“By our contents, you may know us.”
We are what we hold (tho not all shows), e,g.: topic wings & fruity branches; quirky annexes & cluttered basements; exhibits & special collections; as per what may be found at
bod-library.info ~~~here, this content, self-reference…
bod-library.net ~~~ entry, maps, audio, poetry, arts…
eco-wing.net ~~~ eco-logic, Aldo Zone, seeds of thought…
virginiabodner.net ~~~guess who’s poetry, art…
bod-library.xyz ~~~ annex for games & game theory…
bodlibrary.xyz ~~~ language-awareness-thought…
(i.e., b-odd college annex, ‘boca’; diy university)
& others for burning questions, humor & media….
Eventually, we may try to card-catalog all the topics, bits & pieces; explorations, reports & explanations; snapshots, albums, poems & verses; games, exercises, challenges; guides & courses; references..., with expanded maps & clickable quick-links. For now, most visible CONTENT speaks for itself, wherever it is. Speaking of the content makes new content, of course, no less so with self-reference as topic.
In a sense, this is like the library’s on-line `”space” itself, most of which comes into existence automatically as CONTENT gets “entered.” As new paragraphs are added anywhere, the on-line “page” gets longer to accommodate. What our WordPress format calls “PAGES” might more accurately be called “SCROLLS,” or, in the library’s case, “ROOMS,” places in which content of a particular kind may be accessed, uploaded, stored &/or (like now) even made fresh (even found again, for possible improvement).
A self-referential twist makes FORMAT or FRAMEWORK the focus of this CONTENT, however, simply to note that the given software also contains (in addition to what it calls “PAGES“) what it calls “POSTS,” other page- or room-like “places” with distinct characteristics, e.g., that the most recent appear on top of the meta-scroll that holds them, instead of towards the bottom, the way later “chapters” would normally appear.
Some rooms don’t show up on menus at all, being used for temporary storage or drafts in progress, while a few otherwise visible require a password for entry, if only to have a sense of who’s visiting, why & what for. If you’d like access to any of these, let us know which & a little about your interest(s). Email c/or bodlibrary2020@gmail.com, with website & pw page name on the subject line.
A single PAGE (i.e., ROOM) may hold many individual pieces, whether separate works in that genre, aspects of the same topic, or just where they happened to take shape. Unlike a library that holds almost entirely works made elsewhere & by others, this Bod Library is almost entirely HOMEGROWN, & CONTAINS MATERIALS MOSTLY FOUND NOWHERE ELSE, exceptions having been shared in relatively obscure places visitors aren’t likely to know or find.
Ironically, this is so even of the most likely exception, two earlier versions “in progress” of our translation of Basho’s oku no hosomichi, backcountry ways, which appeared (under different titles) in successive editions of The Bedford Anthology of World Literature, 2004 & 2007, presumably in many libraries. Our far more satisfying, “finished” version might be found on a Bod-Library on-line website only, along with our passage-by-passage guide & translation essays that belong with it. [ASAP -ed.]
Similarly, though about two dozen of the Seeds of Thought (in Eco-wing.net) first appeared in the quarterly newsletter put out by Friends of the Las Vegas (NM) National Wildlife Refuge (2004-2017), many have expansions found on the Bod Library website only.
~~~TRUE EXCEPTIONS (i.e., pieces also found elsewhere) may include:
Virginia’s article on “Mudpuddle Marsh,” the outdoor classroom she helped start, originally appeared in Orion Afield ( ), copied on virginiabodner.net. Also, a poem of hers on that site (“Muddy Road…”) was just included in New Mexico Poetry, a new anthology (2023) from Museum of New Mexico Press. Other poems could be in periodicals from years ago, including one named “Best haiku in English” ( ) by the Kaji Aso Society, others honored & re-printed by the Museum of Haiku Literature in Tokyo, Japan Air Lines, etc.
Along related lines, many of the little snapshot-pops (impressions of the attentive moment) now found in the Snaps room (on Bod-Library.net) have appeared as Weathergrams, brushed by Albuquerque calligraphers & hung from trees at an annual Poets’ Picnic, left to weather the rest of the year, as well as in subsequent chapbooks from the same source. By contrast, most poems, articles & reviews published pre-web (1960 on, but especially the 1980s) aren’t on any on-line site (to date). The same can be said for most recordings & programs.
