Ruler # 1

in the order of appearance

The Selected Jokes of Slavoj Zizek by Audun Mortensen

the we in i the me in you by Ruth Höflich

4 pages by Alexander Skarlinski

notes for orientation & notes for two by Cia RinneFrom the book notes for soloists, OEI Editör, Stockholm 2009

Everything that can happen in a day by David Horvitz

4 poems by Lydia Davis

Sketch for The Whole Register by IC-98

Seven Shelves by Martijn in ‘t Veld

1 page untitled poem by Stefano Calligaro

Armageddon Without Armageddon by Inger Wold Lund Pages from the manuscript Armageddon written by Robert Roy Pool and Jonathan Hensleigh, without the parts used in the 1998 film Armageddon.

Garden Birds Log by Patrick Coyle on the back cover

The Selected Jokes of Slavoj Žižek

It is a little bit like the proverbial joke "My fiancée is never late for an appointment, because if she is late, she is no longer my fiancée": if you love God, you can do whatever you like, because when you do something evil, this is in itself a proof that you do not really love God.1

This is a little bit like the proverbial joke: "My fiancée is never late for an appointment, because when she is late, she is no longer my fiancée."2

The reason I find Badiou problematic here is that, for me, something is wrong with the very notion that one can excessively "enforce" a truth: one is almost tempted to apply here the logic of the joke quoted by Lacan "my fiancée is never late for an appointment, because the moment she is late, she is no longer my fiancée": a Truth is never enforced, because the moment the fidelity to Truth functions as an excessive enforcement, we are no longer dealing with a Truth, with fidelity to a Truth-Event.3

A brief Lacanian joke goes in the same direction: "My fiancée never misses the rendezvous, because as soon as she misses it, she would no longer be my fiancée."4

Let us, in passing, be attentive to the homology between this "sceptical paradox" and the structure of a joke Lacan often refers to: "My fiancée never misses an appointment with me, since the moment she misses it, she is no longer my fiancée." — "I never make a mistake in applying a rule, since what I do defines the very rule."5

Lacan’s joke runs in the same direction: "My fiancée never misses a rendezvous, because as soon as she misses it, she would no longer be my fiancée" — here also, the fiancée is reduced to her symbolic functional of fiancée.6

What we have here is a somewhat crueller version of a well-known joke: "My fiancée never misses an appointment with me because the moment she misses one, she is no longer my fiancée" — the People always support the Party because any member of the People who opposes Party rule automatically excludes himself from the People.7

                                                                                                               1 The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic?. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press 2009, 270. 2 Violence: Big Ideas/Small Books. New York: Picador 2008, 137. 3 In Defense of Lost Causes. London: Verso 2008, 306-307. 4 Interrogating the Real. London/New York: Continuum International Publishing Group 2005, 130-131. 5 For They Know Not What They Do. London: Verso 1991, 173. 6 For They Know Not What They Do. London: Verso 1991, 223. 7 The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso 1989, 147.

I WOULD(x) FOR y ‘TILL MY a (b)’d.

I WOULD(x) FOR y ‘TILL MY a (b)’d.

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x FOR YOUR y, (a)’er

x FOR YOUR y, (a)’er

I x (y) LIKE YOU FOR a

Happiest Moment

If you ask her what is a favorite story she has written, she will hesitate for a long time and then say it may be this story that she read in a book once: an English language teacher in China asked his Chinese student to say what was the happiest moment in his life. The student hesitated for a long time. At last he smiled with embarrassment and said that his wife had once gone to Beijing and eaten duck there, and she often told him about it, and he would have to say the happiest moment of his life was her trip, and the eating of the duck.

Order

All day long the old woman struggles with her house and the objects in it: the doors will not shut; the floorboards separate and the clay squeezes up between them; the plas-ter walls dampen with rain; bats fly down from the attic and invade her wardrobe; mice make nests in her shoes; her fragile dresses fall into tatters from their own weight on the hanger; she finds dead insects everywhere. In desperation she exhausts herself sweeping, dusting, mending, caulking, gluing, and at night sinks into bed holding her hands over her ears so as not to hear the house continue to subside into ruin around her.

