Nature Abhors
(Four Favorite) Artists' Books (by Johanna Drucker) Online
An online repository of Digital Objects by Danny Snelson

Quantum (2000)

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UNKNOWN

NOW

the CO) 5imultaneity of time 'plode5

NEXT

RHETORICS

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FLA YED INTENSITY: the time oftelling (a skin peels off), an illusory surface film, coherent for an instant. * F FR( } ,1ches III livingjlcsh

<punctum>

A TIME mAT WAS TOLD.

The granularity of language, porous WIth temporal zones ,md latent spaces, connects each verbal chunk to taproot sources. This

FROZE MOMENTS

BACK uJ

t

It 1

WHEN I SPEED t LIGHT FASTER I NOW

clumsy geometry of meaning relations, an archaic family tree, inbred and outward bound, spreads the seed of well-intentioned syntax over the moist ground of recollected sense. The gelatin of mutable prose flexes its muscular metaphors, migrating meaning through the fabric of letter and line. Awkward calesthenics. Words stink, redolent with associative tendencies and all their

LAST YEAR's CONFIGURATIONS

LOCKED INTO

GENTLY \\ n re

complex social histories packed into little handbags of convenient behavior. Bit-mapped onto the vast prairie spaces, in trails and wild tracings, the morphemic devils unleash their odiferous archives to the eager air. Earthly repositories link to any shining vocal point visible in the surface of this page, its living network throbbing with unspent erotic drive, exciting the blood in its veins. Visit the places where meaning is actually made, inside the corners of our eyes,

p. de th m . In Jr ( I

to capture the magnetic energies like damp files to urge a gentle rearrangment of new prioritie~

I RfI I'r [ m xr D

ANCIENT EXCEP1IONS AMONG

the exile stones o~ ... REASON

r .,....,...

() (t-t n

deviant future d pol t ,ld compromised faith

watching us from within. Inside out, we make the world through the parsing of signs and signals, an inhalation and exhaling of the pulsions driven by appetites that scrape our sentient flesh bare so that it may encounter its own passionate innocence by surprise. Invented daylight, once manufactured, is now out-sourced. Hard rock headlines of

ONCE in FREE FALL

outv.ard towards the <;harp [,lee ( STARS

who will probe the witness engine

when human features configure themselves

lurk in geologic ZONES

BATHED in DEEPLY

PREs! R \ II) ff ARS

inhabited by the quasi-primitive speech, fresh to grammar ~hron I g ·mrl dt

MILLENNIAL DUST

harsh commerce tax the soul, smearing ink on the inquiring mind as it rubs against the glass. Offshore diction, once scorned, now twice wary, drills into material facts. Molecular mothering hangs suspended between original syntax and future semantics. Family history, translated into flesh, cries out in real pain. Before now genetic vocabularies divided into tributaries. The dialect of singular identities frays out in a capillary fan, reaching into northern swamps

pomt<; ot referen( e, onle part of a pocket "Y ~tem turn

YEARS HENCE RECYCLED

waiting for a call back

surreptitiously, until they crack like so many silicon acorns

as deeper STRATA of improbabh. pasts

get truck open along a worri(d "ein ()rigir MOMENTS passeu u u ~1l 11

an e a liar t

EONS of FINE TALCUM

GRAINS

and peasant cultures. Robustness of copy, shot through with its own awarenesses, detects a single rotting thread ready to unravel the tensile grammar. Standing points measure each phrase against another, without judgment, hold ing the dross text and crystal in indifferent turn. Fate is the dimmest of decrees, merely incidental, a naked newborn, mewling in gutteral, utterly unable to fend for itself. We save it, wanting something to rewrite in the name of family

to rec,tlculate our POEMS nil the) ,)treak meles') ir.form,ltion like J. trail SPUME

EVEN SERENI)IPITC)USLY

beneath the imprinting trace

Richer 0 REand outworn tensions rose into burst effluvia

OF OUR LIVES real a~ carbon

POWDERING the FRONT PAGE

but the actions of the planets happen independently, so that cause is the merest freak of reading, a monumental coincidence of sometimes repetitive activity in an arbitrarily framed clause. Illusions of reliable order are products of a too-grammatical ennui. The universe also tires of coping with continual invention. The exceptional solutions get away

