The OMASTERS - The Eisteddfod
MARQUE DUTCHAM, wandering like the proverbial, or legendary Flying Dutchman, arrives as Justin Time for the Eisteddfod. He enlists the Hungry Ghost, or preta, of the dear dead Marcel Duchamp, and the legion of Tuplas associated with the great artist, such as RRose Selavy, Marchand Ducel, etc. Their acknowledged purpose is to release all the data bottled up by the Ego, now demised, of Duchamp. Inevitably they become crossed in purpose with those attempting to mine the secrets of the past and to exploit them in confusion and lies as mercantilistic quantities, in reaction to the wave of Dharma now generally known and called by the term Awakening or Enlightenment, or the Opening Up, Budding, Buddhadharma.
It's the dramatic imaginary encounter of the defenders of the Dharma against the host of demons, as in the Greek sense of daimon, a partial inner fragmentation of the whole vision which becomes 'demonic' when it attempts to take over control of the the whole organism or system--as in Maxwell's Demon--and this control is motivated, we are usually given to understand, NOT by some 'good' or evolutionary "beneficial` trait, but as it were, for its own ends.
The example comes to mind of Simeon's Man's Presumptuous Brain, a revealing study of psychosomatic medicine, despite its pathological bias. The demons are clued by the figure of the Bat, well-known in Sufi lore; Ramon Lull, Robert Graves of "The Dog Walking Ordinance" fame, and in Chinese, it being one of the characters pronounced "FU" (Fuh) 2.5 Matthews Chinese-English Dictionary, 1964:
To prostrate (as a Bodhisattva 100,000 times);
to yield (submission, al‑Islam, ...to the Will of Allah);
to suffer (as in the Four Noble Truths);
Humble (as in the trade mark company name owned by the Rockyfellers, and noted in the National Lampoon's Comic Special.
FU is also the Bat (1979) and Happiness (1978) and much else besides, which will be clearly set out in some sort of table, as it were made plain, or plane.
"What is simple is hard," said Hildegard, a character played by the Abbess Hilda, whose companions were geese, who was of royal blood, Anglo-Saxon, and whose monastery at Whitby, aka Streonshalh, set above the white chalk cliffs, as at Leucadia where those sea heifers were sacrificed to Poseidon, over the edge, into the Adriatic Temples to Apollo. Theseus the hero volunteers to go to Krete to counter King and Tyrant HOLDFAST, who would not let his sacred cow go, the Zeus-Bull that carried Carmenta, Europa from the Philistines, (Land of the Phoenix, Phoebus Apollo, Rising sun, from the temples of Jupiter Melkarth Herakles, the twin-horned peak of Sinai, name of the God of Nysus spelled backwards as the language twists in furrows of usage boustrophedon right to left to right to left, while Chinese went up and down and heiroglyphs went out, demotic came in cursively).
"And what is easy will frequently be found, confirming our model, to be the relatively superficial, further from the center--and thus symbolically removed from the important prior and necessary states (yin) toward the more developed, time factored, materialized states (yang). Easy is complicated and complex, available through the array of data proceeding from the peripheral nervous system's translation to central nervous system input; the array grammar is the simplest mathematical model adequate for mapping the process neuroarchitectural transformations at this physiological state (locus and function). An array grammar, as understood by Formal Language Theory, maps matrices of point terminals onto transformed matrices as the iconic descriptions of tree grammars or the images of web grammars." Hilda, flocked by her geese, was a queenly, buxom, vigorous woman, with flushed fair skin and glowing eyes.
She had been a pupil of the Irish monks, practicing gTummo, the Fire Breathing, as had St, Cuthbert with his friends the sea otters in the pre-dawn tides off the rocks of Iona. The Irish after St. Columba, following the Sign of the Dove, were the Western representatives of the Practising Tradition, known in Tibet, for example, as the rGyud-Pa, Way of the cord--of lineal transmission, more fully as Karma Kargyud-pa, frequently seen as Kagyud-pa, the transliterations from Tibetan being a matter of differing conventions. Hilda helped pass the mantle of poetry to the people, when her hero--outside the walls of the monastery, one CAEDMON, became known as "the first English poet," and for a good reason, as one of the consequences of the Council held a Whitby, called in the year A.D. 663 on account of the concern for the timing of Easter due to be celebrated in the year 665, when the different means of reckoning the date of celebration would produce extreme divergence, as set forth by the Venerable Bede in his Ecclesiastical History of England. After the Roman way of chanting became the established practice, and a priest no longer exemplified the spirit of Enlightenment in the flesh by performing the practice, but carried, rather, Bodhidharma Credentials stamped in Rome on Papal Authority, without which none were allowed as practicing the True Faith, and so the chants became matters of an entirely different sort, and Hilda kept relative peace in her flock, and gave new birth.
