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Author: as Facilitator Chorus: Minstrels of Tidings Pandora: She of the Treasure Questress: Seeker of the Perceptive Modes of Epistemology Master Clan-Is-Raw-Herd: Intrepid Recorder of Empirical Knowledge Master Blemye: Man with his Eyes in His Chest Master Cynocephali: Man with the Head of a Dog Master Sciapod: Man With Torso Culminating in One Limb and Foot Kiru: The Wizard, An Old Soul and The Librarian of Juxtapositions Leonardo da Vinci: More Than a Cameo Appearance |
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If the space of all the world is a stage, then cyberspace may be the ultimate amphitheater; an asymmetrical world of worlds for the simultaneous depiction and enactment of drama; limited only by resources of bandwidth and ingenuity. The acting-out of events in cyberspace resembles the borderless combinatory phenomena of religious practice, entertainment, game play, sport and trade that constituted six centuries of medieval theater; a living theater simultaneously depicting, enacting and being, with the proscenium playing the tickler in and out of thin air. |
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The earth, impaled on its axis,
spins like a wounded organism
raging against the forces
that hold it in check
...and we, in our frail biological houses, strive to see the true primary colors of the spectrum, invisible to the stone age workings of our eyes. You know how it is, an education in the true nature of gravity: .......force without mercy. |
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Once or twice upon a time in medieval literature, epiphanies were rendered allegorically as fictive encounters with stylized personages. This convention appears in the works of Christine de Pizan1, who wrote first-person verse and prose documenting fictive visitations from the likes of Dame Reason, Dame Fortune and Dame Rectitude, 2 all of whom had the good sense to appear in or around Christine's domicile, sparing that author, unlike ours, from the trouble of rushing about in an awkward and arbitrary epistemological search.
Also cached in the treasuries of literary convention of the time was the free and easy appropriation of conventions of other authors past and present. Appropriation was a natural thing, you built wherever you found pre-existing foundations. Our Questress here makes fine use of it because a true story like hers is the most difficult to launch credibly. Its liabilities include the ho-hum predictability of coincidence, the theatrical resonance of its life-is-stranger-than-fiction aspect and the challenge of running to goal without being tackled by cliche. What follows here is one author's theatrical way, occurring in the midst of a thick and rich medieval would... Begin here: |
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In my middle years, when the tide of my physical powers had reached its zenith and they were struggling against its inevitable recession, my mental powers remained robust and I found myself on a steady path with those faculties in good use. Although my meandering path was hospitable in that its margins were filled with bowers of sweet-scented roses, it was also inhospitable in that the blossoms were adorned with prickly thorns inflicting injury and pain along the way.
At times I became unsure as to whether I had not passed this way before. Was the territory indeed familiar, or merely resonant from my dreams or another's oral, visual or written account or a fictive or theatrical facsimile? Had Nostalgia laid its hollow maks upon my eyes? Or was I now actually "there"? Had I been before? Was "here" a way back "there"? Was it any way at all? It became clear, though hard to bear, that I was at a loss as to my placement in relationship to "here", "there" and, as I was to discover, "other." I felt in dire need of help from my own reinterpretation of available signs, or from the informative creatures I might encounter along the way, in order to rediscover my bearings. Nor was I lost, for I lived at a time when the location of every entity on earth was transparent via the glowing gismos keeping company with the moon and stars. But although I had empirical knowledge of my bearings, it seems I had lost my own relationship to them and the ability to discern the worth or lack of it in being in one place rather than another. This filled me with tremendous anxiousness, and I became determined to find once again the center of things and shake off the feeling that I was doomed to inhabit forever the purgatory of the edge. In the course of time there was a broadening of the path into a clearing where I came upon four beings. The first, a bearded old man, strangely dressed but of similar bearing to myself, was seated upon a boulder with writing instruments and paper, recording all he could see and hear around him. He was speaking very softly to three other creatures of astounding structure; they were the living expression of the literary conventions of Solinus, the 6th century cartographer who identified the characteristics of creatures of unknown worlds: the gargoyles, demons, monsters, sinners, unformed and deformed inhabitants of the edge of the flat disc that was the world whom he conjured up and marginalized for they were as yet unseen. |
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These particular creatures Solinus sourced in Africa and the area along the Nile. Until this moment, I had understood them only as mythical, paradigms of strangeness for what we could not actually see or understand. But here they were, these upright creatures, one with the body of a man but the head of a dog, one with no head at all but with his eyes, mouth and nose centered in his chest, and one whose lower body ended in one limb rather than two, so that he hopped about on one extraordinarily large five-toed foot. While seated, he could conveniently swing this foot over his head so it served as protection from inclement weather.
