There is the window.
There is the empty tub.
Here is the towel rack; and,
on that hook is a robe hung.
Hanged.
The robbery of the spirit was abetted by the victim.
No one to blame, so
don’t take it personally.
Take a person-ally, one who will sing the body electric; and,
hold them dear even when they diss-appear
like leaves of grass
under winter’s precipitation.
Like snow, so heavy, ceaselessly falls,
a voice sings, “I will bury you all.”
Wolf People.
“It is the silent transmission of sexual energy in polarity that vibrates the Word in Silence, and that Word is a S(word) that cleaves the Abyss
and it is heard of No-One.”
~ Nightside of Eden. Kenneth Grant.
The chill in the air smells like the last time I fell in love.
Knitted woolen leg warmers donned. Chestnut brown and unraveling from overuse.
My sister gave me three pairs, last year.
“You want, like, Flash Dance legwarmers for your birthday?” she asked.
“Yeah, I am standing on my toes these days.”
An hour ’til I walk to the restaurant.An hour of coffee, words, and nicotine.
I will pluck my heavy comforter (trans. duvet) from storage after work.
⊙
I seat a one top.
Coffee?: I ask
I insist on it: he says.
We have that in common.
No cream. Bring white sugar if you have it: he says.
White sugar?: I think.
Kat, do we have white sugar already on the table?: I ask, unsure what white sugar means.
Bleached sugar, you mean?: she asks.
Smiling, I say: dunno. He wants white sugar. Those words.
Well, we have raw sugar, nutrisweet, sweat n’ low, and truevia in packets on the tables. We have Splenda packets here, just in case. Brown sugar for breakfast…:
The dishwasher (who provided his own sobriquet [call me MC BlackCoffee: he told me, when I first started] ) interrupts her.
He wants this: he says, holding a shaker the size of two coffee cups stacked on top of each other.
What kind of sugar do you call this: I ask him.
The good kind: he says.
We need to reevaluate your nickname. Sugared coffee is not black coffee: I tease.
Don’t change the color, does it?: he nods, smiling.
⊙
Server T. touches my shoulder: the guy at table six has a book for you.
Oh, word. I was hoping he would make good: I say.
How do you know him? He wasn’t sure if you were the right person. Plus, you just seated him.: he says confused and a bit irritated I had let one guy sit at his four top.
I don’t know him. I didn’t recognize him: I reply.
He shrugs. I smile.
Two nights ago, I discovered this server knew philosophy as well as, if not better than, me. And, he discovered a coworker that could keep up with him. We had discussed the very book table six has brought me. He seemed happy.
~
I met table six when he came in for breakfast a few days before. I noticed him reading a Martin Gardner book.
I dig that guy: I say.
This seventyish year old man looked up at me. I recall one eye not opening all the way, although both eyes appear open today.
I found Hofstadter, Penrose, and Feynman through him: I say.
He stared at me.
He wants to be left alone: I think.
I walk away, after offering: I’ll leave you to enjoy.
As he left, he stopped by my hostess post and asked: how did someone your age find out about these guys.
Well, I was ten years younger in Alabama selling collegiate clothing in a boutique and I got very bored.
~
I go up to table six. He has brought me his second copy of Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, thoughtfully wrapped in plastic as it rains heavy. This was a gateway book for me and I lost my copy during my move from AL to WA. I am thrilled a copy has found it’s way back to me.
What kind of restaurant is this? You and my server is a philosophy graduate.: he says, looking quite serious.
One that is open to hiring ex-academic flaneurs: I joke.
I have him sign and date the book.
By the way, your server is also a third degree black belt: I mention.
~
Server T says: Don’t you think it’s funny we were just talking about that book the other night?
Ha, I am surprisingly unsurprised. Things like this happen a lot to people like us, don’t you think?: I respond.
Well, I think there would be some observer bias in such a thought: he says, quite rightly.
But, observer bias is unavoidable by definition because we are observers at every moment. What are your thoughts on metaphysics?: I push him.
I try to avoid metaphysics. Too messy.: he says, walking away.
Yeah, yeah. That’s what all you philosophers say these days. Too messy and too close to mysticism: I call out as much to myself as to him.
Because we are perceivers, that is why?
There is only causation because we create it?
We created the Why?
⊙
We have an inborn propensity to see causation. We attribute our perceptions to external causes, but some perceptual representations are internal, for instance, optical illusions.
