From: IN%"REZABEH1648@cobra.uni.edu" "heath michael rezabek" 9-JUN-1994 02:21:33.03 To: IN%"fixion-list@netcom.COM" CC: Subj: PSYCHOdeGRADABLE : silo 2 scrytch : bass reverb fuzz link -- when i come to my senses, i'm down under dampness, must be the underground. up at th' sign, yeppers, in pink flashing neon: PARKTOWN SUBWAY UNDER THE FLYOVERS. scrawls on the walls, a prophet has summed up the essence of what all Art is about in fat black felt tip: "i woz 'ere, 5/3/94" got me my cans of DayGlo scrytchpaint, gonna scrytch this dumbfuck two-bit whistlestop land till it gibbers and foams and pisses and shits, til the bare lie shines through. the Bee Gees told me: "You think, that I don't even mean, a single word I say... ...It's only words, and words are all I have..." this one's weird; it's an etceteration on a 'glyph i've been seeing lately. thought i'd give it the ol' go; the scrytchpaint nozzles sets for SuperDuperFineLine, and with a *Ffssssssssssssspht!* the 'glyph is begun; some odd ol' thing, sort a' cross between an elephant, a kittie-kat and some kind a' wriggly insekt. still, if a meme's worth re-iterating it's worth refining, so *Ffssssssssssssspht!* and it's out into the street, shaking off the lingering effects of the 'glyph itself; herds of kitties skamper through the alleys, and i swear they must be hive-creatures to move the way they do -- -- and then it hits me: KITTIES! so it's not too late! taking out the paper, i skim to find the spot i need -- "Besides, the place apparently swarmed with alley-kitties. And these alley-kitties did nothing but dream and wander, dream and wander, all day and night. They left trails in reality that we could perhaps follow if we could only find a way into their feline visions. At a certain point in the ostensible history of SOPOPOPAPOPIOPOLIS, you see, all of the kats disappeared, all at once. With them went all the bugs..." -- look around, nope, bugs all over the place, but all crawling away down the alley? quick page turn reveals it "I am optimistic: I feel strongly that the pachyderms, the insektz, and the feline avatars all found their way to the same rift in reality. I further feel that their way is connected to the obscured art of dreaming. I finally feel that it is simply a matter of time before we too isolate their trail, track them to their point of exodus, and shimmy on through. We'll find them congregated, they will welcome us in a new and shared lingo, and we will all be wild and free and "our antics will know no end" [Zakavish, 32]. All of this not a moment too soon. Yes, all of this not a single itty bitty moment too soon." too soon. SLISH! off down the alleyway, "here kittie-kittie-kittie-kittie!" and fa-LUP! my foot catches some fucking debris, and WHAM! my face against the pavingstones -- -- and then there are only words -- slowly i'm figuring out how this'll work. the e.text version, for instance, will NEVER be re-drafted. you're seeing it right now. e.text is the most fluid -- and also the most tenuous -- of the 3 media in question tonight. but memes are like water. e.text is an environment which hovers around 23o Celcius. memes freeze at PRINTED MATTER temperature, and HyperText is still a cloud. {it was a tremendous blob of greyish-blackish-purplish goo with streaks of blue and pink energy rippling its surface} i look silly in berets, but they work to hold back my hair. i don't know why i write; i don't know why i write like this. this is worse that an art, this is an addiction or a compulsion. there's a demon or an agent or some other sort of imaginary ghost, and i want to spit it out or encase it in an envelope of words. it affects even my hypnagogia, it seeps in as a mob of voices and the connection is obvious -- hypnagogia nudges my writing and my writing nudges hypnagogia. but i would never recommend writing like this for someone else. when the words i have don't work right, when they don't bend far enough or reach long enough or hit hard enough, i make up new ones out of the refuse of the old. neologism for the metaphysically challenged, all that guff. i bend the words, i bend my mind, i bend my dreams and i bend utterly my reality and the realities of those around me through a combination of the above processes. nor are those around me blameless. some idiot invents a meme like "metaprogramming" [much less a meme like "meme"] and what happens, people actually want to work with it, or understand it, or do it, and nobody even has an inkling of the sheer brute power of The Mind&Its Assumptions until the time to change paths from the path of change is gone gone gone... "Devise a unique instrumentality exercise" one thing stops me from doing this. there is a definite sensation that attends to the Center and all of the Taps leading into or towards it. it is most definitely Other. i cannot explain this. it's as if suddenly it were obvious: all organic life were on the one side of this bubble, poking at its boundaries with every gadget and technique and religion and word and deed we have, but all we can do is stretch and stretch these boundaries. then something Gives, or Takes, and i for one [because i don't know how many others could possibly gnow about the