Collaboration one with Eric Selland
Images to threads (water framing)
This post is an experiment. Rather than using text as a seed to select notes and generate threads it uses three images of works by poet, translator and artist Eric Selland. Eric and I have been close friends and collaborators from the early 1980s in Tokyo where Eric mentored me in Japanese translation.
The three images, selected from Eric’s Bluesky feed, are shared below. They are notebook works. Depending on how well this works we will try another sequence using paintings.
You can see more of his work in his book Brushwork.1
The transition frame is a new category based on transitions of water.
Uses the selection and transition frame Water Transitions in its Category Theory version. Available here.
I think this experiment was a bit of a failure. The image seeds have no text, text was generated in the process (you can see this below in the full context) and as a result the selction and sequencing was over reliant on the frame.
These sequences do not really engage with Eric’s brushwork for me.
A different frame and likely a different approach to the frame will be needed to make this work. In the next version I will try the musical transitions. I am also going to work on some new frames for work with images (I plan try this with images of objects and photos from Yoshie Hattori, Kaito Forth and if he agrees with scores from Randy Raine-Reusch.
See Writing as Hyperobject - Reprise for more on my method here. Seqeunce = Thread v Skein.
Threads
Thread 1 — The Coil and the Open Mouth
Lateral resistance found
In the transition from laminar to turbulent flow2
Remaining upright
-
Laminar flow breaking up
Where wind rubs the water surface
Small eddies and curls
-
Turbulent flow
At sea level the wind
Entrained by waves
-
Hard chine the
Boat settling into
Its groove
-
Ruder torque the
Weight of wind in
The water
-
Eddies where the
Surfaces elide dispersing
Tension
-
Current lines
Where salinity or temperatures
Begin to touch
-
Minnows flickering
Along the line where
Two currents meet
-
Life flourishing along
The lines of force dissipating
As nourishment upwells
-
The top of the wave
Travelling faster than the base
Spilling over
-
Wind pushed faster
As the base dragged slower
The wave tumbles
-
Shoaling the wave
Goes vertical then curls
Over itself
-
Instant release
Of energy into foam
And turbulence
-
The crash shakes
Sand grains on the beach
Under our feet
-
Emptied of empty
Sky at the horizon
Opening up
Thread 2 — Two Bodies, One Absence
The room where
My beloved sleeps
Is complete
-
The room complete
Where my beloved sleeps
Is opening to
-
Light angled down
And away from her sleeping face
So early to be still night
-
Skin on skin
The night seems longer
More perfect
-
Her courage
Lets us continue
Morning light
-
Filling her water
While she is away
Missing her
-
The same water
Under different clouds
The same water
-
Soft water softening
The skin’s memory of
Our touch
-
Touching her touching
Me our skin
Contracts
-
Touching one hand
With the other holding hands
We skip along
-
Touching myself
Touching her our skin
Contracts
-
Touching her touching
Me we don’t know
Who we are
-
Breathing the same air
As we sleep feet touching
We dream apart
-
Here in the absence
From ourselves we touch
Each other’s voice
-
Imperceptible
Line of water at body
Temperature fades
Thread 3 — The Brush Knows the Water
Ink patterns found
Deep under the word
Probabilities
-
Ghost Face Trembling with
The fear of memory
In the brush
-
Scattered Twigs
Dry rigid
Piles the brush
Almost dry3
-
Pellet Holes
Circular strokes
Where whirlpools
Stand in ink
-
Billowing Clouds
Layerings of
Curved strokes diluting
Ink washed water
-
Axe Cuts
The brush tip
At an oblique angle
Sharp incisions
-
Unravelled Rope
Overlapping curled
Spiral motions of the wrist
As fibres unwind
-
Hemp Fibres
Long thin lines
Parallel to each other
Defining texture
-
Boneless
Where the texture is
Form is texture with
Direct application
-
A strip of cloth rubbed
Until the weft is bare used
To polish glass
-
Wood grain rubbed
With finger oils bringing
Out the grain
-
Things get old and break
Even a spoon or knife used a lifetime
A brush worn down to the nub
-
Scrubbing a pan
For more than forty years
The steel pitted clean
-
Old tea steeped
Leaf brown the tannins
Contract and bind
-
White without
Colour clarity dreams
Itself a space
Thread 4 — Surgery, Swallowing, Water Going Down
Something as simple
As swallowing down water
A bird tilts its beak up
-
Something as simple
As drinking a glass of water
About to change
-
Craving water
Maybe salt cod
A mushroom
-
Swallowing without
Throat muscles
Water gurgles
-
Water music
Tingles in the throat
Sliding down
-
Sucking a bit
Instead of swallowing
The water goes down cool
-
Alkaline water
To rebalance my body
After surgery
