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imagine

warnell

Francis Raven

You Can Imagine
 Evolution w/o Teleology

Theater Revelation
Measure
Educational Sacrifice
Without End
Loss
Imaginary Beginnings
Event Eventuality
Agile
Receptacle
Summons
Wave Crime
Apparatus
Fitted Sheet
Slow Dog
Seal Point
Night and Waking
Corners and Motion
Can’t do Art Talk
Reply and Change
Lantern
Discontinued Handwriting
Death in Venice
Stutters
From a Window, Happily

you can download imagine.rtf at warnell.com/syntac/imagine.htm

texts:Raven + Warnell:documents © 2004 Raven + Warnell

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raven

You Can Imagine Evolution w/o Teleology
1

	[For the reason that]

set exploration shifts from being
	in the world
		to being
	in the subject

[Error — Mistake]

	senses lead

take a sheet of paper
while pretending you’re an inanimate object
tied directly to best knowledge
swinging on beliefs bent towards states of affairs

		counterfactually related

	truth tracking [math primary]
		joint pretense

Do kids think it’s like something to be an airplane?
		(1)	creating a pretend space
		(2)	playing in that pretend space

Theater Revelation

If drama is the way we understand the world talk to me. Propose the play. I was told in tenth grade that plays were not proposed, but I’m still proposing them in the basement with the wish fulfillment and the backwards mass to help me. I’m still standing on the wings waiting for presence or at least its erasure. Those marks of scene changes. Those reconstructionsof actions are now but marks, but gestures, but here I am proposing and making marks nevertheless.

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raven

You Can Imagine Evolution w/o Teleology
2

But if you quietly
		systematically transformed
		terms of frequencies —
Do you think we should have the dessert table selected by lottery?

	Specifically,
		If you shared
	Or
		As if you shared.

An argument by design:
No extra information
		and these children of flourishes;
how have they come to a hidden consensus
about the limits that bias tradition?
		“speak implications”
	briefly outline rejections
	however whole and cold
are not challenged,
			but rather we maintain
			prior probability
			to sound like an engineer
			to sound neutral
		employ when reasoning
		then flout —
				a positive result.

Measure

Porous stack; belligerent meter weighing the changes of roads tongue-tied in burlap sacks. Falling through and towards a space finally unweighed by scientific hands until the world looked up again through sculptor’s palms. What is the final problem with measurement? The measure can’t measure itself, so it falls through, divides out, cancels itself through the semi-permeable membrane of our most dictatorial glance. Butalthough measurement is porous, still speak, even if it is over a long distance or a cup or a hand. Call me sometime, won’t you?

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raven

You Can Imagine Evolution w/o Teleology
3

beginning cancel
		and respond
books and streams
		return rocks
runs in the
		morning graphic design
as the other is actually the other
		burnt locks’ stylist
tied hair’s pressing request
		lawns anger
fixtures awhile sent layering has been aimed
		just got off work.

Educational Sacrifice

The feeling of beingthrown educationally, of course, meets unbeatable odds in that we begin to see the possible directions. That feeling fades and a certain form of superiority enters the scene. Unfortunately, there was a point at which I could not get lost, at which I could not feel the crisis of being mistaken. Persistence often makes lack of surprise.

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raven

You Can Imagine Evolution w/o Teleology
4

Engage our facilities:
	If people want it
	what’s the problem?

Elevation: Leveling

Null Set of Time
Empty Time

Assent, retreat, and the writer’s double life.

		Comprehensive shell of wearer:
		Subjective reconciliation.

Is it straight ahead?
	Earning the ballad
	With a few loops,
	A nod to The Doors.

		Embarrassing, what I have loved. 

[cult of cheapness]
	smothered

Without End

You might say, geography without end, but you would be mostly wrong, not the sort of wrong that your eyes hide from, merely mostly wrong. You might say, world without end, and thus, you would have to include minds within that world. Those minds, splitting off in directions unknown, hidden, enhanced, but trying to come back towards the nearness of one. Something like a geography, but without end, without maps.

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raven

You Can Imagine Evolution w/o Teleology
5

Principle of Exchange:
	The Unity of Production
[Used Up — Recognition as Taste]

		Free time:
		Style as promise of reconciliation.

Markers indicate outcomes
Never realized,
Request to viewed:
	[Leveling]

“…and that message must relieve suffering?”

