a. Time acts chemically, as an aqua regia, to dissolve and reorder the bonds of any aggregates entered into it.
b. Human apprehensions are never fully factored out, but depend on a juxtaposition of several aggregates; (10x10x2) vs. (52x23) vs. (5x5x2x2x2). Adjustments are frequent.
c. A fully factored view would appear as a tautology, as the Carroll map that lies draped 1:1 over its referent.
College students were corralled by the researchers into the basement of the student union. After vigorous dosages and several disorienting bits of stagecraft, the subjects produced a peculiar text. Which is to say: at dawn the following was found scrawled on the blackboard, along with some more (ahem) material remnants.
"Spots of gravy on the bodice twin to the gaps in the lace. At shadow or clutched in an occulted bed, crouched on a [...] counterpane, or stroking a fly that hits between panes. Brass buttons are a child's trumpet [?] to blow.
A mass of spots on the bony chest, and the kin of a fowl, once plucked--a facing form with most numbers omitted. Kin to a fowl, with a hatful of glaring [...] faults.
I do get the sense that this was the substance [...] of her [...]complaint: that she'd be shuttled back and forth. That upon this point she'd be shunned; lengths of her neck [...] and collar wrung, thrown there with the rest.
Insofar as any spotted lady can be white--who at once apprehends and sets forth [...]the alley-strictures, together pent in paper frost."
A week later, a panel of experts were convened to interpret the results. Their responses are given anonymously.
A: "A careful invocation of childhood."
B: "The only word worth reading is 'plucked'. All flesh and no feathers, so to speak."
C: "It fairly breathes racial misgivings."
D: "It may be about snow."
"For the past 200 years, the ideal image of nature has been a symbolic, transformed and man-made landscape, typified by idealized areas of agricultural production. Such idealizations led to the creation of unique parks, but, as symbols of a past romantic ideal, these landscapes cannot now be restored. These cultural landscapes are as lost to us now as are the social dreams of nineteenth-century Romanticism, and can therefore only fail as ideals for a contemporary landscape. The tasks of dealing with run-down industrial areas and open-cast mines require a new method--one that accepts their physical qualities but also their destroyed nature and topography. This new vision should not be one of "re-cultivation", for this approach negates the qualities that they currently possess and destroys them for a second time. The vision for a new landscape should seek its justification exactly within the existing forms of demolition and exhaustion. We have to ask ourselves which spaces from among the dilapidated and redundant places we want to use and occupy, and which of those have to be changed by the mark of a cultural intervention or the remediation of historical contamination.
Would it not be better to attach to the ideal image of our occidental culture, to 'paradise', an oasis in the desert, a place where man has to make his way against the rigors of physical nature? This imagination of an oasis as a garden in desolate spaces is my ideal type of discourse with the nature of old industrial sites, which in their parts can be left to themselves to develop the fantastic images of the future from already existing formations--creating values between art and nature in a way which could never be made by the artist nor mere nature alone."
-from Peter Latz, "Landscape Park Duisburg-Nord: The Metamorphosis Of An Industrial Site", in Manufactured Sites, ed. Niall Kirkwood.
He clasped slight packets in his paws. Mr. Ginger's book of love!
No more wily than a beaver, mild and ingratiating, Mr. Ginger would take his amours ice-skating, or out to the paddleboats, or to that restaurant with totem poles throughout the parking lot. Mr. Ginger would excuse himself on the latter occasions, and go to the loo to pick his teeth with a cocktail sword; on the way back to his table he would stop at the cigarette machine for some Tareytons. He would offer his date a pink mint from the dish on the way out; whereupon they would walk to his LeBaron. As they drove along he would venture a few remarks on local affairs.
According to critic Kendrick Baskin:
"...none of this is particularly gingery, or venturesome; but I do believe there is a measure of caddishness, of laddishness, of promiscuity, in the affairs of such pocket-gentry. This cavalier and all his kin perform a far-flung play, presenting in their innocuous entreaties whole acres of courtly coercion. That is, their adherence to the forms of Usonian love qualifies them as willing instruments of the leviathan's self-willing."
That's Mr. Ginger and his book of love!
Tactics are fine. They're fine to lionize. When we've been sitting in totalities, we like for gaps to open up. We might forget, though, that wholeness is its own curse. Without a share of ourselves to leave in complicity, we wholly become creatures of righteousness, and can't do wrong. As with the partisan: "this I could not do". Righteous conditions leave a single possible path among the many.
With no stake in what it is we fight, we cannot understand any enemy, the names it carries beyond enemy. We can only adhere to path of contraries. We are, then, as lonesome nerves in a body, firing out with no feedback.
"No, Not That"
The film inhabits a 3D wireframe representation of the Barcelona Pavilion. 26 separate 20-second shots are presented, without prefatory material. Each one starts from the center and proceeds to laterally trace out in space one of the letters of the English alphabet (capitals only). For screenings in international locations, suitable alterations will be made (as in: LLs for Caracas, 3s for Sofia).
...50 sculptures ranging in size from 4x20 1/2x2 1/4" to 3x2x1/4', composed in various permutations of wood, wire, plastics, plaster, paper, yarn, thread, rope and found objects.
...Cardboard wire cutters, 48x28x4".
...A gravestone shape with a cruciform hole, 5 1/4x4 3/4x1 1/2", in wood, cardboard, plasticene, and mixed media (wire, paper, burlap, tape); plasticene and cardboard versions later to be augmented with wire, yarn, and pencil inscriptions.
...Performance piece to be done in the area of the slide room. The lights will be turned off, except for a faint light within the room; the landing will be cordoned off by a specially prepared rope. A glass of water will be on the floor, near a boiling (and thus steaming) pot of water placed beneath the ladder to the roof. I will hide in the slide room, and begin to make droning sounds on a synthesizer as the class ascends the stairs--none of them will know whether I am actually present or if a tape is playing (my shadow will be visible but unrecognizable as such). After a certain amount of restlessness becomes evident in the observing class, I will simultaneously lunge up (thus moving my shadow), stop playing the synthesizer, and kick an identical glass of water into the landing area, splattering its contents.
...A chair in false collaboration with Rebecca Horn, 44x16 1/2x17 1/2". Wood, plexiglass, steel, burlap, muslin, copper tubing, four-track tape recorder (with tape), microphone, effects pedal, cables, headphones, thermometer. The seat and legs will be made of stained wood (with copper tubing in a spiral around the bottom of one leg), the back of a plexiglass plate and bar stock, the seat of burlap and muslin. It will work like this: the sitters will put on the headphones and put the thermometer in their mouths. They will then sit on the chair, activating the tape recorder (which is concealed under the seat) and causing it to play a pre-recorded tape of distorted studio noise. At the same time that the sitters hear the tape, they will hear the sounds around them through the microphone mounted above their heads; these sounds, however, will be filtered through the effects pedal between the microphone and the tape recorder. The sitters will then be able to alter the sounds around them by placing the pedal in their laps and manipulating it. The pedal will be concealed in the same layers of inward muslin and outward burlap as the seat, however--so that the sitters cannot direct the manipulation, but only experiment haphazardly.
...Performance piece. Before the performance, I will cut a standard plywood piece into 15 biomorphic shapes of various sizes, draw little eyes in pen on 14 pieces, and smear the 15th with vaseline. I then will arrange the eyed shapes in a cluster on the floor spilling diagonally out from the space. A fellow made out of cloth with identical eyes will watch from a nearby chair. I will attend on this day dressed in my funeral clothes: white dress shirt, black Oxford shoes, black dress pants, black tie, and a black sweater. I will also have a pink cigarette lighter at hand, and pink lip balm in my pocket. As the performance begins, I will arrange my class in rows on either side of the cluster as I face it head on, the vaseline-smeared shape on the floor between the cluster and myself. I will apply the lip balm to my lips, light the cigarette lighter three times, kneel to genuflect, and then proceed to pick up the vaseline-smeared shape and use its vaseline to anoint each of the other shapes above their eyes. That done, I will genuflect once more, and light the cigarette lighter three more times.
...Performance piece. Prior to the performance, I will have sharpened a broom handle into a spear, wrapped it with a broad, long piece of latex, and left it to the side in the presentation space. That night, when called upon to perform the performance, I will stand up, remove my shoes and socks, and remove my flannel shirt to reveal a t-shirt emblazoned with a gravestone. Picking up the spear, I will remove the latex band and wind it around my neck in the manner of a scarf. I will then walk over to the blackboard and draw a diagram of five parallel lines in chalk. Instructing my fellows to follow me, I will lead them to a yard across the street. I will draw the same diagram with the spear in the earth before me, and then incompetently throw the spear. I will then laugh uproariously.
