The Guillotine As A Tool Of Cognition

The camera loves him. The camera loves her.
The camera loves you,

and the rest of us, too.
Inside itself the camera creates

a mechanical projection
of 3D reality

on a 2D matrix. Inside us
the camera creates, too,

a mechanical projection
of our 4D existence

on 3D reality.
Camera consciousness develops

inside us and develops us.
Camera consciousness frames us

and squarely defines us
as an arbitrary collection

of chemical reactions,
reactions bounded by limits

itemized on a spec sheet
put together by engineers

working to the encompassing specs
of a marketing team.

Camera consciousness composes us
for bitching front-page spreads

that tell stories much more powerfully
than language. (Someone

once defined language
as a tool of cognition but camera

consciousness replaces
trivial tool users and tools with

artists and art.) And, then, of course,
the strobe light—the beating heart

pumping life through camera consciousness—
flashes out, flickering,

illuminating the recursive essence
of the cosmos

itself with the quantum pulses
of life itself, one every

thirtieth of a second.
And we flash out, flickering, through

the snapshots. And with persistence
of vision, not to mention

memory, we pretend to ignore
everything we don’t see.

Camera consciousness clicks.
The shutter falls like a guillotine.

Reality as a bloody scrapbook,
a dripping clipping.

Winston Churchill Described Paintings As Cryptograms On Canvas

One of the things I hate most
about watercolor paintings

is the constant, blaring,
monotonous white. The paper white.

White under the blue wash sky.
White around the yellow and red

flowers. White girding and supporting
the carefully biased grays.

Watercolor painters go to such great lengths
to save their whites

that they’re constantly creating
the same painting: A white blotch

as portrayed from
an infinity of viewpoints. The white blotch.

This hazy rectangular glare—
tinted and shaded to taste—

must represent
some archetypal mystery or womb memory

or the externalization
of sparking, neural throbbing.

Winston Churchill described paintings
as cryptograms on canvas.

What secret message
does the white blotch send? And who from? To whom?

The Spirit of the Age?
Blood of the Race? Goddess of Beauty?

Whistler’s sensitives?
Constable’s scientists? Skinner’s pigeons?

Freud’s bouillabaisse
of plumbing metaphors and mechanisms?

Witches and worshippers?
Owners and property? Lost and found?

All black inkblots conceal, reveal
deeper meanings. This white blotch

conceals and reveals, too.
Deeper meanings. Complex. Seductive.

And I believe that is the solution
to these cryptograms.

The depth is the meaning.
The code is the encoded message.

The secret is the seduction.
Whether infinite blackness

or omnipresent white.
Compositions are created things.

These endless black and white mysteries
distract from both creator

and creation. Then confusion
becomes content and context.

Chaos reigns.
When creator and creation lose, chaos reigns.

I use only
opaque media: acrylic paints, collage.

I use black and white,
but only black mixed from red, yellow, blue.

I do not do chiaroscuro,
I do not do cartoons.

Compositions are created things.
I say what I say, not

what I might pretend to say
if I knew some secret language.

The word is what’s said.
Any truth is better than make believe.

Meanwhile, In An Abandoned Strip Mine...

Meanwhile, in an abandoned strip mine
somewhere between San Francisco and
San Diego, cockroaches from space
discuss the motion picture business.

“So, what do you think? Can we get Stone
to play the scientist in the next
‘Boa’ piece of crap? Will she do it?”

“Should Stone play a super ego role?
Reid dragged down ‘Alone In The Dark,’ and
Richards screwed ‘The World Is Not Enough.’
We’re mixing id and super ego.
Stone is old but she’s still a woman.”

“The monster flicks from the Fifties worked.
The male as ego. Monster as id.
And the woman as super ego.”

“Yes, but the phase space mapped differently.
Big bugs smashing buildings skew higher
than big snakes eating random people.
Without id differentiation
the super ego is conflicted.
With Stone as a scientist we’d need,
say, hundreds of big snakes attacking
a recognizable cityscape.”

“Can’t do it. Budget’s just two point five.”

The two cockroaches from outer space
were silent for a long moment. Then
the cockroach that liked Sharon Stone kicked
a rock and said, “I hate this business.”

“Could be worse,” the other cockroach said.
“Could be out east doing politics.”

Both cockroaches from space shivered and
made clicking sounds with their mandibles.
Then they returned to discussing how
to manipulate the Freudian
phase space of earth’s movie consumers
to continue enticing humans
to continue funding the insect
dominion over the human race
while at the same time bringing on board
Sharon Stone to their giant snake film
budgeted at two point five million
and going direct to DVD.

Butterflies From Beyond Newton’s World

This geometric image, a static reflection of an irreversible and fleeting time, brings to mind another one: Kepler’s ellipse. Thom’s elementary catastrophes, as well as Kepler’s ellipses, attempt to reduce time to space and to understand it through geometry. Whereas Kepler uses the mathematical tools inherited from the Greeks, Thom has the benefit of modern differential topology. Kepler uses Apollonius’s Treatise on Conics. Thom uses singularity theory. However, whereas Kepler’s model leads us into Newton’s world, which is closed upon itself, catastrophe theory is a glance into an open universe. In Newton’s world there is no past and no future, since everything is determined by today’s data. Time holds no surprise in store for whoever can handle the computations. In Thom’s world the future is mostly hidden, and the mathematician inspects the flow of events for forms to recognize and classify, like a butterfly catcher.

Ivar Ekeland
“Mathematics And The Unexpected”

Parameter Space And Some Supernatural World

Each object in the world (as Thom sees it) is associated with a dynamical system. The shape, or form, of this object for an observer is nothing but the catastrophe set associated with this dynamical system. The object itself lies in the parameter space, usually three-dimensional Euclidean space, but it is not clear at all where the dynamical system lies, or even if it has a physical reality. For instance, the shape of a breaking crest wave does call to mind a hyperbolic umbilic, but no one has ever been able to build a dissipative potential for the wave from hydrodynamic considerations. Thom himself is not very concerned with this problem. He seems to be content, either with a Platonic attitude of having the dynamical system happen in some supernatural world or with locating it in the neurological phenomena which carry perception to our brain.

Ivar Ekeland
“Mathematics And The Unexpected”

Catastrophe Means Change Of State, Like Water Into Ice

It is essential for catastrophe theory that a small number of external variables be chosen, say three, which will be the only ones to vary, all other parameters being kept fixed. The values given to these three external variables will then be registered as a point in three-dimensional space. If these values are changed, the corresponding point moves along, and the potential of the system gets modified in some (unknown) fashion. The system, initially at a stable equilibrium, follows the latter in its variations. It may happen that, for certain values of the parameter, this particular equilibrium vanishes. The system then jumps to another stable equilibrium; that is, we get a discontinuous response to a continuous change in the external variables. The set of parameter values where this happens is called the catastrophe set. It is a kind of boundary which stretches across three-dimensional space: if the point representing the values of the external variables crosses this boundary, the system will jump from one equilibrium to another. This change of equilibrium will be perceived by the observer as a sudden and substantial change in the properties of the system—a phase transition, for instance, like water solidifying into ice. If one lowers the temperature of water regularly, nothing much happens, until the critical temperature of 0˚ is reached, at which time ice appears. Here there is just one external variable, temperature, and one catastrophic value, 0˚ C. The parameter space is one-dimensional, and the catastrophe set consists of one point, 0, which acts as a boundary between negative temperatures (ice only) and positive ones (water only).

Ivar Ekeland
“Mathematics And The Unexpected”

Catastrophe Theory

Catastrophe theory was born in 1972, with the publication of a very learned book by René Thom entitled Structural Stability and Morphogenesis. It has also a subtitle: An Essay on the General Theory of Models. Title and subtitle together indicate that here we have a mathematical theory with unusual claims to universality.

Thom is a leading mathematician; his ideas were already known in mathematical circles and spread very quickly to scientists in general and to the public at large. Catastrophe theory became an instant success, treatises and research papers were written, articles and interviews appeared in newspapers and magazines. In fact, so much has already been written about catastrophe theory that it seems quite superfluous to add yet another chapter to this growing list.

Despite so many explanations and commentaries, I still have the feeling that the instant success of catastrophe theory is largely due to a misunderstanding of what a theory is and what catastrophe means.

Let me first say what catastrophe theory is not. It does not announce catastrophes; it cannot tell whether the world will end in nuclear war. Catastrophe theory does not enable us to make precise, quantitative predictions, the way relativity theory does, for instance. Neither can it be proved or disproved by an experiment, and so the question arises whether it is a scientific theory at all.

