Anapology: Wabanaki > Wah-wah-taysee
(E*sequiturs à clef)
Inchoacy (Mbuti Pygmies, Ituri Rainforest [Colin Turnbull]: "Darkness is Good")
Dreamtime/Songlines (Primordial perturbations) (Larry "Winiwini" Gurruwiwi: Didgeridoo)
People of the Dawn ([The cosmical Sun] "Morgenstemning," Peer Gynt [Edvard Grieg])
Kingdom Animalia ([Getting way ahead of ourselves] Apocalyptica: "In the Hall of the Mountain King," Peer Gynt)
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Consider creativity: It's been said that there is nothing new under the sun, and that creativity is mere recombination, albeit through insight. The latter is partially true minus the judgmental adjective mere. What you are about to rede (née [obs.] "read," updated to connote electronic media; and see Seq 9) may not be new (diarists, novelists [this very word promising the virginal unexperienced], collaborators and, latterly, bloggers, preappear); nevertheless e*sequiturs may in cultural and technical recombination (and the necessarily dynamic nature of its hyperlinkages) amount to something of a novelty.
E*sequiturs inhabits the Internet (une infinité de machines contestataires). Far more effectively than precursive libraries and encyclopedias (including Huxley's fictional, passive hypnopædia), the Internet is a global repository for humanity's vast, accumulated and dynamic knowledge. E*sequiturs is a metaphor for this surfeit. Granularly, e*sequiturs sifts stimulants of culture from this silican dimension and conducts them to your mind, link by link. Thus, 100 e*sequiturs, or following links, are presented in sixteen Sequences (Seqs), hexadecimally numbered 0-F (for insights into the use of zero as starting counting point, note [from Wikipedia's Nought entry] that
"The most common practice throughout human history has been to start counting at one. Nevertheless, in computer science zero is often used as the starting point."
). Fourteen of the Seqs contain seven e*sequiturs and two (middle and last, numbers 50 and 100) contain one each.
E*sequiturs' antecedents are numerous and diverse. These include the accretive cadavre exquis (exquisite corpse; "Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau") parlour game (that you can try with your friends) appropriated by the Surrealists as "mental contagion," in which composite entities were created without knowledge of what preceded (non-sequitur sequiturs); enjambment in poetry (examples, including the punch line in "the white day" preceding), in which a line is left hanging to continue in the following stanza; the diaries of Pepys, Nin and others; the Wunderkind Goethe's (who suffered the slings and arrows of wealth, class, talent and not undeserved immediate youthful success in his first effort) epistolary novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther [later]; James Joyce's panœuvrean stream (sidesequitur: the term "stream" perhaps too understated a descriptor for e*sequiturs' unselfconscious revelation of "what's on your correspondent's mind" [or in my dilly {dili} bag of tricks] [revelation being, after all, the essence of communication {or diatribe in its original, nobler sense of engagement, discovery or discourse}]) of consciousness, and that of Willliam Faulkner in The Sound and The Fury (contender, with Eric Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front [and anything Russianic], for the most depressing novel of All Time [what from the sleep/dreams of reason? {Goya: El sueño de la razón produce monstruos; ten en cuenta los búhos, los murciélagos y los gatos.} Was Goya antirational? Nadaistico? Do, por favor, rede on.]).
E*sequiturs takes Noam Chomsky's (so how many languages does a medolinguist speak?) (he of "Colorless green ideas sleep[ing] furiously" fame) thesis of the limitlessness of language combinations constructible by a native speaker out for an encyclopedic spin (including unavoidable name dropping and aggregation of others' thoughtforms). For inspiration, one would be remiss if to fail to mention time capsules (more following), Carl Sagan's cadeaux (c'est vrai, Man Ray) for extraterrestrials, sent with [dimorphic adult content] Pioneers 10 and 11 (plaques [and see*sequitur 23]) and Voyagers 1 and 2 (Golden Records, which will probably take at least 40000 years to be found [this for those hoping against hope to be rescued]), containing the greatest hits of humanity (including Nkumbi, Mbuti initiation song), of which there have been and continue to be more than a few. Accompanying the Voyager record (astonishingly unavailable from the US government), this from United States of America's (a nation-state [bane of C*rporatists] founded in 1776) President Jimmy Carter:
"We cast this message into the cosmos. It is likely to survive a billion years into our future, when our civilization is profoundly altered and the surface of the Earth may be vastly changed. Of the 200 million stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some - perhaps many - may have inhabited planets and spacefaring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message:
"This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe."
