Domain Claiming

Dear diary,

We so-called moderns do not bother about reading pandemonium anymore, do we? We find ourselves cast into this place, which contains earth and sky, yet we no longer pay attention to the details of the turmoil that surrounds us. I say “no longer” because our ancient ancestors DID at least attempt to read the pandemonium. They looked up into the sky and saw the same random stars scattered there — they appeared to them just like they appear to us: as if spilled from a heaven-sized jar — but instead of shrugging and returning to their administrative duties in middle management after stargazing, they drew mental boundaries around clusters of these lamps which formed pictures that served to interpret the elements of the expanse. Sure, with Mazzaroth, our forebears were fashioning as opposed to decoding any meaning they purportedly curated from the outer spaces, but at least they were attempting to join the dance. If I remember right, they found a crab up there, haunting the nighttime sky; also a virgin, a dragon, and some fish.

“Only losers have that kind of luck. If I dig in my yard, the best thing I can hope to find is a potato.”

—Officer Duke, from the film Wrong Cops (2013)

Yes, our own age sees the heavens as one big . . .

I also like how the ancient folk interpreted the earth as a woman, and the sky as a man, and they reasoned that these two people were our parents, thus they are forever lying together, Father Sky on top of Mother Earth. This renders all living creatures as the offspring of their perpetual fornication. And it makes my own species feel tiny, for we humans are dwarfed by the size of the land-&-cloud-scape.

I also like how the old Egyptian theologians affixed animal heads on all their deities. I know that there are certain self-styled Christians, like my mother, who recoil from this pious pastime; but I suspect it’s only because she takes the leaked emails of her church’s founders too seriously. If she would allow herself to let loose and live a little, I think she’d like the gods of ancient Egypt. My favorites are the one with the bird head, and the burning fellow with the tyger head.

It’s best to form a relationship with everything. If you can believe that the rocks, who cannot talk, are addressing you with eloquence in the poem that you’re composing, then you’ve got your reward. You’re like the passerby at an amusement park who gets accosted by the operator of a rigged game known as The High Striker:

“Step right up and test your strength!”

So you scrutinize this attraction (which, in fact, turns out to be the most thought-provoking aspect of the funfair) and note how it works: there is a lever at the bottom with a puck lying on its far end; and this puck is attached to a pole that runs up a tower, whose top terminates in a bell.

You pay your coin & become a contestant. You take the mallet into your arms. You strike the lever hard enough to make the puck shoot upwards and knock the bell straight off the tower. You are therefore the winner. The operator now grants you a prize — a stuffed lamb — indicating that you have succeeded in forging a master-slave relationship with your environment.