Re: orientation

Re-Orientation:

Points: 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6) 7) 8) 9) 10) 11) 12) 13) 14) 15) 16) 17) 18) 19) 20) 21) 22) 23) 24) 25) 26) 27) 28) 29) 30) 31) 32) 33) 34) 35) 36) 37) 38) 39) 40) 41) 42) 43) 44) 45)

bodenlosflores: i. ii. iii. iv. v. vi. vii. viii. ix. x. xi. xii. xiii. xiv. xv. xvi. xvii. xviii. xix. xx. xxi. xxii. xxiii. xxiv. xxv. xxvii. xxviii. xxix. xxx. xxxi. xxxii. xxxiii. xxxiv. xxxv. xxxvi. xxxvii. xxxviii. xxxix. xxxx. xxxxi. xxxxii. xxxxiii. xxxxiv. xxxxv.

1) At this moment the cascade of the page begins; later it will be turned.

“The horror — the honor — of the name, which always threatens to become a title. In vain the movement of anonymity remonstrates with this supernumerary appellation — this fact of being identified, unified, fixed, arrested in the present. The commentator says (be it to criticize or to praise): this is what you are, what you think; and thus the thought of writing — the ever-dissuaded thought which disaster awaits — is made explicit in the name; it receives a title and is ennobled thereby; indeed, it is as if saved — and yet, given up. It is surrendered to praise or to criticism (these amount to the same): it is, in other words, promised to a life surpassing death, survival. Boneyard of names, heads never empty.”

“Schleirmacher: By producing a work, I renounce the idea of my producing and formulating myself; I fulfill myself in something exterior and inscribe myself in the anonymous continuity of humanity — whence the relation between the work of art and the encounter with death: in both cases, we approach a perilous threshold, a crucial point where we are abruptly turned back. Likewise, Friedrich Schlegel on the aspiration to dissolve in death: “The human is everywhere the highest, even higher than the divine.” The human movement is the one that goes right to the limit. Still, it is possible that as soon as we write, and however little we write (the little is only too much), we know we are approaching the limit — the perilous threshold — the chance of being turned back.
For Novalis, the mind is not agitation, disquietude, but repose (the neutral point without any contradictions). It is weight, heaviness. For God is “an infinitely compact metal, the heaviest and most bodily of all beings.” “The artist in immortality” must work at reaching the zero where would and body become mutually insensitive. “Apathy” was Sade’s term.”

“Not to write — what a long way there is to go before arriving at that point, and it is never sure; it is never either a recompense or a punishment. One must write, in uncertainty and in necessity. Not writing is among the effects of writing; it is something like a sign of passivity, a means of expression at grief’s disposal. How many efforts are required in order not to write — in order that, writing, I not write, in spite of everything. And finally I cease writing, in an ultimate moment of concession — not in despair, but as if this were the unhoped for: the favor the disaster grants. Unsatisfied and unsatisfiable desire, yet by no means negative. There is nothing negative in “not to write”; it is intensity without mastery without sovereignty, the obsessiveness of the utterly passive.”

“To want to write: what an absurdity. Writing is the decay of the will, just as it is the loss of power, and the fall of the regular fall of the beat, the disaster again.”

“Not to write: negligence, carelessness do not suffice; the intensity of a desire beyond sovereignty, perhaps — a relation of submersion with the outside, passivity which permits one to keep in the disaster’s fellowship.
He devotes all his energy to not writing, so that, writing, he should write out of failure, in failure’s intensity.”

Points

i.

bouquet

2) My brother spent his whole life raising the pig. They were born at the same time. They drank milk together and played in the mud and shit together. When the pig was a piglet, it was very little. It was smaller than my brother, who was very small at the time, and is still small to this day.

The pig grew fatter and fatter and fatter. My brother kept on feeding it. And then my brother passed away. He didn’t have children to inherit the pig. His pig became my pig. He told me that we would drink milk together and play in the mud and shit together. But I couldn’t take this pig with me where I was going. I was not my brother and my brother was not me.

My brother was not me, he was dead. My brother died. How did that happen? He was climbing a ladder and the ladder kept growing and he needed to reach the top. Eventually he climbed so high and it got so cold in the sky and it got so dark in the clouds and eventually he climbed so high and it got so loud in the wind and it got so thin in the air and eventually he climbed so high and it got so electric in the world and it got so conductive in his ladder. He was fried. He was climbing a ladder and he got fried.

I was not my brother, he was dead. My brother died and I was digging a hole in the ground. I had found a plot of land not far from our farm and I was waiting for it to rain. Eventually it rained and the ground was soft and I swung my shovel into the ground. The hole was supposed to be six feet deep, six feet wide, six feet across. But as my brother died I had a vision of the demiurge and I continued to dig, making the hole deeper, wider, longer. I continued to dig until I was alone in the hole and there was no light left. I continued to dig. Eventually I would dig myself out at the bottom of the hole. This was my presupposition. I expected the hole to act like a black hole, where all points contain the possibility of exit and entry. All that is necessary is for one to move at the right speed.

I did not spend my whole life raising the pig. He was my brother’s and now he was mine. But I couldn’t take this pig with me where I was going. I continued to dig. My brother and I were born at the same time. He was climbing the ladder and I was digging a hole in the ground. I was in the dark of the ground and he was in the dark of the sky. I was trying to dig myself out of the dark, out of the bottom of the bottom of the hole. I was trying to dig myself out of a hole, and it was not a hole, it was the hole. My presupposition was that such a thing could be achieved by moving at the right speed.

My brother had spent his whole life raising the pig but perhaps the pig had been raised. Perhaps that is why he was climbing the ladder, in order to raise the pig. And I was digging myself deeper into the hole because I was not raising the pig. But my brother died in the sky and I was in the hole. I couldn’t reach the pig and I couldn’t take it with me where I was going. I was not my brother and my brother was not me.

The pig was slaughtered and I wasn’t there. It had been raised well and it was fat. They lathered it with spices and heated the oven. The table was set with plates and knives and forks. Other preparations were in order and they waited for it to be served.

Points

ii.

bouquet

3) There are points in geometry, but no score.

The points accumulate, forming a quality, not a quantity.

Is there a difference between geometry and cartography? A map has points, but no score. Although some wish to control the map.

Points

iii.

bouquet

4) “When all is said, what remains to be said is the disaster. Ruin of words, demise writing, faintness faintly murmuring: what remains without remains (the fragmentary).”

“This is the era destined to the intermittence of a language unburdened of words and dispossessed, the silent halt of that to which without obligation one must nonetheless answer. And such is the responsibility of writing — writing which distinguishes itself by deleting from itself all distinguishing marks, which is to say perhaps, ultimately, by effacing itself (right away and at length: this takes all of time), for it seems to leave indelible or indiscernible traces.

“Fragment: beyond fracturing, or bursting, the patience of pure impatience, the little by little suddenly.”

“The writer, his biography: he died; lived and died.”

“If the book could for a first time really begin, it would, for one last time, long since have ended.”

Points

iv.

bouquet

5) It isn't possible for things to flow as they used to. The impossibility of writing. Of writing text. The matter of inscription is different. And after such a long time without wounds, bleeding is remembered.

It's easy to decide upon the gutter as a resting place. Many things happened. We will be swept away.

Refusing to write; in relation to getting high such that one cannot write the things that one would write otherwise.

The matter of the accent. 10 years of lunch with Peter Sloterdijk. Atlanta disappears. A placeless sound. The sad reality of flight attendants.

And the overwhelming feeling — this is not my world, this is not my homeland, I walk without a mother tongue or a fatherland, and I slurred too much tonight. I wanted to fight this I. I will fight this I. The I becomes the many. The warp and the weft, intermezzo.

Talking out loud in an empty room. At a certain point who knows what will happen. The delusions that God willed it in such a way. A belief structure. Elsewhere bodies are maimed like corpses, flesh is revealed as exceptionally malleable. Like reality. Space-time is the only exit from the stench. God willed it in such a way. The horrors and the brutality. Belief remains the same whether at base camp or the summit — the shifting architectonics of the bloodspill culpability index project. It became so difficult to answer the seemingly simple questions, like what happened?

Things passed, they were meant to be read. Forgotten. Ember collapse.

Points

v.

bouquet

6) Notes from a lecture:

Points

vi.

bouquet

7) I need noise to drown out the other noise. A quiet by virtue of negation. Inaccessible silence.

Narration is a farce, as is the intention occlusion of perception. The world squeezes, breaks, dust collapses.

He was repeating the same story as the last time, the repetition shorter than the original. Perhaps as he spoke that sliver of memory reemerged with his utterances, perhaps he sought to gain something through this repetition, to hammer home this point. In the two tellings the scene was different, the details were different, the narration, the set, the setting had all changed. Two pictures, with different exposures and varying blurs. Recollection's lens. There were two of him, and then he remembered that he was a third. And he remembered all that he owed.

He moved along, aware that he was progressing from this moment back into a series of points. There were ideas of how these points could be reconstructed, how a railroad track could be remodeled into a highrise. Earlier there was the novelty of the Leica RTC360, a 3D laser scanner which would assembled point clouds. Physical environments would be rendered as data, maps could form. Earlier there was the novelty of new maps, maps of Paris to be explored. Photographs of statues that appear in Duras and Godard films, lists of sites from Rivette films. The same sort of way a girl learning to ride a bike is spatialized into the memory of Manhattan's parks.

It could go on, and it would continue, to go on. A point was assembled. A cloud was mapped. Pages were turned. Books open, shut, emptied. He dragged language through the mud. The rope cut against his hands — he remembered dragging in relation to cranking, mud in relation to his cup. It was also something to get it out of. He would have to get it out of it, in order for it to go on, for it to continue.

Points

vii.

bouquet

8) Efforts to re-write in the manner of the past seem fraught. How to write again anew? If the past was brief:

I got coffee, I worked and I read. I got a bagel, I read and I worked. C texts me and A, we met for beers and wurst. O and M and O2 and F and E arrived. I got cigarettes, smoked outside with C and A. N walked past with two friends, they sat at the opposite end of the bar. C and A left. O talked about staying over at N's place. But we went back to my place and listened to music. M2 arrived about an hour later. There were two other guys, one of them would've been M3, and I can't remember the other's name. They would leave shortly after, but everyone else would stay for a couple of hours. We listened to music and talked and used the computer. We made music and talked and used the computer. O showed me clothing and designs. O2 was on the edge of the couch, didn't talk much, just observed. I talked to M a lot. F talked to M2 a lot. I realized that dealing with people talking a lot is part of M2's job. Like an analyst. With a traveling couch.

There was no grand epiphany, no incredible realization by the end. The end wasn't the end, it was simply a departure. Plans were made for the near future, both firm and loose. Handshakes were exchanged. Deliberations were conducted. The night ended at a certain point, but the task that remains is to ascertain when. Paris Belongs To Us was playing in the theater of The 400 Blows, or so said M. Lack. The name was striking. It recalled cigarettes and absences. When the room was empty, I played a song I had written earlier, about picking things up and putting them down. I sent O and M my film, from when my voice was different, from when the world was different, but the same. The world was always different, the change was always constant. I don't have hope, nor do I have the absence of it. And I recognize the role that time will play, in this future to come. It will come and things will be different, the change will be continue to be constant, I will continue to live, to die, to pick up, and put down.

An exercise emerges: How long can I hold a pose? And does holding a pose change the nature of time's length? If the past was brief, then that was a matter of memory. If a recollection was brief, then that was the nature of what the two parties felt was owed. He was talking, he was talking and repeating himself outside inside common knowledge, thinking of all the games to be played. Traincars turned to dominoes. Factories on the horizon signified an exit. So much of it was gone now, the glowing sign was neither haven nor solace. Eventually: 1610s, "pertaining to events," from French éventuel, from Latin event-, stem of evenire "to come out, happen, result" (see event). Meaning "ultimately resulting" is by 1823. Perhaps that was the signal. He stumbled into an old habit, realized it was best to wait, that he could wait while taking action.

Points

viii.

bouquet

9) The first question was that of volume. What purpose it would serve, and how much was necessary? The nose was whistling like a tea kettle. The body was disintegrating. There was a lamp on the floor. It was designed for tables but it was on the floor. The ceiling light did not work. In the summer the room would get hot. In the winter the room would get cold. In the summer the ceiling fan would spin. It didn't help.

The second question: that of mimesis, of imitation. A comment reads: this feels like destiny. He couldn't grasp the essence of time. Everything appeared to be in freefall; diligent, arduous labor was to be put towards a number of tasks. But it hadn't been applied yet. Stacks of books, piles of clothing, scraps of paper remained. The purpose of the volume was volume. To have a mountain to have climbed. Already, the form amateur, unfit for publishing. Quotations lept to mind, or rather sources of quotations, the words themselves dancing outside memory. The commitment to recollection absent, only a reliance of the prosthetic. The realization of what one territory could be, and the need for others. To write a map for the sake of adaptation.

Points

ix.

bouquet

10) My main urge at the moment is to withdraw. To attempt to stop the production of so many things, to concentrate my volume into only a couple of places. I feel like the Hotel Splendid. Falling apart, riddled with debt, one thing after another needed to be tended to, to be fixed, only I am also the weather, I am the swamp, I am the mislaid pipes, I am flooding, I play piano in the lobby and I get ill, wither, wait for health to return. I put my I everywhere, on top of the entire thing. I am attempting to reconfigure this I, to rewrite this I, such that I do not flood, such that the weather is predictable, such that I play piano at the proper hours, such that the bouts of poor health are manageable, such that I can take care of my debts. Yet this weekend I have failed in that. The time has passed by, there are things I should have quit, addictions I should've resisted, and instead money left my balance, I've ignored my debtors, ignored the phone calls that I am to make, the messages I am to send, and I am dealing with who I am, who I was, in relation to who I am trying to be, who I am trying to become. Noctilucents: "neither being nor becoming, substance nor process, but rhythm: a flow of interruptions" — a cascade:

It is as if she were waiting for something that never comes... The work isn't going anywhere. There are unforeseen complications. That is the way it always is with construction... I am the only one who comes and goes. I am acclimated to the swawmp... No matter how hard I work to take care of it, I can see it is falling apart... Now the Splendid is showing the flaws in its construction, now that it is too late and the harm has been done... The Splendid is quiet all of a sudden... Apparently the project was badly designed and they have to start over. The heat broke all of a sudden... They don't care that it is falling apart. As long as they are waited on and never have to do anything. It is as if they were on vacation here, an endless vacation... She would have liked the grave to stay new forever, like the Hotel Splendid... This is the first time there has been such an invasion of cockroaches during the cold. The hygiene must leave something to be desired, or else there would not be so many cockroaches... I understand grandmother. The Hotel Splendid was her life. And me too, without the Splendid, what would become of me... Without the neon lights blinking in the night, the Splendid would no longer be the Splendid... I have always thought the swamp was an inexhaustible natural resource. If that turns out to be true, it should not be long before the railways is built... I am never completely prepared for things. I wasn't ready for the cold weather... She never plays the piano anymore, she never rehearses her lines. But if she doesn't rehearse, she will not be able to act anymore. She will forget everything. That is the worst thing that can happen to an actress, to forget her lines... Far from making a profit from the prospectors, I have lost money. All that because of the freeze and all the firewood I had to burn... The rooms are freezing. There are no guests. And yet every evening, when night falls, I turn on the neon lights... All of a sudden she no longer believes in anything. She is gloomy. It's her age. There is nothing worse than getting old for an actress. She thinks with regret of all the parts she never played. She never made any kind of name for herself. She was always unknown. The idea of ending her days at the Hotel Splendid eats away at her... I don't think about the future. The present is all that counts... They are gracious guests, and they know how life is... But maybe their life at the hotel is what changed their personalities... I don't like to have debts. But what else can I do? It's either debt or the end of the Splendid. I have no choice... Ada and Adel live in a dream... Adel cannot bear solitude... I don't even dare go up to the attic anymore, for fear of finding some more serious kind of damage... The swamp is swallowing up the cemetary. Ada says soon there will be nothing left of the cemetary, because there will be nothing but the swamp... And at any rate, the cemetary scarcely exists anymore. Only a few of the gravestones are still above water, and soon they will disappear as well... Like grandmother, my sisters have seen a lot of htoels. I am the only one who was known nothing but the Splendid... She drew on all her experiences to create the Hotel Splendid... she says the garden isn't the garden anymore, but the beginning of the swamp instead. She is not completely wrong. The garden is beginning to look like the swamp... They are conviced the company is doing the right thing in trying to put a railway line through the swamp. They say that will give it life. But the swamp does not need the railway to live. It isn't dead like they think... They believe in what they are doing... Adel has become friendly again. She has taken a new interest in the swamp all of a sudden, thanks to the geologists' maps of it. It is as if it was all new to her... They are unhappy with her. She has no more stories to read, she was read them all to us... The swamp might be a blessing... I have to think about paying off my debts... Ada is shapeless. At night, she dreams that the railroad tracks run through the hotel... When I said grandmother was a pioneer, I did not know how right I was. If I hadn't built the Hotel Splendid on the edge of the swamp, the railway would probably never have come here. You can't see the swamp from the rooms just now because of the fog. The foggy season has begun... When the fog comes, you never know how long it will stay. You can scarcely make out the signs of the Hotel Splendid anymore. The hotel disappears in the fog, and the swamp as well. You can no longer tell where the swamp is, or where the Splendid is. You have to know your way along to not get lost... The plumber covered them with a special compound to protect them. But he knows as well as I do that no compound, not even a special compound will fix everything... Ever since the fog began, there have been no more flies... My sisters really have no memory... Her favorite movie, one that she saw several times when she was young, was Hotel Splendid. That was what gave her the idea of naming her hotel the Hotel Splendid. In the movie, the hotel was not on the edge of a swamp, it was in an oasis in the middle of the desert. The wind never stopped blowing. The oasis was slowly becoming choked with sand, and so was the hotel. Grandmother often told me the story of the Hotel Splendid buried under the desert sand. There is no danger of that happening at the edge of the swamp. That's what grandmother must have said to herself when she chose this spot for her hotel... For me things are less glamorous, spending all my time unblocking the lavatories... The workmen think Adel is someone... The workmen do not really understand who she is. They think she is a former movie actress... Every day, some new problem comes up. The geologists could not foresee all the problems. Their studies were very superficial. I was right to think they didn't understand anything about the swamp... The swamp is unrecognizable. It looks as though it's on fire, especially at night... It smells more like fire than like the swamp... Nothing looks familiar to me anymore... She took down all her photographs of actresses. She has begun to doubt the movies all of a sudden. She is disoriented. She says everything is phony in the movies. Only in the theater can an actress really perform to the fullest. Movies are false. She no longer knows what her calling was. She is lost... He agreed to make some repairs, but only on the understanding that he took no responsibility for the results... Little by lttle, she even stopped thinking about the movies. In the end, she never paged through her magazines anymore. The Splendid was the only thing left. She succeeded in life... I am feeling strong at the moment. The Splendid is holding up. It's the embankment that is not holding up... Where the cemetary used to be, now there is the embankment, It encourages the workmen to see the embankment moving forward. What he doesn't know is that in certain places the swamp exerts suction. That is where the embankment is sinking... I spend all day in the office sorting through grandmother's papers. Everything is out of order and unintelligible. The Splendid is no longer making money... The construction is over. The men have left. The garden seems empty all of a sudden. I walked along the embankment and the tracks. The entire company will be there for the opening ceremonies. The first train will cross the swamp. The shutters are closed in Ada and Adel's room. It's the only room that still has shutters. My sisters never touch their food anymore. What can be going on... She says the sand is swallowing up the Hotel Splendid. She is delirious. She thinks she is at the movies... She says death is worse than life... She must think she is already dead... Adel called me Ada. And then she died. My sisters died of the same illness. I prepared Adel's body. I also covered her face with a lace veil that belonged to grandmother. I laid Ada next to Adel. I no longer have any sisters. I only have the Splendid... Who knows where grandmother's coffin is now that the swamp has swallowed up the cemetary? Apparently there are underground currents that slowly suck you in, and as soon as you are caught in one it carries you away... Grandmother knew all about the dangers of flooding. She did not want the Hotel Splendid to be cut off from the world. She had it built just where the pathway is, where it never really floods. That says a lot about her perfect knowledge of the swamp, to have found the only spot that stays dry... They don't make outhouses of that type nowadays. They only make lavatories, with all the problems they bring. Lavatories are my eternal overriding concern, along with the Splendid, of course... It's a miracle tha thtey Splendid has never been flooded. The water always stops a few yards away. If the hotel were flooded, in its condition, that would be the end of it... The debts are starting up again, I will never be free of them... No matter how often I go over my accounts, I cannot manage to balance my budget. I still have a lot of debts. That's not good for the reputation of the hotel. Debts do not inspire confidence... I am already beginning to forget my sisters. I have a bad memory too. The grass is beginning to cover up the graves. I like coming back to the hotel... I see it from far away... The signs are on day and night now. That is my one luxury... The hotel is returning to its old clientele. Travelers are very happy to be able to stop at the Splendid before continuing their long voyage through the swamp... All I need to live is for a few rooms to be taken... Ada and Adel never saw the swamp covered with snow. The swamp is all white. The Splendid is also all white... The hotel looks brand-new under the snow. You can no longer see its flaws... The whole embankment is sinking. My hopes were in vain. The embankment is going to be swallowed up like the cemetary. My sisters' graves will disappear. And their beautiful wooden coffins will fill up with water. Ada and Adel will never escape from the swamp. They are going to join grandmother somewhere on the bottom. I did not succeed in sparing my sisters an uncertain fate at the bottom of the swamp... Nothing can resist the swamp. All it took was the weight of the snow to make what remains of the embankment disappear little by little. Only the Splendid resists the swamp, because grandmother found the right place to build it... I still have debts, but fortunately they are not growing... When night falls and I turn them on, only one word is lit up, the second one, Splendid. That word stands out against the sky. Travelers cannot help but see it. But since the word Hotel isn't lit up, the travelers cannot know that the Splendid is a hotel... From far away, the Splendid must look like a boat that has run aground there on the snow, with its wooden hull half rotted away. There is no chance of it sinking, since it has run aground... The swamp is still the swamp, even covered with snow. Thanks to grandmother's enterprising spirit, this is the only swamp with a hotel in the entire region. The Splendid is visible from everywhere in the swamp. Its signs shine at night, they are visible from a great distance. There are two bright spots in the sky and on the snow. They are the reflections of the Splendid's signs..

Points

x.

bouquet

11) This tendency to put so much in front of myself. Ambition in relation to one's ability, the pressure that accompanies that. It isn't the inability to recognize one's limits but the rejection of said limits, and accompanying this a certain acceptance of inevitable failures given this recurrent impulse to accept impossible tasks. Of course, I've completed the impossible tasks from time to time, and when the tasks are completed, I move into a state of megalomania. Is that last part true? In some ways, perhaps it's more akin to the narcissistic feedback loop enveloping me, getting high off the high.

Points

xi.

bouquet

12) I finished Nevermore today. There is only one more Marie Redonnet novel with an English translation left for me. Candy Story. Once I read Candy Story, I will either have to learn French or wait for translations to be published. Jordan Stump wrote the translations for all of the books I've read. He is still writing translations. I started to watch another Rivette today but decided to save it. I was very tired. I went back to sleep. Most of the day went away. I didn't do what I wanted to do. What I wanted to do was unclear. As far as the short immediate steps. Now I remember what I wanted to do, and the steps were clear. But it is too late to do that now. I must wait. I still don't have a cellphone that works. I turned Instagram off. I suppose this text production is evidence of that. I am changing myself in the ways that I usually change myself, which leads me to question if there is a change occurring. O reminded me of my resolutions on Friday. The ones I brought up were new to her. I have many resolutions and they are all difficult. Somewhere else I will start to write my first novella of the year. The month is waning. I lost weight from not eating enough. And from being sick. I am trying to be better in a number of ways. Time feels as though it shrinking. It felt right to finish Nevermore today. The president was inaugurated. In the book a man becomes the President. In the book there are people fighting for power. In the book people have sex and try to love. But the love feels hard to reach, just behind a veil. On New Year's, O and O2 came over after the party. O2 and I finished his bag of coke, talked about Africa, the horrors of the world, what we've inherited, what will happen. He doesn't remember it but I'm glad for the conversation. I've started praying again and I hope to pray more. I feel bad for not going to the temple today. I've been putting off going to the temple for two weeks. It is in Flushing and now I don't have a phone. But I think if I go there and I pray, it will help with change. It is snowy and icy and cold outside. But I am inside. My laptop is hot. I recall "whoever anywhere will read these written words". I decide to write words from Nevermore.

Translator's Introduction:

"...an outsider's construction of the American West: a West where accounts are settled in francs, a West marked by both volcanoes and disused concentration camps, a West in which one finds such quintessentially French conveniences as the buvette (a small, modest, but not inelegant sort of cafe, common at French tourist sites) and the pissotière (a rather rudimentary public urinal, now vanished from the streets of Paris)."

Readers familiar with the novels of Marie Redonnet will find in Nevermore all the hallmarks of her unique vision: an insistence on repetition, duality, and duplicity, a meditation of the dangers of identification, an examination of the perils and the possibilities of writing, a style of bewildering simplicity, understated power, and offhanded humor, and most important of all, perhaps, a faith in the rare, frail, but incalculably precious ability to transcend the omnipresent darkness and to start anew. Nevermore — the novel or the word itself — implies an end, perhaps a death, but also (or therefore) a beginning and a rebirth.

Words from Nevermore:

...he wants to forget what he had dreamt of, just as he wants to forget the past... It is forbidden to remember the past. It is forbidden to compare the present with what I had dreamt of... Seeing her emerge from her coupe in her white poplin dress, he would never have thought that she was going to San Rosa to sing at the Babylon... he became used to being alone, and even came to like it. How could he have imagined when he arrived in San Rosa that he would still be here after all this time, and that his only desire would be to stay here forever? It will be San Rosa right up to the end for him... The files, already yellowing, were put together by his predecessor, who was obsessed with files and wanted to leave some mark of his existence behind him... Why did his predecessor keep all those files? No one has ever read them... Everyone is taking advantage of the lull, as if it were going to last forever... That is how she sees her life up to now, as a larger and larger wheel which, after having turned faster and faster, suddenly stopped... She asks Willy Bost who he is and where he comes from. But he does not want to talk about himself. The only thing he wants is to move into his room... Only one thing matters, what I came to San Rosa to do. What did I come here to do?... Concentrate on that question alone... Write everything down right away as soon as he feels the need. What would he do without his notebook?... he did not renta. room at the Gold House just to jerk off all alone with no hope of ejaculation! That is out of the question... it never occurs to her that he might be a maniac or a madman... Old images come back to her before she can chase them away. She jumps up and runs to the ocean... No matter how she tries to chase away the old images, she still has the same body, and therefore still the same atavisms. That is what she repeats to herself: the same atavisms. It is aprt of the inevitability she must live with. Is Willy Bost to be the new face of the inevitable for her?... he thinks that he must look like a novelist taking notes for his next novel. That idea pleases him. But there is no question of his becoming a novelist even if he enjoys looking like one. He takes out his notebook again and adds: Don't try to be what you are not. Be what you must be... The words of her songs are very simple. They are about the bombs that never stop falling on Alejo, women from faraway places being sold from one whorehouse to the next up and down the west coast, a little girl crying in the snow because her dog has died, an old man freezing to death under a bridge as he watched a fireworks display lighting up the city, a woman who looks for love without ever finding it and finally gives birth all alone on a desert island, a poet who kills God as if he were His executioner, a priest somewhere in the middle of a desert who gives food to a dead man without noticing that he is dead... How could she have lived all this time forgetting the pleasure that she had felt only once, in suite 103 of the Eden Palace, when she played the first role of her life?... particularly terrible because there is no explosion... But where will she go then? She has nowhere to go. She would rather sing at the Babylon than leave for nowhere in her coupe... She answers that she has nothing to tell him because there is nothing to know... But to go where? With her CV, no one would hire her. She has just come to understand this evening what it means to have been hired only on the strength of her cassette, without being asked for her CV... Even though they are inseparable, they do not tell each other their secrets... It is as if she had loved a dream... Yesterday seems long ago, almost unreal. A new life is beginning for him with this new position... How could he have been so careless as to let it turn into a diary?... He has never tried to find out who she really is... From now on, he wants to do as his predecessors did, write everything down so that there will be some trace of what they discover... What is essential in an investigationof this importance, one concerning the city's most prominent figure, is determining whom to question and how... She is relieved that he is behaving toward her as though nothing had happened. That is the best solution for both of them... That is good news, it proves that everything is going in the right direction... Why isn't love always this simple? Why does passion come along and spoil everything? He pays the girl and gives her a tip, for the music, he says with a smile. When she leaves, he falls asleep, thinking of nothing... why does he find it impossible to give it to her as he had intended?... What must be done is not to destroy the city center, but to save it, in order to make of it the city of God... He does not want to be a man of God only in the house of God. He wants to be a man of God in the city of men in order to defend the word of God there. God visited him in the night as he slept and gave him this mission... She talks to the hummingbird as if it understood everything. She calls it the philosopher... Down at the bottom of Angel Cove there is a submerged grotto whose wonders Mattie wanted to show her. Cassy told her that every time she dives she is afraid the sea will swallow her forever. Mattie laughed. They would dive together, and they would go to the grotto... Here, atop the volcano, she forgets everything that is happening below. The buzzard glides above the crater, then dives... In his opinion, it won't be long before the volcano erupts. He hopes it will be a splendid eruption and that he will be able to film it... She thinks that he knows how to charm and that he enjoys love. She finds him attractive, even if he is not for her... Anything can happen, thinks the commander, even when you think that nothing can ever happen again... He realizes by the pain that he feels how attached he was to her. But he had never wanted to know anything about that either... Why did she not start her life over again?... She used to care about and listen to everyone, but she became withdrawn, never speaking ot anyone anymore... They will behave as if nothing had happened, as usual... "Lacl of logical thought. Impulsive and undisciplined mind. Mistakes his dreams for reality."... The first thing Willy Bost does when he is alone in his room is to write down in his notebook everything that has happened... Now he needs a notebook to write down everything that happens. The threads become untangled as he writes. Willy Bost feels great pleasure in writing. His style is growing more sure. he is learning to master his style... The reason he came to San Rosa, and he trembles to think of it, might be finally to become the master, rather than remaining the slave who rebels because no one respects his merits and no one takes account of him. And he is becoming the master through this notebook, which he can no longer do without... When he goes back to the shooting range, it will be to erase his shame. He has not given up... He has only one desire, to take her like he took her in the cabin on the Moby Dick. He moans even louder inside her. It is so intense that he can't leave without starting over again, until he can't anymore. Gina Koll is one of those women he can't resist because they predict his desires and fulfill them without holding back. But when he leaves her he has learned nothing. What she knows she won't tell. Now that he has had all he desired of her, to the point of feeling an emptiness worse than any nausea, he is determined to never see her again... Like an innocent child, he has fallen into her trap... They had never spoken of the past, as if it did not exist... In memory of Mattie and their meeting at Angel Cove, she swears to do everything in her power never again to be the victim of the past and never again to be the victim of her enemies... Of all of them, he is the greatest victim, because he had to live in pain and remorse, with no hope of salvation... She no longer feels anything of the great love she once had for him. How everything has changed!... Her songs are the weapons she made for herself, all alone, so that she would no longer be afraid... They are willing to be moved, but they don't want to hear about what they don't want to know... He is as talkative about his film as about the volcano. He will show San Rosa as it has never before been sen. There will be no professional actors and no script in his film. The actors will be the people of san Rosa and the story will be their stories. But because of the way the film is shot and edited, no one will recognize them. He does not tell Cassy Mac Key about the films he as already made. She thinks that he doesn't talk about them because he wants to forget them... It is as if he were waiting for her. She undresses without a word. She is trembling she is so afraid... The next morning, when she wakes up in her room, she tries to remember what happened during the night with Willy Bost. Because of the marks on her body, she is sure she wasn't dreaming... Why didn't he simply love her instead of feeling this devouring passion for her?... It is a message of love. On the way back to San Rosa, he understands that his passion prevented him from loving, and that passion is love's greatest enemy... He has suddenly developed a personal ambition and wants to have a destiny... He does not want the force of logic to replace the truth of facts... Locked in his office, he writes as if he has never written before, in a constant stream, without taking his eyes off the paper. For the first time, he is writing an article, and he will sign it with his own name. He has finally become Commander Roney Burke... Then he will love her as he was never able to love her, as if it were the first time... For the people of San Rosa, overwhelmed by what they have just seen and heard, it is as if the earth were opening up before them... To Stive Lenz, who has been filming all of this first night of the campaign, it is a historic evening... What hope is left?... Willy Bost has nothing left to wait for... By stealing his notebook, Gina Koll has forced him to write the book that he never wanted to write, for fear that it would take him where he never wanted to go, the Santa Flor camp where his parents had disappeared forever... Since the other night, she has been haunted by Willy Bost and can no longer sleep... Now he understands what he had not understood... They no longer believe that anything will ever change for the better. They see only the worst before them... What makes his book so difficult to write is that it is a book of memories written in the absence of memories. He invents his memories as he writes. But the more he writes, the more he discovers that he knows nothing... Each time he throws away what he has written, he doubts that he can go on. But he starts again. He sees no other meaning he might give to his life than to bear witness to what no one wants to know... They could love each other there at the edge of the volcano, but something keeps them from it. They stayed for a long time pressed up against each other looking at the crater, thinking of nothing...

