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The Savage Detectives

February 21, 2015 / posted in art, images of being-human, lyrical-narratives, reviews / No Comments

The Savage DetectivesThe Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It took me a while to get into this book. Admittedly it’s thick, and while the headers have names, dates and places, the sheer number of outlying characters threatens to dissolve attempts to make a cohesive narrative anything but conclusive. What Roberto Bolano has done is to show how there is no unifying trend in a group identity. That something as erudite and ideal as poetry can create a group is but a sheer coincidence among youths. As time progresses the boundaries of what makes a group dissolve, leaving but a faint trace of what had existed.

This novel is bookended by a character whose entry into the group, the viseral realists, breaks the group apart. He falls in with a prostitute who runs from her pimp. Their fleeing is supported by the leaders of this poetry group, whose absence eventually unravels the group. We see this as the group no longer has contact with one another. We hear of people faintly by hearsay. Eventually a young academic even writes about the group, including a trace of influence. In that sense, the fantastic nature of the subplots, the vignettes is where Bolano is able to give us choice pickings as the larger edifice melts into time. We catch up to the modern era but swiftly, as a coincidence destroys what may have, some day, in another world, amounted to a mainstream group. We don’t even know what happened to break up the two leaders although it becomes clear that their lives become in an instant, inexplicably altered.

In this way, we can read this as a coming of age story of individuals, but also as a coming of age story of nations entering into the globalized market. The heaving of capitalist trends always rearranges people socially, so that they do other things, odd tasks, specific to their own abilities and ambitions. Ultimately we are shuffled like so many decks of cards as the different decades come and go, different fashions changes and different values highlight out collective experience. In our older age we may return to our ideals of when young, having exhausted our sense of market sensibilities, and found greater joy despite the monotony of change. So we then end, individuals of so many potentials, being effaced on the shores of history, some of us, never to achieve our potential, many of us to be minor players who contributed to movements but only as vanishing mediators. Bolano writes about life, and perhaps this un-covering is the savage detective work as what he examines is both viseral and real.

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Misreadings

February 21, 2015 / posted in art, reviews / No Comments

MisreadingsMisreadings by Umberto Eco
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Normally I die for Umberto Eco’s works. This however, seemed less interesting mainly because it becomes clear that this is an exercise in saying one thing though the filter of another. At times the meaning is twisted as with “Make Your Own Movie” where we play with the narrative form by exporting different possibilities. Other times, it’s the form of two news broadcasters speaking about the landing of Columbus for the first time. Perhaps this is because written in the 60s, these essays would have been more cutting edge than they are now. Either way, I am not certain they stand up today as works in themselves. As always, Eco’s observations and musings are interesting, compelling and insightful. But given the push that they are in, I am less interested in them as comedy than anything else.

In a sense, parody is only the pushing of what something is through its opposite. This is how comedy shows like the Daily Show can be news. It creates the news through its focusing on one object simply because it is “about” something “out there”. The form of its presentation preserves its content even if the deployment is “opposite”. I didn’t think that this is astounding as an execution, but it is astounding as a way in which we humans think and process information.

Still, if you want a brainy book about silliness, here it is.

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Universal Principles of Design: 100 Ways to Enhance Usability, Influence Perception, Increase Appeal, Make Better Design Decisions, and Teach Through Design

January 30, 2015 / posted in art, reviews, Theory / No Comments

Universal Principles of Design: 100 Ways to Enhance Usability, Influence Perception, Increase Appeal, Make Better Design Decisions, and Teach Through DesignUniversal Principles of Design: 100 Ways to Enhance Usability, Influence Perception, Increase Appeal, Make Better Design Decisions, and Teach Through Design by William Lidwell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While this book may seem like a motley alphabetical list (because it is) of design “principles” what this book is really about is about how people chunk information. Each of the monikers isolates a “principle” according to the metaphor that logically independent relationships are separate axioms of organization. The book isn’t meant to be deep, or tell you why something is, it’s simply meant to be an inspiration, a guide to help one organize how to approach a project. The key to this book is that it tries to explain how best to approach each of axiom of organization, how it leads people to digest the presented information.

It’s of particular interest that many of these design principles aren’t so much about even presentation of design, but also include how to design (what processes, kinds of procedures). Design is one of those areas where everyone thinks that they are a designer, that what intuitively makes sense to oneself should make sense to everyone else. That if it’s obvious to “me” then it is obvious to everyone else. This is not true. Good design requires a channel to unpack potentially complex bundles of information, find out what message one wants to impart, and then present that message through the organization of those bundles of information in such a way that the message comes across as the immanent sense of that organization, that most people will select for the criteria presented as being what that information is rather than understanding it in a different way.

In this sense, the optimal organization of a specific complexity for a particular deployment is what design is. This book doesn’t talk about that though, it assumes we understand this already, and goes ahead to present the “meat and potatos” of design through a list of design principles. The authors were keen to also point out that the rise of design as a profession requires the vast accumulation of different areas including “art, science, and religion…the basic workings of nature” to solve a particular problem. I’m not sure that this is exactly what design is (in this sense, anyone who solves problems creatively is a designer…a little too vague) but I think design has to be understood as “cross-disciplinary” simply because what is necessary for a successful designer is the ability to unpack complexity and then select the best presentation for the most optimal deployment of that complexity to serve a purpose. Design in this way is related to philosophy via the organization of information — the unpacking and realigning of complexity — not the academic jargon that philosophy is so often wrapped in. The selection of various “principles” then bridges the desired message and the nature of the material to be presented. Really, quite a complex procedure which needs one to also understand the target audience’s framework intimately. Doubtlessly there can be no simple book about such a procedure.

This book could be better explained through what I just said, the meta-aesthetics of design. But in lieu of that, the authors don’t go much deeper. Instead, I think, they aim to be more practical and throw a bunch of stuff at you, to get you to think… which is misleading because they claim this book is good for teaching. And while throwing a bunch of junk just be what a designer needs to get his juices flowing, it may not be appropriate for a teacher!

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Hélène Cixous, Rootprints: Memory and Life Writing

September 9, 2014 / posted in art, images of being-human, lyrical-narratives, reviews, Theory / No Comments

Hélène Cixous, Rootprints: Memory and Life WritingHélène Cixous, Rootprints: Memory and Life Writing by Hélène Cixous
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Perhaps it was a mistake for me to read this book first, without reading much of Cixous first. The interview, while long, provided for me much interest as to what Cixous was trying to do. I didn’t much appreciate the sectioning of the conversation, but I did like the free flow. In a way, it was about what writing is for her, what she does with it and how she exceeds herself through writing.

