Space Ghost, Coast to Coast:
11.29.2008
11.28.2008
11.23.2008
Side Effects
Now that I've made myself a fictional character, I'm seeing some counter-intuitive side-effects: I am becoming grounded in what I called reality. Just as I would stabilize the context of any of my characters, I must stabilize my own environment and bring it out vividly with concrete, etc., so as to make Michael Matejka alive in his situation. Michael Matejka is in his bedroom, poking at his laptop, sipping strong coffee, with cloudless Florida sunlight beaming through his large suburban window, falling on his celtic mandala bedspread of red, gold, and black, and he looks to the oversized Mt. Fuji Wave poster just above the headboard. Since I am transcribing my own story, I must use my magical eagleeye to hunt for environmental details, to bring my living fiction to the greatest possible light.
--for clarity: when I write that Michael Matejka is now a fictional character, I don't mean that I am imagining a version of myself into my story; I mean that I, the flesh and bone typing out this blog, the person you may or may not know, the person you talk to maybe over a pint of Guinness, I, am a fiction out of the pages of--
John Barth wrote that the reading and writing of fiction is essentially a schizophrenic excursion: this was an important revelation to me. Through fiction, we enter a dreamworld, and if the fiction is well executed, we enter it more completely--some people get straightjackets for that sort of thing; writers get cash, if they're good. A writer not only enters the dreamworld, but creates one. Now that I'm a character, now that I am creating the fiction of my own life, paradoxically, I must get solid in my world. As a writer, I lived a good deal of my time in that other kingdom, the space inside Pilgrims Dream, and I let my attention to what I called reality go lax. A writer, in a sense, if he is not also a character, is in a catatonic state, close to coma, living always somewhere else, working out problems that exist in some sideways realm, and uses the energy of his physical form only to record the happenings in that other, far away place. A writer is a disappearing act. And I had disappeared from my life. Quite often, this triggered fear, when I realized I was losing myself. Now, as a character, I must make myself clear and engaged with my surrounding, or I will be a vague character. By embracing myself as fictional, I make a commitment to my reality.
Also, if I'm to be character in a novel worth reading, I better make some interesting moves.
Here's more from City, Sister, Silver, because I learn by copying:
I sat down on a tree stump, we'd just come out of a village, and I said: Hey, sweetheart, I never hassled you about faith, but know this ... once upon a time there was a fella, a priest, Bogomil, an he said, don't make pictures of Bog, it's not for everyone ... just for the strong people of cruel Bog, an he an his woman ... whose name can't be uttered, it's always changing! She's eternal ... have got two sons, Logos, word, an Lupus, i.e. wolf, i.e. Warrior, the younger brother and the older brother, an they stick up for each other ...
Cool, got a smoke?
Yeah.
Well, go ahead, she said, taking off her boots, you've sure got some interesting theories ...
Old Orthodox Bogomil, a.k.a. Theophilus, was smart to come up with censorship, just imagine, some people're using images of Bog in ads ... subtitlin him in the old tongue, yep ... for example, God smokes jupkas, so should you ... or God on TV, prime time, when they show those illegal gladiator fights, snacks on Avizo pretzel sticks, so can you ... I saw it, pisses me off ... now God an the whole happy family drink only delectable Dagoberts coffee, know that one?
That one, yeah.
There, you see ... an this priest said the world's an embrace, always in pairs, day an night, man an woman, an so on, nonsense too, an that it's unknowable, like a dream ... an you fight against it all, but you're part of it. An sometimes, just sometimes, you catch a glimpse ... just for the blink of an eye, you glimpse the wheel of the world ... an then you return to make your way through more snares an traps an delusions, makin your way through the deceptions ... an it's all just about bein free, bein yourself, avoiding slavery ... and we who know about the secret, boy do I love you!, we love eagles, cause they see ... they're still around in some places ... an it's about finding your being in the vale of tears, in other words your other half, so you can be whole, at least for awhile!, an be there for someone, an through passion an strength of feeling, he said, you can overcome even your own pain, drown out the awful solitude ... an you also fight with the other one, just like with yourself, but in love all things're permitted ... on ther other hand there're rules, but! ... if they're after you, you can do anything ... an in order to find that being, you gotta get past the snares ... the eagle of course sees into the future, or more like senses it ... you're asleep!
