Where am I ?: February 2008

The text on p. 13 and the illustration on p. 24 are reproduced from Paul Fletcher, In the Bull-Ring: Hot Air and Hyperbole in Antipodean Writing (Nelson: Shingle Bay, 1999), pp. 73 & iv.

The illustration on p. 14 is reproduced from Paolo Caneppele & Günter Krenn, “Infinite Distance in Close-Up.” Justine and the Story of O (Köln: Benedikt Taschen Verlag GmbH, 2000), p.15.

The texts on pp. 16 & 61 come from the Compendium of World History: Chronologies, Analyses and Biographical Data, ed. Siobhan Michaels (New York: Space Publishing, 2001), pp. 273 & 134.

The texts on pp. 17, 50, 62 & 64 come from Plato, The Collected Dialogues: Including the Letters, ed. Edith Hamilton & Huntington Cairns (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, n.d.), pp. 1218-22, 1219, 543-44 & 1159-60.

The texts on pp. 18, 29, 66, 70 & 75 come from Stephen Sunderland, Soul Avatars (London: Arkana, 1991), pp. 207-8, 255, 151 & 123, 171 & 174.

The text on p. 19 comes from Devon Jennings, “Boob-tube review.” TV Times (19/9/03): 16.

The text on p. 20 comes from Jock Standish, Doctor Who: XL Glorious Years (London: BBC Bookshelf, 2004), p.iii.

The texts on pp. 21, 23, 40 & 78 come from Bela Seriton, Encyclopedia of Strange Phenomena (New York: Infinitude Press, 1995), pp. 234, 71, 173 & 247.

The text on p. 22 comes from John Flaxman, “Prophecies of 9/11.” Enigma (29/12/02): 29.

The text on p. 25 comes from Sisters, vol. 29 (11) (2004): 7-8.

The texts on pp. 27 & 49 come from The Sign of the Scorpion: An Erotic Mystery Story (New York: Black Mask Books, 1934), pp. 176-78.

The texts on pp. 30, 43, 76 & 79 come from Gabriel de Souza, Masters of Memory (London: Dion, 1999), pp. 296, 22-26, 17 & 14.

The text on p. 33 comes from Roger Horrocks, “The Invention of New Zealand.” AND 1 (1983): 9.

“Ithaka” (p. 34) first appeared in Tongue in Your Ear 8 (2005): 42, and was reprinted in Lorraine West & Stefan Kalleides, In Transit: Poems & Translations (Athens: Journeyman Press, 2005), p.18.

The texts on pp. 36, 56 & 72 come from Ivor Maskelyne, Egypt or Atlantis? (St. Albans: Third Eye Publishing, 1984), pp. 75-76, 244 & 124.

The illustration on p. 41 and the text on p. 52 are reproduced from Bud Plant’s Incorrigible Catalogue, ed. Laurie Woodum (Spring 2004): 75 & 25.

The text on p. 42 comes from International Newzbreaks (22/07/04): C3.

The text on p. 44 and the illustration on p.45 are reproduced from from James Churchward, The Lost Continent of Mu (London: Dion, 1926), pp. 9-13.

The illustration on p. 44 is reproduced from The Hutton Commentaries [http://www.huttoncommentaries.com/]

The illustrations on pp. 47 & 56 are reproduced from The Codex Nuttall: A Picture Manuscript from Ancient Mexico, ed. Zelia Nuttall (Boston: Peabody Museum, 1902), pp. 81 & 26.

The text on p. 51 comes from Jared Bolton, “Metonymic Imprisonments.” JOL [Journal of Occidental Literature] 9(2) (1987): 309.

The text on p. 58 comes from K. B. Ramananda, Buddha Consciousness: An End to Turmoil (New York: Helion Press, 1968), pp. 32-33.

The text on p. 67 comes from Mauricio Estebán, The Code-Breakers: Cryptograms and the People Who Solve Them (London: Sphere Books, 2001), p.128.

The quotation on p. 70 is from Alan Moore, From Hell (Auckland: Bantam, 2001), chapter 4, p.26.

The text on p. 70 comes from Jim Corbett, The Temple Tiger and More Man-Eaters of Kumaon (London: Oxford University Press, 1954), p.139.

The illustrations on pp. 71 & 80 are reproduced from Robert B. Stacy-Judd, Atlantis: Mother of Empires (London: Dion, 1939), pp. 174 & 145.

Letter

Atlantis book – Atlantis book. What a fascinating idea! It always reminds me of the old Aelita by Alexei Tolstoy, a book which (in the Moscow Foreign Languages Publishing House version) always had an incredibly magical feeling for me. In fact, recently I’ve been toying with the idea of trying to get it sent to me, as the chances of finding it here again are nil. Atlantis is great.

Did you think of using this new ‘research’ that traces Atlantis to this amazing Greek settlement on a volcanic island ringed by an outer ridge (annoyingly I can’t remember the name), which was subsequently blown up by a huge eruption? I think it’s on Crete that they discovered wall paintings under a layer of ash that had an almost map-like depiction of Atlantis, and the picture seemed to be of this ringed-island place, answering to the first major reference to Atlantis by whatever ancient writer wrote about it.

