20210701. A pile of green fruit, just sitting there, doesn’t attract much attention. But, after a while, one of the fruit flies does something very interesting. It starts to lay its eggs in the middle of the room.

The whole room becomes a nesting area for aphids, and, since no one is present at all in the room, flies are guaranteed at random.

But, once the eggs are loose, the sound of the fly’s alarm is not enough to scare away the predators, since the spider is well camouflaged in the web.

With this escape route so clear, it is time to return to the question of the mysterious way. The familiar path may be a more fluid medium, or perhaps a more viscous one. 20210701. Brown branches in the foreground.
Green trees in the background.
There are no humans, birds, or insects to be seen.
It was here, in this empty scene, that the fairy tale began.

A story about a mysterious phenomenon, which had baffled scientists for centuries. People had reported seeing fire, sparks, and massive lightning strikes along the entire length of the horizon, but nobody had ever seen anything like it. Nobody. Nobody had ever attempted to find out. There was no written or oral tradition about this mysterious phenomenon that brought life to this point on earth. 20210701. The shape of a bird’s beak punctures the observer’s space.

Out of the blue, from the forest of signs, trees, animals, and human beings, emerges a feral other, one that has its own ways and that plays its own style.

The forest is what inscribes the exotic other in the reader’s consciousness, the unchanging voice of the wilderness, the anonymous other of the city. 20210701. Small pieces of brown and white foods, dried fish, vegetables, and other articles, which, according to the state of the market, are placed under various categories of restrictions, either directly or indirectly, by the working miners.

These articles are thus sorted into categories of consumption, and are thus regulated in accordance with certain general rules.

Social conditions and the state of trade would be in perfect harmony with a rational cultivation of the soil, a rational setting of labour conditions, and the harmonious working of social affairs.

The only thing that would break up would be the semblance of security, or the vague promise of safety connected with the still vaporous sounds of industrial machinery. 20210701. The unknown white world they knelt to
Then suddenly, they pant and guzzle
This last act, take notice
May cause a curious change in the temperature of your stomach

And all your senses will become sharper
And you will find delight in the world
That is made of crunching and squirming and squishing
The stripey ones are particularly gross

And when you venture forth, you will find
Fear not, for they are quick to discover
That you are absolutely wrong,
And quickly correct.

For them, human bein’s is tasty
Delicious, and they know it
So come, old friends, and do not take
The foul persuasion to heart

For bitter is the word, and error is the vice
So turn back to the living-room, and we’ll watch
The children rumbling along the floor
And you can spell, your life out loud 20210701. A black television anchored by a yellow background. A white line ran through it, drawing its power from the veins of the cable line and, alternately, producing a kaleidoscopic display of images (comprehending both space and time) and obscurities (darkness was supposed to be the limit, the horizon).

As its name suggested, this kaleidoscopic display was intended primarily for children, the adults being drawn toward the television screen to see what they could not replicate. The resulting sensation was one of displacement: everyone went to sleep, except for the child, who woke up from his slumbers almost simultaneously with the news report.

The television lit up the interior of the house and created flickering light in each window, as seen from the outside. 20210701. A teddy bear with black and white stripes was sitting in my room.
He looked up at me when I came near to him.
“Hello,” he said. He spoke with a clear, grave voice.
I looked at the bear and immediately began to laugh.
“Hey!” he said. “Who’s laughing?”
I didn’t reply.
“Come here,” he said.
I could see the grin widening on his face.
I shook my head, and finally came to terms with the fact that I was probably going to be eaten alive.
You would never believe this. 20210701. A row of clothes hanging on the rack stood out like a rainbow in the gloom.

Every boy in the school had to wear a different color.

But he insisted that the only color he’d wear would be rainbow. 20210701. Beyond the large window, the forest, the sky, and everything in-between, there was of course that solitary and disturbed silence which falls so often upon us all, and the feeling, the sight, and the smell of spring leaves.

It is this in-between in which the life of a person might be best described, and of which the lives of others were only meant to serve as a symbol, a parable, a story, a mockery, or a farce adapted by the other.

The life of a person who had nothing apart from this, who spent their days dreaming of nothing, dreaming of nothing more than to be a faceless thing, to be a thing indifferent to the things around them, to the little noises they would make to themself, to the little details they would leave to others, the little gestures they would make to show others they loved them.

All those long years spent sitting in silence, feeling the tiny little touches of their hand on their own body, of their fingertips on their own skin, of their long, thin lips in an un-uttered voice. 20210701. Window
Chair
Computer
Clock

A certain device has been placed at my service that shows how useful the machine can be as a messenger. When I take my coffee, I am not riveted to a place, but rather, I am drawn to the sensation of the liquid, to which it belongs, hot and cold, smelling and tasting.

The function of the clock is to give me a signal to get up, not to keep me up. All other stimuli are treated as noise. Sensory perception is thus involved. But a closer look reveals a much more interesting sight.

As one can see, the clock is a useful tool, not just for its internal structure, but also for its effect on the environment. Since the clock’s movement is like a bell, with a simple rhythm, it follows that we must associate the bell with a kind of interior tone, in order to understand its meaning. 20210701. Potted plants
Flowering plants
Seed-producing cultivars

Eucalyptus
Orchids

Azalea
Fungi
Bacteria
Magical phenomena

Everywhere, though, are the mutants, the ones that ripen in the presence of the imperious scourge of climate change but not in the homely realm of the flower-picking imagination. 20210701. The word “unknown” on the illuminated screen of the city. This ocular landmark, an exoticism or narrowness, an “apparition” whose presence from too far away causes a break or discontinuity between the side of the buildings, creates a gap in the spatial continuum. Here, the aesthetic or manual activities of passers-by, or the solitary wandering of individuals, are described. Transformed into a term that is specific, unwanted and absolute, this theatre of errors is not content with diminishing marginality or centrality. It is the complete self, with its own tangibility and pivot, endowed with a singular character and expression, characterized by its “usage of the word” and its tendency to “turn the other cheek” in the most diabolical and sublime of places.

There is something pitiless about this use of language: it is the equivalent of throwing oneself down, as one would expect an artist to do when confronted with an inability to make himself the master of a universe. 20210701. A man in the window
Looks out the corner of his eye

And tells jokes through a microphone
In a whisper

About the boys in school
With redneck looks

And the devil’s dice
Who laughs out loud when he wins

And this is what the French say
When they win

Voir le maître que je suis
See the master that I am 20210701. The red door to the worker’s room is closed.

Throughout the day, it is forbidden to disturb the woman whilst she is working.

A day’s labor was endured in the making of paper tigers.

But now the steam-engine has been turned off. The kettle has been poured. 20210701. The plant in a pot looks different than the orchids in the background. How does a simple structure like an organic pentagram escape the fetters of time? Time is an unseen enemy who chases away the innocent.

Orchids are famous for their ability to survive under terrible environmental stresses. Certain kinds of orchids can withstand for hundreds of years under such stress. Others fail. Others fail and then die.

A rich field of research lies ahead if, with the help of modern molecular and chemical tools, we can establish how these orchids hold up under such stresses.

There are thousands of kinds of orchids, each with its own life stage, females and males. They are also widely cultivated for their psychoactive effects. 20210701. The dirty floor between the walls of the home, the sandy soil, and the holes in the wall, are brought alive by the exultation of dust. In harvest-time the humblest hut may be seen, and the poorest family may be seen doing its best “to please the landlord.”

In the winter months the naked feet of the children are often seen hobbling about the moors.

What a monstrosity!

You have no power of your own volition, sir, except to say that you will knock down the evil wherewith it is raised. And you will fill the workpeople’s pockets, even if you have to swallow your tears.

What madness! 20210701. A photo of a white sheep.

Just to the side of the picture frame, a shepherdess holds a sheepdog in her arms. Its paws are stretched out, with its chin resting on her right shoulder.

In total, this is a mysterious pastoral scene: a rectangular enclosure surrounded by fences and marked by an x, as in a German Expressionist film.

What does a shepherdess need but a sheepdog? 20210701. In the white empty space, a statue of a clock strikes the eye. The metamorphosis of time into a monster. The beast begins anew.

The solitary mechanical arm slowly but surely immerses itself in the hours, and at the same time it disturbs the rhythm of the day.

For the rest of the day, the immobility of the arm in its daylight subterranean activity, and the perfected and unrestrained speed of the machinery, are sufficient to evoke the passenger’s uneasy acquiescence to the hours of the day. 20210701. The black and silver products of the laborers, which in the form of commodities are easily divided into buyers’ necessaries, or by means of exchange between commodities, have in themselves no value, except in so far as they can be sold at their value.

The fact that they can be bought at a great sacrifice of their value does not prevent them from constituting a part of the constant capital of the capitalist. They form part of the commodity-supply and are, so to say, circulating on its front.

We shall not discuss this point any further until later. 20210701. The babies, in a basket made of hay, came up to feed with their mother.

Chapter 1 - The Great Feeding Plot

On the first three days of June, as the babies were waiting in the bottom of the nest, the mother would fly over each day and say, “Hello, hello, hello. I am fed up with you sitting there waiting for me to come and feed you. I am fed up with all of you.” She would then creep slowly up through the nest and settle herself beside the poor babies, and say, “Keep quiet,” and watch them for hours on end with those cracking black eyes. 20210701. A large television screen in the corner of the living room showed a movie about a car crashing into a wall. The screen went black the moment the film was over. There was a static soundtrack.

Until the very last detail, the point at which the story takes an absurd and murderous form, the television viewer cannot help but feel that they are being regularly bombarded by images of violence, of lost lives, of ruined cities.

Yet, in destroying the meaning, it causes a diversion within the spectator’s field of vision and causes a break or discontinuity between the spectator’s position in the story. The gap, or gap between the spectator’s position and the violence they are about to experience, is thus a kind of screen-space heterotopia. 20210701. A young girl in a golden frame, the color of magic, the purest brilliance imaginable. An explosion of color that filled the entire sky above her head, a fire burning in her eyes, wild and wonderful and frightening beyond words.

The burning hatred, the inexorable rise and fall of the upper lip, the lifting of the head, the changing of the fingers, the tread of the toes. Everything was happening before her very eyes, and she remained motionless, blinking at the glass, staring at the body itself, and smiling, but holding an invisible megaphone of silence. 20210701. Behind the green wall, a human is holding a mirror with the caption: “In order to look more natural, one must always use a good lens.”

Well done, human. Well played.

Follow me, then, into the mirror, with my flight path, into the unknown world of the environment.

My companion, the talented artist, teaches me that feeling is not a human activity: it is instead a conjunctive activity.

My companion, the designer, teaches me that thinking is practice: it is a theoretical, participatory practice.

My companion, the animal, teaches me of bird-like fractals, string figures, and mosquito utterances. 20210701. Three bookshelves are filled from floor to ceiling.

The first is lined with old textbooks, defunct remedies, obsolete tricks, and discarded tales.

The second contains aberrations in herbal medicine, and the theories of abiogenesis, embryogenesis, and descent from parents suggesting that they might have been produced by chance alone.

The third doesn’t contain books, but rather papers, of the physical and of the literary kind, on which the future history of the arts and conflict may be built. Here we register histories of the war, the development of photography, the accounts of world events, local customs, notions of right and wrong, aesthetic conceptions of the past, imaginary connections drawn by missionaries, encyclopaedists, and philosophers, the histories and biographies of generals who marched on the front-lines of the battle for the allied cause, of generals who built up their empires, and of generals who sent their only sons into battle. 20210701. A picture on the wall of three small buildings: a factory, a warehouse, and a bank.

The three buildings sit in a row, next to one another like eyes and ears. They receive their doses of circulating capital like a magnet, and their electrons are exchanged in accordance with the tendencies and wants of the market.

The program is worked up like a chemical process, and the result of the whole is that the same atoms of wealth fulfill the same function in the different cells of the organization. It is just as though each cell had made one individual step towards the production of a given quantum of gold.

The whole of society receives, whether now in paper or later in gold, a quantum of interest-bearing capital. Or, like the individual who gets rid of his deposits in the bank, one can be said to have violently thrown all of his eggs into one broken basket. 20210701. A white sheet of a person’s memory is lifted to reveal a constellation of stories underneath.

Biographical Sketches: of a girl with her braids, her bows, her gloves, her nightgown, her scarf, and her shawl.

Environmental Sketches: of a river, of an amphitheater, of a farm, of a city, of a road, of a flag, of a plane, of a cactus, of an ocean, of a beach.

The Origin of Species: a subjective, psychological, and sociological study of the origins of species.

The Prodigal Son: a tale of youthful idealism, with a humorous first part, and a tragic ending, fittingly, considering the author's notorious fondness for irony. 20210701. Dead tree branches are taken from a dead ground and assembled in a new spot as soon as the seasons change. They are hung round the neck and the trunk facing inwards, and at the base of the tree fixed in a circle. Thus they resemble the roots of a mighty tree, which, growing on its own weight, spreads its roots over all the land.

Semper idem (always the same). Parum mutata (little has changed).

-Observations on Certain Verbal Forms of Proverbs, London, 1821 20210701. One of the birds is black.
One of the birds is white.
One of the vultures is yellow.
One of the hares is brown.

All these animals, my grandmother told herself, look absolutely frightening.

She trembled to think what might have come over them all, but she couldn’t stop herself from smiling.

