Working Draft

Indra’s Net

It was only in the late 1980s that the technology to present the results of such work in an appropriately designed format became widely enough available to qualify as, at least, a potential medium of publication.15 It was at this time that I produced the first published piece in a new medium of my own making, Indra’s Net, a title which I used for this piece and also for the series of works which have followed from it.16

Indra’s Net was one of two metaphors which guided the inception and development of this cybertextual project. The concept of Indra’s Net originates in Hinduism. The net was made of jewels and hung in the palace of the god Indra, a generative representation of the structure of the universe. I first encountered it in a history of Chinese Buddhism: “a network of jewels that not only reflect the images in every other jewel, but also the multiple images in the others.”17 As a metaphor of universal structure, it was used by the Chinese Huayan Buddhists to exemplify the “interpenetration and mutual identification” of underlying substance and specific forms. In my own work it refers to the identification of underlying linguistic structures which are used to restructure given texts recursively, and so to postulate and demonstrate these structures’ generative literary potential; or, on a more grandiose scale, to represent some of the underlying principles of meaning-creation within language itself, those which generate new language in the same way that the universe may be seen to be formed by the falling and ‘swerving’ atoms of Lucretius.18

The other metaphor which helps to structure my work is taken from holography. The neologism, ‘hologography’, is based on the definition of ‘hologram’ in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary: “A pattern produced when light (or other radiation) reflected, diffracted, or transmitted by an object placed in a coherent beam (e.g. from a laser) is allowed to interfere with the undiffracted beam; a photographic plate or film containing such a pattern.” This is transposed from light into language: “A pattern of language produced when the words or the orders of words in a given text are glossed, paraphrased, etymologized, acrostically or otherwise transformed, and such transformations are allowed to interfere with the given text; a set of rules, a machine or a computer program which defines or displays such a pattern.”

For drafting purposes, this cell contains copies of texts in the introductory cards of the HyperCard stack.

INDRA’S NET

Term taken from Hinduism, but uncovered when reading about its use in illustrating certain doctrines of the Chinese Huayan school of Buddhism. INDRA’S NET was ‘a network of jewels that not only reflected the images in every other jewel, but also the multiple images in the others.’ (Ch’en, Buddhism in China, Princeton, 1964) It was a metaphor of universal structure and was used in Huayan Buddhism to exemplify the ‘interpenetration and mutual identification’ of underlying substance and specific forms.

INDRA’S NET

Used by analogy to describe texts where the letters and words, or words and their glosses or etymologies ‘inter-penetrate and are mutually identified’. The structure of these texts allows the same sort of iterative, infinitely regressive form implied by the jewels of Indra’s Net and the reflections which they manifest.

POEMPOEMS

Oskar Pastior (1927– ), in describing the processes he used to compose his Poempoems compared them to those of: ‘holography … to make a text as far as possible such that every part contains the whole. That is an image I hold in front of me.’ (Pastior, ‘Poempoems’, The Printed Head, Vol. I, no. 5, London: Atlas Press, 1991)

HOLOGRAM

(as defined by the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary ) A pattern produced when light (or other radiation) reflected, diffracted, or transmitted by an object placed in a coherent beam (e.g. from a laser) is allowed to interfere with the undiffracted beam; a photographic plate or film containing such a pattern.

HOLOGOGRAM

(From Holo- and Logogram. Popularly: Indra’s Net) A pattern of language produced when the words of a base text are glossed, paraphrased, etymologized, acrostically or otherwise transformed, and such transformations are allowed to interfere with the words of the base text; a set of rules, a machine or a computer program which defines or displays such a pattern.

INDRA’S POEMPOEM: THREE DIMENSIONS IN LITERATURE

The visual hologram represents three dimensions in two, and the literary hologogram performs a similar feat. Letters are the graphic atoms of literary representation. Imagine the words of a text set, as usual, in two dimensions on a plane (a piece of transparent paper). Tilt the plane slightly and suspend it in space. Now imagine invisible lines forming an irregular grid in the third dimension and emanating from each of the letters of the text both above and below the words lying on the plane. Along each of these lines—in what will be an ‘acrostic’ dimension, arrange all the other words of the text which share the letter from which a particular line emanates.

