Author: Gwyllm

Something to tide you over for a day or so. Everyone down here with a cold, sore throat etc. Seems the season -sigh- Just keep taking those pills, drink that tea and carry on!
Victor n Kim stopped by for a couple of hours, nice to see them. 8o)

Rowan came home from camp last night, slept for 14 hours.

So ever onward, here is todays’ entry!
What’s On The Menu:

The Drug War Song

The Links

Divine Madness

Gabriel Rosenstock Poetry: Maenads…

Art: Classical Illustrations of Maenads (Seems to be the theme today)
Also, Please Check out Radio Free Earthrites! I am sure you’ll like the new music on there now.

I hope you enjoy, more on the way, so stay tuned!
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm

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The Drug War Song….

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Links:

The Difference Engine

Pub hosts drug testing operation

The Scariest Thing about Neanderthals

Retail Notebook: Shop offers an array of ‘magical groceries’

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Divine Madness

by oinokhoe
“I became aware, more vividly than I had ever been, that the secret of life consists in sharing the madness of God, I mean the power of rousing a peculiar exultation in yourself as you confront the Inanimate, an exultation which is really a cosmic eroticism.” – John Cowper Powys
I begin writing this with some trepidation. Publicly, I tend towards silence on the topic of religious ecstasy of any kind. States of mind are so subjective, the topic is so broad, and beyond that I just feel that some things should be talked of sparingly. I do not wish to detract from the power of ritual experience by discussing it in too much detail; dry examination does not befit it. However, I do think that something can be gained from a brief foray into this strange and often frightening realm.
Socrates said “our greatest blessings come to us by way of madness,” but qualified this with “provided the madness is given to us by divine gift.” This is an important distinction. I am not advocating random insanity with no goal and no guidance; that is rarely productive. Rather, I am thinking of the many traditions which embrace altered states of consciousness, within a magical and/or religious context, for the benefits they bring. Socrates recognized four types of such ecstasy: Prophetic madness, which comes from Apollo; Ritual madness, from Dionysos; Poetic madness from the Muses; and Erotic madness, from Aphrodite. Since my god has always been Dionysos, I will focus on the second form, that madness which comes from direct contact with the gods and other powers through ritualistic and initiatory experience. (Anthropologists generally refer to this whole range of experiences by the term “possession-trance,” though they acknowledge that the activities covered by this term vary greatly, from a Vodoun priest being ridden by his god, to a Siberian shaman traveling to the otherworlds in a trance state.)
Dionysos is a god of extremes, the “god of ecstasy and terror, of wildness and of the most blessed deliverance” (Walter Otto). Thus he is reached through extreme actions – in the myths, these include wild dancing, excessive drinking, and the tearing apart and eating of live animals. Many people might cringe at these accounts, but there is no middle road for the wary, there is no way to tiptoe up to Dionysos and nudge him on the shoulder. Nor should there be. There is a place for such madness, it serves a function, both for society and for the individual.
Concerning the former: Euripides has Dionysos creating havoc in a town, calling the women out of their homes and up to the mountains, implying licentious behavior. When the maenads are imprisoned, he shakes down the walls and releases them (just as he releases man through the tonic of wine). He defies convention by dressing effeminately, and convinces Pentheus to dress as a woman too despite his reservations; though Pentheus’ fate is to be torn apart by his own frenzied mother. Many read The Bacchae as a warning, and believe that Euripides was against the cult of Dionysos. But I believe that he was simply presenting a situation where change was needed, and was affected through drastic means. In ancient times the cult of Dionysos was always on the perimeter, never completely accepted in Greek society, yet never completely rejected either. Its resultant madness was tolerated, perhaps to prevent a greater and more destructive outburst.
On a personal level, divine madness can bring life-changing results. But it can also bring ruin, sending a person over the edge, which is why this is not for everyone. We don’t have a system in this culture to prepare us for such experiences, we think only in terms of “sane” and “insane”, which is why going over to the other side can easily destroy the sensibilities of anyone. But for those who wish to go Beyond, to see the outer realms, to touch the gods, which is an incredibly dangerous but exhilarating path, there is no choice but to surrender part of oneself, which becomes a sacrifice of sorts. It cannot be done lightly, nor without purpose. However, although you may work within a ritual context, and act responsibly and carefully, you can never truly control what happens. If you choose to open yourself to the “madness of God” you must accept the consequences, for good or ill.
The benefits to ritual madness are many and great, but they generally fall into the categories of arrheton, the ancient Greek word denoting something beyond description, unable to be spoken of, as well as aporrheton, a secret not to be shared with others. However, I will say that (in my experience) it can bring communion with the god, of a quality and intensity that usually cannot be reached through other religious actions, as important as those actions, such as prayer and sacrifice, may be. (Although such actions can often be the path into madness.) It also opens the famous doors of perception – “knowledge that lies outside the range of understanding can only be gained in a state that also lies outside this range” (Philipp Vandenberg). And it frees you, as Dionysos freed the maenads, Dionysos the Liberator, the Looser of Bonds. It releases you into a state both outside yourself and extraordinarily within yourself, where you can catch a glimpse of your own soul, and the soul of the world.
How do you enter into this madness? I cannot recommend any specific methods, for many are dangerous and/or illegal. With Dionysos, the way must usually begin with his gift, the vine. For other gods, or other paths, it will be different. Traditional cultures have used everything from psychotropic plants to drumming to invocation to sensory deprivation. If you are committed to the task, you will find a way. And you will never be prepared for what will come, and you will never exhaust the possibilities. But it will change you. Surrendering to madness even once leaves a mark. Gripped by Dionysos, you may find yourself suddenly attracted to the smell of the hunt, and the cries of the maenads will be music, as it is music to his ears. If you think you are ready for this, then he is waiting for you.
“and to Thebes they came all blood-bedabbled, bringing from the hill not Pentheus but tribulation. / I care not. And let not another care for an enemy of Dionysos.” – Theocritus

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Gabriel Rosenstock Poetry: Maenads…

I OPEN MY POEM
I open my poem to bright things

here come oranges, dandelions,

come in

take a seat

I’ll be right with you
into my poem

comes a lovely cuckoo snow in its beak

welcome
what’s this?

oceans of sunshine
I open my poem to all that is

that will be that was

that could be

bad move
here comes

an old cat

a pigeon’s leg in its mouth

(shit happens)

sit yourself down

mind the cuckoo

it’s got snow in its mouth
make room for yourself

between

the oranges and the dandelions

where are you from your catself?

where’s the rest of the pigeon?
I open my poem to all the elements

alive and dead and

some ivy comes in trailing

its own wall

the wall falls on the cat

this poem is a tragedy

of sorts
somewhere in the world

a wall is falling on a cat

on a child
I open my poem again to bright things

but there’s nothing left
—

MAENAD
In her womb she bears the constant sound of bees

That will be silenced only when a wave

Surges to her waist
She stands in the sea

Something unspeakable

In her almond-shaped eyes
Salt foam soon will sting

Her swollen vulva and she will cry out

The waves will shrink from her fury
Lemons and oranges will rain down

Rainbows of fish will arc from the water

And there will be one great humming
Later

Stars will appear from the silence

As if nothing had happened

As if this were the first of creation

She will clamp jellyfish between her thighs

—

LIKE AN OWL
The streamlined feathers of the owl

ensure the silence of its approach,

a silent glide between

one unknown and another

and the woodland mice and insects

are filled with terror

before this beak, this claw of the night.
Like an owl you come to me

spectrally

nightly

tearing at me –

I waken, abruptly

and there is nothing

nothing at all staring at me

only the confused memory

of a kiss

gliding into obscurity

on the wind.

—

LIADHAIN
(i)

Liadhain…

Knowledge flowed between us.

I am Cuirithir.

God goes halves in me

with Liadhain
God’s share

is sterile, lifeless,
Liadhain’s

boils me alive
We lay together among oaks

it was like a nut being shelled

and placed in my mouth

by a creamy, invisible hand
She said nothing at all

but when she closed her eyes

she could see the sap

rising in trees,

hear the old fulfilment of branches
(ii)

When she hides from me

I see her everywhere
I follow the deer’s shadow

and the hawk’s

her absence flits among the oaks
(iii)

When she wakes in the morning

I look deep into her eyes
She is a well

that reflects me
I drink of myself
(iv)

She is all winds,

the middle of all seas –
Everything that moves

and does not
She is a change in season,

all the months of the year
She is day and night,

night and day
(v)

Sleep now, sleep! Sleep, Liadhain,

on your mossy pillow, sleep easy …
If I could, I would dive far into your sleep,

to be forever, bright one, part of your dream.

In the middle of the forest, the boar is restless,

but sleep now, easy in yourself
(vi)

Look! Liadhain in the pool,

swimming on her back

mirabile visu –

she is moon,

a star-filled storm

Christ, do not approach me.

Virgin Mary, avert your eye
(vii)

My prayers

don’t go

anymore

to God

Liadhain, Liadhain,

on the tip of my tongue
(viii)

Her shape in the clouds,

her laugh between showers,

the rainbow

her soul’s colours
(ix)

My beloved is dazzling.

I’m like a hedgehog

waking too early on a spring morning

light hurts my eyes
(x)

A waterfall thunders far off

without pause

there’s no relief

from the way things are

my words are foam

in air

taste it
(xi)

‘Liadhain! Liadhain!’ murmurs the dark river,

‘Liadhain!’ calls the cuckoo in the valley

the plump salmon shouts out ‘Liadhain!’

‘Liadhain! Liadhain!’ cries the slender doe
(xii)

Breezes comb her dewy hair.

I am envious of elements
(xiii)

But an icy blast rose,

uprooting the oaks

the blackbird’s whistle froze in its beak

all the waves of Ireland wailed
(xiv)

My own self I had lost,

lost Liadhain and her merrymaking

Christ bared his wounds –

for me, also, He was crucified
(xv)

On this, my slab of supplication, Liadhain will perish,

and I in unknown territories
(xvi)

Dear God! Bring us together again

Couple us – I beg you – for just one night

in the splendid Paradise of saints

Staying with the Angelic Theme for a bit. Angels seem to be entities that at least on a symbolic level are accepted across great swaths of society world wide. This acceptance (at least as a symbol) is only afforded to a few other ‘mythic creatures’. Mantis Beings need not apply….
Today (Tuesday) was incredibly beautiful here. Clear sky, crisp… golden light fading more into the silver now. The fall is when I feel most mortal, it is so bitter-sweet and wonderful. I am here now, I shall not be forever. This moment holds everything.
On The Menu:

Durex Commercial

Three Angel Parables:

The Angel of Death Calls

The Judgment of God – A Sufi Tale

The Tale of the Crying Angel

Poetry: W.B. Yeats for a Wednesday…

Art: The Angelic Collective
I hope you enjoy this edition!
Gwyllm

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Durex commercial – chocolate flavoured condoms

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The Angel of Death Calls

A Sufi tale with a profound message for life.

By Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani

A certain king once went on a trip to one of his provinces. He set out on his journey, dressed in a sumptuous array and puffed up with pride. A man poorly dressed approached and greeted him from the side of the road; but the king would not answer. The man caught the bridles of the king’s horse and none of the king’s soldiers could make him let go. The king cried: “Let go of the bridle!” The man said: “First grant me my request.” The king said: “Release the bridle and I promise to hear your request.” The man said: “No, you must hear it right away,” and he pulled harder on the reins. The king said: “What is your request?” The man replied: “Let me whisper it in your ear, for it is a secret.” The king leaned down and the man whispered to him: “I am the Angel of Death.”
The king’s face became pale and he stammered: “Let me go home and bid farewell to my family, and wrap up my affairs.” But Azra’il said: “By the One Who sent me, you will never see your family and your wealth in this world again!” He took his soul there and then, and the king fell from his horse like a wooden log.
The Angel of Death went on his way and saw a believer walking by himself on the road. The angel greeted him, and he gave back his greeting. The angel said: “I have a message for you.” “Yes, my brother, what is it?” “I am the Angel of Death.” The believer’s face brightened with a big smile. “Welcome, welcome!” He said. “As God is my witness, I was waiting for you more impatiently than for anyone else.”
“O my brother!” the Angel of Death said, “perhaps you have a matter that you wish to settle first, so go and take care of it, for there is no rush.”
“As God is my witness,” the believer said: “there is nothing I wish more dearly than to meet my Lord.” The angel said: “Choose the way in which you would like me to take your soul, for so I have been ordered to ask you.”
The believer said: “Then let me pray two cycles of prayer, and take my soul while I am kneeling in prostration.”

—–

The Judgment of God – A Sufi Tale
Not so long ago, as time is counted, there came to a certain oasis far in the western desert a faqir. He was a Qalandar, a wandering darvish, who had walked the deserts of Africa and Arabia for many years, seeking only solitude wherein he could remember his Creator and contemplate the Divine mysteries. His virtue and faith, his submission to the will of God, had been rewarded with tranquility of spirit, and his sincerity and devotion on the path of Love was such that the Hidden had been revealed to his heart, and he had become a Wali, a Friend of God.
Now it came to pass that the night the faqir wandered into this oasis and lay beneath a palm tree to rest before the midnight prayer, there was, unknown to him, another man under a nearby tree who was also making camp for the night.
But the other man was a notorious bandit, once the feared chieftain of a band of robbers who had for years plundered the spice caravans and waylaid rich merchants on their way from the coastal cities to the inland towns. The outcry against his merciless raids, however, had at last reached the ears of the Sultan and he had ordered his soldiers to hunt down the band and destroy them. Many were caught and beheaded. Many others deserted their chief out of fear that they would share the fate of their comrades.
Eventually, this evil man found himself alone. His purse was now empty, every last coin having been spent in escape, and he was a hunted criminal with a price on his head. Even his former allies, those dishonest merchants who had bought his stolen goods, closed their doors against him. They also feared, lest the wrath of the Sultan fall upon their necks. And so he had fled for many days across the desert and come at last to the oasis where, tired and hungry, he sat beneath a tree and cursed his wretched fate.
Now I ask you, which of these two men is the greater, and which the less? Whom has God blessed and whom has He cursed? No, do not answer! You do not know the answer, for you are not their judge. The Creator alone is the judge of His creation.
Munkir and Nakir, however, the angels who question the dead when they are assigned to the grave, looked upon the scene of the two men and sighed. ‘Surely,’ said Munkir ‘here at least the true gold may be seen from the false. These two may be judged, though their end is not yet come. God will have the greater, and Satan the less.’
‘Alas! It must be so,’ agreed Nakir. ‘True gold is the most rare, and therefore are the fields of heavens spacious indeed, while the halls of Hell are filled to bursting, overflowing even the deepest pits.’
Now God perceived the thoughts of His servants, and spoke to the hearts of the two angels. ‘Verily, thou hast pronounced their just fate,’ He said. ‘Yet woe unto mankind had I created the world by justice alone. Am I not the Merciful and Compassionate? Behold! I will visit them with sleep and visions that thou shalt know the truth of My creation.’
Thus the Lord sent sleep and mighty dreams to the faqir and the wretched thief. And lo, the Qalandar awoke in hell, even into the midst of the great fires of the pit. And the bandit chief arose in Paradise, where he stood among the saints before the very Throne of God.
The Master laid down his spent pipe and sipped his tea. His eyes searched our faces over the rim of the glass. “Is it mercy to send the worst of man to heaven?” he asked. “Or justice to send the best of man to hell?”
No one dared answer.
“Good!” he said soothingly. “To cleanse the heart of judgment is to discern the Way of Love. And such was the lesson of Munkir and Nakir. For they beheld the faqir awaken in the very midst of Hell, and saw that most worthy of men rise up naked as the fires burned his flesh and the cries of tormented souls pierced his ears. Yet he did not feel pain at the touch of the flames, and showed neither surprise nor fear. His thought was only of his Beloved, and no affliction was great enough to sway his love. He sat among the fires and the torment as a darvish sits, and in a voice clear and strong he began to sing.
‘La Illah illa Allah! La Illaha illa Allah!’
The fires blazed furiously as the song began and then dimmed to smoldering embers, and the burning mountains trembled at the Holy Name. Now the tormented souls ceased their wailing to listen, for the name of God is not uttered in the pits. Then there was no other sound to be heard but his, and the song went on and on until the very foundations of Hell were shaken, and the damned souls began to feel a spark of forbidden hope.
Surely Hell would have fallen into ruin had not Satan himself appeared, and begged the faqir to depart. But the old man would not move, for he had walked many years on the Path of Love, and the Beloved’s Will was his will, whether it be paradise or eternal fire.
The Master paused for a moment to again sip the tea beside him. He did not look at us until he began the tale again.
“And what of the thief?” he asked, when the glass was empty. “This chieftain of bandits who was once so feared and terrible, and who had fallen into wretchedness and misery, the fate of all such men in the end.”
God caused the two angels to perceive his vision also, and they saw him rise and stand robed in white, trembling amidst the host of heaven, before the Throne of Almighty God. And the angel Gabriel spoke unto him.
‘By the mercy of the Lord, thy Creator, thy earthly deeds are forgiven thee,’ he said. ‘Come now and be at peace.’

And now the truth filled his heart, and great wonder, and every veil fell from his eyes; and he saw with a clear sight the Majesty and Beauty of His Compassion, and he wept.
And the Lord God spoke unto him, and said: ‘O man, fear not. For thou canst not fall so low that I cannot raise thee up.’
And fear left the thief. He prostrated himself before his God and wept. On and on flowed the endless tears of his wasted life, until they became the very waters of mercy and would not cease; and the feet of the saints were washed by his tears.
He would have wept for eternity had not the vision ended and the two men abruptly awakened. Then the thief saw the faqir as he stood, and came to him still weeping from the dream. And the faqir perceived all that had befallen them and embraced him, and they prayed together at the midnight hour even unto the dawn. Much befell them afterwards, for the thief became the disciple of the faqir, but that is all of their tale I will tell.
And Munkir and Nakir, who had witnessed but the tiniest particle of the unending Mercy of God, bowed before their Creator in submission, and in shame of their rash condemnation. For surely beyond the comprehension of men and angels is the Judgment of God.

The Tale of the Crying Angel
Kifkef began:
“In Sinai there is a story that, once upon a time, the world was made only out of mountains, valleys and forests. There were some rivers that ran down to small lakes but no oceans and no seas.
The world was dreamed into creation by fourteen white angels who slept on silky cloud beds in a perfect circle. They dozed in serene silence, all things crystal and clear in their minds. And so it also was on the virgin Earth beneath them which they sculpted with their dreaming.
The surface was only in twilight then and the people lived in simple harmony. In the haze that filled the air no one could see very far and they looked only to what was needed for that day. But as the light from Heaven trickled its way down to the Earth, people began to notice all kinds of strange things.
To start with, they saw that they all had different colours of skin and shapes of face. Some had beautiful Arabic complexions and others suffered with pale, blotchy white skin that burnt in the sun. These inequalities soon caused each group to gather together, distrustful of all the others. Blame for everyday problems was put on the least popular tribeswhomever looked different and rumours of war smouldered around every campfire.
Also, the men saw pretty quickly that they were stronger than the women and so could take more of the good things in life for themselves. And, in general, the weak and the less able came to survive only on the leftovers dropped from the tables of the powerful and honoured.
Not only this but the arrival of clear light revealed all kinds of glorious horizons that made their mouths drip with saliva. What they had was no longer enough because there was always something better to compare it with. Everyone began to plan for futures decades down the line and damn anyone who got in their way.
And so the dreamt Creation took control of its own destiny, much to the blissful ignorance of the angels, who still imagined all kinds of beautiful thoughts in their peaceful sleep up high.
However, after some time the sounds of the suffering in the land became so many and so loud that, at last, the noise floated up to the sky and the youngest of all the angels was awoken by the cries of terror and grief from below.
She wiped the sand from her eyes and it took a few moments to realize that the Earth was no longer the happy paradise of her dreams. The sounds of crying and pain shook her from her trance and she glided down to help at once, her gossamer wings barely ruffling in the air.
She headed for the place where the suffering was the loudest and landed in the middle of a battlefield, where two armies were doing their best to hack each other to pieces. Bones were crunching and blood squirting to each side but at the sight ofthis dazzling white angel, floating down from the sky, all those that could ran for their lives. I mean, what would you do?
She moved around the arena of war like a whisper in the wind, laying her hands upon all the fallen. Her touch healed the most butchered and not only that, she even returned the recently dead to life. But by the time her work was done, she found herself surrounded by a gang of armed knights. She couldn’t understand what was happening. Before she could say a word, they wrapped a whole load of chains all around her. Under heavy guard, she was led to a stone castle and presented to the king who had ordered her capture.
“Aha. What a creature.” He cried in triumph, “Now I shall be truly invincible. With you on my side, my armies shall march with eternal life, forever able to get back on their feet and fight again.”
When the angel heard these words her heart shook violently within her. She realized that though she might try to help the people on this planet, they would only ever want to abuse her gifts.
She slipped out of her chains, which were no real restraint upon her and filled the hall with a flash of white light. By the time anyone cold open their eyes again she had flown out of a high window.
She flew at high speed down the slopes to the darkest, deepest place she could find in the cracks and canyons of the Earth. When she could go no lower she sat down to face her grief and began to cry. Tears flowed out of her large eyes like streams and then rivers, filling up all the holes around her and the salt water rose around her.
The pools swelled until she was lost to view and her tears overspilled into the other valleys, claiming the low, dry land in all directions across the Earth. She cried without end and that, my friends, is how the oceans were born.
The hate and injustice continue and so the angel still sits at the bottom of the Earth, crying with all her heart for the dream that went so terribly wrong.
And do not the scientists tell us that the sea levels continue to rise?”

