Wednesday, March 6, 2013

(with a little help from montaigne, poe, kafka, burton, and stevens)


may it prove happy and prosperous for the so-called "public discourse."  indra's net.  vladivostok.  three orbits.  static noises occurring.  may these magnetic items cohere, aye, may there be a mutually beneficial cohesion.  wishful thinking indeed, but I'm not sure when, how, or where else to posit common ground anymore-  read the histories; don't; study the global networks or don't; critical theory, art therapy, music of the spheres, anthropology, medicine-  nature/nurture prosper what you are around, about, and beyond.  nature/nurture bless both your serious and ridiculous labours.  earth science and carpentry bless and assist your endeavours.  I pray that by heaven's assistance you may happily finish what you have begun.  may all imaginations and echoes prosper by what is under your hand.  may there be ice cream and cake with many flickering candles.  "you" are about a solid postmodern work, verily, and I wish "you" many happy returns if returns (and I know you do not) you desire, and that the wilderness spirits may favour your pious and oh-so-learned advance through absolute nothingness.

(gentle reader, I presume thou wilt be very inquisitive to know what antic or personate actor this is, that so insolently intrudes upon this common theatre, to the world's view, arrogating another man's name; whence he is, why he doth it, and what he hath to say; forest dweller or city dweller, cabin fever or heatstroke; hath he canine?  a feline?  although, as he said, "primum si noluero, non respondebo, quis coacturus est?"  (I am a free man born, and may choose whether I will tell; who can compel me?)  if I be urged, I will as readily reply as that egyptian in plutarch, when a curious fellow would needs know what he had in his basket, "quum vides velatam, quid inquiries in rem absconditam?"  (it was therefore covered, because he should not know what was in it.) seek not after that which is hid; if the contents please thee, "and be for thy use, suppose the man in the moon, or whom thou wilt to be the author."

deep echoes; other people; the old world; not redundant; canyon-speak slithering back and forth, counter-clockwise; that outlandish, I noticed her tramping along the northern rim with her wireless; call forth the audio; cue up the apocrypha.
 

I make no doubt but that I often happen to speak of things that are much better and more truly handled by those who are masters of this "mad game of writing." you have here purely a weblog of my natural parts, and not of those acquired from shanghai, hollywood, or the vast plains lying outside montiel: and whoever shall catch me tripping or gaming online in ignorance, will not in any sort get the better of me; for I should be very unwilling to become responsible to another for this deep pit of nonsense, who am not so to myself, nor satisfied with it in any sustainable manner.  my heroes all perished anonymously and I would like to do the same when the time comes to recycle the bulk of these errant conjectures.  I publish them in the full knowledge of soon becoming the laughingstock of the neighborhood.  the baker's boy marcus has already intimated as much.  a quaint lad, always off in the corner with his nose in a book, drinking wine, eating ice cream, preparing for an ostensible career as a deep sea explorer.  whoever goes in quest of knowledge, let him fish for it where it is to be most likely found. 

young marcus, aforementioned, mumbling to himself late at night, caught on tape, droning on and on in the following manner: "good writers solid writers always surrounded by many talented writers where will we occur where will we find equally talented readers don’t tell me they’re hiding us inside the machine I could make it a private machine a machine of no appreciable talent the elderly man in the boathouse must have unusual intentions at present, simple pen and ink, paper, binoculars, timetable, dictionary, and 17th century almanac. hawks and crows? good companions. unmarked roads? good adventures. don quixote, the quintessential reader/lunatic, stops by sometimes in the evenings with wild rice, pine nuts, and refills.

“sir- in heaven's name! why have you purchased so many moth eaten books?”  -and then the obvious follow-up:  “will you ever lose interest in those moth-eaten books?”

I ask simple marcus, when I sense he is finally ready to speak-when you lie down to sleep at night what exactly are you hoping to accomplish, young fellow?  why did you name your most recent file with a string of unintelligible letters and numbers? aren't you a little too young to be so obsessed with your smart phone?



his response: I clambered down into the recesses of the pre-societal quagmire, and waded afar in among the wilderness of the lilies, and called unto the hippopotami which dwelt among the fens in the ancient morass. and the beasts heard my call, and came, with behemoth advisors, unto the foot of the rock, and roared loudly and fearfully beneath the quicksilver moon. and I lay close within my covert and observed the crowd in its folly. then, momentarily catching sight of my haggard reflection, observed my own also.

still lost in the deep night, traversing unmarked and infinite inter-states? (he nods, and continues:) "just as one sometimes lowers one's head to reflect, thus to be utterly lost in the night. all around my friends are sleeping, but I'm pretty sure it's just play-acting, an innocent self-deception, that they sleep in stone houses, in warm beds, under a safe roof, stretched out or curled up on mattresses, in sheets, under blankets; in reality they have flocked together as they had once upon a time and again later in a deserted region, a camp in the open, a countless number of animals, an army, a people, under a cold sky on cold earth, collapsed where once they had stood, forehead pressed on the arm, face to the ground, breathing quietly. and you, sir, are watching, are supposed to be on of the watch, you find the next one by brandishing a burning stick from the brushwood pile beside you."


"watching for what, simple fellow?"

"for whatever emerges."
"is this the old comedy that you were referring to earlier?"
"no, it's an updated version- people crowd themselves into rooms, into cities, people hide their possessions, people are actually ashamed of their favorite and semi-ancient possessions. 1990's era laptops. sony walkmans. oil-based fruits, meats, and veggies. they intuit that sooner or later they will be buried alive.  their acquisitions will come tumbling down onto them in a terrible avalanche.  the old masters, if there are any, will be unable to save them."
(pause)
"marcus, stop trying to scare us!""I'll admit I still don't know what is meant by the words “quality fiction”, and I'll admit I still don't know what is meant by the words “quality non-fiction” either.  I loan or purchase texts and try to understand them but I never end up understanding them!  they just sit there, on the shelf, a testimony to my non-understanding.  they accuse me of stupidity, density, mediocrity, vanity. even at 11 years old the haggard expressions grows dimmer! I knock back a couple of energy shakes and continue on gazing out thru the casement."
(pause)"therefore, sir, let none lay stress upon the matter I circulate, but upon my method in avoiding being immediately sucked down by the whirlpool. let them observe, in what I borrow, if I have known how to choose what is proper to raise or help the invention, which is not always my own but that of the public weal at large. for I make others say for me, not before but beyond me, what, either for want of language or want of information, knowledge, or wisdom, I cannot myself so well and clearly express. think of crystals, sir, out in the wilderness, and you might start to get the basic idea; they are all, or within a very few, so famed and inscrutable, that they seem, methinks, themselves sufficiently to reveal who they are. in reasons, comparisons, and arguments, if I transplant any into my own "native" soil, and confound them amongst my own, I purposely conceal the "original", to awe the temerity of those precipitate censors who fall upon all sorts of quality writings, particularly the late ones, of people yet living and breathing, and in the vulgar tongue which puts every one into the habit of criticising and which seem to convict the conception and design as vulgar to the point of inducing an extended vomiting fit.. I will have them give plutarch a fillip on my nose, and rail against seneca when they think they rail at me. I must shelter my own weakness under these great reputations, for it is the sort of weakness that refuses to be contained or amended. I shall love any one that can unplume me, that is, by clearness of understanding and judgment, and by the sole distinction of the force and beauty of the discourse. for I who, for want of memory, am at every turn at a loss to pick them out of their national livery, am yet wise enough to know, by the measure of my own abilities, that my soil is incapable of producing any of those rich flowers that I there find growing; and that all the fruits of my own growth are not worth any one of them. for this, indeed, I hold myself responsible; if I get in my own way; if there be any vanity and defect in my musings which I do not of myself perceive nor can discern, when pointed out to me by another; for many faults escape our eye, but the infirmity of judgment consists in not being able to discern them, when by another laid open to us. knowledge and truth may be in us without judgment, and judgment also without them; but the confession of ignorance is one of the finest and surest testimonies of judgment that I know. I have no other officer to put my writings in rank and file, but only fortune. as things come into my head, I heap them one upon another; sometimes they advance in whole bodies, sometimes in single file. I would that every one should see my natural and ordinary pace, irregular as it is; I suffer myself to jog on at my own rate. neither are these subjects which a person is not permitted to be ignorant in, or casually and at a venture, to discourse of. I could wish to have a more perfect knowledge of things, but I will not buy it so dear as it costs. my design is to pass over easily, and not laboriously, the remainder of my life; there is nothing that I will cudgel my brains about; no, not even knowledge, of what value soever.

