The Theory of (some) Things (to do with space and technology and other things)

My throat went tight like someone wrapped a cord around it when I realised that never seeing you again is the equivalent of you being dead. Or never seeing you again is you dead. Once you are out of my perception you no longer exist. Existence is an evidence based phenomenon. I can see you breathing, therefore you are alive. Does that mean that people die and are resurrected at multiple points in time when they cease to be within one’s horizon and then re-enter at will?

If this is the case then ‘true’ death could merely indicate that the person has exited your perception. Or perhaps everything, everything exists simultaneously; time, history, purpose. And if this is the case everything is existing all the time and perception is the ultimate mass murderer/terrorist.

The only problem with this theory is that I cannot perceive anything into being. Things exist and then don’t exist, perhaps entirely alien to (and mocking of) the limited ability of a human to perceive anything. But then: What do I perceive? In general I see existence and non-existence; my environment/atmosphere is determined by what is existing within it and, more importantly what is not existing (ie. the elephant in the room). Perception is like a glass of liquid then.

Take for example the Ipod phenomenon. Take for example the fact that houses are being built on increasingly smaller blocks of land. Take for example that you could probably hear your neighbours’ conversation if you listened. Seats are smaller. People are addicted to games. The internet galaxy. People need to seek out different worlds to insulate their increasing lack of insulation between themselves and the next concrete wall that belongs to somebody else. There is a need to create windows to perceive through that generate the illusion that one is contained in their own space, alone. The creation of the world through the necessity to determine your own space may mean that you are crafting your own perception glass, therefore perpetuating the grief of the penetration of this space by a withdrawal or unwanted inclusion. Hence the crux of this generation’s mourning is the necessary realisation that one cannot determine one’s own space/reality/perception. Ye ole self-determination debacle.

Isn’t this the same for every generation, technological or agricultural? I’m not sure. Perhaps not.

Perhaps the necessity to create space is so much more desperate in these times that the realisation that there is no space and that even if there was space, one cannot determine it fully, and the grief is greater. The grief is for a lost phenomenon of space; Innate, primal space. We are trying to recreate a womb in an Ipod and have to mourn its inevitable demolition.

I include myself in the inquiry into post-modern perception at this point. Perception of this form, in this generation, is a cycle. That is, I am within the created space and then I am ejected from the space when something else encroaches on or subtracts something from the space; denial being the key back into the created space. The only way to maintain my created space is to assume that those who exit my horizon have died. So the current generation engages in continuous mourning which their created world requires for survival. Perhaps this idea goes some way towards an explanation of the rise of depression in post-modernist times.

Point number 2 for the evening: the post-modern need for technological determination of the self. Within the created space we house the same needs that we would pursue within ‘true’ space. Most prominently, the need for recognition: to be recognised, to recognise.

Checking email or personal pages for messages, looking up your own name in Google is an assurance that one technologically exists and is recognised as a technological citizen. Posting blogs, sending emails, text messages (text messaging as opposed to calling ensures the created space), investigating other personal profiles is the need to be a recogniser within the technological community.

Interestingly, I check my email too many (obsessively) throughout the day. The frequency of checking is dependent on my intellectual engagement in the task at hand. That is: if I’m at work, guiding paper around the table, it is checked too often as opposed to say, listening to music and not considering email. I don’t think I am alone in these habits.

This admission brings me to my 3rd point: Corporation Ant Syndrome (CAS). CAS is the idea that we are forcefully encouraged to enter miniature hierarchical societies within our society ie. corporations. These mini-societies are made up of people who are encouraged into robotising their actions in an attempt to achieve greater workload per time allocation. The work that they are assigned is entirely figurative, however, that is, it is to do with seemingly inconsequential activities (as opposed to planting a number of trees in a garden and being able to enjoy that garden. Paper and documents are meaningless to the person seeking out space). Plebeians aim to fulfil unreasonable obligations in order to gain access to an office that has a view to the world outside the corporation. The corporation manipulates the worker into false economies of value in the corporate hierarchical machine. Meanwhile, the corporate ant is granted a small space behind a dividing partition. They seek the space within their computer screens to escape the lack of space (emotional and physical) within the corporate landscape.