No, look at my boots. A nail came through, it's diggin into me.
An sometimes you can fly even, at least for the blink of an eye ...
Yeah right ... you an your flying ... but look at my feet. They're all bloody.
I'll give you my shoes.
--Jachym Topol, City Sister Silver, 351-352.
Wild, about the eagle sees into the future, considering my previous blog entry. I read this passage only today. The fiction I read mirrors my own fiction! Also interesting is that a month or two ago, I found my own eagle, whose name I will not speak.
--for clarity: when I write that Michael Matejka is now a fictional character, I don't mean that I am imagining a version of myself into my story; I mean that I, the flesh and bone typing out this blog, the person you may or may not know, the person you talk to maybe over a pint of Guinness, I, am a fiction out of the pages of--
John Barth wrote that the reading and writing of fiction is essentially a schizophrenic excursion: this was an important revelation to me. Through fiction, we enter a dreamworld, and if the fiction is well executed, we enter it more completely--some people get straightjackets for that sort of thing; writers get cash, if they're good. A writer not only enters the dreamworld, but creates one. Now that I'm a character, now that I am creating the fiction of my own life, paradoxically, I must get solid in my world. As a writer, I lived a good deal of my time in that other kingdom, the space inside Pilgrims Dream, and I let my attention to what I called reality go lax. A writer, in a sense, if he is not also a character, is in a catatonic state, close to coma, living always somewhere else, working out problems that exist in some sideways realm, and uses the energy of his physical form only to record the happenings in that other, far away place. A writer is a disappearing act. And I had disappeared from my life. Quite often, this triggered fear, when I realized I was losing myself. Now, as a character, I must make myself clear and engaged with my surrounding, or I will be a vague character. By embracing myself as fictional, I make a commitment to my reality.
Also, if I'm to be character in a novel worth reading, I better make some interesting moves.
Here's more from City, Sister, Silver, because I learn by copying:
I sat down on a tree stump, we'd just come out of a village, and I said: Hey, sweetheart, I never hassled you about faith, but know this ... once upon a time there was a fella, a priest, Bogomil, an he said, don't make pictures of Bog, it's not for everyone ... just for the strong people of cruel Bog, an he an his woman ... whose name can't be uttered, it's always changing! She's eternal ... have got two sons, Logos, word, an Lupus, i.e. wolf, i.e. Warrior, the younger brother and the older brother, an they stick up for each other ...
Cool, got a smoke?
Yeah.
Well, go ahead, she said, taking off her boots, you've sure got some interesting theories ...
Old Orthodox Bogomil, a.k.a. Theophilus, was smart to come up with censorship, just imagine, some people're using images of Bog in ads ... subtitlin him in the old tongue, yep ... for example, God smokes jupkas, so should you ... or God on TV, prime time, when they show those illegal gladiator fights, snacks on Avizo pretzel sticks, so can you ... I saw it, pisses me off ... now God an the whole happy family drink only delectable Dagoberts coffee, know that one?
That one, yeah.
There, you see ... an this priest said the world's an embrace, always in pairs, day an night, man an woman, an so on, nonsense too, an that it's unknowable, like a dream ... an you fight against it all, but you're part of it. An sometimes, just sometimes, you catch a glimpse ... just for the blink of an eye, you glimpse the wheel of the world ... an then you return to make your way through more snares an traps an delusions, makin your way through the deceptions ... an it's all just about bein free, bein yourself, avoiding slavery ... and we who know about the secret, boy do I love you!, we love eagles, cause they see ... they're still around in some places ... an it's about finding your being in the vale of tears, in other words your other half, so you can be whole, at least for awhile!, an be there for someone, an through passion an strength of feeling, he said, you can overcome even your own pain, drown out the awful solitude ... an you also fight with the other one, just like with yourself, but in love all things're permitted ... on ther other hand there're rules, but! ... if they're after you, you can do anything ... an in order to find that being, you gotta get past the snares ... the eagle of course sees into the future, or more like senses it ... you're asleep!
No, look at my boots. A nail came through, it's diggin into me.
