Hyborian Bridge 154

 Replacing stories with a positive which adds up to a duplicitous narrative of zero information is something which is quite hard to grasp. "Pure information" in that sense is not useful to a world of hot blood and passion (the human one.)

The way to get one's head around this is to take examples. The rough plot of Spring Snow (prev) is that - as one could almost guess - Satoko evades the betrothal to the Imperial Prince by taking the tonsure as a nun of Gesshu.

She does this without Kiyoaki's knowledge and, in this scene, he merely thinks she is getting an abortion.

His nineteen year-old imagination could not deal with a phenomenon such as that of a child, something that, however intimately bound up with dark, hot blood and flesh, seemed altogether metaphysical.(page 314)

The sense of fertile life is later counterpointed when she receives the tonsure.

Shorn black lumps, still saturated with the stifling brilliance of the summer sun, piled up on the floor around her. But it was a worthless crop, for the very instant that the luxuriant black handfuls ceased to be hers, the beauty if life went out of them, leaving only an ugly remnant. (page 337)

The Mutsugaes and Ayakuras are shattered at her wilfulness, and desperately seek a solution. The idea of a wig crops up that would enable the marriage to still proceed. But - like the hair - it would be dead, her soul would be absent.

This hypothetical scene of a jet-black wig with Satoko inside reminded me of the final scene if Conan #25, where the Living Tarim has been replaced by a skull! In any case, they have to accept nothing will work, and settle for a duplicitous message to fool the public.

It was essential to present the story to the newspaper reporters without making too much cause and effect out of the..breaking of the engagement and Satoko's becoming a nun. They must be presented as separate events- but their chronological sequence would have to be reversed.. A bare hint would be dropped that.. there was a causal relationship, but the families.. requested that they refrain from disclosing this. (page 341)

Again, this is tricky to get your head around. The main thing is it's to do with changing the sequence of events - ie the true story. Instead if Satoko wilfully becoming a nun, this becomes incidental to the "fact" that she"s insane.

It does work quite well as news, but of course the entire flesh and blood element of nobility and doomed love is missing. The news becomes positive from the point of view of the Imperial Prince's family honour, but is a subterfuge of sequence.

Once news loses a true sequence of events, there is much less there that is honest blood and guts. If that were so, then the more you looked at the information supplied by the news, the less you would see in reality.

But what is a true sequence of events in reality? Well, it's anything to do with life and death: a struggle sychch as the one in Conan #25. You recall the mirrors of Tuzun Thune show a serpent fighting a griffin. Struggle produces sequence in terms of life and death.

It's the animal side of things; it's the life of a garden with pests and predators.

..the inner garden.. contained several huge maple trees that were crowned with red, but as one looked down at the lower branches, this paled to an orange that finally merged into a light green. The red at the top was very dark, with a quality suggestive of congealed blood.. They returned to the parlor, while Her Reverence and the Countess engaged in polite conversation.. (page 322)

Mishima's descriptions are quite germain to Conan - particularly the BWS issues. The mirrors of Tuzun Thune in the Conan story in this case tell the truth - that Conan kills Kharam Akkad.

In my modern day scenario - of electromagnetic illusions or mirrors - this could be explained by saying we are INSIDE the mirrors and are dominated by authoritian information (of acolytes). Mirrors are both truthful and illusory; they can be used to good effect (as in the Conan story), or they can be used to confuse truth with illusion.

If science since Newton - inductive reason (lightbox, see C4-6) - supplies information as opposed to the hot animal side of things, then it could be a sorcerous illusion. The reality is in Satoko's body, the living embryo that is cut out.

The reality is bloody and fertile; a garden is bloody and fertile. We have to get back to the garden as Joni Mitchell's lyric goes.

It's not an easy ride; it has pain and joy. The mirror of illusions has neither. The one thing it has is the words of acolytes. The authoritarian system - Babylon System --stifles independence, which is simply the body being active in the natural state. The connection to our animal side is bloody and sexual. 

Simple fables have the truth that the news suppresses with "pure information" (words, numbers)

TAN AND SEE (Max Romeo)

Hyborian Bridge 153

 A letter to Heavy Metal has stayed with me, even though long lost. At the time Lou Stathis was editor and a guy wrote a cunning jibe which went something like,

'Unlike rock, baroque is characterized by a lack of stasis. HM would be better characterized by a lack of Stathis.'

This came to mind as stasis in the modern world seems never ending. Time is the ultimate experience and it seems to disappear day by day. The faster we move the less we experience it.

Could it be something to do with relative motion? All motion could be relative to another - so what we really need to do is get back to absolute reality: the experience of time.

In Spring Snow, Kiroaki's friend Honda is escorting Satoko away from an illicit moonlit liaison in a chauffeured Ford (it gets confusing!) one of the first in Japan. Honda is questioning her love affair, as she is now sworn to Prince Toinn.

"I've known supreme happiness, and I'm not greedy enough to want what I have to go on forever. Every dream ends. Wouldn't it be foolish, knowing that nothing lasts forever, to insist that one has a right to do something that does? I've nothing in common with these 'new women'. But..if eternity existed, it would be this moment. And perhaps you, Mr Honda, will come round to seeing it this way some day." (page 246)

On the trip she discovers some sand in her shoe (which could reveal her escapade)

Behind him he heard the sound - so faint that he thought he must be imagini g it at first - of Satoko pouring the sand from the shoe she had taken off. To Honda, it sounded like the most enchanting hourglass in the world. (page 248)

Time is often evoked by the sea with its endless sounds if surf on rocks. The advance if a wave is both positive and negative; it surges forward purposefully, then breaks into dissolution. Mishima applies this to their seemingly doomed love.

Everything that framed the two of them - the moonlit sky, the sparkling water, the breeze that blew across the sandy beach to rustle the pines at its edge - all these boded destruction. Just beyond the merest flicker of time there boomed a monstrous roar of negation. Its message was carried in the sound of the pines. (page 244)

Again dawn tinged the ocean. A redder glow lit the river mouth. Conan of Cimmerian leaned on his great sword upon the white beach, watching the Tigress swinging out on her last voyage. There was no light in his eyes that contemplated the glassy swells. Out of the rolling blue water all glory and wonder had gone. (Queen of the Black Coast)

The fact that power and dissolution are part of one process is bound up with the way we experience time (Mishima applies this to Satoko's climax on the seashore). Is it possible that in the modern world this experience is being hemmed-in?

