diu 24a 3/28/95 This is quite different from the self of the English language, whose definition proposes it as the essence of each single human being and the constant point from which the human being can truthfully and originally speak. pardon please zeroing me in on a tiny tiny bit of this post [see diu 23b] but more references today come in angling toward "Language as a Virus" and this looks to be one. I had thought simple [heh, heh tm] de/reconstruction techniques would so masque and reform she language that it now could be used without that boat-anchor to conventional spew. I see now the baggage is superglued to me at a level deeper than my DNA. At least to what thinks it's me. I propose that nonverbal telepathy [teleprosy] is needed as a derailment for the products of the programs now being pursued by ARPA _et al_ to render speech machine readable so that the fly-by FTIR snapshot of your skin's tattling tale will, added vectorially in psi-space to your effluviogram from the GC/MS batbot and the neuroelectrotelemetery of your implanted fink-chip, tend to confirm a VDiagnosis of treasonable behavior from the voiced. sigh! --Ficus To the e-journal D I U: To the Co-poetry News Network: To the listserv Poetics@UBVM: To the local news source Channel 500: 26 March 1995 Sirs: Another thank-you letter going out, this time for those abroad. Let's see if it gets to Chris Cheek, who's sending out pure lies all over the Net. We aren't hiding from critics anymore, now we're fleeing poets. There are piles of them and they turn up where no one expects them. It looks like they took that part about "participating in the critical enterprise" seriously. It's not a bad thing, it's a good thing, the first conclave that doesn't limit itself to hawking wares in the Small Press Marketplace. How are we doing in the One-Up-Manship games? Too bad I couldn't attend. I'm sure I would have done very well in the "filibuster" category. You should see the training I've put in since the onset of 1999! Go on. May the the ink of light flow unencrypted through your lines. >From the mountains of cyberspace. Insurgent Subcommander Guantanamo Bey. March of 1995, in the Time Terminal P.S. Our language, in celebration, laffs. I zone out with my inky dinky walkman. I love those pop Zapatistas of Northamerica, Sly and the Family Stone ... especially the one that goes: "Thank you (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" ... when of a sudden my clone comes running, tells me: It looks like you got your way... - Could it be the NEA has already fallen? - I ask with hope. - No way! ... They caught you - says my clone. - Me! When? Where? - I ask while I access my hard drive to see what I've written and what I've deleted. - Today, in a system crash ... but they don't say just where -, s/he responds. - Oh, good! ... And did I end up badly refuted, or utterly silenced? - I insist. - Completely silent.. that's what the news says - says my clone and leaves. A narcisistic sob competes with the clickety clack of nervous fingers at the keys of the laptop. - Why are you crying? - asks Thus, Albert or Hubert, staring away at the TV and the closing minutes of a basketball game. - Because I can't be present for my own absence. I, who enjoyed sneaking up on myself so much ... P.S.: That tells the story of Thus, Albert on the 12th day of the withdrawal of sympathy, of the mysteries of the Cave of Caffeine, and of other unfortunate events that today inspire, but at the time portended writer's block, and the end of the AHP. - And if they unsubscribe us? - asked Thus, Albert on the early morning of the 12th day of the withdrawal of sympathy. ("What kind of withdrawal, a dry heave," says Thus, Albert.) It's hot. A damp breeze dumps fat drops from a cloud like a dog's tongue red as the eyes of our enemies. I'm not sleeping, in solitude the humidity hurts twice as much. Nevertheless I keep quiet. Thus, Albert comes out from his sheltering graphic and climbs atop me, like a basset hound. To wake me up, he starts tickling my nose. I sneeze with such emphasis that Thus, Albert ends up, tumbling over himself, on my Air Jordans. He recovers and gets back to my face. - What's up? - I ask him before he tickles me again. - And if they cut off our accounts? - he insists. - Yes ... well ... well ... we'll look for a cave or something like that to hide ourselves in ... or we'll climb in a little cpu ... or cup ... or we'll see what to do -, I say with annoyance, and look at my watch to insinuate that it isn't the hour to be worrying about bounced mail. - I won't have any problems. I can go anywhere. But you, with those Air Jordans and those coke-bottle spectacles ... I doubt that you'll find a safe place -, says Thus, Albert as he covers himself again with a .sig file graphic. - Psychology of boredom -, I think, about the apparent indifference of Thus, Albert regarding our fate ... - Our fate? He's right! He won't have problems, but me ... - I think, I get up and speak to Thus, Albert: - Psst ... Psst ... Albert! - I'm sleeping -, he says from under his .sig file. I ignore his sleep and begin talking: - Yesterday I heard Scope and my clone saying that there are a lot of caves around here. Scope says he knows most