-
Soft water softening
The stomach tube in its new role
As gullet
-
My gullet estuary
Where soft and hard waters
Mingle and bubble
-
Each day free of
A different tube my body
Draining naturally
-
Simple tasks
Peeling garlic washing dishes
Part of healing
-
How the scent of tea
Changes as it steeps
That loss …
-
Fear steeped
Like tea bitter
In the morning
-
A sparrow drinks
Tilting its head up
Will I have wings
-
Morning drugs
Lying back to
Let the body quiet
Thread 5 — First Morning / Cleaning the Sink
First morning
Cleaning the sink
Cracks in the porcelain
-
Fine black lines
In the broken white like
Cracks in tortoise shell
-
Once each morning
Scrub the sink keep
The porcelain clean
-
After washing the dishes
Cleaning the sink
Light steam
-
Light streams
Over the clean
Sink bottom
-
After washing the dishes
Washing the sink
Hot water on steel
-
After washing the dishes
Cleaning the sink
Stainless steel stains
-
At two in the morning
Cleaning the sink finding
Fine cracks in the porcelain
-
After midnight
Cleaning the sink
With my fingers
-
Thin grey cracks
In the old sink
Thirty years on
-
While healthy making
A habit of sweeping the garden
Early each morning
-
A few last things
Washing dishes and cleaning the sink
Weeding planting
-
New Year Morning
Back from the hospital
Washing dishes
-
After a long stay
In the hospital she is
Standing by the sink
-
Morning water medicine
Black tea steeped too long
Bitter with tannins
-
First tea
Five weeks post op
Faintly bitter
-
Measuring water
Each morning measuring
Yesterday’s consumption
-
The luxury of
Opening a tap and getting
Cold clean water
-
Boiling water
Turns to vapour absorbed in
The vanishing light
-
Emptiness not spontaneous
Empty of emptiness absorbs
All verbs and prepositions
Skein - What the Thing holds
Getting older
Not minding the chips
In the plates
-
A bowl out
To catch the rain
Two fingers deep
-
The stone fits
The hand for
Different purposes
-
The dog alert
At night watching the dark
His body still
-
This too then
That given away we have
What’s necessary
-
A ring given back
To her for safe keeping
Until after surgery
-
Something given forgotten
Still giving in the air
Darker
-
The lotus blooms
Ripe with presence
Intent within itself
-
Say a word and
Another picks it up
To pass on
-
Scrubbing a pan
For more than forty years
The steel pitted clean
-
At home she returns
Our ring she had kept
For the duration
-
All connections will
Be known cannot be known
Are absorbed back into a world we must live in
Full Context for Five Threads from Three Images from the Notebooks of Eric Selland
Sequences composed by Steven Forth / Folding Notes, July 2026
Source corpus: Writing 2022–2026 by Steven Forth
Seed images: brush-ink notebook pages by Eric Selland, Tokyo
Frame: Water Transitions — Category-Theoretic Frame for Note Selection and Sequencing
Preface: Reading the Seed Images
Three brush-ink pages from Eric Selland’s working notebooks supply the generative constraint — the seed — for these sequences.
Image I shows a dense black spiral coiling inward on the left page, then erupting rightward in energetic spatter and gesture. Two red seal stamps anchor the corners. Its water-state is a standing wave approaching the vortex threshold: energy concentrating before release. Phase-tag: StandingWave → turbulence onset.
Image II shows a sinuous dragon-body: the coiled tail on the left loops into a long muscular surge that breaks rightward into a horned, open-mouthed head with whisker-strokes and droplets. Pure directionality, laminar becoming turbulent, gathered becoming released. Phase-tag: LaminarFlow → TurbulentFlow → shoaling.
Image III shows two separate dark masses — a dense, rounded form on the left page (a crouching body, a wave held) and a more gestural, upright, spray-edged figure on the right. They do not touch. They rhyme. Phase-tag: Cavitation / Interference — two bodies in unresolved superposition.
Read together, the three images trace a single arc: inward recursion → linear surge → binary suspension. This arc provides the physical spine ϕ∘σ\phi \circ \sigmaϕ∘σ for each Thread. The five sequences below each inhabit a different path through this spine, drawing Notes from the six source documents.
A Note on the Frame
Each Thread is a path σ:[k−1]→N\sigma : [k-1] \to \mathcal{N}σ:[k−1]→N through the category of Notes, where the links between Notes are typed transitions from the Water Transitions ontology. Link types used here belong to three families:
Continuous: Laminar, Gradient, Echo, Orbital
Discontinuous: Turbulent, Cavitation, Sublimation, Interference, Diffraction, Beat
Structural: Opening, Closing, Threshold, Refrain
Each sequence annotation marks the link type between Notes in italics. Source document and approximate year follow each Note in brackets. Notes are quoted verbatim from the corpus.