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Poetry: W.B. Yeats for a Wednesday…

No Second Troy
Why should I blame her that she filled my days

With misery, or that she would of late

Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,

Or hurled the little streets upon the great,

Had they but courage equal to desire?

What could have made her peaceful with a mind

That nobleness made simple as a fire,

With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind

That is not natural in an age like this,

Being high and solitary and most stern?

Why, what could she have done, being as she is?

Was there another Troy for her to burn?

—
On Hearing that the Students of our New University have joined the Agitation against Immoral Literature
Where, where but here have Pride and Truth,

That long to give themselves for wage,

To shake their wicked sides at youth

Restraining reckless middle-age?

—
September 1913
What need you, being come to sense,

But fumble in a greasy till

And add the halfpence to the pence

And prayer to shivering prayer, until

You have dried the marrow from the bone;

For men were born to pray and save;

Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,

It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Yet they were of a different kind,

The names that stilled your childish play,

They have gone about the world like wind,

But little time had they to pray

For whom the hangman’s rope was spun,

And what, God help us, could they save?

Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,

It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Was it for this the wild geese spread

The grey wing upon every tide;

For this that all that blood was shed,

For this Edward Fitzgerald died,

And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,

All that delirium of the brave?

Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,

It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Yet could we turn the years again,

And call those exiles as they were

In all their loneliness and pain,

You’d cry `Some woman’s yellow hair

Has maddened every mother’s son’:

They weighed so lightly what they gave.

But let them be, they’re dead and gone,

They’re with O’Leary in the grave.

—-
The Magi
Now as at all times I can see in the mind’s eye,

In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones

Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky

With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones,

And all their helms of silver hovering side by side,

And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more,

Being by Calvary’s turbulence unsatisfied,

The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.

—-
Beggar to Beggar Cried
`Time to put off the world and go somewhere

And find my health again in the sea air,’

Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,

`And make my soul before my pate is bare.’

`And get a comfortable wife and house

To rid me of the devil in my shoes,’

Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,

`And the worse devil that is between my thighs.’

`And though I’d marry with a comely lass,

She need not be too comely — let it pass,’

Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,

`But there’s a devil in a looking-glass.’

`Nor should she be too rich, because the rich

Are driven by wealth as beggars by the itch,’

Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,

`And cannot have a humorous happy speech.’

`And there I’ll grow respected at my ease,

And hear among the garden’s nightly peace,’

Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,

`The wind-blown clamour of the barnacle geese.’

Nice Weekend!

Saw Rowan in his play at his school, ‘The Dark Of The Moon’… he played a spirit- Conjure Man, and adopted the role of the blind Magus for it. Excellent on all counts, best staging I have seen, and a production with excellent acting, music and blocking. The students helped shape it, and Rowan also did stage management, fight choreography, and set construction. Jane Ferguson, the theatre teacher has worked with Rowan off an on for over 7 years. She is a real treasure!
Leana & Richard stopped by today to pick up a couple of prints, we had a nice afternoon hanging out and talking about Portland…
Lyterphotos (you may have seen his article in The Invisible College) came by just as Leana & Richard were leaving. He hung for an hour or so, and we talked about art, metaphysics and kids. Funny how that works…
The Invisible College Magazine went off to LuLu.com finally. Will have a print edition soon, so stay tuned! It looks pretty good, but I have to make sure before I let it out of the bag…
I was working on this edition, and the title popped up in my head. Angelic Beings have been recorded long before Christianity, or Judaism emerged for that matter. They are represented all over the world. Persia, East Asia, Greece, Egypt, the Americas, all had ancient images of winged beings… I am fascinated by the image… Why do we portray beings in this way? What is behind it, is there a memory that travels from the past, and from society to society?
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

Petes’ Picks – Shukar Collective – Malademna

No Nukes Is Good Nukes

Pete’s Picks – Shukar Collective – Gypsy Blooz

Daoist Poetry

Art: The Angelic Collective…

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Shukar Collective – Malademna

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No Nukes Is Good Nukes

An interview with longtime anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldicott (2005)

By Gregory Dicum

Q: There’s a concerted effort right now to rehabilitate the image of nuclear power. Proponents argue that fossil fuels are more damaging to the environment, as well as being in short supply, and that nuclear is the [best option going forward]. What’s going on here?
A:The people saying these things are not biologists, they’re not geneticists, they’re not physicians. In other words, they don’t know what they’re talking about. And that makes me very annoyed. First of all, every reactor produces about [20 to 30] tons of highly radioactive waste a year. The majority of it is very long-lived and will have to be isolated from the ecosphere for hundreds of thousands of years … As it leaks into the environment, it will bio-concentrate by orders of magnitude at each step of the food chain: algae, crustaceans, little fish, big fish, us.
It takes a single mutation in a single gene in a single cell to kill you. [The most common plutonium isotope] has a half-life of 24,400 years. Every male in the Northern Hemisphere has a small load of plutonium in his gonads. What that means to future generations God only knows — and we’re not the only species with testicles. What we’re doing is degrading evolution, and not many people understand that.
Q:Yet as society begins to recognize that we do have to get away from the petroleum economy, there’s a lot of enthusiasm amongst environmentalists for hydrogen — enthusiasm that’s shared by the nuclear industry.
A: Well, of course, they’ll do anything. I’ve been dealing with them for 30 years and they lie — they frighten me. I can debate with generals about nuclear war and feel much more comfortable because they know that what I’m talking about is true. The nuclear industry just lies its way through the whole thing.
They say nuclear power is the answer to global warming. Well … the [Department of Energy] and the EPA [will tell you] that, at the moment, the process of uranium enrichment for fuel for nuclear power releases huge quantities of CO2. And that does not include releases from decommissioning of the reactor and transportation and long-term storage of the waste.
Meanwhile, the enrichment of uranium is responsible for [over 90 percent] of the CFC-114 gas released into the air in the U.S. Now, CFC is banned internationally under the Montreal Protocol because it destroys the ozone layer, one. Two, CFC gas is 10,000 to 20,000 times more potent as a global warmer and heat trapper than CO2. So the nuclear industry is lying. And advocates for nuclear power have fallen for the nuclear industry’s lies. Not propaganda, but lies.
Of course we’ve got to stop burning oil and coal. Those grotesque vehicles that get 10 miles to the gallon should be banned! Americans have no idea about conservation. Europeans have the same standard of living as you and they use 50 percent less energy because they turn their lights off and they conserve. We are actively killing the earth by the way we live.
Q:But some European countries derive more of their power from nuclear energy than the U.S.
A:Many countries in Europe are starting to realize that what they’ve done with nuclear power is ridiculous and immoral. Belgium, Germany, and Sweden have now passed laws to close down the reactors. So they’re learning, but a little too late. Where are they going to put the waste?
Q:Meanwhile, here in the U.S., we’re going in the other direction, talking about new nuclear plants and even new nuclear weapons. Why now?
A:Because the nuclear scientists in the labs keep pushing and pushing. They like building and testing their nuclear weapons. They get a lot of money for it, and they’re addicted to it.
The generals like their missiles too. One general basically said, “If you threaten our missiles and our early-warning systems, baby, that’s threatening the family jewels.” Got it? That’s the reason they’re still there. Missiles are an extension of their sexuality. There’s a deep psychosexual pathology inherent in the brains of these men. “Missile erections,” “deep penetrations” — even the language they use is sexual. I’ve thought, in my more light-hearted times, that maybe they should all be given Viagra, and then they wouldn’t need their missiles.
Q:Although women have also led nuclear-equipped countries, and very aggressively.
A:Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, and Golda Meir. But you’re picking three women out of millions of men. Some women — very few — emulate male behavior. Condoleezza Rice is one. The magic number is 30 percent [according to a U.N. report]. Below 30 percent representation [in government], women tend to please the men and vote for missiles. Above 30 percent, they say, “No, you’re not getting your missiles — we’re voting for milk for children.” So women need to support each other in order to do what they know is correct behavior, and express their nurturing instincts. It’s got nothing to do with politics.
Q:Most of the nuclear-policy focus lately has been on the various dangerous, unpredictable regimes that are busily acquiring nuclear weapons. Why does yours continue to be on the United States?
A:The most dangerous regime in the world at the moment is this regime. The country with the largest number of weapons of mass destruction is America. Of the nearly 30,000 nuclear weapons in the world, Russia and America own 95 percent. No one else can destroy all life on earth except Russia and America. The two rogue nations in the world are Russia and America, holding the world at nuclear ransom. Period.
We got to within 10 seconds of nuclear war in 1995 when Yeltsin made a mistake. On 9/11, America was on the second- or third-highest state of nuclear alert, ready to launch. Weapons are still on hair-trigger alert. They go off, Putin and Bush get minutes to decide whether or not to press their buttons, the nuclear “exchange” is over in an hour, and that’s the end of most life on earth.
And to look at North Korea, who may have two or eight bombs, or none — that’s a form of displacement activity. If you put rats in a cage and threaten them with a lethal situation, they run around doing something irrelevant to that which threatens them. That’s what people are doing by looking at North Korea and not looking at the main issue at hand, which is about to blow us all up. I mean, the whole thing’s insane.
Q:It’s interesting that you have a lot of inroads with military people. And a lot of the people who have come out for nuclear disarmament in the last decade have military backgrounds. Why do you think that is?
A:Well, because they know how dangerous it is. They’re scared.
Q:And yet you’d think they are also in a position to do something about it.
A:Well, you know, they wait till they’re retired. That’s typical of these men. It’s not that they have an epiphany — they know all along. So, in a way, they’re acting as evil people by allowing it to happen during their watch and only coming out when they retire. And I use that word “evil” in a fairly careful way. They are participating in plans to blow up the planet. I can’t think of any other word that’s more appropriate to describe that than “evil.”
Q:Yet today, in spite of this well-documented danger, the issue’s not at the forefront of many people’s awareness. There’s a great deal of complacency.
A:Well, ignorance. I don’t think anyone’s shocking people into facing reality right now. I’m trying and it’s not so easy because I don’t get access to the media. It’s hard to get on a lot of stupid shows and talk the truth. They don’t want the truth. They want theater.
I founded NPRI as a way to get this access. So that I, and others, c
an get on to debate these awful right-wing characters from the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute and American Enterprise Institute. We need equal time, and that’s difficult to come by. But it’s starting to happen where we’re developing a fair bit of credibility.
In mid-May, we’re having a symposium called “Full Spectrum Dominance.” It will be a retreat for 40 of the nation’s top journalists with some pro-nuclear people, anti-, and people in the middle — the top thinkers in the country. Many people say to me, “This is urgent — we need media education because no one’s writing about it.” The media is determining the fate of the earth.
Q:You met with Ronald Reagan when he was president — in an interview with Amy Goodman you described an oddly touching scene of holding his hand to comfort him — but you came away devastated by the feeling that there was nothing to be done. Have you tried to meet with George W. Bush?
A:No. I think Reagan had a heart; he was basically a nice fellow. I don’t think this fellow has a lot of heart. And I also don’t think he’s very bright. Reagan was intelligent in an intuitive way. There was someone at home there you could actually connect with. I’d certainly see George Bush and try to talk to him, but I wouldn’t want any of his neo-conservative people around him. I’d have to work pretty hard, I think, to get to his core.
Q:Do you think there’s anybody else — some other avenue into the administration?
A:No, I don’t think there’s anyone there at the moment who is really worth talking to. I think they’re terribly blocked and terribly dangerous. They practice psychic numbing — that’s the medical terminology — to block out what they’re doing. They’re doing evil and not looking at it. But I tell you what: I treated a lot of these fellows on their deathbeds, or when their children were dying, and when they’re in that very emotionally vulnerable situation they recant. They look at themselves and look inside their souls and realize what they’ve done, and they’re terribly sorry. But it’s too late then.
Q:In the film Helen’s War, there’s a sense that you’ve come out of retirement to go back into the fray. This has been your mission since 1971, and yet here we are, almost 35 years later –
A:I know, and it’s worse. I often feel like I’ve wasted my life doing this work for no good reason, because I love medicine. I gave it up to do this work. People have been saying that I might have helped prevent a nuclear war in the 1980s, but who knows?
I was compelled to do it. I couldn’t stop myself. But am I glad I did it? If we had gotten rid of the bombs I’d be very glad, and die fulfilled. I think, though, we’ve got a chance now to get the revolution going again — to build it again and complete the work. All doctors have to be optimists.
Q:Looking back, what stands out as your greatest success?
A:Of my whole life? The biggest thing I ever did was give birth to my three babies. That’s why we’re here, to reproduce — biologically speaking. Next to that, I guess it was the end of the Cold War, but in truth, when that occurred, my husband had just left me. So I was deeply depressed and I hardly knew the Berlin Wall came down, which was sort of ironic.
Q:You’ve done an incredible thing; you’ve completely dedicated your life to what you believe in. Not everyone can do that.
A:Why not? Not everyone wants to do it, but everyone can do it. It’s a decision you make. I’ve seen so many people die unfulfilled. And those who’ve dedicated their lives to great causes of service to the environment and to the human race have died totally fulfilled.
I think people have to examine why they were conceived, why they were born. It’s our responsibility in this particular generation, when life on earth — probably the only life in the universe — is so threatened.
Everyone can be extraordinarily effective, they just have to not be self-indulgent or narcissistic or greedy, and work for other people and other things. In that action lie the germs of true happiness. You’ll never be happy trying to make yourself happy. It doesn’t work.
Q:So if someone reads this interview, and they get to the end of it, and now they have the knowledge –
A:Then they have to act. Read The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush’s Military-Industrial Complex — there’s enough information in that so you could debate Rumsfeld at any time and beat him on television. And at the back of that book there’s a huge list of anti-nuclear groups all around the country and the world, and you can look up all the people making the weapons and where they live and how you can contact them. The CEOs of Lockheed Martin and Boeing and the like. It’s got a huge list of things you can do and places you can go and actions you can take. Knowledge is ammunition, but you have to work out what you’re going to do with your life to save the planet.

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Shukar Collective – Gypsy Blooz

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Daoist Poetry

Lily Magnolia

There is an end to the remotest corner of the earth, while

There is an endlessness to the yearning between lovers

– Yan Shu

—
Memories in Early Winter
…I remember my home, but the Xiang River’s curves

Are walled by the clouds of this southern country,

I go forward, I weep till my tears are spent

I see a sail in the far sky,

Where is the ferry? Will somebody tell me?

It’s growing rough, it’s growing dark.

–Meng Haoran

—
Under the yellow dust, and the three Mountains,

A thousand years passed like a gallop;

Watching the whole Earth and land

Seawater pouring from a cup.

–Li He

—
A Ballad of Heaven
The River of Heaven wheels round at night

Drifting the circling stars,

At Silver Bank, the floating clouds

Mimic the murmur of water.

By the Palace of Jade the cassia blossoms

Have not yet fallen,

Fairy maidens gather their fragrance

For their dangling girdle-sachets.
The Princess from Ch’in rolls up her blinds,

Dawn at the north casement.

In front of the window, a planted kola nut

Dwarfs the blue phoenix.

The King’s son plays his pipes

Long as goose quills,

Summoning dragons to plough the mist

And plant Jade Grass.
Sashes of pink as clouds at dawn

Skirts of lotus-root silk,

They walk on Blue Island, gathering

Fresh orchids in spring.
She points to Hsi Ho in the east

Deftly urging his steeds,

While land begins to rise from the sea

And stone hills wear away.

–Li He

—
The south wind blows at the mountain

And makes it flat land,

Heaven’s Emperor orders the sea to move;

The Heavenly Mother’s peach blossoms a thousand times

How many times did Peng Zuwuxian die?
–Li He

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The Buddhas and Zen masters of all times and places have emerged only on account of search for truth. Present day seekers are also in search of truth. Only when you attain truth will you be done; until you have attained it, you will repeat your former ways.

– Lin Chi (d 867?)

Meant to get this out yesterday… but added a couple of items. Rowan’s last night at his play is tonight, followed by the cast party… Then he is off to Outdoor School as a Cabin Counselor for a week.
We attended Doris Gunn’s Wake last night. So many great stories, and laughter, and some tears. Truly an amazing woman. She ran as vice-Governor of Oklahoma back years ago, and had her finger in so many different movements. Her sense of engagement was breath-taking when you heard the stories. A good part of the family was there and many friends. They are having a second one tonight. More people, and more stories I am sure.
My Art show has been extended for 4 weeks, and I am putting up a series of different images this next week… so stay tuned!
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm
On The Menu:

The call of Cthulhu

Zen Quotes…

Pure Land Teachings of Master Chu-hung

Poems Of Li Bai

Art: Pure Land Mandalas
Enjoy!

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The call of Cthulhu

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More Here….. At last, the stars are finally right…

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Zen Quotes:
In the still night by the vacant window,

Wrapped in monk’s robe I sit in meditation.

Navel and nostrils lines up straight;

Ears paired to the slope of the shoulders.

Window whitens – the moon comes up;

Rain’s stopped, but drops go on dripping.

Wonderful – the moon of this moment,

Distant, vast.
– Ryokan (1758–1831)
—

She is like white clouds rising from the mountains,

No-mind from the start.

She is like the roosting bird who feels no longing

For the woods of home.

Because this person of the Way happens to enjoy

The mountains and streams,

She wanders among them unconcerned about how deep

Into the lakeside mountain peaks she goes.

She has gone to the empty cliffs to pay respect to

The hundred thousand forms of the Buddha.
– Su Dongpo (1037–1101)
—

It is the one who is without obsession who is noble. Just do not act in a contrived manner; simply be normal. When you go searching elsewhere outside yourself, your whole approach is already mistaken. You just try to seek buddhahood, but buddhahood is just a name, an expression. Do you know the one who is doing the searching?
– Lin Chi (d 867?)
—

Natural mind like the Autumn moon

Reflected on a clear jade lake.

Nothing like it

How to explain it?
– Han Shan (627–649)
—

To be able to be unhurried when hurried;

To be able not to slack off

When relaxed; to be able not to be

Frightened and at a loss for what to

Do when frightened and at a loss;

This is the learning that returns us

To our natural state and

Transforms our lives.
– Liu Wenmin (early 16th cent)
—

Holding my sweater and

Facing the fragrant peony,

I sense how different our viewpoints are.

Someday our hair will turn gray,

Yet the flowers will be this red each year;

Following the morning dew,

Each blooms gorgeously

Then their sweet scent is

Chased by the evening winds.

Why wail till they have withered and fallen

To understand such emptiness?
– Fa Yen (885–958)

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Pure Land Teachings of Master Chu-hung
Master Chu-hung (1535-1615)

Break Through Delusion
This is the way people are in the world. When they encounter pleasing situations, they feel happy and content. When they encounter situations that go against them, they feel worried and endangered.
Nevertheless, pleasing things should not be considered lucky, and adversity should not be considered unlucky. If you are sunk in things that your conceptual mind considers convenient, the intention of transcending the world will never arise. If you are sad and do not get what you aim for, then you will grow weary of the fetters of the world of physical existence, and therefore seek to transcend the world.
Thus, when myriad sufferings extend before you, just contemplate them with correct wisdom.
Ask yourself: Where does the suffering come from? It is born from physical existence. Where does physical existence come from? From karma. Where does karma come from? It is born from delusion. On the basis of delusion, you create karma. On the basis of karma, physical existence forms. On the basis of physical existence, you incur suffering. Just manage to break through delusion, and all of this is empty and still.
You may venture to ask, “What is the method for breaking through delusion?”
Just go to the fundamental meditation point and understand: Who is reciting the buddha-name? Who is mindful of the buddha?
Take hold of your doubts over this, take hold and defeat them: then all delusion will be smashed. Think this over! Don’t neglect it!
Pure Land and Zen Methods
There are many ways to enter the Path, but for directness and simplicity, none matches reciting the buddha-name.