In fact, if memory serves me correctly, they reckoned that it had been the same eruption that did for the Minoan civilisation on Crete as well. They dated it by pottery-styles and stuff.

A diver went down to check the walls of the remaining hard ring (because the outer ring or another ring built up by the eruption still survives, though the island was completely destroyed), and reckoned that it was dangerously cracked and that another similarly-dangerous eruption might happen any day.

(All very inconvenient, of course, if you want to do a sort of Carl Barks lost-city-under-the-sea version of Atlantis instead, or Tolkien’s ‘Atalante’, Numinor sunk under the waves, or something).

[Loose page of an unsigned letter]

Tuesday

Amnesia

The popular notion of amnesia comes from media reports or soap operas. People are found wandering about, with no idea what their names are, where they come from, or about any other details of their past. This does indeed happen – generally as a reaction to stressful conflicts in everyday life. The memory is usually restored to normal within a couple of days. Exactly what has happened to impair their sense of recall is debatable, and seems to differ from case to case. What is most intriguing is that the precise form the memory defect takes seems to depend on their own preconceived views [*] on how memory itself functions.

Subjects seldom lose the use of their native language,
or the more-or-less subconscious details of everyday life:
dressing, eating, interacting socially – even reading & writing:

Perhaps the closest analogy is with “glove anaesthesia,” a phenomenon often observable in sufferers from hysteria. This is a form of numbness which extends up to the wrist, incapacitating the subject’s hand, but not corresponding with the actual nerve patterns which dictate feeling in this part of the human anatomy. In other words, it is the mind which has decided that the hand is paralysed, rather than any impairment in the actual somatic structure of the body. It is because we think of the hand as a hand (the foot as a foot, the arm as an arm, and so on), rather than seeing it – correctly – as part of a complex gestalt of somatic processes, that it is possible to conceptualise such paralysis. In the case of amnesiacs, how much is genuine failure of the memory system itself, as opposed to a simple refusal to remember,[+] is extremely hard to tell.

[The Home Encyclopaedia of Psychology, ed. G. O’Bannon, p. 20]

[*] See >Cannibal Worms.
[+] See >Hysterical Dissociation.

Atlantis (Etymology)

Plato (>Timaeus / Critias):

Atlantis[*] - named after its first king, Atlas[+]

North-West African Tribes:

Atalantes - names given by classical writers
Atarantes - to the inhabitants of regions
Atlantioi - near the Atlas mountains

North African Berbers:

Attala - legendary kingdom off the coast

Celtic tribes of Europe:

Avalon - paradise in the western seas

Basques:

Atlaintika - their mythical place of origin

Portuguese:

Atlantida - a lost land below the Azores

Canary Islands:

Atalaya - still a common place-name

Vikings:

Atli - Valhalla in the western seas

Phoenicians/Carthaginians:

Antilla - an island in the west

Ancient Egyptians:

Amenti - abode of the divine sun-boat

Ancient Babylonians:

Arallu - the western paradise[#]

Ancient Arabians:

Ad - the first civilisation in the west

Hebrews (Torah):

Adam - the first man

Sanskrit (Puranas):

Attala - “White Island” in the west
Atyantika - a final catastrophic destruction

Pre-Columbian Mexico:

Aztlán - Aztec (eastern) island of origin

Venezuela:

Atlán - home of the “white Indians”

North American:

Azatlán - Indian village on Lake Michigan

Malay:

Luca Antara - great mythical South Land[~]

Latin:

Antarctica - frozen since the poles shifted
Antipodes - counterbalance to the old world
Australia - great southern land
Aotearoa - Land of the Long White Cloud

[N. Driscoll, Atlantis: A Conspiracy Revealed, pp. 19-21]

[*] See >Atlantis (Location).

[+] See >Ventris, Michael.

[#] See >Quarles’ Book of Emblems.

[~] See >Mu.

Atlantis (Location)

The Aegean Sea – M. Latreille, Discours sur l’Atlantide (1819)
Algeria – P. Benoit, >L'Atlantide (1919)
The Azores – A. Kircher, Mundus Subterraneus (1665)
Antarctica – R. & R. Flem-Ath, When the Sky Fell (1995)
The Atlantic Ocean – P. Schliemann, How I Discovered Atlantis (1912)
The Bahamas – E. Cayce, Atlantis Revisited (1923)
Bermuda – C. Berlitz, The Mystery of Atlantis (1969)
The Canary Islands – B. de Saint-Vincent, Les Iles fortunées (1803)
The Caucasus – D. de Sales, Histoire de tous les peuples (1779)
Corsica – É. Cadet, Les pierres précieuses de Corse (1785)
Crete – J. V. Luce, The End of Atlantis (1970)
Cyprus – R. Sarmast (Reuters 27/4/04)
Heligoland (North Sea) – J. Spanuth, Atlantis of the North (1979)
Lake Titicaca – H. S. Bellamy, The Calendar of Tiahuanaco (1956)
Mato Grosso (Brazil) – F. H. Fawcett, Exploration Fawcett (1920)
New Zealand[*] – ?
North Africa – H. Bock, Dissertation (1685)
North Atlantic – H. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine (1888)
The Pacific Ocean – F. Bacon, The New Atlantis (1626)
Palestine – O. de Marseille, Dissertation sur le Critias (1726)
Pillars of Hercules – Plato, >Timaeus & >Critias (c.355 BC)
The Sargasso Sea – I. Donnelly, Atlantis the Antediluvian World (1882)
Arghati (Tibet) – G. Ashe, Atlantis: Ancient Wisdom (1992)
Spitzbergen – J.-S. Bailly, Lettres sur L’Atlantide (1779)
Sweden – O. Rudbeck, L’Atlantide suédoise (1675)
Tartessos (Asia Minor) – L. Sprague de Camp, Citadels of Mystery (1973)
Thera / Santorini – J. W. Mavor, Voyage to Atlantis (1969)
Yucatán – R. Stacy-Judd, Atlantis Mother of Empires (1939)
Zimbabwe – H. Rider Haggard, She (1885)