An sometimes you can fly even, at least for the blink of an eye ...
Yeah right ... you an your flying ... but look at my feet. They're all bloody.
I'll give you my shoes.
--Jachym Topol, City Sister Silver, 351-352.
Wild, about the eagle sees into the future, considering my previous blog entry. I read this passage only today. The fiction I read mirrors my own fiction! Also interesting is that a month or two ago, I found my own eagle, whose name I will not speak.
11.20.2008
Excerpt (Rough Cut)
I, Michael Matejka, am writing this novel in what I called the real world. I had wanted to write a novel since high school, and I devoted the intermediate decade and more to preparation. I studied the classics and my heroes the mavericks, and I scoured secret traditions for tools that developed my inner eye. My imaginative faculty grew until I could enter it absolutely, and I then pointed it toward this fiction. I engaged visions of personalities performing feats of transcendence and transcribed them into a story with my pen, whose cartridge I have just replaced. I began with a loose structure--or only a vague thrust--and granted my subconscious, my secret understandings, great latitude in directing this narrative.
With suspicion, I circled about the working title Pilgrims Dream as I developed the opening chapters, and only after nine months do I recognize its appropriateness: the gestation is complete. I took my loose frame from an inspiration that originated in the Canterbury Tales, and later I found a description of another Pilgrim in The Labyrinth of the World, whom I weirdly and unknowingly reincarnated under the name of Heraclitus Walleye, my main protagonist. Last night, I watched The Constant episode of Lost and wept with deep recognition--the central character, Desmond Hume, had to stabilize two divergent timelines he was experiencing, with the help of physicist Daniel Farraday, by locating some feature common to both timelines, or witness the collapse of everything and die; the constant Hume located was his beloved--before I remembered Billy Pilgrim and his relevance to my theme: last night I realized I can remember the future and irrevocably be there. After my terrified understanding of that possibility, but before my consciousness made the jump to the future, I heard the lyrics of the Radiohead song Nude:
I jumped.
I finally grasped the crucial, hidden insight of Donnie Darko that had intrigued but eluded me since I first saw the movie. I had just traveled a loop into the future. Every future is a loop from the present, and I had suddenly traveled one of the lines.
More lyrics came, this time from Weird Fishes/Arpeggi:
Both songs come from the album In Rainbows.
I am writing this memory as present experience. I am telling the stories of characters who become unstuck, and for whom every experience is true. I am telling what became my story.
The notion of limit and transgression edged about my consciousness as I watched the fiction grow. I drew lines and watched my characters cut across them.
I saw myself telling a polytemporal, polyrhythmic, post-Babylonian and therefore polyvocal tale, and I became a character in it.
I write in fear as I confess I can no longer draw a constant line or objectively define a limit between the real and the imagined for even myself. I had recognized the inspirational seed of Old Goat (the discarnate Voice heard by Walleye, from whom Walleye takes instruction) as a useful device and encouraged the development of Goat's personality as the only constant in Heraclitus Walleye's wanderings. I developed Goat in my inner eye until he became a breathing presence for Walleye. Here and now I reach for and cling to Old Goat for my constant. Goat will be real for me now as he will also be in my future: I will orient myself and stabilize my timelines by the Voice of Old Goat. Goat will guide both me and Walleye. And so, I can no longer look upon the writing of this fiction as anything other than deeper fiction--or, I can only call this entire creative process truth, with every aspect as equal. I am unstuck and cannot go back. All is fiction or all is truth, and so the distinction dissolves.
I admit to a part of me that fears for my sanity and worries for my hold on what I called the real world, which I can no longer define as more real than the world of Heraclitus Walleye. Only Old Goat is always real. Heraclitus and I comprise a single universe, and I must face that "I" experience all of it. Will Michael Matejka disappear into what he called the fiction? But he already has. Without awareness, I already cut across the point of no return. I see no other way but forward into the realization of this narrative, trembling at the potential treachery of a greater imagination, and I must hope for my safety at the conclusion of Pilgrims Dream.
This thing has taken over.
