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July 25, 2005
Typical Mondrago Dream Sequence, with Wallet
I, Mondrago, was on my way into this Ice Cream Parlor, which seemed have just been improvised there on the sidewalk between two buildings, when this very nervous guy caught up with me and said, “You remember me? I’m Jesse’s friend”, and then he started telling me how Jesse was doing, that Jesse was doing fine was pretty much the sum total of what this guy was saying--as I endeavored to remember both him and Jesse. I finally thought, well this guy is worth talking to, so I asked him if he was also on his way into the Ice Cream Parlor, and he said Yes, so I proceeded into the place, which again I have to say seemed just mocked up there, very temporary, I guessed it was a seasonal arrangement. But the nervous guy, who was dressed in a white shirt and tie, like an employee from somewhere I thought, well he was a skinny Haitian looking young guy, glistening with sweat; he had glasses and I did recognize him, but couldn’t place him, and furthermore he didn’t follow me into the Ice Cream Parlor, but just stood outside looking through the empty store windows. Well!, so I got in line, I was first in line, with several people coming in behind me, and we all had to wait because the person running this place wasn’t there, he was on some break or something--but he came back before the place was totally filled up. It was small place, temporarily rigged up really to be a kind of take out ice cream station. So, the young man looked at me for my order and I said, “I’ll have a small cone, vanilla,” and, absurdly, that seemed redundant. I had to make myself say “vanilla”, for it seemed obvious even from the way I ordered that a small cone was already vanilla; it was like saying, “I’ll have the simplest item you have,” like when I go into Starbucks I always order only a Coffee, Tall, never any of the stuff they really can treat you with, because I am austere. . . But the point is, when I made this order it took quite a while anyway for him to produce my cone, and he kept looking at me, defiantly, as he added more and more ice cream, as if trying to determine how much ice cream he should put on it, or I could take. I was thinking, no matter what, I end up conspicuous. And then he handed me the finished Ice Cream Cone, and he said, “that will be fourteen dollars.”
I had the cone, I was holding it in front of me like a microphone, and I had moved around behind the rigged up station somehow, to where the server had been, so he was standing next to me. As I pronounced loud enough for everyone to hear, “What! Fourteen dollars? There is no way I am going to pay fourteen dollars for this ice cream cone.” And a few scenarios had already run their tape loops in my head, based on my resolve to not pay for this. I could just stroll away and see if he came running after me, or I could hand the whole ice cream cone production right back to him; or I could really make a scene by turning it upside down and sticking it on the counter.
But there was no way I was going to take out my wallet and hand this guy fourteen dollars.
You know you are dreaming when there is a Thirty Dollar bill involved. But there it was. I was looking in my wallet for some money to pay the gas station attendent, who had gone ahead and filled up the whole tank despite my effort to wave him short of that, for when I said “I didn’t want you to fill it up,” or indicated that by a piteous look (I can’t remember which), he said, “I figured you wanted it filled up, because it was completely empty.” And incredibly, that made sense to me. Like I could see how I had created the impression that I always get the car filled up, because . . . I drive around near empty! Just the opposite of the truth, but that’s a dream for you. And later, I don’t remember when, I was explaining this to someone, probably Redrick or John, because this is exactly on the level of conversation, cars and ice cream, if I make no further effort, at Montys, and the one of them (must have been John, for this wouldn’t be true of Redrick) said they always keep the car full of gas. They top it off every chance they get. As opposed to letting it get low enough for the warning light, as I must. for all eternity.
So what, you say? Are these not historic dreams! The point is there was a thirty dollar bill ($30) in my wallet, alright. That’s the real point. And I knew I could remember that detail after I woke up, and maybe hinge the whole dream sequence on it, unravelling the thread back to the very first dream of all.
Posted by mortimer at 09:40 PM | Comments (5010)
July 18, 2005
SCHEME OF THE MONKS (the beginning)
Late in the afternoon the thunderstorms roll in; Mondrago the magician is still sleeping. He is rummaging about in an overly packed warehouse, at an undisclosed location; Mondrago’s young wife is making him guess how much she spent in the purchase of a golden mattress, with black stitchings, and it is going to be . . . four thousand dollars!
Walking home, laboriously transcribing his thoughts, trying to find a semblance of the kind of diction once spoken before the curtain fell and a fog came upon the populace, half-drunk, half-confused, half-blind trying to maintain the midway focus, the monk, Frere Severitus, finds a small vase-like lamp, sans shade, on the street. He exhorts all eternal souls.
