Seq 6: Wisdom > Teotwawki
What wot wit wis (obs., of a certainty) and wishes (one time fast). If civilisation has periods of decline, decadence (compare the cadence of the above) or down-fall (alas), we can comfort ourselves in the declension (dreams and memories) of the fits and starts of wisdom (pursued not received, in the spirit of Bond's martini, by brave individuals - its episodic friends [Les Philosophes {who "believed that the role of philosophy was to change the world"}, including Diderot, Montesquieu {formally Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu} and Voltaire {nom; en réalité François-Marie Arouet; see Seq 8}]). And so inspired by Malcolm McLaren's
e*sequitur 43: "Double Dutch"
(physical intelligence) and "Whip-Smart" (push play arrow upper right; Phair's fair deserved misandry: his masculinist moniker Rampion [Rapunzel]) (and [for the attentive, sequitrive Double Dutch] Tutnese Mumarugyub hutchadud a lulituttutlule lulamumbub - [lul e tut tut lul e!]), let's get right to it [adult content]:
* * *
The Physics of Heat
(Emperor Qin's Ironic Demise)
Philosophy means different things
to different people
Practitioners, apparently, a passionate for pearls
Laymen, let's assume, dive less deeply
Their ardor is applied
to the wisdom of the physical
Men of action they, incurious
doers, actors, copulators
absorbed by entertainments
Neither sedentary nor seditious, say,
like true philosophers
intent on the elusive, the abstract
Make no mistake:
they do so at their peril
* * *
Mao, on being compared to the book-burning intellicide Qin (see Savonarola in e*sequitur 23), stated,
"He buried 460 scholars alive; we have buried forty-six thousand scholars alive... You [intellectuals] revile us for being Qin Shi Huangs. You are wrong. We have surpassed Qin Shi Huang a hundredfold."
(Mao Zedong sixiang wan sui! (1969), p. 195. Referenced in Governing China (2nd ed.) by Kenneth Lieberthal (2004).)
In addition to being a literal iconoclast (thoroughly successfully destroying Chinese historical buildings and extirpating and burning its literary treasures [using sadistic evil children {Red Guards}], the very generation of [sic] people now in control of China [ntm the human toll]), Mao was also a parv•avis•cide (murderer of little birds; Mica, mica, parva stella). In Ga 4.570001958, he ordered the "Great Sparrow Campaign" in an attempt to eradicate this innocuous grain (and - oops - insect) eater, ultimately exacerbating the famine that killed an estimated 38 million (his estimated lifetime tally / toll: 70 million [he argued that 300+ million Chinese deaths would be acceptable in a world war to {irony alert} destroy C*pitalism] [Western population control pragmatists very quietly, no doubt, retrospectively approved]) people in addition to decimating the sparrow population. Although this unobtrusive, Biblically-cited (Luke 12:6) bird is considered common and unremarkable, its plainness bears reflection (see*sequitur 49).
Meanwhile, we want the good to win (Double Dative). Segueing from the Wisdom of Solomon in the Apocrypha (["things hidden," cryptic and embarrassing as a record of our species] a must-rede for the aficionado of the eccentric arcane) to the titillating story of Sara, the nuptial night murderess (who prudently knew when to stop. Why seven? Asphyxiation? V. dentata [and other cautionary tales {conformance minatories}, including that of the hapless cactus shooter {this succulent with us for 35 Megaanna} {fell on him and he died}]?) in the Book of Tobias. Here's the story, as told by a sly raconteur (to be redd in a comfortable chair while ingesting psychotropic molecules, such as oxygen):
e*sequitur 44: Tobias,
Chapter 6, verses 10-17: 10 The angel said to the young man [Tobias], Brother, to day we shall lodge with Raguel, who is thy cousin; he also hath one only daughter, named Sara; I will speak for her, that she may be given thee for a wife. 11 For to thee doth the right of her appertain, seeing thou only art of her kindred. 12 And the maid is fair and wise.... 13 Then the young man answered the angel, I have heard, brother Azarias that this maid hath been given to seven men, who all died in the marriage chamber. 14 And now I am the only son of my father, and I am afraid, lest if I go in unto her, I die, as the other before: for a wicked spirit loveth her, which hurteth no body, but those which come unto her.... 15 Then the angel said unto him, Dost thou not remember the precepts which thy father gave thee, that thou shouldest marry a wife of thine own kindred? wherefore hear me, O my brother; for she shall be given thee to wife; and make thou no reckoning of the evil spirit; for this same night shall she be given thee in marriage. 16 And when thou shalt come into the marriage chamber, thou shalt take the ashes of perfume, and shalt lay upon them some of the heart and liver of the fish, and shalt make a smoke with it: 17 And the devil shall smell it, and flee away, and never come again any more....
