Re: Melzer

Straussian "esoteric reading" indicates something akin to a "perennial philosophy" (Huxley) permeating the philosophic tradition; our modern literal/superficial readings take the garment for the true content (mistakenly). In the same way, Strauss's superficial political activity is taken by many to represent his true significance, ignoring what Melzer demonstrates as his actual import and value--again, superficiality leads people like myself to be "warned away" from Strauss on the basis of irrelevant details (note my own reticence on seeing Bill Kristol thanked in the opening acknowledgements--we are far too affected by irrelevancies).

what it is, etc.

you struggle to hammer words into the music, but you must, right, because the voice and the words & thoughts voiced are so essential to the higher gestalt, right--right? but it never rattles off into deep kruggian windings, no, you can't work out more than a bare framework supporting a single sentiment, the notion is minimal, limited. its only a thin outline of an obscure feeling, you lean on repetition, muttering the same two-note phrase in groups of four. the leanness of your verbage is akin to the specificity of the music itself, the music coming and going in throw-away fits, each song a container for one passing mood, emitted in the moment, sculpted for an hour, packed away and forgotten, uploaded and barely noted. the words and the sounds are all in miniature, all time-stamped and committed to the instant of their emergence and no more. it all flows like some uneventful weather, spontaneous and forgettable, outpoured from your anonymous aetheric haze and always of no consequence, like atmosphere, like breeze.

losing what--

noting that by the varied methods of measurement one has Naught to show for all-thus-far;

and said realization nagging, persistent kick;

and your own defense for what-you-do beginning to break down, becoming no longer valid within the private limit of your own reckoning (and this was your only secure holding, this precarious thread);

and all again heading (limping) toward the Old Inevitable;

motivated by failure, by debt;

and it's all rather tiresome;

and those last little sparks are going out.

in my head there's a city @ nite

Re-Turn to Re-Read

You have to continually go back and re-read those 'Monumental Texts,' due to your shoddy psyche working ever-diligently to repress the Troubling Revelations inscribed therein.

“The struggle between poetry and prose is a constant in my life. If you obey the poetic impulse, you risk becoming unreadable. If you disobey, you’re ready for a career as an honest ‘storyteller.’”

childe drawland

Hilarity Noted Not, Not--

a reviewer of gaddis' collected non-fiction states--

and although I still find them [The Recognitions/JR] hilarious satires, I'm starting to doubt the penetration of the thought behind the comedy.

having come upon this before, as with commentaries on Pynchon, etc., i find i am often adrift from this viewpoint, wherein one sees the essence in Satire, in Humor. yes, i understand that those elements are present, but my perception barely registers the comedic, when i'm in communion with these certain authors.

it's more like, in my reading, i'm bypassing those 'lighter' attributes in a, ah yes, Desperate hunt for the, uhm, Philosophical, the, yes'm well, the Wisdom, so to--say...

and i could care less about satire, humor, i let it lie there unengaged, quickly passed over because what i want and what i need is The Lesson, The Maxim, the Tell-Me-How-to-Live and the Tell-Me-How-to-See...

as with The Recognitions, see, that's a deadly serious text for me, it's all very grave and somewhat-morbidly resonant, so to speak of hilarity, well, There's Not Time Enough For That, etc.---

Widening  grounds for a school of trance, mesmeric intonations to prime the young ones--

I am so happy
I am so happy
Today--

So chanted and learned, committed to memory, enchantment through affirmation, the ever more expansive reach of a multisensory school of trance--

Public Burning (2)

Reading Coover's treatment of Nixon, fictionalized, giving him a sort of Learish weight (gravity), it comes to mind, to take up the task of sculpting likewise, a treatment of My Nixon, the sweet-souled Gumdrop Prince hisself, O' W.--

[Of course, though, having to note, that we [I] are [am] of the lineage of Coleridge, as it pertains to the mental conjuration of Great Works in embryo, persistently left to miscarry, dissolve, undone, unwritten--]

It seems some sort of necessity, or eternal recurrence, that each age (or Author) will have its specific tyrant, whether Nixon, Nero, Nebuchadnezzar, etc. etc.--

Certainly, in those years, W. inscribed hisself on this soul, mine, littering so many--too many--book margins, his shade invoked to curry the relevance, the resonance--and this is a sort of indignity now, to look at those books, and see the obsessive trackings of W.'s movement, his grace, going to and fro and up and down upon my meager library--

But it would be sort of, what, fun (?)--to perform a bit of tikkunim on that tawdry half-shame, to give that past and presence a bit of polish, to elevate it, remold it into something a bit, eh, deeper than a mere Princely Bumbling, as mystically odd as all of that still is, to think of it (and that, of course, needing to be an element, perhaps revamped and repurposed as some sort of queer dissimulation, for purposes, what, esoteric? --or otherwise hazy, hidden....)--

5-0-

Why is it, that 'The Fifties,' in America, are adorned with a sort of golden-age-y pastoral legacy, when reading something like Coover's The Public Burning makes it quickly obvious that even there, tensions were ever flaring, the body politic was aswarm with snarl and bite, etc.--

And people know, everyone knows, of McCarthy, Korea, etc.--yet the Arcadian mirage persists, as a sort of mental shorthand, even among leftists who should know better--

Like with the misconception, also so popular and cherished, that a dream can offer the lived experience of a lifetime, of lifetimes, within a single night--

These myths, these fallacies, like a kind of unthinking sentimental shorthand--

Designs in Cancellation Are Stitched for Shoddy Carpets

Nopenheimer surveys a figure there on the barren landscape, This Kid Russ in the act of repudiating the Trinity--and off the cuff of the weakened winds they can hear, the muttered half-moans aloft--

I have become Nixnaw,
Aborter of Works...