[N. Driscoll, Atlantis: A Conspiracy Revealed, pp. 15-16]

[*] See >Zodiac.

Monday

B

Baring-Gould, Rev. Sabine (1834-1924)

In an essay on ‘Wandering Words,’ Mr T. W. Sandrey says :– ‘The talismanic words uttered by children in their innocent games have come down to us very nearly as perfect as when spoken by the ancient Briton, but with an opposite and widely different meaning.[*]

The only degree of likeness that lies between them now is, that where the child of the present day escapes a certain kind of juvenile punishment, the retention of the word originally meant DEATH in its most cruel and barbarous way.’

The correspondence is much closer than the writer perceived, for he overlooked the fact that the process in both instances is one of elimination, the one remaining being the victim, the rest being successively set free.

To be set free, you must recite the right words in the right order

I have tried in my novel Perpetua to give a description of what took place, according to tradition, at Nîmes once in every seven years. Nîmes possesses a marvellous spring, a river of green water that swells up out of the bowels of the earth and fills a large circular reservoir. A temple of Nemausus stood near the basin

[S. Baring-Gould, A Book of Folk-lore, p. 106]

Nemausus – Nîmes – Nemesis

[*] See >Short-term Memory Impairment.

Baxter, James K. (1926-1972)

This can be seen also in the audacious way in which Baxter’s “Poem by the Clock Tower, Sumner” (1948) juxtaposes Minoan Crete and Plato’s mythical lost continent of Atlantis with Kiwi beach culture:

Beside the dark sand and the winged foam
Under the shadow of the naked tower[*]
Play the wild children[+], stranger than Atlanteans.
For them the blazed rock hieroglyph burns clear[#]:
Bear dance and bull dance in the drenched arena[~]

“Terrible mirrors,” he calls them, bowing to their (alleged) superior wisdom:

... An Ice Age lies
Between us;[$] for they know
The place and hour of the young phoenix’ nest
On the bare dune where we can see only
Worn glacial stones and terminal moraine. …

[P. Fletcher, In the Bull-Ring: Hot Air and Hyperbole in Antipodean Writing, p. 73]

[*] See >Xerxes.

[+] See >Baring-Gould, Rev. Sabine.

[#] See >Felton Mathew’s spider-web plan.

[~] See >Waite, Arthur Edward.

[$] See >Mu.

Bianca

blank [bianca] / clear [clara[*]] / white [candida]

[P. Cannepele & G. Krenn, Infinite Distance in Close-Up, p.15]

The books in her room are:

André Breton, L’Union libre [Free love] (1923)

Marquis de Sade, L’Histoire de Juliette (1797)

Jules >Verne, Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (1870)

Pierre Benoit, >L’Atlantide [Atlantis] (1919)

Carlo Collodi, Le Avventure di Pinocchio : Storia di un burratino (1883)

Ada Boni, Il > Talismano della Felicitá [Talisman of Happiness] (1928)

Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, or The Whale (1851)

Octave Mirbeau, Le > Jardin des Supplices [Torture Garden] (1899)

[*] See >Girl in Love, A.

Sunday

C

Cannibal Worms

A distinction in this respect should certainly be made between short-term and long-term memory. It has been suggested that the former offers certain analogies with the workings of a digital computer, where familiar pathways can be reactivated or re-excited or in such a way as to constitute a residual record of past activity. The latter, on the other hand, must be physically embodied in some way, since it can endure for almost a hundred years, surviving comas, shock treatments, and even (in the case of experimental rats) refrigeration. An accidental concussion will often take away the memory of the hours immediately preceding it. It therefore seems probable that short-term memory is the more readily interrupted, being embodied in connections which must continually re-excite themselves [*] to last. If they do prove durable, such memory chains are (somehow) transferred to long-term storage, perhaps embodied by a literal “growth” within the synapses.

