[NetBehaviour] Image of a Line that is a Line

[Alan Sondheim via NetBehaviour]

Image of a Line that is a Line

https://youtu.be/QdQ_8-AqbvM video
http://www.alansondheim.org/line.jpg

The street construction goes on and on, maybe 20 times since
we moved here nine years ago. It's always the same thing,
digging a trench the length of Westminster Street, blocking
traffic, usually putting a pipe in. The geometries remind me
of the Nazca lines in Peru, beautiful. The noise of course is
horrendous, starting around six in the morning, through the
day; at night, the clubs take over. On the other hand, I'm
fascinated by the machinery and the ultimate simplicity of
wheel, lever, scraper, shovel, groups of men and women
standing around, trucks and construction equipment wheeling
around... I shoot from the window, maybe follow-up from the
ground, gauging the changing and noisy landscape. The routine
is in fact routine, repeated actions; what changes things
beautifully are the slight errors, asphalt for example
breaking in the wrong place, something slipping... I'm
coupling recordings which you won't watch all the way
through; the first is slightly embellished. I can't get
enough of the sound to be sure. I think Archimedes would
have no problem understanding any of this.

In the early morning, in the early morning,
I wake up ponderous, dizzy beyond belief, everything whirling,
it's not me that's moving, it's the walls, the sound complete
and everywhere, almost perfect, I stumble, almost collapse.
I can't sleep, can't not sleep.
It's not a teeter, not a challenging geometry, problem to be
solved.

It's a state of somewhat terror, something called the
"incessant." There's no framework for this, the melding.
Even now, writing in this cafe, the melding. The Wold,
The Total Loss.

This could be a symphony, noise music. A tired metaphor:
The machines dance. They don't. They're inert, the road,
the Wold, the workers, myself as in-earnest onlooker: all
inert. The Thing.

The Thing manifests itself as nothing: it is The Thing,
neither singular nor plural, neither one nor many, neither
here nor there, neti neti, neither above or below,
The Thing. I capitalize out of habit; it is literally no
matter, no matter at all, no material, no materiality.
Neither this nor that, embracing the world, neither
embracing nor non-embracing, the world. Neither world and
neither world.

What is an embrace but emptiness. Not geometry,
here among the asphalt, not comfort, kindness, nothing.

You are staring, you are in, you are without, you are
absorbing the bones of the world which are and are not your
bones. That is why the absorbing is long and unending,
neither promise nor premise. There's nothing here, you see?
Pixels and accouterments as if in _production._ That is it,
a production form, production formula. There is no tiring
in repetition, what wears down is irrelevant, things are
always larger than things.

Yes, that occurs here. Hurrah, precisely, an occurrence.

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