[Consciousness] is an evolved user-illusion, a system of virtual machines.
David C. Dennett. The Evolution of Minds: from bacteria to Bach. 2017
⊙
The voice of knowledge wants to know what everything means, to interpret everything that happens in our lives.
DM Ruiz & DJ Ruiz. 2010, p124 & 13. ISBN 978-1-878424-61-7
I’m a bulldog for R.E.M being recognized for the amazing punks they are.
Southern Gothic Punk.
The album Monster turned 25 years old the other day.
What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?
/I was brain-dead, locked out, numb, not up to speed
I thought I’d pegged you an idiot’s dream…/
Yeah, /I never understood tha frequency (uh hum)/ either.
/Richard said, “Withdrawal in disgust is not the same as apathy”…
I couldn’t understand/
‘Til recently.
Well, the last time I saw Richard was Detroit in ’68.
And he told me: all romantics meet the same fate.
⊙
What’s the Frequency, Kenneth? Remaster. Given as a present to listeners,
along with a delightful, contextualization presented by original and remaster producer Scott Linn.
He wanted “to take another crack at it.”
I dig both.
⊙
Re: Strange Currencies
David Foster Wallace really dug it during one particular book tour.
Read all about from the words of (a very thoughtful) other.
I.e. read it in many fewer words than DFW would have described it in, with hardly any footnotes. Giggle.
This particular anecdote is my favorite from the entire book.
/I don’t know why you’re mean to me./
/The fool might be my middle name./
/Take you there and make you mine./
/These words will be mine./
/I tripped and fell./
/I wanna feel it now./
/You know with love comes strange currencies; and here is my appeal:
I need a chance. A second chance. A third chance. A fourth chance…
[Insert magical, hard to decipher words here]
To catch myself and make it real./
¤
My ecstasy has indicated I was “born of the ‘Heart’s Affliction.’ “
I found my “way to that spot where they, ‘scarcely move, yet seem to run’ “.
“Having become one with The Way,” I have just come to Tao.
I “discover that the shifting scenes of the world [I] had though so real, will pass [me] by as a pageant until the Vision of the Grail itself is presented to their pure Understanding.” But howl surprised was I to see both you and I.
I fear I believe that all that is written above has occured to me again and again.
I simply continue for long enough to forget and remember it all over again.
A chALice emptied and refilled.
My heart “learned to beat in time and tune with the Soul of the World.”
Rhythm and vibrations are everything we think we know. What is rhythm but
a wave? A wavelength. An S rotated 90% and crossing an axis. Periodicity of the pendulous arm’s swings.
Rhythm is the steady crashing of waves falling.
The entire ocean is every wave.
¤
I feel my being “to be a highly strung musical instrument.”
Fret awaiting fretting. Tuned to the proper tone to be strummed and plucked upon.
A fitt “burn[s] up the veils which hide [me] from Myself.”
It reveals you. A familiar stranger.
Strum me.
“Will runs over [my] strings” and I come to know how to reveal how it is “causing complete and harmonious vibrations.” Do you choose to experience this in your own being? Show me the “unformulated but delightful melody” that is the same song Whitman sang.
The Song of Myself.
I will dance to your song simply because you choose to perform it for me.
I will conduct your currents as you emit them.
I will empty you to refill you.
I am an empty plenum. I contain everything in my nothingness.
I know not the rituals. Yet still I seek to continually “unite the mind to some pure idea by an act of will.” This is the brick wall against which I slam my head “again and again.” The wall where you found me bleeding and dizzy, next to the eggshell pieces of Humpty Dumpty. Alice remembers her name again.
I know not the “Way of Holiness.” I may not impress upon the consciousness of your onlookers.
No-One is the only one that looks upon me thusly.
I am a pure Fool, ignorant and earnest. Before that I was a dummy. I could not speak. I have always been an idiotē.
I have always been the unaffiliated Maverick roaming through the initiated herds, admiring the brands, the symbols emblazoned upon their skin.
My skin is marred by time and circumstance.
My skin is completely unmarked.
Canvas.
¤
“ “There is a Swan whose name is Ecstasy.” “
Also known as you and I.
I “ “wingeth through the blue” and at “[my] coming they push forth the green” “ because I bring spring.
I herald an easter Sunday for your tired soul.
You shot me down from the sky.
