The Mostly Wonderful Story Status of Universes: a Limited Fork Theory observation of an amazing interactive impulse so far unstoppable, unflappable, unrelenting, undeniable

Not only because of the approach of Thanksgiving and its mandate (as practiced in my family) to reflect on some form of blessing, preferably neglected forms, but also because I'm, well, usually fork-ready do I think about: The Mostly Wonderful Story Status of Universes: a Limited Fork Theory observation of an amazing interactive impulse so far unstoppable, unflappable, unrelenting, undeniable

(images of fork-ready forkergirl by Ansted of kna'Knox)


fork-ready: prepared through a bifurcating, connecting, disconnecting, and reconnecting (on some scale, in some location, for some duration of time) tine system (perhaps even a single tine that in its looping and twisting and coiling and curling and thinning and thickening and spiraling and loss and gain or color, etc. seems a mass of many tines instead of an endless single) —even though the many, if that is the case, may have sprouted from a single origin: connected at/to the root system, perhaps forming the root system by bifurcating from an original point, some sort of bursting in every direction, in fact bursting and simultaneously establishing direction, space, time, the remarkable;

prepared for the reaching out, the reaching toward and the reaching for that I like assigning to roots and branches as indication of compulsion to seek something with which to connect, as indication of ability to seek something with which to connect, as indication of need to seek something with which to connect —the very definition of fork. Dare I say as revelatory of design? made to reach, seek, connect? A self-designed existence for which existence is existence's engine? —a whole lot of power that came from where? why? how? Or maybe it was already always there: unbounded, infinite location in which sleepy stuff drifted around, bumping into each other and aggregating into something more robust, more volatile, and then poof! a cycle of existence ignites, spreads, is still spreading, existence riding shockwaves of its own existence —till one day it fizzles? stuff goes back to sleep, drifts, collides, aggregates, explodes.

My favorite branch is the one posted here, a digital copy of what I photographed in 2006 on Miller Road, a branch well-involved with reaching, curving, heading for spiral, partial lung outline, almost half a valentine, more heart when the branch mirrors into valentine fulfillment, the eye/mind/digital manipulation extending/fixing the curve for love of that.


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The branch arced almost completely across the street, from even to odd side. I drove under it twice a week day, as under a wooden arm of rainbow, wooden arch, shrine, colossal matchstick. I had thought to take one of its leaves, without working out how I might climb it, what it would be like to hang from it over moderate residential traffic, or determining whether or not the branch I loved could support my weight plus the added bulk of adoration, but I didn't act soon enough; that branch is gone now, a curl of smoke up and out a chimney (announcing the death by licensed axe-murderer of the wooden Pope of Miller Road) the same year that I photographed it as I approached it in my car. There was no city-wide mourning of the almost-half-heart limited fork branch. No obituary in the print news that soon enough published its own obituary, joining the death of one of the best independent book stores ever, the massive wooden doors transplanted to Shaman Drum from lesser castles.


(fork usually seen tines-up with knife on ShirtiGator red knife and fork apron, black knife and fork apron, and underwear)
At ShirtiGator, forks tell parts of their story, and as clones, they tell other parts of their story here. The telling is an unfolding of information; anything that exists exists as information and as the story system of that information.



I join fork theory at a point where a fork already exists, where a forking system is already active: bifurcations in progress, accustomed to unfolding, yet there's room for me within the accommodating system, and room for the forking within my evolving sensibilities. The limited forking system and I adapt to each other, and my identity is reforged: forkergirl emerges. Reborn daughter of a fork, reborn mother of a fork.
Love at first awareness of encounter.

I lost the ability to form any contexts that a limited fork did not inform. I terminated old loyalties, even those from which I'd benefitted. The whole fork (within the limits) and nothing but the fork. Live by the fork, for the fork: the tines that bind also blind. I'm lovin' the fastness of the reconfiguration of food: when the tines are bare, turns out that the utensil itself has a taste. Assessments of information are filtered through Limited Fork Theory, connection after connection in an incredible anthology of encounter. In the evidence of encounter, the information of encounter are the stories of encounter. Time is also the story of time. Space is also the story of space. The fork-constant keeps forking; the fork constantly forks. Assessments are therefore made within a limited or compromised context of, as far as Limited Fork Theory knows, fork perpetuity.

