Month: March 2018

Thomas Hood (1799-1845)

Richard Orchard is a hypochondriacal land-owner in early nineteenth century England.  Three or four times a week, he experiences dying fits(reminiscent of Redd Foxx) after which he is severely disappointed to discover himself still among the living.  As his personal physician, Dr. Carbuncle, persists in giving him no encouragement in his iterated attacks, he decides to undertake a final excursion. In order to either recoup his health, or suffer the final indignities, he plans a journey up the Rhine river.  His nephew, Frank Somerville, agrees to accompany him along with his sister, Catharine Wilmot and her maid, Martha Penny.  Crossing the channel they encounter a major storm that juggles the passengers about like nine-pins, tossing the luggage around, and blending the cabin constituents all together, like a salmagundi.  Once the seas have calmed, two other passengers, John Bowker, a short fat Cockney, and a tall, skeletal, yellow-skinned, un-named American, have a conversation in which the latter, not having gotten sea-sick, offers to instruct the former how to avoid being sick altogether, offering said advice for the inconsequential price of one sovereign.  The deal being struck, the American, laconically, informs Mr. Bowker that the secret is “to spend thirty years of your life at sea”.  Being of a ruddy and rubescent complexion, Bowker loses his temper and stomps off in a pet.  Later in the trip, after passing through the Netherlands(the beauty of which every member of the party appreciates, except for the overwhelming stench), the tall American, whose name is never revealed, once again fools Mr. B when they are disembarking from a hotel along their route.  Dashing aboard the barge at the last minute, he informs B that he has by mistake appropriated Mr. American’s bags, and proceeds to grab up every piece of luggage in view and scampers off the boat just before it leaves.  Later it’s unveiled that this has been nothing but rampant thievery.  Mr. Bowker does recover his baggage, later, when it’s discovered still at the hotel.  They send it after him.

Events of this nature, in addition to occasionally lovely bits of doggerel, interspersed with admonitory tales illustrating quirks of the German character, constitute the balance of the book, for the most part.  Martha causes trouble when she spontaneously decides to adopt the Catholic faith, to the horror of her employer, Catharine.  Later, after engaging in a penitential parade, carrying a heavy candle, Martha reverts back to her Protestant ethic as a result of sore feet.  Upon another occasion, Catharine is horrified at the parents of an 8 year old child, who apparently view with no alarm that their son is drinking with relish a large flagon of gin.  Catharine throws the offensive liquid overboard, only to discover that the child was actually a 29 year-old midget, one of a large number that live in Germany.  Catharine might be compared to Chaucer’s Prioress, a mild and tender-hearted person with an engagingly soft view of the world.

Barging up the river, the party delights in the passing scene:  the fresh fields with waving grain, skylarks frolicking in the sun, colorful peasants in their native dress working the fragrant soil…  All this description is somewhat tongue in cheek, however, as Hood also expatiates at length on the dire poverty and dirt, the ramshackle living quarters, and the ever-present clouds of smoke to which the large peasant class is addicted.  Smoking is omnipresent and pollutes all the interior spaces, except in the cathedrals.  Arriving in Cologne, Hood commends the city on it’s many fine churches and cathedrals, monuments and museums, but the whole party is aghast at the horrible reek that covers the town;  apparently a sewage disposal problem that is ignored by the inhabitants.  So they cut their visit short, and continue on through the Rhine gorges, examining the high castles and low villages, philosophizing on the era of the robber barons who preyed upon the lowly, periodically decimating the surrounding countryside with their feuds and thieveries, and subjecting the villagers to their tyrannies and rapacious taxations.

