Structure Restructured

Back in 1998, in a little note sent to a friend working on Nietzche, I quoted this excerpt from Touch by Gabriel Josipovici.

The structure consists of a series of gestures in a certain order which satisfies.

The structure is never final. As soon as it has been completed satisfactorily it ceases to matter. The search for boundaries begins again. It will always begin again. Not as Sisyphus rolls his stone up the hill again and again, but as the sun rises each morning, as one breathes in and out and then in again and again.

Yet it is not as natural as breathing. Not even as natural as swimming or kicking a ball. For it is never possible to tell in advance where the boundaries will be or even if they exist.

There is no end to it. But ends no longer matter.

A quirky bit of irony, my signature block at the time read

Francois
wonders how machines make promises
in scifi —
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~lachance/sd/sd0003.htm

which provided a link to a mini-review of Phyllis Gotlieb's O Master Caliban! and how it entices "reader's awareness of the elegance of the artifice" which in a way recalls Josipovici's observations about the perception of structure which in turn reminds me of the bittersweet joy of placing that last piece to complete a jigsaw puzzle.

And so for day 1681
21.07.2011