The interview revolves around what writing is, what it does, where it arises and ultimately what it means for others, for the self, what we find in it, and how we come to be… for Cixous, writing seems to be about touching herself and others in ways that were perhaps unsaid by language… for there is much language can say but does not find voice in social reality, or reality at all… and that exploration makes writing a kind of love, to love the other in the self too. If anything, the interview’s length attests to the ground it uncovers as it runs through all the gambit of the traditional meanings and attitudes surrounding writing to uncover at its root, love and the other.

As Cixous notes, we often cannot be tempted to love, running from it more often than pursuing it…

Perhaps I should return to this after reading more of Cixous’s work, instead of just snippets, for much of this read a little too abstractly for me. I guess at my basic nature, I’m a structuralist in many ways, which is why this was so hard for me to read.

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Vegan Vampire Vaginas

September 9, 2014 / posted in art, reviews / No Comments

Vegan Vampire VaginasVegan Vampire Vaginas by Wol-vriey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Books normally start off with a displacement. Not always a problem, but a displacement that is in fact something out of the normal.

This is interesting because in the bizarro genre, the idea of normalcy is what’s at stake here. Characters sometimes seem normal; that is they get freaked out by things we would get freaked out by. But other times, they seem okay with things we wouldn’t be okay with; that is they don’t get freaked out. So you can understand that for bizarro fiction, what’s at stake is often the sense of normalacy which itself isn’t normal. As readers, we bring to bizarro fiction, the normalcy which then needs to be reiterated in the book after the contradictions that are created by the displacement get resolved… the ending of course, is a non-normalacy which “feels” normal.

Wol-vriey ups the ante here by writing about the bizarro world in the bizarro genre. That is to say, this book doubles almost everything. There are levels within levels here: the bizarro world in the bizarro dimension, but also bizarro Boston vs the normal Boston. What we have is a recursion of being inherent in the bizzaro dimension, where the “platonic forms” of bizarro world appear themselves “up there” in the bizarro dimension. One way to say that the bizarro Boston is an inherently unstable world, needing explanation. So the explanation is located in the bizarro world that is intruding onto bizarro America… that like a machinic assemblage, weaves “bizarro-ness” onto bizarro America… as this bizarro world is self justifying, “without sufficient reason” so it acts as the original site of displacement for the bizarro world.

This doesn’t seem to cut the cake, though, as the ticket into this world isn’t grounded on simply being bizarro. The main character Tom, doesn’t find himself into this world without meaning… he enters this world through the use of raunchy sex and suicide… and that marks the entrance into bizarro. For bizarro is grounded on debauchery, of the sexual and the organistic. Both go together, for cannibalism, sexuality and death are wrapped in an endless cycle thanatos, “death drive”: a proposition made by late Freud to match “eros”. Libido is often thought of the capacity for human subjects to enjoy themselves sexually… but Freud exceeded his libido theory when he found thanatos as the true form of human enjoyment. Thanatos isn’t a will to death, but it is a will to endless enjoyment, often an enjoyment which imbalances the subject… that is, this drive doesn’t kill people, but it does exceed the life capacity of the organism. So that enjoyment marked in excess is results in the bizarro dimension, endless sex and the endless bloodshed, the two of which are enjoyed liberally by all in the bizarro dimension… but it doesn’t explain what bizarro is in itself.

Or does it?

Bizarro is founded on the bizarre… the freakiness that exceeds normality… such that this freakiness can define normality itself: that is, as bizarro shows us as a genre, as Wol-viery shows us, what’s most bizarre about bizarro worlds is that anything can be normal. The defamiliarization of normality is what bizarro gives back to us. Bizarro shows us how normal itself isn’t normal, that what exceeds freakiness is how normality makes what is freaky normal… it helps us recognize that the hyperreal world we live in wasn’t always normal.

So to achieve that non-normality, bizarro often positions most things, in “opposite”. The king is a child. A woman can have a dick. Eaters think eating people is normal. There’s enough in here to make you wonder. And yet, the (in)consistency of what is odd is part of what makes it normal enough… kings must be obeyed. The police are there to help you (but are often scummy because they enjoy their job too much). Penises go in vaginas (sometimes). And of course, in real life, people constrain themselves. They don’t just do what they want, or have endless fucking, or endless murder… they hold some semblance of order… so there’s a little bit of that.

But the actual plot is that the main character enjoys himself too much. He steals the economy’s enjoyment (gold) and aligns it with the excesses of bizarro (hiding it up there). If that isn’t a shame, he also has a cousin who enjoys herself in a most unorthodox way; she avoids sex in a world that is predicated on sex. It is in fact, her doubling herself (but not her cunt, as that is what ties the double to her) that allowed the main character to enter our normal world, forgetting his real bizarro nature one of excess enjoyment (sex, thievery, murder…). Her displaced cunt then, separated from her body, fought between herself and her double, but positioned in her cousin’s hand, forms the link of “excess” enjoyment, enjoyment for him (to be both man and woman) but also enjoyment of the cunt itself (beyond whatever he may want) and enjoyment of the cousin to learn her magics without sex interfering. That cunt “for-itself in-itself” holds the key to the truths of this world, as its excess enjoyment of disembodied orgasming speaks the truth of this world. Like religious sacrifice, when people give up something they value in this world to the Sacred Other to get truths, when this cunt “for-itself in-itself” is pleasured, its enjoyment of the other’s offering allows it to speak the truth of this world for the fucker…. that is to say cunts in this book, are the small other that hold the key for your own desire… but like the end, this disembodied cunt takes its place as the Big Other, the Sacred Other, after it swallows its limit, and is thus rightly worshiped as such.

I don’t want to get into too much here, as there’s plenty, but the construction of this world is constantly the embodiment of the Other, such as the menschs, the vavs, the eaters… each position constitutes a set of values for us in the real world. Gods as idols, celebrity women as needing our lifeblood to constitute their dumb continuance, humans who want to live the good life and are unapologetic in their consumerism such that they literally eat other humans…

So what is this book about? It’s about the raising of the Other, that the natural order of things in bizarro, is in terms of its excessiveness, the primary point being a disembodied cunt has the key to all the mysteries of pleasure in-itself… such that human beings have no place in this world, as we are simply “food”, as others can enjoy us more than we can them.

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Against Expression: An Anthology of Conceptual Writing

September 9, 2014 / posted in art, reviews / No Comments

Against Expression: An Anthology of Conceptual WritingAgainst Expression: An Anthology of Conceptual Writing by Craig Dworkin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What writing isn’t conceptual? All writing starts from a seed, or even a series of seeds, the synthesis of which is at its root, an idea…and the demand of writing be that it be coherent, consistent and end by wrapping up the displacement that started it, resolving aesthetically as pure balance. All the accounts equalled, and that’s the bonus of being complete. The simplest of such balances, of course, is morality.

