The Probability of Unfashion

Careful Readers of the Blog might’ve noticed Vivienne’s conspicuous absence. Careful Readers of the Blog might also have said to themselves, Oh, dear. Vivienne must be going through “a time.” Careful Readers of the Blog would, indeed, be correct in their assumption that Vivienne has been going through “a time,” so far as Careful Readers of the Blog do not define “a time” as an enjoyable period of sunshine, lollipops, rainbows, and daffodils, or as a brief period of slight unfashion that can be cured by an evening with the Lifetime Network, Ben and Jerry’s, and All-Natural White Cheddar Cheetos. Careful Readers of the Blog, however, will probably realize that any “time” which prevents Vivienne from practicing OuLiPo must be quite a time indeed.
And, indeed, Vivienne has been buried in the rubble of an earthquake of Unfashion. Vivienne feels as though her very body, her very soul, her very essence — nay, her very WORLD — has been sucked into the mouth of The Nothing like so much spaghetti.  Vivienne has been having the kind of “time” where she feels she has much more in common with a two year old collapsed in a sobbing pile of anguish at having been denied a cookie and throwing her favorite stuffed animal repeatedly against the wall than anyone else.  Vivienne has been having the kind of “time” which results in her driving home at night listening to “Back in Black” at top volume and belting I-I-I-I go baaaccckk tooooo uussssssss along with Amy Winehouse at top volume while feeling jealous that Amy Winehouse has the sweet release of crank and crack and smack and whatever the hell else she’s smoking these days, also at top volume. Vivienne has been having the kind of “time” that results in her not only singing Amy Winehouse songs at top volume but simultaneously weeping at top volume, so that, by the time she reaches the gas station by her apartment, her carefully-applied smoky eye make-up has turned into the kind of racoonish wreck once made fashionable by the ever-fashionable Courtney Love, only she’s taken things one step further, as her glitter-specked black liquid eyeliner has stained her cheeks and tear-wiping hands as black as Amy Winehouse’s crack-crank-smack-stained fingernails. Vivienne has been having the kind of “time” that results in her not even bothering to spit-wipe the glittering black liquid eyeliner stains from her cheeks and tear-wiping hands before she enters the gas station by her apartment, and Vivienne has been having the kind of “time” that results in her looking the gas station attendant straight in the eye and saying, what? What? You got a problem? when, with cheeks and tear-wiping hands covered in glittering black eyeliner stains, she comes to the counter to purchase a bottle of red wine, an extra-large bag of peanut M&Ms, a bag of cat litter, and a pack of Marlboro Ultra Lights.
Which means that Vivienne has been thinking a great deal about probability. For instance: how, purely through probability, and seemingly without a choice of her own, she has ended up In Her Station — the gas station mentioned above, for instance, which works as a Fitting Metaphor. And Vivienne has been thinking about OuLiPo and potentiality, though not necessarily actuality. But Vivienne has been thinking about the part of probability theory which states something like this (all of Vivienne’s understanding of mathematics generally boils down to “it’s something like this,” by the way): how the probability of a sample set adds, in a sense, up to one. So Vivienne got to thinking about how there’s sort of a sum that each x in this kind of set adds up to. So Vivienne got to thinking about how this might apply to text: how, for instance, each word x in a certain position in a series of lines of text might add up to a poetic sum. So, Vivienne experimented with an invented constraint she is going to refer to as Sum Probability. She took the first word in the first line, second word in the second line, third word in the third line, and so on until the series ended and had to repeat, in a text to see if it would add up to a poetic sum. The text in question is one which also deals with probability: Alberto Moravia’s Two Women, later made into a Film of Fashion featuring that ultimate icon of all Fashionable Things Which are Fashionable, Sophia Loren, which deals with the ways in which two women’s lives are changed drastically by the chance occurrence of war.  Here is the result:

Then Later —

Man’s walking and one —
many – they but are dragged

that people laden — that
in the weariest —

along which valley
national? — via mouthed –

say it – filled green. America
brings its power, motorcars

that — kind soldiers, armored
boughs — large curving of a pair

noticed — recovered. With dear
wind distantly — we too in

would– fire – come on – mine?
Out. Anti-aircraft is the only

clean. Be jumble — lawyers
apprehensive. Lieutenant —

uniform stretched —
a yellow alert.