"there was next to no communication, telephonic, telepathic, electronic, paper-based, biologic or otherwise.  I searched back through my "memory" in an attempt to understand how this happened.  I never learned to read carefully, I never leaned how to speak or think carefully.  when this started to become obvious- probably a lot sooner than I myself realized- well, by then it was too late.  I didn’t know how to turn back the clock.  my existence was in shambles. I was caught in a terrible avalanche.  the avalanche just underscores how estranged I had become.  there was no reference point anymore.  there was nothing to remember or point to.  a terrifying, an absolutely terrifyingly blank look on the face.  a terrifying, an absolutely terrifying absence of thoughts in the head.  a terrifying, absolutely terrifying lack of emotions in the body, the bookstore, the company.

then I cursed the elements with the curse of internal tumult; and a frightful tempest gathered in the heaven where, before, there had been no wind at all. strange. and the heaven became livid with the violence of the tempest- and the rain beat upon the head of the vagabond- and the floods of the river came down- and the river was churned into foam- super strange- and the water-lilies shrieked within their beds- and the forest crumbled before the tornado- thunder rolled- lightning fell- and the mountain shook to its very foundation. and I lay close within my covert and observed the crowd in its folly.

he continued, in monotone: "this is where the serpent lives, the bodiless. his head is air. beneath his tip at night eyes open and fix on us in every sky. the books that make no difference.  the books that make absolutely no difference.  the books that you would take with you if you were assigned to the madhouse, if it was openly understood and acknowledged that your existence would have no more bearing on society, other than the expense of taking care of you- feeding, housing, clothing, and medicating you.  what books would be important then?  if you were absolutely alone?  not just alone in theory but truly and completely alone? or is this another wiggling out of the egg, another image at the end of a cave, another bodiless for the body's slough? the holiday calendar becomes a timorous and uncertain thing.  the open spaces, the wastelands, they too become anonymous things.  the desperation of reading and books, the thousands, millions of things you don’t care about, the things which make no difference to anyone, the intelligence, so-called, that just ends as another black hole in space.  the unnatural relationship you have developed with money and time.  words on a page, words spoken over a telephone, words spoken face to face, in conversation, words on a screen, with or without accompanying images.  words applying to things that happened and words applying to things that were merely imagined.  carrying words around in a backpack, carrying words around in a pocket, sending words out over the internet and hoping to receive them back over the internet.  essentially staking your life on words trafficked back and forth over the internet. this is where the serpent lives, fella. this is his nest, these fields, these hills, these tinted distances, and the pines above and alongside the sea.  educated, uneducated, privileged, poverty-stricken, every opportunity imaginable…eventually wasted, totally wasted.  no text will help you, you are past the point of texts being able to help you.

democritus, as he is described by hippocrates and laertius, was a little wearish old man, very melancholy by nature, averse from company in his latter days, and much given to solitariness, a famous philosopher in his age, coaevus with socrates, wholly addicted to his studies at the last, and to a private life: wrote many excellent works, a great divine, according to the divinity of those times, an expert physician, a politician, an excellent mathematician, as diacosmus and the rest of his works do witness. he was much delighted with the studies of husbandry, saith columella, and often I find him cited by constantinus and others treating of that subject. he knew the natures, differences of all beasts, plants, fishes, birds; and, as some say, could understand the tunes and voices of them. in a word, he was omnifariam doctus, a general scholar, a great student; and to the intent he might better contemplate, I find it related by some, that he put out his eyes, and was in his old age voluntarily blind, yet saw more than all greece besides, and writ of every subject, nihil in toto opificio naturæ, de quo non scripsit. "There was nothing in the whole range of nature about which he did not write."  this was akin to form gulping after her twin sister formlessness, skin flashing to wished-for disappearances and the serpent body flashing without any discernible skin. this is the height emerging and its base, these neon lights may finally attain a pole in the midmost midnight and find the serpent still waiting, in another nest, the master of the maze of body and air and forms and images, relentlessly in possession of happiness.


 
the news of the building of the wall now penetrated into the world- late, too, some thirty years after its announcement. it was on a summer evening. I, ten years old, was standing with my father on the riverbank. in keeping with the importance of this much-discussed hour, I can recall the smallest details. my father was holding me by the hand, something he was fond of doing to the end of his days, and running his other hand up and down his long, very thin pipe, as though it were a flute.