And, you did it by virtue of No-One’s weapon but your own.
A Happy Death for me. A Swan’s life born anew in you.
“ “In all the Universe [a] Swan alone in motionlessness, it seems to move as the Sun seems to move; such is the weakness of sight.” “
“ “O fool!”…”Motion is relative; there is nothing that is still.” “ Let me shoot my arrow at you this time. From your “ “ [feathered] breast poured forth blood” “ and I felt ecstatic and you discovered ichor. Now, let me ecstatically enrapture you until your veins flow with it so richly as to sustain this demiurge. You are no longer a Pure Fool because you know. The men that smote you last time will not let you pass again. But, I can sneak you through the gate. Folly is my protector. Let me use it for the protection of the soul of another.
⊙
I am ignorant of the rule and the action taken breaking the rule was kindly intended.
(says the little boy who cried ‘Wolf’)
(says the collective mind who was “just taking orders”)
⊙
Consequences occur regardless of intention.
Risk is underwritten.
In tension, intension.
Suspension of beginning an action and witnessing the resultant reaction and effects of your affect.
I have been called Artemis, Sagittarius (until the stars changed), centaur and satyr.
I read of the marriage of Christian Rosencrutz. Send them my congratulations and best wishes, please.
Where is the Castle and what of the Tower?
“ “By my word, I know you are Parzival-son of Herat’s Affliction” “-and I have recovered the weapon that you flung off after using it to pluck me down from the sky and into the blue lake.
I have discovered-upon that Might of Love which you used to render me slain. You “succeeded where all others had failed,” dear one.
You say you do “now as yet know [t]he True Name-the Word of [Ewer]-Being, though in the past [you had] been called by many names.”
You mention this: “one thing [you] desired to know and to understand. What is the Grail!”
You have already been told that “ “By no one can it be detected Who by itself is not elected.” “
And, you then did “ “Bestride the Bird of Life [because] thou wouldst know.” “
I desire to know if you came to me by slaying me because you wanted to know or because you wanted to know me. And to what end did you intend this knowledge?
The difference between a means to a desired end and being the end desired.
Dis-ingenuity. Do not be disingenuous, sorrel.
It will make it so much worse for you. Through it you turn three pounds of pleasure into three pounds of misery. Should misery please you, you will never be miserable again, if you act duplicitously or maliciously.
A knight need only be kind. Do not attempt to placate with being nice. Kindness does not impress. It empresses upon. Kindness is a way of being and not an act of valour to be selectively undertaken. Kindness can appear cruel to outsiders.
So, I also ask: are you kind?
I desire to know how you found yourself at the intersection of right now. Face to face with me.
This is the cost of admission. Tell me these things and I shall sneak you through the gate.
I just hope you are as brave as you believe yourself to be. Sometimes it will get dark. You have coronated me a Queen of Magnets. I attract all poles.
Howl I hope it is not just a ceremonial sobriquet, sweet fool.
“We are the ELLIPSE OF THE UNIVERSE.”
Umberto Eco became like a new Hermann Hesse to me, over the last two years.
I have only read Foucault’s Pendulum and On Literature, but these were undertakings filled with amazing rabbit holes.
I recently reread the pages of notes I took from Foucault’s Pendulum. A very hermetic-y work, at least to my unaffiliated eyes.
Here are my favorites.
Believe there is a secret and you will feel like an initiate. It costs nothing…to live as if there were a Plan.
To dismantle the world into two saraband of anagrams.
Le monde est fait pour aboutir a un livre (faux).
Tout se tient.
Books of diabolicals must not innovate.
Yearning for mystery. Initiation is learning never to stop.
The most powerful secret is a secret without content.
Eclecticism is self-defeating not because there is only one direction in which it is useful to move, but because there are so many: it is necessary to choose.
THE INTERPRETATION OF CULTURES: Selected Essays. Geertz, Clifford. Basic Books, Inc., Publishers. New York, 1973.
Music does not consist in those purely intellectual oscillations and figurations which we have abstracted from it.
Its pleasure consists in its sensuous character.
In the outpouring of breath.
In the beating of time.
Certainly, the spirit is the main thing.
The invention of new instruments,
altering old ones.
The introduction of new keys.
New rules, taboos, regarding construction and harmony, are always mere gestures and superficialities, as our the fashions of nations.
