A letter from the Notebooks of von Meier
Up and down the stacks,
Distinguished visitors to 27-D,
Across the Way (Tao in Chinese, D3 in Nihongo),
Turkies, Afghanies, and Emissaries from Sufie Central,
Fresh from the Mount Olympus schreibmaschine & notebooks of Buddy Meier--(Up from the mud, supporting on a delicate green stem the lotus (Padma) of Compassion (Karunya, Skt.) -- these words. "In the beginning..." according to the madman on the Isle of Patmos, the word. "And before you gave me words I had no thoughts; before I had no thoughts, there was mind, still.
AH. Supporting--also in the sense of thronos (Greek) and our word throne, hence therapy. Thrones: an order of angels (whereas now we speak of quanta in physics, or the formal properties of spaces in mathematics), a clutch of Cantos from "il miglior fabbro," as per the dedication of The Waste Land," together with a quip from the Sibyl of Cumae who also adorned the entrance to her grotto in Italy with the sign of the labyrinth, in whose eyes flashed the gleam of Beyond, and Beyond, much later associated with or appropriated by Lady Oracle at Delphi, consort of Apollo chewing Laurel leaves and illustrated by Michelangelo in the Capella Sistina. The California bay (laurel leaves) blooming in the unseasonal springtime. Up above the Valley, by Mayacamas vineyard, back in to the Falls along the east side of Mt Veeder-soo00 loverly! Fragrant pine grove, bare and bulbous California buckeyes, skies clear to the double horn of Diablo in the south, swelling breasts of St. Helena northwest. Migrating red-winged blackbirds. Puppy growing like a bear. Little Squash with eyes the color of jaundice, big balls and speckles on his nose. All is peace and space and light.
We had some of the Mayacamas Cabernet Sauvignon. The late growth from '68 is now up to $26 or so a fifth, topping much from France, they say. Backyard also renders good juice of Dionysos, and the yellow mustard flowers are open for the skyscrapers of bees by the stone bridge. The path with a (Bret) Heart--local color, Spirits of the Earth, song of the sky.
Wally & I arm-wrestled for $1500, payable within a week as an applied Karma yoga, for support: stretching the sabbatical on half-pay without selling the Navajos. Noble is off to the opening of the Hyatt House in Aridzona for which he painted a mural in the grand tradition, space & light. Justin, our local tender of the vegetable kingdom, has cleaned up the corral studio of Noble's dregs, installed two black panther rat-catchers. Cat and mouse. Apollo Smintheus, originally bred to be fed to the Pythonness under the Delphic tripod; Dionysos the cat, snow lion of the Land Beyond the North, spotted, sinewy as vines. Rats in the attics, awaiting the swish of the White Tigres claw.
In the social function calendar for Janus month, a reprise at Esalen, where the Indians thought up words, words for the sunset, otters, sea lions and kelp-forms, while sitting in the light yellow therapeutic waters nestled in the cliff-side. Fresh water supply went out for a day there--hot cocoa for breakfast, eau Perrier for the toothbrush. Michael Murphy was sober in a yello pullover, Dulcie in blue & happy. John of the Lillies is dolphin ambassador to Tarthang Tulku now, for a small fee to the general pewblique. Tom Kranz had a bestfriend apptd. Chief of Politzei in Snafurisco; Brown may Sufising his way into the democratic praesidentum lists.
Who reads Joyce?
Thass Joyce James (108 wpm) of the psychocosmick trans-crypts. Where are the bevy of secretaires? Jean Poole & Kelly's Green Girls, each one of 'em a Smith College grad in horseshoeing and comparative lit--Annie Banannies with zipperskins--Betty Bottom Dahlers--and the Soozies of the world? Where are they all now? Reachoich assistants with inscrutible humors, foot massagistes, omlette cheffettes?
In the golden middlepath meanwhile, whaddabout the Tantradine International Dakinis (not necessarily celestial maidens) of the Big Apple enclave magnetized about Zoichi Skardo? Does the T'ai Chi Princess still grasp for the ever-elusive sparrowtail? Will the redheads tend the knitting? Clean house?
Something in the style of the posthumous Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics by the late, great Ludwig Wittgenstein, we cyclically essay further briefs of insight on how it really appears that we imagine it all to be, in fact. AH! And again we note that the fact is the fruit of the maker, il fabbro. For a fact is something done, made, being the Latin word for the same verb which in Greek is poesis, the making and the doing being the poem. Reviewers never say anything. Critics are forever choosing (in crisis, at the crux of space and time, bearing the crosses--but a piece of which, if True, satisfied the Mother of Constantine).