Short-term memory requires excitement

Memory itself, or the information it encodes, takes the form of connections, not of molecules. The quest for the biochemists’ holy grail, the so-called “memory molecule,” is therefore a mistaken one. Some researchers have tried to pass on memories by injecting extracts from schooled brains, or by encouraging cannibalism in worms.[+] Brains can indeed be altered chemically by injection, but specific information transfer has never been unequivocally documented. Fantasies of cannibalism appear to be more psychologically than biologically coded.[#]

[The Home Encyclopaedia of Human Psychology, ed. G. O’Bannon, p. 455]

Long-term memories transferred by cannibalism

[*] See >Bianca.

[+] See >Panopticon.

[#] See >Werewolves.

Cicero, Marcus Tullius (106-43 BC)

Now, as in Tullias tombe, one lampe burnt cleare,
Unchang’d for fifteene hundred yeare,
May these love-lamps we here enshrine,
In warmth, light, lasting, equall the divine.

[J. Donne, Poetical Works, p. 125]

After the death of his daughter Tullia in 45 BC, the celebrated Roman lawyer, orator and statesman retreated from public life.[*] When her tomb was excavated in the Renaissance, it is alleged that a single lamp was found still burning in the airless gloom.

[Compendium of World History, p. 274]

Fun to be thirsty

[*] See >Short-term Memory Impairment.

Critias

Plato’s description of Atlantis (the plain and the mountain):

Looking towards the sea, but in the centre of the whole island, there was a plain which is said to have been the fairest of all plains and very fertile. Also in the centre of the island, there was a mountain not very high on any side. In this mountain there dwelt one of the earth-born primeval men of that country, who had an only daughter who was called Cleito.[*] The maiden had already reached womanhood, when her father and mother died; Poseidon fell in love with her and had intercourse with her, and breaking the ground, inclosed the hill in which she dwelt all round, making alternate zones of sea and land larger and smaller, encircling one another; there were two of land and three of water, which he turned as with a lathe, each having its circumference equidistant from the centre, so that no man could get to the island.

NB: Circles of land and water:

They arranged the whole country in the following manner:

First of all they bridged over the zones of sea which surrounded the ancient metropolis, making a road to and from the royal palace.

Then, beginning from the sea, they bored a canal of three hundred feet in width and one hundred feet in depth and fifty stadia in length, which became a harbour, leaving an opening sufficient to enable the largest vessels to find ingress.

Moreover, they divided at the bridges the zones of land which parted the zones of sea, leaving room for a single trireme to pass out of one zone into another, and they covered over the channels so as to leave a way underneath for the ships.

All this, including the zones and the bridge, they surrounded by a stone wall on every side, placing towers and gates on the bridges where the sea passed in.

[Plato, ‘Critias’, Collected Dialogues, pp. 1218-22]

Am I the only one to see it sounds like here?

[*] See >Xanthippe.

Saturday

D

Daedalus

The father of the machine is Daedalus, who invented the potter’s wheel, the surveyor’s compass and the carpenter’s saw. He also made the artificial cow used by Queen Pasiphae when she desired to be mounted sexually by the king-bull Poseidon.

sex with a bull = the labyrinth / mind = death

Pasiphae gave birth to the Minotaur: half man (Minos) / half bull (Taurus). Daedalus was commissioned by King Minos, Pasiphae’s cuckolded husband, to build a maze, the labyrinth, to imprison the Minotaur. The labyrinth was meant to mirror the convolutions of the human mind. Minos was also, significantly, the judge of the dead.

[S. Sunderland, Soul Avatars, pp. 207-8]

13 lines / 7 faces
7 facets / 13 spaces[*]

[*] See >Zodiac.

Derren Brown Mind Control

Whilst watching Derren Brown playing blackjack and winning thousands of pounds at a casino tonight, I heard him remark that he used a >Memory Theatre to do it:

“I have a big Florentine house, and upstairs is the card room, and in the card room there are fifty-two objects, and as each card comes up I attach a sticky label to one of the objects – so all I have to do to keep track of the four packs of cards is to go from object to object.”

Funnily enough, even as he was speaking I thought he might be lying … that he’d read about memory theatres somewhere and thought it would be impressive to have one. It’s hard to see how it would really help, but maybe I’m being too suspicious. It seemed to me to resemble the rest of his technique of indirection, distracting you from the main objective in order to leave you open to his machinations.[*]

[D. Jennings, ‘Boob-tube Review’, TV Times (17/9/03), p.16]

[*] See >Short-term Memory Impairment.

Doctor Who

Classic cult BBC TV show. It concerns the adventures of a renegade Time Lord exiled from the planet Gallifrey, who travels around the universe in his ship the TARDIS [Time And Relative Dimensions In Space], which froze in the form of a blue police telephone box in 1963.

The actors who have so far portrayed the Doctor in his nine[*] incarnations are, in order:

William Hartnell (1963-66) – Old Father Time
Patrick Troughton (1966-69) – the Chaplinesque tramp
Jon Pertwee (1970-74) – insufferable dandy
Tom Baker (1974-81) – scarf-sporting teddy boy
Peter Davison (1982-84) – crisp in cricket whites
Colin Baker (1984-86) – garish and ungregarious
Sylvester McCoy (1987-94) – the poison-dwarf
Paul McGann (1996) – the feature film: a new beginning
Richard E. Grant (2003) – animated audio production
Christopher Eccleston (2004-) – return to live action

[J. Standish, Doctor Who: XL Glorious Years, p. iii]

Is >Time-travel possible or impossible?
Can ten men [9 + 1] all be the same person?

