wonder systems

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mist connections

you –
the gap-mawed crane bucket
biting and ripping a ceiling;
arcs of hose spray leave
your prize glistening
in the sun, glittering drips
from the ends of rebar,
wet sheets glaring the sun
at passersby –

taking the time to 
smooth the dangling edges
left by your mouth, so
no destruction occurs
while you're not there to
enjoy it –

I mean, not to frame this
as a jurassic-park t-rex situation;
that is I don't want to make any
assumptions how
you think of yourself;
but
got any plans tonight?
#228
September 27, 2017
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[Laughs] [Does not answer]

Questioning’s run its
course, all interviews done and
now we are a-stage;
Cursors blink, think, plink!
Pink, and a ghostly remaint.


Contemplative, ‘course
riverine, sinuously
parallel, they seek seven
restarting (though alas
that still cursor yet remains)


Seven point gap—a synapse!
Running down rags, snag
Some bend, some end, a comma
Lick clean bones, stones, still waste not—
but break and boil, spice to taste
the lag, that snap, synapse: that’s
it, this character
istic habit: what it is
is tic. 1-2-3-
rattatat metal rap
It sticks, tick sieve, if
still it sits interstitial
spits tips split wit sick
strains the letters leaves the words
insignificant symbols
soup null and hearty
of legumes, of glyph, dash dash
sybil syllabic;
punctuation can have it.
Implied in spacious scores more
.  .  .
hesitation frames the lore
eN and eM dashing
Pointillism broadly points
to choreographic leaps
a ballet en pointe
spins in pause’s darkest deeps


The first scratchings
of graphical zero
was a single .
How invented, this presence
of the not, nay, null, in sense—
absence allowing essence
and ambiguity
Count, er, form, though page-bound
from a chaos pulp:
cut pages, knife the bindings
free words from post-roll
prison, rectangling
page physics, where left-
hand gravity clings

Return / return / mechanical?
less so than metallic dings
metronomically
lining time four/4 A-four
until four followed zero
But from zero’s nose
to spite its face there leapt first
our ratty One.
this one winning wasn’t done:
proclaimed all was 0 and 1.

iambic, i am
a pressure released, inhale
pressing pull, not null
‘stead of scratching, write with light,
leave hang-slights, just quite

what inhabits this
but imaginations invert,
something orthogonal

writing’s but something closer
to topiary pruning
irreversible
but always just removing
concealment so as to
better hide the truth

iambic I am
a blue Bic pressed to measure
Leakings


with Kathy
#227
September 26, 2017
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national weather service alert

POTENTIAL IMPACTS: IN-
CREASED RISK OF RIP
CURRENTS... SNEAKER WAVES...
AND LOCALLY LARGE SHORE
BREAK. BEACHGOERS MAY BE
KNOCKED OVER... INJURED... OR
PULLED OUT TO SEA INTO THE
COLD RESTLESS OCEAN. _

A LOW-MEANING FRONT IS MOVING
TOWARDS THE EYE... INCREASING
ITS STRENGTH.  UNIFICATION
THROUGH DISARRAY... GLOBAL
MELTDOWN... THERE IS NO AFTER.

WRITE A SENTENCE AS CLEAN
AS... BONE AT THE ATTACH-
MENT OF TENDON... TO BONE... 
SHATTER THE ILLUSION. ALL ARE
STUCK WITHIN... THERE IS NO
OUTSIDE. GOERS MAY EXPERIENCE
THE LACK OF OUTSIDE... PULLED
IN TO HELPLESSNESS...
INJURED... KNOCKED OVER...
GET BACK UP. THIS IS NOT THE
GRAVE... ONLY A HOLE.
#226
September 21, 2017
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breakfast aftermath

​September 19, 2017
 
good coffee makes me extremely mature, rolling on the wood floor left elbow on a floor pillow swearing and saying "boo-boo—boo-boo-boo" as I try to understand this custom websocket protocol.

it's the true synthesis; the coffee is the swearing, the congee the comfort;  adult reasoning / despair; ("why don't any of the standard libraries work") involving a deep theory of mind ("oh wait is this raw GPU memory") devolving to an infantile ability to accept the world as it is ("boo-boo") and seek to grow within and through its restrictions ("boo-boo-boo")
#225
September 20, 2017
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food therapy

the fancy tapas
on my commute
opens for breakfast,
six dollar bottomless
congee
and that with an espresso
(that costs the same;
the porridge and its steam
are trying to bridge a class gap
the espresso floats carelessly above)
has me feeling absurdly
well-adjusted, glowing,
suffused with positive valence
and absolutely stuffed
#224
September 19, 2017
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presumption 1

Every meeting I run
becomes a bit like me.
Always about to fall apart
into something glorious.


after 300 Arguments
#223
September 18, 2017
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sequential experiments vs parallel dependence (old notes)

Ideas are an arms race. :o
How are you doing?
Until yesterday my eyes just glazed over at technical material. Gobsmacked.