-Hermann Hesse
The poetics of “defamiliarization”
Representing something in such a way that one feels as if one were seeing it for the first time, thus making the perception of the object difficult for the reader.
“Ratios of revision”
“Nonextraneity of structure in art.”
extraneous: irrelevant or unrelated to the subject/of external origin (Concise OED, 2008)
Structure of words in a poem/story become art in that they are a looking-glass house, a skeleton key, a scaffold.
An example of the aesthetics of structure creating art in unexpected places. Like the table of contents of a book on aesthetics.
Luigi Pareyson’s Aesthetics (Milan: Bompiani, 1988)
Section 3 of Chapter 3 is titled: “The parts of the Whole”
Chapter 3 is titled: “Completeness of the work of art”
subsection 10 of Chapter 3 Section 3 is entitled: “The essential nature of each part: structure, stopgaps, imperfections.
“In this sense the relation that the parts have among themselves do nothing but reflect the relation that each part has with the whole: the harmony of the parts forms the whole because the whole forms their unity.“
As regards “stopgaps in literature”:
“It can be a banal opening, which can be useful for finding a sublime ending.”
As is a practice, I flipped through a book snapped from the shelf at random.
There was a metro ticket from a trip taken.
It fell before the start of this reading.
It fell at the end of the other reading included.
As an investigator of method, Tao, mysticism, I found it of interest. Surprise, right? Giggle.
A couple of extra quotes from different readings included below.
The gate keeper in the capital city of Sung became such an expert mourner after his father’s death, and so emaciated himself with fasts and austerities, that he was promoted to high rank in order that he might serve as a model of ritual observance.
As a result of this, his imitators so deprived themselves that half of them died. The others were not promoted.
The purpose of a fish trap is to catch fish, and when the fish are caught, the trap is forgotten.
The purpose of the rabbit snare is to catch rabbits. When the rabbits are caught, the snare is forgotten.
The purpose of words is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten.
Where can I find a man who forgotten words? He is the one I would like to talk to.
[xxvi. 11.]
Hui Tzu said to Chuang Tzu:
“All your teaching is centered on what has no use.”
Chuang replied:
“If you have no appreciation for what has no use
You cannot begin to talk about what can be used.
The earth, for example, is broad and vast
But of all this expanse a man uses only a few inches
Upon which he happens to be standing.
Now suppose you suddenly take away
All that he is not actually using
So that, all around his feet a gulf
Yawns, and he stands in the Void,
With nowhere solid except right under
each foot:
How long will be he able to use what he is using?”
Hui Tzu said:
“It would cease to serve any purpose.”
Chuang Tzu concluded:
“This shows
The absolute necessity
Of what has ‘no use.'”
[xxvi. 7.]
The disciple got some supplies,
Traveled seven days and seven nights
Alone,
And came to Lao Tzu.
Lao asked: “Do you come from Keng?”
“Yes,” replied the student.
“Who are all those people you have
brought with you?”
The disciple whirled around to look.
Nobody there. Panic!
Lao said: “Don’t you understand?”
The disciple hung his head. Confusion!
Then a sigh. “Alas, I have forgotten my
answer.”
(More confusion!) “I have also forgotten
my question.”
Lao said: “What are you trying to say?”
The disciple: “When I don’t know,
people treat me like a fool.
When I do know, the knowledge gets me in trouble.
When I fail to do good, I hurt others.
When I do good, I hurt myself.
If I avoid my duty, I am remise,
But if I do it, I am ruined.
How can I get out of these contradictions?
That is what I came to ask you.”
Lao Tzu said: You are trying to sound
The middle of the ocean
With a six foot pole…
You have got lost, and are trying
To find your way back
To your own true self.
You find nothing
But illegible signposts
Pointing in all directions…
If your obstructions
Are on the outside,
Do not attempt
To grasp them one by one
And thrust them away.
Impossible! Learn
To ignore them.
If they are within yourself,
You cannot destroy them piecemeal,
But you can refuse
To let them take effect.
If they are both inside and outside,
Do not try
To hold on to Tao–
Just hope that Tao
Will keep hold of you.”
The disciple asked:
“Is this perfection?”
Lao replied: “Not at all. If you persist in trying
To attain what is never attained
(It is Tao’s gift!)
If you persist in reasonsing
About what cannot be understood,
You will be destroyed
By the very thing you seek.