of them. There are small ones, where a haiku would barely fit. And there are big ones like Northamerican longpoems. But he says there is one no one dares to enter. He says there is an ugly story about that cave. The cave of caffeine, he says they call it. Thus, Albert seems to get interested, his passion for unsolved Eleusynian mysteries will be his ruin. - And what is the story of that cave? - Well ... It's a very long story. I've heard it myself, but that was years ago now ... I don't remember it well-, I said, making it interesting. - Fine, go on, tell it - says Albert, more and more interested. I sip my beer. From within the pissy aftertaste comes the memory, and with it ... The Cave of Caffeine. It happened many years ago, a story of a poem that was not, that was abandoned without a second thought. A sad story... and terrible - says Scope sitting on one side, with his beer between his thighs, to cool his sweaty legs. He peels the label with a nail, and looking at the ascii mountain towering above, continues: "A Word came from far away. It came, or was already there. No one knows. It was back in other texts long past, before spell-check and trade paperbacks, and however that may be, in these texts people lived and died just the same, without hope and forgotten. No one knows if it was noun or verb, that Word. Few are those who heard the Word the first time. Some say the Word was the bird, and sang out in an adolescent cackle. Everyone agreed that the Word was extremely ugly. Just to hear it produced dread in men and revulsion in women. What was it that made the Word so unpleasant? I don't know, the concepts of beauty and ugliness change so much from one genre to another and from one culture to another ... In this case, the people native to these texts avoided the Word, as did the foreigners who were the owners of books, rhymes, and master narratives. The indigenous people called it the Kvetch or Sacred Whine; the foreigners called it the Complaint. The Word went into the mountains, far from the ears of all, and set to work there. It made itself a little pushcart library, next to one of the many caves that were there. It made the literature produce, planted connotation and allusion, and hunting meanings in theforestforthetrees gave the Word enough to get by. Every so often it went down to Lethe, a stream near the New Coast. There it had arranged, with one of the older members of the community, to get punctuation, diplomas, or whatever else the Word, the Sacred Whine, didn't obtain in the mountains. The Whine exchanged connotations and tissues of lies for what it needed. The Whine arrived at the stream at the time when smiles began to darken and the shadows of heads advanced droopily over the page. The old muse was sick in her eyes and couldn't see well, so that, with the logic of sense and her retro virus, she couldn't make out the letters of the Word which had caused so much revulsion in the clear light. One evening the old muse didn't arrive. The Sacred Whine thought that maybe the hour was slow, and so pored over itself to hurry the dusk. To make no mistake, the next time the Word made sure to arrive earlier, before the time when smiles turn down. The shadows still had some paragraphs to go before wrapping the text completely in darkness, when the Whine came near the stream. A wurlitzer of laughter and voices grew as it approached. The Whine slowed its steps and came silently near. Among the curbs and hydrants it made out the pool formed by the waters of the stream. The daughters of enthusiasm were reading and copying manuscripts. They were laughing. The Whine looked and stayed quiet. Its heart became wide as the rim of a coffee cup, its eyes thick and rich like coffee. The daughters had gone for a while but the Whine stayed on, looking ... Now the dandruff rained down on the page like non-dairy creamer as the Word returned to the mountains, leaving the muse text in sleep. Maybe it was the sight, or imagined sight, or maybe the false impression that formed on the eye, like a scum of milk atop the surface of yestermorn's coffee, left by what the Whine imagined under the influence of caffeine, whatever it was, the Whine fell in love or thought it fell in love. And its love was not something platonic or neoplatonic, but quite earthy, and the call of the wild feelings borne by the Whine was like a war drum, like a slow drip that breaks through a filter. Adrenaline took the Whine by the hand and began a letter, a love letter, lettered percolation that filled an family-sized thermos of feeling. And the Whine wrote, for example, "Oh, muse of the free refill! Caffeine becomes an agitated dachsund. Leash of a thousand kennels is the yearning of my thirst for thy foam, sweeter than schnapps, and in vain bends the corners of a thousand pages, dog-eared, panting to stay cranked and keep up with a brisk mistress. One grace, long sleeplessness! One sip I ask thee, muse, failed repose of my sugarless existence! Let me pour steam in thy hot almond milk. Yes, I wish to drink, to quaff the quim of inspiration. To stir thee, with sighs, in the mug that hands and lips desire. Within the cup, you brown and I like cinnamon, to read with a gulp your giant mochaccino. In