BERNEVAL

The i

before the c

The i

after the c

ici

here here

And so for day 41
24.01.2007

The pages of Kathy Acker’s Pussycat Fever have borders designed by Freddie Baer. They complement well the themes of repetition and out of the edge of awareness behaviour to be found in the prose. As the narrator says “I do whatever I have to do whether or not I have any idea how to do it.” and pages later, similar border similar sentiment: “In a moment or two, I saw that it was a young girl, my age. I ran down to her as if I were was running down to myself.”

And so for day 39
22.01.2007

Brigid Brophy writing in a forward to a book offers the image of reading Baudelaire’s Poems in Prose as being akin to “picking through a box of marvellous but unstrung beads.” The tempting rattle of marbles secures the tragedy of recitation for the

The images in By Grand Central Station are individually beautiful but beautiful also in the order in which they are strung.

And so comes this devotional note

Reading the book is like saying a tragic, pagan, erotic rosary.

and the assertion

The entire book is a wound. Even when its rhythm expresses the throb of pleasure, the pleasure is so ardent that it lays waste the personality which experiences it.

And so with potent magic invoked, I turn to the intensity of the intervals in the garland-like layout of the cover illustration by Janet Woolley and return again to the dispersing power of projections, the power to disperse both the depicted personality and the person reading aloud the text of that personality’s experiences. The cover art suspends just as the reading does.

A rosary being said is meeting place that suspends prayer in breath. Of the many pleasures, catharsis is one that like the slipping of beads along a path releases self and self and self no matter how often is experienced the laying waste.

Path is to string as bead is to step. Rhythm is to beat as experience is to experience.

And so for day 38
21.01.2007

Brigid Brophy writes in a forward to a book:

Reading the book is like saying a tragic, pagan, erotic rosary.

Reading comes to voice via a garland. A long way from blossoms to beads.

The images in By Grand Central Station are individually beautiful but beautiful also in the order in which they are strung.

And prior to this was the image of reading Baudelaire’s Poems in Prose as being akin to “picking through a box of marvellous but unstrung beads.”

The tempting rattle of marbles secures the tragedy of recitation.

And so for day 37
20.01.2007

Lightbulbs are intelligent signs of lie. Heat & lumens illuminate. McLuhan equated them with information. Failed to distinguish bulb from the turned on filament.

And so for day 36
19.01.2007

Sidewalks dotted with the remains of chewed gum. Gum not swallowed out of ignorance of the benefits of soluble fibre. The wicked wad deserves ingestion.

And so for day 35
18.01.2007

It is not a gardening manual. Still when I read it I have images of carnations sticking out of a rifle barrel.

Every Communist must grasp the truth, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

Some power grows from there but not all.

The growth and replenishment rate of power sources is another factor to consider in mapping strategy.

And so for day 34
17.01.2007

In Unix-land it is invoked by “ln” for link making. In i-Apple land under Classic it is Propeller + M and under OSX it is Propeller + L, both for “make alias”. In Microsoft land, you can invoke it under Windows by Alt+F, followed by the letter _S_ [or mouse click File for the menu] for “Create Shortcut”. There is no equivalent under DOS.

The one land is run on an ethos of sharing. The environment is one of multiple users.

The next land is infused by an ethos of friendliness. The environment is characterized by efficient use of resources: everything in its place and a place for everything and easy to cross-reference.

The other next land can be characterized by an ethos of being file-centred just as the word processing software it championed is page-centric and not document centred. There is great simplicity in being file-centred.

I like to think that in social terms, each contributed to the emergence of the conditions for widespread acceptance of the World Wide Web. Consider permission setting; recall Hypercard; and ponder the salience of page and file centric focus. All about container control. And container control is about boundary crossing, about a longing for extensions of community, and a belief that the personal is not always the solitary.

And so for day 32
15.01.2007