. Spinning .

Along with string theory–and I’m not sure it isn’t coincidental (!) to it–there is the theory of coincidence that takes up much of Ham’s reflections.  The excerpt below is very illustrative of the idea:

(Ham on coincidence)

If I acknowledge hunger then others must acknowledge it at the same moment. Much as I write or link or speak this, many of the words in sequence are also being spoken or written or imagined simultaneously, as the lateral patterns enlarge and branch and intersect. I shout. Some gent named Barnes or Flores shouts, too. Four of us, a Chilean, an Alaskan, Belgian, and Taiwanese, shout. We become an anonymous and coincidental cult of shouters.

Without understanding the basis for Ham’s belief that "others must acknowledge it at the same moment," I’ve pretty much just read by this particular plot.  However, I’d come to this:

(Cervantes on Ham)

"What’s a name without a history?  Names can be meaningless, mere labels.

And the thing here is, see, I’d just e-mailed someone mentioning the labels that names can become.  Not the exact moment as reading this–a day or two prior; not the time this was first written–any time within the past few years.  Coincidence?

Does this mean then I’m more open to Ham’s theories on a parallelity (I know, but say the word out loud and you’ll love it) of events?  If I seek rationalization, or justification’s likely a better word, I might point to the theory of there being only 37 plots in life, or that most folks being used to a lunch being taken around mid-day are bound to be eating together.  Too, the increased population betters the odds.

Or I can just go along with the flow.  Certainly I’ve wondered what a particular someone was doing exactly at this moment but halfway around the world. This is common, especially when loved ones are away somewheres.  And the fact that someone is doing exactly what I’m doing now is not all that odd–I’m at the laptop.  I’ve been struck sometimes by the thought of Instant Messaging, or online classroom forums, which there must be some knack to skillfully communicate because I always find myself typing at the same time the other person is and we hold a most rude conversation by talking over each other.  Yet I’ve held great conversations via e-mail and perhaps the reason is that it’s a hit or miss that you catch each other and if you do, you focus on a conversation.  I’ve saved lotsa money this way when a phone call to Florida or New Hampshire or Arizona would’ve run up a bill.

But multiple happenings concurrently, unplanned but exact.  An odd thought that will tickle my mind until I’ve sorted it out.

(Ham on heads)

(…) I thought I might follow just to see or confirm. But I might have been here before, some leg of life unmemorized thousands of years ago or into the future. Why make the journey again if just to circle back?

Here’s Ham, alone in the desert, and this is the way that he thinks.  He has much more difficult to understand thoughts as well when he gets into time and space and motion and theory, but the above gives an easier to understand version of what’s going on in this character’s head. 

He also applies these intellectual philosophies and intelligent calculations to much of his daily living routines and yet without being a jerk about it.  In the background, of course, is the history, the future, of his brother, Geronimo, and his mother.  So he’s obviously very smart, very dedicated to his seeking of universal answers, and still a likeable, caring person.  So what’s he see in Pen?

It doesn’t matter.  He’s taken with her.  Albeit a charming and exciting trait, Pen’s predisposition of offering grounding then flying off on newly grown wings would be, I should think, the very thing that Ham would avoid, would fear, based upon his losses of loved ones before.  Perhaps the Butlers provided enough for him to have overcome what might have crippled emotionally a less stable personality.  Perhaps Ham, in his patience with Pen, is unconciously setting a trap that once sprung by the least of the ghosts, Pen, will make up for all the rest in this single capture.  Maybe he’s just a masochist.

The main thing is to not try to tell the character what he should do: Go find yourself a nice lady who loves kids and cooks like a chef–Ham’s mother being one to liquify food before serving, another path to explore next time I come up to it. An interesting proposition, not knowing exactly what’s in Ham’s mind, not knowing if he himself knows, or cares, or is just clicking on links same as I.

One thing I haven’t touched on to any depth is the characters and their relationships to each other.  Obviously Ham, as the main character and first person narrator is exposed by his perspective of the story which is all we really have to go on.  But through his relationships we see the other characters in two ways: how Ham thinks of them and how we instead might interpret them through reported dialogue or action.

So I’m not crazy about his girlfriend, Pen.

He is, and that’s perhaps where I see most clearly the separation of writer/character to be necessary, even more so than the reader/character situation.  In simpler terms, it’s the "I’d never do that" effect.  The writer then, is allowing the character to behave in a manner that perhaps most readers would not, and more importantly, he would not.

Through conversations and meetings and reunions we may judge for ourselves the relationships and certain things become clear by reinforcement–which often comes at odd times when you’re dealing with hypertext, and always at different times for different readers.  For example, it’s obvious that Ham loves Pen, Ham and McKenna are good friends, and that Ham and his "sister" Maria were and will always share a bond.  In Ham’s relationship with Pen, however, I find my acceptance of her free and easy ways to be self-centered.  She is a user.  She also loves Ham and likely seeks him out whenever she needs to find whatever it is she’s looking for.  And then she leaves.

