∅ Purgatory

December 9, 2011: Librarian as necromancer (IV).

Teresa: ...Certainly, we can observe the various patterns in the text, looking from afar to get a cohesive whole, or up-close to discern each pat part, but real insight will never arrive. True reading is not about seeing. Reading is feeling, feeling the textures of the text, at first caressing them, then pulling them apart, fingering each strand from end to end, from intention to interpretation.

Cleo: Your method of reading is final. You undo the work of the author; you destroy the text; the mystery is lost. So what if you can recreate the text because you now know exactly how it was weaved? The new product is soulless. It's lost the status of a Work, because it wasn't forged in the intense pressures of the creative process. It's a clinical copy. The whole will forevermore be thought of in terms of its parts only, the strands, perfectly ordered, perfectly unaffecting, an autopsy on a stripped corpse. Is your kind of insight really worth that sacrifice?

Teresa: How does examining the text kill it? It's already too late for that. Once the words are put on paper, they die. At the most basic level, the job of the critic, or any reader for that matter, is to write a eulogy for the text. The best critics go further—they breathe new life into the corpus of an author.

Cleo: You mean sew the parts together again. Do you suppose if you make your recreation dance, you'll regain the sublime? The original Work has now been replaced with a Wollstonecraftian horror.

Teresa: Reading is dissection. The moment a book is opened and the first word is read, the author's shadow evaporates. If you want to maintain the mystery, then stop at the title and sing the praises of your alchemical author.

December 5, 2011: Vain illusions of the mind.

In a moment this conversation will end, and you'll turn from me and begin to forget. With each step I will fade further from your mind, until not even a hint in a dream remains.

Why do I care if I'll not be remembered? Memories are mirages on the horizon of time; I exist here, now, not in others' shaded recollections, tomorrow.

September 25, 2011: Librarian as necromancer (III).

I glanced at the initial letter, a fiery cherub. Beyond that threshold I sensed a long slumbering lost world. As I stood arrested by indecision, the cherub opened the gates, teasing my gaze with trains of putti lining an illuminated path, all beckoning me to follow them, but their eyes were ancient and I was all the more frightened. I slammed shut the covers. Much later clarity came over me: I felt there was no hurry, that I could return whenever I wished, and that angelic patience would strip me of all doubt in the end.

September 5, 2011: A dream recalled from August 19, 2007.

It was this month, in 2007, that I moved to Ottawa. Events came together in such a way as to convince me that it was the right thing to do: my old job was coming to a close, and although I had no job lined up to replace it, friends were flocking to the city for various reasons, and so I took a very uncharacteristic, and quite sudden, leap of faith. Despite some difficulties, I came to feel it was the right decision, and I still think this today, even though all but a couple of the friends that took residence here have since departed. Sooner rather than later the rest will move on. I remain. For now. For what? I suppose it's no surprise that I am particularly introspective on this day, my birthday.

A few weeks before I moved (apparently August 19), I had an esoteric dream that left me uneasy. What I recorded was only a fragment, but it throbbed in my imagination. Below is that fragment as I wrote it on that day.

Two of my friends are trapped behind a door of ice. I attempt to slice through it with a shard of ice sharp as broken glass. It really cuts up my right hand and I begin bleeding heavily. After dropping the shard the bleeding stops, but then near the lower edge of my right palm, along either the Head, Sun or Mercury lines, a worm or maggot begins to poke through the skin. It wriggles out and falls to the floor. After a moment, it turns into a yellow wasp and flies away.

I was asked who the friends were. My honest reply was that I could not see their identities through the smoky ice. A short time later I had a waking vision as I was staring at the sky: the clouds took on frightening shapes. I took it as simple anxiety about moving. In truth I was probably solidifying myself against my own potential doubts. I say potential, since I had little of my usual doubt at that time: if your ship is sinking, you jump into the icy water first, and nurse your doubts about survival later. As you can guess, I was indeed rescued.

Now I sense the storm clouds gathering again, but more slowly. What will I do this time?

September 4, 2011: A dream recalled from October 31, 2010.

A little less than a year ago I had the following powerfully symbolic dream. I never gave it any meaningful analysis, but recent events have caused me to think on it again. Here is what I wrote at that time.

There is a small but somewhat tall circular hut with a plank made of metal, possibly platinum, leading down into it; that is to say, the hut is embedded a few feet into the ground. I enter the hut freely with friends surrounding it. After entering, I am asked to lift and push out the plank, so that the small room may be sealed, but even after doing so, I can still hear my friends about me, through the walls, though their voices are above me a bit, suggesting they are all standing on a lifted platform surrounding the outside of the hut. On the floor, along the inner circumference, are written personal names, which I traverse and think about: the goal of the exercise is to pick a new name. Friends offer suggestions, why one name is good and others not so good, etc. I make a choice with uncertainty.

