Having been previously exposed to Hegirascope (by force) through an ENGL 325 recitation, I really wasn’t looking forward to “going to the dentist” again. Therefore, I set my kitchen timer for exactly 30 minutes and…reluctantly…re-entered the world of this hypertext abyss. My aversion to this creation stems from the simple fact that I don’t naturally read, think, and respond as fast as Hegirascope requires. When words are coming and going on a page before I have the chance to read and process their meaning, I feel agitated. Further, if I can’t make sense of the words I’m reading, the experience is frustrating and meaningless. This considered, I took Prof. Sample’s advice and chose to enter Hegirascope through the introduction and index option. I also chose to exercise further control by backspacing if the pages advanced before I was ready. This helped me immensely and definitely improved the experience. Backspacing may not be what Stuart Moulthrop had in mind, but it gave me the opportunity to go back, read/re-read pages, and process them on my timeframe, not the program’s. I wondered if this might be in a sense cheating, but I don’t think so. The ability to backspace could have been disabled.
For me, the option of entering Hegirascope through the index had an anxiety reducing effect. Because the index page is static, it allows the opportunity to peruse the topics and select a link with no time limit. This entry gives the user some measure of control that the “diving in” option takes away. After thoughtfully studying the categories, I yielded to temptation and entered Hegirascope through ” ‘ORAL SEX.’ ” Although I could not find a relationship between the subjects/theme in this link and the topic as I expected it, I’m glad this is where I started. The first link was Zick. From “Hey Zick,” again, out of curiosity, I chose the next Zick link. My course of travel took me to such places as “Shadows,” “Choose Life,” “Spelling of Love,” “LINGERIE,” and “LOVE IS THE THING WITHOUT STAPLES.” As I write these names, I realize that I chose titles that intrigued me and placed them in my “grocery cart.” Marie-Laure Ryan’s metaphor of the “supermarket-shopping experience” was definitely my approach and the one that made me feel the most comfortable with this hypertext. According to Ryan, “This reader does not feel compelled to read the text in its entirety or to pay attention to every screen, because (s)he sees the text…as a display or resources from which (s)he can freely pick and choose.” (Marie-Laure Ryan, thank you for validating my approach!) Ryan further states that for user’s who apply the “super-market shopping” approach, segments are regarded “as a mode of transportation.” I can definitely identify with Marie-Laure Ryan’s description.
My slower paced experience with Hegiroscope enabled me to awaken to a possible theme. Much of Moulthrope’s text seems to relate to the technology of computers, the web, the virtual world, virtual experience, and in general – technology merged or juxtaposed with life experience – all of this in the context of time. If I didn’t have so much homework, I can honestly say that I would spend more time exploring the hegirasphere and its meaning related to specific aspects of the text that I found intriguing. In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that there were some pages that made zero sense to me, but for the most part – without too much work/effort – I did see a common thread.
So, my conclusion is that a slower paced hegira-experience was the Novocain I needed. After my timer beeped and while still numb, I felt brave enough to give “diving in” (minus backspacing) one more try. In an instant, the familiar agitation returned. I quickly realized that for this procedure, I would probably need laughing gas, too.
As a footnote, I went back to Hegiroscope this morning to re-create the experience I had last night, but it was impossible. When I opened “ORAL SEX,” the program did not allow me to take the same path. When I clicked “Zick,” I got a blank white page. Refreshing did nothing. So, it seems that Moulthrop purposely did not want us to have the option of choosing to travel the same path twice.
I think the shopping metaphor is a good one to approach Hegirascope with. And the back button is definitely our friend when it comes to this text. I’m intrigued that you thought of this method of navigation as a kind of cheating — it’s an interesting idea, and it implies that the reading experience is akin to a game. (In order to cheat, there must have been some rules laid down in the first place.) This is something that Moulthrop himself might agree with. Do you think that all reading has this game-like element to it, or just more experimental texts like Hegirascope?