The Real World of Technology.   I fell asleep to the radio series this was based on, dreaming in beautifully clear nuance and precise dancing diction; reading the book, I hear that but with more time to think through Ursula's density of ideas. 

Palimpzest
Puritan names from quotes 
Clapping when the plane lands

light velocity
"it's been really generative"
Markov play scripts (scriptures)
Technology SF imminent immanent
Enjoy through etc.
syntactical language
black box theatre as a camera obscura
the skin of your teeth (play)
mural biologist

I can slowly feel myself slithering away like slime molf
Mold*

haha
another good metaphor!
growing in other directions
towards new nutrients :D
#222
September 16, 2017
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artificial commuting

when everything
follows you around
hopping fences
of time and space
to walk on your attention
some distance needs
be made;

the setting sun blinked rapidly
through trees through me
as I walked, I thought it
might be lightning again
and imagined its thunder



title by Connie
#221
September 16, 2017
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joicogsys

the study of concepts that exist only between people, between people and computers, between computers, between paper and pen, not solely in one place or the other, but linchpins in a scaffold of understanding, keyways of a collaborative driveshaft, keystones in a bending arch permitting infrastructure, that human pyramid we draw upon so often when we believe that anything known can be made use of, when knowledge is spare bricks in the commons, where glowing rectangles convince us any knowledge can be found at no price but time, without changing who we are, with passwords and privacies convincing us that individuals are real and in possession of their faculties, then it happens that all our private keys are public, our concepts revealed shared or rather only real in the sharing, these islands flooding until waves lap the sandy foundations into new dunes.
#220
September 14, 2017
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three half-caught conversations on truth and repair

Rather than meaning ‘a product which is possible for any user to repair’, a repairable product could be one that is ‘repaired whenever it is broken’. The difference is subtle but significant, and has everything to do with the service system around the product. _

-

this, yes, and always. further, that making those spaces is required to grow through obstacles rather than defeat them? at least, perhaps only, in the in-betweens of relationships? things being things as the air becomes tree. _

-

I feel like we learned with each other that we could be proud of how we talked, with being truthful with each other; that there was always a way to speak honestly in a way that made space for the other person to say as well, and that that shared truth could be beauty and growth
#219
September 13, 2017
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ESSAYISM, Brian Dillon



essay on essays, like a floating board in a shipwreck, it feels utopian and grungy.
 
by Ursula LeGuin's "Carrier-Bag Theory", ESSAYISM sometimes wishes it were a thrusting spear, but it is instead a self-conscious bag of contagious wondrous baubles, each one world of how to think/write/think.
 
quotes from the parts I just read in the bath that made me think of wonder.systems, some in strong agreement, some in disagreement, some in wincing agreement:
 
 
I was proud in a way of my diagnosis – I imagined, despite all evidence to the contrary, that it conferred or confirmed some depth or profundity that I had always felt lacked. An absurd idea of course, but one that led to the suspicion, for the first time, that I might be able to write, properly write, that I could say 'I' and this would not be an entirely shameful or exposing starting point.
 
...
 
 
Many of us, maybe all of us, look at some images repeatedly, but it seems we do not write that repetition, or think it, once written, worth reading by others. Maybe we deeply want to believe that images happen, essentially or sufficiently, all at once.... Maybe the actual business of repeated gawping strikes us as embarrassing, at least when set out in sentences. (Too passive? Too privileged? Too rudimentary? Too 'male'?) Maybe we fear that the work we depend on images to do for us – the work of immobilizing, and therefore making tolerable – will be undone if we throw the image back into the flow of time.
 
 
...
 
