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From: ascott@pacifier.com (Alan Scott)
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre
Subject: Quipu[*]
Date: 31 Mar 1996 07:03:40 GMT
Organization: Peruvian Messenger Services
Lines: 48
Message-ID: <4jlaoc$97j@news.pacifier.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: pacifier.com
Summary: all tied up in knots
Keywords: Incan tation
X-Newsreader: TIN [UNIX 1.3 950515BETA PL0]

  Every time we meet, I tie a knot in the cord that stretches invisibly
from you to me.  Every time you leave, I tie another.  All that you do and
say finds its way onto this record, the string that never leaves my hands. 
I eat our meals together one-handed, tying knots with the other to record
each moment.  Even the verse I write to your memory goes onto the cords: 
the times we share in bed become the knots I tie in red, added to the
thread that I pass between my fingers, touching every one but it's on you
that my touch lingers. 

  When I awaken, as I often do, in the hours before sunrise, I find my
fingers counting knots, busily reading our histories both together and
apart as if they were telegrams sent from a frozen past.  If I were to
follow the bloody-handed god of the Conquistadors, the twine I hold would
be a rosary, but I do not, and it is not, and the language I use for my
memories is far more subtle than that of the church.  The Inquisition will
never translate our secrets.  If captured, I will swallow our time to keep
it safe; they will never unravel that mystery. 

  I will keep this string by my side all of my life, until even the simple
knot by which it's tied to me gains significance.  And though I know I
must in the end grow old, I swear that I will do anything - anything -
rather than become just another old man, playing with a smooth unbroken
length of string. 

-- 
Alan P. Scott..........................................ascott@pacifier.com

      "I like a band that can carry off a good dirge."
                            --Sara Einstein, on the band Kilslug



[*] Quipu:  method used by Inca messengers to record and transmit
information encoded as knots tied in colored string.  The definitive text
reference seems to be _The Code of the Quipu:  A Study in Media,
Mathematics and Culture_, by Marcia and Robert Ascher (Michigan University
Press, 1982). 

  SEE ALSO some quick WWW references:

  "The Quipu, an Incan Data Structure,"
(http://www.cs.uidaho.edu/~casey931/seminar/quipu.html); 

  "The Code of Quipu" (http://fee.unicamp.br/~jorge/quipu.html); or

  "The Quipu / Nasca Valley of Peru"
(http://www.nasm.edu/NASMDOCS/DSH/LDC/ldc_part2.html).