space for machines

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PSYCHIC READING, APRIL 2000: You can do no wrong for the next
fifteen minutes. The world is your oyster . . . Things start coming to
me pretty quickly.
You are at the age that you’re a different being than the person that
sits before you. You grew up in a different time, meaning that time
for lack of a better word is compressing in upon itself. Most humans
feel it as acceleration, for lack of better words. Things are happening
at such a speed and such. Computer network and availability of
information is progressing logarithmically. So as you grow up that
seems normal to you, but it is much greater speed than the person
that sits before you. So do know this.
Surprisingly, painting -- and specifically the triptych -- is the force driving the narra-
tive of What Dreams May Come, the 1998 special effects blockbuster. Again and
again the viewer is reminded that Tracy (Robin Williams) loves paintings, that they
are his “obsession” even. So much so, that after his death, his wife’s paintings
structure his own secular conception of Heaven. When she turns suicidal and
pours turpentine onto the final panel of one of her triptychs, Tracy watches a purple
tree melt before his eyes. This destruction triggers another triptych: that of the
hero story. Tracy becomes separated from the reality of Heaven (as tenuous as it
was to begin with), undergoes his three trials and experiences the liminality of suf-
fering, and is finally reunited with his wife through reincarnation. It seems then that
the triptychs may allude to the trite yet “universal” structure of the hero’s tale. More
than that though, the threes appearing throughout the movie each express a differ-
ent relation to life and death: Tracy’s relation to the death of his children and the
loss of his wife, the wife’s relation to the death of the three members of her family
and her eventual self-destruction, the children’s relation to the loss of their family
and the power of their childhood. There is a calculus of loss working through each
sequence of three, that can’t be resolved through the lame reincarnation scene at
the end which destroys the family triad by eliminating the children. The movie
places itself in a precarious situation by showing the inadequacy of both two and
three.
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I frequently dream of architecture, wondering who
constructs these spaces which create atmospheres
that resonate with feeling when I awake. Some-
times blurring my eyes and looking at a page of
text, the white spaces between the letters, sen-
tences and clauses will start to take on forms unto
themselves. These forms can trigger my dreams’
architecture: a long line, a sharp angle, the hazy
quality of blurred eyes mimicing the fuzzy logic of
dreams and their remembrance. I wonder if it is
the actual material that I’m reading which makes
my eyes sees the places of my mind or if it’s just
the product of the random consequences of typog-
raphy.

“Lost and Found” Touched By An Angel Episode

216: Jasmine Guy stars once again as Kathleen, a
fallen angel. Playing the foil to Monica’s Irish faith,
Kathleen is most notably of mixed race. Her trans-
gression against God is manifest on her body, al-
lowing her to tempt men of all races with Satan’s
promises. In this episode she tempts Detective Bob
Champness, a specialist in finding missing children,
with her mysterious sexuality. Of course Monica
saves Bob’s soul and even some missing children
while she’s at it. However, Andrew, the androgy-
nous Angel of Death, has been working with com-
puters the whole episode. Numerous shots simply
show Andrew banging away on his keyboard, cre-
ating and aging composite photos of missing chil-
dren. Like the transgressions of angels, these pho-
tos are visible mixtures. What borders are crossed
when the Angel of Death compiles generations of
family photographs with state of the art computing
technology? And why does this mixing of borders
lead to the image that will save the missing child?
What makes this one count?

