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<!DOCTYPE html>
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<title>Autocento of the breakfast table | Autocento of the breakfast table</title>
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<h1 class="title">Autocento of the breakfast table</h1>
<h1 class="subtitle">about this site</h1>
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</header>
<section class="content prose">
<section id="introduction" class="level2">
<h2>Introduction</h2>
<p><em>Autocento <a href="http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/owh/abt.html">of the breakfast table</a></em> is a hypertextual exploration of the workings of revision across time. Somebody<sup>[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_sources#Dealing_with_unsourced_material">citation needed</a>]</sup> once said that every relationship we have is part of the same relationship; the same is true of authorship. As we write, as we continue writing across our lives, patterns thread themselves through our work: images, certain phrases, preoccupations. This project attempts to make those threads more apparent, using the technology of hypertext and the opposing ideas of the <em>hapax legomenon</em> and the <em>cento</em>, held in tension with each other.</p>
<p>I’m also an MFA candidate at <a href="http://nau.edu/CAL/English/Degrees-Programs/Graduate/MFA/">Northern Arizona University</a>. This is my thesis. Let me tell you about it.</p>
<section id="hapax-legomenon-or-you-are-special" class="level3">
<h3><a href="hapax.html">Hapax</a> legomenon, or <em>You are special</em></h3>
<p><em>Hapax legomenon</em> (<a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry=a%28/pac">ἅπαξ</a> λεγόμενον) is Greek for “something said only once.” It comes from the field of corpus linguistics, where it causes problems for translators of ancient texts. Because it only happens once in its corpus, a <em>hapax legmonenon</em> is an enigma: there’s only one context to guess its meaning from. This means that many <em>hapax legomena</em> remain untranslated, as in Mayan tablets, or are questionably translated, as in the Bible.</p>
<p>Given the way we use language every day, treading over the same words and thoughts in a way that is nonetheless comforting, and given the fact that a <em>hapax legomenon</em> is, by its definition, the rarest word in the place it appears, you might think that <em>hapax legomena</em>, as phenomena, are rare. You’d be wrong. In the Brown Corpus of American English Text, which comprises some fifty thousand words, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hapax_legomenon#cite_note-6">about half are <em>hapax legomena</em></a>. In most large corpora, in fact, between forty and sixty per cent of the words occur only once, and another ten to fifteen per cent occur only twice, a fact that I imagine causes translators all sorts of <a href="one-hundred-lines.html">grief</a>.</p>
<p>This seeming paradox is reminiscent of another in biology, as summed up by this infographic I keep seeing around the Internet<a href="#fn1" class="footnoteRef" id="fnref1"><sup>1</sup></a>: <img src="https://i.imgur.com/Dub8k.png" alt="Really. I see it everywhere." /></p>
<p>Apparently, the chances of you, dear Reader, being born is <a href="music-433.html">something</a> like one in 10<sup>2,685,000</sup>. The chances of me <a href="about-the-author.html">being born</a> is <a href="poetry-time.html">something</a> like one in 10<sup>2,685,000</sup>. The chances of the guy you stood behind in line <a href="yellow.html">for your coffee</a> this morning? His chance of being born was <a href="dollywood.html">something</a> like one in 10<sup>2,685,000</sup>. The thing is, a number like one in 10<sup>2,685,000</sup> stops meaning so much when we take the number of times such a “rare” event occurs. There are about seven billion (or <math display="inline" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><semantics><mrow><mn>7</mn><mo>×</mo><msup><mn>10</mn><mn>9</mn></msup></mrow><annotation encoding="application/x-tex">7 \times 10^{9}</annotation></semantics></math>) people on Earth—and all of them have that same small chance of one in 10<sup>2,685,000</sup> of being born. And they all were.</p>
<p>It stops seeming so special after thinking about it.</p>
</section>
<section id="cento-or-just-like-everyone-else" class="level3">
<h3><em>Cento</em>, or <em>just like everyone else</em></h3>
