Be the machine that you are in the world.

Baudrillard: Surplus value, profit, exploitation -- all these "objective realities" of capital have no doubt worked to mask the immense social domestication, the immense controlled sublimation of the process of production, appearing only as the tactical side of the process. [...] For the system no longer needs universal productivity; it requires only that everyone play the game. [...] Excluded from the game, their revolt henceforth aims at the rules of the game. This revolt can remain ambiguous if it is experienced as anomie and as defeat, if it occupies by default the marginal position assigned to it by the system or if it is institutionalized as marginal. But it is enough that it radically adopts this forced exteriority to the system in order to call the system into question, no longer as functioning in the interior but from the exterior, as a fundamental structure of the society, as a code, as a culture, as an interiorized social space.

wittgenstein #18

Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets
and squares, of old and new houses with additions from various
periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with
straight regular streets and uniform houses.

research tidbit

"The functionality of Nature structured by labor, and the
corresponding functionality of the subject structured around needs,
belong to the anthropological sphere of use value described by
Enlightenment rationality and defined for a whole civilization (which
imposed it on others) by a certain kind of abstract, linear,
irreversible finality: a certain model subsequently extended to all
sectors of individual and social practice. This operational finality
is arbitrary in such a way that the concept of Nature it forgets
resists integration within it. It looks as if forcefully rationalized
Nature reemerges elsewhere in an irrational form. Without ceasing to
be ideological, the concept splits into a "good" Nature that is
dominated and rationalized (which acts as the ideal cultural
reference) and a "bad" Nature that is hostile, menacing, catastrophic,
or polluted." -- Jean Baudrillard, "The Mirror of Production" (pp.
56-57)

33 1/3 Mercy Street (vintage material!)

(Anne Sexton vs Peter Gabriel, Nick Cave, and Tom Waits
with a sprinkling of Kathy Acker.)

In my dream, looking down on empty streets, all she can
see is that it began when they came and took me from my
home.  The dreams all made solid and, drilling into the
marrow of my entire bone, they put me in death row, the
dreams of which I am nearly wholly innocent, you know.

MY REAL DREAM:

The bats in the belfry and I'm walking up and down Beacon
Hill.  Searching for a street sign, namely MERCY STREET.
Waiting.  Not there.  Where are the arms that held me and
I'M YEARNING.

Try the Back Bay.  Not there.

I pledged her love before, an eye for an eye and a tooth
for a tooth.  It's such a sad old feeling and yet I know
the number, 45 Mercy Street.

I know the stained-glass window, it's memories.  But
you're innocent when you dream and i think of the foyer,
my head is glowing.

When you dream the three flights of the house
when you dream its parquet floors

And we'll be done with all this weighing up of truth, the
furniture, and mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, the
servants and the graveyard. We laughed, my friends and I
know the cupboard of Spode, got nothing left to lose.

The boat of ice, solid silver, where we swore we'd be
together and the butter sits in neat squares until like
a strange giant we died on the big mahogany table.

Not there.

Glowing until the day we died and I think my head is
smoking and where did you go?

In a way I'm hoping I made a golden promise to be done
with 45 Mercy Street, all this looks of disbelief.

That we would never part with great-grandmother, an eye
for an eye, a locket and a tooth for a tooth, kneeling in
her whale-bone corset, and praying gently but fiercely;
then I broke the wash basin, her heart at five A.M., and
anyway at noon there was no proof and then I broke her
heart, nor motive why, dozing in her wiggy rocker.

And grandfather taking a nap in the pantry, smoking all of
the buildings, grandmother pushing the bell for the
downstairs maid, all of those cars and, I'll say it, Nana
rocking Mother with an oversized flower.

And my head is melting again on her forehead to cover the
curl where once just a dream of when she was, good, and
when she was... not afraid to die.

And in a way I'm helping in somebody's head where she was
begat, and in a generation, the third she will beget, I
began to warm and chill, she pictures to be done with all
this, twisted of the truth.