Corrupt TEXT files its own claims

through one KAPIl) FIRE generation after another

OUTCOMES remain elul)ive. Even INDf TE RMI ATF . DESTINY predict~ itself, smug as cake, but the influenn.

of shared code-clones will empathetically divine their links

1 RASI I (AN of HIST()RY burst

into so many jism STRE AMS

Speak MEMORY,

'cd e
In tr (; Hnmu .It n
t sil I l t p t o nl'lJ1 l (q J t

KEYBOARDS

TURBULENCE ERUPTED in the SHARDS COMPACTED around an HISTORIC DATE

with glib editorial murder, slipping off on greased lightning as if they could escape notice. Uncodified and ritualistically available, the unsystematic rains drop their random patterns onto the parched surface of the brain, giving rise to a writing so arcane its very alphabet replaces one glyph with another in the act of being born. Not for the sake of novelty, but for the purpose of unlimited recounting. How many sets of books do we have in the current archive?

while fragile sources of desire push us to erotic limits

of shared WIRING too intimate

for LANGUAGE

SEND a POSTCARD towards an unimaginable future

COORDINA TES in !>pite vf it') random a( c .,s attitude bitmapped against the far flung grid

STOLEN MOMENTS

(th.lt cliche) t mp )ra1 tor clo.... ure ()SSIFIEI)

RAC]S and BONES () UTD ATED mortgages anchored

BASTARD TRADES

reluctantly to their calendrical moorings.

11 b ut

n l U (Pflf RISING HEADLINES, I fUll J(fl BEGINNING ENDPOINTS 11 FINITUDES

Infinitely specific, highly particular, the immoderate modes of quantum poetics expose incarnate readings of their ever differentiating selves. Temporal tongues, swift as those mythic messengers, permanent as smoke on the loyal air, leave their written record etched in the space that arcs between the city of knowledge and the pastoral reaches

rubbing up against outrageous fortune the expansive rush

EVENT WINDOWS

'dcn tt'in t h h '11 tt {d rc \\ 'D.lt more n rrot( l b rna, un old bd rt. our t t'

VERITIES

OU"rCOMES

fk{ and hypervemil.lte at celt. rate

l nuse MECHANISMS )ng fall )w too 1.atent lOr rc\ 1\ al C()MPRESSEI) EVII)ENCE

the particles of early explosions

FILTERED through a seepage bed

of ONE III M~!\; TRFT( H of TI\IF

of imaginary culture. A popular artifice, dearest text, takes everything to heart and mind. The writhing inscriptions keep their dogged faith alive in the letters, seeming like fixed fragments, but really soft as cheese on a relative scale. Light inhabits us in its embrace, passing through our mutual paraphrase of matter and matters. Noise is nonsense, a happy patter, physical in the last detail, in the intervals left open by the travelling illumination. A horizon of missed

promise to cure culpability
and dazzle the becoming
OF lp (reaSIng l PROPENSITY PROGRAMSl us APP ATUS
HI P (. (

tov. ards the as" mptot{ of our clumsih em rgent understanding

PROFOUND d th TRIVIAL

" 11 oth r vu -

hap ACCIDENT 1 ,\ \1lT'P ~t l ')\ ) RA( ED tov; ard'i

t

tht ne g,lp

l{ Ihl I IJS.

PETROGLYPHS d nhl( tler 1 S "Itt t<-' FIGURES 'T' r 1;' '1"'( T

publicly broke highly distilled sweat, like bitters, onto their brows and out from the thick furrows, leaving the dry between its well-worn )ARD~

opportunities fractures coherence nicely. The backdrop illusion of here and how, now and wherefore, lifts semantics from the pulsing mutability of complex parallel processes. Passing this face off as real, the multifacted parcel post delivery system of meme packets takes up residence one lexical unit at a time. Impoverished bibliographic procedures,