6
Many times have I planned to write zines about car
trips. The solitary daytime ones, fueled by coffee
and the glare of the sun and possibly the situations
which lead one to hide out on the moving streets of
wherever it is you’re calling home at the moment.
Pop music from the local mix station makes rhythm
of the random turns and stops. It could be the me-
andering that cements a crappy mix to a day satu-
rated with the reflection of sun on a windshield, forg-
ing a schizophrenic attention to the radio and what
it might tell you to do. It is days like these when
you’re most open to possibilities, perfectly ready
for a life-changing moment suggested by the voice
of what MTV and VH1 too frequently refer to as an
“artist.” Of the schizophrenics who check in, nearly
all of them claim that at one point the voices were
bearable, enjoyable even. Problems only came
when the voices started saying negative things.
This is the rupture that leads them to believe that
there was something wrong with them. Before that
there were only secret whispers, perhaps so indis-
cernible from those of a wandering mind that the
patient thought they were daydreams or their con-
science made audible. Treatment will teach them
that the body’s speech should mimic that of the
sporstcaster’s play-by-play, an alignment of thought
and experience so solid that one wonders where
the brain is allowed to wander.
You helped build the temples at Machupicchu in South America. You
need to go back there and visit as soon as you can. There are
lights . . .
 There’s an immediate association with the red planet which you
know as Mars. This is a many layered onion, number one, you’ve
been there before in your dreams . . . You have much information
coming to you now in your dreams, but you’ve lived on the red planet
before and that’s an impossibility, so stay with us. . . You’ve visited
there. Your, your . . . We’re going to go onto the cards now,
Six months ago, I started working third shift. Slowly
like the night, I’ve become amazed at my body’s
relation to the day and the ease with which it is tam-
pered. Finally I inhabit the night, my adolescent
dreams of mysterious vampire lifestyle now being
realized. The sprawling solitude hours of the night
sometimes make me wonder if I can disappear. For
nine hours I alone occupy a building, waiting on
occasional customers, essentially running the show.
The power trip somewhat besmirched by the gaze
of eight surveillance cameras catapulting my mere
nine hour shift into two and a half days of video-
tape. At the time of the least work being done per
capita, my documented persona threatens to out-
number the actual hours of my life. A victim of
mathematics and existence, I’m most fascinated by
the fact that everyone’s sleeping, unconscious
forces and dreams dominating the empty land-
scapes of this crazy college town. On my days off,
I walk around at 4:00 AM, experiencing the deep-
est intimacy with my surroundings. Usually there’s
no one else around, even telemarketers take a
break. This town is pure Midwest. Its location in
time and space begs you to ponder the idealist con-
cepts of America. At night there is a quiet and a
stillness and the flat Illinois geography allows the
wind to maneuver at will. It transforms dark build-
ings into points on a curve. Nodes in the story of
breeze.

10
“Pandora’s Box” Touched By An Angel Episode 626:
Angel of Death Andrew is at the computer once
again, this time as the owner of Global Village
Cybercafe. The angels are trying to help the Radcliff
family, “a paradox of centuies.” 13 year-old Sarah
has been slumming around chatrooms and be-
comes involved with a man, Dean, who claims to
be a high school junior. When the two meet, Sarah
finds that he is anything but. Dean lures Sarah to
his apartment, but before he can offer her a spiked
drink, Andrew steps on the scene. Wielding a base-
ball bat, Dean swings at Andrew who catches the
bat and violently destroys Dean’s PC. Perhaps the
first instance of an angel engaging in violence, An-
drew seethes with anger. Monica an Tess can do
nothing but watch as Andrew hits the PC, sending
circuitry and sparks of electricity into the air. Later
Monica explains that both the family and the com-
puter are gifts from God, but that evil is able to navi-
gate multiple channels of communication. Sarah’s
father, hopefully miraculously cured of his internet
porn addiction, takes over as manager of Andrew’s
cybercafe.
Just a few weeks after the psychic reading printed
here, I started experimenting with the Tarot, an ac-
tivity which has required angelic intervention at least
three times on Touched By An Angel. Like the psy-
chic who was consulting me, I consistently drew
Swords, specifically the 8, 9, and 10, images at once
forboding, yet at the same time evocative of so
many things at once. The habitual consistency of
drawing the same three cards forced me into math-
ematics. For one thing, this particular suit corre-
lates with time, each card representing a different
number of months of continuing suffering and dark-
ness. The average of the three is nine, a period of
time that has just recently expired, leaving me to
embark upon an emergence that for some reason I
didn’t quite have time to strategize. I like to think
that the duplicity of swords resonates with the bi-
nary of the digital: 0 and 1, on and off, good and
bad. I’m not sure if I’ve arrived at the clarity which
the psychic seemed so certain would come. Maybe
being muddled is the relief that was promised me,
the only way to resolve the harshness of two.
I am truly a lone traveler, and have never belonged to my country, my home, my
friends, or even my immediate family with my whole heart . . . I have never lost a
sense of distance and a need for solitude (Einstein, near the end of his life)

