The polished surface throws
back the arrow. Beneath it,
handwritten in a painstaking
artificial script, a script from
the convent, is “an American

may possibly know the customs
of your country better than you
do.” Visible form is excavated.
Shape dissipates. About this
ambiguity I am ambiguous.

To reproduce & to articulate; to
imitate & to signify; to look &
to read. What misleads us is the
inevitable futility of converting
the text to some glaring color

when a simple swipe of a rag
could soon erase it & reduce
phoneticism to mere gray noise or
inconspicuous article. Treasure
the pearls of what you have read.

Mark Young, 2015

Remixed works:
This Is Not a Pipe, by Michel Foucault
The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette, by Florence Hartley

The lost chatter of men, the
exteriority of written &
figurative elements—very
few persons write a good
letter. In this split & drifting

space, strange bonds are knit.
Two garrulous mutes use
elegant language, yet use it
easily. A word can take the
place of an object if the paren-

thesis is avoided. Neatness is
important. The measure of
the “iron horse” is how many
missives it drags behind. No
mass, no name, form without

volume.  Word & object are
deployed in two different
dimensions. Emptiness undoes
the space. Verbal lightning
flashes come naturally to a child.

Mark Young, 2015

Remixed works:
This Is Not a Pipe, by Michel Foucault
The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette, by Florence Hartley