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I would like to begin, but that's not possible. So, already present in this
named, mutilated, dissected body I dream privately if not quite lucidly, or
maybe--not quite yet. I am empty-headed, idiotic and stupid, i.e., bereft of any
and all useful qualities needed for survival. I could aim again at clarity, but
meaning is always in abeyance. There is only this body. This pain. A side-step
in the direction of technique, the technological. I am looking forward to someday
mutilating my skull and implanting "chips" of whatever kind are available because
as I am I feel inadequate to even the most menial mental tasks. Only with
implants could I ever approach "genius."
I want to be a kind of synthetic Leonardo. I want to master chaos. Or else I'll
settle for Nothing.
More interesting and more "serious" is a certain fascination with selection and
dumb luck. Or with returns or destinations (or destiny). A wild embrace of
negativity held close like a nameless woman who infects me with a certain
unbridled enthusiasm for pessimism.
And so it is with any relationship. I dreamt once that I had taken a bite from a
Cezanne apple. As a result, I became both a vessel and a vanishing point. My
flatness argued against any origin of self from a cubed egg. I imagined, like
the memory of another life, the shrunken heads of analysands rolling off the
blade of a hair-trigger guillotine. This, as usual, had a way of thoroughly
putting the present in perspective for the present again.
If I could only clear my throat, I'd make an assertion, by way of introduction,
that might at least suggest a path, but frankly...I'm not clever enough. Try as I
might to unbury my body and gaze outward from my own lack, out through my own
fault toward some Big Event on the Horizon, I just stammer and retreat, unable to
voice the "a"...or...any other desire...or the name of my beloved...effectively.
This prosthetic limb, the one that I never consciously appended, insists
on mediating what's written, or writes by itself. This leaves both hands empty,
idle, and up to no good. Only mischief.
As I might have implied (I constantly forget), I love a nameless woman. I love
her shamefully, and when I dream of her she tastes like the scent of machine
heat. She opens like an electronic space, but of course that's not
possible--however--she does curve 3-space and time in a very sexy way. Her
seduction purrs like an external drive. She avoids me, and I love that. It makes
me want to fuck her. In fact, I'm obsesssed with fucking her, or having her fuck
me. I don't think it's likely. She's remote, mostly absent. Her line is always
busy. Only the machine answers my calls. I want to lick her til she comes for
me again. She's a little perverse and I love that about her. She told me she
likes the feeling of warm piss running down the inside of her thigh, and that she
prefers the company of other men, younger, more virile men, and sometimes other
women. It makes me want to look at her.
I feel guilty for desiring like a machine would desire, but I do it anyway.
Sometimes I can see her naked. She's beautiful. That she ignores how moronicly
i stare at her is endearing. I look into her, inspect her closely, but I never
find anything to explain my desire. As though I would or could, she once said.
"Take me or leave me." She always says it with indifference.
My fantasy is that she will beg to be with me. Truth is, the only fantasy she's
ever shared was about not wearing underwear. I punish myself by constantly
thinking about this, or imagining her as a computer with fast access mass storage
devices. But even so, her name will never be written. She could never be
recorded, listed, sorted, quued. But she's around. Usually in the topology of
desire. Specifically, my desire. If you take exception to this, please be
assured that I don't really care. It doesn't have anything to do with you. I'm
the one who's adrift here. I'd like to connect in some meaningful way, but I'm
short on talent, short on money, and extremely short on patience--all of which
puts me in mind of the first dream I had the other night. The one that was
scribbled in the margin of this paragraph (before revisions).
It was an...unremarkable...dream. Except...like being there. Another world,
Another dimension. So real, yet all too dreamy. I can only remember snatches.
Part one was set on a farm, a kind of compound or small community. Like a town
in the old west. Wooden buildings. Dust & open fields. There was a school
building. A deranged "lunatic" took the teacher & students hostage. He was a
large hulking, Lynchian character. Bald. Very strong. I wanted to free the
hostages. I snuck into the building on several reconaissance missions, then went
looking for the sheriff & others. The sheriff was a young Andy Griffith who often
morphed into this older character (Slim Pickens). Anyway, I couldn't find him so
I snuck into the school again. The lunatic heard me. I hid under the stairs.
