A rough draft at the window.

By sarah 07 Dec 2001 

“listening, not capturing every word or nuance,
  is when you are participating with what is going on.”

my teacher said to me. She taught me about poetry

while I scribbled notes that made no sense, without

form or context: trying to get it all down. She

smiled, and laughed. Then, reaching down from 

her lofty perch on the table, plucked my 

notebook from before me. And she cast it into the

fire, where it lay, cold and quiet, among

the ashes. “Poetry” she continued “is the words

on the page. On the page in front of you…” and 

she held my eye, conspiratorily, and told me

stories of verse, of the pleasure of rhyme,

and the unending, unfolding variety  of scansion

and metre, ending by quoting someone:

“The poem is the language of an act of attention.”


    
THen she walked to the hearth

and rescued my notebook, and

handed me back this battered,

now stained tome of once-white

pages, and black leather binding.

Then she left em, going back to her 

room at the front of the house.

Leaving me here on the long battered

oak table in the kitchen; leaving 

me to wonder about attention. And 

also what held my attention as had

her eyes. I thought, staring at these

grey pages in the darkening room, the 

autumn sun having left the west-facing

window. The now cool breeze, comeing 

from the window where from the light 

so recently came, deep-set in the stone

wall. This rough, hard chair, cushion

pushed aside, a bony leg tucked up under

me, quickly falling asleep. And breath, not 

frosting, but warmer than the air around it.

The gift of “negative capability”, in a house

not ever silent; one that no one hears or listens

to. Suddenly without sense of change or 

passage of time, I find myself with an endless

dialogue of perceptions, not to pick or 

choose, or even to know the next location of

this non-sequence voice of the room that surrounds

me.


    
Progress and evolution, our stories of the world

outside of the house, the room, the table, the

chair that surround me, stop dead and collapse

into the smoke of autumn leaves burning

out behind in the hills surrounding. And

I sit here, now, present and finally realizing

that I am aware and have been attentive.


    
At this though, I smile to myself and 

wth this smile break the fullness of 

awareness that has held me. The memory

of this evening playing on my lips, I 

gather up my things and shuffle back

gingerly favoring my tingling leg.

wayne krantz

By anders pearson 07 Dec 2001

followed gordie and dave downtown to 55 bar to see wayne krantz play. his music would probably be best described as ‘21st century jazz’. basically, he’s a phenomenal jazz guitarist who knows how to take full advantage of effects processors. overall, despite having a fill-in drummer for the night, the band was very tight. wayne and his bassist have obviously played together a lot and can improvise together effortlessly. there were a few moments during the improvisational parts of the show where wayne was obviously reaching for it; this was pretty forgivable since his technique seemed to involve a lot of reaching down, randomly turning knobs on his effects pedals then seeing what kind of sound it makes and figuring out how to incorporate it with the rest of the music. when i got home, i immediately bought one of his CDs. he apparently plays in the city more or less every week. i’ll probably have to go back again.

decent beer, good seats, and excellent music.

bloody vikings... I mean cookies

By sarah 06 Dec 2001

What the hell? I just found that I’m logged in as Sarah. Even though I’m in another house far away from my own, and I’m on someone else’s computer!!!

<p>Well&#8230; it is true. The fact that this is my old computer and has no been brain whiped when I sold it is totally beside the point. : )</p>

<p>It is/was scary. Sasm</p>

Am I paranoid?

By Mark Boudreau 06 Dec 2001

Am I paranoid or is Big Brother becoming more and more of a reality every day? Between the secret searches, monitoring of every communication, installation of face-cams, secret tribunals, phone tracking gps, national id cards, national databases, and all the other things Congress is thinking up (not to mention the similar steps being taken by England, Canada and others), the world is becoming almost Kafkaesque.

