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(from wikipedia: an image of the random process known as "Brownian motion")


I am writing from a conference on "genre" @ the English Institute @ Harvard this weekend (yes, I am interested in category-making--and category-revision--of all kinds, including literary kinds as well as gender-kinds) and am smiling again in pleased surprise @ the notion of this language-altering movement. The first speaker @ the conference is a specialist in the form we call the lyric, which he repeatedly defined as "the interruption of a narrative," "an event that is not in time, but stops time," that relies on the device of the present tense. So I told him about e-prime, and asked if--given new theories of knowledge about the mutability of perception, and the always-movingness of the world-- the lyric is just a nostalgic gesture, an attempt to claim (to pretend?) that we can stop the motion, fix the world "as is."

He didn't much appreciate the suggestion. But that's just to say you've gotten me in thinking in all sorts of productive (and very pleasing) directions....