The Alan Sondheim Mail Archive

October 10, 2017


Rabidity ~~


http://www.alansondheim.org/aud01.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/aud03.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/aud24.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/aud36.jpg

A rabid network connects and interconnects everywhere and at all
times; so that it might appear as substance, at best dynamic
striations. A chain may be as strong as its weakest link, but a
chain may also be duplicated; each to the other, each a
procurement; many weak links on many duplicates may be
irrelevant (gather them in one place, under one command, and
then there's a difference). A chain grows at one or both ends;
it's anchored, it's ascendent, it's linear. Everything that
transmits is orderly. There are more frequencies than we know
within the universe, more frequencies any-where and every-where,
and if we think of such as infinite in extent and duration, we
are limited to an infinitely small portion of the world, quantum
granularity notwithstanding. Chains and networks are outgrowths;
everything is natural about them, nothing is natural about them.
What extends, might do so with and without nodes, surfaces,
bearings, coordinates. One might prefer a world without any of
these; their presence signifies birth and decomposition, and
unimaginable attendant cruelties.

There may be no originary object, no (0)-> and no finality,
->(1) ; there may be slurry at best. This is the poetics of
form, its poesis, which refuses any mathematico-physical
reduction, no matter the reality. Poesis is us-ness.

The chain is a walkthrough; the network is a walkabout. Note the
difference. The network is full of contradiction; the chain
exists as [x-1][x][x+1] or some such, in other words a well-
ordering; the network might be, for all one knows, a continuum
of infinite dimension, a collocation of surreal or other
untoward or wayward numbers, anything but _that_ which tends
towards calculation, the abacus, the clear movement of a bead
from one place to another.

A network might have no place at all, neither this nor that,
neither one nor another. There might be sheaves, layers,
monstrous topologies, foams, percolations. There might be
something only visible from the outset or the outside, or
something invisible from every conceivable vantage-point. There
may be no conceivable vantage-points. I remember writing the
notion of the _anorectic airliner,_ the motion of air in air,
the introverted and intense turbulence, perhaps without
temperature gradients whatsoever, that remains inherently
invisible. Or caught with one or another Schlieren optics. Or
not caught at all. Or caught always already past, passed.

The network channels movement, or movement defines the channels
of the network; the channels may have fixed walls, or none
whatsoever; there may be sloughs and surges and slurries, for
example. The channel/carrying capacity/information model holds
in a miniscule number of models with proper potential wells; at
the same time it dominates all our thinking in a revolutionary
way reminiscent of the discovery of the wheel, the printing
press, electricity. The revolution might well lie otherwise,
elsewhere, elsewhen, however; it might lie in those glimpses of
inconceivable networks that pervade us and our objects, pervade
organisms and boundaries, problematize aristotelian logics,
dissolve into dissolution or the abject upon or within our
notice or momentary attention - or none or all of these. What
might be of interest here is the idea of the _lifespan of the
network_ - in other words, the temporality of what might or
might not be noticed.

As open-ended organisms we're bound and unbound there, within
this temporality, within the very concept, not of measurement,
but of objects or durations we find amenable. That brings us
back to our problem, our temporality, our networks and their
chains which bind them - as if they, the we within us, were the
case or cases.

No (0),(1), no beginnings and endings, (but) what might pass for
a (momentary) glance, something of the nature of attention or of
the economy of attention. We don't let sleeping dogs lie; we
wake them, sometime or other in the morning, it's a humid day,
it might be better or best to let them be.

--

(be, being, open multi-dimensional sets on any interval; care,
attention, absence)

--

"A research ecologist with the Environmental Protection Agency
in Narragansett, R.I., for the past 20 years, Hale recently
finished compiling a master list of all the species ever
recorded in the sediments of Narragansett Bay. He discussed the
project at a Sept. 28 Rhode Island Natural History Survey
lecture.

The list includes 1,056 species, and Hale believes there may be
another 200 to 300 still to be found. Most live in the top 10
centimeters of the bays sediments. The most abundant creatures
recorded are varieties of polychaete worms, mollusks, and
arthropods.

But rare species make up most of the biodiversity, he said.

Included among the rare variety were 395 singletons species
found only once and 224 doubletons. Another 279 were captured
prior to 1950 and havent been seen again due to range shifts,
pollution, the effects of invasive species, and other factors."

- from "Hidden World of Narragansett Bay on the Rebound,"
Todd McLeish,
https://www.ecori.org/narragansett-bay/2017/10/4/hidden-undersea-world-of-narragansett-bay-on-rebound

---

< times; so it might appear as substance, at best dynamic
---
> times; so that it might appear as substance, at best dynamic
< matter the reality.
---
> reduction, no matter the reality.
< The chain is a walkalong; the network is a walkabout. Notice the
---
> The chain is a walkabout; the network is a walkabout. Note the
< of a bead from one place to another.
---
< channel/carrying capacity/information model holds in a minscule
---
> channel/carrying capacity/information model holds in a miniscule
< No 0,1, no beginnings and endings, (but) what might pass for a
< (momentary) glance, something of the nature of attention or of
---
> No (0),(1), no beginnings and endings, (but) what might pass for
> --
<
---
> --

Generated by Mnemosyne 0.12.