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madscientistjournal · 6 years ago

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Fiction: In Communion with the Invisible Flock: Erasmus Karl and the Nidificant Manuscript

An essay by Luisa Sontag, as provided by George Salis Art by Leigh Legler

“If thy heart were a nest, thou would begat many birds.” –The Purloined Philosophia by Boris of Aventaria

There has been much controversy, even mythology, surrounding the so-called “nidificant manuscript.” A few notables, including the biolinguist Norman Mast, have clamored to call it “an anachronistic masterpiece of scientific literature” (34), suggesting it has been passed down to us from the future, or an alternate past. Many others have deemed the work “a hoax of adolescent caliber” (Mare 25). But by studying the work and delineating its influence on human society, we can say that the truth exists somewhere between fantastic worship and ignorant dismissal. First of all, we know that this some 1,600-page manuscript was composed in the early 19th century by the naturalist, or “supernaturalist,” Erasmus Karl, and details the existence of a species of bird-human that inhabits an archipelago called the Beak-born Islands. A number of its pages include baroque maps of the islands in question, along with illustrations of alien flora and fauna and, most importantly and prominently, the winged beings themselves.

This year marks the 150th anniversary since the first bottle, containing a page of Karl’s manuscript, was discovered, specifically between the pincers of a bleached crab on the coast of Budva, Montenegro. This, the method in which Karl “published” the manuscript, has only added to the idiosyncrasy that has either converted or disgusted relevant experts. Each and every page was rolled into its own bottle and cast into the sea. During the intervening century and a half, around a dozen bottles washed ashore on all countries with a seaside (their contents now published en masse for the first time). The bottles were molded with aid of fire from a translucent shell later identified in the manuscript as a “Clay Conch, a most copious & convenient Resource of Nature.” Ascertaining the location of the archipelago based on the appearance of the bottles has proved to be impossible, and the results obtained by oceanographers inexplicably suggest that the islands are capable of nautical mobility, like a flock, perhaps with occasional murmurations. Because bottled pages are still being discovered almost every month, the nidificant manuscript is most definitely incomplete, its prospective length up for debate. Some have purported that an infinite number of bottles will find their way to land, that they will continue to do so far after human civilization is but dust.

The Wind Calleth: A Brief Biography of Erasmus Karl

Before I begin my exploration of the manuscript and its influence on human society, I find it necessary to relate what is known of Erasmus Karl’s life. Born in the Netherlands circa 1770, his mother was appalled at newborn baby Karl’s full head of white feathery hair, his thin, elongated body, and the downy web between his taloned fingertips. She blamed the sins of the unknown father, while others whispered that Karl’s appearance was the byproduct of a professionally prurient mother. Regardless of their origin, the unfortunate mutations condemned Karl as an outcast, something to be shooed, ogled, or at best tolerated. It wasn’t long until young Karl despised his reflection, taking extreme measures to change it, as is written in his unpublished journals. First he shorn his hair, which highlighted his teardrop-shaped skull, then he filed his fingernails, sometimes with such desperation that he exposed and bloodied the nail beds, and finally he searched for a type of glove that could hide the finger webbings. Deeming the search futile, he excised the vein-thin skin as if it were the film on a Dutch custard. He bled profusely the first time, but afterward it was merely a matter of maintaining the V-shaped scabs.

Aside from his repelling physical characteristics, Karl was a relatively normal and healthy young boy, until, later in school, he became obsessed with nests, spurred by one he had witnessed being constructed outside his bedroom window. He was amazed to see it built with not just twigs and leaves, but clothespins, apple slices, strands of a stranger’s hair, the string from a cup-and-ball, and other miscellaneous objects. The peculiarity of it inspired him to craft his own nests, which he planted, waiting for random birds to make them home. Impatient, he began to track down authentic nests in trees and the nooks of buildings and replace them with his synthetic ones. Some of his nests resembled the real thing, while others were of odd shapes, pyramids and Klein bottles, or made from strange materials, such as quasicrystals and gaseous gelatins. He was compelled to record the birds’ reactions to their new homes. Some of them simply moved elsewhere, while others were driven to infanticide, either eating their younglings or dashing their unhatched shells against rocks. He was further horrified to discover that sphere-shaped nests of chlorophyll caused the birds’ wings to deteriorate into stubs but was later pleased to determine that alabaster dodecahedrons produced birds with wingspans up to five feet. Other nests also seemed to have a positive effect, causing the inhabitants to sing more beautifully, to love their chirping chicks more so than ever before.

Being neglected by his mother, and without a father, the young Karl couldn’t help but wonder why humans didn’t live in similar nests of compassion, and through some such lines of logic he extrapolated that certain humans do live in those nests, bird-humans that exist in isolation from the rest of the world, on top of a mountain higher than Olympus, or on an island better concealed than Atlantis. Thereafter, he dedicated his time to further study of all birds while simultaneously looking for clues as to the whereabouts of the theoretical bird-humans, whom he soon thought of as his vanished ancestors.

Hence the term “nidificant manuscript,” the adjective coming from the Latin nīdificāre, meaning “to nest” or “to build a nest,” the impetus of his life’s work. There is an irony here, in which the curse is also the gift, or vice versa. This is embodied most of all in events that occurred in the final years of Karl’s formal education. Bullying became a constant impediment to Karl’s mental stability. When required to change into athletic wear, the other boys gagged at Karl’s mangled hands, smacked him on his goose-pimpled scalp, and poked him between his peninsular ribs. They spread rumors, asserting that his mother never carried him in her belly, but incubated a yellow-spotted egg for nine months, after having performed coitus with a chicken. Enveloped in that negative atmosphere, an incident brewed. Some said Karl wanted to defy the rumors, transcend them, while others said he wanted to reinforce them, integrate them as a form of truth. Whatever his beliefs or intentions at the time, he found himself standing at the edge of the school building’s roof and, after yelling something, he jumped off, falling two stories as he flapped his phalanges. The webbing between his fingers had been regrown, which suggests experiment on Karl’s part, yet a few witnesses reported that he was thrown off by a group of bullies and had no desire to fly. After being carried on a stretcher to the hospital, he was diagnosed with a broken hip and a slight fracture of the femur. During his bedridden months following an operation, he would repeat the following phrase, sometimes in a slow whisper, other times so loudly and quickly it sounded less like words and more like squawking: “The Wind calleth!” “The Wind calleth!” Such is also what he presumably shouted before his failed “experiment.” One of the nurses claimed that when she put an ear to his bedroom door during those more boisterous moments of layered chanting, the birds outside his window squawked in response, initiating conversations that ceased the second she knocked.

It is thought that those cross-species conversations provided the first clues Karl needed to find the bird-humans (whom he subsequently labeled Homo sapiens avis: “wise bird man”). Not much is known of his life after he recovered from his fall. He did drop out of school in favor of more private research, and afterward his mother formally disowned him, wanting to distance herself as much as possible from his reputation for eccentric and anti-social behavior. He was rarely seen outside the wooden dome he built for himself at the edge of the forest. The few papers he attempted to publish in those early years are lost. We know only the title of one as it appeared in a letter of rejection: “The Nidus & the Fowl: Mutations of Mind & Body by way of Avian Architecture.” A decade later, in 1801, Karl’s “nest” was noticed as dilapidated by curious locals, who peered inside to find a mass of miasmic ingredients and piles of hastily scribbled notes, some of which might have contained proto-maps. Tucked in the walls of the nest as if part of the very structure were items pilfered or “recycled,” such as human hair, newspapers, jewelry, and a pair of dirty women’s underwear. There was no sign of Karl himself. Astounded and infuriated, the locals thought the nest a bastion of black magic and quickly burned it. They also assumed that the witchery had consumed the practitioner, that a cacodaemon snatched Karl from his bed at night. In truth, once Karl’s preliminary research was completed, he left for the Beak-born Islands, an archipelago consisting of four large islands and some thirteen islets. Viewed from above, they vaguely form the shape of a bird’s beak.

It is a mystery as to how Karl made it to the Beak-born Islands, though some allege that for part of his journey, he sailed with the crew of an unnamed British schooner, where he learned English. Whether true or not, it is generally believed that he never left the archipelago. As I will explain in detail later, the Beak-born Islands were his one true home, his “rapturous Nest” (47). Reinforcing the settlement theory, Karl became proficient in their immensely difficult language: “Subsequently bonding with these avian Beings as though I too were bless’d with Wings, I learn’d Their Language, a coalescence of shrill & protract’d Clicks, but with myriad Quavers & what can only be describ’d as Loops & Spirals, tallying a Complexity unheard of in any contemporary Language. Aye, One could only do these Beings Justness by chronicling Them in Their own sacr’d Tongue” (vi-vii). Which explains why some of the manuscript’s pages include cryptographic ink marks consisting of curlicues, crests and troughs, and hypnotic helixes. Translators have yet to decipher them. But, as we will see, even though we can read a majority of the manuscript, it still births many more questions than it answers.

Begetting Many Birds: The Winged Beings and their Influence on Human Society

Some of the questions that the manuscript creates are due to the nature of history, others the nature of science. Yet most, perhaps, are the product of the nature of Nature. For example, it remains to be determined as to why, throughout the manuscript, we are given numerous descriptions and illustrations of the beings’ wings, all of which contradict each other: “The foremost Magnetism of Their pseudo-primitive Rituals were indubitably the arcing Wings, resplendent with feather’d Colors the like of which no Man has ever laid Eyes upon” (261), “& when They alight on the sheer Tips of Their two-digit’d Feet They fold Their iridescent, scaly Wings & seem well-nigh Human, for as cumbersome as the Appendages may appear, they are afford’d the Ability to retract into two large vertical sun-on-the-horizon-shap’d cavities in the Back, flanking the spik’d Spine” (333-334), “To my Dismay, some of Them Drown’d in the Waters betwixt Land–in what could only be christen’d as Rivulets in contrast to the mighty Ocean that enclos’d Them, isolat’d them from all Civilizations. Such Calamities were ow’d to the tuft-laden Nubs which were so infantile in Structure, though mature in their Growth. These superficially suppress’d Extremities only permitt’d Them to drift diminutive Distances, to fleetingly hover forward” (455-456), and “In Stretches of Jubilation They were beheld to fly as high as the Sun itself, encircl’d in the Incandescence, Their Wings the extent of a mythological Bird, fleck’d with fiery Eyes” (999).

