The Speed of Zoom

[A]ny writing is a process of inscription. By inscription I mean a process in which
through putting two things together, the nature of these two things is in some
way modified.
— Ernesto Laclau

1. Nosegay is a word that has nothing to do with me.

The light shimmied through the wires and skimmed the curves of the
screens. Although it was about L_________, it could not be hugged, kissed,
snuggled in any fashion. First there was he and she, him and her, slogging
away at keys. Dialing upward by way of digging down. Only to connect. And
then, response makes a pair. A them of sorts. To be sorted. Meanwhile we,
under the eaves.

dear joe, she wrote. please forgive this imposition from a stranger. dear
kass, he wrote. a stranger imposes pleasing forgiveness.

(It is the misfortune (but also perhaps the voluptuous pleasure) of
language not to be able to authenticate itself.)

2. The words are flying away.

what strikes me, she wrote, is the way your alphabet forms in frankness.
i wonder whether your skin is as supple as your being. being, he wrote, is
the suppleness of striking, your beta waves in alphafrank wonderment,
the skin on your chinny-chin-chin a suitcase away. being is in L_________.

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3. Your word is too white.

dear reader, she wrote, i feel i know you, but what is there to know?
there is nothing, there is the hail mary pass, there is the wide receiver,
there is static in the medium, there is question, there is answer, there
is openness, there is closure, there is no being. but what, he wrote, is
there? a static medium, a questioned answer, a reception in honor of
knowing. to know. nothing. to be. nothing. to feel the closure of being
transmitter. to feel transmitter. to receive that feeling of transmitting. to
know no closure. that is L______.

(After graduating from UCSC with a focus on Cuban Feminist politics
and joining the struggle to end violence against women of color, she and a
friend rode their bicycles cross-country.)

4. People won’t be able to see your word.

i stroke, she wrote, keys. keys that gather order present align pronounce
enjoin decree instruct trim fit shape set sort piece group palm this thing,
this one, this be, this face, this fuss, this will, this won’t, this life. i know,
he wrote, the keys, how striking. the debauch of tapping, the revelry of
pounding, the orgy of beating, the bacchus of fingering. a L_____-in of
fiddling. how it puts us straight, how it codifies, tabulates, administrates,
some thing we name we — a tone, a pitch, a timbre. all from tips, touching,
keying, breaching.

(Is there a way to end the monotony of black-and-white documents by
printing a few pages in color? Yes. The imageRUNNER family is colorenabled.
For when you need color.)

5. Our words are out of order.

we, she wrote, being the best and worst of terms, making of us a we but
necessarily a them. them being necessary to know the we. our separate
speaking, our cant. but for there to be we there must be i and you and for
there to be i there must be you. my separate tongue, my utter. for there to
be we we must be different from and they must be different from. to go to
L______ there must be different from. we, he wrote, being not us, being only
pidgin, being only phraseology, being only. in the separation, evaporation.
surrender of i. if no i, no you. if no we, no them. only reading, the instability
of reading. do not make me use the term interpret. do you. read me.
between the lines, divination. more today than yesterday.

(I have a hearing deficiency, she said, so if you ask me a question and I
answer some other question, don’t get me wrong.)

6. Even human poetry words have to scan for chrissake.

pixels collect dust, she wrote, space dust, cyber trash, hacker tripe. i don’t
know how they get from there to here. how you get from you to me. you
come through a wire — or something. there must be time involved.

L_______ is really time in a bottle. messaged. the time it takes you to write
me. the time it takes you to get here. the time it takes me to read you, wrong
you, rip you, right you. there is no you after that time passes. passaged.
packaged in pixie dust. you are the time involved. there is you, then the
formation of you. massaged by a constant speed of light. resorted. massless.
the most i may make of you, is to print you on paper. twenty-four
pound please, he wrote, and ninety brightness at least. to see the light. i
want to be something to you, something you can tear into, something
apprehendable. you arrest me. time after time i am here and there. there is
no simultaneity, spontaneity. no for that matter me, without time bending
me around to you, bound in time yourself, you not me and not now. we will
get there with energy. fossil fuels in fact. carbon burning beings in order to
be more than babble to one another. one a nother. a whole nother. a howl
nother. a howling nothing. a mooning howl. time is not. change is. this letter
different from that, thus change, thus time, thus sun. passage. in a moment
you will not be you. one brief dying moment. i not you, you not you.

(The way physicists use equations: why is a=b not quite enough for them?
(We invite you to consider becoming a member!))

7. Shout out the word on your back.

but should we, she wrote, see. each other. now. it is, he wrote, necessary.
now. but won’t that, she wrote, you know. ruin. we must, he wrote, not
become. stuck. but is it, she wrote, you know. time. it may, he wrote, already
be too. late. but how do, she wrote, we know it won’t. hurt. we must, he
wrote, actualize. a. heart. but won’t it, she wrote, sting. the loss of light. we
are, he wrote, nothing. a stream of digits. but our fingers, she wrote, make
us who we are. should we. touch. we could, he wrote, quit. end the down
and qwerty. but in L______, she wrote, is there not peril. of pulp. we need, he
wrote, a pulse. to plug the space. of. but your purported, she wrote, pulse, is
a palpitation, a vibration. little more than. this. we will, he wrote, throb. but
might we, she wrote, not. thud. we either, he wrote, take a thwack at this,
or. eighty-six it. we are not, he wrote, playing around here. we are, he wrote,
serious. we are not, he wrote, dreaming of you not me. we are, he wrote,
weighty. far-reaching. vital. we are not, he wrote, fucking around.

ok but, she wrote, i have to buy new underwear first.

(Mr. Smith does not like verbs. Whenever he finds one, he crinkles his brow
in disgust like a man who has discovered a dribble of food on his tie. He
taps furiously at his keyboard, moves the cursor to the offending word and
deletes it, or else adds “ing,” turning the verb into a participle and his script
into the strange shorthand that passes these days for news. “Outrage in
the Middle East threatening the United States! A school bus and two other
vehicles colliding in Dallas! Amazon.com celebrating a birthday!”)

8. My word is black, and yours is blue.

Flight. Flutter. Winging. Soaring. Shoot through the air at the speed of
zoom. Air the only struggle. Well. Friction. Telephones. Cells zinging.
Connection. A voice. Talk. Connection. Well. Speech flounder muddle
bungle. Shoot through the air at the speed of whoosh. The not-thereness
of resistance. In the face of propulsion. Well. The who-you-ness
of making an i. Shoot through the air at the speed of zip. They shared
dispatch. In an attempt to parole. Form. Utter that which shifts. Pledge
assurance. Give their. In a nutshell, they are literature. Well. If you put it
that way. Shoot through the air at the speed of whiz. We may explicate
them only through intimation. Survey their bulletins. Toms peeping.
Flight. Neither here nor there. Not yet the you she will be when she.
Her purposely dressed down so he won’t think she. Him leaning against
a pillar, one foot crossed over the. Winging. Casual on the concourse.
Shoot through the air at the speed of zow. And to put it briefly, boxers.
Well. Flight. In the midst of but not medium. She has neither memory nor
vocabulary. He will talk all night about the notness of we. Well. Except
for ten minutes when they — Shoot through the air at the speed of wow.
Flight. Zero hour. Almost there now. Are we here yet? Do not make me
use the term interpret. They will be neither together nor not. They will
find no separate tongue. They will be youitheywe. L_____. Shoot through
the air at the speed of zoom. They will be we. With the greatest of ease.

(“We don’t communicate in full sentences anyway,” says Mr. Smith. “We
don’t need all those words. It allows us to go faster.”)