Embrace as Boundary of Connection System (some power of bendable tines in Limited Fork Theory)

I've always thought embrace to be powerful
and even more so today, thanks to Eliana's bringing of integrity to class
and the weaving of integrity (or its absence) into considerations
of boundary formation, boundary maintenance, boundary experience.

so in embrace, in hug, there is also interlocking, a weaving of (figurative or physical) arms;
there is what ann marie adams depicts here:
and at fine art america.


It is a form of weaving, a form of building a responsive bridge, one able to bend, yield, extract something from a partner, yet retain some of its own integrity when the embrace, for it is not permanent, ends —or is, rather, I could say, suspended, so as to allow for resumption of embrace. The connective experience of existence may be configured as series of interrupted embraces. Moments of attachment and tethering intersperced with moments of separation in which there may be resonance of embrace leading to desire, need for more physical embrace, and not just the memory which is free to transform within the boundaries into other shapes, other measure of imaginary intensity.

A weave connection permits more contact; more surface area becomes subject to influence; mixing can be more intense. There is the making of crossroad after crossroad as warp and weft elements crisscross, horizontal bridging alternating with vertical bridging —such tines!

And so much meaning is also woven into such connections; indeed, yarn is also passing through the loom of fingers


and the looms of democracy, commerce, identity, ambition; the looms of embrace of landscape and ourselves:



Into my genetic identity is the embrace of multiple races, one that persists even when entities and forces break the loom of human embrace with temporary (even hundreds of years is temporary because of an overriding configuration of temporariness of stuff in the universe) bouts of prejudice, bigotry, discrimination —I do not become undone; what is woven into me remains locked in embrace that does not conflict, does not confuse me, does not beg me to chose anything other than being woven.



This wasn't why one of my favorite toys as I grew up was Remco's The Little Red Spinning Wheel until now. It is my in basement. Tonight, it comes off of its high shelf and is temporarily, for that is the nature —so far— of all things, reinstated into service.

—I can't believe I haven't bothered to photograph my little red spinning wheel, something I won't be able to say truthfully after tonight—

Rules & Obstructions of PREPAREDNESS OF MOMENTS

In Limited Fork Theory, the moments are always ready.

The moment of enactment, of idea taking shape, not out of nothing, but out of some energy and substance available to become the electrical and chemical activity of thought. Both the mechanisms and what powers the mechanisms of thought are available. A moment is ready to become tethered to an idea, to become part of the birth stamp of idea. A peculiar —and I think, marvelous— enlargement


—time need not be physically stressed to accommodate moments in which idea is born. Time is apparently flexible. A moment opens, not necessarily as a slit, but in all directions and on all scales necessary for what will occupy the opening (which could also take the form of a swelling or bubble or other distortion without causing time to stop functioning). Occurrence may be experienced sequentially, but the line of sequence may take on any shape, may twist, curl, spiral, loop, fold, coil, and so forth, or may be, on some scale[s] of encounter, apparently straight. So the idea system may change shape, may be configured and reconfigured and still be supported by the time and space that host it, the configurable time and the configurable space that host it. The idea system's movement and growth are unrestricted within what is possible for movement and growth of idea systems. (image of neuron response to an electrical signal from Contemplating Thought by Susan Gaidos at Science News for Kids)

Brain need not be physically stressed in order to accommodate idea systems and their possible associated infinities. But there is expansion occurring. An emerging idea system contributes to there being more in the mind than before the emergence. The idea system itself may grow, may lead to subsystems capable of as much or even more growth than any of its source systems. And there is room for the expansion, always room for expansion. I have not had to evict an idea system in order to make room for another. When inactive, it is as if the idea system is compressed for better storage, but when necessary, it may unfold, and have space for that unfolding, the size of my head apparently constant. The hat I wore before an idea system emerges sill fits after emergence. In the mind there are many universes. Compressed universes. And both electrical and chemical keys and locks to these kingdoms.

