A Book of Ether, Chapters 1&2 - from Cheryl Penn

[Marie Wintzer]

 

Ether is one of Cheryl's favorite words, and after meeting it several times in our conversations I became fascinated by the concept behind it. Ether is a word that is so multilayered that it is impossible to simply give one definition of it. This word needed a book! We started exchanging chapters for it, in an experimental "let's see where this goes" kind of way, but I think that these first two chapters are the promise of a great book.

 

 

Chapter one is a tale, a lesson, a warning. What is this World of Ether? In Cheryl's note, she writes: It is [a world] filled with opposites. Good and bad, negative and positive, light and dark. It's a place of contrasts, a world very similar to our own. It exists as its own universe.
Ether is a Dark and Dense Forest with a dangerously captivating Glow (my favorite part of the chapter is that one can REALLY see the glow of the Ether through the black trees. She's an amazing painter...).
The inspiration for this chapter is the nursery rhyme "If you go down to the woods today", bears being replaced by wolves. You can go down to the woods any time, the wolves will be there, having their picnic, as they do every single day. And they surely will invite you to join in. And you will join in. Picnics are such fun, but wolves, well, they are still wolves....

 

 

And wolves DO haunt. You need to be aware of this simple fact when you enter the Dense Forest of Ether. This is today's lesson, for Children and Others. Mostly for Others....

01100110101.... is Ether a Binary World? Yes it is, yet it doesn't use binary language. Another interesting fact that adds to the mystery of it.

 

 

Where does Ether take place? Where are the Woods actually located? "Ether takes place in the Core of our heads. Places even X-rays can't find. With so many shades of Gray."
Cheryl used real brain scans for this second chapter, which is absolutely genius and innovative. Ether is there, and X-rays are scanning through, finding absolutely Zalop. Small dots are pierced, a trace, a trail, but it's gone....

 

 

These two fantastic first chapters are already shedding some light onto the concept of Ether. I hope there will be plenty more (and I have to get working on it!!). Cheryl, thank you for sending, I'm so happy about this book, it's going to be a FABU.

 

[De Villo Sloan]

fleur de la cerise - être gentil avec le garçon de lumièrecentime. qu'il est un imbécile et un singe qui mange maarachides. vous êtes en France où l'on parle allemand.

[Marie Wintzer]

Like you didn't know!!!!! grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

[De Villo Sloan]

Now I understand, like when you were in Australia. I wanted to read her views, as she is a participant. I've returned to this piece several times. What I take away now is the darkness of it - so much black. I thought the simulacra was always cheery.

[cheryl penn]

C.B.  is flying just below the ether. In the atmosphere. But she lands soon :-) X

[De Villo Sloan]

Semiotics has always been about the gap between the signifier and the signified - the symbol and the object in the world - enclosed, self-referential systems. The ether is a radical example

[De Villo Sloan]

Thought you might like to know the Simulacra concept and you're not alone. Baudrillard is up there with Derrida and Sartre and he thought it was worth devoting his career to it. Yes, spreading to every corner of the earth - not surprising some would think of the escape. Love these books you are doing with Marie.

[cheryl penn]

:-) being dramatic I COMPLETELY understand that!  I was thinking about how in the ether, words, unaccompanied by their owners  do strange things. They become their OWN Simulacra in an odd way - they become entities with such power - but thats the ether talking :-) thanks DVS.

[De Villo Sloan]

As he grew older, Baudrillard became more and more pessimistic about the Simulacra invading our lives. He explored ways to escape from it and morbidly concluded death is the only escape - very French

[De Villo Sloan]

There's a French culture theorist - Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) who wrote for decades about the "simulacra" - an alternate world we are increasingly living in composed of signs and symbols (informed by semiotics I suppose). When the internet came along, Baudrillard was further lionized because it seemed proof of his theories - humans living in constructs, an artifical world set apart from the so-called real world. Seems relevant to the ether. ether = simulacra, in part anyway

[De Villo Sloan]

"The First Men in the Moon" is such a great choice - aren't the early chapters about (what seems to us) 19th century pseudo-science addressing anti-gravity? Even the old notion of aether? And then the imaginary world Wells creates in the caverns beneath the moon - wow. Love your sub-texts. Have to pull out my H.G. Wells books. Quotes are great - I always thought that one was one of Wells' gems not so well-known - he could write beautifully when he wanted to