Cyclic Fruition Number One

The selfposession required of selfreference is to avoid seeming so selfevidently selfinterested, which is gauche, when we’re all quite vogue, thank you, perfectly selfaware. The characters are stuck in a loop, but never you worry, they’re tying themselves in knots to prove their agency: “Chalgrove: Human action is repetitious. We establish a routine and it propagates to others. / Broadstairs: Yes, and the vocabulary evolves accordingly. New words are created, or older ones get repurposed. / Appleby: But here we’ve encountered a semantic token with no apparent reference. Which implies an entire process of action which hitherto we’ve been unaware of. / Chalgrove: So I’m classifying this as a Phantasm. For the moment, at least. / Appleby: OK, and whatever else we encounter will simply accrete. Until we glimpse its nature. / Broadstairs: Then our own vocabulary will adjust to explain it. / Chalgrove: A new case then? / Broadstairs: A new case. Top priority. Happy now, Appleby?” A reciprocus structure cycling over and over, and “With every repetition we precipitate new meaning.”

Do we? New meaning requires a first meaning, some germinating core which roots whatever proves straining this point to structure fruitful. So very well, who are our interlocutors to localize all this interlocution? Some characters are sketched promisingly: “To consult with Broadstairs is to discover a beneficent uncle. To engage him awakens a mighty foe. His letterhead crowns only solemn undertakings. His monogram makes most weighty the deed. / He is sincere in every syllable. So he will spare you the details. You will be unable to recall exactly what was promised. And when he gives his Word, his Word comes not with a word. The Word of Broadstairs is a nod. An affirming smile. An intoxicating handshake.” A dutiful but ambiguous operator, certain of his authority, affable uncertainly along the banks of a ruse, excellent, but where is that in the actual dialogue? “Broadstairs: Pie and chips? Or Welsh Rarebit? / Some place where we can smoke and sit. / A pint nearby, my pipe well lit. / And these two sitting opposite.” Whatever ambitions you might have had for this man to fulfill all go up in smoke, alas. Each turn you take through the looping draws up more and more of the blanks, which is great for Russian Roulette, but in a story the mirror of the soul is made a meta vanity. The structure of the text is structuring the text, every reincursion blunts the borders dully unporous, suffocation in the selfsame: “Broadstairs: Do we have a stable representation of our situation? I’d like us to agree on some sort of interpretation. / Chalgrove: OK, here’s what we know. A new word has appeared. And it is propagating everywhere. / Appleby: No, we need to think in terms of processes. Language is action. / Chalgrove: Action by whom? / Appleby: I don’t know. But forget where you think you are. If I’m right we’re experiencing some sort of poietic fruition. / Broadstairs: This is becoming a three pipe problem. I need to reflect for a few minutes.” So’s the issue with dialogue ultragained to white noise, we think only in the terms of processes.

A mention is made here, I cannot imagine idly, of a Winograd matrix, and like a lot of Eastgate era hypertext, the text is the hypertext, so it’s an inconvenience to be dragged back to the text. I blame all of this, of course, on Samuel Beckett, whom I’ve never forgiven. Beckett in the past tense is perfect, you see, so many negative constructions all minimus arrayed, any presumption pops to plummet you voidnausea, voila. The problem is that, at some definite point in time, you’re engaged in reading it to have eventually have read it, and precisely then the gap between you and the nothing drones nonzero, which I insist it is, still, it’s spring outside, there’s got to be a world out there, somewhere…

Anyway, this is a satisfying sentence: “A glissando of crimson minims on identical white staves chain the undulating frontages in linking measured intervals.” Sorry for complaining! I’m always complaining. Oh well. Thanks!