Now it has a name, the Nevermore. It was Willy Bost who came up with the idea, from the title he wants to give his book, if he ever manages to write it: Nevermore. Work has begun on the Nevermore... Willy Bost is sitting alone, in the last row. Everything seems unreal to him, even the Nevermore. As if he were deaf, he can't listen to Cassy Mac Key's new songs, and he has a dark veil over his eyes when Lizzie Malik does her act with Livio. He is thinking about his book, which he no longer believes in. The truth about San Rosa, like the trust about Santa Flor, escapes him. He has the impression that his words lead to nothing but a black hole in which he is lost. How could he have hoped he would succeed, when he has never been able to finish what he began? Now he knows that it is not only the fault of those in High Places. It is the fault of his central collapse, into which he sinks every time... It is as if the end of the world had come... At the same moment, the volcano finally reawakes and launches is own fireworks toward the heavens, while lava flows down the slopes of the volcano, burning everything in its path... Stive Lenz is running from place to place filming everything he sees, as if this were one of Tony Landry's blockbusters. Sirens from fire trucks and special service cars are blaring everywhere... He has given up on finishing his book and wants to forget everything... Even if she sings to a very small crowd, it is a real crowd... For the first time since she was released from prison, she is not ashamed, and she feels freed from the past. She is keeping the promise she made the day Mattie was buried. The hardest thing for her is not to think about Willy Bost, from whom she has heard nothing. His absence possesses her despite herself, even when she is singing... Culture... will be a decisive weapon in this combat. Culture must be a duty for each of us and the right of all... A new career is beginning for him... For her, it is not so easy to begin life anew... What she herself is lacking is an inheritance and a memory. That was what brought her so close to Willy Bost. He has no inheritance either, and his memory is the lsot memory of the Santa Flor Camp. Singing every night at the Nevermore is her only reason to live, and yet it is no longer enough...

At the very end of this very deep grotto, there is an extraordinary sight, the complete skeleton of an enormous whale. The whale must have come there to die, as if that were the cemetary it had chosen... Some days when she feels very sad, she tells herself that she could go to sleep there near the whale, and never wake up... Cassy Mac Key is the first to break the silence. She tells Willy Bost that she has something to show him. They dive together down to the grotto. She leads him to the very end, to the skeleto of the whale. They stay for a long time, motionless and silent, looking at it.

A few days later, the Mangor was discovered drifting in the middle of the reefs. There was no one on board. As for Cassy Mac Key, she never reappeared at the Nevermore. We will never know what happened between Cassy Mac Key and Willy Bost in the grotto. Ever since Mattie's death, Angel Cove has become a cursed place, which everyone wants to forget, and where no one ever goes.

Points

xii.

bouquet

13) the most important thing is my heart

Points

xiii.

bouquet

14) Tonight I talked about the writing machine with O and O2 and M. We went back to my place after the opening and did coke, drank beer and wine. The coke is better right now because of the service K referred me to. Tomorrow, I'll refer O and we'll mutually benefit from it, while opening up the risk of possible externalities. I've been doing a lot of drugs lately. Partially because of my supply, partially because of the circumstances of life. I was explaining it tonight, the lump in my neck that the doctor told me not to worry about, that I was quite worried about before, where I was constantly thinking of death. The situation with P, the most minor of heartbreaks that wasn't so much about her but about the opening of the heart, or rather the attempt to do so, but also the vicissitudes that accompany a crush, the sort of return to a steadier state once it's ceased — the heartbreak of the general inability to form crushes without the crutch of text and distance. I talked about N telling me I need someone on my level. I'm still ghosting C because I don't know what we'd talk about if we got drinks and I don't want to play the character of interesting artist type. There is the trap of my job, what it does to my head, how I have to perform a role there. The world at large. On Wednesday I will play a DJ set as Classic Selena to celebrate the release of L's album I Don't Have That Problem. I suppose these are my problems right now. There is also the problem of the machine, and the problems of art — the problems of the text to work through. My inclination is to call that a different set of problems. Another inclination follows, to investigate this idea of sets. Set Theory remains a signifier to me, I cannot do math Like That.

But tonight I did coke with O and M, I don't think O2 did any of the coke. We talked a lot. It was a good conversation. I talked about the walls I feel while trying to talk to N about certain things, how those things bleed into art, and our mutual understandings of our respective projects. But we talked about the good in his work, and in T's work, and now I am listening to a piece from 2 years ago which I haven't listened to in some time. It is tremendously beautiful, and I think the issues I have are justified and make sense, and I think this tension is good. I believe O said as much too. I talked a lot. O talked a lot. M didn't talk as much. O2 talked some. Talk about hope. Talk about suicide. Talk about purpose. Talk about the present. Talk about the future. Songs called Talk in my library — Unpacking my Library (O said N2 had never heard of The Arcades Project; I was talking about The Arcades Project and Balzac to H at the opening and she told me to swing by the bookstore she works at tomorrow, while I go to galleries in Chelsea — the ease of the tangent, the prison of linear language, the stalled plan to map the Arcades Project into a spatialized view, how the Mnemosyne Atlas functions, the cascade continues, I must stop this flow) — Talk by Yeat, Talk (feat. Lil Baby) by Skrilla, Talk 2 God by Yeat, Talk 2 Me by DJ Nate, Talk Facts by Dthang, Bando Gz, & T Dot, Talk is Cheap! by Autumn!, Talk by Ishhh (feat. Kobe) by Dj Crazy, Talk My Shit by Bossman Dlow, Talk My Shit by Fetty Wap, Talk My Shit by PGF Nuk, Talk of Da Ghetto by Wiley, Talk of the Town by Nino Paid & HavinMotion, Talk of the Town by RealYungPhil & Gud, Talk Shit Like a Preacher by Future, Talk That 2020 by BandGang Lonnie Bands, Talk That 2024 by BandGang Lonnie Bands (remember Lonnie Bands as one of the pre-eminent diarists in the face of so much loss and pain in that window) — N worked from that gorgeous section of Lil Keed and the piano into World of T-Shirts and O and I were talking about how we works, how he thinks about the texts, but also his restraint and his discipline in composing, his ability to sample these sorts of texts in an incredible way, how World of T-Shirts says I'm trying to figure out where the ground ends and the lake begins as the strings pick up — I don't know the sample, nor does Shazam — but there is a buried memory that is slightly excavated, of writing those words before while listening to that passage, perhaps a tweet, which pulls me into the tide of thinking of both N and I's composed works of samples, where and how we pull from, how that moment of creating such compositions has faded, transformed, how the reception of our compositions bleeds into the production of our works now — Talk This Way by EBK Jaaybo (recently freed), Talk To Da Dead by Leaf Ward (incarcerated for at least 5 years I believe), Talk To God by Chicken P (has gone Up since being freed — that one line on Bussabrick Vol. 2: Fifteen thousand dollar bond you ever pay for your freedom — and the transformation of his texts since, how Capital has shaped them), Talk To God by Super Throwed Dave, Talk to Me by Skillibeng, Talk to Me (feat. Drake) by Drakeo the Ruler (RIP), TALK TO ME NICE (feat. Quavo) by Lil Yachty, Talk to the Doctor by Randy Newman, Talk to Ya by Rich Homie Quan (RIP), Talk To You (feat. Hone$t) by Cash Cobain, Talk Trash by Landmark 205, Talk Wit God (feat. $Amaad) by Osyris Israel, A Talk with Vlad by Zelly ocho, Talkin the Hardest by Giggs, Talkin Wet by Rio Da Yung Og & RMC Mike, Talking (feat. Aidan Swank) by Tek Lintowe, Talking 2 A Ghost by OsamaSon, Talking Out (Feat. MoneyBagzBuzz) by EBK Young Joc, Talking Stage by lilic, TALKING TO A WALL (feat. Harto Falión) by evilgiane, talking to joejoe by frankie cosmos, Talking to My Dad by Lil B (something I need to do tomorrow, Talking World War III Blues by Bob Dylan. Not every Talk was named and I am trying to recall the purpose. The cascade. There were questions of purpose tonight. I tried to explain as best as I could. As best as I could, yet still incoherent, incomplete, on the verge of, not all the same, the precision of language, trying to wield it. When I would write so much, I would repeat what I had written in conversations. And then if people would read them later, they would think about how much sense it made, where the cogency stemmed from — J remarked on this when she gave the book back to me. I talked about how that time had ended, and talking about how that time had ended, along with sending this most recent iteration to O reopened the opportunity for what the machine could achieve. A call and response. A relationality of data and discourse. What will we do, in light of all that there is to be done? I scroll up and remember: I was unpacking my library.

Points

xiv.

bouquet

15) I am waiting until I am tired enough to fall asleep. I am settling into the idea of this diary again, and the purpose that it can serve me. And I am thinking about what I want to inscribe in a manner that I don't think existed before. I am searching for a moment to pinpoint since the last entry, that would be helpful to probe. There's a general sequence of events but I've already inscribed those elsewhere — there doesn't seem much of a reason to inscribe them here. An alternative, short version: tonight I went to a party with my friends and we talked and played music and danced and took pictures and made a music video. It can be that simple, that short, with omission functioning in an alternative way. Not trying to be this cascade of memory, but to be a minor record of an event, that shapes a certain thing. It is the morning now, but once I sleep and wake up again I can transcribe from the Blanchot. And I can attempt to recount yesterday's dream, which surely will have faded some, and I will be recounting the recountings I told to J and I told to L. It was a dense dream. There is so much to write about.

Points

xv.

bouquet

16) One can imagine the most trivial circumstance as the starting point of a great work; nothing is compromised by that triviality: the act by which the author makes it into a crucial circumstance is enough to incorporate it into his genius and his work... Every work is an occasional work: this simply means that each work has a beginning, that it begins at a certain moment in time and that that moment in time is part of the work, since without it the work would have been only an insurmountable problem, nothing more than the impossibility of writing it.

Let us suppose that the work has been written: with it the writer is born. Before, there was no one to write it; starting from the book, an author exists and merges with his book... What is written is neither well nor badly written, neither important nor frivolous, memorable nor forgettable: it is the perfect act through which what was nothing when it was inside emerges into the monumental reality of the outside as something which is necessarily true, as a translation which is necessarily faithful, since the person it translates exists only through it and in it. One could say that this certainty is in some sense the writer's inner paradise and that automatic writing has only been one way of making this golden age real — what Hegel calls the pure joy of passing from the night of possibility into the daytime of presence...

Because the reader has no use for a work written for him, what he wants is precisely an alien work in which he can discover something unknown, a different reality, a separate mind capable of transforming him and which he can transform into himself. An author who is writing specifically for a public is not really writing: it is the public who is writing, and for this reason the public cano longer be a reader; reading only appears to exist, actually it is nothing. This is why works created to be read are meaningless: no one reads them. This is why it is dangerous to write for other people, in order to evoke the speech of others and reveal them to themselves: the fact is that other people do not want to hear their own voices; they want to hear someone else's voice, a voice that is real, profound, troubling like the truth.

Points

xvi.

bouquet

17) S asked me for a link to a mix that didn't exist. It was not recorded. I sent links to sounds and images to try to reconstruct the night. A dancehall remix of Take Care was marked by the xx guitar riff for her; different memories and associations in relation to place and time. Someone commented on a Chicken P fast mix I made (Rollin), so I looked at the top listeners profiles and found a song: sturdyyoungin - Freestyle pt.2 Ft Mizz, GE3Z & Bril. It samples DJ Nate's May Be Sum Day. I've been listening to both on repeat all day — different memories and associations in relation to place and time. Chicago. New York. Paris. I Wud If I Cud But I Can’t So I Ain’t

Points

xvii.

bouquet

18) After the album release moment L asked if I was interested in doing something at Earth. It was at a bar, maybe after 2, I was drunk and still a bit CK'd, and I suggested a play, The Old Masters, that I had talked with A about staging a table read of, which stalled out immediately after the idea came to be. No reason for it, too many things in our lives. I suggested other things too, but it had a sticking effect, and I voiced my other qualms, and then I got on the Ridgewood bus. He texted me the next morning and then we texted more. We made plans to talk about it at T's show on Friday but there wasn't really enough time, nor was it the space. So we hit E-Chiban on Sunday. They brought out the sushi boat. And it was a good talk, nothing super fixed, but the potentials for possibilities were opened up. More plans were made — to see the Anne Imhof piece at the Park Armory being the immediate one.

In the time since, I've gone back into the obsessive research mode that I can be prone to get into. I explained this to L and I'm sure he could already tell it would be like this, at least to some extent. It's the reason why I can be so encyclopedic to people, and also why the web of signifiers would make such a place as Earth fraught to me, whereas when I mentioned it to J he had never heard of it. Which is nice, because now I can enter into a headspace that mostly focuses on The Work being The Work, without getting as mired within the bounds of site, audience, reception, the Public. Writing as a means to manipulate reality — not in the sense of mediated dominoes, but the reality of myself as I write this writing, and the the reality of the room it takes place. I am attempting to be wary of hijacking, though I'm sure if it isn't the direction L wants he'll let me know. The music he sent me is really exciting. I've been living with it, thinking with it, writing with it — writing in a new sort of way, filming my computer with my phone, the sound playing off the computer speakers. Writing without typing, although there are words, words-as-images.

There are a number of elements I am thinking about. My reason for typing right now is to think through them, to think through their purpose. Perhaps the main thing I am thinking about is a plexiglass structure, similar to that of Dan Graham, and also works by Richter, Imhof, and Dean. I'm interested in what that sort of constructed architectural object would do to the space — familiarization/defamiliarization, opacity/transparency, boundaries. I'm interested in the parody aspects of it as well — I found the way Imhof puts graffiti on hers to be extremely funny. I wrote about graffiti in response to SR's email to me in the summer. He recently sent me some graffiti from Brazil. I don't think the piece I am trying to write is "about graffiti", nor do I think it is "about parody", though I am thinking heavily about parodying Imhof and Rivette, the former with a sense of serious humor, the latter with a sense of reverence.

As such with my obsessiveness I go down rabbit holes. Today's was about Helmut Lang in relation to Balenciaga, Austria (and Austro-Hungary) in relation to Germany, with Bernhard popping in, Richter popping in, a Celine show with a Dan Graham piece popping in, a fragment I wrote about L's performance and Hungary and Germany popping in. As I make the "writing" videos, I am thinking about them as both exercises and source material — works to be adapted into a script / set of instructions. Similar to Bruno Dumont writing novels to adapt into films. I have thought about how this might be a time to write a novella — I was thinking that while reading Blanchot's "Literature and the Right to Death" and making my underlines. That now I might have enough momentum, or rather than momentum occasion, to author such a work. As it could be incorporated into the thing. There is so much bubbling around, and almost all of it will get stripped away. There is too much, and not enough time. But small traces will be left from this process.