In another scene, perhaps earlier in the dream, I am walking ahead of a female friend through what reminds me of a museum with wax-like figures posed in simple scenarios, but so expertly made they truly seem like they could move any instant, though I know they will not. I walk past a series of displays, three-walled rooms with the fourth removed for our viewing pleasure. I can only now remember two rooms: in the first sit three women about a round table, goddesses with long golden hair carefully brushed back and dressed in white chitons, their skin and hair shimmering as though they were covered in metallic dust, calm and thoughtful expressions on their faces; the other room contains a different figure, a friend of my companion, smiling and bending over slightly to look at a small poster, just below eye-level, showing the face of a distorted and silly cartoon character (which I interpret here as a Gorgon). As I look at this second-room figure, my friend comes up to meet me, and I tell her to examine the goddesses closely to see the handiwork, especially in the hair (initiating a sort of Judgment of Paris), but my friend is obviously more interested in the figure I am now admiring. She is amused but not shocked to see her friend like this.

Earlier still I find myself in a busy office with low cubicle walls making it easy to see around me. All my coworkers are busy handling receipts and setting or recording prices. Only I am doing a different job. I wonder if I really belong there. Unfortunately, I either don't know or cannot remember what I was doing, but it was something visual.

It is worth remarking that I always record my dreams in the present tense: likely I try to relive the dream as I recall it. The first and third parts are probably connected, the first being spiritual and the third practical: what do I want for myself or who do I want to be? As for the second section, the allegorical power of the Judgment of Paris is considerable and interpretations are flexible and diverse. At the time, my key revelation was that I unconsciously knew the goddesses of the Judgment had golden hair, as they had bathed in the Xanthus river; I surmised I had read it years ago and merely forgot it. Since the first and second sections involve making choices, I have to ask why the third is not the same. Is it due to a lacuna in my memory? Is this scene a prologue to the making of the choice, or is it the result of a choice made or left unmade? I could go into great mythological detail as I wind my way through the dream's possible meanings, but for now I'll let it silently burn up in my mind's crucible.

August 12, 2011: The literal truth is always second to an edifying metaphor.

I'm just starting with Horace, but I already love him.

Pyrrha, what slender youngster, soaked with perfume, holds you in his arms, lying on a heap of roses in a delightful grotto? For whom are you tying up your flaxen hair, so simple, so elegant? Too bad for him: many a time will he weep at your fickle loyalty and his change of luck, gazing in naive astonishment at the sea whipped up by dark winds. Now the trusting lad enjoys your golden charms, hoping you will always be available, always affectionate—unaware, as he is, of the breeze's treachery. Think of the poor wretches, fascinated by your shimmer, with no experience of what you are like! As for me, a votive tablet on her temple wall records that I have dedicated my drenched clothes to the deity who rules the sea.

#Horace (trans. Rudd, but edited for gender), Odes, I.5.

I was reminded of the following contrast in personality.

Yet her [the foam-born goddess'] connexion with the sea and her interest in navigation are attested by a long array of titles. Harbours and rocky promontories were named from her or gave her names. At Troezen she was worshipped as 'the watcher from the sea-cliffs'; in the Peiraeeus, at Cnidus, Mylasa, and Naucratis, as the goddess who gave the fair wind; she appears as the saviour from shipwreck in the story told by Athenaeus of the Greek sailor who was sailing from Paphos to Nacratis bearing in his ship the little idol of Aphrodite: a great storm arose, and all the crew ran with prayers to the sacred image: when suddenly fresh myrtle-boughs grew about the vessel and a delicious fragrance filled it, and there was a great calm. We gather that she bore the same character in the maritime cities of Achaea, and we hear of her idol at Patrae being dragged up from the sea in a fisherman's net.
At Panticapaeum, as the ruler of ships, she was worshipped by the side of Poseidon the Saviour...

#Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States II, pp636-637.

So which shall it be? Venus Anadyomene or Mater saeva Cupidinum?