To know when to stop
To know when you can get no further
By your own action,
this is the right beginning!”
[xxiii. 3-7]
Merton, Thomas. The Way of Chuang Tzu. Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boston & London. 1992.
Copyright 1965 by the Abbey of Gethsemani
“Everything that had belonged to me in these earlier years of my life went from me and became alien and lost to me. I suddenly saw how sad and artificial my life had been during this period. For the loves, friends, habits, and pleasures of these years were discarded like badly fitting clothes. I parted from the without pain and all that remained was to wonder that I could have endured them so long.”
“The lives of ordinary people can be boring, but the activities and destinies of idlers are interesting…I remained apart from ordinary life.”
“I was overwhelmed by an astonishing feeling of happiness, for I suddenly knew what love was. It was not a new feeling but a clarification and confirmation of old premonitions, a return to native country.”
“The most lively young people become the best old people; not the ‘wise’ ones from school.”
“I can’t live and I can’t die. Everything seems meaningless and stupid.”
I once thought to myself, in one of those moments of passing lucidity: Is the point of life to remember how to enjoy breathing? Is it the most basic pleasure?
Breath.
Breathe.
Breather.
Breathers.
Did you know the word “panic” does derive from Pan? Look it up, might be buried deeper than a single dictionary.
Did you know that Freud posited that the idiosyncratic, neuroses afflicting individuals in society are a result of human civilization itself, not some inherent biology deficiency?
Involuntary loss of control over voluntary processes. Inability to breath.
Breathless. Is that not the quintessence of smoking, smoking anything, inhaling anything?
Taking in the air around you seems inane or futile. Breathing reaffirms life.
Music and speech force breath and leave breathless. Breathing through your nose,
closing your throat to prevent air slipping through
renders speechless.
Ineffable
Here are the things I’ve been thinking/reading over the last few years:
iPagan. Edited by Trevor Greenfield, 2018. Textbook for learning organizational & historical of “naturalist” sects.
The Glass Bead Game (Master Ludi). Hermann Hesse, 1990. Henry Holt
Foucault’s Pendulum. Umberto Eco, 1988. “A Helen and Kurt Wolff book.”
On Literature. Umberto Eco.
The Confessions of St. Augustine. find the Oxford version. Read it as though your narrator is being completely ironic.
Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling
Kantian Reason
Bertrand Russell’s efforts to formalize systems
Sartre’s Being and Non-Being
Consider: Euclidean/Non-Euclidean Space ; Gödel’s sentence G ; a priori methods formalizing almost axiomatically ; the difference between linear/non-linear equations ; consider the different types of numbers and the number line ; consider the difference between permutations and combinations
Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel. Rebecca Goldstein 2005.
Gödel Escher Bach ; Metamathematical Themas ; Mind’sI. Douglas R. Hofstadter
Gödel’s Proof. Ernest Nagel, James R. Hofstadter, 2001
A Mathematician’s Apology. G.H. Hardy, 1940
Introduction to Logic. Patrick Suppes, 1957
Short Stories: The Circular Ruins (Jorges Borges) ; The Beautiful Dream (Hermann Hesse) ; The Dream of Poliphilius ; The Great God Pan Arthur Machen
Consider and draw the Sephirotic Tree.
Consider the nature of words and language: Use Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements as introduction
Consider Parzifal (A.T. Hatto’s translation of Wolfram Von Eschenbach)
Danse Macabre. Stephen King.
Plato-Socrates: The Apology, Phaedo, Swan’s Song,
Random Rabbit Holes: the concept of godess/godheads, female and male sexuality/Hesperus is Phosphorus/a book’s copyright page, Odysseus, Ajax.
The Ecstasy Beyond Knowing: A Manual of Meditation. Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, 2014.
The most interesting question that comes from all this reading, in my opinion: What is the subliminal symbolism of sexuality?
By pity guided,
The guileless fool;
Wait for him,
My chosen tool.
(The keynote of Parsifal is Ecstasy.)
Parzifal: I scarcely move, Yet I swiftly seem to run
Gurnemanz: my son, thou seest Here SPACE and TIME are ONE.
Parzifal. Wolfram von Eschenbach. Translated by A.T. Hatto
I’m Wolfram von Eschenbach. I’m a bit of a minnesænger.