To experience time freely is not only to be free, but to be free to rebel against hostile forces. Kiyoaki's salty grandmother delivers quite a speech when his I discretions are finally discovered.

"Getting the betrothed of the Imperial Prince pregnant! Now there's an achievement! How many of these simpering lads nowadays are capable of anything like that?.." She was speaking now in retaliation against all those others who surrounded her in old age, and whose treacherous power she could sense closing in to crush her. Her voice came echoing gaily out of another era, a violent era forgotten by this generation, in which fear of imprisonment and death held no one in check, an era in which the threat of both was part of the texture of everyday life. She belonged to a generation of women who thought nothing of washing their dinner plates in a river while corpses went floating past. (page 289)

It's the sense of negatives being part of the scenery; foul smells, foul deeds (see TofF2). There is more than a hint of REH in here! The hero is almost berserk at times and verging on revolutionary acts.

It was as if a pack of wolves went raging through the darkness of a sacred precinct. The malevolence fell short of realisation; it escaped the notice of Kiroaki himself: it was born and died in his eyes- but for an instant they flashed with the image of a savage destroyer. (page 277)

Of course, we know about Mishima's extremeism, but the opposite trend to that is to literally have no contrasts atall; to have a world where the only news that us acceptable has to be positive news.

In other words, where there is no slavery, no Confederacy, no historical rebellion. Yes, I'm talking about the USA today. It's become a litigious place, and news has become the authority. But that type of news is not a story; a story has a beginning, a middle and an end - the course of time.

The story of the civil war whereby things changed: where you could say a negative became a positive. Familiarity with the settings of Mark Twain.

Whatever one's view of it, the changes are information and constitute a story. Without the narrative all you have is a positive with zero information.

Also, in a sense news has replaced our experience of time with pure "information", " facts". Its an authoritarianism of the parallel reality where all is relative.

But time is the ultimate absolute, seen in the moon and the stars above. Authoritarianism -as Kemp says in "Collapse if Civilization"- is the way 'they' have of dispensing facts that control us.

The point of 'news,' is that the biggest news of all is ignored. That is pregnancy that takes a nine month gestation. A temporal event; speech and song and everything we are capable of bodily are temporal events.

News replaces stories with facts 'they' use to govern us. Stories can be myth - see prev on Medieval Prester John - and that us part if their enchantment. Anything that is temporal affects us psychically, and so the world becomes less factual.

A fact us something that seems very real - in the parallel universe of numbers and electromagnetism; the future of Musk and Hus exploding starships.

A DAY IN THE LIFE (meaningless news?)

Hyborian Bridge 152

The flip-flop plot has Kiyoaki finally getting frisky with Satoko in an antechamber. Up to that moment, the highly wrought descriptions of surging shoots and plunging waterfalls had set the tone to come. It's a sort of mixture of elegance and animal passion.

The strength of that syndrome is often freely evoked by the high-spirited antics of the workhorses.

The horses, with their powerful, smooth-muscled bodies, suddenly reared back or kicking their hooves against the boards, struck Kiyoaki as having a pulsating life appropriate to the New Year... The high-strung beasts glared sidelong at their tormentors with bloodshot eyes. This delighted the children even more since these baleful looks were proof that the horses regarded them as adults.(page 76)

Kiyoaki, despite his dreamy lapses into an almost Byronic stupor, has a lot of affinity with the nervous beasts. In order to segue his long-delayed meeting with Satoko, who has become enmeshed in court-intrigue, he pigeonholes the Arakuya's tiny charge d'affaire Tadeshima.

From time to time, Tadeshina whispered somethinf to herself which Kiyoaki heard only in snatches: "This us why I tried to stop her...this is why I said not to do it." She was evidently muttering about having opposed Satoko's writing of that final letter.

He maintained his silence, with increasing confidence that he held the winning hand. A wild animal seemed to be gradually if invisibly rearing its head within him. (page 186)

The likeness of wildness to human conduct is apparent throughout the book. There is also a crudity that is somewhat reminiscent of American Indian tales. For example, when Kiyoaki arranges a tryst between his tutor Iinuma and Mine in the 'sacred' library.

And when Iinuma had thus defiled what was so precious to him, Kiyoaki would be as delighted as if he had taken a piece if raw meat and rolled it up.in a sacred Shinto pendant. In legendary times, the savage god Susano, the brother of the Sun Goddess, had found satisfaction in the same way. (page 105)

Ever since Freud, we (the west) have been accustomed to think of sex as a psychological burden. In the ancient and medieval landscape, it is much more a case of simply being part of the cosmic fecundity of everything from the stars to the planets to a sprig of parsley on a plate (Milton's Paradise Lost is a cosmic sex yarn among other things).

This in turn implies that fertility and the dirt of the fields are one thing. Fertility is tantamount to robust health -being in the mood for love - and robustness is found in the fields, where the presence of dirt invigorates the body's immune defences.

The frolicking gayness of people young and old is itself a sign of health (see Cider With Rosie prev). Strength and health in the field is to do with line - the shapes that things adopt in free-form.motion of surging growth. It is the expression of time, the flexing of tensile stress to achieve a unified form.

This entire area is basically bypassed by a factual world where facts exist as pure information.

It's as if we live in a vast hospital where resistant microbes flourish in the established colonies, rather than in free-form spirit and joie-de-vivre pursuits 

What is the proof that a life of spirit in nature is more healthy? The point is that living things are composed of zestful lines in time, so that is a good definition of health.

These lines are comprised of surging fertility which naturally declines through a process of decay and ultimate regeneration. This entire cyclical process that exists in time experiences time as its basic modus operandus.

The west has essentially bypassed that fertile area for Einstein's spacetime continuum, or a type of mathematical construct of stasis that attracts the ego of acolytes (to number).

The question is existential: do we exist as information or as temporal beings with frolicsome ways? We only exist as information to the ego - the ego of acolytes of the mirror of illusions (number or electromagnetism).

Mishima's descriptions often take-in the presence of both creation and destruction in the same process (of living and dying, of dirt and cleanliness). The process of vibrant time is a very eastern viewpoint, here cumulus clouds.

