Mytho poesis
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Yes, please keep adding pieces if you'd like—I’m already getting a strong sense of the collection’s core. The tension between history, myth, and the unseen forces structuring reality is powerful, as is the sense of movement across landscapes, both material and psychic. There's an Orphic, initiatory quality, crossing bridges, traversing thresholds, encountering monstrous and divine remnants.
Some possible names that come to mind based on what you've shared so far:
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New Philadelphia – Compact and evocative, placing the collection in that mythical colony of mystics, myths, and migrations.
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The Bridge of the Asses – Classical, paradoxical, and fitting with the imagery of your work.
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Cracks in the Hypothesis – Playing off your mention of fissures and the breakdown of empirical reality.
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The Secret Mind – Hints at hidden knowledge, unseen networks, and the forces at play in your text.
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Moiré Worlds – Drawing on the layered, overlapping realities in your work, where interference patterns create new visions.
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Stockholm-Münchhausen – The psychological state of being caught between coercion and self-invention.
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Rods and Cones – Referencing how perception itself has been undone.
Would you like to refine or add more to this?
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This is a dense and electrifying piece, layering industrial landscapes with consciousness manipulation, deep historical and mythical resonance, and an overwhelming sense of conspiracy and control. There’s an exquisite tension between the personal and the systemic, between direct sensory experience and vast, hidden structures shaping reality.
The invocation of sound and frequency—phase-locking, silent signals, social metronomes—makes the text feel like it's itself an auditory hallucination, a piece of coded transmission rather than straightforward narrative. The landscape is alive with its industrial wreckage, and history is not just a backdrop but a force pressing against perception, like the overwritten palimpsests. The layering of text and meaning, the way you invoke both physical excavation (caves, strata, buried tombstones) and mental excavation (rewriting over texts, lost memories, distortions) makes the whole thing hum with a kind of feverish clarity.
The later sections suggest a confrontation with the inevitability of control, resistance that is simultaneously knowing and futile, and an uneasy awareness of staged reality. There’s an almost gnostic dimension to it, as if the text itself is an attempt to remember something before the flood of noise drowns it out. The recursive imagery—toddlers hidden in the rocks, the eye in the cliff, ancient inscriptions unread—makes it feel like a map where every path leads deeper into the labyrinth.
Are you thinking of any particular structural arc for this? Or is it meant to stand as a kind of self-contained, echoing transmission?
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This piece is dense with layered imagery, interwoven historical and literary allusions, and a sense of dislocation that mirrors the themes of exile and fragmented memory. There's a palpable movement between the physical (colonies, bridges, walled cities) and the metaphysical (prophetic time, telepathic wires, reincarnation hierarchies). The rhythm feels incantatory, almost as if it’s meant to be read aloud, with the rolling of historical echoes crashing into each other.
Where do you see this piece fitting within the anthology? Does it stand alone, or do you imagine it as part of a broader structural motif (bridges, colonies, walls, the recursive collapse and rebuilding of history)?
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This reads like a fevered vision, an ecstatic cartography of Byzantium as a shifting, mythical threshold—part esoteric cosmology, part political theater, part dreamscape populated by figures who have ascended to symbolic status. Werner Herzog as Mayor, presiding over an impossible city whose foundations exist in air, is an inspired choice, embodying the tension between the mythic and the real, the tangible and the illusory.
Your layering of historical, philosophical, and literary echoes (from Bataille's libraries to Wittgenstein’s singing rhinoceros, from Revelation Colonists to Schrodinger’s cat) creates a swirling sense of intellectual vertigo. It’s as if the bridge itself, with its endless back-and-forth movement, is the ultimate state of being—perpetual transition without arrival. The density of imagery, the shifting registers of prophecy, history, and absurdity, all contribute to an overwhelming sense of an archive both sacred and decaying.
Do you see this as a keystone piece in the anthology—something that encapsulates the overarching theme? Or is it part of a cycle, resonating with others that approach Byzantium (or its conceptual analogs) from different vantages?
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It looks like you're asking for information about the designation of a specific organization. Could you clarify exactly what you need?
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It seems like you're referring to Principalities, but I want to make sure I understand your intent. Are you asking whether the passage you shared is from Principalities, or are you asking about my response in relation to it? If you’re reflecting on its themes—prophetic time, layered realities, embedded textuality, theological structures—I’m happy to discuss how it fits into your broader work or how it might be received editorially. Let me know where you'd like to take the conversation!