If we’ve incorporated the theory of relativity into

our scientific view of the universe, as well as
our literature, art, music, and culture at large,
it’s the great scientist’s attempt to devise a kind
of personal religion -- an intimate spiritual and
political manifesto -- that still stands in stark,
almost sacred contrast to the Pecksniffian sys-
tems of salvation offered by modern society.
Einstein’s blending of twentieth-century skep-
ticism with nineteenth-century romanticism of-
fers a different kind of hope.

But then that woman with long, knotted brown hair, kind of looking like Janis Joplin,
with her jagged mouth and pallid skin, with whatever abandon has led her to the
breakdown lane somewhere in east New Mexico, she stays with me, takes her
place in the constellation of images gathered from the road, and revisits me months
later in the most unexpected moments.
Excerpts from Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with Einstein’s Brain by
Michael Paterniti, Dial Press

14
 What you’re feeling in your head are belief paradigms of other
people. They’re not yours . . . You’re not to be a monk on a hill alone.
Quit bein’ so serious all the time!
There’s a whole bunch of stuff that you’re conflicted about right now
and it’s because there’s not enough difference in what you’re con-
flicted about to make the choice clear. But rest assured that the gift
of the ability to make decisions is going to be given to you after a little
bit more struggle. The swords are conflict.
However, this high moral formulation, “being wor-
thy of the world,” was too abstract to be easily ap-
plicable to daily life. I told the truth and was a rea-
sonably upstanding, if also rather solitary and in-
ward, child; but heroism escaped me. There was
even a brief interlude, at around the time I am de-
scribing, when I began to believe the world to be
unworthy of me. Its false notes, its constant fallings-
short. This was, perhaps, my mother’s disappointed
idealism, her growing cynicism leaking into me.
Now, looking back, I can say that we have been
more or less on a par, the world and I. We have
both risen to occasions and let the side down. To
speak only for myself, however (I do not presume
to speak for the world): at my worst, I have been a
cacophony, a mass of human noises that did not
add up to the symphony of an integrated self. At
my best, however, the world sang out to me, and
through me, like ringing crystal. --Salman Rushdie,
The Ground Beneath Her Feet

18
“An Angel by Any Other Name” Touched By
An Angel Episode 325: A sour elderly woman,
Carolyn, is touched by two angels. Bitter and
a freak for control, Carolyn is displeased when
a makeshift family of Down syndrome patients
move next door. Chris Burke of Life Goes On
fame stars as Taylor, the Down syndrome an-
gel. Carolyn suffers a stroke and, like the Down
syndrome kids, finds herself unable to clearly
communicate. She is left to stew in her bitter-
ness and the irony of being treated as if she
were mentally impaired. Bathed in the bright
light of God, Taylor and Monica inform Carolyn
of God’s love and make sure that her garden
does not fade away. After realizing that Taylor
is indeed an angel and not just deluded with
mental illness, Monica asks his forgiveness,
which he readily gives. In turn, he asks her
why God would place him in a body with Down
syndrome when other angels have otherwise
normal bodies. Monica doesn’t know. She
herself has wondered why God has not given
her the ability to sing. She tells him that all
bodies matter, eliding his mental illness by tell-
ing him that “maybe God put you here to re-
mind people to connect.”
Orpheus was the son of Calliope and either Oeagrus or Apollo. The
greatest musician and poet of Greek myth, his songs could charm
wild beasts and coax even rocks and trees into movement. He was
one of the Argonauts, and when the Argo had to pass the island of
the Sirens, it was Orpheus' music which prevented the crew from
being lured to destruction.