In the context of these quotations, evolution is neither discussed nor acknowledged, and we are led to believe that every being possessed every type of wing, although not exactly simultaneously. One colleague of mine conjectured that time in this archipelago is not like we know it, that the experience of time is disjointed, perhaps utterly capricious. Even physicists are uncertain as to whether our Laws are universal in the ultimate meaning of the word. If this hypothesis of chaotic time is true, then Karl observed the evolution of wings in a relatively brief period but processed the gradualism as a stasis. This evolution must have been guided heavily by the development of their nests’ structure, descriptions of which also suffer from contradiction: “Their Nests, which grac’d the tops of decapitat’d Trees, were hierarchical, bas’d upon the breadth & altitude of said Trees, with the Dimensions of the Throne Nest rivaling the almightiest Redwood” (200), “Evoking the Greek Phoenix, They slumber’d in domestic Groupings within grandiose Campfires, roosting upon the heat’d Coals in Symbiosis, for those Coals were the Backs of Combustible Crabs, who were also commission’d in Spells of Conflict” (606), and “Never had I beheld such gargantuan Leaves, affix’d to such slender Stalks. Sounder than Diamond, the wing’d Beings carv’d Spears from them. I was further mystifi’d when I hearken’d to how Winds, lac’d with twilit Sea Salt, caus’d the bamboo Trunks to knell, soaping the Air with soporific if inhuman Mantras. More like Flies than Birds, They made Homes of the Leaves’ Undersides, adhering with a viscous Substance that secret’d from both Palms & Soles” (1,122-1,123). For this reason, and others previously mentioned, chronology in the manuscript as a whole is defied. What the reader sees published is but one construction of many possibilities, a snapshot of the flock in flight, as it were.

Of course, another question is: Why did the bird-humans–if capable of flight, depending on the type of wing they possessed at a given time–remain only on the Beak-born Islands? Why did they not migrate to other lands, make contact with human civilization? According to Karl:

Their Religion bequeath’d to Them the Knowledge that Nothing exist’d beyond Their Islands & Sprinkle of Islets. As such, They believ’d I arriv’d from either Above or Below. I was either Mole or Swallow. Devil or Angel, if you will. To divine my Color They subject’d me to a Trial. They serv’d me a Bowl of Their own gourmet Delicacy, White Worms, which I willingly ate out of Respect, & dare conclude their Flavor was akin to spic’d Raisins. Such a Worm, I later learn’d, is pestilential to the Mole Stomach. Afterward, They slic’d my Palm with a Clay Conch Blade, taking turns at tasting my Blood. They seem’d repuls’d at first, Their Owl Eyes flaring more so, Their Heads revolving 180 Degrees & back again, but it must have been the Rush of the Aftertaste that made Them Hoot with Hedonism. ‘Uh-Uh-Above!’ (8-9)

Aside from Karl, there is the possibility that contact between humans and the winged strangers occurred again, although much later, and in the unlikeliest of locales. One might say, in heaven. (An earlier and quite different encounter, one of both confrontation and conviviality, will be mentioned later.) To understand, we must learn more from Karl about their beliefs and intentions:

As much as They play’d & pierc’d the Clouds from within, Their Kind had more than mere nubivagant Tendencies. Rather, They worshipp’d the Stars, longing to fly amongst them, to fertilize the scintillating Surfaces like a Bee upon the Flower, for Their Conception of those distant Dots of Light was akin to an infinite Meadow in which the Center of Flowers coruscat’d o’er altitudinous Realms, and thus beckon’d, perchance even taunt’d, the Beings to Pinnacles anew. Legend had it, One of Their Populace did indeed sunder the Surface of the Sky & found Herself floating among the Stellar Flowers. Her Constellation, eponymously nam’d ¡Khoro[1], is delineat’d by Seven Stars, One of which is Man’s Northern, thus She was subsum’d within that Meadow of the Cosmos. Other Acolytes were martyr’d but not beatifi’d in the same Manner. Flapping through the Spheres of the Sky, They would succumb to the Wintriness & fall back as icy Gargoyles, shattering upon an Island or buoying in the Sea ’til They liquefi’d into crystal-ridden Spume. Naturally, They mourn’d Their Dead & would orchestrate aerial Funerals, prancing & pirouetting at such a colossal Elevation that They resembl’d Motes in a Glass of Water. Using Clay Conches or other sundry Materials, grieving Mothers would jar a modest Portion of the Sea a Day after a frozen Martyr fell into it, Their equivalent of Ashes in an Urn. (78-79)

The winged beings’ propensity for spacefaring might explain the “vision” astronaut J.P. Torring claimed to have witnessed while on the moon for Apollo 14. Ridiculed and disbelieved by friends, family, and most of the public, Torring explained what he saw in an interview, “I’d call it, you know, like one of those damned harpies. Something, you know … something your parents might scare the bejesus out of you with to make you behave. A damned big closet monster with … with tiger claws, chicken feet, you know, and wings made of alloy or something. It looked part machine as much as poultry. But with, oh gosh … with a human face” (39). According to Torring, the bird-human stared him down with equal parts fear and curiosity, before beating its wings in a storm of moon dust and heading for the stars. Unfortunately, Torring’s fellow astronauts did not corroborate his story. For a period after that infamous interview, people across the U.S. and some abroad claimed to have been bound in their beds, gagged with silver powder, and sat on by chromium angels, although such claims of abduction or visitation are dismissed by skeptics as frauds and delusions. Amateur astronomers also interpreted at that time certain spectral data as vast fleets of them soaring between galaxies in the formation of a luminous arrowhead a thousand earths wide, but this scientific conclusion is controversial (Krasznahorkai 24-59).

It wasn’t long until young Karl despised his reflection, taking extreme measures to change it, as is written in his unpublished journals.

Controversy seems inseparable from any notion of the bird-humans, however distant in relation or idea, as with their method of copulation. Karl explains that sexual intercourse was never a taboo in that isolated society. Rather, they indulged quite often in a variety of positions, many familiar, if not shunned or banned, by human civilization. Yet only a specific sexual act produced offspring, whereas the rest existed for pleasure’s sake. In no sparse prose does Karl illuminate the bizarre act:

Much like the Red-tail’d Hawk, They would Woo each Other by flying in Circles, Triangles, & Hexagons. The Male & Female both would dive steeply & rise steeply. O, Gloriousness! Then, when the Volition struck at the Center of Their Souls, They would hold feather’d Hands, entangle Talon’d Feet, & dive in a Blur of phantasmal Colors, pecking each Other’s Cheeks & Beaks with love-saturat’d Smeerkins. But, O Foulness!, not all Unions end’d in unanimous Life. If, perchance, They become too enraptur’d in Rapture to perceive impending Ground, such Soul-dives on Occasion result’d in a bespatter’d Death for the Lovers. Yet, O Propitiousness!, an inseminat’d Egg would still hatch & rise as a human Phoenix, not from the Ashes, but from the Gore of the Hatchling’s Progenitors, Born an Orphan. These strange & estrang’d Offspring, who possess’d a crimson Complexion, were treat’d as Lepers by the rest of Their Kith & Kin, forc’d to fend for Themselves or form minuscule Factions with a more savagely-inclin’d Temperament, enduring on the Edges of Islets. Contrariwise, a Child born from a Soul-dive which end’d with a Plunge in the Ocean would be a Child Born to different & deeper Doom. Though lungless at the Moment of Conception, come Accouchement its Lungs would be chock-full of Seawater. O, ill-fat’d! A Child born Drown’d. (171)

Somehow, this way of lovemaking has thrice seeped into human society in the form of controversy as much as tragedy. An obscure French filmmaker named Absolon Dubois, who begrudged and attempted to compete with Georges Méliès, can be credited with making one of the first pornographic films. Yet it wasn’t his intention to be lewd. Rather, he thought the film a “testament to pure science,” and based the premise on what he deemed, without elaboration, a “divine source material” (Oro 10). Titled In the Sky of the Tesseractyles, it was shown at the brink of a millennium in 1898 to an elite audience of intellectuals. The actors in the film, devoid of clothes, hang upside down by well-concealed wires. With a vertical scrolling sky of painted clouds in the background, the pairs thrust in and out of each other as a wind-machine from below blows their hair and wings about. Some of the pairs screech sweet nothings to their mates in the form of clicks and whoops that a linguist in the audience later called “ethereal Morse code, as mesmerizing as it is unintelligible” (18). Starting with cirrus and continuing through stratus, the green-brushed ground finally appears, but rather than creating nests of gore, a substitution splice allows the death-diving bird-humans to disappear in a plume of blue-stained smoke. The scene then transitions to a close-up of a golden egg branded with sacred geometry. A time-lapse of the hatching reveals a newborn baby boy with an albatross’ beak for a mouth. There the film ends. Many praised the uncanny wings of the actors, which were made of glass and contained a representation of four dimensions or higher, a tesseract in wing form. One viewer, a distinguished physicist, said the “wings have more than a life of their own, they have the Cosmos in their curvature” (18). A paleontologist, who sat in the back and scrutinized the film with the aid of a monocle, was stuck on what he called the “terrible pterodactyl pun. These humanoid birds are anything but similar to my winged reptiles,” although he later admitted that ��the film has penetrated my dreams in ways that the bones of prehistoric monsters never could” (19). Almost a year later, Dubois was found dead in his home, any sign of foul play absent on his body, but with the incinerated work of a sequel four feet from his outstretched hand. Méliès was interrogated by the police but presented a viable alibi, leaving the circumstances of Dubois’ death forever ambiguous, his cinematic potential snuffed.