Actually it is—but it is much closer to biological theories like that of evolution than to physical theories like that of relativity. It fits certain facts together and provides an abstract setting to grasp them all at once. It is a way to make some sense out of the hopeless tangle of natural phenomena, like a listening device which picks some garbled message out of the overpowering background noise. It is a mathematical code to help us decipher the book of nature.

Ivar Ekeland
“Mathematics And The Unexpected”

Alison Wakes Up And Introduces Herself

“Hi! I’m Alison. I do rebellious

magazine collages. They’re rebellious

because when I cut up a magazine

I’m not only cutting up pop culture,

I’m cutting up the invisible world.

You know, the political and social

alchemy stuff. All the subliminal

embeds in the photography and text.

And I’m not just cutting up all this stuff.

Oh, do you get the cutting up business?

Anyway, I also reshape content.

For my own purpose. I’m making my own

messages. My own invisible world.

I glue down my worlds, damn it, and frame them.

That’s what real rebellion is all about.

The Pilgrims didn’t just exit England.

They built America. Or, well, you know,

they moved around some pieces, glued down stuff

for their own purpose. In both of the worlds—

the visible and the invisible.

Just because something is invisible,

just because I can’t identify it,

doesn’t mean I can’t play with it. Photos,

text columns, pop culture. Hell, cut it up!

Reshape and rearrange it. Glue it down.

Frame it. Yes! Magazine collages rule

in the monolectic New World Order!”

Alison Dreaming Of Me *

He shares his apartment with mice and bats.
Expeditions of goldfish with sharp spears
trek across carpet hunting fur spiders
living in the corners and dark places.

Beneath vine, tendril, he lives in a tent
seldom venturing out. Sometimes he lifts
a cloth flap to empty an oak bucket—
his waste water, his garbage, his latrine.

Once a day he unzips patchwork screening
and takes into his tent a wooden plate
of fruit and dried meat that the creatures leave—
offerings from the jungle apartment.

He’s a shadow in his tent. Fingers ring
against rusted strings on a wood guitar.
Damp has gently turned the guitar’s fretboard,
curved its body, colored its singing tones.

But the animals—the mice, bats, goldfish,
even the fur spiders in their dark webs—
bring their daily offerings to the sound.
It is their part in the strange, magic place.

Wild civilization, such as it is,
continues in that jungle apartment.
No change of state, just a warping of tone.
A wild man living wild in the wild life.


......................................................................


* That’s me on a rare
excursion outside
my apartment tent,
a typical look
of befuddlement
caught by the webcam.

Alison Dreaming Of Being A Rock And Roll Princess

An electric guitar high and falling,

rotating, above Chicago’s skyline.

Unlike the bone in “A Space Odyssey”

the electric guitar doesn’t edit

into a spaceship or Heywood Floyd’s pen.

The electric guitar rotates, falling,

and crashes through the roof of a building

and falls into a translucent glass hand,

a crystal hand of a crystal princess

standing in a room of jade and topaz

on a floor of sand on top of black wood.

The princess is made of glass, but she moves

and laughs and plays the electric guitar.

An electric guitar. A glass princess.

And the rock and roll she plays is so cool

when the children of her kingdom get sad

she rocks them into a world of laughter.


*

Alison Dreaming Of The Ultimate Buddy Motion Picture

Call it 25 A.D. — Tiberius
was still in Rome.

Pilate was headquartered in Caesarea
but spending most

of his time in Jerusalem.
John was in the wilderness.

Herodians were busy
trying to win the hearts and minds

of the Jews to the Roman way.
Zealots were agitating

for independence. And Pilate’s wife
began having bad dreams.

That’s when the murders started.
First, the wife of a publican.

The second night the victim
was the mistress of a high priest.

A prostitute familiar
to the centurions died third.

Three deaths over three nights.
But more. The women had connections.

The radicals. The reactionaries.
The lunatic fringe.

Pilate became involved.
His agents told him something was up,

but they couldn’t discern what.
Pilate knew and understood Rome.

The politics of empire.
More importantly, Pilate knew

and understood that his Jewish contacts
had vested interests.

They were limited, defined
by their involvements, commitments.

To find the killer, solve the mystery,
keep the peace, Pilate knew

and understood he needed
an ally from among the Jews.

Someone knowledgeable,
yet independent. Pilate’s agents

told him of a young Jew
from Nazareth, an itinerant

preacher, intimately versed in Scripture,
a teacher, as yet

with no students. Pilate turned
to this man. Pilate met with him.

The two had to find the killer,
solve the mystery, keep the peace.

This is the story
of Pilate and Jesus. Their first meeting.

Their struggle to uncover
an evil vastly greater than

anything either one of them
ever could have imagined.

Before the apostles,
the ministry, the arrest and trial,

before the confrontation
of the Roman man and the Christ,

they were just men, just two men
tracking a psychotic killer.

COMING SOON TO A THEATER NEAR YOU:
.....................................................................
“Blood In The Temple — A Pilate and Jesus Mystery”

*

Alison Dreaming

Last night from outside I watched Alison
fog her ceiling. I stood by a street light
and watched Alison lean out a window
and scoop cupfuls of fog from the damp night.
Then she spooned out the fog into the air
of her apartment. The fog drifted up.
Standing on an ornamental footstool
Alison reached upward and smoothed the fog
with hush and kindness and thoughts of design.
Then she buffed it with a ragged tee shirt
until it shone like imitation pearls
from Woolworth’s. I watched her work for an hour
then I went home and to bed by myself.

Walking for the morning paper, I glanced
in Alison’s window. She was sleeping
on a couch, still wearing her overalls.
Overhead, her ceiling glowed, shimmering
like rice paper through frosted glass. Sleeping,
Alison dreamed. Her dreams drifted upward
glowing, shimmering, too, by her ceiling
like jade statues from a magical past
or like barrettes in a young girl’s long hair.

*

Jill, At Halloween Time #5

The wide plastic bowl
of warmed-up milk starts steaming
immediately

and just as quickly
goose-bumps form on Jill’s arms when
she pushes open

the back door. “Here girl!”
Jill says. “Snack time!” The llama
hums and purrs and trills

and rubs against Jill.
“That’s return-on-investment,”
Jill whispers. “Good girl.”

The End

Jill, At Halloween Time #4

Jill checks a mirror
and straightens out her new bra.
She starts walking back

to the kitchen but
hears a noise in the front room.
She stops, frowns, looks in.

On her computer
a tech chart is flashing and
the speaker’s beeping.

‘Some stock’s changed,’ Jill thinks,
starting in. She stops. ‘The milk,’
Jill thinks. ‘Stocks or milk?’

*

Jill, At Halloween Time #3

Standing by the bed,
Jill looks at her broken bra.
A small plastic ring

that attached the left
cup to the left shoulder strap
had cracked and vanished.

‘Looked cheap in the store,’
Jill thinks, ‘and it really was.
How often do things

in real life end up
being actually what
they appear to be?’

*

Jill, At Halloween Time #2

Jill turns the gas low.
She walks to the front bedroom
to get a new bra.

Walking, she reaches
both hands around behind her
to unclip her bra.

Topless, she thinks, ‘Oops,
in all the thriller movies
when a woman leaves

something on the stove
and goes out of the kitchen,
that’s when she’s attacked . . .’

*

Jill, At Halloween Time #1

Her stocks are tanking,
the llama’s constipated
and her bra strap broke.

Jill wants to cry but
she just can’t. Something about
Halloween season

gives her energy.
In the kitchen she warms milk
for the llama. Leaves—

brown, yellow, orange—
blow past the kitchen window.
Jill sighs, stirs the milk.

*

Ansel Adams And Alfred Stieglitz, #2

I believe that the artist and his art are only a part of the total human experience; the viewer in the world at large is the essential other part. I feel that a true work of art is like nothing else in the world. It is not essential to know how the artist thinks or how he believes he relates to his profession or his society. What he creates is his message. For me a work of art does not cry for comprehension, only for reaction at the level of art itself.

Stieglitz taught me what became my first commandment: “Art is the affirmation of life.”

Ansel Adams
“Ansel Adams: An Autobiography”

Ansel Adams And Alfred Stieglitz, #1

Anticipation is another prime element of creative art and essential to visualization. Some years ago I was talking with Edwin Land, a brilliant scientist and close friend. We talked about the remarkable photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson, with his images of people in motion arrested at precisely the optimum expressive moment of time and place.

Land pointed out that the moment captured on film was realized through anticipation. Had Cartier-Bresson released the shutter at the “decisive moment” as revealed in his pictures, the psycho-physical lag would have resulted in capturing the moment after the ideal position in the composition.