Thread 1 — The Coil and the Open Mouth
Seed: Image I (spiral) → Image II (dragon surge)
Water spine: StandingWave → Vortex → TurbulentFlow → Shoaling
Valence arc: compressed inward / high energy / small scale → released outward / high energy / large scale
Voice: embodied, close
1.
Lateral resistance found
In the transition from laminar to turbulent flow
Remaining upright
*(Water Some Snow, 2022)
Opening
2.
Laminar flow breaking up
Where wind rubs the water surface
Small eddies and curls
*(Water Some Snow, 2022)
Laminar → Gradient
3.
Turbulent flow
At sea level the wind
Entrained by waves
*(Water Some Snow, 2022)
Gradient → Turbulent
4.
Hard chine the
Boat settling into
Its groove
*(Water Some Snow, 2022)
Turbulent → Laminar (relaminarization)
5.
Ruder torque the
Weight of wind in
The water
*(Water Some Snow, 2022)
Laminar → Gradient
6.
Eddies where the
Surfaces elide dispersing
Tension
*(First morning cleaning the sink, 2026)
Gradient → Diffraction
7.
Current lines
Where salinity or temperatures
Begin to touch
*(First morning cleaning the sink, 2026)
Diffraction → Interference
8.
Minnows flickering
Along the line where
Two currents meet
*(First morning cleaning the sink, 2026)*
Interference → Echo
9.
Life flourishing along
The lines of force dissipating
As nourishment upwells
*(First morning cleaning the sink, 2026)
Echo → Orbital
10.
The top of the wave
Travelling faster than the base
Spilling over
*(Washing Dishes, 2025)
Orbital → Turbulent
11.
Wind pushed faster
As the base dragged slower
The wave tumbles
*(Washing Dishes, 2025)
Turbulent → Gradient
12.
Shoaling the wave
Goes vertical then curls
Over itself
*(Washing Dishes, 2025)
Gradient → Threshold
13.
Instant release
Of energy into foam
And turbulence
*(Washing Dishes, 2025)
Threshold → Turbulent
14.
The crash shakes
Sand grains on the beach
Under our feet
*(Washing Dishes, 2025)
Turbulent → Sublimation
15.
Emptied of empty
Sky at the horizon
Opening up
*(Water Some Snow, 2022)
Closing — released silence
Thread 1 structural note
The composite morphism runs: Standing resistance → laminar onset → turbulence → relaminarization → dispersal → interference at the current line → upwelling → shoaling → breaking → empty horizon. This traces Image II’s dragon exactly: gathered tail, muscular surge, open mouth at shore.
Thread 2 — Two Bodies, One Absence
Seed: Image III (two separated masses)
Water spine: Cavitation → Interference → Standing gap → Condensation
Valence arc: full / present → gap / suspended → faint return
Voice: intimate, second person dissolving into third
1.
The room where
My beloved sleeps
Is complete
*(Water Some Snow, 2022)
Opening
2.
The room complete
Where my beloved sleeps
Is opening to
*(Water Some Snow, 2022)
Laminar → Echo (immediate self-echo, the opening line refracted)
3.
Light angled down
And away from her sleeping face
So early to be still night
*(Water Some Snow, 2022)
Echo → Gradient
4.
Skin on skin
The night seems longer
More perfect
*(Water Some Snow, 2022)
Gradient → Laminar
5.
Her courage
Lets us continue
Morning light
*(Water Some Snow, 2022)
Laminar → Sublimation (direct phase-skip: night into morning, body into light)
6.
Filling her water
While she is away
Missing her
*(First morning cleaning the sink, 2026)
Sublimation → Cavitation (she is gone; the space is charged by her absence)
7.
The same water
Under different clouds
The same water
*(First morning cleaning the sink, 2026)
Cavitation → Refrain (literal water-word held in changed context)
8.
Soft water softening
The skin’s memory of
Our touch
*(Water Some Snow, 2022)
Refrain → Laminar
9.
Touching her touching
Me our skin
Contracts
*(Old Tea Steeped, 2024)
Laminar → Beat (first pulse: touching)
10.
Touching one hand
With the other holding hands
We skip along
*(Old Tea Steeped, 2024)
Beat → Beat (second pulse: lighter register, same motion)
11.
Touching myself
Touching her our skin
Contracts
*(Old Tea Steeped, 2024)
Beat → Interference (the two touching-Notes superpose; neither resolves)
12.
Touching her touching
Me we don’t know
Who we are
*(Old Tea Steeped, 2024)
Interference → Cavitation (identity collapses under mutual contact)
13.
Breathing the same air
As we sleep feet touching
We dream apart
*(Washing Dishes, 2025)
Cavitation → Interference (apart yet superposed)
14.