One of the other major texts I've been re-working through, that folds itself into these videos, is Washington, which deals with the problems of producing work and its reception. But it also seems pertinent because L also has a relation to Washington. Right now things are murky, but there are ideas. My means will probably settle much of them into place. As will more conversations with L about how he wants his music to function, more about what he's thinking, since I have dominated the Are.na, and seeing the Imhof. But now things have been thought through and typed through, in some capacity. Soon they'll be spoken through.

Points

xviii.

bouquet

19) It's strange only doing C+K. My stomach is rumbling. And there is a sort of disconnect — the stimulant pushing forward text production, the dissociative making the mechanisms feel foreign. I was sober at Earth. I was sober at the River. Line of K in the Dr. Clark bathroom w/ a little C. I saw C at Earth, gave him a bump, he offered me an opening slot at a rave. Told me he'd message me on Instagram but I'm not on instagram right now. He'll forget. In the line for the bathroom with K — she was using Instagram for safari, we talked about how I deactivate, I have to deactivate because I still have other log-ins, it's not about deleting the app, it's about the flow of information. And also being tethered. I had a phone tonight and then it died. In the Uber to C2 and M's party, everyone went to Brown except me. L living in midtown godmother apartment, must be nice no stress life. This girl A overhears my conversation with I about Contemporary Art Letterboxd — I decide not to cook after talking it over with I. I wonder how drunk she was, if she'll remember or forget. If I'm cooking that with someone from Brown it's I and A2. But in any case. Institutions. The Brown Uber. The Bards of The River. People who asked for things tonight: C, was fiending for C, T, did deduction after I talked about being Berlin Sober and doing accents with him and M2, hung out in the Dr. Clark's bathroom, threw a few off the hand, N inside the barn doors of The River before I said my au revoir, too turnt, needed some more, his night, his party, good party as far as the conditions go, and I will be running into such conditions soon as well.

I suppose what I am trying to grapple with is how little happened. Even the linear approach. Saw A3 en route to N's performance which we missed. Found out after seeing O outside walking back to her place. She said M3 was there, but I saw M4 before him, eventually they got together as well. I saw H and talked to her for a bit, I met E in person for the first time, I don't know if she knew who I was online. Talked to D. Talked to N. Talked to D2. This could go on and on. It all stayed quite surface level. People were talking while the bands were playing. The music was not the primary thing, but the ritual of watching a performance was still feigned. I'm curious for what it will be like for the play A3 is in tomorrow. I feel like the only conversation I had all night was with C3 at C2's party, about hair and hairlines, images and appearances, aging and its inevitability.

In the car I was thinking about what I'm Built Like. the ways in which one can be Built Different.

Points

xix.

bouquet

20) The dominant feeling, the reason I've been getting so high, is that I feel that much of my life has been a vacancy, that where the primacy is supposed to be, there is only absence. This absence cannot and will never be filled. And thus, I preemptively empty structure the future such that it will remain as absent as the past, all the while ensuring that the absence's of the past remain both forgotten and apathetically held. The destructive character sees nothing permanent. But for this very reason he sees ways everywhere. Where others encounter walls or mountains, there, too, he sees a way. But because he sees a way everywhere, he has to clear things from it everywhere. Not always by brute force; sometimes by the most refined. Because he sees ways everywhere, he always stands at a crossroads. No moment can know what the next will bring. What exists he reduces to rubble - not for the sake of rubble, but for that of the way leading through it. The destructive character lives from the feeling not that life is worthing living, but that suicide is not worth the trouble.I put my bags inside of my bag, inside of another bag. That bag belongs in a box with a latch that I closed and placed on the top second from the top on the cart in my room. I am attempting to make a resolution. My other resolution has held steadfast.

Points

xx.

bouquet

21) I return to this cascade, to the illusion of progress it provides. Perhaps it is not progress, but volume, production. I looked at my most recent collection of watercolors and ink drawings. That is what they are, drawings. I am not attempting to paint, and the scale of these works are humble. They are within a book. They are pages that one turns. This too, this cascade, will end up a book, of words and images in a series of pages to turn. And my attention turns to scale, to attempts, to essais. To things done already, and the things that must be done. Right now I am struggling in a way that I haven't struggled before. It is an honest struggle. One that will continue. Elsewhere I wrote deciding to end the war I have been having w/ Myself — words that I must make true. There are matters of being and becoming, of wrestling with the self, but this war, this series of poisons I've been inflicting upon myself must come to a close.

At dinner with J I said I wanted to leave. That I have been here too long without leaving. I also spoke of the stagnation I feel, and there is a relation: this leaving and wandering and moving to avoid stagnation, akin to the production of text for the sake of production. Leaving would mean more text, leaving would mean an increase in production. And I tether myself to this production. There are parts of this production, of this life an artist, feeling necessary, because I do not have a world otherwise. There is no other place for me but placelessness, this is no other place for this placelessness but art. Or philosophy, Novalis, the threads connect, the warp, the weft, the weeping. I turn the page, I make another gesture, another motion. I record another attempt.

Points

xxi.

bouquet

22)

And then? I read about the lives of Perec, Blanchot, Derrida — what they inherited from their Europes (and Africa) of the 20th century, how all I have inherited is a lack of place. Yet my struggle still feels so great.

Points

xxii.

bouquet

23)

Nightlife is a beautiful compound word. Etymology functions differently with compound words — it seems as though Melville was the first to use the word in 1852: “All the garish night-life of a vast thoroughfare, crowded and wedged by day, and even now, at this late hour, brilliant with occasional illuminations.” This was in Pierre; or The Ambiguities, a book that I do not have the time to read right now. I have been accumulating books that I do not have the time to read, or rather accumulating links for them.

The first chapter of The Landscape of Events focuses on night and light. Once it became possible for the night to be lit, time changed. With it, language changed — many compound words with 'night-' were born.

Points

xxiii.

bouquet

24)

Points

xxiv.

bouquet

25)

The thing about Secret Defense is that you actually find out “the secret” unlike the other Rivettes which move about the secret, where the secret is fundamentally unknowable. The secret in Secret Defense is not unknowable but unspeakable — no one is able to utter the secret in its entirety. Which is the cause of Sylvie’s death. The impossibility of speaking the secret is the cause of the film’s final death.

The impossibility of speaking the secret is the cause of the film’s first (on-screen) death. The final death that preceded the commencement of filming, the last death before the initial cut, is not the secret. The death is known. As is the first death before the initial cut. After the death[s], the authorities assemble the evidence in order to create a reconstruction of the events. The reconstruction leads to a judgement, a cause of death is assigned. This cause is not the secret, nor part of the secret, but the veracity of the cause is. Only truth is not a binary, but a spectrum, or rather a topological space, where true and false do not represent fixed points but rather regions whose boundaries remain indeterminate — truth values exist in relation to one another within this space but cannot be assigned definite positions or topoi; true and false mark distinctions that dance about points rather than being definable locations. J.D: There is in every poetic text, just as in every utterance, in every manifestation outside of literature, an inaccessible secret to which no proof will ever be adequate… ‘One will never be able to prove that someone has lied.’

veracity (n.) 1620s, of persons, “habitual truthfulness;” from French véracité (17c.), from Medieval Latin veracitatem (nominative veracitas) “truthfulness,” from Latin verax (genitive veracis) “truthful,” from verus “true” (from PIE root *were-o- “true, trustworthy”). By 1660s as “fact or character of being true.”

Curiously, the first death strikes Véronique, who goes by Vero, whose name comes not from verus or were-o but from the Greek, from Berenike, goddess of Victory, rendered into Latin as Berenice. And Vero, this embodiment of a misheard truth, is replaced by a double. It is the double that pulls the trigger. Sylvie dies at the hands of near-truth’s double, hands which have pulled the trigger of Paul’s gun.

One can retrace the sequence of fallen dominoes the lead to this final death, a final death that is a reversal of the first death. The movement swings back and forth, like an idealized Newton’s cradle. Science functions as a fundamental staging device, with action migrating between the laboratory and properties purchased through the wealth of Pax Industries, the weapons company Sylvie’s father ran with Walser. A final etymological concern: that Pax is latin for peace, that the first domino fell for peace. And with it, a cemetery was borne.

Points

xxv.

bouquet

26)

I think it's good that I'm not getting geeked up rn because I really want to get geeked up rn. Last night I started two oil paintings that I plan on working on for a long time. I struggle with this — working on the same thing for a long a time. This morning I read Romeo and Juliet on the train and felt delirious. The biting of thumbs and accusations of quarrels felt like gang signs and calls to squabble up, the sort of approximation of language where you lack a precision of meaning towards each individual part, but can intuitively understand the whole — flu flamming, coals/colliers/cholers. Like we know the truth, like language living and dying, everything feels so foreign and I don't know when I'll be able to leave. I realized I want to leave because time works differently here and I desire the illusion of manipulating time. Which is part of the desire to get geeked up — to manipulate reality, writing of the holiest purpose, et cetera and so on. The track loops. I'm like Giannis. Bitch I need Bucks.

Really it's just this same feeling of nowhereness, and a lack of belonging. It's unfortunate because drugs do solve those problems in the short term. I have so much to do. That's what I do, give myself things to do, tasks to accomplish. It's not the boulder up the hill, but something else, movement around the map, writing the map, making the map. I'm hoping that I can feel something soon. The crisis will pass and there will be another crisis. Elsewhere I wrote that soon I would feel good, but now I'm not so sure. I would like to turn everything off, if only that were possible, but it is possible.

Points

xxvi.

bouquet

27) An old feeling — obsidian bleeding

Points

xxvii.

bouquet

28) The interest of the diary is its insignificance. That is its inclination, its law. To write every day, under the warranty of just this day, and to remind it of itself, is a convenient way of escaping both silence and the extravagance of speech. Each day tells us something different. Each day noted down is a preserved day. Doubly advantageous operation. We live twice.

"The diary in the beginning represented for me the supreme recourse to escape total despair confronting the act of writing," and also "The curious thing in my case is how little I have the feeling of living whe my diary accumulates only its deposit."

Down there, in The Waves, roars the risk of a work in which one has to disappear. Down there, in the space of the work, everything is lost and perhaps the work too is lost. The diary is the anchor that scrapes against the bottom of the day-to-day and clings to the roughness of vanity.

Someone does nothing in his life but writes that he does nothing, and there, all of a sudden, something is done.

... finally the hope, by uniting the insignificance of life with the nonexistence of the work, to raise null life up to the beautiful surprise of art, and formless art to the unique truth of life — the interlacing of all these various motives makes the diary an undertaking of redemption: one writes to save writing, to save one's life by writing, to save one's little self (the revenges one takes on others, the nastiness one distills) or to save one's great self by giving it scope, and then one writes in order not to be lost in the poverty of the days or, like Virginia Woolf, like Delacroix, in order not to be lost in this ordeal that is art that is in the limitless demand of art.

One writes to save the days, but one entrusts one's salvation to writing, which changes the day.

The diary linked to the strange conviction that one can observe oneself and that one must know oneself. But Socrates did not write.

It is tempting for the writer to try to keep a journal of the work he is writing. Is it possible?... To question oneself on one's projects, weigh them, verify them; as they develop, to comment on them, for oneself — that does not seem difficult. Doesn't the critic who, as they say, is a second creator, have his word to say? Can't this word take the form of a ship's log, in which from day to day the fortunes and blunders of navigation can be inscribed? And yet such a book does not exist. It seems that the experience unique to the work, the vision by which it begins, "the sort of wandering" that it provokes, and the unusual relationships it establishes between the man we meet every day and who carefully keeps a journal of himself and the being we see rise up behind each great work, the relationship between the work and the act of writing it, as between Isidore Ducasse and Lautréamont, must remain incommunicable.

We see why the writer can keep the diary only of the work that he does not write. We see, too, that this diary can be written only by becoming imaginary and by immerseing itself, like the the one who writes it, in the unreality of fiction.

We also feel that these fragments constitute the anonymous, obscure traces of the book that is trying to be realized, but only insofar as they do not have a visible connection with the life from which they seem to come, nor with the work to which they form the approach.

For the edges of a secret are more secret than the secret itself.

Points

xxviii.

bouquet

29) It's not that this is the most depressed that I've ever been so much as that it's impossible to remember past depressions, just as it's impossible to remember past highs, the precision of what it felt like is lacking in a significant way and my memories of memories seem to be forming into this muddy mass of gray. But also that I've cut myself off from the short-term escape routes, and have to wander the passageways until I find some sort of change in the geography.

Points

xxix.

bouquet

30) I described this to O as a game — that this is a game called reorientation, with new points from Rome and bouquets from the Orient. I am gathering the bodenlosflores from the past while writing new points and at some point there will be a convergence, upon which there will be no more new points and no more old flowers to gather but for now the bodenlosflores continue to bloom. I am producing texts, as I always am, although I am attempting to concentrate these productions through systems into more concretized forms. A play, an opera, a libretto, a music blog. Once there was an ideal of a novella. Before that was an ideal of a film.

People asked me what I did and I struggled to remember. Then it came back.

I have been trying to write but I feel an emptiness, as though my being is pure vacuity. All of this and there is still the I that I am trying to empty.

Points

xxx.

bouquet

31) I just won a lowball on grailed. It is a funny thing to have “won” — not explicitly, a game, and I don’t feel like a winner, I don’t feel like he’s a loser, and I don’t know if I want these pants, I forgot that I had made an offer on these pants, when did I make an offer on these pants, I deleted the emails saying my offer was accepted, just as I deleted the email saying I made the offer. But I did not delete the email where he messaged me back asking if we could meet in the middle. Only 5 minutes later he accepted my offer. The economy is bad. People need money. I need money, so why did I spent 40 dollars on a pair of used pants from Japan? I don’t even know if they’re actually from Japan or not, everything is vague. Tuesday night, I went on a non-date, which seems like the best term for such an evening, because it makes it clear that it wasn’t a date even though the activities were some date ass activities. I’m still trying to reconfigure my relationship to desire and obsession, right now I just feel this emptiness with most things and I keep proceeding forward, that notion of progress and the wreckage that is my life, my life that will come to an end. I am waiting for it to end, and I will keep waiting.

Points

xxxi.

bouquet

32) For a moment, I was I tonight. We went to see Bonjour Tristesse and then we went to JG Melon for a burger and a beer. When we got there, the man said that the wait would be 30 minutes. When putting a name down, I said my name was I and then I spelled it out. I and I walked to a nearby deli and each bought a small bottle of sparkling water. The bottles were glass. As we checked out, I noticed that I paid a little bit less than I did. My total was $3.26, his was $3.8something, my memory tells me $3.86 — I could ask him to check his charges. We walked back and when the host called us, he called me I like my name was I. Because I said it was.

Before we met we were both at work. We both work in offices. We talked about this, working in offices, and we talked about many other things. On Tuesday O had his thesis show, and later M and I were talking. We were talking in M's room and then we were talking on their roof. A few weeks ago, before starting this job in the office, I came over for dinner. We were going to talk about starting a company; instead we talked about our lives leading up to that moment. And the future.

We walked out of the theater and I said that Bonjour Tristesse was "buns". Which was probably the best way to start the conversation. I and I had gone to see a film that I liked and I didn't like. I read the film in relation to Va savoir (2001) and the idea of the French film in the 21st century. In relation to the past, present, and future of cinema. Bonjour Tristesse was a film which was a book, written by a teenager, which was made a film by Otto Preminger, before being remade today. On the walk to JG Melon, I asked if Preminger was German or Austrian, and I recalled together that he was Austrian. It's a significant difference. I wondered where exactly Preminger lived in Los Angeles, how far it was from I's house, or rather I's parents' house. Now I wonder how many of Preminger's residences remain. The Thomas Mann House in Pacific Palisades, which is now a museum, survived the Palisades fire but remains closed due to smoke damage. While the house was not directly destroyed by the fire, the damage is still being assessed, and the building needs a deep cleaning before reopening.