They arrive at Coblentz, where they rent a house for a month, planning a longer stay because it’s a delightful town in a picturesque setting on the Moselle.  Having experienced all along the way his hypochondriacal attacks, Mr. Orchard suffers a real attack at last, one which he barely survives.  Frank receives a letter from Richard’s lawyers condoling him upon the demise of his uncle, advising him that his will has been probated and proven, and congratulating him upon his inheritance.  In high dudgeon, Richard writes back excoriating his lawyers but finally comes to realize it has been his own fault. Henceforth he changes his ways and quits his hypochondria, becoming a warm and generous older gentleman, more or less normal in his demeanor.  Frank leaves the party of four to join a friend who is a captain in the Prussian army and is engaged in traveling home through northern Germany and Poland.  He comments on the small, remote villages, their poverty, and on their steadfast generosity to travelers, offering bed and board for mere pennies…  although this might have had something to do, he infers, with the presence of forty thousand soldiers marching through the environs.  According to Frank’s account, Poland is constituted mainly of sand.  Slogging through the endless plains gets to be a trial, so he decamps and returns to Berlin, where he tours the major sites and describes them in sketchy detail.  Returning eventually to Coblentz, the four friends travel back to England.

T. Hood was a humorist and editor of several literary magazines.  He loved puns(the book is filled with them) and practical jokes.  He published a few collections of poetry, notably “The Song of the Shirt”, and “The Bridge of Sighs”, and was a popular essayist.  His children, Tom and Frances, were both writers.  Tom was a well-recognized illustrator.  But all of them suffered poor health and died more or less prematurely.  The book is funny and odd, but well worth reading, if only for the window it opens onto the nature of early 19th century humor…

Alan Watts (1915-1973)

An iconic figure in some circles in the 1960’s, AW influenced a lot of people, young and old, and was a distinctly emotive force in the American decade of flowers, love and VW buses.  Man walked on the moon, a president was assassinated, computers took off, and the man you wouldn’t buy a used car from became was elected as POTUS.

Chislehurst, just south of Greenwich, England was a nice little town surrounded by commons, fields, bushes, trees, old architechture and old-fashioned pubs.  Until seven years old, AW explored, played, and thrived in the semi-rural environment.  His parents taught him about butterflies, blackberries, animal life, and about the seriality of things:  that everything around him was moving through time, changing constantly, in a kind of merry-go-round that had no end. His mother, in particular, taught him about the ubiquitousness of life;  that animals were alive, vegetables had their own sort of existence, and that even rocks had a place in the ongoing parade.  Even at this early age, he started to understand the duality of things:  that phenomena existed because of what they weren’t;  in another way, an object’s surround had a role in identifying what the object was or represented.  When he was sent away to boarding school at seven and a half years of age, his former life, much loved, ended and he found the resources within himself to prosper and succeed.  He had a natural gift for expository narration, which he learned to use in public speaking and that served him well in his whole life.  This, in addition to a veritable rage for learning, made him a great scholastic success;  so much so, that he eventually grew bored with the formal educational process and quit school in order to devote his time to studies that centered principally on the literature of the Orient.  He became friends with Christmas Humphreys and joined the London Buddhist Lodge at fifteen.  Due to his social expertise and fluid style of conversation he became known to many world-class Orientalists such as D.T. Suzuki, Joshu Sasaki, Francis Cranshaw, Ronald MacFarlane, and many others, all of whom aided AW in his progress in Buddhism, poetry, and philosophy.  His first book, The Spirit of Zen, was written when he was twenty, after a period of intense study with Suzuki.  As the second World War approached, life became inharmonious what with the curtailment of foodstuffs, the scarcity of petrol, and the gradual emigration of many of his friends, so he left England and moved to Chicago where, after networking with some of the local religious Priests and Bishops, he entered the Seminary of Northwest University from which he was ordained as an Episcopalian Priest.  He had a diocese in Evanston, Illinois for five years, then quit that position, as he was growing uncomfortable with the ritualistic  repetitiveness, and became interested in developing some his ideas on the non-seriality of consciousness.