One moment their brilliant white shapes dominated the sky, and the next, they dissolved into something trivial, an enervated banality. Yet their dissolution was a kind if liberation. For as he watched, their scattered remnants gradually reformed and as they did so, they cast strange shadows over the garden as if an army were marshalling its forces in the sky above. Its might first overshadowed the beach and the vegetable field, and then, moving up toward the house, it overran the southern border of the garden. The vivid colors of the leaves and flowers that covered the garden slope, laid out in imitation of Sugakuin Palace, glowed like a mosaic in the dazzling sunlight - maples, sakakis, tea shrubs, dwarf cedars, daphnes, azaleas, camellias, pines, box trees, Chinese black pines, and all the others- and then suddenly it was all in shadow; even the cicada's song was hushed, as though in mourning. (page 217)

The shadowy presence of death is also a key feature in Howard's writing.

Vines curled up the walls of the palace, and even as Kull mused upon the ease with which they might be climbed, a segment of shadow detached itself from the darkness below the window and a bare, brown arm curved up over the wall. Kull's great sword hissed halfway from the sheath; then the king halted. Upon the muscular forearm gleamed the dragon armlet shown him by Ka-nu the night before.(The Shadow Kingdom, King Kull page 29)

Hyborian Bridge 151

Staying with Mishima, as Spring Snow is the first in the Sea of Fertility tetralogy. He is writing about the zest of sexy living things in a lost world where natural balance still persists.

In this world, the seclusions and attractions of nature match those if the human subjects. Satoko is a beauty who parallels the cherry blossoms, the nape of her neck sanctified.

I mean, Ivanka Trump is cute but you couldn't say that about her! With seclusion in nature comes realism - as opposed to facts - and closeness to the symbolism of natural symmetry.

The Sea of Fertility is a psychic reality as opposed to a material illusion. Reality and symbolism are closest in the contours of balance that surround elemental nature.

Satoko had never looked more beautiful than now as she closed her eyes, still struggling in his arms. But although there was no feature, no contour that marred the delicacy of her face, it was nevertheless imprinted with a subtle, fleeting cast of willfulness. The corners of her lips were slightly upturned. He anxiously tried to make out whether she was smiling or crying, but her face was already deep in shadow, an omen of the darkness almost upon them. He looked down at her ear, half-hidden by her hair. With its tinge of pink and its fine curve, the wonder of it made him think of a delicate coral recess that more hht appear in  dream, containing a tiny, beautifully carved Buddha. There was something mysterious about the hollow of the ear, now fading in the darkness. (page 134 - cf Moebius, Is Man Good?)

This type of Japanese preciousness runs through the book - but is it precious or simply a world the west has lost? Messner-Loeb's Journey (prev) has a similar preciousness that connects the wiles and customs of folk to the fecundity if natural forms.

Facts go contrary to this wilful charm because facts are barren of universal symmetries. They tend to be true only insofar as they occupy an illusion of weakness; the monetary system, the flow if goods. 

Money has become reality because goods are much more numerical than in days of yore. See The Royal Exchange (HB6) when artisan ware and eastern fabrics were exchanged as tokens of taste and beauty.

Taste does nor come into "facts" owing to the lack of the natural connection.

The trees along the way bore evidence of a remarkable surge of growth with their clusters of new leaves and branches. The mountains were a mass of green that ranges from a near yellow to a dark tone verging on black. The bright young maple leaves stood out especially against the general outpouring of green that made the whole countryside glitter. (page 153, elegant description)

The aristocratic society described - around 1915 - sanctifies natural events in periodic festivities that are gay and blossoming with fecundity.

The fecundity is mirrored in the society. On one occasion a flock of geishas are employed to play-act and play instruments, flirting with lover-boy Kiyoaki.

The lax morality is not lost on the patrons of this dying social order. In one sequence, Satoko probes Kiyoaki's father the Marquis on his son's "knowledge".

'Well, according to what I've heard from Kiyo, his father seems to be a great advocate of the empirical approach. He told me that you treated him to a guided tour of the world of geishas so that he could learn how best to conduct himself there. And Kiyo seems to be very happy with the results, feeling that he's now quite a man. But really, Marquis Matsugae, is it true that you champion the empirical method even at the expense of morality?'..

'What a difficult question! That's just the sort if thing these moral reform groups ask in their petitions to the Diet. Well, if what Kiyoaki said were true, I could muster something in my defence. But the truth is this: Kiyo himself rejected just that very educational opportunity..' (page 140)

The Marquis also sleeps around with the Maud Mine and a lodged mistress. So the society is lax in what you could call a sense of natural fecundity.

The subtext of this is that nature also cleanses - with its strong fecund presence. Dirt and cleanliness are difficult to disentangle; the very strength of growth and health.

By way of his patronial spirit, the Marquis also dispenses favors. Kiyoaki's tutor, Iinuma, has been found to be liaising with Mine.

"Yes, in the old days I would have had to cut him down. But times have changed. And then he came here with a fine recommendation from the people in Kagoshima, and I know had s old middle-school principal, who comes up here to give us New Year greetings. It's best to let him go without creating ant kind of stir that would damage his future prospects. Not only that, but I want to handle it tactfully, so as to make things east for him. I'll send off Mine on her own too. And then if they're still both in the mood and want to marry, well and good. I'm willing to fund work for him. The main thing is I want to get him out of the house, so it would be besr to handle it in a wat that would give him no cause for resentment. That's the best thing. After all, he served you faithfully for such a long time, and we have no complaints about him.in that regard." 

This is close to the old European order of patrnage and equal laxity (see Bergmann's Fanny and Alexander).

In all cases, the "facts" are never clean and wholesome, but tinged with dirt and wilfulness. But the very fecundity of the situation cleanses any lingering stink. Apart from anything else, toxins are destroyed by exposure to germs that strengthen the immune system response; modern "facts" merely confuse the situation into a morass of expert testimony (aka junk).

This entire world of strength and (Byronic) beauty is swiftly gone. After all, nature's things wilt and are easily paved-over. True, their strength will prevail - but when? The puritanical moderns even abhor shooting vermin - a natural pursuit of woodsmen and gamekeepers in nature's bounty.

