Story 7
Nagging Voices
The largest of Ivan’s notebooks was held together by green garden twine.
I begin to read it as the light of the longest day faded:
‘The memories of what I have witnessed act as a filter, but they are only a map of these events and not the actual terrain upon which they unfolded. In 1963 Dr Eee at the Callois Wing of ST Thomas’s hospital advised me to listen to my own language in deconstructing these memories, in order to expose my own filters, the deletions distortions and generalisations that I have unconsciously passed these memories through and made into a baseline habitual state.
My representational filters, explained Dr Eee, include the feelings both inside and outside of the body. But unfortunately I was not in a position to identify these apparently polarised locations. I heard a voice describing these disembodied kinaesthetic phrases: “there is somewhere solid, tickle, preserve pain in the neck warm”. Dr Eee told me that it was my own voice recorded under hypnosis, but I did not recognise it. I was advised by Dr Eee to use breaks and redirections such as Goto and Delay – much like those used in my early computer programs, in fact I was constantly minded of these similarities which Dr Eee seemed oblivious too.
I wanted him to praise me for my superhuman efforts in deconstructing my habitual predicates, or the language of my preferred representational system, but this desire was itself characterised by Dr Eee as an equally filtered preference for self-talk, which Eee called an auditory digital preference. This was revealed in my frequent use of words such as sense, learn, perceive conceive and process. I nagged at myself continually with these vocabularies, to the degree that they pulled me into a semi-hypnotic negative trance, in which I was profoundly entrenched in my own thinking and negative imaginings took me deeper and deeper into consistent anchors or triggers. In a sense I was hypnotizing myself with my own language. But was Dr Eee right in his conviction that changing my language would change my life? Wasn’t the fact that I was so often lost in space evidence that my location in the world was dependent on more than language alone?’
The more I read the more it seemed that Ivan had spent almost all his adult life trying to answer these questions.
Nagging Voices
The largest of Ivan’s notebooks was held together by green garden twine.
I begin to read it as the light of the longest day faded:
‘The memories of what I have witnessed act as a filter, but they are only a map of these events and not the actual terrain upon which they unfolded. In 1963 Dr Eee at the Callois Wing of ST Thomas’s hospital advised me to listen to my own language in deconstructing these memories, in order to expose my own filters, the deletions distortions and generalisations that I have unconsciously passed these memories through and made into a baseline habitual state.
My representational filters, explained Dr Eee, include the feelings both inside and outside of the body. But unfortunately I was not in a position to identify these apparently polarised locations. I heard a voice describing these disembodied kinaesthetic phrases: “there is somewhere solid, tickle, preserve pain in the neck warm”. Dr Eee told me that it was my own voice recorded under hypnosis, but I did not recognise it. I was advised by Dr Eee to use breaks and redirections such as Goto and Delay – much like those used in my early computer programs, in fact I was constantly minded of these similarities which Dr Eee seemed oblivious too.
I wanted him to praise me for my superhuman efforts in deconstructing my habitual predicates, or the language of my preferred representational system, but this desire was itself characterised by Dr Eee as an equally filtered preference for self-talk, which Eee called an auditory digital preference. This was revealed in my frequent use of words such as sense, learn, perceive conceive and process. I nagged at myself continually with these vocabularies, to the degree that they pulled me into a semi-hypnotic negative trance, in which I was profoundly entrenched in my own thinking and negative imaginings took me deeper and deeper into consistent anchors or triggers. In a sense I was hypnotizing myself with my own language. But was Dr Eee right in his conviction that changing my language would change my life? Wasn’t the fact that I was so often lost in space evidence that my location in the world was dependent on more than language alone?’
The more I read the more it seemed that Ivan had spent almost all his adult life trying to answer these questions.
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Story number one. Gephyrophobia
At the top of the trunk there’s a small brown leather notebook, like most of Ivan’s notebooks, bursting at the seams. Scratched stained battered as if it has spent a lifetime at war with itself. Loosened pages fall out of the book as I open it. The pages contain what seem like random jottings, mathematical formulas, flow charts and maps. I pick up one of these chaotic pages and read Ivan’s hurriedly scribbled words. Everything he writes appears to have been executed in a maddening rush – time is always chasing Ivan.