(image of linked neurons from Contemplating Thought by Susan Gaidos at Science News for Kids)

The time and space in which thought occurs is available —the idea system will fit into the existing brain, the forms of enlargement and expansion the idea system require apparently not enlarging the brain's physical dimensions, at least not in an easily measurable way. There are bursts of electrical and chemical activity when idea systems are born—sometimes twin idea systems, triplets, or more. Explosions perhaps similar to fireworks: flowering idea systems. Luminous flowerings. Lightning, of course, as idea trails. I would love for my hair to respond to these flowerings, a glow traveling from the roots to the ends of the hair, maybe even splitting those ends more. I would like this at least once. I am thinking of this light, and it is a radiant happening in my mind. And in the mind of a mermaid I imagine thinking while submerged in water, her glowing hair like other glowing tentacles in the ocean. She comes out of the sea as if her head's on fire, strands of hair like streaks of sunset, intensified by dust and debris light filters.

Maybe I'm too easily impressed, wowed too much by existence itself —the existence of anything— but I'm taken with the wow of how there's room for an idea when the idea emerges. No pinch or squeeze in my experience. Within what exists, an access point appears to, for instance, a tube-like structure where a universe may grow, attached to a facet of a universe that itself may be attached to a facet of yet another universe or system of existence with complex geometry.

Space and time are able to accommodate the idea system, no matter how elaborate the growth of the world of that thought system. A new reality may emerge without displacing realities already active; in fact, the thinker may easily navigate to other idea system realities. The electrical and chemical streams will flow (unless damaged —in some cases, perhaps damaged on some scale in some location by aspects of the flow of the erupting idea system). Forms of displacement (including forms of distortion) can and do occur, but are not necessary, may not the norm; in most cases, a new reality of thought emerges in the brain without apparently altering space and time although space and time were full before the arrival of the idea system that prior to arrival apparently had no existence.


The moments are available, moment systems: moment and the tethered context of moment, the where of when, the when of where, for instance. The moment system comes in stereo, is quadrophonic, has dimensions of being, complex geometry. The possibilities of moments are arranged in all possible arrangements, fulfillment occurring when a path is selected, followed. A ideas emerges in a moment and fixes that moment to its emergence, produces a general definition further defined by subsequent choices and behavior along the path of emergence. Now are choices limited to the shaped infinities available within the context of the fixed moment, each decision reconfiguring the available possibilities within limited infinities. So there is a sequence of decision or a line of decision. A line of what happens in the idea system. The line is made of sequential components, but the shape of the line may be any possible shape. May be a spiral or curl, a loop, a zigzag, or may be straight, etc., may be of mixed form, may change direction yet still be expressible as sequence: this happened, then this happened, as the happenings form patterns and shapes of diverse and complex geometries.
(tree mapping of streets of Seoul from Lee jang sub's ComplexCity Project)


Every possible configuration of moment is waiting to become event, etched into a memory of happening, even what may be imagined, what happens in imagination, and what decision excludes. Possible substance is not the same as fulfilled (it has happened) substance. Available for fulfillment vs fulfilled. The where of availability lacks the physicality that defines the where of our existence; accessing the where of availability produces fulfillment, but an act of fulfillment indicates that what was necessary for fulfillment could be accessed.

The moments that are available as if in queues configured in every way that queues may be configured. So some queues bend somewhere in their queue state. Some rotate somewhere in the queue state. Some twist. Some decay. Some spring. Some (parts of) queues are concealed in (parts of) queues). Some queues are reflections, shadows, eclipse systems. Some queues commit to digesting. Some are uncommitted for now. Some are gaseous. Noisy. Some are apparently silent because their vibrations are not measured in an audible range, but the trembling is nevertheless symphonic sometimes. This is all at once. Every possibility exists. Can be mined. Plucked. And so forth. And maybe there is someone to select every possibility. Maybe there is no waste of possibility. Maybe, for this would have to be one of the possibilities, there is a version of me who still sees clearly out of the left eye.

It is as if one moment system contains all possibility, is all possibility, is contained by all possibility until defined by specifics of happening.

The moments are ready to be enacted, to become path, to become a queue of limiting factors as the moment trail unfolds.

Infinities within the limiting factor of enactment are always available.

Each selection shapes the remaining infinities, each smaller, but no less infinite.

