And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.
Moby Dick
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| Path of the Mississippi River over time (a map of a river's space-timee) posted by Jerry Saltz |
once upon a [specific] time, mortal creatures living in recorded time, with recorded time marked and stamped all over them, escape recorded time to appear, as my brother calls Harry, larger than life (and Kenny is no great fan of Harry) -- in this case by being a little too exactly life size -- everyman only more so.
2
As a front, one of many, the wizard deals in circus prizes and gimmicks, like a little black bag you can set on a table, and a few seconds after you let go of it, it starts laughing its head off. * It isn't long before the tin man, straw man, and other adorable characters make their way to Harry in search of brains, heart, and courage. The magnet draws these uncharged souls who wiggle over to him like thin iron shavings, and soon they're spellbound.
Hirsch clan with post-post-(not-not)-warlocky
(not-not-not-not-post-war lucky) Harry
and spritely spouse Suzy at far left.
Here, with his premature widow's peak, he resembles Harry Potter,
but after they over-correct his thyroid condition with radioactive iodine,
he suffers mild rotundity and grows a mustache,
by which he bears a strong resemblance to the actor, Frank Morgan,
or rather, Morgan, the actor who plays him, resembles the wizard.
More pictures forthcoming.
3
Harry remains secretly scornful and often weary of Oz, the virtually virtual, phantasmagoric city on the river, the emerald Eldorado under the spell of the wicked rich and all their mesmerized munchkins -- and he often drifts off, and then floats back through the rainbow mists of what is to when it isn't yet, when it's those letters he writes from Kansas teeming with hopes as cans as wills to do, and from there he drifts down to the state he pops out in, Okmulgee, OK the very locality, when there's no hope, for nothing's lacked, he's a ton of ok just as he is, sixteen pounds (a record breaker!) the heavyweight champion of the state of OK, oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day.
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| corn rising (upper left quadrant) among among the roses in Callisto's Garden |
4
Meanwhile, back in misery, with the wizard flown home, the cartoon characters' confidence flags, the stuff he gives magic powers to loses its charge. When this outcome appears in his crystal ball, the wizard's mood turns dark, as he's sucked back up to hopes and cans, then back over the rainbow mists to Emerald city with its tornado green skies mirroring his eyes. The storm that carries him back wreaks havoc on whatever's not in the eye of it, or just beyond the razor's edge (where directly encircling the devastated zone -- where I am, he will shatter me in other ways -- the tables remain set with the wine glasses intact and upright).
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| Harry's Magic Factory in the Immigrant House after a Tornado |
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After landing in the immigrant house, he flips on the loud speakers of the palace and booms out mystifying threats by which the cowardly lions keep pawing at the door, eventually breaking it down, and if one's an alpha too, it's not a pretty sight. That's how Harry's good intentions pave the road to hell in the great hand basket squirming with scarred, scared lions -- all the tin and straw men now professing to be daring kings of the forest -- who, when not lick lick licking each other on facebook, are roaring and mauling each other and eating each other's babies. I didn't mean to go there, but wherever evolution rules, which seems to be everywhere, it's a tit for tat world, where you always have to harrow hell to find your way to paradise. Freedom is always traveling upward, going against the current of Old Man River, yet you're riding on his back to leave him behind. He's singing his sad song to help you along. "I gave you wings daughterala, now fly away."
5a
The wizard's favorite song is Old Man River. He sings it pretty much constantly. His sonorous strains of Old Man River echo all the way to the elevator where he lies dying in Missouri Baptist, in the remote suburb of Creve Coeur (pronounced, heartbreakingly, creeve core). Meanwhile, to reclaim its merman, the Mississippi rises up to record heights, and waits at the hospital door. To say good-bye, we stand around his corpse singing that selfsame song. Shocking Cousin Jeanne, who disapproves of creative funerals, Kathy hires a booming baritone to sing it from the choir loft at Harry's. Some might say Jeanne has a point, as Harry so likes the baritone's singing of his song, he decides to linger a while longer and haunt the funeral. Then, when this guy I never met starts spouting about what a great guy Harry was, he occupies the microphone, which literally blows its top, which almost breaks the guys nose as it flies into the pews.
6
Not just orchestrating the metaphysical mayhem that unfolds herein, greenish bluish brownish Old Man River manifests manifold marvels, like after Harry covers his chameleon eyes, and just by intoning the words --- greenish greenish greenish, blueish blueish blueish, or brownish brownish brownish, when he opens them -- here comes everybody! joys to the world!-- he has turned into another of the three main types of the billions of us.