(Of course he was criticised by nitwits for giving our location and particulars away [no, really, although reproductively inclined aliens will be flummoxed by absent cameltoe {actual concession to Insaneiban (zoom in on her bald delta if you don't believe me); to be revisited later}].) Earlier, American President Dwight Eisenhower made the following statement to a terrestrial audience:
"The Congress hereby declares that it is the policy of the United States that activities in space should be devoted to peaceful purposes for the benefit of all mankind."
National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958
July 29, 1958
(Again, certain successors disregarded this directive.) And so we presend and attempt, kind kindred reders of the future (may you be more civilised than H.G. Wells' Morlocks), so that we may live on into yours. For you, e*sequiturs strives to be a kind of alphabet of human thought (or condensed digital Rosetta Stone) of a few of the many sparkling facets of human civilisation up to now. Vandals and nature consenting, ars may be longa, tho' vita brevis.
Analogies (more on this shortly): For consoling familiarity, e*sequiturs shares common ground with the page-turning unexpected snippets, sidebars and articles of printed magazines, clock-running informers of the idle dreaming classes (noting the original Parisian Charivari and the derivative Punch, "The London Charivari" [emoticons in 1881] [and e*sequiturs' merged and mashedup media {Pre-emptive notice to the Plagiarism Police: e*sequiturs liberally lifts text (50 words or less) from numerous sources for purposes of juxtapositional and satirical effect; citation omissions and quotation marks are either implicit (when source is linked) or unintentional (your correspondent having no interest in accountability for the ludicrous ironical).}]). This is the rabbit hole to the cerebral candy store (do please avoid the autochthon's shortcut of trephination! [and see*sequitur 34]), mitt bon bons and bon mots (bondye bon), a surfeit of stimulation (meanwhile [adult content], the monkey thinking, "twas all in fun"). (For idle and intrusive reders, in re the physignomy and physicality [creature features] of your correspondent [a signifying monkey], a Capuchin/bonobo/chimp mutt mix in a red fez holding a cup [and yes, with a tail] [and see the Pixies in e*sequitur 18].)
Speaking of which, most problematic to any claim of originality (a Venn overlap with creativity) are the current enthusiastic strummings of sedentary, wired humanity, whose output may exceed that of the "Sulawesi Six," (monkeys delivered) crested macaques (aka singes dactylographes) who disproved the "infinite monkey theorem" (cf. the dizzy gyromants), mainly typing the letter "s" and defecating on the keyboard. These drivelists (humans) are in deed, precedentary, and the typings of many, no doubt (confession: your correspondent hasn't redd them all, and that this is an arrogant exaggeration, with any claim to relative quality drowned in sheer volume [it will, no doubt, take years to sort this out; of course, as journalists {civilminers} demonstrate, there must be daily diamonds in the detritus {wheat / chaff a more organic metaphor, avoiding the trap of cargo cultural bowerbirdnest shiny metal materialism}]) may represent superior examples of random, if intelligible, content generation. Or pure, automatic writing with alliterative permutations generated by a computer program. Such are neither the agenda, intent nor content of e*sequiturs; however, this preloqutive palaver will be neither spoiler nor exegesis (sciolistically, hermeneutic; I lied about the key). BTW, Borges's (content with a single immortal simian stenographer) putative Total Library ("of astronomical size," containing, inter alia, "the history of the future" and which would "eliminate intelligence [Laßwitz: the author, actually]") is also a progenitor (noting Laplace's joyless demon, theoretically able to know the entirety of futurity based on infinite knowledge of the location of all particles and the totality of current molecular motion [relax, it's make-believe]).
E*sequiturs is also a working class consolation prize. Nothing against work, but in the current era of gilded neohedonism (con- or inconspicuous [cf. Atonal II in e*sequitur 46] consumption of the Time & Space Continuum), those of means continuously exult in actual sensual stimulation under the oxygenated dome of a lush and fecund planet. The Joy of KnowledgeTM notwithstanding, imagination seems a poor substitute; among distributed endowments, one could, one supposes, do worse (cerebral confinement producing pleasure).
Then there is the scrapbook syndrome: The wish to leave something behind (or more correctly ahead) for posterity. Because whether trivial or grand, there are so many varieties of dust to collect - including stardust, moondust, snowflakes, human dreams and memories, the sands of time, and more dust (and ashes [a2a, d2d], which we must revere). E*sequiturs' tattered scraps hope to encapsulate humankind's heaping midden trove.
