Twelve Blue

     Twelve Blue", the hypertext fiction writing of Micheal Joyce, has to be one of the most interesting pieces of literature I've come across. Being a newcomer when it comes to learning about electronic literature, the entire experience when delving into the logistics of "e-lit"has still surprisingly left me curious. The new branch of fiction has been almost like a secret phenomena and only a few really know what it consists of. I've barely begun to unwrap the mystery that electronic lit has over me, and it's not necessarily a bad thing either.
     But "Twelve Blue", a long fiction piece in digital form, has left me more confused than when first discovering the world of digital fiction. In a screen of a persistent blue,  the reader is given only what seems like parts of a story or poem and then ended with a hyperlink to send you to different page of the same tenacious blue.If it was a story line, I'm sorry to report that I couldn't pair one sequence with another, but that isn't to say that the words were mediocre, far from. With each segment, I got a nice visual of every piece. One part depicted a male by the name of Ed, imagining himself within the clouds falling into a still pool. The imagery given was pretty to say the least, but then the word clouds was a word that allowed me to click on it to where it then took me to a piece about a girl named Samantha. Samantha and Ed seemed to have no connection, due to how the transition was. Samantha was standing near the shore edge until it morphed into what was described as a carpet. The story twists and turns when you read about a swimmer in the water, Henry, who was made to sound like he and Samantha were connected. It was only until a mother figure is introduced with dialogue, that she mentioned how the earth smelled of blood, that confused me all over again. Just when I thought I was loosely grasping onto the concept, Joyce rips the carpet from beneath me.

There was one excerpt I landed on, that left me when some profound feeling.
 
"Everything can be read, every surface and silence, every breath and every vacancy, every eddy and current, every body and its absence, every darkness every light, each cloud and knife, each finger and tree, every backwater, every crevice and hollow, each nostril, tendril and crescent, every whisper, every whimper, each laugh and every blue feather, each stone, each nipple, every thread every color, each woman and her lover, every man and his mother, every river, each of the twelve blue oceans and the moon, every forlorn link, every hope and every ending, each coincidence, the distant call of a loon, light through the high branches of blue pines, the sigh of rain, every estuary, each gesture at parting, every kiss, each wasp's wing, every foghorn and railway whistle, every shadow, every gasp, each glowing silver screen, every web, the smear of starlight, a fingertip, rose whorl, armpit, pearl, every delight and misgiving, every unadorned wish, every daughter, every death, each woven thing, each machine, every ever after"

Even seeing the word "every" repeated multiple times couldn't distract me from reading it to the very end. The first line hooked me in and I could not stop absorbing both the words and the meaning. Literature can be read, the love between two people can be read, every sensory feeling can be read in all the same way but differently and that's what makes this so unique. It's so different, in multiple ways, and it's a really good start for a newcomer just coming into the world of electronic literature.