Pictorial 67

It was the mania of cities and societies and hosts, to lay a compulsion upon a man, upon all men. For men and women alike were mad with the egoistic fear of their own nothingness. (page 146)

Lawrence is talking about death, and it could be said that a world without death has no destiny, no cyclical sense, only the strident march of advance ever-onward into the nothingness of the future. Maybe so, but nature has its own “strident advance” (Pictorial 66.) The two types oppose one another in every way. The society of cities is authoritarian and – save a few examples like Detroit – follows a straight-line unbroken progress.

The origin of straight –line progress is the sorcery of light (C4 reflection, perspective). Our authority is simply a parallel system (sun). The certainty of this system is substantiated by words, the words of acolytes – financial, political – of the sorcerous system of straight lines (of light).

So, outside of this system is the Earth power that has a glorious simplicity. In this alternate system we can contemplate on the majesty of unthinking nature. In the beginning was poetry.

The strident advances of nature are cyclical, as Earth turns her face to the sun or moon, exists in the forests that Modern Man fears as enclaves of ragged lines and sensual uncertainty; of human dreams in the cosmos; of the mythology of dreams (Pictorial 64 etc.) Here, Man hunts under the pale white moon of Artemis, blood flows and the lifecycle of decay and regeneration is reestablished.

If you call that the pre-industrial world, then it may take atavistic types like DH Lawrence and Howard to physically think themselves back to the world of bodies-in-motion in a romantic landscape of poetry as opposed to facts (words).

 

 

 C7 - C11

Have you ever wondered why entrepreneurial business types are always so preternaturally confident? They pretty damn near have to be, seeing as they live in a convincing illusion of perspective vision, a vision that feeds into their sense of ego.

Where Pictorial 66 says “You can’t think ABOUT thought”, this is because the perspective illusion is also the world of neverending words, a type of nothingness, or saying the same thing differently (tautology). In themselves words may be accurate, but they refer to an inward-looking system of the ego, and not to the wider system of planets and a cosmic labyrinth.

But the man looked at the vivid stars before dawn, as they rained down to the sea, and the dog-star (Sirius) green towards the sea’s rim. And he thought: ‘How plastic it is, how full of curves and folds like an invisible rose of dark-petalled openness that shows where the dew touches its darkness! (page 169)

Don’t get me wrong; I’ve nothing against superhighways and hopping around by plane or on Harley Davidson. However, the egoists are under the impression this system of staright lines keeps expanding till that is all there is.

On the contrary, there are two systems which oppose one another. One is an electronic brain that feeds the ego, originating from the light of the sun. The other is a labyrinth of fear that faces a cosmic spendour.

The fear is of everything the ego isn’t; the flesh of the animal; blood, bone, the sudden death and the regenerative cycle of lifedeath. In a word, it is antiauthoritarianism. Authority, in our system, means straight lines, and this perspective illusion feeds into the ego of those people – whether financial or political or business – who confidently tells us what they think and what we should think.

That’s why it’s a neverending nothingness that runs round again to the preternatural ego of the guys like Boris Johnson who have no doubts. Doubt only comes out of the cosmic wonder that is reality (the stars). I noticed, reading about Uninhabitable by David Wallis-Wells – the bestseller on our frightening climate prospects – that the author is one of the square-jawed ‘I’m right and I know it’ types.

The other is that young Swede (not square-jawed, square-faced). How is it that they know what is a very complex situation? I suspect they are confident in their own egos. Then there’s Prince Harry who is also confident he’s right; what they never have the gumption to say is the one thing that might be right. That we should look squarely at the cosmos which is vast and to which our own world’s vastness is but a speck.

In material terms ($) we are nothing. In cosmic and psychic terms we are the stars and planets (Hyborian Bridge 67). If the physical world we live in faces the cosmos squarely, we can be sure that our moral state and our destinies are on sure footing. It’s big a scary and it dents the ego – and that could also be a description of Howard’s historical adventures (and Weird Tales C20).

There are also small and dainty naturalistic moments. It’s poetry and motion and not egotistical fact that the likes of Mantel are prone to.