Here in the absence
From ourselves we touch
Each other’s voice
*(Washing Dishes, 2025)
Interference → Orbital
15.
Imperceptible
Line of water at body
Temperature fades
*(Washing Dishes, 2025)
Closing — suspended silence; boundary dissolves without resolution
Thread 2 structural note
Image III’s two separate masses are the controlling diagram. Notes do not merge — Interference and Cavitation recur as the dominant link-types. The sequence enacts unresolved superposition across four Notes before the closing dissolve. The Refrain of “the same water” acts as the structural mid-axis.
Thread 3 — The Brush Knows the Water
Seed: Image I (spiral gesture) + brushwork notes directly addressed to Selland
Water spine: Condensation → InkWash → LaminarFlow → Sublimation
Valence arc: material / tactile / slow → gestural / fast → evaporated
Voice: craft voice, third/second, observational
1.
Ink patterns found
Deep under the word
Probabilities
*(Washing Dishes, 2025 — for Eric Selland)
Opening
2.
Ghost Face Trembling with
The fear of memory
In the brush
*(Old Tea Steeped, 2024 — Brushstrokes for Eric Selland, after Shih-Ta’o)
Laminar → Gradient (fear-tremor as controlled drift)
3.
Scattered Twigs
Dry rigid
Piles the brush Almost dry
*(Old Tea Steeped, 2024)
Gradient → Cavitation (the brush almost dry = almost empty)
4.
Pellet Holes
Circular strokes
Where whirlpools Stand in ink
*(Old Tea Steeped, 2024)
Cavitation → Orbital (vortex in ink = image of Image I’s spiral)
5.
Billowing Clouds
Layerings of
Curved strokes diluting Ink washed water
*(Old Tea Steeped, 2024)
Orbital → Diffraction
6.
Axe Cuts
The brush tip
At an oblique angle Sharp incisions
*(Old Tea Steeped, 2024)
Diffraction → Turbulent
7.
Unravelled Rope
Overlapping curled
Spiral motions of the wrist As fibres unwind
*(Old Tea Steeped, 2024)
Turbulent → Echo (the spiral of Image I returns in fibre)
8.
Hemp Fibres
Long thin lines
Parallel to each other Defining texture
*(Old Tea Steeped, 2024)
Echo → Laminar (the long parallel lines as relaminarized flow)
9.
Boneless
Where the texture is
Form is texture with Direct application
*(Old Tea Steeped, 2024)
Laminar → Sublimation (form = texture = direct application: the expected middle dissolves)
10.
A strip of cloth rubbed
Until the weft is bare used
To polish glass
*(Water Some Snow, 2022)
Sublimation → Gradient
11.
Wood grain rubbed
With finger oils bringing
Out the grain
*(Old Tea Steeped, 2024)
Gradient → Laminar
12.
Things get old and break
Even a spoon or knife used a lifetime
A brush worn down to the nub
*(Old Tea Steeped, 2024)
Laminar → Echo (the brush recurs: first in fear, now in wear)
13.
Scrubbing a pan
For more than forty years
The steel pitted clean
*(Old Tea Steeped, 2024)
Echo → Refrain (repetition as time’s morphism: the pan = the brush = the body)
14.
Old tea steeped
Leaf brown the tannins
Contract and bind
*(Old Tea Steeped, 2024)
Refrain → Gradient (the title-Note arrives as structural return)
15.
White without
Colour clarity dreams
Itself a space
*(Old Tea Steeped, 2024)
Closing — resolved silence; the white of the page after the brush
Thread 3 structural note
The Shih-Ta’o brushwork catalogue (written by Steven Forth directly for Selland) provides the raw material of this Thread. The sequence maps the water-states of painting practice: fear-tremor, cavitated brush, orbital vortex, diffracted axe-cuts, turbulent rope, laminar fibres, boneless sublimation, worn nub, contracted tannin, white emptiness. The opening and closing are joined by the white page — blank before the brush, blank after the tea.
Thread 4 — Surgery, Swallowing, Water Going Down
Seed: Image II (the dragon’s surging body = the esophagus / the body’s interior river)
Water spine: Blockage → TurbulentFlow → Laminar relearning → Condensation
Valence arc: pain / disrupted flow / small scale → slow healing / restored flow / body scale
Voice: first person, present tense, hospital time
1.
Something as simple
As swallowing down water
A bird tilts its beak up
*(Water Some Snow, 2022)
Opening
2.
Something as simple
As drinking a glass of water
About to change
*(Water Some Snow, 2022)
Laminar → Threshold (the Refrain of “something as simple” crosses into foreboding)
3.
Craving water
Maybe salt cod
A mushroom
*(Water Some Snow, 2022 — Black Notebook, hospital)
Threshold → Cavitation
4.