The poet has been out in the field for English letters since the Great Beast, Mega Therion, whose number is 666 in the Book of Revelations, swallowed up the soul of the official singers and poets, dragon-feast in the year A.D. 665 into 666 and the rise to power of the Kentish Queen and her Roman Confessors and those who turned for not the first nor the last against the Irish of her lady Queen Isolde, married to the Mark.
Tristan, Tristram...and for such a long time the stone egg is cracking, the Shandy being born--oh to string it out, rMilam, thread of consciousness in the dream as to remember which are the details, the elements from that other mode, which ordinary people call being "awake," and remembering elements from the dream again when seen in sunlight.
"What happens in the plot of Tristram?" Marque asked.
"Almost nothing," Hilda regarded her trench-coated companion as they swooped down into the Baroque, gilt and crystal of the most sumptuous of Moscow subway stations. They approached a subway map, which turned out to be the well-known work of Marcel Duchamp, "Network of Stoppages," said to have been based on a map of the Paris Metro. Hilda snuggled up to the ear hidden in the dark masculine curls above the collar of the trench-coat. Poking her rosy polished nose underneath the brim of his tartan deerstalker (Stagstalker, it would be, from the Argyllshire arm into the sea), Hilda whispered "Listen to the sound of Music, and the song cannot be forgotten."
Hilda and Marque sat on a stone by a bank covered with heather, awaiting the sunset and the Crack Between Two Worlds, perhaps, on the banks of the Loch to discover a clue or clew to the mysterious weavings of the network of associations patched together like the quilt of a wander, a Scot, or in China Lu symbolized by the 56th hexagram of the I Ching. Over the braes with the afternoon light, arm in arm, came a brace of Scotsmen, one dressed for a time on the town, a veritable copy of Johnny Walker seen as the logo of the famous scotch whisky, in its ads and now striding over the stag turf with Aubrey W. Holz, aged 56 forever, the same way Litttle Orphan Annie and Dennis the Menace stay forever young. Holz, the archaeology/linguistics buff, retired cosmologist, and Johnny the man of action, approach Hilda and Marque on their rock.
"You are likely sitting on one of the very dragon's teeth sown by our own Caedmon in the fields; as around Whitby, so about the ancient seven-gated Thebes." Holz indicated the rock with a rod he carried, which Johnny Walker parodied with his walking stick, a vaudeville duo.
"Thebes we know was known as al-Wast. The Greeks called it 'Thebes' in Egypt as in northern Greece, but the Egyptians knew it as al-Wast. And both Cities are related through their names and their Sphinxes, with attendant riddles. The dragon's teeth sown by Cadmus around the Greek Thebes are said to have sprouted as armed soldiers; they are also associated with the letters of the alphabet, and systems of writing down language. (See Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, (Penguin, 2 vols.).
Hilda thought that Caedmon, as a sort of child of the Dragon, ought to be invoked with reverence, made ready for ringing bells, and calling forth the spirits of Revelation. "The story does get told, but it is some time in unwinding," Hilda motioned to the two gentlemen to be at their ease, and they knowing themselves to be in the presence of one of the Highborn ones, assumed the bearing and stance of the dignified anti-clerical presbyter, who called a shot by the truth, as it manifested objective and practical correspondences with reality.
Johnny announced they had been walking, apparently randomly, but according to Holz, with purpose and design, for about fifty six seasons. There ensured a discussion of the term of the term "season," and whether lunar or solar. Hilda commented that this was where the talks were left in the Abbey above the white cliffs of Streonshalh, later called Whitby, from which sailed a boat, according to Bram Stoker, containing one Jonathan Harker, of interest to ladies and gentlemen of letters by way of association with the iconic form of the BAT, well known in Transylvanian circles as natural model for radar and vampirism. Bats were the common concern of Graves, as in the references to the Sufis of Palma, whose emblem was the bat, and the Bat "FU" the homophon for so many important words: vide Matthews pp. 280 ff., # 1908 Fu = A sage (the wild sage growing in front of Trungpa Rinpoche's window at Karma Dzong), a distinguished person (one distinguished, as it were, by a mark of distinction, which state or person, having marked it, we will call the marked state.)
...ORM SJØ
The corner of the torn yellow napkin preserved the Old Norse name for the "Loch Ness Monster." The question which most fascinated then inquisitorial wanderer and true highlander, Holz was the possibility of prehistoric survival of paleontological beasts, or beauties as the case may prove, as have been reported in many Northern lakes. Is the Norse "ORM SJØ" over? Has the creature been scared out of its wits by TV lights and the relentless efforts of modern event-gobbling media to invade even the murky waters of the deep, cold Loch? Or is it now to be lost to science? Must we face the probability of the Loss of Orm? The Orm Show folded? Like the flow of gold, in symbolic terms, the other homophone, based on associations with the Latin aureum, aureus, aurum, Oreo. The loss of GOLD, Gold Flow! Or the Lords of Form, as an International--might as well be intergalactic-- council of Children as the Innocent Judges. They will see the corner of the yellow napkin, and the words ORM SJØ, but will they understand? For to understand is to stand under and to embrace the way of the tree and that of the web, to achieve integration and the closure of group theoretic characteristic of neocortical activity, as mapped in the abstract group structure of planning/command meta-programming/memory /learning extension or metagrammar. Cognitive neuropsychology thus recognizes four cardinal classes of generative grammars: ARRAY, WEB, TREE, and METAGRAMMAR.
