Starting the second file Tue Oct 19 02:56:28 EDT 1999 after giving a talk
at the School of Visual Arts on Net culture and community, mainly talking
about my own work, but also went to a number of sites including trAce of
course, m9ndfukc.com, www.google.com, my URLs, etc. Jodi.org as well. Rec-
ommended CSS's work and showed And's Flash, and there were Flash discus-
sions. It turns out that a lost of the students had been contributing to
the loveandwar and other project; Ellen Zweig brought them in! And other
people there were also familiar with trAce, so I was right at home. I was
still surprised how few students are really familiar with the "other" of
the Net - what I used to call the "darknet" - but that's to be expected. I
like thinking of these areas, text-based or bare-boned as "other" in rela-
tion to "everything else." I'm always amazed on the other hand with the
sophistication of the students in terms of technology and just getting
their way around computers and it makes me realize all the time just how
amazing these machines are themselves...

That's what I'd like to teach - _the other of the Net_ - under or within
other voices, technologies, guises... So I continue to read on Heian Japan
with delight, and still learning kanji, more than I thought I knew,
slightly happy about that. And received to absolutely beautiful books from
Joseph Nechvatal, whose work I've been admiring for a long time. And I met
Arlene Schloss; it was a good evening for me. 

Meanwhile today, the electricity, for the first time since I've been here
in New York, went off, literally, for a couple of blocks around here - and
I have no idea why; the computer just cut out suddenly. I had to do a lot
of defragging afterwards; I'm hoping I didn't lose too much - some of the
files were corrupted...

Tue Oct 19 20:14:41 EDT 1999 I want to write about exhaustion, this almost
unutterable (lack of energy, wear and tear) state I find myself in most
every day at this point - not depression, but something dull thudding, the
result of extreme insomnia which melatonin or tylenol pm no longer seem to
help. It's almost painful to move around for at least a half to two-
thirds of the day; everything seems to waver, and I'm at a distance from
myself (as I am now), feeling a weaking in various parts of the body, al-
ways ready for a nap or another deep and temporary sleep. I only seem to
wake, and then for a while, around 1 in the morning; I have been trying to
go to sleep at, say, 3, but generally end up around 4 or 5; if I had my
way, I'd be asleep at 2. Every day is a miserable struggle; it's been that
way on and off for the past decade or so, sometimes getting worse, as now,
when I'm also literally dizzy during the day. I'm amazed any work can be
produced in this condition. It's connected with a kind of lassitude which
I suppose _is_ related to depression; it's definitely some sort of chemic-
al imbalance, but without money for a sleep clinic, I've got to deal with
this constantly, without recourse. I may try the HIP clinic sometime soon;
I can't continue seeing double, hearing badly, stumbling around, having my
emotions so close to the surface. Azure uses the word woozy; I just slept
when I should have, for two hours - tonight will be another hell.

Bought a Neal Stephenson novel, The Diamond Age, today, but I've been
dealing for a change with well over 200 messages. The ftp is working; I'll
be able to upload and download properly to trAce at least. And as usual
the writing is good.

Thu Oct 21 02:31:37 EDT 1999 Thu Oct 21 02:31:42 EDT 1999 Thu Oct 21
02:31:47 EDT 1999 and the spaces in-between. Picked up the Mac Centris 650
today, only to find it's excellent and producing a blank screen. So maybe
the OS was removed in its entirety, but there's no request for a boot
disk; for all I know the hard drive is gone. But the beauty of the day was
finally finding two books by Donald Knuth (I had these years ago), Vols 1
and 2 of The Art of Computer Programming, which are more brilliant than I
had remembered; they're going now for a lot of money, have been reissued
of course - these are early and already I've been using them. So I'm read-
ing Richard Brautigan to relax, we took the other wall down in the loft,
Knuth has me BLINDINGLY EXCITED. Any work that actually deals with the
aesthetics of programming... 

I also finished THE PRESIDENT work today, and sent it out - I really am
pleased with the way it developed - completely seriously in terms of the
robustness of the world. On one hand, again, chaos theory's (also catas-
trophe theory's) emphasis on "the fragility of good things" and on the
other - the robustness of the world, given the quantum-mechanical playing
out of things (literally) - as well as the alterity at the heart of lang-
uage as it simultaneously gives us speech and takes the world and our
breath away.

Donald Knuth: "a _truly random sequence will exhibit local nonrandomness._
Local nonrandomness is necessary in some applications, but it is disas-
terous in others. We are forced to conclude that no sequence of 'random'
numbers can be adequate for every application. In a similar vein, one may
argue that there is no way to judge whether a _finite_ sequence is random
or not; any particular sequence is just as likely as any other one."


Fri Oct 22 00:56:32 EDT 1999 The Mac still won't work, won't take a boot
floppy, just produces a blanks screen after indicating the hardware's ok.
So there we are, stuck a bit just about everywhere. Helped Allen with his
online bookselling software today and got Joel Garreau's Edge City, Life
on the New Frontier - a lot of places I've lived in Atlanta, Dallas, etc.
at times. More to the point, When Worlds Collide, Indo-Europeans and
Pre-Indo-Europeans, The Bellagio Papers, ed. Markey and Greppin, the re-
sults of a conference. I've wanted this for a while - a lot of recent
research, including material on Armenian. So YAY to this. Visited Tom
Zummer and discussed the paucity of American film. And I haven't been on-
line too much today - just enough; I'm a bit worn out from thinking about
computers, especially with the bad experience with the Mac. On the other
hand, I need to read more Knuth about number-base systems; he covers the
full range of variables, including xi, transcendentals, and systems where
the symbol number A is > or < than the base number N. This material fasc-
inates me; I can see application to that ruler measurement series fgfggg
etc. I was working on. All in volume 2.

My family is getting healthier, but we've been dealing with very heavy
other problems today, and on top of that I feel physically ill. I think
it's one of my periodic body failures screaming at me to slow down...

Fri Oct 22 18:13:20 EDT 1999 Today I was reading the Indo-european book
which fascinates me, tracing pre-i-e back to a mountainous region with
farming, the wheel, and so forth. A lot seems to have gone on through
Anatolia. And reading Knuth on number-base systems which include, for
example a ternary system with +1, -1, and 0 as the symbols. Such systems
can absorb the positive and negative numbers; there are others, such as
ones based on 2i, that can absorb the complex number system as well. This
is an amazing economy of means. The book is my favorite - the volume on
Seminumerical Algorithms - since it goes into the construct of arithmetic
processes we all take for granted. I've always been fascinated by the
possibility of base-1 and base-infinite systems; in the former, of course,
addition becomes concatenation, and in the latter, the addition of any two
unique symbols results in a third unique symbol, i.e. J + K = L. There's
an easy translation from the decimal system; say 25 * 26 = 650 - one would
just look up within the infinite multiplication table, [25] and [26] and
see [650] where the [x] represents the unique symbol. One goes from algo-
rithms to infinite memorization or lookup. The phenomenology of this is
really interesting, I think. For multiplication with base-1, one returns
again to concatenation, for example 1111 * 111 = 111 111 111 111 which is
the same as 4 * 3 = 12. There is nothing to learn in terms of memorization
or lookup tables here; there's nothing to look up or memorize. Think of
this as an abacus of sticks placed adjacent to one another. It's fascina-
ting; it says something about the stability of the earth itself, the Aris-
totelian logic at the heart of the almost-disconnected plateau of the
life-world. I wrote years ago extensively on such phenomenologies; it's
great to see the structures themselves in Knuth.

That is enough to hold me for quite a while here...

Sun Oct 24 00:09:20 EDT 1999 Today got several books of fantasy, including
a copy of The Forbidden Planet, which I've wanted for years, also Giorgio
Agamben, The End of the Poem, studies in Poetics, and a book of essays by
Greimas. So it's been good, and I don't feel sick today which is even
better. I'm still hoping for newer people coming into trAce and joining
the rest of us - who knows? So I sit and read about Indo-European and
really want to find something on Tokharian, and if we do get to go away
next weekend, I'll spend some time definitely reading the Donald Knuth
volumes - I saw he was quoted in Wired this month. And I STILL couldn't
get the Centris 650 to work! I'm wondering if there isn't something dis-
connected inside of it. It's not something I really need at the moment (I
have other computers), but this one's fascinating me in its abjection...

Mon Oct 25 03:03:09 EDT 1999 I worked like hell the night before, today
was more abject, but picked up a second book on Japanese Emaki, scrolls,
as well as A New History of the Cold War, which I found on the street.
Made $24 credit trading books with Allen. Worked on the chat dealing with
the future of writing etc. today - that became very bizarre when we
started playing around with nicknames; I think I was the first to take
someone else's name, etc. and by the time we were done, I didn't know who
was who, but I was apparently speaking Hebrew with myself who was Bernard
which was not only fascinating but indicative of things already happening
online that are symptomatic of a far future in which splits and splinters
are the order of the day, from warfare to biotech to identity. So that was
of great interest. I wrote a text using the command xxd -r which reads
octal back into ASCII, so I used the primes to construct an octal text,
etc. And that was of great interest at least to me. Then I went and redid
my homepage which needed it; I couldn't stand it any more. Didn't change
any of the writing - but did meander about the overall appearance and
placed everything inside of tables, wombs which lead to resonances of
other texts and things and I felt miniamlly satisfied. But it took a while
and the borders aren't neat and I realized I really didn't care so much
about that. I should have something or other dynamic moving about, but
there's nothing I really like to see in motion. At least not at this hour
of the night ... 

