The OMASTERS - Shakuhachi Unzen

OM MANI PADME HUM!
Shakuhachi Unzen muttered: Om mani padme hum, om mani padme hum, silence just barely giving way to the soft sound of his voice as it swirled with the last of the water, counter-clockwise, down to its own level.
HUOM MANIPPA MI!
Eliding the open sounds, Unzen heard the shadow voice of his internal demonic distorter--personified, wearing a mask, off-the-wall. Here, thought Shakuhachi, in a maelstrom of fathering power, was perhaps the very key to the Krypto-Tibetan Luftwaffe plotting room--the navigation chamber in which there was said to rest on a heap of rice a precise simulation of the original Ch'i Mu Gai, from the radiant Mother of Heaven, Crystal Mala, who descended on double rainbows, to the proprietor of the teahouse in which Shakuhachi was dishwasher, flunkey and garbage man.
HUM MANIPPA MI, Huommanippami, humanippami...
With the pulse of a giant heartbeat quickening with the light of the morning, Shakuhachi squeezed a sponge dived-for in the shallows of the Eastern Mediterranean, off the shores of Krete, amidst the underwater ruins of a labyrinthine edifice now quietly dedicated to Poseidon. Unzen scrubbed the ring of scuzz from the sides of the sunken bathtub, rinsed, and a final bubble popped over the drain, pierced in the pattern of a six-petaled lotus. Liberated, the voice of Finnegans Wind reverberated within the walls of the bathhouse. Turned to the paneling of Burmese teak with an echo-chamber effect from the empty tub (laid with azulejos), a monstrous flatulence resonated like the curse of Taliesin in Lyra Celtica to rumble the ear­drums of Melvin Finnis, the self-announced avatar of Perfection; who sat on a coal-black zafu on the bare boards of the meditation hall adjacent to the bathhouse. At this time, Melvin was performing the karmic activity destined, he so reckoned, to squire optimum merit for himself and for all sentient beings: as if his features had been carved out of block ice, for forty-four minutes (by the joss stick) Melvin sat in a perfect demonstration of Za-zen, the motionless model for the community of faithful practitioners. With his heroic glaze of compassion cracked by Shakuhachi's wind yet maintaining the wooden dignity of his skeletal composure, Melvin officiously signaled the bell-boy. The hall full of meditators rose to perform prostrations. In a trice Melvin was on his way to hot water to check on tea. In some mysterious way. Melvin had been instructed by the lLama, Al Paca, to lead the sitting meditation, his perfected glacial exterior transmitting the telepathic heat from a fire which burned deeply and wildly within the soul of Melvin Finnis. Doing a slow-walk to the source of the sound of boiling water, Melvin slid the shoji screen sideways to frame the figure of Shakuhachi Unzen making chai.
"Humble, rumble, eh Unzen?"
"Not, uh, lumber. Only scraps," stuffing sticks into a blazing stove cast in iron, the front of which was in the form of a roaring lion. "Sticks and stoves make, uh, too much noise, Boss?"
Shakuhachi's technique with Melvin was to ask him questions which would conventionally, politely, require an answer of "No." He knew Melvin as practitioner of Perfection would be reluctant to utter "negative" thoughts, being at the rather literal level of the path. Melvin's left eye lid tic’ed whenever a NOT twisted his line of logical reasoning.
"All is mantram. There is no noise." Melvin delighted in the opportunity to glow spiritually, inspirationally. His face flushed with rosy compassion in response to his own great generosity, bestowing, as he thought himself doing, the infallible koans of spontaneous spiritual materialism upon scullery-beings. "But enough for doctrine. Now, Unzen, let's get at the Dharma. Was that you in the infernal bathhouse during our period of tranquility?"
Affecting the stance of a French waiter, towel over arm, Unzen announces, "Peut etre, mon Bon Ami, we have not even scratched the surface." He then executes a 270-degree footsweep, snatching a can of Bon Ami off the sink shelf on the way by, dusts the towel, and begins to scrub at a little spot on the floor in between Melvin's toe tips, "Tracks, Boss! Tracks of the Sounday, right across the bathhouse floor!"
