From: IN%"REZABEH1648@cobra.uni.edu" "heath michael rezabek" 9-JUN-1994 02:29:20.89 To: IN%"fixion-list@netcom.COM" CC: Subj: PSYCHOdeGRADABLE : silo 4 scrytch : spool memory reel cut -- when i come to my senses, i see only television. 555 channels of stuff on stuff, hypercut super-edit; mtv editing spread like a catchy joke through to home-shopping-channel # 488 or 230 or 12... the video, the sound, a wall texture pretending to breathe at me: *klik* Y : May I help you? X : No; I just dropped by to watch the static. Could you tune in to some static on this set here, ay? Y : Sorry sir, ever since the Edict last month we've been allowed only the news-feeds. Who would have thought our 555 channels would all take the form of different news-feeds, each and every one? Ah, except The Advert Channel, which is turning out to be bril, a real fave. X : Mm. Well then, do you have any news-feeds from someplace -- far. Far is the word, yes, from far. Y : Why, we do indeed, sir, we do indeed! Now *this* channel is beaming at us direct from Antarctica! *klik* // police officers will be using equipment capable of looking through solid matter // the army was called in today to deal with yet another sponteaneous eruption of mdma-induced celebration // shoot these evil acid barons // pachyderms spotted right here in Antarctica // i close my eyes, letting my mind fill in the blanks, making it up from uncut attention -- -- bodies found in a Gloustershire garden, daddy killed his pregnant lesbian daughter and a few others for good measure, well if a job's worth doing -- -- and open my eyes again, 'cause the teevee man is channel-surfing; occupational hazard morphed into neuro-atomic addiction at the genetic/memetic level by 555 channels, channels, channels, all for at and to him him HIM! *klik* "Yes, all around your neighborhood, you can sense it: there's a new feeling in the air! A feeling of change! A knowledge that now YOU have the choice! Everywhere you go, people are switching from their /old, dried-up/ wiz to New and Improved WIZ-PLUS!! "That's right! And, by Gum, you'll never have to settle for fiz-less wiz again. Not with NaP [New and Improved] WIZ+! And this is only the beginning! Be on the lookout for other NaP "PLUS" products! You can tell us by our distinctive mark: +! "So forget about wiz... Try WIZ+! It's everything you've come to expect from wiz... 'Plus' a Whole Lot More!" *klik* -- and now it's time for a whole new approach to newsfeeding: Channel 23 NiteCast: The Next Generation! -- *klik* "-- so Buy WIZ+! Or Else!" *klik* " -- dead, and 23 injured. Now, back to some Good News! Ken? Thanks, Tammy. Well, it looks like 'PLUS' is at it again! This time they've chosen to perfect our old standby wiz... That's right; starting tomorrow morning, you too will be able to try NaP WIZ+! --" *klik* enough. enough is enough. mercifully, m'attention picks now to fall to fluff. and then there are only words -- why not do this in the Word Processor? i feel as though the WP will be the receptacle for far longer-range drafts. it's a mess to drag from WP to e.text, but it's even more a mess to drag from e.text to WP. so why do i not compose my e.text bits first in WP and drag them over? ice to water in too little a time? an ice cube thrown into a blast furnace. [no, that's WP to HyperText.] "Facilitate a perceptual program portrayal" do you know what a Kiln Midget is? they are little avatars which are kept around the kiln to see to it that pieces don't shatter during firing. the more Kiln Midgets on guard, the less likely the shatterring. for, you see, each and every Kiln Midget has to have been created out of clay and fired in the very kiln they guard. thus they have a personal stake in the matter. i, of course, have no Kiln Midgets in my workshop, because i haven't yet figured out how to scrytch in ceramic. i do, however, have a cute little ZaxAmid sitting on top of my computer. it'll suffice for now, and i'll show it to you when i get the chance. {it was the mosh pit removed from the dance removed from the fire} i have always been a deliberate over-user of words. everyone hates it, so un-Zen, so self-posessed, so Western, and so useful when there's some ball of confusion rolling around that must not under any circumstances be allowed to roll into a dark corner. no no. not so fast; where do you think you're going? "Profess intramural system habitats" one thing wetware memory does not provide is a time index for posts. {it was a four-sided triangle} Stuart was a paraplegic. he wasn't so bad that he couldn't feel anything ro speak, or move his arme. he was actually pretty lucky. he'd sit in his chair and he'd type away, and he felt things that i can't even imagine, but of