Tue Oct 26 02:21:36 EDT 1999 So it's early in the morning again, I'm wired
as usual, exhausted as usual, moody as usual. Been reading Giorgio Agam-
ben's The End of the Poem, more in Edge City, looking at the book of emaki
again, reading more in The World of the Shining Prince, sending out more
applications, adding more to the YOURS project, and met today with Daniel
Kane who runs the Writenet site for Teachers and Writers - that was very
productive; he's going to announce trAce on the list "over there" and I've
also gone on for the purpose (among other things). But played shamisen
tonight and that was wonderful; I've needed that clarity for a while -
electric guitar is much more a dance, less exact. Now I bring techniques
back and forth between the instruments; on both it's five-finger picking
and no picks at all. I'm wondering about coding, exploring a silly notion
of "codon" indicative of taking samples of text/number etc. and subjecting
them more to that xxd -r command or just xxd in some cases, all sorts of
ways to approach things. I did that with hex a while ago, but in this case
it's integrated with text. I've been devouring text as much as possible...

But it's gloomy, I expect this constant stress will get to me, and I doubt
greatly that any university will hire me at this point - my work is too
strange, maybe not academic enough. I'm at home more in community; when I
do find myself somewhere, I'm making connections all over the town. In a
lot of places that's good, but I'm not prime material at this point,
although from my viewpoint, I should be of course. I still fully expect to
starve to death one of these days. And tonight watched a documentary on
the MacDowell artist's colony, and I was almost crying - I desperately
need that, to get away (with Azure to be sure), just have woods and my
work and the selfishness I need to calmly edit my world back together. 
I've written maybe 3000 pages by now; they need editing, assembling into
manuscripts (not that they would be published), maybe someone would drop a
gift and I'd end up with a cd-rom of the stuff. At the moment, I'm swamped
and it's difficult enough to keep working. And I've got to get the video
going again within the next couple of days, preparing for the Experimental
Television Center week in a month and a half (or so).

Rereading all this stuff, I realize how selfish and boring I am, how nar-
cissistic and illiterate; this diary doesn't compare with Pepy's for
example...

Wed Oct 27 01:56:27 EDT 1999 Installed a new battery in the Centirs 650
and took out a board and it finally runs fine with weird memory results
though - it's jammed with software which should be incredibly useful. I
found personal files in it - nothing had been erased. I removed almost all
of them... It was clearly a networked computer. Beyond that... gave a lot
of books away to Tom Zummer, and went back to the Kyoko Date article - it
has been accepted, and more changes were required. I don't think the
changes I made will hold, though, and I wouldn't be surprised if the
article is turned down at the last minute - it reads to me like a mess.
And meanwhile, over on Poetics, I had sent a few texts, and there were
more complaints and more defense, and I end up feeling worthless - tried
to deal with the "poetics of the real" (wrote about this on the Webboard)
instead of just poetics poetics, and someone wrote in complaining stupidly
- I say that because he just didn't get that a stick can be a sign - any-
way, then Kent Johnson wrote in defending me - and I just withdrew, saying
I'd send out URLs once a week, and that's all. It's a shame for me, since
I have very little other outlets for my work, but I don't want to keep
derailing the list, in a sense. On the other hand, in terms of my writing,
I'm absolutely certain about what I'm doing - and about, for that matter,
it's ground-breaking tendencies, using psychoanalytics, philosophy, etc.,
within the Net and Net literature in a fundamentally new way. But so what?
That comforts me late at night, but doesn't get me friends, and I feel the
air leaking out. And certainly leaking out of Poetics, which doesn't even
recognize hypertext for the most part - much less multi-media or the
complex issues I'm trying to deal with. God knows what they'd make of
Christy's work "over there" which I find beautiful. 

But still, I think, this venue, which I've lived with for so long, is
close to gone at this point, and that saddens me greatly.

I think trAce is going wonderfully at the moment. Tomorrow the furniture
is coming here and I find myself still working at 2 even though I have to
get up at 6:30 and not feeling well. I'm wired. I am always wondering,
what will happen next. Bought Gawain and the Green Knight in translation
today, as well as 3 travel books from the 50's, Europe. Tom's still
talking about doing a CD of my music with me, wants me to record every-
thing I'm playing on electric. Came over and listened for a long time. So
I'll see. And the weather's cold.

Do you ever think the whole world roars, that one can hear engines humming
always just beneath the surface? That's what any skin is like, and the
earth is no exception.

Thu Oct 28 02:18:10 EDT 1999 Bummed out about Poetics, getting a lot of
support backchannel, but feel far too vulnerable with my writing at the
moment. As if it haunts me. As if? It does. So got a book on Gas Stations
today, as well as a book on Scorcese and another on the mind; then got
Showalter's book on hysteria - looking at her amalgam of fibro and cfs and
hysteria and wondering if she knows the damage she's causing - another
book on the psychology of clothes, and Jung on flying saucers. Meanwhile
made an _image that works_ vis-a-vis the Mac, quite happy with that, will
do something with it shortly. Have written a lot into trAce and in a week
need to start thinking about traceroute/millennium. I wish I were going to
conferences at this point - something to take the paste out of my life,
give me some sort of intellectual impetus/recognition/maintenance. Azure
and I got all the furniture for the loft today; it cost $438 and we helped
load it into the big red truck. Took from 8-12 this morning. Wishing I
were otherwise than I am took the rest of the day. Still "worrying" the
notion of poetics, and thinking, now I'm really talking my way on that
list out of any kind of community, grants, jobs. It feels absurd. Should
read Nausee again. Don't want to.

Thu Oct 28 17:34:21 EDT 1999 We're going to see Foofwa in an overly-booked
sold-out night at the Swiss Institute; he's working with the musician/per-
cussionist Fast Forward; we're going to a champagne event after. I took
grim pleasure in passing Sue's postings 2 to 1; still wondering if I'm
sending too much to the Webboard, but trying to keep the momentum going
there and always glad to see new people posting and joining in. I also
looked at Christy's and Riener Strasser's new piece which is beautiful,
for the Nottingham festival; I wish I had that sense of beauty, works -
like some of Miekal's as well - that make one gasp with their shimmering.
I don't know how else to put it. There's something ungainly about my work,
all of it, music or writing or video - it stumbles, and for some reason
the image of a soldier with feet cut off, crawling out of WWI trenches
emerges - someone that 'should' die but just keeps going because that's
all there is in the world to do. Meanwhile I'm reading with embarrassment
some of the defenses of my work on the Poetics list and off it; I wish I
could just send out and otherwise remain anonymous. So finished with The
Shining Prince and will return to the Genji next week I think - I want to
take a closer look at the Showalter book in the meantime, since hysteria
plays at least a subsidiary role in my writing. And on a very minor point,
figured out how to use the fourth in an arabic scale emphasizing the
flatted fifth, etc. - so that if I'm doing E, F, G, Bf, B, (C), Ds, E or
some such, then where to put the A? It comes out quite sprightly, which
surprised me. And I continue to read about gas stations. My mind is
rolling on the floor.

Sat Oct 30 02:40:54 EDT 1999 A busy day, some real flaming/abuse on trAce
for the first time - it was bound to happen. When this occurs, it's always
the same thing, always male, rude, aggressive, anonymous, ugly. The words
are always the same, and the trajectory's always the same, and the damage
unfortunately is always the same. The Net's changed that way - more and
more lists for example have had to go to moderation to avoid people simply
wanting to break up whatever dialog's going on. And often communities
aren't ready for the trouble - someone can come in and do damage in a week
against the trust that a community has taken years to build up. It's
always done with an air of superiority and almost no self-critique or
willingness to listen. Meanwhile, I loaded a lot of plugins I found to
Photoshop (which I also found) today, and made nine pieces that had been
waiting on the backburner - three Shinto, five dealing with sexuality, one
dealing with an online collaborative project. I find Photoshop relatively
quick to do what I need to do, even on the Mac Centris. And I want to
start thinking about ballet and working on video with Azure and Foofwa -
ballet embraces all the classical concepts of form and body, almost to the
point of astringency. I found an antique book called The Ballet-Student's
Primer as well as a book carrying synopses of all the stories. Went back
and am reading into Genji again, this time with totally new awareness, and
still on the Showalter and practiced Shakuhachi. It's been a very long
day. And I still am insecure about the Poetics list, have been replying a
lot to back-channel mail, trying to take it easy and not sound like the
idiot I feel I'm rapidly becoming - 

Sat Oct 30 21:56:55 EDT 1999 So the problems on trAce are in remittence;
Azure and I went to about 100 galleries today from 26th to 20th in Chelsea
- I was surprised how narrowly-defined and conservative the artworld's be-
come; Gary Hill had one beautiful video pice and there was a Russian
photographer whose work was amazing, but the overall feeling was one of
provincialism, exhaustion, ennui, and a tiny corner of the world that
hasn't heard much about the Net, computers, revolution, raw raw sex, any-
thing energetic - the most energetic stuff on show was old Robert Longo
jumping people pieces from the early-mid 80's, and that's absurd. I felt I
was in molasses to some extent. But I did find Stan Kelly-Bootle, The
Devil's DP Dictionary, which I hadn't seen before, as well as Rousseau's
Reveries of the Solitary Walker - I've been anxious to read this. And
another old copy of Wiener's Cybernetics, which I'll pick up if it's still
there, next time I'm in Chelsea. And still reading Genji - which will
probably go past the end of the year... I did nine graphics in total last 
night, four uploaded for the collaboration, and five more kicking around
still.

