footnotes on my name

淼子尘 iꝬ a deterritorialized pun of my legal Chinese name. it translates roughly to “abyssaling Dustling”. ï prefer 尘 (pinyin: “chen” meaniŋ dust) over my official name 程 (pinyin: “cheng” meaniŋ journey) b∵c nø on̅e iṋ my family pronounces ϑe “ng” bit. ϑe “ch” iṋ pinyin iꝬ pronounced a lot môre like “tz” as well. iṋ south east asia before ϑ’sweeping influence of ϑ’PRC Chinese people originally spoke mostly Hokkien so ϑ’Mandarin ϑey speak comes w/ a heavy accent. ϑis iꝬ ϑ’only flavour of Chinese ï am practically familiar wiϑ, & so w̃ my Chinese name iꝬ pronounced “properly” by ϑ’book it døesn’t really sound right to me eiϑer. ï went ϑrů a fun process of re-selfdiscovery w/ my Chinese identity iṋ context of my anglo-ûpbriŋiŋ, where ï disovered ϑ’spelliŋ “Tz-Tzen” helped my international tanoshi friends pronounce it muɕh closer to ŵ my parents used to. itꝬ pronounced like ϑ’middle of cats ‘n’ dogs. my surname (anglosized as “Leo” here) iꝬ Liau (廖) like meow,. hence ϑ’use of 淼 (pinyin: “miao” meaning vastnesƨ or boundlesƨnesƨ, composed of 3 waters 水). ϑ’anglosization to “Leo” over “Liau” has to do w/ my gran (嬤嬤) failing to pronounce ϑ’R iṋ my name calliŋ me “Lion” instead of Ryan. Lion Meow like ϑ’Zedong. ʃhe makes ã effort. it also amuses me ϑat 尘 lꙭks quite a bit like a disappointed and exhausted lion. me w/ my mane. ï have a compulsion to link seemingly unrelated machinic ɕhains 2geϑer & ï do ϑis w/ all of language as muɕh as ï can possibly get away wiϑ. as “xͤplained” iṋ Deleuze & Guattari’s Anti-Œdipus:

No chain is homogeneous; all of them resemble, rather, a succession of characters from different alphabets in which an ideogram, a pictogram, a tiny image of an elephant passing by, or a rising sun may suddenly make its appearance. In a chain that mixes together phonemes, morphemes, etc., without combining them, papa’s mustache, mama’s upraised arm, a ribbon, a little girl, a cop, a shoe suddenly turn up. Each chain captures fragments of other chains from which it “extracts” a surplus value, just as the orchid code “attracts” the figure of a wasp: both phenomena demonstrate the surplus value of a code. […] Schizzes have to do with heterogeneous chains, and as their basic unit use detachable segments or mobile stocks resembling building blocks or flying bricks. We must conceive of each brick as having been launched from a distance and as being composed of heterogeneous elements: containing within it not only an inscription with signs from different alphabets, but also various figures, plus one or several straws, and perhaps a corpse.”⠀⠀