Upon rediscovery, Absolon Dubois’ In the Sky of the Tesseractyles was shown in 1930 on a week-long loop at a gallery of cinema in lower Manhattan. Perhaps inspired by the film, a rash of romantic suicide pacts occurred, wherein nude couples tipped themselves over a steel rib of the Empire State Building’s embryonic skeleton, tumbling while linked at the loins. Later, the same style of self-slaughter transpired on September 11, 2001, in which co-working lovers undressed themselves, embraced each other, and dove from the tower into funnels of fire-flaked smoke, their intertwined bodies an expression of life and love against the presence of cult-inspired death. While writing this paper, a colleague brought to my attention a missing page of the Kama Sutra, recently discovered, that describes the “upside-down lovers, suspended in wind,” whose sexual organs were secondary to the “tumescent wings of their hollow spines” (69). Love between souls, claims the text, is fully realized in this mystical position, during which “all else dissolves” (70).

Yet for all the influences from the society of bird-humans that I have noted, the most clandestine and far-reaching is found in Charles Darwin’s seminal work. Readers might find the following quote familiar: “There is Grandeur in this Way of Life, with its avian Powers, having been originally breath’d into a few Forms or into One; & that, whilst this Planet has ignorantly gone cycling on according to the fix’d Laws that Man knows, from so simple & hidden a Beginning endless Wings most beautiful & most wonderful have been, & are being, Evolv’d” (1,631). This is the final paragraph of, not On the Origin of Species, but the published arrangement of Karl’s manuscript (and the only time Karl mentions evolution, which suggests that he may have adapted to the islands’ nature of chaotic time, in mind as well as body, a phenomenon described later). A paragraph which Darwin, were he still alive, would have to answer to. That is, if the similarity were to be taken at face value. Far from plagiarism, a different story is told in Karl’s manuscript:

Due to the Essence of the Beak-born Islands, I am certain that if a Man had discover’d Them, he must in some Capacity be Pure of Mind & Heart. However, as in the Mythologies of bygone Civilizations, there exists Techniques to sneak into Utopia. Thus, when an Eagle-ey’d Sentinel station’d at One of the Wind Towers first spi’d the Beagle on the Skyline, He warn’d the Fowl Lord, who then command’d His Flock to assume the long-practic’d Formations, encloaking Themselves in Their chameleon Wings, proficiently camouflag’d with the Texture of Stones. While many masquerad’d Themselves as the inanimate Landscape, Others imbib’d shamanic Potions which shape-shift’d Them into Mockingbirds, Giant Tortoises, & most disgusting, clumsy Lizards. When the Man who identifi’d himself as Darwin came ashore, I was strangely unsurpris’d to find that he resembl’d me, minus the avian Mutations that I have long since embrac’d. But his Familiarity inspir’d in me further Distrust, & I could sense the living Rocks beating as dispers’d Clumps of my own Heart. (807-808)

At that point, Karl’s wariness of strangers is the product of a mother’s affinity for her children’s welfare, and so he decides to “destroy Darwin & the Others, burning their Bodies in the Ship from whence they issu’d” (809).

However, Karl is not a murderer, and his adopted kinsfolk are not readily prone to violence either. The foreigners make camp with Karl and eat the combustible crabs they catch near the rock-bird-humans. As Karl relates, “Miraculously, the Crabs did not detonate in their Mouths, which germinat’d in me the Judgement that Men dampen the Magick of Existence, & that those living Rocks were not living after all, but as Dead as those in the dreary Village I hail’d from” (810). Even with this awareness, Karl befriends Darwin, admiring his “Fascination with the false Fauna.” All is going well when, as night begins to fall,

a rogue Band of Four Gore-borns emerg’d, descending from the Shadows, & stabb’d a few of Darwin’s Companions in an attempt to eradicate the Mole Invad’rs, but ere they could slay Darwin & the rest, the Fowl Lord manifest’d, who, Five Meters in Height, possess’d the full Body of a Condor, the Neck of a Swan, the Head & Face of a Man, & the Eyes of a Hawk. Most Regal was His Hair, which was the Tail of a Peacock, like a Chieftain’s Headdress. They cower’d in His Presence, but, with Resolve, the murderous Rogues swoop’d toward the Fowl Lord, & with a single Wave of His Wing He smote Them all. (823)

Believing the crabmeat to be tainted, all but Darwin board the ship in mortal fear of the hallucination they witnessed. However, Karl allows the inquisitive Darwin a keyhole-shaped glimpse into the islands’ secrets, an inkling of truth patched with excuses and fabrications. It is correct to say that Karl indeed develops a bit of trust toward the fellow naturalist, who later refers to him fondly as a “supernaturalist,” but the potential dangers of full disclosure were too great. Thus, an implicit, although obfuscated, knowledge grows between them, and they continue to correspond long after Darwin’s departure, communicating by way of magnetic bottles, which, when tossed into the sea, could find any shore or ship deck that supported the feet of his friend. Along with messages of a personal nature, Karl divulges just enough information, albeit encoded and amalgamated, to produce Darwin’s great observations and theories, with any inaccuracies the product of a necessary opacity.

Regardless, the momentous visitation of the Beagle helped foster in Karl a festering suspicion, at times a loathing, of human beings, which further complicates not only his relationship with Darwin, but his perception of the outside world as a whole. Tensions, too, increase between the bird-humans and their incarnadine counterparts, who attempt several more coups against the Fowl Lord, all ending in their butchery. On a night when the Fowl Lord assumes that he executed the last of the insurrectionists, claiming to have “clipp’d the wicked Wings of Mutiny,” Karl writes:

With the Facsimile of Flight inevitable in Man’s Progress, my Bird-humans, my Kin, will surely be imperil’d. The dim Shadow of Man is visibly ruffling Their Feathers. Yet They seem prepar’d for It, prophetic in the Belief that They will rise & dive, dive & rise. Half of Their Quantity schemes to construct spherical Nests of Wind & Air with the Scope of Cities, adapting to Life at the nethermost Region of the Sea, Their Wings twisting into stunning Fins. (830)

When contemplating this underwater nation, Karl compares them with the winged fish and mermaids he heard tell of (perhaps aboard the unnamed British schooner). Flying, he thought, was not exclusive to air, but with the right adjustment could occur in any and all elements. Regarding the rest of the population:

They have been tempering Themselves in the Fringes of the Atmosphere, predicting the Chill will crystalize Their Skin into Something Metallurgic, & then They will fly higher, nesting in Craters on the Moon, in Spots on the Sun, & Yonder. These are Dwellings in which Man will eternally be one Step behind, but whose pertinacious Progress will eventually force my Bird-humans to fly-swim ever Downward, ever Upward, ever Onward. (831)

Over the course of his studies, a romance ensues between Karl and a bird-human. This not only convolutes his perceptions further, but might have contributed to the alteration of his existence:

In the Beginning, the Females were prone to a social Snub of my Presence, save for a Female who seem’d Herself an Outcast, although not of the crimson Complexion, not Gore-born. She, my darling ¡Vhinda, spent most of Her Time perch’d in the Trees or transfix’d by the tantalizing Stars, gripping the edge of a cliff on the Island’s south Side so that She may sense both the speckl’d Void above and the wet World below…. Only She had been Audacious enough to lip-peck the nova-shap’d Seeds from my quivery, scarr’d Palm, once even permitting me to Stroke the Top of her felt Wing, reminding me, oddly enough, of a high quality Fez of Turkey that a Man in my Village donn’d. (951-952)

Following this are several chapters in which he worries and envisions the extinction of the winged beings, wondering and dreading if that Turkish headwear he knew of was not indeed manufactured from the wings of his creatures. He describes multiple dreams that are clones of each other, plus or minus minor distinctions:

O, They came to me. They had only me. I would have murder’d whomever committ’d such a demoniacal Deed. My wing’d Family, reduc’d to a dying Crawl. O, They crawl’d, Scores of Them, Their Claws rending the Soil & Sand, edging toward me, the entirety of Them wingless, with twin Geysers of hazel Blood flying forth from Their Backs. O, flying! All that flew was Their Lives, Rivers at a time, Rivers & Rivers of depleting Life. (979)

The dreams were the byproduct of a fever caused by Karl’s metamorphosis. His bones were becoming more hollow, his jutting lips thinner and harder, and his shoulder blades ached with emerging cartilage, which were, like a goat’s horn buds, the beginning of wings. The bird-humans’ consensus was that love acted as the ultimate shamanic potion, or, rather, as an antidote to the anthropological curse. Like a dying man who holds within his head mere scriptural knowledge of paradise, Karl was both fearful of his transformation, at times considering it an illness, and enthralled by it, wondering if he wasn’t passing into a different type of hereafter, a region of divinity populated by appointed avifauna.

Before the initial signs of his change, Karl and ¡Vhinda attempt to copulate, to perform a soul-dive. “She clutch’d my Hands and sent me aflight, leading me in that sidereal Dance, around & around, cradling me as I enter’d Her and we soul-div’d, enwrapp’d in Wind” (1,307). But the resulting child was stillborn, with random body parts belonging to either the anatomy of a bird or a human: “The lower Lip the Bottom of a Beak, the Hair as serpentine Feathers, one shrunken Wing, & a chicken-clubb’d Foot” (1,333). As far as is revealed, they did not try again, even after the completion of his metamorphosis, although they did sometimes fantasize about the fertility of their innards, the incubatory power of their insides if turned outward. Suicide as nativity.

Yet Karl’s heart was indeed a nest, and during his life it begat many symbolic birds, including one in the form of understanding both the overt and clandestine influence of Homo sapiens avis on our society, which we are only just beginning to fathom. Perhaps, camouflaged, they live among us, betrayed by reports of invisible wings bending the light behind politicians’ backs, although this has not been confirmed. Unfortunately, the extent of such overall influences, concrete or abstract, is limited by deleterious effects. The reason for this is DNA’s envy, the irresolvable discrepancy of the winged and the not, which is epitomized in the following: there existed a nameless scientist, perhaps a descendant of Darwin, who, extrapolating from the texts of his keyhole knowledge, attempted to recreate a kind of bird-human. All that remains of his work is crazed, haphazard jottings about the process, and a photograph of what some believe is a patient, others the scientist himself, cowering in the corner with bony wings stitched to an oozing back (Mingles 641-666). In the context of Erasmus Karl’s work, we can view this image as, not irrefutable evidence of the creatures’ existence, but a demonstration of a universal truth within us: we, the wingless beings, envy those with the power of aviation separate from supplementary invention; we long to join in communion with the invisible, omnipresent flock and forever migrate from the woes of terrestrial life, but we cannot.

Bibliography

Boris of Aventaria. The Purloined Philosophia. Medieval Science and Philosophy Series, London, 1991. 56.

In the Sky of the Tesseractyles. Dir. Absolon Dubois. Prod. Javier Macron. 1898.

Karl, Erasmus. The Nidificant Manuscript: The Untold Story of our Winged Relatives. TT Books, New York, 2019.

Kinbote, Darrell. “Man on the Moon Meets Monster?” U.S.A. (Unscrupulous Sources for America). 11.3 (1971): 39.

Krasznahorkai, Timofey. “The Angel Yearning: Deceits and Delusions Regarding Heaven’s Servants.” The Periodical of the Viktor Science Institute for Debunking. 21.9 (1980): 24-59.

Mare, Kate. “The Ineffective Forger: Hoaxes throughout History.” Skeptical Magazine. 40.4 (2011): 25.

Mast, Norman. “To See the Unseeable: Inferences on Alien Knowledge.” The Cosmic Cortex: A Journal of Ancient Biology & Related Disciplines. 20.1 (1989): 34.

Mingles, Jarvis. Again and Again: Failed Experiments Since the Dawn of Science. Axiom Books, London, 2000. 641-666.

Oro, Hal. Word of Mouth: Unofficial Reviews and Criticism of Vintage Films. Shift Publications, New York, 2014. 10, 18-19.

Vātsyāyana. The Complete Kama Sutra. Pearl Editions, London, 2017. 69-70.

Notes: [1] According to Karl, “The tospy-turv’d Exclamation Mark betokens a helical Whistle most conventional in the Bird-humans’ Elocution of formal Addresses.” (3)

Luisa Sontag holds multiple PhDs from a variety of universities. Her wide range of knowledge is reflected in her published work. For example, her essay on time’s golden spiral shape was published in Quark, her research on the gene-popping of rare squids was featured in Subaquatic Studies, and her six-volume history of vanished continents was published by Samurai Books. Up until his death, she was collaborating with Stephen Hawking on a book about theoretical flora and fauna titled A Brief Visit to Neighboring Planets. Dedicated to Hawking, it is scheduled to be published next year.

George Salis is the award-winning author of Sea Above, Sun Below (forthcoming from River Boat Books, 2019). His fiction is featured in The Dark, Black Dandy, Zizzle Literary Magazine, The Sunlight Press, Unreal Magazine, and elsewhere. His criticism has appeared in Isacoustic, Atticus Review, and The Tishman Review, and his science article on the mechanics of natural evil was featured in Skeptic. He is the editor of The Collidescope and is currently working on an encyclopedic novel titled Morphological Echoes. He has taught in Bulgaria, China, and Poland. Find him on Facebook,��Goodreads, and at www.GeorgeSalis.com.

Leigh’s professional title is “illustrator,” but that’s just a nice word for “monster-maker,” in this case. More information about them can be found at http://leighlegler.carbonmade.com/.

Fiction: In Communion with the Invisible Flock: Erasmus Karl and the Nidificant Manuscript was originally published on Mad Scientist Journal

#Cryptozoology #George Salis #Leigh Legler #Luisa Sontag #Ornithology

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filmstruck · 7 years ago

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Discussing THE DEVILS (’71) with Kevin Flanagan by Kimberly Lindbergs

Kevin M. Flanagan received his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh in 2015 in English/Film studies (his dissertation: The British War Film, 1939-1980: Culture, History, and, Genre). A book based on this project is under contract with Palgrave (part of the Britain and the World series). Flanagan is also the editor of 2009’s Ken Russell: Re-Viewing England's Last Mannerist and he contributed essays and an audio commentary to the critically acclaimed BFI Blu-ray/DVD boxed set Ken Russell: The Great Composers (2016). He is currently editing Edgar Wright: Interviews for the University Press of Mississippi's longstanding Conversations with Filmmakers series of books.

FIlmStruck: Can you tell readers a little about yourself and how you became interested in Ken Russell's work?

Kevin Flanagan: I'm very much of the video store generation, and my first job and academic interests somehow combined to lead me to Ken Russell's work. When I was 15 or so (this would be around 1998, give or take a year), I remember flipping channels and landing on Bravo's "Five Star Cinema" film, a designation they gave to movies whose rights they had purchased. Other films in this strand that I can remember from the time were THE MEANING OF LIFE (’83) and PATTON (‘70). Anyway, in this particular film, there was an extraordinary sequence that'd I'd stumbled into: a man sitting on a train, with a hand on his head, crouched over in repose, while shadows undulated across his face. I continued watching the film. I gathered it was some kind of artist biography, the story of a composer, but I didn't know his music and was overwhelmed by the images, to the point where I could not really retain the plot. Sadly, our regional TV listings guide did not mention the name of the film, so I was not able to go back and watch the whole thing until years later.

Soon after, I got a job at a video store (Hollywood Video) and began working my way through the back catalog. At the time, I was following recommendations from books like John Stanley's Creature Features or various Leonard Maltin guides. I remember reading about (funnily enough) THE DEVILS (not knowing who Ken Russell was) and renting it, only to be blown away. I had no formal film studies training, nor any critical experience beyond amateur reviews, but I recall thinking that the "look" of the film had a lot in common with the mystery film that I'd been searching for. Certain themes were the same—genius constrained by society, persecution over religious belief—and some actors even seemed familiar (particularly Georgina Hale). I decided to watch as much Russell as I could, and within weeks I'd purchased a VHS of MAHLER (’74) off eBay and realized that at last, I'd found the film that had been haunting me for close to two years! I was soon off to college, where I proceeded to take as many film courses as possible, as none had been available to me in high school. I found my way to cinephilia, film studies, criticism and peripheral things like an interest in serious music all through the lens of Ken Russell!

FS: Seeing a Ken Russell film for the first time can truly be a transformative experience and it sounds like his work really made an impact on you. You mentioned that your interest in Russell also led to your interest in music, and I know that classical music is often an essential element of the director’s work. How important is music in THE DEVILS and was Russell inspired by any particular composers while he was making the film?

KF: Peter Maxwell Davies (who composed the music for THE DEVILS) had a close relationship to Russell during this time. Russell produced two Davies records, featuring his Fires of London ensemble, that were released in the UK by the Unicorn label: Vesalii Icones and Eight Songs for a Mad King. He is a composer of avant-garde "serious music" that might now be called "classical". Russell was by now notorious—and beloved, in some circles—for his films about musicians. His most recent biopics of composers were on Richard Strauss (DANCE OF THE SEVEN VEILS [‘70], his last film for the BBC's Omnibus arts strand) and Tchaikovsky (THE MUSIC LOVERS [‘70], a major theatrical film for United Artists), so there is something of their bombast that can be traced to THE DEVILS. But Russell's commission of Davies to do music for THE DEVILS is comparable to his use of Derek Jarman's sets: an unmistakable modernity of detail and dressing, despite enough historically-appropriate elements that do not feel too anachronistic. The music that Davies delivered for the film is angular and angry in a way that is unmistakably contemporary. At times it feels like a Sun Ra improvisation! But the instrumentation is generally period appropriate. So much about Russell's film of THE DEVILS, just like Aldous Huxley's book, walks a fine line between a clear-eyed vision of the past and the inevitable signposting of the present.

FS: Russell wrote the screenplay for THE DEVILS but as you pointed out, it was based on Aldous Huxley’s non-fiction novel The Devil’s of Loudun. Russell must have found common ground with Huxley since they were both radical thinkers who bucked convention. Both men also grappled with censors who wanted to repress their work. What are some of the differences and similarities between Huxley’s original novel and Russell’s film?

KF: Huxley's book is a weird one. It is based on historical issues and people, but it isn't a conventional work of history. It might be thought of as a book of "ideas", in that it has long divergences away from its central narrative and into psychology, philosophy, ecclesiastical doctrine and allusions to the 1940s and 1950s (critics have noted that the book is Huxley's response to HUAC. The author had worked in Hollywood and witnessed what institutional paranoia did to many of his peers). Russell's film is full of ideas, too, but many of them are communicated visually or sub-textually, or through the gestures and camerawork. For example, scholar Christophe van Eeecke has described the film as primarily being a political allegory, and key sequences like the mummer's play that accompanies a character’s execution show the film's capacity to analyze, render grotesque and represent the world in miniature, as an echo to the viewer on its contemporary concerns.

FS: THE DEVILS was heavily edited when it was released and as far as I know, Warner Bros. has never made a complete and uncut edition of the film available to the public. Why do you think THE DEVILS is still being suppressed and do you think we’ll ever get to see a fully restored version of the film?

KF: Film critic Mark Kermode famously tracked down the extant footage of the film's most famous excised bit, the "Rape of Christ" sequence, and you can view it in his documentary HELL ON EARTH (2004). The BFI have released the film in its longest, officially available U.K. form, and this includes material not in the U.S. theatrical release. I honestly don't know why the film has not been restored to its fullest, since it is a notorious work and I'd imagine would certainly do well if marketed to collectors.

FS: Despite being difficult to see for many years, THE DEVILS has many admirers. It truly is a cult classic as well as an incredible artistic achievement. Why do you think Russell’s film generates such strong reactions and still resonates with so many viewers?

