Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.00.1004051605010.11790@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: Writing and the Absent Center
Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2010 16:05:24 -0400 (EDT)
Writing and the Absent Center The following piece is written using an interesting technique. Several key words are chosen - for example, 'fraud.' Vowels are eliminated - 'frd.' The resulting consonant chain is entered into a 1980s Franklin spell- checker. The spell-checker returns a list of possible words. The words are used, in list-order, as catalysts for lines, one word per line. Any number of key words can be used for a text. In the following, a key word provided the catalysts for the first section; each subsequent section used a key word chosen to augment the meaning of the piece. The key words themselves most likely do not appear in the text, which circulates around one or more absent centers. The writing is always under erasure by an uncanny other that almost never appears itself. (Even if it does appear, it becomes only one of a number of list words.) This is of course a model of writings inherent alterity, used as a means of thinking through a text. And of course such a model hints at the possibility of an infinite regress, alterity's other, and so forth - on one hand a useless construct, on an other, a potential truth as revealed in the following. the sexy body was found near the volcano's searing lip skis and poles were fixed to silent genitals a stale odor permeated lava, air and skin and sky it was as if styli had inscribed an unknown language on the skin lulu stalled, stared at the incised foreign markings the writing was on a miniscule scale, nothing made sense at all volcanic fumes, sulphuric, resulted in scaly, crackling skin something was still missing from the horrifying image of the real lulu moved the body upright, creating a stele effect things were easier to read, but sex is never easy to comprehend the son, sol, looked down through fumes, no answer was forthcoming the inscription was formed from oddly styled tiny dots lulu walked around the upright body trembling, in a daze for the nth time she lightly touched the taut and written skin her tongue ran over its nipples, she sensed an incandescent drug the body seemed to dissolve into dusts and dregs of sky and earth lulu dragged herself along the ground, her clothes torn off travis, blistered, naked, from the heat, sang an uncanny dirge the dirge was dark, the color of incisions on the upright body soon, darts flew through the air, and the body glowed in answer a dirk cut and set it free, its skin sloughed to the ground it sank into the volcanic matrix, nude, never to emerge again lulu drew an image in the dust, trying to remember everything that was i draw better than write, she said, pressing her body into the hollow her skin sloughed and scaled, as travis watched in horror furiously, he dug deep next to her, on the lip of the bleak volcano he scratched the earth like dogs against lulu's mewling cats he dug deeper, until they both fell into the smoking hole all that was left was a sack of emptied clothes lulu and travis disappeared, sick of their burned skin, smoke and fire their last gesture, sucking on each other's bodies' desperate organs this was the beginning of wandering through lack in word and world key and lock were identical, there was no escape there was no luck in the world, and less in every oath and word even now one thinks of the lick of lulu-travis even now one scents the leak of body burrowed into body the volcano lip turned in, to airless lid across the skin of everything the world turned wilder, dangerous, beneath the festered lip all bodies are weld together, all tongues and holes are joined all words are wads of skin pressed tight into the mind senseless mind and body wed together in constant mourning red blood reminds of reddened lip and words nothing rids the world of language, code, inscription nothing connects, not even rods and lines in skin and bone the world seems sacred writ as we attempt a true and real reading the real wilts away as reading disappears characters are welts upon (our) travis-lulu's skin the characters are always rude, the language rude as well lips and words inhabit worlds, forever burning us, in constant acts of dying