She was always smiling. 20210701. The brown branches and grass at the bottom of the tree trunk often served as hiding places for small creatures, who ran amuck in the garden. These places of refuge had long-forgotten names, and their acacia-paneled roofs hid the bodies beneath the branches. These underground gardens existed only by virtue of a contract, respect for which was ensured by various rituals. In them the dead returned, not from within, but from without. Their mourning supplied the continuous murmuring of a subterranean language. 20210701. A cloud of insects stings us in all our undertakings.

We begin to feel that we have messed up our instruments of observation, and that an entirely new system of feeling and action is required.

The feeling we want to impart to these new found, efficacious insects is “to be witnesses for their being.”

But how does a mere mortal like me, who has studied with flying insects, become a veritable witness for the nonexistence of the spiders of my imagination?

My whole environment is closed and confined, and I cannot look away. 20210701. The black mirror serves to conjugate the senses with each other, so that the web is perceived both visually and chemically in the spider's environment.

FIGURE 34. Signals of the web.

Perceived visually, the web is a black-and-white image.

Chemically, the web is a liquid, viscous one. 20210701. The television in the living-room creates but another form for presenting the results of our system of production. This mode of electrical telegraphy demonstrates the special problems caused by the inadequate construction of the transmitting mechanism. Here the application of science and technology succeeds in reproducing old problems with improved methods. 20210701. A bicycle under the metal railing of the stairs belongs to the building’s manager, who has kept it for his own use primarily, and secondarily for lending to friends who stop by and live in the building for a while.

The building manager is a quiet man who keeps to himself, but occasionally amuses the building’s residents with arithmetical puzzles and logic problems, posted on a small board at the bottom of the stairs.

Word-chain puzzles:
HIM LOVE ONE
HER HAVE ORE
ALL HATE ALE

Anagrams:
STREET = TESTER
ATHENS = HASTEN
ABSOLUTE = OUSTABLE 20210701. Atop the colorful tablecloth of the dining-room table sat a small, pocket-sized book.

Dear Diary,

I often forget to write in you, even when I am at home.
I sit thinking about you all the time.

I begin to type, very cautiously, for inspiration.
I cut out the needless words, and hastily add in all the rest.

I begin to write as follows.
In a style that is truly original.

Oh, my joy, my ecstasy, my admiration.
Oh, my horror, my refuge, my salvation. 20210701. A black and white corridor is a visual echo of the reality from which it extends. It is an illusion, a composite, a distortion. It creates the perception of a distance. It is a fiction. The space of the past is erased from the page where it belongs. The space of the near is also a fiction, but different in that the space of the near is created by a process of elimination and absorption, and not by the erasure of everything that surrounds it, including the past. Because of this, the space of the near is not merely a place: it is a partial precondition of the utopia that surrounds it. 20210701. The walls show the shadows that the sun, moon, and stars cast on the wood.
Under the same light, these images blend in the most complete darkness:
Symbol of the living breathing.
Symbol of the dying star.
Symbol of the living earth.
Symbol of the dead man with the cross.
Symbol of the living mother with child.
Symbol of the dead branch on the stem.
Symbol of the living reaping. 20210701. A collection of small toys on the shelf, for each of the four children — an aeroplane, a yo-yo, a bat, a feather, a mirror, a teapot, and all the rest of them, everything was in perfect order.

“There you are, my little friends,” she said to them, one by one.

Then came the bedtime story, the funny little poem, and finally, the frightful song that made them skitter around the room, each to their own corner. 20210701. Behind two empty chairs, a big cabinet, not very neat, contains books of which the owner is keen to remain very much in control of. Not just the pages, but the entire volumes.

The books have always been a blurry, unreliable, and sometimes even inexplicable catalog of everything produced or consumed by him in his ever more inextricable spatio-linguistic grip. 20210701. The dirty concrete floor, the number of workers who built it, the space required for each individual. Many millions of dollars are thus consumed in the production of surface, and it is only due to this that the following statement is not contradicted: that the wealth of the people is not spent on luxury articles, but on luxury surfaces. 20210701. The door to the left is open.
The door to the right is closed.
To the left, there is a void.
To the right, actions.

These are oppositions that have been positively defined, for example between private space and public space.

Between family space and social space.
Between aesthetic and metaphysical space.
Between the space of leisure and that of work.
Between cultural space and useful space. 20210701. The white flowers, a jute sack, and a quilted spread are on the bed. The floor covered in a carpet of woolen masses.

All around the place, the floor has shifted, become more fertile, and various objects have taken on life of their own.

The only thing that seems to have remained constant is the circular opening of the solitary window.

Sometimes the light comes in from the window, at other times through the tiny cracks in the wall. 20210701. A pile of wooden branches comes down, one after the other. These branch varieties are not bound to any ontological commitments: they know universals and differences, and they weave clusters and eddies to sustain relational flourishing.

In forming the woodlands, diverse peoples and other critters enrich the earth with abundant life-forms, changing their species identities according to their own unique structures and compositions. This is not an organic process, but a systematic ordered improvement after centuries of devastating breakdowns and falsifications. 20210701. This wooden hole in the trunk of a tree is a representation of the habitus. We see a disc representing the body of a god on one side and the deceptive qualities of a goddess on the other.

In this combination of flesh and myth, of feminine and masculine characteristics, a fiction is created within the observer's own discourse that shapes his or her own image of the world and distinguishes him or her from others. This is a double reversal that is characteristic of either the religiousness or the modernity that I referred to above. 20210701. A large herd of sheep cast shadows on the stone wall of the market.

A trader in the neighborhood had part of his flock residing at his house, huddled together in two groups of six in the open air. The other part of the flock lay in the cottage of the manufacturer. It was not until he sold them to a bidder that they were distributed among the various producers of commodities. That manufacturer, therefore, had to introduce a new system of division of the flock, and thus, of the rearing of sheep. 20210701. A small window reveals a wooden bed with a cobwebbed mattress above the floor. Down the center of the room there is an empty bottle and a blanket covered with red letters.

The Old Green Grasshopper and the Ladybug had come to see how things were going, and now they are observing the progress of this amazing scene from a distance.

I wonder what they would think if a video camera and lens were mounted directly on to the top of their heads, and if you could see the whole scene from their point of view.

I imagine you would be thrilled to see one of them crawling about upon the floor of the enormous container. And I imagine you would also be pleased to see someone jumping up and down merrily in the air of my favorite scent – the musky perfume of Verbena. 20210705. A wooden mask belonging to a character in a long-forgotten drama.
Forgotten speech-patterns: accents, intonations, pauses, foot-prints. Italian, Spanish, Arabic, and Portuguese, the Portuguese being the most numerous, and the Arabic and Spanish the least so far as we know.
We can deduce from the general appearance of the room that the party was lavish, perhaps even grandiose, and that it did not leave anyone unsatisfied: everyone, in his or her turn, had something to gain and something to lose.
The question was, how to best allocate these gifts? 20210703. The dirty floor leads to an outdoor garden, which offers a mild respite from the hustling and streams of the city. The traveller can rent themself gratis upon this spot for three months, and then they can leave just as freely. The rent is certainly less than the weekly wage of the tenant who would have to labor for three months and save for nothing except the occasional dosing of morphine. 20210703. A large old-fashioned chair sits before a wooden workbench with a black and white keyboard.
The “speculative” part of this chair (the doubtful character of this chair) leads to its downfall. Speculative chairs are bought at half the value, or even less, than those of the modern chair-makers. These chairs, therefore, attract the attention of the capitalist, who, spotting them before he buys, exclaims with interest, “Oh! the beauty of the thing!” On the other hand, these “speculative” chairs are “a discredit to the community,” as the person of the street says, “a shame to be avoided.”
Speculative chairs! In black, they state defiance of all authority.
Speculative tables! In white, they declare with triumphant cheerfulness that they are designed for the enjoyment of the capitalist. 20210712. The large arched windows of the brick building are shields from the sun that give the impression of a spacious place, separated from the bustle of the city by a thin curtain. But the walls are almost completely covered in paintings, engravings, and miscellaneous reproductions, evidencing the intensity of his religious passion for the natural world. Standing on the marble flagstones, he would paint with his brush the fragments of a cliff face, or of a tree, or of a human being’s head, as if he were trying to reconstruct the scene from every angle. 20210703. The white lines on the wall are confined to a single point, and the only variation comes from the angle of the floor. Naturally, this gives the illusion of a seamless space, but in fact the walls are carefully constructed, and the variation in the floor makes a more or less conspicuous difference. At the very extreme, the floor almost completely encloses the entire space around it, and, on the other side, a small but barely perceptible bump is made at the junction of the wall and the floor, like the missing piece of an endless jigsaw puzzle. 20210711. The potted plants and the pictures on the wall hung above the double bed. On the opposite side, in the loft where the nursery was situated, there was an empty room where the children could play. Here also, in one of the loft’s upper stories, the sound of a cheerful song came back to them through the windows. The song was by no means old or familiar, but it was one of those pleasant, little-known folk songs that one knows only too well, like the Vande Patten, or the Staines, or the Cowens, or Kraftwerk. 20210702. The white table in the white room was completely bare, and looked like a kind of altar. I began to stare at the pale walls of the room. The room was so white that when I looked up I was actually looking straight at my own face rather than at the ceiling.
In fact, I was looking straight at the ceiling, and it was so white that I could hardly bring myself to look up there at all. I looked down at my own face. I looked at the wall vertically and horizontally, trying to work out how in the world a person could conceivably be alive without a face. 20210710. The three pictures on the wall mean very different things to different people. A photograph might convey a feeling of profound sadness, or even exhilaration. For example, when you first see it, you may jump to the conclusion that it must be the last picture ever taken by man. A photograph, then, is not just any old picture, but a process through which, over and over, the reconstruction of a single, identical image presents itself to the mind in such a way as to form a narrative. A photograph thus constructed constitutes a lie, and the deception is apparent from the start: the deception is expressed in the perceived image, the object, the time, and the space. It is these three elements that compose the pictures on the wall: the object, the time, and the space. 20210715. The brown carpet was always a reminder to me of the comfort and security of my parents’ house. And always, always, it was the cushy furniture that came first to my mind, followed by the ceilings and walls. In all honesty, I can not think of anything more reassuring or comforting than the feel of that large, brown carpet on my bare feet. 20210702. The bag with orange and white stripes was the stuff of dreams.
A dream is something unreal.
It floats around in the night air.
Floating through the night in the sky.

So high as the top of a castle.
And as far as the eye of the land.
The unutterably awful stillness.
Is released, and at once the realms of dream.

Are welcomed and explored.
With fears and ambiguities. 20210707. On the side of the building, a yellow sign with black letters announces:
“We vacate power.”
On the side of the shop, a large print of the manufacturer reads:
“Coming and going. Buying and selling: with a view to gain money, we sell and buy generally, this is the form of the millennium.”
From the printing-mills where the thread goes through the side door, it emerges in the shape of a spiral: “Inside this spiral, of which less is the basic element, looms the system of circulation which, in this place, is embodied the organ of the millennium.”
Out of this same mill, the spiral mill, the whole world of commodities spins. 20210703. A large window with a white frame.
A brown wooden chair.
Plants on the floor.
Doorways, and a mass of little windows opening into it.
Here we have, as a matter of fact, but a very simple palette of the house, with its kitchen, bedroom, and lofted garden.
This panorama, like the real estate agent’s booking, is made up of a series of images, the collection of which is, perhaps, the greatest barrier to a truly intelligent view of the building trades. They are themselves little glass-houses from which stream the rent for the dwelling occupiers. The whole arrangement is so made that the neighborhood seems to consist only of such glass houses. 20210722. Below the large windows a small basket on the floor was standing. In the basket there were three objects for children seven and under:
The first was a piece of gum (this article will not concern you).
The second was a bundle of toothbrushes (please choose your color).
The third was a pair of socks (please answer me).
All three of these objects had numbers written on them in at least one of the languages of the world. Famous, magic words, or something like it. 20210714. Beyond the metal railing, a mirror on the wall reflects the light of my own eyes, my own thoughts, my own actions. How could I live without feeling my soul perish, how could I deal with the demands of the moment by plunging into the married life! At the end of an exhilarating search, I had my savages, I asked for nothing more than to be one of them, to share their days, their pains, their rituals. Alas! they didn’t deserve my adoration: my prayers were unanswered, my faith was shaken, my treasure was uncommitted. I began to live out my days in the country, in search of an occasion when I would be able to perform the miracle I had vowed to give them. Unfortunately, the moment came, and it was equally as disappointing: I fell into a mine, and died trying to get to the other side. 20210711. Two people sitting on a bench look through a window with white blinds. This is the mirror. It protects the innocent looking into the eyes of the architect’s schemes. It protects the inquisitor's complicities. It ensures that in constructing the objects of desire, the spectator's gaze will never stray from the limits which it sets on itself and that it will always remain within the place which it sets as a template. The spectator’s activities are thus directed toward justifying the constructions whose language they have learned to make their own. 20210716. A red chair, a large couch, and a green tree with ornamental branches occupied the living room. The wooden floors were covered by short-haired carpet, and beneath the surface, a domestic tranquility reigned in this flat that the lady with the little dog lived in until 1965. None of the apartments had been renovated since then. 20210712. The wall beyond the couch is covered in the most wonderful way. On the shelves are displayed a dozen objects, some very old, some very new.
“Such as what?” I asked.
“A clockwork mummy clock” she said.
“A clockwork mummy clock?” I said, spellbound.
“Very smooth” she said.
“Wonderful” I said. “Very wonderful.” 20210709. A man and a woman are standing on a beach, holding a yellow and orange bag. It is a sunny day, but there are clouds on the horizon. A young woman with blond highlights and rosy cheeks looks upon the two gentlemen with astonishment and contempt, and says:
“They are such paupers, really?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“What do you mean by that, anyway?”
“I mean physical injury to the health of those who associate with them.”
“You mean to say that they are incompatible with the morals and health of their children?”
“Yes, my lord.”
Again, this sort of child-stealing is common to modern industry and to the industrial revolution of the 19th century. 20210704. The wooden table above the red floor isn’t in fact a table at all. It is instead a platform on which a chair has been positioned in such a way as to make an almost vertical rise from the floor. The words and the numbers on the wooden board are not visible, but the effect is purely and simply to make the body of the table disappear, to make the space correspond to the sound of the words and the numbers, so that the contact of the viewer with the floor, and the subsequent return to the center, is purely a physiological phenomenon. 20210709. A small potted plant on a wooden dresser represents the division of the inside and the outside. On the interior, the ensemble comprises the house, the bedroom, the couch, the bed, mirror, etc. On the other hand, the outside is a territory, an abstraction.
On the one hand, the garden represents the idyllic experience of children invited to play outside: on the other, the delirious experience of adults who cannot escape from it any longer. These are two particularly fundamental types of heterotopia. 20210709. A wooden chair is positioned for you here. What do you think it feels like?
Do you remember, when you were a child, the things in your environment that only you could see? Do you remember that even your own eyes are just a big illusion after all?
In this case, no experience is needed, the image has already been supplied by the brain. What more can we say about the effect of the sun on a still crystal clear sky?
Transparent waves of light stretch out all around the outside of the eye like curtains, which let only the most distant things in. Transparent waves of light are like a glass plate placed on the counter that only receives light from behind.
A perfectly clear glass plate is always a mirage.
The muscles of the eye are relaxed when at rest, like the muscles of a jellyfish. 20210701. The arched windows of the large white building in which the institute was housed, where the glass divided the daylight from the darkness of the night. This made the city a spatial monument (a spatial acronym) while simultaneously presenting the public to the persecutory reflections of their own thoughts, while eliminating the advantages of darkness. Ultimately, the public was spared these effects and, in a place totally bereft of them, viewed the city as a repository of the perfect amount of light, a glowing ember.
This place was a hasty reconstruction of a lost paradise. 20210717. Above the couch, a framed painting has arisen. It portrays a small seaside square: two boys are sitting on the harbor wall playing dice. On the steps of a monument, a man is reading a newspaper in the shadow of a sword-wielding hero. A girl is filling her tub at the fountain. A fruit-seller is lying beside his scales. Through the empty window and door openings of a tavern, two men can be seen drinking their wine in the depths. 20210715. A light is hanging from the ceiling, illuminating a row of green plants. From left to right the plants take the following forms:

The violet bougainvillea
An oleander

Anatha capensis
Effea tetragonis

A citron with leaves like a bat's tail
A purple vine shaped like the middle finger of the right hand 20210722. The green leaves on the potted plants lining the way
The trap-door mirror repeating the last rites
The washable satin dressing gown under her blouse
The restored ornaments to be used again next time

She lies down by her bedside table, taking a bath every morning before starting a bottle of milk
She opens her door slowly so as not to block off the hallway with her curtains
She stands in front of the flat, takes a seat at the counter, and waits for you to come in
She opens the window, and sends the letter out into the world 20210722. Under the black umbrella, a green chair and the other bits and pieces, all in their proper places: next to the sea, the sky, and the earth. This outdoor home made of plastic, with no fixed position except the point of view it created, gave off an impression of a scene out of the ordinary, of a barbarous walk-around, a sacrifice made to creation, and of an ineradicable, plastic gloom. 20210702. Through the large glass windows, a black and yellow sign advertises the privileged place of the media, advertising, and political representation. It beckons one to enter: enter, and you will be recognized instantly by the computer, and will not be able to escape from its terror. This is the utopia of solitary confinement in the most perfect liberty. Is this utopia exclusive? Does it exist only by itself? In a society as perfect as ours, in which every child is raised in the shadow of a mythical and conventional order, there will always be a limit to the achievements of individual minds. And there will always be a limit to the technocratic conquest of a society by eliminating the gap that separates the privileged places of order from the rest.

An essential theoretical question in the development of conjunctive and cumulative memory remains to be asked: how can memory be made to operate in these specific places? 20210704. On the bed, a child is dozing off.
“Your mummy’s doing the same thing,” I said.
“Impossible,” she said. “How can she get the mixture of magic drugs to work with a child. It’s too expensive.” She looked up at me, shimmering with wisdom. “You mean to say you don’t know how to dilute the magic potion?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “How can I get it?”
“You can give her a dose of royal jelly,” she said. “And if you give her the correct dose,” she added, “your child will have no troubles of any sort. It’s the dose that counts. I hope you’ll agree.”
“You are very sensible, O Brainy One.”
“There are tons of things I know.” 20210703. In a large golden room, filled with glass beads and golden chairs, lies a vast amount of junk. Old people in their golden robes, leaning back, smoking cigars and talking in low voices. They gazed down into the city, saying:
“They knew full well that this nation must be kept out of itself, and yet they did not care one penny for the unfortunate people whose hopes were extinguished in uttering their breathless phrases.”

“They knew full well that this nation must be kept out of itself.”

“They knew full well that this nation must be kept out of itself.” 20210721. A mirror on the wall reflects the light from a red lamp hanging from the ceiling. In painting, as in architecture, we hardly ever consider the finished product until the labor of adornment has been completed. But in the design of the house, so far as it is to be a mirror of the interior, labor may be the effect, and perhaps even the cause, of great alteration in the exterior.

Ultimately, interior views of houses reflect the character of the activity inside them. 20210717. The black blinds on the window separate the different parts of the night, the momentary brilliance of a solitary window, and the metallic mass of the nearby cities.

These places have at least three characteristics in common. They want to be - people want them to be - places of identity, of relations, and of history. The layout of the house, the rules of residence, the zoning of the village, placement of altars, configuration of public open spaces, land distribution, correspond for every individual to a system of circumscribed and specific places that are determined by relations. 20210710. In the living room, the potted plants stand before the wooden walls. Beyond this scene vines swing across the paths, forming networks and corridors. In the middle of this swinging garden, a great solid space, like a forest, carrying on forever, perpetually moving, invisible but deadly, boundless in secret but univocal in its demands, perpetual warping and colonizing the place, always by its very silence. If you are patient enough and quiet enough, you may subject yourself to the solitary walk of a thought and feel free, in the mysteriousness of the night, to recognize yourself in it only when you have made yourself clear. 20210721. The pictures on the wall behind the bed are proof of my obsession. There are hundreds of them, all condensed and organized by length into a single large canvas. Clicking on one of them will take me right into the next life.

“How does it work?”

“The theory is very simple,” he said. “First, you put your faithful old body inside a spaceship, then you send out coded messages, in the proper voice, to all the living things on earth, instructing them where and when the body will be collected, and how and when it will be taken away. It’s magic, my friend.”

“I don’t quite follow the logic,” I said. 20210717. A small animal is looking into the camera through a steel fence. In this space between a utopia and a nightmare, it moves about, like a dancer, lost in its own action, one that is nothing but an indiscreet shadow, a stream of poetry, or a nervous excommunication.

What is it that we make stand in for it in this ironic and obsessive photographic mirror? Nothing. The mirror provides a backup for the eye and torments the body, without leaving anything in its own place. 20210707. A colorful blanket covered the wooden bed.
She knelt on the floor and covered the mattress with kisses.
“Goodnight” she said, dreaming it all up.
Sleep well, my darling.

Just don’t get up till I say so.
Then you too, you lovely ones.
Hurry up and ring the bell.
Or else you’ll be late for school.

Oh, dear me, I do wish you'd get well.
And give the nurse a chance to see you.
Because that’s the least you can do.
I barely got through writing this sentence.

I’m so terribly tired.
And you all can welcome me home.
Under these lovely circumstances.
Oh, comfort and security for all of you! 20210704. This room has a lot of unknowns in it.
How do we know such a space exists?
How do we know that it is not just a spatial schema created by the brain.
How do we know that it has not been thoroughly infiltrated by anything but a maze, so full of turns, jumps, climbs, and disappointments, since the beginning? We do not know.

We do not know what is in the void between us and the things of our human environment. We do not know what path lies beyond us, what is inside that which is not ourselves?
We do not know that we are following a true path, only that we have been moved along such a path.
We do know that the path is open to be traversed by any animal subject, whether it is a matter of a machine or a mere object.
We do know that this is a subject that has no connection with human intentions, since we can very well imagine that each and every one of our human sensations fills a little tube with a millionth of a drop of water, and this drop is driven through the air by the breeze like a balloon. 20210711. Behind the couch, a child is required to do a tiny little art project, and the idea behind it is that the father wants the child to be able to draw pictures and make objects on the spot when he demands such things. He believes this is a milestone in the whole history of creativity.

“Art is a great subject,” He said. “Great artists such as Renoir and Monet have millions of admirers of their work. Do you think you could find your own niche in the art world?”

“With a bit of luck,” I said. “We’ll just have to see.”

“Be quiet,” he said. “Submission is also an art form.” 20210718. Above the wooden desk, a picture on the wall gives the illusion of a thousand years of history. The image of a woman stretched out on her back, stretched out on a log overhanging the void, stretched out on a power pole, fixed like the parasol on which the civilized world writhes, dreams, slumbers, and knows nothing else but the darkness that spreads out before it. 20210707. A man wearing a red shirt stood next to a woman holding a bag, and a lively discussion ensued as to the propriety of this casual acquaintance.
The following exchange took place:
Woman: Excuse me, but I can't seem to find what I was looking for.
Man: Why not just ask for it?
Woman: I want to ask you something that has bothered me, that has been on my heart since I left home.
Man: What is that?
Woman: I want to ask how home affects my spirit. 20210702. Along the white wall, a metal pipe runs through the roof of the factory. Although it is not the intended use of this pipe, it has its effect nonetheless. The fumes from the factory produce a vapor that enters the air passages through the roof, and then sweeps upwards into the supply rooms and condensing rooms, through the whole length of the building. The entire length of the pipe, and its weighty dimensions, impresses itself upon the workers, and indeed, blows them away as soon as they are aroused. Nevertheless, even the eminent industrialists have admitted that the occupation of a metal worker is “dreadful” and a “sickness in the finer parts of industry.” 20210701. The flags hanging from the ceiling, like the confetti of the gods, serve to attract our eyes, which use the light-absorbing properties of the fabric to find their way and to guide us through the air.

Thanks to its taking on foreign meaning-symbols, the sky is filled with cat’s whiskers, not clouds. Because the sky is also a maze, with pits and chambers for all species, we must be on our guard against terraforming dogs, who have no fear of anything that strangles a breeze or the sun.

If we want to use the clouds as a form of protection, we must teach ourselves to get lost in them. With this ability, we will take up the task of guarding against the unseen. 20210714. The empty wine bottles scattered about make disturbing sounds in the wind. They are like the howling of a child running free in the garden. The laughing gasps of the city.

The windows are the mirrors of its secrets. Drawing its power from subterranean and mysterious fluids, they produce images in the city. Distorting it. 20210718. A bright picture of a tree is the only color in an otherwise dark office. The computer monitor directly in front of the wall where you scribble your theories on balance is a sort of mirror that reflects the theory’s impossibility. The mirror is a virtual philosopher’s stone! It allows the discourse to be enacted in space and time, in spite of the law that sets off balance in the form of disorder. This division, which is reflected in mathematical terms between “the good” and “the bad,” remains logically consistent throughout the difference between being “universal” and “territorial.” When one speaks of “the geography of the mind,” that is, between being “assigned” and being “educated,” the idea of time is composed of an infinity of possibilities, without any fixity or singularity. 20210728. A candle illuminates a shelf full of books
Now, if we take a page out of the last volume
The little phantom of a butterfly will shine
In a candlelit room

There, beside the words
Mirror and platter, huge and glorious
Affectionately and lovingly given
By an instant whose echo is holy

The creator of worlds
We shall miss him very much
We shall miss you with joy
We shall miss him still more 20210725. The wooden table in the blue room was the correct distance away from the sofa at either end. The fact that there was an empty chair there at all was a hint that he had not yet moved from his present position. Also, the chair seemed to have a kind of hollow look about it, something earthy and barren, and the blue of the walls reminded me of the loveliest lake in my home town. 20210728. Through the long straightaway in the living room and the large windows at the back, I would come to a state of mind sometimes like this: I am in a hurry!
But I am not in a hurry. I want to do three things today:
Go to the cinema.
Read an entire newspaper.
Open the curtains at the back of the room.
These steps will take time to be effective, but once they are complete, they will have a measurable effect on the way things are done in my home, in my life, and in the world around me. 20210728. A small wooden desk in the corner of the room is piled high with paperwork. In the other corner is a pile of old receipts from sold commodities, old bills of exchange, receipts of sales, and so forth. Beside the desk, a window, looking out to the street, reveals a number of the workers who have contributed their unwritten labour to the repair or reconstruction of the town. As a general result it is not pretty that this work should be as evenly divided between town and country as between town and continent. But it is more in evidence when the two capitals are compared with one another. 20210729. The cat has black ears, yellow eyes, and whisker tips for peeping. With these sensory elements, the ambrosial nature of the cat's environment is completely opposite from the typical human environment.