In the broken glass, she pictures the steam to objects and
a lie for a lie, their fields, she pictures a soul, a
ragged cup, a twisted truth for a mop with no leak at the
seam the face of Jesus in my soup and I've got nothing
left to lose, let's take the boat out, those sinister
dinner meals wait, and I'm not afraid to die.

Until darkness, with the stranger's seed blooming, the
meal trolley's wicked wheels let's take... melting the
boat into the flower called Horrid.  A hooked bone rising
from my food wait until I walk in a yellow dress.  And I
think my blood is boiling darkness comes, all things
either good or ungood.  Nowhere, and a white pocketbook
stuffed with cigarettes, I'm spoiling in the corridors of
pale green and grey and enough pills, my wallet, my keys,
all the fun with all this truth and consequence and being
twenty-eight, or is it forty-five?

I walk. I walk.  Waiting nowhere in the suburbs and I hold
matches at street signs burning in the cold light of day,
for it is dark, and in a way I'm yearning, and a truth for
a truth, there in the midst of it so alive and alone as
dark as the leathery dead to be done and anyway I told the
truth with all this measuring of words that support like
bone, and I'm not afraid to die.

Dreaming an eye for an eye of Mercy St. and I have lost a
tooth, my green Ford waiting, anyway i told the truth and
i think my head is burning.  My house in the suburbs
dreaming of mercy, two little kids, and i'm not afraid to
die.

In your way sucked up like pollen by the bee in me and in
a way I'm yearning for daddy's arms and a husband again
interpret signs and catalogue who has wiped off his eyes,
dreaming, done with all this measuring of proof, in order
not to see me inside out.

Of Mercy Street, a blackened tooth, a scarlet fog.  I am
walking and looking. Swear, a life for a life, they moved
that sign, the walls are bad.  And this is no dream-black.
Just my oily life-bottom.  And a truth for a kind truth,
where the people are alibis, and the street is unfindable
for an entire lifetime.

Pull the shades down (dreaming of mercy) they are sick
breath and I don't care! anyway there was no proof in your
daddy's arms, bolt the door, mercy, they are sick breath,
erase the number, but I'm not afraid to tell a lie.

Rip down the street sign, pulling out the papers from the
drawers that slide smooth and the mercy seat is waiting
what can it matter, they are sick breath tugging at the
darkness, and I think my head is burning what can it
matter to this cheapskate word upon word they are sick
breath gathering who wants to own the past that went out
on a dead ship and in a way I'm yearning confessing all
the secret things and left me only with paper in the warm
velvet box, done with all this measuring of truth.

Not there.

Hear stories from the chamber, between the dollars and the
lipstick.  I open my pocketbook to the priest, as women
do.  He's the eye for an eye doctor, christ (I pick them
out) and fish swim back and forth.  He was born into a
manger.  He can handle the truth and the truth shocks and
like some ragged stranger dreaming of the way I told the
truth -- tenderness -- the tremble in the hips that died
upon the cross but here I'm afraid I told a lie.

Kissing Mary's lips and might I say it seems so fitting in
its way of Mercy St. -- I'm dreaming he was a carpenter by
trade, wearing your insides out, one by one or at least
that's what I told, them dreaming of mercy like my good
hand in your daddy's arms again, tatooed evil, that filthy
across Mercy st. throw them at the street signs.

Dreaming, shoot my pocketbook, they did nothing to
challenge, swear they moved that sign in heaven, his
throne is made of gold looking for mercy the ark of his
testament is stowed into the Charles River.  In your
daddy's arms, a throne from which I'm told all mercy does
unfold.

Next I pull the dream off.  Mercy, mercy, looking for
mercy down here it's made of wood and wire anne, with her
father is out in the boat and my body is on fire riding
the water and God is never far away.  And slam into the
cement wall riding the waves on the sea into the mercy
seat of the clumsy calendar I climb my head is shaved, my
head is wired and like a moth that tries to enter the
bright eye I go shuffling out of the life I live in, just
to hide in death awhile.

I never lied in my notebooks.

My life, a wedding band its hauled up, collaring all that
rebel blood.