___________________________________________________________________________ Sonnet Julu says "I want that cement block." Julu says "I want that cement block of surety." Julu says "I want it in the middle of a cement plain." Julu says "beneath a cement sky." Julu says "a sun of cement." Julu says "the cracks or contours showing like seams." Julu says "a summer dress." Julu says "in the heat but always there." Julu says "a slow crawl, cement tides." Julu says "solitons." Julu says "a pretty dress beneath a sun." Julu says "dress of cement." Julu says "There I will lie and turn on my side." Julu says "There I will stretch and sit." ______________________________________________________________________ Someone for Travis Every day he would hear the bell. Someone was ringing him; he'd look out the window, in the morning, in the early afternoon or evening, and no one would be there. Always the same pattern - two short, one long, all fast enough to avoid detection. Travis worried over the timing. Placed powder on the button, lightly dusted, nothing. Whoever was doing it was aware. The powder was gone, always. Obsessive cleaning, brass plate around the button polished to a shine. That was clearly before the ringing - there wouldn't be enough time afterwards, before he looked out. At empty space, at the street. He was wanted; they hungered for him. A private eye has levels and layers of enemies, time to create that vacuum. They'd have the city swallow him; nameless, heirless, he'd be that disappearance completely solved in degree of cause, emptied in domain of motive. His brother died, violent. What seemed to be a stray bullet. Travis didn't think coincidence; the bell rang, shuddered to a halt. He thought that a different ring, wires pulsed carrying his brother's screams. He lay woun- ded for hours. When they found him, his chest caved in. Messages. House burned, his lover decapitated. He was sure now, more certain of it than ever. The skies were clouded, ash-red, sullen fires not yet out. Overnight, his hair white, color of blast-furnace heat. You could read him in him. The bell was roaring now. He kept dusting for fingerprints. The marks of a noose around his neck, stigmata on hands and feet, eyelids singed in the cool room. Travis worried they were closer. They breathed on him breath by breath. He was tall in his boots and hat. He wore gloves; he thought they thought he ran downstairs, sweat, rang his own bell, blind. Bell rang; there was a bell ringer in bell-weather. He was upstairs, sound asleep; the weather was beautiful. He died in his sleep; police said sad about Travis. They got a full set of prints. They had one set and the wiseguy down at the station. Buried with honor, bye. The bell, unanswered. Ring Ring Hello, who's there. Travis. Travis who? Travesty. __________________________________________________________________________ MINE arms and legs cut off no control over what YOU do to ME to MY texts to MY words where YOU are what YOU are thinking of what tales YOU tell built on the ruins of MY words as I did say and reiterate THESE words which are MINE which you desecrate and VIOLATE all FOREVER and and and I suppose I might insist that RIGHT HERE is an interruption when YOU know better that I'VE placed whatever trash is in YOUR way right in THIS spot RIGHT HERE it does seem to keep sliding YOU'LL do to ME whatever YOU feel like anyway I shouldn't complain IT DOESN'T DO ANY GOOD whoever YOU are I mean YOU MIGHT AS WELL BE MY EYES while YOU'RE AT IT or EARS WHATEVER JUST LEAVE THE LETTERS AT THE DOOR WHEN YOU LEAVE THEY'RE MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE ________________________________________________________________________