Tentatively, Convenience's Reviews > Multiversal

“An amorphous & not necessarily anthropomorphic or in any way detectable 'being' that's large enuf to touch more than one solar system at the same time, more than one galaxy - &, yet, also capable of being so small that it moves freely amongst the as-yet-undiscovered parts of infinitesimal to the power of "e".

It strays in the Enclosure of Beams, of Cores, of Depths, of Fields, of Notes, of Shores, of Spans, of Sparks, of Spheres, of Sums, of Waves. Feelers/Appendages?”

Yes! LIKE offworld video-game characters who are always on your side....

“If nothing else, poets move words around the page like pieces on a 3-tiered chess board, pieces not originally intended for the game.”

Lovely. Is 3-tiered like 3-D?

“‘We should take a panoramic view,
for flowers have never appeared,
never arisen,
never vanished,
flowers have never been flowers,
space has never been space,
and space flowers
give forth space fruit and drop space seeds,
and since what we perceive
are the five petals
opening the flowers of space, we should see
the flower form of all things,
since anything
that can be imagined is a flower and fruit
of space.
If there is a single cloud in the eye,
flowers in the sky
will tumble in all directions.’”

This is from “Flowers of Space,” a found poem I wrote several years ago after typing the words “flowers” and “space” into a search engine. (My first flarf.) The search results included a text about the language-nature of reality, “Kuge: Flowers of Space,” by Dōgen, who I later learned is considered to be a sort of Buddhist Ludwig Wittgenstein.

“&, besides, any bk that mentions "Neoism" (p17) & "Captain Cook" (p11) can't be ALL BAD, can it?”

Obviously I always hoped a Neoist would read this book. So, thank you, tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE! It’s no accident that my Neoist city appears in the “The Barbelith Poems.” While the 2012 ending is now passé, when I wrote it—several years ago—2012 was still a bit indie-fashionable….

“If I take some phrases that I particularly like & arrange them at my 'whim', what's their relation to Amy's psyche, where & how is she located?”

with and, of, 54; turn to page 36: age is the smallest non-noun…

Bird of Joy, 12; turn to page 23: base plus two equals wing, the spiral number…

the bystander, 8; turn to page 12: binaryby10stander10…

caryatid of the universe, 5; turn to page 18: all 23 of her eyes radiating colors from the background nebula…

a devourer, 44; turn to page 15: desire self-replicates wanting to triangulate…

playing cards, 19; turn to page 36: “chance is dead!” (“maybe”)…

by the wood, 56; turn to page 36: hi by the way just writing to say package on its way I guess if I am going to conduct field tests I have to prepare for everything going wrong oops borealis time signatures the pdf you just sent field test # only god knows and i’m an atheist speed ok ahh &yes freedom freedom pt 2 coincidental spam french kiss fried freedom pt billion de rigueur correct spelling big surprise a message from yr phone service

our marionettes, 51; turn to page 36: which came first, the wire or the puppet? “the chicken of course!” (Gibby Haynes)

the color of capsules, 30; turn to page 36: a möbius strip….

International Flag Code, 2; turn to page 36: “Although you may never see them displayed except at fleet parades, around naval installations, and areas with heavy international shipping traffic, International code flags are used to signal between two ships or between ship and shore. Also called signaling flags, they are a set of flags of different colors, shapes and markings that used singly or in combination have different meanings. The flags include 26 square flags, which depict the letters of the alphabet, ten numeral pendants, one answering pendant, and three substituters or repeaters. Only a few colors can be readily distinguished at sea. These are: red, blue, yellow, black, and white, and these cannot be mixed indiscriminately. You will notice, for clarity, the flags shown are either red and white, yellow and blue, blue and white, or black and white, besides plain red, white, and blue. One-flag signals are urgent or very common signals. Two-flag signals are mostly distress and maneuvering signals. Three-flag signals are for points of the compass, relative bearings, standard times, verbs, punctuation, also general code and decode signals. Four-flags are used for geographical signals, names of ships, bearings, etc. Five-flag signals are those relating to time and position. Six-flag signals are used when necessary to indicate north or south or east or west in latitude and longitude signals. Seven-flags are for longitude signals containing more than one hundred degrees. Don’t fly a foreign courtesy ensign after you have returned to U.S. waters. It may show that you have "been there," but it is not proper flag etiquette. Customs regulations and clearance procedures and costs may differ from one foreign country to another. Be sure and check your cruising guide for the proper procedures or try inquiring locally by radio prior to entering a foreign port. Although I have found that most custom officials speak some English or have access to someone who does, don’t forget that you are in their country and you should be prepared to communicate with them in their language. So, now that you know all about signaling flags, get them out and wave them high.”