Marginalization of hope:
	If assimilated
		then
	shouldn’t we keep quiet?

(1)	Amusement sedates us.
(2)	Choices do not equal freedom.

Equation:
chance = coping

“the facts of his life”

Loss

A leaf colored barrette is camouflaged in the live-oak leaves, fallen. But someone’s head is not down there. Someone’s hair is not being held back down there. Someone is just missing that object, someone has just lost it. It’s not very interesting,except we can make a nice story out of it and then everything would have to fit, unfallen. And fitting, everything would be necessary. And everything being necessary, we would have to believe that language transparently tells of the ultimate nature of the universe.

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raven

You Can Imagine Evolution w/o Teleology
6

Blues
	opposing smells
requests our arms together
or shelves another made
	what comes naturally next
burns my back — lotion,
	newspaper from the morning
	an underlying urge —
		quieted, burden.

Imaginary Beginnings

The houses are so crowded they unbuild the urge to build. Space is owned, but in between? Our imaginary beginnings take on some ad hoc form or another. They become not quite so imaginary, but then we own them. Space becomes just that much more overrun and the interstices left for the next generation’s imaginary beginnings become just that much smaller. So, I have one thing to say to you from the sandbox: keep at least some of your imaginary beginnings imaginary. They’ll keep longer that way anyway.

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raven

You Can Imagine Evolution w/o Teleology
7

Bank decide
	pollution and cut their reliance
wealth of exploitation
	“you could not even give me a parking ticket!”
Folder of our worth =
Publicity to innovate
Feeding product charts
	“loan loss reserve”
	“perspective catch”
old terror associated
Current liberals subscribe
	not for it was written
	for the relevant parties
against the power of the greatest number
any infringements of an individual’s rights
	perfectionism
abided by
at odds man’s role in society
when he writes about multiculturalism and membership.

Event Eventuality

“No, let’s go now.” And now we went with the urge to the left of sanity into given hedges, perhaps a card game or so, perhaps driving the technological possibilities into our most comforting relationships. And now we ask — is the possibility worth the actual? Now, we are saved by screens hoping one into the other, screen savers urging motion because if we stood still we might be frozen with the same dirty looks on our faces. “Now, let’s go.” And perhaps, at the end of this play, although confusion arises, we actually do move.

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raven

You Can Imagine Evolution w/o Teleology
8

in one case: where they were interfering
	multisided man
metaphor of marketplace

adequately separated public and private
	(impossible)
strong principle of harm

Contest traditions
That was the waiter from the hotel
Captivating picture

Logical = Language
	Gap
Poor saints, who are you?

Agile

Light doesn’t move because we tell it to. We move because of its shadows speaking through us. Shadows speak man’s hypostasis. Although our work distorts their angles and now they are speaking mummified advertisements instead of listening at the foot of Being. The shadows produced by neon lights make me wish for Oldenburg’s sculpture of a giant flashlight aimed into the ground. But still, we tell the light to ride us while some of our smartest dissidents ask what it would be like to ride it. What is it like for light to ride man? That is the hope for technology, but our greatest poems have all occurred while riding it.

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raven

You Can Imagine Evolution w/o Teleology
9

Taste as layer.

	Degrees — Intensity — Threshold

How are they individuated?
Leave them far behind,
Lowest threshold:
	Indicate, else bridge —
So, I hired an engineer
To knock on any window,
Any special people window,
Any window he could break
	With some stuff in the mouth
		[more intense red
			or
		more of the same red]
the many factors
of your possible world
	talking about your new address:
	percentage of eating out.
I must remember the leafy proceduralism of rain,
		Downpour slowly
		Just not the catalogue.
	Is there nothing purely sour or sweet?
	Or is that a wrong picture of taste?

Receptacle

Between the edges of frames, in a city near San Francisco, were built the impossible spires of the ending of all such enclosures. “Think outside of the box” was a maxim soon put to rest in that city which responded, “what box?”.

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raven

You Can Imagine Evolution w/o Teleology
10

Poles protruding:
	Societal rationality
	proceeds by means
	of teleological action

		splitting the burn,
			but bureaucracy

Negotiation by definition —
Discussion encroaches on system (and ought)

			Steering levels
			Each complete
			Tear down the spine

		disturbances
		several losses

	Save this
	Successful reproduction
		[“the same”]
	Difference as violence —
		Critical original thought.