Having seen depictions of these creatures in many a mappa mundi, I suddenly wondered if I were but dreaming and not really in a conscious state. The dog-headed man and the eyes-in-the-chest man were pacing up and down in a frenzy, while the one-footed creature hopped about to keep up with them. All three had their upper limbs, or arms, |
| clasped behind their backs. So absorbed and agitated were they in the subject at hand that in their pacing they would often collide, knocking themselves and each other to the ground--each of them bewildered but holding the others blameless for injury--rising up, dusting themselves off and starting their speeches again as if they were pleading for their very lives in a court of law.
The bearded man spoke as he sketched and noted everything he was seeing... |
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Perhaps human eyes will someday be fit to move far enough away from the earth in order to turn and see it in its entirety, examining it then from a loftier point of view, from higher even than the birds. But for now we are bound to its territorial surface, be it land or water, and must take incremental earthbound steps to empirically record in a meticulous fashion whatever it is we pass in or through or inside.
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For myself all I ever wanted was that perfectly pitched telescopic perch from which to view the earth; a gradual approach to a position near its face where I could just begin to hear the low hubbub--the sum of all creatures' voices. I sought to treasure that moment before we are too close and begin to distinguish locales and dialects, for we cannot see or hear the whole earth properly unless we are at a respectable distance. The whole Earth is my treasure; my beautiful package.
Alas, now I am too close to hear anything but the voices of individuals acting out their theatrical events. Some of the earth's voices are with us now, let us continue to hear what they have to say... |
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You three sons of Solinus should not take offense at the peripheral territory you are delegated!
Those who make maps must divide the world into empirical geographical zones in order to cope with their position in it. What is unknown must be identified at least as idiosyncratic or the sense of sameness or of not-knowing would drive them mad. That is why then, in maps, it is permissible for the southern hemisphere to be depicted at the top, Jerusalem at the center, and for every bit of territory, known and unknown, to be described through its theological, political or economic ideology. |
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How kind of them to condescend to portray the world in nice stories of its origin so that it can be comprehended even by us.
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Those who trade seek to make pictures of fixed routes and ports of call for the sake of their fortunes.
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Tis completely foolish, for if there are more men like our perpetual recorder here, whose eyes are not central in their chests close to their hearts as God intended, then why not designate THEM as mythological and monstrous and put THEM at the edge. For to me (he leers at Master Clan-Is-Raw-Herd) they are strange beyond endurance.
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But whoa, Master Blemye, then I must be the missing link indeed between you and this venerable gentlemen who sits all day patiently recording what he sees and adding his thoughts on it in indecipherable scribbles. Certainly, I should be at the center where Jerusalem is now for I am the link between those who have heads and those who do not. The fact that my head is described by them to be like a dog's shows only their ignorance of the subject of form and function in art and beauty.
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All I know is that I am the only one of you who is rendered safe and dry in rain and snow by my own physiology. If evolution is indeed everything our bearded friend here says it is then certainly my ancestors--who have engineered the most ingenious and useful adaptation of allÑwho deserve placement as the centerpiece of the world. If inside the edge and outside the edge do not mean completely different things hierarchically, then why not give the inside up to the ones you have designated outsiders. |
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Who, in their right mind, would give up the inside position, even for the sake of epistemology?
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It doesn't rain or snow everywhere on earth, Master Sciapod--there are parts of the world that do not know precipitation or strong currents of air or water in any form whatsoever, like those that have such heavy canopies of vegetation they need no other protection from the bounties of the sky.
(At this point they all look up and see the Questress. The three odd creatures howl and screech with fright, while the bearded man beams and rises to welcome her.)
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Welcome to our little discourse on the nature of judicious perception of the world. Please feel free to partake in the debate or to simply lurk and listen.
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Greetings to you all, and thank you for the welcome. For I take these howls and screeches as a form of welcome. I hope my own calm state can quiet these creatures and rest their minds.
I have come here out of arbitrary meandering in search of the perfect pun in all languages, and I am glad of company at last. I have not been deprived entirely of generic curiousity and I find your discourse of great interest.
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Generic curiousity? This creature is compartmentalizing curiousity? Chasing subtext with a honed and sharpened flint on a stick?
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Usually, all who are genuinely curious finally surrender to a fiction of ideology, mostly to save face and find closure. My society for instance encourages us to lose our minds to a fixed idea, whatever it is.
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I was born to remedy that very source of irritation. I arrived with locked stock and barrel. Few understand whether it is blessing or transgression on the part of humans to release my treasures. Do not fault me for the false paradigms they project on my wares that blind our ability to see, but fault the perpetrators who violate the lock and then assign hierarchical values to the contents.
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If I am not mistaken, I hear the raw din of the blue shrillcatoo's cry, signifying more company.
Kiru and Leonardo enter; engrossed in their conversation.
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Perhaps it was the natural state of night and day, cold and hot, which led to all interpretations of what the world reflects. For where the link is, the intersection, the difference, the bipolar abyss between night and day, the center and the edge, the edge and thereafter, the earth and water, is where all the danger and excitement and all possibilities lie.
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He does not waste much time with amenities... must come from that which they call the New World.
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Indeed, bi-polarity tells the story of imagination for centuries; for how could we know our bearings unless we considered them in relationship to something else... We juxtapose, therefore we are!
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...another off-the-rack paradigm for our epistemological stew...
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| In my work as the Librarian of Juxtapositions In All Their Degrees I alone am responsible for archiving the etymology of extremes. I was not born to it; but became the obvious choice because of my ability to withstand the stresses of contradiction. |
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Albeit that it does not occur to him that speech as he knows it is not necessarily the true indicator of cognitive powers. He seems unaware of history, the long story of visual grammar, word pictures, mnemonic tiers, rhizomatic leaps and trope scopes.
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But what else is there other than right/wrong, black/white, heaven/hell, water/fire, air/earth, up/down, hot/cold, good/bad, green/red, mono/poly, disc/sphere, vegetable/mineral, build/annihilate, birth/death, human/inhuman, empty/full, fast/slow, front/back, perpendicular/parallel, relative/absolute, mandate/option, sloppy/meticulous?
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Centuries, like equators and borders, do not really exist; but are of use to our minds as markers. I invented the space of cyber so it would yet encourage us to surrender bi-polar prejudices in favor of enjoyment of the true pluralistic nature of things.
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Thanks to you, humans can now bear a glimpse of God's face in the abyss of links.
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But irony still reigns! As the virtual territories of cyberspace provide areas for tangible, pragmatic things like collaborative research, the practice of art, information transfer, communication, commerce, and pedagogy, they escalate for some the desire for territorial jurisdictions.
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The Pandora's Box is open, and all the world is staking claim.
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Just as I predicted, here emerge virtual trade routes, political factions, religious and spiritual forums, town criers disseminating information. It is intolerable to our species, particularly our so called "humanists," to leave any resource as it is and could remain: particularly this anarchical and chameleon-like resource, more fitting for process than product. We will surely hone its density down to the smallest common denominator of example so it becomes digestible and subject to simplistic understanding and control. And we will do this in every way we can.