[*] See >Zodiac.

Friday

E

End-times [Arghati]

According to many Buddhists, a vast underground realm called Arghati lies beneath the high plateau of Central Asia. From within the tunnels of Arghati, according to the prophecy, the rightful King of the World will one day come forth:[*]

Before this happens, sometime around the end of the millennium, “Men will increasingly neglect their souls. The greatest corruption will reign on earth. They will become like bloodthirsty animals, thirsting for the blood of their brothers. … The crowns of kings will fall. … There will be a terrible war between all the earth’s peoples … entire nations will die … hunger will become widespread …. crimes unknown to law, unthinkable to the world will be committed.”

During this period of lawlessness, the prophecy continues, families will be dispersed and multitudes will cover the roads as the world’s “greatest and most beautiful cities … perish by fire.

“Within fifty years there will be only three great nations and, within the next fifty years there will only be eighteen years of peace. … Then the people of Arghati will leave their subterranean caverns and will reappear on the surface of the earth.”

[B. Seriton, Encyclopedia of Strange Phenomena, p. 234]

[*] See >Zodiac.

End-times

[Prophecies of 9/11]

The two boys who killed their classmates at Columbine High School in 1999 had a plan to hijack an aeroplane and fly it into a building. They abandoned it in favour of a massacre with semi-automatic weapons.[*]

At the time their plan seemed pure fantasy:

I awoke from a vivid dream in which a skyscraper was destroyed by low-flying aircraft. I felt sure at the time that it was in a very big city, probably New York, though the only evidence of that I have now is the notes I scribbled on my bedside pad:
destruction
plane – or planes?
the president recalled from – somewhere in the sun,
with palm trees
New York skyline

Valerie Kuragin of Bradford was questioned by the security services after she revealed the information above in a letter to the Daily Mail (published on October 29th, 2001). She stresses that it was a fairly low-key affair: “I had the impression they’d spoken to dozens of people before me, and were just interested in establishing that I had no links with any of the people who might have planned it.”

She’s not the only one. Thousands of people have reported disturbing or unusual dreams and premonitions from the period just before the atrocity. Many reported feelings of suffocation, as if they’d been buried alive. “It was like I’d become part of the ground itself,” said self-employed carpenter Scott Mayfield. Others spoke of burning bodies, smoke, falling sensations. Many of these visions were discussed with friends or relatives before the attacks took place.

In psychic terms, it appears to have been the equivalent of an earthquake measuring point ten or eleven on the Richter Scale.

[J. Flaxman, ‘Prophecies of 9/11’, Enigma (29/12/02), p.29]

[*] See >Short-term Memory Impairment.

Enoptromancy

The ancient divination[*] method of using a shiny surface placed in water to foretell[+] the recovery (or death) of someone

the psychic or healer[#] suspends a mirror in water. Only the base of the mirror is allowed to touch the water. The psychic then gazes into the water, interpreting the vision[~] that appears on the shiny surface, foretelling whether the patient will die or recover.[$]

[B. Seriton, Encyclopedia of Strange Phenomena, p. 71]

[*] See >Zener cards.
[+] See >Time Travel.
[#] See >Xylomancy.
[~] See >Young, Edward.
[$] See >Ka.

Thursday

F

Felton Mathew’s spider-web plan

1 Circle
5 rings
2 squares
4 boulevards
12[*]

[P. Fletcher, In the Bull-Ring: Hot Air and Hyperbole in Antipodean Writing, p. iv]

[*] See >Zodiac.

Foreplay

One morning a couple of months ago, whilst on an errand for my husband,[*] I drove past my eldest daughter’s place. She has lived alone since her divorce and as it was a Thursday, and she worked, I was surprised to see her car in the driveway. Stopping the car, I walked down the side of the house to the door. The bedroom window was open and, as I passed it, I heard a low groaning coming from inside. Maternal instinct being what it is, my immediate thought was that Penelope was sick, so I looked through the window.

Penny was lying naked on the bed with a man, also naked, his head and tongue buried between her legs. I had read about oral sex, but had never seen it or experienced it — sex with my husband is very straight and (I have to admit), a little boring. He doesn’t believe in foreplay, but instead tends to climb on, then climb off again. I knew that I should leave but couldn’t, so transfixed was I by the scene in front of me.

Penny was writhing in ecstasy on the bed, thrusting her hips into her lover’s face, her hands pulling his head into her pussy, her moans becoming louder, her body shuddering as she reached her climax. As she lay still, the guy kissed his way across the swell of her belly and up to her tits, taking each nipple in his mouth in turn and sucking them to erection. Reaching for his cock, Penny pulled it towards her cunt, spreading her legs wide and giving a small squeal of delight as he entered her pussy and pushed his cock all the way into her.