<p><em>Cento</em> is Latin, stolen from the Greek κέντρόνη, which means “patchwork garment.” A <em>cento</em> is a poem composed completely from parts of other poems, a mash-up that makes up for its lack of originality in utterance with a novelty in arrangement.</p>
<p>If we apply the <em>cento</em> to biology, we can win back some of that uniqueness, we can resolve some of that paradox of the <em>hapax legomenon</em>. Sure, <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes+1%3A9&version=NIV">nothing is new under the sun</a>, but it can be made new if we say it differently, or if we put it next to something it hasn’t met before. We can become hosts to the parties of our lives, and rub elbows with the same tired celebrities everyone’s rubbed elbows with, but make it different. Because <em>we</em> put the <a href="call-me-aural-pleasure.html">tables on roller skates</a>. Because <em>we</em> told <a href="creation-myth.html">the joke</a> this time with a Rabbi. Because <em>we</em> are special <a href="snow.html">snowflakes</a>, and it doesn’t matter that there’s more of us than there is sand on the beaches at Normandy. Because <em>we</em> are still all different somehow.</p>
</section>
<section id="on-n-grams" class="level3">
<h3>On <em>n</em>-grams</h3>
<p>What we have so far: - A <em>hapax legomenon</em> technically refers only to <em>one word</em> in a corpus. - A <em>cento</em> technically refers to a poem with <em>whole phrases</em> taken from others, patchwork-style.</p>
<p>These concepts get more interesting as we play with their scopes. To do that, we need to take a look at the <em>n</em>-gram.</p>
<p>In linguistics and computational probability, an <em>n</em>-gram is a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-gram">contiguous system of <em>n</em> items from a given sequence of text or speech</a>. By looking at <em>n</em>-grams, linguists can look at deeper trends in language than with single words alone<a href="#fn2" class="footnoteRef" id="fnref2"><sup>2</sup></a>. <em>N</em>-grams are also incredibly useful in natural language processing—for example, they’re how your phone can guess what you’re going to <a href="mountain.html">text your mom</a> next<a href="#fn3" class="footnoteRef" id="fnref3"><sup>3</sup></a>. They’re also the key to fully reconciling the <em>hapax legomenon</em> and the <em>cento</em>.</p>
<p>If the definition of <em>hapax legomena</em> is expanded to include <em>n</em>-grams of arbitrary lengths, including full utterances, complete poems, or the <a href="http://shakespeare.mit.edu/">collected works of, say, Shakespeare</a>, then we can say that all writing is a <em>hapax legomenon</em>, because no one else has said the <a href="http://www.thisdayinquotes.com/2011/07/poetry-best-words-in-best-order.html">same words in the same order</a>. In short, everything written or in existence is individual. Everything is differentiated. Everything is an <a href="island.html">island</a>.</p>
<p>If the definition of what comprises a <em>cento</em> is minimized to individual trigrams, bigrams, or even unigrams (individual words), or even parts of words, we arrive again at Solomon’s lament: that no writing is original; that every utterance has, in some <a href="howtoread.html">scrambled</a> way at least, been uttered before. To put it another way, <a href="no-nothing.html">nothing</a> is individual. We’re stranded <a href="riptide_memory.html">afloat on an ocean</a> of language we did nothing to create, and the best we can hope to accomplish is to find some combination of flotsam and jetsam that hasn’t been put together too many times before.</p>
<p>This project, <em>Autocento of the breakfast table</em>, works within the tension caused by <em>hapax legomena</em> and <em>centi</em>, between the first and last half of the statement <em>we are all unique, just like everyone else</em>.</p>
</section>
</section>
<section id="process" class="level2">
<h2>Process</h2>
<p>In compiling this text, I’ve pulled from a few different projects:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="elegyforanalternateself.html">Elegies for alternate selves</a></li>
<li><a href="prelude.html">The book of Hezekiah</a></li>
<li><a href="table_contents.html">Stark raving</a></li>
<li><a href="art.html">Buildings out of air</a></li>
</ul>
<p>as well as <a href="last-passenger.html">new poems</a>, written quite recently. As I’ve compiled them into this project, I’ve linked them together based on common images or language, disregarding the order of their compositions. What I hope to have accomplished with this hypertext is an approximation of my self as it’s evolved, but <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJjcF2DmFFY">all at one time</a>. Ultimately, <em>Autocento of the breakfast table</em> is a <a href="building.html">long-exposure photograph</a> of my mind.</p>