Anticipation is one of the most perplexing capabilities of the mind: projection into future time. Impressive with a single moving object, it is overwhelming when several such objects are considered together and in relation to their environment. I believe that the mind, working at incredible speeds, is able to probe into the future as well as recall the past. Our explorations of the past support the present, and our awareness of the present will clarify the future.

... Photography is an investigation of both the outer and inner worlds. One might consider that if one is born an explorer he will never find existence dull. The first experiences with the camera involve looking at the world beyond the lens, trusting the instrument will “capture” something “seen.” The terms shoot and take are not accidental; they represent an attitude of conquest and appropriation. Only when the photographer grows into perception and creative impulse does the term make define a condition of empathy between the external and internal events. Stieglitz told me, “When I make a photograph, I make love!”

Ansel Adams
“Ansel Adams: An Autobiography”

Ansel Adams And Edwin Land

Once Din [“Din” was Edwin Land’s nickname] and I went to Dr. Harold Edgerton’s laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology to observe the making of a strobe flash picture of a bullet piercing a balloon, recorded on a new Polaroid transparency material. The extremely short electronic flash was fired by microphone. We stood around, expectantly waiting for the firing, fully briefed on what was to occur and how safe it was. The revolver was securely lashed to a firm support, and there was an efficient sand trap to catch the bullet. The balloon was filled with talcum powder, inflated, and properly placed in the line of fire. The camera was focused upon it, all ready to go. At the moment of firing, one of Edgerton’s assistants struck a large segment of rail with a heavy metal mallet. The sound was terrific, and all but Edgerton and Land hit the floor. Great hilarity ensued. The photograph came out perfectly, with the bullet clearly emerging in a cloud of talcum from the still-tense surface of the balloon; at the moment of exposure the balloon had not had time to think about collapsing.

… [Edwin Land’s] philosophy and humanity are revealed in the statement he made on April 2, 1979, on the occasion of the opening of the new home of the academy [Edwin Land had been president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences from 1951-54]:

“Each stage of human civilization is defined by our mental structures: the concepts we create and then project upon the universe. They not only redescribe the universe but also in so doing modify it, both for our own time and for subsequent generations. This process—the revision of old cortical structures and the formulation of new cortical structures whereby the universe is defined—is carried on in science and art by the most creative and talented minds in each generation. For individuals to contribute to this constantly evolving projection of mental structures upon the universe, it is necessary for them to concentrate on one area of knowledge or experience, and thus they limit themselves by excluding many other areas. This Academy’s function is to associate many specialized lines of concentration by gathering the individuals in whom they are embodied. Thus, while each person is narrowed by his own specialization, the group as a whole is enriched.

“The transfer of concepts as models from one field to another requires intimacy, informality and friendliness because the transfer usually is not a conscious process. Models for physics may come from music, for chemistry from physics, for art from cosmology. … The great historic periods of spectacular human advance, within time spans of relatively few generations, may have been periods in which society made possible the concentrated interplay of the separate contributions of creative individuals. There is no way in which we can tell whether we are entering such a period of history, but whether or not we are, the role of the Academy seems clear.”

Ansel Adams
“Ansel Adams: An Autobiography”

Ansel Adams And Cedric Wright

I am interested in why I see certain events in the world about me that others do not see, while they respond to different events. On the day that this photograph was made there were several other photographers nearby, some very good ones who were then far more technically advanced than I. The scene was before us all, but no one else responded with creative interest. Cedric Wright, close friend, violinist, and photographer from Berkeley, observed what I was doing and, half in jest, set his camera up in my location. I saw his print later; he did not have a lens of appropriate focal length and he overexposed his negative. On seeing my print he exclaimed, “Jeez! Why didn’t I see that!”

Ansel Adams
“Examples: The Making
Of 40 Photographs”

Ansel Adams And Margaret Bourke-White

One of the most successful Life photographers was Margaret Bourke-White, whom I first met in 1934. She had just moved into her studio on one of the top floors of the Chrysler Building and I recall a giant aluminum gargoyle clearly visible through the large window. Her assistant, a nervous young man, said, “Please be seated,” but there was nothing to sit on. Bourke-White entered the room briskly and cordially greeted me. She was dressed with great chic, on the edge of flamboyancy, and moved and talked with marvelous vitality. She explained that she was preparing for an assignment and could give me but a few moments—“My helper is checking my cameras right now.” At that moment a loud crash came from the adjacent room; the camera and tripod on which the young man was working had suddenly collapsed and were severely damaged. Bourke-White reacted with composure, saying to him, “Please call for another Speed Graphic right away.” Stating she would pick up the camera on the way to the airport, she gave me a warm adieu, abandoning me in her pristine office with the broken camera still lying on the floor.

Ansel Adams
“Ansel Adams: An Autobiography”

Paris Hilton And The Butterflies From Atlantis #5: The Butterflies From Atlantis

At the Oak Lawn Public Library where
I often check out books and DVDs
and use the public access computers,
if you browse through the stacks looking for books
like “Fishing The Dry Fly As A Living
Insect,” or, less fish, like “Trout Fishing In
America,” you won’t find them because
such books aren’t there to be found. They’re gone.

If you browse the internet for such books
you find them equally lost, but not gone,
just buried among eighty-three million
references to what Paris Hilton did
two nights ago, or many million more
equally fishy references that may
or may not say anything about trout.

*

I miss good books. Good. As opposed to books
demographically targeted—conceived,
designed and produced to strip-mine every
dollar from every market in the world.

*

When I checked out the book Paris Hilton
wrote with Merle Ginsberg and read in the park,
I sat with the book in my hand, my hand
resting in my lap and the book open
in front of me. An open book like that,
the spine in my hand, pages to the left
and to the right, looks like a butterfly.

Butterflies bask in the sun, wings open
left and right, warming themselves in the light.

Books lie open in front of us, pages
left and right, like butterflies letting us
study the pretty patterns on their wings.

But books aren’t like real butterflies from
the physical place we remember as
Atlantis. Books are like butterflies from
Atlantis, the magical place of myths.

Books are like butterflies from Atlantis,
the magical place of myths. They fly us
not by their wings, but the pretty patterns
on their wings, to worlds long gone, to worlds lost,
to lost worlds of artist and expression,
to lost worlds of designer and knowledge,
to lost worlds, too, of jester and routine.

Like “Confessions Of An Heiress.” Or this.

Books. They’re like butterflies from Atlantis.

Paris Hilton And The Butterflies From Atlantis #4: Atlantis

At the Oak Lawn Public Library where
once or twice a year the gas company
tears up the sidewalks looking for a leak,
there are more than fifty books that mention
Atlantis. Everything from Plato to
Clive Cussler appears somewhere in the stacks.

*

In the traditionally accepted
scientific dating of the planet
the continents as we know them today
were all scrunched together as one land mass
about two hundred million years ago.
Scientists call this land mass “Pangea.”

Pangea began the long process of
splitting in two and then more breaking up
about a hundred and fifty million
years ago. That is about the same time
butterflies first evolved as we know them.
In fact, the distribution of many
species across the current continents
supports the understanding butterflies
initially evolved and then began
species radiation on the northern
and southern components of Pangea
directly after the one land mass split.

Most theories of Atlantis say nothing
about Pangea because modern man—
that is, modern civilized man—is thought
to be about fifteen thousand years old,
with most civilizations much younger.

However, Judeo-Christian scripture
describes the Babel tower incident
as ending when God scattered humankind
“abroad, over the face of all the earth.”
Another verse describes a man, Peleg,
as living when the earth was “divided.”

I think we as a species remember
our origin on that one continent,
Pangea, and then the tribulations
of the catastrophic earth changes that
in the time of just one generation
created the continents we know now.

(Prior to the breakup, on Pangea,
the single continent, it’s easier
also to imagine a single flood
affecting all creatures and all humans.)

Of course this only can be possible
if either civilization is much
older than Western science understands
or our scientific dating is skewed.

Neither option is inconceivable.

Hindu scripture plainly speaks of ages
vastly more ancient than Western knowledge.

And there has been some contentious research
that cosmic “constants”—like the speed of light—
in fact might not be constant after all,
and dates keyed to radiation effects
might be over-estimating ages.

*

I believe someday we will recognize
Atlantis myths as dramatizations
of the tribulations humans endured
during the fracturing of Pangea.

*

But Atlantis has come to mean much more
than just a physical place—although if
it turns out to be the physical place
our butterflies came from that’s pretty cool.

Atlantis has come to mean a global
free-floating metaphor for any place
that was good but now is gone. Atlantis
is the secular Garden of Eden.

Atlantis is the good world that was lost—
lost art, lost technology, lost science,
and lost peace, lost understanding, lost love,
and lost humanity, lost communion.






