A fragment from Bale v.3.57

A history of Bale has been sufficiently evaded until now, when I, a lone man sitting in front of the comp, should attempt a hasty generalisation. Several hasty looks at the Archive and a good deal of wandering, confused and fearful, has allowed me to write this precis, equally a part of Bale. Again, I reiterate, that Bale is everything, and hence nothing in particular. As an early Scientist said, Bale was a photon, which contains nothing but itself, but then is everything, including itself. Not a single man spends a day without it, it is the matter of several lives. How does a game started by bloggers become so pervasive?

It started predictably enough, a clever variation on the Chinese whisper and the Story game. A blogger, frustrated with fiction and non fiction, and haunted by words in his mind, proposed to write some nonsense and let others continue it. A few decades ago, a writer remarked: Google Random + blog and you will get almost as many results as the number of blogs. The blogger's proposition was nothing new, it held no promise. A few others continued it, until one man used it to sublimate his sexuality. There are blogs with nothing but the names of actors and the names of orgasm. The others were disgusted, and hence enlightened: they still believed the word and the seed to be contrary. A sudden sense of fellow feeling must have then been engendered, still unexpressed in Bale, but by it. The entry was quietly deleted, none complained but masturbator. There were several edits, and incoherencies were patched up. But then again, nothing could possibly smooth the varied rudeness of a few amateurs. Nothing could anticipate the ending, or the beginning of an idea born of chance. This was irrelevant to the Pioneers, and everything to Bale's future. The idea grew, and Grew.

A man posted a limerick, another, a love song. An Indian posted a home video of a birth, and again, the Pioneers were jangled. Bale was not to be the province of the senses, but this was unfair, the Indian countered that it was hardly a mish mash of senses. If Bale was about the inability to control thought, then so was it the inability to control life. The Indian, dimpled and humourous, contributed a review of his video. The video was preferred. Bale would boom soon, thanks to the crying baby amidst the remains of other's thoughts and the shadow of an orgasm.
The beginning has gone too long, but true to myself and true to Bale, I will not edit. I will indecently expose Bale’s influences. Borges, first and foremost, as the lightest and latest symbol of infinitude in the infinitesimal. Then it reminds me of Genji's tale. There was after all, a theory that Bale is a portmanteu of Borges and Genji's tale. There is another, that it started as Blogger's tales, then to Blale, and the world, yearning spacious sounds, turned it to Bale. Like all magnitudes, Bale would be named much later than it existed, and good, because a name is a limitation, as several Balists have declaimed. So beautiful, that none remember why it is really called Bale!

The baby's progress was posted, there were several who wished to tell his story and watch if the first Son would live up( or down) to it. The Pioneers, no longer much heard, objected mildly, they did not want a collected fiction to impinge on an individual's reality. However, there were cries of censorship suddenly, the Pioneers, bewildered and frustrated, let them do the hell they wanted with it. The fateful day, when the blog's password was released (hackers were curiously both protecting and attacking the password, hence facilitating the ceremony), would throw Bale along a thousand (and one) trajectories. A hacker 'confessed' his crime. A defender laughed his claim down. Characteristically ignoring flame wars, the Dreamers continued to nurse Bale. Other technophobes posted mini-Waldens, cyberpunks posted Cyberpunk. A pastiche of Dostoevsky followed, by Dosto (most commanding of all the early presences) and Wilde parodied the parody. The swirling double helix grew and grew and Grew, until Grobes summarised the summaries. The helix threatened to collapse at this point and no posts followed for a long time. A few rules ensued. There were to be no false summaries (the GOTO statement that Dijkstra argued against.). Grobes politely pleaded guilty, and set about implying the summary. Again the rules were thwarted without puncturing Bale's Health.

Grobes led, inevitably, to the first Math: RMnjm suggesting equations and series (but cannily, no sets). RMnjm was bested by Cantor culling out equations to the equations. There were absolutely no complaints this time, a sudden swell in postings, varied and sweaty. They had their greatest critics. The appearance of mathematical rigour to imagination and flesh! The masturbator reappeared, hale and whole, writing of his wife. Forgive this hazy symbolism.
Bale's most beautiful feature, of course, was its polyglot profanation of reality. But even a mess has to cohere, if it is to be appreciated (as in Modern Art). Unsunggenius performed the selfless task. It is remarked that he succumbed to heavy metal poisoning soon after. Bale became a public craze. Not even Unsunggenius could have imagined the reverence he would be dealt with soon after. Critics interpreted him, Newspapers reviewed him. Pioneers rejected him, Dreamers thanked him - in their minds. Some believe that UG did nothing but claim that he had carved Bale, it was enough.

But how was Bale to continue without the Maestro? The coherence, the wealth of circumstantial detail, the brave, soaring expectations of the past, who to provide, who to dream? Bale was discontinued, the several bloggers going on sprees and, scandalously, book tours. All entries were blocked, at least on the official website, and for once, the public was impolite to pastiches like Gale (all girl Bale.). Even the most amnesiac reader ignores a thrice removed creation.
Ingenue , or Sunggenius as he is sometimes satirised, solved the problem. Version 1.2 would follow; him at the helm. Ingenue , as progenitor, followed the mathematical rigour for a year's worth of posts. He would give up soon, anguished by an equally Promethean labour, of trying to weave the imagination of all and none at the same time, before and after it would be imagined and forgotten. Ingenue's brilliant failure was duly spat on and celebrated, Bale's simpler contraries a boring tremor to most by now.

Predictably enough, a few years after all and none had read and reread Bale, genius kissed it the second time: a legion Haikus followed, ostensibly written in the interim (or should I say interregnum?) Night had fallen in Bale, now there were stars. For several years haikus, and short poetry followed (poetry was hardly non existent in Bale, though none understood the nature of Bale and its particular demands on the Flight of Fancy). All could enter in it, patterns would follow, read at your will, constellations would appear, some would fade out. A few schizophrenics honoured Bale naively. They lived it, and Called it Religion. The writer of Haikus is anonymous, and his trail led to an ironic grave.

It has been years now, and my lesser talent forces this minimal summary halfway through Bale's third version, as has happened before. Nothing can rob your innocence like this Phoenix. I have not foresworn the edicts of Bale; there is a wealth of invented detail in this digest. As all imaginations soar, let none intersect: the world has once been invented, let us not invent it again, as the writers of India do, again and again. Perhaps it comes from the proximity to divinity they suffer.