...Two loaves of french bread with 31 pins protruding from each end, bound together with a band of pink cloth. On the pink cloth are two buttons composed of pound coins, each one wrapped in a patch of the same cloth. A length of plastic and wire cord will protrude from the middle of the band, and lead to a pouch of the self-same cloth which it seals by coil at the top. This pouch will be filled with every penny I have collected during my time here, and will be surrounded by a ridge of ground-up black liquorice sticks.
...A timeline in pink pencil along the side of a length of toilet paper (still on the roll), with dates of interest (i.e., the ambush of Roland, the siege of Masada).
...A sort of over-large hot water bottle headpiece, made of pink cloth stuffed with batting, with a ruffled fringe and metal cap on top and a velcro strap to go about the chin.
...A smallish battery, composed of a small pouch of pink cloth filled with silicone caulk. The pouch will be sliced half-open, allowing viewing of caulk and permitting conducting wires (twisting together into a loop at the end) coming from the caulk to protrude outwards. Six black liquorice sticks will protrude from slits in pairs along one side.
...A bird made of pink cloth stuffed with batting, with painted eyes; five rocks made of burlap stuffed with batting, with painted eyes; a sack of money made of burlap tied off with cord, with a pound sign painted on the side; a t-square made of plywood with painted eyes; and a pair of eyes made of gauze with painted pupils and red thread optic nerves.
...Performance piece. It will be a sort of cabaret, done at 3:30 P.M. on May 4th for a private crowd of friends. I will sing eight songs. The space will be set up with cafe tables in a front row and couches in a back row, all facing the performance area. This area will be mostly empty except for another cafe table with a swivel chair beside it. On the table will be: a glass of ginger ale with a black liquorice stick for a straw, several blue pills, the tape recorder audio-recording the event, and a small notebook. In the back corners of the space will be an amplifier into which a thin microphone will be plugged, and a stereo playing backing tracks. Two helpers will be employed: one in the audience filming the event on digital video, and one, dressed in a black cocktail dress and black sling-back heels, who will hand me the props for each of my songs (a quilt, burlap rocks, sewn eyes, etc.).
...Final performance piece. I will record critiques of the other pieces for the night of this presentation simultaneously on two tape recorders. Near the end, having picked up the viola case I have brought and turned on both tape recorders, I will lead the class up the hill to a small clearing. I will set down the two tape recorders side by side in the middle of this clearing, and tell them to make a circle around the recorders and myself. I then will remove the viola from its case and set the case open upon the ground next to the recorders. I will start to slowly saw a two note pattern on the viola, and to walk slowly in a circle. I will gradually accelerate both walk and play until each is quite fast, and then suddenly burst out of the circle and away into the night, not to return.
A. Twelve guests are invited by two hosts (six each).
B. As they enter, each guest is handed a small card. The cards are given in order of arrival. Each contains a different instruction, mandating some variety of physical activity to be performed on cue.
C. An assembly with every appearance of a cocktail party ensues. That is, until the system of signaling is initiated, and the sequence of activities begins:
1. At 9:46 (by the clock in the hall), the first guest rises and throws heris glass to the floor.
2. The second guest rises, retrieves a dustpan hidden under the green armchair, and attempts to pick up the pieces without a broom.
3. As the dustpan first touches the shards, the third guest shouts once and starts pacing in a circle.
4. Upon hearing the shout, the fourth goes to the radio on the kitchen table and turns it to 88.9 FM.
5. When the radio comes on, the fifth guest goes to the dinner table and sits. This guest then lets heris head fall onto the table, and remains motionless.
6. The sixth picks up a striped handkerchief left on the cherry endtable and lets it fall to the floor.
7. Upon seeing the sixth guest pick up the handkerchief, the seventh guest rushes over, picks up a checkered handkerchief laid out next to it, and lets that fall as well.
8. Upon seeing the seventh guest run to the endtable, the eighth closely follows him or her. The eighth guest's goal is snatch both handkerchiefs out of the air--failing both, only the second. If both handkerchiefs have already reached the floor, she or he will stand still in close proximity to them and stare down.
9. The ninth guest proceeds to a mandolin leant against the wall in the corner, sits, picks it up, and strums it frantically for two minutes.
10. Whereupon the tenth guest starts to dance on tip-toe for the duration of the mandolin play, freezing with arms in the air upon its conclusion.
11. As the dance ends, the eleventh guest lets out a long whistle and lays upon the ground, head pointed towards the window.
12. This being accomplished, the twelfth guest points an index finger heavenwards. This is the signal for all activities to end and the dinner party proper to resume.
Behaving as though the person you most respect is present can be a problematic moral rule, since it excludes any awareness of that person's capacity for compassion.