KF: As you say just now, part of the appeal in the pre-streaming era was that the film was hard to see, so tracking it down made it something of a prized object. For its detractors, the film's mix of sadism, religion and sexuality makes it dangerous. For its fans, the exposure of political hypocrisy, the examination of power and the memorable visualization of hysteria makes it essential. In terms of genre, it is an adaptation, a sort of biopic, a nunsploitation movie and a historical film with comedic elements, so it has that unique "cult" mix that characterizes a ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (’75) or CASABLANCA (’42). One of the best things you can say about it is that it is timely: it was very much of its moment in the early 1970s, but it also spoke to its historical setting and it is still relevant today.

#FilmStruck #The Devils #Ken Russell #Vanessa Redgrave #Oliver Reed #cult film #StreamLine Blog #Kevin Flanagan #Kimberly Lindbergs

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cricketguru · 4 years ago

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All about Haryana Judiciary Examination (2021).

*Introduction

*Eligibility Criteria

*Examination pattern

*Syllabus

*Dates

Introduction

Haryana judicial service examination is conducted every year by the High Court of Haryana. Haryana judiciary service examination is also referred to as HPSC. Law aspirants who wish to make their carrier as a civil judge or wish to become a member of the subordinate judiciary should give the entry-level exam which is the judiciary exam. the notification was released on 13 January 2021 on the official website. A total of 256 vacancies has been released by the Haryana High Court.

Category

Seats

general

156 Seats

40 Seats

BC-A

11 Seats

BC- B

11 Seats

EWS

20 Seats (ESM+ESP)

PWD

10 Seats

The Haryana Judiciary exam is conducted to recruit the Candidate for various posts like:

*Haryana Civil Service (Executive Branch)

*Deputy Superintendent of Police (D.S.P)

*Excise and Taxation Officer

*District Food and Supplies Controller

*A class Tehsildar

*Assistant Registrar Cooperative Societies

*Assistant Excise & Taxation Officer

*Block Development & Panchayat Officer

*Traffic manager

*District Food & supplies Officer

*Assistant employment officer

Haryana Judicial Service Eligibility Criteria: -2021

Haryana Judiciary Service Examination Eligibility Criteria is decided on 3 basic parameters: -

1-Nationality of the candidate

2-Age limit

3-Educational qualification

Nationality of candidate: - The candidate must be a citizen of India. All Indians nationals Can apply for the exam. Candidate from Nepal, Bhutan, or Tibetans Refugees can also apply for the exam.

Age limit: - The minimum age of the applicant should be of 21 years while the maximum age of the applicant should be of 42 years. As per the Haryana Judiciary Exam Notification.

Educational Qualification: - Candidate must have a degree of Bachelor of law (LLB) from any recognized law university. or any university Incorporated by law in India.

Haryana Judiciary Service Exam 2021: exam pattern and syllabus –

The Haryana Judiciary service examination is conducted into three stages: -

1-Preliminary Examination

2- Main’s examination

3- Personal Interview/viva voce

Haryana Judicial Service Preliminary Examination: -2021

The time duration of the preliminary examination will be of 2 hours.

The question paper will be asked in Objective multiple-choice Questions (MCQs).

The exam will contain 125 MCQs question of 500 marks (4 marks each).

The Minimum Qualifying Marks for the General category are 150. And for Reserved Category 100 marks are needed.

Note: No candidate shall be allowed to appear in the mains exam unless he/she passed the preliminary examination by obtaining 150 marks (100 marks) for the reserved category.

Preliminary Exam Syllabus

Question will be asked from the current event of -

· National and International Importance

· Indian Legal System

· Constitutional History and Governance

· Question will also be framed to test candidate:

· Analytical Skill

· Reasoning Ability

· Aptitude

· The standard of preliminary question paper will be of Law graduate level.

Haryana Judicial Service Mains Examination: -

· The mains exam is subjective and will be asked in written form.

· The candidate who manages to obtain qualifying marks in the preliminary exam and declared pass in pre-exam will be shortlisted to appear in the mains examination.

· General category candidate should obtain atleast

· 50% qualifying marks in aggregate of all papers and reserved category candidate need to obtain 40% marks.

· No candidate will get marked on any paper until he or she obtain atleast 30% marks in it.

Note: - Candidate should pass mains examination to appear in viva voce or personal interview.

Haryana Judicial Service Mains Examination Syllabus: -

Paper-1(Civil Law I): - consist of 200 marks and the time duration is 3 hour.

1-Code of Civil Procedure

2-Punjab Court Act

3-Indian Contract Act

4-Indian partnership Act

5-Sale of Good Act

6-Specific Relief Act

7-Indian Evidence Act

8-Harayana Urban (Control of Rent and Eviction act 1973)

Paper-II (Civil Law II): Marks obtained:200

Time duration:3Hour

1-Hindu Law

2-Mohammadan Law

3-Law of Registration and Limitation

Paper-III (Criminal Law): - Marks obtaine:200

Time duration: 3 Hour

1-Indian Penal Code

2-Criminal Procedure Code

3-Indian Evidence act

Paper-IV(English): -Marks:200

Timing:3 Hour

1-English Essay (1000-1100 words)- 100 Marks

2-Precis - 25 marks

3-Words and Phrases - 25 Marks

4-Comprehension - 25 Marks

5-Correction – 25 Marks

6-Translation of an English passage into Hindi – 20 Marks

Paper-V (Hindi Language): - Marks: 100

Time duration: 3 Hour

1-Explanation of Hindi passage in Prose and poetry-30 Marks

2-Composition(essay), Idioms and Corrections-50 Marks

Haryana judicial service Viva-voice (personal Interview)

It judges the personal qualities of candidates.

Questions concern the matter of general interest and test candidate’s alertness, intelligence and general outlook.

Marks obtained: - 200

Timing: up to 3 hour

Note: - No candidate shall be called for the Viva-voce unless he/she obtained at least 50% qualifying marks in the aggregate of all the written paper. Reserved candidate should obtain 40% marks in mains examination.

Important Dates of Haryana Judicial Service Examination: 2021

Release of HCS Judicial Services Notification

13th January 2021

Start of Online Application Process

15th January 2021

Last Date of Online Application

15th February 2021

Release of Admit Card

To be notified soon

Prelims Exam Date

To be notified soon

#judiciary

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mask131 · 8 years ago

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The Chocolate Factory Kids : Deleted children, mystery solved ?

Miranda Mary Piker… The most well-known of the deleted characters. Everyone (well at least all the ones who did their research) know her for being the school-obsessed little girl… However, she wasn’t always like that. What not many people know is that there was TWO Miranda. Let me explain. When Roald Dahl created Miranda (as Miranda Groper then Miranda Mary Piker) she was, until the fourth draft, in the author’s own words, “the filthiest, rudest and most disobedient creature you could imagine”. The fourth draft also mentions her as the “girl allowed to DO anything she wants”. She’s the character as illustrated by Lauren Child (picking her nose with the tongue sticking out). And her original demise was the following: she swam in the Chocolate River despite Wonka’s interdiction (because she was against any form of order or authority) and thus ended up in the pipe leading to the Peanut Brittle room. This was her song: "Oh, Miranda Mary Piker, How could anybody like her, Such a rude and disobedient little kid, So we said why don't we fix her In the Peanut-Brittle Mixer, Then we're sure to like her better than we did. Soon this girl who was so vicious Will have gotten quite delicious And her parents will have surely understood That instead of saying, 'Miranda, 'Oh the beast we cannot stand her!' They'll be saying, 'Oh, how tasty and how good!'" A song for a rude and a disobedient little kid, a vicious beast of a girl, who was the nightmare of her own parents. However, in the fifth draft, when Marvin Prune was deleted, Miranda Mary Piker became her complete opposite. She was a school-obsessed and prideful little girl, the most well-known version of her, with a school headmaster for a father. Her chapter is the Spotty Powder one as we know it. She was the little girl with glasses and braided pigtails drawn by Quentin Blake. Her song was this one: "Oh, Miranda Mary Piker, How could anybody like her, Such a priggish and revolting little kid. So we said, 'Why don't we fix her In the Spotty-Powder mixer Then we're bound to like her better than we did.' Soon this child who is so vicious Will have gotten quite delicious, And her classmates will have surely understood That instead of saying, 'Miranda! Oh, the beast! We cannot stand her!' They'll be saying, 'Oh, how useful and how good!'" Still vicious, still a beast, but now priggish and revolting, not disobedient and rude anymore. And now she is the nightmare of her class comrades, not her parents.

One might ask… Why such change? Why turn Miranda into her own polar-opposite? I think I can answer to this question… and by the same way, answer to another great question: who was Marvin Prune? Marvin Prune, existing since the second draft and up to the fourth draft, is only described as a “conceited boy”, but we never found out what could have happened to him. This lead some artists to invent their own version of Marvin Prune (I can mention two great interpretations, the one of Jimmy-C Lombardo, on DeviantArt ; and the one of danguy96, here on tumblr) However, someone posted something about Marvin Prune on Wikipedia. We can read the following: "The Children's-Delight Room" Roald Dahl originally planned for a child called Marvin Prune to be included in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Dahl submitted the excised chapter regarding Marvin Prune to The Horn Book Review in the early 1970s.[ Rather than publish the chapter, Horn Book responded with a critical essay by novelist Eleanor Cameron, who criticized Dahl's worth as a human being. Although it was believed that Horn Book never returned the chapter, Marvin Prune's chapter is actually available, but it has not yet been published. "The Children's-Delight Room" was reworked into "Spotty Powder". It is present in two versions. One features the workers from "The Vanilla Fudge Room" but also include "tiny whispery voices" who sing the songs after each child's exit, and Charlie with his mother and father. The second version features Grandpa Joe, Charlie's grandfather, who is present in the final book, and the Oompa-Loompas. In the version with the voices, the voices actually sing two songs, a two-verse type one found in "The Vanilla Fudge Room", plus a longer one like the type that is found in the final book. Like Miranda, Marvin loves school and suffers the same fate as her—supposedly getting ground into powder. What I can confirm because I saw it on other websites: there was indeed a “Children’s Delight Room” deleted chapter that was sent to The Horn Book Review, and that’s when the chapter was “lost”. And indeed, the “Children’s Delight Room” was reworked into the “Spotty Powder” chapter. However, there’s no other sources mentioning all of the other information (Marvin being a school-obsessed boy for example). But… but… if this information is revealed to be true, it could fit perfectly with all the info we have. If indeed Marvin Prune was a proto-Miranda Mary Piker, everything is explained. Remember that Miranda was “remade” into a school obsessed girl after Marvin was deleted, in the fifth draft? The draft from which come “Spotty Powder”? It could be explained by the fact that Dahl wanted to keep Marvin’s personality so much that he implanted it on Miranda (since his original chapter was kept and never returned by the Horn Book). And if Marvin Prune was supposed to be Miranda before Miranda herself was Miranda (yeah, that’s logic), then the “conceited” adjective is perfect. Remember that Miranda was mentioned as having a “smirk on her mouth” and “whenever she spoke it was always with a voice that seemed to be saying “Everybody is a fool except me””? Very conceited indeed. Put that on Marvin and you have a perfectly conceited boy. However, beware! I’m not validating at all what Wikipedia is saying. It may be completely false. I’m just saying that it is, in my opinion, a highly probable possibility given all the side-information I could gather and when paralleled with Miranda Mary Piker’s evolution.