Nonetheless, this writing is conceptual in the sense that other, more traditional forms of writing, are not. Kenneth Goldsmith offers an interesting essay at the start, comparing photography and painting with the internet and writing. The internet, with its textual basis (but also mixed media) releases writing from its traditional prison of realism — of trying to be a representation of the world just as photography released painting from its post-renaissance vanishing point perspective prison…and since the internet is laid over the real world, writing as a whole, with its books and non-specific ties to the planet becomes dated.

So in this sense, the title could have been called as much “against expression” just as the Abstract Expressionist painters were expressing much. The difference, of course, is that in this impressive volume, the writing is centered on writing as a concept, rather than writing as an invisible craft to create coherency, realism and so on as a deferral to another dimension.

In this sense, while much of the writing in this volume seems unanchored from the real world, at its root is always an angular concept that ties it back to how this writing is generated, as the writing itself is the item of interest.

What’s interesting is that even without the intention of creating immersive worlds, automatic writing, writing that highlights only “foot prints” of other forces in the real world, such as word choice, events like 9/11, or various other assorted, curated arrangements, we the reader still persist in creating worlds in which we meander. Traditional immersive writing ecologies, such as narrative-time-space are eshewed for the inner voices of language, the collective roar of a non-singular plurality that does not intend as much as it unconsciously desires…and in that desire creates great social distortion — of facts, relationships, defiguring much of what we do as humans on a daily basis. Much of the writing here, while unreadable, acts as a record of our own distortion… sometimes playful, sometimes sad, sometimes anything you want, this text, devoid of much intent of narrative or morality allows us a partial 3rd point of view on ourselves, so that we can see in our shadow most of all, what we are obsessed in seeing.

It’s funny that often the introduction to the piece grounds the conceptual writing as being meaningful only because it is linked in reference to an hereto unseen axis outside writing. Nonetheless, I still find problematic the title; is this expression or is it against expression? What is expressed; writing always has with it, a pre-linguistic figural meaning that is included in the act of registering language.

All in all, an inspiring collection.

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being and identity and reality

April 11, 2014 / posted in art, dialectics, images of being-human, life as we know it, manifesto, note to self, Theory, Universal non-all, universal nothing / No Comments

I think much of politics stems from identity construction. Most discussions about identity are approached from the question of the Other — include them or teach them or change them. But really, any position of otherness must be mediated by what the Self is. The self mediating the self is the “invisible” point of reference that creates this initial distortion.

Post race isn’t exactly the same as post identity. Even if it’s a class distinction or, say, identifying as a “punk” which means “I’m real” then others who are not punk are “sell outs.”. Identity works that way.

So being American. Being a man. Being your age. Your personal history your children’s future your parent’s past your politics your sexuality your (in)unique soul. These are still pretty much identity construction that traps us as being a type and others as not being us. Except for genuine interaction, which basically needs both sides of the interaction to shed the image of itself, the Other is always a mirror that reflects back to us our negative that is not-me.

These groups of similar mes that see me as being us organizes groups, and super-groups. This organizationing(s) “hows” how we talk to one another and share resources/work. But each group, and group of groups also describe it’s own outside. You have to be outside the outside, to really step away. This organization/description/structure is not accidentally, how things are supposed to be. Based, on the outside of itself, it has to be this way, as defined by the outside that is not itself defining itself. So, each grouping also describes it’s own outside or “rebellion”. Being a punk is inscribed at the heart of being a sell-out. So it really seems impossible to step out of this reality.

But I guess that really doesn’t matter. Most people just want to fit in somewhere and be themselves. Lol, be who their identity tells them they are. :-)

what’s wrong with baseball? Absolutely Nothing.

August 7, 2012 / posted in art, images of being-human, life as we know it, note to self, rational choice theory and homo economicus, rhizomatic architecture, Theory, utility / No Comments

went to a baseball game. a few days ago.

dodgers vs the cubs. i went to a game before when i was 12 but it was without framing, as a school trip. overall, i dont remember anything, so i consider this to be my first baseball game

the initial striking was how immersive being in the crowd was.

usually when i saw baseball games, it was in a movie or a tv show. and so, baseball was a backdrop against a larger plot. at first i kept feeling like there was a larger story i was missing; that my attention needed to be elsewhere.

of course there was nothing like that.

a bunch of random things happened, with the jumbotron, with things like air guitar, dancing, kissing. the audience basically entertained themselves through the jumbotron while the players did whatever they did… guess baseball is a slower game so they needed that. but really, the emotional energy in the crowd was nearly overwhelming. i found myself recoiling when they did the wave, or when random shit happened… the audience was totally in it.

i realized then, something very unlike what my 19 year old self would realize, i think, if he were there.

there is nothing horrible at all about baseball games. Absolutely Nothing ™.

so this is why sports fans are sports fans: you have the near immersal of what it means to be in a group, in a community… with the colors and the cheering and the singular mindedness of the crowd. this rabble focus is what so many 19th century philosophers and political thinkers were afraid of; the mob. this is the heart of democracy and fascism rolled all into one. (south park got something right! rabblerabblerabblerabble)

i found myself kind of sickened by it and at the same time, wanting to be part of it… despite the fact that it was so inane, all the actions and the spectacles… arbitrary. random.

what was so jarring in this had alot to do with the advertisements that snuck in. this is our world; where bank of america’s logo was on the jumbotron all the time, and state farm’s logo was on all the tickets… despite this being dodgerland. dodger dogs, dodger water, dodger gear… the other brands, subway and bank of america and state farm… there, almost like part of the infrastructure…. support beams we see, sitting on the bleachers, but we don’t really see. branding to support branding.

not bad perhaps, since everything takes funding… but i think this kind of experience made me feel, wow, this is really leaning dangerously close to the beginning of social engineering… democracy works by appealing to the masses, so complex ideas and policies always need to be distilled to their simplest form for dissemination and emotional reaction. in much the same way, capitalism — marketing of experiences like dinner, or ziplines or sports events also need to be focused to be pleasurable in their specific ways that they are. everything is distilled, made simpler. focused

i see our lives as becoming fuller and fuller, until there’s very little room for us to move without having some business or some experience waiting for us to come in and sit there… that its easier to go to a dating mixer than to the bar, or its easier to do all your banking and credit cards and payments with one financial profile (linked across several or even just one financial institution)… or your medical records will be stored across a national database for instant access. no more having to go through the same proceedural exams once you switch small time dentists or opticians. everything made easy. want disney? go to the disneystore. go to disneyland. want sandwiches? google sandwiches and go to a sandwich shop. have sandwiches 24/7. want philosophy? go to the philosophy factory and download any number of works, that might have taken a PHD 25 years to find and read… you can have it all on your kindle.