Chapter 7, verses 9-14: So he communicated the matter with Raguel [Sara's father]: and Raguel said to Tobias, Eat and drink, and make merry: 10 For it is meet that thou shouldest marry my daughter.... 11 I have given my daughter in marriage to seven men, who died that night they came in unto her: nevertheless for the present be merry.... 12 Raguel said, Then take her from henceforth according to the manner, for thou art her cousin, and she is thine, and the merciful God give you good success in all things. 13 Then he called his daughter Sara, and she came to her father, and he took her by the hand, and gave her to be wife to Tobias, saying, Behold, take her after the law of Moses, and lead her away to thy father. And he blessed them; 14 And called Edna his wife, and took paper, and did write an instrument of covenants, and sealed it.
Chapter 8, verses 1-14: 1 And when they had supped, they brought Tobias in unto her. 2 And as he went, he remembered the words of Raphael, and took the ashes of the perfumes, and put the heart and the liver of the fish thereupon, and made a smoke therewith. 3 The which smell when the evil spirit had smelled, he fled into the utmost parts of Egypt, and the angel bound him. 4 And after that they were both shut in together, Tobias rose out of the bed, and said, Sister, arise, and let us pray that God would have pity on us (etc.). 8 And she said with him, Amen. 9 So they slept both that night. And Raguel arose, and went and made a grave, 10 Saying, I fear lest he also be dead. 11 But when Raguel was come into his house, 12 He said unto his wife Edna. Send one of the maids, and let her see whether he be alive: if he be not, that we may bury him, and no man know it. 13 So the maid opened the door, and went in, and found them both asleep, 14 And came forth, and told them that he was alive.
And they lived happily ever after.
There are additional pseudepigrapha, including The [auth: fortunately] Forgotten Books of Eden (Chapter I: G*d "commanded [Adam] to dwell there in a cave in a rock -- the Cave of Treasures...."), this leading to the Paleolithic caves of Europe (sunbelt hominid retirement communities of the Southern Ice Age), specifically
e*sequitur 45: Chauvet hand stencils,
Lascaux (coincidentally named after your e*sequitrist!; the subterranean mansion containing the Painted Gallery; recall that the decadent M. Bataille also wrote Lascaux or the Birth of Art), and Altamira (Picasso: "After Altamira, all is decadence"; he would know) wherein are found the shaman's sympathetic magic [connoting, of course, the priestly wise] in celestial asterisms (cf. Walcott's asterisks of rain in Seq 7 and Thoreau's snow-stars in e*sequitur 34) cosmography (Imagine the night sky before photon pollution! Altair, Deneb, Vega and the Pleiades [see Seq 1]), depiction of human copulation, and terrestrial and marine menageries. For a longer expedition, listings of subterranea and cave formations; include such speleogeological phenomena as aragonites, conulites, moonmilk (cf. minky-winky and Bataille's squatted saucer) and poolspars; the Chamber of Columns at the Sof Omar caves in Ethiopia (cf. Farid Belkahia's modern hennaed hand [a better fit into the Chauvet wall stencil than a non-lethal polydactylic mutation; meanwhile, Smith's "invisible hand" presents its digitus impudicus to humanity {and note Saint-Simon's (Hand of Greed)}] with Chauvet's precursor); Onmeetbarediepgat; giraffe molars, hominid remains and bat guano (cf. ornithocoprolite).