With suspicion, I circled about the working title Pilgrims Dream as I developed the opening chapters, and only after nine months do I recognize its appropriateness: the gestation is complete. I took my loose frame from an inspiration that originated in the Canterbury Tales, and later I found a description of another Pilgrim in The Labyrinth of the World, whom I weirdly and unknowingly reincarnated under the name of Heraclitus Walleye, my main protagonist. Last night, I watched The Constant episode of Lost and wept with deep recognition--the central character, Desmond Hume, had to stabilize two divergent timelines he was experiencing, with the help of physicist Daniel Farraday, by locating some feature common to both timelines, or witness the collapse of everything and die; the constant Hume located was his beloved--before I remembered Billy Pilgrim and his relevance to my theme: last night I realized I can remember the future and irrevocably be there. After my terrified understanding of that possibility, but before my consciousness made the jump to the future, I heard the lyrics of the Radiohead song Nude:
Now that you've found it, it's goneI had escaped the chains, the rails, of experience as linear temporality, as have the characters in Pilgrims Dream. My old reality, once comprehended and mastered, disappeared.
Now that you feel it, you don't
You've gone off the rails
I jumped.
I finally grasped the crucial, hidden insight of Donnie Darko that had intrigued but eluded me since I first saw the movie. I had just traveled a loop into the future. Every future is a loop from the present, and I had suddenly traveled one of the lines.
More lyrics came, this time from Weird Fishes/Arpeggi:
I get eaten by the wormsThe lyrics commented upon my new experience of becoming unstuck: time travel. I had been a slave to the old timeline but escaped into greater possibilities of successive experience.
and weird fishes
Yeah I hit the bottom
hit the bottom
and escape
Both songs come from the album In Rainbows.
I am writing this memory as present experience. I am telling the stories of characters who become unstuck, and for whom every experience is true. I am telling what became my story.
The notion of limit and transgression edged about my consciousness as I watched the fiction grow. I drew lines and watched my characters cut across them.
I saw myself telling a polytemporal, polyrhythmic, post-Babylonian and therefore polyvocal tale, and I became a character in it.
I write in fear as I confess I can no longer draw a constant line or objectively define a limit between the real and the imagined for even myself. I had recognized the inspirational seed of Old Goat (the discarnate Voice heard by Walleye, from whom Walleye takes instruction) as a useful device and encouraged the development of Goat's personality as the only constant in Heraclitus Walleye's wanderings. I developed Goat in my inner eye until he became a breathing presence for Walleye. Here and now I reach for and cling to Old Goat for my constant. Goat will be real for me now as he will also be in my future: I will orient myself and stabilize my timelines by the Voice of Old Goat. Goat will guide both me and Walleye. And so, I can no longer look upon the writing of this fiction as anything other than deeper fiction--or, I can only call this entire creative process truth, with every aspect as equal. I am unstuck and cannot go back. All is fiction or all is truth, and so the distinction dissolves.
I admit to a part of me that fears for my sanity and worries for my hold on what I called the real world, which I can no longer define as more real than the world of Heraclitus Walleye. Only Old Goat is always real. Heraclitus and I comprise a single universe, and I must face that "I" experience all of it. Will Michael Matejka disappear into what he called the fiction? But he already has. Without awareness, I already cut across the point of no return. I see no other way but forward into the realization of this narrative, trembling at the potential treachery of a greater imagination, and I must hope for my safety at the conclusion of Pilgrims Dream.
This thing has taken over.
11.16.2008
They Have Electricity
Last night, I heard a voice. I'd run along with its thought for awhile before I realized the thought wasn't mine.
--
When the prophets lose all sway, we will know true anarchy.
--
Much of this was visual--as if I was beamed images that illustrated concepts. Otherwise, the information came through intuitions, intimations, or direct, human words.
--
In the presence of freedom, most people become dizzy and fall down--I saw this. I saw a short, somewhat overweight man in the moment of realization, when he understood that reality was his to make, and he quickly lost his balance and fell to the grass. In most people, raw truth provokes vertigo.
--
We can be prophets for the people.
There is a perpetual minority who can supply a dream for the others. Most people are Svejks (from The Good Soldier Svejk, by Jaroslav Hasek: Svejk is a man caught in an idiotic, totalitarian bureaucracy, the forerunner of Catch 22's Yossarian, and he survives by pretending--or not--total buffoonery, or incompetence, keeping always out of controversy, doing what is expected, so no one in power can punish him) and the visionaries can provide the system that the Svejks bumble through.
