In the House of the Hangman 244

The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was re-designed to this: the peak of your civilization. What fun is it, anyway, if you can no longer hear the clink and rattle of coins that don’t emerge from the slot machines? The days of analog gambling are over. Even the earth is dizzy … Even the leaves are wheezing … Even the clouds are coughing … Phone rings. Female voice. Schwimm little wombat, schwimm. I don't mean to freak you out or anything, but your subtle body gets pretty unmoist by the time you're about 40. Randall Jarrell used to say that when he taught in Austria, his students found “The Waste Land” easy and Frost hard because they were used to Eliot’s moves, having encountered them in other languages, other art forms (e.g., modern painting), and in daily life: Europe as rubble, the world as disillusioned collage, the poet as Tiresias, helpless latecomer to history. Then a chunk of Greenland broke off. The chunk, part of the Petermann glacier, is four times the size of Manhattan. Weirdly, it even

looks like Manhattan. Like I say, what?! you didnt know you have a guardian angel who is probably sitting right beside you now rubbing his knob, smoking some kif and wondering what the hell you have to eat in your icebox? And yet while some things speed up, others slow down. For this is a limo that’s fully equipped with plasma screen TVs, a microwave oven, a toilet, marble floors, cork-lined walls to keep out the ambient noise, even a map of the solar system on the underside of the roof. Deep in the heart of Aisle 7 (the action figure aisle), all throughout the 70s, 80s, and 90s, something waited. No one knew it was there, until toy stores began their turn of the century renovations. Then the Monolith Action Figure was discovered (“TRU-1”). What was it for? Where did it come from? Why wouldn’t its barcode scan? No one knew. And no one knows to this day. Like Brussels sprouts, “they” — and “we” — ride the underground rhizosphere and engage in cross-cultural and microbial trade. “I’m amazed at how fast some of these things happen,” said Consuelo M. De Moraes of Penn State. Dr. De Moraes and her colleagues did labeling experiments to clock a plant’s systemic response time and found that

in less than 20 minutes from the moment the caterpillar had begun feeding on its leaves the plant had plucked carbon from the air and forged defensive compounds. Just because we humans can’t hear them doesn’t mean plants don’t scream. Some of the compounds that plants generate in response to insect mastication — their feedback, you might say — are volatile chemicals that serve as SOS signals. Such airborne alarm calls have been shown to attract both large predatory insects like dragon flies, which delight in caterpillar meat, and tiny parasitic insects, which can infect a caterpillar and destroy it from inside. Enemies of the plant’s enemies are not the only ones to tune into the emergency broadcast. “Some of these cues, some of these volatiles that are released when a focal plant is damaged,” said Richard Karban of UC Davis, “cause other plants of the same species, or even of another species, to …” well, if you knew, you’d know enough to know you are always murdering.

[Note: Sources: Agent Smith, in The Matrix, as quoted in Timothy Morton, and Morton himself, in his “Well-being Is Really OK (Object-Oriented Buddhism 26)”, at Ecology without Nature, 22 Oct 010; Jean Vengua, “the stars”, at Jean Vengua, 22 Oct 010; The Slits, “Earthbeat” (i.m. Ari Up); call from K; Stephen Burt, “How To Teach ‘Difficult’ Poetry and Why it Might Not be so Difficult After All”, as quoted in John Gallagher, “Burt: What you find difficult depends on what you already find easy”, at Nothing to Say & Saying It, 19 Oct 010; Timothy Morton, “Fragile”, at The Contemporary Condition, 8 Sept 010; Richard Lopez, email to JBR, 21 Oct 22:27:38 PDT 010; Jon Beasley-Murray, “stuck”, at Posthegemony, 1 Sept 010 (the latter quote describes the limo in DeLillo’s Cosmopolis); “Monolith Action Figure”, at ThinkGeek; Natalie Angier, “Sorry, Vegans, Brussels Sprouts Like to Live, Too”, at AntennaeBlog, 22 Dec 09, via Timothy Morton, “Antennae Blog”, at Ecology without Nature, 22 Oct 010. Obviously, Morton’s posts are central to In the House of the Hangman at this point in its progress …]

Comments

[Terry]

Just caught up on your blog. What an adreutnve!! I love your pictures. I think I'm jealous-no I don't think I really could do what your doing. One more vacation day left. Not really wanting to go back-I know you can relate. Take care.

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