Where on earth is the energy? Online of course, in trAce of course, but
other than that, the US looks like it's had the wind kicked out of it...

Mon Nov  1 03:27:41 EST 1999 I did another series of photoshop images
tonight; I'm thinking of a directory of Buddhist/Shinto images somewhere,
probably on my homepage, maybe in trAce. They'd take up about 180k of
space, not too bad; at the moment, they're working for me. Watched the X
Files, saw Tom and Leslie with Azure, for quite a while, practiced elec-
tric guitar, did a lot of writing, spoke to my parents and we're not going
to Pennsylvania for another week, so I can complete some of the projects
I'm currently engaged in. The reading's paramount for me at this point,
pretty haphazard, want to do more Genji. But will apply for jobs this week
as well as go back to the Knuth and Genji books and I really can't think
straight at the moment; I've been working for hours and hours. Picked up
three anime films, am excited to see them; they were inexpensive. On trAce
no one was at the chat which could be because of all sorts of timezone
mixups - I'm not sure. Shudder for tomorrow's news, late tonight already
33 messages looming in/at me.

Tue Nov  2 00:48:18 EST 1999 I continued working with the image files;
there are several resized. Did more for job applications. Read in Knuth's
first volume. Watched two anime, of which Armitrage III was by far the
best. Slept far too much today; I couldn't stay awake. Wrote the dream dow
- check out http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/writers/sondheim/diary/lf.txt - the new
file is now started; I've got le and lef and the setup text still in the
directory, removed lc and ld. I'm on a treadmill, waking all the time to
fears of unemployment again; I need time desperately to get my texts in
order, get them out somehow as cd-rom. Nothing happening on these fronts.
Foofwa likes the ballet texts - he'll use them. That's encouraging;
they're just present all the time in the back of my mind. Haven't for a
change thought trAce-like or trace-like or Trace-like for the day. Learned
a bit of Quark Express which I also found on the Mac. Signing off - my
exhaustion seems literally completely, my body _bone_ tired.

Wed Nov  3 02:37:08 EST 1999
sondheim p6 sondheim.dialup.  2:34AM     0 w 
sondheim
sondheim  ttyp6    sondheim.dialup. Wed Nov  3 02:34   still logged in
sondheim  ttyqe    sondheim.dialup. Tue Nov  2 12:27 - 13:03  (00:36)
sondheim  ttypc    sondheim.dialup. Sat Oct 30 22:05 - 22:13  (00:07)
Today wrote a text which I promptly accidently erased. I've been working
too hard, practicing guitar; doing three job applications; writing other
texts, teaching the next door neighbor how to use a Mac; adding a number
of applications to my new Mac; working on several short videos (6) with
Azure; reading more Genji and Knuth and a book on Bizet's Carmen; trying
to keep up with the Yours backbones and Webboard; and watching another
Japanese anime. Until by then I'm ready to collapse, angry at myself for
losing one of the texts, which didn't even remain in the scrollback. And
of course voting, what else? Hoping against hope to defeat Giuliani's
rigged charter. More tomorrow when there will be new adventures sticking
like glue to the back of the human. Or forth.

Thu Nov  4 03:52:22 EST 1999 almost too late tonight. Got 10 books today
at the library for $10 including the Cambridge Atlas of Astronomy, books
on American Light Verse, Satirical Verse, British Verse, etc. all pub-
lished by Oxford, a very good Classical dictionary (my 3rd), a book on NYC
landmarks, etc. Did two more photoshop pictures, wanting to start think-
ing about traceroute, watched another anime, had dinner with an old friend
who made me feel useless and dying - his comments on the NYC scene were so
jaded it felt impossible to talk; I felt choked, as if everything I did
were meaningless. Rewrote the text I lost, and it's 30 degrees out or some
such right now. The usual electric guitar, began to understand algorithms
better, I keep reading parts of the second volume of Knuth. Fell asleep
last ight with Genji again. That is a universal forever book. There are
vast and moving shadows of leaves at 4 in the morning on the wall across
from this machine. This machine, the old Mac Centris 650, keeps moving. I
keep moving with it, jump from machine to machine. I want to do something
again with bar coes. I want to keep doing something. Love to everyone
reading this diary, Alan

Fri Nov  5 02:12:45 EST 1999 Today went to the United Nations, got a book
on the current stats of countries; we also went to Roosevelt Island, did
some shooting, came back, reading The Joy of Computers, Peter Laurie, from
1984, fairly interesting, and Julian Samuel sent me his 1986 Lone Ranger
in Pakistan, poetry of sorts, ideological/political texts which are really
great. So reading a lot, also two anime magazines, and found C. Wright
Mill's essays for free, along with Althusser's book on Lenin - I like Alt.
for a lot of reasons, moreso after his memoir. Running around on the Web-
board, have a cold. Not too depressed and the cat stopped throwing up
after we decided to feed her more, not less, than ever. ...

Fri Nov  5 23:01:09 EST 1999 but heading later, already everything half-
gone, half-devoured. Tom, Azure, and I 'went around' today, found Gamow's
One, Two, Three... Infinity which I'd read as a child, also My Neighbor
Totoro, which I'd been looking for a long time. It's been a year since
Azure and I have known each other. We've taken part of the day off... Now
going to watch the film. Meanwhile found a second copy of The Pillow Book,
smaller, to carry around; I've been (re-)reading sections of it. And maybe
later tonight or sooner or later will install RedHat Linux 6, I keep pro-
mising myself to do that but there's been so much else - the Mac for one
thing, and trying to keep up the work on trAce and the other collaborative
projects for another. I need empty time, suspended time, to think. I am
desperate for vacancy. I think about turning back into other programs. I
think about Japan, Shinto, though I'm blurred on the reason why. The sick-
ness has abated, whatever that was, so have the headaches. I feel desper-
ate as usual, not ever enough time in the day to do anything, I'd like to
be suspended for a while without sleep. I don't want to die. There is not
enough time to live a life. I want to learn cuneiform, play one or another
sport, travel throughout China, Korea, Japan, at the very least. I feel
like a child, WAAAH WAAAH!!! I'm going to die. Even twenty more years
won't be enough, and that's pushing it. I don't want to be a tourist. I
want to live a full life in Pusan, Hongkong, Singapore, Paris. I still
want to go to Lake Hazen, Ellesmere Island, near the North Pole; I dreamed
of that for years and it won't happen. I want to go to Antarctica, not on
a tourist ship, but for six dark months, reading and writing, electric
circuitry buzzing through the outside world. I want to be a true professor
somewhere, with enough time for research and dedicated graduate students.
I want enough money to live on so I don't have to worry constantly about
jobs and stabilities. And so on and so forth. I want my work published
finally on a CD-ROM so I can give it to someone and say, Look at this!
This is what I've done! I'd put this diary on it too! WAAAH WAAAH!!! It
isn't going to happen!!!
 
Sat Nov  6 19:08:53 EST 1999 More and more books, The Death of King
Arthur, The Plays of Hrotsvit of Gandersheim (which remind me of my own
dialogwork), Spencer complete, Diderot, two books on early Greek Science,
Alan Booth's The Roads to Sata, which I've wanted to read, two books on
bird identification. Reading everywhere through these, but quite depressed
- supposed to meet two friends with Azure, neither showed up or even can-
celled. I'm finding myself more and more alienated from people in real
life which worries the hell out of me, too much computer time, too many
interior dialogs, written dialogs, too little voicing. I can't figure it
out, since I make as many telephone calls as ever; it's just that I might,
at this point, be tainted. I worry about jobs as well in this regard - so
it's problematic - no one has replied to me. I'm alone, as if on some sort
of inverted pinnacle or double-cone of success and failure, but all within
the written, all online, just as this typing.

So I did a "Lost" project on trAce, placing calls for the lost object,
speaking about scanning, across a number of the conferences, as well as
within the Yours pages - it's a generalized loss, a phenomenology of
withdrawal; I hope it's seen as more than nuisance... And I'd like to see
Lost become a collaborative project as well - Elizabeth James wrote a
really good piece in regard to it - 


Current date is Mon 11-08-1999
Enter new date (mm-dd-yy): Clearly I'm coming in through Win98 or some
such; it's already the 8th of November, too late, too much, too soon.
Watched the NYC Marathon today, on the street for over an hour, then
back indoors for the rest of it. Simply made work as well as usual. I'm
losing it, bound indoors by computers, the rest of my life emptied, as
if shelled out. Nothing but repetition in this regard and little to
write. Reading, as usual. Writing, as usual. Music, need to play this
evening, haven't yet. trAce, as always. Trying to create a friendlier
environment; it's turning too much on the conferenceboards to ingroup
outgroup but groups of all sorts; I'm anxious to reach just about every-
one in this regard. I worry about disappointing the administration as
well. Put up some edgy artwork on the collaborations site, hope it re-
mains there. Met with a curator this evening who seemed to like what I
was doing, but I'm not sure it will fit with his upcoming show. More if
and when. I'm always just a margin beyond myself, never quite making the
fit. Apologies for boring everyone.