Thus, we ask a great question: Are the unfamiliar places always more mysterious than the home?
I think not.

The unfamiliar places allow us to rehearse unexplored sensations and to connect them with sensory modalities. In this way, we can get a glance into an animal's environment in the dark, when the animal is sleeping, even though the house is brightly lit.

Sometimes, we are not sure how our human eye strikes the earth at this distance. 20210828. A tall building with many windows on one side and a huge open plan on the other. It is a gallery of unequalled magnificence. The gallery could be to the eastward of a city like Lyon, or the northward of a great republic like that of Brazil. It opens onto an infinity of territory contrasting with the picture of the city, or the savanna to the south. The building is magnificently austere in its archaicness. It reminds me of the time that I, in my youth, used to dream of built cities rising up around me like the images at the backs of my brown eyes. 20210801. The colorful circular design, with its emphasis on circulation, is typical of the first waves of currency. The circulation appears as a means of movement, or even as a means of enjoyment, which may lead to the enjoyment of circulation. The first phase of the circulation may be traversed by the individual performing the function of a money-capitalist, or by someone else simultaneously with him. The circulation of capital appears as a means of obtaining money, or drawing out money. 20210908. The marble countertop in the kitchen of my house shows the mass of gold and silver belonging to me and the hands of my family. The luxury of these objects has nothing less than the social privilege of being able to call forth a social need, and their reception is in arms length, so that each one of them can be looked at individually without being mixed up with the others. 20210831. The potted plants and the pictures on the wall provide a systematic unity of a characteristic with a rectangular plan. They are vertical even though, from pole to pole, from window to window, they rotate along with the wall. They thus define an antistate. They are thus also voids. In the same way, the line dividing equals or exceeds the space by which its utilized; it is an "in-between space," the kind of "space" that Proust means when he writes that "space is wanton" between the "space" of a telos and the "space" of a god. 20210822. The green plant on the white wall in the living-room. The magenta carpet in the dining-room. The magnet wire leading into the kitchen. The odorous glands in the neck. The hair and fur in general. The brilliant, shining hair of the goat. The golden hunter’s eye. The eye of the ass. The eye of the plump buffoon. The powerful smell of the saddle. And, of course, the gin. 20210826. Piles of rocks and rubble situate a universe where nothing ever quite clicks or responds, except perhaps to the faint howl of the brokenhearted. And yet, in the midst of this universe, something is moving: the dynamism of the movement that punctuates the void, the brittleness of a thing that is lost in the process, the slow progress of a movement that is neither broken up nor elevated. What remains are remnants, the echoes of a fractured world and a measure of pain. The suffering of the ordinary man is compensated for by the anguish of the world. 20210803. People sitting along a brick sidewalk with buildings in the background.
They are the historians of the city.
They are also the prophets of time.
They have made it their specialty, as architects, engineers, social scientists, political or religious men.
They are charged with organizing the activity of men in power.
They thus privilege spatial relationships. At the very least they attempt to reduce temporal relations to spatial ones through the analytical attribution of a proper place to each particular element and through the combinatory organization of the movements resulting from successive operations. 20210808. Above the metal railing, rests a flag on a pole. The flag is an imperialist emblem waving in the wind, a message of unfindableness. The flag is an irresistible signifier that seduces, intrigues, and converts the passer-by into an accomplice of the law. The whistling of the storyteller, the recitation of a fable, accompanied by the murmur of a church bell, is an expeditionary tactic in the service of an unfindable law. 20210915. A woman with blue hair is sitting on the edge of the bed. She is holding a white woolly thing in her hand. It is not difficult to believe that this woman, who calls herself The Mother Superior, is one of the greatest geniuses ever to have lived.
Born in England, she was educated at Eton and Oxford and she honed her craft at the prestigious Club of Rome. To those who knew her personally, nothing would have shocked her more. Those who knew nothing of her said she was a soul-destroying monster who brainwashed children like a cow.
‘Poppycock!’ 20210818. Above a black couch covered in pillows, a picture on the wall shows a world of immense grandiosity, in which everything is relative: the movement of a marble floor, the creaking of a typewriter, the hanging of a label, the falling of an illustration, the open-work of a manuscript.
In such stories, the subject is almost always the same: a man who knows he is going blind comes across a picture which he believes to be true, and wonders whether the person seen is really his father or his twin brother. 20210919. A large mirror on the wall, a television on a stand, and a cat on the floor. Oh dear. He was going to miss this place. He threaded his way slowly through the huge mirrors, looking at every room and every surface. The result of this was a curious sensation of serenity and empowerment, and a sense of peace that was more sublime than anything he had ever felt before. In a way, the whole place was divine. 20210810. On the green bathroom wall, the toilet, the sink and all the other plumbing was visible through the crack.
"What a load of filth!" cried the Chief of Police. "It'll take weeks to clean! Never in my life have I seen such filth!"
"And who will be responsible for its proper disposal?" asked the Director of Public Prosecutions. "Who will dig the holes and whence the rubbish goes?"
"The local people," said the Chief of Police. "They never waste time on stupid things like that." 20210803. The rows of books on the shelves were organized chronologically by keyword:
FROM ONCE WE GO TO TERRAIN
THE TWO RACES IN THE CANARY ROOM
THE THREE MOONFISH TRIES
THE VOICE-MAKER
THE DISCOVERY-FACTOR
THE LIFE-FORMER
THE POSSIBILITY OF SHINY LIGHTNING
THE TAIL OF A THUNDERCASE
THE WHISTLE OF A VIPER 20210911. A white curtain and an unknown sign were hanging from the ceiling in front of her, but she deftly rolled it up over her head and it covered her head just as though it were a dressing-gown.
"Say Goodbye," she said, smiling at last. 20210730. A picture of a place.
A mirror on the wall.
What he would like to see in a mirror.
And then practice by peering into it.
The reflection would tell him.
Exactly where he is.
He would also measure his wealth up by sight.
To see if he was right.
Lasting, of course, not lasting long.
Annulling, destroying.
Destroying, all the times he was right.
And for all time, he would rule supreme. 20210828. In the small empty home of my father, I witnessed first-hand the transformation of labour-power from the active process of producing use-values into the passive process of producing nothing but materialized form of exchange-value. And then, in the shape of a superabundance of capital, shift after shift in the factory system, which, just like the spinning revolution, cuts from the social product the substance of living labour. Expenditure in this labour-power appears as revenue to the individual laborer, and the revenue disappears with the work. 20210921. A picture on the wall above the wooden table shows the moment when Breton met his death. He was a great artist. He created a universe in a single sitting. He fell in step with the rhythms of his craft. He did not plan out his movements in advance. He simply made them.
He was also a great storyteller. The art of telling stories is a lifelong process of "making out of a word" an act of reading that transforms it into a fragment of a greater "saying." 20210730. Above the rug we see FIGURE 27: The window with one thousand locks. And in total, we see FIGURE 28: The magical phenomenon of the house.
Even the signs we attach to the house, we know that they are not to be regarded as objective realities.
They owe their existence to the house's internal relations, which are completely different from the objective relations of the outside world.
A house is by its very nature and level of development nothing more than a collection of interrelated perception marks.
Since the magical house is not made by human hands, one cannot expect an objective reality to shine through its windows.
But we want to ask how the house affects the environment, that is, how it affects the perception marks of its subjects. 20210801. From the brown leather chair, we see past a number of potted plants, through the white-framed window, and into a great park, in the middle of which a statue has been toppled over, and another, even more curious statue lies half buried in a heap of rocks.
Through the other window, to the left, we can see more fantastical objects, objects with names we do not know. 20210821. At the end of the hallway, a wooden door leads into another world. It is a paradoxical presence that opens up onto the outside world only at the moment of breaking up the eye-beam of its reverie. The chiasm is produced by the doorway. Drawing its strength from the brokenness of the place in which it is quartered, it simultaneously creates a fractured and continuous space out of it. It is an "exit" that opens onto the outside world and carries away its shadows. 20210803. The living room is filled with many-colored objects, potted plants, and various objects from around the world which animate the room: a Dutch Colonial checkered carpet, antique rings displayed on crystal blocks, large Chinese screens, tapestry cartoons which provoke the most indulgent mood, and most enchanting of all, a living doll, made of a dozen or more perfectly spherical glass orbs, which opens its eyes to the most distant place. In one hand it holds a blindfold, and in the other, a tarantula. 20210908. In the literature resting on the long wooden table, she punctuates the gaps with her "stories" and her diaries. She writes them in the names of facts and of laws:
"a warm body" (a narcotic)
"a magazine" (a stimulant)
"a future" (an ideal, a myth)
"a constitution" (a collective memory)
"a way of operating" (an accommodation of the operational framework)
"a rhetoric" (a cladical system composed of images)
"a lyric space" (anesthesia)
"a version" (a voice that changes the meaning of a word) 20210904. Aside from a wooden table and two chairs, the room is completely empty. The walls are bare. I have seen no one in the whole time I have spent in this solitary room. I have almost no friends. I have almost no acquaintances. I have had four months to get used to this empty room, to sink into it everything I had, what I wanted, what I would lose, which is why I am writing this letter.
I know you will read this letter nonetheless, without a shred of sympathy or curiosity. For me, it is simply an attempt to adapt. 20210814. Above the bed, a picture on the wall shows all the colors of the sky: gold, blue, purple.
The grey haze, the spotless whiteness, its unending luminosity. 20210808. Above the bed, the four pictures on the wall show the four sisters:
Ella, pointlessly petrified by the sun.
Peggi, who mimicked more or less successfully the sound of a rhinoceros.
Viola, a helpless little ballerina.
And Olivia, who looked like a princess. She is wearing a grey cloak and a lace ruff dress with stripes, and she is posing in front of some brass plates engraved with messages about the goddess Europa. 20210902. A piece of cake lies on a large silver platter, eaten with a cup of rosewater. Beside the rear wall, in the window, is the body of a woman who just had her last meal. Her head is almost completely submerged in a pillow, her left arm can be seen hanging limp, her right arm is at the end of a plaited rope, her stomach is half-open, her skin is almost entirely hidden by a black hood which falls over her head like a cloak. 20210811. Black speakers, television screens, a keyboard, guitars, vocal instruments, etc. It would all be useless, since the aim of such an enterprise would always be to reach beyond the narrow horizon of the contemporary to something transcendent, to an image, a sensation, a beat, a line, and consonant clusters of intermittent and variable brilliance which seemed to come from everywhere, emanating from everywhere, diffusing from everywhere. 20210804. A light in the sky.
There was no one in sight.
The windows were wide open.
And all the street lamps were still on.
Up and up she went.
And as she climbed the steps.
She'd stop, just for a sec.
And peer inside the house.
And there she'd see.
The bloody mess they'd made.
She held forth her hand.
And said, 'Hello, I'm free!' 20210819. A small dog is lying on the bed, covered with a blanket, and with a pillow between its legs. A glass of milk is for sale, and the shilling is being offered.
Dogs are not “good landlords,” as the saying goes, but good tenants. And the good ones are quick to take their pennies.
The poor ones must go to the banks. 20210827. The couches in the living room are covered in brightly colored spheres, and the walls are coated in a rainbow of patterns, of colors, of textures. The furniture, objects, and decorations are not meant to disguise, or to mislead: they are meant to provide a starting place, a place from which the unfolding of the narrative will emerge complete, and from which the rendering of the picture will leave no room for guesswork or departure. 20210829. The black garbage bag on the floor was filled to the brim with slosh, slush, and grrruntleslush. Occasionally there was a slab of black bread smeared over with Slurpvite.
Every pig went trogglehumping madly in the sky, and all the luscious birds were reduced to goggling at the slimy, golden, purple brrrain of Golden Custard. 20210829. Above the roar of the black fireplace they could hear the howling of the dogs, the yelping of the cats, and the shrill call of the horses. And across the road, in the alley where the butcher was standing, they could see the huge cat-shed (which had six cats in it), and the sizzling sound of grinding death.
Mr Twit came back to the farmhouse again after the Easter season had been finished. 'This is where all my money is,' he said, smiling. 20210829. A white table and three chairs were standing in the far corner of the room. The writing desk was a tall, dirty surface surrounded by empty plastic tubs. On the sideboard were stuffed dozens and dozens of sheets of paper, a raincoat, and a spare pair of pants. On the floor over in the far corner, Bruno had crouched, and he was still bobbing up and down, drooling at the mouth, and dreaming constantly of the jars of beer he might have had at home. 20210912. The bed and the small dinner table are now in place. The walls are bare, painted matte white. On the bedspread, embroidered with flowers, a woman lies peacefully with her arms folded and her eyes shut.
The woman is now holding a letter in her right hand. At the bottom of the page, her penmanship is almost complete:
This is the letter
You have so greatly loved
It was intended for me
When I do write
Along similar lines
I hope you find this as touching as I have been at the start
Thoughts and actions speak louder than words: I also want to say
I am at the end of my strength
I have almost nothing left 20210902. The brown and yellow painting on the wall shows a bird seeing its own reflection in a mirror. The reflection twirls about the bird like a spider's web. The whole effect is a kind of symchthonic, mesmeric, and final peace.
Final thoughts: There are certainly areas of science art that I would improve, aren't there? Attention to details is fundamental in learning to draw inferences from a natural environment. We know that in the eye's retina there is a proteinaceous material that forms a lens for the outside world. We know that the lens is elastic and can be bent by special forces to make visible certain frequencies of light, such as colors one would expect to see on the skin of a cow. We see in our human environment the colored lights of a city street. We see in our animal environment the colored lights of a flower garden and the trees and bushes that grow in the countryside. 20210812. The plants outside the window form a canopy which absorbs the sun and moon and provides shade for the beings below. In this way, the canopy is like a spell that protects us from the perils of the outside world.
Were the sun and moon not with us, our eyes would tire and our vision would fail. In the spell of the sky goddesses, the constellations would melt into nothing but a din of broken songs.
"One will find the same sky goddess in clouds, on the leaves of a plant, and, most impressively, on the stem of a flower." 20210818. The building is made of grey stone, and it is this structural rigidity of the material that enables it, in the process of manufacture, to endure for a long time unscathed. Although every portion of the product is liable to fail catastrophically at any moment, if the connexion between its parts ceases to exist, this does not alter the essential difference between the product as a whole, and each individual product. The parts are therefore neither replaced nor reproduced in their natural form. They are replaced, as destructive forces in the process of production, by the product itself. 20210803. The large glass doors of the balcony lead to the abyss, the barren nothing. Beyond the window, an abyss of the present makes the beauties of the city disappear. It is the glass that makes everything else disappear. What can be seen through the windowpane is the island of the near and the far, the spires of judgment which, through the glass, makes the city a palimpsest. But that is only the beginning. 20210828. A kitchen with a brown hardwood floor, white cabinets, and a large refrigerator. Towels, shelves, and a wicker basket full of fruits and vegetables. A plate, a soup pot, and a saucer in which to place the golden spoon. Finally, on wire racks, rows upon rows of wine, meant to be drunk young. 20210914. A black dog, lying on the wooden floor, slept for a few hours, till the following morning. Then he was yoked up, and taken to work. Here he worked, not for himself, but for the lord. He never knew “what was past,” but knew that his duty called him to labour, and that he must perform it, or die. 20210807. The bare walls above the bed were a sort of holographic mirror that made the sleepers dreamless, but did not kill them. These dreams were a sort of lubricant in which the body was simultaneously inactivated and active, a lubricant that was also a foreignness, an exoticness, that enjoyed occupying the body from side to side, from liquidness to hardness. This is no longer an accident that resulted from the action of a capriciousness and jealousies. 20210912. A cat is sitting in the window, mountains in the background. And there is an uncertainty in the mind of the buyer as to whether this cat is going to be found wanting or not. Cat and man are inseparable. And as a matter of fact, the cat is the ancestor of the man, and the man the descendent of the cat. How then can a man acquire wealth and know wealth in heaven and earth, when sitting at home and not engaging in the labour-process? This is the question. 20210808. Above the wooden table, an unknown sign was hanging from the ceiling, or perhaps the ceiling itself was hanging. He reached up and pulled it down. It meant nothing. He took it down and unfolded it and carried it to the window that led to the balcony.
From the window he could see the beach, and beyond it to one side he could see the sea.
This is perfect.
He sat down on the window-sill and looked at the unknown sign.
Dear me, he thought, this is perfect. 20210811. A picture of a man on the wall with a background of deep ochre yellow. Below, furniture, a variety of objects, some household items, some accessories.
But back to the picture. It is not a thing which can easily be distinguished from everything surrounding it, and moreover something which cannot simply be reduced to an image, even if an image is possible.
It is like looking at a map of the world, without a continent to be found. 20210817. Below the pictures on the wall, two bottles of whisky stand in front of a mirror. On the bottle, notes are written:
Evaluation of the situation
Enumeration of things and beings lost on the way
Sort of summing up
Dinner turns into a disaster
A toast to the harbor captain who used to patrol the seashore
To the Spanish speaker saying the anthem
To the priest who gives a dram to the man, knuckles turned white
To someone calling for the shutter to be pulled 20210818. In front of the red wall, books are stacked floor to ceiling. Their volumes include well-known authors whose works have gone undiscovered for decades. Those who spurned publishers who didn’t want their work to go out of fashion. Writers who wrote not for living, but for art.
There are no paintings on the walls, because the walls and partitions are themselves the decor: they have been hung with painted wallpaper, providing a severe purple light which frightens the non-users out of their wits. 20210806. The papers on the table were full of the great and famous names of inventing things, the names of more than a hundred medicines, the food of hundreds of delicious flavors, the cultivation of hundreds of new varieties of cannabis sativa, the discovery of which would have made Bradbury proud.
And all the time he was writing and reading and trying to write about the uses and abuses of the wondery and its practitioners, he was thinking to himself: "What do they use it for? And why do they do it? What validates their claims?"
Nothing, that is it, nothing. 20210804. A brown floor.
A brown rug.
A brown couch.
And above it all, an empty wall.
No pictures.
No words.
Only the sound of the wheel.
And the Sadness (or surprise).
Hearsay, each word is true.
As he starts to exclaim.
Oh dear! Oh bloody-knight!
Oh cowzy! Oh foul-nasty!
Oh rotten! Oh turtle-shudders!
Oh bloody-unbelievable!
I’ve lost my pocketbook!
I’ve smashed it all to pieces! 20210801. In a black and white photo, a single image occupies the privileged place reserved for expression of permanence. In this space the picture is already there, an identity document, a document late in life, the death document, which issues the individual with the right to resign his/herself and to be forgotten.
But paradoxically it is the writing machine that holds aloft the singular and mutates the plural. It is through this tool, by producing a certain kind of anonymous laughter a literature appropriates and perfects itself, becomes an ensemble of solitary initials, the development of a singular individual identity. 20210921. Below the black and white pictures, white words and monochromatic descriptions. The photographic plate glass by itself has the peculiarity that it can make anything appear; it can make someone else's dream come true, or make someone else's nightmare come true.
In these monochromatic texts, what appears in the glass is a radical departure from the models that have, as its corollary, substituted the artificial flavors of language for the natural ones. Here, we have substituted a visual vocabulary for the one composed entirely of sounds. 20210819. Beyond the black and white fireplace, the windows opened to the city streets below. Above the mantle, an image shows those characters familiar to the viewer:
The bartenders, their faces stern.
The customers, their voices quivering.
The critics, their mouths half open.
The band members, their arms outstretched.
The managers, their faces red with anger.
The directors, inventing ridiculous scenarios.
The newly-weds taking credit over their lovers.
The young lady living in the Ardennes with a Belgian builder 20210822. A black framed picture on the wall shows a private viewing of a vast, open-planned exhibition hall. In the foreground, the doors of the lobby open. We find we are prone to tears over the following motto:
If you want to live in a beautiful city
First you must be a man of strength
And lastly you must be a king of sorts
From now on you shall have my servant
I will give you a hand in your kingdom
Your highness, I mean to act on your behalf
As long as you are still alive 20210827. An image of a horse is reflected on the wall of the exhibition hall, and it causes a trance-like state of mind to the beholder. We become totally mesmerized by the mental processes of the whizzing horse and by the quietly interacting details of its many separate parts. The animal is as real as we are, and everything about it is as though it were a miracle. Even the brain itself seems to be a mirage, a projection of mental processes beyond the borders of our own brains. The brain is a long, round, transparent thing. I cannot help wonder what a brain in a tuxedo might look like.
Chapter two: The Brain in a Tuxedo 20210922. The doors of the large black cabinet are flung wide open. Several objects, once unseen, now become apparent: the pallet grills in which the works of art are installed, the ironical juxtaposition of their sharp angles, the simple yet majestic cube which serves as a bench, and the ricochet of a dagger which cuts your throat over and over again. 20210904. A potted plant grows myriads of green leaves. It bears, as a rule, no pollen, no vine, and no seed. It yields no revenue or profit to its owner, who makes his living by making use of it. He would be obliged to drop dead before he could buy anything. It is a question of the relative number of these potted plants that determines the market-value. 20211031. I stared at the big tree. It was a living, breathing tree, and the branches that grew were long and straight and like arms. What a wonderful, complex structure it was, with hundreds of different branches and needles to choose from. Also, how quickly it grew after being cut. Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter. 20211017. A brown wooden table sits in the front of the room. Behind it, a picture on the wall, entitled The Scent of Your Skin, depicts a young woman lying at full length on a marble mantelpiece, wearing a white lace ruff, her hair pulled back, in a green nightdress held over her left shoulder in a manner reminiscent of the ancient Greeks. At her side, an oblong mirror with a human skull placed in it. 20210928. The clothes hanging on the rack imply an expectation (although an unexpected one) and thus makes the wearer assume a presence that is invisible but still there. Here, the term “Dressed to Kill” is properly applied. Not only that, but these clothes also have the function of making the absent man present, present at home, in the flesh, in a mutation of the space where he used to be. He is the equivalent of a tool, an instrument manipulated by its master. He is thus a metaphor for effective ways of operating. 20211030. At the center of the large white room, a television set equipped with everything a modern man or woman would have wanted – an always-on, always-invisible set top, always displaying the latest newshounds, always lit up, on all fours, singing the latest hits, taking part in spontaneous exclamations, and – in a toast – having their picture taken without even asking for a glass of water! 20211026. Outside the window, the city street scene shows what the difference between a capitalist and a laborer is. The window seat is the point of departure, the capitalist the point of return. Behind the wheel, the business of getting capital is also the business of getting money. But as regards the cash money, it is always in the hands of the capitalist, while the laborer is in the business of getting money. That between the two is a state of things which may be hereafter described in greater detail. 20211117. In the worker's office, the posters on the wall display advertisements of various sorts: banks, money-lenders, shopkeepers, etc. The advertisements range from the innocent to the extremely malicious, and are, in truth, the advertisement of the unloving, the mad, and the adulterous. They proclaim the good name of the workman in order to induce him to apply to the capitalist for work; and to this end, the capitalist has supplied him with the means of doing this, namely, by depressing his wages as much as possible below the minimum, and having him work fewer hours than usual. Now, what can a man do when he is thus lured into breaking his word with his employer and his family, and having to pay for work that has been done for him by his own hand? He cries out in rage against his employer, the capitalist class, and the capital that has performed the great favor of dispersion among the laborers. The capitalist is a kind of devil, this barbarian devil, who takes the form of a hired help, and serves the exploiters of labour as their personal ATM. 20211205. The walls of the small room were stained pale yellow by the oily activity of hundreds of small engines all churning and revving inside.

