Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.00.1201271405480.10645@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.wvu.edu>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: Of Housing
Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:07:20 -0500 (EST)
Of Housing http://www.alansondheim.org/housing.png http://www.alansondheim.org/housing2.png http://www.alansondheim.org/housing.mp3 solo hasapi finding a home in memory [where we grew up, images from google maps, the tree and front entrance to the kitchen are already gone; the tree was one of the oldest in the town] a situation or an unknown situation [trying to find a home for melody on hasapi, it's already gone by the time i arrive] I remember we always liked the trees, the one in the back seemed to grow up with us. When my parents grew older, they stopped caring so much; finally a year or so ago my brother and I insisted that the growth be cut back to avoid misery in the neighborhood; there was always the chance of something falling on one or another building. The hedgerow of pines had to go; they were dead from disease. It's as if the soil itself rebelled against growth in the area. The skunks and possums went and the rabbits were gone for a long time, too. Now some of the rabbits are back, that's all. No more hawks, we didn't see herons either or any of the other visitors. But then we weren't looking either. Google's maps are memories, perfect for archives I think, the details blurred as if you were looking at things through cataracts. Technology will never catch up with the singularity of a one-to-one map; that doesn't matter very much. It doesn't matter that animals and plants disappear, that corrupted form is the result of form corrupting; there are always new plants and animals around the corner, and these images, for that matter, this music, are nothing but digital spews, hardly carrying the meat of anything, much less the world they were extruded from. We are always already replacements, and probably always already have been. The pain we leave behind, the pain within us, is inextricable and lies outside any map or territory; the world shatters, shutters and devolves. Almost no one will read this, and it's more likely to be processed by a bot or spider than a human or other consciousness moved, if only for a second, by the increasing tawdriness of our world, slipping vastly into the digital, no body, our bodies, left behind.