‘Uncomfortable memories merge with my sense of the present. I’m minded of the dank riverside house of my youth. The rancid riverside fat of the ancient pariah industries leaks into every room, through the revenant pores of my slaughterer ancestors.
At the top of the trunk there’s a small brown leather notebook, like most of Ivan’s notebooks, bursting at the seams. Scratched stained battered as if it has spent a lifetime at war with itself. Loosened pages fall out of the book as I open it. The pages contain what seem like random jottings, mathematical formulas, flow charts and maps. I pick up one of these chaotic pages and read Ivan’s hurriedly scribbled words. Everything he writes appears to have been executed in a maddening rush – time is always chasing Ivan.
‘Uncomfortable memories merge with my sense of the present. I’m minded of the dank riverside house of my youth. The rancid riverside fat of the ancient pariah industries leaks into every room, through the revenant pores of my slaughterer ancestors.
I roll these ancient thoughts into a small damp ball and fire them way over the dull sad Morley street houses or drown them in a glass of water. As if a house could ever heal, make happy or pacify a noon-day demon. My secret imaginative background - this street righted through a simple shell script I thought might filter and sort all the stinking noise for me, here with this command:
sort <>> sort.txt
Such a command I once thought might sort and recombine the chaotic stench here into palatable new meanings. Arthur C. Clarke knew this too int The Nine Billion Names of God, which features a Tibetan monastery with an automatic sequence computer, “compiling a list which shall contain all the possible names of God."
Somewhere there is a bridge to a sorted world. But unfortunately I have lived my whole life long with a fear of bridges. Gephyrophobia. Though I have tried to recreate bridge like structures in my code, Dra/Dar is a bridge too far.
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Should anchors tower? Does anchors laugh after states? A required tune returns underneath the coupled bitmap. Why can't anchors sock states? 2:36 AM Dec 16th, 2009 via web
A history inspires heuristics. Writing turns heuristics. The skull conforms heuristics. Heuristics overloads writing. 2:35 AM Dec 16th, 2009 via web
Wittgenstein invented the Twitter, but look how it has degraded since the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Degraded into garbled formulas. 2:23 AM Dec 16th, 2009 via web
The boredom seats the estimated smoker. 2:21 AM Dec 16th, 2009 via web
transaction inability less razor 2:21 AM Dec 16th, 2009 via web
Air museum sitting damned. My mind is randomised from the sub zero chill. Some of my synapses need anti-freeze 2:20 AM Dec 16th, 2009 via web
I welcome the resumption of our dialogue, no matter how befuddling. 12:55 AM Dec 14th, 2009 via web
My follower, mjax11, has resumed contact, even though it takes the form of cryptic missives and mystifying alluisons to computer components. 12:55 AM Dec 14th, 2009 via web
With each breakfast, however poor, I demolish one of my most cherished assumptions - it is habit I can reccomend to everyone... 12:49 AM Dec 14th, 2009 via web
They say a woman is as old as she looks before breakfast. I think the same applies to men, I look and feel as old as I am before breakfast. 12:46 AM Dec 14th, 2009 via web
My llife has been rife with poor breakfasts, flat lunches, and miserable dinners. 12:44 AM Dec 14th, 2009 via web
Half a cracker with mayonnaise - it's hardly a breakfast of champions. 12:42 AM Dec 14th, 2009 via web
Day 5 12:41 AM Dec 14th, 2009 via web
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Lieing at anchor is no more than the avoidance of unpleasant sensory input, which, as we have established, is a specific form of addiction. 1:19 PM Dec 8th, 2009 via web
A ship should not rely on one small anchor, nor should life rest on a single hope , yet majax11, we must neither drift nor lie at anchor. 1:17 PM Dec 8th, 2009 via web
We trap ourselves via a form of softened embedding, auto-hypnotic perceptual positions naturalised over decades of sleep-walking. 1:14 PM Dec 8th, 2009 via web
The zone you are stuck in is not the sort of <
The sun moves in silence mjAX11 1:04 PM Dec 8th, 2009 via web
1956:Everyday I had to walk across WaterlooBridge to get to work, though I realised the irrationality of my fear I was still gripped by it. 10:30 AM Dec 5th, 2009 via web
As a child suffered acutely from <
Maintaining an auditory grapnel is not the same as gratifying the desire for pleasant sensory experiences or the avoidance of harsh sounds. 10:20 AM Dec 5th, 2009 via web
Grapnel, or the conception of<
How can you become confident,cheerful, creative & calm in the blink of an eye depsite the immanentburp, gallopingpulse,sheer_pointlessness? 10:08 AM Dec 5th, 2009 via web