(Tomorrow: Paris Hilton And The Butterflies
From Atlantis #5: The Butterflies
From Atlantis)

Paris Hilton And The Butterflies From Atlantis #3: Fons Et Origo

At the Oak Lawn Public Library where
almost every rain makes the ceiling leak
and basement flood, they are clearing away
old books that aren’t checked out frequently.
The old books either are sold to raise funds—
hardbacks all are sold for fifty cents each—
or they simply are thrown away. The same
maintenance man who deals with the dead birds
in the driveway next to the library
once a week or so pushes a big bin
full of old books that nobody checks out
across the library’s west parking lot.
He empties the bin in the big dumpster
behind the senior center. This clears space
on the shelves for books more relevant to
today’s internet-savvy young patrons.

For instance, Jan Adkins’ “The Craft Of Sail”
has been tossed. Or sold to raise fifty cents.
Adkins designed, wrote and illustrated
his loving primer on sailing himself.

With “The Craft Of Sail” out of the way, books
shift over a little bit and make room
for new titles, like, “Your iPod Life,” by
Dan Frakes, which has a lot of photographs
of accessories people can purchase
for their Apple iPod, along with brief
discussions of how the accessories
perform so consumers can make smart buys.

And, for instance, “The New Tower Of Babel,”
by Dietrich Von Hildebrand, has been tossed.
Or sold to raise a couple of quarters.
Hildebrand, a theologian, wrote that
the modern world’s conceptual conflicts
and confusions stem from Promethean
presumptions on the part of mankind and
share similarities with the classic
Judeo-Christian story of fracture
caused by the Babel tower incident.

With “The New Tower Of Babel” off the shelf,
books shift over a bit, making room for
new and more relevant titles, such as,
“Godless: The Church Of Liberalism,”
by Ann Coulter, in which Coulter describes
atheism and evolution as
something like a religion supporting
Democrats as they fight Republicans.

Soon, a young person will ask someone old
what exactly the word “Atlantis” means.
The adult will laugh and tell the youngster
that “Atlantis” is a word that refers
to any kind of imaginary
existence—for instance, when writers dream
of a fantasy reality where
books could be written even if the books
had no explicit corporate sponsorship
and even if the authors did not have
explicit party affiliations.






(Tomorrow: Paris Hilton And The Butterflies
From Atlantis #4: Atlantis)

Paris Hilton And The Butterflies From Atlantis #2: Paris Hilton

At the Oak Lawn Public Library where
homeless people cool down in the summer
and warm up in the winter, if you do
a computer search of their catalogue
for “Paris Hilton” you will get two hits,
a horror DVD called “House Of Wax,”
and the book, “Confessions Of An Heiress,”
which Paris Hilton wrote with Merle Ginsberg.

If you venture into the stacks you’ll find
Paris Hilton’s book on a shelf in the
seven-nineties. In fact, you will find it
on a shelf right below another book,
“Price Guide To Plastic Collectibles,” by
Lindi McNulty. Paris Hilton’s book,
written with Merle Ginsberg, tells a person
how to live as if they were an heiress.

If you sit down at one of the public
access computers and do a Google
internet search for “Paris Hilton,” you
will get more than eighty-three million hits.
If you venture into those stacks you might
be wandering around for quite some time.

I have read “Confessions Of An Heiress.”
One afternoon when the weather was nice
I checked it out and went to the small park
next to the library. I read it while
sitting on a bench. The book is only
a hundred and seventy-nine pages,
and most of them are full of photographs.
It’s not about a guy named John Galt who
stops the motor of the world by getting
smart people to abandon dumb people.
In fact, you can find inconsistencies:
Paris says never wear the same thing twice
but in two photos—on page fifty-four
and page one forty-seven—Paris wears
the same pink shirt. However, early on—
page nine—Paris warns readers not to take
her fail-safe instructions seriously.

I have not reviewed all the internet’s
eighty-three million Paris Hilton hits.
In fact, yesterday when I checked there were
only eighty-two million. I couldn’t
even review today’s new additions.
I have looked at some of the old stories.
There’s one about Paris wrecking the hood
of her Bentley in a fender-bender.
There’s one about her and Nicole Ritchie
patching up their friendship after feuding.
And roughly eighty-three million others.

“Confessions Of An Heiress” is a book
written by Paris Hilton with help from
Merle Ginsberg. Most likely it was written
by Merle Ginsberg with occasional chats
over party drinks with Paris Hilton.

The internet is not a book. It’s not
written by anybody. It’s tempting
to say it’s written by everybody
but that’s like saying the United States
and Monaco are both in the UN—
it’s true but it conveys little content
toward an obviously much larger truth
that is Byzantine with consequences.

There’s Paris Hilton. And there is her book.
And there’s the internet. Byzantium.






(Tomorrow: Paris Hilton And The Butterflies From Atlantis #3: Fons Et Origo)

Paris Hilton And The Butterflies From Atlantis #1: Et In Arcadia Ego

At the Oak Lawn Public Library where
many people work whose names I am not
allowed to say because it frightens them,
there’s a small park next to the library.

A one-lane driveway separates the park
from the two-story library building.

Among the many trees in the small park,
six trees grow along the narrow driveway.

The foliage of the trees spreads out next to
the library’s large, second-floor windows.

Birds in the trees mistake the reflection
of sky in the windows for the real sky
and kill themselves smashing into the glass.

People walking along the driveway to
the train station or to buy a paper
in the morning find their day starting with
colorful dead birds on black asphalt or
the sight of the maintenance man kicking
the dead birds over the low concrete curb
and into the bushes of the small park.






(Tomorrow: Paris Hilton And The Butterflies From Atlantis #2: Paris Hilton)

Seeing Things In Christina’s World

Andrew Wyeth painted “Christina’s World”
in Nineteen-Forty-Eight. One year later
it was purchased by New York’s Museum
of Contemporary Art. The great fuss,
then, over the painting resulted in
the real-life model, Christina Olson,
being called the most famous model in
the world of modern American art.

I was born ten years later. Growing up,
the only artists people around me
talked about were Peter Max and sometimes
Andy Warhol, or Frank Frazetta and
sometimes LeRoy Neiman. When I first saw
“Christina’s World” there was no preceding
fuss, there was no explanatory text.
My response was only to the image.

God, I thought, what a profoundly modern,
profoundly American, profoundly
New England restatement of the classic
Eternal Feminine. A young woman
sprawled in a bountiful field, her hips thrust
against the earth, her back turned haughtily
to the artist and viewer and her gaze
forward, at her farm, her house, at her world.

Much later I learned how profoundly wrong
I was. Looking at Christina’s thin arms,
thin legs, I was growing up in a time
when many girls thought Twiggy was groovy
and many women were developing
the look Wolfe would soon call social x-rays.

But Christina wasn’t a hippie and
she certainly wasn’t a socialite.

Christina Olson suffered polio
as a child. She lost the use of her legs.
As an adult if Christina wanted
to go outside when people were busy
she would drag herself out of the house and
into the surrounding blueberry field.

Wyeth often painted in a small room
upstairs at Christina’s house. He would watch
her drag herself out to the field, then back.
Eventually Wyeth painted her.

Growing up, a kid, I saw the painting
as bright, a celebration of Woman.

Older, an adult, I saw it a dirge,
a lament of Christina’s affliction,
and the painting’s key was the perspective,
the distance cue of the great space between
Christina and the high, far horizon.

Older still, confused in my adulthood,
I’ve wondered sometimes if my second guess
might be as profoundly wrong as my first.

*

One night a woman called at three a.m.
to tell me she was painting my portrait.
It wasn’t really my portrait, she said.
It was a self-portrait of herself but
she said after knowing me for two years
she felt so shaped by me that by painting
herself she was painting me. And, she said,
it wasn’t really a portrait of her,
it was actually a painting of
a donut. She said after knowing me
for two years she’d come to think of herself
as something like a frosted donut, and
it pissed her off that thinking of herself
as a frosted donut just made her smile
instead of making her angry. She said
she’d bought a frosted donut that evening
and now was staying up all night painting.
She said she was working through her feelings
toward me and herself and our dating by
making a frosted donut oil painting.

*

Having looked at a donut that was me,
or a woman who knew me, I’m not sure
what I see looking at “Christina’s World.”

Christina’s in a field. Does it matter
if I know it’s a field of blueberries?
Christina’s in a field. Does it matter
if I know she’s dragging herself through it?

I don’t know what I see. For all I know
I might be seeing Wyeth’s self-portrait
as he sees himself, shaped by Christina
and the house in the field of blueberries.

I don’t know what I see. That’s my third guess.

My third guess is there are things in this world
that are unknowable. Things we can’t know.

