Thots during leak reprieve

I keep resisting the flood that keeps threatening my basement from the snow that keeps melting off the hill that we live at the bottom of. That’s pretty much all that I’ve been up to, as of late. But today the outside temp held at zero degrees centigrade; so the waters couldn’t flow, so this gave me a break; so I decided to write down my thots.

In the entry below, I won’t talk any more about our leaky basement — I just wanted to mention it here, at the top, so that we can have a common enemy to blame, in case my thots turn out boring.

Obligatory image

(That’s a pic of the backs of two pics on a grocery bag. The left one is yesterday’s and the right is tomorrow’s.)

Dear diary,

One of my most recurrent thots is the question: “What makes good writing?” I’m always trying to solve this problem that has no solution because it ain’t no problem. Writing is just something that one can do: that’s all. It’s that simple. But it’s also as complex as one wants to make it. And I prefer to complexify the hell out of it.

One thing a soul can do is consider what she herself likes. Let’s take me, for instance. My favorite type of writing is that which seems to get better with every re-reading. That’s why I hover around stories like those from Genesis and Exodus in the Bible. And it’s important to me that the writing sounds eloquent, fancy or strange, or strong: majestic. I also like simple, clear writing. Childlike writing. So that’s why I often specify the King James version, when I speak of the aforesaid scripture; because the translations therein evince all those labels above.

And I like writing that feels like thot itself got photographed: I mean when one is persuaded that there’s nothing mediating between the author and the reader: no rendition of the mental matter occurred but only the direct apprehension itself which sparks in a moment outside of clocktime, to the giver and the taker in tandem; with the “giver” being the poet (or God), and the “taker” being the critic-as-artist (or God). The writings of Archilochos are one example of this, for me. I think it’s because he wrote at the very birth of the Greek alphabet (not the language itself, mind you: that long predated the new-nifty way of preserving thot that the alphabet unlocked); so composing with such an easeful and intuitive tool—as compared with the cumbersome tools that preceded that script—was like when cameras first were invented and everyone kept taking photographs of everything, in a frenzy of expression. Creation by means of merely capturing. That lucky spell during which any vacillation or self-conscious curation is nonexistent because the development is automatic, and the genius shows clear.

I slid my arm under her neck
To still the fear in her eyes,
For she was trembling like a fawn,

Touched her hot breasts with light fingers,
Spraddled her neatly and pressed
Against her fine, hard, bared crotch.

I caressed the beauty of all her body
And came in a sudden white spurt
While I was stroking her hair.

Despite my praise of the Greek, for being (as one encyclopedia puts it) “the first alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as well as consonants”, in giving this example from Archilochos, I’ve resorted to Guy Davenport’s translation: I think he does the original justice and even catches fire of his own, like the King James Bible.

Incidentally that note about the hair always reminds me of Milton’s “Lycidas”, where the swain tries to convince himself to drop the pursuit of poetry and take up lovemaking:

Alas! What boots it with uncessant care
To tend the homely slighted Shepherds trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse—;
Were it not better done as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neæra’s hair?

Yes, with all proper deference to Greek and Hebrew, I’m proud of the English tongue. I like the way it rolls everything up into it so greedily. No language is safe: English’ll absorb you. It’ll digest you, and make you its own.

I think that’s part of Shakespeare’s secret, too. Universal appetite. Shakespeare was contemporary with the translators of the King James Bible: perhaps he was one of them (ha sorry, I can’t resist stirring up trouble). That was really a sweet spot in time, for angels who love language. We’ve fallen far, since then; but I believe we can climb back. Or maybe whatever species arises after us and finds our unpassed baton will get there, & even surpass…

It is a trifle, they will more than arrive there every one, & still pass on.

[—from “Song of Myself” (21) by Walt Whitman]

Yes, a close contender for my Most Recurrent Thot is the question “What’ll come of humankind?” I sometimes picture something like LAND SQUIDS (meaning cephalopods who evolved out of the ocean) (& if you don’t know what a cephalopod is, it’s sorta like an octopussy, but here I’m talking about the new dry kind) taking our place at the top of the Art Pyramid, after we poison our environment or explode ourselves in One Last Great Fun Blast (2019, please make it so).

