Shards [vii]: Barthelme's

(Shortened the, say, section name, from Spectacleshards to Shards, just because.)

There's always this urge to return to Southern Tagalog--but not in UPLB. Or so I think, as that particular place mocks me, yet embraces me, as if making fun of what we shared together, of how she, as a mystical place that ironically defies its being a scientific community, cast her spell to those who dared to traverse her depths, or lack thereof. The nostaliga to return to the eLBi is so sickening, as if an itch that needs to be scratched. Today, there's a session, c/o ser D, titled Name-play in Barthelme's "Bunny Image, Loss of: The Case of Bitsy S."

Had I did things I am ought to do earlier, had I been as productive as often as possible, I could have been travelling to eLBi now, but since I cant, I just ripped the plastic of Barthelme's The Dead Father to browse and flip and read the first few pages--though, still, I am, with shame, confessing that I am yet to finish Petals of Blood. Let me share a few sentences, i.e. a paragraph, from the Dead Father:

Machines are sober, uncomplaining, endlessly efficient, and work ceaselessly through all hours for the good of all, said Dead Father. They dream, when they dream of stopping. Of last things. They--

That's it. I stopped. Quite too much. Have to catch up, and make up for the excess of sleep I've slept. I've slacked off, no matter how such a move is against my will, I have none but myself to blame, though I tend to rest against my will as this body does not work that well, I might need a new one, so, I am on a countdown, I've more than five years left before I triumph over life through--

I have to extend the "mechanical experience" and stretch, at all costs, that "experience there was room for." As I also "wanted to know what machines know," i.e what things that repulse me know, i.e. machines more sophisticated than humans--through which I am communicating this message, i.e. venues provided by cyberspace; through which I mechanically reproduced scenes, in an instant, to share experiences, i.e photographs; through which I manipulate images that need, however little, enhancements and few tweaks, i.e. photoshop; through which I explore boundaries, i.e. technology.