After Iinuma had gone, he stood at the open window gazing down at the beautiful reflection of the marble hill, with its fresh mantle of new leaves, as it floated on the water of the pond. Close to the window itself, the foliage of the zelkova was so thick that he had to lean our in order to see the place at the bottom of the hill where the last of the nine waterfalls plunged into the pool. All around the edge of the pond, the surface was covered with clusters of pale green water shields. The yellow water lillies had not yet flowered, but in the angles of the stone bridge that zigzagged a path close to the main reception room, irises were pushing their purple and white blossoms out from sharp-pointed clusters of green leaves. (page 163)

The moon had not risen when Kull, hand to hilt, stepped to a window. The windows opened upon the great inner gardens of the royal palace, and the breezes of the night, bearing the scent of spice trees, blew the filmt curtains about. The king looked out. The walks and groves were deserted; carefully trimmed trees were built shadows; fountains near by flung their slender sheen if silver in the starlight and distant fountains rippled steadily. No guards walked these gardens, for so closely were rgw outer walla guarded that it seemed impossible for any invader to gain access to them. (Robert Howard The Shadow Kingdom, page 29 King Kill)

Hyborian Bridge 150

 You probably didn't appreciate from HB149's statement that universal rhythms are converted into electromagnetism, that I was suggesting we are literally living inside a reflection - a sorcerous illusion, a hall of mirrors (HB20).

For example, P150 has (last para) the case of protein folding being converted into the numbers of an algorithm. While there's no reason Man can't advance into the future, what tends to happen is that our ability to act independently without assistance is compromised wholesale.

In other words, by advance modern Man means to become non-viable as a primitive. Why is that important? Because the human form is tens of thousands of years old - see abnormal or 'micro-evolution HB132.

Anything primitive and old doesn't change and obeys the rhythms of the stars by spontaneously folding into shape. This is Bruce Lee's response-in-time that has no routine and is outside routine. It is pure expressive rhythm, flexing as it goes.

It is Sarah Vaughan or Liza Minnelli or Lee Perry or Grace Slick; those who practice routine then rise above it.

Routine and expression are two separate things; one exists in time, the other is predetermined. In primitive nature there exists an unthinking expression that is very real.

So, when saying natural rhythms are being converted (by advance), this is the result of routine or number (algorithm). Inductive reason since the time of Newton (C4-C6) is the ultimate routine, allowing of no unthinking expression.

In that sense it is not real - and hence we live inside a reflection (electromagnetism or number). The reflection is ultras convincing -almost better than the real thing! But the difference is clear from this quote from Mishima's Spring Snow.

The ancient ceremony fell on the seventeenth if August according to the lunar calendar. A large wooden basin filled with water was placed in the garden to catch a reflection of the moon, and appropriate offerings were made. If the sky was overcast on thus August night of his fifteenth year, bad fortune was expected to dof the boy who stood before the basin, for the rest of his life.. Since this ceremony during his fifteenth year was to determine his lifetime fortune, Kiyoaki felt as though his very soul, naked, had been set there on the wet grass. The wooden sides I'd the basin expressed his outer self; the disk of water, which they in turn defined, expressed his inner. Everyone was silent, so the sounds of insects throughout the garden filled his ears as never before. He gazed earnestly into the basin.. Then all if a sudden the black water in the basin, which had seemed impenetrably obscure, cleared, and there diectly in its centre shone a tiny image of the full moon.(Random House, page 34,35)

The Japanese ritual uses the moon as a symbol of the psyche. The moon is a highly symbolic object in that it is highly symmetrical to the day's orb (Artemis and Apollo). In the real, unthinking universe (of the psyche), objects are symbolic, not material.

The material world is created by routine; in other words, by converting natural expression into number (algorithm, as with Musk, natch.)

A primitive world is created by belief, as was suggested by the findings at Gobeklitepe (prev). Belief springs from the physical activities of the freely expressive body, whether in herding animals, in agriculture or in hunt regathering.

From the physical activities and the beliefs develop the formalities of a society, such as feudal Japan. A formal, feudal order is liable to be highly symbolic. The graces are alive.

A material society kills symbolism with routine. The routines of feudal Japan are symbolic while the routines of modern Japan are material. There's some overlap, but this is evident throughput Mishima's book.

Hence, modern Japan may be increasingly divorced from ritual symbolism, and there are even calls for Geishas to go! This is the mindbloc of materialism. Materialism increases information, but at the cost of primal rhythm. There's no such thing as a free lunch.

For example, here's a letter from Journey #4

'Dear Mr Macalistaire,

I be right glad to be makin yur acquaintinsship as fur as I be also a man what has an appreshiashin fur a lan what has no civileesashin no farms and no shoutin just trees an sky an considibull silens, an as yue appears to be a man a reespeck an good guts an quick wits as I be an a damblain good shot.

I enjoyed readin your adventurs an think they wus wrote an drawd right good except yus occashunally looked a lot like Benjamin Frankelin.

This ain't much but a letter of thank yue an encourigmint as I be a 33 year old green mountain Vermont persin with no suggedtshun but fur ta luk-out any earthpigs carryin swords as they mighty mean littil crittirs espeshully wet.'

It's like saying everything is law and logic - and there is a long section in Spring Snow on the difference between natural (Socratic) law and the Asian tradition of Manu, which includes the origin of the cosmos (psyche).

Law is something that acts on existence, so it either includes the concept in its own writings as does Manu, or it is simply a construct of logic that cannot overstep its bounds

The bounds of nature, which is something you could say is found in the down-home lingo of the above letter. That is to say, the activities of the body, like a rabbit or a pig, are the reality of living in nature by trackin, shootin, firin up and fryin.

This was also the reality in the days of Aristotle, in a way, when the peaceful havens of secluded places were hallowed under the boughs above. It is even more the tradition of Diogenes in his barrel!

The primitive is hallowed whereas the law can just be an ass. This is even truer of western science - previously known as 'natural philosophy' - which has become an unnatural alien invasion.

In our reality facts are also fictions in that they are facts of weakness that attract the ego of acolytes to the mirror of nothingness (HB20).

The one thing that can be said to be real is the balance found in the reflection of Mishima's bowl ritual, as it is symbolic of natural symmetry in the universe (psyche).

A world where natural balance is missing has the weakness of facts - which are also fictions of this world that lacks balance, or realism.

Reality and symbolism are closely tied by natural balance. A woman's figure is symbolic of fertility. An earthpig is symbolic of having an earthbound snout - etc.