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| Unretouched as found, image of approach to weirdly green tinted Emerald City just as I have often beheld it |
How lowdown, cowardly, and bureaucratic can the world get, when Don Quixote and The Wizard of Oz, the fairy tales that debunk fairy tales, are the best we can do. King Harry at least recovers the reversibility of such narratives, so the fairy tale can bunk as well debunk itself, and also hunker down in the middle of, and transparent to, its own motion, refusing to budge.
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The wizard's turbulent commutings materialize in the paintings of that era that most all look like storms or tornados reflecting past and future rainbows, those most faithful to the inside of Harry's head being those of the de Koonings, clearly kindred spirits.*
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| Elaine de Kooning, Bullfight, 1959 |
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As the tempests he conjures up solidify in contemporary paintings, the rainbows between the storms 3-D print themselves into a great shining ribbon bending with your mind as you weave around it, or you can ride the ferris wheel cab up through the framework of the supple metal spine of the silver snake doing downward dog for a view at the top of the green sea of Oz all the way to the wizard's old house and tower.
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Materialized rainbow melting back into a mirage.
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10
Hailing from a long line of our land's greatest poets, the executors of the 3-D printout think how beautiful and apt its image would appear rippling over Old Man River, so they poetically licentiously put it on the wrong side of the state.
footnote:
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*Among the boxes of gimmicks and gadgets, I know I've seen medals, lockets... It's a pack rat's security blanket he needs to cover us with, missing no opportunity to hand out confidential little idols from the boxes, wads of cash so as to die with the IOU's we found in the closet, etc. Oh there they are -- his old high school, college, and law school diplomas. What with that confidence bustin out all over his early letters to Suzy, it's not like he himself needs medals, lockets, or diplomas -- though before he gets it perfectly straight, he wastes his time earning a few of the latter. That's why he blows up like the microphone when I apply for a fellowship to pick the brains of the brain-lacking straw men, until the inflated currency crashes, thinks he. He just glares more fiercely when Suzy offers: "but Harry, she could have become a drug addict" -- but nevertheless, he freaks out that I won't let him pay -- "Even the wild animals take care of their young."
12
In a spatial world, you really need German or some other language where one thing doesn't have to touch the nose of the next to speak to it, where you can track things to their many causes known by many clauses simultaneously. The blind English, French, Spanish, and Italians, among others, think in a tunnel, out of sight out of mind, the last straw is the only one that breaks the camel's back. Over-simplifying a problem leads to greater complications.
In a spatial world, you really need German or some other language where one thing doesn't have to touch the nose of the next to speak to it, where you can track things to their many causes known by many clauses simultaneously. The blind English, French, Spanish, and Italians, among others, think in a tunnel, out of sight out of mind, the last straw is the only one that breaks the camel's back. Over-simplifying a problem leads to greater complications.
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| Making Sense in a Sensory World or...How to Become a River, June, 2016 |
13
But then again, if you, as a human, spend too much time in such visionary languages, you can achieve too much distance, you can grow cold as a hawk stalking a squirrel, and you need to touch base with a language whose eyes have fallen shut in the throes of the kiss of the world by the word, le monde par le mot -- angelish English, mon mari, and maybe some rolls in the heh! with the wench of French. end of aside.
But then again, if you, as a human, spend too much time in such visionary languages, you can achieve too much distance, you can grow cold as a hawk stalking a squirrel, and you need to touch base with a language whose eyes have fallen shut in the throes of the kiss of the world by the word, le monde par le mot -- angelish English, mon mari, and maybe some rolls in the heh! with the wench of French. end of aside.
Harry's story continued in next blog entry at:
Note: in case the craft remains grounded, as the soil requires fertilizer, discursive posts justifying synchronicity and other yet stranger effects in a world of experiential (versus either moral or strictly sub-microscopic) relativity can be found at
All the blog posts reveal pockets of spacetime sliding into everyday time to incorporate and reincorporate latest and most ancient understandings in a long overdue refreshment of the long degraded screen.
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| Callisto and me, 2011, by Moises Samon |
krvs@me.com
this would be illegal,
but I've endured a catholicity of cleansing rites
that I think should cover me, and you,
if you stick to the trail I've blazed --
unless you're a militant selective fundamentalist.
(I doubt all-inclusive fundamentals are militant.)
but I've endured a catholicity of cleansing rites
that I think should cover me, and you,
if you stick to the trail I've blazed --
unless you're a militant selective fundamentalist.
(I doubt all-inclusive fundamentals are militant.)
once again, Harry's story continued in next blog entry at:
