Sunday, 01.1.2012 | by Margi | 0 comments
…but the labyrinth of each thought twisted into something unreadable, terminals unknown. Instead: I’ve drawn out certain objectives of mine for the forthcoming year, which may or may not be interesting and so I’ve placed little stories, or fragments of stories within as small treasures for you. To see a larger version of things, click on the picture. Happy new year. [Heart.]
Monday, 12.26.2011 | by Margi | 0 comments
I’ve recently picked up a copy of Robert Bruce’s biography, Bell: Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude and, oh my, the love letters sent from Bell to Mabel Hubbard have left me breathless. (Chapter 15, if like me you wish to skip ahead.) Bell spent years giving elocution lessons to Mabel, left deaf after a bout of scarlet fever. Amidst his private lessons and experiments with the telephone, he began to write Mabel of his feelings for her. It’s a longish story, and one I’ll let you discover for yourself, but I’ve found some of his handwritten letters to her in the national archive.
A few particularly delicious excerpts: “You do not know–you cannot guess–how much I love you…I wish to amend my life for you.” And, upon learning of her reservations: “I shall not trouble you any more…if you still think of me as you do now, I shall try to be happy in my work.” And again: “Nature has made me what I am and it is not my fault that I have such strong feelings. I can restrain them but I cannot prevent them from arising.” And then, after marriage: “I am afraid of the distance between us — for something tells me that you care less for me…when I am far away…You have grown into my heart my darling…” Oh my, oh my.
I recommend viewing the archive yourself (Library of Congress), where the letters have been typed up and are thus easier to read. Though they are indeed pretty just to see: where the ink fell thick; the way in which the script leans forward suggesting speed; how Bell signs off, your own; the way he rotates the page and fills space. There is something immediate about a handwritten letter: the way the body of the writer cannot be extracted from what it written: the letter, an extension of a self: a self in the fire of a moment, reaching and thinking and forlorn and still somehow hopeful.
Sunday, 12.25.2011 | by Margi | 0 comments
Saturday, 12.24.2011 | by Margi | 0 comments
Things I don’t understand: math mostly; the balancing equations of chemical reactions; physics in general; energy and its transformation from, say, sound into electrical currents and back into sound; frequencies carrying sound and light. These are various systems of logic, ideas I cannot easily see. I’m told I could understand these things if I studied them more closely, more patiently, with greater care. And I do understand some of their concepts; but I am too distracted, thinking instead of the way increasing pressure on the body does in fact lead to disorder; the way I like words commingling with lines and shapes to create meaning; the patterns created by circuit boards. Even the schematic legends pull me into them, not so I can read their attached diagrams but so that I might find some metaphor for the body.
The body is a system of proof, I think. I trust that it knows things my brain does not.* When my voice catches in the middle of conversation; when I misspell or misspeak or make a mistake in a letter; when my face creases and tenses and contorts as I try to untangle some personal whatever. These are little proofs: my body reminding me that there is something else, another layer of thought, another stratum to consider.
I’ve been rustling through my dad’s archives over the past few days, in search I think of some kind of spark, an electricity, something to propel me out of whatever brain or body I’m inhabiting. There are hundreds of schematics and flowcharts from his years as a chemical engineer. The diagrams are beautiful; so too are the charts describing each symbol’s meaning. I’ve found a few slide rulers: sticks with hairlines and scales used for quick multiplication or division.
I find myself more interested in the history lodged in these objects and papers more than their inherent meaning. Happening upon an article about personal computers which my dad underlined and noted in the margins good point has infinitely more meaning to me than understanding the flow of natural gas through the plant he worked at. These notes, marginalia, signatures, handwritten letters and reports are evidence of his self, his former self, his 22-25 year old self. Even his old signature, when he still signed with his middle initial “T” for Thomas, his confirmation name, suggests something to me about time and change.
But back to the objects. They are lovely, aren’t they? Old and bent and dusty with skin cells or whatever. There are conversion books which have been opened hundreds of time, annotated and splayed on tables. I can see this from where the binding splits a little, where the book naturally opens even now. Paper has memory.
I don’t know what to make of these images yet, this giant box I have with his old things. There is something about logic and the miscellaneous kinds of proofs we perceive and believe. Something also about the thin layering of history over each year. And so for now I leave you with these pictures, these objects and their silent stories.
*[Updated] This thought about the body containing some kind of inherent truth is not exactly mine, at least not wholly. See also Ander Monson.
Friday, 12.23.2011 | by Margi | 0 comments
I’ve lately been thinking about codes: coded languages, references, obfuscations, secret messages embedded in prose like winks to readers. Well actually I’ve been thinking more about electricity than codes but perhaps there is a relationship. For one, an obvious one, to think through a code (a question of logic, maybe) is to spark synapses, which are a kind of electricity. Electricity of the body. Also there is something about language, a code or several codes, and the way messages are transmitted: over the telephone, through texts and emails, through live video streams. How sort of rare it becomes to see the lines of someone’s face, where skin wrinkles or folds, to see and hear and feel the breath of a body near you.
To think and talk about electricity is to also consider magnetism: electrical currents generate magnetic fields: the earth is a magnet: maybe our bodies are magnets or certainly there is magnetism between us, between two bodies. And then too magnets help us navigate, direct us toward.
The coded languages of computers, of programs, are possible because of magnetism. Little zeroes and ones etched into metal platters within our shiny laptops and desktops. Before magnets though, programs were punched into paper and whirred through machines, read by giant computers behind locked doors. I rarely think about transmission as I type or even as I code but yes these pixelly letters are also something else. (And what I wonder is lost in these layered translations?)
My dad began coding programs in the 70s, in high school and then college; kept the sheets of paper containing his logic, his equations, which is what these images are. My favorite is the last: comprised of a guide for building flowcharts of programs. Like before my dad would write a program, he’d draw out exactly each step using these shapes, another code. And here we see decisions are diamonds, connectors are circles, communication links are like lightning bolts.