Monday, July 9, 2012

Endless Pieces: Disjecta membra poetae

[notes of experimental theology and mechanics from James Watt, transcribed by S. M. D. 
It seems that Watt discusses the Bible]

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this is not an attempt to bring together what can never be fixed into a whole.

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the ancients called this problem the "Disjecta membra poetae."  Horace lamented that he lacked the full poems of some of his predecessors.  We have to make do with the shattered pieces that remain.  Even we cannot craft a pot in full, without seams or tears.


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some see an over-arching world, that these countless writings from antiquity agree, assemble together a script, and set in motion a play that one can live in.  This collection the church calls its book is no world.  Our world is in steam, a steam that tosses around these fragments and torn papyri.

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even the individual sections of this book are not one.  They are torn out and belong to other places.  Even if our mechanics assembled them, stitched them together as this ancient writing suggests they may be, we still do not know their purpose.

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my gears can wind them out and repeat them into all shapes and into new texts.  The steam can bring them to new homes and graft them onto and into other stories, interrupting them and giving them new life.

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shards and fragments do not make a whole and can be be reiterated over and over again to fit to new places.  My gears grind one way or in reverse, their teeth locked into each other as they spin.  Irregular pieces fit nowhere and everywhere.

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