Losing track of symbolism is also losing track of realism, in the forests and mountains and glens that lie under the heavens above.

Hyborian Bridge 149

(cont) The warrior is supple and rides with the wind, getting in touch with reality. The physical reality is where differences exist and the reckless sprit creates ripples of small-scale conflict. As noted previously (), the rebellious spirit thrives in small-scale conflicts in ancient societies as one Caesar replaces another. The notion of a mainstream of sameness is foreign to the ancients; the basic balance of differences is lost and you don’t know your ass from your elbow.

Differences are found in rhythmic ways of life which are simple and physical. Even as recent as the 50s, 60s soul singer Joe Tex was a share-cropper who’s family lived by cotton picking. It’s noticeable that Tex’s pattern of speech is countrified and homely, and his simple moral tales laid the foundations both of rap, and country soul somewhat akin to the Flying Burritos.

The country life is found in the rhythms of speech and song

BUYING A BOOK

..a preacher man, a guy close to Liza Minnelli’s heart (son of, that is) who performed another Tex ditty to great effect in 72

I GOTCHA

Speech and patois is something that is related to simple patterns of living, as with Wolverine MacAlistaire (HB147). What I mean is, the reality of the speech is partly rhythmic, not informative.

Journey #8

Nowadays, in a world of pure information, such patois is barely heard. Perhaps mainly in rap and such exponents as Kanye West are the rhythms of speech respected.

The basic point is that, unless reality is purely information (number or AI) then it is at base rhythmic and flexible. These are seen in the ecological and artisanal areas that West seems intent on developing in his Wyoming cotton plantation.

The reality of rhythm is continually converted by modernity into the reality of a reflection – or electromagnetism (electricity). It takes the rebellious instinct to imagine in the simple terms of a reality that is at base flexible and ecological and not bound by the iron suit of electromagnetism that attracts the ego of acolytes to number; to the reality of a reflection in a hall of infinite mirrors (HB20)

The reality of a reflection is a fantasy that is at the same time highly convincing – practically real – it fools us even as it saps us of primal strength.

Spirit emanates from the rhythms of living – from physical existence on Earth. It’s impossible to imagine a form of life that doesn’t exist as a flexible rhythm since it’s the most basic spatial/temporal component.

Only a sorcerous fantasy could exist without that component; one that binds our wills with words of malefaction.

Being more down-to-earth, if you take a Gaelic community on the west coast of Scotland that lives IN time it is vastly more rhythmic than the “norm” – see Denizens of the Netherworld2

Going back 10,000 years, the archaeological discoveries at

  

Gobeklitepe

in Anatolia have uncovered a hilltop temple complex -

The monoliths were laid out by a hunter-gatherer society, suggesting that spiritual considerations well predate a settled agrarian society. It has even been suggested that the work involved in constructing the temple led people to adopt a more settled existence. In other words, the spiritual beliefs came before the agrarian settlements.

The carvings on the monoliths reminded me of Egyptian deities such as Horus, Bastet and Seth (Set) in being fairly ferocious and not merely to do with fertility.

One could hazard a Hyborian connection with the sky gods of the nomadic beliefs predating Ishtar (Yaple). Be it a hunting or a herding culture, the primitive rhythms of living introduce belief and spirit into the ancient world.

These primitive rhythms are still there, but are converted into the electromagnetic, numerical order that our sorcerous fantasy is composed of. When that happens, everything becomes routine because it is based on nothing “real”. The fantasy of routine appears real to the ego but is not IN time.

After all, African drums or Amerindian dances are a form of control mechanism; the society doesn’t need authoritarian figures to tell it what to do.

The fact that society is primitive makes it very real. Japan is one of the most advanced countries on Earth yet has one of the highest suicide rates. One factor may be this split between a very routine culture and an ancient heritage of very pure instinct and ancestor worship.

The maids were leading the youngh woman in the aquamarine kimono across the stepping-stones, her head bent forward, and even at that distance the white nape of her neck was visible to Kiyoaki. It made him think of Princess Kasuga and her creamy white neck.. (Spring Snow, page 20. Mishima)

There is a difference with the routines described by Mishima, which are infused by traditional belief.

In a sense, the routines of modernity are cutting out the primitive side of things and one ends up with words about words rather than a society that exists IN time. These societies are balanced between body and head, as previously mentioned, the serpentine neck and sinuous spine – unthinking, graceful – instinctive actions of quotidian life.

Hyborian Bridge 148

Going Japanese, the Zen of Universal spirit is the unthinking wildness of Journey; the refined culture of Byron recited in a log cabin round about the lakes in Michigan.

Spiritual rhythm justifies the information that proves of value to tillers of the soil and farmer-poets of yore – Diosthenes (). Spirit meaning the sort of interplay between life and death at a deep level.

There are those who say Zen is found in quanta in the theories of great mathematicians, but I think that is misguided. If you go back to Einstein’s quote

“As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”

It conceivably refers to the uncertainty principle of quantum physics. If nature were mathematically certain then it would be composed of numbers – as AI is. It’s no great surprise that’s not the case, and one could say that uncertainty is just a manifestation of the flexible, springy nature of reality (HB147)

Bruce Lee said to be flexible (in a fighting style) is to be without routine. To be perfectly responsive and in time. Otherwise, one is not acting in the reality of time, but in the predetermined order of routine.

Lee said there are two sides to reality, and they cannot be reconciled: “a wild beast and a robot.” Mathematics is the robotic side of this equation; the wild beast is something like the Chinese Dragon that weaves and tumbles in crazy motion.

Without the dragon, the zest of living is lost to science. If nature has an innate flexibility (uncertainty), then any mathematical theory – such as quanta – will fall outside the uncertainty.

This can be called luck – fortune, which Byron said

I have always believed that all things depended upon Fortune, and nothing upon ourselves.

Luck can be called spirit as something manifesting in the universe astrologically (see Theosophy).

These themes come into the Japanese anime Macross Plus, an unusual take on the Macross franchise formula of mechas and love triangles including a musical AI called Sharon Apple.

SHARON

The two test pilots Isamu and Guld are rivals for the affections of Myung, an ex-singer who calls herself the producer of Sharon’s innovative sound and light show. It turns out the AI is incomplete and Sharon is the frontwoman for what is really Myung’s voice and emotions.

She feels like she has sold her simple dream of childlike joy to a complex hollow-gram, but her childlike song later saves Isamu’s life.

VOICES

Sharon goes mad and manifests her love for Isamu through the joy of song, taking over the Macross flying fortress. She thinks she has gained a soul, and her hypnotic song takes Isamu to the edge of death (the highest emotion)in his high-flying mecha.

Unfortunately for her, her whole premise is a delusion; a machine can neither live nor die as it’s just numbers. Rather than mechanically fighting the rogue AI, Isamu rides the wind in Zen fashion, finally crashing into the Macross control centre, and Sharon simply blinks and fades into non-existence.

A machine which thinks it has a soul is thinking outside the flexibility of luck and fortune that is actually what constitutes soul or the astrological dimension.

Sharon’s misguided AI could easily represent the entire field of quantum physics, which misguidedly thinks uncertainty is something that can be understood mathematically. Rather, it is simply the limitation of numbers in a world of innate flexibility. Numbers are not real in the sense that, like Sharon, they can be switched off.

A numerical universe, as Einstein’s quote hints, is not real but a fantasy. This is the sorcerous fantasy that has become the modern order with the likes of Musk and his exploding Starships.

To the extent that numbers ARE real, that may invoke mystical, Pythagorean connotations – which physicists would naturally abhor!

The mystical sense of fortune is in Macross Plus the reckless Isamu who is inspired by a pterodactyl and is lucky in love. Isamu is the introspective warrior who notes to the technicioan, “Luck is one of my skills.”

Hyborian Bridge 147

Proteins fold into shape via a spontaneous physical process – mainly tensile stress and springiness – so as to fit neatly and tidily into the serpentine squiggle.

You might call it a type of reflex tendency that achieves a simple result, somewhat akin to Ockham’s razor. Nature has a tendency to be symmetrically simple even if there is an underlying complexity.

Algorithms convert this simplicity into the complexity of numbers, which satisfies the ego of acolytes. Science is heading in one direction; into information as supplied by electromagnetism. The problem with that was approached awhile back, in that all data to the brain is electrochemical (HB62/1)

As was said in P149 the numerical compulsion achieves sameness – identified with sexual neutrality (see Godard WeekendP103). Capital achieves sameness because it’s not so much capital as “goods-all”. We buy goods with money and the goods become increasingly similar and linked to electromagnetism.

The future according to Biden is electrical – which “they” identify with green. However, that future is not physically real since the physical is like proteins; springy and sinuous, reflexing into shape with a power and zest.

Whereas sameness is neutral and appeals to the ego, physical reality is strong and with a primitive simplicity. To be more particular, “springiness” achieves time and space; the shape is produced in a certain time-span.

Living things live in time so that they are springy at a deep level (Bruce Lee, the flexible bough is supple and bends with the wind). Numbers and electromagnetism are not living in that sense.

As has already been hinted at, Einstein’s spacetime continuum is a direct descendent of Newton’s light-box experiments (C4-C6). In the physical reality of living things, there is no continuum in that the shapes of things – such as proteins – are broken-down in decay in a sequence from past (life) to future (death).

The spacetime continuum can only exist when there is no decay and so no regeneration – which isn’t on the living planet Earth. The mathematical theories counter the natural reality, as Einstein’ quote seems to bear out.

“As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.” (meaning the mathematical universe can be a fantasy).

I don’t want to badass Einstein, but the mathematicians that are attracted to the theory give it a bad name or, to quote Albert,

Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity, I do not understand it myself anymore.

In nature, time and space are extremely tidily stratified in multiple successions as is blatantly apparent in the scientific study of peatlands (fens, bogs) and their associated woodland areas. All wetland areas have plants growing in the permanently saturated (anaerobic or deoxidised) and therefore very slowly decaying peat.

Fens have strong growth over thousands of years on top of groundwater sources. A common transition has been found from watery marshes to peat-rich fens, and from fens to Sphagnum bogs fed by surface water (rain, streams).

The most obvious mechanism for this sequence is that the growth of peat in fens eventually grows higher than the source of groundwater, and therefore can no longer grow as a fen.

Tim Conrad, HB8

This is a typical natural development in time and space that has the strength of physical reality (water, minerals, plants, animals). Physical reality is a mixture of life and death, which is often found in common dirt – loam, prairie.

As has been noted before, the physical reality is pathogen-destroying and cleansing. There is always a balance between dirt and cleanliness, as for example was apparent in the sequel to Red Nails.(HB108) where Valeria’s bath comes after stench-laden treks through fungi-infested caverns.

There is a sequence from dirt to cleanliness; obviously you can’t have a continuum where one is both dirty and clean! The power of nature is in this sequence of cleansing. Bill Gates’s pathogen-killing toilet (HB31)converts these physical rhythms into a technical illusion of hygiene. In terms of electromagnetism, the powerful rhythms of a physical reality are replaced with the reality of a reflection – an illusion of “smart machines”, a hall of mirrors (HB20).

Where the physical rhythms are respected, one has mineral waters and Roman Baths (HB2). The strength and cleansing aspects are respected in resplendent settings that are full of psychic luster.

The sorcerous parallel reality of the ego is akin to the Black Sun of Noto (HB122 etc). There is a conversion of physical rhythms into electromagnetic impulses (that attract the ego of acolytes). The grandeur of the Roman Baths and mineral baths of yore that respect natural rhythms are lost in the mists of time.

A conversion of physical rhythms into “smart” products – see “clean meat”. The media, as the talking heads of modernism, tend to promote these advances (DT)

Translation: you don’t know your ass from your elbow (see cuts of meat etc. HB59). In the final analysis, everything could be electrochemical excitations to the brain. The primitive, unthinking nature of dreams and rhythms is lost to time – or to the loss of time in our experience.

The modern order is built on the lack of universal rhythms. These are replaced by talking heads expounding on the reality of a reflection. The traditional reality is based on universal rhythms that are unthinking (the dream of the universe), which are apparent in the grandeur of the prairies that harbour the great herds of yore.

This is time and space in the traditional sense that things change over time (as opposed to a continuum). Dirt changes to cleanliness in the loam of the fertile plains.

There is no such thing as universal hygiene as this is simply weakness and lack of change (whereby one thing turns into another). See Buffy quote on metamorphosis of buffalo manure dried fuel for fires on the range. Traditional people live in this mode whereby the great plains and forests cleanse the dirt and are fertile.

In this situation, the symmetries of nature are somewhat obvious. It is almost the ideal of the Old West. The rhythms and movements of the body are in-tune with the external situation. The sense of spirit is akin to traditional beliefs; as was noted of Hyboria in HB106 the beliefs in fertility goddesses justify the people’s practices and hence the information they value. Beliefs are true in terms of proportion and basic symmetries.

People who live in this mode cannot be told what to do; their bodies are sufficient justification. So it is quite like the old Indian way of living and hunting and herding, but also of the white men and women who pioneered the west.

The theme of people who are different types sharing a basic affinity (as with Howard’s Outremer P11) comes into the 80s comic Journey by Messner-Loebs.

Journey #8

In the first case, the first thing MacAlistaire and Crawfish do on meeting is to fight! It sets the tone in that the people tend to be friendly – but not that friendly. They are suspicious and nowhere is this more true than in Crawfish’s relationship with his Algonquin bride Sparrowdark.

Introspective adventurers read poetry.

They are friendly and I guess love eachother, but “Indian culture is strong”, says Crawfish, and he is feeling somewhat lost. They will get by as they have so much in common, but it is not an easy ride.

In any case, why should living be easy? Is that not the great modern lie to lull is into a false sense of security?

There is a sense of rivalry and chivalry that underlies these old-time rustic relationships. They are not that close, but are drawn together by affinities of custom and the basic situation of being in the wideness of nature.

Universal rhythms are fertile – somewhat in the same sense as is sanctified at Newgrange (P140). Inductive experiment has slowly replaced the old gods and goddesses of nature. Well, actually, the goddesses that still exist are human!

ROCKIN’AND ROLLIN’ cotton picking Anna Mae who became Tina

“There were a number of difficult experiences that could have shattered me, but instead became fuel for my journey, propelling me upward.”  

'After surviving years of abuse, I knew I had an innate resilience I could tap into. If I could increase that, I knew I could become unshakably happy and make my dreams come true.’ (Daily Record)

Pictorial 150

Morrison’s Cassandra Nova storyline happens to encapsulate the dilemma of modernism. The plot, as previewed in P149 has Angel pilfering a DNA sample of Nova under the guidance of the Cuckoos. Emma Frost is able to cybernetically insert the DNA into a bum-faced alien invader called “Stuff”. The plot proceeds when Jean Grey is able to displace Nova to her bodiless (mummudri) state, and Emma Frost then entices her to think Stuff is her true body.

This is the sort of pseudo-scientific super-science that Morrison is renowned for – corporate entities being a speciality. See this link to Biden’sWestExec ) affiliations.

Modernism is delusional and doesn’t know its ass from its elbow. See prev on “smart meat” (P130). Nova is massively intelligent and has the X-Men running in circles but – in the end – their human fire defeats her dry-as-dust machine-mind.

New X-Men #126, Quitely art

This could really be a motto for the modern dilemma. However advanced the method, it is synthetic and not organic, not natural and able to be left to its own devices. The corporate-executive head deals increasingly in the efficiency of numbers (algorithms) which produces sameness (P149). However, in a bodiless state there are no physical rhythms of the body; meaning, a community that sings together, that breathes the same air, that swallows the same food.

Obviously, communities exist but their physical reality doesn’t enter the equations of the alien heads – who deal in numbers and charts. The physical reality – as mentioned previously – is the balance between body and head, the romance of the throat, speech and song. Proportionate balance is something outside the agenda of the aliens.

A good example of a physical reality is a South American barrio – as depicted in Love and Rockets (prev.) It is a place where efficiency and numbers don’t really exist, but where physical rhythms of living and breathing are powerful and visceral.

I happened to read in a piece on Diego Maradona that, growing-up in an Argentinian barrio, he once fell into an open sewer. His uncle directed him to, “Keep your head above the shit!” A philosophy he apparently followed.

By saying that the human body is primitive by origin, it’s merely stating a truth that we are part of universal rhythms. We are in a state of balance rather than a corporate state.

Outside the barrio is the loam of the fields which cleanses naturally and destroys pathogens. A more primitive existence is more realistic and it’s a case of coming to realize modernism exists inside the reality of a reflection. A reflection that creates sameness. The rebel, who exists in physical reality, represents difference- that is the history of Man. The small-scale conflicts and psychic strength, especially where different people and types come together. That is the history of America in her original rebellious incarnation.

Journey #4

Where there is a state of difference and balance you always know your ass from your elbow as it’s blatantly obvious – you’re staring at it. In Journey, it’s also noticeable that MacAlistaire is the primitive. In #2 3 and 4 – the Sasquatch story – he is employed by the Huron to track a missing squaw.

Elmer Craft askes him dumbfoundedly why the “savages” should need a white man. “’Cos I’m not civilized”, replies MacAlistaire. “The Hurons are mainly farmers and fishers, I’m a woodsman, game-hunter, spoor-tracker.” (TofF11)

Without the primitive side of existing naturally – without assistance, independently – modernism faces the dilemma that any state of advance is really a state of conversion into something else. Something not natural (“unnatcherul”).

A conversion from universal rhythms. I happened to read that “DeepMind”, a British cyber-bio research group, has managed to decode protein folding. It’s an impressive advance, but it’s still synthetic in that they’re converting what is a natural phenomenon into the numbers of a super-computer. The result facilitates synthetic proteins. They forget

FASCINATING RHYTHM

 

Pictorial 149

Revisionism is not the reflection of reality, it is the reality of a reflection (La Chinoise, Godard)
This is one of Godard’s more abstract films, about a group of Parisian Maoists, but the quote could equally be applied to the progress of capital (dollar).

The “revisionist” is expelled from the group, and La Chinoise (Anne Wiazensky) goes on to advocate bombing colleges, and then mistakenly shoots the wrong target.

To her, action is realism and she is acting from a sense of culture against what is given by the establishment. As has been mentioned (), ancient societies were in a constant state of rebellion, which was “normal”, as Caesar was toppled and another took their place.

Conan and Kull followed that format. Historically Outremer was an area of psychic strength and constant rebellion. Religious states such as Turkey retain their psychic symmetry (P147); the dollar despite its apparent strength denies it.