All the Santa Fe Trail recordings in the Bod’s AUDIO room were originally broadcast by KUNM (public radio) in Albuquerque & elsewhere, with Rolling On: the wagon years also a limited-edition CD; Like Water, in the same room, was produced on cassette by Leaky Buckets Music (Bernstein & Bodner, 1994), & named a best of the year (for original composition) by New Mexico-focused MicLine Mag. Assuming you’re not listening by cassette or CD, you’ll probably only find these now in the Bod Library’s Audio room.
Some of the games now in the Annex for Games & Game Theory (& at B-Odd College) have been shared publicly over the years, either like Bazari, produced by a Bod Library affiliate (parent Mapa Systems or Land of Enchantment Game Company) or part of courses offered through New Mexico Highlands University & elsewhere. In addition, programs offered through the New Mexico Humanities Council programs & related groups included many featuring figures & topics now at home in one section of the library or another, e.g., Basho, Aldo Leopold, Ansel Adams, S, Omar Barker, SW poetry, humor & the humanities, literature & laugh therapy, & the Chautauqua forms (a personal exploration).
Perhaps it should go without saying, but not all Bod-Library CONTENTS show. Rooms designated as “Private,” for example, only show to the “administrator,” i.e., Yours Crudely, writer-in-residence, thus himself technically includable as contents, yet preferring to remain invisible, out of the way, guide not focus. A presence, nevertheless, arguably accountable at some point for his agency, he & the Peripheral Intelligence Agency have denied any knowledge of each other.
That, in turn, raises all the usual questions, hidden motives among them. Indeed, motives themselves, whether hidden or not, might also be considered a kind of content, however intangible in themselves. (To discuss the hidden may, of course, un-hide it.) Sense of purpose–whether called motive, aim, intent or function–must presumably be part of any true self-reference–starting with the public identity projected, but not stopping there.
The fact that all our self-known aims, motives & intentions are openly discussed elsewhere (e.g., the intro at Bod-Library.net) doesn’t mean some can’t still be fleshed out at a more detailed scale or order of magnitude. Being a file-cabinet & place to hold drafts to improve going forward are both fairly clear compared to being an exploratorium where, among other things, forms themselves are explored, including their roots & creation.
To claim that the library contained examples of most forms language customarily took would probably be foolish, as well as meaningless. How many forms are there? There is really no limit, nor adequate definition of most beyond I (usually) know it when I see it. On the other hand, you may see it differently.
Nevertheless, you can easily recognize many of the widely various “forms” the Bod-Library-On-Line contains samples & examples of: poetry, snapops, news articles, reports, essays, humor, fiction, philosophical & scientific inquiry, even a non-alphabetical dictionary-encyclopedia...all while ostensibly exploring the form of an on-line library with a network of sites, topics, forms & genres…
(…that could also be taken as a whole to represent a novel form of on-line novel purporting to be a funhouse of mirrors & windows, reflecting on &/or opening to views of the creator-author-editor-librarian’s encountered & re-imagined world, thought, mind, fundamental reality, society, time, media, legacy & leavings.)
(…that could also be taken, in whole or in part, to be a novel form of novel purporting to be–in addition to a library–a college with actual courses in awareness, thought, writing, history; a DIYU (Do-It-Yourself-University) without walls, ceilings or floors; a quixotic attempt to wise up the world, starting with the present writer & reader, whether still the same person or not…)
(…that could be taken as a hole with parts in motion…a flock of voids…an absentee ballet in absinthe tutus…a fevered child’s cry in free fall…the babble of an infant…idiot…crick…Mime Public Radio…Mirror-Times-Mirror-Trans-Media…)
…reminding us that, while some things here (in Bod Library-On-Line) don’t show, other things show without actually being here–wherever here is now. In the most literal sense, for example, where do the library & its visible contents show, if at all, but in your mind (wherever that is), via your access screen, as mediated by countless functions & technologies & translations along the way.
Here & there hardly account for the trans-local realms we now live & meet in. Transcendence of the individual place, time, & mind has been part of the library’s original DNA from before its beginning, of course, & surely already implicit in the very idea of the book (liber, libro), if not already in the language…. The associated sense of transport takes many forms, a child discovering realms of imagination among them, opening the covers to enter what livable life & magical world next?