There are also clinical/clairvoyant aspects. Whether or when mind redeing (or, for that matter, mind uploading [e*sequiturs, crudely]; and see*sequitur 26) will be neurelectronically achieved isn't certain, but the potency of its exhibitionistic / voyeuristic mystique is. E*sequiturs is, quintessentially, a moving mind rede (making child's play of Zener cards [what, you didn't know which five {and in what order} they'd be?]; compare the Buddhist mindstream continuum); the subconscious conscious and the private published, coyly. As for mentalists, your correspondent demurs to vodou drummers (at dusk, among the manchineel and acrobatic bats) and the juju-powered Death-defying Yoruban Amos Tutuola ("Back to the Skull's Family's House") himself, a lifelong inspiration (and proof that imagination trumps all after all).
For littérateurs and the literate, e*sequiturs demonstrates the technological disintermediation (see*sequitur 94) of clung-to-and-obsolescent definitional (why should a "book" be limited to alphabetic / static pictorial content?), publishing and distribution models, and the commoditization-to-zero of works of the mind (and the dilemma of information socialism v. elite-access-only intellectual property at a time in which there is an urgent need for educated humanity) - and more. A key feature of Internet tourism is serendippitous non-seriality, in contrast to the path-o-logical beeline (enforced "desire line" [q.v. {quod vide, i.e. (id est, that is), which see}]) taken by readers of printed books down blindered lanes of sequential thought in black & white duotony (before you, if old fashioned, become apoplectic, note that this statement is a cartoon: defense of reading [the value of which is the grapple of the mind, not the clawing grasp of pulpish physicalia] is implicit in e*sequiturs, as its content makes obvious). E*sequiturs, for its part, endeavours to illustrate, vivify, and immerse the reder in the fullness of human corticalia. Be forewarned: E*sequiturs, as ergodic infornography, may overload you with ideas (meant merely to stimulate, not humble you à la Peter Watson's capitalised Ideas [Respect]) (and may possibly be addictive): do not pursue e*sequiturs if you are psychophobic (beware brain fag) (and see phobias / philias in Seq A) or time deficient. In the end, e*sequiturs is, indeed, a penny'swellworth of your correspondent's thought process.
Then there is the aleatoric (see Simic in e*sequitur 25, and "Three Wherefores" in e*sequitur 26) element, with the disclaimer that the appearance of randomness (with more than a pinch of useless information) does not necessarily mean that your carillonneur maintains a fleet of flying blind mammals in the bellfry, necessarily. A generous reder may also detect an amateur's attempts at black and self-deprecating humour.
Re sequitrism: Innovation brings both gain and loss. That life is losing its sequentiality, will, mark well, prove consequential (in the pro v. con sense of con; are people's lives truly of no consequence?). If civilisation is at risk of discontinuity, then you, esteemed reder, may mitigate through repeated redeings and the generous consequity of sending your friends to esequiturs.com. While Merest Finity (let's call him Rex Monday) futilely boxes the shadowmorph of his dreamt-of antimatter doppel, the Unfathomable Infinite (let's just say she's Disincarnate), offstage, repetition embeds the meme (cf. the technological memex in Vannevar Bush's "As We May Think" (The Atlantic, July 1945 [the month of the detonation of "the gadget" at "Trinity" and one month before "Little Boy" and "Fat Man"]).
Puzzlingly, e*sequiturs unintentionally contains recurring examples of numerology (Wire @ 4:03; and, for example, according to Wikipedia,
"The Pythagoreans, an ancient Greek cult of natural philosophers notable for their interest in numerology, personified the natural numbers by assigning gender to them; the odd numbers were male and the even female [auth.: 69 {[adult content] congress of the crow} = yin / yang]."
[See synesthesia later.]), a hidden riddle and the aforementioned highly confusing hexadecimal Seq numbering. This may be analyzed by interested scholars and cabalists. The subset circle / sphere / toroid (or use a tokamak or torsatronic stellarator) motif was inspired by Imaginary Time (requiring no beginning ["(N)in principio..."]) and lifespan of humans relative to the age of the universe). (Recurrence of the non-colour black is likewise inexplicable, although this statement is unlikely to deter determined exegetes, who will indubitably divine psychosexual connotations from your correspondent's dark past [further obscured by a dark mattter halo; and see e*sequitur 40 and the dark sky {note intentionally unlit North Korea} movement, CieloBuio and Dark Sky Week]. The letter a, ants, a few birds [one flipped], calvaria, dice, dogs [author's interstitialia signed - C. familiaris], trey gangsters, jinns aplenty, a mermaid, six exotic pachyderms [and a bonus jumbo herd], snow [and elemental water], stars, violins and the number zero also make cameo appearances [as do da double duty figure 8s as signifiers of affairs infinite].)
