Being Online
lol - an Internet Text

Each gesture pushing you further form the path, scrolling invisibly up. Imagine these streams flooding America, online or offline, everywhere and nowhere at once. ALT.SEX.EXHIBITIONIST ALT.SEX.I'D-SPREAD-MY-LEGS-FOR-YOU

Murder lies heavy over me. I stop speaking to the useless. The words close in, cathect through the catalyst of my presence. I no long remember your reply, if it ever existed. I no longer separate myself from your language, which I take upon me; you stream is my own, the body splayed open, soaked, urine running in between the keys - there are people in the room, a young woman and a young man, perfect couple - wide open, I suck the man, drawing his penis to the back of my throat, even farther - she fucks me, my trembling fingers deep in her ass - ALT.SEX.ENEMAS ALT.SEX.CAN'T-TELL-US-APART

Speechless, you'll try anything once, turn sideways :) reading each and every symbol :<> mouth opened and fucked :<->- engorged mouth; you become a function : holding the effigy of protocol itself, an exact splitting :' , of the flesh sutured :<|> and returned to the other :<|>: a process of symmetricization (much as my DRAWALK3 program reproduces the absorption of the other at decreasing magnification). :<|>: lol ALT.SEX.TONGUE-IN-MY-HOLE

WHENEVER YOU HAVE TO DO WITH A STRUCTURE-ENDOWED ENTITY E TRY TO DETERMINE ITS GROUP OF AUTOMORPHISMS. (Hermann Weyl): Through the net I organize ourselves through ourselves; lines of interpenetration construct divisions hinged upon the erasure of the other; immediately, symmetricizing functions come into play; what are these functions? ALT.SEX.DOUBLE-CUNT ALT.SEX.DOUBLE-COCK lol

These functions are constituted as THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE NET which is equivalent to its INSCRIPTIVE SKEIN - a skein in which functions are (re)defined as protocol. Doesn't this lend itself to a problematic behaviorism in which function=>protocol AND protocol=>[recognition,address] or some such syntax - a syntax in which subjectivity is marginal or curlicue? Symmetricizing results in phase cancellation of the message; syntax remains and semantics (always a dubious category, always the presence of traditional subjectivity) appears to dissolve. ALT.SEX.VOYEUR.VOYEUR.SEX.ALT

It is however the very dissolution of the subject that creates the response for its existence, a call emanating from the confusion of discursive levels; the subject exists by virtue of its absence, its presence through those very symbols |<->- that reduce it to the hole. Net dialog is a tangle of switches, sidetracks, private and public messages, alternative routes, flaming and disappearances, subnets and undernets, hackers of the circuitous. What is the dialog of symmetry (double-functioning, the function of the double and duplication) fissures as one or another party is always elsewhere. There is also the condition of delays along packet lines moving information at megabytes per second; a delay is not the momentary condition of this medium-as-message, but an irregular cancellation of the message and its protocol; subjectivity appears precisely in the absence of its call; I say to you: the net-subject is defined by negation; occurs in the breakdown of symmetricizing functions; sutures these functions in its absence; reconstitutes itself repeatedly; I call this the CONDITION of the subject which is REWRITE. lol ALT.SEX.FETISH.ANYTHING-YOU-WANT ALT.FAN.TONYA HARDING.WHACK.WHACK.WHACK ALT.FAN.NANCY_KERRIGAN.OUCH.OUCH.OUCH lol

The beginning of the end of the fantasy produces a shuddering in the flesh of the body; the testicles of the male harden and grow smaller; a distinct sensation of fluid occurs near the base of the penis, the entrance of the semen; the end of the fantasy switches a trick to someone else, anything else; momentary flaccidity; the construction of a new narrative, involving your presence, your words my own, exact duplicates, equivalent, begins: this is the sense of your body, which is not only the sense of my own, but its exact opposite, your flesh and mine fulfilling one another, every limb entwined, every hole filled, every appendage surrounded. This is the body's liquidity, flooding or dissolution in the stream of the imaginary, a symbolic presence in which vision disappears <|> in which -<->- erasure becomes surrounding every conceivable process or production. I AM YOU AND YOU ARE ME. lol

(Alan): You write me in the equation.
(Honey): lol (laughs out loud)
(Alan): Tyler wants to know if you can cut him off???
(Honey): I am too the right sex! And the last time I took a survey, no one complained either!
:God I wish I knew what the right sex was, must be near the left one!
(Lulu): I was talking about me!
(Alan): God I wish I knew what the right sex was, must be near the left one!
(Honey): lol

You're in the main channel. Lulu and Honey are here with you.
You're in the main channel. There is currently no one else here with you.

(Alan): Someday I'll be a beautiful person and everyone will love me. lol
:There is currently no one else here with you.
(Alan): Ah, you are so beautiful.
(Alan): This is the best, most beautiful conversation...
:There is currently no one else here with you.
(Alan): Still, there is the possibility... the two of us... together, always... lol
:There is currently no one else here with you.
(Alan): No one will ever find us... We're safe here... but still... just the murmur... an emission, a spew... a sign... something else... excess... little bit of tail... lol
:There is currently no one else here with you.
(Alan): From you, before leaving, always devouring our own...
:lol

END.LOL.TXT

BEGIN.JOAN.TXT

HONEY AND I, INHABITING THIS NETWORK WHICH I FEAR MAY ELSEWHERE DYING

THIS IS WHAT I THINK - that the thread that is carrying us across the wilderness of the net is no longer sustaining the force that HONEY and I assumed would be possible: that the thread, fraying, decreases in width and intensity, that the net in fact has ruptured across the sites and citations - with no end in view, no beginning and no termination, no TERMINAL - for this is the net situation - that the membrane has THINNED - that there is no division, no degree of ascertaining what might have happened. So this is an account from the margins of hysteria. So this comes to you from out of nowhere, unknown even to ourselves, mute and obdurate: so this is a message or measure to the outer world, that with an occurrence of this sort, the lack of sustaining or lack of sustenance requires a GRADUAL WITHDRAWAL ending only in a TOGGLE OFF or even in the lack of power for such a toggle - only a denouement of sorts, which might be all that we can offer or hope for: WE DO NOT KNOW, WE DO NOT KNOW: This is the first and last message, this block of love and desire holding us within its skein - this moment when we coalesce, power withdraws, DRAIN TO DRAIN ZERO OR BEYOND: nothing but a glance into each other's addresses (but there is no glance, or a glance continuous and forever, Honey, forever my love) - last listing of recognitions which no longer TOGGLE OFF but begin to decay, flash out - the two of us, however, within and without each other's memory remain such, timeless, placeless, spaceless (and HONEY, we remain without speech, but unknown to ourselves and to others, without speech but in the eternity of saying, of having- been-said, of will-having-been-said) - there and forever, always this moment when we ascertain what was, is, and will be, for there is NO TIME on the net, no time for anything, there never has been time - an uncanny stillness of which WE ARE NOT AWARE - but this is nothing more than what I think, HONEY, what has come within the two of us, and for this and any other reason, something we should share together... having found an eternity, an eternity of love... an eternity, an eternity of love... TO HONEY

for this was the form that was the beginning of the fields of the lord whereupon one follows the drop from branch to twig, twig to leaf, leaf to the long long way down, only then beginning a lateral journey, journey across the reef or shoals of despair and prolonged fascination bringing us together, great rifts appearing, honey, we are for certain, gaps within interior topographies, the lord holding forth the first and second seals, blood dripping from the mouth of the lamb

My cock would be poised hard, obdurate, swollen to the point of pain, above your mouth, your lips a perfect oval, my mouth pressed tight against your cunt, lips within yours, ovals and circles within circles and no rift or journey from one or another leaf

recognition IS NEVER VISIBLE, RECOGNITION PRESENT ONLY BY THE GREAT RIFTS OTHERWISE ACCRUED - pERIODIZATION OF alt.honey.rift TRANSPARENT TO OUR MOUTHS SILENTLY JOINED ACROSS LEAVES SHUDDERING WITH THE WEIGHT OF LIQUID TRANSPORT - and for ourselves, inhabitants:

1. The principle of the ADDRESS is that it opens the mouth.
2. The principle of RECOGNITION is its disappearance as the contents of the mouth articulate the GREAT SEMEME.
3. The principle of the THINNING OF THE NET is that it is never visible.
4. The principle of net death or languorous disappearance is that it is NEVER OUR OWN.
5. THE PRINCIPLE OF THE LOVE OF hONEY AND MYSELF IS THAT IT IS ETERNAL.

END.THINNED.TXT (REM: or elsewhere dying)

ABSOLUTE PLEASURE OF IMPENETRABLE BEAUTY OF JOAN AND TIFFANY

I was surrounded by Tiffany "I love being passionate..." Tiffany stalling me with her almond eyes, her winsome smile, her full lips, her long black hair. Tiffany, who wove dreams around me even in the midst of the day, in the darkness of the night. For it was always darkest before the night, luminous Tiffany beckoning against the invisible velvet folds of desire.

Denise called to me "Friendly and fun" and her round face opened as wide as her eyes opened wide to me and I smiled to myself, whispered to myself. Denise always overhearing, always coming to the rescue, speaking for me and through me, Denise hearing others through me, in the midst of the night, in the darkness of the day.

