From: Ariosto Raggo <df803-AT-freenet.carleton.ca>
Subject: Re: rhizomes
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 1999 01:25:20 -0500 (EST)


> 
> 
> 
>  
> 
> 
> This will go very slowly.  You have read so much more than me with so much
> more patience.  A professor of mine told me once that I have an "uncanny"
> ability to intuitively feel my way into the deeper structures of a text
> without actually following it *logically*.  In this way, I can often claim 
> that I have not *read* anything at all. (Hence my desire
> to read theory about reading so that I can become a more self-aware
> logical reader.)  Is the attempt at the building of a metalanguage the
> gift you (the sound of A) are offering me?  
> 
 I am at a standstill, that is how slow I am starting to go. This is what
i enjoy. That which I want to do is tell as best as I can, unfinished,
interminable X's (not sure of the word. I have no name to give this
genre.) that give an 'account' of the operation of the imagination when
it finds itself without models, in virgin territory. A "virgin
territory" can be a protean fabric on which to write non-allegorical
pictures which would make them unreadable, non-interpretable. I am
making all this up in order for you, stacey, to quiet down and come over to
the spacing place that I live in. This is my invitation to you and it
seems that I have to appeal to your ability to read warm signs or cold
signs. Lately I feel like I am pushing you away. I have my obligation
already to write more about all this. Give it most of my energy is what I
am doing and what I am saying is that if you are really interested,
let's think in a more protracted way about this relation
through something that is not yours or is not mine. I want you to be
my companion if it seems to you like your desire is the same as mine. A
desire that is withdrawing its investenment of interest in things and
conserving itself, waiting.

> I keep coming back to these lines...I have attempted to read
> > Spinoza's ethics a couple of times but I find him so difficult. Sounds
> > important if something as you write here is where your ambition and
> > lust is. 
> 
> I just think that Spinoza is where I would begin/began my initial
> re-thinking/re-doing of my body.
> 
  Go then, I will be there reading Spinoza when I am fifty, if I live
that long.

> What you called a "binary movement" when read as text I would
> > describe as coincidence of opposites and the writer would be a crossing
> > of male/female. 
> What do you mean by coincidence? (arbitrary?)  Does this make the writer
> androgynous, hermaphroditic, asexual?
> 
  Maybe arbitrary, maybe another word describes better. Yes,
bisexual(polysexual would be a limit-possibility and so you get
impossible examples or simulacra) writers but why would you say asexual? 

> I know this makes me and my expression a narcissistic
> > simulacra. Another name for simulacra is anamorfosis or trompe l'oeil.
> > The appeal through the laterality of the turning phrases is to the
> > observing reader who is included if not incoorporated in the imposture.
> 
> Yes, my complicity - and self-awareness of my complicity with a text often
> leads to more pain.  My interpretive desire is used against me.
> 
  So your experience then is that of disintegration and is this pain a
sad joy? It's my favorite mood.

> > This is the figure and position(a protean one, constantly changing
> > depending on circumstances, situations, occasions, the moment) of the
> > sophist. 
> 
> You are talking about entrapment theory right? And I think you are write,
> this isnt me at all.  Not clever enough.
> 
  come on, we are talking the seduction of interpretive desire and
surely you smile when you say you are not tricky enough, a player
write? There were these girls over earlier on and one, young, she
tells she broke up with her boyfriend because he was a "player." I
don't know why some people don't like games and somehow someone lacking
that gives true love? 

> For me it leads clearly to metafiction. I am not sure if this is
> > you, I mean stacey. You say you read me, and repeat that you do. Do you
> > read this? 
> 
> I feel that I do.
> 
  I am clear.

> I think this is my sense of direction through language that i
> > am begining to express, or rather paint as mask and image, as ornament
> > and display.
> 
> Will you tell me what it sensorily seems like?
>  
  Good question. When it's good I know it is because I myself get
excited and try to control that to be able to continue to write. I stop
and enjoy also. Sometimes I jump out of my chair, sometimes it's
calming. I am going to keep this question in mind. There is a flow, a
feeling of confidence that tells you that you are on, in the spacing zone.

> > question: this is way of making something (but also a manner existence
> > and being?) that elicits the readers response, his capture. I had this
> > inhibition when to saying "her" rather "his." I am not sure that in the
> > shape up I am in right now there could be women readers, only writers
> > it seems.
> So you are saying that only I could entrap you...that you could not entrap
> me? (you are so wrong and amazing at the same time)  Or are you using
> "woman" as a kind of rhetoric? (ie. I am not a woman figuratively
> speaking)
> 
> *essentially*
> stacey
> 
  *laughter* 
  we will have to get back to this,
  ariosto

>  Break time.
> > 
> > Ariosto
> > 
> > 
> > >(that isnt it...he says
> > > it better...i am so close to just going home and looking it up...but i
> > > have more to say...)  ambition and lust reside here for me...but they are
> > > messy house guests and (and never seem to actually want to be my
> > > roomates) sometimes i have asked them to leave...*Perhaps* this is why i
> > > do not enjoy it when other people watch me engaged with the
> > > world/myself...they are not really engaged with any kind of
> > > complexity...(fuck is that bordering on vertical movement? i am trying
> > > to avoid it) dont be an ant or a word... seriously have you read
> > > Derrida's book on the postcard? i send postcards to my friends all
> > > the time...and sometimes it isnt about what i say... but the expression 
> > > of longing inscribed in POSTING at all
> > > (doing)...transgressing...impossible...you continue
> > > to surprise me...now i think i am comfortable...
> > > 
> > > a postcard
> > > 
> > > i dream of a dress made from a bivouac...a shift dress of living
> > > ants...organic tapestry...seething chocolate brown speckled with
> > > white...the heads of major worker ants...clustering responses and tarsal 
> > > claws keening to clad me...my knees and elbows join me as surfacing
> > > possibilities...i dance in a dress that moves and breathes with the
> > > surface of me...opening the errogenous...erroneous from monolitihic teleos
> > > to rain and wool on skin and liminality shuddering the folds of increasing
> > > starriness...the pearls of gifts given with expectation reshaping into
> > > animals and cannibals...there is no need for sharpness....scissors.
> > > shears. swords or lasering beams....zones literally and laterally expanding
> > > across the limits of the shift into senses...the eye/i's that do not
> > > speculate but participate...
> > > 
> > > stacey
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > i just had to clear one other little (mis)interpretation up...pinking
> > > shears does not refer to the colour pink...(not a big fan of pink...forced
> > > to wear it way too often)  they are scissors which have a kind of serrated
> > > edge which prevents fraying...sorry this sounds a little
> > > patronising in my head...did you already know this?
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > -- 
> >                                
> >         
> > 
> 
> 
> 
> 



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