So he move to San Francisco and began teaching at the Academy of Asian Studies there, and at the same time expanding his interests to include Zen, Taoism, and related Oriental practices, Haiku, architecture, and gardening…  Two of his students founded the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, where AW visited and held seminars for years;  he also was involved in the establishment of the Zen monastery in Ojai, and also the one at Tassajara.  The ensuing years saw AW establish friendships with many of the significant poobahs in philosophy, anthropology, psychology, and religion.  Joseph Campbell, John Cage, Jean Varda, Gary Snyder, and many others came to value his friendship and frequently visited for long sessions of intense conversation.  He eventually left the Asian Academy when it foundered from lack of financial support and purchased a house in Mill Valley, at the foot of Mt. Tamalpais, which became the center of a sort of beatnik community, populated by various types of free-thinking artists, dancers,  philosophers and Zenners.  In constant demand for public speaking, seminarial work, consultation, and occupied in the in-between bits by writing and publishing books, he passed away at the age of 58, in 1973.

AW was an early influence on me.  I found his ideas fascinating, but never really pursued the Ox(in Zen, studying and meditating in the interest of achieving satori) until i had a job working in the woods in NW Oregon.  That position provided the opportunity to think about consciousness, life, the universe in new ways that were enhanced at the  time by my interest in Haiku…  Suffice it to say, that i began to understand what AW spent his life trying to teach others:  that the universe is one thing;  that people are part of it and not separate…  that much of what we think about is illusion, and that reality is a four-dimensional experience, not comprehensible by serial thinking…  and that having fun is good, worrying is bad, and that people should try to enjoy the moment…  and at the same time to respect the opinions of others:  there is room in the universe for every belief;  what causes comfort or assurance cannot be wrong, and that everyone needs a supportive background in order to survive…

James Gunn (1923-  )

I read Gunn’s “This Fortress World”  when i was thirteen.  I liked it and reread it several more times over the next four years.  So when i discovered his latest novel, i decided to give it a try…

Galactic civilization has become crowded, at least in one wing of the Milky Way:  many alien cultures have, over a period of thousands of years, learned to live together in a sort of reluctant peace.  Until man attains space travel…  War once again rears it’s ugly head as the reaction to yet another intrusive species clamoring for lebensraum and their rights in the galactic theater.  After peace is once more established rumors begin to spread through the various civilizations about a Transcendence Machine, supposedly capable of actualizing the promises of the multitude of religions as concerns immortality, enlightenment, ultimate power, and the promise of Paradise…  Some of the larger, more powerful political powers decide to send agents across the “Great Gulf”, as the distance between the galactic wings is termed, to ascertain the presence and/or reality of the said machine.  The story begins with Riley, an Earthman, riding an elevator into orbit for the purpose of boarding a spaceship, the Geoffrey, which has been appointed to investigate the phenomenon.  Fellow passengers number about fifty, of which seven are depicted as important representatives of the larger cultures, and are ascending in the lift apparatus along with Riley.  There’s a sudden explosion.  The cable support, upon which the elevator car rides, has been blown apart and the passengers are in immediate danger of falling back to the planet.  But the captain of the Geoffrey is close enough that he is able to rescue the travelers.  Henceforth, during the very long expedition, the story assumes a Chaucerian character, with the tales of the seven most important adventurers interspersed with the several events that endanger and threaten the viability of the expedition.

Riley, the human, was kidnapped and had an implant surgically implanted which impelled him, at the command of an unknown authority, to undertake the voyage.  The implant had many features, including a universal translator with the capacity of assuring the correct behavior of it’s recipient, Riley.

Tordor, a two-legged elephant, was a Dorian, from a high gravity planet with a military culture;  he had been a navy admiral in the late wars.

Xi, a knife-wielding weasel, was from a planet where survival was the ultimate good, and  whose society was free of any sort of ethical value whatsoever.

Kom, from Komran, a moon circling a gas giant that itself was orbiting around the double-star, Sirius, had escaped his world because of it’s horrendous reproductive requirements via an escape pod apparently shot out of a human warship as it disintegrated during the last local engagement.  He was a barrel-shaped creature with hooded eyes and a hole for a mouth.

