Divine Encounters

A long day past, starting off around 9:30 AM with an morning shift working until six o'clock, then picking up my fiancée from her new bartending job, a brief sit-down dinner, some to and fro driving to pick up old money, and finally back home around 10 pm. For the time being I'll take a short break, write this post, then get back to reading Rudolf Steiner's Atlantis and Lemuria, which, in its quirky , occult way, is becoming a very fascinating study of the growth of the modern cosmology of UFOs, extraterrestrials, and outer space bugaboos of the imagination. I am not calling this sort of stuff hokey, and not worthy of study, but, quite the opposite, I believe it is highly un-recognized as part of our own modern, imaginative poetics, or language of the cosmos, as well as literature. From the Theosophical movement of Madame Blavatsky and Rudolf Steiner to a modern recent writer like Zecharia Sitchin, or even the supposedly mad Scientologist L. Ron Hubbard, writer of Dianetics -- such writers have absorbed and re-vised the essential tale of a foundation myth in our modern, popular imagination -- developing a new cosmic aetiology or genealogy for the human race (guided by a poetics and vision from outer space). As far back as the classical, medieval and Renaissance periods, and perhaps even up until recent history (and still) writers have invented stories of heritage, empire, and authority drawn from other past, great Empires, such as from Troy to Rome (Aeneid), to England (Geoffrey of Monmouth), or France (Christian de Troyes), or from Charlemagne's Holy Roman Empire (Napoleon or Hitler), or some other great classical hero, or perhaps some old biblical patriarch like Abraham or tribe of Israel, or St. Paul for Catholics--you get the point.

The historical veracity of these tales is questionable, and certainly imaginative at best, but it represents, I believe, a new, albeit common powerful vision adopted by the Imagination (adapted) from the past, to establish a new (or more appropriate) set of images or metaphors for the present, cosmic (or technological) human existence. It sounds rather convoluted when I write it down, but that's because these are just the fresh, immature seeds of thought, not fully developed or matured by an imagination guided by reason. Or maybe I'm just crazy, as my co-workers keep telling me.

The Danse Macabre

Taking a break from reading Gibson's Neuromancer tonight, and continuing to obsess over my literary fascination with paranoid, conspiracy, occult visions in literature and movies, I realized, in the blink of an eye, how much our own lives - as Gerald Alper aptly put it - is filled with the paranoia of everyday life. It is beginning to make more sense as I keep reading literature, or theorists, or the Bible, or other occult or spiritual texts, or watch movies, or television, and, moreover, life is even starting to make sense, or at least unveiling some new plain of existence. Everyone from Lovecraft to Gibson to other great writers have written about nothing other than the struggle in life for meaning, to find, as the Bible says, "our daily bread" or hear "the word of God," figurative language for a central metaphor: that is, partaking of or realizing some greater meaning or inner spiritual code (genius or daemon) to guide our minds through the haze of the paranoia of everyday life (our own fears or delusions) to create a good or moral existence for ourselves in this lonely cosmos. McLuhan said we'd realize this dream through technology, and Frye believed we would find this same thing - the Great Code - manifested in the Bible or literature: something to guide us through the arduous struggle towards a great spiritual restoration or awakening.

For whatever compulsive reason, tonight I went back to re-read my innovative, albeit slipshod paper on the ghost in Hamlet for Shakespeare class last year. I realized while reading it, even then I was struggling to define that same essential pattern, feeling or metaphor in literature that speaks to the archetypal human experience. Before I couldn't explain, secretly to myself, why it is I thought (anathema, no doubt, to most readers) you could teach Shakespeare's Hamlet and Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu in the same imaginative course I had foolishly envisioned teaching in my daydreams. The essential structure, or pattern is there in my paper, though the writing is a bit coarse and garbled as usual, in a metaphorical fashion, describing a very personal, universal human experience - whether felt personally or mythologically - of struggling to exorcise the (devils) anxieties of the paranoia of everyday life to create a greater, spiritual existence in the cosmos for ourselves. Life is just that: struggling with our own senses to find voice (communication) and sustenance (meaning) - to master the Great Code - from within not from some imaginary without--as we usually believe. Now if only I had realized it consciously, and let it guide me, instead of merely letting my unconscious compel me pell-mell to write something (a metaphor) even I did not myself wittingly understand at the time.

