how best to approach the enterTEXT? indeed, the points of entry are both numerous and ill-defined, making one's foray into the online journal both alienation and adventure in the same click. some might find the best way into this space to be the front door, maintaining the vestigial "a to b to c" logics of our (im)print(ed) culture and approaching the journal-space's contents sequentially. in such a way, one ENTERS the text. . .

but let us not forget that these individual texts find traces of themselves within one another--for as beowulf phenomenologically experiences himself mesmerized by the crudely drawn antics of a cynical beatnik bird slathered in breast-enhancing salve , a tear forms from the fire of his eye. what are we to make of this indecipherable sign? a sense of anguished nostalgia for an old order of things which has finally crumbled? joy felt for the liberation of ideas, when things twist and entangle and fold in upon themselves and bleed into each other? a necessary cultural effect of our ceaseless interaction with the screen--a simple case of eyestrain? here we find another way one approaches ENTERtext--in terms of its hypertextuality. if i may be permitted to adopt an outdated postmodern parlance, we cannot deny that these small statements are all part of a much larger conversation involving academics, intellegentsia, and curious human beings spanning heights, depths, breadths, and temporalities. the summation of work that seeks to make sense of our culture, our very existence, comprises one big INTERtext, of which these few works are but a part. . .

whether one submits a work to ENTERtext (at which point one enters the TEXT) or provides commentary/feedback on a discrete unit therein (here, one enters a TEXT by ENTER-ing a "text"), a curious responsibility is taken on. armed with the premise that language IS when it is in USE, we feel the static text, the text of the print-age, is no longer in an authoritative position to dispense truth (or "truth" or Truth, etc.). To put it simply, we must KILL our texts so that they might LIVE. this is the final aim of ENTERtext--to energize the written word, to have it evolve in real time and become an organic, mutable thing. this WORLD (and the collection of texts within it) shifts--making sense of it should itself involve such shifts.

sometimes the best way to get where we're going is to get lost along the way. . .

ben mccorkle, co-editor