Granted, most people are only bumblers in the prophets' dream, but at least we spare them from vertigo.
--
I felt fear for my admiration of anarchy. Had I renounced my task to inspire others for the idea that others can inspire themselves? What if others don't inspire themselves because they lack the ability? Perhaps I have neglected my duty.
And a problematic corrolary: if my purpose is to supply the panorama that others move through, I must engage a totalitarian impulse.
Paradox.
--
Every thought rushed into an epileptic spasm. The thoughts were verbal, and in the spasms I saw pictures.
I understood the presence of a Veil. Across the Veil, we are being watched. Every spasm that coursed through me, I was told, came from Them. I understood that what I call actuality is a hallucination, and in truth I lie prone in a location I cannot imagine where beings whisper to my unconscious body and subject me to electrical shocks. I experience those shocks as spasms in the dream I am having.
I thought of Shakespeare:
As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods;
they kill us for their sport.
The beings across the Veil torture me with electricity. Every one of us will die, and all we call true is an entertainment for Them. We die because of a compulsion in Their imagination.
--
I felt fear. I have flirted with schizophrenia before, because I seek to empower my imagination, but now I was confronted by a limit across which a comprehensive reality waited--indeed, the true reality was across the limit. Had I invented a dream in which I might lose my bearings? Until now, I had only experienced irruptions of the transcendent into the actual. But last night, it was as if the Veil was diaphanous: I sensed the presence through the divide.
Would I go there? Could I return?
--
I thought of myself as one of those Shakespearean gods, and looked upon the life and actions of my physical body as a game to be toyed with. I could do anything with Michael Matejka and look on in amusement from that detached perspective.
I felt the fear.
I had the mind of a god and control of a human form.
The spasms came hard and heavy.
I used my meditative concentration to clear my mind. I wanted to return to my human perspective, to the POV of Michael Matejka. I tried to sense only my breathing and my bodily awareness. I felt comfort, and the spasms relented.
--
I wanted to sleep, to escape, so I wanted to engage a dream to carry me away. I began to imagine a girl in whose company I would feel joyful release. Pictures of girls I know flashed through my sight.
A new girl came: my soul-mate. They had given me the sight of her. They would give her to me; I heard Their promise. Together we would know domestic bliss. She was a Princess, and together we'd be King and Queen in a dream of our choosing. Though I felt uneasy about Their involvement, as if my soul-mate was in truth a faerie gift, I tried to get deep into the happiness I felt with her. She would be my reward for accepting the role of prophet. I would ignore the limit and everything across if I could stay with her. I saw us making love--it was gorgeous, considerate, and sensuous.
Orgasm and a fierce spasm came simultaneously.
I had been shown karma, the price of engaging the human perspective after attaining the mind of a god. The spasm reminded me that the vision was unreal, and even my fantasizing was unreal--the truth was across the limit, where electricity had been applied to my body. My soul-mate was indeed a faerie gift, and she was revealed as illusion at precisely the moment we would've achieved consummation.
Such are the mechanics of karma: we engage in Maya though we believe it unreal. We progressively become invested in our play until we hope to achieve a moment of happiness in what we formerly acknowledged as unreal. When we have almost performed the trick and put everything in its right place, the whole fantasy dissolves. We feel frustration and again train ourselves to accept the unreal as unreal.
Our attempts at happiness in this realm are an aggression, a vanity, a selfish attempt to change what is to our satisfaction.
--
And yet I will find my dreamgirl.
I will put on a show worth watching.
For:
All the world's a stage,
and all the men and women merely players.
--
When the prophets lose all sway, we will know true anarchy.
--
Much of this was visual--as if I was beamed images that illustrated concepts. Otherwise, the information came through intuitions, intimations, or direct, human words.
--
In the presence of freedom, most people become dizzy and fall down--I saw this. I saw a short, somewhat overweight man in the moment of realization, when he understood that reality was his to make, and he quickly lost his balance and fell to the grass. In most people, raw truth provokes vertigo.