this kind of hyper-realism…
this availability of different cultural affects:
apparently tonight william shatner was in the audience somewhere for they did a star trek tribute… during the fireworks display they played was to the music of star trek… movies and tv shows. when they were blowing off fireworks and i was watching young and old take out their cell phones to take pictures and record it… this event was wondrous… a real crowd pleaser. why were they trying so hard?

this notion of enchantment, which was missing from the desperation that arose out of 9/11… has found itself reborn today in momentary displays of immersive experience… ok, sure, there’s nothing really bad about going to see a baseball game and its following fireworks… (except maybe your team losing). but this is the kind of pure, unanalytical, uncritical embracing of patriotism, team spirit, community, crowd-oneness that people are missing… we all are in this together and for a moment, despite being competitors in driving, in jobs, in relationships, in living space with all these angelos, we can all pretend that we belong together and that everything fits in a secular humanism devoid of poverty, suffering and discrimination.

this kind of singularity reminds me of a conversation with some hipsters about books a few nights earlier. rather than lament that no one ever read anymore, we started talking about how people do read, but in different media. i tried to steer the conversation into “the novel started off as a distraction for victorian women on their summer trips (something to do when sitting in the carriage or on a boat)… and ends today as just another source of entertainment (like the long drawnout serial tv dramas like lost or 24)… if we are upset that no one reads anymore, we are probably missing the fact that without the novel as a penultimate art form, no one really processes data in a long drawn out way, for deeper analysis… you don’t get this immediate engagement with tv serials, movies, video games or performance… and following that, do we need the kind of thought that goes into something like moby dick or war and peace?”

no one had any answer that moment. but i think that if we start having our entertainment as immersive singular experiences that exist in “dodgerland” or “when you turn on your xbox and select any video game” … that fragmented disconnected disjointed (ir)relevancy, means that we won’t be able to examine this content without understanding the larger frame its presented in… (since each content will have its own specific logic, like an anime with a ton of characters who behave weirdly but fit together). in other words analysis will be limited to less about what something is, than how it fits in — less what it says than how it functions when placed in the context of a larger whole… in a metaphysical way what “time” it presents in, as it defines its own time and is defined into a time. in a sense, we will have to leave the why to programmers, marketing departments, designers and engineers who create the box, package the content, as they understand how it fits in financially and socially, why people come to it, how they use it, what they are looking for… the only way to engage has to be on a deeper level of abstraction. otherwise, you will a puppet in the system. even while philosophizing, you run around, a rat in a maze of market forces. you are collectively shuffled into traffic, follow the defined paths beaten by urban engineers to maximize efficiency of travel, regulated by invisible giants for a specific purpose… the result of which, is poor design that juxtaposes and fails in most dimensions (lost in traffic, stores isolated and starving, stuck in traffic, accidents, even death); or good design that maximizes its output (easy flow, plenty parking, encouraging you to feel good about buy things you dont need, to a highway that dumps you onto your neighborhood with easy access home to bed).

i think the majority of systems are designed to input-output, they are haecceity oriented; transform one material into another for the purpose of quiddity. it might be information of one type, into another, but the result is nearly always a modularity that interlocks with other modularities… be it a car on the road with other cars, or one web page that functions on most any browser. you can be a unique, but the big system knows you entirely; plays you like a fiddle and when its done with you, you’ll don that solider uniform. your condition may be weird but the health care system has a form for you! its all about the processing. not as an industrial society that used to can fish or make fords on an assembly line; we do this to ourselves now. the rationalization of process invades our subjectivity and cleans it out. even in scifi dystopias of post-armageddon, we still have robot mass murders, insane, inhuman machines that have a system to wipe out the human element.

rationalizations of process and process oriented management (of people, as employees or as customers) is probably the one far reaching mindset that came out of the 20th century…. its also the biggest, most useful and most damning box that we have built for ourselves. as capitalists, we have developed money, at least as students of economy, into a raw unit of social value. in the process of using money as an objective measure to determine the viability and value of pursuing endeavors, we’ve also had to objectify processes so as to track money… so we can further measure the potentiality of any and every course and each level and each intersection, be it in government or business.

as mice in such processes, we are bombarded by a variety of paperwork, forms, meetings, appointments… junctions which administrators and bearucrats alike shuffle us into different hallways, websites, telephone transfers, offices… we are transformed from one client into the next client, and our goals are often sidelined by the process we must endure to reach our goals. the only reprieve from this process must be immersive entertainment, new worlds that we can partake as fully as possibly… with their own logic and their own rules… to be fresh and enchanting, to allow new and better candies… which ironically, sublimates this model of rationalization… single player video games are the most obvious, since there’s a path (or paths), a storyframe the player must masochistically follow to reach the endline. like sade flogging our subjectivity into the perfect worthy superhero who only he can reach the end (and you must be he if you were there for this all). in baseball and other distractions, we have the model which is presented as a series of courses, time for the jumbotron, time for the commercial break, time for the cliffhanger at the end of the season… the better the structure is hidden, the better disney reminds us we aren’t standing in line for hours, the more immersive the experience, the more hidden the process, the more successful the distraction, the purer the aesthetic and the more separate that highpoint emotion is from everything else (to be repeated?).

so when stacking processes, the model of the individual as a free standing spiritual being has to give way to a multi-valent subjectivity… a raw nothingness that is waiting to be transformed into client, or employee, tracked along a series of rationalized tiers (level 1 admin, level 2 senior engineer, platinum card member)… on the producer side we have a series of machinic trees that eat employees and shuffle customers and product like blind jugglers. on the consumer side people are demographized into a crowd of impersonal hunger for particular experiences (a particular sporting team, snowboarding or surfing, the regular motley of a demographic of restaurant, a group tour)… very different from the very personal subjectivity of the “everyman” individual that nearly every main character written since tom jones was approaching the end of the 20th century… (this past naturalistic subjectivity was most visible in mary shelley’s frankenstien, a subjectivity in a non-subject body, the post-human frankenstien!)…

what we are doing is no longer a matter of self improvement, for there is nearly no self. we are regulated into narratives trapped in bodies, with too many properties to count! i am every kind of number to any institution. to find yourself, to look for that center that william wordsworth had when he wrote “Lines written a few miles above Tin Abbey” is impossible today. wordsworth could be whole writing as an upper class poet, lazying in the shade with his sister, but we can only be EAT PRAY LOVE, a series of disconnected, disjointed experiences that are marginalized by the objective processes that dominate our landscape of process oriented institutions., that package experience, package us so many slices of individually wrapped cheese. this post-self is an XML file, a tree crowded with attributes, children and nodes, namespaces needing to populated and defined, attributes that connect only to one or two situations… we are maps that defeat definition, maps that can be read from any dimension but are every shifting and changing in tenor dependent on vector, content and value. you could become any fan at any moment; soak in the media light and follow any event; you can jointly comment on yahoo news, or huffington post or reddit. thats because we are one piece. as individuals on the street we have no connection but our connection is deeper than occupying space. together we create a mindless, headless bastion moving godlessly and clumsily, an orgy of demographics, unified and unpredictable, gobbling up the planet, turning the earth inside out as we stack her guts along as highways, guardrails, airplanes, cell phones, and strip malls, event as we stack her guts on us as an exoskeleton of devices to extend ourselves in invisible social dimensions, to join as a single forge of entertainment and profit maximization.