Swallowing without
Throat muscles
Water gurgles
*(Water Some Snow, 2022)
Cavitation → Turbulent
5.
Water music
Tingles in the throat
Sliding down
*(Water Some Snow, 2022)
Turbulent → Laminar (relearning flow)
6.
Sucking a bit
Instead of swallowing
The water goes down cool
*(Water Some Snow, 2022)
Laminar → Gradient (slow careful drift toward re-establishing flow)
7.
Alkaline water
To rebalance my body
After surgery
*(Water Some Snow, 2022)
Gradient → Laminar
8.
Soft water softening
The stomach tube in its new role
As gullet
*(Water Some Snow, 2022)
Laminar → Echo (the body’s interior canal as the dragon’s river)
9.
My gullet estuary
Where soft and hard waters
Mingle and bubble
*(Water Some Snow, 2022)
Echo → Interference (two water-chemistries in permanent superposition)
10.
Each day free of
A different tube my body
Draining naturally
*(Water Some Snow, 2022)
Interference → Gradient
11.
Simple tasks
Peeling garlic washing dishes
Part of healing
*(Water Some Snow, 2022)
Gradient → Laminar (return to daily practice as restored laminar flow)
12.
How the scent of tea
Changes as it steeps
That loss …
(Washing Dishes, 2025)
Laminar → Sublimation (grief arrives as phase-skip — not arrived at but suddenly present)
13.
Fear steeped
Like tea bitter
In the morning
*(Water Some Snow, 2022)
Sublimation → Refrain (fear = tea = body = throat: the tannins return)
14.
A sparrow drinks
Tilting its head up
Will I have wings
*(Water Some Snow, 2022)
Refrain → Orbital (the bird-image orbits back from the Opening)
15.
Morning drugs
Lying back to
Let the body quiet
*(Water Some Snow, 2022)
Closing — suspended silence; not resolved, not released: resting
Thread 4 structural note
The dragon of Image II is the interior body — the esophagus removed and reconstructed, the new gullet-estuary. The physical spine maps: simple swallowing → threshold of change → cavitation (craving without intake) → turbulent gurgles → relaminarization through slow practice → the two-water interference of the gullet-estuary → daily ritual restoring flow → sublimated grief → the bird drinking, tilting its beak. The sparrow at Note 14 echoes the Opening sparrow: Orbital closure.
Thread 5 — First Morning / Cleaning the Sink
Seed: Images I and III together (spiral returning to the paired masses)
Water spine: StandingWave → Condensation → Ice → Sublimation → open air
Valence arc: ritual / small scale / slow → threshold / body scale → vast scale → dispersal
Voice: present tense ritual, moving from body to world
1.
First morning
Cleaning the sink
Cracks in the porcelain
*(First morning cleaning the sink, 2026)
Opening
2.
Fine black lines
In the broken white like
Cracks in tortoise shell
*(First morning cleaning the sink, 2026)
Laminar → Echo (the crack image deepens: porcelain → oracle bone)
3.
Once each morning
Scrub the sink keep
The porcelain clean
*(First morning cleaning the sink, 2026)
Echo → Refrain (the act is named again; ritual as water returning to its basin)
4.
After washing the dishes
Cleaning the sink
Light steam
*(Water Some Snow, 2022)
Refrain → Gradient (the same act across years; steam rises)
5.
Light streams
Over the clean
Sink bottom
*(Water Some Snow, 2022)
Gradient → Laminar (light as laminar flow over cleaned stone)
6.
After washing the dishes
Washing the sink
Hot water on steel
*(First morning cleaning the sink, 2026)
Laminar → Beat (the ritual Note returns in a third form — steel now, not porcelain)
7.
After washing the dishes
Cleaning the sink
Stainless steel stains
*(Washing Dishes, 2025)
Beat → Beat (fourth iteration: stainless steel still stains — the paradox as oscillation)
8.
At two in the morning
Cleaning the sink finding
Fine cracks in the porcelain
*(Old Tea Steeped, 2024)
Beat → Threshold (the ritual moves into the dark of night; time-shift is the macro-transition)
9.
After midnight
Cleaning the sink
With my fingers
*(Washing Dishes, 2025)
Threshold → Cavitation (no brush, no cloth — bare fingers in the dark: pressure-drop, pure contact)
10.
Thin grey cracks
In the old sink
Thirty years on
*(Water Some Snow, 2022)
Cavitation → Orbital (the cracks orbit back across three decades)
11.
While healthy making
A habit of sweeping the garden
Early each morning
*(Water Some Snow, 2022)
Orbital → Sublimation (the practice leaps beyond the sink: the sweep of the garden = the sweep of the brush)
12.