EDIT : Two more ideas behind the fact that Marvin Prune was supposed to be a proto-Miranda.

1- Marvin appeared in the second draft, in order to replace the deleted Clarence Crump, Bertie Upside and Terence Roper ; just like Henry Trout was here to replace Wilbur Rice and Tommy Troutbeck. And what is the main information we can gather of the three boys in the “Warming Candy Room” chapter ? They are arrogant. They believe in logic and science, and that’s why they refute the “cold hotness” of Wonka. They believe they know best than Wonka, and that they will prove him that they are right. Quite conceited, right ? And by “conceited” I mean a Miranda-type of “conceited”, don’t you think ?

2- We have to interpret “conceited” according to the background of the book. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was written during the 60s. If we interpret “conceited” as vain, it’s because of our modern view. It’s because we are living in a society plagued by the narcissism of the youth, by the cult of the appareances, by aesthetic obsession. But at Dahl’s time, these things weren’t truly existing, or at least they weren’t so prominent. So, at his time, what could have been the people who could be unbearable and conceited and rude in their disdain ? Intellectuals. Students who thought they knew best than teachers or than their parents. The little Mr. and Mrs.Know-It-All.

Anyway, to conclude, that is who I think Marvin Prune was in the old drafts : A priggish and revolting child hated by his classmates. A very intelligent boy and top student, but also a conceited child whose love for school turns into a near obsession. The son of a school headmaster that never missed a day of school in his life and is convinced children should always work and never play. He has a smug face, a constant smirk, and whenever he speaks his voice sounds like 'Everybody is a fool except me'. However, I don't think he was as rude and insulting as Miranda Mary Piker (I think it's the leftover of the time where she was the disobedient and vulgar little girl). Maybe he was just conceited and disdainful, but still kept some form of dignity and good-manners? Maybe...

#thechocolatefactorychildren #charlieandthechocolatefactory #marvin prune #mirandamarypiker #evolution #theory #book #deletedchildren

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lavieenprose · 6 years ago

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All About My Mother: Kate Zambreno reckons again—and again—with maternal grief

“I realize that my writing,” Zambreno suggests in the former, “is about conjuring up and murdering the girl I was and have allowed myself to become, a tender horror.” If the daughter is the mother’s double, her reincarnation and her legacy, it makes sense that to expose maternal flaws is to expose one’s own. In adulthood, I began to see my own mother differently: my mother the depressive, my mother the fallible, my mother like Zambreno’s mother in the way that she prized order as a means of quietening her interior chaos. As I aged, didn’t I recognize some of that hardness in myself? And hadn’t I been beastly, too? For a writer invested in the divergence of sentiment, experiment, and influence, a mother’s death is agonizing, but also presents itself as something to be solved by writing: a straight-line progression in a career spent producing art that probes the feminine, dissects the familial, and teases out lines between the future and the past with the criss-crossed, diagrammatic intricacy of a family tree. “I am beginning to realize that taking the self out of our essays is a form of repression,” she wrote in 2013 at The White Review. “Taking the self out feels like obeying a gag order.” In both Book of Mutter and Appendix Project, nothing of the author’s self has been excised; her brokenness is axiomatic, open as a parent’s grave.

Since her 2010 novel O Fallen Angel—about a fucked-up family with a wayward daughter, the first chapter of which is called “Mommy”—Zambreno has specialized in scary mothers, as well as girly neurotics, shattered female geniuses, and old-school femme fatales who are most fatal to themselves. In both fiction and nonfiction, she employs a mixture of tenderness and crackling, desperate madness to create a prose style that is at times jagged and experimental but rarely feels less than elegant. Because the transmogrification of emotional, creative effort into something that seems effortless tends to be women’s work, it’s no surprise that she appears to be most often read by women, and most often compared to other female writers: Kathy Acker, say, or Elfriede Jelinek. Ever the daughter, she is unafraid to wear the influence of other, older women on her proverbial sleeve.

Not all mommies turn out to be normal, making the experience of morphing into one in adulthood not only unexpected, but disturbing. When Zambreno refers to “being her [mother’s] mirror and double,” her fear is both chilling and not unfamiliar. From the age of fourteen until I left my own family home, I was in some way or another always at war with my mother, whom I saw not as a human woman but as some abstract oppressor: my mother the domestic fascist, my mother the enemy. (“The beast,” Zambreno writes, “my mother, my love.”) The house, her sole domain, was maintained with a zealousness that bordered on obsession. That her hardness had been meant to help me would not present itself as a possibility until I had grown old enough to learn that love was not always expressed through being nice. Even if I understood that mothers, too, can feel afraid, I did not act as if I did. I acted like a brat.

#mothers

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topmixtrends · 7 years ago

Link

Two or three days like the beginning of love […] To go further would be to enter the realm of jealousy, suffering and anxiety.

— Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

AS JOANNA WALSH’S Break.up opens, the author, who is the meta-narrative’s protagonist, is well into a period of mourning a love that never quite happened. The premise of the “novel in essays” is simple: Joanna and an unnamed, emotionally unavailable man met and, while living in different cities, carried on an intense online romance. They saw each other only a few times In Real Life before he pulled away and she began to obsess over what went wrong. As she’s unraveling the affair, Joanna plans a trip across Europe with the hope that the liminal state of travel will offer room for meditation and recovery.

That isn’t to minimize the relationship. Often, those affairs are the trickiest: the ones that strand us, unable to name what that was, but ultimately leave us changed people. On her multi-city pilgrimage, Walsh is prepared to explore every angle of the romantic action and eventual fallout. And she does so skillfully, weaving the concrete details of her travels and life into an in-depth study of love and connection in the 21st century. Break.up works as well as it does in part because Walsh provides room for the reader to examine these topics alongside her, in turn accomplishing what the best essays do: stir up more questions than answers.

So much of Walsh’s writing is caught up in the emotion of travel, how we deal with back there while we’re temporarily here, and a specialty of hers is exploring grief, or the onset of grief, while on the move. In her 2015 book Hotel, part of Bloomsbury’s Object Lessons series, Walsh flees her ending marriage by taking a job reviewing hotels for a new travel website. Though she isn’t paid for the pieces, her stays are free, and the time away from everyday life allows Walsh to begin to process the confusion and pain she’s left with following the relationship’s dissolution. Vertigo, published by Dorothy in 2015, reveals a writer grappling with the complexities of marriage, frequently during travel, as she attempts to decide what kind of woman she wants to be while watching a daughter outgrow her childhood talismans and a husband turn into a stranger.

But it’s in Break.up that Walsh fully realizes this aspect of her art. Joanna knowingly throws herself into the pace of travel to be at once busy and quiet, as travel often is. Sketches of scenes play out in her mind. “I wasted my time with you,” her fading lover says. “I didn’t,” Joanna responds. These vignettes often bubble up as Joanna is doing something else (crossing every bridge in Budapest only once, for example), and they cast a foggy specter. Were these words spoken in actual conversation or made later as notes, marred remembrances of a promising involvement turned sour?

How or when these words were spoken really doesn’t matter. The collaging of ghostly memories, conversations real and reimagined, and philosophical investigations of the nature of love allows what could have been a straightforward narrative hinged on a literary trope to become a rambling hybrid essay that urges the reader to dig deeper, too.

Walsh deftly uses these ghosts from the immediate past to examine the long game of life. While in Budapest, Joanna remembers visiting the city with her then-husband when they were first married and both very young. Walsh writes,

And now I’m repeating that stop in time to grasp at who I was that time in Budapest before — so many years ago I might have been a different person in a different city — but it’s something like trying to hold onto a smell, or a color, or the feel of a string of beads passing through my hand. There are no adjectives to describe time’s passage. It can pass slower or faster, like a volume dial can turn louder or quieter, but no more than that: it has no texture, no timbre.

This meditation acknowledging the essential formlessness of time and self centers the novel of essays. As Walsh reminisces about her past marriage, she sees an entirely different version of herself, signaling to the reader that she knows this is just one story in a line of stories and that, unlike travel, life and love aren’t linear, a truth we’d all do well to remember.

Starting at a London train station, Joanna’s trip takes her through France (twice), Italy, Greece, Bulgaria, Hungary, Germany, and the Netherlands, and she’s packed lightly to leave room for intellectual baggage. Prepared to at least attempt to demystify love, she’s brought with her an arsenal of books on the topic: Alain Badiou’s In Praise of Love, Roland Barthes’s A Lover’s Discourse, and André Breton’s Mad Love and Nadja. Excerpts from these and other titles litter Break.up’s margins.