"If you ever catch it, ask the Sounday what became of the lLama's teacup, famed in the song and lore of this Tradition and now lost," Melvodramatically.
"Nothing's ever lost, all ways."
"Tell it to the lLama, Unzen. In the meantime scour about for that green china teacup. If you come up with it, I, personally, will recommend you for the Brass Figadee with the Bronze Oak Leaf Palm, next Awards Night."
Unzen sat on a high stool, squatting like a frog, pondering.
"May be the Soucay has it, wound around with infinite octopus arms, hidden like a thrush in a billion branches of brush, the Blue Jay way, la Gazza ladra, Rocky Raccoon bandito, swipezies..."
"Who would dare to drink chai out of the Number One lLama's spay-shul teacup?"
Unzen posed pragmatically figuring it out.
"A disappearing band of disparate desperados?"
"Nyet. There is no evidence that any more than one person was involved. No breathing together." Melvin posed concerned.
Shakuhachi poured the milk of compassion into the pot on the hot stove, ground cardamom seeds, stirred in Lyle's Golden Syrup; like hopiscotch he covered a pattern over the kitchen floor worn smooth with retracing, the principle of design utilized by Harrison and Abramowitz for laying out paths at Brandeis University, and by Popo in Santa Barbara, observing the self-described channels of flow. Filling a ceramic stemmed cup with chai, Unzen placed it on the lLama's tray for Melvin to carry to the holy wholly man.
"Unzen, you find that teacup and I will pray that you may see the light..."
"Is it better hunting over there?"
"...the Light that may guide you to seeking Refuge."
"From?"
"In a word, Unzen, from that which, in many systems of soterioloty..."
“lLama chai: Hot" Unzen presented the loaded tray.
Melvin spins to leave; Shakuhachi does the counterspin to pour himself a cup.
"Om mani padme hum!"
A tiny pigmy owl flew down from the towel rack to alight on Shakuhachi's left shoulder, with a mini-screech, "Hri!!" The pygmy owl flew to the honey jar in the center of the round wooden table in the corner of the kitchen. Shakuhachi bent forward to stare at it, face-to, with his elbows propped in a geodeisic with his chin. Owl did a straight sanpaku for psychological effect, then fluttered his eyes as if its consciousness vacillated between Ajna chakra and the realm of timeless space called nirvana. Shakuhachi was amused when the pygmy owl then performed "switching eyes" with him, with but bare breathing space between nose and beak.

The lLama Al Paca, and his lieutenant, Melvin Finnis bent their heads over the tea tray which had been set on the corner of a red Indian blanket on which the lLama too had folded up his feet. They almost bonked their blessed crania as they peered into the swirling Darjeeling, in which floated a little white blob.
Melvin offered, "Shall we pursue a formal disputation on the nature and essence of this extra-ordinary manifestation of the white light of Chenrezig?"
The lLama declared, "That is moot."
Melvin squared for a re­tort; "Aha! Only if we agree to dispute, by convention (that is, by breathing together, by coming together, as it were) to postulate, avow or affirm something by the calling of names."
“It is moot no matter in which direction one stirs the tea."
"A mote in the eye of the mirror," Melvin muttered. "which the lid on your favorite teacup might have guarded against."
“Guard da Hill!"
("Mantram," mused Melvin to himself, imagining the sound of the lLama's softly spoken words as an injunction. Over and over and over Andover and Dover....The white cliffs of Dover, the Cliff fort of Cleveland. up from Kent down from Scotland, across from The NAZE, Walter de Clifford in a rose garden at 51⁰ 51' North latitude, being the base angle of the Great Pyramid at Giza. The Hermetic thief who stole the gold from the Pharoah's tomb with the light-painted fingernails of his anima, never touching the actual objects with any of the eighty-four thousand pores of his skin: The Marques de Limon.
"Maya-show," said the lLama softly to Melvin who had his knees double-lotussed and eyelids split in the haze-phase of visualization. The sound of the lLama Al Pace's breathing in rhythm with the waves of the great ocean brought him to clear the sand from his throat and speak in the sweet-water flow of riverrun. So many grains along the Ganges, so any worlds in the Okeanos of nightsky.
"Guard da Hill, guard da hill, guard da hill…Ah!…Hildegard!”
Melvin's mantric meditation ended an the open vowel sound as into the room swept the Marques manifestation, clad in yellow silk with lace collar and cuff-ruffs. He spat a black-green blob in a long rainbow arc, deadringing the brass spitoon set up as The Vase, ikon of the VOID, prepared to receive the image of collective visualization: Limon, meme.
“XLNT," said the Marques, as he performed four instead of the usual three prostrations before the seated Al Paca.
"Om Ah Hum (bonk!). Om Ah Hum (bonk), Om Ah Hum (bonk!) “Om Ah Hum (bonk)," each time hitting his third eye on the point of the carpet that lay at the feet of the lLama's bed under which was concealed a token of the Famous Missing Lump, the peagreen emerald--stolen from the bag of the wandering King of Troy which was left hanging on one of the bamboo poles curing in the indoor swimming pool of the Teahouse of Necessity, the emerald offered to the Buddha on the occasion of the Vast Rainbowshay's last visit to the locus, and later taken from the alter by the lLama Al Paca, following a vision received in a dream, to be hidden among the effects and furnishings of the room set aside for touring wholly holy men who stopped by to try a cup of Tea Zing on their way (searching for or returning with copies of what they believed in their blessed hearts to be the sutras), and to be found by some Terton. The Marques de Limon settled into a relaxed Zazen posture, apparently unaware that he had three-eye indicated the green Gloria's eye secreted for his discovery by a layer of wool tied into the zillion knowing knots of a Sufi weavers labyrinth, the carpet on which he was plopped. A flash of the llama's eyes to the tea tray brought a request from Melvin Finnis, waiting in respectful attendance.
"Tea, Sir?"
"Si, si," said the Marques, avoiding the ambivalence of "Merci."
"Right! Er," Melvin paused, unsure as to whether the visiting lLama intended to offer his own cup of tea to the visiting Marques, slowly dissolving white blob of owl moot and all, including a layer of settled honey at the bottom of the cup.
"Ride her down to the galley, if you will, Melvin, to fetch a fresh cup for our friend here. Bring one for yourself as well. And you might arsk Unzen to use this on his way up-stairs to join us, for Eye-see the foundations here of a great bridge of communion."
"A fourth for bridge?" enquired the Marques.
"Precisely," the lLama responded, "according to Theorem 16."
Limon: "Then it should be 'Si, si, si, si' as in accord with the view of the cosmos shared by all we four-eyed beings."
"Isn't trying enough?" Melvin querried as he spun to nip the broom being handed to him by the lLama.
"Pluck three hairs from the tail of my hobby horse here," the lLama instructed, "and proceeding accordion-like with the theory of braids, we will presently see (for an ace) what it was that Wotan wrought, with all his lapping fro and to."
The broom handle had been worked up by an unemployed merry-go-round woodcarver into the form of the Night Mare herself. Finnis stradled the hobbyhorse and rode downstairs, making mock nickers, toward the kitchen. In a flurry of fancied unsaddling, he tied the reins to the towel rack.
"Ordering! Three gunpowders to go. Make one of them for yourself."
"Si,si, skinyorito," responded Shakuhachi. Melvin toted the tea tray with three new cups up the flight to the room freshly painted red and yellow in the colors of the Tradition. Shakuhachi followed and the four of them were now sitting mandalesque around the edges of the green rug on the floor, the lLama on a pillow maroon as a ruby clouded by the obscure light of the setting sun in the west. The Marques de Limon occupied the southern edge, Shakuhachi slipped into the north slot, and Melvin Finnis setting down the tea tray in the middle.
