Category: Reflections

They had taken photographs of each other almost all of the time- immediately reading this line, I paint an image of white sand, tough by the coral and ridges produced by frequent runners….Runners in love, runners that frolicked during happier times. It is them, the divorced couple, that protrudes through my mind. This was my beginning lexia- this was my first time coupling and meddling with the text.

The sea is amazing, not too far off to exclude the dreamer or the wanderer, but distant enough to attract us.

I wander, naturally to this word “sea”. “…and, almost always, there is the sea—or what the sound gives us of the sea—in the distance. It took the place of perspective for us, benign and ever changing.”

A relationship, the writer and his affinity, his struggle and disgruntled relationship with the sea, foretells the relationship he has with his memory- memories of his wife, their love, like the dreamlike escape of happier times on the beach.

A photograph should have captured such a time, but was it real? Was it genuine? The meaning of one PLACE appears relevant to this particular lexia- its meaning to an individual, and the apparent frustration it has as it correlates with the temperament of one memory.

I click on PLACE, and am taken to another location entirely. He is romantic. Romanticizing the faint pictures of his love life, tainted by salty relations, much like the cold water that soaked his very toes against the shores of a distant beach. He wishes to have gone back to that love- that memory of conversing happily with a beach- what should have been, was not. Or so was it? It is sad. I am sorry for him. “No matter how scrutinized these pictures now I cannot find the truth,” (from the previous lexia). The truth of his marriage is faulty, washing back and forth like the crashing waves on a shore- it was here, and now it is gone.

 

The faded memory dances off his heart, playing with his emotions. For that reason, I click on DANCERS.

 

Though not of much significance, I was brought to another location. “There isn’t any story here. It’s as Tolstoy said, the genuine drama occurs on the upward or downward slopes, never at the apex. The controlling myth of her marriage was Snow White.”

So it’s settled- his marriage was a myth- not an ounce of truth, only what his memory or imagination allowed. The term dancer and place all form a network of interpretations of the text- One that can almost be formed into a sentence: His memory of a particular place danced in his head much like the graceful yet made-up dancers of a nutcracker production- it was ALL a production; soon, he finds that the truth of this memory is merely a myth. (the term myth having linked me to “Even so, as manufactured myths go, this one is accurate.”…. All of the terms (place, dancers, myth) and the texts that follow compose a story of faded love, past memories, questioning truth, and remembered images.    

I must say that this story has me very confused.  Once you get to the end of one part of this CD, you must randomely click on words until you see a lexia that you have not read before.  Im not sure if these are simply a bunch of short stories mixed together, or if they are all connected to the first story; the one about Wert and Peter.  In any case i chose to start at the lexia that is titled "monsters".

At the beginning of this section we hear some very vulgar and descriptive language from Peter.  Once we arrive at this lexia the narrator, who at this point is Nausicaa i believe?  In this lexia we learn about the insecrurities that Peter has as a man, and they misunderstandings he has of normal male behavior.  He is unable to understand why certain men value property, ownership, commerce, and power.  Peters mind simply does not work in that way, that is why he fears Wert, because Wert does think in this way.  Wert is aware of how the world REALLY works, and knows how to make it work for him.  In tnis lexia is the first mention of Dataquest.  Though i know this is some kindof voice automated system that is later learned to attempt to gain information about the injured boy in the car accident, im still very hazy on exactly what it is used for.  For that reason chose to click on this word "Dataquest" to see where it would take me. 

After clicking "Dataquest" i was directed to the page titled "scars".  This page directs us a small writing about a plastic surgeon who could have fitted Lolly’s last "dick biting" victim with a prosthetic penis, i think that is what this page is about.  Instead this unfortunate soul decides to mark himself in ways that will thwart other females from finding him attractive.  Putting what i believe are described as large rings and hooks into his left ear, perhaps im completely off base.  The next word i chose to click on was the word "spinners", as in the types of earings that this unfortunate man has been putting into his ear. 

Clicking on "spinners" directed me to a page titled "Obligations".  In this Lexia it appears as if Lolly is sitting down with a male patient, perhaps this is why it is called obligations, since we have learned that Lolly does not particularly like to deal with men.  She is asking her gentelman patient, or perhaps scolding him, for his prior statements.  She is comparing men with women, in terms of how they understand authentic speech, telling the man that reciting poems will draw attention to what authentic speech should be.  We can see that she is annoyed with this man, but we are still not sure she is capable of biting off his penis.  The next word i click on is "dazzle".