Her travels are both immediate — sitting in a cafe in Athens, she notes when a young girl comes up to touch her computer — and intellectual — watching a young couple kiss from a park bench in Sofia, she falls into a meditation on the physicality of love, the Soviet statues that once littered the city, and the boredom that inevitably accompanied her romantic entanglement. Walsh writes,

A love story comes only after the end of love, whether it ends one way, or the other, and, until the story’s told, love is a secret, not because it’s illicit, but because it’s so difficult to tell what it is.

Joanna is continuously reminded that, though the story is complete in one sense, allowing her to tell it, an uncertainty remains. Because so much of the affair happened online — through text and email, Twitter and Facebook — the connection is lost only when the wi-fi is down, leaving the relationship perpetually unresolved.

The nature of Walsh’s narrative draws the reader into Joanna’s relentless waiting game. As she enters the cafe in Athens, she’s eager to see if he’s contacted her. By this point, the reader has been told enough about the unnamed man that his silence feels like the healthier outcome, but as Joanna rides the line between obsession and erasure, what she desires becomes less clear. Luckily, spotty wi-fi gives her generous amounts of time to wander, and she takes the reader inside her jumbled, mourning mind as she passes through markets in Sofia, attends readings in Paris, and perches on a rock overlooking the Mediterranean in Nice, cigarette and wine in hand.

Break.up is as much about the loss of emotional liberty in a world that relies more and more on digital connection as it is about the loss of love. Joanna is trapped in a holding pattern — “Come to Prague,” the man writes — and the claustrophobia the online world evokes in her underlines just how difficult disappearing has become. With a few sleuthy moves, anyone can be teased out from the digital dustbin: childhood crushes, lost college friends, a one-night stand, that guy you danced with once at a Halloween party. As a result, a new anxiety has formed around allowing oneself to connect in the first place. In Break.up, Walsh shows the reader the aftermath of an exquisite falling: thinking only of immediate happiness without considering the potential for pain and disappointment, Joanna revealed herself — at least her digital self — to the fullest.

Nearly two-thirds of the way through the book, in an essay/chapter titled “Sofia/Boring,” Joanna briefly loses focus on the man she’s attempting to excise as she immerses herself in the strangeness of Bulgaria’s capital city. The lost love is still referenced, but a shift has happened as Joanna becomes wrapped up in the boredom and stagnation of travel, of what it means to carry oneself from place to place, killing time. She begins to allow herself the room to disengage.

Because of the care Walsh has taken to create both a sound investigation and a narrator strong enough to carry the reader through the book’s experimental structure, Break.up maintains its momentum to the end, even as the novel-in-essays, predictably, meanders — between past and present, obsession and distraction, love and pain. Joanna hits each city on her list, but it’s never the place that matters so much as what she experiences emotionally and mentally (and digitally) at each destination.

As Joanna finally pulls back into London, she and the reader are unsure of what awaits her. She’s returned a person distanced from the pain she felt at the book’s beginning, but the ubiquitous nature of digital contact has left her without closure. Imagining scenarios of how her disembarking could go — who might meet her at the station, what life will look like upon returning home — Walsh, defiant, declines to tie up the story, writing, “I refuse to finish this book. There is no end to love. Now, where were we?”

Melynda Fuller is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in The Rumpus, LitHub, A Women’s Thing, and Poets & Writers, among others. She’s a graduate of the New School’s MFA writing program and is currently at work on a collection of essays.

The post Fighting for Emotional Liberty in Joanna Walsh’s “Break.up” appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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kylanrice · 8 years ago

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Day 4, 5, 6

I have been unable to find time to write for three days. I have written, but not in a diary. After seeing the National Gallery in London on the 19th, and after looking there at the anonymous Flemish painting “Cognoscenti in a Room Hung with Pictures,” I have been eager to work on a world that takes after that piece. I am compelled by the desire that has precipitated it, an epistemological thirst. It is a painting that wants to be several paintings; it tries to contain, index, profile. If each painting inside this painting is a logic and a world, this work worlds itself with these as its lineaments, acknowledging the work of art as more than subject matter: as matter itself. Art retro-architects reality. “Cognoscenti” is essentially a form of praise, too, showcasing the virtues of appreciation, abundance, knowledge, and the limits of knowledge. I want to write a series of embedded essays that work chiastically through world, into art, and back into world again, showing the ways in which transferences redeem the real. Mediation is reality—or rather, reality is always already mediated.

I will return to the National Gallery. I have to take this slowly. Monday the nineteenth begins at Abney Park, a cemetery in the Hackney borough in which I am residing. I am brought here by a book I’m reading called “Lights out for the Territory” by Iain Sinclair. My new unofficial handbook to the city. It perverts the figure of the flaneur into that of a stalker. My walks are like Sinclair’s in this: anxiety, hunger, and paranoia gyring into each other, a sense of non-belonging, voyeurism. I am here to observe, subvert, contain, vivisect. Sinclair’s walks through Hackney take him to Abney, where he notices a spray-painted pyramid-and-eye symbol scrawled in an unused non-denominational chapel at the heart of the park. I’m there before nine and it’s already broiling, one of the hottest days on record since the 70s. The inside of the cemetery is overwhelmingly green, dense, clotted with grave stones. Arborists and wood-cutters haul machinery through the overgrowth. What is overgrowth and what is undergrowth and what is a memorial to the dead is impossible to disentangle or set straight. Everything strays here. Death is no straightforward terminus. Indeed, one of my favorite aspects of Abney were the signposts scattered throughout identifying the various trees on site. The signs record the curious and mazy longevity of silver birches, common ashes, service trees of Fontainbleue, and horse chestnuts, among others, as though offering veiled metaphors for grief and earthbound afterlife: “SILVER BIRCH (Betula pendula, planted around 1930) / This tree appears to have been struck by lightning about 30 years go. It is not know exactly where this avenue of birch trees was planted, but birch rarely live more than 100 years. Lightning is the most likely cause of the long wound down the north side of the tree. You can see decayed wood inside, with fungi and beetle holes. Healthy wound wood has grown around the cavity but it is so big and deep the tree has been unable to seal the gap. The tree remains healthy and should live for another decade or two.” From the trees of Abney I learn that the material for our dearest metaphors are present already in the fabric of our lives.

Other things about Abney: the chapel is the oldest non-denominational church in Europe. The carved stone urns partly draped with veils. Extras of these piled beside a Simplyloo. The Egyptian style entry columns.

A long walk to the National Gallery, as the tube is unexpectedly expensive. I pass over canals, Kingsland graffiti, vertiginous mash-ups of architectural history and new construction. On Stoke Newington high-road, Arabic men drinking red coffee from tiny glass cups in front of bars and barbering establishments. Memorials displaced by bombs in the Barbican. Ornate underpasses. Smithfield wholesale market, whose sprawling industrial galleries are tastefully domed with glass and hinged with arcade glass. I have lunch at Fabrique. Ham sandwich on rye. Live flowers in glass milk jars on the tables. London Review of Books Cake Shop later on for afternoon refreshment. At last, two hours later, the National Gallery. A room full of still life floral arrangements, stray curves, diagonal axes. Closed peonies in shadow. I am an anachronist and miss in today’s world the understated ambition on display; again, the desire to contain all, the burgeoning thrust of the catalogue, the encyclopedia, the enlightenment era reach and grasp. The transparent wing of a dragonfly laid over a half-concealed leaf laid over a panted leaf on a vase. Palimpsest. My attention turns to the other museum visitors. A woman on a bench, having unconsciously adopted a Marian pose, arm over her backback, eye-shadow, Adidas, double rings on her wedding finger. Repose, in the gallery. Turner, Dido building Carthage: construction, development, empire, the empire of scope. The return again and again the judgement of Paris. This pairs well with my interest in Enlightenment era observational painting: anxiety regarding accuracy, discernment. Are these available to us? Is the illusion of possible accuracy even available anymore? I feel Cassandralike, intuiting a dark truth, completely bereft of a capacity to speak it or even explain it to myself. Agamemnon gets murdered off stage. What is mine is not knowledge but an inarticulate shriek in the shape of knowledge.

A beautiful painting by Meindert Hobbema called The Avenue at Middelharnis. Arbors, cranes in the backdrop, husbandry. Order (arrangement) and its derangement—that is, its warping. Hobbema excised two trees from the foreground of his painting to clear up the sky, giving it visual priority. You can see evidence of this on x-ray. Elsewhere: shipping scenes, ports, fleets. Trade and spectacle and confluence. Claude Lorrain, his lit backgrounds and shaded foregrounds: a curious sense of closure, lateness. Beautiful work by Beuckelaer: his four paintings make up a group illustrating the four elements: Earth, Air, Fire and Water. The elements communicated by way of market scenes as frame narratives for Christological imagery. Densely layered. The main event or subject as peripheral (in both cases). The Ambassadors. Again, epistemological ambition. Measurement, efficiency, death. Despite wayfinding technology: memento mori, pushed into the periphery to see the skewed skull rightwise. In many of these paintings of Christ and martyrs, the body is there to suppurate, gush, anoint.

At the end of the day, a long walk through St. James park and alongside Buckingham palace. Dinner on the steps of Westminster Cathedral, a beautiful striped, squarely Venetian building across from the malls near Victoria Station. The apartment buildings nearby match this decorative scheme. I listen to the nearby sounds of the wind in the maple, a roundabout with mopeds and bikers at its foot. Westminster has exquisite marbling on the interior, like being inside a shell discovered on a beach, creamy and lit from the outside in.

The next morning I call an Uber to get to Victoria station at 5 in the morning. The stillness and quietude of his Prius. I navigate to Gatwick and onto my first Easyjet to Lyon. I admire the Saint Expury TGV station for the structural integrity of its concrete arches and lattices. Once in the city, I take lunch at Ludovic B.—a restaurant about halfway through my walk toward Parc de la Tete d’Or. They’re confused at first but ultimately amenable when all I want is bread and cheese: with sweet balsamic reduction a demi Saint Marcellin, which has a pungent, good, bitter, indoors (interior?) taste. Again the sound of maple leaves beside a primary school as I leave the restaurant—refreshed, amorous for this place—and make my way toward my AirBnB beside the Rhône. At the park, where I linger until 2 pm, check in scheduled for 2:30, I walk through a fin-de-siecle wrought-iron greenhouse. Superheated. Camellias, the emblematic flower of romanticism, immortalized by Alexandre Dumas in his novel the Lady of the Camellias. Polynomial and Riemann equations graffitied in the public bathrooms.