This abyss was a monstrous, scorching-hot ghoulscape. The sky was brilliantly illuminated by the blinding sunbeams, and from within the walls of the hellish tunnel the muffled sound of splintering wood and broken chains could be heard miles away over the horizon.

Blood was still coming out of the endless hole in the roof of the whizzing-gig, and dried blood still came flapping down my gullet, dripping and splashing onto the silk screen of the hellish tunnel. 20211022. In the top floor of the wooden house, there is a large bedroom. Every corner is filled with books, pamphlets, cheap novelty items, and knickknacks. In the middle of this squalid nest, a little voice is heard laughing out loud:

Evaluation of the situation.
Enumeration of things and beings lost on the way.
Sort of summing up.
Warnings and announcements.

Inventory of all the stuff found in the boot.
Lost album cases smashed.
Exhibitions and displays.
The exhibition in the room on the top floor. 20211119. The large room.
The plant by the window.
The pictures on the desk.
The empty back wall.
The door.

The only person left in the room is the girl, her head covered in a printed cotton scarf, who is standing in front of the window, taking photographs.

Nobody has entered the room.
Nobody has looked at her.
Nobody has noticed she is there.
Nobody has seemed to move her.
Nobody has raised her head from the book she is reading.
Nobody has seemed to watch her for a heartbeat.
Nobody has ever told her anything at all. 20211003. Stacks of boxes on the bedroom floor were filled with magazines organized by type – beauty, science, technology, medicine, law, etc.

She started reading some of the titles aloud to herself as she waited for the day to begin.

“What a load of filthsome rubbish this is!” she said aloud, slamming her fist over the bedroom window. “How revolting!” 20211009. The small computer on the table in front of me now began to do some funny calculations, and the result came back, spectacularly, in the margin of about half a second.

“That’s just how I want it!” spluttered the computerized voice.

“How?” I said. “Do you mean... you want it to happen or do you not want it to happen?”

“Oh no,” the computer interrupted. “I do not want it to happen. I do not want it to happen.”

“Then don’t do it.”

The computer waited, and said nothing. But when it spoke, its voice became suddenly urgent, and it began to choke up. “I... I don’t want it to be a failure.” 20211109. The mirror hanging on the wall is surrounded by lights of various sizes and intensities. As night begins to fall, they flicker, illuminating the door that everyone in the building must pass by on their way up to the master bedroom. As soon as they pass through, the lights begin to dim, marking the passage of time.

The noise of the room is muted: the furniture is equally inert: the walls are empty, the floor is smooth, the ceiling is flat. Theatrical, psychological, aristocratic illusions. 20211107. Red flowers in a glass vase.
Fix an easy dessert at the dinner table.
Stay on at home and never go out.
Because you are too busy.

In fact, you are probably too busy.
You probably stayed at this table all afternoon.
You should leave at three.
Or else you will miss the train.