The Tyrannical, The Flat, The Simple, The What--

There is a certain mode of communication--speech, uttered or written--you can see it in the Reverend Gwyon, in the Consul Firmin, in Wyatt (or Stefan, or otherwise Unnameable--)--

(in some transcribed memory bank, tattered old abandoned site, when there were one or two, who spoke eclectic--)

--a lively mode, highly literary, bordering on the mystical, or perhaps just obscure, but desired just the same, whether esoteric or plainly erratic--

(such a mode to shame the rest, the sort, what was it, stenographic speech, the daily-everyday-mundane-bleak, all of it just a dull tyranny shouting down those elusive bits, the rare creatures skirting in, out, ever dimming with lostness, elusive--)

--which is the wanted type, because it excites, it begs interpretation, and--this being key--the interpretations are in the vein of literary interpretation, symbols cryptic, some of that precious-because-rare mystery, and, like--

(and had we met it, maybe once, twice, then dodged down, took-off-and-gone, lingering only as memory-residual, lost spark, and so then, so now, pressed out, eliminated, overcome--yes, by this, the everyday, the stenographic--)

--and to see it in this wayward slope of the three or so 'Key Authors,' yes and giving thanks, that they are there, that this exists, for you to read, but likewise, same-time, the recurrence [eternal] of a note of bitterness, to recall that you had broached it once, twice, not on the page, not in story, but hereabouts, in this, this Real Life, ah, you knew it, once-twice-what?--so we think, right, to dimly recall, those sites--

Otherwise awash in, again, this, the stenographic, the uninspired, surrounding--

Fronts with no backs to them, exo- vaunting victorious over eso-, gloom-dyed Normal, repressive Apparent, threatened now, these days, only by these texts, these tales, from that fiery resilient so-rare slope, that three-pointed semi-straight segment, our link, via Lowry-Gaddis-Pynchon, in defiance of the, ahem, Real, so they, they are there--

But is it enough, one wonders, somber-shaded desperate wonder, of those three, alighting the only apparent alternative, to, what, all this--

Ending in sigh, in Ehhh..., 'midst this, this so-much, the stenographic....

HIm in All and All in Him (so Found, Found--)

--Yes, Yes, I was there! I remember, yes!

Him saying this, we pause, what--?

--The school, the collapsed black schoolhouse, back off the service road, invisible, that schoolhouse!

Because from what we read, yes, whatever details, and also the lack of, there and not-there now coalescing into the heady onrush of revived memory, why yes of course he was, was there, of course--

--And as a boy, yes! --Totally, yes! We never knew, we couldn't tell you how to operate a telephone, there was no electricity, no radio, we were orphans, blind and quarantined, yes! And, yes...yes!

So it rolled, rolled out now, all this memory, note, "memory," whatever was there on the paper was absorbed, imbibed, joined to his starry-eyed conspira-mystic soul, joined to his ever-so-essential Being and his storied, majestic Past, it was his now, as ever, as it always must be, yes, his--

--Nameless, nonexistent practically, yes...Finders, we never, well, did we? --but maybe, Finders, yes, maybe it is familiar, but that was us, of course, I was there, yes--

And to see, you can see it, yes? From the paper and ink, now bound to Soul, whatever External, whatever Story, now joined into intimate union under the heading, Biography, that dustless shelf, ever alive, added-upon, growing...

--And I was there, in that black, black schoolhouse...

And he was, he was, whoever could challenge a memory, the unreachable phantom Past, eh? None, none at all, none so qualified to question, contradict--and so his majesty, his centrality, him him him him Him--

And yes let's say, that it came as a sort of relief, to read Scholem write of Crowley, 'that charlatan...' --because, and remember, didn't the local jongleur say something of similar effect, did he not, also, point a spot of piss, onto that legacy, that legend so precious to the thieves of the Necronomicon, etc.--?

Because we always felt, instinctively, a distrust, as per Crowley--

And what we remember most, of the fragments of biography perused, is the incessant series of power struggles, 'magickal battles' for control of various 'magickal orders,' which to us, seems the saddest, basest sort of sad, regrettable materiality, so earthly, mundane, pathological...

But of course, yes, per Robert Greene, it's an Always-On sort of world, yes, and Machiavelli shant not be escaped, down here, yes? --but oh, supposing it is, what, a lingering remnant of a sort of idealism, romanticism, to be of a realm, or state--of mind--wherein those lowly battles are left behind, abandoned--so, yes, supposing, what, naive, or what--

Ok, ok...