Ever since there's been a limited fork system, the fork has been constant, existing in some form on some scale in some location. That it adapts as it receive (and transmits) information (stories); that it is configurable helps it succeed, helps it persist, form after form, iteration after iteration, story after story.

Mysteries of beginning have no consequence that threatens the fork, for solving those mysteries or not solving them does not terminate the fork's existence. All possible beginnings lead to a lead fork, bifurcate into a limited fork, because the fork exists already, is already an interim destination of all genesises. Any speculation, hypothesis, or ultimately proof about genesis must somehow lead to emergence of a limited fork system, a system that only from time to time distresses over a lack definitive reason for its existence —maybe that's why it works so hard to reach for, to reach toward, eventually, everything, collaborating in manufactured purpose. Could it be that the complete story of anything is also the story of everything?



Seeking connection, making connection, toward a moment in which everything has become temporarily connected with everything, a kind of filling in of those gaps between things, as if once all connected, that tine, that string could be pulled returning stuff to a compact state, perhaps a dense ball becoming increasing more dense the tighter the string is pulled by a gravity of self-embrace into a tiny speck of infinite density, a seed for another cycle of universes as a tendril leaks and the whole thing comes undone, an infinite unraveling until stuff grabs onto stuff and pulls everything together again until another leak. Above, the Ganges as captured in a NASA satellite image bifurcates, flows, connects with (with a little help from forkergirl and their shared ambition) two Twisted Fork Bistro logos, the convergence telling a story of convergence, accommodation, access, connection.

The Ganges-Twisted Fork Bistro poam.

River and logo side-by-side, a bit of Ganges and a taste of Vancouver bathing in the river, forking up water that washes the twisted tines, that flows between them, that falls, having touched tines back into the river, back into the water cycle, back into recycling bits of reconfigured existence:


At the top, a bit of silver-plated Ganges captured just after it came out of forkergirl's mouth as the words silver-plated Ganges came out of the mouth that tasted them with teeth, tongue, lips, mind, heart: a moment of giving Thanks.




(A Veal Surprise Shatters A Family's Turkey Day
by JEFFERY RUDELL from npr)


To exist is to be a form of story.

We are immersed in chapters, we contain chapters, and we are chapters.

Some of us experience the poetry of this, are aware of the lovely and tragic poetry of this, burden of metaphor, information able to be expressed as other information, the loveliness and tragedies of configurability, everything is the poetry of this terrible and wondrous, the powerful and humbling intrusion of connection, the collaborative nature of all things telling a story against singular possession and individual achievement, a story of embrace that as it widens on all scales in all locations during all moments of time snares everything (at least once), possesses all (on some scale in some location for some duration of time), achieves.

ONE WORD book video (featuring "fork" from "sixpack")

The promotional video for One Word book: contemporary writers on the words they love or loathe, edited by Molly McQuade from Sarabande Books features excerpts from fork, a section of the essay sixpack by Thylias Moss, a close associate of forkergirl.

Please enjoy this marvelous multimedia short film by Tucker Capps for Sarabande. Dear Storytellers (as we keep waiting for motion, please note the mix of active and static elements in this little film that delivers forkfuls of visual delight, the quick shift from one visual to another, continuity maintained/sustained by both the spoken text (written by forkergirl's friend) and the music by Jonathan Zalben. Note the range of visual textures. In this case, text preceded the film, inspired the film, provided both rules and obstructions in which/despite which the short film was made. The writing itself did not mandate an unfolding of content as a plot-dependent narrative —indeed; rules embedded in the structure of the writing (structure determined by tenets of Limited Fork Theory) may have made plot-dependent narrative an unlikely vehicle for content intentions or the content transcendence that occurs in this film.


My Two words about the One Word video: Forking good!

One Word: Contemporary Writers on the Words They Love or Loathe from Sarabande Books on Vimeo.

From the One Word book website:
In One Word: Contemporary Writers on the Words They Love or Loathe, Molly McQuade asks the question all writers love to answer: what one word means the most to you, and why? Writers respond with a wild gallimaufry of their own choosing, from ardor to bitchin’ to themostat to wrong to very. There is corn, not the vegetable but the idea, defining cultural generations; solmizate, meaning to sing an object into place; and delicious slang, such as darb and dassn’t. Composed as expository or lyric essays, zinging one-liners, extended quips, jeremiads, etymological adventures, or fantastic romps, the writings address not only English words but also a select few from French, German, Japanese, Quechua, Basque, Igbo, and others. The result is like the best of meals, filled with color, personality, and pomp. There is something delightful and significant for every reader who picks up this wonderful book.