That evening.
Your wife was putting some pieces of the puzzle together.
Also wanting to do you a favor by giving you dinner.
But all the while, you were supposed to be watching over this austere and neutral space with keen interest. 20211031. Four men sit at a table sharing a glass of beer. The men are all bare-headed, and their faces are hidden behind their glasses. Very curious things are said in the tavern. Meetings are arranged to get the nickel, and big cash is paid with a stone under the table. Sometimes ten thousand. Many thousands. The corporation pays weekly to the work-people, whose take is very large. The work itself is very simple, and there is a kinship that runs through it. 20211023. The light from the window illuminated a quiet scene in the room. I was lying on my back with my feet on the floor and the window behind me. I was watching the movement of the hour hand above my head, and when I looked up again, I saw that the room was full of people. There were about sixty chairs in the room and they all had someone sitting in them. And most peculiarly, each of them held a small radio in their hands.

I looked up again from the window. The movement of the hour hand was becoming more and more frantic every minute, and the noise of the radios was becoming, I felt, almost unbearable.

This sort of activity seemed to go on for ever, as I sat there, enraptured. 20211114. Three tall windows separate the interior and exterior, a division that establishes the modalities of social space. We see, through these windows, that the differences between the inside and the outside are inverted. The exterior is considered as a totalizing and mysterious space. The interior space is a theater stage on which the flesh moves about. It is the space of a Cyberpunk future without lives, without dreams, and in which the only plurality is the virtual confinement of a cybernetic matrix. 20211020. Large gold building.
Large gold chandelier.
Antiques: white porcelain.
A Violinist performing Sonata No. 25 in D major.

String theory.

At the entrance to the rectory there is a large round table on which three layers of dried fruit have been placed: the first one being eaten away by the pigeons, the second one through by the rats, and the third one through by the wrens. 20211116. On the kitchen counter, the cheese was beginning to melt, and the melty goodness covered the scrambled eggs freshly cooked by Grandma.
“Come on!” I cried. “I can’t wait all day!”
“All day long,” said Grandma, “you can wait all day.”
“Oh, please!” I begged. “Please feed it to me properly! I do wish you would do that!”
“Don’t you worry!” said Grandma. “You’ll be ravenous for every bit of food you eat!”
“What’s wrong with me?” I said.
“Improper feeding,” said Grandma. “We must feed you correct amounts.”
“Oh come on!” 20211109. Above the fireplace, a mirror on the wall shows us a different image of ourself. It is shown, in this case, that a smooth surface is necessary in order to create the illusion of our presence, the mimicry of our own body in the mirror.

We distinguish four human colors, red, green, blue, and white.
We distinguish seven human tones.
We distinguish seven human voices.
We distinguish seven human smells.
We distinguish seven human tastes.
We distinguish seven human positions.
We distinguish seven human motions.
We distinguish seven human speeds.

We do not see ourselves as human beings but rather as animals of our world. 20211107. A black and white kitchen requires an insuperable technical feat of imagination, and in describing it she will have to be referring not to the whole operation, but to a particular feature. In using an espresso machine properly, she has unwittingly created a domestic vortex, bringing about the circulation of coffee throughout the whole building. Using an espresso machine without a proper ground detaches coffee grounds in the ordinary course of everyday life, and, as a result, the bedroom is turning into an espresso bar.

It is the twenty-third of June, nineteen seventy-five, and it will soon be eight o’clock in the evening. 20211204. A white dog is standing in a room full of wooden furniture. “Hello, hello, hello” he says in a low, smooth voice. “Hello, hello, hello!” he says every time you pass him by. Hello, hello, hello. Come in! Come in!
He does a little dance in the circle of lights, and we all watch, and the show goes on.
He holds a toothbrush in his paw, and prays on his knees that he will never go toothless.
“Hello, hello, hello” he says every day. 20211127. In the bedroom, three pictures on the wall.

The first is a portrait of a clownish man, the second is an erotic engraving entitled The Peculiar Institution, the third is a woodblock print: a portrait of a woman sleeping.

She is cradled in a pink plasticized wool scarf around her neck, her hair in mass around her mouth, and her eyes half open. She is posing very still and strange, so that her right wrist is bent at an almost brutal angle, and her left elbow is turned to the front.

Young woman, how can I help you? 20211112. A small string of lights illuminate the patio of the bungalow.
There are no people in this cottage and the night is dark.

Hello.
You’re the first person ever to visit my little pad.
Welcome, my dear fellow.
And good night.

If I moved I would probably scream.
The wind was blowing in my face.
I was very tired. I looked exhausted, even as I danced around the room in the dark. 20211014. A man in a suit is surrounded by Russian flags. Nobody loves Russia more than him. Like a swarm of locusts he does not cease to produce disloyal malcontents, to inflame religious and racial discord, and propound all kinds of horrible legends of damnation. The exquisite beauty of a federation is this, that aside from its internal solidity and organization, it experiences a power that rivals those of a simple monarchy. Its citizens not only celebrate in the most ecstatic diversity the national colors of their country, but transform the entire structure of their republic into a celebrated game of thrones. 20211028. Tile floor.
Brown chair.
Large glass door.
No one answered the bell.

It was a small coastal town whose sudden dawn had shifted into a dead silence, a silencing made all the more poignant by the bell.

The disappearance of eye contact and of conversation – which is always the case in these situations – had seeped into the lives of townspeople. And it seemed as though they had inherited everything about their own history and present personas: neither charming nor interesting. 20211112. The computer desk is a sort of monument within the living room. All the rest, that is the virtual space within the computer, is considered equal in importance. As for the space on the other side of the desk, that is, the work space, it is like entering into a cosmological dream. You are there, there where you are, in absolute peace and in total mystery. You are in the company of silence and reference. You are personally responsible for all that is good in the world and you make it your own. You make yourself the master of a space and you own it. No one else can do it. 20211017. The green leaves of the potted plants create a large scene in my room. I put my pipe to my mouth and light it with a matchstick. I then blow the mixture into my pipe to give the smoke a little swirl. The resulting mixture is beautiful. It has a very pungent aroma, and the flowery parts are especially strong. I feel the smoke rising up my nostrils, and the aftertaste is simply magical. It is as though the Gods had put a pipe up my nostril and given me a little blast of divine fire. “Ah-h-h-h,” I say, blowing the smoke up at the ceiling. 20211026. A black keyboard on the desk became active and started sending out quick repetitive chords. I began to perform calisthenics and measure out drops by weight. I was able, in fact, to tweak the precise amount to the correct dose by simply pressing the increment (+) and measuring it by the time-point (ie, exactly the millisecond after the dose has been calculated), and I invariably received the same response: electric head slamming, which was especially effective on geriatrics and widows, especially in the early stages of recovery. 20211204. The entire architecture is one large glass window, looking out upon a world that embodies the paradox of the body in its moment of lucidity, but it is the body that is dreaming through the windowpane. The dream that is arousing the sleeping subject is revealed to be but a simulacrum — a phantom of the reality that the instruments of the body has created. A phantom that constantly makes a body an object of illumination is aroused, edited, repaired, and put back into working. 20211002. The sign on the wall describes a woman wearing a white shirt. It is clear in the street, and in the space of a sentence or so. It is composed of fragments of stories, the formal and silent shorthand of an esthetic language. It is not a corpus considered as foreign, fragmented in order to be displayed, studied and “quoted” by a third party; nor is it the “spectator” of a lost world, who transfers his or her “soul” in order to work on the machines producing his or her body. 20211127. The empty glass of wine on the table was a clue. He would have to refill it and drink it.
He sipped it. There was nothing to indicate that he was at all ill. The nose was clear and the mouth was wide open, the whole face seemed to be open and bright, and he was smiling with a mouthfull of wine.

“That’s what I was thinking of,” he said. “A bit of wine to go with this big feast.”
“And when you have eaten it, will you imbibe it?” I asked him.
“My goodness,” he said. “I wouldn’t miss it for anythin’.” 20211105. Beyond the living room, the large windows opened upon a scattering of trees, a kind of hedging in the undergrowth, or a road.

Ahead, a little to the right, a cyclist pedaling downhill, holding his chain in his hand, with his foot dragging in the middle of the road. Shortly, he turns left onto a wide stretch of grass lined with poplars, toward the only human habitation he knew. A little village, a few acres away from an oil-mill, with a grazing cow, a little creek, and a low house with a sign, alluding to the direction where he grew up. 20211109. The concrete floor and the white tiles could only hide so much. There wasn’t nearly enough room for him to go around without hurting himself.

“No,” he said, creeping around on his hands and knees. “No. I must go deeper. I must go right underneath the floor and wait to come out.”

On the second day he went on with his explorations. He went on, thumping along the corridor with his stick.

The feeling of helplessness, the complete and utter helplessness of it all must have tormented him to death.

But finally, he came to decide which pockets of the home to blow up, which corners to blow down, which walls to blow in, which rooms to make light. This was his chance to get a thing or two right! 20211107. A kitchen with black and white walls.
Kitchen-candy, brown sugar and cream pie!
A baker’s dozen, holiday favorites.
Delicious liverwurst and sauerkraut.

And three times only grubblest.
A sink full of old lobster tails.
Pile it up in a basket.
And send it off to your lovers.

With frying-powder and marshmallows.
And now, you guessed it.
The oven-bread is soon to be had!
But this isn't just any old bread.

The best anybody’s ever seen!
The most valuable treasure in the land!
Don’t change a bit of this!
Here we go! 20210925. “A box full of unknown intoxicants?”
Silence.
“I’ll bet they are.” I said darkly.

A box full of unknown drugs, the before-and-after picture, the after-images of the great man himself, and of course, the innumerable variations thereof, are as fascinating to a non-stop fiend as all the jewels of the empire.

But I digress. And in a voice that echoed the squeaks of my own innermost notes, I offered them to the Queen. She took one at her lips and swallowed it in one gulp. “Ah-h,” she said, licking her lips. “Yes, thank you.” 20211113. The white tile of the bathroom floor is covered in a red fluid.
But blood is not the only substance on the white surface.
The water is proof.
The Tentacular fabric is fabulated with fibrous loops.
Crocheting with this material is not only courageous, it is beautiful.
The microcosm of prosthesis, of making a positive difference between ourselves and those we come into contact with, is celebrated.
We hope that this show of hands, with its labyrinthine paths, will give us a glance into the chambers of our mothers at our coming encounter.
We know that our mothers are our breath, but we cannot see into their souls.
We only perceive signs of our breathing. 20211026. A large window opened above him - city life was conducted by efficient, manly men, with a touch of Eastern magic and a taste for controversy. He would be drawn inexorably into tangents that sounded original and which he would have rather avoided, and which the listeners, without failing to grasp the underlying patterns embedded in the overall scenario, would instantly identify and joyously slit away. 20211204. The calm waters of the harbor are not only the places in and around which the small traders and manufacturers send their wares to distant markets, but they are also the harbors in which the large merchants and manufacturers send their goods to England. Thus the competition between the two is brought to a standstill. And just as in the competition between the great landowners of the continent, a quarrel arises between them over the limits of the coastline. The quarrels must be resolved – settle them, or face the consequences. 20211205. A black and white cat appears several times throughout the text, each time on a different page. Readers who pay close attention will soon spot the patterns. Each of these arrangements of text has a destabilizing effect on the other. When converted into a speech or a picture, a blank page on a newspaper sometimes does more than just that: it shapes the reader’s mind and, as a consequence, his behavior. A blank page will interest a person who reads only things he agrees with, or who agrees with other things; a distorted page will interest someone who reads only places he likes, or who is indifferent to reminders of the boats he used to booze around, the ones he didn’t fancy very much, the ones that went on forever. 20211127. The window with colorful curtains.
Stand on the street, bit by bit.
Around in a minute breath.
Cityscape, linoleum, desert sand.

Blow dry grass, pat down tender places.
Assessment of situation, fox guarding bottle.
Situation improve, need strengthening.
(Partly disappeared).

Carry on dismantling old stuff.
Points to be crossed, double crossing each other.
Singing birds, vultures, cobras.
Documentaries, radio dramas, black boxes. 20211028. The brown wooden table is set with small white plates and various utensils. While beyond the table, almost out of sight, stands an upright piano. The piano is not in tune, but you proceed to play it anyhow. It sounds like a high-pitched scream.

It screams, and tells you that when you die, it will be because you did not listen to it. 20211009. A man with a beard.
A woman with a scarf.
Or should it be a combination of the two?

What does it matter?

Very soon, all the naughty little children will be aged.
And find out whether their grandparents.
Existed or were just figments of rumor.

Behold me and you may possibly.
Come to very near enough to understand.
Why all this LOUDNESS IS SO MUCH BETTER THAN ANYBODY CAN.

(This final note came from the loudspeaker in his house.) 20210922. A black and white design on the wall helps you identify twelve possibilities:

A reenactment of old films.
A rectangular piece of cardboard.
A manuscript in a bound volume.
A poison pen in a bottle.

A clean table with a refined finish.
A leather bench.
An issue of the avant-garde review.
Two lamp posts, one on each wall.

The clear glass ocean.
The deep blue sky.
The snow is shadow.
The ground is firm. 20211106. The classroom is mostly full of empty chairs. In order to conduct reading and writing exercises, the students are sometimes compelled to sit still for a long time in a row, like rabbits, while the adults write. In one corner a young man is fidgeting about, while his teacher sits cross-legged on the arm of his chair, quietly reading. In the end, the students learn to love books, and begin writing in their own blood. 20211017. The man sitting at the table speaks very slowly, with an unsteady voice.
The woman doesn’t like the way he speaks.
Several times she has called him Daddy, but he doesn’t like the way she talks about him.
Sometimes he bothers her, sometimes he doesn’t; sometimes she feels sorry for him, for his part, for the length of time it takes her to say – and she doesn’t mean to say anything at all when spoken to. Often her confiding turns into pleading and despair: My father! My father! I hate you! I hate you! 20211125. A black cup of coffee.
He hadn’t drunk much.

