Indeed, corporeal (individual or societal) manipulation is the last recourse of the desperate. Like a apathetic adolescent splitting flesh or reveling in nutritional deprivation, lacking relief our global body seeks self-destruction. It is cousin to the abundance of choice: when we can choose to watch/see/read/be anything, our human experience is troubled, gray, removed and dissociated. Baudrillard is right on the proverbial money. It is this idea of actual and symbolic self-immolation in response to saturation and secular sameness has particular resonance for me. This reversion takes the form either of open violence (terrorism is a part of this) or of the impotent denial characteristic of our modernity, of self-hatred and remorse - all negative passions that are the debased form of the impossible counter-gift.' He follows this by stating that 'there inevitably comes a response in the form of a negative countertransference, a violent abreaction to this captive life, to this protected existence, to this saturation of existence. It is not that giving is impossible in this culture, but that the counter-gift is impossible, since all the paths of sacrifice have been neutralized and defused.' Today we no longer have anyone to whom we may give back, to whom we may repay the symbolic debt - and that is the curse of our culture.

This is what ensures the symbolic equilibrium between living beings and things. 'In the traditional order, there is still the possibility of giving something back to God to nature, or to whatever it might be, in the form of the sacrifice. In looking over my notes, the following passage jumped out at me. Weeks ago, a rainy Saturday found me reading Baudrillard's The Spirit of Terrorism. Recently, I had occasion to revisit some of my notes from the last days of my time in Des Moines.

Music with thirty second notes