By clicking on "dazzle" I am directed to the page that should have come after "monsters" if i were simply clicking on the Y button.  The new page is "self-destruction".  This page takes us to a random place, a place that talks about the plot of Daughter of Frankenstein.  How Frankenstein comes to live with an old blind man and his daughter.  The daughter treats the monster with kindness, but eventually the villagers hunt him down and murder him. 

Im must say that I am very bewildered at this entire story.  I could not see the connections very well, or what some lexia had to do with the other.  Monsters, Scars, Obligations, Self Destruction, these are the connecting lexia that my four word choices have given me.  How they are related to the title is very difficult for me to say.  Perhaps it refers to Lolly extending her meetings with clients to deep into the afternoon, perhaps after noon is when all the bad things in the story begin to happen, i really have no idea, I just could not get a grasp on this story and i am very frustrated with it.

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.

The first page I came upon which caught my attention and had some juicy material upon which I could run with was the lexia titled [yes3].  In this lexia, the narrator in this section, Peter, and Wert discuss a nurse at the local hospital named Lolly.  This lexia is important because it show’s Wert’s character for who he really is: a jackass.  The foul language that is used provides a further taste of the bitterness found within the story.  The way they describe Lolly’s "dyke" activities illustrates the contempt the characters have for each other throughout the story. It this is contempt and lack of trust between all of the characters that block Peter from finding out the truth about his son’s death…if it really happened.
At this lexia, I clicked the word "jealousy".  Jealousy is the bedfellow of contempt so it was logical to follow this train of thought.  The first thing I noticed was that the next lexia was titled [yes6]. Then I began to realize that perhaps "yes" was the truth that no one really wanted to admit.  On the first page, the following passage takes place: “I decided to provoke him. <And an occasional dick?> I ask <Sounds like some jealousy there>." The character questioned never gives a direct answer and instead redirects the focus.  The first line on [yes6] is: “<Are you sleeping with her?> he asks.  There are candies in a crystal dish in front of me. I pick one and unwrap it carefully.” Again the character in question, who is the narrator this time, stalls and diverts the focus.  The last line was incredible because it was so thick with meaning.  The candies represented the truth which the narrator seeks but also the lustful nature of some of the characters throughout the play including his wife, Wert, Lolly and Desmond.  The crystal dish was symbolic of the fragility of life.  The wrapper represented the layers of superficiality that had to be taken off.
I selected the word sleeping which took me to the next lexia titled [Lovers].  It is unclear who the narrator is on this page, perhaps the therapist or Lisa, the wife.  Both Wert and Peter are described and it is stated that is their differences that make them attractive.  Wert is described as self-centered, rash, raw, young and energetic like a “sinner.”  Peter is described as more dense and complicated.  What is odd is that by the end of this page, the narrator admits she would sleep with both of them.  This raised the question that maybe the accident and unraveling of the circle of characters was a punishment by fate or God.
I clicked on “sinner.” Next page was titled, [Touching Myself].  The narrator continues comparing her lust for both characters of Wert and Peter.  She compares it to masturbation because with Peter it is familiarity and with Wert it is compulsive.  A key insight to this particular narrator is the line, “I am certain they both believe they have me.  They share that sense of the man’s cliché: wife and whore, and I am the woman without complications.”
This whole set of lexia revolves around the title of “YES.” Even the last page titled, [Touching Myself] links back to a page with the heading of [Yes].   The yes plays two parts in this series.  In one aspect the Yes is the truth underneath the layers, even under the bedcovers, lies, and denials of the characters.  The yes, ties in to the lust aspect for obvious reasons but also because some of the characters can’t say no and commit unsavory acts.

I chose to begin this sequence at the lexia entitled “White Afternoon”. Here, the narrator talks about the scene of the ‘accident’, which is a key event in “afternoon”. In fact, it seems that the whole storyline of “afternoon” revolves around this accident, which may be why the author chose to entitle this lexia with “afternoon” as part of it. All of the words here link to the lexia entitled “4 what I see”, except for the words “Him” and “boy”, which link to the lexia entitled “speak memory”.

"Speak Memory" is a dialogue between two people which does not seem to make much sense, although it does appear that these people could be talking about the nature of hypertexts. The title of this lexia could possibly fit the text here, because both of these characters are speaking to eachother. All of the links on this page lead to the lexia entitled “Winter”.

“4 What I See” is another lexia which explains what the author sees at the scene at (presumably) the same accident as in “White Afternoon”. Here, the narrator (which is probably the same one from “White Afternoon”) describes in detail the skidmarks that have resulted from the accident, and how he/she finds things that seem odd about the aftermath of the accident. The title of this lexia seems to fit with the content of this story, as the author is describing what he/she sees around them. All of the links here link to the lexia entitled “5”.

"5" is another description of the accident scene. The title seems to suggest that it comes in sequence to “4 What I See”, and it certainly seems that way once you read the context of the lexia. This is probably the same narrator as from “White Afternoon” and “4 What I See”. Here, there are many links within this lexia. Everything links to the lexia entitled “staghorn and starthistle”, except for the word “Cigarette”, which links up to “yes”, “Footprints”, which links up to “2/”, “Sequin”, which links up to “o”, and “Woman’s”, which links up to “tit”.

The four lexia that I picked to analyze were Lolly’s Monologue, 1/, 2/, and exploding.  To get from Lolly’s Monologue to 1/ I clicked on the word "accident".  Lolly’s Monologue is discussing the accident that the story begins with, discussing how it came about.  The word accident doesn’t seem to really have any relation to the title of the lexia, 1/, but it does have a large relation to the content of the lexia. 1/ details exactly what took place, or at least what Lolly thought took place.  From that lexia, I clicked on the word "truth".  This brought me to 2/, which discusses the history of some of the characters, as chronicled by Lolly.  Again, the word which brings you to 2/ doesn’t have anything to do with 2/, but the content of 2/ has everything to do with the word which brought you to the lexia.  2/ is talking about the truth behind what Peter and Wert know.  Moving on from 2/, I clicked on the word "entropy".  Clicking on entropy led me to the lexia titled "exploding", which contained the single word "exploding".  Here, there is an interesting link between the word and the lexia.  Entropy has a secondary meaning of a measure of the disorder or randomness in a closed system.  An explosion can be very disorderly and very random, and it’s interesting that the word entropy would link to a lexia titled explosion.

Lolly’s monologue
I decided to begin with the page titled "Lolly’s monologue."  This lexia almost seems to be a beginning to an end, a starting place to summarize the accident.  Prior to getting to this lexia, I had clicked through several lexia’s being narrated by Nausicaa, who was one of Peter’s lovers.  However, at Lolly’s Monologue, we see a shift from narration by Nausicaa to narration by Lolly.  Lolly is telling of her interpretation of Nausicaa’s words, breaking down what she said about the accident.  As a lexia, this relates to most of "Afternoon, a story".  When you begin the story, you come across some discussion of an accident, possibly involving the ex-wife and son of the narrator, Peter.  Lolly’s monologue analyzes what Peter’s lover said about the accident. 

1/
In this lexia, we continue to see Lolly narrate.  She is analyzing the accident, trying to come up with a reason as to why it happened.  Again, this relates back to the beginning of the story with the discussion of the accident.  Also, this lexia ties in several different characters of the story, namely Peter, Wert, and Lisa.  In that way, it relates back to the previous lexia, but also to lexia throughout the story. 

2/
2/ is really about history.  It is about stating facts about Wert and Peter, and facts of life.  There are two lines in this lexia that read "There are forces which we can call evil." "There are powers which we can call good."  With these two lines, this lexia is basically saying that throughout the story you come across good and evil powers and forces, and that they are what drive life and the story.

Exploding
This is an interesting lexia because it so subtly relates to the previous lexia and to the entire story.  The previous lexia were discussing the accident, discussing the relations between Peter and Wert and Lisa, and analyzing what Nausicaa had to say.  In a way, the previous lexia were discussing an explosion between the lives of several individuals.  They were discussing several different lives coming together at one exact moment, an explosion.  Similarly, the accident could be looked at as an explosion between two automobiles.  So, it’s interesting that the previous lexia led to a page with one word, explosion, on it. 

The overall theme of these Lexia seem to be about the accident and what caused the accident.  All of them, with the possibly exception of “exploding”, seem to be narrated by Lolly.  These specific lexia almost give an answer as to what happened in the accident, but it’s only part of the answer.  As seems to be the case throughout “Afternoon, a story” you are given a small piece of the puzzle but must continue to read on to fill in the rest of the puzzle.

Afternoon, a story

 

I begin by clicking on the beginning page; I logged name in parenthesis in the title bar; then I assessed the page links that was derived from the pages that I choose and the text was as follows: 

The beginning page titled [begin] had 13 relevant links with different textual story lines, all the other words on the page linked to this text:  “I want to say I may have seen my son die this morning”.  I found that each page’s words linked basically to the same storyline except a few words, but most if not all of the words linked to the same story.  The begin page’s story implies an unyielding lifecycle without joy or maybe a little joy that come from melting noonday ice, which only melts at noon and freezes in the evening. 