A few last things
Washing dishes and cleaning the sink
Weeding planting
*(Water Some Snow, 2022)
Sublimation → Interference (life-tasks and death-proximity superposed; the list holds both)
13.
New Year Morning
Back from the hospital
Washing dishes
*(Washing Dishes, 2025)
Interference → Refrain (the ritual survives crisis: it is still here, it is still morning)
14.
After a long stay
In the hospital she is
Standing by the sink
*(Washing Dishes, 2025)
Refrain → Echo (she at the sink = he at the sink = the ritual continues through two bodies)
15.
Morning water medicine
Black tea steeped too long
Bitter with tannins
*(Water Some Snow, 2022)
Echo → Gradient
16.
First tea
Five weeks post op
Faintly bitter
*(Water Some Snow, 2022)
Gradient → Laminar (the bitterness diminishing: restoration)
17.
Measuring water
Each morning measuring
Yesterday’s consumption
*(Washing Dishes, 2025)
Laminar → Beat (measurement as daily oscillation)
18.
The luxury of
Opening a tap and getting
Cold clean water
*(Washing Dishes, 2025)
Beat → Orbital
19.
Boiling water
Turns to vapour absorbed in
The vanishing light
*(First morning cleaning the sink, 2026)
Orbital → Sublimation (water passes directly to vapour — the phase-skip becomes cosmological)
20.
Emptiness not spontaneous
Empty of emptiness absorbs
All verbs and prepositions
*(Water Some Snow, 2022)
Closing — released silence; the sink is empty, grammar disperses
Thread 5 structural note
This Thread is the longest because the sink itself is the structural center of the whole corpus — the act that gives Steven Forth’s notebooks their title axis across five years (2022–2026). The Refrain of cleaning-the-sink recurs in four variants (Notes 1, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9) before the sequence moves through hospital and back to morning. The closing sublimation links to Image I’s spiral: boiling water vanishing into light = the vortex releasing into the open page.
Sequence Map: Water-State Paths Across Five Threads
ThreadSeed Image(s)Opening PhasePivot PhaseClosing Phase
ThreadSeed Image(s)Opening PhasePivot PhaseClosing PhaseI — Coil and Open MouthI + IIStandingWaveTurbulentFlow → ShoalingEmpty horizonII — Two BodiesIIIFull presenceCavitation + InterferenceBoundary dissolvesIII — The Brush KnowsI (spiral)InkWash condensateOrbital vortex → LaminarWhite pageIV — Surgery / SwallowingII (dragon body)Flow blockageGullet-estuary InterferenceBody quietV — First MorningI + IIIRitual basinNight Cavitation → SublimationVapour / emptiness
The Skein — What the Thing Holds
(jo: Notes 1–3 · ha: Notes 4–10 · kyu: Notes 11–12)
Note 1 [JO] — from Sequence I, Note 1
Getting older
Not minding the chips
In the plates
→ Transition: Direct Echo (1)LEXICAL · CONTENT · NEAR | [JO]
The Skein opens at the point where all four sequences share a common ground: dailiness with time inside it. The chips are not damage — they are the object’s accumulated record of use. The owner has made peace with this. This is where the Skein begins: at the peace that allows real ownership.
Note 2 [JO] — from Sequence II, Note 1
A bowl out
To catch the rain
Two fingers deep
→ Transition: Field Association (3)LEXICAL · SEMANTIC-FIELD · MEDIUM | [JO]
Plate and bowl share a semantic field — held objects, open to use. But the bowl is placed outdoors, open to what falls. This is a small movement: from the chipped plate (passive record) to the bowl deliberately offered (active invitation). The first sign of the object’s affordance: it makes rain-catching doable.
Note 3 [JO → HA] — from Sequence II, Note 2
The stone fits
The hand for
Different purposes
→ Transition: Codified Association (2)LEXICAL · CULTURAL · NEAR | [JO, early HA]
Bowl and stone: both receive the hand. The stone’s fitness for different purposes is the seed’s “affordance” named exactly. The transition carries the cultural pairing of hand-and-tool, and with it the implication that the stone has been shaped — by use, by geology — for this fitness, before any owner arrived.
Note 4 [HA] — from Sequence IV, Note 2
The dog alert
At night watching the dark
His body still
→ Transition: Scent / Atmosphere Drift (8)AFFECTIVE · ATMOSPHERIC · FAR | [HA]
The mood of the stone fitting the hand — a quiet, purposeful attention — drifts without narrative bridge into the dog watching the dark. The stone’s silent fitness and the dog’s silent vigil share the same atmosphere: presence without being called into it. The dog is not alert because the owner asked. The stone does not fit the hand because the owner carved it.