--
We can be prophets for the people.
There is a perpetual minority who can supply a dream for the others. Most people are Svejks (from The Good Soldier Svejk, by Jaroslav Hasek: Svejk is a man caught in an idiotic, totalitarian bureaucracy, the forerunner of Catch 22's Yossarian, and he survives by pretending--or not--total buffoonery, or incompetence, keeping always out of controversy, doing what is expected, so no one in power can punish him) and the visionaries can provide the system that the Svejks bumble through.
Granted, most people are only bumblers in the prophets' dream, but at least we spare them from vertigo.
--
I felt fear for my admiration of anarchy. Had I renounced my task to inspire others for the idea that others can inspire themselves? What if others don't inspire themselves because they lack the ability? Perhaps I have neglected my duty.
And a problematic corrolary: if my purpose is to supply the panorama that others move through, I must engage a totalitarian impulse.
Paradox.
--
Every thought rushed into an epileptic spasm. The thoughts were verbal, and in the spasms I saw pictures.
I understood the presence of a Veil. Across the Veil, we are being watched. Every spasm that coursed through me, I was told, came from Them. I understood that what I call actuality is a hallucination, and in truth I lie prone in a location I cannot imagine where beings whisper to my unconscious body and subject me to electrical shocks. I experience those shocks as spasms in the dream I am having.
I thought of Shakespeare:
As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods;
they kill us for their sport.
The beings across the Veil torture me with electricity. Every one of us will die, and all we call true is an entertainment for Them. We die because of a compulsion in Their imagination.
--
I felt fear. I have flirted with schizophrenia before, because I seek to empower my imagination, but now I was confronted by a limit across which a comprehensive reality waited--indeed, the true reality was across the limit. Had I invented a dream in which I might lose my bearings? Until now, I had only experienced irruptions of the transcendent into the actual. But last night, it was as if the Veil was diaphanous: I sensed the presence through the divide.
Would I go there? Could I return?
--
I thought of myself as one of those Shakespearean gods, and looked upon the life and actions of my physical body as a game to be toyed with. I could do anything with Michael Matejka and look on in amusement from that detached perspective.
I felt the fear.
I had the mind of a god and control of a human form.
The spasms came hard and heavy.
I used my meditative concentration to clear my mind. I wanted to return to my human perspective, to the POV of Michael Matejka. I tried to sense only my breathing and my bodily awareness. I felt comfort, and the spasms relented.
--
I wanted to sleep, to escape, so I wanted to engage a dream to carry me away. I began to imagine a girl in whose company I would feel joyful release. Pictures of girls I know flashed through my sight.
A new girl came: my soul-mate. They had given me the sight of her. They would give her to me; I heard Their promise. Together we would know domestic bliss. She was a Princess, and together we'd be King and Queen in a dream of our choosing. Though I felt uneasy about Their involvement, as if my soul-mate was in truth a faerie gift, I tried to get deep into the happiness I felt with her. She would be my reward for accepting the role of prophet. I would ignore the limit and everything across if I could stay with her. I saw us making love--it was gorgeous, considerate, and sensuous.
Orgasm and a fierce spasm came simultaneously.
I had been shown karma, the price of engaging the human perspective after attaining the mind of a god. The spasm reminded me that the vision was unreal, and even my fantasizing was unreal--the truth was across the limit, where electricity had been applied to my body. My soul-mate was indeed a faerie gift, and she was revealed as illusion at precisely the moment we would've achieved consummation.
Such are the mechanics of karma: we engage in Maya though we believe it unreal. We progressively become invested in our play until we hope to achieve a moment of happiness in what we formerly acknowledged as unreal. When we have almost performed the trick and put everything in its right place, the whole fantasy dissolves. We feel frustration and again train ourselves to accept the unreal as unreal.
Our attempts at happiness in this realm are an aggression, a vanity, a selfish attempt to change what is to our satisfaction.
--
And yet I will find my dreamgirl.
I will put on a show worth watching.
For:
All the world's a stage,
and all the men and women merely players.
