– L-F Bertin des Vaux, Hôtel Bertin – La Maison Blanche Hauteville (facade, detail), 1801.

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The room I entered was a dream of this room.
Surely all those feet on the sofa were mine.
The oval portrait
of a dog was me at an early age.
Something shimmers, something is hushed up.

We had macaroni for lunch every day
except Sunday, when a small quail was induced
to be served to us. Why do I tell you these things?
You are not even here.
– J. Ashbery, “This Room”, Your Name Here, 2000

Why indeed.

– R. Queneau, "Télégramme”, *Exercices de Style*, 1964 edition from the Club Français du Livre, enhanced with 33 parallel style exercises painted, drawn, or sculpted by J. Carelman, and 99 typographical style exercises by R. Massin.

Due to circumstances beyond control or comprehension but for which we (by which I almost always, invariably, mean me) bear varying degrees of responsibility, many of “our” most resonant terms – art, for starters – no longer bear any commutative or noncommutative connection to what it means to be us. The same is true for all variables in this order of equation, including tangent vectors, transformation groups, differentiable manifolds and contact of spheres. You, me, he, her, it, them, thus: power equals s...