Writing on the Wrong Side of the Wall: a collaboration with Geof Huth

Geof Huth and I began exchanging a little booklet back and forth through the mail. Geof wrote about it on his blog. Apparently (because we'll see how this develops) we are sending this little book back and forth between NY to Ontario and filling it with some kind of drawing. We began with what Geof terms 'fidgetglpyhs' though as I was working on my second set at a cafe, I was sorely tempted to dip the book into my decaf latte or paint it with coffee. A fidgetsponge. A glyphrag. The writing of a book as a process of osmosis. The text as capillary.

These little cards bound together with a single ring immediately appealed to me when I saw them in an airport store. Writing on these little tablets they become a deck of cards, an asemic Tarot, flash cards for an arithmetic without number, and with only the fingers to hold them up: countless fingers. The hand as a fleshy star. The grip as twinkle. They are paper teeth. The rectangular ribs of an as-of-yet non-breathing book.

I've posted some of our images. Ordering the images is part of the process, though now it is Geof's next move. In this non-semantic Rummy, he may reorder them. He may hide some of the images up his sleeve. The text may evolve from fidgetglyphs to texts, drawings, maps, dominoes or demonoes. They may begin to bruise colour (or in Geof's case, color.) On the back of the images, I have created some single word poems/images, but I'm not posting them. Part of the mail-art process of this is surprise, and I don't want to give everything away to Geof. The texts on the back can be reordering numerously. They are a subtext, a back text, the writing on the wrong side of the wall.