The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of paraheliotropic trees

Wind on the waters. Not darkness but light, unknown, unseen. A whisper, ohm, and then a storm. That is all — that is everything — that is how we come to be, how I come to be, writing these words, really, truly, ground between the two wheeled gears of World and Time, relishing in the Holy Moment at this Late Hour, 4:27 in the morning, October 28, 2008.

Let there be light; so speaketh the words of an ancient book, laid down like I lay this down. Once, during the Days of Awe, the High HolyDays, I was a child, and I sat in my old house, now sold, on my old couch, given away, reading the linear Pentateuch, when my uncle, now dead (I myself laid him in the ground, wailing and wailing of women, crying in my father’s arms, crying in my aunt’s arms at the apartment after the funeral, no words, no nothing, just the pure and terrrible emotion of heartbreaking pain and the feeling of human arms around me, holding me up), reading about the Genesis. Those days are gone — past out of the Holy Moment, replaced by other days replaced by other days that have led me to this day, this day which is my chance, my one true chance, to reach both out and in and in gathering the legions of my will so touch those same waters of time and beginnings that once rippled with the whispers of a universe being born. I need no whitehaired Zeus-God to tell me the truth before my eyes — the truth that perpetually slips beyond our grasp, pushed out by televisions and lcd screens that exalt the eyeball and wither the hand — reach out then, soldier, child of the lord, reach out, self, lyric odes to action, sitting here, thinking and writing and forming words in the cockhours before dawn, opposite of sleep, opposite of action, student, studious, unused, waiting, waaiting, how much will I lose, how long will I wait, what else, and when else, and why, and there are other friends, and other roads, and first, perhaps, make friends with myself, and find myself in this new city, and do things, and love, and go forth, traveling, on the road, all is not lost, where there’s a word there’s a way, ten vowel phonemes, and graphemes, and syllabic exercises, and weaktongued lovemaking, and alabaster arms, freckled, wrapped around me, smiling, giggling, presenting a poem or joke, my peacock tale, my plumage, dancing now, we’re dancing now, words fall away, it is late, it is early, I am lullabying myself to sleep, to places where I’ll dream, and make actions with the pure factors of my thought, I’ll dream of life, and not death, faces of my uncle and my grandfather who have gone before, my old great grandmother, the love of all who have e’er loved me, all the girls I ever loved, all the friends I ever had, and above them, Saints Paramount, the Special Few, dancing, loving, twirling around, skirts fluttering, hands in gloves and ears in muffs and scarves wound tightly around pale white necks, red cheeks, and breath made visible, crossing the inches of air lit up with the light of holy fires, captured at high price, a bird is pecking, so we go, up, and up, and up, and out, and up, and on, and on, Sisyphus is happy, maybe, maybe still, and I am happy, with him, in the depths of madness and at the height of love and being loved, I will find my place, I will find my calling, my great work, I will sleep, I will dream, I will sleep, I will dream.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%ADch_Qu%E1%BA%A3ng_%C4%90%E1%BB%A9c

http://www.longnow.org/projects/clock/

I wanted to be sure to reach you;
though my ship was on the way it got caught
in some moorings. I am always tying up
and then deciding to depart. In storms and
at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide
around my fathomless arms, I am unable
to understand the forms of my vanity
or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder
in my hand and the sun sinking. To
you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage
of my will. The terrible channels where
the wind drives me against the brown lips
of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet
I trust the sanity of my vessel; and
if it sinks, it may well be in answer
to the reasoning of the eternal voices,
the waves which have kept me from reaching you.

On the Road is Don Quixote told from the viewpoint of Sancho Panza/Sal Paradise/Jack Dulouz; the tale of the hurting, death-filled, craftsman sitting alone in New York City, waiting to be struck, waiting for his life on the road to begin, and then it did, not with some old knight of the dolorous face, but a young knight, a true knight-errant of America, Cassidy, Moriarty, and Sancho Panza, both squire and amanenuensis, goes along, looking for windmills.

