Ben Marcus - The Age of Wire and String

A further American truth is that of John, a house / garment correlationist who developed the first shirt shelters and land scarves that were sufficiently large enough to supply a family with shelter while still outfitting them in rashproof garments that did not crush under. It was John’s theory that a family member should exist within the confines of a garment hovel; naked collisions were notable in this interior, and sleeve rooms were often damp and difficult to traverse, but tailoring of such a shelter was achieved easily by zipping cloth onto a room or snapping hoods onto windows or dog doors. John claimed that when visitors traveled from one house to another, they entered a public garment area (the tunic) weaved of municipal cotton, in which garments were shared with other travelers until a house was reached. At this point, private house law dictated that the visitor permit body scrubbings, the application of skin pooter, shrinkage testing, and synchronized family walking training before the resident family deemed the visitor worthy of sharing their clothing inside the larger house costume.

The ramifications of the human ideas about houses are tremendously complex and can never be exhausted, extending as they do into the concepts of heaven construction theory, which posits heaven as the only usable, cooled shelter from which one can safely witness or bog the endless combustion of god (self-banished house member), who by definition resides outside of the heaven house in a broken house of air, with no means of entering in again. There just remains the torching of this EXILE out on the lawn (sky), the swarming embers that pull down the trees (clouds), and the sparks that blacken the gravel and burn their way down through house after house after house (instruction from sun*).

* Never shall sun be allowed to approximate an entry into the house. The windows shall be blacked up with wind and no chimney shall exist, nor may vents be punched into the walls. If the door is necessary, a bag shall seal the frame. Heat will come, as always, from the inside.

OHIO — The house, be it built or crushed. It is a wooden composition affixed with stones and glass, locks, cavities, the person. There will be food in it, rugs will warm the floor. There will never be a clear idea of Ohio, although its wood will be stripped and shined, its glass polished with light, its holes properly cleared, in order that the member inside might view what is without — the empty field, the road, the person moving forward or standing still, wishing the Ohio was near.

LAND SCARF — A garment that functions also as a landmark, shelter, or vehicle. To qualify, the item must recede beyond sight, be soft always, and not bind or tear the skin down.

AIR HOSTELS — Elevated, buoyed, or lifted locations of safe harbor. They are forbidden particularly to dogs, whose hair-cell fabric is known to effect a breech of anchors, casting the hostel loose toward a destiny that is consummated with a crash, collapse, or burst.

QUITTING THE HOUSE — The top-down process of smoothing out and polishing what was lived. We begin with confirming the shape and development of our lives, then verify the sequence of our feelings and pain. When we are wise we spend ninety percent of our time in the house. Then we examine the connections and transitions between houses. We check to see if our lives require clarifying or strengthening. Can we substitute a better feeling or a more effective pain? Should a plan of action be moved from the end to the middle or to the beginning of the life? Are the right people in the right places? Is this house preventing something, somehow?

FEBRUARY, COPULATED — A contraction corresponding originally to a quarter of the house month — it was not reduced to seven houses until later. The Texan February of ten houses seems to have been derived from the early rude February of thirty houses found in Detroit. The Ohioans, Morgans, and Virginians appear to share a February of eight houses, but Americans in general share a February that is dispersed into as many houses as can be found.

EXPANDED HOUSE — Swelling of the hands, fingers, foot, or eye that generates a hollowness in the affected area, rendering it inhabitable.

SYNCHRONIZED FAMILY WALKING TRAINING — Method of motion unison practiced by members and teams inhabiting larger, divergent cloth shelters. Instruction was first elaborated by Nestor. Later, Crawford refuted Nestor’s system and a national technique was established.

PRISON-CLOTH MORNING — 1. Term applied to any day in which a construction site is enhanced with cloth dens and enclosures of a jailing capacity. 2. Period of any disciplinary term in which the felon must construct a usable garment from the four things: soil, straw, bark, and water. The morning is an extensive period and will often outlast the entire sentence.

GARMENT HOVEL — Underground garment structure used to enforce tunnels and divining tubes. This item is smooth and hums when touched. It softens the light in a cave, a tunnel, a dark pool.

HOUSE COSTUMES — The five shapes for the house that successfully withstand different weather systems. They derive their names from the fingers, their forms from the five internal tracts of the body, and their inhabitants from the larger and middle society.

GEVORTS BOX — Abstract house constructed during the Texas-Ohio sleep collaborations. It relayed an imperative to the occupant through inscriptions on the walls and floors: Destroy it; smash it into powder; sweep it out; make a burial. Knock it back. Mourn the lost home.

LISTENING FRAME — 1. Inhabitable structure in which a member may divine the actions and parlance of previous house occupants. It is a system of reverse oracle, dressed with beads and silvers and sometimes wheeled into small rooms for localized divining. The member is cautioned never to occupy this frame or ones like it while in the outdoors. With no walls or ceilings to specify its search, the frame applies its reverse surmise to the entire history of the society — its trees, its water, its houses — gorging the member with every previosity until his body begins to whistle from minor holes and eventually collapses, folds, or gives up beneath the faint silver tubing. 2. Any system which turns a body from shame to collapse after broadcasting for it the body’s own previous speeches and thoughts. 3. External memory of a member, in the form of other members or persons that exist to remind him of his past sayings and doings. They walk always behind the member. Their speech is low. They are naked and friendly.

LOCKED-HOUSE BOOKS — 1. Pamphlets issued by the society that first prescribed the ideal dimensions and fabrics of all houses. 2. Texts that, when recited aloud, effect certain grave changes upon the house. 3. Any book whose oral recitation destroys members, persons, landscapes, or water. 4. Texts that have been treated or altered. To lock a given text of the society is to render it changeable under each hand or eye that consumes it. These are mouth products. They may be applied to the skin. Their content changes rapidly when delivered from house to house. 5. Archaic hood, existing previously to the mouth harness, engraved with texts that are carved into the face and eyes.