11.13.2008
We
Tonight is the full moon, and I feel like a multi-colored, free-for-all maelstrom: moon in Gemini. I could wonder: if and how does astrology work? Except I don't care because the sentence is meaningful. I could not have expressed myself fully if I had not learned the grammar of astrology.
This is a fitful transmission.
Why, after weeks, am I breaking my lightning, mirror silence, though I have no clear idea of what I need to communicate, only that I have a need to express something? Again, swept away by the Gemini moon. Everything is everywhere tonight, and up for discussion.
I had recently considered writing a blog explicating my thoughts on anarchy--election fever brought out the worst in me, and it took every good fiber of my soul to restrict my harangues, even to the obscene levels I let them reach. A majority of earthlings seem relieved to have Obama as president. I'm also glad we have a new vibe coming out the telly, which is about the extent of my joy for Obama, and I don't even watch teevee.
I want people to see the possibility of their lives, and not just the possibility of some man they'll never see with their own eyes. I want people to believe in their own magic. And I want to destroy the propaganda about anarchy as destruction. I want people to envision Thoreau and Tolstoy when they hear anarchy. Everyone, and I mean everyone, whom I speak with about anarchy, says we can't have it "because of the other people." Everyone is afraid of everyone else--and that's a lie: everyone is afraid of themselves. Anarchy is about trusting ourselves to do the right thing. Anarchy is about confronting and doing the tango with our own restrictions, which have so much more movement and style than the laws and governments and law enforcements and armed forces of old lawyers and old bankers and old failed dreamers bolting together this grotesque, patchwork Machine. I want people to imagine their lives, and then do it. It's the Aquarian in me--I think of big pictures, how we are getting along, and I swear it could be . . . I don't know . . . your imagination, by definition, is beyond my imagination . . . what kind of dream will you live in?
And the reason I never composed that tirade was because I know I can't worry about anyone's life but my own, or I destroy the dream--I run the risk of legislating anarchy. Whether it's the increasing restrictions placed on freedom by the federal government of the United States of America, or the law of gravity, or the law of karma, I have my own game to play. A part of it involves talking to and hopefully inspiring others to push down a few ancient walls in the imagination, but I don't want to be a blind prophet chained to a barren rock either.
Prague.
Deep exhale.
I am learning so much about this city. I am learning the language. I am learning the history. I am learning the magic. I am learning the literature. I am learning the Names. The Pearl. The Mother of Cities. The City of a Hundred Spires. The Golden City. Magic Prague. I am learning the alchemy.
And I am writing a novel.
I realized my cold, watchful gaze upon Empire is kinda funny given my Irish and Czech ancestry. I come from two distinct lines of proud, literate and unusually creative nations who've spent centuries under the dumb heel of a foreign military.
Is our song because of our cage? Perhaps otherwise we would only fly.
But what a restriction, bound only by the blue skies . . .
I think of Dedalus, I think of Joyce--I think of Kafka in his labyrinth.
Prague.
This is a fitful transmission.
Why, after weeks, am I breaking my lightning, mirror silence, though I have no clear idea of what I need to communicate, only that I have a need to express something? Again, swept away by the Gemini moon. Everything is everywhere tonight, and up for discussion.
I had recently considered writing a blog explicating my thoughts on anarchy--election fever brought out the worst in me, and it took every good fiber of my soul to restrict my harangues, even to the obscene levels I let them reach. A majority of earthlings seem relieved to have Obama as president. I'm also glad we have a new vibe coming out the telly, which is about the extent of my joy for Obama, and I don't even watch teevee.
I want people to see the possibility of their lives, and not just the possibility of some man they'll never see with their own eyes. I want people to believe in their own magic. And I want to destroy the propaganda about anarchy as destruction. I want people to envision Thoreau and Tolstoy when they hear anarchy. Everyone, and I mean everyone, whom I speak with about anarchy, says we can't have it "because of the other people." Everyone is afraid of everyone else--and that's a lie: everyone is afraid of themselves. Anarchy is about trusting ourselves to do the right thing. Anarchy is about confronting and doing the tango with our own restrictions, which have so much more movement and style than the laws and governments and law enforcements and armed forces of old lawyers and old bankers and old failed dreamers bolting together this grotesque, patchwork Machine. I want people to imagine their lives, and then do it. It's the Aquarian in me--I think of big pictures, how we are getting along, and I swear it could be . . . I don't know . . . your imagination, by definition, is beyond my imagination . . . what kind of dream will you live in?