Techno-Phobic Vision

Wintermute and the nest. Phobic vision of the hatching wasps, time-lapse machine gun of biology. But weren't the zaibatsus more like that, or the Yakuza, hives with cybernetic memories, vast single organisms, their DNA coded in silicon? If Straylight was an expression of the corporate identity of Tessier-Ashpool, then T-A was crazy as the old man had been. The same ragged tangle of fears, the same strange sense of aimlessness. "If they'd turned into what they wanted to..." he remembered Molly saying. But Wintermute had told her they hadn't.

William Gibson, Neuromancer

Our Atlantean Forefathers

"The water imbibed by the Atlantean acted differently upon the life-force animating his body from what it would in the man of to-day ; and in consequence of this, the Atlantean was able--of his own volition--to use his physical forces in other ways than would be possible now."

--Rudolf Steiner, Atlantis and Lemuria

Yes I'm reading Theosophy again, but this time I'm reading one of the founding members of the Theosophist movement: the Austrian philosopher and writer Rudolf Steiner. I tried reading the first lady of Theosophy, Madame Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine earlier this year, but I got as far as a few pages past her introduction before I had to put it down to finish my proper school readings. Perhaps this summer I'll brave her again, just as I keep saying I'll read Nikos Kazantzakis's The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel to the final page before I am side-tracked with some other literary intrigue. Regardless of the "letter of the law" or true veracity of the Theosophical movement I must admit I've become enamoured with their occult ideas--which began as an extension of my interest in Lovecraft and writing a paper interpreting The Call of Cthulhu based on Marshall McLuhan.

I also picked up, and started reading for my own personal interest, William Gibson's Neuromancer last night. Earlier this week during office hours a professor of mine exhorted me to read it because of my burgeoning interest in Marshall McLuhan, and paranoid visions in literature, in addition to a few other less popular, more occult writers of the last few centuries. Now I know why I'm more sad to leave university soon: some of my professors are awe-inspiring, walking resource libraries of recommendations, and a few, also, share and have been encouraging my own quirky literary interest (as well as prospects for a M.A. thesis) about a welter of later nineteenth, earlier twentieth century occult and weird writers. As one of my professors asserted, few if any people have written about which I'm enamoured, and it's an open field of possibility--open as much to humilitation as discovery!

Cosmic Consciousness

Earlier today I handed in my mini-paper (confined to 2-3 pages) on Northrop Frye's The Great Code--the topic based on a simple, yet elusive question: What is the Great Code?

My response is: here.

I took the odd, perhaps even antiquated approach in contrast to more modern slants--viewing Frye's title 'Great Code', taken from Blake, as a 'cosmic', 'existential' or 'moral' 'code' that is manifested in myths and metaphors, which communicates with and/or guides our Imagination (as well as our general cosmic existence) towards something we might call the good life, that is, moral (or perhaps the word 'ethical' is better) or enlightened being, or better put, a cosmic understanding. The best example of what I mean:

Just as Christ retorted to Satan in the wilderness, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God” (Matt 4:4), Frye states in his introduction:

Man lives, not directly or nakedly like the animals, but within a mythological universe, a body of assumptions and beliefs developed from existential concerns. Most of this is held unconsciously, which means that our imaginations many recognize elements of it, when presented in art or literature, without consciously understanding what it is that we recognize. (Frye xviii)

The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde

Published in July 2006:

Ever wondered why Mummy bear and Daddy Bear slept in seperate beds? Ever pondered over the real reason Goldilocks was in the bear's house that morning? Ever racked your brains over the thermodynamic impossibilties of simultaneous porridge pouring? You did? Then hold onto your porridge spoon for:

The Fourth Bear
A Nursery Crime

'...However many photos you see of the Gingerbreadman, nothing can ever prepare you for seeing him in the flesh. He was a dark brown colour the shade of mahogany and at least six foot eight inches tall with heavy limbs and a large head. His jacket was open revealing several large pink icing buttons that ran down his chest. He had large glace cherries for eyes the size of tennis balls’and a huge dollop of red icing for a nose. His mouth was two slivers of licorice, the corners of which rose into a smile as soon as he saw them. 'Alan!' said the Gingerbreadman with a deep yet friendly tone, 'What a pleasant surprise! And most timely, too. See here, I have bred a new rose which, in honour of your work to cure me of my criminal tendencies I take great pleasure in naming after you. Behold, Mandible's Triumph! ...'