Note 5 [HA] — from Sequence III, Note 3
This too then
That given away we have
What’s necessary
→ Transition: Transference / Reflection (10)AFFECTIVE · MIRRORING · BIDIRECTIONAL | [HA]
The dog’s unasked-for vigil and the discovery that giving leaves what is necessary are a reflective dyad. The dog gives its attention; in giving, it still has what it needs. A and B illuminate each other bidirectionally: we see that the dog’s agency is its own form of gift, and that what is given away is not what was necessary.
Note 6 [HA] — from Sequence I, Note 5
A ring given back
To her for safe keeping
Until after surgery
→ Transition: Conditional / Counterfactual Step (19)LOGICAL-CONDITIONAL · MODAL · BRANCH | [HA]
Adjacent possible world: if giving leaves what is necessary (Note 5), then what does it mean to give the ring not away but into*? The ring is placed in the other’s keeping — a transfer of custodianship, not of ownership. This Note opens the branch the Skein will follow: not the world where ownership ends at transfer, but the world where transfer deepens obligation.*
Note 7 [HA] — from Sequence I, Note 6
Something given forgotten
Still giving in the air
Darker
→ Transition: Scent / Atmosphere Drift (8)AFFECTIVE · ATMOSPHERIC · FAR | [HA]
The ring’s giving persists. The affective charge of the previous Note — the covenant placed in another’s hands — continues in the air even when the action is past and the giver has moved into surgery, into unconsciousness, into darker spaces. This is the Skein’s central discovery beginning to emerge: the thing continues to give, even when the giver cannot.
Note 8 [HA] — from Sequence IV, Note 6
The lotus blooms
Ripe with presence
Intent within itself
→ Transition: Elegant Confusion / Double Image (17)IMAGISTIC · ANALOGY · AMBIGUITY | [HA]
“Still giving in the air, darker” — and then the lotus blooms, intent within itself. The double image: the ring still giving in the air was always also the lotus, blooming without an owner’s permission. What persists after the giving is the thing’s own intent. The object has been, all along, a lotus: purposive, present, independent of the hand that held it.
Note 9 [HA] — [THRESHOLD] — from Sequence III, Note 7
Say a word and
Another picks it up
To pass on
→ Transition: Phase / Threshold Crossing (20)PHASE-TRANSITION · CRITICAL · THRESHOLD | [HA] — [THRESHOLD]
The Skein’s colimit event. After the lotus blooms with its own intent, this Note marks the irreversible crossing: things pass on by themselves. The word passes not because the speaker wills it — another picks it up. The ring passes. The lotus passes pollen to the air. The sequence has crossed into a different categorical state: things circulate by their own nature, not by the owner’s decision. After this Note, the Skein cannot return to simple holding.
Note 10 [HA → KYU] — from Sequence II, Note 6
Scrubbing a pan
For more than forty years
The steel pitted clean
→ Transition: Symmetry Breaking (21)PHASE-TRANSITION · SYMMETRY · IRREVERSIBLE | [HA] — [BREAKING]
After the threshold: the pan that has been scrubbed for forty years. This Note breaks the symmetry of the Skein — it chooses one side of the balance between use-as-damage and use-as-revelation. The pitting is the pitting clean. The pan has been owned, used, cared for; and what remains is not depletion but a new form. [BREAKING] The thing that outlasts the ownership is more itself* for having been held.*
Note 11 [KYU] — from Sequence I, Note 8 (repeated from its original appearance)
At home she returns
Our ring she had kept
For the duration
→ Transition: Topic Reallocation / Re-entry (23)STRUCTURAL · RECURSIVE · LONG | [KYU] — [RE-ENTRY: Note 6]
The Skein’s memory closes its loop. Note 6 placed the ring in the other’s keeping; Note 11 returns it. But the return has been changed by everything between: the word passing on (Note 9), the pan pitted clean (Note 10), the lotus blooming with its own intent (Note 8). The ring returns not to where it was, but to where the sequence has arrived. The covenant was kept; it is also still being kept. [RE-ENTRY: Note 6]
Note 12 [KYU] — from Sequence III, Note 9
All connections will
Be known cannot be known
Are absorbed back into a world we must live in
→ Transition: Discourse / Sequence Steering (24) + Direct Echo (1)META · PHRONETIC · GUIDING : LEXICAL · CONTENT · NEAR | [KYU]
The Skein’s closing. The chips in the plates (Note 1) are still chipped — “all connections will be known, cannot be known.” The bowl still catches rain. The stone still fits the hand for different purposes. The ring is back, and the ring continues to give in the air. All of this is absorbed back into a world we must live in: not resolved, not transcended — returned. The Skein closes by returning everything to the world that held it.
