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tags:kissartgift
How to construct a gift that isn’t understood as a gift, until you get all of it? or a piece of knowledge is unlocked.
It could be like you give someone something every year. There might even be confusion about why they are getting the piece of it. It might be an object that doesn’t make sense in isolation, and it becomes confusing which is presumed to be the joke (like how you might get all gifts about cows because people think you like cows, and then it becomes a joke.) But there would be a deeper level to it, beyond the joke.
If you are bold, maybe even something like the wrapper paper, or a photograph, or even nuts like a can of cola with a small mark on it. Hidden in the photo is a message, that becomes clear at the end when you know what to look for. Symbols - A room written and everything is a letter communication, cheat sheet
I would like that. To only understand what you were doing later and see that love was there all along, even if you were confused. All of those pieces of wrapping paper had poems on them. They were all a message.
This could also be effective as a gift for Valentine’s for someone who is down on Valentines. You don’t even need to tell them about it. You, even if you are gone, loved them in a thousand silent ways.
Children’s book
There’s this children’s book that touches on this. It involves a mouse walking between animal neighbors frantically searching for a gift for his mouse wife. He’s put in various predicaments and each home stop he gets to results in a dead end - no gift or idea.
Finally he’s tired and upset about not finding a suitable gift and rests upon a hill overlooking the town. His mouse wife comes to comfort him, saying, roughly, your effort of love is all the gift I ever needed, and then he notices his steps in the snow to each of the places he’s searched, have traced out a giant heart. Attraction
Distributed Art Project
Here is an idea, you can approach it from this direction:
Imagine the entire world running right now. All human beings holding a pen. Everyone touching pen to paper is employed as part of the artist work, which is a gift to you. You can make them write what you want.
You can declare that all those concurrent sequences of the pen touching the paper, producing the first letter of your name constitutes one collective act. All of that ink, all at once. A thousand, thousand letters.
And it can spell your name thousands of thousands of times (even more if you declare all typists typing to be a distributed letter to your love.)
So all simultaneous A’s then a second pause, all simultaneous B’s then a pause. Whatever you want to write.
This can also be your distributed gift. Also, right now, everyone who happens to be jumping exists as part of this art project. And what is it is an art project to understand gravity, or what it is like to fly. This one moment is a collective flight of human life. The individual feeling of jumping, barely a second but all of those sensory moments adding up at once. That is your gift.
Also all the human kisses, lips touching right now in this moment you both kiss - they are all one kiss. Or you can distribute them. You can say, all lips that are touching while our lips touch - they are all other kisses. When sorted, this kiss we have now is on top.
Of all kisses, that are, have been and will ever be - this is the kiss we feel. I feel no other.
Also all your kisses to her, in time, can be one single kiss linked through time. They all lie upon one another, like a common subsequence. All of this, trying to understand someone.
Eternally returned gift
Another way might be this.
You get a gift, and that gift is always returned. You’ve purchased something. On your birthday, you received it back. It doesn’t have to be your birthday, but whenever the next opportunity for a gift comes, the Gift comes back to you or is given away.
What might be best here is that each time the gift is given back, it must be transformed in some way. (In the original format this will occur as well, by wear of time — possibly resulting in a poignant farewell of the gift like a tattered toy that is destroyed.) I can see it working like an “Exquisite Corpse” type of exercise where various artistic appendages are added, creating a new gift over time.
What would be suitable here? Is this something that is already done?
NOTE
Money as a gift has this quality.
Pet Upgrade
If you ever have children, perhaps this will work as an example I’ve come up with. It is slightly warped.
Your children demand a pet at some age, and you might be reluctant about the amount of work it entails and their ability to properly provide care. But what you can do is provide your children with a blade of grass as a pet. They’ll look at you quizzically because why did their parent provide a lame blade of grass as a pet.
What you can do though is explain this concept to them. For them to have another pet, they must allow their current pet to be eaten by their new pet. The ridiculous idea is that they will work their way up the food chain, beginning at the blade of grass, which is then eaten by the grasshopper (to produce a new grasshopper pet), which is then eaten by a frog (who is now their pet).
What then happens is that in a few months, your home is overrun with apex predators, such as a large wolf because your children were over zealous in their upgrading and nature can be cruel. You didn’t want a pet all along, and you will now appear wise to them.
You can appear wise, twirling the single blade of grass in the corner while they play out this Jumanji-style nightmare. Once the beast is subdued you can all go out for ice cream and reflect.
Jokes
I heard this joke, meant to be torturous and told over a few days (in an environment like a family trip or a camp).
Two whales walk into a bar. Bartender looks up, asks what they’ll have. First whale says “OooOooooOOoooOoooooHhhhoOoooʻoooooooooooOOOOOooOoooOoooohhh’OooooOoOooooOoooooOoo” - here you focus on someone not laughing yet - “OooooooooHhhhhhhhOoooooooOOOOOOOOOOOoooooHhHhhOooooooOooOoooooOooOOOOOOoooOoOOOOOOOOOOoooo” The other whale goes “I’m sorry he’s already drunk.”
The next segment is told some time after, and you exhaustively concoct this drink request, till everyone is sick of hearing what you have to say.
Finally you return to the whales, saying that after giving the drink given above it is “the best drink they ever had. How did you ever come up with that?”
Bartender then tells about the story of the whale who ordered… and here you return to that long whale sound from the first day
Oulipo and palindromes
Oulipo texts or palindromic texts Wild Geese Returning - Chinese Reversible Poems by Michele Metail might be examples of this. A poem where there’s a forward read, but the then a reverse read that elucidates or subverts or otherwise changes the original forward read.
Joseph Weizenbaum
The creator of the first chatbot Eliza spoke of incomprehensible programs
It may be well that in principle we cannot make any machine the elements of whose behavior we cannot comprehend sooner or later. This does not mean in any way that we shall be able to comprehend these elements in substantially less time than the given required for the operation of the machine, even within a given number of years or generations.
Any intelligent understanding of a machine’s mode of performance may be delayed until long after the task which it has been set has been completed… This means that, though machines are theoretically subject to human criticism, such criticism may be ineffective until long after it is relevant.
John McCarthy provided a rebuttal review: “An Unreasonable Book”
Christmas Tree
My aunt had prepared an activity for us all as part of Christmas. We each made small wooden ornaments at the table. My niece joined in as well, mixing the red, yellow and blue primary color paints on her plate to form this deep color that had hints of purplish blue when the light hit it. This was fun in itself, but then she revealed the true gift.
The long box she had brought in was in fact this small wooden Christmas tree she had made that we’d all hang our ornaments on. It had multicolored bulbs and places to affix the ornaments. We placed it next to the Christmas tree proper, which dwarfed it and was wrapped in white lights. What a surprise.
But this was not all. She revealed the tree was 30 inches tall. She had made the tree we were making, the height of Eva. In all the future years, if we are so lucky, we’ll look at that tree that will forever be 30 inches tall and say “this was the size you were Eva. It is your tree.”