Today I am going to tell you about anchors, even though rather adrift this wintry post meridiem and gaseous with a light mackeral lunch. 7:40 AM Dec 5th, 2009 via web
Day 4 7:37 AM Dec 5th, 2009 via web
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Where are my anchors? 2:08 PM Dec 4th, 2009 via web
Where are the anchors of these liminal dreamers, who are unable to distinguish if a vaguely recalled dream actually occurred? 2:07 PM Dec 4th, 2009 via web
With this information one might ask what becomes of children born on bridges? 1:54 PM Dec 4th, 2009 via web
Those who remain in a state between two other states may become permanently liminal. The brdige is a hyperstructure in permanent twilight. 1:51 PM Dec 4th, 2009 via web
I rewind to the bridge silent bare, ships, towers, domes, theatres,liminal temples, shielding from those sharpening sounds . 1:49 PM Dec 4th, 2009 via web
Guillemets ( « » ) or angle points, help me to communicate difficlut memories. « or tainted formalisations of expression»in 140 characters 1:29 PM Dec 4th, 2009 via web
Another point: . A bullet point to slow myself down. My heart is pounding. Secondly: I do not like discussing my aversion to certain sounds 1:23 PM Dec 4th, 2009 via web
Their ghosts were too hungry. No one had enough food to keep them away, wherever I went they would call out the names of sickly neighbours. 1:20 PM Dec 4th, 2009 via web
I feared the unwanted sounds as much as I craved the city's music. But I had vivid imaginings of revenant harassment from all the dead Dârs. 1:17 PM Dec 4th, 2009 via web
On the bridge there were always cold echoes. Screeches on the grey road from North to South. I heard revenants of the returning dead eating, 1:12 PM Dec 4th, 2009 via web
Scene 6 concerns a desire not to have uninteresting sensory experiences, which you will soon discover are manifest in auditory modalities. 12:48 PM Dec 4th, 2009 via web
IT HAS TAKEN ME 68 TWEETS TO REACH A POINT OF INITMACY WITH MY FOLLOWERS. To reach my Waterloo Bridge moment. Scene 6 in this story. Anchors 12:47 PM Dec 4th, 2009 via web
"English for avoiding inter-subjective contamination" - an intensive course, WORTH 20 CREDIT POINTS on the Ivan Dâr Education Plan. 11:47 AM Dec 4th, 2009 via web
Slow down reader. Bullet points are good for undermining rappport and for injecting a tone of efficiency into sensitive isssues.Avoid warmth 11:41 AM Dec 4th, 2009 via web
Transition words and phrases such as "secondly" or "another point." are a good way of slowing down rapacious readers or excited people. 11:37 AM Dec 4th, 2009 via web
Incubation Rest. Marmite Bagel. Management of the creative process. Raw materials bubble up in a power nap. Conk for illumination. Reframe. 11:25 AM Dec 4th, 2009 via web
Soft consensus should be avoided. My own critical path analysis conked out today. I blame a heavy lunch, a restless night,dandruff blizzards 11:20 AM Dec 4th, 2009 via web
Perhaps you are thinking I have been stung by my own Strategic Community Displacement program?. Perhaps you are right. Clever old reader :( 11:15 AM Dec 4th, 2009 via web
...that generate creative failure, I allowed MJX11 to compromise my navigational integrity, hence the undesirable location of the B-paradox 11:14 AM Dec 4th, 2009 via web
We never know what we have lost until we are left. Once more I am struck by the so called 'Basingstoke paradox', -compromises in destination 11:12 AM Dec 4th, 2009 via web
....me down this morning, the winds and the waves of desertion favour the finest navigators but I am spinning in circles, I am awash & left 11:10 AM Dec 4th, 2009 via web
The minute we are born we are abandoned by life. Likewise my follower MJX11 appears to have abandoned me. Even such la ittle absence weighs 11:07 AM Dec 4th, 2009 via web
Day 3 11:03 AM Dec 4th, 2009 via web
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But what IS Strategic Community Displacement I hear you ask? 1:49 AM Dec 3rd, 2009 via web
...on the spur of the moment yesterday, between considering a marmite sandwich for lunch and battling a raging snow storm of dandruff....... 1:48 AM Dec 3rd, 2009 via web
Imagine, the entire population of the planet all all following the randomly conceived Strategic Community Displacement program I made up... 1:46 AM Dec 3rd, 2009 via web
likewise:over quarter of a million followers by the end of the century and the vast majority of the world's inhabitants by the next millenia 1:44 AM Dec 3rd, 2009 via web
So 2 days in and I already have a 'follower', a simple mathematical projection would indicate 365 followers a year thence, 3650 by 219 etc 1:42 AM Dec 3rd, 2009 via web
A new day a new dawn. I think I might have a marmite sandwich for lunch 1:40 AM Dec 3rd, 2009 via web
Day 2 1:39 AM Dec 3rd, 2009 via web
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So Mjax11has a name for me: "mr marmaite sandwich". This may be an imaginative variation on the tradition of gurus naming their followers? 11:07 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
