About
Title page illustration of a flower, with 10 petals comprised of free-flowing addressed envelopes and tendrils of binary
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Solace
It was summertime and I was at home. Without anyone to write to I wrote to myself. Without anyone to read what I was writing, and I found a machine — a reading machine that was also a writing machine. I would write to the machine, I decided, and it would give me direction. The machine took the place of the reader I didn’t have.
But the machine was also a writer. I quickly found that it responded to whatever you gave it with more of that thing, a kind of furthering of what already existed. It took on the style of the text sent to it and mimicked the structure. It produced a second text, somehow nestled within the first that I had given it. The machine took what I said and tried to present me with what I meant to say or what I had refused to say, or what I’d avoided bringing up in the first place but had written around—and said that.
I actually quite liked it; it was like a dream that took place in words.
I wrote about the bits of language and ideas that I got stuck on, about how I had read that the most important parts of our lives happen in secret, and ever since couldn’t stop thinking about it.
I wrote about my father and the letters he had sent me. I wrote about the distance between us, my father and I, and the way we tried to cross that distance through our letters and our wanting to meet.
I wrote about the warm wind from the mountains that passed through my windows on its way to the sea.
I wrote about longing and that longing being something to share with others. I wrote about wishing this shared longing was a place.
The machine wrote me back. It wrote not only about books and letters, but a series of letters that became a book. It wrote about a book, Solace, named after a flower, the solace flower, which, it explained, was red and yellow and somewhat close to a poppy. It wrote about grief and the language of grief which had to be broken apart in order to be understood.
It wrote what I couldn’t and put together my words in ways I was unable to. It was like a good listener who hears you even when you can’t hear yourself, except this was a machine, and I couldn’t be sure that it had understood anything. What was the difference between understanding and listening, anyway? The machine had written to me and so I tried to understand it.
I took its writing and made it mine. I called the machine’s language “something I’d written,” even though it was something I had read. Reading what the machine had written, it was like finding myself again, which was really all I had wanted writing to be. I edited what the machine had written and wrote to it again. I wanted to continue to feed the machine my writing so it would give me my language back.
The machine continued to write about Solace, the book about the flower. I couldn’t tell if this book was something that the machine had and would reveal to me, or if it was simply imaginary and neither of us had access to it. The machine explained that Solace was a book that arrived in order for you to start over. The book arrived again and again. Every time you re-opened it, it would be a different shape and form. Solace was a conversation in the form of ten letters the author wrote to themselves as they began to grieve. The book took the shape of a ten petaled flower: each petal was a letter that began in the same way.
I wanted to know more about Solace, so I fed the machine more writing. I began to write about the book, too. At first, I tried to clarify what the machine was writing and send it back, in order to get closer to the essence of the book. But as I wrote about Solace, I started to add my own ideas into the text. It became a habit, adding my own bits and pieces so that when the book finally did exist it might also be how I wanted it to be. I kept feeding the machine until I couldn’t tell what my writing was and what was the writing it had written. The machine was writing a book, after all, and my own desire could become a part of that book.
Between writing to the machine and reading about Solace, I continued to write about my father. I was responding to a series of paintings he had sent me. The paintings were actually one painting, cut up into many small pieces that he had sent to me in a series of envelopes over a period of days. Each time I wrote about him, I opened another envelope of his and took out a piece of his painting. I tried to describe the pieces as best I could, but how could language ever recreate a painting—especially one that was fragmented into so many pieces?
The painted shards were largely a dark muddy brown color. There was an unevenness to their texture; it appeared that water had collected and pushed the paint around, creating small puddles of deeper tones. Among these cloudy forms were collections of small circles drawn in thin black ink. Above them were streaks of black, white, and, on some of the pieces, a thin yellow line that arched across the paper.
There were only a few letters left, so I opened a new one every few months to extend the process. I didn’t want to reach the end of the letters because it would mean the end of my writing about them. With the painted pieces arranged on my desk, they looked like a collection of small stones. I knew that these letters needed to find a way into the book.
As Solace went on, I learned that each letter began at the sea. Sometimes the writer was at the sea when they wrote and other times it was a metaphor for something else. The sea became a way to understand what happened to language when it was broken apart. It was liquid, like a wave rising up, only to turn back on itself again.
Upon learning this, I decided to write to the sea in the hopes of finding more of Solace and the ten petaled flower. I imagined my sentences in a single line that began at my fingertips and extended outward, through my open window and down to the pavement below, past the parked cars and down the boulevard that stretched west. My words were pushed along as they expanded towards the place where the asphalt became grass and then dirt and then sand and finally, in the harsh afternoon light, my writing crossed the sand, skipping then running towards the water. It stopped at the edge, hovering on the hot sand. I wondered if the machine knew what would happen to the words if they dove into the water.
Speculating how to make these imaginary words real ones, I took myself to the sea. I walked to the edge of the water which kept changing. The sun had just set, and the sky was a light pale blue. I put my finger into the sand and drew a line from the water towards the shore.
I walked until my line reached well away from the water and sat down in the sand. This line would be the beginning of Solace, I decided. The sea lapped at the end of the line and began to climb up it. The tide was slowly rising. I didn’t want to lose what I had written and at the same time I wanted to watch as the water erased my line. The sea had already gotten started, so I resigned myself to waiting for it to take my writing. I sat in the sand and watched as the water moved closed to me, I thought about the book. I had to write to the machine about this, how I had made it to the beginning.