That grieves me, my friends, that my discovery may have been somehow faultily constructed at its base. I may have not accounted for its degradation in the course of time.
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Well, at least you are consistent with your lack of concern for the material elements of things.
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But it WAS I who first said that words and images will one day be broken down into their smallest common denominators and sent in a stream over long distances from city to city, from realm to realm.
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Everyone who occupies a new land strives to develop a mental map of it. If what you say is true, that the linear paradigm of bipolar bearings is over, the quest for locking in a pre-existing credo and dispensing with the key remains very much alive.
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Questress, you speak my mind! How do you do that?
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Questress: In any system, including the solar system, an inside and an outside to the system is assumed, akin to a beginning and an end in a linear system. The focus on nodes and synapses still clouds the issue of borders and territories; where something ends and where it should begin; the substance of the center and the edge. Surely, everything can happen simultaneously, and synaesthesia can reign. |
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Synaesthesia! ...too rich for my blood!
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There remains a tendency for all systems to have relationships of weight and scale and color, for the link lengths to be measurable so they may be perceived as objects. The desire to perceive everything as object, vessel, system, is one to which we remain thoroughly addicted.
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Human nature being what it is, I'm sure everyone just wants fast and abundant phantasmagorical news.
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What's the difference if the world is a sphere or an ever-changing disc to our eyes. Hasn't anyone considered that its visual appearance could very well be treated as a simulationÑa cinematic texture map moving across a convex disc?
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It must be then, that we should surrender the notions of beginning and end, center and edge, left and right, right and wrong, and live inside the links. Could we resist treating the links like borders, markers and separators, as signifiers, and allow them to remain the lively synapses, the festering cocoons, they are? Would we allow ourselves to be visible in that condition?
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Yes, and our maps should be the ever-evolving natural trails of process, discovery and rediscovery, experimentation and drive seen from the eyes of journey makers, with records created from the inside out. Only then will our knowledge include the stored knowledge of all of the memories of the future.
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Knowledge devoid of juxtaposition and morality?
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Master Blemye:
All porpoise and no purpose?
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Yes! The earth, untethered from its axis, would spin in fired orchestration applauding the forces that free it to play. And we, in our frail biological houses, would see the true primary colors of the spectrum. Now visible to our glossy recalcitrant buddhas. We would know how it is, melding seeing and unbelieving. An education in the true nature of levity: .......mirth without mercy. |
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And so I think you are saying, and wisely so, that we should not lose our mind's heart to a fixed idea or deny any longer that solutions are none of our business.
Rather, we should move like porpoises through the nooks and crannies, the elements and substance of known and unknown worlds for the purpose of keeping them enduring, thriving with imagination, adventure, and prosperity.
This then must be our true business, and none other.
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Photo Credits figure 2 Santarem #3, item 6: Mappemonde du XIVe siecle ...dans la Bib. Nat #6808 figure 3 Hereford Mappa Mundi, ca. 1289 [detail]. The Dean and Chapter of Hereford and the Hereford Mappa Mundi Trust figure 4 courtesy of NASA figure 5 Minstrels at Shakespeare's Globe Theater. Video still; Adrianne Wortzel figure 6 Shakespeare's Globe Theater. Video still; Adrianne Wortzel figure 7 Santarem #31, item 6: Carta Catalan mss. de 1375 Na. Bibliotheque R. de Paris [detail] figure 8 Hereford Mappa Mundi, ca. 1289 [detail]. The Dean and Chapter of Hereford and the Hereford Mappa Mundi Trust |
Notes 1 Christina de Pizan, born Venice. ca. 1364, died Paris, ca 1430 2 de Pizan Christina, The Book of the City of Ladies, Translated by Earl Jeffrey Richards, Persea Books Inc., Brattleboro, Vermont, 1982 |