The method of buddha-remembrance through reciting the buddha-name brings salvation to those of the most excellent capacities, and reaches down to the most stupid and dull. In sum, it is the Path that reaches from high to low. Do not be shaken or confused by vulgar views that Pure Land is only for those of lesser abilities.
Since ancient times, the venerable adepts of the Zen school have taught people to contemplate meditation topics (koans), to arouse the feeling of doubt, and thus to proceed to great awakening. Some contemplate the word “No.” Some contemplate “The myriad things return to the one: what does the one return to?” The meditation topics are quite diverse, and there are quite enough of them.
Now I will try to compare Zen and Pure Land methods.
Take for example the koan “The myriad things return to one: what does the one return to?” This is very similar to the koan “ Who is the one reciting the buddha-name?” If you can break through at this “Who?” then you will not have to ask anyone else what the one returns to: you will spontaneously comprehend.
This was precisely what the ancients meant when they said that those who recite the buddha-name and wish to study Zen should not concentrate on any other meditation topic but this.
Recite the buddha-name several times, turn the light around and observe yourself: who is the one reciting the buddha-name? If you employ your mind like this without forgetting, without any other help, after a long time you are sure to have insight.
If you cannot do this, it is also alright simply to recite the buddha-name. Keep your mindfulness from leaving buddha, and buddha from leaving your mindfulness. When your mindfulness of buddha peaks, your mind empties: you will get a response and link up with the Path, and buddha will appear before you. According to the inner pattern, it must be so.
Master Chu-hung (1535-1615)

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Poems Of Li Bai

Endless Yearning (I)
I am endlessly yearning

To be in Changan,

Insects hum of autumn by the gold brim of the well

A thin frost glistens like little mirrors on my cold mat,

The high lantern flickers, and deeper grows my longing

I lift the shade and, with many a sigh, gaze upon the moon,

Single as a flower, centered from the clouds

Above, I see the blueness and deepness of the sky

Below, I see the greenness and the restlessness of water…

Heaven is high, Earth wide, bitter between them flies my sorrows

Can I dream through the gateway, over the mountain?

Endless longing

Breaks my heart.

—
Endless Yearning (II)
The sun has set, and a mist is in the flowers

And the moon grows very white and people sad and sleepless,

A Zhao harp has just been laid mute on its phoenix holder

And a Shu lute begins to sound its mandarin-duck strings…

Since nobody can bear to you the burden of my song

Would that it might follow the spirit wind to Yanran Mountain,

I think of you far away, beyond the blue sky

And my eyes that once were sparkling, are now a well of tears,

Oh, if ever you should doubt this aching of my heart

Here in my bright mirror come back and look at me!

—
A Visit to Sky-Mother Mountain in a Dream
So, longing in my dreams for Wu and Yue

One night I flew over Mirror Lake under the moon,

The moon cast my shadow on the water

And traveled with me all the way to Shanxi,

The lodge of Lord Xie still remained

Where green waters swirled and the cry of apes was shrill,

Donning the shoes of Xie

I climbed the dark ladder of clouds,

Midway, I saw the sun rise from the sea

Heard the Cock of Heaven crow,

And my path twisted through a thousand crags

Enchanted by flowers I leaned against a rock

And suddenly all was dark,

Growls of bears and snarls of dragons echoed

Among the rocks and streams,

The deep forest appalled me, I shrank from the lowering cliffs,

Dark were the clouds, heavy with rain

Waters boiled into misty spray,

Lightening flashed, thunder roared

Peaks tottered, boulders crashed,

And the stone gate of a great cavern

Yawned open,

Below me, a bottomless void of blue

Sun and moon gleaming on terraces of silver and gold,

With rainbows for garments, and winds for horses

The lords of the clouds descended, a mighty host,

Phoenixes circled the chariots, tigers played zithers

As the immortals went by, rank upon rank.

—
On the Way Back to the Old Residence

Traveling to Heaven in dreams

There is another space and dimension in the kettle

Overlook the human Earth,

That is easily withered and rotten.

—
Ling Xu Mountain
Leaving the human world

Going toward the path to Heaven;

Upon Consummation through cultivation,

Then follow the clouds to Heaven,

Caves hidden under pine trees,

Deep and unseen among the peach blossoms…

In Northern Europe, Samhain (the Celtic term for Halloween, pronounced sow-in as in ‘sour’) was the time when the cattle were moved from the summer pastures to winter shelter. It was the end of the growing season, the end of harvest, a time of thanksgiving, when the ancestors and the spirits of the beloved dead would return home to share in the feast. Death did not sever one’s connections with the community. People would leave offerings of food and drink for their loved ones, and set out candles to light their way home. Those traditions gave us many of our present day customs. Now we set out jack-o-lanterns and give offerings of candy to children – who are, after all, the ancestors returning in new forms.” – Starhawk, On Faith

Samhain… and the parting of the doors. Saw a few goblins, elves, musketeers, gypsies and the like today. Perfect Autumn day, somber though with news locally and from afar. We have two candles burning on the mantle tonight for those who have chosen this time for the transition…
A favourite time of year, the beauty, and the lingering days that are now darkening. Such beauty.
On The Menu:

Doris Gunn

White Goddess

Chapter Nine – from Petronius’ “Satyricon”: The Werewolf Story told by Niceros

Poetry: John Keats
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Doris Gunn

Got a call on the 30th from our good friend Julie. She was over at John Gunn’s home, and his mother, Doris, who we have known and loved for many years, died in her sleep… Doris had been ill with cancer for 2 or so years, and was a real fighter until the end. Luckily, Johns’ sister was there as well, visiting from Alaska.
Doris was originally from the Carolinas’. She spent a good deal of her life in the cause of the future. Doris did jail time for fighting the nuclear industry, and may well have been in for other causes but I cannot recall at this time. She was always organizing, and the photocopier was her tool of choice…
She was a frequent caller into KBOO, our local Leftie/Pacifica type of Radio Station… She would come on, and land an excellent point. All the commentators knew her.
Doris had a huge heart, mixed with true southern mannerisms and a wonderful sense of inclusiveness. She was the epitome of The Yellow Dog Democrat… We will miss you Doris, you chose a good time to go. Thanks for the laughs, the stories, and of course… The Photocopies!
Blessings,
Gwyllm

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White Goddess

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Chapter Nine – from Petronius’ “Satyricon”: The Werewolf Story told by Niceros

[LVII] But Ascyltos, lost to all self-control, threw his arms up in the air, and turning the whole proceedings into ridicule, laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks. At this once of the freedmen among the guests, the same who occupied the place next above me, lost his temper and shouted:
“What are you laughing at, muttonhead? Isn’t my master’s elegant hospitality to your taste? You’re a mighty fine gentleman, I suppose, and used to better entertainment. So help me the guardian spirits of this house, but I would have made him baa to some purpose, had I been next him. A pretty sprig indeed, to laugh at other people! a vagabond from who knows where, a night-raker, that’s not worth his own piddle! Just let me piss round him, and he would not know how to save his life! By the powers, I’m not as a rule quick to take offense, but there! worms are bred in soft flesh. He’s laughing; what’s he got to laugh at? Did his father buy the brat for money? You’re a Roman knight: and I’m a king’s son. ‘Why did you serve as a slave then?’ Why! because I chose to, and thought it better to be a Roman citizen than a tributary king. And henceforth I hope to live a life beyond the reach of any one’s ridicule. I am a man now among men; I can walk about with my nose in the air. I owe nobody a brass farthing; I’ve never made composition; no one ever stopped me in the forum with a ‘Pay me that thou owest!’ I’ve bought some bits of land, put by a trifle of tin; I keep twenty folks in victuals, to say nothing of the dog; I’ve purchased my bedfellow’s freedom, that no man should wipe his hands on her bosom; I paid a thousand denars to redeem her; I was made a sevir, free gratis for nothing; I trust I may die and have no cause to blush in my grave.
“But you, are you so busy you can’t so much as look behind you? You can spy a louse on a neighbor’s back, and never see the great tick on your own. You’re the only man to find us ridiculous; there’s your master and your elder, he likes us well enough, I warrant. You! with your mammy’s milk scarce dry on your lips, you can’t say boo! to a goose; you crock, you limp scrap of soaked leather, you may be supple, but you’re no good. Are you richer than other folk? then dine twice over, and sup twice! For myself I value my credit far above millions. Did any man ever dun me twice? I served forty years, but nobody knows whether I was slave or free. I was a long-haired lad when first I came to this town; the basilica was not built yet. But I took pains to please my master, a great, grand gentleman and a dignified, whose nail-parings were worth more than your whole body. And I had enemies in the house, let me tell you, quite ready to trip me up on occasion; but–thanks to his kind nature–I swam the rapids. That’s the real struggle; for to be born a gentleman is as easy as ‘Come here.’ Whatever are you gaping at now, like a buck-goat in a field of bitter vetch?”
[LVIII ] At this harangue Giton, who was standing at my feet, could no longer contain himself, but burst into a most indecorous peal of merriment. When Ascyltos’ adversary noticed the fact, he turned his abuse upon the lad, screaming, “You’re laughing too, are you, you curled onion? Ho! for the Saturnalia, is it December, pray? When did you stump up your twentieth? What’s he at now, the crow’s meat gallows-bird? I’ll take care God’s anger falls on you, you and your master who does not keep you in better order. As I hope to live by bread. I only keep my hands off you out of respect for my fellow freedmen; else would I have paid you off this instant minute. We’re right enough, but your folks are good for nothing, who don’t keep you to heel. Verily, like master like man. I can scarce hold myself, and I’m not a hot-headed man naturally; but if I once begin, I don’t care twopence for my own mother. All right, I shall come across you yet in the open street, you rat, you mushroom, you! I’ll never stir up nor down, if I don’t drive your master into a wretched hole, and show you what’s what, though you call upon Olympian Jove himself to help you! I’ll be the ruin of your rubbishy ringlets and your twopenny master into the bargain. All right, see if I don’t get my teeth into you; either I don’t know myself, or you shall laugh on the wrong side of your face, even if you have a beard of gold. I’ll see that Minerva’s down on you, and the man that first trained you to be what you are.
“I never learned Geometry and Criticism and such like nonsensical screeds, but I do understand the lapidaries’ marks, and I can subdivide to the hundredth part when it comes to questions of mass, and weight and mintage. Well and good! if you have a mind, we’ll have a little wager, you and I; come now, here I clap down the tin. You’ll soon see your father wasted his money on you, though you do know Rhetoric. Now:
‘Which of us?–I come long, I come wide:

now guess me.’
“I’ll tell you which of us runs, yet never stirs from the spot; which of us grows, and gets less all the while. How you skip and fidget and fuss, like a mouse in a chamber-pot! So either hold your tongue altogether, or don’t attack a better man than yourself, who hardly knows of your existence,–unless perhaps you think I’m troubled by your yellow ringlets, that you stole from your doxy. God helps the man that helps himself! Let’s away to the forum to borrow money; you’ll soon see this bit of iron commands some credit. Aha! a fine sight, a fox in a sweat! As I hope to thrive and make such a good end the people will all be swearing at my death, hang me if I don’t chivy you up hill and down dale till you drop! A fine sight too, the fellow that taught you so,–a muff I call him, not a master! We learned something else in my time; the master used to say, ‘Are your things safe? go straight home; don’t stop staring about, and don’t be impertinent to your elders.’ Now it’s all trash; they turn out nobody worth twopence. That I am what I am, I owe to my own wits, and I thank God for it!”
[LIX] Ascyltos was just beginning to answer his abuse; but Trimalchio, charmed with his fellow-freedman’s eloquence, stopped him, saying, “Come, come! leave your bickerings on one side. Better be good-natured; and do you Hermeros, spare the young man. His blood is up; so be reasonable. To yield is always to win in these matters. You were a young cockerel yourself once, and then coco coco you went, and never a grain of sense in you! So take my advice, let’s start afresh and be jolly, while we enjoy the Homerists.”
Immediately there filed in an armed band, and clashed spears on shields. Trimalchio himself sat in state on his cushion, and when the Homerists began a dialogue in Greek verse, as is their unmannerly manner, read out a Latin text in a clear, loud voice. Presently in an interval of silence, “You know,” says he, “what the tale is they are giving us? Diomed and Ganymede were two brothers. Their sister was Helen of Troy. Agamemnon carried her off and palmed a doe on Diana in her stead. So Homer relates how the Trojans and Parentines fought each other. He got the best of it, it seems, and gave his daughter Iphigenia in marriage to Achilles. This drove Ajax mad, who will presently make it all plain to you.” No sooner had Trimalchio finished speaking than the Homerists raised a shout, and with the servants bustling in all directions, a boiled calf was borne in on a silver dish weighing two hundred pounds, and actually wearing a helmet. Then came Ajax, and rushing at it like a madman slashed it to bits with his naked sword, and making passes now up and down, collected the pieces on his point and so distributed the flesh among the astonished guests.
[LX ] We had little time however to admire these elegant surprises; for all of a sudden the ceiling began to rattle and the whole room trembled. I sprang up in consternation, fearing some tumbler was going to fall through the roof. The other guests were no less astounded, and gazed aloft, wondering what new prodigy they were to expect now from the skies. Then lo and behold! the ceiling opened and a huge hoop, evidently stripped from an enormous cask, was let down, all round which hung suspended golden wreaths and caskets containing precious ungents. These we were invited to take home with us as mementos.
Then looking again at the table, I saw that a tray of cakes had been placed on it, with a figure of Priapus, the handiwork of the pastry-cook, standing in the middle, represented in the conventional way as carrying in his capacious bosom grapes and all sorts of fruits. Eagerly we reached out after these dainties, when instantly a new trick set us laughing afresh. For each cake and each fruit was full of saffron, which spurted out into our faces at the slightest touch, giving us an unpleasant drenching. So conceiving there must be something specially holy about this dish, scented as it was in this ceremonial fashion, we rose to our feet, crying, “All hail, Augustus, Father of his Country!” But seeing the others still helping themselves to the dessert, even after this act of piety, we also filled our napkins,–myself among the foremost, as I thought no gift good enough to pour into my beloved Giton’s bosom. Meantime three slaves entered wearing short white jackets. Two of them set on the table images of the Lares with amulets round their necks, while the third carried round a goblet of wine, crying, “The gods be favorable! the gods be favorable!” Trimalchio told us they were named respectively Cerdo, Felicio and Lucrio. Then came a faithful likeness of Trimalchio in marble, and as everybody else kissed it, we were ashamed not to do likewise.
[LXI ] Then after we had all wished one another good health of mind and body, Trimalchio turned to Niceros and said, “You used to be better company; what makes you so dull and silent today? I beg you, if you wish to oblige me, tell us that adventure of yours.” Niceros, delighted at his friend’s affability, replied, “May I never make profit more, if I’m not ready to burst with satisfaction to see you so well disposed, Trimalchio. So ho! for a pleasant hour,–though I very much fear these learned chaps will laugh at me. Well! let ‘em. I’ll say my say for all that! What does it hurt me, if a man does grin? Better they should laugh with me than at me.” “These words the hero spake,” and so began the following strange story:
“When I was still a slave, we lived in a narrow street; the house is Gavilla’s now. There, as the gods would have it, I fell in love with Terentius, the tavern-keeper’s wife; you all knew Melissa from Tarentum, the prettiest of pretty wenches! Not that I courted her carnally or for venery, but more because she was such a good sort. Nothing I asked did she ever refuse; if she made a penny, I got a halfpenny; whatever I saved, I put in her purse, and she never choused me. Well! her husband died when they were at a country house. So I moved heaven and earth to get to her; true friends, you know, are proved in adversity.
[LXII “It so happened my master had gone to Capua, to attend to various trifles of business. So seizing the opportunity, I persuade our lodger to accompany me as far as the fifth milestone. He was a soldier, as bold as Hell. We got under way about first cockcrow, with the moon shining as bright as day. We arrive at the tombs; my man lingers behind among the gravestones, whilst I sit down singing, and start counting the gravestones. Presently I looked back for my comrade; he had stripped off all his clothes and laid them down by the wayside. My heart was in my mouth; and there I stood feeling like a dead man. Then he made water all round the clothes, and in an instant changed into a wolf. Don’t imagine I’m joking; I would not tell a lie for the finest fortune ever man had.
“However, as I was telling you, directly he was turned into a wolf, he set up a howl, and away to the woods. At first I didn’t know where I was, but presently I went forward to gather up his clothes; but lo and behold! they were turned into stone. If ever a man was like to die of terror, I was that man! Still I drew my sword and let out at every shadow on the road till I arrived at my sweetheart’s house. I rushed in looking like a ghost, soul and body barely sticking together. The sweat was pouring down between my legs, my eyes were set, my wits gone almost past recovery. Melissa was astounded at my plight, wondering why ever I was abroad so late. ‘Had you come a little sooner,’ she said, ‘you might have given us a hand; a wolf broke into the farm and has slaughtered all the cattle, just as if a butcher had bled them. Still he didn’t altogether have the laugh on us, though he did escape; for one of the laborers ran him through the neck with a pike.’
“After hea
ring this, I could not close an eye, but directly it was broad daylight, I started off for our good Gaius’s house, like a peddler whose pack’s been stolen; and coming to the spot where the clothes had been turned into stone, I found nothing whatever but a pool of blood. When eventually I got home, there lay my soldier a-bed like a great ox, while a surgeon was dressing his neck. I saw at once he was a werewolf and I could never afterwards eat bread with him, no! not if you’d killed me. Other people may think what they please; but as for me, if I’m telling you a lie, may your guardian spirits confound me!”
[LXIII ] We were all struck dumb with amazement, till Trimalchio broke the silence, saying, “Far be it from me to doubt your story; if you’ll believe me, my hair stood on end, for I know Niceros is not the man to repeat idle fables; he’s perfectly trustworthy and anything but a babbler. Now! I’ll tell you a horrible tale myself, as much out of the common as an ass on the tiles!
“I was still but a long-haired lad (for I led a Chian life from a boy) when our master’s minion died,–a pearl, by heaven! a paragon of perfection at all points. Well! as his poor mother was mourning him, and several of us besides condoling with her, all of a sudden the witches set up their hullabaloo, for all the world like a hound in full cry after a hare. At that time we had a Cappadocian in the household, a tall fellow, and a high-spirited, and strong enough to lift a mad bull off its feet. This man gallantly drawing his sword, dashed out in front of the house door, first winding his cloak carefully round his left arm, and lunging out, as it might be there–no harm to what I touch–ran a woman clean through. We heard a groan, but the actual witches (I’m very particular to tell the exact truth) we did not see. Coming in again, our champion threw himself down on a bed and his body was black and blue all over, just as if he had been scourged with whips, for it seems an evil hand had touched him. We barred the door and turned back afresh to our lamentations, but when his mother threw her arms round her boy and touched his dead body, she found nothing but a wisp of straw. It had neither heart, nor entrails, nor anything else; for the witches had whipped away the lad and left a changeling of straw in his place. Now I ask you, can you help after this believing there are wise women, and hags that fly by night. But our tall bully, after what happened, never got back his color, in fact a few days afterward he died raving mad!”
[LXIV We listened with wonder and credulity in equal proportions, and kissing the table, besought the Night-hags to keep in quarters, while we were returning home.
And indeed by this time the lights seemed to burn double and I thought the whole room looked changed, when Trimalchio exclaimed, “I call on you, Plocamus; have you nothing to tell us? no diversion for us? And you used to be such good company, with your amusing dialogues and the comic songs you interspersed. Heigho! all gone, ye toothsome titbits, all gone?” “Alas! my racing days are over, since I got the gout,” replied the other; “but when I was a young man, I very nearly sang myself into a consumption. Dancing? dialogues? buffoonery? when did I ever find my match, eh?–always excepting Appelles.” And clapping his hand to his mouth, he spit out some horrid stuff that sounded like whistling, and which he told us afterwards was Greek.
Moreover Trimalchio himself gave an imitation of a horn-blower, and presently turned to his minion whom he called Croesus. This was a lad with sore eyes and filthy teeth: he was playing with a little black bitch, disgustingly fat, twisting a green scarf round her, putting half a loaf of bread on the couch, and on the animal’s refusing to eat it, being already overfed, cramming it down her throat. This reminding Trimalchio of a duty omitted, he ordered Scylax to be brought in, “the guardian of my house and home.” Next moment a huge watchdog was led in on a large chain and took up a position in front of the table. Then Trimalchio tossed him a lump of white bread, observing, “There’s no one in the house loves me better.” The boy was enraged at hearing Scylax so lavishly praised, and setting his bitch down on the floor, cheered her on to attack the monster. Scylax, as was his nature to, filled the room with savage barking, and almost tore Croesus’s little “Pearl” into bits. Nor did this fight end the trouble; but a chandelier was upset over the table, smashing all the crystal, and scalding some of the guests with oil.
Trimalchio, not to appear disconcerted at the damage done, kissed the lad and told him to get up on his back. The latter mounted a-cockhorse without a moment’s hesitation, and repeatedly slapping him on the shoulders with his open hand, laughingly shouted, “Buck! buck! how many fingers do I hold up?” After thus submitting for a while to be made a horse of, Trimalchio ordered them to prepare a capacious bowl of wine for all the slaves sitting at our feet, but on this condition, he added, “If any one won’t take his whack, souse it over his head! Business in the daytime, now for jollity!”