each layer is different; at each step up the tree or across a branch, we have a different logic, a different department. vast stretches of sociality are the same; paper work, stamps, requisition and cross-benefit analysis, but many areas are radically different; and they may bump into one another like galaxies whose gravitational influence cross-congregate and (dis)assemble like rap and rock or 4chan and minecraft or the colbert report and highschool… but an interesting elucidation for another post.

so yes, this is what i went though while watching the baseball game. dodgers vs cubs. dodgers won, 6 to 1.

art and connoisseur-ship as market affects

May 6, 2012 / posted in art, images of being-human, manifesto, rational choice theory and homo economicus, Theory / No Comments

apparently there’s a release of a new documentary called jiro dreams of sushi. have not seen it. was curious though — thought it was an anime about sushi. cuz on fb and twitter people watch the movie and then go eat sushi.

okay.

naw, it’s about a man who took sushi as an art to the next level. as a biography that’s kind of alright. but the movie seems to translate into go have sushi and appreciate it even more.

that’s okay too. its kind of duh. i mean if you know anything about japan, of course it’s an art. but at the same time, what isn’t anything anyone does an art?

stacking rocks is an art. breathing is an art (yoga). looking at something, standing. it’s all an art. so what!

If everything is art, then why should we care about art?

 

What is wrong with Art for Art’s sake?

i am not sure why i am on such a bent on thinking of connoisseurship. what’s wrong with it? i think art for art’s sake is stupid. i think art for a purpose is just as stupid.

art for art’s sake or collecting specific knowledges like collecting shot glasses. connoisseurship for personal development is a waste, a sign of our decadent society. behaving in this manner is like picking a random thing and making that thing central. that kind of imbalance isn’t really all that great for anyone. but taken seriously, it becomes a replacement for actual life.

i would like to make a distinction now, between knowing what you like and being a snob, an otaku or a fanatic about it… there too is a formal difference between being a connoisseur and being an addict, but i don’t think that in this context, addict vs connoisseur is a meaningful distinction as both seek to centralize a content area. what’s tragic about this content area is that the borders of the content area are often arbitrary, formed from external factors (market influenced, historical or personal, to name a few). EX: you can be a tennis connoisseur but why not soccer or racquetball? that’s a different sport? what about clay courts vs concrete or grass? what about right or left handed players? singles or doubles? mens or womens? you see my point.

in contrast to this decadence, is knowledge collected for the sake of solving a problem. for instance, being nitpicky about how a certain module is built can have an impact on the entire system for the purposes of a network server. that’s fine. or how a proposal is written. okay! but being nitpicky about how a wine is aired is some sense ridiculous.

so art is nebulous, a matter more of deployment and affect than of substance.  this is because there’s no big picture for art. a big picture which preserves art as a concrete thing is a fantasy, because art like authenticity exist in the middle as a tactical endeavor.  art as a material affect lacks authenticity.  authenticity is about relations.

 

Authenticity and the Market place, What makes Hipsters Capitalists

so yes, all i do is talk about the big picture. but there is a difference between relationships and meaning/intention. certainly there is a correlation between things, even cause and effect. for instance, as i’ve complained before, hipsters have a notion that only non-market effects have authenticity.

this means that we (as hipsters) buy things that are local and personal. we despise corporate. but this really misses the point. the corporate (market) culture worships material. through branding, through product and design… the whole point is to get to the point of sale. so knowing this, hipsters avoid markets, and seek far flung corners of the globe to escape market realism.

but this is nonsense because by considering the non-market affects as alternatives to market products, hipsters actually bridge the gap between market and non-market. they introduce global capitalism by seeking supposed non-market areas and introducing rational choice theory and other market constructs. ive said it before; hipsters are very much the avant-gaarde of global capitalism by bringing fringe affects to the center.

so my point about authenticity is that hipsters like their corporate nemesises, miss the point:

Authenticity is found in relations, not Material.

you may complain that your boss treats you inhumanly, like a cog in the machine. but that treatment is authentic because when you are at work you are a cog in the machine. getting cut off on the freeway is definitely an authentic relationship, as is talking to the local barista for five minutes each day. in much the same way, hipsters mistake authenticity as a market construct — they think that having a human relationship means getting to know your local bum as your brother.

walter benjamin got it right with art in the age of mechanical reproduction. art as a market construct comes about when an item can be massed produced. the ‘original’ item then, becomes something more than mass produced. it becomes art, valuable and priceless because of its non-market origins. this is a different understanding of art than as a tactical maneuver.

when you think of non-market influenced art, like performance art.. but even more so like street art, graffiti art or transient earth art as real art (non-museum, non-institutionalized pieces) you are making a mistake about what art is. art as a produced item, even if it has non-market origins only enters the market as more market produced items.

graffiti art just happens to be the latest taste… performance art (which cannot be traditionally museumized due to its localized and temporalized nature) and earth art were previous forerunners in a series of attempts to experience non-market reality. but this too becomes just another item that is more prized as art once reproductions (albeit even imperfections) are passed on.

post-industrial capitalism as a whole is rightly a post-modern worldview, of signifiers divorced from having a penultimate signified.  post-industrial capitalism encapsulates material within a decontextualised territory, of market place, passing on the content as the form. hipsters seeking to escape market influence only spread its affects further because they mistook the market place as a set of content not a logic of deployment.  to grasp onto someone who was the first or who was the best (as with jiro) is just another expression of those elevating forces that define art and artistry as another market deployment. (this works, of course, the same way with music hipsters, who must hate a thing once it has obviously entered the market…)

so if you re-tool authenticity as relationships which originate from us as who we are, then we have to accept that authenticity is market-agnostic. so to go over human relationships as being authentic or not, wearing your mother’s sweater she got you is an authentic thing — not because she made it by hand (rather than old navy — because it might be from old navy) but because you note she loves you and you love her back is the thing. so in this i agree with zizek. the waiter who notes his role as waiter with a dose of cynicism is the man who actually is a waiter… he notes the expected rules and approaches them with the intention of being effective as a waiter is one who is authentic about his being a waiter… more so than the one who just does what he is supposed to with a pure heart… that kind of attitude means that the latter has not sacrificed all that he is into the role — he has not given up that which is not waiter yet, as he has not acknowledged it to give it up.

this is kind of a complex idea, but it comes from zizek’s background growing up in stalin eastern europe. one’s actual actions count, so that if one even carries with it the negativity about their duty and yet performs their duty — then one really is completely “into it” so to speak since one has made the choice to accept one’s fate… rather than one who mindlessly does it because it’s there (suggesting that the latter has yet to really make up their mind as they haven’t yet realized their mind).

in much the same way, one who is with their spouse despite their spouse’s flaws is one who is committed to the relationship. perhaps that is a more obvious way of speaking.

this of course, defines authenticity regardless of market influence.   authenticity has to do with personal affect, if it touches you or not.

sad to note though: the most authentic relationships most people have in their daily lives are with their pets. we can imbue our pets with subjectivity so as to better relate to them — or we can take that subjectivity away, should it be inconvenient. what makes most people’s relationships inauthentic is our inability to really accept the other person, due to expectations, market forces, career pressures, emotional hang ups or whatever… (i don’t mean that one should blindly accept whatever your significant other dishes, i mean that your relationship should be defined on a personal basis before one plays the role of “wife”… not because one has to be a “wife” so that means you behave in a particular way regardless of how one feels or doesn’t feel)

So where does that leave us with Art and Jiro?

rather than pursuing art in terms of market, we should probably see it natively. that is, with the viewer’s  (our own) sensibilities than any group focus. group objectivity is a theoretical position, one which is best fostered through art community consensus or market forces (enough people recognize, or it has been reproduced enough times to be famous). this means that art is a nebulous thing… and it is up to the artist to manage their audience’s expectations, should they wish to be an artist. i don’t think that art for arts sake should be how we see it, otherwise as a model of self expression, bad poets are the most artistic of all, since they speak directly from their emotions regardless of craft… and bad poetry is something most people will recognize as not being at all art.

so what we take from the movie is what we will, be it a biography, or a better appreciation. and if it be the latter, than we have achieved the most simple marker, haven’t we? and if watching a movie lets us be affected by sushi as art, then so be it.

what’s missing from corporate materialism is enchantment… and tactically, that is what art does.

so yeah, i did start somewhere, against something and i ended up in the same spot, with everything possibly, as an art. so what!

the soft amplification of a lever along a fundamental force

March 17, 2012 / posted in art, images of being-human, lyrical-narratives / No Comments

one of the simplest motions is the lever.

levers work by translating a small force into a larger motion — called leverage. mathematically the work remains the same, sum total, but through the use of levers through time, a smaller force applied over a longer period of time is easier for human beings to achieve motions which would be more difficult to apply directly. one of the key facets of levers involve the prime fundamental force, which helps structure the entire universe — namely gravity. levers could still work even if gravity did in fact not exist, as the force needs to be applied throughout the beam which acts as an amplifier. an interesting application of this happens in snowboarding, when the snowboarder stands at the fulcrum and adjusts her weight to and fro, in order to direct the force down the mountain. what’s tricky about the application is that part of the direction relies heavily on the traction between the board and the mountain. the snowboarder isn’t just deploying her own body as an amplification through the board but the constant change in the packed-ness of the mountain and the slope of the mountain also increases or decreases the amplification. if you hold the board and the mountain as two stable variables, you can see the little shadow grow bigger on one side or the other. this isn’t true to life though, since we are talking about a single axis with a stick — the human body is a more complex shape.

susan would write all these equations on the blackboard, working through variables in her math class. what’s absolutely astounding, she said, is that after a few trials of falling down, you intuitively grasp the physics. these equations become second nature to you, she said. for all our deliberate graspings of these complex equations, there isn’t anything for what happens in muscle memory. you learn quickly, or at least i did, she said, that tightening one muscle in your calf, or in your thigh can be enough to change direction

all these flew through her head, and out the proverbial window, though, when one winter day she tried to carve over a rather large ice patch and her board slipped out from under her. she over compensated and flipped over, flying in the wrong direction. she saw for a brief second a tree in her near future. she planted her feet down, forcing her board into the side of the mountain, wanting to cut deep into the ice and force a radical turn left, back onto the path. conditions that day were dire for her already — it had stopped snowing for a week already, and the constant sunshine had melted the snow which re-iced in the cold night that followed. this happened for 8 days already.

so the snow she cut into was hard, and she forced her board in too deeply, causing her board to lock. she didn’t have room to complete her fall though — the tree was right there.

when she came to, she was heavily bandaged and there were restraints on her body. she was groggy already. where? what? who? her left arm was somewhat unrestrained so she groaned and reached up, only so far before sharp pain forced her to relax. her boyfriend was there. yes, she had slammed into the tree. yes, she was in the hospital. she wanted to talk but her mouth was locked. don’t move, he said. i’m here. you were out for two days — your parents are flying in tomorrow. just relax. i’ll be here.

lucky the school had great insurance for their professors. and she had recently become tenured. so the months that followed were a slow progression for doctors in the dark. at first, she was worried she would not walk again. they said, no that wasn’t it — her spine was fine. she had changed her fall to the right in the last second and avoided the trunk, which would have probably snapped her spine should she had hit it full on… but in her change she hit a low hanging branch and that knocked her out. she could see herself drawing our her accident on a chalkboard, explaining the entire thing to a class of disinterested students. yes, she would have to revisit the spot, first chance she got, to take measurements and figure out exactly what the slope was and which direction she was going. in fact, susan? susan? hm, she asked. sorry, i wasn’t listening. there was a long silence, and she sensed something was wrong.

the point? she may not see again.

her chalkboard dreams disintegrated back into darkness.

but they will have to run some tests and wait, let her body heal some more.

there wasn’t much else to it. some glimmer of hope evaporated slowly in the ensuing weeks. when she was released, she could not believe it; she had to use a cane, sweeping it to find her way around.

with that, her remarkable future as a math teacher seemed another world. her upcoming vacation to morocco next year? the last thing on her mind. her devoted bf would go to the other way, in the hallway and whisper with doctors. tell her, we’ll get through this, somehow. her parents, her mother’s hand on her forehead, her father holding her hand. she was an only child, and they stayed way too long. what’s all this whispering business? what’s all this poor susan business? what’s all this darkness?

there’s not much to a blackboard without chalk. so her math musings were like so many fingernails trying to scratch an x on what was blackness. only a blackboard isn’t truly black. it’s kind of a green-black, so she always thought, but now, there’s not even that. this blackboard has no equation. she couldn’t carve an x into this darkness for anyone, let alone carve a sharp turn in some fucking ice patch. she had stayed an extra few days too, extended her trip since the hotel offered a deal since ppl were leaving. the slope was bad, so froze and packed, only the experienced daredoers stayed. and those years and years of practice, fun, and all the bruises and the few broken bones here and there — for this?