Summons

Your call falls from the nearest shelves upon the relief of wandering. Calling into travel fits you. You have that restless look, or are you looking for memories of falling from sources? Your motion bears a slight resemblance to singing loud songs in theshower, but only when water also falls, only when singing falls into your pulse where you hide the very possibility of revolution which lays waiting for your action, waiting for your fall from the ordinary.

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raven

You Can Imagine Evolution w/o Teleology
11

Pursue: science as model for morality
		or was that
			reality

Could have heard wrong.
	A proposal:
Our predicament is that we must adjust.

anti-withdrawal
historicized understanding
and the status of ontological truths
perhaps some tolerance
would fill out the requisite comprehensive view?
Math is always a tool.

Wave Crime

A wave in a cheap painting haunts our distinctions, washes over our only words. Even crappy representations change the way we view language. That same painting gets crooked when we are drunk and bump the frame. There is a chance that all of our convictions were framed for a crime they didn’t commit, but merely accentuated. For the crime was already proposed in the wave, although the police didn’t get there until the frame was tipped so much that someone important noticed.

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raven

You Can Imagine Evolution w/o Teleology
12

Rendering facts irrelevant
Postulating quarks
Theoretical disconnection

	Myth as system
	Connection of contents

Squeezing unity from the total project of years’
Account of meaning and burnt apples

	Entitlement full circle
	With Enlightenment

Pledge of salvation
A required aesthetics
	[understanding as agreement]
Functions separately
As problems to the spheres.

Apparatus

Accidentally taking hostages because a situation presented itself in which you thought someone would listen and they didn’t. Your intentions didn’t measure the circumstances volume honestly; what the reaction required of your motion. In such enclosures your natural actions necessitate a new metaphor. Holding to the meaning/truth distinction we slowly find that the space between shifts, holds different individuals victim, places other words in charge.

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raven

You Can Imagine Evolution w/o Teleology
13

And a shirt that hangs comes back
Expressed his regret
And the yellowing pages —
Missed 16th Street;
Fall, (as they
native smooth down)
		Moved
Author of crime
Blackening entire
Riddling in the glass (mirror)
	And, as with so many,
	Liked to display
	Traffic drilling skimmed off
		Desperately perch —
	Cured over pieces of wood
	Well done while waiting.

Fitted Sheet

In other sheets sleeping atop our original position behind closed and further closing doors. We washing them weekly, otherwise, the stains of other thefts would have penetrated our present actions. We know the trick of the game, and yet, we continue to play, although quite differently than a beginner. In the same sheets we still dream of weaving others, of a door that continually closes but never ends.

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raven

You Can Imagine Evolution w/o Teleology
14

Expanses of normal sources:
	New public spaces

		Witnesses

separate island w/ nature reserve

	more specifically,
	of the mind

To ground the imaginary
Reenact conflicts of beauty.

Slow Dog

The French lady yells, “pig ear, pig ear, would you like a pig ear?” towards her musty dog. He scrapes the cement floor with his paws, a little too noisily. Now he answers the question of intentionality. Yes, he would like a dried pig’s ear, are you kidding? He drags it along the ground, gnaws it, is dragged himself into the Open by the lady’s opening question. She has no idea that she has asked and provisionally answered some ofthe most pertinent questions on the topic of animal consciousness. The dog thinks without a thought, our Gods are only half open for him.

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raven

You Can Imagine Evolution w/o Teleology
15

What impact
	radically of some capital command
	susceptible to train intimidation	
		else psyche as planes

		certainly not relent
	facts, in the center,

		will set you echoing
			embers
		of allegiance.

Seal Point

Life in the waves teaches us time to become, the movement of moon’s falling darker towards the horizon until only the tip sticks up and we begin with the wine. I see the ocean through the weeds and instruct myself how to remember what may never have occurred. I’m searching through almost contemptuous wind for the trace that makes now unavailable to memory. We sleep in the hot-tub and constantly have to decide whether to turn on the Jacuzzi jets or listen to the distant waves. Waves might be the measure for man, falling over, crashing beautifully, when our whole body doesn’t move at the same speed. But hey man, the crash is what allows for that rhythm, the sound of which harmonizes with my pulse.