My hand found its way inside the waist band of my slacks and my fingers were gently stroking my clit. I forced myself to leave, and when I reached home, tore my clothes off and threw myself on to the bed, caressing my tits and softly pinching my nipples as my hand moved down to my pussy and my fingers explored my impatient clit, bringing me to a shattering orgasm.

Images of Penny and the stranger tormented me for weeks. Penny had climaxed more in a single morning than I did in a month of sex with my husband, and the desire to have someone eat my cunt had become an obsession.

[Sisters 29 (11) (2004), pp. 7-8]

Penelope was Odysseus’s wife, famed for staying faithful & resisting all suitors during his twenty years of exile

[*] See >Xanthippe.

Fotis

[Book II, section 6:]

... verum enimvero Fotis famula petatur enixe.
on the other hand, why not try to win over the maid Fotis?
Nam et forma scitula et moribus ludicra
It cannot be denied that she is beautiful, and free-spirited,
et prorsus argutula est.
and a good conversationalist.
Vesperi quoque cum somno concederes, et in cubiculum te deduxit comiter,
Yesterday evening when you went to bed, she led you softly into your room,
et blande lectulo collocavit, et satis amanter cooperuit,
and sweetly turned back the sheets, and tenderly tucked you in,
et osculato tuo capite quam invita discederet vultu prodidit,
and kissed your brow as if she were looking for an excuse to stay
denique saepe retrorsa respiciens substitit.
and kept on turning back to look longingly at you instead of going.
Quod bonum felix et faustam itaque, licet salutare non erit,
So you have an excellent chance – even if no good comes of it -
Fotis illa temptetur.
of seducing Fotis.

[Book III, section 20:]

Sic nobis garrientibus libido mutua et animos simul et membra suscitat:
Thus, as we conversed, mutual desire awoke both souls and members:
omnibus abiectis amiculis ac tandem denique intecti atque nudati
discarding all disguise we came together in nakedness
bacchamur in Venerem, cum quidem mihi iam fatigato
and held a bacchanal for Venus, until, having tired me out,
de propria liberalitate Fotis puerile obtulit corollarium,[*] iamque
of her own accord Fotis turned to obtain the lad’s reward,
luminibus nostris vigilia marcidis infusus sopor etiam
and so we continued our sports until slumber overcame us
in altum diem nos attinuit
at break of day.

[Apuleius, The Golden Ass, or Metamorphoses. ed. S. Gaselee. Loeb Classics, pp. 58 & 130]

[*] See >Xanthippe.

Wednesday

G

Girl in Love, A

She was crying, but she was happy, and it suddenly seemed to her that this was the time to tell him her secret.[*]

“Sometimes,” she whispered, “when you are nice … when you make me feel the way I do now … I want to do anything you’d like.”

“And how do you feel now?” he inquired.

Clara hesitated, and then took the plunge, wondering whether she should have waited for him to speak first. “I love you,” she whispered very softly.

His face lit up[+], but he shook his head slowly. “You shouldn’t,” he replied. “I only make people unhappy.”

Clara was radiant now. “I expect to be unhappy,” she said. “Love always makes one unhappy, I think.” She couldn’t remember where she had heard that before, but she was sure it was true.[#]

“I’ll make you love me too,” she told him. “Just see if I don’t.” And she raised her slim arms and twined them around his neck, pulling him down to her once more. She took his prick in her warm lips again, nibbling on it, teasing its tip with her tongue, sucking at it with all the sensuous desire that was possessing her.[~]

“If you really mean …” Conrad began. And then his voice trailed off, and his hips moved to and fro in a frantic embrace that kept them both speechless. He realized very well that she had had no other teacher, and he was amazed that she could instinctively perform the act of love with such understanding. Even the cleverest of men cannot comprehend the possibilities of a girl in love.[$]

[The Sign of the Scorpion, pp. 176-78]

The path of an eagle in the sky, the track of a snake on a rock,
the course of a ship on the high seas, the ways of a girl in love.
[Proverbs 30:19]

[*] See >Fotis.

[+] See >Quarles’ Book of Emblems.

[#] See >Cicero, Marcus Tullius.

[~] See >Oral Sex.

[$] See >Golden Ass, The.

Golden Ass, The

Sed angebar plane
non exili metu, reputans
quemadmodum
tantis tamque
magnis cruribus possem delicatam matronam
inscendere, vel tam lucida tamque tenera et lacte ac melle confecta
membra duris ungulis complecti, labiasque modicas ambrosio rore purpurantes
tam amplo ore tamque enormi et saxeis dentibus deformi saviari,
novissime quo pacto, quamquam ex uniguiculus
perpruriscens mulier
tam vastum genitale susciperet:
heu me qui dirupta nobili femina bestiis obiectus munus
instructurus sim mei domini! Molles interdum voculas et assidua
savia et dulces gannitus commorsicantibus oculis iterabat illa,
et in summa “Teneo te,” inquit “Teneo meum palumbulum,
meum passerem,” et cum dicto vanas fuisse cogitations
meas ineptumque monstrat metum: artissime namque
complexa totum me pror- sus, sed totum recepit.
Illa vero, quotiens ei parcens nates recellebam,
accedens totiens nisu rabido et spinam prehendens meam
appliciore nexu inhaerebat, ut Hercule etiam deesse mihi
aliquid ad supplendam eius libidinem crederem, nec Minotauri
matrem frustra delectatam putarem adultero mugiente.

