Thursday, February 21, 2013

PLURAL: counting barbed wire

the PLURAL sign deals with multiplicities and chaotic collections

We don't say what we mean to say. The sentence is not one, but a cluster of contrary tendencies. It is a thread of DNA--a staff of staphylococcus--a germ of contagion and possibility. It may be looped into a snare or a garotte. It is also, and as readily, a chastening rod, a crutch, an IDJbracelet. It is available for use. But nobody can domesticate the sentence completely. Some questionable material always clings to its members. Diligent readers can glean filth from a squeaky-clean one. Sentences always say more than they mean, so writers always write more than they know, even the laziest of them. Utility pretends to peg words firmly to things, but it is easy to work them loose.


Even the most boring, linear (SINGLE), laziest approach to the (META)BLOG (itself deliberately constructed (AUTHOR) to be quite simple and self-contained in structure (WORK)) gives rise to these 120 (PLURAL) possibilities. On the other hand, any reading order -- no matter how redundant, incomplete, or convoluted -- could be enumerated in a similar way, if at great length. 

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