Continuing with yesterday's post, we were discussing how language may be deployed to convey the eternity that is beyond it, including the technique of "repetition with variation." The following would be one example, as it piles layer upon steaming layer of the identical nonsense:
nothing,
pure emptiness,
a formless void without mind or life,
a shadow spinning before the beginning
over a silent static sea,
unlit altar of eternity,
fathomless vortex of the Infinite Zero.
Some readers will no doubt call this omschooled doggerel "repetition with tedium," or "artlessness with sincerity." But if I had any time at all this morning, it wouldn't be difficult to provide additional examples of this technique from genuine licensed poets such as Blake, Yeats, Donne, or Suzanne Sommers.
Another interesting way to express the symmetry of eternity, according to Bomford, is through what is called antithetic parallelism. This is a literary device in which a statement is made and then repeated with the terms in reverse order. He cites the spontaneous utterance of a person on trial whose case was close to reaching a verdict: "I was about to lose my liberty.... My freedom was about to go."
Interestingly, Bomford points out that "the richest source of such antithetic parallelism familiar to the English-speaking reader is in the Book of Common Prayer," for example,
O God, thou knowest my folly:
the wrongs I have done are not hidden from thee.
or
I am the talk of those who sit in the gate,
and the drunkards make songs about me.
The following examples may not be exact antithetic parallelisms, but at least I can now see what Petey was driving at:
Nothing is real.
NOTHING is realized.
That's it in a knotshall.
The nature of reality,
the rapture of nihility....
A drop embraced by the sea
held within the drop.
Know you're nought
you naughty boy.
In fact, I can also see that the Cosmobliteration section of the Coonifesto has a number of examples of the "unchanging cry," i.e., exclamations used to express eternity, such as
Om, now I remurmur!
Finn again, we rejoyce: salvolution, evelation, ululu-woo-hoo-aluation!
Whoops, where'd ego?!
So long. So short! Whoosh! there went your life.
Holy creation, shabbatman, time to rejewvenate (oy!).
Wu, full frontal nullity!
I am? That! O me ga!
You know, I feel a little self-conscious analyzing Petey's text, but I realize that no one else is ever going to ever do it, so it might as well be me.
Anyway, Bomford then cites the excellent example of Eliot's Four Quartets, which reflects upon how words may be used in the struggle to express the still silence of eternity:
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach....
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place...
I actually cited this very passage on page 5, as a preface to the cracked and broken punnish antics of Cosmogenesis. How to reach up into the silence with blustering and unruly words? Hell, I don't know. Ask Petey, who, like Eliot, is not above occasionally lifting a line from elsewhom. Here this literary kleptomaniac holographically playgiarizes with John Lennon, Leonard Cohen, Neil Finn, James Joyce, Van Morrison, Miles Davis, and Joe Strummer, all at once:
Get out.
Get in.
Relax and float downstream.
A hole in the river.
Only drowning men can see it.
Slipping away, softly now.
Beneath the waves, ocean of being.
Shhh, peaceful.
So quiet in here.
Don't touch that dial!
In reference to Eliot, Bomford notes that "A reversal of beginning and end is needed to make the expression of eternity more complete: the combination of two penultimate forms together more strongly points to the ultimate."
The combination of two penultimate forms together. Hmm, once again I can see what Petey was up to with many of his puzzling paradoxables, since he was attempting to convey an unbleatable state of mind that is technically unglishable to our wordly whys:
Darkest night.
Dreamless sleep.
Outside in.
Spacetimematterenergy.
No beforeafter,
nobodaddy, no mamafestation,
nothing but neti.
Or
Darkness visible the boundless all....
unborn thus undying,
beginning and end of all impossibility,
empty plenum and inexhaustible void.
Who is? I AM.
A wake. Alone.
Hallow, noumena!
Likewise, there are numinous examples of the conjunction of contrasting penultimates in Cosmobliteration:
Luminous presence,
all-negating Void Supreme
Unfearing, allahpeering
darkness within darkness,
benighting the way brightly.
The body, an ephemeral harmelody of adams
forged from within stars,
our life, a fugitive dream
within the deathless, sleeping
what's-His-G-d-name.
Too old, older than Abraham,
too young, young as a babe's I AM.
We'll meet again.
Up ahead, 'round the bend.
The circle unbroken, by and by.
A Divine Child,
a godsend,
a touch of infanity,
a bloomin' yes.
In this last passage, the ultimate purpose of the cosmos (the ancient God's-end) is conjoined with the boundless joy of the brand new infant (godsend) -- that most precious and fleeting of flowers, which, like all flowers, always says Yes! to the gift of existence. What do they not know that we do, and how can we forget it?
To be continued....
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17 comments:
always says Yes! to the gift of existence
To think that needs stating! And yet, in the creeping nihilism that has become the Left, it's almost like having to remind people to breathe.
The Gaia worshipers don't realize that we really were here first.
NOTHING was here before man.
Come to think of it, not even nothing...
Petey said "NOTHING was here before man."
As luck would have it, nothing is at the root of all leftist thought, and nihil is what they seek... and looking at their pierced faces, it is obvious that they find it.
Btw, keeping to the mind body unity, I wonder where the almost involuntary, repeated head shaking together with the upper half of the body twisting aside, on hearing devastating news fits into that... usually accompanied by 'No... oh no...no....'
wv:hyspi
Always.
Some posts -- notably the always-popualar insultainment editions -- read more or less like standard blog entries, albeit some of the best on the web.
Other OC posts like today's always bring me around a bit so that I'll be working on something or other, take a breather, and think I think I'll put on a little One Cosmos... much in the way I might fire up Bitches Brew or Magic Windows. For a long time these posts baffled me -- as the Coonifesto did first time around -- because I tried to parse and analyze them. Uh-uh!. Gotta let 'em wash in, over and through you, cat!
Feel me?
Anyway, seems like a good way for you to try to forget what happened to the Dodgers....
Well, needless to say...
Anyone else ever have the feeling that they were passing through gates in their life?
My life seems to have chapters for some reason. Some are shorter and some are longer, but they still feel like chapters and they all last at least a few years.
jp - I definitly has that chapter-feeling too.
The so called "Book of Life" comes naturally to mind.
Jp-
There is the seven year change theory of life.
http://www.dreamhawk.com/7.htm
Bob,
I just checked out the Coon Store and it's AWESOME - intended full meaning of the word. Thanks so much for pulling this together, particularly the music section! This is a huge help to me filling some of the holes in my collection.
Thanks. I've pretty much sampled everything, so I've included only the best collections in the best sound available and for the best value. Often, if you want to explore an artist, you're overwhelmed with choices, so this should narrow it down for people. I'm still in the process of adding categories and selections....
And even the stuff from the far side of the cosmos is pretty accessible IMO, although I still can't play Scott Walker with Mrs. G. in the house....
With respect to the 7 year change theory of life, I may have just hit the 35 year transition point like nothing I've ever hit before.
Felt quite catastrophic, so to speak.
Yes, the 35th year -- 34 to 35 -- would be the completion of the fifth seven year cycle. That was a big one for me too. Among other things, my mother died and I ended my analysis. If that's not a redundancy.
"The One enters into movement because of his fullness."
That "because" is not a known and cannot be a certainty because it transcends cognition of any kind.
Yes, "the One enters into movement," but why, no one can say beyond that it happens. No existence conditioned by finitude knows the intentions of God, or motivations. No one knows why the Unconditioned takes on conditions.
Like anyone could ever know that, Napoleon.
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