[NetBehaviour] The universe that is the universe

[Alan Sondheim]

The universe that is the universe

http://www.alansondheim.org/universe.jpg

It's only a name that we give to everything. It stands in for
time and space in a way that is inconceivable to us. the
beginnings and endings are ours and have nothing to do with the
universe. the universe is the name that means absolutely
nothing. It's clear it's so clear given the length and breadth
of the everything and its complexity that there is no place for
a God or another mechanism that would start at the beginning and
be otherwise than the epistemology of the world as we know it
with the world as it is given to us. Such a week epistemology.
To assume that there is a creator at 1 end is to assume the
ultimate hubris on our part. That is all. we have absolutely no
knowledge of anything. even here as I tried to talk into this
machine. The voice is distorted by the machinery of the world
around us. it can't say what I mean it to say because what I
mean to say, is it conceivable. It's not a poetry or a poetic.
it's not prose nor a list of things. it is not an order of
things or an outline of things. it's nothing like any of that.
What is going on with that? This dictation fails in such a way
so horribly that my words are distorted. Just as the universe is
distorted whenever I speak. but the universe is not distorted,
what is distorted is only my presence within it is only my
articulation and paltry logics applied to nothing whatsoever
although I have the hubris and pride to believe it's applied to
everything bracketing everything conjuring everything as if
everything could be within a clause or a dependent clause. It's
almost as if there's a war going on a war with words which are
inconceivable in relationship to the universe. It's almost as if
what we're doing is nothing more than talking to ourselves. all
we have to do is add rhyme to make a poem out of it. This
machine is no longer capable of taking down a proper dictation.
it's not taking down to dictation as it normally does. faced
with the universe, and with the age of this particular machine,
which is miniscule and relationship even to the room, it's
saying there's nothing more that can be said in terms of a
bracketing of the world. it is all hubris. it is enough that we
can go out and walk.  For a mile or so and return somewhat near
where we began . that is what we are given. That's all we are
given. there's nothing more or less to anything than that.. We
pretend that words have ontology that they reference things. We
pretend that there's something beyond our local grammars. Beyond
our local Beyond your local ways and means of looking at things.
it's as if we think that there truth or something that is
graspable and words are bracketed. nothing is farther from
anything. nothing is far from the sounds we make. this machine
is dying. This machine is dying and refusing to listen to my
words as it come through to speak to you about the only truth I
know which is the absence of truth. or rather, the absence of
what truth might be period.. Yes, it's all ugly what this
machine is doing. it's not taking a note down. it's distorting
what I'm saying. but every statement is already a distortion.
every step would take in the Earth on the Earth is already a
distortion. we live in distorted times and distorted spaces. we
think that's what?  Time and space are. talk, time and space
are. We think that's what time in space are. Whatever I'm saying
here is already always already effaced by what I am saying. the
words are choking me to death. that is, all the risk. and the
remnant of this is distorted group of words.  Ultimately, we'll
mean nothing at all and be uninterpretable. Because as I'm
speaking them and I'm watching them appear on the screen. They
are doing no one any good and have no reference to what I am
saying or thinking whatsoever. And have no reference to what I
am saying and speaking. and have no reference to what I'm saying
or thinking whatsoever speaking. Or repeating what I am saying.
That has no reference for speaking to anything that I am
saying.

Now on another machine. Now perhaps this machine will understand
what I am saying. Enough to reproduce what I'm saying. The more
we understand the universe and the more we put the universe
together in our minds engineer equations and tabulations the
less we understand the universe. There is always going to be
the scar or cicatrice of ontology, remnant running into ground.
Using phrases such as 8^100^100^1000 it's as if googleplex
suddenly makes sense, suddenly comforts us. We do violence to
our surrounds and the world . We cannot conceive our collapsed
bracketing. We give them names. Like tree, love, googleplex.
Now how frail is that? What will most certainly disappear
probably within the next century here on the surface and
somewhat within and somewhat above, a small bit above, probably
most electromagnetic transmissions will disappear. Already the
biosphere's crashing. so for those of you who believe there are
gods that created this mess, that made the cosmos, good luck.
You're luck if they planted the last tree standing.

Universe has no meaning. Much of anything, words are tools that
represent minor inconveniences. There's not much else around.

*

What has meaning is the earth we fall into. The ground saps us.
while we think we are at the pinnacle of death. Only by ratios
and exponents can we symbolize, void into void in its midst. On
the way to day we understand this. No sentence is a completion,
no breath continues.

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