Jan and Jon were small identical humans.  They were from a set of nine clones who had terra-formed Ganymede, the largest moon of Jupiter.  They were the last two, the others had died during construction

Flora, a tall sun-flower sort of plant that walked on roots.  Their planet had been invaded by Alpha-Centaurians who had killed them all except for one.  But over time they had grown back, driving off the invaders with poisons and pesticides.  They communicated by semaphore, using leaves and branches that also doubled as weapons.

The Coffin, a suitably shaped machine from a planet even further out of the galaxy than Earth, but originally inhabited by humanoids who had followed an evolutionary pattern almost identical to that of Earth.  And ended up by eradicating themselves from the world, leaving their war-machines the sole occupants.  There were possibly two of the species left, inside the Coffin, but this was never verified.

Asha, a human female with a mysterious past who seemed familiar with Riley, although he didn’t remember her.  Asha had somehow obtained a map of space between the galactic arms, including nexus points, positions in space that allowed ships to jump through hyper-space, radically shortening the time and distance required for the very long trip.

After the journey was about half over, the Geoffrey came to a star with several planets  situated between the galaxy wings, which seemed a good rest spot.  So the seven associates(not friends) were permitted to use the captain’s barge to investigate the planetoid.  While engaged in poking about, one of them noticed that the Geoffrey had vanished, abandoning the seven to a fate worse than….  After a bit of dithering, the explorers, with the help of Mr. Coffin who was a genius computer mechanic, took off in the barge, scooped up enough hydrogen(fuel for the trip) and made their own way to their purported destination.  Asha knew how to get there.

Subsequent to a long and uncomfortable trip, they arrived at the planet where the Transcendence Machine was located, landed, and discovered that the Geoffrey had gotten there before them, the captain, crew, and remaining passengers had exited the ship, and had all been slaughtered by the indigenous giant spiders.  By this time it was obvious to the passengers of the barge that Asha had been there previously.  Directing Mr. Coffin to a local sewage outlet apparently leading to a nearby city, they all left the ship and made their way underground to what Asha claimed to be adjacent to the building in which the Machine was located.  But she didn’t remember exactly where it was, so there ensued a certain amount of spider slaying and trap-laying until she finally pin-pointed the spot.  Entering the edifice(by this time there was only two of them left, Asha and Riley).  Riley, watching Asha enter the Machine, saw her dissolve in front of his eyes, her blood vessels, bones and skin disappearing one after another.  Even so he enters after her;  mainly because he realizes that the Machine is a teleportation device, which he knows by inference will convey him to a locale different than the one arrived at by Asha.  End of book.

There were several interesting features of this novel.  The Chaucerian aspect was intriguing. Even though the travelers’ tales were not exactly the same as the Wife of Bath’s, or The Palmer’s or any of the other denizens of the Canterbury Tales, it was a connection of a sort that led to a semblance of continuity.  Another point was the inferential  suggestion as to the eventual demise of the human race unless they changed their ways and started respecting their planet instead of using it up and poisoning it to death.  I found out at the end that Transcendental was the first volume of a trilogy;  it was interesting enough that i think i’ll send away for the rest of it.  And it was interesting seeing how Gunn, who must be in his eighties now, has developed his ideas over the intervening sixty years.