The begin page relevant link starts with [winter] where the narrator is still a woman, she says that tries to recall winter and the story tell about watching a snowmobile burning while the other riders hopelessly watched.  The second link [she] brought up the lexia that implied a meeting between a man and a woman and he asked “what shall I call you”. She gives him the name Nausica.  The third work on the beginning page that I clicked was [blacktop] where you get the impression that the narrator is speaking about summer road conditions when heat waves rise from the paving.  The fourth link selected was {crystal, but in the title brackets the word [lethe] was there and not the clicked word crystal.

I fond that the pages all followed the story from the original page, especially the link that I choose, it was just from a different point of view. The point depended upon who was speaking and the subject matter that they were speaking about. The storyline that my text revealed was in Poland during the economic reformation with a few post hippy elements thrown in.  The text linked to crystal spoke about how a person feels when they get high for the first time on hard drugs, after which, you have a continual longing for that feeling.

A couple living or trying to relive the heated passion that the once shared, but finding it necessary to move on.  Once younger living free like hippy they now have responsibilities and must conform to some different social standards to raise their children.  The wife who once expressed love for her husband now choose a younger man to feel the passion and completeness she once felt with her husband.   Trapped in the new economy the husband looses his son and can not bare to know the truth so he evades the sense of the inevitable.

The words were found some wherein the page text, they related to the story, and connected the story of a relationship between people in their every day lives;, in there Polish community and show that their live were the same as many other families in other provincial economic developing societies. 

The textual media Afternoon, a Story by Michael Joyce has some elements that resemble the other texts that we have discussed in class.  I has text where the text implies that the story is going to give you closure, but does not; It has a narrator that maneuvers the reader into the plot in a way that you do not know who is telling the story or who is being told the story; and new character are interjected into the story line in the same manner that Calvino presented his characters.  

He connected is story text and pages more like that in the novel Choose Your own Adventure, but set the text links more like the textual media in Hegirascope.  It conveys a sense of the mind filling the stories gutters and seen in Understanding Comics.  The way the story was structured made you fill-in a lot of gutter space, especially with the text on his conduct about the accident.

Afternoon opens with the casual, brief exchange between a character and his or her thoughts. I stare at the page, and conclude that I already like this story. Continuing to read the still screen- it is still by the manner of descriptive words such as cold, and winter, and ice- I frame the fragmented scenes as a collage of war- instilled by the lines that read, “By five the sunsets and the afternoon melt freezes again across the blacktop- into crystal octopi and palms of ice—rivers and continents beset by fear, and we walk out to the car, the snow moaning beneath our boots and the oaks exploding in series along the fenceline on the horizon, the shrapnel setting like relics, the echoing of far ice. This was the essence of wood, these fragments say. And this darkness is air.”

 

 I found that instinctively I had placed the setting of this story in the arms of a courageously cold and bitter war. How interesting that this mode, this present scene, is introduced in thought by a series of terms and descriptive terms. Beset by fear, conjured shots of fearful trance, projected by faceless expressions of soldiers sprawling the fields of ice and heavy snow.

 

 A war in winter-

 

Which is carried by the line, “snow moaning beneath our boots”- almost an immediate mental depiction of these soldiers that I have so vividly pictured in my mind, certain that this is the tale the author intends to share. The depiction is of moaning fighters, trucking upon bitter cold snow, trampled on by heavy boots- military, most likely. The terms shrapnel and darkness did aid my erratic assumptions, either. For shrapnel is in war, used for battle. And the darkness speaks of billowing smog of artillery smoke and gun powder, canons, and whatever fantasy like image I am projecting- one that molds separate time periods as one.

 

Much like the instances we discovered in the hegirascope, and the first assignment of linking particular nouns to specific sites, words do in fact bring about a memory, a feeling, a fleeting thought that signifies its importance to you, and whether or not it deems further inquiry or interpretation. I saw these words and thought, surely this is a novel of cold hunger, much like the story, “Ordeal By Hunger”, (a war story involving the chronicles of men becoming men throughout a war zone). The tale, again, exemplifies that fantastic dementia between words, mind, interpretation, and sequence. (sequence, I speak of the placement of the words on the page, coinciding with the placement- rather importance- of certain words to the reader).