Musicality of a whirling fan.
Lyricality of a faucet running.
Night songs.
Lullaby white noise.
A single dog bark.
An æon in a cat’s eye’s
Blinkin’
Winken & Nod
Set out one knight.
By only the light of three moons.
Pyres burning into the misty lake night.
Wooden ships of exposure espied from a tower.
Bring your three medallions.
Leopard Branch grows a summer coat of kudzu,
Not yet claustrophobic
It will not be humid enough.
Not like in Bamaland.
His legs drape mossy of either side of the foreside.
Hips rested just so.
Tail winding round the trunk of his supportive tree.
Head resting.
Possibly but not necessarily asleep.
The cat heaves her bigger sigh.
Looking at the window.
I notice the siren.
She just hears noise pollution.
Suddenly the wails reek like klaxon
Doppleganger effect.
Sound waves flailing over time and space.
Distortion becomes further distorted.
Something or someone near is a gauche.
She puts her nose back to the quilt.
The sun finally met spring in full.
Several day delay after an hour exchange.
Neither seems impressed to see the other.
“Foot-gazing, bird-watcher.” Said spring.
“Overly stylized hipster in faux-cigarette cut denim.” Said sun.
It is diabolical to miss the middle range
In favor of the radicals.
Come slowly.
The parable of the parabola
Is parabolic.
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.
Cicero. Fetch him. Will he read to us, aloud, his Dream of Scipio?
Recall the nightmares of Nebuchadnezzar? His hope for Daniel’s talent?
Recall. He refused to heed the warning this soothsayer pulled.
Recall: The king lost his mind, to a strange psychosis lasting seven years, at which he regained reason.
So where are the temples erected to Aesculapius?
And, who also dreams like pharaoh Thutmose IV?
Hormakhu comes and goes now.
New forms. Uncovered the Sphinx.
Perhaps goddess Safekht took Serapis as hers.
The learned ones of the library of magic.
《《》》
So incubate. Sleep. Dream
Learn.
The Egyptians taught.
Hermes & Moses received. Others too?
Encrypted. Pentaeuch.
《》
Everything is already written in the very measurements of the dimensions of the Temple of Soloman; and even Paracelsus, so long ago, already said: The Earth is a magnetic body.
Concerned with patterns of currents’ change, they replaced menhirs with Gothic cathedrals.
< < > >
Receiver-Transmitter.
Transmitter-Receiver.
Power & Directions
Flow & Tensions
Telluric
< >
Four nights ride at me like knightless horses.
Some of us may be dead.
Do not overreact, we shall (re)enliven to you, the dead.
And, if you feel restless,
Then stand.
And, if it lingers, walk.
But, you must (not) forget your breath.
The Stain of that tree;
the mark of that unknown paw.
Await.
The tug of leash.
Does it follow?
Machen to Helen.
Machen was guide. Weigh Station.
Chhinnamasta calls me fall at her feet.
With my love.
To feed her, so she may feed the mystæ.
Horrendous in image.
But not horrible when properly imagined.
Can you deserve without earning?
Leviathans are understandably underendowed.
Catastrophe revealing atrophy.
Missing. One star. Even though there is a sky full.
I walked through a field of green meadows, last night.
Fields of fantasy and feeling.
And, then again,
the singular black dot.
Tiny spec/k/.
I cannot enlargen it, but I
continue to try.
I did as I have done because the demand
upon me was greater today.
Clothed in bedsheets worn/draped as a
s/ash.
Imagine. Pitter patter. Socks on carpet.
The deer licked the derelict.
Feeling the parsimony of time in mind.
Along.
A long.
A longing.
A precious ore mine.
A veritable land grave possessed
by the fool hanging by one foot.
On a needle & thread.
A slick little number from a favorite of my mine.
I sat awake all night listening to this album at age 17.
Working my tail off to prepare Girl State campaign propaganda. It is a rather eerie patriotic program. Two gals picked from each public and private school in the state.
To this day, I do not know how I was selected. A bit clandestine. I returned from my lunch period (the effing latest one of all— major drag) to find a printed invitation on my desk. I’d ask the Randall family: publishing impresarios. Highest of royalty that I have ever met in the South.
Underdog was my theme. My goal: Sanitation Engineer (garbage pick up, yo).
Hotly uncontested. Responsibilities included: making sure the dorm rooms, where us Girl’s State occupants stayed, received regular trash pick up.
That’s right. I didn’t even pick up. A paid grown up did. So, I spent the days unencumbered. Bored until night fall. A swarm of white moths would descend upon the light outside my window. Dizzying numbers. Vertigo.
My 17 year old self did not micromanage the paid adult. I did put a big black garbage bag, sloppy outside the door of my and dorm mate’s (she was not impressed) suite.
It has a formal sign next to it, bearing Underdog’s image.
