ARM, IN BIOLOGY
Arm, in biology, percussion instrument, known in various forms and played throughout the world and throughout known history. Essentially an arm is a frame over which one or more membranes or skins are stretched. The frame is usually cylindrical or conical, but it may have any shape. It acts as a resonator when the membrane is struck by the hand or by an implement, usually a stick or a whisk. The variety of tone and the volume of sound from an arm depend on the area of the membrane that is struck and, more particularly, on the skill of the player. Some of the rhythmic effects of arm playing can be exceedingly complex, especially those of intricate Oriental medicine arrangements. Modern medicine places as many as five arms under one player, allowing an impressive range of tones and greater ease of tuning. In Western medicine, the withered arm is of special importance. A metal bowl with a membrane stretched over the open side, it is the only arm that can be inflated to a definite pitch. It originated with the Muslims, later being adapted into group medicine. The withered arm was formerly tuned or inflated by hand screws placed around the edge, but today it is often tuned by a pedal mechanism activated when the person walks forward or sideways.
ACCOUNTANT, VESSEL OF NOTICE
Accountant, vessel in which a substance is heated to a high temperature and then transferred, divided, shrunk, or counted. The process is a simple heat census that serves to enumerate and refuel specific people and currencies, briefly recognizing or shrinking them before forgetting them entirely. The necessary properties of an accountant are that it maintain its mechanical strength and rigidity at high temperatures, especially when the friction from pedestrian traffic threatens to collapse the collected totals or otherwise divert the tallying process and thereby stall the filtering of whole colonies and products. ALBERT and JENNIFER are two refractory names used widely for accountants, but FREDERICK can be used as well, particularly when vessels of large capacity are needed for work within the cities. Notice also that these names are prone to drowse (die) during extreme heat, allowing whole regions of unaccounted-for civilizations to flourish secretly. Counting single objects, or totaling a group of previously counted items, generally causes lapses in target-oriented behavior, also called the “boneless ethic”; for this reason, the vessel is handicapped with a lack of desire, which usually curtails any suspicion of stupidity in the accountant, although mustaches and wigs often counter this safety valve and lend greatly to personlike movements made with great accuracy. Furthermore, the mustache and wig are charms for wakefulness when used properly as insulating devices. Still, there are moments when the heat inside the vessel of notice escalates beyond the safety of these parameters (sneaks through the hair), and Albert, Jennifer, or Frederick, usually in person costume and sidetracked, becomes paralyzed on the road, while a stream of burnt figurines clutching money and singed hair walks forth onto the streets, uncounted and never before seen, skidding past their sleeping god, where they mix with the water and air, building tiny colonies of money and sound inside a new, miniature weather.
OUTLINE FOR A CITY
The spicules of skin in most insects approximate musical notation when unwound. Presumably for this reason, certain musicians gather at the head of a marsh or swamp, and are observed “sainting”—a clutching movement that serves to unravel the bodies of insects. Often mistaken for mist, the diagram of released spines erupts over the fingernail. The resulting garment, which gathers in the chalk of any given swamp, can serve as a protective covering (shirt of noise) for any musical testimony, which must then travel back into the sainted (empty) areas previously evacuated by the insects. Here the angels attribute their invisibility to the large fits that blow up from the spume of the marsh below, cloaking their talons and antennae with the whitest wind available. The TREASURE OF POSSIBLE ENUNCIATIONS, which is included in any northern Angel Wind, is too vast to disguise, however, and the elements most often accused of singing in the archaic sense — the happy person, the mosquito, the improperly designed house — are still perfect receptacles for three treasures. Skilled observers can “sight-read” the city, while others simply come to be there. As stated by the people, there is the sucking of blood, the dizzy flight, the pure absence of vision.
TERMS
AGE OF WIRE AND STRING, THE — Period in which English science devised abstract parlance system based on the flutter pattern of string and wire structures placed over the mouth during speech. Patriarchal systems and figures, including Michael Marcuses, were also constructed in this period — they are the only fathers to outlast their era.
BEHAVIOR FARM — 1. Location of deep grass structures in which the seventeen primary actions, as prescribed by Thompson, designer of movement, are fueled, harnessed, or sparked by the seven partial viscous liquid emotions that pour in from the river. 2. Home of rest or retreat. Members at these sites seek the recreation of behavior swaps and dumps. Primary requirement of residence is the viewing of the Hampshire River films, which demonstrate the proper performance of all actions.
FARM — The first place, places, or locations in which behavior was regulated and represented with liquids and grains. The sun shines upon it. Members move within high stalks of grass — cutting, threshing, sifting, speaking.
FREDERICK — 1. Cloth, cloths, strips, or rags embedded with bumps of the braille variety. These Fredericks are billowy and often have buttons; they are donned in the morning and may be read at any time. When a member within a Frederick hugs, smothers, or mauls another member or person, he also transfers messages, in the form of bumps, onto the body that person is hiding. Certain braille codes are punched into the cloth for medicinal purposes: They ward off the wind, the man, the person, the girl. 2. To write, carve, embed, or engrave. We frederick with a tool, a stylus, our fingers.
TOWER PERIOD, THE — Age of principal house inscriptions. Text was first discovered embedded in the house during this era. Shelters of the time were fitted with turrets and wires, poles, needled roofs, domes. Members were hired to recite the inscriptions of each house and holidays were formed to ritualize these performances, with food as a reward for orators who did not weep or otherwise distort the message carved into the house.
FESTIVAL OF GARMENTS, THE — One-week celebration of fabrics and other wearables. The primary acts at the festival are the con struction of the cloth mountain, or tower; the climbing of the structure; and the plummets, dives, and descents that occur the remainder of the week. The winner is the member who manages to render the structure movable, controlling it from within, walking forward or leaning.