"Off the carpet with those Jap-slaps," Unzen barked.
Melvin flipped his zoris: left foot over right shoulder, right foot over left shoulder, which came to rest, parallel on the threshold, pointed away, ready for swift entry upon Finnis's exit. Now Finnis finally settled down into the seat of the east, and it was seen that Unzen also bore a tray.
"Surprise filafel," he announced.
There in a simple wooden bowl were cradled three stuffed filafels, the pita bread bulging like three full half-moons.
"And one order of tamales, brand: XLNT."
"Excellent," said the llama, commencing the prayer for food offering.

Wiping some jalapeno sauce from the tips of his mustachio, the Marques inquired, "Who's got cards?".
Al Paca unwrapped a wicked deck of tarocchi from a bundle of black silk, and stacked the deck on the carpet so that it balanced on the bulge formed by the secreted emerald.
"Cut!" Turning toward Shakuhachi.
Unzen sprang from behind the door ajar, whence he had slipped upon the untying of the black cord which bound the Tarot pack. He was clad only in black-topped zoris, a black silken Manchu skullcap, and a leather belt with black G-string. Kung-fu flying over their heads, he sprang again off the wall in a breast-stroker's speed-turn, and in a single movement, unsheathed a jet-handled Samurai sword which he swung down in a graceful arc so that the point pierced the deck of cards clean through. This caused the hidden emerald to pop out from under the rug and come to rest between Shakuhachi's toe-tips as he landed along the northern edge of the field of play.
"Blimey, limey," gasped the Marques, memorious of his former incarnation's cruise-ins with the English.
"Glorious!" the lLama.
Melvin (aside): "She comes here from Davis, miles away, 'round midnight, in the rescension of Them."
Shakuhachi: "In excellente day-o."
The Marques, unable to restrain himself from speaking, "Et enter a pox..."
"Chicken, cow or small?" the lLama stood in formal question­ing posture, and concluded fixing the Marques with a steady beam while he clapped his hands sharply, commanding an answer.
"Multiple choice from a field of three," computed Finnis, marking the odds, "He should get it," turning to Shakuhachi and placing his bet down on the board, the stakes consisting of his half-eaten filafel, understood.
"He'll waffle--nothing clean," Shakuhachi, covering with his crust on which he placed an oil-dripping jalapeno pepper to sweeten the pot.
The Marques criss-crossed the question, first by echoing, "Boxes, boxes, boxes. Boxes inside of each other as nestled in China and the structures of Borgesian tales. Je me suis le Marque lotteraire (cough) litteraire, that should be. Et puts, la plus grande de toutes in 'pox' vient de l'amour. Eco! The fourth estate, unmarked, because unmentionable. The famous romantique affliction brought back by the mutinoids who sailed under the flag of the Atlantic Cross, the wings of the dove, the Noahic sign, los reyes catolicos, to the New World in which, for example we now find ourselves." With a deep, flourishing bow to the lLama and then, side to side, acknowledging his colleagues.
"Is that an answer?" Melvin appealed to the lLama, who said, "Si.”
“…pyllis, that would be, blond as the wood of the almond tree. The Model: Recherchis, "She would water a while with her mandorla eyes as we sipped Sicilian Gold on the deck at Rapallo...or was it Stromboli? North, south, what does it matter? Lady of the Madder Lake, where is the stare of your soft purple eyes when you see I weep for your being to be embraced by the fold of my neurotic projections of dreamy love and romance in this world which gives your marked man a daily Odyssean polytrope, now enlightened, now benighted, dawning, dying..."
"Tie it together, Lemons, I'm losing my bit bet the way the Tao now flows," Melvin urging the Marques to come to the point of a specific answer by way of choosing one of the lLama's three offered categories.
The lLama held out his arms for effect, pronouncing, "The stars are matter, we're matter, but it doesn't matter."