course i could move around, i could make love. tried to tell him at one point that it was more trouble than it was worth, but the thought of not even being able to did sort of make those comments into empty attempts. "Monitor a self-actuated utilization proposition" the city is a dense secretion of culture. ITs streets flow with a current varying from place to place in ITs tendency. i can only provide a mapping of those places where i have spent my time, collected my specimens. i'm not too worried about mis-informing anyone; this little addition to the meme.pool will barely be noticed, will hardly make a ripple in the static.flux of those pre-disposed to its use. you must understand: i, like every other within IT, create this thing through compulsion. there are no drugs in this city, only memes of assorted shapes and sizes. friends, they are one and the same; the map is the territory here. IT /is/ a meme, after all is said and done. what is a meme? IT is. what could be simpler? LISTEN: not only is it VITAL that we work out the functioning of this place, it's also possible for us to sustain our widget flow in doing so. how? encode our research into the widgets we sell. {it was a teeny-weeny pre-historic shellfish which was swept up in the rising tide and dashed against the stone} compromise: always waiting to suck me. in every city in every town there's a lounge where i serve drinks to weak and pityful excuses while the camera looks on. in the back room there is a watching man who jacks off. i, excuses, and the man. i will remain here until there are no more excuses, or until i pack my gun, deliberate as a survival machine, and shoot the man, making holes so big even /i/ could fuck him. i got no reason to do this, dig; the excuses will go to the lounge down the street where another man watches behind another camera, behind another table of intellectuals talking about the they. "Reinforce a gender-neutral apprehension projection" they buried what was left of him this morning. there was only me, Slakka and Grouty there. we'd been up on the graveyard all night, spacing with the view, high on the hill with the stars so bright... come daybreak, we is far and wide and crystal morning mellow. they lower the coffin down and leave; we stare at the writing on the gravestone: loop-phase, lift-sync, scythe-lamp fix; weft-mesh, beat-trim, slice-gate feat; leash-frame, brogue-mire, blam-fest heat; drift-bode, mere-slip, ham-fly slate; marsh-lamb, boat-gasp, beam-lisp tram; sloe-fret, reap-sill, cusp lash flange fill. then we head off down the 24-hour garage to buy food and drink and skins. the young mod behind the perspex screen gives a friendly chuckle as he hands over the King Size Rizlas and the Mars Bars and the milk. {it was a dime a dozen} she's screaming again. shit, i hate it when she does that. she screams and scratches and curses. she'll be out of it again soon... back to the flacid, drooling, mewling, pathetic creature she is most of the time. maybe i'll get some sleep. i light a cigarette, pour another cup of that awful coffee i made this morning out of spite. we used to take our shots together, you know. listening to the radio, sitting on the porch, an innertube tied around each right arm. it was communion, worship, the sun on our faces. sometimes i cried, it was so good. i was in love. what did i know? i always knew it was her trip, though. it was always her idea. and now she's gone so far. i don't take the stuff anymore. i just wipe up the mess. when will she quit that fucking screaming? it's getting longer and longer... pour some orange juice into her favorite red mug. some granola and milk in a milmac bowl. brought you some breakfast, honey. "Articulate a nonessential propulsion solution" those who wish to sympathize with the attached Narrative may benefit from a Metaphor. there is a bubble. the bubble is the result of an internal pressure exerting equal force upon an external pressure via a thin membrane, the only visible evidence of bubble-dom. the words of the Narrative -- the symbols which insinuate that which you infer -- are Analogous to the membrane. you reside outside the bubble; the Story itself perforce resides INside the bubble. the only evidence you will find of the bubble-blower -- if it is a well-blown bubble -- is the bubble itself. i, as a bubble, am the Narrative. there are no other Allegories, Metaphors or Analogies in this Narrative. you can, from here on in, plainly see that which is membrane and you must take for granted that there is pressure pushing it into its shape. however: it should be revealed at the outset that SOPOPOPAPOPIOPOLIS & its Locality are Virtual. Virtual places can sometimes operate in ways different than those which are Real, as any Dream could remind you. {it was a night to remember} We sleep in the Yukon; someone suggested what has turned out to be Dan McGrew. "Reference child-centered propulsions" So you know that flame seeks flame and also water and that -- in time -- you will choose. {it was worth it in the end} Young woman leaves the console, where she has been scrything her scream of desperate need of freedom and un-loneliness. She makes several paces from keyboard to bed [I suppose she has terminal in her bedroom]. She falls hard on the soft pillows; as her head is falling from about 1714.07 mm, it reaches the touch-down velocity of about 5 m/s. That means abut 18 km/hour [for scrytchers from English-speaking countries: it is ????? mph]. The pillow is nearly as soft, as if it is filled with hevezedeny dust, but it is not able to prevent a small brain-quake when her head encounters its reluctant softness. When Barbara, as this pretty young women with the horror vacui in her eyes IS Barbara, wakes up [after several mili-seconds], she finds several small-funny-and-furry-one-foot-high-animals giggling near her bed. They offer Barbara something like a glass of orange juice; she does not refuse it. The glass is in fact a small can, made from strange kind of archaic and enviroment-damaging plastic. There is a short texture written on it, using Times New Roman True Type font: EAT ME - DRINK ME - BUY ME ! "Optimize unqualified interdiction factors" so this is all this is about. what my scrytch can become? yes, i can change my feelings; yes i can change my feelings with scrytching; and yes, probably i am just not capable of changing my feeling while others do so, but WHy? {it was a means to an ends} If 2012 (exact date/time?) is the culmination. If Rebus Ka-Neebus gets the bus If we aren't ready ... will there be another bus? Is THAT rapture? What is tribulation twixt now and then? Is 'God' standing with all the soul-bits of self of herhimself Here and There Now? Seeing all time and this possible leap of evolution Will we Leap only by co-operative competition? What does the historic figure Jesus, son of God-and-(hu)Man signify? Is the wholly ghostly undermined mind sub-conscious ratial racial memory mythos a communication link with pre-carnate being not past or future but both from here and all one from there can we remember? "Determine proliferating sequestrations, in the wake of a modular decision landscape here: humans -- at least, the one i am -- have a tendency to organize the flux of impressions which assault them constantly into an ever-evolving pattern or order. does this mean that there is no order inherent, that it's all self-created? don't know. that's the sort of question that i simply won't know until the moment comes in which i gnow it, and i can't bring that moment about by babbling about the question, so i let it drop. that still leaves this issue: what sort of order does Culture represent? when i take a look at my culture of one -- the collection of artifacts and widgets and just plain stuph -- that defines the scope of my attention, i see a complex and rich system, one that has sort of assembled itself about me, rather than being one i deliberately assembled. certainly, i deliberately chose this or that thing out of the flux, but i did so through the information of my prior influences. i am a culture in and of myself. i am alone in this culture of one. BUT. when i look around the nexus, i see people with more or less similar personal cultures. some share this or that artifact, some another. that puts us all into the same damn culture. yet we all came to these points on our own, discovering our affinities through the Net, in which it's impossible to see the visual or textural or even behavioral identifiers of all of these personal cultures. this above all else lends legitimacy to our virtual culture. {it was much much more than a mere writing exercise} Girls and boys come out to play, On a busy motorway. "Document non-linear evaluation goals" Momentum. I've lost most of mine. For months the words have been dormant. Essay questions. Five page papers. Written for the short attention span. Choppy sentences. Dead end words. No leads followed. Going nowhere. But now, am I scrytching? {it was the straw that broke the camel's back} there are no maps; there is no information which is not expendable. what use, then, is Art? expression into the void. snowangels on the sun. there is a form of prose which has adapted itself to the Net [i was about to say "evolved," but thought better of it] -- by name, it is often called the RANT form. ultimately, it is what we are all doing; to ourselves, to each other. my fancy-schmancy word for this is "AUTOLOGUE." self-[dia]logue. an autologue does not have to be directed entirely inwards, however. we -- you and i -- define an US. we define a dissipative structure within a memetically open system. we define an autologue, and the best we can engage in is autology. this is not to be scorned; this is only the beginning of an amazing new development in the single medium which is human culture; human culture within the Gaian petri dish. "Resolve a value-independent contingency imperative" these were the heady days of youth. eventually enough time went by that we were all sure that the days of youth must certainly be numbered, and some of us began to worry about what we were going to do when the days of non-youth came upon us. some suggested just going on, talking as we had been. many did just that. some suggested we all get together and meet in the flesh, because that would be a suitably odd thing, to finally see someone we all knew from words alone, to be able to touch them and hug them and punch them in the face if need be. many did just that, and it was accordingly odd. once we'd done that some of us decided that what we'd REALLY like to do would be to CREATE something, to rear up some impossibly, horrendously intricate and elegant and neo-retro-post-baroque structure right in the face of entropy. it was further suggested that the single most inefficient -- and thus negentropic -- way to do this might well be with words. and so we took to task, and here we all are. switch to present tense. {it was not something which required much skill} sometimes there is fear and doubt, but it always gives way to the exhilaration of having something towards which i can apply my passions and my energies. "Deconstruct an ad-hoc curriculum, in an affirmative sense" I love this courtyard. In fact, I think the last thing I really wrote was written here. I think it was only a journal, but it was at least something. It was at the beginning of the year when the weather was still warm, and I could sit here in the sunlight without fear of frostbite and loss of limbs. (I hate Michigan, especially this year.) This courtyard is in the center of the dorm, with the rectangular corridors ringing it like a kitten balled up in sleep. Only things aren't asleep here. Here, in the center, I can hear everything-- every room with an open window is open to me, and there are a lot of open windows. Not that I'm a voyeur, but I just like feeling this sense of population, that there are this many people around me. And now, someone living behind a window across the courtyard from me has start playing "And You And I" by Yes. A very pleasant surprise, since, as I was descending the stairway to get out here, I regretted that I no longer had my portable CD player or anything to give me music. And now, someone who probably doesn't even realize that I'm an audience is playing one of my most treasured songs. Music to scrytch by. {it was the haunted fishtank} the gnotions flow like water when plugged into a simple formula. through constant and persistent and perpetual work, the writing process improves. it is self-correcting; cybernetic, some hoity-toities might say. it is a feedback loop and, like any other, it reinforces some habits and squelches other through novelty, the boiling up of an error in the supposedly simple process of mimicry. but there is a crucial problem: if the idea of closure, of plot, of Point, of Exposition Rising-Action Climax wasn't realized from the start, it would probably never be discovered. that made the stuff a bit too boring for some, a bit too exciting for others, and a bit too redundant for the rest. "Develop a diversified propulsion, geared toward a non-negotiably modular interdiction accomplishment" I took the shortcut through the UC building which takes me across to the other side of music building. I've been wandering, just absorbing everything. I've let the wind carry me, letting my feet follow its whimsical course. I've ended up on a wooden bench out in front of Wariner Hall, the center of campus. I'm only about ten feet away from the flag and the cement seal pedestal which mark the very center. {it was all-but-impenetrable} you are not words. but that is all of you i can see. you are not your actions... because you wish to exclude your words. you cannot do that, that's against The Rules. you are no more or less your words that you are your actions, and In Here, WORDS ARE ACTIONS. steps taken, trax made. "Propagate a self-actuated culture concept" Life seems to be returning to my world now. Winter brought frozen stasis to everything, even my daily routine. But now, green things are growing again. People aren't bound up in their insulated shells, instead baring their