Only at sea! Otherwise I suggest not participating in the purpose of a flag. Unless it’s that five-flag signal relating to time and position. Or a flag that is mysteriously flagging. Or 2000 pins with lettered-flags projecting a geographical, magnetic mediumistic text about the radiation of lines of force. Or thousands and thousands of red flags making a heart. Those are all okay.

coiled around, 6; turn to page 36: lullabies…

like fossil bones, 9; turn to page 36: from the future…

If an event is something that happens at a particular point in space and at a particular time, turn to page 36: where spacetime doesn’t era…

singularities

A blaze within a tighter blaze, engulfed.
Scarlet poppies bloom, or blue nights--
and people, too, just beyond their
peripheries. peribloomingly…

If one can describe a position in space by three numbers, turn to any page. Wavering in me is the science I made for you—It began as a temporary opening—If stars appear to shine with intermittent gleams: The Breath

If I were to pick ONE love letter to love above ALL OTHER LOVE LETTERS it wd include thousands of red flags making a heart.

"Yes! LIKE offworld video-game characters who are always on your side...."

There's a video & pinball etc games place here in Pittsburgh called Games n'At & I went there for the 1st time in the last yr or 2 for a friend's birthday? party. I'd never played video games before & have/had close to no interest in them.

I was playing a video game where people fight each other, as usual, & a gamer that I didn't know asked me if I'd like to play w/ him. I sd sure - but explained that I don't play video games & didn't really care whether I won or not. I picked a small female human avatar & he picked a larger male. We 'fought'. I just basically flailed around & he won.

Afterward, as I was thinking about the different abilities of the different avatars, it occurred to me that it might be possible to just gently touch the other player instead of karate-chopping them or whatever. Since then, I've had the fantasy of going back there & playing such a game trying to make love instead of fighting.

Maybe you could create a new video-game genre based on making love not war. Since I play video games, I’ll help with R&D:

RESIDENT LOVE: First-person lover. Instead of killing zombies and solving puzzles players make love with other characters while finding new & exciting non-weapons under beds and in showers such as super-charged lingerie and glowing aphrodisiac potions. Players save their game old-school style by threading ribbons through typewriters.
RATED D for DOMESTIC

FINAL FANTASY: RPG. We’ll plagiarize the title and role-playing aspects but tweak the endless dialogue between characters so that all communication is in porn.
RATED X for ECSTACY

MORTAL KINDNESS: As a one-on-one love-game MORTAL KINDNESS would be most appropriate for players interested in monogamy. Complicated controller moves such as XOXOXR1L1SQUARE would correspond to various sexual positions.
RATED E for EVERYONE

TOY STORY 3: speaks for itself

Seems like X-BOX and PlayStation would be appropriate platforms, especially with the multiplayer broadband that allows players to play with each other all over the world....

This might not mean anything to you since you don’t play video games, but I couldn’t resist.

HHmm.. Thanks for jumping into the spirit of the thing! HOWEVER, I have a counter-proposal: have a game where the player can pick a broad variety of avatars (including, possibly, non-human ones - both of creatures 'known' to exist &, possibly, imaginary/speculative ones).

Then have what can happen in the game be non-specified - don't even have the name of the game reveal much. Perhaps the game cd be called "Multiversal poems" Then have it so that the game begins in a fairly banal way - SAY, I pick a 56 yr old male as my avatar. In the game, "I" awaken in a nondescript rm, roll out of bed & begin my day.

Perhaps I walk to the library. It's somewhat unpredictable what'll happen - maybe some idiots will call me "fag" from a passing car, maybe an interesting looking person will compliment me. I go to the library & there are intelligent seekers everywhere.

Maybe I have psychic powers, maybe I have a mean streak, maybe something strangely wonderful will happen. Not knowing the capabilities of my avatar maybe I try out a few little things - trying to levitate, eg. I meander to the poetry section. Let's say there's someone there that looks special. Here's where the game's ambiguity creates challenges for the player. Is the avatar shy or can he try talking to the fellow browser?

The point is that RATHER than create something that's full-blown porn, it might be more stimulating to bring in the general possibilities of life. IMO, there're too many people trapped in the introverted alienation of porn & too shy to engage in the real thing. As such, I wdn't want to make a sex game. The thing that interested me about turning the fighting game on its head was to see if it cd be done! To see if a punch cd be turned into a caress at slow speed.

Looking forward to continuing this exchange more!

"Lovely. Is 3-tiered like 3-D?"

For me, that's just a more accurate way of referring to what's usually called 3-D chess - since chess is already AT LEAST "3-D".

"It’s no accident that my Neoist city appears in the “The Barbelith Poems.”"