It's late the next day or early the next morning. I've been reading a
beautiful book about the construction etc. of the Brooklyn Bridge, as
well as a medical encyclopedia, parts of Alan Booth's book, sections of
the Pillow Book again, more guitar/shakuhachi, making six new images,
thinking about the trAce projects and hoping in about three weeks I can
start planning traceroute for the millennium, and finding myself in the
middle of censorship issues (my work) in the artists' collaborative pro-
ject I'm engaged in - after sending out the images last night which were
somewhat explicit one of the participants asked me to remove them, saying
they were "pornography" etc. - even though they were in my own directory
and could have been ignored - the project is private and this was no re-
flection on anyone else. So I removed all the images, although one person
wanted them - I made a hidden directory for him, placed them in it, and
as far as anyone else is concerned, they're gone. So it should be. I hate
it when artists censor artists - especially after dealing with the city
censoring artists here in NY - i.e. the Brooklyn Museum issue - and this
was miserable as far as I was concerned. But I am completely sick of
fighting people about my work. As far as "pornography" is concerned, the
images are/were explicit, but they were heavily reworked and accompanied
by text and if anyone read them as pornography, they weren't really look-
ing, or rather were looking literally at _the thing_ as if that deter-
mined the content and meaning. People aren't afraid of violence on tv or
their daily lives, but heaven help them (and most believe in heaven) if
sexual organs and god forbid (and most believe in god) intercourse is
depicted in any way shape or form. It's dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty.
With this kind of logic, we exterminate most everything on the planet...

Tue Nov 9 22:40:40 EST 1999 Into the city and Soho where Kiki Smith really
shined in the midst of paler work, picked up Voznesensky's Antiworlds,
Birdwhistell's Kinesics and Context (which suddenly looks fresh after all
these years), eight copies of Being On Line (I'd run out of them) at Lusi-
tania, and Rexroth/Atsumi, Women Poets of Japan, a book I'd not have seen
before. Talked for a long time with Martim Avillez at Lusitania about the
original 23 Jews who settled in New York; they were Portuguese, and Martim
is working on a project about them. The fold-out book will be beautiful. I
talked to him about doing a CD-Rom about Net art and culture; I doubt this
will come through, but it seems worth pursuing. Meanwhile I've put "those"
images up in a private directory at the collaborative site, so that if
anyone wants them, they can use them, but they'd presumedly contact me
first.


Current date is Wed 11-10-1999
Enter new date (mm-dd-yy): None is possible, yet, or at this time, during
which I read Showalter, getting ready to read Laurie Cubbison in reply,
in relation to hysteria; worked on some video, looked at kanji, finished
the Pillow Book, read more Booth and Women Poets of Japan and Voznesensky.
I'm finding myself caught on the Webboard between, say, pursuing a really
populist approach to literature, and wanting to pursue my own interests;
I find myself worrying Jack Kimball, Peter Ganick, etc., in ways I don't
want to, trying to keep spaces free for everyone, but having their dial-
ogs intensify nonetheless; the writing's brilliant. So I make suggestions
like a scoutmaster and feel idiotic and dampening; these positions are
problematic for me, for them, for everyone. In the collaborative artist's
project I keep thinking of earth-burrowing and that keeps me going. For
some reason I've been feeling healthier the past couple of days, getting
out another job application, working on shakuhachi. Tomorrow, just more
of the same. Maybe I'm a statue sinking into a substance that will erase
its feature, permanently; I'd be a potential in some larger organic hole,
waiting forever for release. Maybe is only a word.


Ju21lu% date
Thu Nov 11 20:19:26 EST 1999
Ju22lu% time
   0.00s real    0.00s user    0.00s system
Ju23lu% A good day today, did some excellent video with Azure, and begin-
ning to get ready for the residency at the Experimental Television Center.
Meanwhile got two books I ordered, anthologies - Ritual and Speculation in
Early Tantrism which is fantastic, and Body/Text in Julia Kristeva, Reli-
gion, Women, and Psychoanalysis. Also got a copy of R. Akutagawa's Tales
Grotesque and Curious - the odd thing is that the version is from 1938.
So "just working" today, still reading the Booth (and the other books at
this point - it's been a good day. I think the green tea helps - we found
some excellent some. Got my 1969 Sony cassette player fixed - it's still
the best recorder I have... Ah well, now we're watching television and
I'm ploughing along like Booth, who in the book, has now walked to the
southwest corner of Honshu...

Sat Nov 13 01:56:31 EST 1999 reading the tantrism book, finished the
Booth, reading a book on many-valued logics and their reductions, bought
The Bad Seed and another book on Quark Express and another copy of Life on
the Screen (Turkle) - mine may have gone missing. The radiator was pouring
water all over everything; Mark, next door, fixed it. I'm writing mourn-
fully and oddly, see lf.txt for the latest, and trAce pushes along; I'm
leaving in three days with Azure for Pennsylvania and deserved rest for
five days, going to study Perl. So I rewrote the Perl program to reflect
the panorama collaboration and then used it for other things as usual. The
whole day has been "as usual" and quiet, quieter, than usual...


Sun Nov 14 01:43:15 EST 1999
 Word:  --------
Guess:  Remnants of a hangman game, sitting here. Gave Tom some books and
picked up a book on the anthropology of reading in ancient Greece. And
looking at the essays on Kristeva, making new images, running around Chel-
sea with Azure (lots of galleries, Nitsch and Brus the two most interest-
ing artists even now, also some Joan Jonas), getting strings for the elec-
tric guitar, making three new images, that's about it. Trying to get ano-
ther manuscript together - this will take time. And I'm worn out, can't
talk, can't slee well. Last night was bad; today was better and at least
I'm feeling peaceful and reached 904 messages on the Webboard, for which
good grief. I'd reveal my inner feelings here but there's a kind of momen-
tum or impulse at work that absorbs them, literally. But still reading at
every chance I get. Found four very tiny 19th-century Japanese woodprints
obviously taken from a book, of Murasaki-like scroll (Genji) images; they
were inexpensive and immediately went into the collection... I need to do
more math on binary systems - hope to focus better in Pennsylvania; here
I'm on a learning, running, making jag all the time. I'll still be online
but we'll be in a very quiet house, my parents' -

From sondheim@panix.com Sun Nov 14 23:04:35 1999
Date: Sun, 14 Nov 1999 23:03:53 -0500 (EST)
From: sondheim@panix.com
To: sondheim@panix.com
Re-Port


I am very exhausted. I'm looking at a book of Japanese emaki, picture
scrolls. The women lean in Heian images. Their kimono are jagged. My mind
is jagged. Something is wrong with me. I don't know what's wrong with me.
Azure says I walk around tired all the time, and I know I need help. I
can't afford it. I'm used to reeling around. It's late in the day for me.
I'm reading Akutagawa Ryunosuke. Read some Shinto texts today. I'm going
away tomorrow with Azure to my parents' house. I'm hopeful for rest and
meteors. I'm drinking green tea. I never sleep right. I would lean over
into the jagged kimono, my cheek cut and bleeding all over the tatami, no
one would ever notice. I see these letters in "double." I think, I say to
Azure, English is like kanji; look at the expressions "I get to go to the
movies." "I've got to go to the movies." Both are completely different
idiomatically than their formal syntax would indicate. I'm trapped by the
grammar of get up, get out, get in, get down, take up, take down, take in,
take out, done in, done for. I'm done in, feel done for, a bit down in my
get-up. It's all memorization; there's nothing left to English but the
plurals. I'm sure, I say to Azure, that all will become a row of monads,
singularities; the syntax will crack, fall through to the floor of the
chora. I'm afraid I'll wear Azure out with my own wearing-out. I want to
play guitar faster than ever. I wonder about the confusion of being in a
plane falling at .86 the speed of sound in any measurement. I have three
small woodcuts taken from a Japanese book; I bought them yesterday. There
are three women, each leaning, each Heian in appearance, stylized. I
imagine the tensed energy of the curved body beneath the minimal dozen of
layers, slim fish through currents of dyed orange, white, and purple
cloth. I wait for the angry sun. I fall to the floor, not tatami but sad
rug and wooden boards. This building dates from 1870 at least; there are
photographs. I crawl towards the window; just beyond, I see Murasaki
suspended and leaning, and what could be so beautiful. In the midst of
fantasy, exhaustion is very very real. I tremble; my muscles ache. I can
barely see the words. A port in any storm.