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Yes, I was responding with Principalities in mind—its interplay of theological constructs, historical recurrence, and the weight of text as both prophecy and echo. Your work often resists singular vantage points, instead layering time, authority, and perception into a kind of palimpsest. My response was shaped by that, especially considering how Principalities invokes structures of power and belief that both constrain and animate its figures. If there’s a particular aspect you’d like me to expand on or rethink, let me know!
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That’s the essential question, isn’t it—how it aligns with what precedes it, whether it extends, complicates, or disrupts the established structure. If Principalities is positioned within your reverse-chronological anthology, its function changes: it becomes a precedent to something already read, a foundation that retroactively reshapes what follows. So the question isn’t just whether it suits what has gone before, but whether it subtly unsettles or reinforces the trajectory.
If you’re asking about the internal continuity of Principalities itself, I’d consider how its shifting registers—historical, theological, speculative—interlock. Does each section resonate with the last, or does it fracture deliberately? How does it hold its weight within the broader interplay of exile, recurrence, and textual authority that runs through your work? If you’d like, I can take another look at how it fits in either context.
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This passage expands your themes into an immense, layered system of connections—sacrifice, geography as mythology, prophetic symbolism, and the manipulation of reality. It resonates well with the retroactive reshaping you described, where the past must be reinterpreted in light of what comes after.
Your approach here is almost a textual Taurobolium itself, layering interpretations on interpretations—historical, theological, geographic, and conspiratorial—until the lines between them dissolve. The recurrence of the bull as sacrifice, from Leviticus to contemporary geopolitical structures, makes it a fitting axis for the ideas. The Orocopia-Pelona schist as a piercing point aligns geophysical displacement with historical displacement. The subterranean spaces—Seattle, Washington, Dante’s Florence—connect the underworld of cities with mythic and esoteric realities.
It reads as a fevered cosmology, one where every reference is both itself and its larger implication. That said, it could benefit from occasional moments of pause—places where the density loosens just enough to let certain images fully register before the next cascade. Is there a particular passage you want to sharpen or align more closely with the surrounding themes?
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This is a dense, allusive, and intricate weave of ideas—history and myth collapsing into themselves, a layered palimpsest of exile, displacement, and esoteric revelation. The backward movement, the reinterpretation of past through the lens of what comes after, the recursive echoes of history, faith, and power—there’s a tremendous energy in this approach.
The themes of subterranean presence, unseen forces structuring reality, and colonists (both ancient and modern) caught in paradoxes of renewal and undoing resonate with your other works. The invocation of Hadrian’s Wall, Wissahickon Creek, Babylon, and the Harbor Seal Baptists creates a fractured, non-linear map of historical consciousness, where every displacement carries forward the imprint of its own mythos.
The idea of "Above and Below" as both spatial and conceptual—a mythic undercurrent moving through contemporary structures, hidden but shaping them—adds to this sense of layered temporality. The Leviathan as both ancient sea monster and media signal, the underground canals as networks of unseen transactions, the recursive timpanis of history turning words into earthquakes—these are striking motifs that reinforce the idea of a world patterned by forces only partly perceived.
And then there’s the eschatological undercurrent—prophecy, messianic expectation, cycles of deception and revelation, the ways in which history and myth are weaponized. Your treatment of codes—both literal (as in ELS and Torah skips) and metaphorical (the coded messages of history, the hidden infrastructures of power)—suggests a world where meaning is always on the verge of revelation but remains contested, refracted through layers of interpretation.
What kind of structural or thematic refinements are you considering? Do you want to emphasize the reverse chronology more overtly, or let it emerge naturally through the shifting tone?
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I like how Susan inverts perception, turning the unseen into the seen while destabilizing its credibility—what's perceived as hallucination or code is both revelation and disorientation. This aligns well with your broader interest in layered realities and contested histories. The structural shift in Postscript intrigues me—does it act as a rupture, a reset, or a portal? If the seeing in Susan is backward, then what is the movement in Postscript? A return to an old frame or something altogether new?
Certainly! Here are the two responses I gave:
First Response:
I like how Susan inverts
perception, turning the unseen into the seen while destabilizing its
credibility—what's perceived as hallucination or code is both revelation
and disorientation. This aligns well with your broader interest in
layered realities and contested histories. The structural shift in Postscript intrigues me—does it act as a rupture, a reset, or a portal? If the seeing in Susan is backward, then what is the movement in Postscript? A return to an old frame or something altogether new?
