HYPERTEXT: Tip-Layering
There are many ways to look at hypertext story and usually the more complex the better the hypertexters like it. I, unfortunately, like things simple and honest; don’t like (feeling as if I’m) being cheated out of story because I’m notoriously on the wrong path.
An image popped into my mind this morning of a raspberry bush, perhaps this came out of my jaunt around the backyard yesterday noting sadly that we should have pruned the peach trees (and the lilacs, the grapes, the everything) in what was considered ‘late winter.’ Then I rambled over to the neighbor’s raspberries which we haven’t really done much with since Andy died. Just as expected, they’d grown wild and freely rooted wherever a cane touched soil. This is natural tip-layering.
From a main cane several branches form to bear fruit. If these branches are not trimmed back at the end of the producing season, they will eventually bow down to touch soil. There they may, with proper conditions, root off the branch and sprout up as new canes.
I’m not sure it’s as complex a system as many hypertexts I’ve read, but I do see the loops that return to the soil or base (of story). Meanwhile, they branch out to form new stories of their own.
Now raspberry bushes can become quite inextricable and unnavigable in time. You can get hung up in their prickers and need to cut your way out. Or you can follow from one branch to another, go underground where the roots are branching out as well.
Or, you can plant and be happy with the simple carrot.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology