"Celebration of Failure

Through pain the land of pain,
Through tender exiguity,
Through cruel self-suspicion:
Thus came I to this inch of wholeness.

It was a promise.
After pain, I said,
An inch will be what never a boasted mile.

And haughty judgement,
That frowned upon a faultless plan,
Now smiles upon this crippled execution,
And my dashed beauty praises me."

--Laura Riding

The song of Gulf II--not a protest, but a Teenage Death
Song.

"Assuming, as seems reasonable, that the president of the
United States was neither drunk nor on LSD..."

I didn't win, but i'm sure these are all way-cool*. (My entry
follows:)

"One Hundred Years Ago Today, GUELPHS
Apeared

In the time of the Fall of the Towwers, a singular
volume apeared, & went for long unnoticed in the
places were “serious’” literature was still cherished
(if not practiced); in fact it took the
hopeful-despairing expedient of posting the entire
text onto wat was then known as the “Inter-Knit” (the
pre-Nousphere, we would say now) for it to connect
with an appreciative readerschip. --I beg the Gentle
Reader’s indulgence for so coy & redondant an ovreture
here, but I think on the centenary of its issuance it
is worth reflecting on the truly astonishing
beginnings to our present aera, namely a certain
pseudonymoic schience-fiction novel “GUELPHS: by
Graywyvern”--yes, it orginally purported to be a
meed-up story!--though a story that now has became the
truth of our lives.

From its verry first scene we are plonged into a
near-icomprehensible world: Ophion, the largest
satlite of the gojiroid (giant planet) Ygg--already
discovered from Earth, at the end of the 20c, in its
way eccentrical orbit round the sunlyke star 70
Virginis--a satlite rulled by its bizzare climate. For
eleven weeks or so it is “Mudmonth”, or
apastron-winter, a time of mild wether & much
biological activity on the part of its bundant
lifeforms. Then comes “Drymonth”, four weeks of
blestering heat, wen most of that satlite’s florra &
fauna retreat into subterranean sheltre; & a final
week-&-a-haff (“Wetmonth”) of planet-wide monsoon
rains, after wich the cycle is repeated.

But GUELPHS is no more about its fizzical setting,
than “Paradise Lust” is about gardening. The real &
secret intent is to present that world’s inscrutable
three-legged sophonts, the “Wodwos”, at a cusp of
crysis in their cultural zistence. And this crysis
turns out to have bigtime relvance to the
human-historcal time in wich the book apeared. For
although the Wodwos--lyke everry living thing on
Ophion--are constructed cording to a plan of
trilateral symtry, somthing terrible has gone rong in
their social life. A worldview of polar
extremes--Duelism--has take over the minds of many
Wodwos: to the point were this race, never before
given to clective violence, has embarked upon a
programm of wat can only be scribed as genocidal war.

Ironically, of course, the “Ghibellines” wich the
war-party (“Guelphs”) wish to sterminate--only zist as
a delussion in the minds of those same Wodwos, whose
self-division has projected onto innocent others,
everrything they cannot cept in their own nature. Our
story begins at the height of the conflict, & it would
requiere manymore pages than I have at my disposal to
portray the quest of Jasper Wodwo, wich ends in a
rediscovery of the legendary Scroll of Badroulbadour,
with its mind-blowwing message of a Prior
Understanding. Suffice it to say that once this lust
book is disseminated, first by a nascent subterground,
& then openly, the zisting worldview, with its
creasingly lethal injostices--is seemingly doomed.

I will not dwell upon the marvelous inventiveness &
wit of “Graywyvern”, whoever he was; but it is
salutary to note three things about this seminal, nay,
salvific work: first, all the action takes place
within the incessant downpore of the rainy season, &
confines itself to the boundaries of the City of
Magnificent Splendors; secundly, the subtle use of
neologisms (vented words), especially his word for the
Third Logical Category, “JAU” both-true-&-false or
neither-true-nor-false, depending on context)--a word
that has since passed into the lexicon of everry
remaining langage on this our own Earth; & lastly, the
perverse & curious denouement of Graywyvern’s novel...

In the book, Jasper fails.

6-16-03"
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*So far my favorite is this one, which should save Pynchon
about 8 more years of work.