What you now see is an irregular solid, a constellation of words in three dimensional space associated and structured by two very different criteria:— through their membership of the set of words which composes a particular text, and because they share a particular literary/graphic element.

A ‘Free Abecedarian or Internal Acrostic Indra’s Net’ is simply a set of readings along the lines of the acrostic dimension of this virtual, three dimensional constellation of related words.

A FEW VARIETIES OF HOLOGOGRAMS: • single sentence or twenty-six-word-story strict abecedarian or [head-] acrostic Indra’s Net • single sentence or twenty-six-word-story free
abecedarian or internal acrostic Indra’s Net • strict abecedarian or [head-] acrostic Indra’s Net • free abecedarian or internal acrostic Indra’s Net • [non-hologographic etymo-] glossological Indra’s Net • strict hologographic [etymo-] glossological Indra’s Net • hologographic phonemic Indra’s Net The following explanatory definitions are composed with apologies to Oskar Pastior.

the SINGLE-SENTENCE OR TWENTY-SIX-WORD-STORY ABECEDARIAN OR HEAD-ACROSTIC INDRA’S NET POEM is a sentence or story or story-sentence the first word begins A as in Another or Awakened the second word begins B as in Bloody or By the third C as in Clod or Care the fourth D as in Damn or Dawn and so on to a last twenty-sixth in the modern Roman alphabet word beginning Z say Zeroes or Zilch so there are words for all letters in the tiny universe of xxvi elements and each word can replace each letter in the original sentence to make a new story beginning for example Another Near Obsessive Time Had Each Realized or Awakened While Awakened Knowing Enfolds Night Enfolds Dawn and so on making the FIRST TRANSFORMATION of the NET or HOLOGOGRAM which of course itself may be transformed and that transformation may also be transformed with each letter-jewel reflecting its word and each letter of that word reflecting its reflection in infinite regression and although no new words appear there will be new arrangements and in fact all of the roman literal universe might so be translated by a single sentence and there would be only the words of that sentence on the surface of all literature with all others hidden though clearly there would be NO LOSS of information

the SINGLE-SENTENCE OR TWENTY-SIX-WORD-STORY FREE ABECEDARIAN OR INTERNAL-ACROSTIC INDRA’S NET POEM begins with the same hard-to-stomach-story- sentence as its STRICT HEAD-ACROSTIC cousin but in making a Net each letter in the sentence may be replaced by any word of the sentence which merely contains that letter and if all literature were so transformed its sentences would be more deeply hidden the arrangements of still only twenty six words would be more various there is the problem of which word to choose to replace each letter in the new transformations so that language as CHOICE and CHANCE may naturally select to evolve

the STRICT AND FREE ABECEDARIAN OR HEAD- AND INTERNAL-ACROSTIC INDRA’S NET POEMS allow any text to seed a Net with jewels the STRICT AND IDEAL form demands a text with at least one word beginning with each of the alphabet’s signs and once transformed any word beginning with or containing a certain letter may take that letter’s place there are examples where words for certain letters do not occur THEY ARE INCOMPLETE and if used to transform all literature they would leave it full of holes the FREE form is the first self-sufficient solopsistic free-willed form it will ALWAYS transform itself as words containing a letter replace each letter in the transformations but it MAY NOT be able to transform the universe of letters without LOSS if it lacks a K a Q a Z an X

enough of LITERATURE the freest here the NON- HOLOGOGRAPHIC ETYMO-GLOSSOLOGICAL INDRA’S NET POEM sets out for each word a verse or its story or a story or a lie or a mistake and uses the gloss or glozey story wherever the word once was to make a point to show the body of the word to compare the stories of the bodies of the words in a translation or two the poet rears her/is arrogant head for is it the first time no it isn’t the HOLOGOGRAPHIC version is the same but the word stories may only be composed from words found in the first text these are difficult of composition and need more fruitful time

and for literary musicians there is an untried definition the HOLOGOGRAPHIC PHONEMIC INDRA’S NET POEM sings a story with words each one contains a sound of a language until all the sounds of the language are caught up in a Net of words and the story’s transformed so the word that first sang a sound takes the place of the sound wherever it was heard in its first place all speech might be so transformed reduced to a few words as word-letter-jewels might do for literature and with still NO LOSS of a even a single fireside ditty

Again for drafting purposes: Descriptions of the pieces from the HyperCard stack.