skin to the warm light. Hell, I'm even wearing shorts now-- me, with the translucent skin on once-muscled, now knobby legs. Well, summer's soon to follow, and even these legs will fill out again. {it was not entirely regurgitated} They're locked up there in that room, just he and she. I left them in there with a PC, a printer, and a bed, and a rope out the window attached to the bucket sitting in the new grass at my feet. The bucket is stuffed with supplies they'd requested the last time I was here. Sometimes I wonder, how are they doing up there? I mean really. I know that they're up there to scrytch -- but aren't they taking it a little to the extremes? Every day I come to this house and find the big, blue plastic bucket with its rusty metal handle lying in the grass. The house really isn't anything special, but then they wanted it that way; they only use one room in it anyway. This house is just a boringly white two-story residence, not really new but not old enough to be called a landmark either. The paint's peeling but the roof's okay. I look up at that window every day; its plain just like the rest, just your standard rectangular panel cut into quarters just like little kids draw on all their little houses. And I stand here in the grass, looking up at that window. I think its around 9am, the sun's glinting off the glass and the air has that spring smell to it that only comes about when you're standing in uncut grass as the sun ascends at 9am. I don't need to signal them up there; we agreed upon this time from the start. I've never been late, though they have. I'm their only link to the world. Sometimes I wonder what would happen to them if I just left-- I mean, they don't have a phone line up there, and I have the only key to that bedroom door they'd asked me to lock. There aren't any neighbors out here, really. Again, they wanted it that way: neighbors poke their nose into things, ask questions, dial 911 when other neighbors don't ever come out of their bedrooms. I told them, "Why not a phone? No one would know the number. And then, you could even dial up the accounts over at the Nexus yourself, instead of having me post your scrytch for you." And they told me, "No, not even a phone. We might know the number. And then, we might even dial up the accounts over at the Nexus. And then we might be tempted to interact with the community and one of us might let the number slip innocuously. We need isolation if this i going to work. We trust you." They trust me. They really do. Neither of them have spoken to me since I turned my key in their lock and walked silently, almost melancholic, down the stairs and out the door into the Autumn air. They don't seem to think that they need to talk to me. To them, I've become as constant as the sun -- why should they question me? If I didn't love them so much, I might just skip out on them one day just out of spite. Then again, I know I really wouldn't. But I just wish they weren't so damn naive about this whole thing. Autumn? Has it been that long? They moved in here around September, and today is the twelfth of April. Its Spring already. I wonder how they're doing up there. Really. They've been up there in their self-sentenced imprisonment for almost two seasons now. As a couple they weren't that stable to begin with; should I expect to find one day not only the bucket lying in the grass, but also the broken body of a friend? Ah, but my thoughts do have a tendency to stray to the morbid and macabre. Back at the Nexus, the fixion groups have drawn a lot of creative inertia from the fixional humus those two have been generating in their scrytch. Some of the guys I know have even found popularity with their works outside even the circuit of the Nexi themselves. So maybe they're not doing that badly, if what's happening is what they'd intended. But then, they were so enigmatic about their reasons when they'd packed up and left the Nexus. But then again, if they're doing so well up there, why is it taking them so damn long to open that window today? "Deconstruct responsive linkage declines" >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 somehoe 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 foodstuff and sexstuff and bile- >stuff 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. >still he wrote, and wrote, and wrote. or, at >least, he scrytched. the two aren't the same, the >difference has to do with decomposition, the >inherent sort of "well, what the hell else is there >to do now" sort of humility of a decaying banana >peel. the fruit is gone, it's done its deed, >nowhere to bring it but all back home. as noted >elsewhere, he was of course an eccentric, with lots >of spare time and the most