What makes me wonder about how much I am influenced by the nature of hypertext is that since time is efficiently available at command–past, present, future all at a click–it may seem to me that Pen’s comings and goings are one thing, away a long time, back for a minute and gone again. And as I follow Ham’s life in between these spaces, when Pen comes back it is almost an intrusion and I think I resent her for that.

And perhaps it is only because of my own reading style in the hypertext environment that Pen behaves as she does. 

Engage the senses, the books say.  Poetry teaches this and poetry shows it best:

(Pen on Geronimo)

Pen looked white and vulnerable herself on the bed, her naked legs folded beneath her, her eyes glittering with sins to come.  We’d lit candles and opened the sliding doors to let in the scented night breathing off the mountains, cricket chirps and night larks owling.

"eyes glittering with sins to come."  That describes the moment and it describes the future.  Maybe Ersinghaus is right; maybe they’re one and the same. 

We get the sound, the scent, the visuals and the imaginings, i.e., "larks owling."  I personally love making nouns do the work of verbs. 

Movement:  "the night breathing off the mountains."  Touch:  the warm smoothness of skin on skin in "her naked legs folded beneath her." 

There.  In a couple of sentences, we’ve been asked to open ourselves up completely.

This, part of a conversation between Ham and a friend:

"I haven’t read a book in about ten years," I said.  "I don’t trust them."

Priceless.

UPDATE:  And the next box is even better–though I can’t reveal it.  It’s shades of a green chair and a man reading a murder mystery.  It’s…it’s…wild.

UPDATE #2: The green chair refers to Julio Cortazar’s A Continuity of Parks.  (s-thanks).

I don’t think it’s any big secret that I’m the teeniest bit of a control freak.  Nor that for a long time I nodded and smiled while deep inside me lurked a festering resentment against hypertext, IF, gaming, or any other means by which the reader rebellion could claim victory over the author.

How can you plan a story out so carefully (said she who has never plotted from A to B but creates instead in response to the "voice" inside her head) and then leave it up to some smudge you’ve never met to read it right? (insisted I.)  How indeed can you foresee and plan for every possibility so that some jerk doesn’t fuck mess it up?  How can I trust someone not to turn it into a farce?  (I wailed.  Inwardly.  Silently. Because I’m extremely polite.)

There is an added pressure on the author of hypertext story.  Loose ends must be glued to another strand of thought or episode.  Characters may drop out of a scenario but there must be damn good reason.  And, they must be returned before they’re forgotten. 

Ersinghaus has a well thought-out story line here, though I would think that it may be considered several, it still is focused upon the main character Ham Sandoval in various segments of time that come to the forefront when needed, (omigosh–I just got an image of a grid with covered words or pictures that you have to select in pairs and match, or re-cover and remember and try again). 

There is Ham Sandoval’s youth, his memory of his mother, brother, and what he was told of his father.  There is his teenage years with the Butlers and his closeness with Maria.  There is his first teaching position, then his switch to journalist.  And there is his love interest, Pen, who weaves in and out among the blocks of time, as does the string theory and black holes and water (and trees!) that provide the bindings of narrative structure.

Ersinghaus, being the proper English Professor minus the stuffiness that accompany some, has not disregarded the primary elements of story, the need for conflict, tension, and more thought-provoking and timely topic matter (meaning political–just can’t get away from it…) that serve as the high points, the blips on the arc of whatever curve the story has taken you–or rather, you it. What each of these conflicts accomplish may be a moral decision, a character revelation, a statement on human oppression that surprises the reader–but stays with him.  And this is for two reasons:  one, it has a certain subtle shock value and two, the problem doesn’t get solved.  Just like in real life.

It is admirable to watch how an author has knit together a coat that covers a character.  And while I would call this a literary novel, it is not by any means a navel-gazer nor does it require any more from the reader than to tap and click one’s way through it.  Oh yes, and to think about what was just read. 

Finally found a sequence that’s concise and wouldn’t ruin the reading for others to illustrate what I’ve been saying are the more scientific workings of Ham Sandoval’s mind that he applies to his view of the more mundane reality of daily living:

(Pen on boats)

A squirrel leapt onto a boulder near the edge of the river, the Rio Grande.  The heavy rains had made it swollen and dangerous.  The animal jumped and ran a linear path toward bushes.  (Squirrels may only run forward on an imaginary two dimensional curving plane.  It’s an ambulatory axiom, set into existence at the Beginning.  We move forward on curves because the earth is round, although from our limited point of view they appear as straight lines.)

This one, fortunately, is one that’s more easily understood.  We’ve all known people like Ham, those who think on a different level, whose mind is constantly forming relationships between data gleaned from normal conversation, observance, reading, experience.  Thoughts of sausage and peppers as a possibility for supper will, if uninterrupted by something more titillating to the passionate interest in a particular field, wander into the coordinates, volume, gravitational resistance of a dirigible, all from an image of sausage.

And when it starts to make sense to the reader, as the obvious reference to curvature did to me, it brings one to a new level of understanding of the main character.