<section id="a-note-on-terminology" class="level3">
<h3>A note on terminology</h3>
<p><em>Autocento of the breakfast table</em> comprises work of multiple genres, including prose, verse, tables, lists, and hybrid forms. Because of this, and because of my own personal hang-ups with terms like <a href="on-genre-dimension.html"><em>poem</em></a> applying to works that aren’t verse (and even some that are<a href="#fn4" class="footnoteRef" id="fnref4"><sup>4</sup></a>), <em>piece</em> applying to anything, really (it’s just annoying, in my opinion—a piece of what?), I’ve needed to find another word to refer to all the <em>stuff</em> in this project. While the terms “literary object” and “intertext,” à la Kristeva et al., more fully describe the things I’ve been writing and linking in this text, I’m worried that these terms are either too long or too esoteric for me to refer to them consistently when talking about my work. I believe I’ve found a solution in the term <em>page</em>, as in a page or <a href="leaf.html">leaf</a> of a book, or a page on a website. After all, the term <em>page</em> is accurate as it refers to the objects herein–each one is a page—and it’s short and unassuming. But it’s probably pretty pretentious, too.</p>
</section>
<section id="the-inevitable-creep-of-technology" class="level3">
<h3>The inevitable creep of technology</h3>
<p>Because this project lives online (welcome to the Internet!), I’ve used a fair amount of technology to get it there.</p>
<p>First, I typed all of the objects present into a human-readable markup format called <a href="http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/">Markdown</a> by John Gruber, using a plain-text editor called <a href="http://www.vim.org">Vim</a>.<a href="#fn5" class="footnoteRef" id="fnref5"><sup>5</sup></a> Markdown is a plain-text format that uses unobtrusive mark-up to signal semantic meaning around a text. A text written with markup can then be passed to a compiler, such as John Gruber’s <code>Markdown.pl</code> script, to turn it into functioning HTML for viewing in a browser.</p>
<p>As an example, here’s the previous paragraph as I typed it:</p>
<pre class="sourceCode markdown"><code class="sourceCode markdown">First, I typed all of the objects present into a human-readable markup format
called <span class="ot">[Markdown][] </span>by John Gruber, using a plain-text editor called <span class="ot">[Vim][]</span>.
<span class="ot">[^5]</span> Markdown is a plain-text format that uses unobtrusive mark-up to signal
semantic meaning around a text. A text written with markup can then be passed
to a compiler, such as John Gruber's original Markdown.pl script, to turn it
into functioning HTML for viewing in a browser.
<span class="ot">[Markdown]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/</span>
<span class="ot">[Vim]: http://www.vim.org</span>
<span class="ot">[^5]</span>: I could've used any text editor for the composition step, including
Notepad, but I personally like Vim for its extensibility, composability,
and honestly its colorschemes.</code></pre>
<p>And here it is as a compiled HTML file:</p>
<pre class="sourceCode html"><code class="sourceCode html"><span class="kw"><p></span>
First, I typed all of the objects present into a human-readable markup format
called <span class="kw"><a</span><span class="ot"> href=</span><span class="st">"http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/"</span><span class="kw">></span>Markdown<span class="kw"></a></span>
by John Gruber, using a plain-text editor called <span class="kw"><a</span><span class="ot"> href=</span><span class="st">"http://www.vim.org"</span><span class="kw">></span>
Vim<span class="kw"></a></span>. <span class="kw"><a</span><span class="ot"> href=</span><span class="st">"#fn1"</span><span class="ot"> class=</span><span class="st">"footnoteRef"</span><span class="ot"> id=</span><span class="st">"fnref1"</span><span class="kw">></span> <span class="kw"><sup></span>1<span class="kw"></sup></a></span>
Markdown is a plain-text format that uses unobtrusive mark-up to signal
semantic meaning around a text. A text written with markup can then be passed
to a compiler, such as John Gruber's original Markdown.pl script, to turn it
into functioning HTML for viewing in a browser.