warped sort of -eriority >complex [sup- or inf- it's impossible to say] ever >seen by this narrator. luckily, he'd been tucked >away from society at large, off in his Antarctican >bungalo, for half his life. unfortunately, it was >his UN-productive half, which ended when he got >himself some basic plain vanilla Internet access >and had that damn dream-silo. "Insektz. what've they got? bunch of architects without no Soul. making their little damn boxes. laying eggs. bah. nothing." {there are futures whose prerequisite is the ignorance of these very words by any but myself} "i feel the need to communicate something but words seem lost to the enormity of it. it's nothing. i need to communicate, i feel. perhaps i'm going for too much too soon." {the motion was not without its charms} "i've never wanted so much before. i went slowly, making what sense i could. when i made no sense i tried for sound. when i made neither sense nor sound i waited. now it seems as if my world lies in the balance of how much i do and how efficiently. its a pleasureless task. so i try to create pleasure, which is pleasureless and decadent. i thought about taking a bath tonight but it wouldn't effect my state of utter solitude." {experience is no substitute} "now i wonder, why did i remove myself from humanity, and from human affairs and emotions, why did i take myself away from the known. i can hardly complain, now, for it has always seemed like i had no choice. i simply wasn't built for the living drama. just always a barely observer flitting in the shadows, watching, and waiting. as if having a brain were enough, my mind existing in print a priori to the creative act. i already know the outcome of a thousand conversations, four hundred and twenty sexual trysts, eight million ninety-two thousand and six suicides, and at least three wars, independance, civil, and world." {sometimes the farther away you move the nearer you want to be} "i want to lose myself in a wash of associations and particular qualities. i want to speak with plums, and tables, and stones. but i keep getting drawn back into the web of relationship which never quite allows me the madness i desire. i should just be thankful for the world to allow me to find a way to live, and get by, but it's much too late for that. i should thank you now for listening to me flounder, and listening to me not doing it not very well. i do thank you." {Garden : drift in roils about your edges and swamp the ground in a thriving chaos return to yourself and feed on your past return to the dawn at the end of time's toil} "it feeds into itself, the language, and the madness, it taunts me to begin speaking without accuracy. just for the sake of comfort. to put a stop to the constant hammering which occurs without a world view, without the current events and newspapers and politics, without the solid base of any religion, art, or psychology which state comes from knowing that there is no such thing." {scrytch if only} "but of course there is, there is that which came before [in all fields, psychology, art of all kinds, religion, of all kinds]. it has never been of less use to me than these days, these past few weeks. i'm living outside of time. i'm already dead, so theres nothing to look forward to. the only thing that gets me by is the thought that i might learn something, with the proper intention, that could help those close to me. and that just gets me by; the work is not or may never be finished in any sense of the word. it's farcicle. it's freudian. it's just plain silly. there is no reduction that i can make which could comfort me in the face of this kind of complexity." {there was once a process which went on and which fed its mourners} "what happens when i go straight for the complexity, when mortality is realized with more and more frequency? regret rears its ugly head, the beast that i've always thought it to be, a wish to never regret the words that i say, to choose them carefully. and yet, the words can never quite match up to the complexity. it's a compromise." {there is a rage in the succumbing which outstrips any and all modes of communication, which renders all struggles impotent in the face of its blind intention and fury} "i have none of the credentials to speak on any level but the most risky, the most personal. i have a stake in everything i say, whether it shows through or not. they are, simply, not big enough. i wonder what kind of stakes i'd need in order to write a novel. i'm not satisfied any longer [ha] to process, make pottery, or write poems. i want to swim in the complexity which has come on lately. what happens when death is no longer a stake?" {and a thousand stolen fragments from a world gone crazy}