This is one curious effect of the [...] experiment in attention: it invariably departs from the objects at hand to enter realms of speculation and even fantasy, because that is the liberty that such attention allows. We are back in the purview and power of the list, but not only that: also, a commitment to the deadpan unfolding of ordinary time and things – could you make an  essay simply out of the things to hand at the moment you started to come back to life – the photographs, the half-remembered images, the books and fragments that are not books?

...

...an extreme example of a tendency [...] towards curiosity: that is, towards a rapt discovery of the world [...] but a way of treating that discovery too: as a collection.

...
The melancholics concern themselves with the structure of doubt, rather than the structure of belief, because doubt is inventive. Doubt complicates. Even repudiation is a doubling. In this sense, doubt is erotic, as is melancholic space.
 
...

I thought if I wrote about the horror at a distance, or described it askance, then it would stay in its place, but I'd be saying enough about it to tell myself that I was not running away. I would be in control. Which was certainly my thing, control.

...

Just that, I suppose: the usual combination of poise and its antipode.
 
#218
August 29, 2017
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before the eclipse



ii. 

This black fence, raised by our duplex neighbours years ago
(one currently steps over the property berm to use our hose
on their half of the yard) after they came (or were?) home
and found on their higher-numbered porch people smoking
something (& masturbating?);
the memory seems kept unclear to respect the trauma;
the half-inch solid steel bars anchored in cement
pinning curled eighth-inch hearts now rust through
their paint to protect this; this fence could probably
arrest a car but couldn't stop an eight-year-old.

This summer slowly I've tried to bring the sidewalk
to our yard; housemates tore out the feral flowerless
rose, we put mulch and comfortable plastic chairs,
I read and eat here to try making space for quiet 
acknowledgement, dragged the charcoal grill
and marinated vegetables; slowly people look more
familiar and more often, though the fence chops off
the social ambiguity of any limbs extended over it.

This Monday I sat here with a book and paper
goggles high on my nose, eclipse bifocals; the
astronomical event brought people to the surface
nakedly curious asking to steal a glance as the moon
just started to nibble the sun; these were the first
conversations sitting here that I didn't initiate,
lower-numbered neighbours excited for the sake of
excitement, walking to see the heavens home through
their white fence of thicker tall plastic posts and
squared-terraced toppers like a Mayan flying saucer.
#217
August 24, 2017
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before the eclipse





















i.
There's a moment, before the eclipse happens,
before the milk hits the floor, before the bee finds
the entrance to its hive, before actually meeting,
#216
August 22, 2017
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Dispatches from an Unfinished World

Everything was fine until I began to notice that the house was badly built. Living spaces had been constructed out of what had clearly been a condemned building. Then I began to forget where my things were. As I went from room to room looking for them, the house revealed itself as even more badly built. Some of the rooms had collapsing floors. Ceilings and walls seemed solid but were made of draped tarpaulin. The stairs moved under you. First I forgot where my belongings were. Then I realised that I was beginning to forget the layout of the building too. I wasn’t sure which rooms I had visited and which I hadn’t. The structure was increasingly unstable. Lath and rafters showed through. The rooms trembled and wallowed as I moved. My panic increased. I had lost all my objects. I had lost all sense of where I was. I had lost all my identifiers. I didn’t recognise anyone in the house. When I looked out of a window I realised that I had forgotten what country the city was in. I went out there and began to wander about. At first I was absolutely certain where the house was._


i.
"Track poverty from space" they say,
well-meaning,

implicitly imagining themselves
as aliens in immaculate space habitats

sprinkling probabilities

like fairy dust

to bring reality, density;
otherwise we merely see.


ii.
All models are lies, "but"
it's said, "some are useful."

Mysticism is in choosing uselessness
so as to see the unmodelable

perplexity of choices made
in passive voice

the miracles and disasters
with precedents but without causes.


iii.
This is gourmet modernist news,
designed for newsfeel,

a balanced palate,
just the right amount of sour.


iv.
Was the media ever really
group proprioception?

Or was it always
trite hegemony.
#215
August 11, 2017
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time as she is felt

grows all in rings;
my inbox numbers five
pages, so each must be
an equal step back in time:

one week
one month
two months
two months
three years

the data is clear, this is
the precise timing
of my development:

a three-year project
will be halfway done after
three months.

a month is twice as past
as a week.

the beginning of grad school
was five weeks
of inbox-time ago,

and so it feels.
#214
August 10, 2017
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shatter the illusion of explanatory depth (needs work) blooper stanzas

so undersea the pearls of Thought
are layered by the clam
misunderstandings soothing errors
while meaning's on the lam.