Constructing the Story Body (where tines converge)

In this approach, story system (system in part because multiple angles, multiple configurations, multiple modes of expression, etc. will be considered, and system because different parts are involved, a telling that is not a single narrative element, an unfolding that could be interactive, might not be expected to end, an unfolding that could be generative, etc.); in this approach, the story system will be considered as an organism, something that reacts to and responds to its environment, something that can grow, change, something that came into existence somehow, with or without intelligent design; an entity that is part of a community of possibly similar and possibly dissimilar entities/iterations (that community can be as local as the multicellular organism's own body and as distant as the superorganisms that form from interactions of multiple organisms, collective dependence), an entity made of different parts of various function that together form and/or behave like a single entity, such as the human body (a cooperative society of human cells and microbes). (human brain and global network image from principia cybernetica's article: the social superorganism and its global brain, generative manifesto image from generative.net)

While the story body can be or seem relatively static, can be a moment or moment-sequence isolated for examination, focus, zooming in or zooming out for a time-stopped, frame-by-frame opportunity to study details, etc.), in this Limited Fork Theory approach to constructing a story body, the static study will have as part of its purpose the seeking of insight into the story system's dynamic forms, movement of idea, evolution of idea, etc; the purpose of discovery. A single aspect of the story system (just one tine) can be the focus of the story body you construct, with some nod to the aspect's role or participation in or relationship to a larger (or smaller) system. What you focus on in your story system can be the container of subsystems of the story body, and your focus in your story system can be contained by larger systems or subsystems of something even larger.

So we'll be entering the story body (which is a system) somewhere, a story body that, on some scale, is in progress; we enter something ongoing, establishing a tine that despite how innovative or new it might seem is nevertheless connected to (in some way[s]), is rooted in the already-established, the in-progress [hence some of LFT's commitment to a collaborative nature of all things), the ongoing, interrupting connection somewhere else when we terminate the telling (the body then on its own to interact further with environment and habitat, so not necessarily or even likely to be the end of the story system from which we extract aspects that we shape,that we may split into subsystems, to emphasize in a system related to the ongoing content or subject system, but that is not the actual content or subject system that it might be without our interaction; a tine system of what we might call the actual). We intercept something ongoing when we begin the telling, and we depart from something that persists when we stop our telling.



Does our telling interact with that ongoing system? That is a strong possibility. In telling, a branch or tine of the subject of the telling is at least temporarily established. This subsystem has existence of its own, and mayor may not converge at times with the system to which the subsystem was attached. Could we change or could the system that is the subject of our telling change as a consequence of the interaction of telling the story system, of constructing the story body? That is another strong possibility. Again, the act of telling establishes itself as a subsystem of the subject system of the telling. The telling is not the subject but instead is a related tine, an extension of subject system that may explore the subject system in behaviors and scenarios that the subject system itself does not explore. During moments of our telling, the subject system goes on, perhaps perturbed somehow by interaction with a teller, some influence of a teller; something happens in order for a subject of a telling to become subject. This interaction in which subject becomes subject establishes location (moment) for the interaction, and in that hosting of interaction, a system of telling emerges, a system of telling related to the teller's existence prior to establishment of interaction with the subject and related to the subject's existence prior to establishment of (teller's awareness of) an interaction system with a teller; related to but not identical to prior existences of teller's systems and subject's systems. The same (apparently) subject system may interact with multiple tellers and participate in multiple systems of telling, on multiple scales.


In building a story body, in part we are assemblers; we cobble stuff together from forms of existing stuff, and we can be somewhat reckless and bold in how we form rules and obstructions concerning what can, and what shouldn't be cobbled together, even if only in imagination. In essence, these story bodies may be considered hybrid forms, mutant entities, transformations, alternative species, variations, etc. We bring into existence that which we believe or come to believe warrants temporary emphasis, ideally with a perspective, angle, twist, etc. that differs subtly or profoundly from what already exists. in this way, contributing to a collective story body that through a mesh of connection and intersection, a mesh of tines that seems to fill in more, that seems to acquire density approaching (but not fully arriving) an apparent solidity that if actual might suggest that all connections have been made, all possibilities have been fulfilled, all angles have been visited, etc.