How so?!

"While the 2012 ending is now passé, when I wrote it—several years ago—2012 was still a bit indie-fashionable…."

What?! Maybe to retro-futurists anything after 2010 is passé.

"with and, of, 54; turn to page 36: age is the smallest non-noun…"

HHmm.. yr age is 36 but that's not mentioned on p 36, 'nor is "age the smallest non-noun" given that "a", eg, the indefinite article is a "non-noun" & is only one letter. There's more here than meets the "I". In fact it's a regular page-turner.

Regarding your game, “Multiversal poems”: reality is privileged over the virtual the way life is privileged over the page: yet the body keeps wanting to accept the caress like velvet. The thing about page-turners is the end can arrive quickly....

I didn’t follow the Choose Your Own Adventure portion of your response and instead remixed my adventure with my index to create a statement that would, as you already know, communicate. In “age is the smallest non-noun,” I was referring to my “with and, of” in a Steinian sense: what happens when the article, conjunction or preposition is as privileged or more privileged than the noun—the people, places or things that populate consensus reality? In my index can the non-noun be privileged at the end of the book? More obviously, how does grammar organize reality or consciousness? I omit the comma between “with” and “and” in order to show that such words could be slightly joined in the hypothetical index, which exists within the hypothetical book, the one being continually written between poems. I’m also referencing George Oppen’s small nouns, which are ruined for me since they cry faith (see his "Psalm"). I chose age as the noun since 36 is my age, 54 will be my age someday and is close to your age now, and age has been one of our nouns printed at the end of our book.

Are you saying that 2012 is not passé or is passé? Or that it was passé when I thought it wasn’t passé? “Confused? Good!”

“The Barbelith Poems” has to be the poem that contains my neoist city, because, well, in order to explain this I’d have to get all William Blake on you, so I will just reiterate: read The Invisibles by Grant Morrison and call me in the morning!

ANYWAY: I have a counter proposal to your counter proposal that I’ll call a proposal: Since one must think many steps ahead in chess in order to beat one’s opponent, is chess a game that requires visualization within the fourth dimension (time), the fifth dimension (spacetime), the sixth dimension (which I suspect relates to the six human senses), and so on? Similarly, if “poets move words around the page like pieces on a 3-tiered chess board, pieces not originally intended for the game,” are the words being moved by the poet visualizations of the multiverse? Of course, the goal of the poet, unlike the goal of the chess player, isn’t to beat an opponent: they might move the words to see what happens when they are reshaped outside their intended contexts. Or perhaps it’s not like a chess board and more like a Ouija board, and the W-O-R-D-S are moving the P-O-E-T.

"what happens when the article, conjunction or preposition is as privileged or more privileged than the noun—the people, places or things that populate consensus reality?"

The connective tissue becomes more lively. Maybe it's a step in the direction of Animism.

"read The Invisibles by Grant Morrison"

Lo & BEHOLD! I just checked my local library's catalog & they have it.

"Or perhaps it’s not like a chess board and more like a Ouija board, and the W-O-R-D-S are moving the P-O-E-T."

OOooOOoOoHHHH! I like it! A 3(or more)-tiered Ouija Board for opening intuition paths for generating field writing!

"what happens when the article, conjunction or preposition is as privileged or more privileged than the noun—the people, places or things that populate consensus reality?"

“The connective tissue becomes more lively. Maybe it's a step in the direction of Animism.”

Ha! Yes, all the slight a's and with’s and the’s having some sort of sentience. I wonder what your idea would look like in a subatomic system. Quarks (the small nouns) are connected to a proton (the poem) by electromagnetism and gravitation (conduits). If language is animistic and exists in or interacts with physical systems at subatomic scales, its electricity and gravity might not only be lively but alive. In which case, of course, privileging the connection as much as that which is being connected serves as a reminder that the perspective of which is which is a choice rather than a fact. The difference between a noun and a preposition, a quark and a graviton, might be that while the noun-quark operates visibly in consensus reality (like the full moon in one of our recent e-mails) the graviton-preposition requires imaginative or mechanical technologies to perceive the invisible (the new moon). Hence, I’m really glad you’ll be reading The Invisibles. Make sure you start with the first installment: “Say You Want a Revolution.”

"Or perhaps it’s not like a chess board and more like a Ouija board, and the W-O-R-D-S are moving the P-O-E-T."

“OOooOOoOoHHHH! I like it! A 3(or more)-tiered Ouija Board for opening intuition paths for generating field writing!”

Yes! The questions might start with: Are you moving it? I’m not moving it! Are you moving it? I swear I’m not moving it! You’re moving it, right? I promise I am not moving it. You have to be moving it! I’m not moving it! I think you’re moving it!