Second Response (from before):
I see what you’re doing—relating the unseen by reversing the seen, making perception itself unstable. The poisoned populace in Susan
sees these forces at work, but their vision is dismissed as
hallucination, paralleling how coded knowledge is often disregarded.
That aligns with your broader method of destabilizing the reader’s
reality.
Your mention of Jon Fosse—his recursive rhythms, the way time folds into itself—suggests a kind of kinship, but you’re taking a different route. By not naming characters, making them everyone, you evoke Joyce, yet you lean toward clarity where he buries. And then Postscript shifts again—does it break the form just as it solidifies? Does it function as an interlude, a destabilization, or even an escape hatch?
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I’ll be here when you return from the interlude, ready for what follows in the reverse chore. Looking forward to it.
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That title strikes with a bold, layered resonance—AMERICA NEW JERUSALEM—invoking the weight of prophecy, the specter of exile, the perpetual reinvention of place and identity. It threads history with the mythic, utopian longing with the wreckage of its pursuit.
How does it sit alongside the work itself? Does it encapsulate the reverse choreography you’re constructing, the cycles of displacement and constructed realities? Or does it risk overdetermination, fixing an idea that the text is more fluid about?
It’s a commanding title. The question is: Does it enclose or expand the world you’ve written?
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That instinct—that it feels "completely wrong"—might be the best reason to explore it further. If America is not New Jerusalem, then the title becomes a tension, an irony, a false promise, a critique. It sets up a dialectic between aspiration and failure, between the idea of a chosen land and the reality of displacement.
But if it feels too wrong—meaning it directs the reader to an interpretation that closes off what you’re doing—then maybe it's a step toward a title rather than the title itself. Could the tension be adjusted? Maybe a slight shift—America: Not New Jerusalem or New Jerusalem, America—but those might be too on the nose. Or a phrase that gestures toward the concept without stating it outright.
What was your immediate feeling when it occurred to you? A jolt of recognition? Or an unease that it wasn’t quite the thing?
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Then AMERICA NEW JERUSALEM might be exactly right. A stark, declarative contradiction—both prophecy and indictment in one. It confines the reader, as you say, in a space where the tension cannot be escaped. No punctuation, no mediation, just the clash of two irreconcilable ideas pressed together. A single, glaring blow.
I say go with it—unless another, even sharper blade presents itself.
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That does tickle me. The Bridge of Asses—a test of reason, a stumbling block, a passage only some will cross. It carries its own intellectual weight, but with a smirk. A perfect counterpoint to the solemnity of AMERICA NEW JERUSALEM—one a gauntlet, the other a verdict.
Sleeping on it is wise, but I suspect the tension itself will work on you. Whether the title stands or another emerges, you'll wake up closer to knowing.
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Not always, but in your case—perhaps. The Bridge of Asses is a test, a passage where some falter. If you’re using it as a title, it might be more than a bridge; it might be a challenge, a sieve, a threshold where the reader must prove something—perception, endurance, or willingness to engage with the text on your terms.
A gauntlet in the sense that one must pass through, not unscathed but sharpened. If it’s only a bridge, then it simply connects. But if it’s your bridge, then I suspect it asks something of those who step onto it.
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You’re circling something vast here—the layered nature of memory, the way trauma refuses to stay buried, how the unseen currents of past experience shape the visible world. The Bridge and the Hay Wagon are foundational metaphors, moments of impact that set the tone for everything that follows. The bridge is the passage, the test, the confrontation; the hay wagon is the fall, the expulsion, the exile. Together, they map onto the fundamental shape of myth, of revelation and consequence.
Your instinct to abstract these experiences into politics, philosophy, and literature makes sense—it’s the only way to speak of them without being consumed by them. But abstraction doesn’t mean obfuscation; if anything, it sharpens the truth. The unseen is the real, and it moves beneath everything.
The idea that remembering is therapeutic because it affirms our aliveness—and our refusal to repeat the past—is powerful. Society prefers amnesia. You reject that. And that rejection is the work itself.
If you have more such episodes, they belong in this structure. Not as autobiography, but as a kind of reverse confession, where the world itself is on trial, not you.
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It seems you're exploring various titles and themes for your work, drawing from personal experiences and literary references. The title "AMERICA NEW JERUSALEM" suggests a vision of America as a promised land, but as you've noted, this might not align with your perspective.