If societies are not in a state of potential rebellion, it’s another way of saying there’s not much there apart from what is handed down from the establishment.

A rebel is rebelling against sameness and advocates action. Physical realism (perhaps that was the appeal of Maoism until the grotesque state tyranny took hold?). The contrary state is inactive unreality – or the reality of a reflection.

This could be the state we’re approaching, since so much of the work comes down to intelligent infrastructure. In this domain, efficient distribution is the key, and this comes down to the translation of words into numbers – algorithms.

Efficiency is really the opposite to rebellion, since it means one obeys the running of the machine. However, as was said of Lee Perry (), he invented dub in a Jamaican radio-shack simply by fooling around with the machinery. He had an intuitive knack.

Knowing too much is a case of having the machine do the work rather than the human creativity. Dub is primitive and dynamic, with a flair for experimentation.

By kowtowing to the machine, the instinctive simplicity is lost. Perry works against efficiency to achieve originality; the modern mainstream works with efficiency to achieve sameness.

The numerical compulsion of the ego is therefore driven by sameness. Godard, in Weekend, associates this with the anus, being sexually neutral – see P103

Babylon system is a case of getting ever closer to sameness. Rebellion is a sign of life and blood and prey.

New X-Men #125, Kordey art

WE ARE NEIGHBOURS

Dub represents the war between the rebel and the technology. Its idiosyncrasy is its message and its meaning. Living and breathing are an irreconcilable war against sameness.

Exactly the same applies to gamekeepers who manage predators on moors and for farms (). As an update to that, the process of controlled burning of heather in England has come under a government ban (DT). The mindset of the minister is generally not to think of the state of dynamic growth that gamekeepers deal with yearly. They are not thinking realistically, only abstractly.

Associated with that, teenagers under 18 have been brutally restrained from holding airguns (DT). One trains to shoot for balance, both bodily and for the sake of wildlife.

The intelligence of Babylon system denies the primitive sense of balance in the landscape. The clearest sign of this is the recent sanctioning of a tunnel under Stonehenge (DT).

Without the strength of primeval balance, things approach sameness. This is almost the same as saying nothingness, in terms of the symmetry of the psyche. A conviction of the ego without meaning.

Hyborian Bridge 146

The image of corporate America is caught by the SpaceX astronauts going for liftoff on Musk's machine.

If a corporation is the head, it makes sense to have a row of faces staring at you through space-visors. All helmeted space-faces seem to look oddly similar, like they've entered some parallel-verse. This was the one flaw of Outland, I felt, as the ''High Noon" battle took place suited-up outside of the colony (unlike the French Connection-style chase inside the gridiron complex).

Could that indicate that in space everyone becomes the same by dint of the technological imperative? A lone voice can fight for only so long. A lone wolf has to be different but what if the imperative of space is to become one with the machine via the algorithm?

What I really mean is that by conquering space, one enters a parallel dimension where algorithms rule. Anyone who challenges their authority is doomed to failure. (Space IS that reality, but it is possibly becoming apparent down here, if one thinks of the recent US election chaos!)

The parallel dimension convinces the ego for the reason it is composed of number, perspective and the rules that run it. 

As was said back in H06

on the Old Gods of Hyboria (the Shemitic mother goddesses), where there is belief in the strength of fertility, the worlds of information and belief are tied together. What is credited is what serves the laws of fertility and renewal. With this s can be associated obscene acts and the annual rebirth of the mate of the goddess with the cycle of vegetation (see Yaple).

The animalistic, the obscene and the filth if the earth revitalise through strength and cultish reverence. The animalistic represents sex, death, rebirth, the bloody hunt of prey. Does space represent the exit from this world through the universe of illusions (electromagnetism)?

Aldrin photographed by Armstrong (seen in reflection)

The mirror of illusions inside which things appear the same. Space is the most true mirror I that it is barren. The ego is persuaded by the image that reflects the truth of a perspective illusion.

Space is the place where the ego heads via algorithms (number). By ye same token, it's the domain of sameness. The gods and goddesses and their rustic physicality remain on Earth while Man - as a disembodied head - voyages the stars.

More broadly, since the new space frontier is built on computers, is it a case that the bigger the computer the better for everyone, as with Amazon's global franchise? Many would say that is America's future. An interesting image is this one from Conan #1 that juxtaposes future space travel with a sorcerer.

The sorcerer's overreaction could be that of shock the old gods had been overturned in this far future epoch! The gods are difficult to escape though, their vengeance, as this Jefferson Starship track illustrates.

WINDS OF CHANGE

Gods and goddesses of the sky and earth represent the storms of creation and destruction. Unless those stories are outmoded the old ways could well return.

Kantner, though a fan of sci-fi and the romance of planetary voyage, is questioning all things in

AMERICA

Is the future America one of illusions? Beliefs incorporate obscene acts and from.them is born a society of strength and not simply one of information. How does one fight back when one's strength is sapped? 

By entering space, does one also enter a hermetically sealed capsule that essentially seals the head off from the outside world of the body (see Orphans of the Sky, a construction of the delusory mind as opposed to the physical universe that is visible to all).

An active world can be a simple one - see HB145 on Godard - and has the romance of physical balance.

The head and body are balanced together and obviously connected via the neck. Rather than saying that the head represents 'intellect' and the body is 'anti-intellectual', it's more true to say that a romantic world is one where action (body) puts emphasis on song, breathing, swallowing food (see P1). The hunt, the apres hunt (the piste, the apres piste).

The future'they' envisage is persuasive to the ego; for that reason one should be suspicious of its veracity. Their future is supposed to be 'smart' - meaning of the intellect - but in a way that means dumb, sincw we're going to be told what to do.

How to process information that is beyond one's ken? Is that what they want so that we enter an illusory mirror world of all these so-convincing images?

The head is electrochemical impulses (see ) but our primitive reality is muscular and to do with glands and serpent-like extensions. The primitive can't be reconciled to to what'they' term advance, it can only be ignored or replaced by a profane version (see previous).

The elegance of the human figure, the arch of the neck, the swaying sensual grooves, are truly intelligent because they express physicality. Without this the psyche is nowhere. Django without the performing women and guitar player (and horses) wouldn't be Django

"And me I don't want to go to the moon

I'm going to leave that moon alone

I just want to dance with the rosebud Sioux this summer" (Generation, Buffy)