The Gingerbreadman: Psychopath, sadist, genius, convicted murderer and biscuit is loose in the streets of Reading. It isn't Jack Spratt's case. He and Mary Mary have been reassigned due to falling levels of nursery crime, and The NCD is once more in jeopardy. That is, until a chance encounter during the Armitage Shanks literary awards at the oddly familiar Deja-Vu Club lead Jack and Mary on the hunt for missing journalist Henrietta 'Goldilocks' Hatchett, star reporter for The Daily Mole. She had been about to break a story involving unexplained explosions in Herefordshire, Pasadena and the Nullabor Plain; The last witnesses to see her alive were The Three Bears, comfortably living out a life of rural solitude in Andersen's wood. But all is not what it seems. How could the bear's porridge be at such disparate temperatures when they were poured at the same time? Was Goldy's death in the nearby 1st World War themepark of Sommeworld a freak accident? And is it merely chance that the Gingerbreadman pops up at awkward moments? But there's more. What does a missing scientist with a terrifying discovery in subatomic physics, a secret weapon of devastating power, a reclusive industrialist known only as the Quangle Wangle and Colonel Danvers of the National Security all have in common?

Published on the 10th July in the UK and the 24th July 2006 in the USA.

The Calor, Canor, and Dulcor of Divine Love

The Form of Living

"The sevene gyftes of the Haly Gaste that ere gyfene to

men and wymmene that er ordaynede to the joye of

hevene and ledys theire lyfe in this worlde reghtwysely,

thire are thay: Wysdome, Undystrandynge, Counsayle,

Strenghe, Connynge, Peté, the Drede of God."

--Richard Rolle, written for the anchoress Margaret Kirkby

'O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’ He chortled in his joy.

Here I am again: sitting here, typing out an entry, rambling off what I should be reading, finished reading, and planning to read for school this week--ought to, and still am reading Anatomy of Criticism, with Buried Child, and Death and the Maiden soon to be read, "as always," my fiancée chortled repeatedly this weekend. Plus I have two final assignments I'll be starting soon--a ten to twelve page well-researched paper on Beckett's Waiting For Godot, which, yes, I confess to never having read before this year, and as I previously stated an anthropology paper on magic, aliens, paranoia and all that psychological jazz. Eventually, I'll have a third paper of my own devising to write on Northrop Frye--more than likely something to complement my reading of Lovecraft, perhaps using Frye's books to interpret the under-appreciated Clark Ashton Smith poem "The Hashish-Eater or the Apocalypse of Evil" published at the same time as Eliot's "The Waste Land."

For now I have Frye's tomb, Anatomy of Criticism to get through--yes, chortle, you know who you are--which was neglected aside from a few minutes during break at work today as I spent most of the day working--8 3/4 hours, and evening eating again, and night-time writing a reflection on Matthew Arnold's poem "The Buried Life" (available here).

What is the Great Code?

I'll be posting more this upcoming week, perhaps even my mini-essay on: What is the Great Code? Bear in mind we were limited to two or three pages so it'll not quite be a sweeping, encyclopedic explanation of Frye's The Great Code. For this assignment I focused like my McLuhan paper on language and the manifestation of a universal spiritual or cosmic vision in Frye's book (or modern gospel), especially for the human spirit, or rather our Imagination.The next task: read Frye's Anatomy of Criticism for class in the upcoming week. In the following week as well I have to eventually read: Buried Child and Death and the Maiden. We're also reading some poems by Arnold in another class, which, unfortunately, I won't be able to attend this week due to a more timely and precious commitment i.e. anniversary this week. Who knows what we're reading about this week in my anthropology class--I believe we're starting to analyze worldwide, organized religions, in lieu of last semester's small-scale societies, cultures, practices, rituals and all-around quirky things. I finished reading Shakespeare's King Lear last night, which I, of course, plan to re-read for Thursday's class--partially because I want to shake off my old, naive impressions of the play, and begin to understand the play and its language anew.

Evisceration

To our professor's chagrin last semester in Shakespeare class, our essays, or at least the majority must have been rather poor in textual analysis but rich with skimming paraphrases and assumptions. Instead of asking us to write a ten-page essay on a general thematic issue in one play, he's asked us to analyse two speeches from Coriolanus and Troilus and Cressida, the first one being when Martius first eviscerates the First Citizens, and the second where Thersites satirises Achilles and Patroclus and Agamemnon but most of all, Menelaus. The only requirement for this assigment is we focus on the language itself, not what we think we already know, but what is written on the page.

Here is my attempt, flawed and teeming with errors as it is.

Personality Test

You Are Scooter

Brainy and knowledgable, you are the perfect sidekick. You're always willing to lend a helping hand. In any big event or party, you're the one who keeps things going. "15 seconds to showtime!"