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raven

You Can Imagine Evolution w/o Teleology
16

Savagery		circling several doubts
			not recommended
			way to make them less
	leaked to guarantee
	counts as a works of “art”

phrasing irregularities
	frequencies rather than probabilities
		and then, further along in the debate:
	mechanisms vs. judgments

	where are the yardsticks?
	surgery		circling sentences
	across roads by the light of a moon.

Intuition is at fault —
Conjunction: it’s a mistake
	and then darkness.
How the hell do you know that?
And if you do how did we get to be so smart?
	Still waiting for the surveillance tapes.
If you can prove it — a recurrent theme
		prescribed
	pool of probability.

Night and Waking

When we can see desire formulate its own body we have no choice but to listen to its beckoning, but as a ghost it is not even like itself and so we contemplate, ask others, think through the consequences of going with that specter. When darkness comes its hard to see bodies at all and thus, we have trouble distinguishing the specter from the tangible incarnation. Of course, we could call it all into question. How the machine works? Whether we exist? What is the ontological status of that ghost, or that voice? But we don’t. We go along, up staircases made of books, until our heads hit the ceiling and we awaken to the aroma of instant coffee.

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raven

You Can Imagine Evolution w/o Teleology
17

doubt if
comic filter
moment even
(still balance)
in the forties
in concentric circles
called “Those Stories”
fix grammar seemed
air, and I tried
concerns the milking
smell empty
off underbrush
what we fall
when we wear old
shapes that come
possibility in details

Corners and Motion

Motion makes us wild. Four corners in every room. Any doors? Any coffee? Place your jacket in the other room. The world is not a square. Motion doesn’t come in lines. Noone thought that it did. Motion makes us wild for more motion. We can’t stop. The corners are not locked. We drill within their metaphysics. We do more motion, or, more motion is always presentedto us, alone. Perhaps later we share it like albums that our lovers never heard of. Perhaps. This is motion’s violent and hopeful turn towards sources, through whirlpools, coming back upon the same river, now continues its motion and pokes silent holes in each corner, in every room that we thought secured us. Yes, motion folds every room, clears the landscape and makes us see that we rebuild rooms everyday just to survive with corners.

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raven

You Can Imagine Evolution w/o Teleology
18

Sink sounds
Edge of the sink
Fuzz on the tee-shirt
Look at your fork
It’s so dirty
With things you eat
Perhaps you hurt
Paperback success
Together. My
“Yes, yes, yes, an arrow?”
follow the standard
another living room
Really? I did by the prosecution
Chair, easily be corrupted

Can’t do Art Talk

Aesthetic distance cramps my fucking style. Spit. Cum. Thank you for your reasons. Thank you for your eyes on this new painting, but panting would be far more fun. Let’s jump off and tranform the personal into the political. You probably think me naive, but I’ve seen some Picasso and I think analytical cubism sucks. Thank you for your reasons. The one thing he got right was to take the focus off of the models. It brought it within, not too far away. Let’s give up on the background. Let’s not make the foreground into the background either. I’m tired of wallpaper and I’m actually tired of your reasons too.

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raven

You Can Imagine Evolution w/o Teleology
19

Principle with a slip
Distance
“We” intention and a note
getting my insignificant —
	upon, even
changed)	 	for the principle
	we accept
		present situation
(disregard this complication)
		calculation that counts
		silky and monstrous

	indigenous ways of looking
		or
	autonomous from looks

memory beyond contingency
combination stripped away till happiness

Reply and Change

Taking it through the folds of the system. Replying to the new metaphor takes all the sweat you might have. Pulses rumple the perfect fold, that is, humans do not respond to the perfect. Perfection’s cost is the reply to the new metaphor. Self-critique is impossible in this surgical environment. The cost of rigor is too great, smells of rigor-mortis. The clean linesare critical for being able to live on the clean paper, for being able to note the truth value of our most cherished propositions. But in the interstices, we must rumple the fold with our utmost, for it is here where meaning is altered so that our clean lines won’t dryly break, or worse yet, appear completely old-fashioned and useless.

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raven

You Can Imagine Evolution w/o Teleology
20

Either
	Why are you waiting
Or
	Why are you here

and there would be a small pause
at the beginning of a sentence

Shifting books
In the mouth —
	full thirty minute
	most disciplined

gargling
	spitting a version
	be sure to mention the raid.