2 Items per Gaddis

Two things re: The Recognitions--

--firstly, that you are led into the mystic glories, schizodabbled heresies, all such fun and up-our-alley, but watch it, see?--degenerating into nonsense, free-floating disassociation, cacophony of reference and counter-reference, ultimately leading--our alley, up it, to, where?--to Bellevue, o!

(lesson, so?--some lesson, there? o?)

--and secondly, note the suitors to Esme, even in such boat-borne short-term as with Stanley, good loyal papal Stanley, gripping tight the arm erratic, to silence the mouth, limit the (heart), --so too with the others, all equally mad-driven by the pathological currents of, yes, J-word, Jealousy, o--

(touchstone back-tripped to Swann's Way, same bitter lesson, same 'h/t' to withdrawal, ultimately, ok, yes --to be safe...)

Ex.

Hypotheseus, God of paranoid imaginings...

Method Working on Chance Which Was Born From Chance

X. is thus engaged in attempting to revisit a seven-years-past encounter with a pair of strangers on a road, in mind and in text, thru the transformative methods of symbolism--

and so X. reads, in a study of the Greek origins of the literary sense of symbolism, that symbolism (in part) developed from divinatory traditions, this study emphasizing especially the species of divination concerning "symbols of the road," understood through Aeschylus to mean a chance meeting with a stranger (as well, "Xenophon..confirms the the sense of symbol as ominous chance meeting"). So too, "...these divine signs are coincidental meetings with people."

Therefore we observe, so--that a blind clawing at symbolism in the hope of expanding/remolding a chance encounter is a blind clawing at a methodology whose origins lie in part in the divine/demonic significance attributed to the chance encounter (on the road, the road--).

*Relevant text being Struck, Birth of the Symbol

Research Agenda for a Pseudo-Pynchon/Mixed-Malcolm

La Mordida

"The central narrative of La Mordida involves a descent into the abyss of self, culminating in the protagonist's symbolic rebirth at the book's end. Lowry planned to use this basic narrative pattern as the springboard for innumerable questions about such concerns as art, identity, the nature of existence, political issues, and alcoholism. Above all, La Mordida was to have been a metafictional work about an author who sees no point in living events if he cannot write about them and who is not only unable to write but suspects that he is just a character in a novel."

Know Thyself in Jung's manner means to become familiar with, to open oneself to and listen to, that is, to know and discern, daimons. Entering one's interior story takes a courage similar to starting a novel. 

(maybe) the key is to have one or two definite projects in-progress, and ever at the forefront of your mind (or near the forefront, within the forefront's reach), so that whatever else you encounter is sifted through the prism of those projects, so that the rush of incoming data can be quickly bent to productive design. thus there persists a steady note of relevance, the random and useless suddenly become affected by an afternote of possibly-useful, possibly-relevant.

and so in your scraping-over, your running-through, there's a Something perched behind you, digesting, transforming--

Subset of Menagerie 5.

Their dossiers could be drawn from the subterranean archives and consulted for detail, for background, yes you could mine the triplicate paper-trails for elements of beginning, middle, and end, sign and symptom, diagnosis and treatment. You could make that effort, make it twenty-one times, you could chart the unlevel progressions of each body, each mind, map the histories and plot the tragedies—all of this you could do, of course, it’s standard protocol, out there—

But we are here, not there, and the familiar orchestrations of treatment, remedy, and most importantly understanding do not seem to apply now, here, in this place, in this state. This being some site of exile, some refugee camp for the indeterminate, for the unsettled, the cannot-be-settled.

Here too there lurk the impenetrable administrators, but as with the residents they administer to, they are also, in a sense, fallen. Perhaps you’ll consult their dossiers as well, and then move upward through the chain of command, to governors, to kings, to spirits and gods?

Or else this is a place and a time where previous methods expire, where moot is the keyword, where a confused and listless stasis reigns, like a sentence, a judgment—to which you would be at a loss, were you to ask, by whom?

Maybe a tilt of your perception would at least free you of certain intractable anxieties, could maybe offer a boost, a kick, serve as a palliative. A tilt leftward, clockwise or counter-, downly-upward and spheroid, change for the sake of it, a derangement of the senses—

Anything to pass the time, here, where it passes, just passes.

Gatekeeper M-B-A Downfall Contagion

Perfected company man, metaphysical middle-manager. Z. lived triumphant in his shepherding role, he was an acclaimed fixer.

A fisher of men.

Z. would want for nothing, insulated by professional indifference, wholly independent from petty, decadent concerns. Passing to and fro from common space to common space, Z. was the gatekeeper to the ineffable mysteries of The Bold-Printed Signs, and this critical intermediary status contained the beginning and end of his desire, singular--for he had only one desire, to serve faithfully the grim force of which he was the only visible representative.

So it was, until, until now, here--as if having contracted an airborne illness, pathogens exhaled by these his charges, these twenty-one subjects condemned--

What, like some unconscious vengeance? And now, only now, after so many previously felled in the name of The Mystery.