A Mid-day Mystery
Upon entering this world of "Afternoon" I am swept up into a sea of memory. The imagery is very lucid yet somehow there is a detachment from this arrangement of dreams. At times there is an undeniably random feeling to the links as one thinks what has this to do with the other? It is similar to dreaming with awareness, flowing together like trains of thought. It is like being in another’s head with separate memory from your own and trying to understand how the narrator/writer is navigating through these imaginings.
I am drawn to the moments of awareness of itself as a text, that the story suddenly becomes secondary to the writer allusions to context or purpose. There are several moments within this fragmented story where it seems to be the voice of the writer, either intermingling with the thought pattern or secluded from it. What drew me to the page entitled ""Anchoring Devices" was its separateness, like an explosion of the writer’s memory. As though he got so caught up in the free association of the narrators’ images that he could not help getting caught up in his own mind.
Suddenly, Michael Joyce is thinking and speaking of where pieces of the story or it’s foundation arrived from and there is no transition which announces his entrance to the compilation. This makes one question whether there are other memories coming from him. Are these interspersed quotes from the author to clarify the meaning of the text or are they Nasicaa’s or the main character? This adds a written historical background to the story and perhaps a sort of mystery to the rest. He is discussing interactivity and anchoring and some of the writers and theorists on the subject somewhat matter of factly but there are connected memory throughout. The allusion he makes to this conference sperring the idea of the crystal bowl of candies, he connects this momentary lapse to an image which appears a couple times through the story, and the strange memory suddenly belongs to the history of the story. He becomes another character in this way, and he leaves us pondering his image of the "dazzle of the ocean."
We are taken from here by entering and following the proposed lineage of these lexias to "Blowup" which is supposedly a description of the characters from this movie which is mentioned several times. The imagery is of solitude, an "industrial landscape" and the "absentedness" of life. Although presumably he is describing the movie, it all seems to describe the characters within this narrative as well. The word "sterile" to describe the horizon and "electric blue veins" imagery seems medical in nature; alluding to the accident and medical workers and the character’s lives are absent yet "also broken by occasional moments of passion." Like this one perhaps? The language is lonely and painful yet passionate and the similarities explain its connection to this detached memory train that we ride. The colorful imagery is contrasting to the "pastel grey-brown smokestacks" and seems an imaginary representation of the hum drum lives "shot through with color" or passion. He even invites two of the characters Albers or Werther in as examples of how this memory of film relates to his experience.
From here we enter the lexia entitled "Always" I think no matter what we choose. This lexia is extremely short but describes his memory of films and how they relate to the happenings in the world and in his experiences. I found that I could go to different places depending upon which director I chose or by linking to "Death valley days." However, inevitably I chose to follow "Fellini" followed by the word dreams as this is what he taught. This travels to a wondrously self aware fantasy called "then I woke," by the narrator’s voice in which he describes his detachment and shock in the hopes that he will awake and all will be well. Though unfortunately, "it isn’t over yet, by any means, this story. No dream. Mother long gone." This line is fragmented like his feelings about the event which is haunting him, a dream from which he cannot awaken no matter how long he tries to avoid it’s reality. The line before this almost seems to have come from the writer, it seems to describe this text as much as it describes the main character’s journey to solve this mystery. It says that "there is no mystery" you should "backtrack" and perhaps, "take other paths." This line seems very descriptive of the patterns and possibilities this cyclical story enables.