A Dialectical Digression
She walks around a farm that charges admission and operates a store that sells miniatures of itself plus donuts which has thereby transformed itself from a farm into "a farm," a copy of itself in which all implements and spatial arrangements are copies of themselves and all animals are in quotation marks, a place where a cow standing in a field becomes "a cow standing in a field," an exemplary cow standing in an exemplary way in an exemplary field that clarifies what is meant by cowness, standing-in-ness and fieldness. "The farm" is a theory of language interaction with which enables the act of observing to become "the act of observing," a duplication that opens onto "experience" that is onto experience and the dynamics that condition it, that is onto the intricate play of shifting visual data, spatial relations and conceptual prototypes in the continuous fashioning of everyday realities and onto the ways in which each of those realities is always specific (the cow) and general ("the cow") at once.
Her journey through the space of rural forms happens on a blustery metallic autumn afternoon. She wears a long scarf like an aviator. She positions herself before a series of white rail fence frames. Separated thus from the picture world she is unconditioned, a pure observer flying in a slow silent airplane over the shifting terrains of time. Disembodied and floating, she gazes at the unfolding of the phenomena “pigs.” She contemplates their porcine ideality. She comprehends the ways that "pigs," taken as bundles of attributes, interact with the landscape that is their horizon and the ways in which the "landscape" in turn becomes itself through its interactions with the ideal pigs and the ways that "landscape" and its "framing" allow the porcinity of the porcine to shine forth.
She moves seamlessly through the levels of retail phenomenology until she feels a tugging on her scarf that tightens it around her throat. One of the very large ideal pigs has started to eat it. The ensuing struggle performs the dialectic that intertwines real and ideal through her mounting concern about being choked to death then eaten by a very large pig. But mostly she wants her scarf back. “This my favorite scarf you goddamn pig. Give it back.”
Her journey through the space of rural forms happens on a blustery metallic autumn afternoon. She wears a long scarf like an aviator. She positions herself before a series of white rail fence frames. Separated thus from the picture world she is unconditioned, a pure observer flying in a slow silent airplane over the shifting terrains of time. Disembodied and floating, she gazes at the unfolding of the phenomena “pigs.” She contemplates their porcine ideality. She comprehends the ways that "pigs," taken as bundles of attributes, interact with the landscape that is their horizon and the ways in which the "landscape" in turn becomes itself through its interactions with the ideal pigs and the ways that "landscape" and its "framing" allow the porcinity of the porcine to shine forth.
She moves seamlessly through the levels of retail phenomenology until she feels a tugging on her scarf that tightens it around her throat. One of the very large ideal pigs has started to eat it. The ensuing struggle performs the dialectic that intertwines real and ideal through her mounting concern about being choked to death then eaten by a very large pig. But mostly she wants her scarf back. “This my favorite scarf you goddamn pig. Give it back.”
Quite interesting, though maybe the appeal to the pig at the end doesn't quite work (imho). Maybe also some tightening of the grammar is required (since the type of writing it is demands precision) - eg the 'which' in sentence 1 is imprecise, and 'with which' in sentence 2 needs to lose the 'with'. Stuff like that - nerdy stuff which needs to satisfy nerdy readers who'd probably otherwise fret if they started to feel that the sentences were badly designed word puzzles.
thanks for reading and commenting eamon.
losing the pig ending is a problem because it's the point of the story i stole for this. but my friend laurie's version was more slapstick though. i decided to stand that on it's head.
conceptually the piece is quite precise. grammatically, it's set up to move as a performance piece as well. the words you point to are linking terms---the relation that they're articulating is exact--and they're in place both because of that and for the cadence help as well. but i'm thinking about them again.
no need to fret.
This would be real funny except for the porcine propensity to eat anything that falls down in front of them without regard for propriety. Enjoyed.
The tone is what's doing for me with this, and the style, the language. There's a story, I know, but sometimes the words that make up that story just shine like stars and I find myself with a stiff neck, gazing. I like the pig ending, for what it's worth. It brings all those fine word combos back from the heavens and lands them back in the lap of reality.
Yes, I read it one way. There's an ambiguity, since reading 'interaction with which' as a noun phrase makes 'interaction' the dominant subject, whereas reading it the way I did, seeing 'with' as an unintended slip, makes 'the farm' (aka 'a theory of language interaction') as the subject. A difference, you'll agree. The ambiguity is eliminated by placing a comma before 'interaction' - but I can see why you wouldn't want to do that, since that would remove the ambiguity, and ambiguity is just another term for an alternate (ie extra) meaning. What's interesting is how one might keep the ambiguity while removing the ungrammaticalness (!) of one of the constructs. Maybe that's not possible - an irreconcilable dilemma of language - you trade off precision for nuance. Anyway, pardon my nerdiness. I'm reading Javier Marias' Fever and Spear at the moment, so am tuned in to stuff like this.
first off, thanks to all for the reads and comments. i appreciate them.
@larry-->this was basically the story i stole. whats in the text + what you say + urban paranoid narcissism meets a pig.
@sheldon: thanks so much for the lovely comments and encouragement. sometimes i think my writing is in some parallel world quite against my will. it's nice to hear that folk like it as writing. thanks so much.
@eamon-->i like more than anything that there are others out there who are as nerdly as i am and who take on something like this at the model level for real. it's a treat and i welcome each and every question/challenge. any time you're engaged by all means tell. i'll reciprocate. it's a lovely nerdly thing. indeed it is.
wow, a romp, great language and a sharp ending. i think you're onto something here with "the ideal pig" and the like. a sequel to "animal farm" is imaginable, incorporating what we've learnt about the human condition since 1950 into a new narrative. (must stop now, still chuckling at "porcinity"...i think an agricultural association might send an assassin to your house for this one...)
this piece fits my present mood perfectly. *
marcus & julie: thanks for the read and lovely comments.
m-->i'm now officially on alert for the agricultural assassins. at least this way i'll not go down unawares.
"retail phenomenology"
Perfect.
Love the ending.
cf. Marianne Moore: "real frogs in imaginary gardens."