A Strange Impulse

I looked down on the street from my window. The sun shone and the shopkeepers had come out to stand in the warmth and watch the people go by. But why were the shopkeepers covering their ears? And why were the people in the street running as if pursued by a terrible specter? Soon everything returned to normal: the incident had been no more than a moment of madness during which the peo-ple could not bear the frustration of their lives and had given way to a strange impulse.

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SEVEN SHELVES

Martijn in ’t Veld

I

All these books have been standing in boxes for way too long and it is such a hassle if you have to go through seven boxes to find that one copy of Libra which you desperately want to show to your roommate because of this one quote which you tried to mention while having breakfast together, but you can’t remember the exact quote, something with God and Easter eggs but what you are saying is not making much sense so you say I’ll just go and get that book and show you and then you don’t know anymore in which box this particular book is because when you moved you didn’t organize the boxes by author or genre or anything, but you just organized them by weight, because the boxes are standard moving boxes made out of cardboard which can only hold so much, so you spread out your Penguin Pockets, which don’t weigh anything, equally into all the boxes and the same for the heavy-weight coffee table art books, first editions and all the other books of various weights.

All the boxes are stacked up on top of each other so you have to take them off from each other one by one until you finally find this book, which is of course at the bottom of the last box and then you bring it back to the breakfast table saying I got it! waving it half way in the air while entering the kitchen and then when you sit down your coffee is cold and the quote which seemed so important just moments ago lost all its momentum but you say it anyway:

Some people don’t believe in God but they color eggs at Easter just to change the pattern of their days.

II

So…I said to myself, Today… Today, I will make a bookshelf.

II

So…I said to myself, Today… Today, I will make a bookshelf.

III

Seven shelves you buy at a furniture shop outside of town. You take the subway there and pass a station called Jacques Brel. You buy the shelves and carry them to the subway. They are heavy and you are sweating. Too many layers of clothing. You set them down in the subway in between your legs and your face is red and you are puffing and you can’t really feel your arms. You lean back on your seat and pass through Jacques Brel for the second time and you wonder what it means when people turn into subway sta-tions.

IV

Now you only need some beams to build something of a frame for the shelves to hold. You decide to buy them at the hardware store close to your house. Six of them. They are quite thin, more like sticks actually, and you tape them together at the counter with some transparent tape and march them home like a rifle, letting them lean against your shoulder where they bob along gently to the rhythm of your footsteps.

You build the thing lying flat on the ground and then you raise it up and it suddenly stands there in front of you, in the middle of the room, like another man.

V

There is a grammar to the whole thing. The language it speaks. The way it forms its words, the way it talks to you. Clear-cut and well-articulated, with sharp, tight corners. Neat and organized and well built. A strong construc-tion and at the same time, very minimal.

Its structure is open; no plates on the back or on the sides, so it’s a book-shelf through which you can look out into the world.

It stands alone. It stands free and does not need a wall to lean onto for support so you can walk around it, fill it from both sides, has a front and a back and sides too.

Simple white and cheap wood which is soft, young and fresh. You can see this in its colours which are clear. Almost illuminated. Whites and yellows like the sun. Dark and light lines swirling together, embracing each other in what was once a trunk or a branch. An internal world now violently exposed like an autobiography written in wood.

The material is untreated. No paint. No coating. No cover. It will grow more yellow and brown over time. It will age and it will change and it will write its own history. This is the frame you chose for yourself to hold your books.

You look at it and you think people are not necessary inside of people.

VI

The bottom shelf holds the coffee table books. These books hold pictures and images. Fashion, Art and Design. Beautiful and voluptuous images dripping from their pages. Eyes are made for these. The shelf is com-pletely filled with these heavy books and the entire bookshelf would loose its balance, if they would be on a higher shelf just because of their sheer weight. You think about the rules of anatomy and wonder if a human head is more heavy than his feet.

One shelf higher are the philosophy books. Structures and networks of thoughts through which to look at the world and to translate it into sys-tems, theories and logic. These books form somewhat of a filter, a grid of words, ideas and thoughts between the picture books on the shelf below and the novels on the shelves above. Of these last ones there are many. Colourful spines with names on it. It reminds you of a distorted rainbow inside a pencil box. You have to tilt your head slightly to the right so you can read the titles on the sides of the books. You let the letters drip from your left eye, down into your right, where they slowly sink into your brain, which is not used to processing them in this way.

