Hey, hey, hey, hey
Four winds at the four winds bar
Two doors locked and windows barred
One door let to take you in
The other one just mirrors it
Hey, hey, yeah! hey, hey
In hellish glare and inference
The other one's a duplicate
The queenly flux, eternal light
Or the light that never warms
Yes the light, that never, never warms
Yes the light, that never, never warms
Never warms, never warms Astronomy Blue Oyster Cult
Four winds at the four winds bar
Two doors locked and windows barred
One door let to take you in
The other one just mirrors it
Hey, hey, yeah! hey, hey
In hellish glare and inference
The other one's a duplicate
The queenly flux, eternal light
Or the light that never warms
Yes the light, that never, never warms
Yes the light, that never, never warms
Never warms, never warms Astronomy Blue Oyster Cult
The one-way
duplicate trap in our claustrophobic future of heads that talk like talking clocks.
Out there the four winds blow – the warm, the cold, the blustery, the sheer. In
here everything is bright and smooth-running, superficially sweet.
Yet, as Kari
Hohne says in The Mythology of Sleep, energy can never be destroyed (in
conventional physics), only converted into another form (such as mass in
Einsteinian physics).
The energies of
Earth, the dragons of air and water, are warming-up our dull planet, even as
acolytes recite in the light of coldness. In The Long Tomorrow,
warehouse boss Dulinsky is the spokesman for “America the great again”, a
builder like our friend Trump
“My
great-great grandfather came from Poland, and he never got rich because things
were already built. But now they’re ready to be built again, and I’m going to
get in on the ground floor. I know what the judge has been telling you. He’s a
negativist, He’s afraid of believing in anything. I’m not. I believe in the
greatness of this country, and I know that these outmoded shackles have got to
be broken off if it’s ever to grow again.”
Judge Taylor,
meanwhile
..gave him
one burning glance and said, “A man can make anything he wants to out of
words.”
The sudden
violence that does erupt is sort of farcical (Dulinsky’s shooting and the “holy
fire” pillaging of Refuge), but Leigh has a woman’s touch in the descriptions
of land and locals.
Leigh of course
is not writing of modern times, she is writing of an America that has
regenerated to its barren splendour. There is a long interval whereby Len and
Esau are led by barge across the mountains and plains to the hidden enclave of
Bartorstown. Here’s a quote that tells of a storm.
They ducked for the shelter of the house. The wind hit first, laying the trees over and turning up the lighter sides of their leaves. Then the rain came, riding the wind in a white smother that blotted everything from sight, and it was mixed with leaves and twigs and flying branches. After that was the lightning, and the thunder, and the cracking of trees, and then after a long time only the rain was left, pouring down straight and heavy as though it was tipped out of a bucket. They went out on deck and made sure everything was fast, shivering in the new chill, and then took turns sleeping. The rain slacked and almost stopped, and then came on again with a new storm, and during his watch Len could see lightning flaring all along the horizon as the squalls danced on the forward edge of the cool air mass moving down from the north. About midnight, through diminished rain and distant thunder, Len heard a new sound, and knew that it was the river rising. (page 139)
They ducked for the shelter of the house. The wind hit first, laying the trees over and turning up the lighter sides of their leaves. Then the rain came, riding the wind in a white smother that blotted everything from sight, and it was mixed with leaves and twigs and flying branches. After that was the lightning, and the thunder, and the cracking of trees, and then after a long time only the rain was left, pouring down straight and heavy as though it was tipped out of a bucket. They went out on deck and made sure everything was fast, shivering in the new chill, and then took turns sleeping. The rain slacked and almost stopped, and then came on again with a new storm, and during his watch Len could see lightning flaring all along the horizon as the squalls danced on the forward edge of the cool air mass moving down from the north. About midnight, through diminished rain and distant thunder, Len heard a new sound, and knew that it was the river rising. (page 139)
Now, Leigh is
writing a tale that is half Huckleberry Finn, and half a techno-trip – ie. the
arrival at Bartorstown. The Huck Finn side of it is all sweat and toil, and the
fatigue and weather roll on by.
They fed the fire while Charlie worked the draft and watched the safety valve. The thump of the piston came faster and faster, churning the paddle wheel, and the barge picked up speed, going away with the current. Finally Charlie motioned them to hold it for a while, and they stopped, leaning on their shovels and wiping the sweat off their faces. And Esau said, “I don’t think Bartorstown is going to turn out much like we thought it would.” (page 133)
They used up the coal, and took on wood at a station on the Illinois side, and beat on again to the mouth of the Missouri, and after that for days they wallowed their way up the chutes of the Big Muddy. Mostly it was hot. There were storms, and rain, and around the middle of August there came a few nights cold enough to hint of fall. Sometimes the wind blew so hard against them they had to tie up and wait, and watch the down-river traffic go past them flying. Sometimes after a rain the water would rise and run so fast that they could make no headway, and then it would fall just as quickly and show them too late how the treacherous channel had shifted, and they would have to work the barge painfully and with much labor and swearing off the sand bar where she had stuck fast. The muddy water fouled the boiler, and they had to stop and clean it, and other times they had to stop for more wood. And Esau grumbled, “This is a hell of a way for Bartorstown men to travel.” (page 139)
They used up the coal, and took on wood at a station on the Illinois side, and beat on again to the mouth of the Missouri, and after that for days they wallowed their way up the chutes of the Big Muddy. Mostly it was hot. There were storms, and rain, and around the middle of August there came a few nights cold enough to hint of fall. Sometimes the wind blew so hard against them they had to tie up and wait, and watch the down-river traffic go past them flying. Sometimes after a rain the water would rise and run so fast that they could make no headway, and then it would fall just as quickly and show them too late how the treacherous channel had shifted, and they would have to work the barge painfully and with much labor and swearing off the sand bar where she had stuck fast. The muddy water fouled the boiler, and they had to stop and clean it, and other times they had to stop for more wood. And Esau grumbled, “This is a hell of a way for Bartorstown men to travel.” (page 139)
This struck me
as an evocation of life in olden days. As in this Van Gogh
What you see is
the primitive aspect of the human figure that is strong of bone and flesh; the
body that warms up as it sweats, and that then goes to lie down in a shaded
grove, or get anointed with oils.