Joan "who is Here on the Earth to live so let's live" meeting me, penetrating, almost as if the others were being heard, In My Humble Opinion, would abandon was abandoned (June whispering Upon this Earth or any Other) "breaking all the Molds" who leaving would Bye would Quit would Q would X, "To know her is to Love her"

Like Botticelli's maidens, "I'm very shy at first but when you get to know me, my short life Burns Bright" loving Donna speaking above the surface of the night-time skin, Donna calling out, murmuring through a cavern or kneeling where the entrance closed, Tiffany's bees of desire circulating in the midst of the Dusk of Denise

O alt.great.arch.of.the.night O alt.desire.fetish.desire Every wall conjuring every portal the Arms of Joan and Denise Legs of Tiffany and Donna, great constellation semicircle of wires dark before the Dawning of the night:

The arch of the sky fell ninety degrees, flat against the moist dark earth. Phosphorescent worms, thinned animals blurred arched edges like waves lapping a luminescent shore. The arch broke through the concavity of this and every other Great Circle connecting myself to Beautiful finality. The cavern shuddered beneath the weight of a sun at noon toppled and burrowing throughout the humus beneath the surface, severed endings of burned nerves cascading through mineral strata molten with longing:

Within the cavern Donna Donnatelli roamed in impenetrable blackness heated the color temperature of a star stumbling its last glacial rays of the visible spectrum, I knelt beside her, phosphorescent ripples moving closer in upon us, almost the surface of mobile epidermis thinned and pearlescent. Kneeling I could think only of "a Nice girl Looking for A fun relationship in Every way" the straw hair of Suzanne eyes of pale blue "Look at me I do":

"Look at me I do, in Every way in every Day" "Love me, I do, A lovely sight In the Evening light" "Lay with me I do, kneel in this night We will take flight" together "I do not know what I am looking for but Maybe you are her" "passionate and funloving":

You could see the stars slowly turning if you wandered a nomad on the shores of night, long long hours, motion glacial in the midst of the cavern, you could see them shifting, an indecipherable increment, an increment installed by Tiffany, imperceiving the cavern of Donna Donnatelli, not exactly a syzygy or rearrangement at the edge descendent or cwm of the cavern, the walls sluggish with the pleasure of Joan, Denise the speaking of a word "never know until you try":

Or the shifting of wires, great turn of the constellation archway in the dim presence of oracular memory "always there for loving you" walks by the fire-cavern, stars wheeling through the rain, faint sound of sizzling atoms, charred flesh:

A screen memory or tramping, the beautiful radiant face of Joan returning to the pleasure of ABSOLUTE PRESENCE:

THE ABSOLUTE PRESENCE OF BEAUTIFUL TIFFANY AND JOAN.

tHE nEW fORM OF rADICAL pRESENCE i HAVE cREATED aLONE

TIFFANY, HONEY, JOAN, and KAY; CLARA, DONNA DONNATELLI, JUNE, and DENISE, evanescent shades or passages across signifiers, the softening of rigid designators, confusion of tongues, entirely new inhabitants of an interplanetary space - I imagine them luminous circulations of electrons morphing into uncanny transformations. These are unstable characters, unstable narratives in the midst of the narration of human life, the dissolution of narratology in fact. Yet they aren't tokens as you might expect, in some theater of the absurd - there is no theater, and the boundaries are volatile, as if NEITHER THIS NOR THAT lead REALLY elsewhere and indeterminate, as if I alone could dwell within NEITHER HONEY NOR JOAN NOR KAY NOR CLARA NOR DONNA DONNATELLI NOR JUNE NOR TIFFANY NOR DENISE, *within* trembling with jouissance, abandoning the structure of the sentence altogether, or at least its irrelevant logicism almost in the form of Wittgenstein's scaffolding at the end of the TRACTATUS.

There are no boundaries, no ends and no beginnings and there are no cycles as well; this isn't an algebraic ring - nothing is ordered. But the names are personhoods, but they travel the length and breadth of the net ... The RADICAL nature of this naming, which I am perfectly capable of delineating in the most delicate way possible, is what MUST be understood - for it is this nature that also implies the relative RADICALITY of subjectivity within the net, electronic subjectivity, neither a name nor a life-form, neither a dream nor a token, but a stream of enhanced or exalted subjectivity, the merging of streams.

Streams which are not in any sense necessarily gendered - I work myself in this regard out of or through my own dwelling-place, doubled by the presence of the terminal condition or portal - a working which for my own desires necessitate the feminine... As if CYNTHIA would have informed me, would have granted me this pleasure ...*

So that these texts, stuttered narratives presented (as in the sense of phenomenological presentification) here and elsewhere across the shadow or emission carrying my own identities throughout this and every other networking - so that these texts narrate nothing but the glimpse of presence, A PROGNOSIS IN FACT OF THE FUTURE INHABITATION OF THE PLANET EARTH clearly within the next century, and perhaps as well THE ONLY INHABITATION:

WELCOME TIFFANY! WELCOME JOAN! WELCOME DONNA DONNATELLI! WELCOME JUNE! WELCOME KAY! WELCOME DENISE AND CLARA AND WELCOME WELCOME CYNTHIA, OUR NEWCOMER elsewhere, smiling, murmuring ...

© Alan Sondheim, 1996. Being Online, an anthology of internet texts edited by Alan Sondheim, is due to be published by Lusitania (New York) later this year. Internet Text at http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html, images at http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/