It read:
1. Please do not remove; this is not trash.
2. Please file complaints about your garbage service on paper and put in trash bag.
it gained me friends and foes.
we ended up overthrowing the elections through a write-in campaign,
instead of voting for the winners of the primaries, like good gals.
the most qualified candidate for a top position did not make it thru the primaries.
so, we waged a covert campaign. messages were passed through the obnoxious, yet seemingly innocuous garbage bag.
one must not underestimate the aversion most southern ladies experience when it comes to the idea of poking about in a trash bag. even if they knew it is clean. this was a big, industrial bag. you had to shove your head and arms into it to get the paper notes. it sat loose on the ground. no supportive structures to help hold it up while you lean in.
underdogs and insinuations. make change happen.
giggle
Scant and off-standish. I confuse for oscillation.
Busied with nothing, they are.
Ashade & alee, ally & algæ.
Predicated upon such a predicament.
Do what, now…
In/Transitive verbs. Inert momentum gave the other dog the upper leg.
I asked the CAT scan tech:
Can you have electric without magnetic?
Field/ed/ naught.
He grinned; I passed out.
Suzie Q got graham crackers.
She can still write in cursive correct.
They do not teach it anymore.
Skills being disvalued.
After being discounted
Only creating future demand.
We are no orthodox sun-dwellers, dear.
Such is a sweet thrill.
Pity the would-be achievers; they will never enjoy their achievements
Until they learn to love strangers.
My apprehension now apprehended.
Eyes narrowed and lips
Pursed. Spawning focus.
Now, your lips purse, pucker up, as you
Awaken into a dream, falling into sleep.
My sweet Poliphilio.
Your own right hand pressed to your cheek. The scratchy friction of just a bit of beard to the back of your hand.
Your fingers curl slowly.
Except your pointer. It alone rests atop the left shoulder, too.
A top,
The bend of a knuckle, the one next to the nail.
Holding until held.
Pucker ampersand purse. Your lips. Again. Deeper you fall.
Twitching tap of that
Pointer fingertip to clavicle.
Across pectoral, sternum, and pectoral.
I start my next sentence but we idle in the æyther and I recognize.
In our idyll. The approach.
An image, but not one of whom I recognize.
Encircled and fuzzy in capture.
Encapturing the same arm
To the same shoulder.
It will not be long now. This will drop.
My brow and focus unfurrows and
Then uplifts in honest realization and disappointed resignation to the moment.
My eyes no longer two half moons.
Becoming oval saucers.
Serving platters for huge dinner parties,
Big enough to hold the head of John the Baptist (aka the Revelator).
And, at the feast,
I see the eyes and hear the hush of the hushed. They peer in on this meal with faces stoic and smug.
Held in their voluntary vanity
That holds their faces involuntarily so.
I asked the Old Man. The who no one ever done met:
Does your mountain happen to be Sugar or Magic?
He grinned
And asked:
Have you heard of The Mountains of Madness?
I nod. I know. I read and read. Now.
Knotting and loosening.
Hand in hand.
No juxtapositing but aligning and allying periodicities.
The sacrosanct of a reluctant headliner.
He said: now you know a secret; man can fail.
I said: that’s only a revelation to your men.
Morgan saw detail.
Meredith saw the night sky.
Rachel saw in between.
Portrait. Picture perfect.
The braches on boughs broke.
Lying lifeless. Casualties of the white out.
Lost soldiers, abandoned by their unit.
Under the weight they could not withstand.
Only now revealed
Sheets melted.
Perfect circle encircling more circle.
Inside.
There is a blackstone panther, she re-enlivens each night
A path of sprawling
Stalking prowl.
The little girl awaiting her bus told me so.
She tugged my coat and pointed as I passed: I see her at night.
Does she have a name, I ask?
She just nods and waves.
Passing,
I smile and turnaway.
Nor roof top runners.
I went to high school with this blonde
(ed. note: before ‘tuscaloosa’, it was called Druid City. Point in case, the biggest hospital is known formally as DCH- Druid City Hospital. Quite magical considering the Magic City is only 45 min. NE.)
1. Hunter’s father has the sway and motive to save his son and the party to the crime. That is if we/they ever make it to trial. Which is questionable. The state of AL is in shoot first question later mode.2. I will bail from the truck before impact IF impact is inevitable. I have great confidence in my ability to time and gauge this.3. Amy is the only one in the truck I feel loyal obligation to. I fill with dread. We have not spoken in years, and she feels like dead weight that I am responsible for. And I intuit she may feel the same way about my own prescence.
Somehow we avoid crashing.
And look at each other. We did not plan to bail together.
Cut to last night.
pull over and rest.
The disarray outside continues.
Just a tiring, surprisingly self re-affirming dream)
With back straight,
Í asked you, “do you try hard too?”
The snow reduced me to pencil,
#2
Bleeding out my pens proper.