But
nothing worried me so much,
as wondering how I could with such great legs
embrace so tender a woman, or how it was possible to
kiss her tender and soft honey-lips with
my enormous great mouth and stony teeth;
or how such a woman, even if she was lewd
to the ends of her fingertips, could manage
to take me on. “Alas,” thought I, “If I damage
so fine a lady, I shall be thrown out for the
wild beasts to eat.” But looking at me with
burning eyes, she redoubled her kisses
and caresses and moans, until at last, crying “Take me, Take me, my dove, my sparrow,”she showed me all my fears were in vain. She took me in fully, and showed that she had no doubts on that score. Indeed, the anxieties were soon on my side, and I began to comprehend what the Minotaur’s mother had in mind when she chose a four-legged lover.[*]

[Apuleius, The Golden Ass, or Metamorphoses. ed. S. Gaselee. Loeb Classics. p. 510]

[*] See >Zodiac.

Guide to the Otherworld

Pack little. Travel light.
Don’t believe everything you’re told.[*]
Don’t stay in places which look to you like home.
Observe local mores; respect local ways.
Talk less than you listen.
Try to see as well as sightsee.
If in doubt, smile.
Don’t stay aloof, but don’t try to go native either.
Don’t join in the dancing unless you’re sure you know the steps.

[S. Sunderland, Soul Avatars, p. 255]

[F. Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Polyphilii, p. 401]

[*] See >Short-term Memory Impairment.

Tuesday

H

Herennium, Ad [To Herennius]

Latin treatise on rhetoric, written in the first century BC, and attributed to Cicero; the most important source of information on the classical art of artificial memory:

The essential thing to note about its addressee, Herrennius, is that he was one of the most barbaric men in Ancient Rome. He helped Cicero in his suppression of the Catiline revolt, and was rumoured to have taken the unprecedented step of using torture on citizens (and – especially – their wives and children) as well as the more common freedmen and slaves.

There is then, perhaps, a kind of rebuke coded into the text of this otherwise dry rhetorical manual: notable, above all, in the constant references to the cruelly distorted (and therefore especially memorable) nature of the images[*] to be employed in each of the memory loci of the system.

Would it be fair to say that memory begins with pain?

[G. de Souza, Masters of Memory, p. 296]

Memory begins with pain

[*] See >Zodiac.

Hy Brasil

Even yet at rare intervals, like a phantom, Hy Brasil appears far out on the Atlantic. No later than the summer of 1908 it is said to have been seen from West Ireland, just as that strange invisible island near Innishmurray, inhabited by the invisible ‘gentry’, is seen – once in seven years. And too many men of intelligence testify to having seen Hy Brasil at the same moment, when they have been together, or separated, as during the summer of 1908, for it to be explained away as an ordinary illusion of the senses. Nor can it be due to a mirage such as we know, because neither its shape nor position seems to conform to any known island or land mass. The Celtic otherworld is like that hidden realm of subjectivity lying just beyond the horizon of mortal existence, which we cannot behold when we would, save with the mystic vision of the Irish seer.[*]

A sunken realm below the horizon.

during each century with an odd number like 1900, the fairy tribes are said to be visible or to reappear among men, and to become invisible or to disappear during each century with an even number like 1800.

[W. Y. Evans-Wentz, The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, pp. 334 & 206]

2000 onwards is invisible

[*] See >Short-term Memory Impairment.

Hysterical Dissociation

Hysteron, Greek for the womb, has encouraged a popular association between woman (womb-man) and hysteria. In fact, the phenomena we are dealing with here have in common only the fact that sometimes people act in such a way that they do not seem to ‘be themselves’[*] – or, rather, to have access to their most recent memories. The most common examples of such ‘hysterical dissociations’ are sleepwalking (somnambulism), hypnotic trance (on a variety of levels, including post-hypnotic suggestion), fugue (when a person simply wanders off, and turns out subsequently not to know who or where he is)[+], memory-loss (hysterical amnesia) – when people have finite, measurable gaps in their memory[#] – and split, dual, or multiple personality, when the subject is seen to change (at least ostensibly) from one person to another.

[The Home Encyclopedia of Human Psychology, ed. G. O’Bannon, p. 197]

Changing from one person to another (like >Doctor Who?)

[*] See >Panopticon.

[+] See >Odyssey, The.

[#] See >Bianca.

Monday

I

Imaginary Museum

It’s an old country. One day out in the back of beyond you come across a small town, run-down because many of its young people have headed for the city. In an unpretentious building you discover a local art gallery-cum-museum. A solitary caretaker puffing a pipe turns on the lights and you are startled by the paintings on the walls. You smile at some of the quaintness but basically you are very impressed by this local school. There is a pleasant sense of artists having worked closely together. Here are old images of heaven and hell that now have a surreal air. You’d like to understand this odd iconography but the caretaker has a curiously literal approach – he tells local stories about the paintings as though he were pointing things out to you through a window. Still, he’s a compelling talker, and the small town has changed so little over the years that it’s not difficult to feel your way back inside the artists’ frame of mind.

