<nettime> Mermaid Tavern Press, Aug. 2042

[Gidget Digit <gidget@tao.ca>]

the following document was conveyed to me on a small photocopied slip of
paper by a member of a local union of witches somewhat hazily affiliated
with my own union....  i felt it of the utmost importance that artists
like Luther Blisset and certain "hacktivists" of conscience are able to
read a copy of this communicae, given such recent endeavours of
conscientious objection to forced identification, forced drugging, and
such creative healing as that done through statue-stealing. i can verify
the authenticity of the paper through a variety of pattern tests seen in
this extremely "responsible median's" previous works. 

it is my hope that further of the mentioned "studies in disembodiment and
calumnious non-identity" along with other practices towards healthful
transmogrifications may be forthcoming from our poet-channellers and
assorted union healers in the vein of this particular letter, surely
originally written in 2042 to be intended for more social-democratic
leaning magistrates. 

in earnest sincerity, Gidget Digit



    Mermaid Tavern Press.  				August, 2042.  
    David Atwood.

To the magistrates of Belle River County,

Regarding the continued incarceration of the poet/activists Gwendlyn
Parker, Rebeccas Smart, Jay MillAr and Steven Venright.

Realizing that rights such as free speech and political organization have
been withdrawn and removed as bygone Yankee traditions not truly in the
interests of the nation of Ontario, it is nonetheless with only the most
sure necessity I write you once again on behalf of the above 4 mentioned
poets whose work continues to remain popular in this region, and whose
ideas seem to myselfe and others, harmless and benign.  They are old now,
as am I, and what minimal practise of their crafts they could embark upon
at this point would have no more effect than did the troubadors, thence
the Thespians, further the Victorian occultists, the surrealist poets, the
language-oriented writers, the visualists, etc., the lengthy line of
repropriates of mostly miscellaneous possibilities of humankind, a joyful
group, these last, whom by various afflictions of conscience, began
working upon an amalgamation of identities together.  The stirs they
created, first with Smart's _Dead Ever Press_, Parker's role in
_boondoggle_, orginally founded by the Montgomery Clift Foundation under
the pen name Jay MillAr. I insist again, the studies in disembodiment as
well as those in calumnious non-identity, had chiefly the effect of
drawing upon good energies trapped in the criminal quarter by virtue of
their medical abilities in cases of identity collapse and distended phobic
relational shift, health problems which we have discussed countless times,
and which the State has conceded cannot be treated by any of the various
wonder drugs which led to many of the upheavals at the start of this
century. 

Since the sealing of the borders in 2114, and the attempted medicalization
of all aspects of the State's functioning with regards to neighborhoods
and workplaces, it has been shown that a portion of the population is
untreatable, their spokespersons, Smart and Venright among others now
deceased, arguing on a whole community's behalf that human beings
themselves, each individually are in their own beings healers --
self-healers, lover-healers, community-healers, environment-healers --
which in the experiments of 2020 and afterward you acknowledge surprising
success was had.  As a responsible median myself, I have of course
acknowledged the necessity of the F-class inoculations -- enforced by law
on the lower classes and provided free of charge to the wealthy for
optional use-- and that Parker in particular with her stance against this
social method caused the state considerable difficulty.  But we err
entirely in letting this phase of transmogrification be handled
exclusively withing the traditions of the Law, as ultimately it must be a
natural process.  Do not forget the shared mutual goal of a non-violent
society, and allow these and any they may have trained during their
incarceration, under the new provisions, to return among us, echoing the
intent if not the letter of our remarkably peaceful society. 



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