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Poetry: John Keats

Ode To Autumn
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;

To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o’er-brimmed their clammy cell.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,–

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir, the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

—

O SLEEP
Soft embalmer of the still midnight!

Shutting with careful fingers and benign

Our gloom-pleased eyes, embower’d from the light,

Enshaded in forgetfulness divine;

O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,

In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes,

Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws

Around my bed its lulling charities;

Then save me, or the passèd day will shine

Upon my pillow, breeding many woes;

Save me from curious conscience, that still lords

Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;

Turn the key deftly in the oilèd wards,

And seal the hushèd casket of my soul.

—-
WHEN I HAVE FEARS THAT I MAY CEASE TO BE
WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be

Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,

Before high-pilèd books, in charact’ry,

Hold like rich garners the full-ripened grain;

When I behold, upon the night’s starred face,

Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,

And think that I may never live to trace,

Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;

And when I feel, fair creature of an hour

That I shall never look upon thee more,

Never have relish in the faery power

Of unreflecting love;–then on the shore

Of the wide world I stand alone, and think,

Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

_____________
“The veils are thin this time of year, they say. The veils are thin between the worlds seen and unseen, but they are also thin within us. Something in us opens and reaches out into the dark. Something in us reaches into the darkness held deeply in secret, too. Something in us longs for the warming fire. Our veils are thin, our personality parts fight for dominance, and our psychic centers know that there is more. Our hearts do, too. The unseen reaches for us, and we reach for the unseen. There is no difference between the two.” – T. Thorn Coyle

Uploading the magazine to Lulu.com… will be doing a test run this week!
Stay Tuned….
Gwyllm

_________
On The Menu:

The Links

-Forever-!

Tuli Kupferberg – Interview by Jason Gross (June 1997)

Tuli Kupferberg – Interview by Matthew Paris (2004)

Poems From The 90′s: Tuli Speaks His Mind…

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The Links:

Rak Razam Interviews Filmaker Jan Kounen: Psychedelic States…

Dutch protesters make bid to save “magic mushrooms”

Forget wine—California’s biggest crop is bright green and funny-smelling

Report: Schwarzenegger says marijuana is not a drug

___________

-Forever-!

=en_US&fs=1&”>

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Tuli Kupferberg – Interview by Jason Gross (June 1997)
PSF: What were you working on before the Fugs?
Well, I was the world’s greatest poet before I became the world’s oldest rock n’roll star. I wasn’t with the Fugs until I was 42 but before that my life was trivial. I went to graduate school for sociology in Brooklyn. I dropped out and became a bohemian, living in Greenwich Village. The rest is mystery and history. It’s all one blur now.
I was a free-formist. I never took to the traditional forms. I never bothered to learn them. It’s OK to learn the old forms though and study what you’ve inherited in any art. I valued spontaneity a lot and being young, you’re always afraid that you’re going to be overwhelmed by the masters so you try to avoid it.
PSF: What kind of things were influencing you then?
The usual things. Ego, sex, money, in that order I think. Money wasn’t actually up there though. You could actually live on much less than you can today. I was sort of influenced by anybody I read.
PSF: How did you get interested in politics?
I was very political at an early age. When I was in my pre-teens they had those ‘Hoover-villes’ during the Depression. My father had a retail store that failed three times. We were just on the brink of going on welfare. You’d be amazed at how that can make you politically and economically conscious. My generation really experienced adversity so a dime is still big money to me! You had to be REALLY STUPID not to be political then. Even when things got better, you didn’t see it was better for you personally. It could always happen again and it always does. Besides the economy, you also had wars. When there’s a crisis in society, sometimes you see things more clearly. Otherwise, it just kind of waves right over you, especially when you’re young.
PSF:What did think of the Beat movement when it first started happening?
I remember being shocked by it. I guess I was still in some sort of traditional mode. Shocked, jealousy and then adaptation. It was liberating. I was shocked by Ed Sander’s freedom of sexual expression. I’m sure people were shocked by mine when I started. Ginsberg is your best example of a liberating force. It’s not just the language or the freedom of the language because that just reflects character structure. A person who drops dead or wants to kill someone would use all those words you’re not supposed to use. It’s more than language. It’s attitude towards sexuality and human relations along with domination and love. It’s not that people who shout about sexual freedom understand everything that’s involved. In order to have good sex, you have to have good human relationships and vice versa. When I grew up, in my community, you weren’t going to have sex until you got married- this was a middle-class Jewish community. Maybe you went to a prostitute… But that gradually broke down. That was all for the good and not just for me but also for most of America.
PSF: So you got to be part of the Beats yourself then?
Everyone was. But I felt that they had a heritage with the bohemians. The term comes from 12th century University of Paris. The craziest students came from Bohemia and they gave them this name. There’s this old tradition of living outside of the mores of society. Until the burgeouis revolution, most artists lived on the patronage of the ruling class. LA VIE DE BOHEME, the libetto for that opera, tells you what was happening then in the 18th century. So that’s a 150 year old tradition that’s still going on. It used to be linked to geography with places like New York, San Francisco, Munich, Paris. But now, with the Internet, you could be crazy, wild, free and self-destructive anywhere you want. But hopefully, there’s still communities of people out there. Utopian colonies who are just friends.
PSF: Before the Fugs, did you have any interest in music?
I’m not a musician- I can’t read music. The only thing I know how to play is the radio. I sing and write and compose songs. I have a memory of thousands of songs. There was always some music in the house. I seem to remember melodies better than some musicians I know. I had a sliver of that particular kind of intelligence. I listened to a lot of pop music on the radio but there were no musicians around me. Poetry and music used to be the same thing so if I had an interest in poetry, it was part of a musical interest as well.
Speech is music. It’s bad music. Some languages are very musical. When you hear certain people read, it’s almost music. Some people who do music, it’s almost speech. It’s a continuance.
PSF: A lot of your music comes from chants and sing-a-longs.
I like to invovle the audience like a number of writers, directors and political people do. I like to break down the barriers. The artist wants to move people and see the results. That’s why performing is more pleasurable than just writing, to me at least.
PSF: How did you start out with Ed and the Fugs?
We were both poets on the lowest East Side. We met at a place called the Metro. They sold furniture and since they had the tables and chairs there already, so they decided to open a coffee shop. Once the coffee house was established, it became the center of poetry readings. This was in the early ’60s. After the poetry, we would go to a place called the Dom on St. Marks. We would go there and try to dance, listening to the Beatles and the Stones. The early Beatles were not great poets but they did become great poets later. We decided that we could do something like that. So we decided to enter the field and we were sort of an instant hit. We had a wide range- Ed was a wild, crazy, mid-Western young man and I was a New York radical Jew. So together he had everything or, as some people would say, nothing.
PSF: Peter Stampfel said that he was impressed with all the songs that you and had written before the Holy Modal Rounders joined you.
He was a great help to us. He sort of gave us the illusion that we were musicians and a band. We were sort of a punk band. Our idea was that anybody could do this. Peter and Steve Weber gave us a lot of encouragement. We didn’t give a fuck actually. We weren’t out to do high art. For our first performances, our friends joined us on stage and carried on. We had a few people who would write songs like Ted Berrigan. The most archetypical Fug line was ‘I ain’t ever gonna go to Vietnam, I prefer to stay here and screw your mom’ which was from Ted. That’s from ‘Doing Alirght.’ That was enough to get us beaten up if we did it in the right place.
With the War going on then, it was a desperate time. There were thousands of dead and all the young men were facing that attempt to murder them. The nation was still supporting ‘our boys.’ We were really the ones being patriotic because we were trying to save lives. Other people were just trying to kill other people that they had never seen. That’s what war is- you go somewhere and kill people you’ve never met.
PSF: What happened with the Fugs after Peter and Steve left?
We got other musicians. I was sort of opposed with the idea of perfecting our music. I felt that it would interfere with our message: love, sex, dope. The only thing I think is safe or worth doing is marijuana. Also, as Ed put it ‘all kinds of freedoms given to us that the First Ammendment hadn’t taken care of.’ We were poets. Poets can say whatever they want about anything. So we felt that we did that with music. Pop music from the ’20s to the ’60s was mostly courtship music. In pop music, the Beatles sang abou
t everything in life and so did everyone else, including us.
PSF: Do you think a lot of people who were getting serious about politics at that time were phonies or were they genuine?
There’s the problem that if you keep faking something long enough, you start to believe your own lies. But I think mostly they were genuine. The ’60s were a time of great crisis in America. The war was the focal point. There was also minorites who demanded equal rights and the womens’ movement and various kinds of socialism, communism and anarchism. Then you saw that these things were connected. For instance, a woman couldn’t have equal pay unless you had some sort of control over the economy unless you fixed it in the law (though I really don’t believe in the law). It’s still inter-related but people aren’t conscious of this. You have to be very clever, quick and lucky to escape such an oppressive system.
PSF: You think that you did that?
Well, we were never arrested, which is amazing. We were threatened many times. Ed has these FBI advisories. Someone in the FBI probably realized what a farce it would be and what asses they would make of themselves if they put Ed on the stand. ‘What exactly do you mean by ‘Coca-Cola Douche’ Mr. Sanders?’ ‘You know, Coke! No Pepsi!’ There were suggestions that we’d be prosectued but nothing ever happened. People in the government aren’t THAT stupid. After ‘Howl’ was being prosecuted, it became the most famous poem in the country and thousands of people wanted to read it. So if we HAD been arrested, we would have probably sold a few hundred thousand more albums.
PSF: Since you were talking about it before, what kind of interactive things were you doing with the Fugs?
Pete Seeger used to do it but going way back. There were whole societies that had huge choral groups. Mass singing was done with the Welsh and the Russians. You could do it in two ways. You could print up the lyrics and force the audience to sing with you. You could also repeat a line or do the song once and then give the audience the line. Depending on what mood they’re in, you get audience response. It depends on the song too. The best audience was the third audience at midnight on a Saturday at a club we used to play at on MacDougal Street. They were all drunk so you could come out on stage and wave your hands and they’d scream and yell for you. In our first performances in the East Village, the audience would come on stage and do all sorts of things.
In the sixties, we were really the USO of the Left. We did a lot of benefits. We were one of the most conscious bands but we weren’t the only ones. It was really the attitude and style, which later became co-opted. In all due modesty, I don’t think there other bands that were as radical then. Zappa was kind of a cultural radical but he was a liberterian and a political idiot as far as I’m concerned. He started out in advertising and he stayed there to some extent. Ginsberg started out in advertising but he never looked back. The Who, The Stones and Beatles were saying very radical things. A lot of folk music is culturally and politically radical. There is a tradition in folk music for that though a lot of the songs are bad. It goes back to the Wobblies in the 19th Century. Woody Guthrie also. Dylan started very political. Phil Ochs too. Folk purists used argue about playing rock n’roll but good music is good music where ever it comes from. Music by itself can move people, sometimes very destructively like with a military march.
PSF: A lot of your songs involved writing new lyrics for songs.
It’s a very old tradition. I used it a lot when I didn’t have a band. The earliest singers I remember that did this was (Martin) Luther who took popular songs of the period and made church hymns out them. He said ‘why should the devil have the best of tunes.’ Then Joe Hill in the early part of the 1900′s used church hymns and changed them into radical pop songs.

Long-haired preachers come out every night

Try and tell you what’s wrong and what’s right

But when asked about something to eat

They are sure, they are sure to repeat

‘You’ll get pie…

You’ll get pie in the sky when you die (that’s a lie)

Work and pray

Live on hay

You’ll get pie in the sky when you die (it’s a lie)’
So it’s an old tradition. I call them para-songs.

PSF: Did the Fugs have any particular goals?
Our goal was to make the revolution. That would have been a complete revolution, not just an economic or political one. We had utopian ideals and those are the best ideals. What happened was that this movement that flourished then had a lot of problems. A lot of promises weren’t as deeply rooted or as well grounded as we thought. The technological revolution and the movement of world capital created problems that no one had ever thought possible. The sixties never connected. It was basically a youth movement and basically a middle-class, male movement. That’s not enough. There were students but the war fed itself on that part of the movement and the previous radical history. There were a lot of ‘grown-ups’ and academic people and ordinary people but its roots were not deep enough and its analysis (Marxist and anarchist) wasn’t enough to take over. We didn’t know how to get from our good ideas to the society we wanted.
Then it slowly collapsed once the draft ended and once the war ended. Obviously the forces of the old society (religion and tradition) were much stronger than we thought. So things continued the way they are. We still don’t have the ideology to get out of this. We never connected to the working class and now they seem to be disappearing into microchips- you have a lot of ‘surplus’ people. We need some sort of understanding of what’s going on because everything is out of control, especially out of our control. We have very little influence, we radicals today.
The sixties were a complete surprise because in the fifties, American society was just recovering from World War II and young man just wanted to go back to school and start a family. There was no politics. Then the sixties happened. You can never predict when it’s going to happen because it’s rooted in human nature that you can only take so much oppression before you do something. But sometimes you do the wrong thing. We don’t have the answers but if they only gave us a chance… It was not a complete failure because a lot of the things we believed in have gone a long way to being realized. We were not the idealists. We manifested them and learned from other people.
PSF: With the Fugs, what was happening with the band after ’65?
I think that our songs developed and become more sophisticated and complicated. We spread into different areas and the music got better. I don’t think we should have disbanded. It was due to personal conflicts which I really don’t completely understand. We would have been really needed in the ’70s because that was a slow decline where everything that that generation thought was going to happen, just disappeared slowly.
PSF: What were you doing after the Fugs broke up?
I formed a group called the Revolting Theater, which sort of carried on in the tradition of the Fugs. Basically we acted out artifacts that we had found in society- advertisements or crazy songs or poetry. That had a mild reason for being. We played mostly at colleges. Then I formed a group called the Fuxxons and that was me and anybody that was around- we did some Fugs songs and other stuff.
Then in ’84, the Fugs were reformed. I would have been always ready to reform but I think Ed decided that it should happen at that particular time. We did a reunion concert with new musicians at the Bottom Line. A lot of people came and it was fun. We’ve been playing on and off since then. I don’t think that we had the impact that we did in the sixties for a number of reasons. We did the Real Woodstock Festival in ’94 where Ed lives. That same year, we played in Italy.
PSF: Before you said the Fugs were about dope and fucking. What about now?
No, I said that the Fugs were about dope and fucking and any kind of mind liberation that didn’t kill you or damage your internal organs. I was always careful about that because I’d been a medical librarian and I knew all about that. My phrase was ‘better to be a live ogre than a dead saint.’ I knew a lot of dead saints. It was about politics and it was about life and relations between people and ‘freedom,’ meaning the ability to explore and express yourself and other peoples’ feelings. We were all about creating a utopia and we had our ideas about what it was. We tried to work for it and to live it because we weren’t going to wait- ‘we want the world and we want it now.’ We were impatient, especially in the sixties where young people faced death and they weren’t going to wait to enjoy anything after they were dead.
It’s a mistake to put it (freedom) in terms of physiology. Nothing wrong with that. The basic unit of human society is the human body. You have to know how to use it and enjoy it. That’s only part of it though because if you have a human body and you put it in the dark and leave them there, you get something that isn’t quite human. It needs nourishment and human society. It doesn’t have to be the patriarchal family. In the age of AIDS, I recommend group marriages with four couples. More than eight people would be too much.
Bascially, the Fugs are the same except we’re more refined and more clever and more worked out and more beautifully put and less listened to.
PSF: You were saying that things are different for the Fugs now.
What’s different isn’t the Fugs- it’s the society around which we function. There was more of a community for the arts before. If you lived in the Village, you knew the film makers and the painters. Due to mass media, there’s no much of a community because there are many, many small communities and groups. If you go into Tower Records, you can find 2500 bands- that’s good because it means a lot of people are doing things. But audiences have also become more broken down. There’s no large community. The question is whether the times create the great artist or whether the great artist helps to create the times. It works together. If you’re incredibly great, you can surpass the times. If you’re just a little good, then times will push you onward and make you better. If the times are terrible, you’ve got to work against all of it. It’s really complicated but we’re always ready for more good music and more good times.

_________________
Tuli & Ed Saunders

Interview With Tuli Kupferberg – 2004/ Matthew Paris

M.P. – Tuli, you started out as a young anarchist; were you Kropotkinesque or Bakuninesque?
T.K. – Well, actually I was a Stalinist. In those days everybody was a Stalinist but very shortly I became a Trotskyite or demi-Trotskyite, and then I became very confused. All those terrible questions were being asked about the trials, though other people were asking them. I was very young, about thirteen; it was the Depression so there was a lot of motivation around.
M.P. – Why Stalinism? He was a Russian nationalist and Trotsky international; how did you defend that?
T.K. – When you’re thirteen you don’t really defend too much. It’s just that the Communist Party was the most active group around and they would have first shot, so to speak, at a young person who became politically concerned. When I went to New Utrecht High School it was a hotbed of political radicalism; all Jewish areas were. (laughs) They were the children of immigrant workers a lot of whom were radicals of various kinds.
M.P. – How do you feel about those days when causes were so clear and simple?
T.K. – 0, if they would only come back! (laughs) Maybe simplicity was part of being young, but Fascism, Hitler helped crystalize us. I think there’s a lot to that theory that Western Capitalism built Hitler up, particularly. France and England, to devour the Soviet Union. My God; he didn’t do exactly what they wanted! Maybe the telephone receiver wasn’t too clear.