A note on the Big 'n' Hard wrds: Do the dictionary dive and lóòk (see Seq 4) them up. If U want, the ge-ne (ur wish is his cmd [pre-1337$9è@|<]) can rite an "e-z e*seq(TM)" 4 U! (Gem collectors will enjoy Michael Quinion's World Wide Words [and divers other online lexica].) Any resemblance of e*sequiturs to self-congratulatory wordchattery (and party chitchat) is duly documented; more germane, e*sequiturs' wry insistence on (for the most part) positivity. On the other hand, e*sequiturs does contain one obscene word and strongly hints at three others. Further, be forewarned: The medical / anatomical terms for the male urogenital organ, gonads and sac envelope are gratuitously included (the*sequitrist apologises for being unable, however, to work either the word [adult content] Clitoris [playboy poet / publisher Crosby's wife's {née Jacob (bra inventor)} pro-ana pet greyhound] or the four-letter c-l-i-t into the prønarrative). So the reder will probably not be shocked to learn that e*sequiturs contains and links to nudity, adult situations, violence (including violence against small animals) and blasphemy (against C*pitalism [Mammon] and religionism) - at no extra charge, tossing in terms for sexual climax and ejaculate (obliquely) en passant.
(Contradictory disclaimer: Because e*sequiturs is intensionally written in the frequently foreign language of literature, it is not necessary to know the meanings of Actual Words or to grasp the meaning of phrase, clause, sentence, paragraph, etc., to rede through it (note that although words and concepts may sometimes seem addled [and the the entirety of e*sequiturs inscrutably cryptic], the words herein [unlike those in a ludling] are either real or logical neologisms, neither nonsensical nor scrambled). You, as reder, are encouraged to mindrede ["silently"], audiate or tongue [recite aloud, ling{lang}ually], so gustatorially savoring the sound and music of its poetry and prose; your understanding is thus decidedly (arbitrarily, fatalistically [facetiously {orderly vowels with the benefit of y}], by me) optional. Note also that the ability to click a mouse [en Español: ratón, a calque] [Pavlovian pellet bar] for instant gratification / amplification / edification is a system requirement.)
To compensate for the opacity of the words / concepts presented, e*sequiturs offers finity. As noted above, there are only 100 e*sequiturs, and the reder may stop at 50, when the punch line is revealed. E*sequiturs may be incomprehensible, but the informationally advantaged reder needn't say it was tl;dr (if perhaps juste un peu de trop).
The poetry (in xochitl, in cuicatl), too, must be mentioned. (The obsolete [, as are most pre-{and, alas, many post-}Darwinian philosophers, although note Lucretius' advanced explanations {atomic, infinite, non-created universe and much, much more} in his poem De Rerum Natura{!} {see*sequitur 64}] and obnoxious Herr Nietzsche's [Ask yourself: He über others {alles}?] Hochwertig [eugenically superior {note that Virginia's state sterilization law (how apt!) wasn't repealed until 1974}] Also sprach Zarathustra is cited as precursory [you are spared its Polonian oracular aphorisms {"This above all: to thine ownself be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man" not half bad for a dead poet / playwright}]; the poems of others and your e*sequitrist correspondent [those uncredited] are presented or to-pointed.) Poetry (the catalytic fusion of mentation and emotion), I say, endures so that reders of the future may relate, traveling in time (Toumani Diabate [e*sequitur 59], on his music: "... where you discover the past which meets the present for the future") to visit our primitive society and imaginatively interpret our most sincere (if homiletic) sentiments.
Ultimately, e*sequiturs is a love letter for the people of earth - past, present and future (as tensed above). In gratitude for what our forebears have given us, in empathy for our uncompleted contemporary selves, and in hopes for a pacific future (si vis pacem, para pacem). May reders of the next millennium and beyond think well (or at least kin-dly) of us. May they say, paraphrasing Emerson, that we lived lives worth living, recording and remembering. And that today we know what day it is.
One could go on(, for example, on the subject of omissions: alas, innumerable, e.g., the music, the*sequitrist's karaoke). By now, the astute reder will have deduced that the preceding is hardly a literary apology. A patient and persevering reder may, somehowever, find illumination and recognition (replete with ripening ideas for further creative exploration) in the process of recovery (review, when territory is familiar) and discovery (the curtain pulled back, the veil lifted, the revealed resplendent) - or, minimally, unaskedfor nuggets of solace and catalysis for deferred ([but not too long! Your time is finite.] recombinant) recreation, as e*sequiturs aims to provide some smallish sparks of stimulation. Ainsi commençons nous.
"Let's not be L7 [defined], come and learn to dance...."
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Image: Genus Photinus
Fireflies from The Emperor's New Clothes blog. Permission pending.