<nettime> Our Quiet Lives...

[Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>]

Our Quiet Lives...


This is the safety zone. Within these borders... Everything else outside -
corruption, decay. This is safe for us. Love at the barricades. What
happens outside the frame. The frame problem - not to adjust the real, but
to keep it out. The problem with everything real.

Go through the works. Begin with the indices, directories. Locate
similarities in format, style, enumeration, content, names and dates. Mark
and re-mark them. Keep them for future reference. By virtue of the sign
the body is not a sign. That is, culturally determined but obdurate
nonetheless. You can see the body. You never see the sign.

Everywhere there are incompleted books for you to finish. My friends
belong nowhere and have no badges. Lack of identity is the beginning of
wisdom. Without signs... You might wander through the wrong door.

What I was going to say slips out, as the tongue moves. That is, it
remains, as in 'remains of the day,' un-spoken. You can only imagine, and
what you imagine is always right, write and written, within the borders.
It's safe within the borders. They're here for the moment.

All these packets are enumerated, addressed, like the directories
themselves. They're ordered so you can read and are comfortable that way.
You can dissemble, forget. The addresses disappear forever. Even to save
the words... within the protocols, the borders. The words are boarders and
grow old. The truth of the pun is the pun of the truth. Truth slips out, a
pun, my word, safe here.

The world is so unsafe, plasma, sun-spotted. We take these few moments and
re-make the frame. My books, my films, the animations of my life, are
within it. Nikuko is here and Jennifer is here, Travis is here and Julu is
here, and Clara Hielo Internet, too. We are comfortable here, these names
our names. We are here for you, part of you. You call us forth with this
reading which is a writing as well. We pour into you.

It's safe and warm here for human life. We are amazed that anyone still
does good, does something unequivocal and calming. We are amazed these
tiny spaces come forth in the midst of armageddon. They come forth and are
quiet, are peaceful. They hold us in their arms, they sing to us softly.
We cry quietly among the lullabies. We are at home, and we are up and down
with the frame.


___

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