That doesn’t mean that we cannot see them.

I think looking into “Christina’s World”
I see things unknowable in this world.

There are things in this world we cannot know.

That doesn’t mean that we cannot see them.
Or that we cannot think they’re beautiful.
Or that we cannot love them. That’s my guess—
That art is about unknowable things.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


Christina’s World at Wikipedia

A Very Elusive Thing

My struggle
is to preserve that abstract flash—
like something you caught
out of the corner of your eye,
but in the picture
you can look at it directly.
It’s a very elusive thing.

Andrew Wyeth
quoted in “The Helga Pictures”
by John Wilmerding

A White Mussel Shell On A Gravel Bank

You look at my pictures—Christina’s World, The Patriot, Miss Olson—there’s witchcraft and hidden meaning there. Halloween and all that is strangely tied into them. For me, the paintings have that eerie feeling of goblins and witches out riding on broomsticks—damp rotting leaves and moisture—smell of make-up—as a child, the smell inside of a pumpkin when a candle is lit—the feel of your face under a mask walking down a road in the moonlight. I love all that, because then I don’t exist anymore. To me it’s almost like getting inside of my hound, Rattler, and walking around the country looking at it through his eyes.

What I’m trying to say is that I start every painting with an emotion—something I’ve just got to get out. These immaculately painted things—you’d think I was a very calm mathematician. Truth is, I use tempera partly because it’s such a dull medium—those minute strokes put a brake on my real nature—messiness. My wild side that’s really me comes out in my watercolors—especially of snow, which is absolutely intoxicating to me. I’m electrified by it—the hush—unbelievable. A white mussel shell on a gravel bank in Maine is thrilling to me because it’s all the sea—the gull that brought it there, the rain, the sun that bleached it there by a stand of spruce trees.

Andrew Wyeth
quoted in “The Art Of Andrew Wyeth”

The Deliriously Beautiful World Of Unnamed Substances

Alchemy is a discredited pseudoscience. It took a long time dying, but the end was in sight early on, as the sciences began to move forward after the Renaissance. Oswald Croll, a seventeenth-century German alchemist, wrote a book with a picture of himself emerging from the alchemical vessel and striking a kingly pose. It is supposed to be an image of the Philosophical King, the very embodiment of the Stone. Croll calls his likeness “the earthly treasure and earthly God” but he is a flabby, nude, fifty-year-old man, and he looks pathetic—like an overweight suburbanite who stepped into a pot by mistake. Even then, in the golden age of alchemy, there were those who suspected that alchemy might be hollow. As modern chemistry got going, alchemy lost ground, and in the nineteenth century scientists stripped it even of the dubious prestige it had once had. In the last fifty years things have gotten even worse, because now alchemy is either mummified within Jung’s heavy psychological theories of the mind, or evaporated into New Age dreams.

In a perverse way, some alchemists reveled in the ruins of their discipline. If things looked bad, and they were expelled from court, or called quacks or “puffers,” then that meant their art must have some miraculous secret. Because it seemed empty, it must be full. Because it was despised, it must be magnificent. Countless books begin with versions of the epigram “What good are glasses to those who cannot see?”—implying that the book will not be understood by anyone unless they already believe in it. As the criticism from outside became more strident, the alchemists dug deeper into their unwavering convictions and unconscious self-deceptions. Current alchemy happens far from serious chemistry, physics, philosophy, and literature: that is the price it pays to keep its hope alive.

The weight of history is against the alchemists, but in a sense they are right, because there is truth in alchemy even if it does not reside in vague recipes or ecstatic prayers. I hope I have made it clear that alchemy is not just a fusty old activity fit for cranks, or a mystical New Age pursuit suitable for adolescents. It has its truths, and they were hard-won in encounters with unknown substances. Above all, alchemy is a record of serious, sustained attempts to understand what substances are and how they carry meaning. And for that reason it is the best voice for artists who wrestle every day with materials they do not comprehend and methods they can never entirely master. Science has closed off almost every unsystematic encounter with the world. Alchemy and painting are two of the very last remaining paths into the deliriously beautiful world of unnamed substances.

James Elkins
in “What Painting Is”

Negotiations Between Water And Stone

Water and stones. Those are the unpromising ingredients of two very different endeavors. The first is painting, because artists’ pigments are made from fluids (these days, usually petroleum products and plant oils) mixed together with powdered stones to give color. All oil paints, watercolors, gouaches, and acrylics are made that way, and so are more solid concoctions including pastels, ink blocks, crayons, and charcoal. They differ only in the proportions of water and stone—or to put it more accurately, medium and pigment. To make oil paint, for example, it is only necessary to buy powdered rock and mix it with a medium, say linseed oil, so that it can be spread with a brush. Very little more is involved in any pigment, and the same observations apply to other visual arts. Ceramics begins with the careful mixing of tap water and clay, and the wet clay slip is itself a dense mixture of stone and water. Watery mud is the medium of ceramists, just as oily mud is the medium of painters. Mural painting uses water and stone, and tempera uses egg and stone. Even a medium like bronze casting relies on the capacity of “stone”—that is, the mixture of tin, lead, copper, zinc, and other metals—to become a river of bright orange fluid.

So painting and other visual arts are one example of negotiations between water and stone, and the other is alchemy. In alchemy, the Stone (with a capital S) is the ultimate goal, and one of the purposes of alchemy is to turn something as liquid as water into a substance as firm and unmeltable as stone. As in painting, the means are liquid and the ends are solid. And as in painting, most alchemy does not have to do with either pure water or hard stones, but with mixtures of the two. Alchemists worked with viscid stews, with tacky drying films, with brittle skins of slag: in short, they were concerned with the same range of half-fluids as painters and other artists.

That is the first point of similarity between alchemy and painting. There is a second similarity that runs even deeper, and gives me the impetus to explain painting in such a strange way. In alchemy as in painting, there are people who prefer to live antiseptically, and think about the work instead of laboring over it. In alchemy, those are the “spiritual” or “meditative” alchemists, the ones who read about alchemy and ponder its meaning but try not to go near a laboratory; and in painting they are the critics and art historians who rarely venture close enough to a studio to feel the pull of paint on their fingers. Perhaps because they are uncomfortable with paint, art historians prefer meanings that are not intimately dependent on the ways the paintings were made. Consider, for instance, the first of the color plates in this book. An historian looking at this painting might recognize Sassetta, a fourteenth-century painter from Siena. Sassetta is known to art history as a late medieval artist who slowly adjusted his work to the emerging sensibility of the Florentine Renaissance. He knew about the important new works that were being made in Florence, and there are echoes and hints of them in his paintings, though in the end he remained faithful to the conservative Sienese ways. We know a little about his life, and about his patrons and commissions; and we can guess at his friends, and the places he visited. Pictures can have many meanings of those kinds, and art history is a rich and complex field. But a painting is a painting, and not words describing the artist or the place it was made or the people who commissioned it. A painting is made of paint—of fluids and stone—and paint has its own logic, and its own meanings even before it is shaped into the head of a madonna. To an artist, a picture is both a sum of ideas and a blurry memory of “pushing paint,” breathing fumes, dripping oils and wiping brushes, smearing and diluting and mixing. Bleary preverbal thoughts are intermixed with the namable concepts, figures and forms that are being represented. The material memories are not usually part of what is said about a picture, and that is a fault in interpretation because every painting captures a certain resistance of paint, a prodding gesture of the brush, a speed and insistence in the face of mindless matter: and it does so as the same moment, and in the same thought, as it captures the expression of a face.

In Sassetta’s painting little brushstrokes form the face: they are delicate light touches that fall like lines of rain over the skin, coming down at a slight angle over the temples and next to the mouth. Brighter marks spread from the top of the forehead, crisscrossing the canted strokes over the temple. There are larger milky dapples just under the pink of the cheek—almost like downy hair—and curling marks that come around the neck and congregate on the collar bone. Sassetta has clasped three bright rings of sharp white (they are called Venus’s collars) around the neck. The sum of brushstrokes is the evidence of the artist’s manual devotion to his image: for Sassetta painting was the slow, pleasureful, careful and repetitious building of a face from minuscule droplets of pigment. The initial strokes were darker and more watery, and as the contours began to emerge he used whiter paint, and put more on his tiny brush, until he finally built up the forehead to a brilliant alabaster. This is tempera painting, and in its period many painters used the medium as a way of showing devotion. Sassetta’s lingering patience and fastidious attention remain fixed in the painting for everyone to see: they are a meaning of the method itself.

James Elkins
in “What Painting Is”

Mischa Barton, Mischa Barton

Now and then people say this or that owl
is really the daughter of some baker.
We know what other people are, but guess
at what other people really might be.