Such a fine day:  what is so rare as a day in…  no, not quite there yet, but still fine:  high cirrus clouds, aimlessly pottering about, not sure which way to the cloud freeway…  I parked at the library as usual and pointed and pedaled toward the dike path, the one the city opened up just recently in spite of one section traversing the end of the local golf course.  Signs every one hundred feet saying:  “Use at your own risk;  beware of flying golf balls”.  Surely not a common warning sign:  unique, i’d be willing to bet…  The surface was gravel;  not an ideal biking media, but not bad if treated with respect.  Many ducks plying their trades alongside the pathway, sticking their feathery rumps in the air and feeding on who knows what delicious goodies sticking to the slough bed.  Many utilizers of the path, walkers with and without dogs, prams, young persons sitting in the grass and weeds with jovial smiles and daisy chains around their necks.  I saw a duck i’d never seen before:  it was fairly large, pure white head to the base of the neck and a deep black all over below that.  In fact, i’d never seen anything like it, ever…  we looked it up when i got home, but it was not anywhere listed.  Another of life’s perpetual mysteries…  Blithe in the sun, i rode to the end of the trail where was located the old auto salvage yard i used to frequent with some regularity.  I stopped and mused for a space from a high spot on the path, remembering the old cars i had at one time and the struggles i went through keeping them on the road.  Except now all the old good ones are gone and there’s naught left but modern, computer-driven vehicles moldering away in the dirt.  Some kind of lesson to be learned, there, but deeply hidden…  Turning around and enjoying the slight downhill rush, it was a quiet and contented ride through suburb with children in the streets, chasing various shapes of ball, brilliant tinkling laughter pricking needle holes in the air.  Several old persons trying out their old lawn chairs, tuning them up for another season in the sun.  Occasional hoods up:  would-be mechanics of at least two genders poking at the innards of older and not so old automobiles.  And more bicycle riders, mostly the types with curved handlebars, but some with small framed mountain bikes.  Most seemed intent on arriving, though, enjoyment of the journey not universally admired except by us older perambulators.

The megamart looms ahead, solid cement wall breasting the clamoring customers, imperturbable in grey concrete.  And the low point of the day:  no jelly donuts.  Sigh.  So, an old-fashioned instead, with a plastic vial of orange juice to wash it down.  Then off to the bikeway running along in front of the pulp plant, lacing the surround with odorous vapors…  I stopped at my usual lunch spot, watching the locals mowing lawns, picking on opportunistic volunteers, and wandering about in a sun-soaked daze.  Living -in- the -moment on display for the enlightenment and edification of any who might choose to notice…  Phone call to Mrs. M, describing the view across the Columbia and discussing errantry and purchases.  Then back, musing along, looking for new leaves on the annuals and alert for flowers…  Still a bit early for them, although a few daffodils herald the daylight.  Amazing that just a week ago, snow blanketed their resting places like a fatal shroud.  Truly the earth is a living being, breathing and sighing on it’s way, plummeting through space, scattering hydrogen atoms in its wake.

Back to the library now, loading up and trafficking my way back to the manse, our small refuge in a world seemingly uninterested in the two wheeled fantasies of some its numerous inhabitants, just concentrating on root growth and leaf production.  Delightful ride it was, yes….

Paul Scheerbart (1863-1915)

The action takes place within the asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter.  Pallas is a barrel-shaped planetoid forty miles long and thirty miles in diameter.  It’s hollow, with the interior forming a double cone with the points meeting in the center.  There’s a tunnel connecting the two.  The inhabitants are described as follows:

In addition to having a single suction-foot with which they are able to cling to almost any sort of surface,”the faces of the Pallasians are yellow in color;  only their eyes and lips are brown.  When furled up, their scalps have radial brown stripes on the inside against a yellow background.  The back of the head is dark brown.  Their dark brown rubber bodies have many yellow freckles, big and small.” They also have wings.

Pallas is riddled on the inside with rapid conveyor belts and cables, on or upon which they travel at great speeds from place to place.  There’s a North cone and a South cone.  Most live in the North section, as the gravity there is more reliable.  Nine months on Pallas equals one day on Earth.  Hovering above the North cone is a “cob-web” cloud, ten miles distant, which sinks at night to cover the open side of the asteroid, “star”, as it’s referred to, and retreats during the day, thus providing a diurnal rhythm to the lives of the residents.

