Thursday 31 December 2020

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scene of a jet-black wig with Satoko inside reminded me of the final scene if Conan #25, where the Living Tarim has been replaced by a skull!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)