It’s peculiar because American ideology was Part of this simplicity, such as Manifest Destiny, Progress. The easy way out was simplicity. Whenever you found a Socialism you didn’t like you’d say, this is not Socialism. In the end, the ideology was not developed enough to explain or foresee things. Therefore we had these incredible mistakes, if you can call what cost millions of people their lives a mistake happened.
Marx predicted a lot of things wrong, made a lot of mistakes, and had a lot of success; he predicted the revolution would happen in a developed country like England and it never did. Revolution in Russia because it was undeveloped stood outside the theory. In retrospect one can say that both Marxism and Anarchist theory had serious defects. The Anarchists say their theory has never been tried; that’s one of the faults. If it never took power anywhere, it’s a defect.
M.P. – Aren’t these etudes in artifice that stand apart from Nature?
T.K. – Nature is a word I never use; I think everything is natural, even artificial things; it’s a different kind of nature. Not everything that’s natural is wonderful as anyone who eats the leaves of the hemlock will easily find out.
I don’t associate with any group; maybe no group will associate with me. I think the 60s was a search for community because American society has none; it has small groups organized to exploit small groups-and then larger groups. At first anarchism has to be an attitude; it starts with disrespect for institutions. If you have a general disrespect, you might slight something worthwhile.
M.P. – How did you meet Ed Sanders?
T.K. – I guess I met him at the Metro, a coffee house on Second Avenue; we had readings in the free art forms of the period. You were there.
M.P. – Yeah. If people didn’t like the poetry there was some rather violent criticism of it.
T.K. – I think that’s all right.
M.P. – Also there was utter freedom to say whatever you wanted; that was revolutionary.
T.K. – Well, Paul Goodman always said you could always say whatever you wanted as long as it didn’t have any effect.
Only In America. The owner was not exactly a poetical type. It was a commercial thing for him; he was sort of a Birchite actually. The poets brought him a lot of business so he was quite happy with that. It had a reputation of a place where people read and met their friends in those kinds of circles.
M.P. – There was you, Ed Sanders, Allen Katzman, Allen Ginsberg; you never knew what was going to happen. One girl read tragic limericks. Ed Sanders ran it, right?
T.K. – No, it passed through several hands because it got too disgusting for one person to do all that organizing and balance these inflated egos against one another. One of the games was getting the perfect place on the schedule. You didn’t want to read too early, but you didn’t want to read too late. You had to find the place where the audience was at the perfect pitch of receptivity.
M.P. – Those were eight hour sessions. When was that?
T.K. – 0, it would be a little past the middle, generally. In my novel which has the same unmentionable title as a magazine I helped edit, I discuss it; if anyone can convince a publisher to do it, they can ponder over it too.
M.P. – There was one poet, who seemed to have bought a costume out of an old IWW shop, who’d bring a poem of 30,000 pages, read excerpts, and always have a different girlfriend. He was very serious.
T.K. – There were thousands of people like that; you’ll have to be more specific.
M.P. – He looked like a Warner Brothers fantasy of a dangerous Red; no smiles.
T.K. – I got inoculated against bad sentimental poetry there. I didn’t get pickled, just sweet and sour. I once was going to do an anthology called The World’s Worst Poems. It was very hard to do, because no matter how hard I tried, there would always be something good in one of them, or if the poem were totally bad, it became something else: a perfectly funny thing, actually.
M.P. – It’s a virtuoso trick to be banal all the time.
T.K. – The trouble with a cliché is that you don’t hear it at all. Newspapers are a means of non-communication; you have to read between the lines. I make a lot of poems out of them but sometimes you want to rip out the paper and recite it as the joke of the month.
M.P. – Could you talk about the politics in your mag with the unmentionable name?
T.K. – Not all of it was. It was A Magazine of the Arts. You’re allowed to say Arts, I think. Ed Sanders was the editor. He was sort of a lyrical wild man; he just sort of spoke those words quite naturally. It’s really in the American tradition.
Ed is from Missouri; there really is a lot of Mark Twain in him. He gathered the liveliest things he could find around the East Village at that time and put them all together. He didn’t worry about language and he got a pretty lively magazine.
M.P. – How do you feel about Al Goldstein’s mag, to not use another word)?
T.K. – The sexism seems to be so obvious and stupid that I don’t consider it to be very harmful. I like the humor of it, the lightness it brings to sex. I think if you talk to Al he’ll deny that he’s sexist.
M.P. – Yeah, I talked to Al. He says that. He says it’s Flaubertian satire.
T.K. – I don’t know whether it started out that way. If you carry anything to an extreme it becomes ridiculous. I’ve had this experience with satire: you have to know what you’re doing, but if you’re willing to take the risk, you’ve got to make yourself very clear.
M.P. – Did you like working for the East Village Other?
T.K. — I was a free lance as opposed to a slave-lance journalist. It had some possibilities; it did some good things.

M.P. – How did The Fugs start?
T.K. – It was Ed’s idea. We had been going to the Dom, which was an ethnic bar around the corner from the Metro; you remember it-we were listening to the Beatles, and the Stones on the jukebox. Ed saw a logical connection to putting that music and that energy into poetry.

I thought it was a great idea; I picked the name. We had been performing; those readings were sort of performances. There’s always been a link between music and poetry, as Ed knew being a classical scholar, so we just connected them. A lot of it

really worked.
M.P. – How did you like touring?
T.K. – It was a mixed bag. It was nice to go somewhere you wanted to go, but it wasn’t good to leave some place you wanted to stay. Motel rooms are not the most wonderful place. But it was exciting to meet the folks out there. At first it’s all very exciting and you accept it uncritically, but then you begin to wonder what exactly is being adulated and why, and is it overdone, overblown, is it wrong, is the whole idea of the Artist or anybody as hero valid? In the media it’s almost impossible to escape that role.
The form demanded that I have a broader sense of humor. Since none of us were musicians we had to do more than music. Since Ed wouldn’t let me sing, I became more an actor.

There were some good reasons why I shouldn’t have sung. But we were working in the pattern of the folk balladeer, the minnesinger, which I’m still doing; the traditions became confusing because the music got in the way of the poetry. It was at times too loud for the music, and no point to us, though we had good musicians.
M.P. – Do you think the 60s idea of an honest life was a dream?
T.K. – It’s not the first time this dream has been around. I can remember the dream of the 30s that died in the 50s. Another was alive in the 60s and died in the 70s, and it’s older than that. Nothing is wasted; no voice is wholly lost.
M.P. – Do you feel that your historical role is over as Trotsky’s was in Mexico?
T.K. – Did Trotsky really feel that? Why did he keep on writing then? If one particular role is over, it’s up to you and your sense of self to look for another role which is not necessarily a contradiction of the old one but will continue the things you want to do.
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Poems From The 90′s: Tuli Speaks His Mind…

BECAUSE THE STATE
tune: chorus of “Because the Night (Belong to Lovers)”

by Patti Smith & Bruce Springsteen
Because the state belongs to fuckers

Because the state belongs to them

Alpha primate otherfuckers

Wasps in the edenic glen
& because the state was made by fuckers

Because the state was made for them

Pleasure-hating motherfuckers

Lover-baiting sons a guns
And the state holds monopoly of force

“Cop killers” also mean “cops who kill”

& tho the idea is somewhat coarse

Wilheim Reich might hold: “That’s a sexual thrill”
& because the state seducts us early

From 3 years on to postgrad docs:

Because the state educts us early

Dripdries our brains, hangs ‘em out like sox
& because the state thrives with armies

Protects its properties thru blacks & blues

Soldier boys are never called “murderers”

But what the hell is what they do?
& soon no doubt when we’re alone

The govt’ll tape your cunt & my bone

The state is a devil disguised as God

That throws its laws like a lightening rod
& this “executive committee of the ruling class”

Shoves its media up our ass

Will the evil of two lessers set you free?

Now the question’s: “To be internet or be TV?”
But because the state belongs to fuhrers

Because the state kills us for fun

Because the state belongs to furors

Because the state thinks only with the gun
& because the state belongs to fuckers

Because the state belongs to them

Gotta underthrow them motherfuckers

To return us to our edenic glen
O because the state belongs to fuckers

Because the state belongs to them

Oh we’ll have to change them all to lovers

& we’ll have to try & start again

Yeah we’ll have to change us all to lovers

Oh we’ll have to try to begin again….
OY!

—
GREAT MOMENTS IN THE HISTORY OF CAPITALISM

URANUS (to the tune of AQUARIUS from ‘Hair’)
This song is dedicated to the Passers of the Welfare Reform Bill
When the stools are in the Gringrich House

And Senators align with Mars

Then Greed will guide our country

Pure Ego steer our Pol-Stars
This is the dawning of the Age of Uranus

The Age of Uranus

Uranus, Uranus
Simony, misunderstanding

Cruelty, sad lusts abounding

Lots more lying and derision

Golden parachutes their vision

Mystic racist fulmination

Nation-soul in constipation
Uranus, Uranus
When the Pricks are in the Clintrich House

And Congressmen are paged with bribes

Then Idiots will damn our destiny

And Shits will ruin our lives
This is the dawning of the Age of Uranus

The Age of Uranus

Uranus, Uranus
Conspiracy and underhandling

Media control astounding

Circuses with bread omission

Downsize lives without contrition
Uranus, Uranus
Now the Ghouls are in the Masters House

And Murderers kill us en masse

Now the Rule they Rule the Planet

And wipeout the Underclass
This is the Sundown of the Age of Uranus

The Age of Uranus

Uranus, Uranus
Let the Moonshine

Let the Moonshine

Let the Moonshine

Let the Moonshine in!

—

PAINT IT RED (& BLACK)
Tune: ‘Paint It Black’ (Rolling Stones) with spoken extensions

NOTE: Red & Black are the Anarchist colors
I see the White House & I want to paint it Red

Rabbi Jesus whispers to me: ‘Besser Red zan Dead.’

I see the Kremlin & I’m gonna paint it black

Clinton’s toasting Yeltsin: ‘Zdrovye Bourgeois Hack!’
I spoke to Tolstoy: ‘Emma Goldman’s coming back!’

He sat there writing on a shard of red & black

Black & Red. Coming back!

Red & Black. They’re comin’ back!
The homeless Alien morphs to Newt’s Sonovabitch

The Species (social) Being’s served up: dessert for the rich

The Lions of Reason strobe the deep grave of yr dream

The Lamb of Love hides in the Caves of Academe
I hear the students as they wonder what comes next

They’re forced to take the test but do not have the text

They wander thru the World Wide Internet

They still believe they’ll find the Finland Station yet!

(in St. Petersberg where Lenin entered Russia in 1917)
I heard Mohr (Marx) & General (Engels) laughing in their Hell

They said Bakunyin had a funny tale to tell

‘Anarcho Pacifist Bolshelvism never had its chance!’

Perhaps we could invite St. Francis to the dance? And hey St Paul & Jacob Frank!

(18th Cent PolJewCath pansexual Messiah)

YOWZAH!
I see the White House & I want to paint it Red

Willy Reich is shouting at me: ‘Better Bed than Dead!’

Now Billy’s roasting Yelstin: ‘So long Bourgeois Flack!’

I spy the Kremlin Hey we’re gonna take it back!

RED & BLACK

GET IT BACK

RED & BLACK

WE’RE COMING BACK

RED & BLACK

RED & BLACK

RED & BLACK

_________

“When patterns are broken, new worlds can emerge.”

– Tuli Kupferberg

This is entry #728… if you are still with me, you might of picked up on some trends and modalities that I am running with. I think that the concept of Bohemia is more than just a take on artist in France, Beats in NY and San Francisco in the 50′s… Hipsters around the world in the 60′s, 70′s and so on… more than Burners and Ravers. It is an accumulation of the Underground streams running for hundreds if not thousands of years, that tie us back to pre-neolithic sensibilities. Bohemia is about Love primarily, Love, Sex, Dope, Art as some would say. The basic drives. Feel good about it, and be the creature you really are….
The idea of ‘Scene’ seemed to disappear in the last few years… Tuli Kupferberg said in an interview:
“But I felt that they had a heritage with the bohemians (the Beats). The term comes from 12th century University of Paris. The craziest students came from Bohemia and they gave them this name. There’s this old tradition of living outside of the mores of society. Until the bourgeois revolution, most artists lived on the patronage of the ruling class. LA VIE DE BOHEME, the libetto for that opera, tells you what was happening then in the 18th century. So that’s a 150 year old tradition that’s still going on. It used to be linked to geography with places like New York, San Francisco, Munich, Paris. But now, with the Internet, you could be crazy, wild, free and self-destructive anywhere you want. But hopefully, there’s still communities of people out there. Utopian colonies who are just friends.”
This speaks to me of the Inner Bohemia, the Bohemia of the Heart. Not a phrase bandied about much, but still, it is a state, and to me, maybe equivalent to a state of grace. An inner connectiveness, a community united by the heart, the mind, the soul.
So, Utopian Communities…. indeed. Whether it is in a TAZ, or a neighborhood where the shared ideals creates a Commons… more on this later? What are your visions of a Utopia? Drop me a line…
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm

___________________
On The Menu:
Peters’ Video Feed

Koan’s

The Poetry of Petr Borkovec

Peter’s Video Feed:
DCD – American Dreaming…

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Lisa Gerrard – Come Tenderness

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Koan’s
Storyteller’s Zen
Encho was a famous storyteller. His tales of love stirred the hearts of his listeners. When he narrated a story of war, it was as if the listeners themselves were on the field of battle.
One day Encho met Yamaoka Tesshu, a layman who had almost embraced masterhood in Zen. “I understand,” said Yamaoka, “you are the best storyteller in our land and that you make people cry or laugh at will. Tell me my favorite story of the Peach Boy. When I was a little tot I used to sleep beside my mother, and she often related this legend. In the middle of the story I would fall asleep. Tell it to me just as my mother did.”
Encho dared not attempt to do this. He requested time to study. Several months later he went to Yamaoka and said: “Please give me the opportunity to tell you the story.”
“Some other day,” answered Yamaoka.
Encho was keenly disappointed. He studied further and tried again. Yamaoka rejected him many times. When Encho would start to talk Yamaoka would stop him, saying: “You are not yet like my mother.”
It took Encho five years to be able to tell Yamaoka the legend as his mother had told it to him.
In this way, Yamaoka imparted Zen to Encho.

—

The First Principle
When one goes to Obaku temple in Kyoto he sees carved over the gate the words “The First Principle”. The letters are unusually large, and those who appreciate calligraphy always admire them as being a mastepiece. They were drawn by Kosen two hundred years ago.
When the master drew them he did so on paper, from which the workmen made the large carving in wood. As Kosen sketched the letters a bold pupil was with him who had made several gallons of ink for the calligraphy and who never failed to criticise his master’s work.
“That is not good,” he told Kosen after his first effort.
“How is this one?”
“Poor. Worse than before,” pronounced the pupil.
Kosen patiently wrote one sheet after another until eighty-four First Principles had accumulated, still without the approval of the pupil.
Then when the young man stepped outside for a few moments, Kosen thought: “Now this is my chance to escape his keen eye,” and he wrote hurriedly, with a mind free from distraction: “The First Principle.”
“A masterpiece,” pronounced the pupil.
_________________

____________
The Poetry of Petr Borkovec

Commuter Train, 0.05 a.m.
AZURE FORMICA, fluorescent tubes –

the heavens open, floods of light: Father

with adult daughter, ermine, me, the odour

of sodden clothes, a few rows down some troops.
The whistle. Lamps streak by. Then dark. The windows

hold our gaunt and yellowed faces. The soldiers

deal out cards on their laps. A woman, close,

her swaying earrings sputa of bright jasper.
Father and daughter can’t doze off to sleep

remembering the heart which bleeds and sears

on the drunk’s palm at the tiny platform shop.
She’s willowy and tall. Her program slips clean

off her lap towards the drunk – for Cymbeline.

She stoops in white, as she would to a kiss.

—
The Light Dragged Off
THE LIGHT DRAGGED off and rain began to pour.

Hell glinted through the pavements here and there.
Like Lada’s pictures, with tender and kind hearts,

the devils set to laying out their hoards.
Above the lamps, three late birds homeward bound.

Above the listless, sad and drawn-out standpoint
of the evening city, of the windows of each bookshop,

of the pubs going at full tilt and all lit up,
of the fountain with a naked marble lad

consoling a small carp in a marble lota
(the nose his father’s, the eyes his mother gave him…

how gaily coins glint at the water’s bottom),
of the weakening rain and the devils with their secrets.

We stood there and lit two sweet cigarettes.
It’s nothing, love. You’re shaking like a feather.

Hold me. Let’s go. We will sleep together.

—
We Rose
WE ROSE. SEPTEMBER. Long house shadow.

Dust everywhere, the radio’s drone.

Sun on the bedframe’s chrome.

You reached for your cigarettes.

The stairwell dreaming still beneath us,

the curtains slowly stirring, flowing down.

The empty sink was like a silver bust

and the seconds always flowing and flown

past warmth, its touch. Time at a standstill,

and all things aswell, unmoored from their roles

the sunlight on the bedframe stalled,

the hook, the picture on the wall.

I saw your cigarette’s fresh smoke,

the books beside us in a stack,

and the duvet’s fish and fowl and flowers

all slipped and slid down to the floor

where they cooled in blue geometry.

Dust on the wardrobe, dust on the aria.

The window’s coloured block going nowhere.

Outside, no plans were hatched in shadows,

and the towel, lying idle by the chair,

had the same story as us.

—-
For J.K.
The twenty-third pavilion,

The wall lit with October sun –

A bright memorial plaque for summer –

The same one Fet and Bunin have somewhere.

SLIGHT DÉJÀ VU –

some ornaments familiar;

around me came spring air

like screens pulled to.
Chilled to the bone. The trees

sent memory ranging back.

The sun pressed on my cheek

like iron, a piece of steel.
Hands over eyes, each finger

like a braid of rubies.

The heat’s a heavy figure

placed upon the earth.
As though someone had pressed

my back and hid the sun –

cold and blue the vein runs

through a memory, its dry hand.
I go with sick-bed gait

about this April morning;

inclosure, classic gate,

wind and light, their blows
against white walls, verandahs

of the numbered pavilions,

metallic noise through curtains

flies out the window – they
are like a sign or way

for someone else, not me.

As if about a white bed,

body twisted and awry,
with chamber-pot of urine,

amber, settled, cold,

I go about the morning.

Not I – two eyes unbodied.
Machine-like, quick, the nurse

makes up the sheets and covers.

The bedstead’s metal glows

like sunlight on the clouds.
Linoleum with patterns.

Like spring air in the gardens

four listless blank screens hold

a body which grows cold.

__________
Petr Borkovec (b. 1970) is the most prominent of the young generation of Czech poets who emerged after 1989. His first book of poems was published in 1990, and since then he has published four further collections, most recently, Polní práce [Field Work] (1998). He is also a noted translator of Russian poetry, and recently he has been working on translations of Sophocles and Æschylus. Borkovec lives in Cernosice, a town to the southwest of Prague.

___________

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.

-Leonard Cohen
(My White Bicycle – HapsHash)

I recently started exploring Poster art… and I have be revisiting Hapshash’s Nigel Waymouth & Michael English’s works… It is a wondrous thing that so much good art exploded onto the scene in such a short time…. Anyway, these guys are right up there with Rick Griffin & Stanley Mouse, but they definitely have the British aesthetic.
This edition of Turfing explores some of these pieces…. Enjoy!
On The Menu:

On The Music Box – Maps/We Can Create

Maps -It Will Find You

The Links

The Private Sea

THREE KOANS

Leonard Cohen For A Late Friday…

Art – HapsHash & The Coloured Coat….

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On The Music Box – Maps/We Can Create (find this one!)

A nice mixture of vocal harmonies, intricate phrasings, good rhythms, electronic keyboards blended with traditional instrumentations and a lush mix. Tasty Stuff! Recorded on an old 16 track recorder in James Chapman’s bedroom, this masterpiece was mixed by Ken Thomas of Sigur Ros production fame.
Maps – We Can Create…. Download it here!

Maps – It Will Find You

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_________________
(HapsHash – Love Me)

_________

The Links:

Thoughts On Days Of The Dead…

Scotto strikes again: Comfort Music!

The Leonard Cohen Files…

Modern Times…

Orthodox Moorish Radio…

__________

The Private Sea – William Braden

3. Chemistry and mysticism
In its broadest sense, mysticism refers to direct communion with the divine; to intuitive knowledge of ultimate truth; to the soul’s sense of union with the absolute reality that is the Ground, or the source, of its Being. And apparently it is impossible to distinguish this experience from the central experience produced by LSD and other psychedelic agents.

The classic accounts of mystical experience read like psychedelic Baedekers. In recent years, moreover, a number of studies have compared the two experiences, and the results have reinforced the idea that the experiences are in some way connected. The best known of these studies was undertaken by psychiatrist Walter Pahnke at Harvard University, where psilocybin was administered in a religious setting to ten theology students. Nine of the ten felt they had genuine religious experiences, and Pahnke concluded that the phenomena they reported were “indistinguishable from, if not identical with,” a typology based on W. T. Stace’s widely known summary of mystical experience.

At Princeton, students were shown accounts of a religious experience and a psychedelic experience, and two-thirds of the students identified the drug-induced experience as the religious one. In a book in which they summarize five separate studies, including Pahnke’s, R. E. L. Masters and Jean Houston stated that “religious-type” experiences were reported by 32 to 75 per cent of subjects who received psychedelics in “supportive” settings, and by 75 to 90 per cent of those who received them in settings that included religious stimuli. And so on. The consensus of research seems to be that the two experiences are at least phenomenologically the same. This is a way of saying: “Well, they certainly look the same, and beyond that I’m not going to stick my neck out.” What this neatly avoids, of course, is the problem of comparing the sources of the experiences.

