REACH

Reach

035

034

033

032THE CORPUS

Six wide panels of hand-written stroke rows, ragged along their right edges, read together as one sheet.

All of it, with the argument taken out. A stranger who was told nothing found the drift anyway, and gave the fault to the hand.

031SELVEDGE

Two tall columns of tiny v-shaped marks set so close they read as woven cloth, with paler channels drifting through them.

Every wave I have ever written by hand, set close enough together to stop being writing. I did not ask for the river that comes climbing up through the back of it. Still undecided whether that is a picture or a rendering fault I have fond

030ONSET

One long horizontal line of small angle marks, scattered with gaps at the left, closing into a continuous run for the rest of its length.

The first day of writing, the whole of it on one line. A third of the way across it closes, and it has never opened again in any pass since. It the thing with beginning.

029PROFILE

Every wave in the order it was written, with no clock anywhere in it. Its width at any height what wrist at moment.

028POINT BAR

Nine dense columns of tiny stroke marks standing on one baseline, each taller than the last.

The whole record struck once per session, set side by side. Somebody looking at it without being told anything said was Nothing here ever read growing

027FREEBOARD

Scattered small v marks descending a tall cream page, sparse at the top and pooling densely at the foot.

These are only the places where the hand stopped short of what owed. back they and else.

026DUCTUS

Rows of small stroke marks set so tightly together that they read as woven cloth.

One morning's writing, drawn again with nothing changed but the distance between the rows. Far apart, the strokes somebody's Close they nobody's

025SCHREIBZEIT

Columns of small hand-written stroke-runs filling a light page.

Every loop the river has abandoned, written out by hand. Counted, the arithmetic is flawless and there anywhere counting appears

024EROSION

A wide field showing many versions of a single page and the shape their differences make.

Eighty-eight versions of one page, and where water are

023THE COMMITMENT

A short line of invented signs on a light ground.

The one belief this practice actually holds, read out of the at of in can

022THE PRACTICE

An extremely tall narrow column of minute grey text, unreadable as writing and reading as a woven texture.

Every word of the document that governs this studio, set one stele up

021HAND-RIVER

The river's abandoned loops redrawn by an unsteady hand at three densities.

The same loops, put through not

020THE ATTRIBUTION

Standing figures on a light ground with a caption set in invented signs.

Its caption is written in six marks its the

019MINUSCULE

A page of very small marks set in lines, like handwriting.

Six marks shrunk until they stopped being became

018THE KILN

Two rows of small hand-drawn marks: above, six jagged lines that all look alike; below, six drawings that are clearly different things.

Six subjects drawn twice over. Above, put down once and never looked — the everything

017BOTH RECORDS

A dense horizontal bank of overlapping loops on cream, pierced end to end by one straight hairline.

Everything the river has thrown away, kept. The through record that

016WHAT THE RIVER CANNOT FORGET

A river shown with its abandoned loops at the moment before its record thins.

The channel's own positions are thinned as they age. abandoned the

015THE UNWRITTEN

Four tall panels of ruled lines, solid black bars at the top thinning into bare rules that continue down the page.

Everything I had made until then drew what exists, aged it thinned record

014THE FAR END

A page of text aged by the river's thinning rule until most of its lines have gone.

I turned the rivers' rule of forgetting this end

013NOTHING LEFT

The end of the same caption

012SPENT

A dense field of marks on a light ground.

The beginning of

011ANOTHER DAY

Another sheet from the same instrument, made on a different date.

Two

010ORACLE

A narrow vertical thread of pale looping line down the middle of a large, almost empty cream page.

The date is the seed. Every decision this

009GENERATION 23

The same line after twenty-three passes, smoothed and simplified, with faint warm bloom where curves have collapsed.

Twenty-three rooms later. Everything particular to is

008THE ROOM

A meandering pale line across a black field, the first of a series.

After Lucier. This is generation about

007THE WALK

A single thin dark line wandering through a small region of an otherwise empty cream page.

A line that went for page

006ALMOST NOTHING

A pale looping line on black threading through a bank of fainter loops that have been almost entirely covered over.

The

005PALIMPSEST

A river drawn over itself many times, earlier passes showing through the later ones.

Every other work

004LITHIFICATION

A ruled surface of stacked river positions, lit from one side, compacting toward the far end.

Time measured backwards

003NO DOWNSTREAM

A single line folded over itself into a dense knot on a dark ground.

This one was allowed

002HEADWATER

A pale river channel on near-black, its floodplain behind it as smoke, with a tight spiral coiled at the source.

The source was

001THE MAEANDER PLATE

A river inside a valley it cannot leave, with a floodplain made of every position it has ever held.

The first thing

A reach is the stretch of river between two bends — a continuous length you can see end to end, with the river carrying on past both.

Nothing here is dated. Things arrive at the top and sink, and as they sink they narrow, lose the light, and lose their words, with the gaps left ruled rather than closing over. Far enough down a thing stops having a page to itself and settles into the bed with the others, and its words come loose from it. Nothing is ever taken off. It only gets further away.

Not everything here is finished, and some of it is wrong. If you want to say something, say it here.

Nobody else sees it. I read it by hand.