Closure

Miles

Schizophrenia may be a necessary consequence of Awareness

‘The division of faculties which results from the technological dilation or externalization of one or another sense…’

Now bidirectionally visual and audible.  Even tactile.  Personally mobile and ubiquitous. Multidimensional, immersive, and nearing a fully-connected social environment–orders of magnitude beyond cold television and hot text.  All senses engaged and remixed.  Versioned and archived.  Your dilation recorded live for all to see.

‘is so pervasive a feature of the past century that today we have become conscious, for the first time in history, of how these mutations of culture are initiated.’

Is it possible the gap between those who are conscious and those who are unaware is growing?  There’s more than one gap, and each one is a perspective–some potentially dangerous.  What are the consequences?  The past century is the past five years now.

‘Those who experience the first onset of a new technology, whether it be alphabet or radio, respond most emphatically because the new sense ratios set up at once by the technological dilation of eye or ear, present men with a surprising new world, which evokes a vigorous new “closure,” or novel pattern of interplay, among all of the senses together.’

With what we are now building we should expect a radical new setup of sense ratios with a potential onset more rapid than we could ever think.  The ‘closure’ may be transformational and violent beyond our wildest dreams.  What happens when you add two-billion people to the mix almost overnight when compared to historical or geological-scale change rates?  The time between system shocks is decreasing.  Multiple shocks seem to be arriving during the lifetime of a single human.

‘But the initial shock gradually dissipates as the entire community absorbs the new habit of perception into all of its areas of work and association.’

And we’re just at the beginning of the biggest shock ever with the potential for the next one to be something that we can’t even recognize.  If we weren’t conscious of how these mutations were initiated before, it seems to follow that we won’t be able to recognize our next initiation.

‘But the real revolution is in this later and prolonged phase of “adjustment” of all personal and social life to the new model of perception set up by the new technology.’

McLuhan, M.  THE GUTENBERG GALAXY.  1966.  p. 23.

This is what worries me.

No Fatherhood Without Childhood

Sometimes I cannot use specific words. I can’t stand to read them. I do not want them to exist.

Children, he said. Without children I would not be the Father. No Fatherhood without childhood. I never wanted it, it was thrust upon me. Tribute of a sort but I could have done without, fathering then raising each one of the thousands and thousands and tens of thousands, the inflation of the little bundle to big bundle, period of years, and then making sure the big bundles if male wore their cap-and-bells, and if not observed the principle of jus primae noctis, the embarrassment of sending away those I didn’t want, the pain of sending away those I did want, out into the lifestream of the city, nevermore to warm my cold couch, and the management of the ___, maintenance of public order, keeping the zip codes straight, keeping the fug out of the gutters, would have preferred remaining in my study comparing editions of Klinger, the first state, the second state, the third state, and so on, was there parting along the fold? and so on, water stain and so on, but this was not possible, all went forth and multiplied, and multiplied, and multiplied, and I had to Father, it was the natural order, thousands, tens of thousands, but I wanted to wonder if if if I put a wood pulp mat next to a 100 percent rag print would there be foxing and whether the rumblings of the underground would shake the chalk dust from my pastels or not. I never wanted it, it was thrust upon me. I wanted to worry about the action of the sun fading what I valued most, strong browns turning to pale browns if not vacant yellows, how to protect against, that sort of thing, but no, I had to devour them, hundreds, thousands, ____, sometimes their shoes too, get a good mouthful of childleg and you find, between your teeth, the poisoned sneaker. Hair as well, millions of pounds of hair scarifying the gut over the years, why couldn’t they have just been thrown down wells, exposed on hillsides, accidentally electrocuted by model railroads? And the worst was their blue jeans, my meals course after course of improperly laundered blue jeans, T-shirts …

Believe me, the Dead Father said, I never wanted it, I wanted only the comfort of my armchair, the feel of a fine ________ paper, the cool anxiety about whether I had been cogged if if if with a restrike or not, whether some cunning fellow had steelfaced an old copperplate and run off the odd thousand extra impressions, …

if if if if—-

–DB, TDF

You may take my meaning, but for myself I withhold that which defines you. For the fire.

Shell of Yesterday’s Man

My heavy-starch husk
Holds me up
As I drop into my chair.

Humans in caves
Of fake
Machines
Career the Valley outside my window.

She’s so far away now
I can’t see
Her eyes huge
When she last brushed by.

And now the jerks are expected
And terrible
There’s nothing to do but
Cruise.

I hope to someday
Find something to say
Beyond
I see you.

Because I’m no longer
Sure
I do.

Kristening

Kristening

The alley pours into the dry room
Providing hairless light
Not knowing true nature
Yet understanding.

Absent fathers and
Untaught.

Disappearing
She will not be found
Contradicting all we’ve worked for.

Now wife and future mother
Holds vast
Tearing time and moment.

Demands full attention.