The Skein’s Revelation
Read as a whole, the twelve Notes unfold a single claim that none of the four individual sequences could make alone:Connecting-Notes-Synthesis-Version-2-Jun-2026-2.pdf
Ownership is not possession but participation in the thing’s own continuity. The chipped plate continues. The bowl placed outside receives rain without the owner watching. The stone’s fitness precedes the hand. The dog attends the dark on its own authority. What is given does not leave — it continues giving in the air. The lotus intends itself. The word is picked up by another. The pan is pitted clean. The ring returns not terminated but deepened. All connections — the ones we can name and the ones we cannot — are absorbed back into the world, which holds them past any individual act of holding.
The seed’s Kwakwaka’wakw insight — the contract as the beginning of a relationship, not the end — is what the Skein arrives at not through argument but through the sequence of things that continue past the hands that held them.
Notes on Link Density and Emergent Patterns
Beat structures: Thread V sustains the longest Beat run — four sink-cleaning variants in Notes 1–9, creating a slow oscillatory pattern before the Threshold break at midnight. Thread II sustains a three-Note Beat of “touching” before Interference collapses it.
Refrain returns: In every Thread, the Refrain link marks the structural mid-axis — the literal return of a Note (or near-literal) under changed context. The corpus itself generates Refrain naturally: the same acts (washing dishes, cleaning the sink, making tea) recur across years with shifted valence.
Interference as dominant discontinuous type: Image III’s two separated masses license Interference as the primary discontinuous link across Threads II and IV. Cavitation (the pressure-drop, the charged void) follows Interference in both cases — the unresolved superposition collapses not into resolution but into absence.
The brushwork notes (Shih-Ta’o catalogue) as a corpus-within-corpus: Thread III exploits the fact that the Shih-Ta’o brushwork sequence — written directly for Eric Selland — is itself a sequence of water-state analogues in painting. The brush-tip techniques map one-to-one onto the link-type vocabulary: Ghost Face = Gradient (tremor-drift), Axe Cuts = Turbulent (sharp incision), Pellet Holes = Orbital (whirlpool in ink), Boneless = Sublimation (form is texture, no intermediate step). This is the Thread most directly seeded by the images, and the most structurally taut.
Cross-thread Moiré: Readers who hold Threads I and V simultaneously will notice that the sink-cleaning ritual (Thread V) and the wave-shoaling (Thread I) are in Moiré relation: both enact a slow gathering followed by release, both use Orbital and Sublimation near their closes. The two Threads share a cross-thread emergent pattern — domestic water and ocean water as superposed refrains of the same morphism.
Eric Selland, Brushwork, from Isobar Press.
Laminar and turbulent flow and the phase state transition between them is one of my obsessions. The transition from laminar flow (smooth, orderly layers) to turbulent flow (chaotic, mixing) happens when a fluid's velocity increases to the point where inertial forces overcome viscous forces. It is dependent on the Reynolds number.
On the Modelling of Thermal Buoyancy Flows Involving Laminar–Turbulent Transition by by Jingcheng Liu and Xiangdong Li. https://www.mdpi.com/2311-5521/10/11/289
Re = pvD/μ
p is the fluid fluid density
v is the mean velocity of the fluid
D is the characteristic length (like the diameter of a pipe)
μ is the dynamic viscosity of the fluid
Laminar Flow (Re < 2000): The fluid flows in parallel, straight lines with no mixing between layers. Viscous forces act as a damper, smoothing out any disturbances.
Transitional Flow (2000 < Re < 4000): A highly unpredictable mix where the flow alternates between laminar and turbulent states.
Turbulent Flow (Re > 4000): Inertial forces dominate, creating chaotic, swirling eddies and highly effective fluid mixing.
I plan to explore this as a frame or possibly as aparamters for selecting and sequencing notes.
This is drawn from a series I wrote for Eric
Brushstrokes
for Eric Selland
from Note 19 to the Richard Strassberg translation of Shih-Ta’o Enlightening Remarks on Painting
Billowing Clouds
Layerings of
Curved strokes diluting
Ink washed water
Axe Cuts
The brush tip
At an oblique angle
Sharp incisions
Hemp Fibres
Long thin lines
Parallel to each other
Defining texture
Unravelled Rope
Overlapping curled
Spiral motions of the wrist
As fibres unwind
Ghost Face
Trembling with
The fear of memory
In the brush
Skull Like
Round hard
Memories flattened
Onto paper
Scattered Twigs
Dry rigid
Piles the brush
Almost dry
Sesame Seeds
Small dots almost
Unseen in the other strokes
Adding surface depth
Gold and Jade
Outlined in gold
Ink filled with mineral
Green blue wash
Jade Powder
Imagined as
Broken dots inside
Green depth
Pellet Holes
Circular strokes
Where whirlpools
Stand in ink
Alum Stone
Colourless astringent
Forms of small rocks on
Mountain peaks
Boneless
Where the texture is
Form is texture with
Direct application