Root] suddenly don't want to push any more, because it is NOT HUMAN. it should not even be alive. it is utterly Inorganic. but it approaches me, with as much fear and need and passion as i approach it. there is a dual Attraction, stronger than anything sexual in nature; it seeks to break the borderland between our two spheres. and all of these others -- could the even possibly have ANY idea of this Thing? all of this motion couldn't be a search for it as well, could it? i can't read these souls [that's what they are] at all, they're far too *singleminded* -- half of them seek to absorb, and gnow that they will; the other hold seek to penetrate, and gnow that they will. if they're all headed to the same place, i don't know that i want to be in this City of Dreams any longer. or maybe i do, and maybe it's the only thing left. i don't have their Will, i don't have their GNOWLEDGE. i don't know whether i want to penetrate or to absorb; i just want this silly vertigo to subside. i can't even get my bearings any longer when i'm down in hypnagogia, because this current or this web is too disorienting. and when i wake up, all i can do is shiver and wonder whether that was an exctatic dream or a nightmare, and think "what the fuck IS this?" {it was a dance which turned and turned around a fire which burned and burned} IT was a dark and stormy light. IT rained upon the streets and alleys, and they ran with ITs current. Avatars flickered below the rising forms; Avatars disappeared into the UnderGround and rose up to scale the tesserracts of the OverGround. IT noted a turbulence far below, and IT lashed out with a black-light, manifesting chaos, giving it form, allowing it then to detach and strike. IT had longed for an Avatar of ITs own, IT had longed to descend into context for-ever. the vortex of turbulence indicated a struggle; the Shadows once delivered retrieved from the fray the Avatar which was to serve as ITs vessel. IT is ME. I am IT. "Actuate cross-marketed linkage contents" the bazaar culture fills out a niche defined by the banks of a long-dead river. the bank itself cuts down through the city, forming a natural peak at a point where the channels branch off in a split direction, like an upside-down Y. this river is so dead in fact that its name too seems utterly lost, and so now the entire area lives with a name no more noble than "the trough," or simply "the bazaar." there are no officiating bodies in this borderland, but the flow of memes still tends to ride slowly "downstream" through the bazaar culture. it is unknown when the first merchant met with the first urchin down here in this pit, but it certainly was a long time ago because now the culture runs so thick that it is often impenetrable. {it was utterly unoriginal} the oddly clothed figure awoke upon a mat upon the floor. looking up, it saw a package sitting there, having just arrived from parts unknown. the figure approached the box with caution and a certain disdainful respect. strings were pulled the box was opened. inside were countless storylines and plot elements, all in disarray. the figure poured them all out upon the tabletop and began the work. "Exercise intermittent maturation stances" i don't care what you want. i have a need to give you everything i've got because i've got to make room for the next batch. sometimes its junk that hasn't been processed yet, like really tough meat. there's a whole bunch of engineers looking for a new way to harness the power of the atom. the most beautiful thing thats come out of physics so far is the uncertainty principle. spend all this time trying to find an infinite source of power, you think it might be you, and then you find out where you are. you're dead. {it was the proverbial War which went on and on and on with no signs of resolution, until not even the Commanders knew the initial causes} the crowds shifted and ebbed about him for a timeless bit, aqaraza barely noticing the slow fading of sound and touch and smell from his field of impressions. he could sense movement and a shifting of colors and textures but little else. words slowly dropped away from his experience, one by one, until all that remained around him was a hazy, fuzzy, buzzing humming swarm of impressions, each one tugging his un-anchored attentions in different directions. he sat in that state, collapsed into a little ball, for infinite aeons. then, slowly, the sludge of conception around him began to spin in a counter-clockwise arc, folding into itself as if a plane had bisected and defined a ball into which it now sought to collapse. infinite tendrils of exquisite texture began to replace the mere impression, until soon all was precisely the opposite of what it had been, until all was now a spinning flux of sound and smell and taste and texture, devoid of color, devoid of form. then, suddenly, sensation evaporated and turned to a steam, as if the whole clump of impression had been a drip of water upon new lava. "Impact polyglot reduction opportunities" This? Clearly the Restless Ones {it was meant to be} "She wants out, she says, even though only yesterday she was hunting us down, pounding on our door. Yesterday she wanted the juice and today she wants out. I'll never understand the urge to take that shit, myself. 