November 21, 2010
Susan - “NOOOOOOOO”…….I bellowed! “Don’t throw it to her/me, he’s in there….after all this time….I have found him. I was born to liberate him. The oracles have foretold this. Don’t you hear his treatise, his brilliance! I have been searching forever, my whole life and you can’t just toss him away” I conjured up to my memory the time I met my first Soothsayer. I let out a laugh that no one seemed to hear as I recalled that embarrassing meeting. That was so long ago; what seemed like an eternity. I was so much younger then and gullible. It was November 17, the same month and day Bill pulled him from the water. That channeller promised me. She said he would be liberated on this date on a Wednesday (the same day I was born and the same number but in February) and to search for clues and omens leading up to this date.
I sat there cross-legged in my brown suede pants with the long fringes falling down the outside seams from my hips to my ankles on the carpet. How I loved the fine detailing and craftsmanship of my biker gear with the front and back pockets. I had a pocket on the side where I kept my blue pack of Gitanes cigarettes and chrome Zippo lighter.
 |
| Alchemist _ Susan Shulman |
So many journeys have passed since that time. I have heeded the words of that alchemist and all the other I have encountered during my adventures but I have to admit my faith was wavering and the luminous bright flame of belief flickering. I doubted the authenticity of the legend, but I hear it now with my ears and my soul. The prophet Mark has arrived. I started to sprint to the Blues to intercept the precious glass flask!
William - "What? What do you mean What! I just spotted a peradam floating in the sea, swam out, retrieved it and when I show it to you, you toss it to the squirrel....like it was a pistachio; that's What."
SuTwo stops in mid freight train riff, removes the harmonica (seemingly much recovered) and yells, "She's not following protocol!"
Meanwhile the little blue sniffed and chattered madly as if in a violent debate with the vial.
Shocked, I stammer, "What is protocol? This is as unique experience as I've ever encountered! One of a kind, no precedence; how can there possibly be protocols, rules, procedures, laws or prescriptions?"
Susan smiles as she says, "Oh yes, haven't you heard of Pandora's Blochs?"
The little blue, clearly agitated popped the vial in it's cheek and made it's beady eyes bulge as Susan continued;
"Both of you stop with your protocols and logics..they're of no use..it's all rubbish! You both are wearing those concepts like a girdle that's constraining your thoughts into some ideal form of an albatross. This is serious business. At least take it as serious as him." Susan points in the direction of the little beady, bulge eyed blue as SuTwo flings herself at him and the cheeky vial.
Mara - The little blue opened his mouth and a sea shanty emerged. A ship appeared to be circling in the vial as if caught in a maelstrom. The little blue deftly removed the vial from his cheek and gave it a long stare. He walked up to us and quietly place the vial into the outstretched hand. Then sneezed, cleaned his muzzle with a few quick swipes and ducked for cover... emitting sounds much like quacking.
Mark - (reading) "...my predilection for prime numbers has led to a curious condition which I was discovering after much trial and error...the lack of words completing a sentence or the addition of nonsense words to a sentence was an unconscious construction of immense numerical complexity. It seemed the author spoke in sentences in which the number of words are always a prime number...the number of letters in the sentence are also prime...The following sentence is typical of this new behavior. "They eat only the void, such as the form of corpses; they get drunk on empty words and all the meaningless expressions we utter..." I wondered, "Is zero a prime number?"
Meadowbrook. The first encampment. Going backwards to go forwards. To help those that follow. That had been my predicament. I had been abandoned by my friends. And now I was alone. But maybe it was not abandonment. I had just fallen behind.... I was like Alphonse Camard who organized his own climbing group. Alphonse. Alpine. Must keep climbing. Must keep reading.
I did not understand all the hubbub about the blue squirrels. There were unicorns dashing out all over the place. No one made a big deal about them. But somehow the blue squirrels had made an impression.
Must keep reading. Chapters one two and three. Then there was something before chapter one. But I no longer had that. So I always began my re-reading at chapter one.
But as I neared the end of the book I realized there was more of the book but the author had died. I forgot that every time.