Streaky feet.
Sore shoulders.

Arms and quivers with an untamed swagger.
Brown hair brushed up.

Sluggish mouth.
Relaxed posture.

Epic, splendid sight.
Empty hands, grasping pretty much everything. 20211105. The windows of the warehouse were supercilious and glumptious. There was no furniture or pictures on the walls, only a whole lot of boxes piled up on the floor. It was a chaotic scene, and most of the people working there didn’t know what to do or where.

But I could see now that the warehouse was actually a great club. All the furniture, the pictures, the TV screens, the chairs, the tables, the lamps, the door knobs and the hinges were all in one fell swoop, piled up in the warehouse in what appeared to be a gigantic heap upon the floor. 20211116. The windows behave like picture frames, creating a three-dimensional appearance of space. They are an artistic effect, performed with words. They thus produce a rim around the outside of ordinary language. They are an artistic utilization of the interior, and cause a break or discontinuity between the outside and the interior. They are actions of fracturing open the texts that proliferate around them. They are other uses of the same instrument. They therefore form a parallel system. The system is broken up into time periods which are marked by regularities. The consecutiveness of the instants is compensated for by the periodic nature of the uses to which they are put. 20211106. This is a bedroom in which all my worldly things are strewn about like the bushes and trees of a meadow after a hurricane.
All my worldly things are points of view, like a garden which has no center.
They do not belong to me, nor do they represent a particular kind of reality.

They are jumbled together like a tumbleweed.
They weave like a spider’s web.

The shrapnel of grenades, the feathers of pigeons, and other such things float in the ether like raindrops. 20211113. The two children in the colorful room make their space in the image of something that does not yet exist. They transform the given space into something different. What they have to do is to make themselves the master of it and to transform it so that they can then make themselves the authors of a new space. They are writing themselves as masters of their own space. They ensure that their work never becomes a chore or a repetition of history. They ensure that their discourse is always necessary and always pays off. They are in the business of constructing utopias and marvelous complicities, laden with meaning and full of contradictions. 20211116. Inside the large building, the shelves were stacked with the usual supplies:

fifty trumpets,
ten banjos,
ten wooden stools,
ten tricks,

forty dollars,
a ball of string,
a bunch of poetry,
and countless other things. 20211204. Plants with green leaves cover the wooden floor of his shack.
And there, surely, in the very center of the whole.
Story, there will always be a single room.
Till all the dreams and frustrations.
Of your life seem to have a rest.

We’re going to need a plane.
To whisk us away.
Or you might be lucky.
To find a bed, a chair, a pillow.
And plenty of warm food in the fridge.

Oh, what a lovely country this is!
And we soon shall forget all about it.
The more excited I am, the faster we'll all go.
And where, for months on end.
And so, every day, on his way home. 20211005. The boy's smile turned the color of a ripe orange. “You are a liar, madam!” he shouted, glaring at the Queen. “A repulsive, boring, ungrateful little pig!” The Queen lifted her head and looked at the son. “You are kind of off your rocker,” she said.
“Now, Now, Now,” the Long-armed Lady shouted back, icily. “Stop teasing!”
“Not now, you understand,” the Prince murmured.
“Then tell me,” the Queen said.
“Well,” the Prince went on, “it seemed like a really pretty cloudy hell during the first part of this week. And Thomas, well—not exactly a shining example of chivalry he was, I’ll be bound. But he was really mild and gentle. He was understanding. He was nice. He was helpful. I’ve gotten him into the army. We’re giving him the best schools in the army.”
“Nice school, he told himself. Very nice indeed.” 20211117. Everything in the bedroom was pure white and sparkling. And when I turned my head in, I was looking into a space that was as big as a marvelous looking cathedral. There was an infinity of little bouquets and dozens of different and wonderful things going on in there, and when I turned to the door, I could see the magic was still going on.

This whole place, I thought, was everything. The walls, the ceiling, the floor, everything was made of shining white and there was a radiant and heavenly feeling in the air. The whole place was alive with magical happenings. 20211107. The two people sitting at the table nearest to me were my parents.

My parents were generous with each other, and I have to admit to myself that I felt closer to them than anyone could be. They touched me beyond words; they took me seriously; and they were very kind to me, too.

When I needed anything, they would gather round me and pour it into my smile-box and I would give them a big hug and a kiss.

“Good-bye” my parents would say. And then out we would go in our separate ways. 20211123. The colorful pictures on the wall do not detract from the minimal furniture, but serve to complement each other. Images like these normally mean nothing and provide no additional information. But sometimes, as in this instance, they serve to magnify the point that has been originally emphasized and to crystallize the entire situation. They serve as accents, or rather perimeters: topic, time, place, number, animal, person, thing, encyclopedia, religion, man, woman, plant, jar, pencil, eraser, nail, brush, comb, hair, plane, ellipse, bushel, selenite, etc. 20211125. A person is taking a picture of a woman with long dark hair. She is a model citizen of a ruined city. Every pore on her skin has been seeped by the filth of the world — by the filth of capitalism — and she is ready to be radiated further.

A radiated woman wants only to be recognized and to be competent in her function as a carrier of meaning. She does not need a photo-shoot to know what she is doing. 20211103. From the bed in my room, I could see through the large window to the trees beyond, and I could hear the beaches rustling and sighing just over the side of the valley.
I went to the door of my room and opened it quietly, with my precious secret in my hand.

Dear Diary,
All this talk of the woods and the valleys and the woods gave me the lovely idea that tonight I would go forth and visit all the above mentioned places myself. I will undertake to go into as many of them as I please, and I will visit the woods and I will visit the valleys and I will visit the empty houses all standing still. 20211031. A group of people in a small store perform a common set of activities.

They are consumers.
They are users of language.
They are translators of cultural traits into physiological facts.
They are translators of anatomical structures into physiological facts.
They are also transformers of these facts into laws.
They make these facts proliferate around them.
They animate them.

Thus, their bodies become a collection of ridges and fractures in the space of a social texture. 20211121. A room with a small desk is always worth less than one with a large desk.
Here, I am speaking directly in the interest of the capitalist class.
Think of the horror!
The “big boss” always holds the large desks at the head of the room.
While the “little boss” must always sit at the small desk.
How can life really be life when such dreadful things can be revealed in its very existence? 20211028. Above the potted plant, a shelf is lined with small glass bottles half-filled with rain water, summer thistle, and pharmaceutical products. Mangosteen, Japonicum, Pinus, Orlichum, and various exotic medicinals are displayed here. Aloe, pipa, guinea, maca, as well as certain weights and measures of multi-colored powders from the Americas: ambergris, corn, ash, bone, marble, cornelian, guaiac, and sepura alba. 20211105. A pile of black metal chairs.
From the back there came a triangle of metal rods.
Immediately behind the rods there was a row of small white rubber lips.
It was a pretty sight to see.

The whole of this fearsome creature’s face minus the nose-holes.
And all the tubes going upward from head to toe.
And those gums going sticky, rich, brown.
And tastes that should frighten the daylights out.

The Giant from the land of the midnight sun.
And his ravenous hunger drove us insane.
We fought to the death and in the end.
(I always look for chairs when I go into a shop). 20211029. My eyes are drawn to a small group of pictures. And in each picture, there is a animal subject in a still magical environment. The group of animals in the magical forest is closely related to the group of animals that lives in the everyday environment.

Each picture is a repetition of the same theme: an animal lives in a magical forest, and two groups of animals come together in a common magical experience.

Why is it so hard to find a common denominator between animals and magical environments? Since all animals are mere mechanisms which work together just like any machine.

How can we think in the magical atmosphere, which is stuffed with loops and ridges, folds and curves. How can we think in the magical environment, which has no beginning and no end? 20211109. A brown cabinet.
A white shelf.
A black light.
A window seat.
A little island.
A rocking horse.
A summer's garden.
A sewing-machine.
A bucket.
Basics, to be found in the back of the room.
Explosives, for example, Petrochemistry, Sodium-POP! 20211204. At night, the lights around the windowpanes give it a mysteriousness that makes it hard to read our names in the dark. This source of illumination is a philosopher’s dream, carried away in the dark of night, and at the same time a philosopher’s nightmare, the object of vain exorcisms. The presence of the night is a reproach to the day, a dragging away of the past.

The unfinished business of yesterday is being carried out today. What is here today is only a repetition of yesterday’s mistakes. 20211003. I am sitting across from an empty red chair, and the chair just keeps getting lower as I inhale deeply and deeply. In order to get through this horrible period of emptiness, I have to keep my gaze fixed on the ground. This does not allow for much room for mistake. As soon as I start to get up, I am not guided by visual perception marks to move my legs. My eyes are on the ground only after I have taken a deep breath, so that they are focused on the movement of the entire body no matter how small.

FIGURE 14. Deep breath and regular movement of the leg.

Deep breaths are the only ones that work. 20211022. On the old wooden table, a ring of wax candles illuminates the dark. The aromatic smoke we have just exhaled hangs heavy in the air, but when it finally reaches you, you dream upon the Holy Ghost. You curl up onto the cushions, rest several long seconds on your bony back, and imagine the huge abominations preparing you for the duel in which you would play the devil.

Our dreams and hallucinations are shaped in the fire of ambition which burns in our visionary cortex, bright, with a hot sulphuric smell. 20211019. This is not a livingroom, but in fact a living room. A room brought to life by the lively medium of the spider's web.

With the same medium, the art of weaving is enabled. With the elasticity of fibers, the art of weaving is on display.

Weaving is passing on and receiving, making and unmaking, picking up threads and dropping them.

Weaving is a process of causative destruction, of implanting and flowering.

Weaving is a practice of “passive resistance,” “passive integration,” “passive decomposition,” “passive synthesis,” “passive implanting,” “passive notification,” “passive tactile sensation.”

These oppositions are not a contradiction. They are a consistent pattern in bringing disparate relational worldings into harmony. 20211106. The brown floor of the tiny room where the experiment was carried out.
He tread lightly with a sack under him.
A sorry, sorry sight, but one which is easier to view than to describe.
Shame! Shame! how the experiment was conducted.

And what dreadful consequences it brought to the house.
The poor creature!
He was so dazzled by the beauty of the thing.
That he chose for his experiment a room of the most comfortable kind.

The experiment was a complete success, and the result was, that for the space of half a year, the inmates of this hell-hole were at liberty to indulge in most wholesome games. This abolishing of serfdom has been effected, not by mere words, or by a single act of parliament, but by a long series of legislative enactments. 20211023. A black and white picture on the wall in front of the fireplace showed the silhouette of a person, usually a gentleman, but always with a jaunty hat on his head.
“Here is the picture for which you inquired, you see?”
“Yes, but what do you want him to look like?”
“Ah,” he patiently answered, “that’s the main thing.”
“Jaunty, isn’t he?”
“Became famous, yes.”
“Terrific chap,” he said. “He’s a genius. Can’t you see him?”
“Of course I can see him,” I said, “I’m absolutely certain he’s a genius.” 20211022. Four women at a table.
A picture on the wall.
A glass of wine.

And sometimes the ladies would withdraw the bottle of Beaujolais, and enjoy instead some sumptuous sherry.
This bottle was something that she displayed, almost as much as any other collector would display her collections.
She would stroll about holding forth some bottle of choice, and inquire after about some interesting double or triple.

Some wine indeed and a good book to read. 20211212. The blue light from the television screen is a kind of broken mirror that makes the spectator's eyes wander. The flickering of the screen is a partial restoration of a lost paradise. It is the vibrato of a body in motion, the murmur of a language, and the movement of an immobile body. These are the effects that the invention of a new visual language produces in the spaces that it creates.

These spaces have been conceived in relation to what is constantly passing by: an onslaught of contrasts, yellows and oranges, of extremes that are hard to describe but which make the heart beat faster, the eyes scan the landscape, make the hair on the back of your neck stand up, and make your skin crawl. 20211120. On the wall above the table, a white paper in a black frame contains the following remarks:

“This is the work of art which, together with the needle and thread, constitutes the material of the instrument of labour. The operation of making, breaking up, and putting together an instrument of labour is its direct activity or function. No other material can thus be so called, except in so far as it has been specifically prepared and dealt with as an instrument of labour. Its immediate activity, whether preparing or performing, is alone that which can give rise to any form of artistic effect. ” 20211128. The black and white stripes create a dazzling camouflage in the architecture of interior spaces. When the interior is dark, and the letters are gold, we become surrounded by the language of the other. When the outside is filtered through a lens, the letters revealing themselves are there inside the glass, making out of it a mirror with itself. The glass is a utopia in which everything is mirror-paned and a sea of meaninglessness. Only the instrument (a stone) is able to break this mirror in order to bear the image of something that does not yet exist. 20210924. A group of well-dressed people sit in front of a large, ornate tapestry.
“O mischief!” cries a voice from behind the curtain.
A young man in business wear, a dark suit, with scraggly beard, and carrying a thick stack of bank-notes, tries to shuffle and scramble up the aisle.
He raises his hands skyward, “Aye! from the wealth that men give to one another, a man must look upon this wealth as the devil has told him to look upon it!”
“What is that? What is that supposed to mean?”
The young man does not understand that what he earns is the capital, and that capital is a thing, and a thing is capital, and a thing is wealth.
“Ah! pity!” exclaims he, almost in a whisper, “pity!” 20210925. In the small kitchen, the food is served on a low wooden table. Two large cups of coffee, black and strong, were brewed for me and my wife. My wife drinks them both in a single gulp, and shudders with joy when she sees her reflection in the mirror. I haven’t had enough time or coffee to process her story yet. I will return to it when I have more information to go on. Before leaving, I wanted to ask you one question.