[R. Horrocks, ‘The Invention of New Zealand’, AND 1 (1983), p. 9]

Le Musée imaginaire:

The Imaginary Museum
Stanley Wm Rogal (New York: ECW Press, 1993)

Imaginary Museum: Poems on Art
Joseph Stanton (New York: Time Being Books, 1999)

Imaginary Photo Museum
Renate & L. Fritz Gruber (New York: Random House Value, 1987)

Bali the Imaginary Museum: The Photographs of Walter Spies & Beryl De Zoete
Michael Hitchcock & Lucy Norris (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1996)

Paris Eros: The Imaginary Museum of Eroticism in Paris [*]
Hans-Jurgen Dopp (Parkstone Press, 1994)

The Poet in the Imaginary Museum: Essays of Two Decades
Donald Davie (Manchester: Carcanet New Press, 1977)

Van Gogh’s Imaginary Museum: Exploring the Artist’s Inner World
Chris Stolwijk (Editor) (New York & Amsterdam: Harry N. Abrams, 2003)

[*] See >Short-term Memory Impairment.

Ithaka

Before you set out for Ithaka
pray for a long itinerary
full of protracted stopovers.
Customs officials, Interpol,
the zombie Police Chief – not a problem:
as long as you keep your shit together,
staple a smile to your fat face,
they won’t be able to finger you.
Customs officials, Interpol,
the paparazzi, will look right through you
unless you invite them up for a drink,
unless they’re already inside your head.
Pray for a long itinerary:
landing for the umpteenth time
on the tarmac of a third-world airport
at fiery psychedelic dawn;
haggling in the duty-frees
for coral necklaces and pearls,
designer scents & silks & shades,
as many marques as you can handle;
visiting every provincial town,
sampling every drug & kick …
Never forget about Ithaka:
getting there is your destiny;
no need to rush– it’ll still be waiting
no matter how many years you take.
By the time you touch down you’ll be stuffed,
happy with what you snapped in transit,
just a few daytrips left to do.
Ithaka shouted you the trip,
you’d never have travelled without her.
She’s got fuck-all to give you now.
Dirt-poor, dingy … she’s up front.[*]
It’s over now; you’ve seen so much
there’s no need to tell you what Ithaka means.

[L. West / S. Kalleides, In Transit: Poems & Translations, p. 18]

“Ithaka” was written in 1911
by the Alexandrian poet C. P. Cavafy
(1863-1933).

In W. H. Auden’s 1941 adaptation,
“Ithaka” has become “Atlantis”

[*] See >Xanthippe.

Jardin des Supplices

[Torture Garden]

I looked at Clara. Divinely calm and pretty, naked in a transparent tunic of yellow silk, she was languidly stretched out on a tiger skin.[*] Her head lay among the cushions, and with her hands, loaded with rings, she played with a long wisp of her flowing hair. A Lao dog slept beside her, its muzzle on her thigh and a paw on her breast.[+]

“It was horrible, my dear! Annie died ... died of that frightful scourge called elephantiasis ... Never have I wept so much, I assure you. I loved her so much – so much! And she was so beautiful!”

“But how did it happen?” I stammered.

“One night when we were returning from the river, Annie complained of violent pains in the head and loins, and the next day her body was all covered with little purple spots. Her skin, rosier and finer than the althaea flower, was hardening – thickening, swelling, and became an ashy grey. Great tumors and monstrous tubercles arose. It was something frightful[#] ...”

Terror sealed my lips. I looked at Clara, unable to utter a word. “I learned from her Chinese housekeeper,” Clara continued, “a really curious detail, which fascinates me. You know how much Annie loved pearls. You remember the almost physical joy, the carnal ecstasy, with which she adorned herself with them.[~] Well, when she was sick that passion became a mania with her ... a fury, like love! All day long she loved to touch them, caress them and kiss them; she made cushions of them, necklaces, capes, cloaks. Then this extraordinary thing happened; the pearls died on her skin: first they tarnished, little by little ... little by little they grew dim, and no light was reflected in their luster any more and, in a few days, tainted by the disease, they changed into tiny balls of ash. They were dead, dead like people, my darling. Did you know that pearls had souls? I think it’s fascinating and delicious. Since then, I think about it every day.”[$]

[O. Mirbeau, Le Jardin des supplices, pp. 143-46]

tiger – dog – elephant – & pearl

[*] See >Lemuria.

[+] See >Quetzalcoatl.

[#] See >Herrennium, Ad.

[~] See >Yates, Frances A.

[$] See >End-times (Prophecies of 9/11).

The Imaginary Museum of Atlantis

Index

The R.E.M. Trilogy (1997-2008)

Nights with Giordano Bruno

E M O (2008)

EMO

Wednesday

Tuesday

Monday

Sunday

Saturday

Friday

Thursday

Wednesday

Tuesday

Monday