He saw how Joseph was annealed by the fire…[and] felt the ordeal more than Joseph. P241
Sounded overwrought to me. Then I bothered (sic. concerned) myself with actually looking up
/annealed/
I was being educated on several levels. I first read the sentence such that I thought I knew more than I did. I imagined /annealed/ to be some form of a bow or a kneeling position, a kiss the ring, smell the glove. A posture taken when the situation demands you take yourself seriously. If you can imagine such a thing! Or that you undertake to do something trivial quite meticulously. For the sake of the process itself. By your choice. You take part with and in. Or, when ritual, tradition, culture, bestows us a transcendental catharsis by allowing us to take very specific actions with others undertaking them alongside, as well. A hymn sung by a choir. Suddenly, lighting a candle is holy. Yet, lighters and matches abound. Fire is easy to come by but it was not always so.
Blind spot.
Shocking how much meaning we can contain. There are so many pearls that some readers start arguing over the appraising of an irregular pearl. It is all about finding, examining, analyzing, and drawing conclusions about the relative value. Waiting to find that big money shot pearl. A yup.
“awe, more valuable. made of pearl but unique, collectors edition. Gesture, essence. and articulation.”
“Worthless. It’s shape isn’t paradigmatic of the standard pearl. Misinformed. Monstrous, devalues the other pearls to even be in the same bowl with them.”
Who let the pigs out? Who? Hoo hoo?
Too much monkey business for me. We as a species have moved on. Or did I miss the train and am now out of joint?
The Glass Bead Game: Magister Ludi. 1990. First Owl Books Edition. $18.00 USD/$24.95 Canada. That seems really inexpensive as I think back on it now. At five hundred and fifty eight total pages, it is a trek but no death march. As with any trek, though there will be days. But, then there will really be days! Am I right, a hyuck, hyuck.
The length is not the deterrent. The printing of the book intimidates. At least my copy. That is why I bought it. It looked too heavy for a book that size. A thing that is larger than physics allows but your eyes empirically cannot deny. Your brain’s rational processors will fill in the reasons that ‘you can’t trust your eyes.’
A phone booth and doctor.
A House of Leaves.
A ship ever at sail on a foreign sea, the life of the house mouse lost.
S/he loses their position in the home.
You lose something you did not know could go missing. The notion of home? An ending spoiled. Don’t let the little ones hear. Something you cannot unlearn but surely there is room for doubt and maneuver. Doubt suffers where there is little room
Something you took for granted. Because there is so much to see and so many things vying for the pleasure of your (everone’s) attention at all times. We cannot process the amount of information we physically can conceive us. We get by and brains fill in the blanks. The way you discover your new car’s blind spot.
《《 》》
Crash. Ah, hell.
《《 》》
But what was to be done? Can you judge yourself for not knowing that your vehicle is afflicted with a blind spot? Sure, but where that at? If you want me I’ll be in the bar. Speculating on some dreamy nonsense. The thing you did not see in your rearview & side mirrors (electric-adjustable, I’d wager) as you merged lanes, was, by dint of optical physics, unseeable. You cannot adjust for and account for such a variable.
The publishers did not eff around. There is a deliberate concern for both style and balance in the margin setting and lettering layout. There is room to scrawl. If you are into that sort of thing. I am! The luxury of the thick white broadband’s conjunction into right angles about the four verticies gains further dimensionality by its opposing page.
The reflecting pool in the palm. Narcissus finally went mobile. Each page appears with its predecessor and/or successor in symmetry. Consider the leaf of the sheet itself. Two page numbers and each bearing letter matricies yet on but one page. One page in the book holds two pages. Think about that. There ain’t ya’ll entertained? If that is not magic, then ya’ll doin’ it wrong. I see gods contained and present amongst the multiform streams. IHS Bacchus first. Then as Janus. Holding us in the present, pressed fast between the past and the future tense. So the text on each side of the page gives rise to leaf between your fingers as you turn the page.
Let us say, maybe, five hundred and forty pages are geometrically identical in dimension, same squares, same squares. Matrix array with its vectors contained in those critical margins. Two koi ponds reflected about the same axis of symmetry. Simpatico. The more you read, the more the very confined area with unnecessarily tiny pt. font, single spaced. Tight, trim, orderly. And you are drawn in and held fixed in that little space. Rapt. Enraptured.
And then the ratio expands. The page does not seem so small.
