WELCOME to the Bod’s:
L-O-L: Library-On-Line/
~~~Filing-cabinet in the clouds, with
~~~On-line exhibits;
~~~Adventures in awareness;
~~~Mime Public Radio (MPR) Studio;
~Entangled Neural Networks of the Imagination;
~Experiments in novel form(s), frameworks;
~Explorations in which representation & reflection generate insight & creative flow; fun & games; ethereal companionship; transcendent revelations of ineffable being; sporadic groans, guffaws, glitches, gasps & gushes; falls & follies…
FRONT DESK GUIDE:
You’ve reached the sign at the entrance to a room with a view of itself–& more: a hole of mirrors leading from the peripheral edge of the event horizon to the center of the known universe, pulsing heart of the zero point where mind meets map, as personal & mind-in-common expand & focus together.
From here, you can:
a) SCROLL down THIS PAGE.
b) CLICK to OTHER PAGES on this site, from menu at top, e.g.:
# ATRIUM for featured exhibits, e.g.,
~~H/R ’64 60th Anniversary Report (soon)
~~Auroville at 50…. (2018)
~~Trompe l’oeil (2020) reality behind illusion
# ALICE’S GALLERY, some of VARB‘s late art…
# AUDIO, Santa Fe Trail radio; Like Water album
# GIFTS from here & there, poetry of the masters
# SNAPOPS—hokku, snapshots, weather-grams
(short-form impression/expressions)
# MAP-room, where guess what’s the territory
c) CLICK to linked SITES, WINGS & ANNEXES in the Bod Complex–e.g.,
https://www.virginiabodner.net, with many newly found gifts;
www.Eco-Wing.net, Nature’s Way, Aldo Zone, Seeds of Thought;
www.Bod-Library.xyz, Game Theory, Strategic Thinking….
Other Bod-Library branches, annexes & wings featuring BASHO, Big Questions, Self-Reference…
d) Email us (c/o bodlibrary2020@gmail.com) for information on (& access to) wings & annexes devoted to:
Basho & his Backcountry Ways; essays on translation;
course in writing, awareness, & thought (for teachers at DIYU);
the profound questions (fundamental natures of universe, mind, life…;
modern history; humor & media; the Basically Absurd Peninsula…;
perverse verse (Doggrel Park, Radioactive Banana…);
self-reference (the 7-story edifice complex)….
e) Take a rest & COME on BACK. Don’t expect to exhaust what any library has to offer in a single visit, even one as limited in scope as this. Indeed, a library isn’t created in a single visit either, & may never be “finished.” Even odd Yours Crudely (self-reference librarian & author of The Editorial We, a Postit-Press “memo to self,” long out-of-print) runs out of steam before any job is done, alas, not always returning as often as better results would require.
All sites are Works-In Progress, therefore, more or less finished only when Yours Crudely is, when executors may set parts in stone &/or print…before before the Bod goes the way of all free libraries & even that one in Alexandria. Nothing lasts forever (or does nothing not even really exist?). Still, many things hang around long enough to make some difference (however humble), as in the value of any completed work passed along (however imperfect).
As discussed in Deeper Dive below, one reason any of our sites exist is that, by being on-line, content sporadically returned to (& re-read as if from scratch) may be improved, particularly useful with so much of the text drafted on the fly. Another reason is to share work more or less finished (& fairly paid for) at the time made, not otherwise available, e.g., radio programs in the Audio Archives room; teaching materials, scripts., publications & translations on branch sites. Labors of love to start with, most were made to be shared.
in the sands of time/ footprints from the long ago/ still telling trail tales
=======================================
Technical note RE WEBSITE ADDRESSES & HYPHENS: Screen-display programs may add possibly misleading hyphens when crossing lines of text. Intentional hyphens (as in bod-library) & their intentional lack (as in bodlibrary) lead to entirely different sites, if any at all. (The first address in parentheses should have a hyphenated address & the second shouldn’t.) Destinations also depend on SUFFIX, of course, whether .net, .org., .info, .xyz, etc. (none currently .com).
========================================
Map of: the Bod-Library Complex–
ATRIUM: Our first exhibits are now growing old, & need a renewal.
AUDIO: Santa Fe Trail radio programs (Rolling On: the wagon years; Origins; Streams running together) & our Leaky Buckets album (Like Water: northern New Mexico Suites for guitar & poetry) have just been uploaded (1/ 2023) for your listening room pleasure–& already need a new upload.
ALICE’S GALLERY: Features examples of the dynamically experimental visual makings of the late Virginia Alice Richardson Bodner (1942-2019). After retiring from a lifetime teaching, she didn’t so much make art as practiced it, as recreation, therapy, & exploration of the visual & emotional effects of her changing neurological condition….
ALBUM SNAPS: Many of Virginia’s, Gita’s & Ricardo’s are included, along with a few here & there by friends; a drop-down file opens to a few essays on snap-forms. Includes Weathergrams, hokku/ open lens (hai! snaps), etc.
AWESOME OFFERINGS–gifts of grape poetry: 1. new translations of ecstatic masters; 2. discovering Virginia’s Stepping Stones legacy; 3. humble bumbles & 4. perverse verse, rhymes of the ridiculous, may be found elsewhere.
ART: “Any resemblance to the original works is purely co-incidental.” Think of the gallery area as our refrigerator, & Alice’s magnetic art seen only in photos.