I is from Los Angeles and lives in New York. I am not from Los Angeles and live in New York. I and I live two streets away on Fresh Pond Road. We talked about living in Ridgewood, living with our parents, and the specifics of living where one grows up on the train ride home. I think I was tired at this point. I was talking more. I had taken a concerta that M had gave me on Tuesday night, or rather I took it and then told him, although he had said earlier that I could have some. I took it while I was doing cocaine with O. I didn't have an ideal place to put it, so it was loose inside a silk bag with various accoutrements. If I am wearing cargo pants, this bag is usually in my front-left pocket. If I am not wearing cargo pants, this bag is usually in my back-left pocket. On the train ride home from O and M's I ran into C and L. L didn't recognize me, I had changed how I'd looked, and we've only met briefly every time we've met. At O and M's, there were many people I knew that I'd met but that I couldn't remember but I did recognize. I knew that L didn't recognize me rather than remember me because he said "nice to meet you". There is a difference.

C had a bracelet on his arm that he was trying to take off. He doesn't work in an office. He works for an art gallery. He said he was working at an art fair and that that's what the bracelet was from. The bracelet was very tight and strong. He couldn't take it off with his hands. He looked in his backpack for scissors. There were not any scissors. I wondered if he had spray paint in the backpack. When I saw him at C's birthday party, C had just been arrested. He was allegedly walking on the train tracks at night. His backpack allegedly had cans in it. But he was not caught in the act. I don't think I need to use allegedly there. We talked about this and I realized that I had something sharp to cut off his wristband. In my pouch was a razorblade, Romanian 1 Leu note, slightly crusted with blood, and a small amount of cocaine. Everything else I had left at home. N left the razor blade here when he stayed one night. It has become a sort of a signature, as has the bag. Signature bear meanings and associations. They are recognizable signs for people to observe.

I messed up the last time N stayed the night. C and G came over. J came over too. In my mind we were going to talk about music and music-related things. And then I invited N because I was at his apartment working with A on a video. So there were 6 of us, since J was there too. N brought cocaine. Everyone drank beer except J and I. But I drank kava, kratom, and thc seltzers, snorted ketamine, snorted cocaine, smoked weed, and a cigarette or two or three. They went to get more beer. The amount of empty beer cans in the morning, considering only four people were drinking, was tremendous. But before the morning, N arrived. Probably around midnight. He had been drinking with Z at a nearby bar. I don't recall if he buzzed up but I don't think he did. I made him a set of keys to make things easier. In case I'm not home, or I'm sleeping. But now he was tired and I had told him earlier that he could sleep on the couch. But now we were on the couch, drinking snorting smoking, making music, and talking. He sat in the adjacent room, charging his phone. His charger is still there. So I told him he could sleep in my bed. Only bed is not a bed, but a mattress on the floor, and my bedroom lacks a strong delineation from the living room, there is only a curtain, and not a wall. We were up until 5 or 6 reveling. Once everyone left, I wrote for another hour or two. I was meeting L in the morning and I wanted to have some semblance of progress to display to him. When we met, we didn't look at the text in detail, rather we glanced at its surface. It is read best that way. I slept on the couch and N slept on my mattress, and when he left I went back to my mattress. I slept for a few more hours and left to get coffee with L. Later that day, I sent a link to a flickr album with images I had made from that night to the group chat and realized that I hadn't invited Z or I. I had realized this early in the night and thought about sending a last minute invitation, before the list of substances induced forgetting. I felt bad and apologized. It was a miscalculation — I am now trying to determine if it was a computational error, and if computation and calculation imply the use of a quantitative system, or if miscalculations can be errors in judgement where values are not fixed by systems or numerals. I am refraining from referencing an etymological dictionary, for the sake of time. Like I, I have to be in the office tomorrow.

If you recall, earlier I was in M's room. At first it was O and I in M's room. We used a Jutta Koether book. M picked out a picture frame. At one point he tapped the blade against the glass. It made a noise. It made a sound. There is a blurring between taking and taking. But I took half of what I took on Tuesday this afternoon, even though this afternoon has both passed and is yet to be. Perhaps this is not a day in the sense of a sunrise and a sunset, or in the sense of a fixed quantity of hours, minutes, seconds, measures of time — perhaps this is simply a set, a set that I am defining through writing it, and under such definitions, such a thing as this afternoon can exist without breaking the rules. The rules of time. The rules of the game. I was having a great run writing sans references. Sans titres. A collapse into Sang titre. I was moving files tonight. After I said bye to I, after we looked at the street signs wondering how long they had been there, I said they looked new, I said I had never noticed them before. Va savoir was moving between French, Italian, and English. The English was mostly in the subtitles. But I was thinking about how close amour is to a mort. Love and Death. It is not the same in English.

August 20, 1937
The English language is an infinite sea with no shores;
French is a sea which is full of enchanting islands, but also of
perilous reefs.

The first quotation; the first interruption. Will there be another? How long will it go on? I took half of what I took from M at the office and I continued to work. After work I took the train uptown, to meet I. We were going to meet at a deli with a hotbar that J had shown me when we went to go see a Johnnie To movie at the museum. But now we were meeting at the theater. I was running late. I asked I to grab me a Clif bar and told him that we should hit JG Melon after the film. I texted me that he had "chicken nuggets potatoes some pasta" and that it was "delicious". And that he had to wander far from the vicinity of the theater in order to find a bar. And then that he'd found a bar, that I should go and find seats at the theater. I was confused, I had forgotten what kind of bars we were talking about, or rather texting about, but then I remembered. For a moment I read I's message as saying something along the lines of: I'm going to a bar to drink instead of watching this movie, because I found this bar, and it is calling me more than Bonjour Tristesse is calling me. And that this was a joke. But then language aligned. I told me where he was sitting and then I found him. He showed me two bars and I took one of them and ate it discreetly. The film hadn't started yet, but I didn't want anyone to get mad. Before I got there, I texted me about the amount of old people there. This was who I figured would get mad. I replied asking about baddies. I and I agreed that there were a fair amount of baddies. I texted baddies seated behind us and then it got dark, I and I changed the settings on our phones, the film was screened, and then we got up, changed the settings on our phones, I went to the bathroom, I waited for me, and we walked up the stairs. There were many old people. The way in which we walked was different.

I narrated the trajectory of the director. How she came to make this film, her first film. I pointed out how there were not even short films that preceded it. Her filmography begins with a feature. And I traced back how such a thing came to be. I traced it back to the British colonization of Bengal and the establishment of Calcutta, now Kolkata. This is not entirely my tracing. I've talked about it with P, who has talked about it in regards to his academic sphere, where the glut of Bengali post-colonial scholars can also be traced back to colonization. Material conditions and aspirations. Before Tuesday, I was at M and O's apartment, it was M's birthday. I made him a card. I also met P, who said it was good to meet another Indian and asked me how often I go home. I didn't get into the complications of such a word like "home" with him and told him the last time I went to India. He said it had been six years since he's been, that he's from Singapore, but his family is from Delhi and Darjeeling. I had to ask questions to get this information. But it made sense in the way I expected. I talked about this with M later.

He asked if I was bothered but I wasn't really bothered. A different P came over last Friday. She came over to braid my hair but it wasn't the right day for that. I said that I would make food and I struggled with that. She wrote that we made soup and that I was dead and that she taught me how to use a can opener. I was dead because I didn't sleep, I was busy arranging a song, attempting over and over again, to get it right, and once I had settled on an idea of what was right, I had to make a video for the song. And I had to finish it all before it would go away. So in order to not sleep I was snorting cocaine and ketamine. I did not have to work the next day because my office was taking the day off for Easter. I do not get paid time off because I am not a full-time employee with benefits, but rather an independent contractor. I was trying to explain the nuances of this situation to H on the roof with M, but we were interrupted by K. This interruption was later, before I was working and not sleeping, which lead to my death. While I was dead, P and I talked about J, how they are both half-Indian but they are different. I said something about how one chooses to engage with their race. I can't remember exactly. I was still dead. P's dad is from Calcutta. I was reminded of it before, but I didn't write it, but now I must write another reference: Her Venetian Name in Deserted Calcutta. The same sounds as India Song, with different images. On the roof I was telling M that I don't think of myself as Indian so much as Tamil, that the Indian nation-state is problematized for me, that it is a problem of language, Tamil is Dravidian while Hindi is Indo-European, Hindi is linguistically closer to English and I only know a few words of Hindi, while I can speak Tamil poorly while understanding most of it, but that when I go to the North they think that I am from the North and don't understand why I can't speak Hindi. Years ago I watched an episode of a Louis Malle documentary about India, the episode focused on Tamil Nadu and the organized protests against Hindi in the schools there. The film recorded a process that shaped who I am, a process that I was not present for. Material conditions. While walking uptown, I and I talked about Bonjour Tristesse as this sort of aspirationally French film, and its relation to dislocation. A novel, written by a French teenager, adapted into a Hollywood movie made by an Austrian Jew. The novel was translated into English, the translation censored parts of the novel. It was translated into English again in the 2010s, this time without censorship. It would make sense that Preminger's film was adapted from the censored English novel. The industry moved fast and made a lot of money then. But I don't think Durga Chew-Bose used this new English translation. She was born in Montreal. I would assume she speaks Québécois.

I did not talk about this with I while we walked uptown, I read this later, I read this now. Now it is late. I have snorted all the cocaine I said I would snort. There is another bag, but I don't want to open that bag. It is 4:10 in the morning, like a Drake song, 4:10 AM in Ridgewood, 4:10 AM on Fresh Pond Road, Fresh Pond Road Flows, 4:10 AM in Queens, 4:10 AM in New York City. This is where I live. I lives here too. J is gone right now. He's in Paris visiting his brother. Z and I suggested that he meet up with J, but she is not in Paris, she is in New York. She got here on Tuesday. When I saw her at O and M's apartment, she talked to me about how I know S, and how the world is small. I said French words with J and O, but I cannot speak French. Material conditions. It only gets later and now it feels both inevitable and right:

material(adj.)
mid-14c., "real, ordinary; earthly, drawn from the material world" (contrasted with spiritual, mental, supernatural), a term in scholastic philosophy and theology, from Old French material, materiel (14c.) and directly from Late Latin materialis (adj.) "of or belonging to matter," from Latin materia "matter, stuff, wood, timber" (see matter (n.)).
From late 14c. as "made of matter, having material existence; material, physical, substantial." From late 15c. as "important, relevant, necessary, pertaining to the matter or subject;" in the law of evidence, "of legal significance to the cause" (1580s).

condition(n.)
mid-14c., condicioun, "particular mode of being of a person or thing," also "a requisite or prerequisite, a stipulation," from Old French condicion "stipulation; state; behavior; social status" (12c., Modern French condition), from Medieval Latin conditionem (nominative conditio), properly condicio "agreement; stipulation; the external position, situation, rank, place, circumstances" of persons, "situation, condition, nature, manner" of things, from condicere "to speak with, talk together, agree upon," in Late Latin "consent, assent," from assimilated form of com "together" (see con-) + dicere "to speak" (from PIE root *deik- "to show," also "pronounce solemnly").
Classical Latin condicio was confused in Late Latin with conditio "a making," from conditus, past participle of condere "to put together." The sense evolution in Latin apparently was from "stipulation" to "situation, mode of being."
Meaning "rank or state with respect to ordered society" is from late 14c. in English. From the notion of "prerequisite" comes the sense of "a restricting or limiting circumstance" (late 14c.). Also in Middle English "personal character, disposition" (mid-14c.).

And it would be tidy and clean, but I am not quite yet ready for it to end. Unwoven, stray threads, looming in my memory. It would be clean and tidy, but it would be abrupt. Would it be properly woven? It is how I work, I was talking to I about this while we ate burgers. I got mine medium, I got his medium-rare. I got a Budweiser, I got a seasonal draft beer. I can't remember what it was. We split fries. On the menu they're called "cottage fried potatoes". I used ketchup, I talked about how he doesn't like ketchup on burgers. I had to shake the bottle vigorously for the ketchup to come out. It was heavy and glass. I was talking to I about the office, I was talking to me about the office. We were eating burgers and drinking beer after work. We talked about burgers, we talked about drinking, we talked about drugs.

I took a break from drinking about two months ago. But I have not been sober, clearly. But today, "Having a beer" became a linguistic problem. Maybe it's because it was so nice out. J and I left the office a little after noon to go get lunch. We wanted to get banh mi's from the food truck on Water Street, but there were many people waiting. This was because it was so nice out. So we went to the Japanese deli. I got a Poke bowl and an Asahi Dry Zero. It was the first non-alcoholic beer I've bought, sometimes I drink the ones J leaves in the fridge. I'm not sure if he buys them or boosts them. It doesn't particularly matter. But I had a beer with my lunch. And I had a beer with my dinner. I had been saying that I was not going to drink until the play. I have been talking about the play, because one has to talk about the play, yet talking about the play then constitutes a situation in which one must talk about the play. I switched from I to one. The play is coming together. But it is a lot of work. And different kinds of work. I have described it to a few people, and I have described L and I's coffees to a few others. I've written about it in correspondence. What a formal way to put it.

And I was talking to I about not drinking, because he didn't drink for a long time, and now he drinks but he rarely gets drunk. I was talking about being at the bar with O and M and K and J and N and J and K and J and all the repeating letters. This time there are no numbers. L and I were not drinking. L went home at a reasonable hour. I went home at a reasonable hour too, but it was after K wanted to leave, so she left without me. And I went home and I read and I wrote, I wrote what I felt was the foundation of the play, a foundation of ideas, with some text. I wrote a secret, a secret between L and I, and M who prints and binds the books for me. Another quotation, this time M. Blanchot, interrupts For the edges of a secret are more secret than the secret itself.

M was talking about the lack table. Later I was re-writing my writing: There was no grand epiphany, no incredible realization by the end. The end wasn't the end, it was simply a departure. Plans were made for the near future, both firm and loose. Handshakes were exchanged. Deliberations were conducted. The night ended at a certain point, but the task that remains is to ascertain when. Paris Belongs To Us was playing in the theater of The 400 Blows, or so said M. Lack. The name was striking. It recalled cigarettes and absences. When the room was empty, I played a song I had written earlier, about picking things up and putting them down. I sent O and M my film, from when my voice was different, from when the world was different, but the same. The world was always different, the change was always constant. I don't have hope, nor do I have the absence of it. And I recognize the role that time will play, in this future to come. It will come and things will be different, the change will be continue to be constant, I will continue to live, to die, to pick up, and put down. An exercise emerges: How long can I hold a pose? And does holding a pose change the nature of time's length? If the past was brief, then that was a matter of memory. If a recollection was brief, then that was the nature of what the two parties felt was owed. He was talking, he was talking and repeating himself outside inside common knowledge, thinking of all the games to be played. Traincars turned to dominoes. Factories on the horizon signified an exit. So much of it was gone now, the glowing sign was neither haven nor solace. Eventually: 1610s, "pertaining to events," from French éventuel, from Latin event-, stem of evenire "to come out, happen, result" (see event). Meaning "ultimately resulting" is by 1823. Perhaps that was the signal. He stumbled into an old habit, realized it was best to wait, that he could wait while taking action.

I said I couldn't be a Sunday painter. An old phrase comes back, from where? From memory: this is where I've been keeping myself.

5:00 AM in Queens. Tomorrow I will go to the office. Incorrect. In the morning I will go to the office. Remember: this point can close. And another point can open. Is it opening and closing, is that the operation at hand? Or is it something else, like emerging and submering, dissolving and solidifying, condensing, materializing. These words are not opposites, nor are they pairs. I can quote myself again, this time from prosthesis rather than memory: This question of a stopping point... Stopping does not mean writing ends. Stopping does not mean inscription ends. Stopping only means that these [points and bouquets] must stop. Must stop - because that's what feels necessary. Writing of the holiest purpose: I realized stopping must stop... There is a realization: I don't desire stopping any longer. This isn't to say that this stopping is different than that stopping, or that the desire to embark on one stopping is different from the desire to embark on another stopping, only that I don't want this coda, this ending, this musical term — that I desire the ending but not the ending. I want free fall, but I don't want impact. I want and I desire yet what if I stopped wanting and desiring, what if I embraced this finitude with open arms? Is it possible? This infinite text, another infinite conversation, a coda, an ending, a musical term, that comes after the body of the text, after the footnotes, but before the last things last, ever expanding. And yet this can't stretch out forever, it needs things, oil and minerals, extraction of the earth. I don't desire the stopping of this coda, this ending, this musical term — do I desire the stopping of this extraction?

