Field Study's Man in E11 and Julian Beere attend counselling

towards a field report - in progress

There has been a breakdown in communication here in Lost and Found in E11, between 'Field Study's Man in E11' (FSM) and 'Julian Beere' (JB). JB claims the poor communication (and consequent lack of emanation) is on account of the field student's unsustainable mental deficit. JB has refused to service the deficit by not putting his forefingers to the keyboard. To do so , he says, will only make matters worse. This post emanates out of a spurious intervention on the part of a third character by the name of 'Lost and Found in E11' (L&F). L&F has applied various skills in mediation to facilitate a sort of 'republicratic' compromise and thus reestablish communication between the imaginary raised bed fellows.

JB - Field Study's Man in E11 produced a terrible map of the allotment site. There is no scale. There are no cardinal directions. Where is the key? The hand drawn rendering of the main features of the site is very clumsy and expresses little, if any, of the subtleties of the environment. The crudely drawn circles for trees and large shrubs are abominable. It beggars belief that a field student could produce such a barren and paltry map after 10 years of immersion in the allotment site. Don't you understand the responsibility you have to your followers and visitors? That map would have them all lost! FSM is a complete i.......

....L&F - I'll just interrupt you there, JB, and summarize what I understand as your initial concerns about FSM's map. They are:
1. technical/cartographic inadequacies e.g. the absence of scale.
2. graphical and aesthetic inadequacies e.g. in how different features have been drawn.
3. that your expectations for a map expressing 10 years of involvement have been disappointed.
4. that the map appears to you to express little regard to those who might want to visit and find their way around the site. 

Would you both accept these 4 points? (grudging nods) 
FSM, which of the points would you like to respond to first?

FSM - point 4. Most of the followers of and visitors to the blog site, Lost and Found in E11 (and E17), are virtual statisticians and sex workers (or pornographers) who appear keen, by dint of the frequency of their visits to the site entrance, to have me connect with their virtual services. I have to confess I am quite keen that most of these dubious visitors do get lost and the inadequacies of the map might be understood as a precaution against their trespass. The very partial (rather than inadequate) nature of the maps is intended to be a way of protecting the site from their attentions. Should a hoard of stat' crunching missionary position-ers get in with that map, they might well find themselves at a loss. It is true I have only a 'little regard' for many of the visitors because more than that is risky. The allotment site is supposed to be where you can lose some of yourself, Julian Beere; it is, potentially, the 'terra incognita' where and when you might be fully present.

L&F - JB, FSM accepts your observation that he has a little regard for some of the visitors (or viewers) to the blog. It seems to me that he has adopted the role of an allotment guide and that the map in question is a tool for him rather than for unwelcome intruding others.The partialness of the map is deliberate and in your interest - and the interests of other allotment users. How does this role and assertion alter, if at all, your misgivings about the technicalities of the map? (Point 1.) 

JB -  There could be some duplicity in what FSM says. Is he actually capable of imagining better maps which I can make? If the allotment is problematic as a subject, there are less vulnerable or private places and activities in which to situate some imagination. I have, in the role of thinking typing fingers, relaying or recounting his field pursuits, had to censor some of his more errant and fanciful notions concerning the nature of reproduction - sexual and otherwise - on the virtual allotment. The scoundrel has deviously attempted to usurp my role as rationalist; he is supposed to be the fantasist entertaining and informing my fingers (and other parts). He has lost the plot!

L&F - JB, please refer to FSM as, FSM and use only 'he', 'him', 'you', 'his'. FSM, JB has made an important assertion (for those of us here), that your role is to imagine and his role is to realize what you are imagining - or have imagined. How do you feel about this distinction?

FSM - Feeling and imagination? I think we may be missing an other; that there is an absent constituent in this pretense. I am perfectly okay with JB referring to me as a scoundrel because, after all, I am the imagination providing 'his fingers' ('His Fingers') with that word. He can call me what he likes so long as I am around. There is a risk someone else will hear their self being called a scoundrel (or whatever). The problem, as I imagine it, is that 'His Fingers' finds his imagination lacking and a hindrance. What I am imagining or capable of imagining does not match with what he wants to make. There is a fact (or is it a fiction?) that my presence as a performing character, as one to be represented, interferes with his being lost and fully present.

L&F - Rather than calling someone, 'a scoundrel', I think it is better to say, you think they are behaving like a scoundrel. JB, are you okay being referred to as 'His Fingers'?

JB - No, I don't want to be called, 'His Fingers'. If he is aware of his interference in my being lost, why doesn't he get lost and allow me to be lost?

L&F - FSM? Why haven't you got lost and left JB to be lost and so fully present?

FSM - I was lost! JB found me as a surveyor of the site and extracted me, entirely out of context, from the Long Lost Land of Zzzzzz. To present that map as the be all and end all of my mapping imagination is unjust. There is plenty of scope for his imagination to play with that map and how it has been realized by His Fingerliness - dexterity in the application of a pencil for the purposes of mark making. I provided a clue, in the emanation or elucidation of F2/G2, as to the found of A-Y. The rest is, of course, left to your imaginations. The marks and shapes are a work in progress and, if left to playful imagination, in a perpetual psychic state of imaginative flux. I didn't make the map; he did.

JB - You could allow yourself free rein and imagine some more imaginative ways for us to create the maps.

L&F - Us? Very interesting. JB and FSM, it appears we have to acknowledge the presence and roles of other elements in the field of 'Lost and Found in E11' although we are running out of time and wont be able to introduce them today. We have however discovered some common ground between you and FSM today - most obviously in the limited regard for some viewers of, and visitors to, the virtual allotment. We have not addressed the ramifications of nearly a whole decade of involvement in that particular field, and in particular what expectations have evolved and so we will discuss this next time.

By the way, is it true there is a very lost tribe of, er, shall we say, 'nymphs' waiting to be found in G14?

FSM & JB - oh no no no!





  



  

Comments

  1. The baths in the photograph provide a scale for the map.

    ReplyDelete
  2. http://www.upworthy.com/we-have-been-mislead-by-an-erroneous-map-of-the-world-for-500-years

    ReplyDelete

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