Because of slippage through tines, challenges to forming the complete picture remain; there can be little or no certainty that nothing has fallen through, that everything has adhered to every possible tine in every limited fork and has been assembled in every possible form on every possible scale, including, for sake of completion all possible future forms. Even assembling a complete moment to which we (may believe we) have limited access across the planet will defy completion on all scales in all possible forms; there are gaps in what is known no matter how close we may have come (and oh the fascinating challenges to measure the distance —on all scales— of the fully assembled moment from an absolute completeness of a moment —in all its dimensions, including somehow acknowledgment of all imagined configurations of its completeness, including outcomes of generative configurations, and thoughts of the moment that embrace the past and future of the moment, antecedents and descendants). But even with a miraculous completion, what might emerge may contain more than what is assembled, the sum of the parts of the moment in interacting produce something more than a simple addition; interacting is more complex; some interactions enable tines of behavior, tines of form that are fueled by reactions that occur with the interactions —what Rima refers to as 1+1=3: that which is being added, that what is participating in the interaction and the outcome system that emerges from the interaction system.



There's a touch of homage to Frankenstein here, a story system/body that embraces many tellings and modifications: visual, still, moving, sonic, tactile —many costume options (such as the options in the above image from fancy dress ideas), masks of various materials, skin paint, etc. meant to be temporary —though more permanent cosmetic surgery options exist, including peculiar assisted vanity operations (as shown in the image to the right of Jocelyn Wildenstein from The Daily Mail). Highly manipulated evolutions with intense visual impact without necessarily having direct genetic intervention to influence species change through natural or assisted breeding. Planned and unplanned, coerced or natural genetic mutation helps to produce that which, in departure from expectation and norms, seems monstrous, at least until advantages of the mutation become apparent. A possible monstrous outcome is a necessary risk if more ideal forms (from this tine of perception and that tine of perception) of mutation are to be attained. Various circumstances conspire (it might seem) or somehow align in order to support (temporarily) what emerges from the interaction system. That this happens can be extraordinary, mechanisms that resist maintenance of status quo, that resist, even if it seems pleasant and/or near perfect, permanence, that participate in change —by any means that are or become (tines that emerge, for instance, as consequences or outcomes of interactions) possible.

That transformation is possible is celebrated in many instances of human-manipulated morphing. A redirection of a natural (without direct intervention) progression of form via deliberate structural manipulation whose outcomes may match or deviate (immediately or over time) from a target. Efforts to shape an inevitable change in appearance. Efforts to control inevitable change. To set inevitable tines of change in motion. To stop a tine of events from progressing along what may seem an inevitable path system to inevitable destinations. Of course, intentions and outcomes are systems that may converge and diverge along paths that themselves are systems of gestures and behaviors, shaping and being shaped by interactions with systems of variables on some scale in some location[s] for some duration[s] of time. ¡O for the love of variables!

James Whale's (a filmmaker who who once was a cobbler) 1931 cinematic achievement: Watch Dr. Frankenstein as the moment of achievement emerges in a temporarily ultimate configuration cobbled together from various parts, assembled from diverse sources yet IT'S ALIVE!




All of existence in involved at all times in telling the complex, compelling (I think), story systems of a shared existence system; all of existence is involved in this telling (an assembled involvement in this moment) even without consent or awareness of telling the story, which is to say that telling the story everything is telling may not be is probably not the purpose of existence. The trails of existence, what happens as outcomes of existence become stories of what occurs when existence happens. In the next video, a BMW Z4 tells part of the story of its existence, writing its rolling trail in paint and color in An Expression of Joy:



The moving architecture of existing, of meaning; the assembled story body that itself moves, dances, explores space, that actively tells a story can be explored in work by Theo Jansen, a kinetic sculptor (the Theo Jansen link is to a story system tine about the strandbeest moving in the video story tine of a strandbeest/Jansen collaboration system):



What follows is an assembled story system, a form of video collage story body system that, as described on the video story body's youtube page, is:
A story body made from:
- footages of Heima Dvd
- footages of Theo Jansen docs
- footages of differents Sigur Ros clips
for the great song of Sigur ros


Please enjoy the building of your own story body systems and please post the stories of the building of your story body systems.

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

MERMAID AS METAPHOR (a consideration from forkergirl's temporary fish eye lens advantage)

fish eye lens advantage image from forkergirl's photostream

In this consideration of Mermaid as Metaphor, a point of entry and a point of departure (bifurcation hub) are formed by two elements brought together (in a range of manipulations) forming a third element that is a composite of the two (1 element plus 1 element = a 3rd element [1+1=3], as Rima pointed out in a limited forked multimedia story class). At this hub is a common depiction of mermaids in which two unrelated biological segments of two organisms are brought together in (primarily visual) unification usually depicted as horizontally split halves forming wholeness: a mermaid.

This (visual) wholeness is a form of marriage, an easily imagined evolutionary progression or regression of marriage. Though the one mermaid outcome of wholeness formation is usually offered, there are at least two composites that would emerge from each union in this imagined evolution or regression. Human upper body + fish lower body, and human lower body + fish upper body. This is an answer to where's the other halves? —the human lower body and the fish upper body? An example of this more complete merger outcome scenario supplies the horror factor of The Fly (1958). The human/fly hybrid is created when a teleportation experiment meant to be an exclusively human teleportation experiment becomes a human/insect teleportation experiment when a fly is discovered inside the teleportation chamber with the scientist when the experiment is already underway and no one is there to stop the experiment. Though the human/fly hybrid is an unintended outcome, that the hybrid is an outcome indicates a form of successful, if horrifying, biological union. The film features both composite forms: human body with fly head/hand and fly body with human head/hand. Once the hybrids emerged, the assumption was that capturing the fly body/human head composite and repeating the experiment with both hybrid outcomes in the chamber, would restore the human and the fly to pre-composite forms though other possibilities would have been as likely had the fly body/human head variation not been snared in a web of spider for whom the genetic modifications of the humanized insect changed nothing.

A cautionary tale, to be sure. A scientist accused of playing God to be sure.

Though I hesitate the use the term, this serves, in part, as a, well, deconstruction of the mermaid metaphor. It is a closer look inside what is and isn't occurring in the architecture of the metaphor that a mermaid is, and simultaneously is an invitation to explore what can happen/is happening inside other metaphors, using the outcomes of those explorations to establish other opportunities and forms of expression: the making of other poams (products of acts of making).

In popular depictions of mermaids, biological segments contributed by the human and by the (unspecified species of) fish seem interchangeable, largely because each segment apparently remains intact with crossover of fish into human, human into fish. The fish and human portions of a mermaid hybrid system could be separated easily. It is obvious where to cut. The human and fish segments seem closed systems stitched together (or in some other way held in place) superficially. The forming of human/fish composites seems exceedingly neat with a well-defined boundary separating fish function and appearance from human function and appearance. No transgression of species apparently occurs; nothing, well, fishy in the merger. Mermaids, rather, seem models of respect for species purity despite their being linked. No tinkering with the actual DNA as human DNA and fish genetic code don't mix, but instead exist side-by side. Good neighbors who share much, but not everything. Good spouses who share much but not everything.

If a deeper connection is considered, the external division and separation of fish and human raises questions about function, form, and layout of internal organs. Just how is the mermaid metaphor creature mapped internally? Surely anatomical mingling occurs, or it is difficult to imagine viability of this trans-species as a species distinct from human and fish with its own biological frameworks and systems; the fish, in the more frequent ichthyological bottom half mermaid configuration, would have no heart, no brain, no circulation of human blood in fish areas. If the halves are stitched together superficially and not integrated into a single being, each half would then need separate and contained systems of respiration, systems of ingestion, systems of excretion, etc. A romanticized depiction (and why not such a depiction!) of mermaids does not support contamination of the beautiful, usually, woman, with fishiness. Indeed, the mermaid might even be a purer form of woman for rejecting genitalia in favor of fishtail; with breasts, she may suckle a child and could even seem, depending on who's constructing the idea system, nearly as wholesome and good as Mary, Mother of Christ. In this wonderful anatomical chart (to the right) of a mermaid from gearfuse.com, the internal revelation is still decidedly human in keeping with the biological structure of most mermaids; no doubt a common or typical mermaid is dissected in the well-imagined image of mermaid reality wherever it exists, in imagination, gaming, and/or virtual worlds, for instance. Mermaid Diaries is a blog all about a little mermaid named Natalia Zelmanov and her adventures in second life. Below is a video of a Spore mermaid followed by a video of a Second Life mermaid show:






The common mermaid is uncomplicated, unproblematic in biological terms. She (usually) looks good,
and, in keeping with her fish contribution, is an excellent catch.