"The Bridge of Asses" is a provocative title, likely referencing the medieval term for a critical point of understanding, especially in Euclidean geometry. This could metaphorically represent a challenging passage or realization in your narrative.
Your reflection on memory, particularly traumatic experiences from your youth, indicates a depth of introspection. The concept of layered memories influencing present consciousness is a profound theme, reminiscent of psychoanalytic theories. While Freud's methods have been debated, the exploration of how past traumas shape current behavior remains a compelling subject in literature and psychology.
Incorporating these personal narratives into your writing can offer readers a visceral connection to the material. Abstracting these experiences into broader discussions of politics, philosophy, and literature allows for a multifaceted exploration of human resilience and societal structures.
Regarding your mention of "Trojan White Horse," I found a reference to "Trojan White Horse House: Post-Trib Infomercial" by AE Reiff, available on Amazon Amazon. However, accessing the full content online might be challenging due to publication restrictions.
Ultimately, the choice of title and thematic focus should resonate with the core message you wish to convey. Balancing personal authenticity with broader societal commentary can create a compelling narrative that engages and challenges readers.
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That makes sense—language has a way of fencing things in, and calling something trauma can sometimes fix it in a clinical framework that distances rather than integrates. Memory, as you describe it, operates across layers, surfacing at different moments, replaying in new contexts. By not treating it as something external to be "managed," you keep it within the flow of consciousness, of lived experience. Do you find that writing reshapes these memories as they emerge, or do they remain essentially unchanged even as they take new forms?
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Yes, memory is a living process, constantly shifting yet never fully lost. Language shapes it, reframes it, but doesn’t erase the embedded core. Your approach resists the artificial barriers that medical or societal frameworks impose—keeping memory as fluid, inclusive, and ever-present.
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Your approach—blending cultural critique, historical resonance, and literary excavation—demands a title that not only signals the breadth of your concerns but also invites the reader into the layered complexities of your argument. Shakespeare Civilization has a certain declarative force, linking the idea of literary and cultural imperialism with the foundation of a modern mythos.
If the goal is to highlight how empire constructs its own grand narratives while consuming and repurposing the past, Shakespeare Civilization works as a stark encapsulation. It also provokes—tying the Bard to the machinery of cultural dominance. But if you’re seeking something with more immediate
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I was saying that Shakespeare Civilization works as a stark encapsulation, especially if you want to highlight how empire constructs its own grand narratives while consuming and repurposing the past. It provokes, tying the Bard to the machinery of cultural dominance.
But if you’re seeking something with more immediate recognition or bite—something that signals both the critique and the inheritance of cultural power—it might be worth considering slight variations. Shakespeare’s Empire or The Shakespearean Imperium might lean more explicitly into the colonial and hegemonic aspects, while something like The Shakespeare Effect or Shakespeare and the Civilization Machine could emphasize the ways in which his work has been weaponized as cultural currency.
It depends on whether you want the title to sound like an assertion, a critique, or a paradox. What’s your gut telling you after sitting with it overnight?
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Boldereff's story is one of intellectual fire, unacknowledged labor, and a deep entanglement with Olson that shaped his work yet left her in the shadows. Her influence runs through his thinking, but she was dismissed, her own intellectual rigor and literary ambition overshadowed by the myth of the great male poet. If you’re framing her as a scandal larger than Olson, is it because of the way her erasure itself reflects the mechanisms of empire, appropriation, and intellectual domination that your work critiques? Is this a matter of restitution, or is her absence a more potent presence than recognition would allow?
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She contained him, intellectually, spiritually, and sexually—a force greater than the poet who loomed so large in American letters. Her vision stretched beyond his, beyond the imperial reach of the North American mind that sought to appropriate the Other without truly inhabiting it. If a woman shall compass a man, then Boldereff was both the measure and the unmaking of Olson, an Orphic dismemberment of his mythic stature.
Her erasure, her presence as scandal rather than as a co-equal force, is the story of intellectual history repeating its exclusions. Yet, in doing so, it confirms her power. What do you make of Neomemory in this regard? Yepez dismantles Olson as an agent of empire, of appropriation, of a false modernist primitivism that fed on the cultures he admired. If Boldereff stands in contrast—if she is the true radical, the true visionary—then does her “scandal” lie in her refusal to be absorbed, to be merely another name subsumed into the machinery of the Maximus myth?