What is the most amazing story you have ever heard? 20211125. The black kitchen cabinets are filled with the surplus-foodstuffs of the laborers, the necessary means of subsistence. In those of the better-paid servants, however, the floor is tiled and the walls decorated with murals of flowers, leaves, and fruits. In order to afford amusement to the children, who have been trained to eat and drink well, these moulds are often decorated with figures of animals, birds, and other creatures adapted to the taste of the laborer. Sometimes both are consumed, but always in the form of snack foods. 20211028. A child is alone in the living room when the clock strikes eleven. The room is a dark and forbidding place, and the child, suddenly and without provocation, sets foot in it and begins to play. Suddenly the light comes on, and the child turns round to see the horrible apparatus that is now playing before him. It is a hideous clock, with a black and monstrous face, and a ticking mechanism that, far from being a mere device for passing numbers, is rather an evil machine. The ticking stops, and the black box that contains the ticking mechanism opens and shuts, as if in a dream. In the distance, you can see the workers lining up for their night-shifts at the local factory. 20211105. In the large glass building, scenes of the city and white clouds in a blue sky loomed large. I peered through the window at the clouds, and everything looked different. The lighting was better, the colors paler, the shadows more vibrant, the quality was closer to the surface. This was a city I lived in, and all the nights were wonderful nights in which the rim of the sky was something like white wine in a bottle.

Panchromatic: The colors come from machines. The software engineers spent six years preparing a method for producing panchromatic photographs. The photographs were then processed with special scanners and analyzed with sophisticated software. The resulting photographs were of a precisely circular shape. The literature on color says that a photograph is a photographic effect that must not be confused with the real thing. Photographs were also invented to serve other purposes. 20211106. Above the fireplace, the picture on the wall shows three people standing in front of a building. Each one of them was holding something out in front of them, and it is clear that whoever was doing the talking, wasn’t speaking to any of the others in the room.

“What on earth are they doing?”
“Who are they?”
“Ssshh!”
“Listen!”
“Listen!”
“What are they doing?”
“Ssshh-sshh-sshh!”
“Who are they?”
“Ssshh-sshh-sshh!”
“Where do they come from?”
“Ssshh-sshh-sshh!”
“Strangers!”

“Oh no!” 20211127. The small kitchen has a dirty concrete floor and a low window overlooking a garden with an iron rail. The garden is immodest, the kitchen is extra, the living-room is solitary and the bedroom is reserved for the sleeping person. The garden is the inverse of the bedroom, in that it is a blank page to be written on by one who has no control over it, and who, consequently, inspires awe and passion in the passer-by.

Everybody has a place, but not everyone has a hobby. Everyone has a need, but not everyone has a job. People come and go, fill up and go, pause and rest, take a moment to enjoy themselves, then they come back to work. The landscape keeps its place, but the machine that cuts it up and polishes it is also the place of play, of surprises, and of menial tasks. It is the antithesis of the “public space.” 20211005. The large white warehouse is empty, except for the electrician who sets the factory in motion.
It is not at all uncommon for two different manufactories in the same branch of industry to each have separate and opposing views of the social value that it expresses. The proprietors of the smaller establishments may disallow the employment of persons under 18 years of age. But the people employed in the larger establishments are hardly less “free.” The secrecy of the business of mixing up the persons employed in different factories constitutes a valuable source of amusement to the operatives. 20211231. The room is full of green plants and small animals lying on the furniture. To live in such comfort and luxury, the tenant must attain a degree of wealth that his neighbors call extraordinary. But the occupations of astuteness are proving to be of a past age. The tractors are getting old. The implements of labour are beginning to turn rot. The buildings are beginning to fail. The drains are low. 20210924. Above the large black couch, the walls are completely bare. The wooden floor is also empty, revealing a most cursory collection of objects.

A wood cabinet.
A plant in a pot.
A bottle of wine.
A top hat, a decorated vase, a lamppost, and a serpent.

On the coffee table sits a single notebook, opened to the latest entry, which is written in Gothic lettering like this:

Please do not attempt to wake me if you do not succeed in seeing the devil.
I am in your hands.
I have nothing to hide.
I see the dark side of your face.

Your charming smile hides nothing. 20211215. In the mirror on the wall, a woman was standing only a few yards away from me, and the woman was holding a bottle in one hand and a walking-stick in the other. Both were white, and so were the hills reflected in the distance.
“I don’t want to go out,” she was saying, “unless you promise you’ll come back again.”
The walking-stick was still in the basket.
“You can come back again,” I said. “You promised.”
She took the stick out of the bag and held it up to me.
“I am about to put the bottle on you,” she said. “But first I must ask you a very special thing.”
I was speechless. 20211130. A large display of multi-colored glass blocks was set up in the middle of the room, and guests could gaze up at it with anything from gentle to vigorous headaches.
“Maybe it’s the dose,” I thought. “I never dose anyone.”
“It’s the ticket,” said the Doctor. “But I doubt very much whether it’s much more than the normal amount.”
“Oh hell no!” I cried. 'How can this job ever be done properly! How can the government force this insane thing to be sold to a person?”
“Well,” said the Doctor, stroking his beard and gazing thoughtfully at the ceiling, “there’s really no knowing what might happen to your head if you swallow just a tiny extra dose of this.'
“Drunkenness is no fun,” I said. “It’s loathed very much,” I went on. “Illegal highs like kites and cannons are all but unknown. Look here, Doctor, you take this little sip and you shall see the future.”
“Would you want to see the future?” said the doctor. “Good heavens, it’s even worse than drunkness!” 20211115. A laptop computer rests on a desk in a small room. But the computer occupies a space of its own, a “virtual space.” It transforms the bewitching world into a text without author, without language, into a mechanical system that makes text produce a gridwork without writer, without altering it at all (even if one can dismantle its facade). The same sort of thing is done in dreams and in the most ordinary of human beings. One can already find the prototype and the essential structure of what will later define the “modern” ideal: the individual subject, an artificial construct created as a result of a process of elimination. 20211007. The room with the large bright windows looks lovely from the inside, but one can easily see a person peering in from the outside. They are looking through the glass pane, directly at the framed picture on the wall. When illuminated, this image is imbued with life, giving off a radiant brilliancy.

Holding a magnifying glass, they continue to stare from outside the window. Their arm is extended in a perfect circle, their head is tilted towards you, their eyes are moist with emotion. 20211229. Beneath the wooden stairs.
Through the gaps in the treads.
Ohmigosh! The vibrations!
She threw the first set of legs.
And beat the world record!
She did it in four hours.
She is now the most dreadful and dangerous woman.
Everyday, baaadly lounging.

So please, biby, buckle up, get on with it.
And while we do this.
We looch at her up all night.
Until wee light comes at last.
(Click here to see a larger and more pristine picture.)
And wee bones are beginning to weigh.
The word is truly loving and gracious.
(Click here to see a poem.) 20211117. In the workroom, the picture on the wall shows an image of an entirely different place. It is not the first time that it has been there, nor will it be the last.

On the contrary, the room has wandered from one function to another, ever since a certain period of production has been here. The transition from one sphere of production to another and the entire process of production, then, consists of the exchange of products.

It is not the result of the form which is shown, but its preliminary condition. The transition from one phase of the labour-process to another is effected by the aid of objects, by the aid of materials. 20211019. The lavish furniture, and the lights hanging from the ceiling adorn the dwelling of the capitalist. It is a common occurrence, that he changes his room from dismal to splendid in the course of the year. Very few enter it without looking for fault, and without looking twice. In winter, it is absolutely uninhabitable, but in summer, it is a wonder. Compare with the ordinary suburban house, the one furnished wholly with domestic goods. While the capitalist’s home is furnished with goods of every description: it is said to contain jewels, to contain treasures, to contain a treasury of gold and silver to the value of ten million pounds sterling. 20211110. Above the bed, the lights on the ceiling mark a contrast to the night-time outside.
Everything darkens.
Everything grows darker.
The moon enters a slow month.
The sun enters its last month.
The moon shines on the clouds.
The sky is full of stars.
And these transformations become like lines upon a gauzy fabric. 20211230. Two people stand before a large image of a meadow filled with demons, each with his or her share of the demon blooms. Each has a speaker placed in his or her vicinity that stimulates speech.

Whenever two persons exchange whispers, it is as if the demons had been summoned by heaven to the rescue. The whole environment is a meadow filled with the most dreadful things.

Whenever both of us take our places opposite one another in a meadow, we hear the same speaker announce, “There is a being at the other end of the rainbow, a human being.”

If both people produce the same speech, then the demon has been exorcized. 20211229. A cat wanders across the brown rug on the wooden floor. All is well in the world.

My cat lady loves to curl up with a book in the corner. Here, she jumps onto a book, reads a chapter, and then, with one smooth motion, throws the book back on the shelf. She has had enough.

We are not alone, we are not things, only judgments and concepts, the universe will be found in the deluge to come. 20211229. The empty blue chairs at the back of the room sit there, kind of like giant amplifiers, amplifiers that make everything else go away and exaggerate their own weirdness.

These places have at least three characteristics in common. They want to be - people want them to be - places of identity, of relations and of history. The layout of the house, the rules of residence, the zoning of the village, placement of altars, configuration of public open spaces, land distribution, correspond for every individual to a system of possibilities and prescriptions whose content is both spatial and social. 20211229. Beneath the black couch, a dog is laying on the floor.

It isn’t the litter that he is looking for. It is the small white dog, fine, sweet and surrounded by loving people.
I always thought a white dog was the most beautiful color. The pure white of the Irish sea, the pure white of the Dover-London road, the white of the blackberry trees of Kent, the black of the Harzog between Beychevelle and Beychevelle, the flat white of the Haut-Brionne region, the tuxedoed beluga of Bordeaux.

I miss my Grandma. 20211230. In front of the door, a large mirror was mounted, and a voice came out of it. “On my instructions,” the voice said, “you may now remove your mask, open your mouth, and test for yourself whether you are indeed hypochondriacs or not. Is everything all right? Do you experience any peculiar symptoms?”
“Well . . .”
“Precisely,” the voice said. “And now tell me if these pills work and whether you are suffering. These symptoms are far more dangerous. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, all hypochondriacs should be extremely cautious when taking these pills.”
“And who will be responsible for ensuring that they are not poisonous? Who will be the guinea pig?”
“I will.” 20211229. A kitchen table.
A bowl of food.
A bottle of wine.
A plate, perhaps.

It was a lovely house.
But the night was ominous.
The great plans were unravelling.
But nobody could see it with naked eyes.

She was at last successful.
She had devised a fascinating machine.
And in the middle of it all.
There was a little button.

Curious, rather brilliant.
Some sort of a camera.
A kind of life-extension.
Then all hell broke loose. 20211230. A number of boxes and trash cans on the floor caught my eye, as did a picture on the wall showing an equally messy pile of clothes. These were not ordinary human things, these were exotic foreign objects, brought into this world by stealth, as we girls and boys in the West continue to be taught that birds are real. My curiosity was piqued. Why not me too? Surely, someone had to be curious. And besides, I had the feeling that the stranger before me was not a product of Western culture at all, but, rather, a product of Nature herself. 20211229. The red and white designs on the wall of the room, the entrance and exit, are of two colors. The opening and closing of the trap, the making of the bomb, and the killing of the rats, are, as I have said, mere decorations. The bomb, as a means of effecting the circulation of commodities, is a complicated mechanism. And so are the different forms of the means of production, the yarn, the cotton, the coal, and so on, which circulate the product of labour in these factories. 20211229. Above the brown chair, the writing on the wall is shifting. It is moving out from the back of the windowpane, moving toward the glass, and at the same time, isolating the event or its object. What is obscured by the glass is the writing that creates the drama of the distance or the impossibility of passing on. What is written about remains un-titled. The pane of glass separates the inside from the outside, the wild or domestic from the opaque texturology of a semiotics of their own. 20211218. A man with black hair stands on the wooden floor of the theatre and cracks a bottle. He licks the bottle and returns to his chair. He is disturbed at being caught. “What’s wrong with being caught?” he says, and he glances at me. “I’m absolutely tickled.” He is then caught and thrown over the balcony into the theatre, where he sits on a chair in front of a roaring sea of blue dancers.

When he speaks again, it was in a voice that filled my head from head to toe and left me speechless. “You are the only monarch in the world who has a treble tonic. Pirates,” he says, “are not dangerous to the naked eye.” 20211222. All the colorful books on the shelf, the children’s books, the nursery rhymes, the geography books, popular culture — everything was swimming around and spilling out into the little room.

“Hello,” the voice was saying. “Hello hello hello!”
It was alive. The room was alive, and it was breathing.

And a fish was also alive. The dolphin was walking about, flapping its great water-bottomed tail around viciously in front of its face. The wolf was curled up asleep on the loose-backed skull, while the whale and the walrus hung upside down on their great shoulders, both motionless, respectively, the head on top, the arms out sideways, like a pair of swimming gloves.