Does it work here? Do these interruptions of stopping stop? It is not a matter of force, earlier I was talking to I about discipline. The dawn is creeping in. There was something else. It was about remembrance.

Points

xxxii.

bouquet

33) But I stopped being I. It had to end. Because I went to the office and I didn't.

After producing such a volume of text, I had to face the question of what had been produced besides production.

Perhaps I continue linearly, of what was written after stopping:

I went to my mattress and laid down, but I couldn't fall asleep. I laid there for a few hours, swiping on my phone. Eventually the sun started to rise and I went back to the couch. I snorted more K and realized that I wouldn't fall asleep for a while. The light came in and with it a sort of delirious dreamlike state. What happens when you dilate time and days. I used to do this so often, but I hadn't done it like this in a couple of years. I ended up going to bed around 4pm. I'm trying to recall what happened in the hours before then. I tried to watch some films but I couldn't. I made some arrangements for the text to be performed. I read and I took notes. I ate some freezer waffles. I worked my job from home. I went to bed. I missed Z's screening. I didn't take out the trash. The next day I woke up and got ready to go print with M. I had everything with me but my keys when I left. I realized this immediately. So I texted N, asking if I could come to New Jersey to pick up the keys from him. I told M that I would hang out with him, but had to bail. To some extent, the drugs are fucking up my friendships. I printed with M and felt insane in the printing environment and what American academia / art school is. We went to O's show, which I read in more detail, before leaving with the books in hand to meet L for coffee. I got the espresso shaken with sugar that I had been craving and we talked for a bit before going back to his apartment. We talked more about the play and setting things into action. We listened to some music and worked through some references. Made plans. Then he went to work and I went to New Jersey. I went to N's house. It's a house and not an apartment. We talked there and then we got Japanese food and talked there. Then we went to an empty classroom and screened parts of films and talked more. Went back to his house and talked. And in the morning we talked. We attempted to make a track, during which we didn't talk much. All this to be said, I am trying to make sense of what was said.

Points

xxxiii.

bouquet

34) I will wait until the morning. And attempt to start anew. Reorientation is something of a captain's log. The act of mapping is more direct. Tonight I dock at port in order to coordinate the journey.

Points

xxxiv.

bouquet

35) Maybe the situation is that I am able to draw considerably, but that I struggle to bring a work into completion. That many of my works are the stringing together of drawings, in such a way that they bring about the illusion of completion. Or that by framing these drawings as a work I stop them, they become ossified. And then there is nowhere else for them to go.

What I see in Rivette is this chase, this paranoiac chase for someone sort of answer, some magical text, that will bring the disparate threads into a unification. Goldoni's lost play. When Colin realized that his search for the thirteen was misguided and that there were better questions that he could ask. But what are these questions. Perhaps this is what the play can be — the play is not fixed, it will evolve and continue to evolve as it is read and rehearsed. I have a starting point.

What N talked about was what gets in the way of creating the work, and what accelerates the drawings that remain drawings. Of course, I have my sort of obsession with the drawing. With the work around the work. But L and I were talking about that Berenson quote, about the life of a work of art, and how facile that sort of statement is. Rivette's life was a remarkable life yes, but the films are what are truly remarkable. And his life was a secret, that's what Bulle Ogier said in that interview, along the lines of it being inpenetrable, unknown, she only knew him through the context of his directing, through work. I rewatched parts of Gang of Four last night and was blown away yet again. N showed me a book of plays by Marivaux. When I was meeting with L I talked about rewatching certain Rivettes and the idea of rewatching these films again once I have read the plays that are being cited. A new meaning-making formulation would unlock itself.

And I texted O about the commitment. Throwing away the fryer after my soujourn. What the subtitle said: You must have destruction and doubts in order to rebuild, create, invent. Destruction and doubt, that's what I have to teach you.

Now I am in the office and the day remains.

Points

xxxv.

bouquet

36) I got sick which brought about the larger problem of how often I get sick. Body on mattress, mind unable to do what it should, thinking back to the Carrere, Paul as a sickly man.

Time elapsed. What happened in that time? In the room, little happened, the passage of time. A cough and a wheeze — interuptions of silence. There was silence for the first time in a while.

We've begun to work on the play.

Points

xxxvi.

bouquet

37) Every few minutes the ceiling fan makes a noise that sounds like the wheels on an office chair rolling while a brake is being triggered. It is a skidding noise, a mechanical noise. It means that there is something wrong with the ceiling fan. The level of wrongness is relative. The fan is still operational. If it were to fall that would be a problem. But I think it is far enough from me to where I would not get hurt. I haven't been able to write very much lately. My mind has felt slow. This is normal when getting sick. I have a record that proves that. Normal in the sense that it happened once in the past; proof in the sense that a record of it exists from the past. I've been thinking about types of production lately, about channeling production into a certain, well, channel. And then the energy is released through a certain form.

Perhaps this lack of production isn't a bad thing — that a large volume of text is not actively being produced. There were the movies I watched when I was sick: The Fast and the Furious, The Dark Knight, Gladiatior, Gladiator 2, Inception. Popular cinema. O and I were talking about the public. Tomorrow I'll talk to him about his book. I will not have the right copy of my old book to give to him. E still has it. But I could ask for it back, and there's a chance that the morning will work. But the point of meeting isn't to give him my book, but to talk about his book. His book is a novel, my book is a book of writing. There is a difference, and one can ascribe a label onto anything, one can call an essay film an action movie, but there is still a socially inscribed set of expectations based on titles, and failure to adhere to titles can cause one's audience to have an adverse relationship with the work. The public is small, the public can be large. Nolan reaches a large public. I watched Inception in a movie theater. They used to play Godard in movie theaters, and movies in movie theaters used to be different. The movies were different but the types of movies were also different. This is true of books too. The books in stores were different, the types of books were different. The volume of books and the volume of movies were also different.

I posted a picture of birds today. Instagram inhibits my ability to produce. I am well-aware of this. I think now is a time where I can move away from Instagram though.

Points

xxxvii.

bouquet

38) I think my problem with desire isn't a lack of it but that I desire so much at once, and only part of that so much isn't enough, I would rather have nothing than have not enough. P's roommate wants to hang out and P tells me that she broke up with N, who she wasn't really dating, which explains why she wants to hang out. I'm trying to get myself to care but when I don't see anything going anywhere I really wonder why. And then I'm inclined to not. And I could be the one lacking in vision. I want to go back to India and not have to work but I would have to give up my room, and despite its lack of a final enclosing wall, it is a comfortable room. I would rather have nothing than have not enough. There is a difference between not having enough and having not enough. One is a type of possession, the other is a type of non-possession. There is an honesty in the images one makes that's inescapable.

Points

xxxviii.

bouquet

39) I think it was both good and bad that I mainlined my first love in such an intense way. Like sipping act in 2014, now I can't afford it. Or find it. I think it's funny that I use the phrase ex ex girlfriend because she is they now and I haven't talked to her in 5+ years and the illusion of anything with her existing in relation to futurity has been shattered for years, naturally. But it's the relation to the intensity of the thing, that I met someone where the idea of Being-In-Love was mutually so inundating, that we met in Croatia after epistolary romance turned into auditory romance such that the timbre of a voice could do such a thing, that we had a period of isolation to only get deeper into the delusion, and that the way it shattered shattered in the way that it had to. So it makes sense that when M said she loved me that I couldn't reciprocate, and those things aren't supposed to function in relation to reciprocation, they're just supposed to be — "supposed to be", like there's an assumption of the state of things — perhaps I'm closing in on the why and how of opening my heart once again. Perhaps it'll be gone in the morning.

Points

xxxix.

bouquet

40) I have to write the play by Sunday. I will write the play by Sunday. Work has changed my life in significant way, but it's a thing where I can't let it stop me. Part of that means recalibrating mentally, such that my mind is freer, less spent, and taxed by this labor. Or, should push come to shove, it means recalibrating physically, practically, finding new means. On Monday, I had what felt like a breakthrough in thinking about the play. Part of this was the time, the not having to work. But still there was a rush, I was between my book, my computer, between the laundromat and the Japanese restaurant. The string from my notebook dragged through the green tea for a moment and I drank it anyways. Z said this was gross later, when I brought up the incident in response to something gross that had happened to him.

Now I can't recall where the idea the ideas I had, as far as resequencing, rewriting, expanding, and contracting came from. That day became a blur, the park and Rodeo took over, playing a day in a certain way twice over. I didn't even rap about that, but I'll have the chance soon. A sequence of events, if only because it was a day of movement, with many people. Letters and numbers. Reductive. I would've hung out with J in the morning, we would've talked about M more, and the incident from Friday. I haven't been detailing my life in such a way ——— or at least I haven't here, I emailed P about it, a sort of way of letting it exist in writing, while maintaining privacy. But I've talked about words received, as I'm sure she has, to some degree, but wonder if I should have. J left to go set up the barbeque and that's when I started — started to... to start. Started to start, started to start to write, re-write, think conceptualize. I had to laundry to have clothes for the show and I realized I was running out of time before I had to get to the park. I told myself I wouldn't take an uber because I don't have the money and I can't make the concept of the debt incurred tangible in a meaningful sense. Maybe most people can't, and that's why the derivatives market only exists and is understood by a few. In any case, I did the laundry, obtained clean tank tops, and while doing this, I took my notebook to E-Chiban, ordered the sashimi lunch with miso soup and tea, and filled pages for the first time in months, but really years. The last words left were "I've had this book for so long — because I've been putting myself elsewhere. My writing... my handwriting". Quoting J, a song we made together, on a beat he made, sampling MCR. But there has been very little handwriting, it's been websites and Tumblr posts. And emails, and actions, and withholding. I used to burn through these books, an exaggeration, but they filled up quicker, time was different. I turned on my old computer and started looking through the files. There's a music video that might be on it, but doesn't seem to be there. But there are old images. Images of journals, from years ago, reading: all I am doing is filling up different white spaces with things it's all I know how to do and the world needs me to do something more but that isn't what I want. I just want to not feel like this to not be depressed — that's probably asking for too much. what's less? being alive, [scribbled out text]. There's a certain poverty to my language at that point. As though I lacked an adolescence of reading and writing words.

this film I'm making feels like an exercise in imitation. I'm chasing marker, akerman, mekas, it feels idiotically ambitious to be doing so. and it's strange that they're dead but still have so many ties to the present world, existing in memories & artifacts. I recently read a piece lynne sachs wrote about marker after his passing in BOMB magazine — about the impact of sans soleil, that she had met him and he refused a picture. it's strange to think that I could meet her, that she still exists in the same world as me. most of the writers I read & the filmmakers I watch are dead, firmly lodged into the past, inaccessible, almost mythic. tomorrow I'll take the train to mysore which I'm sure will unlock some memories & feelings & words. I should've been writing more earlier, the words were bubbling out yet I tried to store them instead of immediately recording them and it feels like I'm grasping for something that's already gone. I had thoughts about depression, about my mother, about the shootings in el paso & ohio, about baurdrillardy and simulacra, about her & trying to stop my mind from going there but all that's there now are memories of these thoughts. eventually the memories will fade & all that I'll have are these words. I used to think I had an excellent memory, others would still say I do, but I'm unsure whether I retain the original or just constantly make copies of copies of copies, If my mind just holds a series of referants.

I've been going through old things lately, documents from before I was an Artist and a Writer in the way that I am now, texts and images and attempts in their early forms, which have now matured. I wanted to delete that quoted fragment as I typed it, but I allowed it to continue, without interruption, and once I reached the end, I thought it in relation to the words above here, and the other words of the last few years. I lost that notebook after a halloween party where I interned, I was falling asleep on the subway station after throwing up, they gave me too much free alcohol. I was embarassed that I threw up in the office toilet and left immediately, but I'm sure felt a sense of responsibility or guilt that they let me get the drunk the next day. Or no one thought anything of it. The age gap of me to the others was similar to that of me and M now, which is a friendship that I'm very happy about. Interesting to think about, but I was also missing many of the experiences that M had that I hadn't. Material conditions, circumstances, I did away with the numbers, an inelegant system to begin with, replaced by fluidity, without visible seams.

I was attempting to recall the day, or to inscribe the day. To turn the day into text-image, or image, to strip it from its being as memory, but also to gestate its formation as memory. A version of what I wrote almost 6 years ago. When I used to write with dates. I still write with dates, but they exist without visible seams, replaced by fluidity. Fragments that are unclear, will remain unclear, and exist of tenuous "value". "Value" insofar as writing is considered — I was talking about this to V at the bar, being prolific in a way that he is entirely unaware of, he wasn't encyclopedic, at least not in the way at I am and there was a high degree of relatability and mutual interests. For some reason, I feel the need to clarify that I am being critical, not critical, and to write out my good will. But this volume, its "accessibility", its "value" — in any case, I went to E-Chiban after going to the laundromat. I went to the laundromat and I started to wash my clothes then went back to the apartment, set the detergent on the table, set the laundry bag on the chair, and then went to have my lunch. I think I had olive bread for breakfast. And black coffee, and a spinach pastry. I woke up early because of the sun. I've been waking up earlier, the next things are going to the temple and going to the gym.

At the restaurant, I returned to the flow chart. I hadn't drawn one in a while, they don't come naturally on the computer, the computer formats my mind into linearities, it is not fluid, it is rigid, even if one achieves the image of fluidity it is because of a system, or a series of systems, of rigidity. On the paper, with the pen, things open up. I haven't been drawing or painting much, let alone handwriting lately. On making music. I've mostly been writing and watching and working towards the play. Which is a series of drawings or paintings. But they should be paintings with narratives, like The Adoration of the Shepherds, an adaptation of an episode from the New Testament, from the Gospel of Luke. An episode adapted over and over, an image with a relation to replication, in that time, when the replication of images was arduous, time-consuming. I've been thinking about Nolan recently, a sort of Hitchcock/Truffaut type exercise. In my mind, Nolan represents Hollywood and America, but at a specific bridge point. Someone recently told me that it's like my films aren't America. It was A, he's from New Zealand. An interesting comment to receive. It was also rare that he was a fan in such a way, such that he would quickly tell me that he likes the work, and asks why I slowed down. I didn't really slow down, production shifted. And I have been working back towards the image, as well as how to work with reality to shape and make that image. A natural and artifical process. Outdated binary maybe. Atomic soup.

