and a note, mostly on pronouns
this is a continuation, footnote, correction, or apology for my last entry. or something. it won't make sense unless you read that, and even then
...the above-mentioned "I" is (obviously, considering what what just been written--fictitiously just been, as at the time of the composition of the text that I am now transcribing from manuscript, it had been 11 hours since the writing of the previous text) a fiction, as is the implicit "you," the reader. In fact, every word on this page (now a screen, or hard drive somewhere, perhaps) is a fiction, in that they are all agreed-to-be-agreed-upon, crudely consistent symbolic encapsulations of the sighs, grunts, clicks, coughs and hoots that we are treaty bound to recognize as language. And in this fiction woven from fictions that I have given you, both "you" and "I" are characters--but look at that: "I" have given "you." Have I given you anything? The manuscript may be burned, may be landfill, maybe end up fragmentarily scrawled in perfect Palmer-method script on the pillars of an overpass in Dallas, Texas (the English call them flyovers, I think; overpasses, not pillars, but the flyover is a nice metaphor for the relationship between reader and text--but I'll write about that later, maybe) but do you see what I'm saying? Nothing is being said. We can perhaps imagine, perhaps tentatively agree, that someone somewhere may be writing something, but it is not I (or me, but more about me later). The "I" of the text is merely a pronoun in a string of clauses, perhaps a similar "I" from clause to clause, more likely not. Whatever the case, you are certainly not reading this, because you are generally and instance of second-person narration, or an object of the mysterious and possible dangerous "I" subject of the fiction.*
Perhaps you and I are in love. I really like fictions that contain a love story. If we refer to the brief consideration of love above (well, in this case, in my previous livejournal entry, and in manuscript a few pages back, both settings in which this narrative is taking place), by the conventions laid out there, our romance may very well be underway. "You" and "I" are characters that are making certain concessions concerning language and shared metaphor (of which, of course language is a great example); "we" agree, in the end (or maybe now), upon a sort of fiction of a shared fiction.
That is cumbersome (and how!), but I think that if you (or the character "you" you're reading about) break it down, oh best-beloved, oh rock-a-my-soul, that somewhere, somewhen, that there is a reader, and somewhere, somewhen, there may to be a writer, and in between these characters there is a text, which we will imagine is this text. They have very different readings of it, these poorly developed characters. Perhaps the first time the writer wrote it (fiction; he's not done! (fiction; you're reading it after the fact!)), he felt a kinda-sorta mathematical identity property, an a=a relationship with the pronoun "I," and imagined that a few of his trusted friends and the livejournal curious might be the "you," someone who would read it and maybe say kind things about it. He knows he's creating a fiction (and believe you me, he's been thinking a lot about verb tense as fiction too). In this fiction there may be a reader, perhaps one of our perhaps somewhere existing writer's friends, that will read this text, our Elsinore, our Topeka, Kansas, this imaginary place where this story is happening, and s/he/it may construct a fiction from it. Indeed, the writer himself finds that he is becoming a reader and halfway identifying with this "you" guy, and is slightly disturbed by the Onanistic implications of the fact. There may be possible readers so foolish (probably including the writer) as to identify more with the "I" than with the "you" (Try it; I've been successful the entire way through).
Anyway, the point is that we (in a sense--ha!) are totally in love. You and I are BFF, kay-eye-ess-ess-eye-en-jee, let's pump out kids in a shack on the Bayou Tortue. Not just the you and I of the text, the "yous" and "Is" of the asides, but maybe all possible maybe-writer-somewhere-Is and possible-readers-somewhere all of us, agreeing to spin infinite fictitious readings from what what we are pleased with (or hopefully at least okay about) calling this text, we are sharing a fiction about sharing a fiction, perhaps at even more infinitely removed orders of sharing, but ten-thousand-billion kisses, lover. I'll call you tonight.
Mais I don't know, me.
Me is a character that I don't recall seeing much of thus far in this story. S/he/it seems to be more shadowy, and somehow weaker than I, and somehow more inclined to being made into an object than I like, or at least than I like to admit.
But more about me later.
*If anyone is counting how many times and in what ways I am using quotation marks to deliniate narrative removes (or something) in the instances of pronouns here, well, good luck to you and tell me what they mean. I'm pretty sure that there is only the most tentative gesture towards consistancy.
