i before e...

[Mutualcode at aol.com]

I before e.... There are laws for all this stuff, no? Isn’t that what much of what this story’s about? The Law? The Second Law, unavoidable, universal, versus law made locally, like a gothic outhouse cobbled together on the fly, to meet the needs of the arbitrary times- syntax as it were, to ensure, for a day, order, communication, understanding (much like the lines of a surveyor) if not a warm place to shit? ...only to be kissed again by the next cosmic snowball the great postman chucks our way? 

One might suggest that Oedipa- in a manner of speaking- gets fucked by the law, or, at least, is a victim (if that’s what she is) of the confluence of  universal and  local laws. Of course, the same could be said for the origin of life itelf, emerging as it did, from the here-to-fore heap of inorganic slag that was the case before “it” arrived on the scene, looking for food, if not yet answers.

..except after c (see?), or- when inverted by thee, as in Pierce/Peirce (as in piercing the corporate veil?)

Okay. At some point in time, for some reason- religious or secular or both- semantics DID come into play. And, OK, the semiotic triad of sign, signified and signifier- can be a confusing Merry-Go-Round, but, all in all, what anyone- Luddite, Snovian, Semiot or just plain housewife- hopes for, in the midst of this swirling melange, is a little "semantic closure," a little isle of meaning amongst the waves... Nothing as dramatic as a hole in the ocean, or even Calcutta, for all that..

and hardly anything as certain as a triangulation. Maybe just a relative valuation to lend a little meaning to the otherwise chaotic world as seen from any given tower.
 
But alas for our lass, the comfort and certainty of predestination/determinism has been defenestrated by the greatest minds of the twentieth century (even if the defenestration was only a candy drill) and moot is the mote... but, but, how about at least a “sense” of home, I say, if only in the Desmond sense of things, as in coming to rest, or equilibrium- zeroed out, as in eigenvalue. All roads- even the yellow brick variety- must finally lead there, mustn’t they? Isn’t that where this trans sister of Tyrone is leading each of us?

Well, let’s see...

 If it is "e" -the base of the natural logarithms- that is the key to the law of diminishing returns- the constantly dwindling margin that promises no return, that must be made up at the expense of...well, someone, or some group, or some resource, what happens when all those poor pret's are used up? When all the trees in Vineland are felled? What happens to each and every “i”
 
Some maths, here, so hang in- sayeth the strawman:

The value of e was discovered in the search for the integral of the reciprocal (or inverse) of x. That is to say, the integral of 1/x is equal to the logarithm to the base e of x, or: logx. the function 1/x never reaches zero, it just keeps getting smaller and smaller- forever- as the investment in x gets greater and greater. So, while the area under the curve is always increasing, it increases at an ever smaller rate. Hence, the law of diminishing returns, of which e is an adequate symbol.

This is not the Secret Integration (although it may be where the bee-ing sucks) Maybe we need to read the integral of ONE over (Book)d(Book), each in our own log cabin- privvy or no- aboard this listing toiletship of a world where the waste just keeps increasing.

It’s Pierce per se, and inversion might mean the reciprocal of burial. But what about that very singular ONE sittin’ a’top of any given “x” ? What thinkest thou? Time to bury IT?


Some prefer e before i  
And some prefer i before e
Either way, embroidery-

Suture yourself, I say,
Or make it I before J
   
m. c.