A thousand interlocking weird situations; that’s what the world is, tens of thousands of interlocking weird situations. Loretta, or is her name Dianne?, was wondering how she could figure out why some of the people she knew were so close and knowable to her, and others you could stare into their faces all week and they just seemed unknowable. Most of the people who came to her Plant Stand are either unknowable, or maybe they belonged to some group of intimates that sat around in kitchens and on front porches and were friends like we are. Was it possible it was she was incapable of knowing them? The look on her face when she is saying this shows she is really considering it; it’s enough to make anyone pause, and I had to reassure Loretta, I mean Dianne!, that it was as it appeared; these were not people, per se, but members of the general population who had not coalesced, and maybe never would. They had no aggregate central selves of furiously important meanings, as we did.
And the actors? Often they say that they feel they are reenacting history itself, in their dedication to getting the character right and displaying Agamemnon, or King Arthur, even Honest Abe is in need of an actor to bring him across the impossible suspension bridge of history, on the screen for all the populace to see. Psychologically, I get the impression they, the actors, think of themselves as even more than just actors, they think of themselves as the historical characters themselves now happening or the first time. Wow!
This could be one of the major themes, developed in the Lecture Tour brought to many mid-sized cities, and also small towns, in fact in front of anyone who would listen, two people at a corner stand waiting for ice cream, even that shifting gallery Monty's Krown Lounge . . .
Where next we may summarily disengage the politicians and mock their use of basic metaphors, like referring to soldiers in Iraq as “on the ground”, or events as “turning the corner.” There are days, indeed, when to even listen to the News of the World for even the length of one broadcast at the top of the hour, is to be a fool, feel like a fool, and have all the future of a fool. But this is where we live, and the television needs to be fed, like the front garden.
The day after the tremendous night rains there were fallen flowers all over the yard, it was a massacre of beauteous Foxgloves and Dame’s Rockets strewn about, and so Janet went out there with her big vases, those gaudy ones we’ve been saving, and gathered up the fallen flowers. If and when I stopped bringing in philosophical, or I might say immaterial concerns, the talk would simply revert to monotonous information about the new ceiling tiles and bathroom fixtures, or cars, that was always a topic. It was so clear, after many years!, that I was the sole keeper of these topics that I had to realise these other so-called people were really empty headed in that area. One could not convict them of actual thoughts. This brings in a whole group, which might be identified as the people in life. They are sort of given to you, or me, to deal with. You can’t tell, at even a short distance, that what they are talking about is in fact the smoothness of the new bathroom tiles, when they make a chopping motion with their hands; at first you have to assume they are making a vital distinction, until you get in on the conversation, like with the other smokers, and find out it really is all, what can I say? . . . flapjaw!
The meaning that is immaterial, of which Frere Severitus would speak, is only known by examples. It is not a category that you fill up, as is the purely material. The material world is held together by a set of categories, while the world of meaning, which is immaterial, is known only by examples, and we do not know what holds it together. Maybe the fact that we know this world only by examples, and do not know the whole, are the same thing--or, what informs us that we cannot know the whole truth is that we get the truth only in parts. Furthermore, perhaps things which are held together by being in a category together have a strict dependence on that category, and no other meaning.
Thus, for example, a person can have their apparent existence in the category of person, that is they appear to be a person; but their meaning, that is held entirely elsewhere, in pieces, and never aggregating, so to speak, into an individual person. Or, conversely, as in the case of our most serious monk, Frere Severitas, one might be such an individual that they regard the rest of the people around them as only . . . so-called!
These aren’t just vital distinctions making content available; these distinctions are the content. The reason I am so concerned with defining history is because I am aware that I am in a different place than history; it isn’t that other writers ignore history and act as if they were standing on the same starting block as anyone ever; it is because they never conceive of the difference to begin with, and therefore act that way. They aren’t really even people, these writers, but facets of the general populace. Voices of stupidity, I might say.
I most frequently find myself saying, “This system accounts for everything but itself.”
What system? It is comprehensive but doesn’t include the facility of comprehension itself. It organises everything but can’t account for itself inside the that organization. This is certainly true for the theory of evolution, which is a complete crock, I mean skeleton, and can’t account for the occurance of the theory itself; and it is a contradiction that an entirely unconscious process should suddenly become aware of itself. The only understanding that accounts for the act of its own comprehension is one which is totally retrospective, so that all the content occurs within the idea. So there! This is the way I speak at dinner parties at my house, and at the bar when I get the chance, and if I am voluble then . . . that is the story.
There is much to do, before Mondrago awakes.
Posted by mortimer at 09:39 PM | Comments (1843)