...the above-mentioned "I" is (obviously, considering what what just been written--fictitiously just been, as at the time of the composition of the text that I am now transcribing from manuscript, it had been 11 hours since the writing of the previous text) a fiction, as is the implicit "you," the reader. In fact, every word on this page (now a screen, or hard drive somewhere, perhaps) is a fiction, in that they are all agreed-to-be-agreed-upon, crudely consistent symbolic encapsulations of the sighs, grunts, clicks, coughs and hoots that we are treaty bound to recognize as language. And in this fiction woven from fictions that I have given you, both "you" and "I" are characters--but look at that: "I" have given "you." Have I given you anything? The manuscript may be burned, may be landfill, maybe end up fragmentarily scrawled in perfect Palmer-method script on the pillars of an overpass in Dallas, Texas (the English call them flyovers, I think; overpasses, not pillars, but the flyover is a nice metaphor for the relationship between reader and text--but I'll write about that later, maybe) but do you see what I'm saying? Nothing is being said. We can perhaps imagine, perhaps tentatively agree, that someone somewhere may be writing something, but it is not I (or me, but more about me later). The "I" of the text is merely a pronoun in a string of clauses, perhaps a similar "I" from clause to clause, more likely not. Whatever the case, you are certainly not reading this, because you are generally and instance of second-person narration, or an object of the mysterious and possible dangerous "I" subject of the fiction.*
Perhaps you and I are in love. I really like fictions that contain a love story. If we refer to the brief consideration of love above (well, in this case, in my previous livejournal entry, and in manuscript a few pages back, both settings in which this narrative is taking place), by the conventions laid out there, our romance may very well be underway. "You" and "I" are characters that are making certain concessions concerning language and shared metaphor (of which, of course language is a great example); "we" agree, in the end (or maybe now), upon a sort of fiction of a shared fiction.
That is cumbersome (and how!), but I think that if you (or the character "you" you're reading about) break it down, oh best-beloved, oh rock-a-my-soul, that somewhere, somewhen, that there is a reader, and somewhere, somewhen, there may to be a writer, and in between these characters there is a text, which we will imagine is this text. They have very different readings of it, these poorly developed characters. Perhaps the first time the writer wrote it (fiction; he's not done! (fiction; you're reading it after the fact!)), he felt a kinda-sorta mathematical identity property, an a=a relationship with the pronoun "I," and imagined that a few of his trusted friends and the livejournal curious might be the "you," someone who would read it and maybe say kind things about it. He knows he's creating a fiction (and believe you me, he's been thinking a lot about verb tense as fiction too). In this fiction there may be a reader, perhaps one of our perhaps somewhere existing writer's friends, that will read this text, our Elsinore, our Topeka, Kansas, this imaginary place where this story is happening, and s/he/it may construct a fiction from it. Indeed, the writer himself finds that he is becoming a reader and halfway identifying with this "you" guy, and is slightly disturbed by the Onanistic implications of the fact. There may be possible readers so foolish (probably including the writer) as to identify more with the "I" than with the "you" (Try it; I've been successful the entire way through).
Anyway, the point is that we (in a sense--ha!) are totally in love. You and I are BFF, kay-eye-ess-ess-eye-en-jee, let's pump out kids in a shack on the Bayou Tortue. Not just the you and I of the text, the "yous" and "Is" of the asides, but maybe all possible maybe-writer-somewhere-Is and possible-readers-somewhere all of us, agreeing to spin infinite fictitious readings from what what we are pleased with (or hopefully at least okay about) calling this text, we are sharing a fiction about sharing a fiction, perhaps at even more infinitely removed orders of sharing, but ten-thousand-billion kisses, lover. I'll call you tonight.
Mais I don't know, me.
Me is a character that I don't recall seeing much of thus far in this story. S/he/it seems to be more shadowy, and somehow weaker than I, and somehow more inclined to being made into an object than I like, or at least than I like to admit.
But more about me later.
*If anyone is counting how many times and in what ways I am using quotation marks to deliniate narrative removes (or something) in the instances of pronouns here, well, good luck to you and tell me what they mean. I'm pretty sure that there is only the most tentative gesture towards consistancy.