When Orpheus' wife, Eurydice, was killed by the bite of a serpent, he

went down to the underworld to bring her back. His songs were so
beautiful that Hades finally agreed to allow Eurydice to return to the
world of the living. However, Orpheus had to meet one condition: he
must not look back as he was conducting her to the surface. Thinking
that he had been duped by the gods, Orpheus looked back just
before the pair reached the upper world, and Eurydice slipped back
into the netherworld once again.

Orpheus was inconsolable at this second loss of his wife. He spurned

the company of women and kept apart from ordinary human activi-
ties. A group of Ciconian Maenads, female devotees of Dionysus,
came upon him one day as he sat singing beneath a tree. They
attacked him, throwing rocks, branches, and anything else that came
to hand. However, Orpheus' music was so beautiful that it charmed
even inanimate objects, and the missiles refused to strike him. Finally,
the Maenads' attacked him with their own hands, and tore him to
pieces. Orpheus' head floated down the river, still singing, and came
to rest on the isle of Lesbos.

Ovid. Metamorphoses X, 1-105; XI, 1-66.

Apollodorus. Bibliotheke I, iii, 2; ix, 16 & 25.
Apollonius Rhodius. Argonautica I, 23- 34; IV, 891-909.

http://www.pantheon.org/mythica/articles/o/orpheus.html
21
 credits
The images and quotes used in Space for
Machines is in accordance with the fair
use clause of U.S. Copyright law. Any ob-
served violations of this clause
can be reported to the editor at
marshall52790@lycos.com. Fonts are
Slurry and Arial.
The cover is Rapho Guillomette by Izis.
Its original context is “The Family of Man”
exhibition, curated by Edward Steichen in
1955 at the Museum of Modern Art, New
York. The exhibition was also collected in
book form published by MOMA, New York.
The psychic reading reappearing through-
out this zine took place over a year ago at
the Spiritual and Intuitive Arts Festival in
Urbana, IL. The fest is sponsored by
S.E.A.R.C.H, Inc. of Urbana, (217) 344-
1510. The psychic was the immensely tal-
ented Jane Hawthorne, specialist in Tarot,
UFOlogy, and Dream Imagery. She can
also be reached at the above number.
The Tarot cards come from the Rider-
Waite deck, originally published in the
1920s. The deck was originally conceived
by Dr. Arthur Edward Waite and Pamela
Colman Smith, members of the Order of
the Golden Dawn. The deck is now dis-
tributed by U.S. Games Systems, Inc.
Orphic imagery as well as the Androgyne
image on page 4 are from Neil Gaiman’s
Sandman, specifically “The Song of
Orpheus” which is reprinted in Fables &
Reflections, Volume VI of the Sandman
Library. The Androgyne image comes
from “The Parliament of Rooks” in the
same volume.
Aerial photos mapping the various places
I’ve lived come from the United States
Geographical Survey, disturbingly avail-
able at www.microsoft.terraserver.com.
Many of the specific details regarding
Touched By An Angel come from the epi-
sode guides available at the official
22
website, www.touched.com.
Engraved winged figures come from Sur-
realist Max Ernst’s collage novel, Une
Semaine de Bonte (A Week of Kindness),
specifically “Tuesday.” The book is pub-
lished by Dover Publications.
The androgynous Manga fellow on pages
6, 13, and 14 comes from Strain Volume
1 by Buronson and Ryoichi Ikegami, En-
glish adaptation by Yuji Oniki. It is avail-
able through Viz Communications’ Pulp
Graphic Novels.
The “distortion” on pages 10 and 11 comes
from Barnett Newman’s Stations of the
Cross, specifically Station One, 1948.
The back cover comes from Frank Miller
and Geof Darrow’s Hard Boiled, published
by Dark Horse Comics.
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Multi Bookletmaster
Thank you so much for coming to my table. I wish you peace to your
journey, love and light to your path. We are one in spirit, journey well.
 space
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