Our text opened with an account of the Synod of Whitby. Anm Dominicani (The Hounds of Annwm, spotted red and white translated from the Celtic lore to the Catholic to become the domini cani, of dogs of God, changing color to b/w). Black and white and red all over, and over. Joyce (James) sez to the little girls at St. Brides' to read the Standard Press. And who now carries the Standard. How many million did it cost S.O. Noo Joisy to change its name to EXXON? In our land the Corporation is KING (King, having changed his name to Ford, bridging the great electoral waters to park his car in the White Garage). What's in a name-change, Adam (who changed his name to Edam, the Big Cheese, out of Eden, no pockets in which to carry the adamantine stones, indestructible, so he popped them into his mouth like a Greek beachcomber ventriloquist, ennunciating diamonds; for the Democritics, artificial pearls cast before real swine). The style (parenthetical). Adam named them; Noah counted, 2 by 2's. Had he single-cell organisms, 'twoud have been by ones. Glory to the line of Trilobites! And we are feasting on CRAB this season--archaic scavengers. Not in the Kosher kitchens, tubie sure! Red food dye #2 is out for rats & their governmentally protected patrons. Red, as Graves reminds us (Food for Centaurs) is the raison for prohibiting cooked crustaceans from the Joo-soup. Treffe langostina, scorpio interdita, love-apple ausgeschlossen! And yet...Jewish girls...
The word stem graph is cognate with "scratch, as the scratching of the crabs claws on the silent sea sand (crab, too).
Cancers can't get far from their omphalos. Tonite: PIG MEAT. Nothing hunky about these hocks, but deelicioso, from the little sausage shop opened in the Artsy-fartsy Vintage 1870 on t'other side of Yountville hill--with the best homemade sausages pobbly in the state. The state now is nigh Xstatique.
No dope. Clean scene. Hardly any fun any more. Who wants a $100 traffic citation? Mister, naturally the magic traveler is welcomed still in the tradition of the Tea House of Necessity--and those who travel light frequently travelling with the light-emitting diodes (two poems for the shared joint).
After the sixth crossing (counting outwards, from the so-called Void), we move from the "Crystalline Heavens" into the world of the here and now, from the application of the algebra to the second degree equations, with feedback, with flow, with closure: temporally and spatially. Therefore, we experience memory--even though we can map a memory function abstractly in a simpler space (after the fifth crossing).
All of this is on the tape of the conference at Esalen, hosted by the EST physicist, Jack Sarfatti. The high-energy particle physicist, T'ai Chi maiden (with Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu translator, Gia-Fu Feng) Jane English attended, et. al. COMICOSMIC CHAOS. Esalen attempts to find its way back into its head. The western tradition divided itself at the Council, or Synod of Whitby, Anno Domini (leaving out the dogs/Sgod, this time) 665--if you count 'em following the chord of St. John, the Beatus in Apocalypsin, one before the Great Beast (a/k/a Gold) arrived on the scene, bearing the Scarlet Lady on his back (nos. 666 and 667, respectively, or Tishman and Tishm'am). Joyce, James reverses the number on p. 13 issit? of Finbackwhales Wake (Whoo needzem?), and does the trope of Doublining 566 . 1132. Knot a sounding. A-cumin' back 2311 and 665 (prime factorial for 11, plus one, also prime) and that amazing date--665--in which the PRACTISING tradition goes, first back to Lindesfarne, the retreating to Iona, then underground in the West. And St. Cuthbert, swimming with the sea otters at dawn would steam away the icy waters with gTummo, Q.E.D. according to a monk who arose early one bright day and recorded the incident for the Venerable Bede's history of the Ecclesia. We hear the chants came from within, in harmony with the beating of the heart and the respiratory tides of the pneuma (rLun in Tibetan). And after that time, with the institution of the church in the hands of the BodhiDharma credential holders from Roma, hymns were written down, the congregation led by Choirmasters, following texts; the offices performed by those only with the authority of a distant capital, head far removed from body. Abbess Hilda (famed for her magic friendliness with geese, getting on down) gave the mantle of poetry to Caedmon, the first singer in the English language, who was a shepherd at the time, fortuitously tending the flocks of al-Suf on the hildasides. Bleak, blaak, blahsheep. But now, lays, dies & Gerontion, we are aboot to Whiteness these remarqueable re-insertion (however slight) of the full-come circle, in a dimension ascribable by topology to the seven-colored tower of Samarra, Lighthouse of the Blind Alexandrian, Bibliotheque Borgiana, torus of genera ONE (one black whole). Inside, over and out.