I chat (in French!) with my AirBnB landlord while he finishes cleaning the place. He teaches literature at a university in Paris. We talk about my upcoming entrance at North Carolina and he points out that the study of American literature is one without any intertexts, so young and new as a literary epoch. The apartment is perfect. Windows with a rotting balcony overlooking the massive, wide celadon Rhône river. Multiple rooms to myself. Fourth floor. I leave to explore in the afternoon: the excruciatingly steep and winding upward staircases, the two hills of the city, old stonework built into the mountainside, the narrow pastel-colored riverside buildings wedged into each other. Stone reclining chairs by the waterfront, where I read for a while. A girl next to me is paging through Levinas in paperback. Saupers pompiers practice their diving in scuba gear in this summer heat. I wander through galleries and ateliers, trying to get a feel for the city, feel through its shirt to its skin to its spine. I follow signs toward Parc des Hauteurs. Ascend endlessly in 90 degree humidity. Like a pilgrim to a temple. Continued on into my misdirection, upward, plateauing, discovering the ancient Gallo-Roman theater ruins. Labyrinthine stone passages. Boys playing in their corridors. Sprays of summer flowers, purples and whites where grass springs between the ancient stones. Torpid bumblebees. A magnificent view of the city, its white buildings. Musicians practicing for the evening entertainment below, the drifting sound of saxophone, piano. Old heat of a late afternoon. I sit and read Faulkner and think on the vista and realize I may be experiencing a perfect and golden moment. Sometimes my ambling pays off. I buy bread and butter and a viennoise on my way home, dine in.

The next day—today—Lyon was less forthright with me. I started the morning at the mall, a dead hive experience, looking for a cheap t-shirt to get me through the day. I hadn’t planned for Europe’s heat wave. I went west, away from old town, until noon, and found Lyon in commercial merchant squalor. I walked through an indoor market, the smells of fresh fish, bread, doggish smell of hard sausage. Swallows all day, urgent cries overhead. Delighted by the high-pollarded avenues of trees I see from time to time—like the stilt legs of Dali’s surreal elephants. Into and out of cathedrals on my way: these are spectacular to look at, and each different in its own way (its own light), but curiously similar and banal, too. You tire after a while of vaults and stained glass. Women everywhere with hand fans—quaint. Back toward the river near 11 am. Shallow pools, a biker dragging through slowly them in rings, a wood boardwalk, strange metal plaques drilled onto 450 meters of the wood pontoon ramp. Research reveals it is an art installation by Philippe Favier called “J’aimerais tant voir Syracuse.” The wood ramp reminded Favier of an infinite “table d’orientation”—a semi-circular table you might find at an overlook or panorama. He came up with a series of literary terms for fantastic or fabulist places, inscribed these in metal plaques, and drilled them into the surface of the wood. Others, on their own accord, have added their own. La piscine du Rhône nearby, 60s style, space-needle architecture. Took a street lined with Arabic food shops and stores where you can buy traditional Muslim dress. The pastry-shops feature glittering caverns of tiny gem-like confections, glazed and square as ornate snuff-boxes. Purchased a pear tart for lunch and ate it in the courtyard of the old ESSM (École du service de santé des armées de Lyon-Bron). There, you can find a museum on the resistance and deportation. I wasn’t originally planning to visit, but I felt compelled, as I usually do when visiting France, to understand the complex European relationship with the second world war. Especially enlightening to learn that Lyon was included in Vichy France. Old propagandistic images of Petain. Narratives of racism, exclusion, turmoil. As if the shroud of Turin, a fragment of the parachute used by Jean Moulin to drop secretly into Southern France, where he was tasked by de Gaulle with uniting the resistance. An exhibit on the extensive food rationing in Vichy France. The ration stamps called “tickettose d’angoisse”—or “anxiety tickets,” for fear of losing them. Petain encouraged his populace to grow their own food. Steep increase of home gardens during the war years in places like Lyon. The countryside encouraged to donate excess to the cities.

Above all, the important lesson from the museum and today is how crucial the medical industry has been in Lyon. I get the impression there has been some kind of mandate to this end, and near the Grange Blanche later in the day I discover an austere statue of a robed woman with a sword and sheaves of wheat standing on a plinth that reads: “À la gloire du service santé,” which translates: to the glory of health services. The plinth features a frieze of figures at work nursing and ministering to the sick. At the Musée des Confluences, I encounter a “fermenteur Frenkel,” a large vat with clamps and dials used in the process of vaccine production. By way of prelude, the accompanying plaque informs me that Lyon has been backed by a long tradition of health and veterinary institutions, which led to this flourishing of the health industry in the 19th century. During the war, the ESSM was dismantled of its military status by Germany, but continued educating young men in the medical arts. Grange Blanche, which is near the Lumiere institute (more on this in a moment), is a veritable etoile of specialized hospitals.

Another industry central to the development of Lyon is silk production. My plan is to dedicate today to learning more about Lyon’s canuts, or silk-weavers. At the Musée des Confluences, I see large taxidermy displays that catalogue the components of the industry: large white braids; fat, gold-translucent moths; cocoons in various stages of unraveling. Also at the Confluences, which is where I go after the Centre, I also see a fiberoptic wedding dress, fringed with light, woven using Brochier technologies, which have been adapted from the original Jacquard loom types. The dress making technique was designed for the Olivier Lapidus haute couture fashion show in 2000, and the present artifact was made in 2014 by Mongi Guibane. Jacquard loom technology was used to develop the punchcards that supported the development of the computer and film industry.

In all, the Musée des Confluences is astonishing, and often painful to look at. Its exhibits are dizzyingly ambitious in scope. Permanent exhibitions include: “Origins, stories of the world,” “Species, the web of life,” “Societies, the human theatre,” and “Eternities, visions of the beyond.” The attempt here is to track a story of the world—a dubious aspiration, given the rigid warping porosity of historiography. The methodology here for engendering an epistemic experience is completely indiscriminate, much like the old-fashioned, original museums or curiosity cabinets. Indeed, there is a temporary exhibit at Confluences regarding the acquisitive spirit—a display of cabinets, carnets, colonization, observation, exploration. The latter exhibit teaches me that museums of natural history in France were often the outgrowth of imperial activity in colony nations—a strategy for understanding, and thus subverting, containing local populations and epistemes. I am overwhelmed here. Nothing is stable. I can’t concentrate on anything I see. A vast display of varieties of microscopes, magnifying glasses. Equally vast the glassed-in case of beetles, butterflies, shells of all kinds. I am desperate to concentrate, to core down to the heart of one of these objects. My mind does not operate on the basis of this kind of expansivity. I am wrecked by the curatorial attempt here to encompass all the world and all of human understanding—a cross-sample that asks its visitors to ask themselves: is there a duty to remember? A good question. I remember thinking on my walk today back to the conversation I had with my landlord, Thierry. We assume that literature is intended to amuse, entertain, or educate. But I think we forget the preservationist function of the medium, too. To safeguard in language language itself, the means of transmission of human learning and love. I can think of no holier obligation. This doesn’t mean just writing—this means writing in a tradition. I am sick and tired of literary peers who have no regard for the acquisition of or immersion in tradition, since this is the most important task for any artist. What you have to make or say is only possible as it relates to a long history of expressive force.

At the end of one of its permanent exhibits, a plaque declares: “The objects and specimens preserved in the museum’s stores and show in this exhibition constitute our common heritage. They are inalienable—they cannot be assigned or sold.”

Objects of note at the Musée: a Volva volva shell—a false cowry—unwrapping like a lily bulb, or a twist of angelic candy; a simple microscope designed by Dutch astronomer and physicist Christian Huygens, high performance, easy to use, made and engraved by Jean de Pouilly for wealthy clients. The privatization of accuracy for amusement’s sake.

The museum was designed to look like a crystal and a cloud by Coop Himmelb(l)au, Austrian studio known for deconstrutivist architecture.

After the museum I walk out to the point of confluences, where the Rhone and Saone flow into. It was originally a trafficked port area. The point hosts a submerged rail track for offload. Concrete pillars indicate incoming ships to pass “Gauche” and “Droite” (left and right). Now the area is under heavy construction, a rebuilding phase intended to urbanize the area. The regional governmental seat is nearby. Construction of apartments and other highrises. A mall.

I do a crash course in public transit and leave for the Lumiere Institute, which I learned about in a temporary exhibit at the Confluences on the Lumiere brothers, pioneers of the cinema and film industry, and lifelong locals of Lyon. Developers of a special dry plate for making photographs in the late 19th century. The institute used to house a factory for manufacturing these, and the brothers created their first film by recording end-of-day closing-time at the factory doors, the workers squeezing out, back into the world of their lives. The brothers, as the museum points out, were dyed-in-the-wool industrialists. There is something tautological about the development of this new medium: their first film (and so the first cinema experience) is an outcome of photographic plate development at the Lumiere factory. Later this factory would be converted into a studio production space. Here, the subject of film is film’s production; then the film eventually colonizes and magnifies the industrial context that produced it. No wonder the Best Picture Oscar goes every year to a film about film.

Watching early Lumiere films, I get the sense that what the brothers sought was movement, sheer motion. Their narratives were simply frameworks or pretexts for acrobatics, destruction, rising dust, consequence.

I eat a raw ham sandwich with goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes in a little margin of grass near Grange Blanche. Delicious and sweet. On my way home, I stop at Place Bellecour (featured in a Lumiere film, as well as the Centre on resistance and deportation), then walk home from the Hotel de Ville. Music in the streets. Solstice is always la Fete de la Musique in France. For the last three years, every 21st of June I have been in France, where the streets at night fill with discos and trumpeters and opera soloists.

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