Somebody's wife wrote, “THE GUY IN THE BOOK goes through life with a sort of radar for trouble but yet he chases away money and success. He can find darkness wherever he goes and that’s how he found Sogol. And he was angry from his solitary position and the more solitary he was the angrier he got. He was often the smartest guy in the room but it never seemed to do him any good because there was this gloom factor that seemed to follow him around. It hung over his head like the dybbuk in A Serious Man. Maybe that’s how I make sense out of that film—by adding it to mine. I hereby appropriate the dybbuk scene from A Serious Man into my film. Only in my film he really is a dybbuk and she kills him or he really is NOT a dybbuk and she kills but either way it brings a curse on them and their descendants. And that descendant is me. I grow up with a curse on my head from all the generations, all the BEGATS.” I did not know at the time, that the movie of my novel would not be made for 26 more years and even the making of A Serious Man was 15 years in the future.
He wrestles with the book. It almost destroys him. He thinks he is cured. He thinks it will not dog him, that he won’t be needy anymore. But he is not cured. There is no cure. He is still needy. He still has needs. And that voracious appetite.
He was not a happy fellow. He wanted to paste the conversation into the book but he couldn’t find it so he did it from memory. After all this was his life. It wasn’t hard to remember. He had tried to explain to the woman at the other end of the chat mechanism that he had always been miserable and she wanted to know more. He explained. He wanted to have everything everywhere. He was miserable because his appetite was so huge he always wanted more. Was he ever happy she wanted to know and he tried to explain that yes he would get lost in the moment occasionally and forget that he was miserable and these were wonderful moments. And they were quite frequent. In fact he didn’t notice that these little moments comprised most of his life. So he was both and ecstatic being and a miserable fuck. And he flitted back and forth between them at a moment’s notice. But he thought, due to his awful upbringing and all of his insecurities, that the ecstatic moments were some kind of accident and that only the misery was real but part of his voracious appetite was that he wanted to change it. He wanted to change it in he worst way. And he was slowly succeeding and that was what the book was about.
Prehistory leading up to Sogol and his young parents. He meets the author the book begins to eat away at him. The book is performance art. It’s bigger than life. It reflects the times and the society but somehow I won’t write the book be cause it doesn’t yet have the story arc I am looking for.
I keep thinking it needs dialogue but it doesn’t need dialogue. I think the Sogol character is a problem but it’s not. Maybe he shouldn’t be called Sogol. Sogol spelled backwards is Logos which means words.
I still remember Sogol but there’s another older monster. Underneath Sogol is the real problem. I must cast off the Mount Analogue without finishing it. And I realize I will never finish it. I look at Smile by Brian Wilson and I look at the Prisoner by Partrick Mc Goohan and I realize this book is the destroyers of men so I give it up and I imagine I could listen to That's It For the Other One by the Grateful Dead. I try to keep reading but I am distracted and I hear voices.
Susan - "They are the voices of hope." I whispered while gently caressing this valuable and ancient case! "You are now found and pay attention this time.” I held the vial close to my face and murmured words barely moving my lips. “I have been told so much about you and hope you will stop your rhetoric long enough to take directions?" I paced nervously, peeking into the faces of the others. My eyes darted to the water and back to the mountain. I was contemplating if I should make a run for it. Where is RIA when I need some mathematical equations calculated?
Mark - I closed the book for the umpteenth time. THIS HAD BEEN MY FATE FOR WHAT SEEMED LIKE YEARS. Should I immediately begin reading it again? Miraculously I had finished it by the time the darkness had enveloped me but I retained little of its details. Instead I was overcome by a feeling of longing and incompleteness. A faint voice of hope lingered vaguely in the distance but it was uncertainty and confusion that consumed most of my consciousness as I clutched the book contemplating what action I might take next. I felt I was balancing on the edge of a steep mountain pass with no sure place to step on either side of me.
November 22, 2010
Mark -
I did not understand all the hubbub about the blue squirrels. There were unicorns dashing out all over the place. No one made a big deal about them. But somehow the blue squirrels had made an impression.
Hubbub about Squirrels _ Lee Goldberg
Must keep reading. Chapters one two and three. Then there was something before chapter one. But I no longer had that. So I always began my re-reading at chapter one.