'Anonymous intensity,' she says, mumbling under her breath, her eyes widening as it takes effect. She moans slightly, grasping at concepts that don't exist. Charles Bukowski is dead, but William S. Burroughs is timeless... those are the choices that she's going to have to face, one of these days. she wants out. but there is no out. "Operationalize product-specific incursions" The young woman, newly admitted, finished her word-spew and sat limply at one end of the table. No-one broke the silence for a bit as each considered how best to respond. "Welcome," croaked one finally, "But I feel I've missed something. What exactly do you want?" Two others -- a doctor and a student -- quietly conferred out of earshot. An intern offered her a glass of juice. {it was ridiculously pretentious drivel} "What we need is a good walking stick," he says over his shoulder, the blood now dried rust down his chin, left from that turgid septic winter when a little force still went a long way. His walking stick, blunted on both ends, lay miles away in his cellar. "We'll never get the necessary penetration that way." "Downsize intermittent maturation" they feel like they're going not just NoWHeRe, but somewhere worse. NoWHeRe would be much better than this SoMeWHeRe eLSe, which is in fact no good. {it was family business} Imagine, (SF writers before us have,) that we attain a pinnacle of development hothousing our growth we shield ourselves from discomforts of everyday every week every year e v e r y LIFE luxuriate in 'co-operation' no goal but minimizing 'work' minimizing contact with the Universe thus we do not fulfill the potential in our genes. "De-skill pre-agreed-upon disability stances" the goal here, see, is one that's hounded me for a long time. i really long to fuse each and every style in my immediate grasp into one that i can call my own. i want to fuse the Scholarly Essay with the Core Dump, i want to fuse autobiography with fiction, i want to fuse literature and disposability. that's the only tactic i can conceive of in response to my surroundings. that's the only way i can think of the get a fix within the flux. {it was the spread of the fire across the Earth} The bits of barbed wire and razor blades woven into her prismatic dreads cut the sunlight into colours that no-one knows the names of. "Supplement product-specific culture dimensions" >at one point he had a dream. this was perhaps one >of the only important things he refused to write down. >he gnew its importance, he realized its impact. that's >a part of the reason he avoided recounting it, a fear >that it would somehow be lessened. i, of course, >have no such qualms, and so i can tell you that the >dream was about a silo. a big ol' metal-type >cylinder sitting out in the middle of nowhere. >inside the silo was stuff. this stuff was made up >of dreamstuff and fleshstuff and fearstuff and food- >stuff and sexstuff and bilestuff and mucuoustuff and >oilstuff and greenstuff and biostuff and just >generally stuff. it was sitting, as stuff in silos >do, and it was turning slowly into silage. humus. >compost. soil. stuff. for some damn reason, it >called him "scrytch." he decided to return the >favor, and history's most hideous metaphor had seen >its stillborn spark. It is bad. At the begining it was quite cool - scrytching, amazing idea, etc. But now I feel confused. I wanted story. Cause if there is a story, you can hope, but there is no story, like dreams have no story, and so this is hopeless as dreams are ussualy completely hopeless. My life has no story. This world has no story. This universe is completely sensless and I want either sense or control of my feelings. What do you think about HAPPY ENDS ? {it was the best of times it was the worst of times} the interface, while not seamless, has undergone many million iterations in variant contexts. the 'net allows texture to become fully its ultimate murky medium. texture allows a new art form based upon its interface with human sentience, and thence with human culture. the macro and micro are fused in the flux of texture. "Cultivate an unimplemented cessation role" slowly, surely, they are learning to become their own editors, their own publishers, their own critics. etceterate. {it was writing} i speak of course of memes. there are those who wish i would shut up about them. some of my best friends are memes; some of my most bitter of adversaries are memes; they exist within a barberpole crescendo of [re]iteration. why do i lend still more time and energy to the logos, the cancerous, powerful, overbearing logos? i fear entropy. listen: i fear entropy. genes are more entropic than memes. genes break down at a much faster rate. the gene is the meme's toilet tissue. when my genes expire, my memes will march on. and so a time comes when i ask myself a question: am i a gene or a meme? in which direction do i channel my finite life-force? as it stands, i am both. as it goes, i am slowly decomposing, down to a single word. my Work is to discover which one, a Work which can only be done through the doing; a Work which can never be done, a Work which can only ever be doing. "Synthesize