Tue Nov 16 00:50:59 EST 1999, very edgy and nervous, down to Pennsylvania,
beautiful bus ride, found a book before I left, reference manual for C
from 1990, reading that, as well as Samson's first volume on the history
of Japan (skipping around for all that). Beginning to realize how tired I
am - practiced shakuhachi, trying to make some reasonable phonecalls to
relatives, my parents seem quite ok, which is a great relief, reading The
Great Bear, a book I've had for quite a while, A Thematic Anthology of
Oral Poetry in the Finno-Ugrian Languages. Sometimes can't make heads or
tails of the commonest things. Beginning to get a better idea of the Ex-
perimental Television Center residency coming up - we have a lot of ma-
terial towards that. Had fearful dreams during naps of violence against
yours truly which is hardly anything new under the sun, more like under
the son, given my site-specific typing here, within the family economy.

Wed Nov 17 02:23:13 EST 1999, been reading about C and beginning to under-
stand the structures, copied a little program which I've been combining
with the paste function in unix to make a two pieces... Today got two
books for home computer users in the 70's, at Artco - these are old and
historically interesting, as well as the programming examples, etc. -
Getting Acquainted with Microcomputers, Lou Frenzel - and Peanut Butter
and Jelly Guide to Computers, by Jerry Willis. So going through these, 
and got 10 zip disks; I want to place some linux on them, as well as
remove a lot of things from the laptop here, to make room for the work at
the ETC - we need spaces for quicktime movies - that will probably be one
of the final formats we'll work with. And my mind draws a dull blank here
in Pennsylvania, just trying to get work done - Azure and I walking around
and waiting for the Leonids tomorrow night - we'll see if anything at all
shows up in these parts - it sees people in England are already looking UP
at the skies...

Thu Nov 18 03:19:44 EST 1999, saw amazing fireball and other meteors and
going out again, we were in an isolated area, there was a dike holding
back the Susquehanna river, we were on top of us, some large animal
screaming at us, beginning to charge through the underbrush, looping back
and forth, we got the hell out of there, still shaking, going back into
the area for more meteorics, at least here in Pennsylvania quite spectac-
ular, reading Unix in a Nutshell and Eric Davis' Techgnosis, which is
quite beautiful, used another little C program, found a program to change
the gamma of my images, began playing with that, shakuhachi as usual, on
the webboard earlier, maybe later again, have to go, back outside, quite
soon, the sky is leaving me breathless, the animal as well

Fri Nov 19 02:38:09 EST 1999 going through numbers of bks. I've had at my
parents' house, bringing back Haida, Tlingit, Kwakiutl texts, Einstein's
relativity papers, illustrations for Diderot's Encyclopedia, some texts on
primitive counting systems, another manuscript of David Bohm's, a Cambod-
ian version of the er-hu, etc. So tiring again, stiff from meteors, and
feeling dull, a day of chores of all sorts and assortments... I found out
I will have troubles with the traceroute project, and don't know quite
what to do with it. No possibilities of other jobs coming up yet. Bringing
back some books on phenomenology and techniques of geometry, a book on
groupoids, all sorts of minor wonders. I want to writhe to no unearthly
delights, just the premise and the promise of eternal life, on THIS planet
in THIS universe from NOW on.

Fri Nov 19 20:52:47 EST 1999 and waiting until the complete odd number
until 3001, rather 3111, let us say, 0 neither odd nor even, waiting until
11/19/1999 11:59:59, momentary celebration when celestial gods will mount
one another across even-handed lower formers crawling and careening
against all measure of oddity... Reading as usual today, helped my mother
buy a computer, looking at Tlingit myths, writing slower than usual,
thinking about reading My Antonia, haven't gotten back to Techgnosis - too
much of my own to do/think about for my own good; tomorrow we're returning
to NYC in the afternoon, mail to go through, other things - wrote a piece
about ownership that somehow attempts to burrow through a theory on the
way to narcissism or burrow through narcissism on the way to theory, maybe
a clear sky tonight, want to be one with those streaks of light.

Which are silent, the meteors, quiet as streaking can be, enormous energy
making nothing, the think shearing of part of heaven's sphere, a split,
open to infinite possibilities of light. The silence is literally uncanny,
as if something is quietly inverted beneath the ground itself, it's a made
silence, whereas before there was only a lack of sound. I think of the
shuffling of meteors, I remember that occluded rock with garnet crystals I
found years ago in Maine, and another near it, certain of extraterrestrial
origin, both long since gone, my memory all that remains of them. 

And as soon as I'm back I'll deal with traceroute, more ephemera, wisps,
nothing certain in this world but those rocks, not even memories. Take us
to outerspace, drop us off.

Sun Nov 21 02:18:12 EST 1999, back in New York, writing on the Webboard,
playing electric guitar with splintered nails - 

Top 10 Message Posters - enough said...

 User 
                                             Posts 
 Alan Sondheim 
                                             1000 
 Sue Thomas 
                                             384 
 Bernard Cohen 
                                             185 
 Andrea Semeniuk 
                                             164 
 Margaret Penfold 
                                             143 
 Miekal And 
                                             94 
 Elizabeth James 
                                             94 
 Helen Whitehead 
                                             77 
 R. Adams 
                                             68 
 Nic Coleman 
                                             64 

So it goes and I'm taking the rest of the night off here... 

Mon Nov 22 00:13:17 EST 1999 and starting again onto the next millennium
of messages. Ah well, not a good day today for private reasons (nothing
happening here in Brooklyn however), read a little more Techgnosis and
want to start My Antonia. In the meantime reset the gamma on a whole lot
of jpegs and saved them as bitmaps for the Experimental Television Cen-
ter project; I also tried, again and again, to run Slackware Linux in the
zipslack form but couldn't get the console to mount, so I finally gave
up. And I completed the manuscript for Peter Ganick's Abacus, and sent it
off to him; I have to send off a floppy of the same as well - will
probably get that out tomorrow. Nothing else is new here; the day has been
a day of constant work...

Tue Nov 23 02:13:50 EST 1999 More sound today, saw Inside John Malkovich,
worked on the webboard some more as well as the YOURS backbones, hoping
for the best. Trying to get the fiction-of-philosophy email list digest
working ok as well, with some problems at the moment. I don't know if
anything is being archived, if anything will survive. Wanted to locate an
older piece which I erased by mistake. And beyond that, nothing for the
day, just too much typing, too much business all the way around. I've got
to get off some email lists before I go crazy at this point. I'm working
far too hard... It was Azure's birthday, I had no sleep last night, was up
early this morning, trying just to proceed, looking at Currier and Ives
prints and a book by Parrington on American letters and criticism around
the turn of the last century...

Tue Nov 23 23:29:23 EST 1999 and nothing, general reading, music practice,
my fingers this time aching, and thinking further about the phenomenology
of multimedia objects in relation to their surrounding space. I feel truly
dull, blunted out, staring into space, continuing to write, deal with text
and the theory stuff has come out painfully, too much energy near the
point of exhaustion. Right now the loft is absolutely quiet; there is
nothing to distract me, my fingers can hardly move on the keyboard, I'm
attempting to continue writing. I belong among the forgotten spaces, just
like the Aboriginal lizard carving I purchased in Sydney was a forgotten
and forlorn carving, staying in the store apparently for a year inhabiting
a basket with others coming and going. Forgotten spaces are effacements,
neither creations nor annihilations, and I use the concept to illuminate
at least for me, the environments of multimedia objects. No wonder Jabes,
Derrida, Kristeva, Celan, there is something about the irritated or unas-
similated wanderer among all of them...

Wed Nov 24 21:27:49 EST 1999 but it is another day, this time found an
older book on the Internet, written September 1992, The Internet Compan-
ion, A Beginner's Guide to Global Networking, copyrighted 1993, and so
hopelessly out of date and time - again I'm reminded of the high speed of
telecommunications today, the tenor and content of them, as well as the
bandwidth... I keep wondering if this is a presaging of Virilio's history
tending towards infinity - Meanwhile I'm writing again on forgotten space,
extending the idea clumsily, as if I can no longer think, too exhausted
again all the time. But fumbling with it in all sorts of way, trying to
see it through - not even certain the concept holds, but trying to find a
way to think about all the events that occur here and there on the screen
during art and art presentations - I would give anything to work with
Internet II (my friend is!) on various projects, testing, teasing out the
phenomenology, exploring possibilities, entering into undreamed-of jectiv-
ities and imaginaries... 

Thu Nov 25 21:53:17 EST 1999 What reading on Thanksgiving? Very little,
but received several theory books from Tom which will keep me occupied the
next few days - gave him some tintypes and photographs and will receive a
photo of Nikko Shrine in return. The books include Harada's The Lesson of
Japanese Architecture, which is wonderful!; a novel, elvissey, by Jack
Womack (I get rarely to these, hoping I'll have the time); Lee Quinby's
Anti-Apocalypse, Exercises in Genealogical Criticism; and a relatively old
1974 City Lights Anthology, edited by Ferlinghetti. I did give a group of
books as well, including Rebel Without a Cause, and Speer on Hitler; I
also gave Leslie a book on Zen life (monastic), complete with photographs.
Meanwhile I'm trying to think of the Moabites and prophecy and prophecy's
relationship to the yamabushi, Japanese mountain priests, who would occa-
sionally descend to Kyoto in Heian Japan, making demands, running a bit
amuck, etc. It seems there's something of the obverse to Mary Douglas'
Purity and Danger, that is those groups like the yamabushi and prophets,
who are part in, part out, of cultural matrices, slightly dangerous -
almost like Zuni clowns, but not quite - there being no sanctioned rites
or rituals of their break-ins, break-ups, break-downs, break-outs... This
is still blurred in my mind, I need to look up a few more sources...