she would never drive again.

she would have to take the crappy almost non-existent public transit. one of her first trips was to the beach.

from here, her bf told her how beautiful coronado island was, how she could see it. hear the seagulls, hear the ocean, small the salt. hear the children and the far off sandrake the city of san diego dragged across the beach to keep the sand loose and smooth, cool under her feet, freshly raked sand.

she wouldn’t go into the water, except with a heldhand. she could only see the beach in her head. sometimes she saw things at night, or saw her bfs or someone’s expression, filled in, and she would unconsciously mistake her imagination for vision, smiling when she heard the street vendor’s voice, imagining him like mario from mario brothers, with a thick bushy mustache. she asked her bf if he looked like that, and he sounded funny when he said that the man did look like that. she played this game for a while, hearing a woman talk sternly to her child, and seeing a thick redheaded woman until she walked into the one too many chairs, thinking the pond smaller than it was, and she fell over spraining her ankle in the fountain, pennies sliding under her fingers like so many bumpy equations hidden in the thick darkness like a gigantic patch of ice over everything again.

they had been an outdoorsy couple, despite her nerdy inclination to make everything into an equation. they loved to go surfing, or golfing, snowboarding, hiking in the hills, or out in the desert. she would map out the arc of balls, draw fourier transformations on napkins so she could rape him at pool. (he would complain but if she used the math she would always win.) how like a dream now! they used to camp overnight, make love under the stars. and came back covered in dust to sit naked together, after a hot shower, to watch the tv. all of that paradise was so far away now. they couldn’t do the tv thing.

at first he was more than attentive, but then as she dispassionately predicted, he came by less and less after work. she still taught, but could not grade papers. she had to work doing something else, with a TA. she went on disability. she stayed at home, sleeping odd hours. her phone would ring, if she remembered to plug it in, and she learned her apartment by the shape of her body, the space she fit herself into between the toilet and the shower, between the kitchen and the oven was three susans. her couch was two susans from the sliding glass door.

she burned her fingers trying to cook. so she left the radio on, softly and held the handle. the radio sound did not matter. they could talk of the presidential election, the serial rapist, or some celebrity bullcrap it was the same drone to her as she stir a curry mix until it smelled a certain way, careful not to burn herself… her pots must look terrible, full of burn marks, and other odd grossnesses…

the microwave was touch pad, and her bf glued dots to the buttons, so she could cook her food properly. after an undercooked this, a burnt that…

she felt him as a smell, an obelisque on the horizon, dark and small and then smaller and darker until it was only night. she wasn’t sure what time anything was, without feeling the sun on her skin. she left the curtains open a crack so she could feel the heat.

until she realized was it a day ? a week? two weeks? he did not come by. she called him and there was no answer. a message, and… no return call. nothing.

a small nothing, in a big gigantic void of nothing.

suicide was a small thought somewhere. her parents said she should come back to them, but she loved that apartment. she couldn’t afford it. the disability services ppl wanted to teach her how to subsist on routine and fixed dimensions. the entire globe became the shape of her street block, like the back of her head, or the small between the toilet and the sink.

if she dropped her toothbrush in the bowl, she knew where it would lie, and she knew how far her hand was from the rim. her parents bowl? how big was that? how smooth was that?

she was wasting away, with her cell phone dead somewhere. she tossed it into some obscure corner. she was sure it broke, it sounded like it. and something weird and crunchy lay under her feet by the front door.

she wasn’t sure where her duvet lay, she slept under a sheet, with a towel and her jacket. what color was this towel? was it the blue one or one of the ones with animal prints?

then one day it happened.

she thought it a dream, a face like mario from mario brothers, the street vendor but with a yellow hat staring down at her. so startling she forgot she was blind and screamed, turning her head to the side, what was this man doing so close to her face?

but she could not get away. she screamed and bolted to her side until she realized that she was face planted in a mysterious pillow on the floor beside her bed and this face still filled her field of vision.

still this vaguely terrified her, after seeing nothing for so long and she wept a little into the pillow, feeling the chilly floor sweep into her back and sides. she recalled this was winter, heard somewhere on the radio, and it was about a year since that fateful accident.

she stretched out, banging her elbow on her bed and the face spin slightly and winked at her.

she tried, experimented with turning her head, reaching her hands out and this face, too close for comfort was still there. her hands, she did not see her hands. was there sunlight? she found and hit her clock and it told her it was 3:45pm on tuesday, january 3rd.

it was the beginning of the FACE the era of its eyes, two black holes, a blackhole mouth with blackhole nostrils, dark hair, busy mustache, yellow cap like one of those taxi drivers from movies in the 60s.

this was so odd and terrifying at once, she could not ignore it. when she turned on her favorite radio station, this face danced around a little, wriggling though it lacked body and neck. she thought she could see every little pore in its sink, see every eyelash on its eyes. it could be more handsome. who are you, she asked, her voice crackling from lack of use. the face winked at her again.

she thought she could see her reflection in its eyes, but she could not peer closer into to see, as FACE existed as contact lenses do, independent of where she moved her head or her body.

whatever. add to my misery.

as though she lost a tooth. it used to be there, her mouth was the same and now it’s not. she’s toothless and must continue to eat and live life this way.

or like blindness.

after a day though, she was screaming at it, throwing things around, the FACE grinning and winking at her as though it understood her. but then it did not. it danced around, random. it made a kissy face as if mocking her. then she heard knocking noises. is that you she screamed stop a very muffled voice answered back and the FACE made a gesture with its eyes and tilted the chin. who are you she asked again.

this is the police. police? yes open up. are you okay, miss …. she had a strange revelation she almost fell over, someone was at the door. the police were at the door! yes yes sorry officer, everything is fine she said hoarsely, cracking the door open. she thought they were shining a flashlight in her eyes, she was sure of it, but she is blind and had no idea if they were. we heard screaming is everything okay? we had a complaint of noise. it’s 5am, miss. yes, sorry, everything is okay, i just thought someone was in here. do you mind we look around? no i’d rather you didn’t (you might take something from me, or move something and i would never find it again, probably trip over it.) well this is your first warning. we can walk around the perimeter if you like.

she got them to go away. and decided to keep her illness to herself. she laughed a little, cried a little and the FACE winked at her its grin both toothy and toothless. okay okay, so you need a name after all. lets call you… mac. you look like a mac. as if in agreement, so the mustache wriggled.

mac did not disappoint. a week later, she noticed he tilted a certain way when she was in the bathtub. she could not play with herself anymore, she found too, with this FACE always looking and jiggling.

what a turn off.