Consideration of shared biological functioning is not meant to discredit the mythic or aesthetic function of mermaid systems, and certainly does not undermine an ability of imagination to overcome problems of mermaid existence within shared physical realities. That closed biological and chemical systems can align themselves without sharing structures or circulation, may give a nod to some of the power of imagination as part of the glue maintaining the human/fish alignment. Not that everyone can (or should) use imagination in tis manner; what I refer to as imagination may be referred to differently in other cultural and/or belief systems that configure reality differently, including religions in which what some might consider supernatural is real; prayer connects a human mortal reality with a divine system of existence; prayer and belief function as bridges between these configurations.

It is quite odd, I think, that more mingling apparently does not occur at the juncture of fish and human in a mermaid system of co-dependency to be one being, one creature; why not more raggedness as these halves struggle to come together? In the production of mermaids, if something is occurring biologically, why not more evidence of mutation in the manipulation of humans and fish to produce mermaids? Where are the failures? Where are the monsters of human/fish alliances? Where are the other creature from black lagoons (gill-men) and other evolutionary missing links along the evolutionary road to mermaid? What is it about certain environments that seem to encourage emergence of human/fish hybrids? So much perfection! —similar, it seems (sorry for a lack of statistics) to a rate of perfection in production of angels or other beings embodying some human elements and some divine elements. Something in imagination apparently overcomes potential conflict in human and fish unions —did not George W. Bush say that he hoped the human and the fish could coexist peacefully? In configuring scenarios of this coexistence, some of that peaceful cohabitation would exist within a single body, half human, half fish; the bi-species creature practicing a form of political correctness in blending —indeed, Bush's statement could be construed as a call for transspecies experimentation, phase one focusing on human and fish peacful coexistence scenarios.

Had W seen Shiloh Pepin on a Discovery Channel documentary (Mermaid Girl) when he said that?
Did he realize that there was such a condition as sirenomelia, that humans were sometimes born with their legs fused in a disease commonly called mermaid syndrome, a challenging coexistence that might look peaceful? What hope for the future of humans did he foresee in improving human/fish coexistence? What's in that enhanced coexistence for Americans? for democracy? for capitalism?

In written metaphor also things come together with suspicious ease, perhaps in part because of familiarity with a long history of mythical part human creatures from ancient, classical, and sacred texts ; indeed, even Jesus Christ is a half-human outcome of a human/divine union. Evolutions occur inside metaphor; there is a journey from something to something, and details of the journey are seldom mapped. Mapping of what occurs inside metaphor could be quite revelatory and could lead to other revelatory forms of making, thinking, and/or understanding. To the left, Gort becomes The Stig, and to the right, Sambo becomes Obama in two metaphork evolutions by forkergirl. Much, much (compelling and exciting, among other forms of work) remains to be done.

(a part of the story of the) MERMAID TINE

When I was seven, I was committed to compromise,
refusing to allow things to be only what they were,
a slave to metaphor.

No cloud was safe.
Anything I wanted to see
appeared above me in temporary galleries of icy sculpture.

I have some co-conspirators:
cloud-gate by Anish Kapoor in Millennium Park
where wei o-connell captured (for her cloud gate sculpture gallery
—please visit it) what I see, in this moment of seeing,
as a hatching of mermaid embryos in her image.
The embryos can also be(come) seeds of a need to impose such seeing, to grow such stories (high rises of stories, development after development, density and entanglement of of everything that can have a voice having its say, some of it through puppetry and ventriloquism and appropriation and hiccups)
without regard for possible benefit for humanity if telling alone lacks benefit,
proves nothing (assuming something in fact can be proved, proof that holds across
scale, across location, across durations of time).