Shakuhachi footnoted, "The sutras according to the vision of Captain Beefheart. Album in display window of I. Magine's Category Store."
Melvin pressed, as if to test his citation, "Was that 'Clear Light' in the tradition of Od sal?"
"Or what the bad hound sucked out of the cosmic egg crack!" yukked Shakuhachi, with a note he thought owing to Faulkner.
A box of eggs holding a baker's dozen would have to be what shape?" asked the lLama of his three transient disciples.
"Bzzz! I've got it?" snapped the Marques, just as Shakuhachi and Melvin set themselves to hold the question for a period of bSam gTan meditation. The Marques spread his yellow-lined cape in a flash media-veronica, which wound up whirling around Melvin's head, as Shakuhachi snatched at the food instead of the words, one-gulped it, then lit up in fire breathing with the jalapeno smoking his palate, figuring the first question had been blown. There was a rattling of bamboo slats as Phillip Taoed slipped in the second-story window from the ver­andah roof.
"Mark, by the numbers?" He snapped his fingers at Limon. The Marques marked the numbers, "Six seventeen. By Sloane, the fourth term: Lattice sphere packings (tight)."
"Sphere knot" adjoured Shakuhachi, "fourth behold the 13th ping pong ball, or an imaginary sphere within 12 without spheres."
Melvin set for an jnana encounter.
"But the first term is a token functional unity, the proper sequence: 2, 4, 12, 24, 48, 72, 126, 240, 272...presumably we could go on forever, since forever is such a long time, and yet we find that somewhen the algorithm has slipped and we cannot generate sequential terms in quite the same way we get so far as the eighth hyperspace."
The Marques appeared to recompute using the lace knots on his left cuffs. "The value is twelve, your lLamajesty, whether we follow Sloane's convention, or simply reckon order from the proper members of the sequence."
"According to Sloane's lineaments," Taoed insisted, “of the number's address, so that we may know precisely where to locate it. I would not be telling you all this, were it not on page 73, of the 1973 edition (A Handbook of Integer Sequences, Academic Press, New York and London). And as we all must know, the seventy-third radical in Chinese is the character for speech, and so it seems fitting we should tell all that may not mislead those seeking the Dharma, even though the risk, according to sGam Po Pa, is one of committing the most heinous crime through idle chatter, what is said be the Truth. Swell."
"The proclamation of which is without fear, screecheth Garuda....One of the without spheres was a Puerto Rican chicken-- shaman if I've ever plucked one," added Shakuhachi to his owlet's contribution of the Bija, "Hrii!!"
"Can you produce a copy of your sutra?" the lLama requested.
Taoed slapped a bright blue copy of (N.J.A.) Sloane down on the deck of their teaparty space, thumb-flipping the pages to SEQUENCES BEGINNING 1, 2, 6, pp. 72-73.
"Verrry Good, Evangelflip," the lLama blessed in Taoed's direction, south, where through the window poured the yellow golden light of the midday sun, mottled by bamboo leaves, resounding with the buzzing of honeybees.
"One, two, six, in the notation of Amanita, arrive at the first perfect number almost as fast as Dickson does in Volume One, in which the text begins with a dividing operation," (Leonard Eugene Dickson, A History of the Theory of Numbers, Volume One, Divisability and Primality, p.3, Chapter One, "Perfect, Multiply Perfect, and Amicable Numbers: Perfect, Abundant and Deficient Numbers.")
Shakuhachi continued, "And was that not 'By the aliquot parts...' in publication 28 of the Carnegie Institute of Washington?"
Melvin complained, "But 617 is just what the list is called, and not what the elements of the sequence really are." With a rosy glow, the lLama smiled, "Distinctions may surely be indicated in the world of home and Form. Let us proceed by the book, if you will all provide the texts for citations. Taoed has Sloane, Unzen, Dickson..."
