Flesh Fair: Quest In the Design

Vladimir Nabokov uses a narrative framework similar, but upgraded, to that which Conrad developed with such success. It is an omniscient framework within a framework, like a boxed set of novels that make up a franchise, only on a smaller scale. It is a technique that opens Lolita with blaring trumpets, in the incident report which summarizes the death of all the parties involved. (You might be surprised to know that I do not own a copy of the novel extant, but for me this is not a must have addition to my personal library, not under the duress of my present circumstances. I'm hostile to it as a masterpiece for reasons I shall not tackle here.) It is also present, but in softer fashion, in the earlier title, The Luzhin Defense. I have not seen the film, nor am I ready to view it, though some brief capsule skims convey the disappointment of reviewers; nor am I going to discuss the novel in great detail, except to say that one of its major motifs seems to be that if humans do not search for transcendence in religion, or even divinity, we still search for it through mastery of patterns and formal structures, which is a dystopian subtext when we take up androids, cyborgs, and robots in science fiction, the crux of the matter coming down to a dichotomy between personhood and a set of programmed responses, like kimmy using her piglet self to lie down on the keyboard when cynical adoptive parent is on a roll. I wonder if she'll inadvertently reformat the HP for me. Sulking, she is snuggled with Vinnie on the Quantum, so adorable we should all just die and cede the field to felines, and this too cute moment makes me regret that I cannot join marshmallow heads and upload another 7 billion cat pictures online, and tongue ties me when I say "She's not Joey!" Joey was special in that marshmallow overweening sentiment so very and extraordinarily difficult  to define. He feared all ambulatory humans except those in wheelchairs, and suspect my aunt rushed him and his surviving sibling to me because something happened that instilled fear that left its imprint, at least on the deceased. Spielberg uses the same framework technique in A.I., almost, suggesting that in the end all we can hope for is that testament will survive, but this is an obdurate, romantic review of machine (and man) over the brutal realism of evolution before our eyes. What transforms particles into Being is beyond the scope of our own CPU's to understand, and I am highly skeptical that a mechanical device will ever evolve in the Darwinian sense, although I am less skeptical, and almost alarmed, that through mimicking microbiological processes, we will create artificial life. It scares me, as even cloning sheep and cows seems to create vulnerable immune systems as a residual effect of losing sexual division.

In mulling my quite exasperated conscience, I do not really want to explore the dark side of attendant care too much in this account, and Tim is better than much of the trash I've dealt with, past tense, but the system, designed toward de-institutionalization, is still a highly charged source of class conflict. Tim is basically a good man, and if I could walk, he would not exist for me, unless I was a paternalistic globe trotter like Niall Ferguson or Nicholas Kristof. Do those of you who can balance on the balls of your feet ever think about it? I have no organic sense of what it feels like. I accept it as a fact, our bipedalism, but I can feel my lungs expanding; I'm intimate with what it is to breathe. Walking was ever and only an approximation, and an exercise in pain, as indeed, is much of what mobility I do have.

The Beckles Projection

I had a busy, if virtual day, angling to see if I can return to the real world against young turks, such as this gent, if I indeed have enough left in my cognitive matrix to do so, since I am barely a goose with enough down left to hold myself up to a swan, and I was never a turk. In the convenience store, a young nerd said "here you go mamma," and of course I allowed it to glide, but it rankled. My mother was a mamma, a loose one, a lush, without the humor we tend to associate with the Wife of Bath, she opened her legs to the wrong people. So did I, come to think of it, without the magnitude of such reverberating damage to anyone other than myself, still with the mettle of the feckless, social media is not all that it is hyped to be, because I still like the weight of critical analysis as compared to typing "ooo how lovely!" to Ms. Farrow about her pictures. When it comes to Woody's behavior yes I have picked the side I am on, but as a matter of social equality, I have to get fusty with the forces of feminine domestication, and believe, especially in the West, that women have to "embrace their inner bitch" to quote Laurie in script, to operate in the alpha male world, and that we'd be better off engaging without overt lesbianism in the process. Do I expect secular academia to really take me back in the fold with that plank, nearly collapsed as it is? Am I for real? Not in terms of fire and brimstone epithets, no, but as an intellectual warning, yes.

My pleasures are few. One of them once was dragging my body into class with a spastic infantilism, my crutches splayed in the hallway, my breathing labored, gratefully pushing my buttocks back onto the sling seat of a metallic wheelchair frame long rusted into recycle, or landfill. Video rarely takes me out of my consciousness, sex never, good or bad, and I am probably past any point of abandon, and yes, I know abandon is ellusive for the healthy. Levels of practice and expertise are involved. It was like that when I took Paratransit to the Riverfront to see A.I. Bladder filled itself like a weakened rubber, most likely I wet myself in the studio when I returned, not a good day for wonder, or even to feel secure. After the Colorado shooting, reporters kept blaring that theatres were supposed to be a safe place for families, and those of you with relevant pair bondings, of which I am sometimes envious. I never felt that way, not safe, except when Kmac told my mother, the bungle of us screaming at Jaws popping out of the ocean, that "damn shark should run for president." She was wry in the closet. We're catching up with our fictions of science, the erosions of those boundaries, the autonomic, clinical coolness of a Spock, a Data, a Goren, a Sherlock Holmes. I always thought the organic androids from Alien were the most plausible. Should I have my DNA preserved, and come back without damaged brain tissue? Is that possible? 

The Thing Itself

I esteem William Hurt for his public reticence. I have never seen him do an interview on television about any of his films, neither on Charlie Rose nor other syndicated segment, and since my volubility manifests in stark contrast to his weighty pauses and force of expression, I am drawn to it, most of the time. In his earlier work, like Gorky Park, his emotional silences seem to matter less. In A.I. the existential focus of his character is as doomed as any other human social dynamic still in operation. Many of his roles involve definitions that viewers hope to draw on for assurance, only to find ourselves unfulfilled, a hanging chad being sucked into the void, as illuminated in films like The Plague, and Dark City. Very different narrative vehicles, but part and parcel of his presence being a misdirection that frustrates expectations. Doctor Hobby cannot resurrect his son, at the end of the day, and unintentionally creates more suffering, though I have always had trouble conceptualizing robots as truly anthropomorphic. Asimov sees robotic evolution as a rather frightening encroachment of paternalism, the ultimate case manager, determining the future of its creator; in essence, vanquishing the free will humanity once believed it had. Spielberg turns the tables on this, of course, and the meme becomes a bummer, to cull a contemporary reviewer's term.

To undercut my objectivity, as I usually do, I was forced to forfeit my entire day for the sake of cat food supplies, since my order had not shipped, and I grew agitated because I am still not fully adapted to a secure transfer to the Quantum model chair, which is why I rarely use it, although I know I need to change this strategy. Most of you do not know how low I can get on bad days, in part because I grew ashamed of the depth of my anguish in public, and do not want to dredge it up, and I myself do not like reading depressed women crying out and then getting advised by half the damn country on the brand name half the damn country is using, and yet, like an insane idiot, I am afraid of not having the cats to take away what would have been quality writing time if I did not have to charge and then frantically get to the nearest outlet. I am almost far gone enough to roll myself on the nearest Amtrak and get off somewhere in Rhode Island. I have no idea what this would achieve-- if in fact such an impetus is just another way of giving up and letting society cage me now, as opposed to five years down the road; even if I do leave Presby, this is not a magic charm. Nothing would change. I'd still need to be compliant with the categorization of my status of a nursing home candidate. Of course, I will kick my attitude about the bush after some sleep.