The biggest hinderance to the book’s popularity in America was a poor original cipher of the German language. But translating the lyrical prose of Hesse is probably like trying to translate a Japanese character into ‘the English word for it.’ You can pull it off but the English Equivalence is questionable. Americans are poorly positioned to be strong readers of such heavy, often erudite, ultimately, ironic tomes. We do not get the geographical exposure to other cultures.
Hell, we didn’t get the joke.
It fell for it too! The joke of being so dreadfully stoic that the reader would not dare think you were givin’ a ribbin.’ This is a book; An effing long one; I found all these pearls. I’m rich. Made-man. This is a book of power not jokes for blokes.
Sigh. Now, your cracking me up.
The good news is, if you do ever get the joke, it makes you smile and laugh out loud. Then shake your head. Hold on.
Although, states are arguably the same as little countries.
Foucault’s Pendulum¤ = Asteroid of a book and author and both have coated me in spec(k)s of poussières d’étoiles forever.
Sister star to The Glass Bead Game: Magister Ludi°, at least in my little ol’ heart.
Trine. Zenith. Allegorical Syzygy?
Funny, for sure. Bless him for that because this book was heavy-wading for this gal.
Until,
I hit p.478 and read the text in the pic below. I, literally, Laughed out Loud; I, figuratively, was Rolling on the Floor Laughing.^
Mystical sumption of the syllogism, or modus ponens. But while this gal fumbles with wordsmithing, here are some juicy open secrets to for you more achievement oriented individuals to add to your trove.
Do you see the connection?
¤ Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data [ed. note: open secret x]
Eco, Umberto
[Pendolo di Foucault, English]
Foucault’s pendulum/by Umberto Eco ; translated from the Italian
by William Weaver—Ist ed.
p. cm.
Translation of: Il pendolo di Foucault.
“A Helen and Kurt Wolff book.”
ISBN 0-15-132765-3
PQ4865.C6P4613. 1989
853′.914–dc20. 89-32212
°Originally published under the title of Das Glasperlenspiel by Fretz & Verlag AG Zürich Copyright 1943.
^ Aka 🤣 FKA (original med. f/k/a) ROLF. This note is for my sister, with love.
As I research Parsifal/-zifal, I like to jot unexpected correspondences. Here is one involving the Sufi tradition. The quick quote below is included in a Sufi meditation manual that came into my possession a year and a half ago.
“The radiance of the streamers emanating from the shoulder blades has, when unfolded, often been compared by Sufi’s with a mantle of light. In the Parsifal legends, it was because there were holes in the mantle of Anfortas that the evil forces of the night were able to attack him.” Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan. The Ecstasy Beyond Knowing: A Manual of Meditation. 2014. p47
Anafortas: the wounded Fisher King who guard the Grail at Munsalvaesche.
[Perceval arrives at the Grail Castle, to be greeted by the Fisher King. From a 1330 manuscript of Perceval ou Le Conte du Graal by Chrétien de Troyes, BnF Français 12577, fol. 18v]
Below is the context in which the quote above is presented. The reader is being given meditation methods to enliven these ideas. Parsifal is not mentioned again.
The (life) energy fields includes the electrostatic and electromagnetic fields, the aura, called bioluminescence (light body?), the sonic field, and perhaps fields of other alternate forces (chi force; etheric body, which pulses with your breath; celestial body.) p46
“The energy in the human electromagnetic field flows in manifold ways. You may distinguish [sic. seven total ways including]…..vi) streamers (plumes of energy). ” p46
The concept of energy pluming from your body can be illustrated by:
1) Energy streaming above the head, like the Pentecostal tongues of flame
2) Energy flashing from the temples “as the winged thoughts of Greek Mythology”
3) Energy pluming out from behind the shoulder blades as winglike or cloaklike.
4) Plumes around the temples, included with the wings of the Seraphim.
5) Plumes around the shoulder blades and ankles, as the wings found in images of Hermes or Mercury.
Khan proposes that attributing validity to the existence of such “higher” fields that have so far not yielded to the measurement of science, enables the accounting for some of the uncanny bouts of energy to which contemplatives refer. Examples:
“Actually, we [sic. science & mysticism] have been going along with the assumption that the body emits these fields, but what if the electromagnetic field, in fact, all components of the life field, were the templates, the mold, in which the body is being formed?” p. 47
One related meditation practice is listed among other practices given in this section.
Definition in musical notation.
Too lovely.
WrittenCasey 