Cloud Gate has a tine extension in Heathrow's Cloud by Troika:


A bit downtempo isn't it? Purpose or not, we're here, and we're made of our stories, our DNA telling a good one, full of recipe, prescription, destiny, opportunity for error, explanation, the joy of code, reduction to information, expansion to information, built-in script, and so forth. I'm trying to tell a story-tine about aspiration, always about aspiration, about becoming, a journey from one place to another, something even am amoeba can do, without requiring a way back, so as to keep nodding to how great it is to keep going, to church out whatever it is that inhabits the wake of movement, from gentle assistance to steamroller crush and pulverization into a fine power that travels the globe like all-purpose cosmetic.

Everything dressed up like mermaids.
Clouds of memories of mermaid parade.
Here is a forkergirl image of a cloud factory producing mermaid embryos:
When I was seven, I wrote Mermaid Sisters and with my cousin made paper dolls that had a change of a dozen different fish tails, mostly based on what could be caught, including what we could imagine could be caught, in Lake Erie. We tried to carve mermaids out of ivory soap, but neither of us were good at that, some really bad butchering (nothing at all like what's available from The Mermaid Soap Company). It didn't occur to us to buy some mermaid soap molds, but we did pour Bosco chocolate syrup into small china lifeboats (from my aunt's good china set so seldom used, she didn't miss the shallow oval dishes just right for a Barbie or Tressy rescue in shallow water) that we put in the oven to try to bake chocolate bars. We also didn't have access to, and at that time couldn't imagine access to something that couldn't exist then (though a possible path to it was in progress): the wonderful Liana's Paper Doll Blog.
(image at left from Liana's Paper Doll Blog)

When we floated the mermaid paper dolls we drew, appropriately putting our half-fish in water, bending them so that their torsos were above water so that they could breathe without oxygen tanks, the paper outfits came off; those tabs we folded to hang the fish skirts onto the mermaids weren't secure fasteners.
The fish skirts floated separately.
Paper fish skirts and paper mermaids became increasingly fragile in the water.
They drank the water.
They became heavier with water. Soaked. Saturated.

(image from animals in the attic.com)
When we squeezed out the water, we held paper wads, the beginnings or aftermaths of paper wasp nests. It was as if we'd chewed and spit out deformed globes, very inexperienced makers of worlds yet the wads were habitable, could teem with microbes we didn't know anything about —and I had no excuse, having attended since kindergarten Louis Pasteur School, named for the then king of the war against germs harmful to humans, the source of the pasteurization process —pasteurized eggs among the safe eggs, the good eggs during the recent egg recall;
eggs that seem signed by Louis Pasteur himself. I do not know how Louis Pasteur felt about mermaids. Had he ever visualized his wife as a mermaid? Was there a mirror that gave her mermaid aspects of herself in exchange for reflection? I don't know how well mermaids may have engaged the imaginations or fever-sponsored realities of his children. I don't know what significance mermaids may have had for him or his children had typhoid not demanded their attention. I can speculate. I can give his children that succumbed to typhoid the gift of mermaid memory in the form of story I might make, some typhoid mermaid tines.

Writing this has given birth to the idea, has included typhoid mermaid tines into the multimedia story system, the limited forked consideration of mermaids that appeared to me in clouds over my head, sometimes taking on the weight of obligation, the fog of guilt for not acting on obligation.

Read Lois Pasteur's papers on Germ Theory
My search, at the moment, for mermaid in the Pasteur Galaxy did not produce any results, but try your own luck in the galaxy; try your own search. what cannot be found, cannot be pasteurized at this time, is not yet bug-free. At some point, a search for Pasteur and mermaid will lead here where the map is not yet reliable, where the meat of mermaid, typhoid, and Pasteur has not fully emerged, and in this gestation state is particularly susceptible to contamination, to mutation, perhaps on the order of trans-species work that may look more and more feasible, less and less ethical as it moves in a range of directions from trans-species organ transplantation. There is a place for this human/fish merger, even the reverse fish/human merge as in this work by Magritte: : Otherkin.net; Otherkin.net is not the only place where species meet, where species have met, producing ligers and tigons, for instance; it's just one place, one tine of a story that in the telling nd retellings might be able to connect, however briefly, with everything on some scale in some location. Meet me at Mermaid Alley and form a (temporary) intersection.