Fri Nov 26 16:53:00 EST 1999 Later, today saw an auto accident, retrieved
Peebles' Cosmology which I forgot I loaned to my neighbor, it was more of
a pedestrian accident, a woman hit and bounced across and on a car and on
and on, I have written about this in lf.txt, am worn out, no need to go on
at this point. Reading the Japanese architecture book, last night played
long slow music on Chinese flute and shakuhachi, I've been stressed and
nervous lately. I need more time to think, got a book on Indian Philosophy
which probably has some texts I don't have elsewhere, and I need to take a
slow long slip of languorous sleep again. I will always say, not enough
hours in the day...

Mon Nov 29 00:06:06 EST 1999 and working more on the ETC residency, bought
some tapes, did some images (finished I think 7 in two days, sent them out
to the collaborative project where I promptly hide them, since some are
sexual), dealt with some bad karma on the webboard as best I could. It's
been cold out today, but went walking, later finished a Raymond Chandler
novel, the last he wrote, maybe tonight we'll still have time to watch
Alphaville. And feeling all too often this illness coming on. Sent an
article on the future of the internet (wrote a while ago) to m/c but it's
not very academic and in outline form and I doubt they'll use it. Found
old letters of recommendation/references. Practiced Chinese and Japanese
flutes. Feel much too cold, feverish almost, this is the last time in the
world I should get the flu, before the residency, me running around the
Southern Tier of New York State. Except for the working of the day,
nothing of the day. My lunch and dinner

1/2 box yellow tomatoes
1/2 box green tomatoes, both with balsamic vinagrette sauce
1/2 can of cranberry stuff left over
there was an egg salad sandwich and a half
3 mushrooms, also with the sauce
coffee coffee of course, with skim milk
2 thin slices of ham (I shouldn't have!)

Azure and I watching something or other on television accompanying
different parts of these meals. Two great meals, Azure's on Thursday, Tom
and Leslie's yesterday, Thanksgiving constancy, now I will bed myself

Tue Nov 30 01:00:32 EST 1999 and I wrote something about the past as safe
heaven for the living. Keith Sanborn came over, brought four tapes, one
based on Joan of Arc which is brilliant; we found books like crazy, an
Arthur Danto and Pogglioli's Avant-Garde both pristine in the trash - at
the Salvation Army, Ishmael Reed's Calafia, a collection of California
Poetry plus a great number of other books, including one in Ikebana, plus
early Robert Kelly, etc. and an illustrated book on the Chicago 8 which
looks fairly amazing. We talked about CD Rom burning, Hildegaard von Bing-
em, all sorts of things, I worked on electric guitar again, Allen came
over and I traded some books to him, will pick up others shortly, tomorrow
going downtown for 3/4" tapes. And must recommend the new O'Reilly book on
the Internet, probably the most complete thing available and full of use-
ful information. Struggling with my own writing recently, and constantly
taking texts out of circulation as best I can and too tired but not feel-
ing sick at all today which is a big relief, practiced some Chinese flute
and last night did some, for me, excellent on shakuhachi. Talked Rig Veda
with Keith; he is an amazing thinker, Azure and I earlier wandering around
Brooklyn, the word is exercise, trying not too much online and finding it
all otherwise. The Webboard seems low-keyed. Got rid of my William Bur-
roughs and discussed Bataille. This is my name for now, Alan.

Wed Dec 1 00:21:19 EST 1999 A complicated day, gave Tom the NCR 486/25
with the HP barcode reader and active matrix screen and case; picked up 8
more 3/4" tapes from Film/Video Arts to use on the upcoming project; got
copies of Calafia to give away; started reading Paul Reps Zen Bones Zen
Flesh which I don't think I actually read before; still on the second
Raymond Chandler; got John Reed's Ten Days which Shook the World again,
this time with notes etc. - looks great; Azure found a Korean wedding
dress and we might do some shooting with her wearing it. Looking at Swan-
ton's Haida Texts and Myths, Skidegate dialect, and might use this at the
Center as well, but also want to write on Leslie Thornton's recent film-
work and possibly Keith Sanborn's Joan of Arc piece, in relation to the
Haida material and thinking through narrative issues in general. Leslie
asked if I could speak on narrative, and I began talking about everything
from teleology to measure polytopes and Scripts and Goals, and the organ-
ization of language and the gesture (vis-a-vis Tran Duc Thao) and I think
I could put something together with all of this. Meanwhile feeling ill
physically which is almost a comfort, maybe I can slow down, but waiting
now for latenight snow flurries, so Azure and I can go out wandering. And
bought an isolated volume of the full Golden Bough, on Osiris, very glad
to see it was still at the Salvation Army, quietly waiting for me to show
up. And my mood is good, but I feel so tentative all the time, waiting to
hear something, anything, in relation to jobs, courses, etc. so I can plan
on NOT STARVING for the rest of my life or how it feels...

Wed Dec 1 19:09:57 EST 1999 Found Nietzsche's Wagner and other texts in 2
German texts, also Hegel's Encyclopedia - can use it with the English, and
Lingis, Alterity and Transcendence. Read more Chandler since I couldn't
sleep last night, finally at 7:00 getting there, then getting up at 10:45,
not enough as usual. I'm at war with myself; it's odd anyone else can "get
to me" since I do a decent enough job on myself. Shall I reading Saving
the Text? What to take, beyond the Mishima bio, and other stuff already in
Pennsylvania, to the Experimental Television Center? Getting to the point,
which I reach periodically, where I can't think straught, and meanwhile
there's always the slight fever to drive me crazy. Enough of this; some
people just live in this condition. Meanwhile I've pulled out of the co-
llaborative project permanently - I can't deal with a situation that has
implied censorship, that remains ideologically/politically neutral, that
cuts out sexuality as if it slides into a condemnable pornography. Culture
_goes_ on the edges; it's the edges that provide the brackets holding the
mirrors in place. I'm fragile and neurotic in real life, but my work shows
some sort of minor bravery; I'd rather hold myself there working, than
come in - most people don't realize that they're the spies who came in
from the cold, that they carry the cold, that there's nothing of the
warmth but make-believe for just a very little while. (And of course I
realize I'm writing to myself here, so it becomes a bit self-serving, but
I never claimed nicety.)

Thu Dec  2 22:54:10 EST 1999 as the great fear hits, finding out my SVA
class "didn't make," not enough students; they expect it to be fine for
next semester, which is next year, but again I'm struggling all the time
for money, a total mess, so I went out and bought Total Art: Environments,
Happenings, and Performance, by Adrian Henri, quite old, as well as a book
by Rom Harre on the phenomenology of the body and three volumes of Kant in
German, hoping I can find translations as well, the writings on Natur-
philosophie, then Vermischte Schriften, and a strange Beweisgrund zu einer
Demonstration des Deseins Gottes which I vaguely recall somewhere in Eng-
lish. So enough, practiced guitar, Azure picked up another DAT tape for
our going away, and I ran around depressed as I could be trying to figure
next year out; decided to try and "do" another cross-country trip, so I
wrote a few people, to see if it's possible; I already had to invitations
from southern California. All of which is a bit crazy as well as tiring
me. Earlier read some Nietzsche on Wagner for the pure fun of it, have it
in German as well. I would love at the moment _to sleep_ and just might
try it, wake up later to write. With a glass of wine in me (white, not
that dry which is a real mistake), I'm half out of it...

Sat Dec 4 00:17:00 EST 1999 Got a TRS80 Color Computer and entered some
Basic lines but couldn't figure out how to name/run the program. So it
goes... I'll get it yet. It was made in 1980 and cost me $20 in mint con-
dition but no workbook associated with it. And listening now to Donald
Knuth talking about computers and aesthetics and that's beautiful. He's
absolutely amazing. I've been very shaky today for some reason, not doing
so well, trying to think as best I can through a lot of turmoil. And still
packing for the Experimental Television Center, more and more small bits
of things, trying not to forget anything. It's been exhausting. No real
new reading today, back into Techgnosis, that's all. I don't have much to
say. I didn't sleep well, but that is not new. Last night read a bit of a
biography on Mishima I'm taking with me. It's a bizarre time. I wish I
could stay up forever. I don't ever want to die. I don't want to think
about anything except I know so very little and I want to know more. There
is too much to know, too much excitement ahead of humanity. We're back in
the Dark Ages and it will take a century for knowledge to emerge with any
degree of certainty anywhere, and perhaps not then and perhaps humanity
won't survive but I won't be around. I want to know my universe. I want to
scream like a small child. That's all I care about, this screaming.
There's nothing else, just this. Nothing.