A rope-skippable Extra & Redundant Introduction: The Bod L-O-L (Library-On-Line) goes on re-designing all sites, with new wings, branches & annexes for topic areas. Some rooms remain private (invisible), or need password to open, at least until deemed worthy of visitors like you.
Others are opened whether they are ready or not, letting time-lapsing re-visitors see the sausage in steps & stages. (Condolences to those who found only inferior versions & never came back.)
We used to say, Nature is the great teacher. That’s still true, though our conception of nature expands to include all of what might be found in our multiple realities, including the fundamental mysteries of mind, matter, feeling, imagination, movement (in, through & out of the various dimensions), with sense of self arguably near the center….
Note that each of these exists both within & across orders of magnitude, at various scales, e.g., across levels of conceptually physical matter from quark to corpse or cosmos, as well as between distinctly unique individuals & larger entities (families, teams, enterprises, communities, traditions, legacies, etc.). This is the premise that has given science & technology such cumulative power, each generation “standing the the shoulders of giants,” i.e., collectively engaged in the inherently shared process of re-refining & re-purposing information.
Topics, subjects & themes aside, our shared interests likely range from the purely artistic pleasures found in sound, language, color, form, imagery, motion, invention, twist & surprise (!) to fresh insights & awareness, expanded perspective on this, that & the other; clearer thought on what matters, as well as on what doesn’t; even strategic advantages fostering a personal self-interest. While game- & market-savvy can serve certain aspects of self-interest, a good laugh &/or sense of the ridiculous may serve others.
Thus this library has no Sssssshhhhh! signs. Guffaws are welcome, along with snickers & groans. If what strikes Yours Crudely’s funny-bone strikes yours also, you should be in for some good times once in a while, as measured in grins, smirks, & dimple jerks. For Yours Crudely, this simply goes with the territory, as from a quick-witted mother & the quirky extended family I spent my early years among, in a house that was also a lending library.
Ma’s lending library (at 48 Shirley Ave in Revere, MA) was nothing like this one–even more so in reverse, this nothing like that. A story mostly for the history branch, for one thing, we have far more rooms here (counting the unseen, let alone the unseeable, virtually countless), along with branches, wings, annexes, basements, attics & closets behind book shelves.
Content is even more distinct. Unlike Ma’s 2-cents-per-day romances, pot-boilers, & best-sellers (plus adult nickel-a-day ‘specials’ under the counter), just about all Bod-Library materials are found nowhere else, most created entirely in-house.
Bod Library Complex: A network of imaginary ideas, thoughts, projects, events, symptoms, causes & effects etc. linked to the psychological delusion of being a library.
[…with poetry, art, history, society, economics, games, music, dance & the insanity of our effable fiction in progress tucked in between pocket dictionaries, encyclopedias, maps, business & product directories, excerpts from articles, periodicals & ellipsoids; advertisements, announcements, & other metaphorical re-embodiments of the often goofy faces of the daffy human condition, sporadically caught (“in flagrante delicto”), upside down & inside out, via The Mirror-Times-Mirror Trans Media ‘s 21st C. digital telegraphy network….]
DEEPER DIVE: As often as I come back, there’s always more to notice, note, do, re-do, add, delete, trim, cut & clean up after….In fact, part of why this library exists in the first place is to put some materials where I’m more likely to find them again, re-read & so improve, in contrast to the vast volume that simply disappears into the raw files of my Mac Mini (“Bodrik”), likely never re-read again, let alone improved for prime visitors like you.
In theory, the possibility of you is also part of why this library exists, being imagined for your benefit, pleasure, understanding, perspective, insight, illumination, enjoyment, sense of play &/or LAUGH THERAPY. When I think & write the word you, to some extent I imagine actual people whose lives have in one way or another entangled with my own, at core & the periphery, part of a shared conversation with old friends & acquaintances (however sporadic) . I also imagine personal (even close) connections with recipients not met before, however, directly addressed mind-to-mind even so.
Why? It’s what a writer, speaker, teacher, companion, docent does, in forms usually shaped by social institutions, but that come with the territory of being human, sentient individuals who are also mindful parts of something larger, the borderless community of humanity through time–not jsut an abstraction. We are born inquisitive, & primed for sharing, learning & teaching, receiving from countless sources & passing along our offerings in kind. It’s what we do, part of the human condition, a distinctive characteristic, though not likely exclusive to our life-form.
We are not of our own time only either–or only “our own” person, even when we’re more & less clearly that also. How strange. Even when we’re looking back, we’re thinking forward. Even when writing of history, we’re writing forward. That reminds me–part of being someplace I may come back to has nothing to do with re-offering or improving earlier material, but having an available jumping off point for fresh thought, realization, inspiration, not just a repository, in other words, but a launch vehicle….
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Feel free…to noodle around the open wings, annexes, gardens, exhibits, branches; scroll special topic rooms, shops & bistros, hotspots, nooks & crannies, in your own time, at your own risk, as usual…taking special care in re-construction areas, labyrinths, worm-holes, slippery ellipses, bottomless depths, &/or while skating on thin ice, as would-be poets & their imitators in residence are prone to do….
If you don’t feel free, you may still feel cheap, as nothing’s for sale–& that’s already half-off, but only while supply lasts, albeit potentially longer than all prior forevers if new nothing is indeed created all the time, an expansion embedded in the ever emergent spacetime fabric itself… Oh, well. If that doesn’t do it, I offer no apology for my crock-eyed view of the cosmos, planetary human societies in general, specific cultures, & twisted use of (sometimes punful, sometimes painful) language, as we go forth on our adventures….