UNDER IT ALL

UNDER IT ALL is produced in two versions from the same base text, a short piece of prose by John Cayley.

UNDER IT ALL II, which is perhaps more interesting to see ‘read’, is a ‘free abecedarian internal-acrostic indra’s net poem’. UNDER IT ALL is a ‘strict abecedarian or head-acrostic’ version.

OVERHEARD IN A PUB

OVERHEARD IN A PUB is the only example in this book of a TWENTY-SIX-WORD-STORY ABECEDARIAN OR HEAD-ACROSTIC INDRA’S NET POEM.

LIVING WORDS

LIVING WORDS is an example of a ‘composed’, non-hologographic poem, where the computer is not strictly neccessary (only, perhaps, desirable as a ‘reading’ device).

The entire reading takes about 5 minutes.

LIVING WORDS is a NON-HOLOGOGRAPHIC ETYMO-GLOSSOLOGICAL INDRA’S NET POEM.

HIEROGLYPHICS

HIEROGLYPHICS is a HOLOGOGRAPHIC ETYMO- GLOSSOLOGICAL INDRA’S NET POEM, where the verses defining certain of the key words in the short text are composed of words taken exclusively from the text itself. (LIVING WORDS is a non-hologographic example of this type of Indra’s Net.)

A REFINEMENT OF LANGUAGE

A REFINEMENT OF LANGUAGE is a ‘free abecedarian internal-acrostic indra’s net poem’ based on a short quotation from one of Ezra Pound’s CANTOS.

DUNCAN’S FIRE II

DUNCAN’S FIRE II is a ‘free abecedarian internal-acrostic indra’s net poem’ based on the opening of a poem by Robert Duncan.

CRITICAL THEORY

CRITICAL THEORY is a ‘free abecedarian internal-acrostic indra’s net poem’. The text, by John Cayley, was commissioned by the Zürich-based artist, Christopher Bledowski. It is a series of nine loosely structured statements — often based on the artist’s own words or quotations he has used — the whole intended as an appreciation of Bledowski’s production.

INDRA’S POEMPOEM

INDRA’S POEMPOEM is a ‘free abecedarian internal- acrostic indra’s net poem’ based on a short explantory piece concerning the three dimensional qualities of this type of work which appears amongst the introductory pages of this book.

Again, for drafting purposes, the ‘base’ or supply texts.

OVERHEARD IN A PUB

Another bloody clod. Damn. Each Friday Gary had it. Jan knew love might near obsessive possibilities, quickly realized: soon time — unrelenting violent — would XXXX. Yup: zilch.

LIVING WORDS

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

— St John 1.1

HIEROGLYPHICS

When the Egyptian priests wished to signify divine mysteries, they did not use the small characters of the script, but the whole images of plants, trees or animals; for god has knowledge of things not by way of multiple thought but through the pure and firm shape of the thing itself. — the neo-Platonist, Marsilio Ficino Opera Omnia, Basle, 1576.

A REFINEMENT OF LANGUAGE

Here, surely, is a refinement of language

 If we never write anything save what is already
 understood, the field of understanding will never be 
 extended. One demands the right, now and again, to 
 write for a few people with special interests and    
 whose curiosity reaches into greater detail.

                                                        — Ezra Pound, Canto XCVI

DUNCAN’S FIRE

jump stone hand leaf shadow sun

day plash coin light downstream fish

first loosen under boat harbour circle

old earth bronze dark wall waver

new smell purl close wet green

now rise foot warm hold cool

                              — Robert Duncan, opening of: The Fire

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const { value: nbsNotes } = await nbs().next();
display(nbsNotes);

Note Drafts:

Sample note text.

#### *Note Drafts:*
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<div id="sample"> Sample note text.</div>

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import { css, nbs } from "observable:@shadoof/inapm0_shared"

const css = await import("observable:@shadoof/inapm0_shared");
display(css);