But as I neared the end of the book I realized there was more of the book but the author had died. I forgot that every time.
Somebody's wife wrote, “THE GUY IN THE BOOK goes through life with a sort of radar for trouble but yet he chases away money and success. He can find darkness wherever he goes and that’s how he found Sogol. And he was angry from his solitary position and the more solitary he was the angrier he got. He was often the smartest guy in the room but it never seemed to do him any good because there was this gloom factor that seemed to follow him around. It hung over his head like the dybbuk in A Serious Man. Maybe that’s how I make sense out of that film—by adding it to mine. I hereby appropriate the dybbuk scene from A Serious Man into my film. Only in my film he really is a dybbuk and she kills him or he really is NOT a dybbuk and she kills but either way it brings a curse on them and their descendants. And that descendant is me. I grow up with a curse on my head from all the generations, all the BEGATS.” I did not know at the time, that the movie of my novel would not be made for 26 more years and even the making of A Serious Man was 15 years in the future.
He wrestles with the book. It almost destroys him. He thinks he is cured. He thinks it will not dog him, that he won’t be needy anymore. But he is not cured. There is no cure. He is still needy. He still has needs. And that voracious appetite.
He was not a happy fellow. He wanted to paste the conversation into the book but he couldn’t find it so he did it from memory. After all this was his life. It wasn’t hard to remember. He had tried to explain to the woman at the other end of the chat mechanism that he had always been miserable and she wanted to know more. He explained. He wanted to have everything everywhere. He was miserable because his appetite was so huge he always wanted more. Was he ever happy she wanted to know and he tried to explain that yes he would get lost in the moment occasionally and forget that he was miserable and these were wonderful moments. And they were quite frequent. In fact he didn’t notice that these little moments comprised most of his life. So he was both and ecstatic being and a miserable fuck. And he flitted back and forth between them at a moment’s notice. But he thought, due to his awful upbringing and all of his insecurities, that the ecstatic moments were some kind of accident and that only the misery was real but part of his voracious appetite was that he wanted to change it. He wanted to change it in he worst way. And he was slowly succeeding and that was what the book was about.
Prehistory leading up to Sogol and his young parents. He meets the author the book begins to eat away at him. The book is performance art. It’s bigger than life. It reflects the times and the society but somehow I won’t write the book be cause it doesn’t yet have the story arc I am looking for.
I keep thinking it needs dialogue but it doesn’t need dialogue. I think the Sogol character is a problem but it’s not. Maybe he shouldn’t be called Sogol. Sogol spelled backwards is Logos which means words.
I still remember Sogol but there’s another older monster. Underneath Sogol is the real problem. I must cast off the Mount Analogue without finishing it. And I realize I will never finish it. I look at Smile by Brian Wilson and I look at the Prisoner by Partrick Mc Goohan and I realize this book is the destroyers of men so I give it up and I imagine I could listen to That's It For the Other One by the Grateful Dead. I try to keep reading but I am distracted and I hear voices.
Susan - "They are the voices of hope." I whispered while gently caressing this valuable and ancient case! "You are now found and pay attention this time.” I held the vial close to my face and murmured words barely moving my lips. “I have been told so much about you and hope you will stop your rhetoric long enough to take directions?" I paced nervously, peeking into the faces of the others. My eyes darted to the water and back to the mountain. I was contemplating if I should make a run for it. Where is RIA when I need some mathematical equations calculated?
The Drift pattern of the Vial _ William Evertson
Mark - I closed the book for the umpteenth time. THIS HAD BEEN MY FATE FOR WHAT SEEMED LIKE YEARS. Should I immediately begin reading it again? Miraculously I had finished it by the time the darkness had enveloped me but I retained little of its details. Instead I was overcome by a feeling of longing and incompleteness. A faint voice of hope lingered vaguely in the distance but it was uncertainty and confusion that consumed most of my consciousness as I clutched the book contemplating what action I might take next. I felt I was balancing on the edge of a steep mountain pass with no sure place to step on either side of me.
November 22, 2010
Mark -
I was reminded of my teacher Moody Duck who once said to me, "The chameleon law as the voice in the back of our head telling us to back off, be careful, go slow, compromise. He calls it the lizard brain."
