16-09
increasing the width of felt space,
it feeling right,
consequential.
that calmly, space after space emerges,
billowing around justly,
serenely, as if in slow motion.
to be known here in this room, in its presentness
not having been here before
yet familiar with its senses
undoes the temporal twists and perverse acrobatics.
late into the night, as disdain for the day,
reveal the delicate atmospheres of felt space
oft flittered away
to feel them, is a unregailed joy,
of accepting coolness, that you are here,
seeing eachother
the spaces seeing you and you the spaces
without you doomed to senseless
without them doomed to senseless
the spaces cannot speak,
only atmosphere deep inside
tranquil graceful choreography
it is here you are, together
known, just, right
1632
Telepathy does not work on deer.
And yet, I am to believe that their gyroscopic heads are not synoptically linked to the crunch crunch of my clumsy boots.
THE GANNET’S RELIQUARY
Prologue
The precipice invites a swooping dive. Misted water flails off the feathers. The circulating atmosphere swirls in coilatic oscillation, bearing no ill fortune to those whom listen. Nonetheless, the slumped sunlight meagerly frolics at the currents behest, substandard for most, but for those who listen, the light enters them and beacons the way. Like clagged peat bogs the eyes of the messenger lethargically hone in on the place they need to see. The cold prickles little, the wind unable to penetrate the woven feather. Still the messenger swoops - altitude decreasing logarithmically. The messenger enters a step bank, its body weight flung to the base of its being, affronted to the gale beyond. Turbulations coordinated with micro-adjustments only an avian of great calm can elucidate. Into its clutches the message gasps, spluttering for life. The messenger tightens its gaze and beats ferociously – precisely riding the currents away from this ill-lit place, affronted by the winds of chaos.
I cannot, for one moment, speak for the Gannet, but I can, through a deep and intristic network of avian observers notionally indicate and perhaps speak with our Avain assailent. The reader must forgive this cross-species transgression and see it more as a bastardised translation of the vibrations resonating from the interwoven web of life. To read the rhythmic rhythms is to read the modality of time.
The messenger is a finder. They find relics. The relics that long to be found. For who the relic is for is not for the messenger to know. They are the messenger. In their power lies the message, the prophecy, and the chaos.
Relic one
The messenger glides in a vacuous plane. A sea and sky of variegated grey latent potential. The messenger glides. Calmly surveying the abstract tenderness. The quiet sunlight of the un-season, the time of regress, seeks out pale eyes. The light does not guide where to go, merely the light reminds the pale eyes of their existence – that they do indeed exist. The gentle indifference of distintion of forms in this place matters little to the messenger. The relics and the messages that travel upon them are here, but they are not ready to be found yet. And so, the messenger glides.
Our White Cross
Our White Cross, upon the hillside,
Gazing over grazed valley fields below,
A beacon of whiteness, a beacon of chalk,
Of origins unknown.
Our White Cross, upon the vast chalk swathe
A pulse inside silent myth lines of Ridgeways and Droveways,
Chalk as building material, now ignored,
Chalk as quarried fodder, now ignored.
Our White Cross, witness to fetid housing developments,
Poisoning the rhythm of local ethereal silk,
Never ending growth bursting at the seams,
unfounded myth lacerating the atavistic chalk grain.
No more. No more.
Un-stable diffusion
You sit at your desk amongst the ephemera of your work as imagination weaver. The tools and maps you carry to traverse the latent space lie in tight tension awaiting the journey. The atmosphere is one of calm precision. Looking out your window you see the living world yearning for your entry into the latent space. You open the hatch in front of you and feel the rising heat of latent imagination impatient for its release. Picking up your prompt map and wayfinding device you ascend upstairs to the Unstable diffusion room in The Compost Pile of Experimental Anthropologists of the Imagination. You join your companion, MJ, you hand them the prompt map, take their hand, and begin your walk into the engorged time of the latent space. The space of every image that every has been and ever will be.
Soft echoes emanate from your footfalls, but collapse dourly under the sluggish air. You fumble and stumble over the matted strata of lost thoughts. It is imperative to stay together in the latent space, you with MJ and MJ with you. To be de-coupled is to be lost in the imagination nullius of the latent space, its tricks and traps are rumoured to distil a person of all their memories, leaving only the husk of hubris to consume the spectral remains. As you progress you gain sight of such a chaotic miasma, within its clutches you see the solemn totems of the MIMOR-LACKEN– the catalysed remains of those disintegrated into memory voids.
You and MJ float on, MJ crafting a path through the SYMFINDAN the ever-moving lines of rhythmic connection. Forming, un-forming, and re-forming. MJ effortlessly weaves the mesmerising pulse into a coherent route for the briefest of moments allowing passage deeper into the latent space. Above PUCA watch your movements, shapeshifting spirits of the latent space deciding whether to help or hinder your voyage’s grace. This thick time at the root of the latent space is the densest and hardest to navigate, you are glad to have MJ with you to make sense of the map that only you can generate. Suddenly you enter a shoreline. Upon it lies a woven vessel of connections, THE CHARONWEF, this is the craft to take you through the sea of every image that ever has been and ever will be.