The Muppet Personality Test

I Think I'm Paranoid

Being unable--because of an anxious panic that is soon to escalate--to sense the contextual animated presence of the human other, the paranoid is free, for the duration of his episode, to resurrect familiar demons from the past and to concoct imaginary arch enemies of the future.

--Gerald Alper, The Paranoia of Everyday Life

Escaping The Enemy Within

As part of the research for my upcoming Anthropology of Religion assignment - reviewing, analysing and criticising the article of our choice from our textbook - I have been reading a book by Gerald Alper called The Paranoia of Everyday Life: Escaping the Enemy Within. This is to complement the bizarre, nevertheless interesting article I'll be examining by a fellow anthropological psycho-analytic, Ronald C. Johnson called "Parallels between Recollections of Repressed Childhood Sex Abuse, Kidnappings by Space Aliens, and the 1692 Salem Witch Trials." As odd a subject as it seems for study I've becoming increasingly interested in the narrative structure of paranoia lately, partly because of a revelation about the stories of Lovecraft, and my own quirky psychological realization--no, I'm not saying I'm crazy, but merely becoming fascinated with psychology and modern literature.

I was particular intrigued after reading Frye's The Great Code with his concept of the demonic parody, or aspect, that is, the dark vision. As far as I can tell, Frye's concept is the most helpful, succint idea for elucidating in ironically positive terms the structure or intent of things like paranoid visions in stories. His concept has helped me realize in my study of Lovecraft, in conjunction with McLuhan's theories, every paranoid vision in every Lovecraft story is just that: A demonic parody of the traditional dream vision, which brings us back to the albeit modern realm of metaphor and allegory. But as a demonic parody of the dream vision, the standard being Chaucer and his Book of the Duchess, House of Fame, or Spencer's Faerie Queene, at least for me, everything is reversed, this deus ex machina scenario is: --infernal rather than celestial, nightmare rather than dream, fracturing instead of completing, and trauma not catharsis. To what is the vision of Lovecraft pointing us to: the dark side of technology, which cannot be revealed except in an infernal, paranoid vision as light shone on darkness only shows light--showing us the sinister, dark conspiracy of ideas or influences lurking in the shadows. Paranoia, in modern literature, as an artificial structure or mode of narrative is precisely and necessarily traumatic to take us out of ourselves, or beside our minds as the very word suggests, because if we see for ourselves, and therefore become aware and master these things in our minds with a language or narrative of understanding, we become no longer unconsciously enslaved or entrapped in the mass hypnosis of the world.

The point as Alper's title aptly suggests is escaping the enemy within...

Paranoia Lost

Incidentally, I ought to be sleeping but instead I'm sitting here contemplating a mish-mash of things from various books I read recently, and, unfortunately, keeping awake late enough into the early morning that I won't attend my morning anthropology class as I had insisted. The sad part is, as I realized very early, generally, there will be no loss if I miss class because we're not marked for attendance but rather our ability to analyse and criticise, and write a convincing essay, which I can do with the text-books and word processor here at home. If you will, call this an apology for my recent, flippant choices to skip, or, rather, to use a better phrase, to do what is in the interest of my own physical and mental health. This sounds utterly selfish, and demeaning to my teachers who are obviously intelligent, well-read individuals themselves, but truly I have no intent this year, unlike previous years, personally, to drive myself to the brink of exhaustion by pandering to and realizing someone else's foreign, inimitable dream. Nor have I the desire to be dragged naively, repeatedly through the delirious and perilous experience of hazardous health, narcosis and ill relationships this year as I learned from past experience by counting - whereas depending on someone at least suggests a bearable co-operative symbiosis or quest - on the shadows and strangers of the world to be benign. This is the year I won't deny what I've work so hard to achieve for my own health and knowledge by reading widely and voraciously, my calling for these erstwhile years, since I left the belly of the high-school whale on my mission to the proverbial Ninevah, university.

Then again, my analogy is cruel and, perhaps, ironic if I remember correctly because the citizens of Ninevah listened to Jonah - to his surprising chagrin - after he gave up trying to shirk his duty to speak (or preach) to them, because he coldly and selfishly thought himself above them, but this, in fact, is what put him on the perilous path to bittersweet recognition. Hmm. Interesting. It seems after reading Frye's The Great Code, I've begun to see and re-enact his idea - case in point, tonight - or this morning, which ever it is.

I just got back my assignment on McLuhan earlier this week and apparently the professor thought it was great. Even though I do not think it deserved the grade it earned, it is re-assuring that a professor thought the idea I had for an M.A. was original and full of potential.

You can read it here.