"It is I, sir, who hold Dickson-his Linear Groups with an Exposition of the Galois Field Theory (I'm looking over, the white cliffs of Dover, on the spine: 486-60482-9), sez Melvin Finnis.
"Do we have a double-Dickson citing?" Al Paca asked.
"Your lLamajesty, my mine is in three volumes, stashed in with the sauces on the cookbook shelf, since in all of 1602 pages there is barely an opinion to be found--merely, lucidly, elegantly injunctive language and pure descriptions about what is the case. Besides, I had to carry the filafel and tamale tray, exercising the ancient Ninja meditation of concealment in the bright light of the midday sun, so as to stoke you up before Buddhafast. What, however, about our new traveler recently slipped in like tiger stripes? Mr Taoed," Shakuhachi addressed him with a ceremonial bow, "as you have traveled, we welcome you to the Tea House of Necessity, Dharma Place of Tranquility, to the grove of the Great Queen of Heaven Herself, in the form of a magic tigress who Durosawas through the tall grass--the two hundred odd species of bamboos are grasses--especially in the raking light of the morning and again when the rays of Amitabha's sun angle groves sharp shadows in the field of continuity--our yin wood tigress who appears every 120 years (give or take eight), and who is now due."
"A drop of dew," the llama quoted Issa's famous haiku, which was completed by the others, in flaw:
"So dear," (Melvin, complacent in the East now with the sun past zenith).
"So fresh," (the Marques, on one leg, curling up like a limon).
"So. .." Taoed drawls out the all-propose Nihongo word.
"Flea T'ing," Shakuhachi wiggles his eyebrows and commences a slowmotion mock flight from the room.
"In soich of the famous misplaced volume of exact references, doubtless, Unzen. Was not the Flea T’ing a pauldron of prurience, presumably cast in the Yin dynasty, bearing four Tao-Tiehs, three legs, two handles and one void, with a purple patina, famed in fable and ballad as the color of skin around where the itch has been scratched?" Melvin clapped his hands, twice.
Shakuhachi does a Tae Kwon Doo kick, darting  back into the room, flicks his cushion up to Taoed. The emerald pops into the cup llama Al Paca has been using. Unzen whisks away the tray with dirty dishes.
To Taoed, "Sounds like Finnis gone to Korea. Got some kim chee maybe turn his ears violet." The Marques rises grandly, "Please, gentlemen, no violence at the tea party. Not even any violins, so we may concentrate on the music of that most precious organ, the human instrument."
Melvin picks it up, "Instrumenting the urge felt in the slow rumblings of Thunder, imitating its sound as the message first falls down from heaven in wrathful vibrations as he who first hears the sound of Ursprach knows he has stolen the great secret of mantram from celestial beings, as first the poet in the inner ear of man spirals inward the sound of the wave with coclear contractions refining it to the fundamental aum of our bio-electric sound system, tuned in resonnant frequencies with our skulls, pace rickettsia depending upon how much vitamin D we can fortify, sunbathing in northern latitudes--and because of the angle of incidence of solar radiation, essential dietary supplement north forty degrees and higher--usually found in egg yolks and fish oil, tokened by the non-Neanderthals who knew how to fly to the land beyond the north, and what to eat, as evidenced from the eggshells and fishbones found by Anthropology..."
"And may God save us from Anthropology," the Marques clasping his hands in expressive prayer.
"Symbolic anthropophagy is present in the very notion of the Eucharist," declared the lLama, "unless I shall have to eat my words."
Unzen enters, serving a gorgeous tray of sliced hard-boiled goose eggs, dressed with pate de maison truffe and small sauteed Amanita muscaria mushroom canapes in tiny rounds of Russian black bread spread with sweet butter and blueberry preserves. "Tantradine International presents...taDa!"
The lLama commenced a food blessing. The others, discarding meditation pillows, pulled up their books to use as seats. Melvin on Dickson's Linear Groups, Taoed on Sloane's Integer Sequences, The Marques de Limon with a morocco Opus Omnia of Jorge Borges. Shakuhachi Unzen frogsquats, holding in his left hand Dickson's 3-volume History of the Theory of Numbers and in his right a copy--perhaps the sole copy--of the I T'ing, prepared as a loose-leaf record of menus for the Feast of Four Thousand and One Fools.
