Chronicon:
Dance Lessons from the Bottomless Pit

-John Meador

“Now, Cap’n Smollett,” remonstrated Silver, “dooty is
dooty, as I knows, and none better; but we’re off dooty
now; and I can’t see no call to keep up the morality
business.”
“You’re a damned rogue, my man,” said the Captain.
“Come, come, Cap’n, be just,” returned the other.
“There’s no call to be angry with me in earnest. I’m
on’y a chara’ter in a sea story. I don’t really exist.”
-Robert Louis Stevenson: Treasure Island,
Chapter 32

Do metals do the rumba deep in the bowells of Pluto’s Keep? while spinster ores wallflower the benches of sombre caverns, envy scouring their pockmarked complexions, a band of unrelenting Kobolds kicks up a spangled & frisky dust as they break open an old bolero:

‘...At the very break of day
The peanut vendor’s on his way
At dawning the whistle blows
through every city, town and country lane
you hear him sing his plantive little strain
And as he goes by to you he’ll say
Big jumbos, big jumbo ones
Come buy those peanuts roasted today
Come buy those freshly roasted today

If you’re looking for a moral to this song
50 million monkeys can’t be wrong
Peanuts do bop do bop
Peanuts do bop do bop
Peanuts do bop do bop...’

An ancient grizzled prospector older even than Rip Van Winkle with gray eyes glowing like feral coals in the dark, observes the festivity from a shadowed alcove. He lights the last of his Habanas, sighs as he throws back his head, tucks the cigar box underarm and with a suave, debonaire step and rusty hip sway leads his prospective absent escort; blue smoke serpentine in the thickets of his vast & hoary beard.

The unsettling & sudden spectacle of this partying Lawrence Welk from Hell coupled with his own rug cutting enthusiasms had riled the old-timer and moved him deep within his own dark reaches. He farted a roar to rival the bellowing of Thor himself.

The congregation turned as one in arch regard of his momentous halleleujah.

Karys, virtuoso pungi player at the rear of the orchestra, sipped slowly from a flute of phosphor champagne as menopausal moths overhead hovered wistful, recharging their ardor in the xxx rated twilight of champagne TV.

“I caught a bullet in my ass”, expectorated the old geezer. Habana juice dribbled into his beard from the old stogy. “Silver, minted from my own claim. See, my pardner & me had equal shares. He didn’t much cotton to me making off with maybe more than I oughta. I saw the look in his eye, and I took off down the shaft, but that rabid jackrabbit of an old cuss set a fierce hornet up the seat of my worry and thats how I tripped down that hole that landed me in an underground river. Still there, that silver slug. I call it Vlad the Impaler. And dadgummit, one of you’s lucky that bullet weren’t wallerin’ in that sulphurous blast just then . “

The laughter rang like burning sleighbells in freefall.

The impish band leader stepped forward and addressed him: “Mecca lecca hi, mecca hiney ho. Are you from the motherland? Wonderful!”

“Sure thing, Mozart. Now, where’s that rare persimmon among women, Her Majesty Queen Cora?”

At the old feller’s reply, a sudden hush overtook the merriment; echoes fled into the deep.

Pointing the way, the spritely minions directed him to a lambent glimmer reflected off glistening stalactites, emanating through corridors of schist and polished limestone whose myriad primordial windings through a succession of pillared arcades and sparkling mica ceilinged galleries emerged into an immense cavern. The Telesterion.

Approaching the quivering diffusion he could make out a sign ahead whose choreography of luminescent, futterwhacking moths spelled out his immediate destination- ‘Cora’s Cage: Cafe Arcane’, the nekromanteion botanica of the Daeira Avernus. Her’s & her’s alone, this throne to the unknown.

When he walked in she was wiping down one of the small obsidian tables, a blackness devouring the very name of Night; hair done up with her back to him she set down a coffee cup and spoke.

“Ezra Nightingale, what secrets bring you me? Sit, and I will reveal them.”

Hearing the sound of her voice again catapault a glacier smack into his gut. He shuddered at the freeze out.

“Make it a ristretto red eye then, Queeny” shivering still, he resigned himself to the inevitable, impending tasseography “-with a shot of kykeon; that aged Hofmann Reserve if ya still got some...”

Executing its ritual ministrations, the boilerplate serpent hissed and spat out its Stygian venom through brass spigots. The regent barista chanted softly to an old ditty vaguely familiar, drew from a shelf the requested ample vintage draught and with a graceful sashay she sat the ivory cup & saucer before him. Raising the steaming cup in futile exorcism of the lingering chill, he brought his gaze to the brink once again, into the initiation of the haze.

Ratcheting things up several notches, the beverage duly unbridled his tongue, percolating the fountains of oblivion.

“Y’know Queeny, I had my first bolt of steam-press thunder at Dominic Parisi’s place in Greenwich Village- Regio’s- back in 1927. He would let none else touch that machine. He polished it til the dragon guarding the base breathed fire. Old Parisi never took off his hat. He was America’s introduction to espresso, glory be.” Putting his finger on the hummed fragment of her tune, suddenly he remembered an American version:

‘Oh the girls in France
Wear their whiskers in their pants
And the things they do
Would kill a Russian Jew
And the clothes they wear
Could freeze a polar bear.

Do what your mama says
And do what your papa says
But don’t split your pants
Doing the Hootchy Kootchy Dance

Cuz the way the way it shakes
Gonna wake that sleeping snake
If it comes uncurled
In the lonely underworld
Have to kiss it’s head
Til you wish that you were dead...’

O, Little Ægypt! Swept far from the streets of Cairo and the horizon of the Sphinx, where breezes lull the datepalms with alluring masqued patchouli; camels drifting in the moonlight on caravans from Khartoum... The precinct of her virtue in perpetuity abides.

Surveying the gravy stain marooned on his overalls, she made a mental note of the recipe. Nothing quite like a down-home meal.
She sighed. “Nightingale, if I may interrupt the solemnity of your thoughts and relieve the burden of your depleted vessel...”

Putting the saucer atop his cup she overturned it briefly. Arighting it, she slowly whirled the remaining sediment thrice in its own revealing delta dance. Peering into the shallows of its pareidolic abyss, with soft solemnity she spoke:

“Looked have I and read often this cup of yours, how well I have known. The heart’s beloved sleeps in a haunted palace guarded both by dog and sombre shade of soldiers. Springtime’s princess here is sleeping, her chamber lost to waking. He who descends within her garden, to unplait her hair and take her hand is lost ... lost. Nights become the days that were. Far, the light that bids cold cheer...”

After the reading, she commanded: “Azaryahu Uzair, open your heart”.
He placed his right thumb at the inside bottom of the cup and twisted slowly clockwise, licking the plumb tasting of Pandora and secrets of the deep delved earth. A continental drift felt contained within the cup. He shivered as a frisson wriggled up the staircase of his spine, then he also looked.

And there he saw a dance that he’d never seen before. A curtain drew open in a crazy little joint with drinks served hotter than Sahara sands; club the Black Cat Bone, old Hootchy Kootchy Man’s.

Arrayed like never-ending Scheherazade, the cafe Queen, in her mystery and seven veils; zills on her fingers, girt with coin and cowry shells. Incense swirling round barley spears and poppy bud she wound and shook like willow while thunders rumbaed in his blood.

He recognized the pungi-playing snake charmer below from his earlier encounter with the goblin orchestra, tracing her sinuous birthing ritual through a delerious labyrinth of steps as her lithe and supple grace enacted the consummation of shadow and stellum.

Laying down her crown and bracelets and slipping from her shoes, upon a zebra skin she did the limbo til her belly-button bling popped loose.

His heart did a triple somersault as the seventh veil gave way, there: a cowgirl tattoo of Prairie Rose Henderson & Yippy-O Ki-Yay!

Yeah, como esta usted senorita
Come with me to the border...

She looked up into his startled eyes and winked.

Allmächtiger Gott, Lösche Aus!

“Lay up in your heart dreams which thou hast seen and the interpretations which thou hast heard”, she advised. Recovering his composure, he reached inside the remains of his weather-beaten cigar box, withdrawing an object. Closing the lid, he laid something before them on the table. In the wan light of the cafe it discharged a warm golden glow as he spoke.

“One exit visa, your Aureus-Virga.”

The expression that crossed her face was not surprise. Perhaps never again would she be subject in that Kingdom of Surprise...

“Ah, formidable messenger come to us from out of the fog. So, your Société Angélique flexes its wings? Do they reckon the endurance of the seasons no longer up beyond these cloistered gates? There is an age of Winter on us yet and under mighty bonds I’m bound tho its lash sounds but a whisper.”

When the bowels of the world were forced open by men for wealth hidden in the depths it riled the ghosts of hell in an eruption of wickedness and sin. Wasteland. A heavy pall of dense mists enshroud the dolorous realm with embalmed darkness; a sovereign vengeance of disruptions, rents and chasms the resulting work of the seldom seen Lord Undertaker.

Her prescient foreknowledge of his arrival was to be expected, for she was mistress of its realm. The sponsors of his venture, however, remained mysterious as their name, and their purpose obscure.

“Tidings I bear, Great Queen. The threshold of thresholds is upon us all. The ancient ever-young awaits transformation untold. That narrative great work of Time collapses in a confusion of tongues as the singular Tale that lies beyond silence approaches. I’ve fasted, rode the kykeon blasted and been encrypted; from my chest taken vision; the Chronicles’s done, placed sleeping in a casket; and casket back inside my chest.
Borne through the elements we shall return into a Vernal midnight when a Star in glory shining overtakes both the gods below and the gods above. We shall behold the Anaktoron opening.
Cross the bridge Cora, it is time to begin plowing threefold fields of joy where once the frightened flowers fell from your long black limo- jonquils come before even robins dare to hatch the winds of march.”

“Pilgrim of eternity, even here in this dead realm, over your living head heaven bends; your spirit’s sister, this lorn nightingale mourning her beloved with much melodious pain; these gray walls moulder round, on which decay feeds, like slow fire upon a rotting fuse- but he lives, he wakes? Death’s dead, not he? Adonais, manna dew and splendour... Gawain returns with the Graal.”

“Aww Little Nestis, no need to moan those skeleton keys in the rain just to unlock that cherished captive. Queeny, its but a sibilant slippered step between Aidoneus and Adonais; come cease that ageless murmer of maternal lamentation high atop those rooftop gardens where the escaped cock’s evercrow transfixes your Aeon dawning on april’s couch stretched out forever; in lilac and lilies of the valley to the maypole at the crest.”



...................................................

Postscript:
Miranda Ruling

(after William Shakespeare’s Tempest)

Come with me & bless these two
With prosperity and honored issue
Spring come to them at their farthest
Further than the scythe of harvest
With Cere’s blessing so upon you
In Proserpina Prospero’s arts continue-
Even tombs unseal when the eye’s well lit
tho Time hath writ what humbled hands Emit.


7/19/2010

Notes from a Raven's writing desk to the March Hare, o'er a spot of tea

"...she is not taken by force, but enters Wonderland, or the Looking-Glass World, of her own volition, because she is trying to get there. This expression of agency trumps even Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, wherein her entrance to the Underworld is more explicit—she literally descends beneath the earth—but essentially accidental. Her truly heroic gesture, unambiguous in its intent, is her penetration of the Victorian mirror."

It is the going underground that preserves the body,
so though Persephone is ancient
and Alice long ago became antique
each could pass for sixteen.

They stand close, arms about each other's waist,
faces pressed together -- halves of an apple
cut to show the star of seeds.

They stand on opposite sides of knowing,
balance each other. What Alice lacks in weight
she makes up in fear, heavy as the denser metals.

It is the going underground that gives them
this battered look -- dark crescent moons beneath
the eyes, lips swollen and split at the corners.
Dirt in their scalps, at the roots.

--Stephanie Bolster, from: Portrait of Alice with Persephone

(Pishsalver & Upelkuchen's from my 1/2 guinnea hat):

CURRICULUM OF A.'. A.'.
COURSE I.
GENERAL READING.
SECTION 2. --- Other books, principally fiction, of a generally suggestive and helpful kind:
[...]
Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll. Valuable to those who understand the Qabalah.
Alice Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll. Valuable to those who understand the Qabalah.
— Aleister Crowley
Magick in Theory and Practice Appendix 1

"...one can hardly comment upon a theme which has been so fruitfully
treated by Ludovicus Carolus, that most holy illuminated man of God."
-From BOOK 4, by Fra. Perdurabo and Sor. Virakam (Aleister Crowley and Mary d'Estes Sturges)

Tomorrow is the first day of Spring. Enjoy the Winter.

Ladies and Gentlemen... Step up! Step up!... I, Mercury, the messenger of the gods, invite you... tonight, for one night only... at this very venue... to enter the mind, the very great mind, of Doctor Parnassus!


DOCTOR PARNASSUS’ cabin is tiny. It’s packed with books and memorabilia; Egyptian/Assyrian/Greek/etc., magic trick paraphernalia, and much else. A hanging lantern suspended from the ceiling throws moving shadows. DR. PARNASSUS is slumped despondently on a cramped bed. A plate of untouched food sits on a table in front of him. He has laid out tarot cards. To the right - The Magus.. to the left - The Devil. The next card is The Maiden. He places it carefully beneath The Magus.
And as the waters rose... the people's need for stories grew. Stories that would feed a great hunger. A hunger for more than just understanding...
MR NICK What exactly do you do here? DR. PARNASSUS We tell the eternal story. MR NICK Oh.... What's that? DR. PARNASSUS The story that sustains the universe. The story without which there is nothing.

Socrates and Theaetetus chew the fat

... there still remains to be considered an objection which may be raised about dreams and diseases, in particular about madness, and the various illusions of hearing and sight, or of other senses. For you know that in all these cases the esse-percipi theory appears to be unmistakably refuted, since in dreams and illusions we certainly have false perceptions; and far from saying that everything is which appears, we should rather say that nothing is which appears.
Theaet. Very true, Socrates.
Soc. But then, my boy, how can any one contend that knowledge is perception, or that to every man what appears is?
Theaet. I am afraid to say, Socrates, that I have nothing to answer, because you rebuked me just now for making this excuse; but I certainly cannot undertake to argue that madmen or dreamers think truly, when they imagine, some of them that they are gods, and others that they can fly, and are flying in their sleep.
Soc. Do you see another question which can be raised about these phenomena, notably about dreaming and waking?
Theaet. What question?
Soc. A question which I think that you must often have heard persons ask:-How can you determine whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?
Theaet. Indeed, Socrates, I do not know how to prove the one any more than the other, for in both cases the facts precisely correspond;-and there is no difficulty in supposing that during all this discussion we have been talking to one another in a dream; and when in a dream we seem to be narrating dreams, the resemblance of the two states is quite astonishing.
Soc. You see, then, that a doubt about the reality of sense is easily raised, since there may even be a doubt whether we are awake or in a dream. And as our time is equally divided between sleeping and waking, in either sphere of existence the soul contends that the thoughts which are present to our minds at the time are true; and during one half of our lives we affirm the truth of the one, and, during the other half, of the other; and are equally confident of both.
Theaet. Most true.
Soc. And may not the same be said of madness and other disorders? the difference is only that the times are not equal.

Timewave Zero

Prajnaparamita Hrydaya Sutra
or: The Heart Sutra

Body is nothing more than emptiness,
emptiness is nothing more than body.
The body is exactly empty,
and emptiness is exactly body.

The other four aspects of human existence --
feeling, thought, will, and consciousness --
are likewise nothing more than emptiness,
and emptiness nothing more than they.

All things are empty:
Nothing is born, nothing dies,
nothing is pure, nothing is stained,
nothing increases and nothing decreases.

So, in emptiness, there is no body,
no feeling, no thought,
no will, no consciousness.
There are no eyes, no ears,
no nose, no tongue,
no body, no mind.
There is no seeing, no hearing,
no smelling, no tasting,
no touching, no imagining.
There is nothing seen, nor heard,
nor smelled, nor tasted,
nor touched, nor imagined.

There is no ignorance,
and no end to ignorance.
There is no old age and death,
and no end to old age and death.
There is no suffering, no cause of suffering,
no end to suffering, no path to follow.
There is no attainment of wisdom,
and no wisdom to attain.

The Bodhisattvas rely on the Perfection of Wisdom,
and so with no delusions,
they feel no fear,
and have Nirvana here and now.

All the Buddhas,
past, present, and future,
rely on the Perfection of Wisdom,
and live in full enlightenment.

The Perfection of Wisdom is the greatest mantra.
It is the clearest mantra,
the highest mantra,
the mantra that removes all suffering.

This is truth that cannot be doubted.
Say it so:

Gaté,
gaté,
paragaté,
parasamgaté.
Bodhi!
Svaha!

Which means...

Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone beyond beyond, Awakened!
All Hail the Goer!

George Boeree notes:
* Emptiness is the usual translation for the Buddhist term Sunyata (or Shunyata). It refers to the fact that no thing -- including human existence -- has ultimate substantiality, which in turn means that no thing is permanent and no thing is totally independent of everything else. In other words, everything in this world is interconnected and in constant flux. A deep appreciation of this idea of emptiness thus saves us from the suffering caused by our egos, our attachments, and our resistance to change and loss.