He leaped over the stair rail & went looking for me in the basement. I slipped
upstairs and opened the front door so the hostages could leave. I couldn't
beleive it!
They were reluctant to go. I had to prompt them over and over to get the hell
out of there. As they were coming out the front, other townspeople arrived and
opened all the doors to the building. More and more children came scurrying out.
Then, the lunatic, charging out of the cellar door, went running toward an empty
field. There was chaotic movement in the clouds. He kept pointing a pitch fork
at the turbulence and screaming. The clouds settled into one large pink cloud
with some sort of rotating structure inside it with blinking lights. The lunatic
kept running toward it; the object began to move toward him until it was hovering
over him. It shot a high energy particle beam toward the man that pulled him
into the sky. He was flying through the air behind this thing holding onto to the
pitchfork. Pulled along. Flying on the end of this energy trail. Suddenly, I
was the lunatic. I was flying! (Well, being carried along). I thought it was
going to pull me into it, but instead it started to lose speed and altitude. It
gently dumped me into a huge tree like a tangled parachute. The pink cloud lost
energy; transformed into a hawaiian lai of pink flowers, it fell across the
branch above me like a deflated balloon. There were a lot of other people in the
tree! They'd all had the same experience. Some guy below me was explaining to a
woman next to him that the "philosophical implications...were, well, mystical".
I started laughing hysterically, but I wasn't sure he wasn't right.
Part Two: as I climbed down the tree, I went deeper into what
seemed to be endless catacombs--a combination marketplace/flea-market &
disco inferno. Everyone was dressed for a masquerade ball, or the
Limelight. I wandered toward a huge stage. It was open on four sides. Itseemed
to be a theatrical stage with a set several stories high &
constructed entirely of window frames and doors. I met a woman. Slim,
dark haired. She invited me to spend the night with her, but we
couldn't find a "roost" anywhere on the stage. Every square inch had been
claimed by some strange "squatter" who had taken up residence. The squatters
were very territorial & quite bizarre looking. At the far corner of the stage
was a group of vamps. Beautiful. Scantily dressed in seductive variations on
black lace, leather & net stockings. Their hair styles were wild. I was
immediately captivated. One of them started running her hands over my shoulders,
pushed herself against me and kissed me. She pinched me, and bit me. At first I
was scared, then I realized she was making love to me in her own way. We had a
great time. She told me that I had found my way to the Castle of Windows &
Doors--when I was ready to leave, she wrapped herself in a satin sheet (looking
very arabian) & followed me. I found my way "outside".
She followed me out. She pleaded with me to take her with me. She said she
loved me. I told her she couldn't come back into the "world" with me, that she
would die. I explained that she was too fragile & too crazy & that the world
would destroy her. She started crying. Her crying made me sad...deeply sad, but
I insisted that she go back to the Castle of Windows & Doors. She could survive
there. I promised her I'd come back to visit, & assured her that I loved her.
She turned to go back & I moved away up a long sloping sidewalk. It was Autumn.
The wind was blowing leaves around in the street. I thought to myself, "What
kind of perverted love desires a nameless woman like a machine?"
This body remains cursed by the knowledge of its own monstrous desires to rid
itself of faults by dreaming in a language that names forbidden technologies. If
it is ever possible to be uploaded, I want to be coded into a bolt of lightning.
I want to crash the threshold of the speed of light like a raging bull and be
folded into the angelic arms of my beloved who will fuck me furiously. I want
her to extinguish me in the wrenching pain of our disappearance. I want to die
in the thought that she is first here...then there...or finally...that she never was.
Received: by noel.pd.org id AA27123
(5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for anyone@elsewhere.world); Tue, 8 Mar 1994 11:43:20 -0500
From: Chea Prince
Message-Id: <199403081643.AA27123@noel.pd.org>
Subject: Perforations 5: Introduction
To: anyone@elsewhere.world
Date: Tue, 8 Mar 1994 11:43:19 -0500 (EST)
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