25 Jun 1996

Dear rh--

You mentioned that you were off to England and that you assumed there would
be modems there. Yes, but sometimes getting all the little phone jacks and
funny adapters all together can be a pain. I have been totally getting off
on recovering from my brush with the forces of intestinal destruction. It
is wonderful when health and good digestion are new won friends that get
you high every day. Ah, so that is over, one more speed bump on the pot
holed highway of life. It has allowed me to turn my attention back toward
the secular holy grail of my life here, which is the search for a really
good connection to the internet. Nobody knows the hell that we go though
out here to have a web presence. The levity machines in New York serve the
site very quickly and of course Dan is a state of the art kind of guy. No
problem there. The problem is my connection. I use an analog US Cellular
modem to reach my server in Kailua-Kona. Top speed is 4800 baud,
connection is intermittent, easily broken and 35 cents per minute. Moving
even a small GIF to the levity machine under these conditions can be a
frantic experience. There are solutions, really there are mirages of
solutions, the only real solution as far as I can tell is wireless spread
spectrum technology, powerful radio modems that can reach thirty miles at
128 up to 256 kps. Hot stuff but expensive. Finally I have put together a
leasing deal where this toy is almost in my grasp, in fact we are in the
installation and burn in phase now. Or nearly now, as no one has yet seen
this puppy perform. If and when this comes on-line I will be the technical
ace of the Kona Coast. But we have been after this for eighteen months
with dot to show for the effort. I will let you know how it comes out. I
felt the need to give you this detailed look at the technology behind my
end of our connection so that you understand the reasons for some of the
delays and lost time with our conversation.

And what about our conversation. The Other is always with us. It is sort
of the Omni-purpose Muse. One only has to evoke it's presence and it
offers itself as a perfect surface for the inspection of the limits of the
imagination, certainly. I think that in an earlier post I mentioned that
though it resists description nevertheless when I tell my mind "Think about
it." I enter into a state different from any other. And it is un-English
able. And after these experiences of "thinking about it" are concluded I
then and in a normal state of mind conclude that the phenomena is about
language. It is an experience about language that nevertheless, or perhaps
intrinsically, cannot be talked about. It is as though it takes one to the
other side of language, to a world where language is beheld or understood
differently, through different senses or from a different perspective. It
is as though there is a simple and obvious truth which cannot be said in
words, all words betray it. Yet words are all that we have to approach
this truth, it is a truth I feel, not a feeling of truth or a true feeling
but a Truth. Normally such things come made of words. But not this one.
Why not. The answer to that question would tell us what it is. Perhaps it
is a mathematical truth, perhaps when one's IQ is boosted by an order of
magnitude, as seems to happen in the flash, then one groks the basic
mathematical order of things, something that can normally only be known
after a life of deep intellectual discipline. Or perhaps... perhaps...

Enjoy England and the summertime, if you can get down to Devon. To the Old
Stones.

All the best,

T



6.28.96

Dear Terence,

Online in England after aquiring the plug & phone jack adapters and a good transformer. Ever try to dial an 800 number (my server) from over here? A: it possibly can't be done. B: if it can be done you can't do it with the wrong country code. The US is now 001 instead of 0101. But I'm fixed. Could write a handbook.

The Net cranks here. Very fast. Now I know what www means experientially. Distance is real but I can't say how since self and time are variables with variables of their own. Great satisfaction in wielding faster, wider bands of potential than at home but I don't use it much. It's my vacation.

The imperative urge to communicate remains active, the coal I can't swallow or spit out. I've put out a whaleworth of doggedly spontaneous communication in the last four months, courting risk. I often upload my journals with something like a prayer that they not blow up in my face or haunt me forever because of some unexamined attitude. But I feel what you describe as the Other prompting me to hold truth higher than caution. Truth magnifies. Caution avoids.

Agreed: truth is simple and unsayable. Viewing from that position of simplicity allows instant apprehension of matters complex beyond calculation. Resolved: art is the proper response. There's much to say
about it - nothing to say of it. Say of it anyway and be a glad fool. Speak of what is beyond speech fluently. The Psalm is an appropriate mode of expression. The elegy and the ballad.

The net offers appropriate boundless ground to declaim - without publishers, editors or retail to consider. There's a well known syndrome of derring do on the net which is a combination of ready accessibility and infinite editability and/or updatability compounded with cathode fixation. I'd hesitate to call it a Muse, but it sure acts like one. "Nettie made me say it!" Trying to downsize the Net in my own perception lately. The Ignoranti feed off our delusions of the actual "power" and "reach" of the WWW, which we confuse with its sheer potential and advertise accordingly. Once corporations learn that there's very little cash profit to made on the Net, outside of our servers, funds will stop. But it will be too late. It already is. Until a comet erases every hard drive on the planet. What form of digital information storage could escape the mass erase? Crystal? Protein? Jellyfish? Silicon? A roomful of idiot savants with photographic memory? Laser embedment on the point of a pin? Put the technology on a rocket and send it on a return cruise outside the solar system? Make that two rockets. Always back up important data!

"What resists description" is the object in itself. We either see it free of words, or in a language appropriate to itself, which is more akin to co-ordinates than the lingua we use to relate useful objects to our bodily needs and egocentric ambitions. We see only the aspects of objects the lingua allows for. Some objects we do not see at all. We intuit from the "flash" that all objects are beings. We are redefined in the act of being observed by objects in the samee manner in which electron micoroscopy changes what the scientist observes. What about telescopy?

In light of all this a redefinition of "seeing" is called for. One that implies interactivity. Seeing is less passive than we assume. This state of affairs is probably exciting only to the risk taker with a built in sense of essential immortality and a willingness to invest "self" as a kind of psychic capital.

I wonder, now that you're on the mend, about something icily terrifying you said awhile back, about the end of consciousness - coming up to that point in fear and trembling. I felt moved to comment on it at the time. It seemed like a viewpoint of psychic exhaustion. I saw it once after overdosing on a quarter million micrograms of acid at the Carousel Ballroom (NOT on purpose) in '69, which effectively marked paid to my acid career. Someone who has crawled naked across the Sahara doesn't spend much time in tanning parlors. Anyway, your statement carried the conviction of someone who has recently looked that place in the eye (or vice versa) and I'm curious as to how much of it may have been due to the parasite invasion? I believe that place (technically known as Hell) is more of a culdesac of consciousness than an inviolable limit to it.

Meantime/space, life in this unspoiled pocket of England is all it should be. Cynicism seems unknown here, tourism is slight, the people cheerful and friendly beyond my previous experience. It's hard to be grumpy but I manage. Roses climbing into my window, 3am, light patter of rain. Time and the Net seem distant. Heap good vacation.

rh

ps: this place feels lousy with lay lines. Not my field, but there's something happening here which speaks to a dormant sense. Not a mystic feeling. Seems objective.

pps: can I use your server? Wow!

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