"I sit upon my left hand, an exemplary tripos, while I hold here in the right a slim tome which contains the spice-cipher enabling one to translate the recipes from injunctions into descriptions of ways it might just as well be."
Taoed inquires, "Is this the-renowned "fleeting volume?"
Melvin, “According to Ignatz Fine, the T'ing element recurs cyclically, probably in various shades of violet to purpurea. One T'ing came in hues of the Rossano Gospels, another the wine-dark sea, yet another couple as Nino and April (quite profound), and finally of these examples, the madder lake, as seen through the eye (I) of a chameleon (I)."
"Tui, tui," said Taoed, “None so mad as he."
lLama Al Pace readied the competitors for the wissenschafts elimination, explaining the conditions--that the volumes brought to reference were table stakes, were there a table, winner take all and advancing in the ladder of the great Spiritual Materialism Sweepstakes.
Next came the injunction: "2311!."
Borges in his parsimonious style had perhaps not written 2311 pages, thought the Marques, who instead of opening the Opus Omnia to the last page, cogitated upon the possible, just possible, perhaps even chance or synchronistic reference to that number in Borges, knowing that the number is unique, that there never could be another number like 2311, not in 2311 universes even, and so it was certain to be mentioned significantly in one of the volumes of the Library of Babel, if not actually quoted by Borges. The memory search continued at this loose and speculative pace. The Marques drifted away into early afternoon dreams of topaz-colored sherry, recalling one of the famous joke-tellers conventions close to the Portugese border, under cork-oaks, in the hot sun--didn't I get a laugh-meter record? Reverid; "…not Senator Ford, it couldn't have been Senator Ford who told that…someone with an even greater deadpan...I pass!"
Taoed already has his Sloane open to integer sequence #2311, a sure-fire finisher.
Melvin Finnis turns to Dickson's Section 290, referring to the same sequence as Sloane, but nowhere containing the actual number 2311. A loser for all the other information it adds to our understanding of the sequence which Sloane has called 2311.
"What a thing is called and what it is are distinct, as we note in the well-read Christmas Carroll, 'The Tune's My Own Invention.’ Would the gentlemen care to stipulate to the like nature of the sequences?"
The Marques answered "Si," but was out of it anyway. Taoed slowly shook his head as if appreciating Ravi Shankar in India. Melvin turned to Shakuhachi Unzen, last of the four competitors.
"As your own invention, the tune is in no necessary way anything even remotely like the sequence."
"Not ‘Your Own Invention,’ but mine, 'My Own Invention!"
Taoed, "No, His Own Invention."
Unzen, "Your Own Invention?"
Melvin, "My Own Invention," repeat after me, "My Own Invention!"
Taoed, "Standards of publication reporting experiments on many phenomena related to micro-wave biological transmission and perception are not such that procedures can be duplicated easily and so results corroborated. This is because of the somewhat different traditions behind the Iron (continuous spectrum) Curtain and within ARPA. Your own inventions sir, may not be quite so easy to repeat after you as the mere words. However, tell us please, what is your invention?"
Melvin, "The Tune."
Marques "Time for a hit toon?" Expectorates, another ringer. "Sing it, Finnis, in the key of Karma!"
Melvin begins, "A sitting on a gate, a sitting.
lLama, "Om gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate bodhi svaha!"
Unzen, "Heart of the matter is contained on a single page insert in this wee volume, in among the foreign words, phrases and expressions. The I T'ing metamaps the Fairy Story of the little queen who lost her crown owing to the vultures of state who soared above the lame king's dying body, without letting its spirit escape to find peace on the other side of Samsara, called "The Loss of Orme," for hers was a realm of pure gold."

Kurt von Meier
Circa 1975