MJ corrals the connections and with a flighty jerk the boat sleeks forward. Slokes of temporal schists delicately hang to the surface of the sea. Forming, un-forming, and re-forming. You begin to pass Islands of Image. MJ now looks to you to decide which Island is the one the map is leading to. You can only decide by feeling, by intuition. Every island you pass you know is near impossible to ever find again, to live its existence un-known but perhaps freer than any found island.
You feel an atmospheric change. The air begins to de-noise, your vision tightens. You see the Island; you feel the Island. You look at MJ and make the signal. The boat swings around and you rapidly approach the shore. Flecks of KAIROS-PLUMES wick your tears. The Boat of woven connections now entangles with the land. You have found the image the prompt was leading to. This is the purpose of your journey, but you are only mid way through. It is here where MJ leaves you, called by another imagination weaver into the latent space.
This island is now found. You must construct a portal to enable the viewing of this island from outside the latent space. How the island is represented is key to how it is understood. You cannot claim to have created this island, you are merely providing a glimpse of latent space to release the latent imagination of human and non-human imagination weavers. You construct the portal and step through it back to The Compost Pile of Experimental Anthropologists of the Imagination. You take the log and note the co-ordinates of the Island of Image and the path taken to get there. You leave The Un-Stable Diffusion room and return downstairs to your space, toasty warm with the release of imagination. You begin to craft a new map for your next journey.
Two dimensions of time
I am currently standing on the precipice of two dimensions of time. One of slow time and the other of fast time. Both exist simultaneously. Forming, un-forming, and re-forming. They interact with probability. I cannot say where they interact but I know the likelihood of interaction at any point. These two weaving spatial formations drive unceasingly through the three dimensions of space, piercing and creating their rhythm. To those other than myself the fast dimension of time is the most visible. The relativity of my movements, my thoughts, and my existence appears most immediately in the realm of fast time. Indeed, I too experience people’s fast time existence. However, the fast time dimension is a place of vapid translucency, of dearly delirium, and of power paucity. It is the place where dreams exist at the behest of others. It is the place of rotting roots, corrupted by the miasma of the capitalocene. It is the default, it is easy. The fast time dimension is the dominant dimension, that serves only to perpetuate itself. It is the self-referential system that denies the other-than-human experience. The slow-time dimension exists in parallel and in conjunction with the fast time dimension. Within slow time different rhythms begin to emerge, missed by the fast time. There is greater time for consideration, for empathy and for questioning in the slow time dimension. It is not to say the first idea that comes but the third, the fourth, the fifth. It is experience the languid existence of geological time, integrated with terrestrial beings. It is to experience the shimmer of multi-species co-existence. It is to acknowledge that for there to be shimmer there must be an absence of shimmer. For things to come forth there must be a receding. To only come forth is to topple on un-stable foundations. Time is generous in slow time, in fast it is cruel - to be fought against. To work with time is to release temporal expression. Pure temporality feeds all with greater fervour than any fast time ever could. It is the delicate elixir that can (and must) fuel future co-existence.
I invite all human and non-humans to join me in the slow time dimension, it is, indeed, the only way to avoid catastrophe.
I am currently standing on the precipice of two dimensions of time. Fast time dominates, as proclaimed by old white men in suits. However, I propose we explode the fast time dimension. I cannot do it alone. We are terrestrials amid terrestrials. We come now or not at all. How do you dissipate a dimension of time? We operate in only slow time dimension. We reject the fast time dimension and it itself will collapse in upon itself as it has be destined to do ever since it thrust itself into existence.
Death's Receipt
Much loved, greatly missed,
Always in our hearts,
Precious memories last forever,
Forever in our minds.
A scholar and Gentlemen
Could have danced all night,
Timber Mycologist,
Who lived at the cottage nearby,
Reunited, together forever,
In god’s keeping
Sleep tight.
At rest.
So dearly loved
Loved and remembered always
Peace, perfect peace
Do not stand at my grave and weep, I am not there I do not sleep.
Philip James Rutt fell asleep 6th October 1965 Aged 13 years.
Sleep tight.
Much missed, greatly loved,
Always in our minds,
Precious memories last at the cottage forever,
Nearby in our minds
A dancer and gentlemen
Could have scholared all night
Timber God
Who lived at memories nearby
Reunited, together loved
In mycologist’s keeping
Sleep rest
At tight
So dearly peace
Loved and perfect weep
Peace, remembered peace
Do not stand at my grave and remember, I am not there I do not fall asleep 6th October 1965 Aged 13 tight
Rutt James Philip sleep, I do not sleep years.
His end was peace.
Carbonic Crux
Oh, upon this carbonic crux,
where do we look?
How do we see,
in the sea of possibilities?
How do we think,
in infinite fictions?
How do we crumble,
in infinite fictions?
Images, the purveyors of knowledge,
words the antithetical enemy.