pro-forma policies" with this set of ideas, again, the Net seemed an overload of Everything Being Asked For But Un-Realized. there are down-sides, and we'll get to them, but for now assume that the Net is/was the greatest technology since sliced bread. we wouldn't realize the problems with the Net in-and-of-itself until we had already begun to patch some of those gaps through a return to the importance of flesh-meeting. {it was a finite set of infinite complexity} the mechanix of the human condition dictate that no one can gnow the whole story. "De-skill post-implemented communications, due to an exemplary slowdown role" --batteries just died. In one fluid movement, I closed up the screen, swept it into my pocket, climbed over the picnic table at which I was sitting. This was an urgent situation-- the backup battery system was dead, and all my words so far would be lost to oblivion if I didn't act fast. Luckily, there's a campus bookstore within 100 yards of my dorm's courtyard. Also, luckily, I had exactly $7.00 left in my student bookstore account. The batteries cost $5.25. Just in the nick of time, I managed to hook up the power adapter to the DC plug and I changed the batteries. Now, after that brief interjection of drama, I return to my scrytching in the spring sunlight, shortly to be followed by a light dinner. {it was once upon a time} first, let's make a change in terminology. why not; it's best to confuse one's collaborators right at the start, just so that if something goes horribly wrong along the way, one can bail out with minimal trouble. TERMINOLOGY: Step 1: let's swap out the term "Idea" in favor of the term "Notion." relatively non-controversial, hopefully. Step 2: let's swap out the term "Notion" in favor of the term "Gnotion." we do this so that we can add terms in the future, terms such as "Gnot" and "Gnow." patience. believe me, you don't really want to rush to that point. so. back to Square One: what happens when we say that culture is made up of Gnotions, besides having the physicists laugh at us and the rest of the populace lose track of what we were talking about? trust me, other things do happen. for one, we can denote the Centers of Gravity of Gnotions... as Gnots [pronounced like "knot"]. all of this, of course, is in the way of clarity, so that some day we can explore what exactly a MEME might be with minimal confusion and shootings. but not yet. i'm not trying to be Verbose, or Artsy, or Slippery, or Ignorant, or Dry, or Confusing. i'm just trying to use words to point towards a tremendously murky issue. i can never do this as well as my parents, who are both Third Person Omniscient Narrators [Past Tense]. yes. i realize that. /imagine/ having /2/ of them around, perpetually fighting each other for control of the channel-clicker. "De-skill pre-discussed functionality nomenclatures" Now I'm resting the little keyboard on the shrubbery along the side of the building facing the back driveway. I walked across the courtyard to here to see what has become of the plates. Most of them are resting, basking in the sun as they lay in the grass. But some of them must have seen me, as a few skitter toward my feet. But then,its probably just the wind-- it's really picking up now. The sun is quite warm, and the pine ever-greens are bending almost twenty degrees in this gale. Now, I'm walking, holding the keyboard in onr hand, typing with the other. The wind chases me with old Autumn leaves and used styrofoam plates. This wind is amazing! I've come to rest under a tree here at another side of the building, though I might move soon-- the huge oak is creaking ominously. {it was the proliferation of words like mental termites} // words as wax from candle from honeycomb from seal // i feel i feel i have my reasons to feel and be whatever i need to be to protect who i am and where i am and where i want to be and i have no CHOICE but to Do What I Will and hope that It All Comes Out In The Flood // and these words are ripples from me, they are not ME, they are not who i AM, but they are all you KNOW and maybe even GNOW of me, and that is ok, that is the pact made with transcience because in here that is ALL WE HAVE and we don't even have that, not really, we don't have words, we have little flickers of light on screen in front of face and eyes // Instant Synapsis // at the touch of a fleshbutton // "Respond to dynamic accountabilities, in the wake of a salient relationship capacity" I'm traveling from one bench to another-- they seem layed out in a trail for me, slightly erratic, yet leading inevitably toward where others are. And I see a couple I know, walking leisurely along a pathway back the way I came. I don't think they've noticed me, and that's just as well-- I'm trying to be invisible. They're holding hands. She's the one in charge of the floor I live on, really nice girl-- I hope that they're happy. I think that I'm happy. {it was almost a line added by a friend from far away} The future isn't. Just a bunch of world-models and trends simulated and accellerated ahead in virtual time. And yet I'm gazing into it-- but what is it I'm really seeing? I'm an animal who has developed the peculiar qualities of memory