shape of unintentional provocation

not an interpretation of a beckett play at vectorbelly.

'' my aim here will be to examine the respects in which the augustine paradox imitates the "shape" of waiting for godot, is in fact a perfect working modle of the play's structural dialectic. ... put simply, the essay is an examination of the ways shape matters in godot. ... i am not concearned with the poetry in the language, or with an interpretation of the play but with the structure of its intelligibility. in fact, if we were to condense godot to a graphic illustration of itself, it might resemble a highly "sucessful" rorschach blot. i have in mind the simple wonder of the blots appeal: like found art, it is unintentionally provocative. ... i am hardly implying that beckett, or any playwright, could be unintentionally provocative with any sucess. what i mean is that the shapes and subshapes in godot behave as if they were.''

bert o. states, shape of paradox: an essay on waiting for godot.

christopher alexander--function follows ornament follows beauty follows centres

flower nails at notcot.

''i have found again and again--without counter example--that our ability to see the field of centers in a thing, and to produce the centers which are indicated geometrically, tends to produce an object which works better. ... form follows function! but if we look at the examples i have given, it seems very unlikely that this is what took place when they were made. ... example after examples suggest emphatically that this is what came first: making the centers beautiful was the driving force. ...

'' the geometry that occurs in the 14th-century nail produces life that has both functional and ornamental qualities to an extraordinary extent. ... it also works incredibly well because of its size and the thickness of the head, it has a very long life and great strength, lasting in some cases 600 years--something that a 20th-century nail could almost never do. is it a coincidence that the 14th-century nail works so well both as an ornament, and  as a functioning long lived nail? what is the connection between the ornament and function in the nail?''

christopher alexander; the nature of order, bk-i.

baudrillaird--cool memories

''fragmentary writing is, ultimately, democratic writing. each fragment enjoys an equal distinction, the most banal one finds its exceptional reader. each, in its turn, has its hour of glory.

''of course, each fragment could become a book. but the point is that it will not do so, for the ellipse is superior to the straight line. it is also a matter of laziness; one has no right to waste time to no good end, anymore than to exploit oneself to no good end. and a matter, too, of compression of words, which have done so much work already.

''another promise of fragment, is that they alone will survive the catastrophe, the destruction of meaning and language. like the flies in the plane crash which are the only survivors because they are ultralight. like the flotsam in poe's maelstrom. the lightest items sink the most slowly into the abyss. it is these one must hang on to.''

jean baudrillard, fragments-cool memories iii, 1991-95; english by emily agar.

barthes--incidents

''incidents is the writing down, the collection, of what barthes saw and heard in morocco. for the most part in tangiers and rabat, then in the south, in 1968 and 1969. ... the text is the written account of meetings--incidents--that could of woven the fabric of a novel. without the support of people; also with practically no continuous thread to the story, which would necessarily force a 'message'. into it: the 'novelistic', in essence, is fragmentary. ...

''this is clear when roland barthes par roland barthes twice alludes to this text; under the heading 'projeto de livres' [ book projects ]: 'incidents [ mini-texts; wrinkles, haikus, everything that falls, like a leaf ]; and under the title 'qu'est ce que ca vent dire?' [ what does that mean ]: 'a non-book could be conceived; one which would relate a thousand incidents, by keeping itself from ever drawing one line of meaning; it would be exactly a book of haikus?' ...

''one may note that here, in fact, the genre is constantly emphasized by a particular attention to surprise, to a break in continuity, to the incongruous. the incident is there: the one thing that falls outside all codeification.''

roland barthes, incidents; english by teresa lavender fagan, from the publishers notes of francois wahl.