He called the lizard brain "the motor of mediocrity and mainly responsible for late launches, middle of the road products and procrastination. It is the force that causes you to fit in instead of standing out."
Mount Analogue seems to be about inner doubts and how they prevent us from seeing the other 99% of the possibilities that are at hand in each situation. With rational thinking and conventional ‘common sense’ we easily fall prey to the chameleon law. Scratch off the surface of the chameleon and you will find Fear driving its actions.
He called the lizard brain "the motor of mediocrity and mainly responsible for late launches, middle of the road products and procrastination. It is the force that causes you to fit in instead of standing out."
Mount Analogue seems to be about inner doubts and how they prevent us from seeing the other 99% of the possibilities that are at hand in each situation. With rational thinking and conventional ‘common sense’ we easily fall prey to the chameleon law. Scratch off the surface of the chameleon and you will find Fear driving its actions.
How did I get here? Tibetan Buddhism, I think. I heard before my captivity of a tradition called Terma: a physical object such as a ritual implement that is buried in the ground (or earth) or a text, one often written in Dakini script: a non-human type of code or writing but nonetheless hidden in a rock or crystal, secreted in a herb, or a tree, hidden in a lake (or water), or hidden in the sky (space). Though a literal understanding of terma is "hidden treasure", and sometimes objects are hidden away, the teachings associated should be understood as being 'concealed within the mind of the guru', that is, the true place of concealment is in the Terton's mindstream the way the peradams were being found along the way on the climbing of Mt. Analogue.
Whoever buried me in this vial must have seen me as some kind of masterpiece to be discovered at a later date. But as to why I do not know. My chameleon minds seems incapable of understanding of it.
Whoever buried me in this vial must have seen me as some kind of masterpiece to be discovered at a later date. But as to why I do not know. My chameleon minds seems incapable of understanding of it.
Jane - Ria appears over the horizon on her blue mountain bicycle bearing a long red rope tied around her waist and a Tibetan prayer bowl. She reaches Susan and stops; takes the bowl and strikes it once - the sound echoes across the distance resulting in ..........
Mark - Suddenly I was shaken from my self-reflection by a loud, deep ringing sound. It catapulted me back into the moment. What was happening outside the vial? Other than the mysterious waxing and waning of light and dark, I had stopped thinking of "life outside the vial" many seasons ago.
Lee - looking down at the beach where the travelers have gathered, Lee felt a dread that enveloped her like a shroud...they don't have any idea what they've discovered or uncovered...but...they seem to be such a flexible lot...just maybe they would survive this last development...like a Genie in a bottle - now a Mark in a vial...will they let him out? Can he grant their wishes? Or...is he like the Mark on the other side? Evil encased-imprisoned for all time....Susan seems to have a connection- but both Susan's have the connection-one negative the other positive- which will be let from the vial?????
Mara - Pandora, it seems, had found a way to institute the "...on second thought.." clause, and in naming it honored the man who showed the way to "Storàge Safety". Unfortunately, at the dedication ceremony, involving Absinthe among other things, there was a slip and Bloch was Blocked... hmmm now what did she say about the unlocking?
Mark - Pandora? Pancake? Before I knew it, I was transported back to 1967, listening to “Born in Chicago” by the Butterfield Blues Band. But I had never heard that song before. I passed out.
Absinthe Squirrels _ Susan Shulman
Susan - Did someone mention Absinthe? I must clear my thoughts; I have something way more urgent to attend to at the moment. But how can I as I taste that memory in my mind? The first time I encountered that beautiful emerald green “Fairy” liquid was in Montreal at the New Penelope Blues Bar. I was moving to the Paul Butterfield Blues Band outside on Sherbrooke Street when he came over to me that first time and divulged his name to me in his Irish accent. “Call me Hemingway”. It must have been the music blaring out permeating every passage to my soul that camouflaged and altered my sanity. He continued to tantalize me,” Absinthe inspires many prominent artists, writers and poets such as Vincent Van Gogh, Oscar Wilde and Manet. I think you would be a great addition to my list.
I snap out of this flashback. “It won’t be much longer Mark!"
No comments:
Post a Comment