He finds women, and strange far off cities on hills, and is promised islands and riches and all of that — Sancho, fat, still broken, in love with the bottle, as nervous as the rest of us when it comes to girls, thatsaid, could still light up a room with his darkbrow when he walked in it — and genderbending Moriarity, first-one, dancing in the moonlight with Old Queer Alan Ginsberg — what songs did those two sing? Cold-water flats in New York City. Here, in the post fin-de-seicle ultramodern new, I sit in Greenwich Village, their Village, after long travels, by a commodious vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and environs — —

Who am I, echoing into the wishing well, deep dark, down below, coins chinking against the hewn stone sides, slippery with watermoss. What price freedom? Even revolutionaries have to die, Sancho Panza the first, dying in my father’s town, unmourned, unloved, unknown, as the United States carried on, ripping itself apart — the Empire still exists, says the Horselover, dead-now, cybernetic simulacra missing in America, that Black Iron Prison, Tricky Dick’s Ghost still in charge, the Undead King, where is Cassidy, where is Moriarity, where is our Knight-Errant Quixote, Zorro, Batman, Superman, Heroes dressed in pantyhose, silk stockings — when I was a child, my goal was to wear my underwear on over my pants —

We have the CultureMachine, and the MoneyMachine, and the FoodstuffMachine, and the TrinketMachine, and the ServiceMachine, and all these little submachines dancing along their subroutines, factors of production, neomarxist Adorno-style systems of control, post-historical paradise, while we rape and pillage the beautiful Edenic-rest of the world. The Empire still exists. Where goes Quixote? Disappeared at a Dead concert — and now I go to Phish concerts — everything is new again, happy days are here again, can’t keep banging your head against the wall, it hurts.

I lay in bed, under a red sheet and a blue comfortor, echoed behind my head in my two pillows, typing on a black computer whose 15-inch monitor glows too brightly for these night-eyes; to my left, a small wooden dresser, where I keep my clothes, next to that a half-size plastic shelving unit, the top sags under the weight of four books, an empty tissue box (know what that means), alarm clock sits on top of Finnegan’s Wake, my cellular telephone (almost forgot how to spell it, they’re just cellphones now, postnyms and retronyms, strange) plugged into the power strip that sits on the wooden floor, above this shelving unit is a framed print of Jasper John’s American Flag; in front of which, hangs my fuzzy blue bathtowels, big one, hand towel, and big one, then a fake plastic partition-door keeping me off from the living room, and then a large bookshelf-like structure, with a couple of other pictures stacked up, then some binders and papers, then a few of my law books (that’s right, I’m reading law presently), some more pleasure-books and DVDs, my wallet, watch and keys, and below that, on the bottom rung, precariously close to the dustmites my suit and shirts. On the other side, back up, some toiletries, some school (office) supplies, some papers, and then some laundry supplies. On the side of the structure is a shoerack type pocket thing, containing my dress shoes and umbrella. At the foot of the bed, cutting across at a sharp diagonal, is the sole window, looking out onto a small negative air space between our two townhouses, and a pole through which the hotwater flows in the morning, noon, night, sometimes, and a wicker table I mean to dispose of. That’s my room — small but large enough for this one, a double bed, books, computerized devices. 21st century chic. I am poor now, may be poor later, that’s ok — I only spent $23 today, half of that on groceries, milk, orange juice, and Raisin Bran Crunch. Shall I practice the art of KMart realism? Shall I go into those shiny plastic action figures that peopled my imaginary playfield twenty years ago? He-Man, and Lion-O, and Optimus Prime? Skelator, Mumm-Ra, and Megatron? Or talk about the science fiction apocalypses I witnessed as a child, Terminator 2 and Independence Day, Godzilla Remake, and the Lord of the Rings reduced to cellulite? Or how I spent the high holidays of my Third Grade Year reading through the original Tolkien, sweetly seduced by tales of hobbits? Absolute reality — absolute simulacra. Hyperreal. Ultramodern. Alone in the middle of nowhere on a farm in Tennesee, I eat mushrooms, and dream of what the aliens would think, seeing the human monkeys dance to loud music. I think that they would be impressed — I think that God, if he existed, would be impressed — the fun and wonder we have created.

Yes we die. Still, we die. But the fun and wonder we have created — the easy death as opposed to the hard death — the rich life as opposed to the poor life — the full life, well-lived, followed by the deep dreamless sleep — as soon as I stop typing, typing thought-fossil-graphemes out into the noosphere, I will slipslip into an analogous sleep — yes, yes, yes, there are windmills out there, masquerading as giants, masquerading as windmills, and there are yet Dean Moriaritys out there, Father Deans and Baby Deans, and several thousand Sancho Panza’s, waiting to be their shieldbearers. Quest on, Knight, the Questing Beast exists, continues, the Fisher King is wounded, who does the Grail serve, what secrets lie within the hidden sanctums of the Black Iron Prison, who will go there, to what ends, the ends of the earth, I dance ecstatic before the Ark of the Lord, I go to renew the promise, the Relationship, the Great Connection, Rainbow Connection, someday we’ll find it, the lovers, dreamers, me, I love you, Nina, I love you, Nina, I love you, Nina, and I wish that you were with me now, sick babygirl, sweet baby james. Even though we ain’t got money, I’m so in love with you honey, the romantic poverty of youth, the unbounded optimism of all tomorrow’s parties — oh baby sweet baby jane oh baby oh sweet baby jane — what kind of song will I sing tomorrow? What kind of song will I sing?