Learn you then these magic words
to make all your points better:
"anything that you can do,
I can do Meta."
#213
August 4, 2017
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shatter the illusion of explanatory depth (needs work)

Society is the pretense that
we know as others know
what it is they think
and why they think it so

and Reason, oh, it's not a god
just a way of tracking fights;
arguments are wars, you see
and soldiers have no rights

new Facts are a bombardment
and cause people to entrench,
shouting at the whistling shells,
along the miles of fence

defending what they first believed;
and so our proposal's been
to douse them with new Facts
from battles not yet seen

carried on the wind
in from the fringe
consistency is what's smelt
when conspiracy is dealt



after Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds, Elizabeth Kolbert
and particularly Valerie Young and Brian Moen's reading of it
#212
August 3, 2017
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untitled tweets

During the Joy Shortage of 2017
we mined it from whatever sources we had
including terrifying world events.

In our culture we used every part of the news.
We couldn't afford to waste anything.



by Jesse Kriss
#211
August 2, 2017
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the forgotten dialect of the dark

you are as beautiful
as an extra hour of electricity_

 
for Elena Byun, who introduced me to the poem this evokes
#210
August 2, 2017
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sandalless

a tangleweave of terraced roots
run down to greet this Mystic beach
its name a false cognate for 'big tidal river'
its sediment settling for thousands of years
beneath a calm exterior; I grew up near
a tidal Big River with different trees
different sands (less arsenic)
different thoughts near the surface
different feelings layered deep
different brightenings from the tops of waves
but the same beaming sun, I hope.


for Esther Jang
#209
August 2, 2017
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there's just not enough room!

There's not enough room
for Design in this world,
if Design wants to be
somehow outside it:
immaterial design, hitting us
right in the pineal from its
world of the ideal, design as
the evocation of essence,
the ontologick magical ghosts
of our ancestors shown reflected
in high-gloss plastics:
if it lives i'th heavens, a celestial nit,
I'm sorry to we've no room here for it.



for Grace Kane
#208
August 1, 2017
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insects make space

by pirouetting the invisible
pressures of a still room;
by climbing unseen scents; by
salivally spiralling through soil;
by chirping buzzing rattling
enough to fill a whole night:
they push back the sky,
the certainty an eye has of
emptiness,
and make room for space



for Connie Lu
#207
July 31, 2017
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p🌳

just going to get out early ahead of this one
and call it a day of poetry—that is, peonies and tries:
purple-teal blossom bruises pouring as tea
from our mouths into the cups of pale trees growing
rings and canopy pluots, all of us 
postpartum party prats sprouting potted prose
#206
July 30, 2017
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a sense of continuity

the stories we tell,
our selves,
can leap to the next
without any essence;
this isn't even The-
seus's ship, it's just a
plotting trick, a
separating line between
unconnected images, a
Meanwhile heard
from someone else's
movie which you
think arose
from your own
#205
July 29, 2017
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re: mini sce

the trouble with snapshots
is who has the time to look back
through them?
of course one does encounter
such here, each one this one-
way ticket to reverie, but
when the inbox is slowly
molding while the Web seems
to catch altogether too many
insects my temptation is to
take only photos with recipients
in mind, perform ever for
the present, never for the
future past,
                   but maybe the
synthetic synthesis solution
precipitate is to keep treasured
media medeas mediums
as terraria, mossy and full of
earthen scent; bring back the
time capsule, write letters to the
future self who thinks they'll
never get around to reading them,
because someday they will.
#204
July 5, 2017
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roadside picnic

(and we as ants)

"it just works!"
this is to say
all that it does, is work

and we are caught in its
working all

of tec
tnol ogy
as a cargo cult, feverish repetition
of the material combinations that
worked so well for Watt and Tesla
in hopes that the same social
motion will happen again, the same

disruptive boardflip, pieces everywhere, this
subtle and not so subtle rearranging 
while putting them back on the board:

"I think this was here, right?"
#203
July 1, 2017
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situatedalism

not a place where the poor have cars,
but where the rich use public transportation_

and it turns out bikes truly don't count;
too personal, taking much more space, 
not effective enough to combat the
big-bang-like inertia of urbanity,
very much making assumptions
about people's bodies; ideally, yes,
bikes and buses both, but given just one,
buses

here in the city of the angels I'm glad
that hyper-masculine fit engineers have
looped, have found a way to find trains
glamorous again

for the second responsibility is space
an ending
of reach
#202
June 29, 2017
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boundary-object-oriented

too much feelings to poem?

but,
creative expression is neither privilege nor need but
an inherent characteristic of human endeavor_

i mean,
real or planned solid objects and of their bounding surfaces_

that is,
oh the night, what it does to you_
#201
June 28, 2017
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re: happy birthday

re: happy birthday
above: my responses to today's facebook posts wishing happy birthday.
you may need to enable images in your email to see it
icons in the same position for consecutive responses are replaced with a blank space
none of the patterns were conscious
thanks~

#200
June 10, 2017
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first memo

language, better still a
a magnetic field, "light
like the bird
and not the feather",
with agency as the sights

of outlines at dusk,
with no
bright line,
so the doer stays the fiction
of the deed, the bird

is written
by the feather,
as well
(at least as well)
as the other way around, for

"A sepal – petal – and a thorn"
we arose, so very light
we placed a hand thoughtfully
and vaulted
the weights of frivolities
and so on, those other angers,

#199
June 6, 2017
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at the swimming hole

big-eyed snake vampires go,
suck rocks away to form
a river dish
as we stand watching
our eyes as wide
as those of the two eels
frenziedly bumping a 
particularly
large flat rock
from the bottom of the river
on its place to elsewhere
#198
June 3, 2017
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confusing focus & motivation

that is, ascribing not doing the thing
that Should Be Being Done
to Not Wanting It Enough, 
Just Want it More
Why Don't You Want It More
is perhaps an unkindness
to oneself? or when you put
it like that, certainly a bad model
for explaining caffeine and
other vibrational modes, such
as conversation.
#197
May 12, 2017
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sugar-dusted freckles

and Pink Space Whale Delights
the whimsy the whims the
chance to care for others and
ourselves together
in this meterless fashion.
A Surprising Lack of Gravitas
But a Surplus of Good Times
And Ricotta

written in May
#196
May 11, 2017
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drafting a bio after catching up on news

is a Master's student, Mechanical Engineering, prone to projects and potlucks. Better far to hope with teeth than to end with organized disappointment.

a Master's student in Mechanical Engineering, where there's time spent / waiting for that macrame bird of prey to come down and sing. ^

was writing this bio when the words we used lost their bite now they hit you like an imaginary pillow fight; Master's, student, Mechanical Engineering. But everybody has the right to beautiful radiant things. ^

wants you to know that astronauts make an incredible number of jokes in person and in flight transcripts; humor is not the answer but it can be a peace.
#195
May 10, 2017
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soundings

drop a line / in the well / make a wish / hermitage / plumb the depths / become that / noisy signal / you want to see / learn that / system you're in / resonances / peaks and valleys / it / can be hard / to identify peaks / maybe / a sunny day will help / Inline image 1
#194
May 9, 2017
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migrant worker poets

I want to press the straps flat
so they won’t dig into your shoulders when you wear it
and then press up from the waist
a lovely waist
where someone can lay a fine hand
and on the tree-shaded lane
caress a quiet kind of love
last I’ll smooth the dress out
to iron the pleats to equal widths
so you can sit by a lake or on a grassy lawn
and wait for a breeze
like a flower

Wu Xia


{ http://lithub.com/the-chinese-factory-workers-who-write-poems-on-their-phones/ }
#193
May 4, 2017
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grace more-or-less

approach, insist
we can learn from
this activism
the very apparatus of prison,
its foci
as active participants in flux,
your fifteenth birthday
suddenly viral,
escaping control. Yes,
reframe
with clear-sight
those particular
enormous ripetides
which can be allowed to flex;
conversely
which are integral, which
need to hold firm.

can individuals
and communities
emerge
with grace more-or-less intact?