Notes taken by a conscientious third-year student at Pollexfen University during critic and "versifier" Kendrick Baskin's momentous engagement. Further material is forthcoming, pending restoration efforts on a cache of reel-to-reel tape held by the Pollexfen Archives. -ed.
1
"MATTERS OF DICTION"
On calibrations: specifically, how to negotiate, when to elevate vocabulary, and how to navigate between comprehension and elaboration. "The hopeful thought is that a vigored and flowery style--not afraid to aim thorns at its own eyes--should please in any case."
2
"MUSTARD-SEEDING"
Considering the proposition that verses are grown from single words, not born from thematic matrices. "A verse often expands from the word as though defining it; whereupon it proceeds to use this word in context...Thereafter, the seed is seen hanging from a minor branch of the plant--it is not yet suspected that this is the second generation." Awareness, perhaps in order to curtail revision, that the aforementioned original associations of words--as in Roussel--best dictate genetic sequence and syntax of composition.
3
"THE ONE AIM"
Work specifically intended for multiplicity, tending towards a refusal of unities. That "any god that could be postulated must needs be as much of a patchwork as Dr. Schreber’s."
4
"THE MEASURE OF SEPARATE CHARMS"
Further, that superimpositions exist even in what are intended as the most singular meanings. "Artwork is true insofar as it contradicts itself—this is the hallmark of souled truth".
5
"DOING YOUR COLORS"
Proposition that ideological, syntactical, logical contrasts work for verse as "color-juxes" do in visual design. Slides provided.
6
"DOTTY"
The conscious preservation of "the dainty and precious, the effeminate prerogatives of verse". Being that it is a universal expectation, the best practice is to seize it and turn it back against (...?)
7
"...THAT SAID..."
An excoriation of reflexive verse, of the exaltation of verse and the versifier, of verse such as it is (or is not). Also: any named colors, most places, most trees, and "all but the most select scatology, slang, and 'plain speech'”.
8
"DOGGEREL DOGGEDLY"
"The versifier sits in a study, looks at the rest of it, and labors at how to say it—oh no, that approach is too direct. 'How do I do this place in pleasing words?'" Instead, intuit something pleasing out from the span of several years. "Don't think in subjects; think and think around them as though they were very tall formations."
9
"I HARDLY KNOW"
"...what’s to be written when I start." Be like an atrium, "incessantly poured through and walked", like a reverberating machine. "I don’t know the best way to proceed; I can, at the least, be the exemplar of what’s naive. If I can but promote new forms of sense: extend the tongue by natural degrees, rather than by dictate." Movement towards a greater faith, in terms of turning metaphor towards the literal--seeing as there’s been no faith in the tissue-integrity of posited relations.
10
"CLOCK-TIME"
Regular meter can only be countenanced when the ideas and vocal contours of the individual lines are "rocky" and not at level; i.e., Coleridge composing on uneven ground and Wordsworth on a straight walk. "...You ease your way, mindful, down the slope—some skree, some spar, some pack-dry, some slide." Let rhyme and ready measure lie with popular music.
11
"NOW, WRITE FOR MASS TRANSIT"
Promulgation of a "crass poetics against crassness". "...When your reader may need to cross the same ground three times, it’s not such work, but such charm, and firm collar-leading."
12
"I DON'T BANK"
There exists a lack of credence in any particular polemic, but some have more allure, and more charm. That charm and allure are known compounds, "as sure as the fragrances that are known to abet them".
13
"CONCERNING ARTICLES"
"To cite 'the pots' is sorely different than citing 'pots'." The deifications or other 'cations introduced by "a" and "the" dramatically narrow the spectral width of a word, until only a scant received idea is left. For example, "pots" stands for any possible or pleasing association for the reader with such vessels, while "the pots" forces a reach for the most proper set--encouraging in this case "a tissue of the rustic, the quaint, and the earthen".
14
"JUMPING TRACKS"
"...as our current-day authorities would have it. It's irritating, since it takes such a lot of switchman's-work to get to writing at all." If the versifier cannot write so as to dislocate her-or-himself from accepted notions of "what a rain is, what it looks like, where it may licitly appear", the verse will eternally remain composed on its page, and never perform its own particular function of pleasured re-routing. How to achieve this? "Make a knotted switchyard", and draw all lines so as to connect by some slight remove. As a rule, write quickly and with little regard, and then knock any disparates into a shared path.