The body that is
mammalian, that has inbuilt thermostating in the face of variegated weather
cycles. That use energises the body and gives a natural high. It is strength of
bone and flesh.
When one goes
into shops or public building nowadays one is hit by a wall of heat: this is
for serpents; serpents we have become under the rule of heads that think and do
not act.
A few hours later the wagons came in, eight of them,
great lumbering things made for the hauling of freight and drawn by mules. The
men who drove them were brown and leathery, with the tops of their foreheads
all white when they took their hats off, and a network of pale lines around
their eyes where the sun hadn’t got to the bottom of the squinted-up wrinkles.
They greeted Kovacs and the bargemen as old friends, and shook Hostetter’s hand
warmly as a sort of welcome-home. Then one of them, an old fellow with a
piercing glance and a pair of shoulders that looked as though they could carry
a wagon alone if the mules gave out, peered closely at Len and Esau and said to
Hostetter, “So these are your boys.” (page 144)
Earlier, Len had
asked Hostetter why he didn’t support the “Growth, progress, intelligence, future”
that Dulinsky had wanted. The answer is in the remainder of the book! Actually,
the “hidden in plain sight” Bartorstown reminded me of Asimov’s 2nd
Foundation plot, on a more savage footing.
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Yes, for Bartorstown
is itself run by atom power hidden deep within a canyon. This bit of the plot
didn’t exactly catch me by surprise, but the way it is worked out is
intriguing.
The scientists are
trapped in their belief-system, just as the outsider sects are in their
sin-laden beliefs of holy fire from heaven. Then we hear about “Solution
Zero”; that even Clementine – the super-computer – may not be able to tame
the atom for global consumption (again).
For what is the
atom but the sun? And how can one tame the sun except by its polar opposite –
the moon – and the regenerative force of Artemis? Earth-power, the spin of
our planet against the cosmos.
Are we moderns,
then, trapped in the canyon of Bartorstown, forever using supercomputers for
the global consumption of light (electronics), which is just a shadow-play of
the mighty atom?
He looked at
Clementine, and she was no longer sleeping. The many eyes on the panel board
were bright and winking, and all through that mighty grid of wires there was
a stir and a quiver, a subtle pulse of life.
The selfsame pulse,
thought Len, that beats down there below. The heart and the brain. (page 217)
What Leigh is
saying here is that – the two are the same. The cold light of logic – computing
– and the fire of the atom. We (“they”) live in a tautology because that is
what logic is (sun Apollo). It always goes back to its source, which is light
(straight line), saying the same thing twice in different ways, a sort of nullification process.
The light is
“cold”; it does not burn, only it burns into the brain.
The cold light
molds our global thoughts into one because introspective thought depends on
the unthinking cosmos (Pictorial 67). That is, the
cosmos of ambiguous symmetry, balance and proportion that is observed from
the parading globe.
Why should that be
so? As Leigh writes in The Long Tomorrow all Man’s societies are
belief systems, no less that of Bartorstown, that Clementine will solve the
puzzle. There is a scene where chief physician Gutierrez is so convinced of
the truth of his research that he goes mad when Clementine denies him.
“You are against
me, both of you. You had it arranged between you, so that no matter what I
did she would never give me the right answer…laughing because she knows the
answer and won’t tell… I’ll make you tell, you bitch, you lying bitch,
deceitful bitch, I’ll make you tell.” (page 219)
They believe in the
sun – as do we (or “they”). The sun is an energetic source but not the heart
and soul of a semi-symmetrical cosmos. This cosmos is both physical (moon,
planets) and psychic (the psyche of the moon and planets – Diana, Pluto).
Man’s myths are
dominated by the graceful and pleasant presence of Earth’s body in the
cosmos, as part of the heavens above. The Earth’s body has unthinking power
that links her to the mystery of the cosmos as a whole.
It is the
unthinking power that gives pause for thought, whereas the solar-onrush of words
in our present situation cancels out the very idea of introspective thinking
under the stars. We are in the canyon of Bartorstown, forever searching with
supercomputers for.. “Solution Zero.”
Yes, the unthinking
power of naturalism that Man – in his power of reason – destroys with straight-lines
(builds over, paves over). At the finale of the book, Len and his woman,
Joan, escape and hole-up in a desert town, awaiting their destiny. When
Hostetter finally arrives, Preacher Man is speaking and Len is thinking
I have let it blow
through me, and it is just wind. I have let the words sound in my ears, and
they are nothing but words, spoken by an ignorant man with a dusty beard.
They do not stir me, they do not touch me. I am done with them, too. (page 235)
The false god of
ignorance speaks. But – Moloch too is false, born of the reasoning sun
(light) and not of the unthinking Earth. Destiny.
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