As the story opens, Nuse, one of the constructor- Pallasians, has built a mile high tower with colored glass and an abundance of flowery decoration which is admired by all.  Lesabendio, in contemplation of Nuse’s creation, has an epiphany:  he will build a tower ten miles high to touch the high cob-web cloud and discover what it is made of and who lives there.  A long period of contention arises, during which artists, builders and various other parties argue about the meaning, relevance, and possibility of constructing such a huge edifice.  While studies are being made by experts in applicable fields, Lesa(nickname) and Biba, Lesa’s old philosopher friend, enjoy discussions and speculations about the surrounding stars and the possibilities of finding life or construction materials on them.  They take a short flight out of the South cone and are captured by the gravity field of their closest neighbor, Quikko.  Landing on the soft and yielding surface, it becomes evident (to the reader, not to the adventurers) that the two have arrived on a giant jellyfish floating in space.  Soon they are visited by the inhabitants, the Quikkoyans, who are almost microscopic in size, and fly about in dizzying and undisciplined fashion.  Mutual comprehension is soon established as the Quikkoyan language is much like that of the Pallasians.  The Quikkoyans laugh a lot and have unbridled senses of humor.  Their laughter produces a bright tinkling sound.  Eventually they invent a way for the two Pallasians to return to their own asteroid, and ten of the Quikkoyans go with them.  Meanwhile, work has begun on the ten mile high tower.  A base of forty four pillars is built to start with, each composed of Kaddimohn steel, mined from the appropriate formations on the outside of the asteroid.  Upon this base, another forty four series of pillars are erected, and so on…  The finished structure will somewhat resemble the Eiffel Tower.

One, or maybe the most important, reason Lesa wants to build the tower is so that he can investigate the “head-system”:  the Pallasian term for a superior power or leading influence.  In contrast, the planetoid itself is referred to as the “torso-system”.  During construction, many different issues arise and are dealt with:  the role of art(whether the tower should be covered with crystals or decorated with flowery designs), the anger of possibly jealous over-beings(sinning by presumption), the difficulty of maintaining the degree of concentration required for the necessarily long effort, etc.  Philosophical questions are routinely bantered about:  do asteroids have an instinct that draws them together?, do comets support life?, are there living beings in the overhanging cobweb cloud?…  When the tower reaches the height of nine miles, a large basket(1000′ in diameter) decorated with flowers and attractive symbols,  is woven together and raised up by the use of cables and cranes, to provide a resting place and viewing spot for the workers.  This basket drifts up and down as the center of gravity at this height moves around in response to the movement of the cloud…

At any rate, after the tower is finished, Lesa jumps off of it into the cloud and becomes one with it, discovering new species of life and learning the language of the spheres.  Eventually, having become more or less intimate with the surrounding planetary bodies, he is absorbed by the cloud and becomes part of the union of the head- system and the torso-system during which amalgamation there’s a lot of pain experienced by everyone involved:  the entire race of Pallasians.  And there’s a long section toward the end of the book that eulogizes pain and attempts to present it as a part of the throes experienced in growth.  The ending describes the Pallasians celebrating the importance of unity and their ongoing pursuit of bliss and peace as they surge forward toward the green sun (i forgot to mention that the stars are all green).

This work was more fantasy than science fiction.  Scheerbart was a member of the German Expressionist movement and had many well-known friends such as Bruno Taut, Erich Muhsam, and Ernst Wohlt, none of whom i’ve ever heard.  He tried to invent a perpetual motion machine, wrote poetry, and had a degree in art.  And a lot of interest in architecture.  I couldn’t help but notice, especially toward the end, that his philosophical leanings were rather on the Nazi side;  or maybe, ultra- Nietscheistic might be a better description…  But it was quite interesting and acquainted me with a genre that i’d never been aware of before…  I don’t know if i’d recommend that anyone read this book unless they had too much time on their hands, or were under the influence of some non-off-the-counter drug.  Possibly, the artists of the time were influenced that way anyhow…  pretty wild book…