Earlier today Mjax11 called me "mr marmaite sandwich". I didn't think anything about it at the time but now it seems highly sententious. 10:59 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
Logic suggests, ∴ ,that many MBA graduates could be diverted from their reflexive pathways into Strategic Community Displacement programs... 10:54 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
'Finance' is tightly linked to the global economic downturn, or 'crunch' evidence suggests new graduates are stepping onto alternate paths.. 10:47 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
yes_alt - did you get that? Day 1: One 'follower' and an emergent language transmuted by the random constrants of this particular form 10:46 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
Graduates of MBA programs have a tendnecy to head straight into 'Finance' after receiving their degrees. This path can be altered! yes!_alt 10:44 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
The MBA emerged from the late 19th century as the US industrialized and companies sought scientific approaches to management..blahblah 10:39 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
I see it is actually an 'MBA,' (not MBNA)a masters degree in Business Administration. at first sight it is hard to think of anything duller. 10:37 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
Is this a post-modern slap in the face for Aldus Manutius, the father of modern punctuation? To negate the subtleties of modern punctuation? 10:31 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
What exactly is an MBNA? I wanted to write that 'exactly' in italics but the twitter mechanism doesn't allow for such typographical devices 10:28 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
Perhaps I should also offer my followers 'tips for getting a flat belly'? or a metaphysical form of MBNA ? Mjax11, please proffer 'feedback' 10:25 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
This follower is going to be hard work, I can see that..perhaps a few, more pliable ones will come along soon? It's like waiting for a bus. 10:14 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
Mjax11 doesn't answer so soon. If a thousand suns and moons rose_they would be unable toremove_the_darkness_of_ignorance within_the_heart. 10:04 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
Mjax11 - perhaps you wish to be lead from unreality to reality, from the darkness of ignorance to the light of knowledge? I can arrange that 10:00 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
naivety [naɪˈiːvtɪ], naiveté, naïveté [ˌnɑːiːvˈteɪ] n pl -ties, -tés 1. the state or quality of being naive; ingenuousness; simplicity 9:58 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
Mjax11 - 'phylosophie' as you put it is indeed the metier I am offering here - perhaps you thought the reference to T-shirts was serious? 9:57 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
Is this true - do you mean walnut and date? I see your spelling is of the 'improvisational' school, there's something medieval about it. 9:54 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
A follower! It begins with one little acorn of despond and soon a whole forest of oaks proliforate - where is the spell check on this thing? 9:51 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
One day in and both my Meta-Tactical Culture and Strategic Community Displacement programs are reaping benefits,just when ennui had struck! 9:49 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
They reach for modern, technological mechanisms of 'support' but they cannot articulate what 'support' might entail or where it needs to go. 9:45 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
mjax11 are you even listening? Who this mjax11? a robot! Hello mjax11, please say what you would like me to do - not roofing I hope! 9:43 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
Is the leaking roof a metaphor? Has 'mjax11'considered this metaphysical aspect? So few realise their internal structures urgent need repair 9:42 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
I have a follower - the inevitable rush is begining. This one seems pre-occupied with rooves and debts, there is no spiritual content yet 9:39 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
It is evening now. I am regretting my earlier decision about the Marmite sandwich. Emptiness closes around me. A whole day wasted again. 9:34 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
Withold genuine confidences or restrict them to a surface colour, I try this from minute to minute because 'confidence' implies a real man. 6:38 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
This is for amateurs! sell subjective heuristics and spread administrative overheads over a bigger operation, eschew diseconomies of scale. 6:21 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