Significant parallels to psychedelic experience are to be found in William James’s observations on religious conversion, the faith-state, and mystical experience. Conversion occurs, said James, when a formerly divided self becomes unified, and “a not infrequent consequence of the change operated in the subject is a transfiguration of the face of nature in his eyes. A new heaven seems to shine upon a new earth.” James made the point that “self-surrender has been and always must be regarded as the vital turning-point of the religious life.” And the total abnegation of self or ego is without question the hallmark of psychedelic experience. “Only when I become as nothing,” wrote James, “can God enter in and no difference between his life and mine remain outstanding.” Discussing the faith-state, James observed that it too is characterized by an objective change in the appearance of the world, which takes on a sweet and beautiful newness. “It was dead and is alive again. It is like the difference between looking on a person without love, or upon the same person with love.” In addition, there is a loss of all worry: “the sense that all is ultimately well with one” and a “willingness to be.” Finally, there is “the sense of perceiving truths not known before,” and these “more or less unutterable in words.” As for mysticism, James found that it also is marked by an ineffability requiring direct experience, as well as a noetic quality which carries with it “a curious sense of authority for aftertime.” Still another aspect is passivity, in which “the mystic feels as if he were grasped and held by a superior power.” And a final factor is transiency. “Mystical states cannot be sustained for long. Except in rare instances, half an hour, or at most an hour or two, seems to be the limit.”

One of those rare exceptions perhaps was Emanuel Swedenborg, the so-called Swedish Aristotle, who was said to have had a mystical experience which lasted, more or less continuously, for almost three decades. LSD cannot match that record, but it does seem to improve somewhat on the normal time limits indicated by James. Except for duration, however, there is obviously a remarkable similarity between James’s typology and psychedelic experience. And just incidentally, James noted that mystical states are often accompanied by various photisms, or luminous phenomena, which also are an aspect of psychedelic experience (for example, Paul’s blinding vision and Constantine’s cross in the sky). Finally, let us call attention to James’s observation: “One may say truly, I think, that personal religious experience has its roots and centre in mystical states of consciousness.” In other words, we are likening psychedelic experience not just to mysticism but to religious experience as a whole.
From this background, then, emerges LSD’s first clear challenge to orthodox theology.
Did the saints owe their visions to some biological short-circuit which caused them to experience spontaneously what LSD cultists achieve with a chemical? Can their mystic raptures be traced to a malfunction of the adrenal glands? Does the faith-state have a neurological basis? Is the religious experience as such nothing more than a fluke of body chemistry?
The materialists would like to think so, and do. Dr. Sidney Cohen (who is no materialist) has suggested that religious experience may one day be redefined as “a dys-synchrony of the reticular formation of the brain.”

Some scholars have pushed even further. Not only do psychedelics appear to duplicate religious experience, they say. It is possible that religion itself is psychedelic in origin. One of the major spokesmen for this viewpoint has been Gordon Wasson, an authority on the psychedelic mushrooms of Mexico, who has suggested that primitive men may have stumbled many times upon innocent-looking plants which produce the same effects as LSD. These theobotanicals, possibly mushrooms, might well have been a “mighty springboard” which first put the idea of God into men’s heads. Wasson also has proposed a psychedelic explanation of the ancient Greek cult that produced the Eleusinian Mysteries, and he has advanced the idea that Plato’s pure Ideas might be the product of a psychedelic insight. (In other words, Plato was an acidhead.) Following this line of reasoning, it might seem logical to conclude that the Eden story is actually a psychedelic parable—and we would be happy to propose that theory ourselves had we not already proposed another theory with an antithetical conclusion. In any case, Wasson goes on to suggest that psychedelic sacraments in the course of time may have been replaced by more innocuous hosts, and that they represent perhaps “the original element in all the Holy Suppers of the world.” The whole idea, of course, is pure speculation, and necessarily so, but at the same time it is very interesting speculation and by no means implausible. It is particularly tempting to apply Wasson’s theory to the metaphysics of India; according to Masters and Houston, an estimated 90 per cent of the holy men in that country are currently on hemp and various other drugs.
The point often is made that religious ascetics traditionally have promoted their mystical states of consciousness by employing techniques that rival LSD in their probable impact on biochemical balance. These include fasting, yogic breathing exercises, sleep deprivation, dervish dances, self-flagellation, and monastic isolation. Even in the pews of the pious, religious contemplation may be supported by such trance-inducing aids as organ music, stained glass windows, repetitive chants and prayers, incense, and flickering candles.
The question of religious chemistry has been underscored recently by the wide attention given to the theories, already mentioned, of Dr. Abram Hoffer and Humphry Osmond. Their adrenochrome-adrenolutin hypothesis suggests that schizophrenia may be caused at least in part by defective adrenal metabolism. Very briefly, the adrenal gland secretes the hormone adrenaline, which helps coordinate biological mechanisms in emergency situations—for example, a fist fight or a threatened traffic accident. Heart rate is increased, the blood is sugared up and pumped to the necessary muscles. Adrenaline also may affect the emotions, contributing to anxiety and depression. In the body it turns into a toxic hormone called adrenochrome, which in turn can be converted into either of two other compounds: dihydroxyindole or adrenolutin. It is possible that dihydroxyindole balances off adrenaline to reduce tension and irritability; in schizophrenics, however, adrenochrome is converted primarily into adrenolutin, which also is toxic, and the combination of adrenochrome-adrenolutin results in a poisonous disruption of the brain’s chemical processes. That is the theory. And the prescribed antidotes are nicotinic acid (niacin) or nicotinamide (Vitamin B-3). Discussing one of the villains in the piece, the scientists write: “There are few who doubt that adrenochrome is active in animals or in man, and it is now included among the family of compounds known as hallucinogens—compounds like mescaline and LSD-2 5 capable of producing psychological changes in man.”
The Hoffer-Osmond studies are far from conclusive, and similar theories have been advanced in the past. But the studies hold promise, and they are receiving serious consideration—due in part, no doubt, to the significance they have in other areas of current debate, including religion. The line dividing insanity and mysticism has never been too sharply drawn, and the biochemical theory of schizophrenia makes it all the more tenuous. Vitamin B-3 actually has cured cases of schizophrenia, according to Dr. Hoffer and Osmond. But Vitamin B-3 also has proved effective in terminating LSD experiences, and the implications of this must be obvious. As we asked earlier: Are insanity, mysticism, and the psychedelic experience in some way related?

Aldous Huxley has suggested they are. The experience of absolute reality is awesome enough in small doses, and the schizophrenic, drugged by his own body chemistry, is like a man who is permanently under the influence of a psychedelic. He is “unable to shut off the experience of a reality which he is not holy enough to live with.” He cannot take refuge, even for a moment, in “the homemade universe of common sense—the strictly human world of useful notions, shared symbols and socially acceptable conventions.” The result is a bad trip which never ends. But the psychedelic subject knows that he can and will return to that limited but comforting world, and he is therefore in a position to accept his experience: to enjoy it and to learn from it. This in fact appears to be the main basis for denying that psychedelics produce a model psychosis. As Dr. Cohen and parapsychologist Gardner Murphy expressed it: “When the dissolution of the reasoning self occurs in a chaotic manner, the result is called psychosis. When the state is not accompanied by panic or anxiety, it is perceived as mystical, and creative solutions of (or at least an armistice with) life problems could result.” Dr. Cohen has proposed that the difference here makes logical a distinction between insanity and unsanity, which he would place at polar ends of a continuum; in the middle, somewhere, would lie sanity. Nevertheless, it is a bit jarring to consider the possibility that religious experience is an end-product of adrenochrome, described as a dark crystalline material which can easily be made in a laboratory. “In its pure form,” write Dr. Hoffer and Osmond, “it manifests itself as beautiful, sharp, needle-like crystals which have a brilliant sheen. When the crystals are powdered, it appears as a bright red powder, which dissolves quickly in water to form a blood-red solution.”
It would be interesting to see if a shot of vitamins could terminate a spontaneous religious experience. But what if it did? And what if LSD does in fact initiate such an experience? Does this mean the experience is simply a manifestation of the drug?
(Jazz at the Roundhouse – HapsHash)

__________
THREE KOANS

It is Not Mind, It is Not Buddha, It is Not Things
A monk asked Nansen: `Is there a teaching no master ever preached before?’
Nansen said: `Yes, there is.’
`What is it?’ asked the monk.
Nansen replied: `It is not mind, it is not Buddha, it is not things.’

Nansen was too kind and lost his treasure.

Truly, words have no power.

Even though the mountain becomes the sea,

Words cannot open another’s mind.

—

Dried Dung
A monk asked Ummon: `What is Buddha?’ Ummon answered him: `Dried dung.’

Lightning flashes,

Sparks shower.

In one blink of your eyes

You have missed seeing.

—

The Enlightened Man
Shogen asked: `Why does the enlightened man not stand on his feet and explain himself?’ And he also said: `It is not necessary for speech to come from the tongue.’
Mumon’s Comment: Shogen spoke plainly enough, but how many will understand? If anyone comprehends, he should come to my place and test out my big stick. Why, look here, to test real gold you must see it through fire.

If the feet of enlightenment moved, the great ocean would overflow;

If that head bowed, it would look down upon the heavens.

Such a body hsa no place to rest….

Let another continue this poem.

____________
(Middle Earth – HapsHash)

____________

Leonard Cohen Poetry For A Late Friday…

Bird On The Wire

Like a bird on the wire,

like a drunk in a midnight choir

I have tried in my way to be free.

Like a worm on a hook,

like a knight from some old fashioned book

I have saved all my ribbons for thee.

If I, if I have been unkind,

I hope that you can just let it go by.

If I, if I have been untrue

I hope you know it was never to you

—
Sisters Of Mercy
Oh the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone.

They were waiting for me when I thought that I just can’t go on.

And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me this song.

Oh I hope you run into them, you who’ve been travelling so long.

Yes you who must leave everything that you cannot control.
It begins with your family, but soon it comes around to your soul.

Well I’ve been where you’re hanging, I think I can see how you’re pinned:

When you’re not feeling holy, your loneliness says that you’ve sinned.

Well they lay down beside me, I made my confession to them.

They touched both my eyes and I touched the dew on their hem.
If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn

they will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem.

When I left they were sleeping, I hope you run into them soon.

Don’t turn on the lights, you can read their address by the moon.

And you won’t make me jealous if I hear that they sweetened your night:

We weren’t lovers like that and besides it would still be all right,

We weren’t lovers like that and besides it would still be all right.

—
Beneath My Hands
Beneath my hands

your small breasts

are the upturned bellies

of breathing fallen sparrows.
Wherever you move

I hear the sounds of closing wings

of falling wings.
I am speechless

because you have fallen beside me

because your eyelashes

are the spines of tiny fragile animals.
I dread the time

when your mouth

begins to call me hunter.
When you call me close

to tell me

your body is not beautiful

I want to summon

the eyes and hidden mouths

of stone and light and water

to testify against you.
I want them

to surrender before you

the trembling rhyme of your face

from their deep caskets.
When you call me close

to tell me

your body is not beautiful

I want my body and my hands

to be pools

for your looking and laughing.

—
The book of longing

I can’t make the hills

The system is shot

I’m living on pills

For which I thank G-d

I followed the course

From chaos to art

Desire the horse

Depression the cart

I sailed like a swan

I sank like a rock

But time is long gone

Past my laughing stock

My page was too white

My ink was too thin

The day wouldn’t write

What the night pencilled in

My animal howls

My angel’s upset

But I’m not allowed

A trace of regret

For someone will use

What I couldn’t be

My heart will be hers

Impersonally

She’ll step on the path

She’ll see what I mean

My will cut in half

And freedom between

For less than a second

Our lives will collide

The endless suspended

The door open wide

Then she will be born

To someone like you

What no one has done

She’ll continue to do

I know she is coming

I know she will look

And that is the longing

And this is the book

—
Mission
I’ve worked at my work

I’ve slept at my sleep

I’ve died at my death

And now I can leave

Leave what is needed

And leave what is full

Need in the Spirit

And need in the Hole

Beloved, I’m yours

As I’ve always been

From marrow to pore

From longing to skin

Now that my mission

Has come to its end:

Pray I’m forgiven

The life that I’ve led

The Body I chased

It chased me as well

My longing’s a place

My dying a sail
(Traffic at the Saville – HapsHash)

It has been a week since I posted… very busy with art and getting the new Invisible College Magazine ready for release, and as a matter of fact, here it is:The Invisible College Magazine 3rd Edition!
Please check out this free online version of IC-3rd edition…. The printed version will be out shortly btw… a few days whilst I figure how LuLu.com does its thing and all.
Lots of stuff in this one The Free-Online version clocks in at 92 pages, and the Complete Printed version clocks in at 108 pages. More poetry, art and articles!
Stay Tuned, and Enjoy!
Gwyllm
On The Menu:
A Saucerful of Secrets

& A Saucerful of Secrets

Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun…

Poetry: by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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A Saucerful of Secrets(from Fortean Times….)