15
"ORGANELLES"
No verse need be essential in of itself. "If we're all so keen for a verse to be a flower, then: some as orchids, self-complete, rare, nigh-unique; some the whites of Queen-Anne's-lace, insignificant in atom, but the prime constituents of a heavenly-milky disk." The individual verse as a working organelle in the cell of a larger work. The goal is more for a single Dickinsonian proposition than "a suite of carved masterworks".
16
"BIND TOGETHER SUCH SPARKS INTO THE ONE OPAL!"
Summary and review.
ST. LUCIA URBANISM
All public light fixtures are replaced with agglomerations of candle-holders. Citizens pay a yearlong "wax tax", compelled to continually donate candles to neighborhood distribution centers in order to keep the streets lit. Local children (ages 6-14) are gainfully employed in maintaining the candles; girls march in processions of ten, carefully lighting them, while boys stand by in formation, water-pails at the ready.
TULIPOMANIACAL URBANISM
Portable shelters are issued by the government, offered to anyone who might want them. There are forty-something distinct lines available, each containing between seven and ten cosmetic variations on a basic model (something like jockey silks). Outside of this readily available array, there are any number of special editions, offered either for a limited time through rehabilitated warehouse/storefronts--or as rewards for secretly witnessed meritorious acts--or as rewards for any chosen random action (28th person through door X on 28th Street on the 28th of March.) The scarcity and variability of these items propels a furor: citizens constantly exchange shelters, barter for one another's shelters, pull around their own shelters (now to display them, now to obscure them). Permanent dwellings are largely abandoned; seen from above, colorful shells constantly shuffle themselves in the streets and open spaces.
COCKTAIL-DRUM URBANISM
Mixed-use planning is taken to its logical conclusion; separate rooms within buildings are apportioned in order to create microcosmic neighborhoods inter mures. To reach a hotel room, the enterprising sleeper must first get through a laundry, a teahouse, and a tax-preparation service.
BILLINGSGATE URBANISM
All public statuary is removed and replaced with identically-scaled foam copies. Citizens can visit their scorn upon the simulacra: easily gouging in graffiti, sawing off heads, or removing riders from their horses. Moreover, they may post notes of mockery upon the foam--attacking their their neighbors, their elected officials, and their fellow man in terms of foul contempt.
TOBACCO URBANISM
The timetable of the built environment is altered so that buildings may be conjured in a matter of days out of a fixed vocabulary of prefabricated parts, and then disassembled slowly and methodically over a standard course of time. Whereas the constructors worked in haste and obscurity, the destroyers will work in daylight under the terms of a scrupulous choreography. Crowds will gather outside to cheer these ritual demolitions. In addition to being thrilled and edified, the public will also be given a visible index of the passage of time.
CYPRESS URBANISM
Lines of settlement rake across the country in fixed channels. Immense brooding shells begin at the coast, progressively half-sheltering slightly smaller iterations of the same forms, terminating at the opposite border in a scattering of rounded sukkahs. Humans are dispersed throughout this array based on the results of an extensive written questionaire concerning their space preferences.
NARCOLEPTIC URRBANISM
Ready access to sleeping facilities is taken to be the greatest possible good; whereby entryways, benches, and window-ledges are optimized for the comfort of the weary passerby, with leather cushions and coils of bedsheet rolled up like garden hoses. As a last resort for the exhausted, pavements and grates are rubberized, with reams of newspaper set out in neat bales.
It seems that the only necessary element for the creation of a mystery is application of the label "mystery"; that is, that any simple act classed outside of conventional norms can lend its setting more than its ostensible share of scrutiny. So, our modern-day mystery novel can add interest to any period, any geographic region, through the shortest possible expedient: a murder. A murder, being horrible enough to hold attention but not abominable enough to deflect it, seems an ideal light to hold to the otherwise dim outlines of any prosaic landscape or society. In other words: the ignoble can take the opportunity to march into view close on the heels of the parading return-of-the-repressed.
Scaling the observation down, a mere ambiguity of trait or motive may attract such interest on a smaller, less official scale. Certain simple products become fathomless confusions of elusive taste and racial unease. Such insertions of the inexplicable not only beguile the young, but tend to inculcate a taste for ambiguity for its own sake (and, one suspects, unpleasantness for its own sake).
Speaking of confections, elusive taste and racial unease: an nth generation laughingstock.
I was being harangued at the bar the other night.
"You see," he said, "that every itinerary is itself a place. You may move from one apartment to another three blocks away, and find that you are no longer in the same neighborhood; not because you've crossed a border, but only because the base sequence you encounter in your comings and goings has changed. What can seem bucolic from one angle can be nothing but paving and pigeon from another; oases become wholly habitual, and hideaways become theaters. The very in-between places that charmed in their irrelevance have become quotidiana."
I know all about quotidiana. I can quote it chapter and verse: to wring out the sponge when you're done with the dishes, to make long phone calls on Thursday nights, to run the dryer 55 minutes on hot,to reach the cafe before 9 on Saturday mornings (if you want to duck the crowd). These actions, even, are functionally somewhere where I've been sitting too long.
I've made a few. You can't say that you minded; the worst that they could have done is take up space, and there's enough space in the world.
Something patently untrue is precious. It brings out the hunter in you. You spy it between the leaves, in a clearing. It's easy to hit.
By giving you this untruth, I have given you the opportunity to bring out your keen common sense. The more you keep that common sense at hand, the more sensible you feel.
You really ought to thank me!
It is processional. The sense of the performance corresponds to any unit in a parade--it approaches, pauses to be taken in, and moves on. It is likewise made of quiet and bright components, the sort that can make racket together.
A typical method: you'd empty water onto a snare drum, then strike it.
It has a certain keyed character, operating between definite junctures--so the song is its own index. It's scored thematically, but these themes are graced by felicities, first-thoughts, and side conversations. You could see in it some humanists revisiting the bare of the Twenties, bringing a lilt from the Nineties. Or a neighborhood's girls and boys on a Sunday, chanting down the void.
Think of it in company terms. Oratory and pleasant silences. Then oratory and pleasant silences. An all-day roundtable, with shuffled participants, the subject being _________. End result: an impromptu invitation to the public on watermarked paper.
It depicts the frame of reportage, while omitting the picture; so it shows vast lines across nearly nothing, with no view of the acting pen. It will translate easily across scales (an engineer's scale; an architect's scale).
Nonetheless: it takes less time to hear it than to read this post.
Because we didn't want to care to fully hold it, and so sheathed it, and jettisoned it.
It shared our mood so well that we wanted to share it with you.
We're very confused and wanted to be confused again in the future.
It deserved to be only what it was at the time.
We knew it was economical since it told a truer story in a shorter time.
It was the shortest way to a band of holograms.
We want to put a composite in the market, and assign resulting value to our own respective contributions.
It is a viable organelle, for an appropriate cell, for the growing cultural body.
It isn't here very much if it isn't there.
It didn't share our mood, and so we translated it to better speaking terms.
I pray in my dream to be a poacher, and to run at some hundred sorts of game on this estate--all the subtle and variegated things, a tactic at least to levy against each one. Snares at a flexible tempo, rods camouflaged and dipped in the water, rags fitted snug over smoking barrels, and barrels with their lids pried off.
Houndsteeth and buckled boots and bristling leashful of hounds, on a smoky November day--I'd like to be a thief, a blackjack, against that and of it.
The two of us have in common an unreflective love of long, slightly varied series. I don't know if it's a function of our culture, or of organized capital, of consequent formal lines of product, and so, and so--but we both find that what we really crave is not a continuing development across dimensions, a great and varied work, but a single finite line of production. Its various products represent a formal approach applied to a series of objects or sites, themselves relatable along a pre-existing thread (even if tenuous).
It is a great thing to come across a new or unknown component in a common series. But the happiest times we can remember have come with discovering some new series, up until then wholly occluded from us--strange compounds parceling out physics, biology, and
geometry, in terms that urgently announce themselves to any desiring body.
I hope I don't bore anyone when I have to run over all the details from the party last night. Each of the details from last night. It's just so good to hear strangers come forth and speak for themselves; they are fearless, and then some of them are sick. Wine gives you a free field. Women give you a free field. Song gives you a free field.
But I don't like making it to the early morning, when the situation simply turns base.
For instance, I'll tell you that I spent today mulling that particular minimalism that didn't trouble itself to excess with perfections. That is, it would leave an erasure on and not buy more spotless paper. If it set about to make a line, it would make the line once, and not care to draw it again. It would love, even, the humps that slid under the ruler, and its pencil's breaking leads.
I called this "the ringing grid", and I thought about it often back then. That the structural idea could move, and resound, when caught in physical circumstance. How could an idea subsist anyways?--were it not obstructed, misunderstood, deflected, so on--like a singular impact that would die in an instant, were it not seconded and thirded by the area of air that makes it a sound.
All of which is--in that dreary humanist realm that all things get annexed to--one devised measure of comfort against the fleshly frustrations that trouble clear thoughts.