The first lines of the goddess in literature that were traced into my memory were from the Iliad, book V, when she came down to protect her holy son, only to be chased away at the first strike upon her. From Ἀφροδίτης Αἰνειαδος to later depictions of Venus, both high and low, brave and cowardly, caring and cruel, regal and petty, generous and jealous, my image of her gained colour. Although Aphrodite and Venus (not to mention Turan, Astarte, Cybele, sometimes-Artemis, etc.) are different deities, and all their cultic associations, nymphal extensions, and mythical progenies should not be folded together with the hope of finding the one true Queen worshipped by the Ancients, which would be foolish, it is tempting and edifying to combine all these forms into a single literary figure with a complexity that mirrors those of her various spheres of influence: the raging yet life-giving waters, the cycle of birth and death and rebirth, the interaction and changeability of the genders, and most famously, love.

July 28, 2011: Crito, we owe a shuttlecock to Asclepius.

Academic badminton, the lobbing back and forth of literary quotations, feels like a caricature of conversation, a mockery of self-expression, self-justification veiled as intellectual amusement. And yet, is normal conversation much more than an exchange of naturalized tropes? One may claim the badminton a richer intellectual experience due to the depths of context. It's a possibility, but being able to source an allusion doesn't appear to be making anyone wiser, despite the wellspring of wisdom from which it might be drawn.

June 8, 2011: Librarian as necromancer (II).

Books preserve the intellectual throes of the dead or dying. Perhaps it is only fitting that a textual corpus might be partly reconstituted from linen reused as mummy wrappings, as in the Liber Linteus Zagrabiensis.

May 30, 2011: A rather verdant excerpt.

Reversing down the versant to converse with him about the verso, she observed he was averse to the obverse verse, a most adverse version served up to his reserved vision.

May 11, 2011: Librarian as necromancer (I).

If an earthquake were to strike the area about my apartment while I was in it, I would most likely be killed by my deshelving books as they crash over my head in a cascade of wood pulp and glue, a thousand flapping imps raining blows upon me.

September 20, 2010*: Cultivate your mind, your talents, or your compassion.

To be young and beautiful is a blessing, so revel in it, but all youth crumbles, and your beauty will lie down in its shallow grave long before you will in yours. You had better have something else to offer, or what use are you to the world?

August 11, 2010*: {This title has been bowdlerized}

For a man, love both gained and lost is a great source of inspiration, but lust will smother creativity. Often, to be an artist means to be alone.

'I am,' she sang, 'I am the sweet siren
who beguiles mariners on distant seas,
so great is their delight in hearing me.

'I drew Ulysses, eager for the journey,
with my song. And those who dwell with me
rarely depart, so much do I content them.'

Her lips had not yet closed
when at my side appeared a lady,
holy and alert, in order to confound her.

'O Virgil, Virgil, who is this?'
she asked, indignant. And he came forward
with his eyes fixed on that virtuous one.

The other he seized and, ripping her garments,
laid her front bare and exposed her belly.
The stench that came from there awoke me.

#Dante (trans. Hollander), Purg., XIX, 19-33.

June 28, 2010*: Nature is not to be contemplated in the mind's eye, but embraced with the physical body.

I can remember the feel of the fresh green grass brushing against my skin as I rushed to get in my last hour of precious play while the summer sun set and the cool shadows stretched out over me. Then I'd lay on that same grass, breathless, as the first stars were set alight, and the first fireflies began to dance. Now I worry about grass stains and traces of dog poop, about mosquito bites and tracking ants indoors. Still, after night falls, I sometimes stand at my open window, and inhale the perfume of the dewy trees carried on the breeze mixed with the sighs of sleeping flowers everywhere. But now the stars are faded behind the orange electric sky; and I wonder, are old ghosts wisping about those burning street lamps?

2011: Purged posts.

∅ January 3; April 5, 20, 21.

2010: Purged posts.

∅ January 18; July 7, 18; August 1; September 4; October 3; November 16.

2009: Purged posts.

∅ January 23; May 31; August 23.

2008: Purged posts.

∅ January 12, 17, 30; February 26; March 7; April 10; August 12, 23, 31; September 5; October 27.

Navigation: Top.

Some explanations: (1) the content here is pretty much unedited, in that, if I have some random desire to write something, the words will usually just pour out onto the screen, but, if something is terribly nonsensical and a minor edit will make it presentable, I'll do it; (2) the fact that the content is unfiltered accounts partly for why older posts get archived into oblivion; (3) the content seems to be settling at last into the category of miscellanea that crops up while I'm writing or thinking about writing, and, even if a post is not explicitly about writing, its existence is due to the fact that writing is an act of ploughing virgin soil, with all the worms once safely hidden beneath the earth getting violently brought up with each pass of the nib.

* denotes a quietly resurrected post, likely because it still lingers in my thoughts.