The whole list of "FU"s is presented by Ignatz Fine, the Chasidic Mandarin scholar and Oriental dilettante (1908 to the final entry for "FU" in Matthews), which, believe it or look it up to confirm, #2002, pronounced with the tone 4.5 and also read po³ meaning, To stumble and fall prone (as Finn Mac Cool, the Cowan, Coward, Gavin, Gawain, and adversary of the Green Knight--Al-Khider--St. George). Stiff in death (Finnegans Wake), a rigid corpse. Thus the entries in Matthews correspond to almost a century of FUs from the years 1908 to 2002. We could begin with 1902, really the first word that sounds like FU, being represented, FOU³ . That gives us a "hundred names of God" in Chinese, all of them variations of FU. Character number 1982 does have the principle meaning of Buddha, Buddhism. 2000 is a Turnip.
"Could Johnny Walker, my road companion, be of the ilk of Randy, known to have followed a strictly Hamiltonian path--that would be the Irish criss and cross, and an etching in the soft stone of a bridge over one of Dublin's runnels?" Holz inquired aloud of Mr. Walker, who replied, "Name 'em. Wally, Random, Tennessee. And among the best known to those children associated with the lore of the Loss of Orm, Skye Walker and her lover, the Chinese cook, Deep Fat. Skye, you'll all remember, is one of the Krypto-Tibetan Luftwaffe Kommand Scretaries, under the eagle aegis of Rebus Jetsun Orphandular, who is never known to have walked anywhere, preferring to ride with Lampadephor Metaphrastes in his touring car, the slowest & most powerful in the world.
"The 'not' dreamed of by Bertrand Russell shortly before he died, was perhaps a vision of the Bardo precognized in the iconic shape or form of 1981, the "FU" meaning a negative, Not, and used in transliterating sounds, such as for 'volt' and for 'volt-ampere.' Which brings us back to the work of Stephan Themerson, Cardinal Polatuo, Gaberbocchus Press Ltd. 42a Formosa St. London, W9, 1961, p. 32 f. wherein the French savant M. Andre Marie Ampere, discoverer of the Right Hand Rule, and indicator of a profound bias in the world of physics that forms the substance of the Enantionorphic Dissertations on the Parity Principle, such as Elvis Presley, "You're Right, I'm Left, She's Gone."
Three dreams of three ladies. Among them Hilda, also called Signa, for Cygnus, the swan, the ivory image of the White Goddess as she was carved by the mesolithic wanderers out of the ivory of mammoth tusks, wandering north from the Pyrenees, along the loess belt to the Volga. And the story is ever the same the one and same story for the poet, as noted by Robert Graves and as recorded by Alun Lewis, from out of the loose leaf pages of some poetic primer (The White Goddess--was Moby Dick a male whale?), in Burma, in March 1944, "the single poetic theme of Life and Death...the question of what survives of the beloved."
We may, through the two poems of Ku K'ai-Chih see two aspects of the Lady, as Confucian model companion of the Emperor in the Admonitions scroll, and as the Taoist model of the Alchemical spirit, the Muse, anima, and complementary inner being, as The Nymph of the Lo River.
The Fu is a rhymed form but the rhymes are internal, and resonate with the meaning of the characters, the words. The poem is diffuse in structure, loose and flowing as a river in its fluid associations, based upon nature or honoring the Lords of Form, the spirits of the Place.
Thus a section or a whole poem might consist of many words for "green," and difficult to translate because they will all more or less have the same meaning of greenness, but different in nuance or association. We can extend this in the West with, say, a citation of the set of numbers in the spectral band of visible greeness, in terms of angstroms--and these numbers do mean green, as much as Lorca's image of the ship on the sea, or Gauguin's "The White Horse," which is green. "You can take a white horse anywhere," in many languages.
Hilda explained that the plot was somewhat like a French Index or Table of Contents, where the general flow of what is happening, like stories of the great operas which help the understanding of the plot, from the point of view that appreciates the linearity of structure, the cause and effect, temporally-factored sequences. We know that such tree grammars map iconic descriptions onto hierarchical directed graphs or symbolic descriptions. But the real richness of the Fu was in the network of diffuse associations, the mosaic or patchwork-quilt structure. The analog in process neuroarchitecture is a web grammar (characteristic of right cortical hemisphere activity) which maps images onto directed graphs or iconic descriptions--the seeing of the whole all at once.
Kurt von Meier