“This sublime anthology is poetry for people who don’t read poems, collecting 67 essays, short stories, and memoirs in which seasoned writers and novices expound, meditate, or riff on a single word. The words range from the familiar (forget by Mimi Schwartz, crash by Dan Moyer) to the obscure (darb by Erin McGraw [1920s slang for an excellent person or thing], umunnem by Kelechi Okere [an Igbo term for all one's blood relatives], from the short (a by Joel Brouwer takes up eight pages) to the long (floccinaucinihilipification by Siobhan Gordon [it means nothing]. Thylias Moss’s disquisition on fork and related words itself forks in many directions. Jason Iwen detects capitalist ideology in interesting, which first appeared in 1711 in an economic context. Poets are almost half of the contributors, but they also include critics, translators, academics, and novelists. These marvelous little pieces of writing highlight not so much the words themselves as what words do, how they exist as themselves but also as the carriers of meanings, which shift and branch into many paths real and metaphoric, juicy with sound.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)


“One Word is a rich and varied collection of meditations on words from the simplest (a and or) to the rarest (kankedort, with only one known occurrence) and from the most basic (doom and filthy) to the most ornately elaborate (floccinaucinihipilification). Starting with Joel Brouwer’s deeply perceptive and thoroughly entertaining exploration of the article a through Lee Martin’s narrative of childhood memories attached to the tricky word colander, Joan Connor’s vignettes associated with lilac, Eric Ormsby’s profile of or (“It’s not a showy word but a worker word, a syntactic functionary. … Or stands like a squat bouncer at the revolving door of the disjunction.”), to Mary Swander’s recounting of two billion years of geological history lying beneath topsoil, we encounter all of the many ways that language and human events intersect. In each case, the writer has chosen, to borrow wording from Maureen N. McLane’s essay on kankedort, an “exceptional word”, an “unusual word,” a word that has “lodged itself like a mystery, a word that gathered around it associations [both] personal and ramifying…” Not surprisingly in a collection of writings about language, we encounter not only discussions of words and meanings but also stories of relationships with parents, children, mates, and friends, and of the intimate and powerful forces that shape lives. It is a measure of the power and the wisdom and the charm of these pieces that a reader’s relationship with these words will never be quite the same after reading this collection. Maggie Hivnor’s words about Yeats’ use of the word half-light seem apt for this collection as well: “When poets use a word as well as that, they leave a trace of meaning on it, a fingerprint—or sheen: a new layer of lacquer, a warmth, like the time-worn glow on the newel-post of an old banister, touched by generations.” Readers of this collection too will find that the words profiled here have a new trace of meaning, a warmth, and a time-worn glow.”
—John Morse, President and Publisher of Merriam-Webster, Inc.

“At last! A dictionary for people who are words! From the eight pages that define “A” (the fifth most commonly used word in English) (“A never looks back”) to the concluding two pages of “Wrong” (“Two wrongs only make a wrong wronger.”), what we have here is a smorgasbord of sentience, a collision of serendipity and scholarship. This is a book at play in the fields of meaning, a sixpack (Thylias Moss) of quipus (Arthur Sze), a dehiscence (Forrest Gander) of florere (Vincent Katz), I (Cynthia Gaver) hope (John Rodriguez) as (we like it) (Brenda Hillman). We like it! When More’s Utopia is realized, One Word will be the vocabulary list for the SATs. (Except: there will be no SATs!)”
—Bob Holman

We get lost in a web of stories built tangentially off of each other until the origin, the spark of initial awareness, is gone: a math equation with missing parenthesis and brackets of closure. Seven seems to be the number repeating itself today, partially because I left "Seven" on repeat while I was baking cupcakes in the kitchen. It all seems to fit--creating new tines in the fork--from my story, to that of a seven year old imagining mermaids in the clouds, to my earlier thoughts of my cousin's seven year old daughter trying to process the death of her father in the heat of the Ohio summer. Something is feeding on my memory, causing me to scribble out strange Rules & Obstructions from the place where my brain cannot separate the senses. Synesthetics began the evening by tasting the muddled murmurs of the funerary feast; their stiffly pressed pant legs of coarse cotton clung to bruised kneecaps while rumpled handkerchiefs hung limply with discarded grief.