Sun Dec 5 00:54:30 EST 1999 and going tomorrow to Pennsylvania, the next
day to the Experimental Television Center. The TRS80 is quietly sleeping.
Nothing will be running here, someone taking care of the cat. Away for
ten days but "on" "here" hopefully during that time. Azure and I walked up
to a crafts fair and walked back. I got Kant's Anthropology in German back
at the second-hand bookshop, and Jabes' first three volumes from The Book
of Questions, from Tom, although it turns out I already have this. My
German's terrible; I also got Kant's writings on history, including
material on races, etc. These volumes - I haven't seen them in English at
all. So today has been a fair amount of running around and just being with
Azure, trying to calm down, looking at one or another book, not really
focusing that well. Madeline Kahn died. New York is more right-wing than
ever. The WTO goes up in flames, Mars. I write idiotically about pure land
Buddhism, what's the point. I think, Nichirin's a man for our times, and
that makes me fear Nichirin. Sometimes I think of my body as pure kanji,
and then pure hebrew; in either case, churning into names, smoke filling
the skies with strange inscriptions...

Mon Dec 6 00:15:16 EST 1999 and down in Pennsylvania. I'm trying to work
on not being constantly negative; today though I got hit hard by pure ex-
haustion, building up from a week's insomnia and bad dreams. I could
hardly focus, made silly jokes to Azure and then realized the form inter-
ested me. Found Kant's essays in English - I have a lot of books stored
here, including Pepy's diary, which I'm taking first to the Experimental
Television Center tomorrow and then on to New York. Getting more and more
excited to work with this audio-visual equipment; I found my Egyptian nay,
an end-blown flute, and finally was able to play it, thanks to starting on
the Shakuhachi. Beautiful microtonal intervals that I've heard in North
African music, and they sound amazing and thin at high speed; I can just
about hear the drumming in the background. So the day has been one of
rising and falling, staying awake, feeling dizzy, getting exhausted again,
thinking of Kant and a lot of other writers for that matter. And I found
some more of my old essays - I'm taking them back with me. As well as the
Nibelungenlied, I could go on and on. A fortress are my books, I shall not
want, riding high and parasitic on other peoples' words. Tomorrow the
drive will be wonderful, the ETC will be wonderful, and with the turn of a
switch I will enter tomorrow with yesterday's technology...

Tue Dec  7 04:31:21 EST 1999 or worse. The 3/4" isn't working so I have to
use the two hi8 cameras with me for mastering, and there is another color
camera that's out and there is a problem with the Toaster 4000 on the
Amiga, but not crippling. I made 15 minutes of tape so far, it's about all
I've been able to think of. I also had to get another ISP locally here in
order to even connect to the Net - it's been somewhat disasterous today,
but at least tyhe 15 minutes are sufficienlty eerie. Used shakuhachi,
Mirage sampling keyboard, electric guitar, voice. Worked with some Adobe
stuff, two of the Amigas, one of which has the frame buffer that still
goes well, and the other carries the Toaster. Mind full of tech, hoping
that somehow the output gets warped, placed in one or another direction,
slanted out there, we'll do some shooting tomorrow out of doors, I'm
certain of that. Using just about everything I brought with me, except for
zipdrive, and that's tomorrow/ today - it's so late out, I've been working
nonstop for hours and hours...

Wed Dec 8 19:15:17 EST 1999 There's been a break, I'm on the television
residency here. Very depressed still about job opportunities, but I don't
have to think about them directly from here, I can't even work on them
from here. Had Clay Shirky (who wrote a bad book on Net chat and relation-
ships a while ago) damn me for the traceroute project, saying it will
bring the Net to a halt. I have no idea what he's talking about; from what
I know of tcp/ip and current bandwidth, as well as the number of partici-
pants, nothing at all will happen - it will be less than someone listening
say to real audio or participating in an online game. Here at the Experi-
mental Television Center, I've been sleeping at most 5-6 hours a day,
working on a series of tapes, and getting to learn the new stuff - see
above. I've been playing the Egyptian _nay_ as well, an end-blown flute
with six holes, microtonal intervals, the most difficult mouthpiece I've
come across, something like a tube with one end slightly sharpened. And
not much reading; I've been looking at old TRS80 Basic manuals, and other
things Japanese. The truth is, I'm too tired in a way to do the diary for
the next few days - I will, but some of the work is going into the "rush"
series which is at http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/writers/sondheim/diary/lg.txt at
the very end of course... 

Tue Dec 14 01:52:55 EST 1999 so many six days later and you will have to
go to the lg.txt for the upkeeping here, which is the rush series
mentioned above but on the other hand I will insert them here, they cover
the gamut, love alan, here they are:

___________________________________________________________________________


rush // going into the frame buffer then out and lowering the pedestal
before sending to the toaster where it coagulates with a frozen wipe
set half-way according to the other half of the connection from the
hi8 camera through the effects generator and the whole running into the
other hi8 camera and connecting with the line input from the audio
mixer and the effects box lined up with the mirage and guitar effects
box, time base correctors all over the place for field freezing and 
signal corrections, eye always on the waveform monitor and vectorscope
among the analog machines connected and interconnected with adobe premier
and the relatively slow pc with the huge hard-drive getting its images
from the hi8 output before closing out and slowly losing sync running
through the toaster, the guitar set hard through the marshall amplifier
raising and peaking the harmonics, cutting them out at the lean sound,
shakuhachi and voice combined, azure and me on the floor, on the chair,
microphones everywhere, the bolex tripod doubling as whole worlds look
down on us, us, us


_______________________________________________________________________


rush ii / new 3/4" edit deck replacing old worn-out broken belt, color
camera connector held together by tape, hi8s freed for camera work, this
3/4" does insert so black-bursting at the moment through the toaster,
setting up the 1970s character generator for the block look, beginning
working this morning, now it's operating fine in roll crawl and grid mode,
worked with the quicktime images today, as well as azure-ballet and other
supporting or non-supporting materials, hokey guitar playing, some mirage
as well but a great deal of speech processing, i had wanted to go that
route, meanwhile insert editing didn't quite work without rollback on the
hi8 cameras so i've been rerecording and cutting into the original
3/4" work since the hi8 rollback is ok for recording then rerecording with
time base corrector and noise reduction into and through the matrix,
constantly reworking the patchcords, also using the analog synthesizer
this afternoon in order to switch between three cameras controlled with a
voltage-controlled amplifier which then went into the effects on the
toaster 4000 and out again through the usual checkups including phase
which is always slightly off and pedestal always fiercely lowered, using
the audio echo only sparingly and recording a long sequence with azure-
ballet on the laptop and shooting off it with the hi8, then transferring
it to the other hi8 with the tine base corrector and noise reduction to
begin the sequencing described here


_________________________________________________________________________


rush3 // azure in korean wedding dress and an abacus will play a role,
reed flute, egyptian _nay,_ already at work for sound, moved all the
equipment i brought to one end of the loft for more room, getting ready
for still photography, using the frame buffer again for comical alan
waving the _nay,_ color camera placed in position, buffer creating noh
images across the repetition and slow movement, facial closeups as one
image is always slightly displaced from the other, the phase controls
transforming colors into jades, will be a silent work except for clacking
on occasion, nothing more, sound of abacus beads in noh rhythm framework,
_nay_ playing improving, thinking about finnish folklore, shaman songs,
noh plays again, some things from the upanishads, the equipment still
silent behind me, decided not to use any of those things, looking at noise
in the old 1970s text generator, it's forced into on-screen characters,
just like a dream is forced from neural noise, thinking perhaps make a
piece with all of this, the dreamwork of the machine manifest in a text
which takes the indecipherable murmurings of the universe one step further


__________________________________________________________________________


rush4 // or if not the universe one step further those insidious sysadmins
who keep my day to a minimum of pleasure, stepping on my fabulous trace-
route plans, one warning that if i had my way, y2k would look like a holi-
day. if i were so lucky, the net would collapse of its own, one dialup
connect to a happy isp and real audio or another duke nukem out of date
saga and there goes the planet. meanwhile the hunger of the equipment
calls me forth; it's roaring behind me; i can't escape it, or my depres-
sion, which has deepened, bad sleep even here, my job worries following me
everywhere, i live with death, i don't want to spend the next several dec-
ades pathetically looking for work, my knowledge means nothing, i'm not a
man blah blah, i'm not even human blah blah, i'm too full of self-hatred
blahblah, i'm my own worst enemy blahblah, blahblahblablablablablblblbbbb,
i don't know how azure puts up with me, or why, i must have my moments,
they just don't stick around, back working with noise in the machine, the
master tape has too much dropout (3/4"!), i'm sending through the time
base correctors again and adding noise reduction by copying it to the hi8
5000 camera, back and forth, meanwhile the tr81 records tapes that jitter
in the 5000, but the 5000 records tapes that play fine in the tr81 and the
tr81 tapes play fine in it as well, recording out in bitter cold susque-
hanna river, working the keying in the toaster and trying for a third
source after recording electric guitar through air coupling (marshall
amplifier, effects, etc. into microphone then into mixer and additional
effects, resonating in the room for added texture, keeping the whole in
balance), adding nay material to the five-second-delay setting, along with
new shakuhachi work, now i work at dancing on the guitar too fast to see
my hands, want that freedom of pure touch ahead of visual feedback, here i
am on such and such a fret, need the internal roar, that's all i have left
of me, this this this this this, this internal roar