<span class="kw"></p></span>
<span class="kw"><section</span><span class="ot"> class=</span><span class="st">"footnotes"</span><span class="kw">></span>
<span class="kw"><hr</span> <span class="kw">/></span>
<span class="kw"><ol></span>
<span class="kw"><li</span><span class="ot"> id=</span><span class="st">"fn1"</span><span class="kw">></span>
<span class="kw"><p></span>
I could've used any text editor for the composition step, including
Notepad, but I personally like Vim for its extensibility, composability,
and honestly its colorschemes.
<span class="kw"><a</span><span class="ot"> href=</span><span class="st">"#fnref1"</span><span class="kw">></span>↩<span class="kw"></a></span>
<span class="kw"></p></span>
<span class="kw"></li></span>
<span class="kw"></ol></span>
<span class="kw"></section></span></code></pre>
<p>For these files, I opted to use John McFarlane’s <a href="http://johnmcfarlane.net/pandoc/">pandoc</a> over the original <code>Markdown.pl</code> compiler, because it’s more consistent with edge cases in formatting, and because it can compile the Markdown source into a wide variety of different formats, including DOCX, ODT, PDF, HTML, and others. I use an <a href="https://github.com/duckwork/autocento/blob/gh-pages/template.html">HTML template</a> for <code>pandoc</code> to correctly typeset each object in the web browser. The compiled HTML pages are what you’re reading now.</p>
<p>Since typing <code>pandoc [file].txt -t html5 --template=_template.html --filter=trunk/versify.exe --smart --mathml --section-divs -o [file].html</code> over 130 times is highly tedious, I’ve written a <a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/make/">GNU</a> <a href="https://github.com/duckwork/autocento/blob/gh-pages/makefile">Makefile</a> that automates the process. In addition to compiling the HTML files for this project, the Makefile also compiles each page’s backlinks (accessible through the φ link at the bottom of each page), and the indexes of <a href="first-lines.html">first lines</a>, <a href="common-titles.html">common titles</a>, and <a href="hapx.html"><em>hapax legomena</em></a> of this project.</p>
<p>Finally, this project needs to enter the realm of the Internet. To do this, I use <a href="https://github.com">Github</a>, an online code-collaboration tool that uses the version-control system <a href="http://www.git-scm.com">git</a> under the hood. <code>git</code> was originally written to keep track of the source code of the <a href="http://www.linux.org">Linux</a> kernel.<a href="#fn6" class="footnoteRef" id="fnref6"><sup>6</sup></a> I use it to keep track of the revisions of the text files in <em>Autocento of the breakfast table</em>, which means that you, dear Reader, can explore the path of my revision even more deeply by viewing the <a href="https://github.com/duckwork/autocento">Github repository</a> for this project online.</p>
<p>For more information on the process I took while compiling <em>Autocento of the breakfast table</em>, see my <a href="process.html">Process</a> page.</p>
</section>
<section id="motivation" class="level3">
<h3>Motivation</h3>
<p>Although <code>git</code> and the other tools I use were developed or are mostly used by programmers, engineers, or other kinds of scientists, they’re useful in creative writing as well for a few different reasons:</p>
<ol type="1">
<li><strong>Facilitation of revision.</strong> By using a VCS like <code>git</code> and plain text files, I can revise a poem (for example, “<a href="and.html">And</a>”) and keep both the current version and a <a href="https://github.com/duckwork/autocento/commit/61baf210a9d0d4fffcd82751ba3419dd2feb349d#diff-8814290de165531212020a537e341e44">much older one</a>. This lets me hold onto every idea I’ve had, and “throw things away” without <em>actually</em> throwing them away. They’re still there, somewhere, in the source tree.</li>
<li><strong>Future proofness.</strong> By using a simple text editor to write out my files instead of a proprietary word processor, I’ve ensured that no matter what may happen to the stocks of Microsoft, Apple, or Google in the following hundred years, my words will stay accessible and editable. Also, I don’t know how to insert links in Word.</li>
<li><strong>Philosophy of intellectual property.</strong> I use open-source, or libre, tools like <code>vim</code>, <code>pandoc</code>, and <code>make</code> because information should be free. This is also the reason why I’m releasing <em>Autocento of the breakfast table</em> under a Creative Commons <a href="license.html">license</a>.</li>