The flow-chart reworked The Pig Trade to start with Algeria, with Kress & Duveen, their negotiation and a line like this: | , delineating a territory on the page, for Derrida, Glas, Cixous, Hyperdream, Benjamin's Bed. Below that, notes about Algiers, The Battle of Algiers, Oran, the outpost in Gladiator II, Algiers flowing into the Roman Empire below, flowing into Rome/Italy/Vatican, below that [Church] and Italy is separated into territories, Rome, Napoli, Florence, Sicily, Puglia, Sicily flowing to the mafia, to The Equalizer 3, to Albanians and that Berenson quote about gangsters. He would have dealt with gangsters in Italy. He had to. There is a barrier but the Albanians pass through. Notes about Algeria, Gold, Extraction, Cocaine, Global Distribution Networks. Today S. Paul recieved a package from DHL. T sending me back my field recorder. To use in making The Pig Trade. I messaged her essai logique (deux), which I only made the day after. The idea of translating a joke, repeatedly, across contexts, what connects, what doesn't, but also this repeating of a joke, until it ceases to be funny, and then until what end, what purpose does the joke serve. All of my jokes, my jokes to myself, the dopamine, but it's more than the dopamine. When I went to Il Barbiere di Siviglia, I said it like that at Triest to H, my realization was that they're working on Prometheus Bound because they're searching for an origin. etymologie. But I said that day felt important. At the picnic I talked to J for a while, and it was a very enjoyable conversation. I drank a weed soda on my way to the picnic. It was a BBQ and not a picnic. F organized it. I was very happy she organized it, because people rarely organize things like that. I wanted to have a party, it would've been tomorrow night, but then we had the incident. Still, we'll have another party within the next few months. C was talking about that era when there were so many parties, and now that era's ended, and you take it for granted while it's happening, that there will always be a party. C and M's housewarming party was one of those last parties. I got there in an uber with I and D and L and A and one other guy. It was my first time seeing L in a while, she had a new haircut, it was a really strong haircut, like a 90s Hong Kong film look. I can't recall if I ran into her at any of the Johnnie To's, but I ran into her on the street once, I talked about my Chinese movie a bit. I'd like to return to the Chinese movie after the play is done, to swing the momentum in that direction. Z said he would help, he seemed enthused. He's also pursuing theater, but in a form different than me. After his reaction to La Boheme in relation to mine, my mind drifted and then went back to seeing El Greco as a teenager, The Holy Family with Mary Magdalene, or trying to see, read, gain a sense of understanding. Maybe in a sense, to imbibe it with narrative, or at least with information.

Is it simply a matter of information? This desire to fill white space. The charts continue on the next page, smuggling of art connecting to freeports and freeport architecture, the malleability of wealth, Tenet lingering in my mind, in relation to Hito Steyerl and knowledge that things exist. A thought about Tenet and the opera, the opening scene at the opera house, the idea of the mass, and the popular in relation to entertainment, a new current flow to the Canetti that remains unread, on the page is the idea of the intermission, and the intermission in India, where there wasn't opera in relation to the cinema, and where it was a social event. Then the structure formed:

It starts at 7, and from 7 to 7:30 there is music. Then the first act goes from 7:30 until 8:30. There is a 30 minute intermission until 9. The second act is from 9 to 10. There is a note about the intermission as an Inflection Point. Then I write about the reader, the playbill. There is a term for it. Then a list: Boulez Translation, Play Synopsis by Acts, Cast & Crew Biographies. Advertisements: Galleries, Institutions, Bars / Restaurants / Etc. with Special Deals, flowing to Eeel Bar Somm Where etc. Then a list of scenes.

Scene 1: Algeria - 1920 - Frog Joke + Bargaining

Scene 2: I Tatti - 193X

Scene 3: I Tatti - 193X

Scene 4: Albania - 2020 - Frog Joke + Bargaining

Scene 5: I Tatti - 193X

FIN

FIN is in a box. Below it a line, then a note about the aforementioned retelling of a joke. Another delineation, for the idea of Worlds, their construction, their fabulation, flowing to what holds them up, flowing to their architecture, also in a box. Then a list of different paintings of The Adoration of the Shepherds. We can make paintings over and over again, but why not films. At least why not in that certain way, of attempting to retell the same story, rather than expanding the story, and Nolan returns, with his Batman, which is the iterative spectacle of our time, at least in that different voices attempt to tell it, rather than attempting to be a consistent studio product. That list then shaped the video I made. With the scene from Gang of Four overlaid with the mistranslated action, being read for the first time, most parties without context. The joke doesn't work. And then I told the story of N repeating that joke to me, with no context, and repeating the subtitled joke rather than the joke itself, but I presented went beyond that, it attempted to slightly shift Rivette's reality, such that the events of the joke were (re-)enacted. That is on the left, on the right are eight versions of The Adoration of The Shepherds. El Greco's is the first, then these dark Rembrandts, outside of this text are his replications, his name, his signature, then Caravaggio, Poussin, and then the final version, the one the narrative made important, because of its greatness, but because of the relation of greatness to the market, like an NBA player (more of a footnote than a comma moment), but the authorship blurred, Titian/Giorgione. Not an attempt or making a video or a film, but drawing out an Idea, like Straub-Huillet or Farocki, in relation to theatrical action I want to take place. To work with the presence of the human body, its voice, and its extensions, its technical devices. That flows into the idea of reading/not-reading, the public as a body, meaning what? That there's flesh, bone, structure, composition, implying an inevitability of decomposition? But where does this most recent implication come from? Can a body composed not remain? For how long is not the issue, How may be the issue, how can a body composed not remain? What is this remaining, this paralysis, this ossification.

ossify(v.)
1713, intransitive, "to harden like bone, become bone;" 1721, intransitive, "convert to bone;" a back-formation from ossification, or else modeled on French ossifier (18c.) and formed from Latin os (genitive ossis) "bone" (from PIE root *ost- "bone") + -fy. Figurative sense "become rigid and fixed" (of thought, customs, etc.) is by 1858. Related: Ossified; ossifying.

paralysis(n.)
1520s, "impairment of the normal action of the nervous system in bringing body parts or organs into action," from Latin paralysis, from Greek paralysis "paralysis, palsy," literally "loosening," from paralyein "disable, enfeeble," from para- "beside" (see para- (1)) + lyein "loosen, untie" (from PIE root *leu- "to loosen, divide, cut apart"). Figurative meaning "loss of energy, loss of the power of performing regular functions" is from 1813. Earlier form was paralysie (late 14c., see palsy). Old English equivalent was lyft adl (see left (adj.)) or crypelnes "crippleness."

I talked about ossification with S, this was when I saw him last, on the Upper East Side, we went to the Twombly Show, at my suggestion. Narrative propulsion. That was the phrase I was using to descibe what Nolan does, where concepts do not entirely need to cohere nor be understood, but only to present a surface, a reflection. The idea of a puzzle rather than a puzzle to be solved; or the image of a puzzle, or rather than a puzzle: puzzle(v.) 1590s, pusle "bewilder, confound, perplex with difficult problems or questions," possibly frequentative of pose (v.) in obsolete sense of "perplex" (compare nuzzle from nose). To puzzle (something) out "resolve or discover by long cogitation or careful investigation" is by 1781. Related: Puzzled; puzzling. The question of value, of time, or energy, its creation, its conservation, how it flows. Flow, the systems that govern it.

In the midst of this flow, I attempt to reorient myself and return not to a prior place, but a fork, a turn departed from. A turn, which could imply taking turns in a multi-player game, but it could also imply a decision, left, right, up, down. A large entry, turn:

turn(v.)
Middle English turnen, from late Old English turnian "rotate, revolve; move about an axis, center, or fixed position," also in part from Old French torner, tornier, Anglo-French turner "turn away or around; draw aside, cause to turn; change, transform; turn on a lathe" (Modern French tourner). All are from Latin tornare "to polish, round off, fashion, turn on a lathe," from tornus "lathe," from Greek tornos "lathe, tool for drawing circles" (reconstructed in Watkins to be from PIE root *tere- (1) "to rub, turn"). From late 12c. as "change position or orientation so as to face or point in a different direction," hence "change course, go in a different direction." In reference to the tide, etc., "reverse course or direction," c. 1300. Transitive senses in English are from c. 1200 as "cause to shift so as to face in a different direction;" by c. 1300 as "cause a change of course." Related: Turned; turning. Many figurative senses and expressions (turn (something) into (something else)) likely grew from the notion of "shape (something) while rotating it on a lathe or wheel, form or fashion (a piece of wood or metal) with a chisel while the object is rotated," the classical sense, attested in English by mid-14c. "Execute in round outlines," hence "form, fashion, or shape in any way" (1610s). From late 12c. as "cause to undergo transmutation from one substance to another." Hence "change in a character or property" (color, thickness, mass, etc.), c. 1300, also transitive. The sense of "become sour or tainted" is by 1570s. Also from late 12c. as "lead to" (grief, advantage, etc.), "result as a consequence of;" from c. 1200 as "come to pass, happen, occur." Also from c, 1200 as "become inverted, assume a reverse or contrary position;" also "repel" (evil, danger); "rout in battle." By c. 1300 as "shift allegiance, shift loyalties, change sides," also transitive. To turn down (v.) "reject" is recorded by 1891, American English. To turn in "go to bed" is attested from 1690s, originally nautical. Turn to "look to for help or hope, have recourse" is from late 14c. To turn the stomach "nauseate" is recorded from 1620s. To turn (something) loose "set free" is recorded from 1590s. To turn up one's nose as an expression of contempt is attested from 1779.

The next page in my notebook contained a schema of sorts. A box at the top, inside the box was Narrator. Then the numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4 in small circles. Below that a list of names. 1: BB, Kress, Gangster #1. 2: Mary, Shawl-Man. 3: Duveen, Fowles, Cyril Connolly. 4: Nicky, Mary's Daughter. Below that 10 in a circle. A line went through the 0, vertically. Gangster #2 was crossed out from the 2 list.

Below that was another schema. This time the numbers were a column on the left, marking 5 sequences of names as one moves down the page.

1) Duveen. Kress. Shawl-Man. Fowles.

2) BB. Nicky. Mary. Duveen.

3) Mary. BB. Duveen. Nicky.

4) Gangster #1. Connolly. BB. Duveen.

2) Mary. Nicky. The Swede. Mary Daughter.

Below this an arrow, a flow, to the idea that Mary is writing the Gospels in the final act. Mary's Gospels. The heretic, the unorthodox. The El Greco comes back. The next few pages have rough sketches of the set piece. Then a relation: Africa / Homelessness / Virlio / Speed, flowing to the housing start-up that houses the world, contemporary living, urban migration, and then there are no more notes. A schema of the above, combined, given form, architected, a sloppy word. Translated, I suggested it to D and then he read some of. And now he's going to Puglia.

Theater Production Schema
Theater Production Schema
Scene Characters
1) Algeria - 1920 - Logic Joke + Bargaining Duveen. Kress. Shawl-Man. Fowles.
2) I Tatti - 193X BB. Nicky. Mary. Duveen.
3) I Tatti - 193X Mary. BB. Duveen. Nicky.
4) Albania - 2020 - Logic Joke + Bargaining Gangster #1. Connolly. BB. Duveen.
5) I Tatti - 193X Mary. Nicky. The Swede. Mary Daughter.
Performance Schedule
7:00 - 7:30 Music
7:30 - 8:30 Act I
8:30 - 9:00 Intermission (30 minutes) - Inflection Point
9:00 - 10:00 Act II
Playbill Contents
Content Description
Boulez Translation Musical interpretation and score notes
Play Synopsis by Acts Detailed breakdown of narrative structure
Cast & Crew Biographies Artist profiles and background information
Advertisements
Galleries Art exhibitions and cultural institutions
Institutions Museums, theaters, and cultural centers
Bars / Restaurants / Etc. Special deals and dining experiences flowing to Eeel Bar Somm Where etc.
FIN

Points

xxxx.

bouquet

41. Things can be generated, inserted, use the information above, place it in relation to a dataset, datasets, gradient descent, hallucinations, synthetic data. That one N told me about in the car in Oakland. But the script for the play cannot be generated, that isn't the relation I want it to have to technology. Because of this idea about the performance and it's relation to the human, but also to time, that the purpose of performance is that it was a technology, just like Prometheus's flame, or what can be done with hair. Tonight C said I looked like a fine shyt from the back with my curls out. I made resolutions for actions to take in the morning. And resolutions for actions to take in the immediate.

What the machine cannot do

An outline for The Pig Trade — to be translated once again.

The first scene is in Algeria. It can be in Algiers, it could be in Oran. It could be both. But it is before they built the monument. And it is before the war, before the battle, it is while Algeria is a colony. I ask for a history of Algeria, the Roman Empire, the Arab conquest and its caliphates, the Berbers, the Ottomans, the French. The play should open with the logic joke. I erased a section above where I called it the frog joke. Changed it to the logic joke. The emphasis on the frog was my error, and then it manifested itself as such. The logic joke became the frog joke. Or rather, the joke became the frog joke, and now I am attempting to re-christen it 'the logic joke'. Because I think the logic joke is better, it takes time to get the joke, to follow it to its conclusion. In that time, you can get swept into something else. Narrative propulsion. The shawls are haggled for by Kress and Duveen watches. They are the ones telling the joke. The joke was told and the haggling was done. Are they in Algiers or Oran? In Oran is Cixous and her family house, her mother's house if I can recall, her mother who bought Benjamin's bed, and her brother who slept on it for many years, who never knew. Knew what? Too much to explain. I was returning, looking at my markings, my colors. This week there was a post of a circular rainbow, I thought on monasteries and I thought of what happened. Now time happened. I am fighting time to write, to my gain, to my detriment. When I wake up I will feel the detriment. But I have to carry on.

If I extract the remaining information from my flows, there is the connection of Algiers to the Roman Empire, of the scenes in Gladiator II, of being on the periphery, the outside of a boundary, or at close to it. The rules are different. Rules for the turns and rules for the games. If the rules for the turns are different, that implies different mathematics for the periphery, the boundary changes things. Passing through, permeability, delineation.

The Roman Empire flowed to Italy, Rome, the Vatican, the Church, the Heart of an empire, now there's Nancy's heart and the graft. There are the sections of Italy and how they came together. Have they come together yet? Narrative propulsion. Like Duveen's afterlife. In Sicily there are gangsters, a slip of the fingers renders gangers. More associations: the Mafia, The Equalizer 3, tonight Denzel's name was in the room, we talked about Flight and Sully, and with M I talked about Othello, so I thought of P and her relation to the production. Relation to the production. Repetition. A flow.

This scene is a Nolan scene. The foreign scene. Like Mumbai in Tenet, like Mombasa in Inception. It establishes a global context, that rules can change. These are, in fact, different realities. This is what foreignness does. There is an introduction of possibility, of a change to the reality, because the boundary, the periphery is collapsing inwards. Like Nancy's heart we keep living. Before I was talking about the Bourne trilogy, the ground traversed. Different rules, different realities. Today I looked at images of Oviedo and of India. We could project images of Algeria. I wanted to go to Algeria, but there were the problems of time and money. All of the problems can be eveloped by these two problems. Not enough time to learn Arabic, to dedicate myself to learning more than a few phrases but to understanding the script, as beautiful as I find it, which can lead to a fetish, such that I could fill out the Visa form. I could have used a translation app to assist me, like the Boulez process, but the larger problem of what I would do once I was there, where I would stay, what I would do, those got in the way, and I was in Morocco with nothing to do, convenient places to stay, doing things to fill the nothing. Filling up the different white spaces, adding a the, changing it, its nature, its meaning, how it reads, what is read. The question of what this inability to get to Algeria means, about will, about what one writes, honesty, my name, truth. There is no article, it just is.

Duveen and Kress are in Algeria with Fowles and the Shawl-Man. The problem is that they wouldn't and cannot talk about any of these scenes. Kress can talk about business with Duveen, Fowles can assist, the Shawl-man can sell and haggle. They have roles and rules. They are not far from the center. What happens will be predictable. There is the joke at the beginning. Then there is the action. The remaining wanderings must emerge elsewhere.

Points

xxxxi.

bouquet

42) Scene 2 is in I Tatti. The year of Scene 1 is unclear. But it must be after Benjamin dies, for his bed to be in Algeria. Or maybe he left the bed behind years prior. In Paris. The Maison de Verre and the labors of learning. Reconsiderations in the scope of the moment. Glass and extraction. Glass and the transformation of material, of matter. Diamonds today, their relation to production.

But Scene 2 is in I Tatti. BB is with Mary, Nicky, and Duveen arrives. This is the scene from The Old Masters. There is some foregrounding, some action, so that we can begin to undestand BB, Mary, Nicky and their relations. The scene starts with the logic joke. Who is telling it? Then Duveen, the negotiations, the exchanged barbs, and then the abruptness of the ending. What Berenson wrote about Hamlet, about being a real character, who can make decisions, whose speech, and whose writing, is unlimited. In the play as a whole, it is the illusion of BB as a character, of an action-Writer, who writes with his speech as he preferred to in real life. It is BB who dominate the central 3 scenes of the play with his presence, before being undone in the final act, with Mary's writing of the Gospels.