the double shot of my baby's love stare to drool longingly and study, with a single leg raised in salute to your beautiful meanings, sturdy as a red bullit monument to fire. Awaken, O cluster of moans that in you hide, siempre con leche! To march to the rim and take prisoner with a swallow, burning now the skin of the tongue, brilliant blackness announcing the night sops my croissant. To trace, diligent and skillful, the M-grain of abstinence promised by your Apex of addiction. To give thee a tremor of cold heat and arrive, whole, to the moist stirring of caffeine. One slow first sip, a deep guzzle next. After that the runaway ride of liquid and caffeine. To reach Olympus, and then fall. One grace, promised insomnia! One grace I ask thee, muse of the restless sigh! Let me come to thy margin! In it I am saved, far off I die." One night of storms, like a thirst burning the Whine's throat, a bolt of lightning burnt down the little pushcart library. Wet and shivering, it took refuge in a neighboring cave. With a hot plate to light the way the Whine found little figures of poets giving and receiving Mr. Coffee, the nervous excitement worked in stone and clay. There was a can of Maxwell House, and little jars that smelled of terrors and marvels already passed and yet to be. The Whine could not or would not leave the cave. There, desire filled its hands once more and wrote, a trail of Folger crystals leading nowhere ... "A dog dish am I now, muse of the longed-for sniffathon. Tomorrow, a gun at war. Today, a dog dish lost between breakfast and dindin. The prop-plane of caffeine starts its propellers. A continual moaning, all whizzing and wanting, leads the plane between rival aces and storms. I Lightman illuminates the flickering sugar bowl of desperation. A wet packet of sweet 'n' low takes the controls. Pure carcinogen, cancer alone, we navigate seeking thee, among sighs and panting, seeking the precise place the leash takes thee. Caffeine, muse of storms to come, is a knot hidden somewhere beneath the skin of hardened milk. Find it I must, and muttering spells, untie it. Free then shall be thy longings, feminine spillings, and they will fill thy kidneys and bladder, thy womb and innards. One last and ferocious sip of sweet caffeine hurls us to a cafe where a bottomless cup arrives. A dog dish am I now, muse of tender buttons. Don't await my assault, come to it! The cave of caffeine! The horizon clouds over with black liquid, now we are arriving, now we go ..." So it happened, they say. And they say that the Whine never again left the cave. No one knows whether the muse existed in truth or was a product of the cave, the Cave of Caffeine. What they say is that the Whine still lives there, and whoever comes close becomes sick with the same addiction, with poetry ... Thus, Albert has followed the whole story attentively. When he sees I have finished, he says: We have to go. - Go? - I ask, surprised - Of course! - says Albert -. I need to check the score on the Kansas-Virginia game. - You're crazy! - I protest. - Are you afraid? - asks Albert ironically. I waver. - Well ... afraid, really afraid ... no ... but it's very hot ... and it looks like static is on the way ... and ... yes, I'm afraid. - Bah! Don't worry. I'll go with you and I'll be telling you where. I think I know where the Cave of Caffeine is -, says Albert with certainty. - All right -, I say, giving in. - You'll be in charge of the expedition-. - Great! My first order is that you march in the avant garde, in the center we'll have nobody, to disconcert the enemy, and I will go in the extreme rearguard, indicates Albert. - I? In the vanguard? I protest! - Protest denied! - says Albert with firmness. - O.K., a poet to the end, I'll go along. - Good, that's what I like. Attention! This is the plan of attack: First: No ideas but in things. Second: You can't step in the same river twice. Third: Raid Kills Bugs Dead. For a war plan it seemed too cautious, but Albert was now chief of our little collective, and given the circumstances, I had no reason to object to prudence marching in the vanguard. Above, the stars started to be timed out ... - It looks like it's going to static-, I said to Albert, excuse me, to the Chief. - We're Poets! - shouts Albert, with the screech of an angry Canadian. A gust of burning e-mail and the first screenfuls of static ... - Haaalt! - orders Albert. The static starts to multiply ... - I forgot to mention the fourth point of the plan of attack ... - says Albert with doubt. - Oh yeah? And what is it? - I ask insidiously. - Good fences make good neighbors! - The last words are said by Albert now in an open run back to camp. I ran behind him. It was useless. We got shorted, and sweating, we reached the little hidden node in the archive. The static flew as if caffeine had, at last, been unleashed ... Go on again. Health, and that the hunger for tomorrow be a desire to struggle ... today. The Sip, inside, far inside, of the Cave of Caffeine. It's March, it's early morning, and for being silenced, I feel verrry noisy. -- translated by Hecuba Whimsy please advise of errors. DIU: Oppression's Infinite Regression MANifesto/Communique #2 [The scene so far: in a "creative writing