The Aleph: Twitter and Gutenberg mashup tribute to Jorge Luis Borges

A neat project by David Hirmes: The Aleph: Infinite Wonder / Infinite Pity. Sentences from Project Gutenberg and Twitter that start with two words: "I saw..."

You can view only Gutenberg, or only Twitter, or mush them both to produce beautiful word salad like this:

I saw wild hands upcast to the gloom above, a shrunken, pallid face, the gleam of snow-white hair. I saw and smelt that they used real powder. I saw the horrible glare of her eyes, but I could not see so much of her as I wished, and I said that I would call again in the morning. I saw her first five years ago at Gerard's; she came from Switzerland, where she had taken refuge. I saw him the other night, and from what he said, and what she says, I can see pretty well how things are going. I saw a picture of @AmalJamal_ on prom night. lol.

The Aleph is a short story by Jorge Luis Borges in which a man is suddenly able to see all things at once. The website's creator David Hirmes explains:

I wanted to present a version of what The Aleph might look like now, designed as an endless stream of descriptive passages pulled from the web. For source texts, I took the complete Project Gutenberg as well as current tweets. I searched for the phrase "I saw." The title of the piece is a reference to the narrator's summing up of the vast whirring world he's seen, one of "infinite wonder and infinite pity".

(HT: @samryan)

• [Rob Beschizza]

  Brilliant

• [Mark Dow]

  The narrator of “Axolotl” (by Julio Cortázar whom Borges published) stares at the axolotl, an amphibian behind glass in an aquarium, until he suddenly discovers that he is the amphibian, looking back at himself.

  “I 
saw
 from
 very
 close 
up 
the 
face
 of
 an 
axolotl 
immobile 
next 
to
 the
 glass.
 No
 transition 
and
 no 
surprise, 
I
 saw
 my 
face
 against
 the 
glass, 
I
 saw 
it
 on 
the outside
 of
 the
 tank, 
I
 saw 
it
 on 
the 
other
 side
 of 
the 
glass.
 Then
 my 
face
 drew 
back 
and 
I
 understood.”

  https://www.msu.edu/user/eisthen/lab/Cortazar.pdf

• [cortazarian]

  Oh this is so beautiful.
  Real Time Aleph – Great :)

• [toobigtofail]

  Great. One more thing to keep me from getting anything done…

  “I saw a bomb guy Sat Night that I think follows me on twitter but my drunk ass wasn’t sure so I didn’t go say hi ..I should’ve tho oh well. I saw many large armies of this, or a closely allied species, in the forest. I saw in your eyes just now that you cared for me, he whispered; oh, my Mary, say that you do! Then he bent down and kissed her. I saw men chopping sawmill logs as I came through that wood. I saw a dime, turned my head and almost hit a lady.”