__________________________________________________________________________



rush5 // the harder days are those when i'm down, working through it, my
music perhaps better, the video veering however into uncomfortable terri-
tory, as if i want my truths, but veiled. veiled truth - because the ob-
verse is death of course. today working with azure again, keying in water
images against a very flattened and somewhat hysteric to-be-determined
studio imagery, as well as more musical recording. i worry that my hands
will slow up; arthritic, i'll remember the fingerboard of the guitar, al-
most a physical memory, the very _thick_ of it, but not the skill the ab-
ility to move fast, produce the complexity called for by the mind. when my
fingers are invisible, it's the physical against the physical, sound com-
ing in from the remnants of the world, what i can see, if i could see the
things of space that make the air what it is, air-mountains and valleys,
air-trees and rivers, all the air-creatures of this or any other earth.
went out riding to johnson city, the village of johnson city, saw a very
old working carousal there, as well as a pagoda housing parts of an elec-
trical plant, which i photographed, came back and did another 45 minute
music tape, only recording on one side, my fingers hardly moving at this
point, but very satisfied with the sound, going for the shakuhachi later,
it's dark out, river's right outside the window about twenty meters down,
i've been feeling physically a lot healthier since i've been here, what a
surprise, working with a digital delay system and upped it to 32 seconds
for late-night recording and working with a digital shortwave as well, put
up the antenna east/west this evening, only direction really possible in
the building, working with themes of alienation, seduction, gender, the
psychoanalytics of the image, the haunting of the imaginary - which brings
up this intensive work with largely analog equipment, reading the old
waveform monitors once again, tweaking everything from phase to gain to
offset to pedestal, this _visual_ state-of-affairs, riding a system that
refuses constructivity - the only subtext is that of the ntsc signal it-
self, and the rest is amplitude, frequency, etc., with the delay, symbols
for queen, mouth, wheel, superimposed over disheveled azure mouthing aah,
my aah as well off-camera, she's in an open kimono, nothing revealed,
glazed look, tripods everywhere, my mouth's long aaah in background, this
for an evening, but this mindset of the analog, stringing units in any
direction, shortwave in the background looking for numbers stations, it's
the spectral mother all over again, voices, voices, voices


_________________________________________________________________________


rush6 // the analog again, it's a sliding scale, it's sliding across the
skin, no jump-cuts, skipping nothing, guitar tuned so low microtones are
easy, the same with shakuhachi, everything a caress of the audible and
visible. i haven't explored these areas for years, the circuitry of the
pixelless image, the image-body as flux or flow, it fascinates, fastens
me. every knob moves through continuous positions, a turn reveals new
worlds as chaos enters in the form of pure land noise way above the min-
imum. keep the noise down! and watch the universe withdrawing, foofwa
here, we're filming ballet, azure and me on the floor, she in primadonna
against this flesh, foofwa in serious costume, neurotic movements, five
cameras triggered by microphone, guitar backdrop, i'm too tired to really
know what i'm doing, pushing this way, the fall into the icy river, maybe
snow do come along long way so soon, a half hour of dance video, azure and
i making love in a corner, neurotic dancing and furious frenzy of camera
switches, sound dah dah dah dah dah at high speed changing things around,
azure in ballet dress dancing on main street in the middle of cold winter
night, jump rhythms against foofwa and azure dance on red brick wall, all
systems go, from ennui yesterday to neuroticism today, from languor yes-
terday to high energy today, from flow to cutting through, in and out of
dancing, bodies, ecstasies, sounds, murmurs of words almost understood


__________________________________________________________________________


rush7 // rushed out, working all day on pieces deconstructing musicals
(film and live) which means editing, music/sound, dance routines, sync-
opation, nothing comes easy, using the tr81 hi8 for outdoor capture in the
middle of the night, avoiding the police and rednecks screaming faggot,
it's got tape problems so playback processing is necessary. i'm wandering
around the analog, going deeper and deeper into it, the digital/computer
relegated to the background - that became clear when i did an early pack-
ing (so we would have more time tomorrow), looking at the zip drive as if
it were a foreign object - i'd brought up ten disks, and didn't need even
one of them - foofwa and azure dancing in the cold gazebo, 19 degrees out,
light ballet costumes, the cameras running more or less, dancing in the
street, dancing around the fountain, around cars, finger-snapping all the
time, keeping the rhythm go go go, tomorrow using the blind girl poems
from 1844, there's not a moment to lose, but sight is gone the way of the
digital, ironically the net is slamming me at the moment, hard to type
these few notes of a bygone era, i realize, the computer doesn't breathe,
i hardly do any more, been sick and feverish almost the entire day, we're
going to begin work in a few hours and i can't see what i'm fucking typing
as packets sputter and die, i'm slamming my arms into the chair, the pain
helps


_________________________________________________________________________

rush8 // last full day, four and a half hours' sleep this time, the fur-
nace noisy, set it on last night because of feeling ill, we're already
duplicating and preparing to edit, took three rolls of film yesterday,
getting it developed now, trying to figure out when to come up again here,
we'll have six dance pieces finished in two and a half days, not counting
the materials azure and i did plus the photographs and audiotapes (some of
which are heading for dancetracks), i woke up this morning feeling desper-
ate and suicidal after a terrible dream about joblessness and loss, still
haven't been able to shake it, the v5000 camcorder was able to handle the
footage from the tr81, the jittering just added to the dance, used noise
reduction on maximum plus lowering pedestal and running through a tbc (as
well as the tbc in the camera and tbc in the toaster) and it all seemed
more than usable, not a bit of dropout anywhere on the tape, indicating
i've got to take the tr81 in for repairs, and i want to watch real tele-
vision as soon as i can with foolish people laughing, i haven't relaxed in
days, and the dreams are always getting the better of me, they're reflect-
ing my truth of absolute uselessness, there's nothing i can do in this
culture, wah wah, nothing anyone wants to pay for, just noticed the lack
of 'effect' in the rush writing, no processing at all, no programming,
it's all in the language, it's all on the video screens here, running on
and on and on

rush9 // and on and on and leaving and driving eight hours after finish-
ing a full six tapes, working against foofwa's musculature, the control
of the body against imminent desire, imminent against immanent, clutching
azure to me as local suffusion, blanked stares against enraptured, i'd say
ecstatic, deportment, within and without, haven't yet come to grips with
dance, i wrote, part of the piece yesterday, 'in the danceworld there are
no wings,' one always inheres in the body, its presence-presentiment, it's
this, cohering, that covers the text for me, i don't want to lose that
presence, for a week online was secondary, it was the full resonance of
the world and the things within it, the totality of chaotic harmonics
produced in living flesh, fucking cut into the dance, the dance stuttered
against fucking, taking over the street, the blanking of the street, sound
from the culvert, dance beneath the bridge, azure and i couldn't bathe or
shower for a week, venue discussions, the sound always so fierce, then
again a lilt and syncopation carrying balletdress and ballerina against
the freezing of nijinsky leaps on the street of musicals

rush10 // back to language but what i've heard and seen, unimaginable,
what is an ecstatic


__________________________________________________________________________


as I said and you can see, they cover the gamut, and I have been away from
the webboard for a few days, come back on and there are 56 messages and I
answer a few of them, but leave leave leave the rest alone, I can't do all
of that, I will die from exhaustion if I resonate in such a fashion, I
will go to bed and read the Cid and play shakuhachi, start the day anew
again tomorrow...

Wed Dec 15 00:19:31 EST 1999 and finally catching up on trAce, I set the
messages to read, couldn't handle all of them, played shakuhachi, wrote
some new pieces, two of them, feel satisfied with them, more and more ex-
cited by the video/audio we did, want to work closer to the grain, reread-
ing parts of George Devereux' Mohave Ethnopsychiatry and Suicide: The
Psychiatric Knowledge and the Psychic Disturbances of an Indian Tribe, as
well as more of the McLuhan, hoping against hope for nighttime snow,
tomorrow want to pick up another book on kanji with the histories of some
of the ideograms, I need to extend myself more than I have been, I feel,
dulled mentally in some ways, overly extended audio-and-video but want to
combine everything, going to read Arnold Lustig's Indecent Dreams over the
next couple of days... and set up the traceroute project tomorrow at
trAce, very excited about all of that!

Thu Dec 16 00:32:08 EST 1999 here we are growing larger, looking at Ken-
neth Henshall's A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters, which I'd seen
before and had always wanted, replete with history, nervous family issues
here in Pennsylvania compounded by sickness, we'll be back in New York
soon. I need to get the traceroute running properly. I need to think more
about analog/digital and the great divide and the sliding of symbols and
symbolic histories among ideogrammatic formations. I need to understand
dream issues of condensation and displacement better in relation to such
symbols and the economies of symbolic transformation in the mind. And how
these slid and slip. And how these stutter among serrated edges.

Fri Dec 17 01:18:33 EST 1999 It's been a difficult day and I ended up
reading around Exodus III in Hebrew/English (in that order), working on an
exegesis in relation to Rashi's commentary - that will be sent out shortly
- it's a way of clearing my mind I suppose. And reading more into the book
of Kanji, trying to memorize things. The difficulties have exhausted me;
I'm trying to get over things, there are times my self-hatreds, neuroses,
stupidities, etc., get the better of me. Somewhere beneath the surface I'm
decent, don't even have to work so hard, can old onto the things of the
world with some degree of certainty. But from the surface, that degree and
the things themselves appear like a gift, I can imagine a childhood birth-
day party filled with emptiness, disappearances, dark skies and faltering
candles...