class," in my critique of a piece on rape, I had the temerity to mention Adorno's comment on "Art being impossible after the Holocaust," meaning to comment on the problematics of representational realism, especially in matters of great ugliness and brutality. The ensuing argument raises a whole series of issues, touched on below....] I don't like being cast in the role of the oppressor. I resent it and think I deserve a more accurate representation. It reminds me of being a dog in the slide show studio of my unhappy youth, being told by total strangers who and what I am and, for their satisfaction, should be. In a more recent example, when I was teaching an extension course at a maximun security prison, a number of the more politicized Muslim men would in each of their papers be sure to characterize me as "the white devil"--but how, honestly, in the wretched confines of this human cesspool could I possibly disagree, and say "No, I am not truly part of the racist power structure that has incarcerated you here, but if so, my actual power is so miniscule as to be inconsequential." Here, at SUNYA, a fairly progressive "institution of higher achievement," I would hope that people had more interesting things to do, more better ways to expend their emotional surplus, and if I am abrasive in my written commentaries here it is only because I am giving an honest gut reaction to what is presented for my literary consumption, and why, really, would anyone want anything different? It seems obvious that to be a writer or an artist of any kind--though these terms are by no means synonymous--one must by needs cultivate a very thick and leathery skin. And if the comments of a confused Bozo like myself mystify and seem minatory, seem "designed to silence women," then Lordy I cannot fathom what the sarcastic leers of the unrepentant male mongrel hordes outside our priviliged academic Ivory Tower must do. But this ignorance does not in fact make me truly complicit in the whole sorry patriarchal spectacle and its myriad tortures, and to taunt me for the genetic accident that I am a male of the species seems a peculiarly superfluous variety of political action. We are all, female and male here, after all's been said and done, a peculiarly priviliged class of organisms--white Norte Americano graduate students--living on the face of the incipient death of this planet, living off the blood and labor of its darker and poorer inhabitants. The Nikes on our feet are made by Indochinese peasant women averaging twenty-five cents a day in their gruesome plastic sweatshops. The computers that we use to stroke our bourgeois individuality are assembled by likewise impoverished Asians.* The automobiles that we drive, if you think about it, if you can imagine the carless ambulatory life of a Latin American or African or Chinese or Indian subsistence farmer, the automobiles that we drive are perhaps the most destructive and evil artifacts of late-twentieth century techno- industrial imperialism, a colonization of the collective space that reaches deep into the oilfields of the Middle East, and Prince Charles Bay, Alaska, where the birds and seals and otters and fish have still not shed the taint of the Exxon Valdez's apocalyptic bowel movement. If I am abrasive in my commentaries it is only because I am sick to death of the human race's oilspill propensity for self-glorification and masturbatory self-indulgence, in whichever gender-forms these may take, and more than anything else I think we need to move beyond these forms of naive nineteenth- century self-congratulation to a more inclusive and sophisticated view of our collective situation at this late stage in the proceedings. The world is moving faster and faster, doubling and contracting in the birth throes of a new and horrible reality. Our cancerous growth as a species has made anything less than a total reevaluation of our collective existence a cynical and disingenuous farce, played out for people with too much money to spend on the backs of those with nothing, played out on an ecological stage promising a tragic third act, pandering to the peurile desire for fame and immortality in a narcissistic Industrialized Mind. If I am abrasive in my written commentaries here it is because I do not really care to acquiesce any longer in the hypocrisy of this second-rate sitcom we call Culture, and waste my time nurturing the hackneyed platitudes of the general mediocrity. The history of the last thirty years of the progressive Left (for want of a better term) has been one of backbiting, bitter rancor, infighting, and jockeying for petty power. A marginalized academic feminism has been pitted against a disorganized civil rights movement against an arcane, over-theoretized Marxism against a fragmented neo- colonialism--etcetera, ad nauseum. Ecce Homo! Newt Gingrich. * See Donna Haraway, "Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980's." Socialist Review 80: 65-107. --pop-apocalyptic productions poetry is the only true counterrevolution (fwd) the ahp has no secrets death to the proletariat long live the petrodollar of pure theory --monotonous ghandi descriptions of an imaginary univercity thelogicof snowflakes cf2785@albnyvms.bitnet *** *