Mischa Barton went from Los Angeles
to London to learn about Shakespeare’s plays.

I knew a young woman who looked so much
like Mischa Barton that I wondered if
Mischa Barton was researching a role
as a hot, young beauty toiling away
in an anonymous suburban job.

Since in my deepest, secret soul I feel
life is for the most part very much like
a Danny Kaye movie—you know, people
in other people’s places, playing roles—
or like Greek mythology, I asked her.

I asked the beautiful suburban girl
who looked exactly like Mischa Barton
if she was Mischa researching a role.

I planned, of course, to hint that I’d expose
her presence in the suburb unless she
used her influence to put together
a development deal for a two-hour
made-for-TV thriller I was writing.
Mischa would play an ichthyologist
investigating sea serpent sightings
in Lake Champlain. I wanted Penn Jillette
to co-star as her grad student sidekick.

Mischa Barton dated Brandon Davis,
heir to the Marvin Davis oil fortune.
“I dipped my foot in that pool,” Mischa says.
“But in the end I’m not part of that world.”
They split up and Mischa went to London
to read, study and perform Shakespeare’s plays.

I asked this beautiful suburban girl
who looked exactly like Mischa Barton
if she was Mischa researching a role.

It turned out she wasn’t Mischa Barton.

And, of course, this suburban girl didn’t
assume I was a writer looking to
further my writing career through standard
show business quid pro quo maneuvering.
She assumed I was, well, something like a
barn owl looking to snap up a field mouse.

We know what other people are, but guess
at what other people really might be.

Which is not to say that I’m not something
like an owl looking to snap up a mouse.

Mischa Barton went to London to learn
what Shakespeare thought about country matters.

The girl that looked exactly like Mischa
got married, started her own business and
is living happily ever after.

Mischa Barton came back from studying
Shakespeare in London and is hoping for
a key role in a television show
about sexy, desperate suburban wives.

A mysterious society of
international banker-alchemists
somehow mixed up me and another guy
and now I’m on the run with a famous
retired woman tennis player who looks
very much like actress Vera-Ellen.

We know what we are, not what we might be.

Sleeping Beauty

I made my way down to the public beach and along it to the sandy point which partly enclosed the harbor. A few people, mostly women and girls, were standing at the edge of the water, facing out to sea. They looked as if they were waiting for the end of the world, or as if the end had come and they would never move again.

The surf was rising sluggishly. A black bird with a sharp beak was struggling in it. The bird had orange-red eyes, which seemed to be burning with anger, but it was so fouled with oil that at first I didn’t recognize it as a western grebe.

A woman in a white shirt and slacks waded in thigh-deep and picked it up, holding its head so that it wouldn’t peck her. I could see as she came back toward me that she was a handsome young woman with dark eyes as angry as the bird’s. Her narrow feet left beautifully shaped prints in the wet sand.

I asked her what she was going to do with the grebe.

“Take it home and clean it.”

“It probably won’t survive, I’m afraid.”

“No, but maybe I will.”

She walked away, holding the black struggling thing against her white shirt. I walked along behind in her elegant footprints. She became aware of this, and turned to face me.

“What do you want?”

“I should apologize. I didn’t mean to be discouraging.”

“Forget it,” she said. “It’s true not many live once they’ve been oiled. But I saved some in the Santa Barbara spill.”

“You must be quite a bird expert.”

“I’m getting to be one in self-defense. My family is in the oil business.”


from, “Sleeping Beauty”

by Ross Macdonald

The Mythologies Of Facts

“The very notion of truth
is a culturally given direction,
a part of the pervasive nostalgia
for an earlier certainty.
The very idea of a universal stability,
an eternal firmness of principle out there
that can be sought for through the world
as might an Arthurian knight for the Grail,
is, in the morphology of history,
a direct outgrowth of the search for lost gods
in the first two millennia after
the decline of the bicameral mind.
What was then an augury for direction of action
among the ruins of an archaic mentality
is now the search for an innocence of certainty
among the mythologies of facts.”


Julian Jaynes

in “The Origin Of Consciousness
In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral”

That Fourth Dimension For Which I Am Searching

“For me the
metamorphosis of
height, breadth and depth into the
two-dimensional plane is a
magical experience which gives me an
inkling of that
fourth dimension for which I am
searching with all my
soul.”


Painter, Max Beckmann (1884-1950)
quoted in, “Perspective,” by Alison Cole

Anna Kournikova’s Face

I’ve been staring at
Anna Kournikova’s face.
I never get tired

of thinking about
Anna Kournikova’s face.
She always stares back.

It’s a picture of
Anna Kournikova’s face.
It’s not, you know, her.

Of course, I’d stare at
Anna Kournikova’s face
in real-life if she

were here with me, but
Anna Kournikova’s face
isn’t really here.

It’s a good pic of
Anna Kournikova’s face
from the BBC.

I’m so knocked-out by
Anna Kournikova’s face
I’d like to draw a

graphic novel of
Anna Kournikova’s face.
The cover would be

a big picture of
Anna Kournikova’s face.
And then every page

would be panels of
Anna Kournikova’s face.
The story would be

subtle and involve
Anna Kournikova’s face
in global intrigue.

There would be hints that
Anna Kournikova’s face
in real-life inspired

the odd goings-on
Anna Kournikova’s face
lives through in the book.

Readers would study
Anna Kournikova’s face
looking for clues, but

the mystery of
Anna Kournikova’s face
wouldn’t be revealed.

There’s real magic in
Anna Kournikova’s face
and magicians don’t

give away magic.
Anna Kournikova’s face
doesn’t give away

its magic. Seeing
Anna Kournikova’s face
is to know magic.

All faces are like
Anna Kournikova’s face,
pages to read, but

turning endlessly.
Anna Kournikova’s face—
I can’t look away.

Like everyone’s face
Anna Kournikova’s face
is the Holy Grail.

Second Quarter Index Page

This page links to all my Friday posts
from the last three months. From
each Friday post, the links on the
blog’s template can access each week day.


First Quarter Index Page (Friday, June 30, 2006)


J U L Y

July 07 - Professor Martel’s Startling Conclusion (5 of 10)

July 14 - Professor Martel’s Startling Conclusion (10 of 10)

July 21 - Sasquatch And Anime Girl, #3

July 28 - The Road To Magonia


A U G U S T

August 04 - Suzy’s Show (End Theme)

August 11 - Martin’s Sweater #5: Martin’s Sweater

August 18 - Mischa’s Dream

August 25 - A Bigfoot Walks Away


S E P T E M B E R

September 01 - Parking Lots At Night #4: The Next Day

September 08 - Joni Mitchell And King George #2: An Epistemology Of Empowerment

September 15 - Dirty Laundry In Cézanne’s Country #4: The Reply

September 22 - Get Well Soon, Marianne Faithfull! #5: The Monkee And The Fox

September 28 (Thursday) - Free Energy! Light Without Heat! Lifts And Separates! #4: “Let Me Tell You The Good Life”

Free Energy! Light Without Heat! Lifts And Separates! #4: “Let Me Tell You The Good Life”

When I think of Grandma Laura, my first
thoughts aren’t about the glowing bra or
the adventures she had with the Nazis.

My first thoughts of Grandma Laura always
are of her smiling. Smiling while we talked.
Smiling while she was on stage performing.

She never denied that bad things happen.
And she certainly didn’t smile talking
about the Nazis. Or about the wars.
But it was never long before a smile
returned to her face. And even singing
sad songs Grandma Laura always managed
to sing the song—to interpret the song,
to perform the song—in a way that left
the audience smiling, somehow happy.

And I think of the things Grandma Laura
specifically asked me to remember.

The night that Grandma Laura disappeared
seemed to me the same as many others.
We talked in her dressing room. She performed.
We talked later and then I went to sleep.
The next morning Grandma Laura was gone.
All her clothes and both suitcases were gone.
My dad swears he never heard her leaving.

Before Grandma Laura left, when we talked
in her dressing room, it was a talk that
she asked me to remember. She had changed
behind the screen. She came out in the bra
and a long green skirt. The bra was dark but
as she talked it warmed and started to glow.

“I want you to remember this,” she said.
“Will you try to remember what I say?”

I told her of course I would remember.

“Remember,” Grandma Laura repeated,
“that all the things in the modern world, now,
all the things that make today’s world modern,
existed way back, when I was your age.
Global commerce and communication,
global culture in art, architecture,
entertainment. And global politics.
All those things existed. But everything
was different. It was a different world then.
I mean before Nineteen Fourteen. Do you
know why that date’s special? Nineteen Fourteen?”