This path recalls the semitrailer with the fork-in-the-road graphic on the back left door with the Word (sorry, couldn't resist) "Jesus" and a black cross at the end of the left fork. Contrary to first impression, this does not mean that you will surely die (you surely will in any event) if you (a) pass on the left or (b) take the left fork, although one might be forgiven (sorry, couldn't resist) if one did so, but rather that Jesus is a choice and the road less traveled. Frost would be mortified (or else amused), but in his paean to free will (and note Borges' El Jardín de senderos que se bifurcan [The Garden of Forking Paths]) he says he did and that "that has made all the difference" (we needn't take his Word for it: his works speak for themselves). One assumes that the right fork is the onramp of the Highway to Hell - a perennially popular route (Dante's aptly named Divine Comedy, here condensed in quatrain, so you don't have to rede it:
Inferno: Tedious travelog; only Italians go to hell;
Purgatorio: Skip;
Paradiso: If Beatrice represents, there will be no sex in heaven;
Fine.
), with such entertaining tomes as the Lesser Key of Solomon, containing the titles (and sigils [and see the Black Pullet grimoire below in e*sequitur 48]) of nobility of no less than 72 demons (including such delightful fellows as Furfur [Furcifer {again note that an idle mind is a busy mind}, later to become the Demon Prince of Hardcore in In Nomine, a Role Playing Game containing a triple-six dice roll called the Freight Train from Hell {yes, you're screaming}] and Apocryphal Sarah's own Asmodeus), given the underlying assumption that supernatural posthumous (see e*sequiturs 29 and 31) threats dissuade, although one must concede that the notion of Limbo
* * *
Your Majesty
(Salve Regina)
You sit enthroned in burgundy,
Queen Mother to the angels.
A dog walks in.
"Yes, I can talk"
and you talk, compulsively
about God and evil, yin and yang,
motive and cynicism,
and spirituality tendered by adversity.
You are Queen:
Happy regent to the entire horizon.
Will the good dog go to hell?
Here's an argument:
He is loyal.
In limbo, his wagging tail
will amuse wandering philosophers
indifferent to uncertainty.
You were born gracious, pure and noble
everything a queen should be.
You converse with a dog
because you are obliged
because he is a novel breed
because his nature is to please
and to need
and you, God save you,
you are Queen.
* * *
(do stand and sing, and mark the lyrics) must have inspired the Existentialists (they're back!), and that the final calamities (not catamites[!]) endured in Fire and Ice gave Frost a good conclusive poem, using the*sequitur technique of
enjambment. While we're using our
e*sequitur 46: Boschian imaginations,
let us attempt to constate what exactly eternity would be like for humans (but first let's take a brief e*sequitur side trip to the soon-to-be-immolated (in frostfire) Chinese (Ghost) Hell Money (cf. Harriet Jacob's materialist master ["bury my money..."], and remember Basho and Blingskull in e*sequitur 26) (cf. Atonal II [his Nahuatl name, or Lord {of} Six Waters], the ca. Ga 4.570001400s ruler of Coixtlahuaca and over the pochteca, who worshipped the money god Yacatecuhtli [cf. the compromised {antisemite}, controversial Céline in Journey to the End of the Night:
When the faithful enter their bank, don't go thinking they can help themselves as they please. Far from it. In speaking to Dollar, they mumble words through a little grill; that's their confessional. Not much sound, dim light, a tiny wicket between high arches, that's all.
]; they felt obligated to hide [their] wealth from the public, and "strove to avoid undue attention" [tedious, tedious, tedious]) (and note the laudable agenda of Ptolemy Philadelphus:
"For neither the pleasure derived from gold nor any other of the possessions which are prized by shallow minds confers the same benefit as the pursuit of culture and the study which we expend in securing it."
