HHH       HHH
  H       H
  H       H
  H       H
  H       H
  HHHHHHHHH        igh    AA
  HH     HH              AAAA
  H       H             AA  AA
  H       H            AA    AA       scii
  H       H            A      A    
  H       H           AA      AA   
  H       H           AAAAAAAAAA   
                      A        A  
                      A        A
                      A        A
                      AA       AA  
                                                           
 
by Frank Stevenson

STEV0301 and RIFT03.01 are copyright (c) 1994. See below for full notice. Click here for EPC HOTLIST

<FRANK STEVENSON>

High Ascii


                                             1
                 Interactive/Dithyrambic Pome
                                                1
                                                 as in pommes de terre

    On Wed, 24 Aug 1994........wrote:

        > [[|[T[^h[h[h[TT[^[ HIGH ASCII

         (subtext = "thin red line" ("read line")  twixt
         computer-generated random numbers, hacked into the
         backs of turtle shells for oracle bone divination in
         shang dynasty china, 2nd millenium bc, and the gramma-
         tological creativity of late 20th c ad (@) post-
         strIcturalist writers, ritters (knights) & assorted critters?)

         (in loco parenthesis, opened closures like
          tunafish cans flown thru the wayward night......

         high (on) acid, man!

        > Gottesdammerung:
        ("twilight of gods/gourds" as vs friedrich's gotzen-
         dammerung, "twilight of idols" which he/i shall break into--
         into their hollowness--"with a hammer as with a tuning fork"?)

        ^ Odin joins the Norns......
         ("Norns": Stefan George's "The Word": "Und harrte bis
         die graue norn/Den namen fand in ihrem born--"....
         "And waited till the twilit norn/Had found the name
          within her borne"..../So lernt ich traurig den verzicht:/
          Kein ding sei wo das wort gebricht."...."So I renounced
          and sadly see:/Where word breaks off no thing may be."
          (a pome much discussed by heidegger in unterwegs zur sprache.)

        ^ Nothing is in form......
           (Buddhist "slogan": "form is emptiness, emptiness form")

> Odin: "In Isolation larceny I route the lists one to another, Traffic
> with Thee. I would Tarry 222 Tarry 222 Tarry ^^^^^^ bar of barren soil.
> TIFFANY is the occasional transform of the artificial. TIFFANY motivates
> HIGH ASCII. I move within HIGH ASCII. I ^^^ bar myself naked in HIGH
> ASCII. I return the motivated to the unmotivated in HIGH ASCII.

             Hey man, I hear yuh! High on acid, man!
             "Gone on windowpane" as we said in 1967
             on the Paoli Local out of downtown
             philadelphia

   > HIGH ASCII trickster on the occasion of earth.....

             Loki? Heidegger's 4-fold, Rilke's Duino
             Elegy: "oh earth, to arise invisibly
             within us, is that your secret wish?....
             friedrich's "eternal return," or batman's joker?)

         > SOPRANINO IN HIGH ASCII!
         > LYMPHATIC BASS IN HIGH ASCII!
         (Pound's "Mauberley": "Luini
          in porcelain!/The grand piano/Utters a profane/
          Protest with her clear soprano.")

         > HIGH ASCII JOPLIN, HIGH ASCII BJORK!
         (Saw Janis last night in 1969 on TV at Woodstock
          a reality less virtual perhaps than crystal clear, porcelain)


            >.......hIGH aSCII.  (windowpane)
            (or gosainkunda in 1975, high hindu
            holy lake at 15,000 feet and, incroyable,
            you're in the valley with mts towering all around)

            gelassenheit, flowing hair of wind

           > cLARA hIELO iNTERNET mOTIVATES hIGH aSCII.
           > cLARA hIELO iNTERNET mOTIVATES hIGH (clar, clear
             light/clarabel the clown on howdy doody on
             tv in 1959/pound's Cantos: "Gods float
             in the azure air,/Bright gods and Tuscan..../Light:
             and the first light, before ever dew was fallen...."