Points

xxxxii.

bouquet

43) Scene 3 can be in I Tatti as well. Perhaps Scene 2 can be split into scenes 2 and 3. Scene 1 happens between scenes 2 and 3. As far as chronology. Mary and Nicky and BB are in I Tatti and Duveen appears. An early visit is staged, they are all young, in their primes. Nicky is very young. Duveen tells the joke about logic to her. She doesn't understand. But that is Scene 2, in Scene 3 decades have passed, Duveen, like Twombly, like many others has gone to Africa, but BB sees no need to visit Africa. To an extent, as a homeless invidual (Lithuania/Boston/London/Florence), he has attempted to grow roots, to imbue I Tatti with permanence. But he can sense that he will just be one of the many homeless. And the homelessness to come would be different than the homelessness of the present. That is Scenes 2 + 3, the characters are the same but their placements change. Their voices and appearances will change. This is time, and this is place. But this is the center, or at least the closest to the center we will get. The rules are strong here.

Points

xxxxiii.

bouquet

44) Scene 4 is set in Albania, in 2030. A villa outside Tirana. BB and Duveen are there with a Gangster. Cyril Connolly is also present. It feels arbitrary, having Connolly. Connolly could become Donnelly. He could become, like in Circe. The periphery blurs the rules. Albania exists in the periphery. If it is Albania today, then we simply accept that BB and Duveen are present. Narrative propulsion. They are in Albania as partners, to discuss ventures in the art market. Musuems, galleries, collections, patrons. Global migration, Virilio, homelessness, these things slot in here. The migration of Africa to Europe, the changed demographics of Italy, of France, of sub-migrations, a fictional flood to Albania. Commodities are changing in value, which changes the world. Precious materials — Gold, Lithium, Uranium, and their extraction, the transformation of their forms of extraction. Cyclonopedia type beat, but just the intro and different. My type beats stray far from the source. janetjackson.mp3 (add link later). But it starts with the joke about logic. Then a third of the GDP — black money — international activities, territory, besa, oath, generations, cultural maintenance, archipaelago theory. Berenson on Gangsters. Connolly on The Masterpiece. The transformation into Donnelly. Narrative Propulsion. How does it end? Who wins? Is it a game or is it a turn? The rules aren't being broken, they are being blurred. The words recently assigned etmologies: ossify, paralysis, turn. But not game:

game(n.) c. 1200, from Old English gamen "joy, fun; game, amusement," common Germanic (cognates: Old Frisian game "joy, glee," Old Norse gaman "game, sport; pleasure, amusement," Old Saxon gaman, Old High German gaman "sport, merriment," Danish gamen, Swedish gamman "merriment"), said to be identical with Gothic gaman "participation, communion," from Proto-Germanic *ga- collective prefix + *mann "person," giving a sense of "people together."

The -en was lost perhaps through being mistaken for a suffix. Meaning "contest for success or superiority played according to rules" is first attested c. 1200 (of athletic contests, chess, backgammon). Especially "the sport of hunting, fishing, hawking, or fowling" (c. 1300), thus "wild animals caught for sport" (c. 1300), which is the game in fair game (see under fair (adj.)), also gamey. Meaning "number of points required to win a game" is from 1830. Game plan is 1941, from U.S. football; game show first attested 1961.

Perhaps that is too much, but the process is too much, the process is produce, fill the white space, and then see what you want. Generate, edit. Like a marble sculpture, the material is extracted, from the earth, from my body, it is prepared, and then it is refined. Perhaps there is a way of sculpting that occurs simultaneously with extraction, as though extraction were freestyled, that there were technical objects that mediated this process of extraction-preparation-refinement, after which there was work, or a Work, or value. I Got Paid For A Show And Bought Some Work Yeah Cuz I'm Trapped Out. A graft, its meaning different now, a different kind of dropped, and the question of how one moves forward when things don't go as planned. When withholding fails, and a moment was squandered. Still, one can write what happens next.

The men talk. The joke is told. Deals are made. BB's facade is made visible. What type of window are we looking through?

BB's facade made visible. BB as a body. A body of work. Speech, actions, a life, but also words.

Before Scene 4 is the intermission. It serves as the inflection point, the present between the past of scenes 1/2/3, and the future of scenes 4/5. There will be drinks during the intermission. People will go outside during the intermission. It will be a Friday night, on Orchard Street, in 2025 during the intermission, and the intermission serves a purpose, like the intermission of a Bollywood film, or the intermission of an opera. It allows the production to make a change, but it also allows the audience to enter a social context. Society forms. Balzac, Flaubert, Proust. A social context, a social contract. Rules, the center, the periphery, where are we? It is a Friday night on Orchard Street in 2025. People may leave, others may join. There will be a crowd, a small crowd, there will be other crowds too. People will move, there will be a choreography to their motion. And if it restaged elsewhere, as the idea was toyed with, a park, an empty space, a nowhere, a non-location, unmapped, uncoordinated, then the intermission will occur, and the audience will be able to enter a social context, a social contract, and rules for the game and for the turn, or rules for the game or for the turn will be clear or blurred in relation of the site to the center. They remodeled the Natural History Museum and I still haven't been. Things change, Ben Stiller is on TV at the Knicks games but he's older now. I'm unsure if I'll recognize it from the movie. Which would have left the arena of entertainment for me, and straddle the border of historical document, or a type of movie, a type of media, indicative of a place, a time, and the cultural production and distribution happening at that point. Coordinates, mapping, reorientation, re-orientation, re: orientation. I repeat the name, its variants, like its the hook of a song. Hannah Montana. Hannah Montana. Hannah Montana. Hannah Montana. And even this association provides a sense of dating, a carbon indicator in the field of white, the field of white which has been stripped bare, such that there is a chronology to the points, to the bouquets, there is a linear sense of progress, but how would these points, which perhaps should be considered locales or coordinates, and these bouquets function if they moved towards the periphery, if the rules were blurred, or if a threshhold was passed, if the points moved beyond the periphery, into an undefinable space, that seems to exist in the present but upon closer examination one realizes that they cannot localize this point or bouquet, but that the rules have not been blurred or broken, but that they no longer apply. This movement leads us into the final scene.

Points

xxxxiv.

bouquet

45) Scene 5 returns to I Tatti in 2050. It is Neo-Africa in Italy. Migration colliding with tradition, technology, place, history. At the moment there are four women. Is this the best approach or is it too on the nose. Idioms, etymologie, a note to reference later, a note of major or minor importance. The women are Mary and Nicky, the Swede and Mary's Daughter. Perhaps the Swede isn't there and both of Mary's daughters are there. There are two, Karin and Rachel. Karin is mentioned in The Old Masters but she never appears "in the flesh". Idioms, etymologie, a note to reference later. Wikipedia says Karin was a British psychoanalyst, so it must be Karin, she is conjured, summoned, in a time that does not follow the rules, ergo the rules are blurred, or the boundary has been passed. And there was Frank Costelloe, Karin's father, a man from before BB's time in Mary's life. He doesn't appear but he can be spoken of. As can Frank Costello, the crime boss, or Frank Costello, the character in The Departed played by Jack Nicholson, popular media, popular entertainment, and art, but now a cultural artifact, like Hitchcock or Howard Hawks. And then there are the events of The Departed, the doubling, the adaptation, Boston, BOSTON, New England, Newness, in relation to the unmodified England, and there is the analysis within, and there is the Anglosphere and the colonization of Ireland, the reason for this migration, this homelessness.

In any case, they begin, with the joke on logic. There are 5 jokes on logic in the play. They should move around, so that each actress says the joke across the first four scenes. In the fifth scene, the final scene, The Narrator tells the joke. Narrative propulsion. He mentions this propulsion in this scene as well. It is not a breaking of a fourth wall, it is not the breaking of a rule, but a blurring, a blurring of a boundary, a delineation, a structure, an architecture. See Diller, Scofidio + Renfro's Blur Building, what it caused, the creation of the Shed, the program of the Shed, T.D. opening the shed, opening the shed, just built in the backyard, like it's the Bay Area, trees, nature, hills, there's a different relation between that reality in 2025, in 2020, in 2000, in 1980, 1950, 1900, 1800. Blue jeans, to pan for gold. Blue jeans, the America that Helmut Lang saw, the name that Helmut Lang sold, America, the West, the commodity of making a name (for oneself, as they say), the commodity of reputation, in relation to the commodities of extraction. One must produce, what must one produce. Perhaps in 2050 time can be unstable, space can be unstable, points can be unstable, movement can be really fast, fast in the sense of Virilio, and this lets the Narrator speak into existence. The Narrator writes what is next, the Narrator writes what is present, the Narrator can attempt to rewrite the past. This is more difficult because of how the past is stored in the collective memory. But the present is getting difficult to store, all of the presents, scattered, their differences, the speed, the speed. So there is still the future, there is still the future, the still of existence, of permanence, and the still that is a lack of movement. Language games, language turns, language movements. Like language was an art or music, with periods to track, with an essence to map, to make explicit its changes over time. Or like language was an athlete, returning to language as a body, but that language can be measured, like I have been measuring language, converting language, storing language, that language can be rendered as data, information, to be analyzed, translated, into statistics.

There is language poetry and a bitter taste in my mouth. I take a sip of water. The sun is rising, the birds are chirping, and I must go to bed soon, such that I can sleep a couple of hours before work. Narrative propulsion. The phenomenon that occured tonight. And the definition of that, of tonight, this problem of time and place, this rule, this turn. detournement ran into the ground, no silicone, that's where my mind goes, but a slip of the keys no sol-, no sun, there's the eclipse, the Lippit, the grafting, there's proto-cinema, Lascaux, the caves, and there's proto-cinema, fireworks in China, and there's the moment of collision, of light and shadow, of proto-cinema and fireworks in China, of Prometheus and invention, and this slip of the keys was supposed to lead to an ending, perhaps the truth is the ending, that Mary wrote the Gospels, and a sequence that tries to work through what that means, but perhaps there is no sequence, there is just an ending. This is the power that I have. But this is just the outline, a detailed outline, to turn into a script, to write into a form, formalized series of instructions, rules, turns, embedded in games. A memory of improperly conjugating jugar, before I could've known, that rule was sprung upon me. I moved into a territory that was foreign to me and things were different. I broke the rule and there was a cost. It is not in one's interest to break the rules, althought he cost can be thought of as a consequence, and perhaps the negative connotation of consequence can be elided, perhaps elision is a form of blurring, the etymology of elide: (v.) 1590s, a legal term, "to annul, do away with," from French elider (16c.), from Latin elidere "strike out, force out," in grammar "suppress (a vowel)" from ex "out" (see ex-) + -lidere, combining form of laedere "to strike" (see collide). The Latin word in grammatical use translates Greek ekthlibein. The phonological sense of "slurring over a sound or part of a word" in English is attested by 1796. Related: Elided; eliding. The definition of elision: elision noun eli·​sion i-ˈli-zhən Synonyms of elision 1 a : the use of a speech form that lacks a final or initial sound which a variant speech form has (such as 's instead of is in there's) b : the omission of an unstressed vowel or syllable in a verse to achieve a uniform metrical pattern 2 : the act or an instance of omitting something : omission. What I think is an error is correct, it flows to Zhejiang, a map is opened, flowing to Fujian, to Chongqing. A memory east of Los Angeles, a valley which burned only weeks after I left, which centers the experience of this I in relation to a valley, to buildings, to trees burning, like I am the one bearing witness to this fire in order to make it exist, like the sound of the tree falling in the forest, and to make an old turn, I left days after it began, I wrote this already, and about my relation to home. I want to save two hours, but the two hours keep moving. But I think that is the bare minimum that must be reserved for rest. When I was younger, "when I was younger" it was the way elision functioned in Carver, he would introduce something, but its consequences would not be obvious, one would have to think through what happened.

In this play, in The Pig Trade, what happened? What happens? There is Algeria, an Algeria of the past, where an American businessman buys shawls with his assistant and with a British art dealer. They have conversations and introduce themes. Then there is I Tatti, the I Tatti of the past, where BB, a man, a man like Hamlet, who writes the world with his speech and actions, with his wife, and with his mistress, welcomes Duveen, welcomes Duveen twice, once in a time before Algeria, once in a time after. It is BB who tells the logic joke first. In Algeria Duveen tells the joke to Kress, as entertainment, while doing business. Then when they return, Nicky says it. Why does she say it? She is entertaining, she is greeting Duveen, business is to be done, and she is a part of the process. Perhaps this isn't compelling enough, and there needs to be a stronger reason. But it ends. A debate is had, a deal is made or unmade, things are real or non-real, but they proceed. The 20th century comes to a close. The location shifts but remains Mediterranean. The Mediterranean, its importance to movement, to culture, culture and the soil, memetic etymological relation, floating, flowing, culture and empires. The Mediterranean and Twombly and the many others. The insertion of Twombly, once again, but there is something, the relation to Nolan, cryptology, cryptography, puzzles, turns, rules, games, non-games, or sets of rules without winners, without endings, that spiral into an undefined space, but can It spiral, or does that add definition, and the limits of this language present a boundary that is not permeable, where it scarcely knowable. The complications of dividing by 0, the interupption of the past in the midst of that, the way in which the past exists in the present, in a way that you haven't voiced. And also debt, possession, belonging, belongings, returning. The same words, the shifts in meaning. Réda Bensmaïa and where the words went. The public, the private. And their quotation, their resurfacing, as though it was treasure, buried, extracted, as though it were a message in a bottle, a type of message without a public, but an unknown person who will recieve the message. An unknown audience of one. Here the public is unknown until it makes itself known. Although this latest non-script, this body of text, slab of marble, this material will be reworked, refined, translated, into a Work for a public. The idea of a the, in this situation, is problematic. Very little reaches the public. Trump reaches the public, Kanye reaches the public, EBK Jaaybo does not reach the public, and this reach, the waves and noise caused by reaching the public, there are consequences, the world is transformed, reality changes yes, but those categories existed previously, before the idea of the public was solidified.

I suppose there is The Public and there is The Social, or Society. Both items, both The's are fraught now. Virilio, speed, migration, how we exist, how worlds are constructed, maintained, demolished, forgotten, restored, resurrected, or cease to be, in both matter and memory. The mechanisms changing, but some of the old mechanisms remain. There is no etymonline entry for skeuomorphism, the search engine has indexed a page related to Brown University, from when the Internet was older but it remains, it was written by Faustino Mora, who graduated in 2010 and studied Political Science Classics, who attended Boston Latin School like Berenson. Mora's project is for a class titled "Archaeologies of the Greek Past" and he is defining five terms: Nestor's Cup, Herodotus, Croesus, Charioteer of Delphi, and Skeuomorph. They don't do this at Brown anymore. They may do something similar, but it is different. Space, time, technology. Obvious. Two hours has turned into an hour and a half. A turn. A game. A dance, the same old dance, handwriting, my handwriting, and choreography: choreography(n.) "the composing or arrangement of dance," originally ballet, 1789, from French choréographie, coined from Latinized form of Greek khoreia "dance" (see chorus) + graphein "to write" (see -graphy). Related: Choreographic.

Khoreia and its relation to chorus — rate-limited by etymonline. An obvious sign to draw an ending, as the possible time continues to shrink. Skeuomorph is the term used to refer to an object, in architecture and archaeology, which retains ornamental designs, not out of functionality, but because it was part of the necessary structure in the original. The actual word is derived from the Ancient Greek skeuos which can be translated as “tool” or “vessel” and morphe is “shape.” Some of the most obvious examples of skeuomorph are the decorative stone features located on Ancient Greek temples. These include mutules, guttae, and modillions that are derived from the original functional feature of the early wooden temples. Modillions are ornamental brackets that are utilized to support the upper part of a Corinthian or Composite cornice. Classical examples are usually in the form of scrolls with acanthus leaves. The images that accompany the text are ruddy, clear enough but ordinary. They exist in a certain class of images. I cannot speak about Khora now. I must attempt to speak the ending. Or perhaps it ended above, but the text kept going. The body, the slab, the filling of this white space necessitates the creation of more white space. I was searching — a direction, a co-ordinate, a point, before recalling the cross-section

Points

xxxxv.

bouquet