and when wanting to drink milk, mac seemed annoyed. she sniffed it. called on her neighbor and asked when does this expire? it’s been expired a week…

she went to the store, and found that when going down the milk aisle, mac bristled. where is the milk? there is no milk. the store is remodeling. how could she get milk? could you help me, she said, i need these items, and i can’t see…

it was odd talking to the employee, as she felt she was talking to mac. and mac seemed to dance quite a bit, in conversation.

she decided to move in with her parents.

she had to. she had no income. she did not tell them about mac, but one by one she learned is movements. if she moved slowly enough, he was consistent. when she was going to run into something he did a look. when she was reaching for her drink and it was not there, he made a face. she talked to a man, and mac seemed alarmed, disturbed. she tried to excuse herself even though he seemed nice enough, and he protested, started to get rough with her, mac made a face and she knew he was going to put his hand over her mouth so she kicked at him, or at least mac gestured in such a way so as to suggest kicking at him… there

he ran away when someone came running by, and the police were called, he matched the serial rapist description. are you okay miss? yes, i am, sorry, no its okay i don’t need to go to the police my parents number is xxx.xxx.xxxx please call them,

and so she learned to read mac, or rather he taught her. mysterious teaching, but she had nothing else to do. mysterious looking, yes there seemed to be mysterious packages in the living room. her parents looked at each other. can you… see, susan? no no, i just… it’s my birthday and you were acting strange, she lied. yes, they are for her, and her dad laughed, she was adjusting okay.

when opening, she noticed dispassionately that they had still gift-wrapped the packages. no, it didnt feel like newspaper… she was sure the wrapping paper had a blue ribbon pattern so said mac… but she said nothing, asked, what does this gift paper look like…

blue ribbon…

maybe she should get off disability?

she took a trip on the bus to downtown one day, and knew how far the bus stop was, and mac’s tiny face seemed the entire expanse of the world, the colors in his skin telling her where to put her foot, and she marched up stairs and did not trip, knowing where everything was, how far the railing went, and that she was in front of a large building and that building was a grocery store.

so this discrimination went, and she could find her jacket where it was moved, whether it was night or day until one day her parents said, it’s just like you got your vision back!

i guess so, susan admitted. i should go back to work. she had a hard time reading, but it came slowly until one day she was walking down the campus to her class when a former student ran into her and said wow, ms kirkpatrick, i haven’t seen you in a long time.

yes — i … had an accident. i was blind for a while… they talked for a bit and she marveled at the marble whiteness, the faded dust along the edge of the wall. that was 6 years ago… and… where’s mac?

she didn’t see a face anymore, she saw the birds flying over head, the color of the trees as they swayed like so in the invisible but felt wind. she thought maybe his mustache extended the sidewalk, and maybe she was under his left eye? but then it was gone and she only saw the world, as placid as his winking eye.

wherever she went, she strained to see him, no longer drawing equations to describe the flight of birds, or how a skateboard can jib on a railing, how the skate bumps can decrease speed given how far apart spaced they are… she thought she saw his face in a student’s face, and she stared too long at the student that the student looked away embarrassed.

she felt like carmen electra in the movie the box, a professor with a secret club foot. she thought she walked with a strange internal limp, thought for a minute that the sky was a lip, a twisting of the nose in a sneer for a minute, and that familiar winking she thought she remembered but she could not picture at all; the pores on her skin lighting up in the setting sun, an iron chimney over the student union with the faint smell of korean bbq they are cooking something for the student event.

she could not shake how spaces in rooms felt like a skin, how her vision and how she touched everything as if through the filter of a tv screen that remained the same so that we forgot it was there, and then we were in the tv. and having slipped through that looking glass, unable to see the screen again, unless someone were to blind herself again, as if shining a light on the tv from behind the viewer, so one could see the shadow, the outline of his face.

there were days she could not see him at all, seeing only a field of things like tron, like the wireframe of a renaissance painting shocking through everything in those measured lines. she hurried along towards the horizon at breakneck speed, thinking perhaps, i can find the vendor who sounded like him, the street vendor whose voice i might recognize a mac…

was mac, was mac god?

did she see her in blindness the skin of his face, winking at us, supplementing for us as newborn infants the rest of the world, when in mother’s womb dad shines a flashlight through the naval so that our dark wet world becomes a crowded web of veins and arteries through which we might poke at small intenstinal lining as a series of tubes that wrap us when we sleep, piping that we will never remember again, and the smell of the amniotic fluid, both the taste of mother’s saltine p.h. and mixed with our own nose and mouth.

she drove her car to the beach and then walked around, looking at the island. drove to ski park and rented a snowboard since she did not bring one.

they looked at her funny people did, i don’t have a ski jacket she said. in her trousers and blouse, shivering she sat in ski lift 2 in chair 75 on her way to the top, behind her big bear lake, blue like the sky, with evergreens lining its outskirts. the lake big bear, like the big bear in the sky she knew was there, she watched stars with her x so often but a constellation could not see as the sun was too bright, burning out her memory.

she slid off the lift, angled it clumsily and fell, her naked arm burning against the soft snow, from shock and cold. she got back up, brushed the snow from her. people stared at this woman without snow pants, without a snow jacket. so out of practice. if she fell too many times, her blouse would get wet, turn transparent, maybe? she went down the same fated slope, carving around a tree. she never did revisit the spot like she had imagined in bed.

there was a turn. she thought this was the tree but something was not right.

she went all the way down, rode back up and down a different direction.

she fell a few times, and shivering got back in the lift. someone commented that she should go get a jacket, or you’ll freeze. teeth chattering she said i am alright.

she went back another way, and this was different too. she thought for a minute she saw the outline of an eye slipped down a loose patch and tumbled off the path into the snow that was not boarded on, that was not packed that was soft and filled her, she sunk up to her butt and she was so cold she unlocked her boots and hobbled out, her legs numb and stinging.

just then someone flew by, at a tangent to the general curve line, how the steepness of the curve could increase speed. the variables flew by her in a second and she was stunned with a cartesian map of the slope this was the direction! this was the way!

she climbed out of the bank and strapped her boots in bindings again, slid down and then she found a tree, sure this was the one. it had a fence around it. she wanted to touch it. she climbed around the fence, and hugged the tree, feeling its rough bark against her torso. she closed her eyes and saw the inside of her eyelids when she turned her face towards the sun, blinded in red, she thought she could see the inside, red like her blood, with some sharp relief of veins that blurred once her imagination faded, and warm, against the tree, intuitive, without graphing it she knew it well, mac, the face, the mountain with its matching stars. without mapping it, or measuring the slope she knew it, knew it without conscious deliberation, equations that melted in the sun like icing, so she no longer shivered, a uterine hug.

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