             ("Faxing God"...."Possibilities Abound on Internet
                                    in 1994")

             ("Thus the light rains, thus pours, e lo soleills plovil
               The liquid and crushing crystal,.../Light tensile
               immaculata/the sun's cord unspotted")

              ^beyond the ascii is the high ascii,...../
              >.....sewn shut against the light.
                       > ^_^[[ZZ[[__\\ dark monuments
                       > of text forlorn, holes carved
                       >      norns  ^_\[__[[__[\_]
                                 > [[[[[[

                                              Mister Moon/Frank S, Taipei


_____________________________________


Date: Mon, 29 Aug 1994 16:38:28 +0800 (CST)
From: Frank Stevenson 
Subject: margins of virtuality



OK, so, in fact I'm quite serious when I say       Shang Dynasty China, 2nd
I don't understand the new obsession with cyber-   millenium bc: Diviners ask
space, virtual reality etc given that we've long   questions about the future
had telephones & TVs. OK, of course you'll say:    (spoken) which they then
"But cmptr email = much expanded capacity over     WRITE (read "carve")on the
TV's/telephones" etc BUT my pt. is that we're      plastrons (lower or tummy
talking mainly about (1) STORAGE capacity (mem-    shells, cognate of "plas-
ory) and (2) the WRITTEN word (as vs logo-phal-    ter" & "plastic") of tur-
locentric meaning-self-presenced SPEECH & all      tles; they then ask the
that, right?) (on the phone to yr aunt or what-    "spirits" these questions
ever, i mean). (OK, TV is another thing, we've     and burn the shells in
already got a lot of stuff--graphics plus vir-     specific places: they
tually infinite space etc etc, eg TV news live     "read" answers in terms
from Kabul, Afghansitan where, once you're al-     of the (shapes of the)
ready crossing southeast into Pakistan you can     CRACKS that appear. Thus:
buy hash cookies from the f....g border guards!    "writing" was originally
--with TV which people seem to be conveniently     random cracks generated
forgetting in their new love afair with cmptrs,    "naturally" during rites
but anyway, for the sake of argument I'll for-     of augury, since (1) the
get about TVs)....My question: why this new        oldest Chinese characters
obsession with storage, in so-called cyber-        are those found written
space (if this shit truly exists which i truly     in Shang "oracle bones,"
doubt), of the written word? Because people        & (more to the pt.) (2)
LIKE the "feel" of absence, indefinite defer-      the accepted Chinese
ral etc (as vs self-present logo-phallic "face-    "myth" of writing (cf
to-face" of telephone conversations?), is that     Plato's Thoth-myth in the
it? Because we're in the "post-modern age" and     Phaedrus, Derrida's "P's
all that? You can retrieve old phone conver-       Pharmakon" & etc) says
sations as well, for crissake (assuming they've    the original IDEA of "wri-
been recorded by your local police which in my     ting" came from direct ob-
case is a safe assumption)! & even if you cldn't   servation of nature, of
those old SPOKEN conversations are still there,    the RANDOM or ARBITRARY
my friend, their echos hanging like weary bats     (here we think of a gram-
in the corridors of night (you know, night-yrs     matologized Saussure, per-
of time)....upside down maybe, being echos after   haps) "marks," "lines,"
all....waiting for me/you/us to retrace their      wen-"patterns" (where both
tenuous, INVISIBLE but NOT ERASED (inter)connec-   world & human mind are seen
tions and fathomless (inter)stices, their very     as wen-patterned) in nature
inward-WOUND complexities......within the laby-    --in eg tree bark, birds'
rinthine pipes, the wires within earth. "Oh        wings or feet, turtles'
earthly voice!" Oh (logocentric) wired earth!      shells, phone lines....

                    frank stevenson, ntnu ang-wish dept, taipei

 


RIF/T: An Electronic Space for Poetry, Prose, and Poetics
Editors: Kenneth Sherwood and Loss Pequeño Glazier
ISSN#: 1070-0072
Version 3.1 Summer 1994


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