{ http://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/feminist-approach/ }
{ http://justinpickard.net/2017/01/belgian-shrimping-and-a-quinceanera/ }
#192
April 12, 2017
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a taming

confused we
called the instructor over;

looking at us
she put one hand gently on
the machine, as if to calm it
and scolded
#191
April 12, 2017
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hindsight horoscope

curling a stiff face into the rain
late after an early day
feebly the mind grasps after, tries

to make it mean something,
and from the morning's exam
the dipole by streetlight seems

an elemental, transcendent metaphor
this insertion with its equal
and apposite reaction which can be

a force in the fluid,
a push filling itself in behind
that cannot be seen from the side.

acoustics makes it the sound of one hand clapping
but aren't we always seeing so much else
of reaction, of virtual mass, in our days.

and so night, city, traffic, thoughts,
make space where you pass, then resume
#190
April 5, 2017
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scavineur

to that being too public and too private,
your skin a hungry ghost and only the
inexpressible coming to mind and motion's
dervish gyre of naval contemplation
there will come no satiation, no no
no ceremonial nation will slip the ritual
goose the cobblestones and bind! the habitual
instant to the sounds and the throat tension
so let. so let! the bloods and ash of
tempered strength, temper strengthen.
#189
March 26, 2017
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wake for #neonoir

cause of death: obsolescece

eagles catch drones
servers submarine
night mayors in between

"may we be martyred in space"
Death by poisoned GPS

ALERT - FOX NEWS: Seven shot at Florida night club
ALERT : We found seven new jobs that may interest you.

GOT REALLY DRUNK LAST NIGHT AND ACCIDENTALLY WROTE AN ETHEREUM CONTRACT TO DRONE STRIKE ME AT A RANDOM TIME IN THE NEXT 48 HOURS

If You Talk to Bots, You're Talking to Their Bosses
"Just got a robocall that read off a PHP error and hung up. That is a first."
#188
January 30, 2017
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overly honest methods

(Continued from other side)
as cast on a historical plaque
seems like a good tombstone inscription


"...everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things."Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world--prisons, persecution, everything.


"We seem to think that there is lack of money but no limit of resources.

What would happen if we took things upside down and assumed that there is unlimited money but limited resources?"


archaeology has always been about the anthropocene. It is completely reliant on our footprint, on our pollution.

Dream in years, plan in months, evaluate in weeks, ship daily


'
Just
Chipping
Away
'

#187
January 28, 2017
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holes

What resembles the grave but isn't


Always falling into a hole, then saying “ok, this is not your grave, get out of this hole,” getting out of the hole which is not the grave, falling into a hole again, saying “ok, this is also not your grave, get out of this hole,” getting out of that hole, falling into another one; sometimes falling into a hole within a hole, or many holes within holes, getting out of them one after the other, then falling again, saying “this is not your grave, get out of the hole”; sometimes being pushed, saying “you can not push me into this hole, it is not my grave,” and getting out defiantly, then falling into a hole again without any pushing; sometimes falling into a set of holes whose structures are predictable, ideological, and long dug, often falling into this set of structural and impersonal holes; sometimes falling into holes with other people, with other people, saying “this is not our mass grave, get out of this hole,” all together getting out of the hole together, hands and legs and arms and human ladders of each other to get out of the hole that is not the mass grave but that will only be gotten out of together; sometimes the willful-falling into a hole which is not the grave because it is easier than not falling into a hole really, but then once in it, realizing it is not the grave, getting out of the hole eventually;  sometimes falling into a hole and languishing there for days, weeks, months, years, because while not the grave very difficult, still, to climb out of and you know after this hole there’s just another and another; sometimes surveying the landscape of holes and wishing for a high quality final hole; sometimes thinking of who has fallen into holes which are not graves but might be better if they were; sometimes too ardently contemplating  the final hole while trying to avoid the provisional ones; sometimes dutifully falling and getting out, with perfect fortitude, saying “look at the skill and spirit with which I rise from that which resembles the grave but isn’t!“ 

Anne Boyer (2013)



Anne Boyer's poems have filled this space before, and my book of her poems is getting dogeared.

in other news,

holes left by the earth fleeing a bomb become moss become pond

holes that were an absence of knowledge become an abundance
#186
January 20, 2017
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going forth

During a stomach flu last week I got sucked into SHENZHEN I/O, a game of electronic logic puzzles solved by writing tiny convoluted programs in assembly. After days of playing it, well again but with MOV and NOP swimming before my eyes, I re-read bits of AP2, an archive (and relic itself) of an Amiga games magazine (1991-96) and its writing culture: this led to reading issues of its idiosyncratic progenitor Your Sinclair (1984-93), which led to finding the Forth language (1968), which led to my staying up for hours last night reading its book, that starts with a dictionary but inexorably just keeps thinking until you're using the switches on your computer to input your own compiler / OS / virtual machine.