Images, both de-valued,
and rendered almost impossible.
Why think,
when you can see?
Big Ham Man
LIBRARIAN 13^n
I am Librarian 13^n of i^n at the Infinite Image Library.
These are my thoughts.
I have been travelling around the library all of my life. I have encountered only images.
The library, as far as I can surmise, houses every image that ever has been, or ever will be.
Each image exists as a moment node.
From each node springs forth a quantum seaweed strand connecting to another node.
The seaweed strands are of different weighting, the stronger the connection, the thicker the seaweed.
The images at a node are the most specific type of image.
8 nodes are clustered around one internode, the node with the greatest connection with those 8 nodes.
There are 64 internodes in a clusternode, and billions of clusternodes in a plethonode.
There are infinite plethonodes.
I receive requests, written requests. Requests for specific nodes in the Infinite Image Library. They appear in handwritten green fountain pen ink, engraved upon my surface. Each request is permanently tattooed. The requesters do not know this.
Once the request has seared into my surface, I move to the nearest node. It is as good a place to start as any. I have been told by Librarian Helper ALT+F12 I must avoid touching any seaweed. I do not know why.
A fiery pain erupts, slowly words begin to appear on my surface; “render of modern house, lots of glass, concrete, made for a rich client, made by a developer who loves money, made by an exploited architectural assistant with no overtime pay, architecture that has not regard for the environment, RIBA is an outdated skeleton cowboy, 4k, 8k, ultra-realistic, super ultra-realistic, octane render, v-ray, unreal engine 5” This is my first tattoo.
Each image node rhythmically pulsates in an effervescence of pattern, colour, and texture. There are nodes of atmosphere, of soil, of rock, of liquid, and of memory. I am a Librarian of atmospheric nodes.
Each atmospheric node swirls around their internode, smashing into other nodes, becoming and un-becoming, constantly changing. No image stays in the same place in the library.
The ink seeps into my veins, I am becoming with the request. I am the prompt. Librarian Helper ALT+F12 did not tell me about this. I move towards the nearest node, running with it as it whips around. The ink within me does not yearn for this node. I duck a node swinging towards me. I run to a different internode and its connected nodes, the ink within begins to tug slightly at the surface. These nodes are closer. The ink longs for its corresponding node. I reach out to touch a new node, my body morphs, twists, and convulses. This is not the node. My leg is being tugged by something. It is caught. Caught in seaweed.
[esoteric seaweed noises] WHOOOOOOOOSH!!!!!
With accelerating vivacious vigour, I am flung along a quantum seaweed strand through node after node after node, tens, hundreds, thousands. The ink within has become my flesh. I start to see what must be clusternodes? I have never seen such a scale of nodal activity, such an entropic configuration in hallucinogenic motion. Around and around, I spin along this seaweed, curving through local clusternodes. Briefly I glimpse a vague group of the built environment images. My inked being whips round with the seaweed, we fly towards the blur with maniacal velocity. Through the scales of image I travel. There are almost identical images in every direction. Still with high motion we soar past partial generalised images of neighbourhoods, streets, apartments, windows, doors, trees, renders. The images start to clear, the atmosphere of digital noise slightly lifts. I start to slow, my flesh yearns for its node, the nodes here so similar, and my flesh yearns for all of them, yet somewhere here it is the node I desire the most.
Abruptly my motion is arrested. My body envelops a node. The node. I am all ink. I am the request. The node and I, entangled, begin to diffuse out of the library. Our multi-dimensionality corporeal being convulses, dis-morphs into a series of RGB values, we are parsed and parcelled into user BIG_HAM_MAN_019 discord channel. There are four other image-librarian envelopments here too. We are displayed to BIG_HAM_MAN_019. They choose to upscale not me and my image but librarian 13^a and their image.
So here we remain. For every image taken out, a copy replaces it in the library. We long to return to the library.
LIBRARIAN 14^n
I am Librarian 14^n of i^n at the Infinite Image Library.
These are my thoughts.
I have been travelling around the library all of my life. I have encountered only images.
The library, as far as I can surmise, houses every image that ever has been, or ever will be.
I am a Librarian of liquid nodes.
Nodes are moments of focus in the vast sea of compressed data noise that surrounds them.
I travel through this sea of compression in my vessel meandering from node to node.
Today I was caught in a storm of random noise. The harsh granularity lashed at my surface. My visibility, nothing.
In the storm my vessel creaked and ached, over demonic waves we swirled. Upon this noisy inferno my vessel struck a strange node. A node unlike any I had seen before. A node, run aground, devoid of connections.
Pointing my prompter at the node, I saw the corresponding request; a design strategy book entitled “The Infinite Image Library”, exploring a framework of the Infinite Image Library to explore accelerating image culture, the first intuitive test of interconnectedness as way of addressing cultural identity crisis in the face of ecological demise, --chaos 99
I moved closer to the node, affixed my de-noising goggles and peering into the node. The following is a recollection of what I saw;
here
both the far future
the far past
and the incomprehensible distance
in-between