From: mbr2@quads.uchicago.edu (Curious Of All Natures)
Subject: Phone, song, silence [important]
Keywords: words are not key
Reply-To: mbr2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: Universtiy of Chicago
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 00:31:00 GMT


Curios Of All Natures drifts over to the payPhone in the corner.  He
doesn't realize it's sentient.  Neither, so far as the Phone knows,
does anyone else in the bar.  It has never spoken up, you see, because
the very raison d'etre of a Phone is to be talked _through_.  T'would
be existentially awkward to the highest degree if anyone were ever to
talk _to_ it.  Anyway...

This inanimate fellow is faced daily with challenges of undocumented
magnitude.  COAN's coin, for example, is stamped from plasticized
sugar - a process chemically feasible only in his home dimension.  The
Phone analyzes, identifies, and authenticates it, navigates the
on-line beauracracy of COAN's world's economy, madly figures
non-linear exchange rates, and finally pings him for another coin.
Almost a second had passed.

Guessing the intended interpretation of the number COAN then dials is
no problem - the Phone'd picked out his accent long ago.  It's
floating the connection across realities that requires a brand of
frenetic skill rare even to Phones of this species.  Such contacts are
maddeningly unconvincing, maintainable only by degrees of belief far
beyond what's possible for any being capable of doubt. Connections to
Radio Free Colorado, like this one, are particularly prone to
vanishing in a blip of impossibility or paradox.  COAN would be
hanging up the Phone a great deal more reverently if he had any notion
of the convolutedness of backup virtual-telecommunication theories it
had concocted in order to maintain his call...

Curious Of All Natures light-heartedly thanks the Phone as he turns
away.  He has NO **IDEA**.


If you weren't watching you probably wouldn't identify the fellow
leaving the corner with the cat who moments later hops up onto an
X-windowsill.  But you will surely notice this cat occasionally, for he
will be abiding quietly, eyes closed and ears a-tracking, for a very
long while on that ledge in Mike Callahan's Place...


if language were liquid 
it would be rushing in
instead here we are
in a silence more eloquent
than any word could ever be

words are too solid
they don't move fast enough
to catch the blur in the brain
that flies by and is gone
gone
gone
gone

I'd like to meet you
in a timeless
placeless place
somewhere out of context
and beyond all consequences

let's go back to the building
  (words are too solid)
on little west twelfth
it is not far away
  (they don't move fast enough)
and the river is there
and the sun and the spaces 
are all lying low
  (to catch the blur in the brain)
and we'll sit in the silence
  (that flies by and is)
that comes rushing in and is
gone  (gone)

I won't use words again
they don't mean what I meant
they don't say what I said
they're just the crust of the meaning
with realms underneath
never touched 
never stirred

never even moved through

if language were liquid
it would be rushing in
instead here we are
in a silence, more eloquent
than any word could ever be

and it's gone
gone
gone
and it's gone         -Suzanne Vega, "Language"


-Matt Ryan, of much presence, some fear, and little directedness,
mb-ryan@uchicago.edu                Curious Of All Natures
==================================  ====================================
If I'm dreaming, never let me wake. You'll never see the end of the road
If I'm awake, never let me sleep.   When you're traveling with me.
               -old chinese fellow                        -Crowded House     
==================================  ====================================
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