Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Katamari Walking

Before Saturday night, I'd never played Katamari Damacy. In Datacloud and again in "Katamari Interface," I read about the princely roller pushing the tacky (magnetic?) ball through the game's byways, gaining in things, some strategic, many accidental. All of them counted, catalogued. They're persistent in my own Katamari-like memory, the projects I mention, their framing of Katamari Damacy as an installment of the database logic implicit in much digital writing. Like toaster ovens placed enigmatically in the middle of the street (what's that doing there?), Katamari logics have joined the clump that is my plan for WRT302 this fall, too.

Speaking of stickiness (or glue), I've been walking Y. most days lately. Mornings. We've jogged, too, but whether or not I'm jogging, he walks, mocking me and my slow, laborious pace. Puppies are voracious collectors; Y., particularly so. He aggregates the street, its detritus, its unseen flavors. Leeches miscellany: cig. butts, sticks, wilderberries, leaves, wrappers, styrofoam bits, and so on. This gets at the deep tension in our relationship (Dr. Phil, Y. takes into his mouth every tiny speck of crap and debris in reach!). He's learning "drop." It's a sweeter lesson since he's come to understand that I'm not afraid to dig my fingers into the dark depths of his kibble-pipe to retrieve the salivascraps rather than have him ingest them for good. Back to the point of what I was getting at: Y. is a collector.

The other morning a neighbor who we don't know was repairing one of the two Hyundai Accents parked in his driveway. The hatchback trim lining the interior (the car's ceiling) appeared to have come loose, fallen in. On the away-route, our first pass, the repair was just underway. The man was placing pillows in the back window of the car and, oddly enough, propping empty beer bottles (green ones--Rolling Rock?) to close the gap. He was improvising a stabilization system from the whatever-at-hand lying around the place. Bricolage auto repair. The mouths of the beer bottles would apply pressure from the bottom side to the damaged trim, which, now held with Gorilla Glue, would be suspended long enough to dry, hold. Y. and I walked on by (curious, but trying not to gawk). Added when we passed back by on the way home: duct tape.

Our course is just 1.6 miles. Roughly one mile into the walk, there's a hill. The down-slope is where Y. lifted his favorite toy of all time: a cracked tennis ball, pre-chewed by another dog. Found it in the street. Unethical to let him keep it? Nah. It's a tennis ball. We see one or two per week along the route, often in the drain gutters. So I let Y. keep the ball, and we carry it on subsequent walks, although he doesn't actually get to play with it--going leash-wild--until we're a mile into the walk, until we reach cut-up hill. Cut-up because the ball is hacked. The tear helps him grab it and keep it held. Cut-up because Y. goes ape-ass wild just to have it in his clutches. With the ball, he bounds recklessly into yards and into the street again, taking the leash to its limits. And them I reel him in. "Drop." (Often I have to take it from him). Loop.

Katamari walking. The street as inquiry. Don't know what we'll find, but let's walk. And then there's a guy using beer bottles to repair his Hyundai. Minutes later, duct tape. Another time (and for weeks), we find a tattered Formula 409 bottle, an oxymoron of cleaner as filth. Next, two small boys positioning plums where tires are most likely to mash them, then scurrying to hide behind a shrub--a stripe of jam, perpledicular to the street.

Collection and annotation. These are the emphases in Sirc's "box-logic" essay in WNM. I'll be teaching it alongside Katamari logics (pieces from those above) in a few weeks. WRT302 starts Monday.

Posted by Derek Mueller at August 22, 2006 11:50 PM to Methods,Perrito