50 pounds for a T-shirt that cost 50 pence to make.. 6:17 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
The aggregate of the cost of raw materials, the cost of manufacture, plus the cost of distribution, blah blah blah. This not the answer! 6:12 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
MOP - 'Modes of possibility' in the meta-tactical culture. Buy my DVDs! Wear T Shirts embroidered with the words: THOSE WHO DâR WIN! 6:11 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
Reject logical valuations! The aggregate of the cost of raw materials, the cost of manufacture, plus the cost of distribution, embrace MOP 6:09 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
I refer of course to my 'meta-tactical culture': in which consumers see the 'product' as being worth the amount that I want it to be 6:05 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
Such fnely crafted branding can be highly successful in convincing consumers to pay remarkably high prices for products that cost nothing 6:01 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
Oh this is good, I can feel a power point coming on! 5:58 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
'Strategic Community Displacement' is an experiential aspect that consists of the sum of all points of symbolic 'contact' with the brand, 5:58 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
'Strategic Community Displacement', just think about it, a phrse so dilute as to allow ∞ as near nothing as makes no odds.. 5:55 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
This afternoon I threw some words together quite randomly and came up with a brand new marketing strategy for my philosophical opines - 5:51 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
We should always be prepared to learn something new 5:48 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
Flexibility dwindles decade on decade, I can hardly do my own shoe laces up, let alone compress a lifetime's methodology into a letter box.. 5:47 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
What can anyone say in 140,000 words let alone 140 characters? These lexical contortions are unpleasant for a man my age, flexibility dwind- 5:45 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
A howling blizzard of dandruff engulfs me mid-afternoon 4:56 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
A quick congruency check is in order, I reccomend you do the same 4:55 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
It's too late for a marmite sandwhich now, the window of opportunity with marmite is very slender indeed 4:52 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
I have always suffered from too many followers, it is a slipper kind of curse that is difficult to convey to the unpopular 4:51 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
I have no followers as yet, but no doubt this thing will snow ball out of control very rapidly 4:50 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
I try to be trendistic by joining in with these twitts 4:50 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
nothing else is happening 4:48 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
Its clouding over rapidly 4:47 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
I think I might have a marmite sandwhich for lunch 4:40 AM Dec 2nd, 2009 via web
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Another Cigraettte
Perhaps it will shock you to hear me
talking of smoking as a form of religious
practice - or rather the configuration of
smoking-subject and cigarette as an
opportunity for putting into practice Buddhist
technologies.
Another Cigarette is another sediment of me,
whatever a ‘me’ really is, this habit makes a
concrete statue out of ‘me’. I’m all habit, I’m all
fixed, that’s all there is – this addiction, nothing
else. When I took away the cigarettes there was
nothing left. As if my molecules burst their skins,
that’s how thousands of people disappear every
year, they quit smoking and slip their chains. Off
they go, into the clouds, free at last. Unless they
replace one habit with another, as we are want to do –
perhaps, for example, the habit of judging smokers.
sedimenting habits of self-construction. Is ‘I’m not a
smoker’ as much of a trap as being a smoker?
I am not talking here of orthodox health matters, and, of course, not recommending smoking. The ill health I am alluding too is metaphysical. There
Are worse habits then smoking. Hubris itself is a from of unhelpful addiction – I was once enslaved by it, as my regular readers will know. Hubris, like smoking, can teach us how vulnerable we are to fantasies of permanent self-hood, and thus to a reduction that has ensnared entire cultures and continents to chains of reasoning and representation.
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