Lantern

A paper star, torn a little, sits beneath the other light, the one I take with me when I’m torn myself. Its pink corners smoke joints out back while I’m asleep, but I take the other light with me, so it’s okay. The blanket from the Navajo sweatshop covers the television, but it’s so expensive to buy union-made cloth. The lights are not united to stand, but they call time together. The clocks all borrow their annoying voices from those same lights, but as I said in the beginning, I take one of them with me, under whatever cover is chosen by the soil.

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raven

You Can Imagine Evolution w/o Teleology
21

(lost work, health costs, etc.)
	might not be possible to
separate public from private
question is: is the good
command theories of ethics say
else theatrically pretend to offer
histories of forced flight
looking back
over your shoulder
breathing appliance
for making them fly
shooting them from canons
(too lyric)
via the inhalation
of potent nutrient language.

Discontinued Handwriting

The fallen writing violently hits the pavement. Our vacation was well planned and yet, the tracking was off. We could still watch the movie, but sometimes we couldn’t quite understand all of the dialogue. Was it thrown out of the white window along with the writing? Perhaps it fell in the crack between two slabs of sidewalk where the weeds hide in order to flourish. Perhaps my vacation, my memory, also needs to hide for it to fully sing. But I planned it all so well and I need its blueprint so that I can focus on the day that is ready-to-hand.

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raven

You Can Imagine Evolution w/o Teleology
22

Back when fire
	used:
	Infinity

dice, time.

		These scenes of crucifixion
			digitally remastered
			deliriously guides ever
		engraved inner structure

	this plate
	jammed full for the occasion
		charred meat

			eating
			therefore issues U.S. currency.

Death in Venice

The up and down of boats being rowed, the channel change, posture’s measure. “Stand up straight.” The boats tips, but does not capsize, only intimates that it has the power to. The facts remain moving, not still, not even remaining anymore, only moving in and out of various systems and charts of metaphysics; only flowering in the graphs of certain pretty ladies who shall remain unnamed because they have not been named by any poet’s hand. Only, there is still the pier that is the contrast class for all the rest of this crazy cavorting and wave rolling. The drugs kicked in then tipped off then measured the man who was taking them against the flow chart of his possibilities.

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raven

You Can Imagine Evolution w/o Teleology
23

Noises come, strange delighted motion,
Apples turn, spin their letters,
Meet the alphabet in its second story apartment,
Or else, they wait like quiet lovers spent.

Look through ‘now’.
Make it a strange birdcage
In the middle of the interruption
Of iteration.

Now, I am the waiting.
The customer service representative will not respond.
There is nothing more than anxiety in the islands.
There is passion, but it slips into its own gray building.

Stutters

Pillows. Consciousness. Candlesticks. Brass. Dirty shirts. Possible honesty. Fluffing the pillows. Burning the cases. Holding. Reading flames. Gradually consciousness. Reading it straight, or were there mirrors? Judging from appearances, out, about, consciousness exaggerates flames. Rest now. Pillows. Cups kept upside down. Tension between the sheets. Attend to their arguments. Receive thought with water down the drain.

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raven

You Can Imagine Evolution w/o Teleology
24

the world travels on its hands and knees
although it has a perfectly good ladder in the closet

the days follow on invisible string
but leave some water in the kitchen

days stain the hands
calluses, lies and others things left in your pockets

I don’t know the politics of walking yet,
I’m taking a class in rectilinear objects

the melting of rain makes its own shapes,
eroding all these things that stain the hands

the hands know the feeling of a ring,
an attachment, a choice

the wrist wanders and understands
a watch, an attachment, a choice

the walking makes a minute,
the crawling is a different view

upwards-upwards,
towards a straightness unfound and yet finding a statue

attempting a growing

From a Window, Happily

Everything can’t count as what you are looking for. Some criteria will help you decide, but that requires a thought out process of analysis. Oftentimes, we just, how do you say, go with our instincts. Not that we sway in the wind, no, but we don’t necessarily fight the gusts either. We have minds and quite a bit of pride in them. We have words too, privileged ones and ordinary ones as well. We scratch them out and replace gestures with them gradually. But mainly, we’re like airplanes that appear to be taking off from the moon, but which are actually just blocking the view.