UTURE

Come this way, you

outstrip the regular sequences into which mere mortals had been mired

'in man, v; in~ed curcuit'i

TAKE FLIGHT

using small hooks of specific information to LAUNCH

smoke trails I)FTA s
precipitates of sense, old droppings, vamshed LIES
11 '[ I U' fF RRAIN
between minerals and life

U[ LEGACY p) J i 1 t LIGill th SEABED ub t'v

far less articulate than the birds whose sonic stabs pierce the fabric of late afternoon, to stake their linguistic claim. Outmoded aesthetic effects sustain only the merest interpretive system, inadequate to the task of telling us how to speak the culture of things across the surface of recursive grammars. Recovering the structural architecture of thought is hardly an archaeologists dream anymore, since all the logicians have been put out to pasture, necks bent in obedience

se" era: du·el tioG!> at on(

OPEN p vf INEVITABILITY

countering the awful Stn!>e

shall we balance imperfectly 0.. the DG of our

OUTLOOK FRAMES

EMOTIONS Nl:nt outh,

~our,
hghth SOILED
m whatever could be captured
r Ie SEEP AGE ) a ru tul 01 l11Ctllf)h 1,le l r )1 s fOR
the sake of posterity

EXPLOITATION, the OVERTURNED FIELD, staked and CLAIMED a RECKLESS ABANDOMENT of nostalgic SEASONAL CYCLES

to their appetites. No story is the same as we remember. Or, to put it another, mild, way, we are ourselves the unreliable suffering witnesses to our own repeated testimony under rapid execution. Fools rush and spell-check replaces the standard formats, cutting across vocabulary lines with adolescent abandon. A copier fast as fumes, races through

speeding up,

a handful of T:LOCrry 0 PTI 0 ... T transect the submissive sky light years tremble, inept at finding their way with the blind

TRAJECTORIES

aVv kwardl} SIMULATED humanity OPPORTl ITY

Non-navigable paths pulse freely, eager to escape their usual definitions fraught with molecular EXPLOSIONS that stretch unmapped toward an outer galaxy with innovative adverbial posture

FEAR TREMBLING
trapped (rubble wIthout a t..1Use) ECHOES
r) l-sh ld l)\ r R
INERT
t I
UNPARDONABLE tl..} lit II MOONS

as in the SWIFT DEATH

ot

an afternoon they found

the files. The disjunct between delivery and destination, a sub-directory re-route, opens a gap in the discourse field big enough to stick a fist in. Such is our condition, destined as we are to editorial revision on all sides. Ephemeral pleasures may mark the rising and falling of our human tides, but the moment of disappearance signals to us through the very same flames that have haunted souls forever, still to no apparent end. Every reference passes through us, for

1 HEAVEN ban.llit\ wm t~is ,mazing HELL

as the INNOCENT account of prosody swells and lurches, eager to re-invent our EXPERIENCE again

glimpses of one soul to another

In

through open A MOMENT of triumphant nano-speak, SWAC:rC-ERL l.J

ORIFICES of COMMUNICATION

ALPHA IllusioIl in .l crack between and the 1< OMEGA

MYSTIC

p<;eudo tribal phonetics recollecting

ATAVISTIC

invention

better, for worse, for antique algebra and final equations. We who are I may punctuate without seeing a thing, or be awake to the minutiae of calibrated history. Encyclopedic movements have no bearing on the wearing of words nor on their ludic games, performing us for their amusement. The intervals we speak into call out to us in turn, answering

PURE DELIGHT

we may replace the whole natural seeming universe

with MEAGRE ALTERNATIVES
used to going under the name programmed to perform in anemic imitation
OF LIFE MESSAGES J to ou er ed lk
FUTURE t f e ~ I REVERB

MY1HIC ORIGINS

THAT WAS YESTERDAY

PARTICLES

tagged presence with marked absence, each an opportunity for invention. Anomalies abound, quick as ants, eager to escape notice. Tightwire lines of inquiry stretch to the communicating horizon, casting a shadow that looks just like meaning onto the ground of the page. Composition trips over its own polygot capability, preserving its heritage within the accelerated pace of a frantic refresh rate. Here (where the universe begins and ends) is where it stops.

h rb er~ 0 a I-ghu rder

WAVES

and of

possible outcomes

<leap>

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