And you have to be close. You need to be intimate to be able to read them. You can smell them, new and bleached scents or dried out and death yel-low smells. It’s all possible. Virgin paper and paper which is stained by tobacco smoke. Curled up paper edges, slightly torn or folded or internal wiring showing up. Bookmarks too often fumbled with, sticking out like wrinkled heads hovering helplessly above blown up bodies.

In the middle of the bookshelf there is one shelf upon which the books are laid out flat. Only four of them, so each of them has space to breathe.On this shelf are the books you recently acquired, but which you haven’t read yet. They are lying there with their eyes open: waiting to be picked up and opened and read and lived and owned.

VI

The bottom shelf holds the coffee table books. These books hold pictures and images. Fashion, Art and Design. Beautiful and voluptuous images dripping from their pages. Eyes are made for these. The shelf is com-pletely filled with these heavy books and the entire bookshelf would loose its balance, if they would be on a higher shelf just because of their sheer weight. You think about the rules of anatomy and wonder if a human head is more heavy than his feet.

One shelf higher are the philosophy books. Structures and networks of thoughts through which to look at the world and to translate it into sys-tems, theories and logic. These books form somewhat of a filter, a grid of words, ideas and thoughts between the picture books on the shelf below and the novels on the shelves above. Of these last ones there are many. Colourful spines with names on it. It reminds you of a distorted rainbow inside a pencil box. You have to tilt your head slightly to the right so you can read the titles on the sides of the books. You let the letters drip from your left eye, down into your right, where they slowly sink into your brain, which is not used to processing them in this way.

And you have to be close. You need to be intimate to be able to read them. You can smell them, new and bleached scents or dried out and death yel-low smells. It’s all possible. Virgin paper and paper which is stained by tobacco smoke. Curled up paper edges, slightly torn or folded or internal wiring showing up. Bookmarks too often fumbled with, sticking out like wrinkled heads hovering helplessly above blown up bodies.

In the middle of the bookshelf there is one shelf upon which the books are laid out flat. Only four of them, so each of them has space to breathe.On this shelf are the books you recently acquired, but which you haven’t read yet. They are lying there with their eyes open: waiting to be picked up and opened and read and lived and owned.

VII

The bottom shelf is actually not at the bottom of the thing but a bit higher so there is space underneath the bookshelf for storage. There is a cardboard box tucked underneath holding books which were, at some point, expelled from the shelf. Books you don’t want to fill your life and your head with anymore but you can’t do away with either. They still represent some part of who you are or who you were and you never know, they might be important to you once more in the future, and that’s what this box is for, to just keep these things for an undetermined amount of time, waiting on the threshold between this life and another.

now imagine the waterit being transparent and cleannot only in a glassbut as a ponda riveras the oceanimagine as if it were all thingssoundscoloursyour thoughtsyour gesturessome simple shapes a bunch of photosan untold storytwo angles perpendiculara wooden brickthe bag that’s hanging on your shouldera nice warm summer

somehow the waves are movingalignedsomehow they do

now imagine a snowball not bigger than your fistsolid compact white purewatch itten secondsand turn itfeel its weightits bright-lit colours nicely shaped

keep yourself busy

stretch out your handslet fall into the water

A blanket of dust the sun is powerless to penetrate. For five thousand years our world is robbed of light as a nuclear winter falls. In that darkness, a civilisation is removed from existence.

A blanket of dust the sun is powerless to penetrate. For five thousand years our world is robbed of light as a nuclear winter falls. In that darkness, a civilisation is removed from existence.

No, this was a bad dream. We weredrilling and the ground ate the bit.Then it ate the pipe, then thederrick. Then it ate us.

That’s a dumb-ass dream.

I’m not coming home.

What are you thinking about, Chick?

My kid. You.

My Mom, she’d be proud to see me asan astronaut.

Harry, what are you thinking?

How beautiful it is. Thinkin’ aboutall that oil I sucked out and spitinto the air.Funny how a man canlive 46 years and realize he ain’tbeen doing the right thing.

The President is counting on you toput out the fire, Dan. Say whateveryou have to. Just do it.

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