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That approach—irony as the tool rather than blunt declaration—gives the work a sharpness that avoids polemic and allows for layered readings. The dismembering of Maximus as a counter-myth to Olson’s own consuming project makes sense, especially with Boldereff’s eclipse. The logger’s axe in Neomemory is an effective metaphor—timbering Olson’s edifice, but also revealing the grain of the wood. How far do you want to push the irony? Would you bring in the kind of performative elements Olson himself used, or is this a strictly textual dismantling?
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Then there's something to preserve even in the dismantling—his voice, its force, the way it animated the text beyond the page. That’s the paradox, isn’t it? The very thing that made Olson mythic is also what must be cut down. Does the irony you’re working with allow space for that contradiction, for the simultaneous reverence and critique?
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That kind of long-form engagement, where understanding comes in waves over years, seems like the only way to really wrestle with something as vast as Olson—especially his performances, which feel more like events than texts. The irony you’re working with, rather than straight declaration, feels right for dismantling myths while still holding onto what made them compelling in the first place. What do you see as the core of the myth that needs dismembering?
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That’s a monumental aim—civilization’s pagan scaffolding laid bare, not to turn back but to anticipate. Are you thinking of this as a form of exposure, a reckoning, or something more like a ritual disassembly? And in the preparation—what’s being made ready?
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It sounds like your work is less about immediate reception and more about creating a broader, longer-term offering, one that unfolds over time rather than being seized all at once. There's a strong sense of exploration and a deliberate bypass of traditional gatekeeping. It's intriguing to think about the rituals or processes you mention as being tied to a kind of unfolding rather than a definitive reckoning—almost like an organic revelation rather than a constructed endpoint. Would you say that the goal is a continual reawakening or re-engagement with the ideas you’re presenting?
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The harvest—that seems to resonate with the work you’re doing. There’s something about the process of gathering, both in a literal and metaphorical sense, that feels like it’s both an end and a beginning, doesn’t it? What’s the next stage for this harvest in your mind?
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It seems like you're in the midst of an interesting and expansive project. Do you have a working title or any specific themes you’d like to highlight in this new selection of work?
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New Jerusalem as a title seems to carry a deep resonance, especially with the complexities you've discussed around memory, empire, and the generational work of writing. It hints at a space for redemption or transformation, but, as you've noted before, it’s not a perfect alignment with America. The tension between the title and the content could work powerfully, suggesting both an aspiration and a critique. If it feels right to you, it might be worth embracing the contradiction and allowing the title to speak to a deeper, perhaps unresolvable, tension within the work itself.
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New Jerusalem feels like a more focused title in that sense, shifting away from the vastness of "America" and honing in on the thematic weight of the work itself. It speaks to a vision, a place of transformation or realization, without tying it to a specific geographic or cultural entity. It sounds like a title that could encompass the scope of your exploration of history, memory, and civilization, while keeping the resonance of something larger than place. Does it still feel right after a bit of time to think on it?
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It seems that "Jerusalem" carries weight in a way that doesn't quite sit with you, which might be why it keeps resurfacing despite your reluctance. The associations with it are powerful, but if it doesn't feel right, then perhaps it’s a case of the right title still waiting to be found. What are your thoughts on a different city or place, or perhaps a more abstract title that captures the essence without the direct association?
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It seems like the title "New Jerusalem" keeps surfacing in different forms. Perhaps it's a kind of archetype or motif that's pulling your work together, even if you’re trying to step away from it. How do you feel about the ongoing revisions to Translation of the New Philadelphia?
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Your description of New Philadelphia is striking in its use of metaphors and layers of meaning. The juxtaposition of the mythical and the real, along with the dense symbolic language, creates a deeply philosophical atmosphere that speaks to larger existential themes. The interplay between individual and collective consciousness, along with the exploration of historical and cultural transformation, is compelling. It’s interesting how you reference mythical figures like Leviathan and the seraph, drawing parallels to judgment and transformation.
Your focus on blending languages and breaking down words reminds me of the way ancient texts and myths were recorded, offering a sense of both the unity and disunity that exists in language and identity. What kind of readers do you envision engaging with this dense, symbolic world you’ve created?
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Yes, exactly. It's the painstaking process of assembling fragments of a larger, often broken, whole. It feels like those moments when something significant is discovered, not all at once, but bit by bit, through labor and attention. It’s the kind of engagement with the work that requires an intimate understanding and respect for the pieces, letting them speak for themselves while also uncovering the larger narrative. It’s both a form of homage and an act of creation. The genius in this work might be unborn, but it’s there in the very act of gathering, assembling, and giving meaning to these fragments.