Then: How is it moving?

Then, the special question: What should we ask next?

According to Wikipedia, the movable indicator—the small heart-shaped piece of wood that spells out the messages—is called a planchette, meaning “little plank.” LIKE a subatomic plank that the poem is willingly suspended on before stepping off & free falling. If clinamen was at play, the w-o-r-d-s would swerve as they fell, and, in the strictest Lucretian-Epicuren sense, create bodies.

If all of these linking words start going off on their own the nouns might disintegrate. Think of it as a revolution: the workers quit their jobs & the empire of the nouns falls apart.

linking words start going off nouns might disintegrate. Think revolution: workers quit their jobs empire nouns falls apart.

If all of these on their own the of it as a the & the of the.

lkg wds start gog f nos might distegre. Thk revoluti: wkers qu tir jobs empire nos falls apart.

in in or in of un in at in on or it he un.

UN for all & all for UN!

didn't put in into because not just an or a hypothetical of for accept also understand that realistically for probably won't lead to a sustainable with however sometimes ARE unrealistic especially and so have to acknowledge the of the probably have been crashing the last and right hurts may be used to and am that are used to but am not used to remember what was like maybe ago but none of those were sure have fallen in with some amazing but are/were any as amazing as not like have fallen in with just sometimes the ends with a sometimes ends with "happily ever" in why decide the while still writing the why decide the for that matter? Maybe shouldn't write called should be more like & use no controlling & let the & the unfolding. Maybe this is why didn't have well probably because was in with but anyway am SO THANKFUL didn't want with maybe knew that weren't going to and that's why didn't want only happily ever after should be otherwise might have a whole of that ended on which could be fine for a first or second but at some one might want a that multiplies while closing. Which means doesn't close at all. A that is always. Even if it doesn't result in will try to write a that stays open.

Emily didn't put a bun in her oven b/c she was into her sister-in-law's use of "because" not just as an understatement or as a hypothetical "of" - for to accept this, one must also understand that realistically Emily was for "UN" & this probably won't lead to a sustainable Conceptual Poetics even in THIS day & (r)age. With this in mind, however, sometimes even the encodings of sex magicians & alchemists ARE unrealistic - especially - and so have to acknowledge the poem "of the probably" as having been crashing the last 6 yr old computer and that righteously hurts, gosh darnnit! May we be used to end and slam those that are used to keep it going ad nauseum. BUT I am not used to remember nor am I used to forget what was it like maybe yrs ago when Emily lived - but none of those were sure who have fallen in with some amazing crowd but are/were any of that crowd as amazing as Emily? It's not like I have fallen in with just any old "sometimes" - after all, the ends don't really justify the means - they're just used that way - with a sometimes 'ends with "happily ever"' in wishful thinking - but why decide the whatever while still writing the "why-wherefore"? Why decide the "for" for that matter? Maybe Emily shouldn't write, maybe Ford called it "sh(v)uld" but really meant "not should"? You can be more in the AAAAAAaaaAAa-me. I dislike & use no controlling & letter opener "the" & "the unfolding". Maybe this is why Emily didn't have a well - or did she? It's probably because she was in with that exciting crowd - but anyway I am SO THANKFUL that she didn't want confusion mixed with maybe - I think she knew that they weren't going to produce a "happy ever after" and that's why she didn't want only "happily ever after" as if it were a matter of "ifs, ands & buts". If it should be otherwise, we might have a whole passel of that creamy stuff up-ended on some mysterious depiction - which could be fine for a first or second hr but at some tick of the clock one might want a bacteria that multiplies while cleaning. Which means that it doesn't clean at all. A cleaning that is always permanent, fixed dead in its tracks. Even if it doesn't result in next-to-dogliness, Emily's inheritance will try to write a word or 2 that stays open.

As a 6 yr old sex computer and conceptual alchemist, Emily keeps opening her hypothetical oven to check the poetry bun, which she realistically accepts; sometimes her sister-in-law, gosh darnnit!, crashes the dinner party and steals the probabilities. This hurts Emily because buns at the UN are so unsustainable this day & ®age of magicians ad nauseum, which I blame on Ford and his encoding crowd who righteously control the THANKFUL ifs, ands & buts by offering them “happy ever after” even when it won’t lead to an amazing understatement that one can remember and then really forget. Considering how Emily’s “sh(v)uld and not-should” wishes are like a whole passel of letter openers made from the creamy multiplies of bacteria, the clock happily cleans its unfolding insides by permanently or probably writing in AAAAAAaaaAAa-me, falling this way and that in the mysterious well of dogliness, as if it were only a matter of wherefore hrs and NOT the fixed tick of the inherited clock.