I didn’t. The only big date I knew
about the world was Nineteen Forty-One.
But I knew there was an earlier war.

I guessed, “Was that when World War One started?”

Grandma Laura nodded. “You’re very smart.
Before the Great War we had telegraphs
all over the globe. And every ocean
was crossed and re-crossed by giant liners.
Every major city had skyscrapers
that architects tried to make taller and
more beautiful than previous buildings.
Europe had the world’s first airline—zeppelins
carried passengers to all big cities.
All the things that make today’s world modern
existed way back, when I was your age.
But all the things were different in those days.
And I think that’s what the Great War really
was about. I don’t think it was about
Germany fighting the world. Or treaties.
Or any of that political stuff.
I think the Great War was about changing
the thinking behind the things in the world.
Changing hearts and minds behind the thinking.
I don’t think it was this country against
that country. I think the Great War, with its
new scale of killing, new technologies
of killing, new politics of killing,
wasn’t war in the human sense at all.
I think the Great War was monsters starting
to take the planet away from humans.
I don’t know if they’re what we Christians call
the Fallen Angels. Or what the Arabs
call Djinns. Or what science fiction people
call aliens from another planet.
But whatever they are they hate humans.
They use humans to spread death. And to change
this world from what it was in Nineteen Twelve
to what it is becoming here and now.
Things weren’t perfect when I was a kid.
It wasn’t Arcadia. There was grief
and sickness and injustice and madness.
But back then all things, even the bad things,
were human things. The world was a human
place. I’m going to tell you something dumb.
But it’s important. Do you understand
something can be dumb, but important, too?”

I wanted Grandma Laura to go on,
but I didn’t want to pretend with her.
I said I didn’t think I understood
how something dumb could be important, too.

Grandma Laura laughed. “That’s okay,” she said.
“Someday I believe you will understand.
When I was a kid—when I was your age—
we could take an elevator up to
the highest floor of a high skyscraper.
You could go to an office and open
the window. You could open the window
and breath fresh air and look straight at the world.
When you traveled by zeppelin the windows
in your cabin and in the lounge opened.
Traveling from Berlin to Paris you could
stand by the open window and look straight
at the world. You could breath fresh air. Windows
opened when I was a kid. You could breath
fresh air. You could look at the world without
inches of glass between you and the world.
It sounds dumb, but remember it. Monsters
don’t need fresh air. Monsters don’t need to see
things straight. There are a million differences
between the world that was and what is now.
Not just different things, but different thinking
behind things. And the hearts and minds behind
the thinking. Monster hearts and minds versus
human ones. Will you remember all that?”

I told Grandma Laura that I would try.
She smiled and rubbed my head. Her bra was bright.
She told me to come listen to her sing.

Even when she sang songs that sounded sad
the way she sang them somehow made you smile.

I’ll always remember Grandma Laura
smiling, making me smile, everyone smile.

She sang this song that night in her glowing bra.
It sounds sad, but at one point everyone
sang along. That was my Grandma Laura!

This is what Grandma Laura sang that night:

Let me tell you the good life
It’s been good to me
Let me tell you the great good life
It’s been good to me
I’m going down, down, down, down, down . . .
In a sea of happiness

Let me tell you the good life
It took it all out of me
Let me tell you the great good life
There’s nothing left of me
I’m going down, down, down, down, down . . .
In a sea of happiness.

I’m going down, down, down . . .
I’m going down, down, down . . .
I’m going down, down, down . . .
I’m going down, down, down . . .
In a sea of happiness—
I’m going down

Three little fishes
In an itty-bitty pool
Singing boop-boop,
Diddy-daddem,
Wannum, choo!
Three little fishes
And a Momma fishy, too
Singing boop-boop,
Diddy-daddem,
Wannum, choo!
“Swim!” aid the Momma fishy
“Fast as you can!”
And they swam and they swam
Right up over the dam!

But me, I’m going down, down, down . . .
I’m going down, down, down . . .
I’m going down, down, down . . .
I’m going down, down, down . . .
In a sea of happiness—
In a sea of happiness—
In a sea of happiness—
I’m going down

The End

Free Energy! Light Without Heat! Lifts And Separates! #3: The Paperclip Nazis

“Only in Germany did they possess
the metals industries to fabricate
wire to our extreme specifications.
Only in Germany did they possess
chemicals industries to formulate
a fluid with the composition and
purity of its components our plans
required. We had to stay in Germany.

“Or abandon our work. Everyone felt
another war was coming. The Great War
had changed Europe. We feared that the next war
would change the world. If we did abandon
our research we feared that we could never
get an opportunity to resume.

“We felt—many people felt—horrible
changes coming. We hoped we could work fast.
We hoped to verify our theories and
construct prototypes before the next war.

“We worked fast. Made progress. But not enough.

“No matter what you might read nowadays
everyone recognized right at the start
the Nazis were evil. The White Rose group
framed all their dissent in religious terms.
For their insight they were all beheaded.
But everyone saw. Everyone, like us,
had their own reasons to stay, go along.

“Himmler himself oversaw all advanced
industrial research. But we believed
we were smart, thought we could fool the Nazis.
We thought we could show just enough progress
to continue getting resources but
withhold the foundations of our thinking.
Our reports and demonstrations were all
carefully planned. We believed we were smart.

“And for a very long while we were smart.

“We celebrated in late Forty-three.
Our experiments confirmed our theories.
Our final stage prototypes functioned well.
We contacted Allied agents. A deal
was worked out with the Americans. They
would extract us and much of our work. We
would help them develop infrastructure
to manufacture our technology.

“And we did get out. Of course Himmler still
had our reports and early prototypes
but without the knowledge inside our heads
there was no way for him to develop,
expand on and exploit what we had left.

“We felt smart, safe, successful. The Allies
were winning the war. We were in Detroit
surrounded by great industrialists
and research scientists. They understood
our theories, our prototypes. They began
the planning stages to start production.
We believed that we had fulfilled our dreams.

“We’d manipulated, fooled the Nazis.
It had never occurred to us there were
larger—almost incomprehensibly
larger—manipulations in motion
around us. We learned. Then we learned again.

“The Americans brought over von Braun.

“He was a Nazi scoundrel who didn’t
care about employing slave labor or
firing missiles at British civilians.
But von Braun was angry because Hitler
made him work on missiles and not spaceships.
The Americans promised they’d let him
work on spaceships so von Braun came over.

“But von Braun was trivial. He worked with
chemical engines. Chemical rockets.

“Why did the American make a deal
with this Nazi scum, we asked ourselves, when
America had fine chemists themselves?

“We didn’t answer that question. Not then.
We told ourselves the politics of war
must get so complicated that sometimes
individuals cannot understand
the decisions made by politicians.

“Then our world changed. Rather, something happened
which caused us to realize that the world
around us was much different than we thought.
Our world stayed the same. Our vision sharpened.

“The Americans brought over Kammler.

“Hans Kammler and his whole group. Kammler was
Himmler’s equal. Kammler had built the camps.
The slave camps. The death camps. Built and run them.

“The Americans brought over Kammler.

“Von Braun was a trivial scoundrel and
we could pretend we didn’t understand.

“But some things are so plain, bluntly evil
they can be understood regardless of
whatever complications surround them.

“The Americans brought over Kammler.

“It became clear to us, then, the Nazis
were not losing the war. We understood,
then, the Nazis were just being absorbed
into something larger. Something that could
deal with, give place to, pure human evil.

“So one by one we withdrew. Some retired.
Some went on vacation and stayed away.

“There were some individuals and groups
within the American government
as appalled as we were when the Nazis
regrouped and reappeared under new names
in the American business world and
in American academia
and even America’s politics.
These individuals and groups helped us.
They gave us what protection they could when
Kammler and his stooges tried to exact
revenge on us for leaving Germany.

“But we were done. And the Nazis were strong.
We had delivered our life’s work to them.
The very people we had escaped from.

“I slipped away, taking one prototype.

“Eventually the American
industrial base developed enough
to recreate our technology. But
they do not. At least not publicly. Why?

“I believe we were right many years back.
We were right when we feared that the next war
would destroy the world the way the Great War
destroyed Europe. The whole world was destroyed.

“Not the buildings and bridges and such stuff.
When that stuff’s destroyed it can be rebuilt.

“What we didn’t foresee—couldn’t have guessed—
was how a war could destroy ideas,
blast minds to wasteland, smash hearts to rubble.

“We were thinking of wires and chemicals.
We were thinking about things. It never
occurred to us that people who made war
simply didn’t give a damn about things.”



