CHAPTER 1
[insert pigeon-dog]
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I might . . . I didn’t feel that good about dogs. It felt weak. It needs to be edited.
Just take out all the dog things?
Just take it out?
Sorry, did I mishear you?
I don’t know if we should leave or take out the dog stuff, or just edit it.
Yeah, I don’t know how much we need the dog stuff.
I’m gonna take it out.
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I realized that if i removed any section of this transcript, you would never know, no one would ever know, how does removal function then when there is a complete untelling, an absence left behind with no markers and so no meaning, without residue does the substance even matter
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I guess they get used to it.
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Something unspoken behind glass. Something unspoken on the dogs’ bobbing necks. We are ankle-deep in ashy water. That is history. As brought to you by you. It continues when we leave it. You would never know. No one would ever know. A story told in reverse, that ends somehow, in us. Our histories are inscripted. We perform them from our flesh, and then the histories are new.
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I see a dog on a leash. A little . . . it’s strange to think that we take animals and tie ropes around their necks.
It is kind of strange. I mean, I guess they get used to it.
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They leash and unleash us. A leash of liquid time. Rememory. We link and unfasten from the past. In your past I am ‘you’, and in your present. But you is an invention—there are only various eyes. The metaphor unclips. Roots spread in the rocks in the caves, and die and spread again. The rock crumbles into sand and slides away.
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I am on the skytrain underground. I am on my way to the waterfront. I intend to make my way to Burnaby. I intend to visit the places that LR wrote about. I will return to the bay. I am on the train. My mother tells me stories about my father. There is no other way for me to remember.
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CHAPTER 2
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There are opening spaces between
My body there is space
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(sound of dogs lots of dogs) i just walked by lots of dogs porch soundded like yeah its just a park waking paths baseball diamonds never been there during the day i tend to bike ride with my mom and night weave come here at night before
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He said, You know how cells . . . He said,
you know how a mother turns what she eats into a baby? Like what the mother eats is what makes the cells of the baby. (Yeah.) So.. what if a mother only ate doritos. She would make a baby, a whole baby human out of doritos.
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A mouse standing on two legs and eating a grain of rice. Its tail wipes meanders in the dust. If you move then it will move. You are connected by a fragile stillness, and fear, and in that it was your rice that it eats, and your dust that it squats in. If you look, you might find its droppings beneath your sofa. In its hiding place, when a great weight pressed onto its sky. There was no warning in the understains. You, its weather, are fickle and sudden.
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Yes, they don’t seem to mind that much.
I think it’s also really strange that we take it for granted that we have these living things that sit with us.
These different types of bodies.
How . . . [inaudible, we apologize (not for the edge, but for the seam)]. I don’t know, maybe dogs befriended man.
Well, I guess when they were wolves, they did.
When they were what?
When they were wolves.
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Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Chapter 2
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CHAPTER 3
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Hello.
Hi! Can you hear me?
I can. Can you hear me?
Yeah.
Great. Um.
Okay.
So. You’re on a train right now?
Yes. I am on a train from Providence to Philadelphia.
So we’ll have a couple of days before the 1st to pull everything together in person.
Yeah. Ok, that’s great.
Um, I’m thinking that I should, we should send an email to R and tell her that the visual part of the project is kind of, not happening.
Sorry, you’re breaking up.
Oh, sorry. Um, can you hear me better now?
Yeah.
<terrible sounds of wood cracking>
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They could have come from anything, but i guess they all came from wolves
They told me, late at night in bed, something that had astounded him that day.
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You know what I think we should do tomorrow?
What?
Tomorrow we should go on another walk.
Okay. But with a slightly different objective, maybe?
Yeah. Maybe, um,
<horrible wood cracking>
Maybe this time, instead of mirroring each other’s movements, we should maybe try to position ourselves in similar places in our cities?
Yeah. Definitely, and we can, maybe try to focus on objects there in front of us.
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This is the only place with trash on the ground.
Fountains shaped like rock piles
This is the only place with trash on the ground.
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Right.
And just cataloging and describing them to each other.
Okay. Yeah. That sounds like a really good idea.
You know what else is interesting?
What’s interesting?
Um, just as a result of our physical distance, I feel like the nature of the project has almost been about communication itself, a little bit, but also through the lens of what we’re trying to work on and look at, because we’re focusing on scale so intensely, and then to have such a literal restraint on how we can communicate with each other to collaborate.
Yeah. And that’s definitely a really important part of the call format as well. Just like the little hiccups we have.
Yeah. Yeah.
The fact that our calls break up and . . . I think that’s really important as well.
Yeah.
And I was thinking about how there are so many things that don’t . . . our Umwelt is so limited, the one that we’re allowed. And you think about how a dog just knows when it’s going to rain.
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CHAPTER 4
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We are dismissive. To the dogs: you are dismissed. But they stay, because there is nowhere for them to go. But between us. Their bodies there are spaced in caves, are rarefied, our space. Your body there, is there, your former bodies nested in your bodies. Past selves in your memories. But memories are less dive and more creation, taxidermizing yourself, making yourself anew but not alive.
Hello. Dropped call?
Yeah.
Gotcha. I’m in town, and I put on my shoes without any socks. And so, now I think I need to buy a new pair of socks. My feet are starting to hurt.
Ah.
Pause.
Are you wearing sneakers?
Yeah.
No sandals?
No sandals. I forgot them. It was an unfortunate mistake.
Pause.
I’m standing at the counter now, with my socks, and there’s no one coming up to help.
Is it like a small store, or is it more of a department store?
It’s a small store, a very small, I mean, it’s a very little town, with a tiny store, so I don’t know what’s going on. Um, do you want me to call you back, when I get out?
Sure.
Ok. Sorry.
No worries.
Bye.
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PROLOGUE
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I lost the end, because my phone died before it could save the recording.
But we talked about memory. We talked about stripping food of its packaging, and the packages of their shelves, and the shelves of their walls. We walked through rooms defined by things that were once contained, floating in self-imposed boundaries. We talked skeletons. We walked childhood. We talked about our racial histories, and the wakes of our myths. Myths are science in reverse. We are re-covering, and rediscovering things we have always known.[1]
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[1] There’s virtue in reaching for something and falling short. Should we record it?