“…UFOs were not just in the air, they’d become a religion and the word a common sacrament to everyone who’d tripped.” – Neil Oram
The word hippie conjures visions of brightly clad youth rebelling against society while advocating peace, free love and the right to alter their consciousnesses in whatever way they chose. But behind the fashions and fads, the hippie underground movement in the UK was responsible for the greatest expansion of interest and belief in fortean phenomena in history.
Social historians invariably associate the hippie movement with Eastern religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism, sources of both inspiration and imagery, and the hippies’ interest in these belief systems has been well documented. But there was another alternative to the blinkered Western worldview of the 1960s already deeply embedded in the British cultural psyche, and already present in the lives of those who would form the movement known as the Underground – the flying saucer culture.
In the mid-1960s, although flying saucers were being discussed among the influential group of post-beatniks and modern mystics who would form the core of the Underground, the nascent movement lacked a voice. A figurehead was needed, someone who could breathe life into the background hum of belief in flying saucers, articulating it for the burgeoning subculture.
That voice came in the form of John Michell, whose influence on the Underground, and forteana in general, cannot be overestimated. Like many of his generation, Michell was disillusioned by the acquisitive post-war society: “When I was at Cambridge, the whole atmosphere was extremely rationalistic, materialistic. Everyone believed the current academic orthodoxies of the time and there seemed no way of questioning them.”
UFOs first caught Michell’s imagination in the 1950s when he noticed that “it was quite obvious that people were having experiences that weren’t allowed for within the context of our education. There was a split between the view of the world we’d been taught and accepted unquestioningly and the world of actual experience.” To Michell, flying saucers were more than just ‘nuts-and-bolts’ craft; they were one of a number of phenomena which became attached to the ‘Matter of Britain’. This corpus of belief largely concerned itself with the legends of King Arthur and the Holy Grail and was focused on the Somerset town of Glastonbury.
The View Over Glastonbury
Glastonbury is firmly embedded in the public consciousness as a centre of all things strange. Since the early 20th century, it has been the pulse of alternative Britain and has seen wave after wave of settlers arrive there, each seeking their personal Holy Grail. This vortex of the weird was well known to John Michell, who decided to experience the ‘Glastonbury effect’ for himself:
“It was, I think, in 1966 that I first went to Glastonbury, in the company of Harry Fainlight… We had no very definite reason for going there, but it had something to do with… strange lights in the sky, new music, and our conviction that the world was about to flip over on its axis so that heresy would become orthodoxy and an entirely new world-order would shortly be revealed.
“At that time I was writing the first of my published books, The Flying Saucer Vision. It followed up the idea, first put forward by CG Jung in his 1959 book on flying saucers, that the strange lights and other phenomena of the post-war period were portents of a radical change in human consciousness coinciding with the dawn of the Aquarian Age. A theme in my book was the connection between ‘unidentified flying objects’ and ancient sites, as evidenced both in folklore and in contemporary experience.” In this statement, Michell encapsulated an entirely new way of looking at flying saucers and their meaning.
Michell may have been the catalyst and helmsman for the hippies’ interests in flying saucers but the motive power was provided by the drug LSD, which had hit London during 1964–5. LSD, or acid as it was known, was quickly taken up by the countercultural mystic vanguard and suddenly everything was not only possible, it was likely!
Art gallery owner and Underground luminary Barry Miles summed up the effect of the drug on the hippies: “From the mid-Sixties onwards you have what would have to be called a sort of LSD consciousness permeating the whole of the counterculture side of British society. And you get it in the songs of Pink Floyd… all these bands incorporate LSD-inspired imagery, and that of course was not the normal imagery of love songs and picking up girls, it was much more to do with a sort of specifically British form of psychedelia which involved dancing gnomes and flying saucers”.
The combination of a new generation of seekers with powerful psychedelic drugs revivified Glastonbury as a spiritual centre. Now, in addition to King Arthur, the terrestrial zodiacs and other landscape legends, flying saucers were also woven into the tapestry of belief. Issue one of the Underground magazine Albion, edited by Michell, provides the visual clues; dragons and UFOs appear in the skies over Glastonbury Tor, while swords, serpents and geomantic imagery are visible in the Earth below. A new meaning for flying saucers was being forged, and to the Underground this blend of saucers, sacred sites and mythology was a damn sight more interesting than the nuts-and-bolts, sci-fi derived vision of the UFO orthodoxy.
Barry Miles was also aware of the attraction Glastonbury held for those in the counterculture: “The King’s Road led straight to Glastonbury in those days… The people we knew led double lives, experimenting with acid, spending entire evenings discussing flying saucers, ley lines and the court of King Arthur. Other people waited patiently at Arthur’s Tor for flying saucers to land.” And as word got around that Glastonbury was the new ‘window area’ for UFO sightings, more and more hippies made it a place of pilgrimage. According to Michell, “UFOs were constantly being sighted over St Michael’s Tower on Glastonbury Tor. Mark Palmer, Maldwyn Thomas and their group were then travelling with horses and carts on pilgrimages across England. They often camped near the Tor, and while I was with them we used to watch the nightly manœuvrings of lights in the sky. Jung’s prophecy of aerial portents being followed by a change in consciousness was evidently being fulfilled.”
Craig Sams, who set up England’s first macrobiotic restaurant, was also a Glastonbury enthusiast: “I didn’t see a flying saucer till October 1967 when I went to Glastonbury. One day I got a ’phone call from Mark Palmer saying that it would be a good idea to come down, that there was a lot of UFO activity, that John Michell, who had just written The Flying Saucer Vision, was camping down there, and Michael Rainey. So here we are in the field and up come the UFOs. We weren’t tripping, I’d given up acid. I was completely normal, maybe I’d had a cup of tea about half an hour before… Mark Palmer saw them – they were definitely there. They were in the classic cigar-shaped mother-ship form. Little lights emanating from them. Then at one point you saw these other lights coming up towards them and the smaller lights just shot into the cigar-shaped mother-ship, which then just disappeared at high speed. The other lights had been RAF jets. It was obvious that the RAF had scrambled some jets.”
It would be easy to dismiss the Underground’s fascination with saucers if it weren’t for the fact that 1967 was a huge ‘flap’ year for UFO sightings in the UK. This wasn’t just a ‘hippie thing’ – it was even happening to policemen, who chased them for hours in their patrol cars. The MOD was so inundated by UFO reports it radically changed its UFO policy and set up a team of investigators to interview civilian UFO witnesses, the first time this had been done.
Saucer Ro
ck
As flying saucers became further embedded in popular culture, rock musicians were becoming interested in them as a means of expressing the psychedelic experience. Music promoter Joe Boyd consolidated the link between drugs, music and flying saucers when he named one of the first hippie clubs, on London’s Tottenham Court Road, ‘UFO’. Although ‘Unidentified Flying Object’ was only one of its meanings, advertisements in International Times (it) showed a flying saucer hovering over the head of a dancing hippie. Most musical histories of the psychedelic era use Eastern influences – sitars and raga-like instrumentals – as the primary indicator of how ‘far out’ the music was. But there was another aspect of psychedelia steeped in saucers and space.
Pink Floyd’s first album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn included the atmospheric pæan to deep space Astronomy Domini, possibly the first song to use outer space as a metaphor for inner space. By their second album, Pink Floyd had further absorbed saucer culture, entitling it A Saucerful of Secrets, and were mixing ideas of UFOs and the secrets of the mind (with, perhaps, a nod toward a particularly potent batch of LSD called ‘flying saucers’). The sleeve artwork left fans in no doubt that space – inner or outer – was the place: swirling universes and spinning discs mixed with signs of the zodiac (adapted from the Marvel Comics encounter between Dr Strange and the Living Tribunal). The album’s keynote song, Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun, became the backdrop for many psychedelic journeys toward dawn.
Even the Rolling Stones – possibly the least spiritual band of the Sixties generation – took an interest in saucers. John Michell accompanied them on a saucer-spotting mission to Stonehenge, while singer Marianne Faithfull recalls the Stones’ ill-starred rhythm guitarist Brian Jones taking a great interest in Michell’s ideas on the subject; “Like a lot of people at the time, myself included, he was convinced there was a mystic link between druidic monuments and flying saucers. Extraterrestrials were going to read these signs from their spaceship windows and get the message. It was the local credo: Glastonbury, ley lines and intelligent life in outer space…” Similarly, the Stones’ Keith Richards was more than curious about saucers: “I’ve seen a few, but nothing any of the ministries would believe,” he told a Melody Maker journalist. “I believe they exist – plenty of people have seen them. They are tied up with a lot of things, like the dawn of man, for example. It’s not just a matter of people spotting a flying saucer. I’m not an expert. I’m still trying to understand what’s going on.”
Throughout his career, David Bowie has flirted with the idea of ‘the alien’, often mentioning extraterrestrials in songs such as Starman, and creating the Ziggy Stardust persona. In the late 1960s, before he was catapulted to fame with the single Space Oddity, he claimed to have been closely involved with flying saucer research. In 1975, he revealed to Creem magazine: “I used to work for two guys who put out a UFO magazine in England about six years ago. And I made sightings six, seven times a night for about a year, when I was in the observatory. We had regular cruises that came over. We knew the 6.15 was coming in and would meet up with another one. And they would be stationary for about half an hour, and then after verifying what they’d been doing that day, they’d shoot off.” The fact that the ‘6.15’ was so regular over south London should have given Bowie a hint that it might have been an aircraft rather than a UFO! Bowie’s active interest in UFO research dwindled as his fame as a performer grew, but it can’t have been helped by this event, recounted in a recent issue of The Word: “An early attempt, while living in Beckenham, to attract extraterrestrials involved standing on his roof at dusk pointing a coat hanger into the skies. He gave up, dejectedly, when a passer-by enquired, ‘Do you get BBC2?’”
Notes From the Underground
If music was one way of spreading the flying saucer message through the Underground, then poster art was another powerful method. Artists created lavish posters for even the smallest-scale event, incorporating the myths, signs and symbols of the era with visual images of the music and musicians. Barry Miles recalled: “The symbol of the flying saucer on the posters of Michael English and Nigel Weymouth and the references in all of the songs wasn’t just used as a graphic symbol or a convenient lyrical device. People did feel that flying saucers were shorthand for a wider, deeper understanding, a sort of god figure I suppose or a sense of an external spiritual deity of some sort. There was one clothes shop called Hung On You that Michael Rainey had, and he very much believed in flying saucers, and there was a lot of flying saucer imagery all over the shop.”
As saucers permeated the hippie subculture, they began to appear more frequently in the underground press. International Times featured many articles and book reviews concerning saucers, engaging John Michell as its ‘UFO correspondent’. In the 16 June 1967 issue, it reviewed Anatomy of a Phenomenon, the first UFO book by French scientist and influential ufologist Jacques Vallee. Reviewer Greg Sams used the argot of the period to express what a significant book it was: “Do you believe in flying saucers? Most people with even a slightly open mind accept their existence, if only because so many reliable people have seen them… The book itself doesn’t turn you on. You must read the book and turn yourself on… If you are just beginning to be interested in saucers then read his book. If you are already convinced and want a beautiful rave with your mind, read other further out authors.”
Quite!
Oz was less keen on UFOs, editor Richard Neville being more interested in provoking the establishment through explorations of radical politics or sex than through modern myths. But when Neville took his eye off the ball for issue nine, leaving the work to poster artist Martin Sharp and designer John Goodchild, he was shocked at the result: “To my embarrassment, it was devoted to flying saucers.” Enraged, he asked Sharp, “How can you indulge your intergalactic delusions, when Asia is a bloodbath?” Sharp’s reply typified the zeitgeist: “There are far more things in heaven and earth, Richard, than are dreamt of in your philosophy”.
The cover of Flying Saucer Oz, as it became known, featured a large flying disc, taken from a collage by the Dadaist/Surrealist Max Ernst, with six coloured pages featuring a variety of quotes about the saucer phenomenon from ‘hip’ people ranging from Charles Fort to Mick Jagger.
John Michell’s influence on the hippie movement, coupled with his erudition, was such that the ‘establishment’ couldn’t just ignore him. Following the screening of UFOs and the People Who See Them on BBC1 on 9 May 1968, The Listener devoted most of that week’s issue to a discussion of flying saucers. Michell was asked to contribute an essay, simply entitled Flying Saucers, which clearly laid out the hippie philosophy in relation to aerial phenomena – a blend of sightings of inexplicable lights in the sky, snippets of folklore, Glastonbury ley and dragon lines and other ephemera from the Underground’s dream world.
Listener editor Karl Miller contributed a critical piece, Midsummer Nights’ Dreams, analysing the ‘UFO cult’ and Michell’s place within it. “He is less a hippie, perhaps,” opined Miller, “than a hippie’s counsellor, one of their junior Merlins.’ Recognising Michell’s influence, but critical of his stance, Miller wrote that “Michell behaves like a visionary, though his language doesn’t always avoid the current jargon of the pads and barricades. He likes to talk about how the light from the midsummer sunrise shot across the land, travelling a line from holy
place to holy place, starting the crops, bathing the feasts and fairs that saluted its passage. I would say that… his book is relatively weak, busying itself with sundry mysteries like that of the Mary Celeste and converting them to extraterrestrial proofs.” ‘Straight’ society was intrigued by the hippie take on flying saucers but then, as now, saw no real evidence it could take seriously.
Just as straight society dissociated itself from the hippies, mainstream UFO enthusiasts kept their distance too, the nuts-and-bolts saucer buffs considering the newcomers to be just a bunch of drug takers with strange views (the irony that mainstream society viewed the nuts-and-bolts crowd as being equally strange was completely lost on them!)
Saucer Camp
Nevertheless, some influential individuals from the orthodoxy saw that the hippies were receptive to new ideas, and that mercurial aristocrat of flying saucer culture, Desmond Leslie, decided to organise the UK’s first flying saucer convention for them (see FT225:40–47). The conference, held during the summer of 1968 on Lusty Beg Island on Lower Lough Erne in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, was jointly organised by Leslie and Camilla, Countess of Erne. Camilla was a wealthy socialite with an interest in flying saucers who frequented the edges of the Underground.
The Lusty Beg event was small, with attendance estimated at about 80 people, but many of those who attended were influential movers and shakers from the Underground, including Nicholas Saunders, editor of Alternative London and founder of the Neal’s Yard shopping complex in Covent Garden. Saunders recalled: “I was fascinated by what John Michell was saying about UFOs and leylines and so on, but felt pretty guarded about it too. I did go to a Flying Saucer conference on an island in the middle of a lake in the northwest of Ireland. There were all these people plodding about in the rain and the mud and there were very serious talks by people who either said that flying saucers had visited, that they’d been on flights themselves or that they’d seen them.”
Another key member of the Underground, Neil Oram (See FT217:44–49), was also there. Oram had morphed from beatnik wanderer to hippie philosopher, later writing his semi-fictional memoirs as The Warp trilogy. In Lemmings On the Edge, he describes the scene as he arrived at the shores of Lough Erne: “At the water’s edge, we were met by Michael Roner, who took us across the choppy lake in a battered rowing boat which was equipped with a noisy, erratic outboard motor. Apart from the big white house on the lawn, the rest of the island was overgrown, without a trace of permanent habitation. Although now there were camp fires and tents scattered all over the wooded hills, which rose quite steeply from the beach.”
Desmond Leslie was responsible for organising the conference lectures, held each evening in a large marquee. Scant information now exists as to exactly who spoke, but Neil Oram remarks that they consisted of “rather dull pronouncements of what lay in store for the human race”. According to Oram, “It wasn’t until the fourth night that we were given some real information, by an ex-Australian Air Force radar expert.” This impressed Oram: “It made my hair stand on end when we learnt that he’d picked up unidentified craft, whose estimated diameter was in the region of three hundred miles! MILES! Travelling in excess of one hundred THOUSAND miles an hour!”
Johan Quanjar, another attendee, recalled: “[D]ozens of people had descended on the island for fun, jollity and invocation of higher energies. By the end of the week, the entire hippie UFO community had gone native. They had formed separate tribes with some not speaking to others.”
This event was as close as the hippies ever got to organising the subculture’s fascination with flying saucers, but they were rapidly losing interest. Too many other fantastic possibilities vied for their attention, and when you’d explored inner space, outer space could seem positively tedious. Essentially, those among the Underground who took an avid interest in flying saucers did so not out of certain belief, but from a desire to explore the possibilities. When the flying saucer experience didn’t deliver the goods or, as the hippies saw on Lusty Beg, it descended into conflict and argument, they didn’t want to know.
Poet and author Barry Gifford, whose novel Wild at Heart was used by David Lynch as the basis for his film, sojourned as a hippie in late 1960s London. In The Duke of Earls Court, Gifford writes of his interest in UFOs and refers to an incident in which a friend called Ace invited the editor of Flying Saucer Review to dinner. The clash of cultures was inevitable: “It was obvious upon his entrance that the editor, an ordinary-looking, balding, middle-aged man in a dark grey three-piece suit, was visibly shaken by the den of freaks to which he had unwittingly lent his presence. He had no idea, he said, attempting to smile, that the dinner was to be such an event.
“After answering a few desultory questions about saucers, it was clear that the editor wanted to be anywhere else but with those people. The food was macrobiotic and when he enquired what was in the meal was told, ‘Brown rice, kasha, bulgur, soy, miso. The food of the people. It makes you high’. Mention of the word ‘high’ caused the editor to drop his fork, obviously afraid that the meal had been spiked with drugs of some form. He left soon afterwards, pleading a prior engagement.”
Selling Saucers by the Pound
Flying saucers continued to be courted by the Underground in the dying embers of the 60s, but by 1970 the hippie movement had become subsumed into the broader spectrum of youth culture: now, you could buy kaftans in Marks and Spencers, and like all youth movements, it had been diluted and repackaged by commercial interests; it was being sold rather than invented. Those who had been heavily involved in saucerdom moved swiftly on. For everyone else, the subject of UFOs was now just another hip belief to be ‘into’; the publishing floodgates opened and books on Earth Mysteries, witchcraft, folklore, astrology, occultism and mysticism offered other ways of thinking and being.
But were it not for the hippies’ interest in flying saucers, nurtured by John Michell, it’s doubtful that the continuing interest in such subjects would be part of our cultural landscape in the 21st century. This brief burst of drug-fuelled exploration cross-pollinated many fortean subjects, the results of which we see today. Where mainstream ufology was mired in the yes/no argument about the physical reality of UFOs, the hippies treated the subject as just one in a long line of possibly useful ideas. This difference of attitude between the hippie and straight views of saucers was aptly summed up in an exchange between Barry Gifford and his friend, after the FSR editor had fled their dinner party. Referring to the editor’s ‘stuffy’ attitude Ace pointed out to Gifford:
“But it’s OK man, it really is; he’s a dedicated cat. I mean he’s never seen one, but he really believes in them flying saucers.”
“So do you,” Gifford said.
Ace nodded. “Sure, man, sure I do. The difference between him and me is that I’m not so bloody serious about it.”

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Set The Controls For the Heart of the Sun

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Poetry: by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ozymandias

I met a traveler from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal these words appear:

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

—
Ode To The West Wind

I.

O wild west wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,

Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,

Each like a corpse within its grave, until

Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow

Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)

With living hues and odors plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;

Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!

II.

Thou on whose stream, ‘mid the steep sky’s commotion,

Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed,

Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread

On the blue surface of thine airy surge,

Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge

Of the horizon to the zenith’s height,

The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night

Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,

Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere

Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: oh hear!

III.

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams

The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,

Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ’s bay,

And saw in sleep old palaces and towers

Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers

So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou

For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below

The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear

The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,

And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear!

IV.

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;

If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;

A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less free

Than thou, O uncontrollable! if even

I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,

As then, when to outstrip thy skyey speed

Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne’er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.

Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed

One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

V.

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is;

What if my leaves are falling like its own!

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,

My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!

And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an extinguished hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to unwakened earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

—
Hymn Of Pan

From the forests and highlands

We come, we come;

From the river-girt islands,

Where loud waves are dumb,

Listening to my sweet pipings.

The wind in the reeds and the rushes,

The bees on the bells of thyme,

The birds on the myrtle bushes,

The cicale above in the lime,

And the lizards below in the grass,

Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was,

Listening to my sweet pipings.

Liquid Peneus was flowing,

And all dark Tempe lay

In Pelion’s shadow, outgrowing

The light of the dying day,

Speeded by my sweet pipings.

The Sileni and Sylvans and Fauns,

And the Nymphs of the woods and the waves,

To the edge of the moist river-lawns,

And the brink of the dewy caves,

And all that did then attend and follow,

Were silent with love, as you know, Apollo,

With envy of my sweet pipings.

I sang of the dancing stars,

I sang of the dædal earth,

And of heaven, and the giant wars,

And love, and death, and birth.

And then I changed my pipings–

Singing how down the vale of Mænalus

I pursued a maiden, and clasp’d a reed:

Gods and men, we are all deluded thus;

It breaks in our bosom, and then we bleed.

All wept — as I think both ye now would,

If envy or age had not frozen your blood–

At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.

Off to do some Poster Printing at Doran’s… The magazine will be out later this week, I flew the tester past Earthrites yesterday. Some iffy bits, but generally well received. We are putting it out in two formats… printed! and pdf. Be there or be square!
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

The Links

Uh ty, govoriashchaja ryba!

The Apples of Youth and the Living Water

Gerard Manley Hopkins Poetry

Watts’ – Art

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The Links:

Legally Questionable FBI Requests for Calling Circle Info More Widespread than Previously Known

Ancient Mexican city raises questions about Mesoamerica’s Mother Culture

Four sue police, alleging “dirty tactics”

How to Reappear Completely

Portland Will Vote to Legalize Marijuana
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Uh ty, govoriashchaja ryba!

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The Apples of Youth and the Living Water
In a certain kingdom, in a certain land, there lived a Tsar, and he had three sons. The eldest was named , he second was named , nd the youngest was name .
This Tsar was in his old age, and his eyesight was poor. And he heard that past , in te kingdom, there was an orchard where apples of youth grew, and where a well full of living water could be found. If the old man could eat such an apple, he would find youth, and if he could wash his eyes with that water, his sight would be restored.
Therefore the Tsar ordered a t be prepared, and he called all the and al the , and he told them:
“Who among you, faithful noblemen, would be first among the chosen, first to volunteer, who would ride beyond three-nine lands, into the three-tenth kingdom, and would bring me some apples of youth and a ewer full of living water? I would give half my kingdom to such a man.
But then the bhind the younger, and the younger hid behind the youngest, and the youngest kept his mouth shut.
Prince Fedor came out, and said:
“We do not wish to give the kingdom away to a stranger. I will go on that errand, and I will bring you some apples of youth and a ewer full of living water.
Fedor went to the stables, chose , put on it a bridle, took out a brand-new whip, and secured the saddle with twelve straps, and one more: he did not do it for looks, but for strength. Then prince Fedor took off on his errand: he was seen mounting up, bt .
He rode far, or he rode near, he rode high, or he rode low — he rode from dawn to dusk. He arrived at a crossroads where three roads met. There was flat at that crossroads, and there was an inscription inscribed on it:
“Whoever takes the right road will save himself and lose his horse. Whoever takes the left road will save his horse and lose himself. Whoever rides straight ahead will find a wife.”
Fedor thought to himself: “I shall ride where I will find a wife.”
And he went straight ahead. He rode, and he rode some more, and he arrived to a tall ith golden roofs. A beautiful maiden ran out to greet him:
“O prince, I shall help you dismount, come with me, partake of my hospitality.”
“No, fair maiden, I do not wish to dine, and sleep will not make the road grow shorter. I must ride on.”
“O prince, do not hasten to ride on, hasten to take pleasure in life.”
Then the fair maiden helped him dismount and took him inside the castle. She fed him, and gave him to drink, and led him to bed.
No sooner did prince Fedor lie down by the wall that the maiden turned over the bed, and the prince fell down into the cellar, deep into a dungeon.

fter a time, long or short, the Tsar again ordered a great feast to be prepared and he called all the princes and all the boyars, and he told them:
“Who among you, faithful noblemen, would be first among the chosen, first to volunteer, who would ride beyond three-nine lands, into the three-tenth kingdom, and would bring me some apples of youth and a ewer full of living water? I would give half my kingdom to such a man.
But then the eldest hid behind the younger, and the younger hid behind the youngest, and the youngest kept his mouth shut.
Prince Vasilii came out, and said:
“We do not wish to give the kingdom away to a stranger. I will go on this errand, and I will bring you some apples of youth and a ewer full of living water.”
Vasilii went to the stables, chose a green-broke horse, put on it a brand-new bridle, took out a brand-new whip, and secured the saddle with twelve straps, and one more: he did not do it for looks, but for strength. Then prince Vasilii took off on his errand: he was seen mounting up, but no one saw which way he went.
He rode far, or he rode near, he rode high, or he rode low — he rode from dawn to dusk. He arrived at a crossroads where three roads met. There was a flat stone at that crossroads, and there was an inscription inscribed on it:
“Whoever takes the right road will save himself and lose his horse. Whoever takes the left road will save his horse and lose himself. Whoever rides straight ahead will find a wife.”
Vasilii thought to himself: “I shall ride where I will find a wife.”
And he went straight ahead. He rode, and he rode some more, and he arrived to a tall castle with golden roofs. A beautiful maiden ran out to greet him:
“O prince, I shall help you dismount, come with me, partake of my hospitality.”
“No, fair maiden, I do not wish to dine, and sleep will not make the road grow shorter. I must ride on.”
“O prince, do not hasten to ride on, hasten to take pleasure in life.”
Then the fair maiden helped him dismount and took him inside the castle. She fed him, and gave him to drink, and led him to bed.
No sooner did prince Vasilii lie down by the wall that the maiden turned over the bed, and the prince fell down into the cellar, deep into a dungeo.
As he fell, a voice called out to him:
“Who falls?”
“Prince Vasilii. Who has fallen?”
“Prince Fedor.”
“Well, brother, we certainly fell for it!”

