The Astigmatism Of The Human Genome Project
by Marc Nash
G 20/200
C T 20/100
A C T 20/70
C G A G 20/50
T A G C T 20/40
C T U C A G 20/30
G G G G G G G 20/20
G) You interrogate nothing but those dark parts of yourself, when you shine your spotlight upon my features. The chittering whispers and sepulchral resonances are your own dissonant reverberations. Supra-lingual in all likelihood, but they do certainly run deep within you. It is time to address yourselves. Stamp me unopened, return to sender.
AT) These are the outpourings of your own consciousness, acknowledged or not. The questions you might, or should be asking, as you launch into me with your febrile spurs. To what end do you undertake your inquiries, when you can journey within your imaginations to probe the answers in your mind? I recline prone beneath you, as just another one of your all-encompassing, all-conquering, all-singing and all-dancing metaphors. (Metaphor, that temporary secondment of anglepoised illumination. In order to tack a shadow on to the opaque object under scrutiny, so as to assimilate some shade of legibility {there, I've been dying [literally/metaphorically?] to interject that}). Only I'm a bit closer to the bone, the marrow, the cell and the protein. Your species erudition and memory are the sacrosanct text, not me. It is to be found in the pneuma and the psyche, not the plasma and gist. Assail me and you irrevocably ravish your own integrity, triturate your own sculpted truths.
ACT) I don't exist see. There is no such thing as a genome, nor even genes as discrete units of hereditary. Until that is, you imagined me into useful being, to solve the predicaments of your carnality. But this is going about arse over tit. It is not the way I approach things. For me, as I'm endlessly repeating, there is only replication. You too, may nakedly lust after this, but alas, siring is adulterated reproduction. Inheritance, not immortality. Which it is for me. Admittedly, at present, you and I dovetail through this affiliation, but we are coincidental, not coeval. I navigator and you matelot, merely share this passage, this berth, this bunk bed, with me on top. Give me my leg up will you?
TAT) I do not consciously seek to obscure meaning. For there is no meaning, other than what you choose to ascribe.
TACT) There is to be no revelation from my unscripted scripture.
GAG) And that is my (your) final word (aggregated symbolic linguistic code) on the matter (issue) {you and I are both matter, yet only you issue}.
TATA) See ya! Wouldn't wanna be ya!
(apologies for lousy formatting)
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Author's Note
a very short excerpt from my novel involving the human genome as one of the central voices.
Hi Marc. I came to this by chance after coming across yr essay on escape into life. Figured you'd be on the naut.
'Experimental' writing (quotes
wrapped to indicate irony) interests me. Don't be surprised. People like me actually exist. On the other hand, don't get excited either, I'm not saying you're bloody Beckett.
I thought yr short piece here was interesting. There's too much in it to comment on, so I'll reduce to a couple of points.
1) Your setout. The interplay between prose and visual elements has a lot of potential. That a text can grab the eye immediately without the eye having to actually read the text's content is exactly what the visual arts do. Therefore question: why is 99% of prose writing so visually dumb? Capable, like that previous statement, only of mixed metaphors and other old devices?
2) Syntax. Maybe it's because I've been eye-inspired by yr eyechart, but I have to say it's nice to see a nice eye.
'I don't exist see.' Voila. The lack of a comma is eyecatching here (oh, please stop).
'Until that is, you imagined me into useful being, to solve the predicaments of your carnality.' There're a few sentences like this, with an important comma missing (in this instance, before 'that'). It strangely contrasts with the first example I quoted, and the strangeness doubly exists because of the sense one has of seeing TOO MANY commas, where, conventionally speaking, there're clearly not enough. Unless you redefine the conventional. I use the term 'conventionally' to draw attention to an important point: that it's the conventions that make writing so bloody boring, at least for some readers (though, alas, not many). Of course, the conventions nowadays dictate that commas are anathema to ... what? Mm. Well, I'm not putting a noun there for you.