CAS is another motivator of the creation of space in modern technology. The need for self determination of the self as separate from the corporate collective is indicated by the personalised pages and sites that litter the internet. The aggressive consumption of created space is fuelled by an obsession about space creation in order to receive recognition of the self as an entity/citizen in a seemingly meaningless corporate hierarchy built on paper.

[this contemporary spatial manifesto is unfinished due to the inattention and unreliability of its author.]

Whirlpool

Long Grass tickles at my ankles
In fields of long forgotten glances
And riches of claytons princes

You cooked up illusion and I've asked for seconds
To every new temptation becons
Sleep
Full bodied and unadulterated
And you're so tired but you have to stay awake

Be Awake

to look under the stones of yourself
and ask why for the children of your emotions;
did you lead us into empty crusades?
The weapons were drawn and hot.
And we're taken back, like a lapping wave
sucking existance back into the sea
and crashing everytime a little less
a little less
and lesser still


And back again.
I am becoming weaker
Pillars crumbing off my hands
like ancient civilisations in ruin
are paraded for the tourists
to snap and clinch a piece of
what they make of history.

Imaginings of what used to be there
Are so much grander than what ever was.

And so we return to illusion
And the cycle to which i stand within
and feel its tenticles wrap my wrists up behind my back
and lead me in circles

until i am a whirlpool
placed in inconvenient spots
to draw us in.

Vials and Jars

Everything I’ve done

since feeling your voice

wash over me

Like a catholic holy water tide

Behind every idea

is a spec of dust

from the bottom of your shoe

Lifted off by a brush of your hand

surrendering a little piece of yourself

To the thin air

Well all of that

I stole.

The strands of hair that you left at the café

I picked them up

I have vials and jars.

When you canvassed my hearts

I kept the leaflets

Door to door I sold your favourite words

To everyone

if lovers everywhere got a shot o’ this

they’d never let their eyes get lazy or old.

Sound effects ride from ear to ear

And I’ll be on the outer

cos I chose to come inside with you

Come in from the elements

let time pass you

like the streaks riding the skirt of a carousel

And sometimes I’d count myself

as a fortunate soldier

Dead mid-battle

is better than the welcome home parade

When time passes you by

like the streaking little faces of children

who would rather death in the throw

of it all

Than be watched by themselves

On a parade float of

every face

Means Something.

I think about thinking about someone else

In the place where you might place me

In the scheme and tender of your

furrowed brow masquerading

When all you needed was a pair of glasses.

Which day will I lie down around your shoes and weep?

Its gotta be the end then.

Canon

Last night, a choir of 100 nuns sang these words in a canon:
"OPEN UP YOUR HEART TO ME"

Rainbows curled across the page. Hearts came out of the mouths of the singing nuns.

Martin wanted to kill them all.

But their singing overpowered him:
"OPEN UP YOUR HEART TO ME", they sang.

Leaning off the earth; head somewhere between the exosphere and the moon.

Sun is shooting through the trees like a machine gun popping off those ridiculous dreams you've been toying with for over and hour now. Flashes of light beat the day into night minds. Real Life pummels at the side of your eyes to make them small black beads. And that darned blue sky is jeering its subjects into realness - "you are not the measure that you are; real is the pollution you must drink. oh, and its nice to see you again, subject".

This is not a new idea.

You wanted time to stop, you pretended you'd leased the space between a second to another second. And now with the artillery of a putrid baby sky, you are birthed into a new economy where the stroke of a minute slaps your face.

Welcome to real life, subject.

2004

The flourish of conversation entered Adah in waves of music: her breathing, the beat; the rise of laughter, a crescendo; the fall of an impending change of topic, a hush between movements. The symphony of weather, sport, politics and gossip flowed in and out of Adah like a numbing cathartic tide, wearing away her anxiety to make way for comfort and a steady tidal breath. As Adah watched him, Lee was at the helm of the conversation, the catalyst for arias of laughter that gurgled down the veranda, intruding on the fresh silence of the night as it rolled its librarian eyes toward the moon.

The sense of unreality that Adah felt this night was partly due to this ache that she felt, now and then, as she studied Lee. His intense gaze kept cutting through her own numbness, forcing her to close her eyes and find control in her own darkness. She wondered whether these looks could transmit her thoughts of his body against hers from her mind to his. Suddenly scared of this prospect, she rose from the table with an unrequited look to Lee, and walked inside.