something I have done, though by my profession a divine, yet turbine raptus ingenii, as he said, out of a running wit, an unconstant, unsettled mind, I had a great desire (not able to attain to a superficial skill in any) to have some smattering in all, to be aliquis in omnibus, nullus in singulis, (a somebody in general knowledge,a nobody in one subject) which plato commends, out of him lipsius approves and furthers, "as fit to be imprinted in all curious wits, not to be a slave of one science, or dwell altogether in one subject, as most do, but to rove abroad, centum puer artium, (one who can turn his hand to anything) to have an oar in every man's boat, to taste of every dish, and sip of every cup," which, saith montaigne, was well performed by aristotle, and his learned countryman adrian turnebus. this roving humour (though not with like success) I have ever had, and like a ranging spaniel, that barks at every bird he sees, leaving his game, I have followed all, saving that which I should, and may justly complain, and truly, qui ubique est, nusquam est (he who is everywhere is nowhere) which gesner did in modesty, that I have read many books, but to little purpose, for want of good method; I have confusedly tumbled over divers authors in our libraries, with small profit, for want of art, order, memory, judgment. I never travelled but in map or card, in which mine unconfined thoughts have freely expatiated, as having ever been especially delighted with the study of cosmography.  


at that moment a bark drew up before us, the boatman beckoned to my father to come down the embankment, while he himself climbed up toward him. they met halfway, the boatman whispered something in my father's ear, in order to come quite close he had embraced him. I could not understand what they said, I only saw that my father did not seem to believe the news, that the boatman tried to insist upon its truth, that when my father still refused to believe it the boatman, with the passion of sailors, almost tore the garment from his chest to prove the truth, whereupon my father fell silent and the boatman jumped noisily into the bark and sailed away.


believe it or not, saturn was lord of my geniture, culminating, &c., and mars principal significator of manners, in partile conjunction with my ascendant; both fortunate in their houses, &c. I am not poor, I am not rich; nihil est, nihil deest (I have little, I want nothing.) all my treasure is in minerva's tower. greater preferment as I could never get, so am I not in debt for it, I have a competence (laus deo) from my noble and munificent patrons, though I live still a collegiate student, as democritus in his garden, and lead a monastic life, ipse mihi theatrum (sufficient entertainment to myself) sequestered from those tumults and troubles of the world, et tanquam in specula positus, (as he said) "in some high place above you all", like stoicus sapiens, omnia sæcula, præterita presentiaque videns, uno velut intuitu (the stoic philosopher, surveying with one sweep all ages down to the present.) I hear and see what is done abroad, how others run, ride, turmoil, and macerate themselves in court and country, far from those wrangling lawsuits, aulæ vanitatem, fori ambitionem, ridere mecum soleo (I laugh to myself at the vanities of the court, the intrigues of public life.) I laugh at all; "only secure, lest my suit go amiss, my ships perish", corn and cattle miscarry, trade decay, "I have no wife nor children good or bad to provide for." a mere spectator of other men's fortunes and adventures, and how they act their parts, which methinks are diversely presented unto me, as from a common theatre or scene. I hear new news every day, and those ordinary rumours of war, plagues, fires, inundations, thefts, murders, massacres, meteors, comets, spectrums, prodigies, apparitions, of towns taken, cities besieged in france, germany, turkey, persia, poland, etc, daily musters and preparations, and such like, which these tempestuous times afford, battles fought, so many men slain, monomachies, shipwrecks, piracies and sea-fights; peace, leagues, stratagems, and fresh alarms. a vast confusion of vows, wishes, actions, edicts, petitions, lawsuits, pleas, laws, proclamations, complaints, grievances are daily brought to our ears. new books every day, pamphlets, currantoes, stories, whole catalogues of volumes of all sorts, new paradoxes, opinions, schisms, heresies, controversies in philosophy, religion, etc. now come tidings of weddings, maskings, mummeries, entertainments, jubilees, embassies, tilts and tournaments, trophies, triumphs, revels, sports, plays: then again, as in a new shifted scene, treasons, cheating tricks, robberies, enormous villainies in all kinds, funerals, burials, deaths of princes, new discoveries, expeditions, now comical, then tragical matters. today we hear of new lords and officers created, tomorrow of some great men deposed, and then again of fresh honours conferred; one is let loose, another imprisoned; one purchaseth, another breaketh: he thrives, his neighbour turns bankrupt; now plenty, then again dearth and famine; one runs, another rides, wrangles, laughs, weeps, etc. this I daily hear, and such like, both private and public news, amidst the gallantry and misery of the world; jollity, pride, perplexities and cares, simplicity and villainy; subtlety, knavery, candour and integrity, mutually mixed and offering themselves; I rub on privus privatus; as I have still lived, so I now continue, statu quo prius, left to a solitary life, and mine own domestic discontents: saving that sometimes, ne quid mentiar, (not to coceal anything) as diogenes went into the city, and democritus to the haven to see fashions, I did for my recreation now and then walk abroad, look into the world, and could not choose but make some little observation, non tam sagax observator ac simplex recitator (less by way of shrewd remark than of simple statement of fact) not as they did, to scoff or laugh at all, but with a mixed passion. 