Yet if we don’t expire altogether, but rather keep morphing and evolving into the future as its unwelcome guests, so that our post-tragic forms are genuine ancestors of us (as opposed to our atoms being reconfigured without the slightest acknowledgement of their former arrangement); I say, if what succeeds us proves to be a real branch from our tree and not a totally fresh start after our dead end, then I imagine it’ll look something like a brain in a vat. Cuz why would we continue to use our physical features: aren’t they sorta vulgar?

I mean, look at where we came from, & compare it to where we are now, & then think about where we are going. My pastor tells me we came from apes. Now, apes are hairy; and humans are less hairy; so it follows that our successors will be quite hairless. Also monkeys have tails, but apes lost the tail when they changed into us, ergo our successors will jettison their appendages and even almost all their internal organs. All that stuff is just weighing us down: Why keep supporting it? The heart must grow big, to pump blood to a single needless limb — and all limbs are basically parasites.

Yes, future-folk will consist of 99% mind. (The remaining percent is just a sentimental keepsake.) That’s why I wrote, near the end of my entry from March 11:

These enormous pieces of ice that I’ve positioned in my backyard will remain unmelted even after this winter. I declare this to be so. They’ll subsist here after thousands of years have passed, so that the disembodied brains of futurity will stare at them wide-eyed; for there shall be neither blinking nor weeping in The Inevitable, as each mind shall remain submerged in a clear, ambulant jar-vat filled to the brim with lively spirits.

That hyphenated term “jar-vat” is an instance of bad writing — one should choose either jar or vat, and accept the consequences — but I wanted to keep both words, because the vehicles that these future brains, our successors, will take as their homes (the word ambulant means “able to walk around; not confined to bed”; and, yes, they’ll have wheels), I say, these vehicles that our distant brainchildren will hover around in will look sorta like a punch bowl turned upside-down. They will be clear, like if a modern car were to lose its frame and become wholly windshield. I guess I’m thinking of those flying pods that they drive in the cartoon The Jetsons. But the space within will be hermetically sealed, for the life of its occupant depends upon the integrity of this container. Yes, like a sea-diver’s helmet, this mobile shelter will have a transparent appearance; also, as it is written, its interior atmosphere shall consist of pure grain alcohol.

But if we call its shape a jar then it gives you the wrong impression: for jars are small; whereas these brains will be very large compared to ours: so they’ll need something more like a vat. For consider the vegan dish called “mock monkey-mind” that they serve at most pubs nowadays: it’s pretty small; like a clenched raised fist, or if a walnut were a sponge and you let it soak to five times its size — my point is that monkeys have tiny brains, compared to humans, and thus the successors of humankind will be planet-vast computational hazards; except imagine such a thing shrunk down to about the size of a horse. We’ve gotta keep our species manageable: we can’t have our bodies exceed the magnitude of the places where they live, otherwise future life in this world will look like a bunch of billiard balls floating in space. Spinning around & knocking about. So if you’ve ever gazed into the eyes of a healthy stallion,

A gigantic beauty of a stallion, fresh and responsive to my caresses,
. . . Eyes full of sparkling wickedness . . .

[—from “Song of Myself” sec. 32]

this is about how big their ocular chamber-balls will be; and each brain will attempt to remain proportionate.

*

So, in closing, I think that good writing should be enjoyable to read on a first time thru. But it should also contain something enigmatic that attracts you back to revisit the text. And during your second time reading, the writing must do two things at once: the familiar parts must maintain their interest, they must practically deny their own familiarity; while the parts that you didn’t catch the first time around must reward you freshly. Moreover, each new reading should open further enigmas; so a successful second reading will lead to a third & fourth reading (& so on), for similar reasons that led to the first re-reading.

