“There was no longer a point of
reference: the Galaxy went on turning but I could no longer count the
revolutions, any point could be a point of departure, any sign heaped up
with the others could be mine, but discovering it would have served no
purpose, because it was clear that, independent of signs, space didn’t
exist and perhaps had never existed.”
─Italo Calvino,
Cosmicomics
This doesn’t feel like a winter issue. Maybe it’s
the heat. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s no longer winter. (Spring is
coming, albeit grudgingly, to this calciferous town on the edge of the
Edwards Plateau.) The Red Oaks have sprouted precocious leaflets and
tassels but vestiges of that chilly and dormant season remain: the
Guadalupe is still rather frosty and the Sycamores in the quad are
plagued by an oppressive lack of foliage. In the spring and summer the
American Sycamore, Platanus occidentalis, is a handsome sort of
fellow, with elegant whitish bark and large maple-like leaves. Today
they looked tired and weary as the full moon rose over the
juniper-stained hills on the outside of town. And as much as I would
like to see their broad canopies brimming with lime green, sappy buds, I
feel a certain reluctance to pack away all my sweaters and scarves.
(Flip-flops, for all their innumerable merits, will never be accused of
intelligence.)
Perhaps it is best to think of this issue as an
annular statement, something a bit removed from the immediacy and
symbolic romanticism of winter and spring. Still, I don’t think digital
mediums lend themselves well to notions of temporality. They feel
immutable, Platonic; they are fire and air to the aqueous dirt and soot
of the vegetable page.
I have walked through the Bois de Boulogne with a
copy of Proust and felt certain the text in my hand was somehow
autumnal. I have sat in the honeyed shade of a Green Ash in Dallas with
a volume of Borges and felt the vertiginous weight and splendor of
history press upon my eyelids; and I have, on a winter afternoon some
years ago, callously derided that evergreen sentinel, the Live Oak, as I
browsed the satanic splendors of Maldoror. Computers can never
communicate this sometimes numinous sense of being- of-this-world.
Computers are astral entities, sidereal spirits, airy demons. Cyberspace
is an angelic delusion measured in light-years; hard-drives and CD-ROMs
are satellites of some distant and silent galaxy. The internet can make
you woozy with omnipresence ─ the elusive promise of an ultimate
synchronic now. All these, mind you, are good things in their own way.
So it is somewhat preposterous to call this an annular issue, when some
other, more appropriate metaphor is clearly called for. That said, we’re
sticking with the inadequate sobriquet, if for no other reason than the
fact that naming the issue Global Sign or Space Ritual
would surely be a sign of editorial derangement.
Anyways, there’s a lot of good stuff in here, none
of which has to do with space or annularity. We are rightfully now a
journal of arts and letters, with the dutiful inclusion of visual
art. Also included, with due fanfare, are Illuminations’ first
submissions in Spanish. Emily Seal has done an amazing job revamping the
site’s look (along with taking over the managerial reins from her
grossly irresponsible, tree-gazing predecessor) and Joshua Allen, Sally
Alter, Lori Lundell, Colter Brown, and Chris Collins were indispensable in winnowing
the chaff from the grain, so to speak. As always, we would like to thank
our faculty advisors Dr. David Breeden and Dr. Lydia Kualapai, along
with the always patient and accommodating tech department.
-Jacob
Stewart
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