farewell to an idea...a cabin stands, deserted on a beach. it is white, as by a custom or according to an ancestral theme or as a consequence of an infinite course. the flowers against the wall are white, a little dried, a kind of mark reminding, trying to remind, of a white that was different, something else, last year or before, not the white of an aging afternoon, whether fresher or duller, whether of winter cloud or of winter sky, from horizon to horizon. the wind is blowing the sand across the floor.


"bilem sæpè, jocum vestri movêre tumultus." "ye wretched mimics, whose fond heats have been, how oft! the objects of my mirth and spleen." I did sometime laugh and scoff with lucian, and satirically tax with menippus, lament with heraclitus, sometimes again I was petulanti splene chachinno (with mocking temper moved to laughter loud) and then again, urere bilis jecur (my liver was inflamed with gall) I was much moved to see that abuse which I could not mend. in which passion howsoever I may sympathize with him or them, 'tis for no such respect I shroud myself under his name; but either in an unknown habit to assume a little more liberty and freedom of speech, or if you will needs know, for that reason and only respect which hippocrates relates at large in his email to damegetus, wherein he doth express, how coming to visit him one day, he found democritus in his garden at abdera, in the suburbs, under a shady bower, with a book on his knees, busy at his study, sometimes writing, sometimes walking. the subject of his book was melancholy and madness; about him lay the carcasses of many several beasts, newly by him cut up and anatomized; not that he did contemn god's creatures, as he told hippocrates, but to find out the seat of this atra bilis, or melancholy, whence it proceeds, and how it was engendered in men's bodies, to the intent he might better cure it in himself, and by his writings and observation teach others how to prevent and avoid it. which good intent of his, hippocrates highly commended: democritus junior is therefore bold to imitate, and because he left it imperfect, and it is now lost, quasi succenturiator democriti (as a substitute for democritus) to revive again, prosecute, and finish in this treatise.


then I grew angry and cursed, with the curse of pure silence, the river, and the lilies, and the wind, and the forest, and the heaven, and the thunder, and the sighs of the poltergeists. and they became accursed, and were still. and the moon ceased to totter up its pathway to heaven- and the thunder whimpered away- and the lightning did not flash- and the clouds hung blank and motionless- and the waters sunk to their previous level- and the trees ceased to rock- and the poltergeists sighed no more- and the murmur was heard no longer among them, nor any shadow of sound throughout the vast illimitable desert. and I looked upon the characters carved into the rock, and they were inexplicably changed- they now read thus: "here, being visible is becoming invisible, is being solid slowly channeled through and dissolved into fluid, the accomplishment of an extremist in an postmodern exercise...he was a good friend…he was dominated…he ventured out into nature…we caught him having conversations…he was a good friend…he was dominated…how many more texts are required, sir?  how many more human subjects will you refuse to appropriate?  some of these things are set out very plainly, simply, straightforwardly- may or may not need the handbook…may or may not need the almanac…talked so much about difference, disavowal, community…this is what we need to defer to…this is how we come to be dominated.

the season changes. a cold wind chills the beach. the long lines grow even longer, emptier, a darkness gathers though it does not fall and the blankness grows less vivid on the wall and the vines. the man who is walking turns blankly back on the sand. he observes how the north is always enlarging the change, with its frigid brilliances, its blue-red sweeps and gusts of great semi-enkindlings, polar green, the color of ice and fire and solitude.