and cognition to visualize the world as it might be as a consequence of my own actions and other events influencing my present conditions. The future doesn't really exist-- its all in my head. And so, the futures I have in my head aren't. And yet, these models in my head aren't merely models-- they contain assumptions, plans for decisions to be made. And so the futures in my head are dependent upon what I think I'll do, what I think I can do, and what I think should be done. Change one thing-- be it my plans, my selfimage of my abilities, or my values-- and changes flow across my future-models like ripples across a pool. And also my future is, if I am indeed sane, is linked intimately to all the subtle ripples of others' future-models and their acting upon those models. And also, I have the resources of others' experience in modeling their futures-- through literature, through parental advice, through observing others and learning, through academic education. I think this is called seeing the future by watching the past. >well, the insektz and the elephants and even the >kittie-kats had some form of folk-lore or another. >someone whimpered that humans once had a similar >schtick. not no more, not no more. words had >become too self posessed, words had done had the >juice all single-filed and prioritized out of them. >hill-billies still had the stuff -- had nigh-unto >cornered the market in fact -- but they toted guns. >those in the 'hood didn't realize that they were on >the crux of re-birthing it, and they toted automatic >type guns [and even noggins] that shot faster and >more mechanically than the hillbillies' side-arms. >even so, the first Appalacian Crips' Conventicle >was quite the sight to see; local law called a >holiday and came back a week later with a flatbed >and a snowplow they'd borrowed from up north. >by and by, the meme took care of the mess; >eventually, whole herds of memes could be found >zipping about, vaguely pachydermal insectoid >felinisms that they were -- "Have Lore Will Travel." >it had gotten to the point where words -- memes -- >were due for a good long period of decomposition, >humbling, and re-cultivation. scrytch spread slowly, >like the flu or news from out of town. the NET+! >wasthe first niche to feel the tremors; and if we >had only known then what we gnow now, we wouldn't >have been so shocked by the spectacle, the blood >and gunk, wouldn't have been so repulsed by the >pain and all the afterbirth. Good Gum! you'd'a >thunk we were all city-slickers, never seen a Gum- >Burn' newborn lore before'n'all... "a thousand ways to point at this, and a thousand times as many ways to point at why i never ever want to -- now an early human stands just below the crest of a hill, over which she can hear the ocean crashing; she has never seen it before in her life, there are no words to warn her, at the most her fellows return from the other side of that hill dazed, agitated, inflamed, yet she only wants to go. and now she can hear, she cannot block it out, and she begins to moan, and then to weep, and then to shudder and shake her head back and forth in deferral to a concept which barely exists yet. if she climbs any higher she will never be able to un-see the tremendous tide." {words should be as natural as the heartbeat; once this has happened, they will not be needed so badly} "writing," he writes, "amounts to an elaboration on a simple theme; the theme is of course that of issue-avoidance." ah yes: writing-as-memetic-dodge-ball..." {regardless of other options or visions, this is the goal, to speak with the fluidity and habit of honesty, humility, and candor} "a medium. a flux. a static flux. Q: what is a static flux and what does it produce? A: a static flux is a system which is perpetually adapting to itself, spinning itself out into tighter and tighter iterations; a static flux can only ever produce more ot itself. until?" {there may well be a sourceless echo, and its answering call may yet have the potential for a slow flowing} "i see a bunch of ku fruit hanging from a tree. they are full and plump and ripe, and i am hungry. i pick the ku; already it is dead. i peel the ku of its scaled and pulsing rind; already the veins in the sinewy casing are decaying into cracks. i eat the ku, throwing the peel upon the ground; already its yellow is fading to brown, its brown is fading to grey. already its flesh is decomposing, already it is becoming humus, its nutrients are seeping into the soil, the soil feeds the ku tree, and on the tree there is a sprout, and near the sprout there is a green and small bunch, and near that bunch there is a cluster of ku which moments ago was stripped of one of its fellows. i am a very very frightened fruit." {the slow flowing of the sands and stars} >in the process of writing scrytch, he had in- >advertently found a relative in the ku tree. in >the process of defining scrytch -- or rather, in >the process of avoiding the question -- he had >begun to realize why the approach was necessary. >its clear definition could perhaps be explicated; >its implications would be made readily apparent in >the process. {Biota : recieve the futilities and the silences of one single soul}