Gee whiz. The energy of early computing. As if to make up for all the disappointments of actually using these computers, the texts sparkle, and every obstacle seem to hide a secret delight.

I read bits of the AD&D2 Dungeon Masters guide recently as well, and I think aspects of that game only make sense from this perspective as well: the game is in many ways about the DM concealing from the players what is possible, leaving them to puzzle and try things that generally fail hilariously, but sometimes in their success bring a sense of wonder.

Today you find game hints on the Internet, not in magazines employing witty writers, and you download programming languages instead of creating them yourself on punchcards. The notion of a story game where everything is hidden from the players seems a bit obtuse and uncollaborative. We hear now from many more voices, and from different voices as well: AP and YS were squarely aimed at well-off teenage boys, and the Forth book quietly insists you're not a good enough programmer, requiring replenishing reserves of confidence.

Plus, there's the fact that even among engineers today's technological advances are shadowed by our speculation on how it will be used to shore up drone-warfare and surveillance complexes. ("I realized how long it had been since I looked at a new technology with wonder, instead of an automatic feeling of dread." Maciej Cegłowski, 2014) I'm not sure of this, but I feel like it's much clearer now in national and global conversations that technical solutions must be combined with social ones than it was thirty or forty years ago. Even Facebook is sinister to even Americans, these days.

And so I'm looking for that secret delight of discovering the possible in life and politics. The sense of magic, the awe of abstraction, the energy of responsibility. Because of, not in spite of, the disappointments.
#185
January 12, 2017
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windsongluckboard

Joe Tone
Just saw the rabbi in the hall. "The good news is, he changes with the wind," the rabbi said. "Let's be the wind."


Zadie Smith
At this moment, all over the world—and most recently in America—the conductors standing in front of this human orchestra have only the meanest and most banal melodies in mind. Here in Germany you will remember these martial songs; they are not a very distant memory. But there is no place on earth where they have not been played at one time or another. Those of us who remember, too, a finer music must try now to play it, and encourage others, if we can, to sing along.


Ursula Franklin
A society might work like a potluck supper, where everyone contributes and everyone receives, and where a diversity of offerings is essential. In such a world there would be no one who could not contribute their work and care, and no one who could not count on receiving nourishment and friendship. I hold this vision with firm confidence.


wikipedia
A group of specialists watch the blackboard, looking for an opportunity to apply their expertise to the developing solution. When someone writes on the blackboard something that allows another specialist to apply her expertise, the second specialist records her contribution on the blackboard, hopefully enabling other specialists to then apply their expertise. This process of adding contributions to the blackboard continues until the problem has been solved.
#184
January 10, 2017
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github is for lovers

One thing I love about ICTD is that
privileges are turned on their head
 
> What's hard is naming a process, practice, or tool
> that others can repeat with success
 
If you grew up poor in India, you are now the expert
 
>> To me the most surprising technological change
>> of the last 20 years is how quickly we forgot
>> how to build decentralized systems
 
If you grew up a secret-feminist woman engineer in Pakistan,
you know something to do to encourage feminist engineers in Pakistan
 
>>> Grab a lonely dream
>>> and hold it tight
#183
January 9, 2017
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morning sketch

Inline image 1

think of you all <3
#182
November 9, 2016
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walking into the cold night

bundled in our copes
stitched with connections
woven by communities

history stretches in front of us
as we step backwards towards the cliff
out from all of our comfort zones, now

care for yourself and others
let others care for you
tomorrow is not yet built
#181
November 9, 2016
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the wait, the weight

walking around I find myself counting people
the way one would count a rare object,
if you saw multiple at once

but people seem more distinct today, not less
cloaked in invisible, immutable, intent
#180
November 8, 2016
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after wrathskellar

what
is the burlesque
of floor plans?
circuitous
halts
revelations
gauzed
by intermittent
veiling
and back tracks

what is the tease
of stories?
catching the eye
and throwing it
inviting
attention
and attention to
intention's
tension
the illusion of purpose
of importance
as better than the real

eyes masked
hand outstretched
the thrill, the startle
the lean and tilted neck
gazes diffuse

~
#179
November 1, 2016
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