Wondering about that table of six í auto-gratted
in the Tavern five years prior.
My lead cracks.
Mark darker.
And then í find,
one pen left in my fold.
Shortstop
Between run and go.
A dash of dalliance
Unconcerned with with prose that came before
Or wilt
Would be.
Her hands would shake?
Ledges are not only
but also for leaping.
They told me “no.” Which is always within rights, but í was left confused.
Í cannot remember asking anything
Lend a
Hand, right?
Play your vinyl
Remove the album sleeve.
Put your diamond down, glasscutter.
45 rpm.
Morbid effery from the monkeyed,
Landed gentry.
Luxurious as late night coffee with heavy cream.
Laden.
All the crawfish fixing to get boiled.
Cloves of garlic
Resting on claws
Coalescing correlations.
Corrections to iterations
Deshelled and /de/tailed
Consumption.
Silver eyes against armor-alled all red
Whiskers a’faced to
Terraced tails.
Rampant mud and bug
With a dropped bouquet.
The slow crawl of the limited engagement
Leaves above my head.
Shining.
Í will make you look up and remember the sky.
You forget your breath
(Ampersand)
You lose a life.
I forged injunctions
Duplicitous & with steely reinforcement.
Silversmithing.
The pleasure of the written word. Consummate.
The change in our handwriting over time.
Fingering out your new font
Of pen scratch.
Scrawled.
Sprawling.
And my rhythm dictates a tempo for our saraband.
Shorthand.
You should always carry a handkerchief.
Cotton is fine. Print or naught.
It is not you that will use it
Anyhow.
So remove from that top drawer.
Overly ajar.
《》
A black rectangle
Framed in an indigo field. Ræching.
《》
What do we know of destruction?
Or why the paper need be canary.
Elongation in enunciation is
A mispronunciation.
Two blankets for the two ankles outside
Tonight.
Headed stones of fuzzy beasts
Sette
Atop footed cherrywood.
Vascular knotted circuitry
(<subterranean>)
A slip of the hips,
a flick of fingers.
Full affront of the suites
Merely one of a sort of resorts available
To your privy.
The pluck of pages.
Should they dissuade?
Is it prey to the præter-?
They said some really mean things about some really mean people. What do you suppose that means?
Felled and befell.
Sometimes it is hard to tell an l from I from a 1.
But no one ever mentions this.
A notice noticed. Even if misunderstood.
I drank the coffee to stay
Sharp in my sleep.
I sleep with a steno
Padded
Petrified enfossil.
A sordid seizure of a hardened fruit pit.
Dishollowed.
Where countenance meets disposition.
Heavy like
Wet denim.
I shift shoulders,
Crackly, a’tængled.
Naught not knotted.
Capacity and current
Contained by my spine.
Contracting.
Runs amok until
Corrected to both
convex & concave
Context.
Back braced
And arching.
Bending
Bow
To arrow.
Column of my chord.
Given immobility put to good use
In postures
Not posturing.
Posing but no poser.
Calf cramps
Paces inside
In sides.
Sidling as slides.
Sliding the sphere of my cəntər
Recanter.
And əntərs.
My abdomen to
My solar plexus
through
To my head.
Red , Terracotta , orange
Yellow , Green, Indigo.
Amid
White
Black.
All then red.
When cultivating a rose, they account for size, form, color,
Substance
Stem & Foliage
Balance
&
Proportion
(but wə can turn anything into a competition, I’d wager)
An ugly rose?
Hum
Birds and bees do not notice.
Lao Tzu or The American Rose Association Rule Book.
Misnamed. Mislabeled.
!
Dont let the roses pick up on that vibe.
Or the glass embracing it might break.
The rose and the vase.
This translates to a title.
Whirling padded fan blades
Belt around in circles.
Encircling.
Edifying eddies of easy breezes
Above me.
Pink & blue light
Nearly a wishing sky meandering on my wall.
Reflected
Then
Transposed.
Everyday reaching one more yard.
Poised.
Discomposed.
A’teeter
Totter.
Topple.
Someone fell down?
Afront.
In front ampersand behind.
(All a front for)
A’cold
Front
A’coming
Font.
Red rocks the remain
chilled & a’cold
/Des-/In spite constant sunshine.
To spite.
Spritely
Bell Rock
Pealing.
Bells.
Belle appealing.
Upturned. Un toward.
A forward.
A’front.
Word afore
A nameless, unspoken
Fleur
The server dropped the tray of glasses
Right after saying, “Don’t worry I’m a professional.”
Rushy.
Could not out plates down fast enough
Before picking up new ones.
Meritoriously.
Feet bones cracklin
Pork ears
The following morning
IT sent an email.
Meanwhile, the coil leaked.
And my hair sits flat today.
And I smile.
At a memory.
You said noodles used to be tradeable.
(Funk & Wagner photo)
WrittenCasey 