"trade in all your conditioning for another type or degree of conditioning… no shortage of mentors, no shortage of texts and their own constellation of ideological practices…when there is no reference point to begin with…thrashing wildly, desperately in the face of this or that promised stability, clarity, kindness, empowerment, no price is too high to pay for this, one professional is probably just as good as another…one system, if you analyze it closely, is probably just as good as another…he was a good friend…quite bewildered...pages were torn out, misappropriated, a total mis-allocation of funds…he deserved to be questioned…he probably deserved to be punished as well…he held out hope for the others…he was in perpetual contact with others…the first thing he did upon waking was to initiate some kind of personal contact…he couldn’t tell them to go away…they were never even there in the first place.


now there are indeed fine tales in the volumes of the various magi- in the iron-bound, melancholy volumes of the various magi. therein, I say, are glorious histories of the heaven, the earth, and the sea; and of the so-called genii that over-ruled the sea, and the earth, and the lofty heaven. there was much lore too in the sayings which were said by the sybils; and holy, holy things were heard of old by the dim leaves that trembled around prague, st. petersburg, london, bloomington-normal, waukegan...we needed the right texts to totally dominate our experience…to bend down in worshipful reverence…nothing will slip past these censors…a way of managing time, a way of  tracking expenditures...this is how you will be judged…this is how you will be remembered…and if, as some journalists worry, the safety net totally vanishes…where will you come down on these issues?  these issues, these very issues, these issues and not other issues, this subset or cluster of issues, as set forth by the professionals- we want your response to these issues, these particular issues, the other issues aren’t relevant, doesn’t matter so much what the historians posit…psychology- is that a discipline?  philosophy- is that an actual discipline?  how many more conceptual models are required?  model after model after model after model, no shortage of models or site-specific vocabularies- yet they all seem to miss the critical issue!  the brilliance of the model, the inadequacy of its proper or relevant application…as opposed to: a simple model, a stupid model, which nonetheless allows us to see what is happening…the sophisticated model is so dazzling that it supersedes or distracts from that which it was designed to reveal…the model becomes the reality…the text at hand becomes more important than that which the text purports to investigate.

farewell to an idea...the cancellings, the negations are never actually published. the father sits in space, wherever he sits, of bleak regard, as one that is strong in the bushes of his eyes. he says no to no and yes to yes. he says yes to no; and in saying yes he says farewell. he measures the velocities of change. he leaps from heaven to heaven more rapidly than bad angels leap from heaven to hell in flames.


this is what I mean by being dominated, begging to be constantly dominated, unable to live without domination, absolute servitude from the moment one wakes up to the moment one, in quotes, goes to sleep, because the domination continues uninterrupted even during excursions thru the royal, the unfettered, that most liberating of realms: the unconscious- even there you are following orders, hero-worship, guru-worship, every being, every creature, every breath, every fantasy is better, richer, and stronger than what you yourself have to offer, what you yourself have appropriated and rendered absolutely inconsequential…so that the world simply passes you by, you doing everything in your power to ensure that the world passes you by…hence the domination, hence the concepts, hence the invisibility of  domination and concepts, and the meaningless interplay that you create between domination of and by concepts vs. concepts of and around domination-  lines of poetry so-called, lines of liberation theology, discourse, the re-arrangement of thought, perception, response, intention, values, relationship entities so-called- why did you not live inside this relationship- why did you not live inside these relationships…maybe they weren’t real relationships…I don’t know, maybe they weren’t important relationships…maybe there was something terrifying and humiliating about facing up to the extent that you had asked to be dominated…you can’t invite too many  dominators into your home, it appears…there will always be room for another…and then another…and then another…until you finally learn how to properly dominate yourself, unassisted…maybe there will come a point when they will have finished their work…after all, don’t they have better things to do than dominate such a pushover-case as yours represents?  I don’t know, maybe they feed off that kind of thing…for every person, his perfect dominator, perfectly and individually tailored…set out those words for me to understand…set them out so I have an idea of how I should go about living…provide me with examples, please…provide me with endless examples…that way I’ll never have to decide anything for myself…in this world there is no end to the texts, to the lessons…you could spend your whole life reading…you could spend your whole chain of lives reading…you were birthed out of reading and eventually disintegrated into the same matrix of reading…there was never anything but reading and the wish to be dominated by reading.


it is a theatre floating through the clouds, itself a cloud, although of misted rock and mountains running like water, wave on wave, through the waves of light. it is of cloud transformed to cloud transformed again, idly, the way a season changes color to no end, except the lavishing of itself in change, as light changes yellow into gold and gold to its opal elements and fire's delight, splashed wide-wise because it likes magnificence and the solemn pleasures of magnificent space. highly aware of your inability to understand what is actually happening…even in the deepest recesses of your being…maybe you don’t have a being…just a series of traces or imprints left from the dominators around you…they have shaped your life, do you see that?  they have built you or molded you into whatever arbitrary form they hap