. After a time, long or short, the Tsar ordered for the third time a great feast to be prepared and he called all the princes and all the boyars, and he told them:
“Who among you, faithful noblemen, would be first among the chosen, first to volunteer, who would ride beyond three-nine lands, into the three-tenth kingdom, and would bring me some apples of youth and a ewer full of living water? I would give half my kingdom to such a man.
But then the eldest hid behind the younger, and the younger hid behind the youngest, and the youngest kept his mouth shut.
Prince Ivan came out, and said:
“Father, give me yor to go on this errand, to bring you some apples of youth and some living water, and also to look for my brothers.”
The Tsar gave him his blessing. Prince Ivan went to the stables to look for to suit him. But when he looked at a horse, it shook all over, and when he put his hand on a horse, it fell to its knees.
Ivan could find no horse to suit him. He went out, his brash head bowed low. An old woman came up to him, and asked:
“Good morning, child, prince Ivan! Why are you so glum?”
“How can I not be glum, , wen I cannot find a horse to ride on my errand.”
“You only needed to ask me! There is a good horse that will suit you in the dungeon, tied down with an iron chain. If you can take it, you will find it a good horse.”
Prince Ivan went to the dungeon, he removed an iron plate from the opening. He ran up to the good horse, and the horse put its forelegs on Ivan’s shoulders. Ivan did not flinch. The horse tore off the iron chain, burst out of the dungeon, taking Ivan with it. Ivan put a brand-new bridle, and a brand-new saddle on the horse, and twelve straps, and one more — he did not do it for looks, but for strength.
Then prince Ivan set out on his errand: he was seen mounting up, but he was not seen leaving. He reached the crossroads and stopped to consider the inscription.
“If I go right, I’ll lose my horse. And what would I do without a horse? If I go straight, I’ll be wed. That’s not what I’m after. If I go left, I’ll save my horse. That’s the best way for me.”
. And he turned onto the road where he would save his horse, but lose himself. He rode for a time, long or short, he rode high, or he rode low, over green fields, over rocky mountains, he rode from dawn to dusk, and reached a smal.
The izba stood o . It had only one window.
“Izba, little izba, turn your back on the forest, your front towards me! As I enter, so will I leave.”
The little izba turned its back on the forest, and its front towards prince Ivan. He went in, and saw of the bony leg, her shoulders stretched from corner to corner, her nose had grown into the ceiling.
“Ugh, Ugh,” she said, “I haven’t heard a i a long time, haven’t seen one even longer, and here’s one coming to me! Are you seeking something, or running away from it?”
“How so, baba-yaga, you question me even before you greet me! Won’t you offer me food and drink, and a bed for the night? Then I will tell you all about me and my errand.”
The baba-yaga did just that, gave food and drink to Ivan, and made his bed, sat down by his side, and asked:
“Well now, where are you from, good man, brave youth? What land? Who are your father and your mother?”
“Grandmother, I am from such-and-such a kingdom, such-and-such a land, I am prince Ivan the Tsar’s son. I am riding beyond three-nine lands, beyond three-ten kingdoms, to fetch apples of youth and living water.”
“Oh, my dear child, you have far to travel: the apples of youth and the living water belong to a powerful , t . She is my own niece. I don’t know whether you will be able to obtain those goods…”
“Well, grandmother, would you lend your head to my shoulders, and advise me on what to do?”
“Many a youth went this way, few spoke courteously. Take my horse, child. My horse runs faster, it will take you to my middle sister, she will advise you.”
Prince Ivan arose early in the morning. He thanked the baba-yaga for her hospitality, and rode off on her horse.
Suddenly he said to the horse:
“Stop! I dropped my gauntlet!”
The horse answered:
“While you were speaking, I traveled two hndred !”
. Prince Ivan traveled far, or maybe near, he traveled all day till dark. Then he saw a small izba ahead. It stood on a chicken leg, and had only one window.
“Izba, little izba, turn your back on the forest, your front towards me! As I enter, so will I leave.”
The little izba turned its back on the forest, and its front towards Ivan. Suddenly, a horse neighed and the horse Ivan rode neighed in answer. The horses were herd-mates.
The baba-yaga in the izba (even older than the first one) heard the horses and said:
“Sounds like my sister comes to visit.”
And she came out on the porch.
“Ugh, Ugh,” she said, “I haven’t heard a Russian in a long time, haven’t seen one even longer, and here’s one coming to me! Are you seeking something, or running away from it?”
“How so, baba-yaga, you question me even before you greet me! Won’t you offer me food and drink, and a bed for the night? Then I will tell you all about me and my errand.”
The baba-yaga did just that, gave food and drink to Ivan, and made his bed, sat down by his side, and asked:
“Well now, where are you from, good man, brave youth? What land? Who are your father and your mother?”
“Grandmother, I am from such-and-such a kingdom, such-and-such a land, I am prince Ivan the Tsar’s son. I am riding beyond three-nine lands, beyond three-ten kingdoms, to fetch apples of youth and living water from the mighty warrior-maiden Sineglazka.”
“Oh, child, I don’t know whether you will be able to obtain what you seek. The road is difficult to the abode of the maiden Sineglazka!”
“Well, grandmother, would you lend your head to my shoulders, and advise me on what to do?”
“Many a youth went this way, few spoke courteously. Take my horse, child. My horse runs faster, it will take you to my older sister, she can advise you better than I.”
Prince Ivan arose early in the morning. He thanked the baba-yaga for her hospitality, and rode off on her horse.
Suddenly he said to the horse:
“Stop! I dropped my gauntlet!”
The horse answered:
“While you were speaking, I travele !”
. A tale is soon told, a deed is done slowly. Prince Ivan traveled the whole day from dawn to dusk. He arrived to a small izba. It stood on a chicken leg, and had only one window.
“Izba, little izba, turn your back on the forest, your front towards me! As I enter, so will I leave.”
The little izba turned its back on the forest, and its front towards Ivan. Suddenly, a horse neighed and the horse Ivan rode neighed in answer. Another baba-yaga came out, old, even older than the second. She looked at the horse, recognized it as her sister’s, but the rider was a stranger, a handsome young man.
Then Prince Ivan bowed to her courteously, and asked her for her hospitality. The baba-yaga had to offer him her hospitality: it was due to all, to those who came on horseback and those who came on foot, to rich and poor alike.
The baba-yaga took care of everything in no time at all: she stabled the horse, and gave food and drink to Prince Ivan, and then she questioned him.
“Well now, where are you from, good man, brave youth? What land? Who are your father and your mother?”
“Grandmother, I am from such-and-such a kingdom, such-and-such a land, I am prince Ivan the Tsar’s son.
I was at your youngest sister’s, and she sent me to your middle sister, who sent me to you. I am riding beyond three-nine lands, beyond three-ten kingdoms, to fetch apples of youth and living water from the mighty warrior-maiden Sineglazka.”
“Oh, child, I don’t know whether you will be able to obtain what you seek. The road is difficult to the abode of the maiden Sineglazka!”
“Well, grandmother, would you lend your head to my shoulders, and advise me on what to do?”
“Many a youth went this way, few spoke courteously. Oh, well, I will help you. The maiden Sineglazka is my niece, she is a powerful and mighty warrior. Her kingdom is surrounded by a wall hgh, thick. There is a watch f at the gate, they won’t even let you in. You have to go there in the middle of the night, on my own good horse. Once you’re at the foot of the wall, whip the horse with a never-lashed whip: it will jump the wall. Tie down the horse and go into the garden. You will see the apple tree with the apples of youth, and a well under the tree. Take three apples, not one more. And fill a ewer with the water. The maiden Sineglazka will be sleeping, don’t you go into her chambers, get back on the horse and whip him stoutly: he’ll jump the wall again.”
. Ivan did not spend the night at this old woman’s, he mounted her good horse and rode off in the dark. This horse hopped over swamps and bogs, jumped over rivers and lakes.
After a long time or a short, having ridden high, or maybe low, Prince Ivan arrived in the middle of the night to the foot of a towering wall. There was a guard of thirty three warriors at the gates. Ivan squeezed the horse with his legs, whipped him with his never-lashed whip. The horse was angered, and jumped over the wall. Prince Ivan dismounted, went into the garden, and saw: there stood an apple tree with silver leaves and golden apples, and there was a well under the tree. Prince Ivan picked three apples and filled his ewer from the well. And then he desired to see the powerful, mighty warrior-maiden Sineglazka with his own eyes.
Prince Ivan went into the castle, where everybody was sleeping: on one side slept six warrior-maidens, and on the other side slept six warrior maidens, and in the middle the warrior-maiden Sineglazka was sprawled all over her bed in her sleep, roaring like mountain rapids.
Prince Ivan could not resist. He kissed her and left. He mounted his good horse, but the horse said to him in a human voice:
“You did not do as you were told, Prince Ivan, you went into the castle to see the maiden Sineglazka! Now I won’t be able to jump over the wall.”
Prince Ivan whipped the horse with his brand-new whip.
“You old nag, , bg of grass, we won’t just spend the night here, we’ll lose our heads!”
The horse was angered more than ever, and he jumped over the wall, but he caught a shoe on the top of the wall: strings sounded and bells rang.
The maiden Sineglazka awoke and saw that she had been burglarized.
“Awake, awake! We have been robbed of our goods!”
She commanded that her warrior’s horse be saddled, and raced off with the twelve warrior-maidens in pursuit of Prince Ivan.
. Prince Ivan was riding as fast as his horse could go, and the maiden Sineglazka was hard on his heels. Prince Ivan arrived to house of the oldest baba-yaga, and she had a horse all ready for him. Ivan changed horses on the fly and raced off. He was scarcely out the gates when Sineglazka rode in, asking the baba-yaga:
“Grandmother, did an animal pass by here?”
“No, child.”
“Did a man ride by here?”
“No, child. But won’t you have a cup of milk after all this riding?”
“I would, grandmother, but it takes a long time to milk a cow.”
“Oh, no, child, it won’t take but a moment.”
The baba-yaga went to milk the cow, and she took her time. The maiden Sineglazka had a cup of milk and set off again in pursuit of Prince Ivan.
Prince Ivan arrived at the house of the younger baba-yaga, changed horses, and raced on. He was scarcely out the gates when Sineglazka rode in.
“Grandmother, did an animal pass by, did a man ride by here?”
“No, child. But won’t you have some ater all this riding?”
“It will take you so long to fry them!”
“Oh, no, child, it won’t take but a moment.”
The baba-yaga fried a mountain of pancakes, taking her time to prepare them. The maiden Sineglazka ate them and raced off after Prince Ivan.
Prince Ivan arrived at the house of the youngest baba-yaga, dismounted and got on his own good horse, and raced off. He was scarcely out the gates when Sineglazka rode in and asked the baba-yaga whether a man had ridden by.
“No, child. But won’t you take a nice ater all this riding?”
“It will take you so long to heat up the bath house!”
“Oh, no, child, it won’t take but a moment!”
The baba-yaga heated up the bath house, and prepared everything. The maiden Sineglazka had a steam bath, and then raced off after Prince Ivan. Her horse jumped from mountain to mountain, hopped over rivers and lakes. Soon she started catching up after Ivan.
. Ivan saw that he was pursued: twelve warrior maidens, and a thirteenth — the maiden Sineglazka. They were about to catch up with him, and they were ready to behead him. He slowed down his horse, and the maiden Sineglazka rode up to him and yelled:
“You thief, why did you drink from my well and did not replace the cover?”
He answered:
“Let’s ride three horse-jumps apart and measure our strength against each other.”
Then Prince Ivan and the maiden Sineglazka rode three horse-jumps apart, took out their war-, heir long-measured lances, their sharp sabers. They met each other three times, they broke their maces, they split their lances, they dulled their sabers, and yet neither could throw the other to the ground. There was no point in fighting a-horseback: they jumped off, and fought on bare-handed.
They fought from morning till night, thill the bright sun set. Prince Ivan’s leg slipped, he fell to te . The maiden Sineglazka put her knee on his , nd took out her great dagger to stab him in the heart.
Prince Ivan said to her:
“Do not slay me, fair maiden Sineglazka, take me instead by my white hands, help me rise from the ground, kiss me on my sweet lips.”
Then the maiden Sineglazka helped Prince Ivan to stand up, and kissed him on his sweet lips. They set up their pavillion in the wide field, in the open plain, on the green grass. They spent three days and three nights there. There they were nd exchanged rings.
The maiden Sineglazka said to him:
“I will ride home, and you go home as well, but beware: do not turn from your path anywhere… Await me in your kingdom three years hence.”
They mounted up and rode away. After a long time, or maybe a short — events happen slowly, but a tale is quickly told — Prince Ivan arrived at the crossroads where the flat stone lay, and thought:
“This is not good! I am riding home, and my brothers are lost without a trace.”
. He did not follow the orders of the maiden Sineglazka, he turned onto the road that promised marriage. He arrived to the castle with the golden roofs. Suddenly Prince Ivan’s horse neighed, and his brothers’ horses responded, for the horses were herd-mates.
Prince Ivan went up the stairs to the porch and knocked the ring so hard the finials on the rooftops shook and the window frames became crooked. A beautiful maiden ran out.
“Oh, Prince Ivan, I have been waiting for you for so long! Come, partake of m , and spend the night.”
She took him into the castle, and served h
im a real feast. Prince Ivan did not eat so much as he threw under the table, he did not drink so much as he poured out under the table. The fair maiden took him into the bedroom:
“Lie down, Prince Ivan, rest comfortably.”
But Prince Ivan threw her onto the bed, he turned the bed upside down, and the fell into the ellar, the deep dungeon.
Prince Ivan leaned over the dungeon and called out:
“Who’s alive down there?”
And he was answered:
“Prince Fedor and Prince Vasilii!”
Prince Ivan pulled them out of the dungeon: their faces were black with dirt, moss had begun to grow on them. Prince Ivan washed his brothers off with living water, and they became as before.
They mounted up on their horses and rode off. After a long while, or a short, they arrived at the crossroads. Prince Ivan told his brothers:
“Watch my horse while I rest a little.:
. He lay down on the silky grass and fell into a deep warrior’s sleep. But Prince Fedor said to Prince Vasilii:
“If we return without apples of youth or living water, there will be little fame for us, our father will send s to .”
Prince Vasilii answered:
“Let’s throw Prince Ivan into a deep ravine, and let’s take these things and hand them over to our father.”
So they took the apples of youth and the living water out of Ivan’s pocket, and threw Ivan into a deep ravine. Prince Ivan fell for three days and three nights before he reached the bottom.
Prince Ivan fell onto a sea shore, came to, and saw that there was nothing around him, just the sky and the water, and under an old oak tree, some fledgling birds were calling, for the sea was pummeling them.
Prince Ivan took off his ad covered up the fledglings, and hid under the oak tree.
The weather calmed, and the great bird Nagai came flying.
She arrived, landed under the tree, and asked her fledglings:
“My dear little children, did you suffer from the terrible weather?”
“Do not cry, mother, a Russian saved us, he covered us with his caftan.”
The bird Nagai asked Prince Ivan:
“How did you happen to be here, good man?”
“My own brothers threw me into the ravine for the apples of youth and the living water I had.”
“You protected my little ones, ask anything you want: gold, silver, precious stones,”
“I do not need anything, Nagai: I do not need gold, or silver, or precious stones. But can I return to my native land?”
The bird Nagai answered him:
“Find two barrels, each full of some twelve s of eat.”
So Prince Ivan shot many geese and y the sea shore. He put the meat into two barrels, and put one barrel on the right shoulder of the bird Nagai, the other on the left, and sat on her back. Then he began feeding the bird, and she took off and rose higher and higher.
She flew, and Prince Ivan kept feeding and feeding her. They flew a long time thus, or maybe a short time, and Ivan fed both barrels to the bird. And Nagai turned her beak to him again. Ivan took out his knife, cut a chunk off his thigh, and gave it to the bird Nagai. She flew further, and turned her beak to him again. Ivan cut a chunk off his other leg and fed it to her. They were almost there, and the bird turned to Ivan a third time, and he cut a chunk off his chest and fed it to her.
Then the bird Nagai arrived in Prince Ivan’s native land.
“You fed me well the whole time, but the last piece was the most delicious, I have never eaten the like of it.”
Prince Ivan showed her his wounds. The bird Nagai regurgitated the last three chunks, and said:
“Put them back where they belong.”
Prince Ivan did so, and the chunks adhered to his bones.
“Now dismount, Prince Ivan, I shall fly home.”
The bird Nagai rose in the air, and Prince Ivan went his way home.
. He arrived at the capital, and found out that Prince Fedor and Prince Vasilii had brought their father the apples of youth and the living water, and that the Tsar was healed: he recovered his good health and his sight.
Prince Ivan did not go to his father, or to his mother. He gathered all the drunkards, the barflies, and went from tavern to tavern.
At that time, beyond three-nine lands, in the three-tenth kingdom, the mighty warrior Sineglazka gave birth to two sons. They grew hour by hour, not day by day. A tale is quickly told, a deed is done slowly: three years passed. Sineglazka took her sons, gathered her army, and rode out in search of Prince Ivan.
She arrived in his kingdom, and set up her white pavilion in the wide field, in the open plain, on the green grass. She carpeted the path to the pavilion with bright cloth. And she sent a messenger to the capital to say to the Tsar:
“Tsar, give up your son. If you do not, I will trample your whole kingdom, I will burn it, I will take you prisoner.”
The Tsar was frightened and he sent his oldest son, Prince Fedor. Fedor walked on the bright cloth, and arrived at the white pavilion. Two boys ran out.
“Mother, mother, is this our father coming?”
“No, children, this is your uncle.”
“What should we do with him, mother?”
“Treat him as he deserves, children.”
The two little boys took some switches and began whipping Prince Fedor just below his back. They whipped him stoutly, and he barely managed to get away.
And Sineglazka sent another messenger to the Tsar: “Give up your son!…”
The Tsar was even more frightened, and he sent his middle son, Prince Vasilii . He arrived at the white pavilion. Two boys ran out:
“Mother, mother, is this our father?”
“No, children, this is your uncle. Treat him as he deserves.”
The two little boys took some switches again and began whipping Prince Vasilii just below his back. They whipped him stoutly, and he barely managed to get away.
And Sineglazka sent a third messenger to the Tsar:
“Go find your third son, Prince Ivan. If you do not find him, I will trample and burn your whole kingdom.”
The Tsar was frightened even more than before, and sent for Prince Fedor and Prince Vasilii, and ordered them to find their brother, Prince Ivan. But the brothers fell to their knees and confessed how they took the living water and the apples of youth from the sleeping Prince Ivan and threw him into a deep ravine.
Upon hearing this, the Tsar shed many tears. At that time, Prince Ivan was making his way by himself to Sineglazka’s pavilion, and all the barflies went with him. They tore up the bright cloth underfoot and tossed it to the wind.
Prince Ivan arrived at the white tent. Two boys ran out:
“Mother, mother, some drunkard is coming here with many barflies!”
Sineglazka answered them:
“Take him by his white hands, bring him into the tent. This is your own father. He has been suffering for no reason for three years!”
The boys took Prince Ivan by his white hands and brought him into the tent. Sineglazka washed him and combed his hair, put fresh clothes on him, and put him to bed. Then she gave a drink to each barfly and they went their way.
The following day, Sineglazka and Prince Ivan arrived at the Tsar’s palace. Then there was a great feast, and wedding to follow. Prince Fedor and Prince Vasilii earned little fame: they were thrown out from the palace to spend a night here, a night there, and the third nowhere.
Prince Ivan did not i his kingdom, he went away with Sineglazka to her own kingdom.
And that is the end of the story.

_______________

Gerard Manley Hopkins Poetry

The child is father to the man

‘THE CHILD is father to the man.’

How can he be? The words are wild.

Suck any sense from that who can:

‘The child is father to the man.’

No; what the poet did write ran,

‘The man is father to the child.’

‘The child is father to the man!’

How can he be? The words are wild.

—

God’s Grandeur

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

—
Epithalamion

HARK, hearer, hear what I do; lend a thought now, make believe

We are leafwhelmed somewhere with the hood

Of some branchy bunchy bushybowered wood,

Southern dene or Lancashire clough or Devon cleave,

That leans along the loins of hills, where a candycoloured, where a gluegold-brown

Marbled river, boisterously beautiful, between

Roots and rocks is danced and dandled, all in froth and waterblowballs, down.

We are there, when we hear a shout

That the hanging honeysuck, the dogeared hazels in the cover

Makes dither, makes hover

And the riot of a rout

Of, it must be, boys from the town

Bathing: it is summer’s sovereign good.

By there comes a listless stranger: beckoned by the noise

He drops towards the river: unseen

Sees the bevy of them, how the boys

With dare and with downdolphinry and bellbright bodies huddling out,

Are earthworld, airworld, waterworld thorough hurled, all by turn and turn about.

This garland of their gambols flashes in his breast

Into such a sudden zest

Of summertime joys

That he hies to a pool neighbouring; sees it is the best

There; sweetest, freshest, shadowiest;

Fairyland; silk-beech, scrolled ash, packed sycamore, wild wychelm, hornbeam fretty overstood

By. Rafts and rafts of flake-leaves light, dealt so, painted on the air,

Hang as still as hawk or hawkmoth, as the stars or as the angels there,

Like the thing that never knew the earth, never off roots

Rose. Here he feasts: lovely all is! No more: off with—down he dings

His bleachèd both and woolwoven wear:

Careless these in coloured wisp

All lie tumbled-to; then with loop-locks

Forward falling, forehead frowning, lips crisp

Over finger-teasing task, his twiny boots

Fast he opens, last he offwrings

Till walk the world he can with bare his feet

And come where lies a coffer, burly all of blocks

Built of chancequarrièd, selfquainèd rocks

And the water warbles over into, filleted with glassy grassy quicksilvery shivès and shoots

And with heavenfallen freshness down from moorland still brims,

Dark or daylight on and on. Here he will then, here he will the fleet

Flinty kindcold element let break across his limbs

Long. Where we leave him, froliclavish while he looks about him, laughs, swims.

Enough now; since the sacred matter that I mean

I should be wronging longer leaving it to float

Upon this only gambolling and echoing-of-earth note—

What is … the delightful dene?

Wedlock. What the water? Spousal love.

. . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . .

Father, mother, brothers, sisters, friends

Into fairy trees, wild flowers, wood ferns

Rankèd round the bower