Tyler Richard

Mark Bradford, Black Venus, 2005. Berezdivin Collection, Photo: Bruce M. White. Courtesy of www.themarkbradfordproject.org.

  Then take the hard right where blue river reeds



obscure the bank, waist-high, where the dock,



that dumb, clean monk, has lost its red habit




to the current, limbs scoured by microbeads.



 



“It really ain’t that hard, you just loop the line



loose around the sticky bait, drip the knot in



your mouth, and cinch, trap wire for yellow



perch, that what your mouth is for,” he grinned.



 



And that was what he said. What this shored mind fills in.



Reaching back, my hand is fishing for the true




weight of his knife, warm, yellowed, and finds




a phone, no bars, the hollowed waters



 



parting. Hungry go those who long after fish long



after fish are gone, still, scale-silt, umber. 

Until the moth takes

wing light on dark

on your dark eye

I cannot express.



Hold up a flashlight

to things themselves;

separate the body

into day and night.



Across your screen

the moth wings

are many and pressings

wrinkled hands cupping



and dropping the dark.

Overhead a light

aurora performs its

handless weavings.



These are our angels:

the luminous who sing

in light of things

as they truly are.



That your dark eye

wing light on dark

might tear a part

for the daytime



I reach overhead.

I caress the mothlight

and with its dust

I mark my breath.

  Night yawns its dark



     door left ajar,



          and I declare nothing



 



but this white intention



     to say goodnight



          clearly. This is clearly



 



a manner of speaking




     against but regrettably



          through this break-black,



 



over-interpretative reek,




     through this way of speaking,



          where *break* is consonant



 



with *bleak*, through all




     that’s left for us. Along



          with this goodnight,



 



which reminds me,




     there was no snow,



          is no snow this year.



 



We cannot forget




     to consult the pond.



          Not unlike your dreams,



 



the pond is a magic,




     the mirror of what’s



          fair, of creatures, of water



 



cohering with water, as all



     above my head is how



          tonight now feels.



 



Acrid clouds a black




     shade of bleak. I shift



          my footing a tad



 



and hope things change,



     and already



          you’re fast asleep. 

*Read the full blog post at [Notes from 21 South Street](http://theadvocateblog.net/2013/09/20/i-wont-watch-no-reruns/).*



After the box office success of their 1999 film The Matrix, the Wachowski siblings released in 2003 The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions and plunged their moviegoers into short-lived existential crisis. That same year, British philosopher Nick Bostrom carried The Matrix‘s threat out of movie theaters and into philosophy departments, publishing “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?” Looking at the past growth of computing power, Bostrom raises the possibility that we are living in a simulated universe generated by an extremely powerful computer, which in turn might itself exist within yet another simulation, ad infinitum and ad nauseum. This skeptical worry along with a few related variations have come to be known as “simulation arguments.”



Philosophers often compare Bostrom to Descartes, arguing that the simulation argument is simply the dream argument — “Are we living in a dream?” — outfitted in the silicon trappings of the computer age. The similarity, certainly, is difficult to overlook. In a similar vein, we can view Dan Ashwood’s Repeat Viewings as a nineties-era refashioning of Bostrom’s skeptical worry. RV records the simulation argument with a camcorder and plays the tape over and over again until the video itself becomes damaged by the VCR. The acts of re-collection, re-membering, and re-vision are themselves caustic, slowly corroding what they attempt to preserve. In Ashwood’s animation, the anxiety underlying Bostrom’s simulation argument deteriorates and falls away. The characters’ existential angst lies not in the fact that they live in a simulated reality, but rather in a general question of nostalgia: Is it worth satisfying? Is our wistful affection for the past an act of violence that we should avoid? Or are the lines of static that gradually obfuscate our favorite videos like green lines of code, shimmering with the promise of meaning?