The most beautiful experiences that Adah would ever sense were foundered in her imagination. When she received even a vague replica in life, she would savour it and write it down to keep the memory. Adah sat on her bed and tried to distract her thoughts with a book, but Lee’s form dominated every imaginative thought. Lust filled her up and she wondered whoever voted love above lust was obviously unfeeling. Clearly nothing was more powerful than this all controlling physical need.

Adah started as she heard the door of her room shut, followed by a pair of warm, soft arms folding around her waist as Lee whispered in her ear: ‘lets get out of here’.

II

When she finally wakes up, she will feel as if she was lucky enough to have utilised the time sleeping to live. She will wonder whether dreams are just a compensation for the sad circumstance that you must stop (everything still happens) and endure ‘8-hour death’ every night to sleep. its really very unfortunate and dreams aren’t exactly ample compensation given that life is a given and dreams are sometimes remembered. So to the sleeper, there is no evidence, on some nights that they have actually received their fair compensatory sleep-life. The institution of dreams merely assures the sleep-liver that they have dreamed but as a malfunction of their memory, they just can’t remember it. If she ever gets the opportunity to work in the movie business, she will suggest this as a new way of selling movie tickets. User buys, and is then assured that they have actually seen the movie, however, due to their disabled memory functions, wont remember it. I’m sure that almost every time the patron will tell their friends; ‘you should go and see [insert movie here], what great fun we had.’

This is all said notwithstanding the fact that she did enjoy the honey-moon-death that sleep brought. She looked forward to it.

But this night in particular, she received sufficient compensation in the form of a dream about her lover. He was staying in an old house. the wooden kind, infused into a tea cup of wistfulness and warmth. She hadn’t seen him in a while and the nostalgia of an old relationship was building a blanket factory inside her skull.

Unusually, her clothes were bland. Upon meeting her lover at other times in her life, it would be the best shoe/dress/self forward, it was sheer trickery; she seduced him with lights and colours. it was fun. This time, in this dream, she was bland, just her suburban self forward.

They pulled up together at the old house. She followed him into a small room. The room had a single bed, shelves on the wall. the bed and shelves were overflowing with old things. Op shop selections were in piles around the room. Old suitcases, shirts with flowers, preloved items of the old world. history. the longing of old things to tell you how they have lived. the longing of the bearer to know secret stories.

They were gifts for her. he had picked them all out, scowered the city to find old things she could love and harbour in a fortress behind her eyes where he often stood. she was his Chariot.

When she woke up, she was lying next to her new partner, worrying she had given some secrets away while sleep-talking. everything seemed 0.K. (0 Kills). he got out of the new bed, into his new work shirt. he put on some faded old workpants and expressed his hope that someone would see his old pants and replace them with shiny new ones. As per company policy, he had a right to new things.

I

A young girl dreams. She is saving cash, working, trying to avoid unworthy purchases, skipping lunch, sometimes dinner. She has moved back in with her mother to avoid rent. She has tried to put her hand up for as many shifts as they will give her. She has set up rituals so that money will be saved every pay day. She hasn’t brought things; she is surrounded by people acquiring things. She needs to save $5000 to get her somewhere so that she can play her guitar, inherited from her father, jigsaw her poems into melodies and begin her campaign to be the feminine answer to the pied piper. Months, years pass. She craftily avoids perfunctory moods and sequential people so she can harbour her creativity. She practices scales. She tries to finger her heart into a sponge. She jumps in and out of obsessions in order to stuff the chicken of inspiration she is cooking. And it is almost cooked.

She wanders through her city; it is the night for night shopping. She is soaking up in the urban spill. Shops pass and suddenly she is transcending the scene, high above the mall she takes a large breath in; metal bars and cocktail bars are sucked into her mouth, the night sky wavers as though it too will follow, and she vacuums up the city. The inspiration is a succulent meat. She can taste the pavement.

But stop. One shop remains.

Her large eye focuses in on a sparkly thing. She is a bower bird and swoops from high above the city to the glass cabinet keeping the necklace. Everything is throbbing. She is a puppy to its sparkles. She exchanges it for her $5000.

And now, the chicken cooked, she is wearing a sparkling necklace round her neck.