</ol>
</section>
</section>
<section id="autocento-of-the-breakfast-table-and-you" class="level2">
<h2><em>Autocento of the breakfast table</em> and you</h2>
<section id="using-this-site" class="level3">
<h3>Using this site</h3>
<p>Since all of the objects in this project are linked, you can begin from, say, <a href="in-bed.html">here</a> and follow the links through everything. But if you find yourself lost as in a funhouse maze, looping around and around to the same stupid <a href="dollywood.html">fountain</a> at the entrance, here are a few tips:</p>
<ul>
<li>The ξ link at the bottom of each page leads to a random article.</li>
<li>The φ link at the bottom of each page leads to its back-link page, which lists the titles of pages that link back to the page you were just on.</li>
<li>Finally, if you’re really desperate, the ◊ link sends you back to the <a href="index.html">cover page</a>, where you can start over. The cover page links you to the <a href="_toc.html">table of contents</a>, as well as the indexes of <a href="first-lines.html">first lines</a>, <a href="common-titles.html">common titles</a>, and <a href="hapax.html"><em>hapax legomena</em></a>.</li>
</ul>
</section>
<section id="contact-me" class="level3">
<h3>Contact me</h3>
<p>If you’d like to contact me about the state of this work, its history, or its future; or about my writing in general, email me at <script type="text/javascript">
<!--
h='gmail.com';a='@';n='case.duckworth+autocento';e=n+a+h;
document.write('<a h'+'ref'+'="ma'+'ilto'+':'+e+'" clas'+'s="em' + 'ail">'+'case dot duckworth plus autocento at gmail dot com'+'<\/'+'a'+'>');
// -->
</script><noscript>case dot duckworth plus autocento at gmail dot com (case.duckworth+autocento at gmail dot com)</noscript>.</p>
</section>
</section>
<section class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn1"><p>Which apparently, though not really surprisingly given the nature of the Internet, has its roots in <a href="http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/abinazir/2011/06/15/what-are-chances-you-would-be-born/">this</a> blog post.<a href="#fnref1">↩</a></p></li>
<li id="fn2"><p>For more fun with <em>n</em>-grams, I recommend the curious reader to point their browsers to the <a href="https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=technically+refers&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1600&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t4%3B%2Ctechnically%20refers%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Btechnically%20refers%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BTechnically%20refers%3B%2Cc0">Google Ngram Viewer</a>, which searches “lots of books” from most of history that matters.<a href="#fnref2">↩</a></p></li>
<li id="fn3"><p>For fun, try only typing with the suggested words for a while. At least for me, they start repeating “I’ll be a bar of the new York NY and I can be a bar of the new York NY and I can.”<a href="#fnref3">↩</a></p></li>
<li id="fn4"><p>For more discussion of this subject, see “<a href="arspoetica.html">Ars poetica</a>,” “<a href="howtoread.html">How to read this</a>,” “<a href="manifesto_poetics.html">A manifesto of poetics</a>,” “<a href="onformalpoetry.html">On formal poetry</a>,” and <a href="statements-frag.html#declaration-of-poetry">The third section</a> of “Statements: a fragment.”<a href="#fnref4">↩</a></p></li>
<li id="fn5"><p>I could’ve used any text editor for the composition step, including Notepad, but I personally like Vim for its extensibility, composability, and honestly its colorschemes.<a href="#fnref5">↩</a></p></li>
<li id="fn6"><p>As it happens, the week I’m writing this (6 April 2015) is <code>git</code>’s tenth anniversary. The folks at Atlassian have made an <a href="https://www.atlassian.com/git/articles/10-years-of-git/">interactive timeline</a> for the occasion, and Linux.com has an interesting <a href="http://www.linux.com/news/featured-blogs/185-jennifer-cloer/821541-10-years-of-git-an-interview-with-git-creator-linus-torvalds">interview with Linus Torvalds</a>, <code>git</code>’s creator.<a href="#fnref6">↩</a></p></li>
</ol>
</section>
</section>
</article>
<nav>
<div class="anchors">
<a href="backlinks/about.html" id="backlinks" title="Links to this page">
φ
</a>
<a href="index.html" id="coverlink" title="To cover">◊</a>
<a href="#" id="randomizelink" title="ERROR">ξ</a>
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