Our concept of Zero derives from the Greek: zephirium via the Sanskrit: sunyata

"The binary equation for life is 0 1 0, where 0 represents the universe and God before manifestation and 1 represents God's manifestation in the world of matter. Each human birth begins at 0, where the human soul is still part of the unmanifested universe and God. Immediately after birth, the soul, encased in its human body, begins the journey of life, which in encapsuled in the 1. The cipher 1 may be likened to a microdot where a huge amount of information is encoded....
The soul is essentially an observer. it 'observes' the life encoded in the cipher 1 and interacts with its experiences. It soon becomes entrapped by the illusion of the 'life' it observes and believes it is part of that life..."

"The soul experiences the 'life' within the microdot that is the cipher 1, instantaneously. It passes from the state of nonbeing that is the 0 through the physical experiences of the 1 and returns to the state of nonbeing of the 0 in a single instant. You are 'born' and you 'die' at the same cosmic moment. All the experiences of an entire existence, divided into years, months, weeks, days, hours and seconds are an illusion. It is as if you are watching a film unwind itself from the beginning to its eventual and fateful end."
- Migene Gonzalez-Wippler: Keys to the Kingdom, Jesus & the Mystic Kabbalah

Yule

The Burning Babe.
-By Robert Southwell,
From St. Peter's Complaint, 1595

As I in hoary winter's night stood shivering in the snow,
Surprised I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow ;
And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,
A pretty babe all burning bright did in the air appear ;
Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed
As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed.
Alas, quoth he, but newly born in fiery heats I fry,
Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I !
My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns ;
The fuel justice layeth on, and mercy blows the coals,
The metal in this furnace wrought are men's defiled souls,
For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,
So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.
With this he vanished out of sight and swiftly shrunk away,
And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas day.

1. Our prayer - The Beach Boys
2. Wise man in your heart - Daevid Allen
3. Child is father of the man - Brian Wilson
4. Bumper ball dub (karmacoma) - Massive Attack (remix: Mad Professor)
5. Knights Templar - Steve Hillage
6. Space between your ear - Ozric Tentacles
7. Emotional slaughter - Black Uhuru
8. Exposure - Robert Fripp
9. 1000 years - Sting (remix: Bill Laswell & Karsh Kale)
10. By this river - Brian Eno
11. Stella Maris - Einsturzende Neubauten
12. Greensleeves/What child is this? - Jethro Tull
13. Sweet child - Pentangle
14. Wise man in your heart - Gong

How to stay alive

Pixies in Tokyo
Shibuya Crossing
Some of you may be familar with Shibuya Crossing in downtown Tokyo, if not by name then perhaps from photographs you've seen (you know the ones pedestrian crossings going every which way), it's the Times Square or Piccadilly Circus of the city, and like both those places neon signs and video screens abound. Well somehow by some means, all this week the Gong 'How to Stay Alive' animated video is part of the loop of films and adverts playing above the heads of the thronging crowds. Will any stop and have a PHP interlude, wonder what all that was, then scurry along? Strange times indeed. Maybe there are some Shibuya web-cams on the net where we can catch it happening live?





Released to coincide with the band's 40th Anniversary, 2032 continues Gong's famous Radio Gnome album trilogy which includes the milestone psychedelic progressive rock albums Flying Teapot (1973), Angel's Egg (1973) and You (1974). The band line-up on the album includes Daevid Allen (guitar, lead vocal): Steve Hillage (lead guitar), Gilli Smyth (Space Whisper and poetry), Miquette Giraudy (synthesiser), Mike Howlett (bass), Chris Taylor (drums), and Theo Travis (sax and flute).

"2032 is full of risk-taking, which is always a double edged sword, but these quirky songs might seem fresh and even bring a new blood in the Gong planet..."

"There are so many great moments on 2032, it becomes difficult to catalog them all. Taylor’s drums on “Pinkle Pockle” are outstanding, and the token straight-ahead rocker “Guitar Zero” is also something to hear. The electro-funk of "Robo-Warriors" is the most surprising sound to appear on 2032. It could have been a track left off of Funkadelic’s 1982 LP The Electric Spanking Of War Babies.

Fittingly, it is the final song that commands the most attention. The instrumental “Portal” is Steve Hillage at his finest, and Didier Malherbe’s sax solo serves to contrast and complement the song as well."