And the reason I never composed that tirade was because I know I can't worry about anyone's life but my own, or I destroy the dream--I run the risk of legislating anarchy. Whether it's the increasing restrictions placed on freedom by the federal government of the United States of America, or the law of gravity, or the law of karma, I have my own game to play. A part of it involves talking to and hopefully inspiring others to push down a few ancient walls in the imagination, but I don't want to be a blind prophet chained to a barren rock either.
Prague.
Deep exhale.
I am learning so much about this city. I am learning the language. I am learning the history. I am learning the magic. I am learning the literature. I am learning the Names. The Pearl. The Mother of Cities. The City of a Hundred Spires. The Golden City. Magic Prague. I am learning the alchemy.
And I am writing a novel.
I realized my cold, watchful gaze upon Empire is kinda funny given my Irish and Czech ancestry. I come from two distinct lines of proud, literate and unusually creative nations who've spent centuries under the dumb heel of a foreign military.
Is our song because of our cage? Perhaps otherwise we would only fly.
But what a restriction, bound only by the blue skies . . .
I think of Dedalus, I think of Joyce--I think of Kafka in his labyrinth.
Prague.
10.30.2008
(Epochelliptic) The Miraculous Doctor Hradil
My heavy sorrow and my insane longing for She-Dog were giving me bad circles, worse and worse every day . . . so I pestered the Miraculous Doctor Hradil, visiting him for checkups: Uh-huh, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, discombobulated joints, run-down cartilage, beat-up ribs, fucked-up skull, quick shoulders, slowish knees, cracked Adam's apple, buzzing calves, demented heels, profession? Dancer. Aha, ah-hah, well, what else've we got: sunken eye sockets, hungry glances, coarse fast hair, clogged pores, old hump, dark malice, yearning, eagerness, mysticism, harsh booze, avarice, gloves, fill in the blank: Actor. Uh-huh, uh-huh, hold on now, we're almost done, how many time've you been committed, hoochmeister? Six, boss, Doctor sir, but that was under the communards. Just the opposite, old rat, those count double, and moving right along, this is going to hurt: Aha and oh my: yellow Slavic blotches, Celtic somnambulist, Germanic dummkopf, Jewish ganef, transitional AIDS, you stud, incipient raw graphomania, insane heavy perpetual adolescence, and good old schizophrenia. Capable of living defect free. Good luck. Next!
--Jachym Topol, City Sister Silver, 57-58
This novel looks to be a major turning point in my creative evolution. My style, my novel, must integrate. From the aftermath of Communism's collapse, in the city of Prague, this epochelliptic dream called Sestra in the Czech comes surging . . . down the tracks Joyce & Pynchon darkly, a scanner nonetheless . . . with Powers . . . Celtic somnambulist finagains Wake, see me jitter like baby for coin-operated candy sweet Machine--
This augurs pyrotechnical finger cramps, and crystal dreams, living, waking, and the Great Working.
I wonder, did Pynchon steal Topol by way of Zucker and pervert into the phrase Incipient Gammomania-- . . . from a translation? Alex Zucker's translation of Sestra (City, Sister, Silver in English) is an achievement in itself.
Find it if you can.
--Jachym Topol, City Sister Silver, 57-58
This novel looks to be a major turning point in my creative evolution. My style, my novel, must integrate. From the aftermath of Communism's collapse, in the city of Prague, this epochelliptic dream called Sestra in the Czech comes surging . . . down the tracks Joyce & Pynchon darkly, a scanner nonetheless . . . with Powers . . . Celtic somnambulist finagains Wake, see me jitter like baby for coin-operated candy sweet Machine--
This augurs pyrotechnical finger cramps, and crystal dreams, living, waking, and the Great Working.
I wonder, did Pynchon steal Topol by way of Zucker and pervert into the phrase Incipient Gammomania-- . . . from a translation? Alex Zucker's translation of Sestra (City, Sister, Silver in English) is an achievement in itself.
Find it if you can.
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