Imagine walking down the street, passing the other pedestrians. While doing this, you are a participant in their life and they are participants in theirs — from this basic interaction, this exchange, all other things in our society become possible — though we can never completely close the circle, and there are always both solipsistic doubts and actual failures of the parallax view, evolution of our mindframes have converged so as to allow us the Common Language and Common Mental Field upon which that language rests so that we can communicate with each other and help each other with our sand castles.

The drug — that strange chemical which changes the variables and alters the field — damages the common field, and while subjective experience is heightened, the community suffers in that one man has chosen to go alone. An ethical question arises as to the extent the community as a community should censure the anti-social whose only harm to society is his willing non-participation — nevertheless, the problem as a problem is a real one without any judgments made.

This is why it is so difficult to talk to your girlfriend when you are high, why you wouldn’t want to raise or deal with children with such a state.

The next obvious question is whether mutual drug-taking restores the communal field, within the bounds, or whether it is the (SAT analogy) mutual masturbation to regular communication’s full-fledged intercourse. If a tree falls in a forest, but I’m the only one to hear it, is ther a significance to it?

Is there a significance to the larger individual qualia that can never be validated by outside experience? Clearly, Western Culture, with it’s focus on the building of tall buildings, emphasises the common and deemphasizes the individual — ironically, considering the persistence of that fierce individualistic meme still so prevalent in 21st American Culture — but is the inner intoxication (and let’s expand this intoxication to those induced sua sponte by sages, mystics, bodhidharms, and the like) devalued because it cannot be shared? Or can it be shared? While the initial drugtaking experience may be scattershot and result in a endless multifurcation of parallax-views as every one and harry pursues their own private giggles, perhaps with repetition and training, the landscape of the new field can be explored and systematized so as to allow the shared experience that we use to structure our Quotididian Business Affairs can be reimagined in the Mental Pyrotechnics Arena.

The issue of danger is a real but separate one. My interest here is only the isolating effects of the intoxicant, and how, perhaps, they can be overcome. If overcome, what skyscrapers, what Towers of Non-Babel will the psychonauts, fellow travelers, construct for themselves. The 1960s? Second Summer of Love, Manchester? 100,000 Phish fans in the Everglades? Black Rock City, ra ra ra? New rules, new civilizations; new crimes; new pains; old world loses its luster.

In the foggy dark of twilight, a dirty empty diner on the industrial edge of the Vast World City, I wait, trembling, nails bitten down, jittery, grinding at my back teeth, untouched coffee before me, scratching at my nicotine patch.

The whiteman walks through the door, impossibly tall, stooping to come in, he is white, but he is dressed in cream, and he walks up, sits down across from me, and smiles at me with yellow teeth. He opens his mouth  and takes out an albino cockroach and hands it to me. It tickles at my hand as the voices at the edge of my mind begin to talk over one another, screaming quietly, I can hear the fear in their voices, tickling, white legs on my palm, the whiteman’s hand covering my own —

He opens his mouth again, about to say something, and the cockroach in my hand is gone. He nods at me, rises, and walks out of the diner.

Just like they said, I think. I corral my legions, and they go silent. I open my hand. In it is a page ripped from a book, thin, like drug paper. I look at it. The page number, 362, is highlighted, as is the chapter title, Corinthians.

An address. A clue. What I sought.

Crystal Ball. Location TBD. Women in cubist Spring 2009 Comme De Garcons dresses, you cannot see their faces. Noise rock blaring from potted plants. Nude waiters and waitresss passing out pills and philtres. Lights blink in rhythm. Young Vagabond Debutante-Son, in a black and white three-piece, laughs uncontrollably as he turns a flute of liquid over and over — it clings to the glass, it is non-Newtownian fluid, ooz, Mirrors surround the room, come up and down like stalagmites and stalactites, forming columns — the guest list is exclusive, someone famous is in the corner, lighting the hair of a model on fire as she laughs uncontrollably, dark drugs are at work in this place — a naked girl walks past, bleeding from a thousand cuts, eyes red and tear-stained, but she is silent and elsewhere — and old woman, in a large Queen Elizabeth dress looks on, as a young dark-skinned man goes to work under her skirts — she talks all the while with an impossibly old old man, attended by his own young dark-skinned man. Flamedancers dance in the middle, as young howling lordlings take deep drinks of kerosene and spit at them, the dancers dart out of the way, but flames lick at their feet. Uproarious laughing.