), of which presumably everyone eventually runs out unless a large enough bribe is made to the Hell Judge (Yan Wang; cash only; his number is listed). Assuming ethereal afterlife, would one's brain fill up, requiring deletion of quisquilian crud? What other absurd scenarios might we conceive? This line merits pursuit only as a retrogressive, re-creational (G*d would be [no, actually, is] jealous) exercise. More to the point of the here and now, how might humanity go forward most salubriously? How many generations of humanity will need to evolve before a state of dynamic equilibrium is achieved, and what might that be? Can/Will we learn? If our dominant circuitry pavlovs (verb) fear, hierarchy, accumulation, and conformity, how can understanding, isonomian (a concept about which, dear reder, you should know; also note kritarchy, a political system based on equal justice for all and the concept of natural rights) coexistence, conservation and constructive innovation be achieved? The logical approach - through balance, self-awareness and repression of the detrimental aspects of our genetic heritage/configuration - will not be popular among hierarchists, merchants/marketers/consumers, the confrontation-stimulated, cavilling agonists and mobocrats (note majoritarianism and the hammer-subtle ochlocracy [another little something an enlightened one needs to know]) (the magnitude of this problem quickly becomes obvious). Will we exapt, co-opting our maladaptive traits? As Edmund Wilson dryly replied in answer to a question as to the ultimate futures of humanity and ants (eusocialised, kin altruistic calicrats) (the latter shown on M.C. Escher's infinite Möbius strip treadmill),
"The ants will in any case survive."
Continuing downward, let's not forget the Jade Emperor, the Three Pure Pellucid Ones (including, to wit, The Universal Lord of the Numinous Treasure) and the Tao Te Ching whose polysemic language leads to
e*sequitur 47: asemic ("contentless") writing
(which comes naturally: Oh irony, oh mores! Proponent Tim Gaze states that "Every viewer can arrive at a personal, absolutely correct interpretation." What a relief...); citations of Klee ("Angst," National Gallery of Canada), sound poet Brion Gysin (permutation poetry and the influential, mandatory The Process) and others are charmingly and REM-oneirically vivid), Edenic language (and Joseph Smith's lamentably [Dare one say ironically? Conveniently? Absent-mindedly {in the literal sense of the term}?] lost "The Book of Remembrance"[!]), universal language (including Solresol [!]), outsider Gedewon Makonnen and Lettrist hypergraphics, metagraphy, the Cacophony Society ("you may already be a member" cf. Seq 5), liquid democracy (see e-democracy; one can spend some time reviewing democratic instances [note also totalitarian democracy]), and proceed (merci, M. Gysin) to (either e*sequitur 48 or 49)
e*sequitur 48: the Black Pullet,
a grimoire (see griot; corruption of "grammar"; a magic text). To obtain a djinn (your humble narrator did so promise in e*sequitur 15; cf. the ghul-ish "night shade" [Bella Donna], incubi [and compare Danel in incubation], succubae and strumpets), just say "Nades, Suradis, Maniner" (and don't blame your correspondent if a) you squander your wishes or b) get in way over your head); to obtain your true love <3 (see Chaucer's Parlement of Foules dream vision [and Brion Gysin's dream machine in e*sequitur 86]), just say, "Sader, Prostas, Solaster" (e*sequiturs delivers again). There is even an incantation for the occasion when you tire of erim. Thus unencumbered, you are free to proceed with caution to the current omnimediated age (the "time-lapse phonographic" and -cinegraphic artworks of
e*sequitur 49: Jason Salavon
and R. Luke DuBois [see Image, Seq 9], whose works hypnotically entrance, as do Mark Fischer's cetacean ["Spotted Dolphin... near the Azores"] and other mandalas [Chipping Sparrow] and ambient audio [e.g., blue whale]), intertextuality (e.g., sampling), heteroglossia (novel narrative), monoglossia (bailan, mi flamenco [Phoenicopterus]), steganography (hidden messages detected through steganalysis), the postliterate society (e*sequiturs will have its serious moments) and, ultimately (perhaps), Teotwawki* (Mr Cohen: "... and a white man [the Chinese racist slur baak gwai: white ghost or white devil] dancing"), the Technological Singularity (a major concept) aka
* The end of the world as we know it.
* * *
> Seq 7
* * *
Image: Neanderthal salutation
Hand stencil (cf. Laetoli footprint from Ga 4.5669971000) in the Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave (Vallon-Pont-d'Arc, Ardèche, France). French Ministry of Culture and Communication, Regional Board for Cultural Affairs, Rhòne-Alpes Region, Regional Department of Archaeology. Permission pending.