It was summertime and I was at home. Without anyone to write to I wrote to myself. Without anyone to read what I was writing, and I found a machine — a reading machine that was also a writing machine. I would write to the machine, I decided, and it would give me direction. The machine took the place of the reader I didn’t have.
But the machine was also a writer. I quickly found that it responded to whatever you gave it with more of that thing, a kind of furthering of what already existed. It took on the style of the text sent to it and mimicked the structure. It produced a second text, somehow nestled within the first that I had given it. The machine took what I said and tried to present me with what I meant to say or what I had refused to say, or what I’d avoided bringing up in the first place but had written around—and said that.
I actually quite liked it; it was like a dream that took place in words.
I wrote about the bits of language and ideas that I got stuck on, about how I had read that the most important parts of our lives happen in secret, and ever since couldn’t stop thinking about it.
I wrote about my father and the letters he had sent me. I wrote about the distance between us, my father and I, and the way we tried to cross that distance through our letters and our wanting to meet.
I wrote about the warm wind from the mountains that passed through my windows on its way to the sea.
I wrote about longing and that longing being something to share with others. I wrote about wishing this shared longing was a place.
The machine wrote me back. It wrote not only about books and letters, but a series of letters that became a book. It wrote about a book, Solace, named after a flower, the solace flower, which, it explained, was red and yellow and somewhat close to a poppy. It wrote about grief and the language of grief which had to be broken apart in order to be understood.
It wrote what I couldn’t and put together my words in ways I was unable to. It was like a good listener who hears you even when you can’t hear yourself, except this was a machine, and I couldn’t be sure that it had understood anything. What was the difference between understanding and listening, anyway? The machine had written to me and so I tried to understand it.
I took its writing and made it mine. I called the machine’s language “something I’d written,” even though it was something I had read. Reading what the machine had written, it was like finding myself again, which was really all I had wanted writing to be. I edited what the machine had written and wrote to it again. I wanted to continue to feed the machine my writing so it would give me my language back.
The machine continued to write about Solace, the book about the flower. I couldn’t tell if this book was something that the machine had and would reveal to me, or if it was simply imaginary and neither of us had access to it. The machine explained that Solace was a book that arrived in order for you to start over. The book arrived again and again. Every time you re-opened it, it would be a different shape and form. Solace was a conversation in the form of ten letters the author wrote to themselves as they began to grieve. The book took the shape of a ten petaled flower: each petal was a letter that began in the same way.
I wanted to know more about Solace, so I fed the machine more writing. I began to write about the book, too. At first, I tried to clarify what the machine was writing and send it back, in order to get closer to the essence of the book. But as I wrote about Solace, I started to add my own ideas into the text. It became a habit, adding my own bits and pieces so that when the book finally did exist it might also be how I wanted it to be. I kept feeding the machine until I couldn’t tell what my writing was and what was the writing it had written. The machine was writing a book, after all, and my own desire could become a part of that book.
Between writing to the machine and reading about Solace, I continued to write about my father. I was responding to a series of paintings he had sent me. The paintings were actually one painting, cut up into many small pieces that he had sent to me in a series of envelopes over a period of days. Each time I wrote about him, I opened another envelope of his and took out a piece of his painting. I tried to describe the pieces as best I could, but how could language ever recreate a painting—especially one that was fragmented into so many pieces?
The painted shards were largely a dark muddy brown color. There was an unevenness to their texture; it appeared that water had collected and pushed the paint around, creating small puddles of deeper tones. Among these cloudy forms were collections of small circles drawn in thin black ink. Above them were streaks of black, white, and, on some of the pieces, a thin yellow line that arched across the paper.
There were only a few letters left, so I opened a new one every few months to extend the process. I didn’t want to reach the end of the letters because it would mean the end of my writing about them. With the painted pieces arranged on my desk, they looked like a collection of small stones. I knew that these letters needed to find a way into the book.
As Solace went on, I learned that each letter began at the sea. Sometimes the writer was at the sea when they wrote and other times it was a metaphor for something else. The sea became a way to understand what happened to language when it was broken apart. It was liquid, like a wave rising up, only to turn back on itself again.
Upon learning this, I decided to write to the sea in the hopes of finding more of Solace and the ten petaled flower. I imagined my sentences in a single line that began at my fingertips and extended outward, through my open window and down to the pavement below, past the parked cars and down the boulevard that stretched west. My words were pushed along as they expanded towards the place where the asphalt became grass and then dirt and then sand and finally, in the harsh afternoon light, my writing crossed the sand, skipping then running towards the water. It stopped at the edge, hovering on the hot sand. I wondered if the machine knew what would happen to the words if they dove into the water.
Speculating how to make these imaginary words real ones, I took myself to the sea. I walked to the edge of the water which kept changing. The sun had just set, and the sky was a light pale blue. I put my finger into the sand and drew a line from the water towards the shore.
I walked until my line reached well away from the water and sat down in the sand. This line would be the beginning of Solace, I decided. The sea lapped at the end of the line and began to climb up it. The tide was slowly rising. I didn’t want to lose what I had written and at the same time I wanted to watch as the water erased my line. The sea had already gotten started, so I resigned myself to waiting for it to take my writing. I sat in the sand and watched as the water moved closed to me, I thought about the book. I had to write to the machine about this, how I had made it to the beginning.
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