<p>Who knows. This post could be a crime now. I&#8217;m criticizing the government, does that make me un-American? I&#8217;m worried about our collective future, does that make me an enemy of the state? Maybe I&#8217;m just reading too much of <a href="http://www.politechbot.com/">Declan McCullagh&#8217;s writings</a>. I feel powerless. I feel like the governments can do whatever they want, and even if we catch them, it seems like it won&#8217;t matter. They&#8217;ll just use some pathetic patriotic drivel, and the heroes that caught the misdeeds will be demonized as wacko civil libertarians.</p>

<p>Sorry for ranting. I&#8217;m just frustrated. It makes me say &#8220;Grrr.&#8221;</p>

<p>Added Note: <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/12/06/inv.ashcroft.hearing/index.html">Ashcroft decided to answer some of my questions.</a></p>

aesthetic hell

By jerfunfin 02 Dec 2001

Spent the past two full days writing my final paper for an aesthetics class. It was surprisingly enjoyable, although there are other things that I would rather be doing with my spare time. Each evening afterwards I can be found milking a beer at the what bar. It is my favorite way to decompress of late.

<p>Damn, now I&#8217;m thirsty.</p>

everyone loves the gnome

By anders pearson 01 Dec 2001

had lychee martinis in soho again last night with gerard and other people from work (including jennifer who used to work with us but doesn’t now).

<p>slept late today then, instead of going to the party downtown that i was supposed to go to, i went to go see <b>Am&eacute;lie</b> again with gordie and ryan. the 5pm show was sold out so we bought tickets to the 7:30 and wandered around midtown to kill time. we stopped in at <span class="caps">FAO</span> Schwartz where ryan&#8217;s wife was working as an elf. wow. if my parents had taken me to a toy store like that when i was a kid, it would have destroyed me; i&#8217;d probably never have forgiven them for the rest of my life for not buying me everything there. you can buy kid-size <em>working</em>, gas powered harley-davidsons. jesus christ.</p>

Metamorphiction and identifying my reservations

By lani 01 Dec 2001

The original title was to read, “Metamorphiction and identifying my reservations with new media” but that was gargantuan and it’s 4am. Not to mention that i had reservations concerning the subject heading itself and whether or not “new media” was an appropriate description. Is it hypertext? Is it cybertext? Will I get a brain tumor thinking about it? Will I later find myself reveling in the fact that I have a brain tumor and find myself calling it pet names? These are all serious things to consider when dealing with blerphhht.

<p>But seriously, i am interested in all this jarble but have sometimes have a hard time wrapping my head around it.  Mostly because i took a hypertext short term class with <a href="http://www.bates.edu/~dkolb">David Kolb</a>, where he would lecture us on rhizomal structure, non-linearity vs. multi-linearity, the effects of authorial control, etc&#8230;and then every once in a while throw in something about truisms, virtual/reality, and spaces vs. places.  I got caught up on one of the major considerations (i think anyway) of when is a reading finished in a reader/writer/reader interactive affair and never (or haven&#8217;t yet&#8230;) finished my project.  Ultimately the reader make the final decision of when to stop but when they do, will they have a sense of completeness&#8230;which leaves the author to decide how much control (via link:node mass ratio) do they want to implement.</p>

<p>Anyway, this whole thing was to provide the link to Jeff Noon&#8217;s work <a href="http://www.cobralingus.com"> &#8220;Cobralingus&#8221;</a> as well as a dialogue betweek Mark Amerika and Jeff Noon on what they somtimes call <a href="http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?2426">Dub Fiction.  Inspired by dub reggae, well&#8230;i think it speaks better for itself.  </p>

<p><blockquote>Cobralingus is a literary revolution. It explores new ways of creating stories, using only imaginary technologies and the strangely twisted pathways inside Jeff Noon&#8217;s head. </p>

<p>Jeff Noon transforms techniques from dance music into a whole new approach to the production of words. He begins with his own fiction, or pieces &#8216;sampled&#8217; from Shakespeare, Thomas De Quincy or Zane Grey. These are playfully &#8216;remixed&#8217; by the Cobralingus Engine, producing fiction, poems, songs and visually stunning text. </blockquote></p>