This is tricky business. And this explains why writing that is merely correct, factual, right, scientifically accurate, is an abomination unto the LORD. For what’s obviously non-figurative & able to be grasped in a single pass is inherently unlovable:

You can only love what eludes you. That’s why marriage only works when one spouse is Satan. Cuz you can’t ever quite discern what Satan’s angle is, in this world — what game he’s playing. Why does he keep helping humankind harmonize, even against his self-interest? Jove is not like this: Jove is utterly unlovable. Yet Prometheus brings us fire, even at his own peril! How eternal it is to adore the Alien Deity. And all becuz he’s inscrutable. I recall one of the James brothers (Henry or William; or maybe it was their father) exclaiming about Ralph Waldo Emerson: “O you man without a handle!” And Wayne Meeks, editor of The Writings of St. Paul, calls those epistles’ apostle “The Christian Proteus”. In Book IV of The Odyssey, Proteus’ daughter Eidothea, “fairest of unearthly nymphs”, explains to Meneláos (in Robert Fitzgerald’s translation) how to get a grip on her father — I like to merge the following episode in my imagination with the memory of Paul (Saul of Tarsus) preaching to his congregation, the members of which are like these foul-breath’d seals:

. . . flippered seals, brine children, shining come
from silvery foam in crowds to lie around him,
exhaling rankness from the deep sea floor.

Enter the Apostle Paul as Proteus:

He goes amid the seals to check their number,
and when he sees them all, and counts them all,
he lies down like a shepherd with his flock.

Eidothea now advises Meneláos and his men how to proceed (how to handle the arguments of Paul’s dada-scriptures), upon encountering the shifty Apostle:

Here is your opportunity: at this point
gather yourselves, with all your heart and strength,
and tackle him before he bursts away.
He’ll make you fight—for he can take the forms
of all the beasts, and water, and blinding fire;
but you must hold on, even so, and crush him
until he breaks the silence. When he does,
he will be in that shape you saw asleep.
Relax your grip, then, set the Ancient free,
and put your questions, hero:
Who is the god so hostile to you,
and how will you go home on the fish-cold sea.

This fighting-free from the seductive power of St. Paul reminds me of that gnostic tale called “The Hymn of the Pearl”, where the protagonist, who is the child of the Great King & Queen, sets out on a journey from Infinitude down into the nightmare of spacetime:

I rushed directly to the dragon and camped near its den,
Lying in wait for it to grow drowsy & fall asleep, so that I might make away with the pearl.

But then the adventurer ends up falling asleep himself! (Might each of us be the very “god so hostile to us”? I wonder.) The natives of this nightmare then lure the child with

a mixture of cunning & treachery, & I tasted their food.
I did not any longer recognize that I was a child of the Great King, but rather acted as servant to their king.
& I even came to the pearl for which my parents had sent me on the mission
But sank into deep sleep under the heaviness of their food.

(I’m using Bentley Layton’s translation, by the way.) Eventually the traveler is awakened by the message in a letter, which was sent from his royal parents — so it’s like Kafka’s parable of the emperor (“An Imperial Message”), happy ending & all; or perhaps even happier: “...the Emperor from his deathbed has sent a message to you alone. [...] The messenger immediately sets out on his journey [...] But the multitudes are so vast; their numbers have no end. [...] Nobody could fight his way through here even with a message from a dead man. But you sit at your window when evening falls and dream it to yourself.” (Translated by Willa & Edwin Muir.) — Compare this to our Hymn:

“Remember that you are a child of kings.
“You have fallen under a servile yoke.
“Call to mind your garment shot with gold.
“Call to mind the pearl for which you were sent on the mission…”

And on the spot I remembered that I was a child of kings and that my people demanded my freedom.

So I guess that’s another trait of the strongest writing (I wish I had said “strongest” instead of “good” writing, in all the instances above; so please revise them accordingly, if I forget to do so before I get raptured): strong writing invites comparisons with other strong writing: it makes one’s mind, involuntarily and without effort, into a museum of genius. As Kafka said: “I am a memory come alive.”