movements of all the interconnected points in the system
Wednesday, August 4th, 2004Notes on TimeAndTheHunter/BloodSea (page 39)
The narrator casts his mind back, far from the car journey he is currently taking part in, to the primordial beginnings of his cellular existence, swimming, or being swum, through the medium that contains all life, whose movements effect the movements of all the interconnected points in the system, only in that movement did Zylphia and I become aware of each other’s presence, even if then we didn’t so much as graze each other, even if I was undulating in this direction and she in that, but the sea had only to quicken its rhythm and I became aware of Zylphia’s presence, demonstrating how the degree of connectedness represents power and fitness for survival, and the extent of surface area presented to the medium directly increases the receptiveness of the cell to the ripples created across the medium by the actions of others, we felt all this through the layers of our former surface dilated to maintain the most extended possible contact with that nourishing sea, because at every up and down of the waves there was stuff that passed from outside of us to our inside, now, when the reversal of that primordial condition means that the liquid network, quote sea unquote, is contained within us, quote blood unquote, the inversion disconnects the consciousness that once made us One, we are left with chasms of nothingness to cross before we can make connections, vacuums that refuse to retain traces of our movements, making the individual moments in the movements worthless, until we fool ourselves that skin on skin represents a link, whereas the maneuver in itself changes nothing at all, the distances between Alfa, curve, Volkswagen can assume different values and relationships but nothing essential happens, and I sit in a coffee shop writing these notes on the back page of the book, cream moustache on my lip, transferred from the grass, to the cow, to the milk, to the tin, to the surface of the hot chocolate, to my mouth, unsure whether any of these relationships actually matter, since there was no feedback included in the system and the cow is oblivious to the result of her efforts and actions, let alone the grass; but I digress, this is a story about loss, loss of a system that ties us all together in a way that made it impossible to perceive a distinction between self and other, since the action at the surface of the self, would result in the deformation of the surface of the other, and the structure of the surface of the story itself becomes indistinguishable from the words it contains, when, breathlessly, you reach the end of the narrative and realise that whole pages have passed without there having been any sign of a single full stop.
- sections in italics are quotes
- for more ideas about interconnected surfaces and deforming topographies, see my previous post on the data wall, and the subsequent revelation about this blog.
- for a contradictory view on whether the space between bodies can still transmit environmental relationships without the aid of blood or sea, see my previous ‘teeth on plastic’ entry
- for other chapters see Peter’s entries here, here, here and here. Also my previous bag blog. More will follow. Eventually.