(Tomorrow: Free Energy! Light Without Heat! Lifts And Separates! #4: “Let Me Tell You The Good Life”)

Free Energy! Light Without Heat! Lifts And Separates! #2: How It Works

My grandmother often sang at the club
owned by my father’s aunt and her husband.
My dad’s aunt was Grandma Laura’s sister.
The club was a neighborhood supper club,
not a fancy night club. In the Sixties
and early Seventies most neighborhoods
had lots of little restaurants and lounges
with live music. It was mostly local
bands and performers. Local musicians
made a little money and customers
enjoyed live music. Later, however,
the so-called economies of DJs
playing tapes made such places history.
Customers made do with recorded songs.
Local musicians were left high and dry.

Before and after her performances
Grandma Laura spent hours talking to me.

Once when she’d been wearing the glowing bra
on stage, in the dressing room she changed clothes
behind a screen while I sat on a couch
by the make-up table performers used.
She changed into a black skirt and green blouse.
When she sat down at the make-up table
she was still carrying the glowing bra.

It still glowed in her hands but was fading.
Grandma Laura saw me staring. She smiled.
“What do you think of this garment?” she asked.

I told her my dad thought it was a trick.

She laughed, but it wasn’t a happy laugh.
“That’s my son,” she said. “But what do you think?”

I enjoyed talking to Grandma Laura.
She listened. She took me seriously.
Lots of adults don’t really talk to kids.

I picked my words carefully. “I don’t think
it’s a trick. I don’t think it’s real magic.
I think it’s something else. But I don’t know
what kind of thing it could possibly be.”

Grandma Laura laughed again, happy now.
She rubbed my head. “You’re my grandson alright!
It is not magic. It is not a trick.
This garment’s science and technology.”

She tossed the bra to me. “Feel it,” she said.
“Don’t be shy. Looks like fabric, doesn’t it?”

I nodded. “It looks like fabric,” I said.
“But it doesn’t feel right. It’s cold. It’s hard.”

“That’s right,” she said. “It’s not fabric at all.
It’s wires. It’s metal and stuff like metal.
It’s many different kinds of the thinnest,
most amazing wires ever created.”

I said, “The wire near the body’s different.”

“You have good eyes. All the wires are so thin
they are woven together just like thread.
But the wires against the skin are special.
They’re called composites and they don’t conduct
electricity. Shall I tell you how
the garment works, how it generates light?”

I frowned. “I don’t think I would understand.”

Grandma Laura frowned, also. “What you don’t
understand today, you might tomorrow.
Always learn whatever you can. Later
when you learn more everything might make sense.”

I nodded. “Okay. Tell me how it glows.”

I was still holding the bra. She pointed.
“Those thousands of wires are hollow,” she said.
And they are not just hollow. The thickness
of the open interior changes
in a very calculated manner.
A very special fluid circulates
inside the wires. Body heat makes it warm.
Convection currents make the fluid flow
through the changing inside diameters
of the wires. The patterns of the changes
make the fluid form vortices. Do you
know that word? Do you know what vortex means?”

I had read some science fiction story
where a giant whirlpool caused a ship to sink.
The writer called the whirlpool a vortex.
“Is a vortex something like a whirlpool?”

“Yes, you are my grandson,” she said, again.
“And yes, a vortex is like a whirlpool.
Inside the hollow wires the fluid spins,
and pressure makes it spin even faster.
The spinning and pressure become so strong
that a tiny percentage of atoms
can’t even exist in a normal state.
These atoms become particles we call
virtual state matter. Then they’re so strange
they pass right through the thinnest metal wires.
When they pass through the wires, two things happen.
The thin wires develop a potential.
That means if you connect the wire’s free ends
to some simple circuitry you can make
electricity. To run a motor.
Or radio. Or recharge batteries.
Anything. The second thing that happens
is the virtual particles quickly
lose energy and reconstitute as
mostly normal photons. Photons are light.
We see the photons then as shining light.”

No matter how hard I tried to picture
all that stuff I had no idea what
an atom was supposed to look like, or,
even worse, what virtual state matter
was supposed to look like. But I did own
a transistor radio and I knew
the batteries were always running down.
Grandma Laura said that the glowing bra
made electricity. I wondered if
it was like batteries. Did it run down?

“If someone puts this on,” I asked, “would it
glow forever? Would it ever run down?”

Grandma Laura raised an eyebrow. “That is
a very good question. And the answer
is no. Not forever. There’s no such thing
as a perpetual energy source.
But since the vortices break down atoms
even though there’s just a tiny amount
of fluid, there are a lot of atoms.
A lot in this case means a vast number.
Kept at body temperature that garment
would eventually break down enough
atoms so that vortices wouldn’t form.
But even if it glowed around the clock
it would glow for about three hundred years
before the vortices inside lost shape.”

I was still holding the bra. “Wow,” I said.

“Oh, yes,” Grandma Laura said, nodding. “Wow.
Just imagine shirts made with this technique.
Or jumpsuits. Or tents. Imagine panels
people could put on their roof in the sun.
Lingerie like that bra was just a lark,
a way to demonstrate the principle.”

Suddenly the bra in my hands felt like
handfuls of pure diamond or sheets of gold.
I very carefully put down the bra
on the table between us. I looked up.
“Is somebody going to make those things?
How come nobody’s ever heard of this?
Why does my dad think it’s some kind of trick?”

Grandma Laura let out a long, sad sigh.
She sat back in her chair. I never thought
of her as old. She was in perfect health.
Singing on stage she was as beautiful
as any of the young women singers.
But at that moment, when she sighed, sat back,
I realized this was my dad’s mother.
It occurred to me she must be about
seventy years old. Or even older.

But just as I was thinking about age,
Grandma Laura inhaled a long breath and
sat forward in her chair. She grinned at me.
When she grinned, she looked like she was glowing.

But she looked like she could glow forever.



(Tomorrow: Free Energy! Light Without Heat! Lifts And Separates! #3: The Paperclip Nazis)

Free Energy! Light Without Heat! Lifts And Separates! #1: Grandma Laura

I don’t even know if Grandma Laura
was a scientist or businesswoman.
Heck, I’d always thought she was a singer.
I think, however, even as a kid
I knew she had done some kind of spy stuff.

No one in the family talks much about
the family’s past. And no one talks at all
about Grandma Laura. But I miss her.

It wasn’t until I got to high school
that I connected her disappearance
to the whole glowing bra and spy business.
I guess I always just had imagined
she had gone off on a singing tour and
met and married a guy somewhere far off.

I’m still convinced today that whatever
caught up with her she would have seen coming.
She somehow would have got out of harm’s way.
I think she disappeared to stay safe, not
because the Paperclip Nazis got her.

After all, I know she didn’t create
what I as a child called the glowing bra—
what fringe-types call the Nazi vortex bra—
alone. In Germany there was a group
with contacts that helped her get to Detroit.

Talking to me, she just said she had ‘friends.’

When I learned they helped in her first escape
from the Paperclip Nazis I figured
they must be powerful friends. She even
stayed openly in Detroit after that,
even sometimes wore the bra while singing.

I have no idea who her friends were
or what kind of connections they maintained.
I wish they had been powerful enough
so she wouldn’t have had to disappear.

But she hasn’t disappeared from my mind.
In fact, she had specifically asked me
to remember some of the things she said.
And I’ll always remember what she said
about how the Nazi vortex bra worked.



(Tomorrow: Free Energy! Light Without Heat! Lifts And Separates! #2: How It Works)

Get Well Soon, Marianne Faithfull! #5: The Monkee And The Fox

Today is the final day of Get Well Soon, Marianne Faithfull! Week.

Today’s quote comes from a man whose songwriting and performances shaped my consciousness—for better and worse—far more than I’d normally admit.

And when this man did whatever it was he did that started MTV, he shaped the consciousness of the whole modern world—for better and worse.

But more importantly than this consciousness-shaping stuff, this man actually has met Marianne Faithfull.

Ladies and gentlemen, Mike Nesmith:

I was staying with John Lennon during the recording of the Sgt. Pepper album. He would come home and play the acetates from the day’s sessions. “What do you think of that sound? Do you think there’s too much bass on there?” And of course I just didn’t have any way to talk to him because he was just rearranging my musical realities at the time. I said, “This is just miraculous. This is some of the most innovative and creative and interesting stuff I’ve ever heard.” And he showed me a picture of the album cover. So when he said, “Do you want to come down and hang?” I was there. The only thing I can really remember about the sessions, however, was Marianne Faithfull—whoa. I thought, “This is the rock and roll mama of all time.” And I was unabashedly just stricken. She was with Jagger. When she wandered into the room, I thought, “Oh, this is what the fuss is all about.” She was some stone fox, I’ll tell you.

*

Marianne Faithfull, you stone fox, get well soon!