Book three – Neq
the Sword – struck home for reasons that are too personal to go into. Neq,
the 2nd or 3rd sword of the old empire, isn’t gay but is
scared of being rebuffed and when, in the course of a quest to uncover
renegades who are ambushing crazy trucks (distributing equipment and weapons
from Helicon), he finally meets a desirable stranger who takes his bracelet
(wife), they are ambushed and she is raped by a pack of fifty, Yod, the leader,
killing her in a defensive gesture. Neq has already killed, and Yod cuts his
hands off. They cauterize the wounds with fire, Yod having spared his life as a
moral gesture, and he is cared for by the crazy they earlier freed from the
pack.
Neq’s mind is
set on vengeance, and they trek to Helicon where the crazy attaches a sword to
Neq’s stump. He stalks the pack, putting their heads on spikes. Even though he
is determined to make them all pay the price, a couple of decisive events
occur, and he has a Damascus conversion. This is the thing that struck me,
since he decides by rational thought that vengeance will not achieve his aim.
With the destruction of Helicon, the crazy supply chain has been cut and this
is at the root of the renegade phenomenon: plunderers who are no longer served by
the system.
Therefore, the
system itself has to be restored so that Helicon restarts the crazy supply
chain and thereby the nomad system of fight-circles. This struck me as a type
of revivalism, since the nomad tribes are self-organizing places of power, with
distinctive textures and colours (pennants). But they require a rational system
to service their needs and, actually, this is how organic things work! The
self-organizing principle doesn’t mean things are irrational, it means the
places are powerful, places where the body gets dirty.
Piers makes a
point through the books of saying, “dirt doesn’t matter”, and it is simply a
sighn of the strength of the earth, smell of manure or puddles of mud. What Neq
is referring to is a rational system, but it doesn’t require much organizing;
mainly routes of trade from a centre of manufacture. Our modern system is
confused because it assumes everything can be rational. But a living system is
not rational, it is cyclical, it self-organizes. Therefore, it cannot be
organized externally.
Our systems are
run by politicians who are the top managers of a race of managers. Their
confidence is misplaced because they are only dealing with the nervous system
(or external nervous system) and not with the active body in places of power.
In order to regain power, we need untidy places with no politicians. Because
these places are so hard to find, the head becomes dominant and indulges in
compulsive behaviour of “facts” (numerical, monetary - Grace Slick quote Hyborian Bridge 62/1).
But facts exist
in places that are tidy, are not self-organizing or dirty and are run by heads
that gain confidence in hygiene systems that supply them with facts. A hygiene
system happens to be electronic and attached to the head via screens
(reflections, see prev.) Our system is Apollonian (sun) and cannot encompass
the playfulness of the moon (waxing and waning.)
It’s not so much
a case of rational vs irrational as hygiene versus dirt. One can have a
rational system that is dirty since this is the one Neq proposes. It has power
and playfulness in places of texture, colour and song.
Our masters,
because they exist in the head, are attached to hygiene-machines (screens) that
flatter the ego with facts. A hygiene-system is simply one where
electro-impulses are attached to machines; one with neither content (or
strength of psyche in a place) or style (action of body in a place).
In the trilogy,
the action of the body is enshrined in the circle code. There’s a similarity
with western rodeos; in places of power, codes come into force which safeguard
the body. Any threat is regulated by the system, as with the Western duel.
From our modern
standpoint, arbitrary violence is wrong, but we all die and a much greater
question is the meaning one places on death. What happens in book three is that
Neq kills Var over a misunderstanding, and he and Vara (Soli) are forcefully
brought together ina battle between vengeance and understanding.
What you could
say is that, in a naïve society where relationships are based largely on
physical action, these circular relationships are bound by the welkin – the
vault of the stars. Life and death are no longer simply material things of fact;
they have circular relationships bound by the welkin (vault of heaven), having
the mutable sense of destiny that can make a negative become a positive. Irony
is there; disaster and death can mutate into affection and love with the shared
experience of the welkin (cosmos).
The meaning of
events is no longer factual and serious, and is given an ironic tinge that is
almost playful. Tears flow and mutate into tears of joy. Life lived as a code
can no longer be 100% serious because it is no longer factual (material); it is
the psychic strength in a place of texture and colour and song.
Materialism is
simply the absence of shared experiences in places of power. Power means the
wilderness strength of dirt and texture and colour, where the herds roam, where
cowboys poke, where Indians have a home. The dirt of the Earth, where worms and
buffalos have a place. It’s a cyclical system, and therefore not a material one
– which is just the facts that the ego can comprehend in a hygienic order, one
that the ego compulsively attaches to numbers and facts.
Outside of
materialism – or serious fact – are the shared experiences in places of power
that connect us to the cosmos. The meaning placed on cyclical events has a dose
of irony, since that is the reality of the situation. Our lives and deaths are
part of a wider ambit of shared experiences.
Materialism is
just the absence of that, since it is a fact such as a 1 or a zero. A shared
experience is a psychic reality. I mean, to take the obvious example, a
Nativity scene is the commune of Christ.
Kasimir
Zgorecki, French Poles 1930s
The solemn faces
seem to tell the story of naïve acceptance that is so lacking in a material
world. Acceptance of cyclical events that tell a story of life and death much
wider than that of mere fact. Birth and death are “facts” if we take away the
psychic content and activities of the body in a place of power. (They remind me
of my youth in Spain; the “unthinking” culture of the body).
There seems to
be a dual aspect in that psychic relationship. I’m a Pisces by sign and have
always had a sense that my sign reinforces my sense of self! It’s my connection
to the cosmos, telling me how to behave. It’s not factual, but - the psyche affects the world of facts via
behaviour. In a sense, modernity is the exact opposite, even though a material
fact has no meaning beyond the fact it exists as an electro-impulse.
That reality is
weak because it is not dominated by line and movement; it is complex and not
simple, attractive to the ego. What is simple and strong is actually the human
body in action. The politicians with their tentacular heads are the enemy to a
revival of shared relationships in places of power, of self-organizing, of dirt
under the welkin.
“Give back
what you have taken this day.” (page 119)
Is Tyl’s
stricture to Neq..
(page 125)
Well, the answer
is that Var was sterile and Vara wants a baby. So the circle turns. Story
versus atomic fact (sun).
(page 161)
(Neq
had a glockenspiel soldered onto his sword)
