[NetBehaviour] the clerk

[Alan Sondheim]

the clerk

all my work is a quotation mark around duplicity and the
fabricated text. all my work is a preface for death and the
collapse of fecundity controlled by a consciousness intent on
structuring. all my work is the grounds for dismissal. all my
work is a commentary on all my work and the possibility of
having for at least once in my lifetime my work read and
appreciated for the structures and theoretical underpinnings i
find within it. all my work is a commentary on the i and its
dissolution in the face of the serrated cuttings of the digital
against the soft suppurating flesh of the analogic. all my work
is a repetition of the same ideas sporting new clothes.

i live in the land of new clothes here in a new city in a nice
home and i know i am a tourist here, that i am passing through
this home in a way i haven't passed through others. everyone
except for azure threatens disappearance; their edges are
translucent and i am invisible in their midst. i must learn a
new language and it is not this language but one of honorifics
which i am incapable of applying; i would have to have the
chart.

the chart details the honorific for each and every person and
their status for themselves and for others, and the status of
others for themselves and for them. the chart is always a
consultation and never in process; it is not an ancient wisdom
but a permanent semiotics based on the principle of exclusion.
i am not on the chart and i have never been on the chart.

i repeat my work for the clerk in the office where i go to
purchase the chart. she is a nice clerk and the day is nice. i
am happy to speak to her and recite my work. i receive a copy of
the chart but i find i am not on the chart and i have never been
on the chart.

because of that i cannot read the chart because the chart is
dependent on one's place on the chart, and without the place of
the one, there is no reading, there is only a fielding, and the
chart appears meaningless or interpretable at best by a
hermeneutics residing in the critique of abstraction in painting
as well as the abstraction of everyday life.

the chart is a machine for transforming the abstraction of
everyday life to the concrete of the every day, and with the
chart one is happy and there is no longer a need to repeat my
work which i continue to repeat almost every day, since i am old
and daily repetition is beyond my means.

in this fashion all my work is a duplicity and all i am capable
of doing is the recitation before the nice clerk who is happy to
hear me as he continues his daily round on this very nice day.