It was the middle of the week in that spring morning when I walked into the classroom, without any expectations… Everything seemed normal, except that this time, the classroom was slightly filled with cirrus clouds, somewhat frosty and foggy, and everything felt miraculous!
I had the sensation that this was a living dream, or that I was already dead! In which case, I thought, we were all spirits, coming from our respective realms, to congregate in Dr. McCaffrey’s room!
“[…] Derrida’s attribution of the discovery of the signifier’s differential nature to Saussure draws attention to Bacon’s bilateral cipher, arguing that ‘we find in Bacon’s cipher an extremely precise development of the binary character of the signifier […]’”
Dr. McCaffrey read from his book on the theme of Alphabetic Dimensions.
It’s not that I wasn’t interested, but my mind was set on thinking about his previous teachings, especially those about the Kabbalah, the Gematria, Hieroglyphics, and about my favorite, the subject of Zaum.
However, that wasn’t all… I was also thinking of Kierkegaard and of The Concept of Anxiety, the Gift of Death, by Jacques Derrida; Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy, and especially of The Dominion of the Dead, by Harrison… in which book, the story of the Polish novelist, Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski (Or Joseph Conrad, as he’s known in the English-speaking world) was being told in an unexpected manner…
I was thinking that this particular story stroked me gravely, since I had never thought of myself as having an alliance to the earth as a place of “remembrance,” and of tradition from which all humans are – well, what we are: “Humando,” or “Burying;” because to be human is to bury, according to Harrison.
Does that make any sense to you?
Well, at the moment, it did to me, although my brain was a blender (As you can see!) in which all kinds of thoughts were being processed into one gulp of thick, hot lava.
So, I thought to myself, “What can I do that is fun while the thought of the signifier settles in my brain?” “Oh, I know!”
…And then, Mario came to mind…
Why Mario? Well, it’s both, impractical and fun at the same time! “I always had many good times playing a Mario game,” I thought, “particularly Super Mario Bros. 3”! “Oh, man, was that a great game or what?” So, in an instant, I came up with something that looks like this:
MARIO, JUMP!
Press “Start”
Stasis – Still – Chill – Pause – Halt – Stop!
Anxiety – Presuppose – Nothing
Press “Right Control Pad”
One – Step, 1
One – Step; 2
One – Step: 3
One – Step. 4
Leave – Drag? Accelerate – Forward! Gain – ¿Speed Vector – Right →
Exhilaration – Joy – Anticipation – Expectatioλ – Hope
Press “A”
Action – Reaction – Mass – Weight – Loss – Gravity – Verse – [Re]
“Pause!”
Apex – Climax – Cima – Mesa – Top – Max – rms – Syntactic – Blank – Space
Known – [Un] – Zaum - Hieroglyphica – Kabbalistic - Gematria – Qualitative - Leap
Land
On
-Or-
Void
Press [ ] Start
Submission Name: Mario, Jump!