Whoever disappears inside a wardrobe or down a rabbit-hole or through a glass (looking or shot) disappears in a book & daydream, too, a nursery rhyme, sing-a-song, broadcast, game & creative play–the imagination at work. Note the confluence between escape & flow, another side of that between play & preparation, pleasure & learning….
Indeed, who doesn’t disappear inside a library? (–or a funhouse?) It might be said that the Bod itself was a house of disappearance…, making escape hatch & absence part of its content. Forget the self for a moment, friend–share in the imagination of what’s here (wherever you are &/or were)–voilá–kaleidoscopic spectacles, doors & passages, whirligigs & wonderwogs, daydream-scapes & zafus.
What about the countless wonder-birds coming & going in the in the well-seeded sculpture garden, veranda & yard & at any given time, these, too, part of the library’s contents, although not much visible to on-line visitors, yet very much in keeping with the library’s sense of function, if it had any sense. So what kind of bird are you?
The deeper one descends into the bottomless hole of self-reference, the more insubstantial the substance of content becomes, as if closer to that mind-field of pure imagination, a library imagining itself, including its staff–& its visitors. Indeed, the library starts to take on &/or reveal characteristics associated with some descriptions of the quantum realm, among these non-locality & entanglement, the mindful transit of times & places, a shared language.
The writer writes–with no idea worth spit about where & how the feelings & thoughts take place, hearing the words emerging in the mind the same way a reader may reading (i.e., re-thinking them) later. That’s quite amazing when you think about it–that being a feature of the mind, as well as of language as a vehicle of connection &/or transmission between individual pockets &/or particles of mind. The ordinary dualisms of subject & object break down in the quantum realm, where probability wave & particle collapse co-exist with super-position.
Although we may not understand understanding, we feel it. The same can be said for our ignorance. Should understanding & ignorance be listed among library CONTENTS? At first thought, not, being non-entities, yet is there anything more fundamental to a library’s identity than the relation between these? To know & not know at the same time is, after all, part of the human condition–for which we don’t need a library to tell us.
Like the birds, trees, spiders & clouds, humans follow whatever nature has given. Humans are born, nursed, raised up in multiple groups, learn the languages, respond to conditions & alternatives. Out of this, human languages have emerged, along with their modes of transmission, including vessels for extending the reach in space & time, along with libraries to hold any & all of these…meta-vessels, houses of language, whether spoken in clay, fresco, glyph, ink-stained papyrus, or scribe’s devotion….
World & sentient being give rise to idea (thought, feeling, motive), which gives rise to the word (speech, transmission, connection), which gives rise to action (choice, reaction), which in the current instance gives rise to Yours Crudely & the Bod Library! Stay tuned for another wing or annex–devoted specifically to the weirdness of language, and the universality of translation….
Everything we know (& likely all we don’t) involves translation–whether yje functional operations of DNA, proteins, & physical cellular processes or the psychological equivalents–from turning raw sensory data into meaningful observations & communicable experience all the way to the transmission of mind to mind via countless technological transformations leading to–VOILÁ–Bod Library….
PERCEPTION is arguably the simplest mental process besides internal raw sensation itself, yet it already gives rise to what might be considered a primal tension between the real & the fictional, what’s received & what’s made up. We tend to think we see, hear, smell, taste & touch things as they are, yet the brain & sensory systems play many tricks as it filters, focuses, & re-arranges in-put. Nevertheless, we recognize a difference between report & fantasy, between “I see a magpie at the feeding bowl” & “I see a pink elephant in a hot air balloon depicted in a film….”
Levels of real & fictional aren’t necessarily so easily distinguished in the case of a library, particularly this library…. In this case, we are speaking in terms more fundamental than usually included in CONTENT, i.e., the on-line–library itself, something without actual buildings, a CLOUD CRITTER, a set of encoded zits-&-bits, entirely the product of this typist’s imagination-guided entry-fingers, yet demonstrably real enough for you (at least I) to be here).
Nor is this interfusion of the real & imaginary as rare as one might assume. It’s been pointed out, for example, that most money is also entirely a human fiction, with no actual intrinsic value in either the paper or the digital form–except that which people agree on at that time & place, thereby giving it undeniably meaningful (difference-making) reality (albeit at fluctuating exchange values).