Well, the reason why Thomas Merton ended up in the United States at all, is that his mother was an American, and his father was a New Zealander, a painter, and sort of a feckless bohemian type. They never had any money to speak of. And his mother died when he was, he had one brother who was about three years younger. And then, a little while after that brother was born, his mother died of cancer. And so his father carted him off to England, where he had relatives. This was in the United States he was born, or? No, he was born... In New Zealand? No, no. Merton was born at Prague, in the south of France, P-R-E-D-E-S, where his parents were at that time living. And uh... American and New Zealander? Yeah. His mother was an American, his father was a New Zealander. But his father had all his relatives in England, so after his wife died, he carted Thomas and the baby up to England, and parked them with relatives, who in turn parked Thomas with

[01:05]

some other people. And then he went to private school, and then he had his mother's father and mother lived in New Jersey. And so, in 1935, he came over to go to America, and presently was going to Columbia University. When was he born? Fifteen. Nineteen and fifteen. So, uh... Where did he get the money to go to Columbia? Well, his grandmother and grandfather found it, somehow. They owned their own home up in Douglaston, New Jersey. Somehow or another, they got together scholarships and stuff, I suppose. I don't remember the details. I haven't read any of his biographies. I just have this book, which is sort of a general thing, sketch put together by Edward Rice, who was an old college friend of Merton's, with lots of photographs and drawings and

[02:07]

I'm thinking of that, which is a very nice little book. This was done in, uh... It's called An Entertainment with Photographs by Edward Rice. The Good Times and Hard Life of Thomas Merton. Image books, edition 1972, by arrangement of Duvalie Day. Published... Previously published material by Thomas Merton Copyright. Trustees of the Thomas Merton Legacy Trust, Copyright 1970, by Edward Rice. So, anyhow, he... He, uh... A lot of the people that he knew at Columbia, like Rice and some of the other ones, were all in... All very philosophical and he was busy playing the piano and working on the college magazine

[03:14]

and having a lot of fun and drinking a lot and running around with lots of women and having a great time. But at some point he got religion. I don't know. I forget now. I read The Seven Story Mountain only once in his autobiography and I can't remember what it was that... It was probably from reading Thomas Aquinas and other people that he found out that it was really real. And also, earlier on, he had made a trip to Rome and he realized that all that architecture and whatnot was actually Jesus and that it all meant something and he thought that was interesting. So he had an earlier kind of superficial or artistical conversion. But then later, when he was in Columbia, he got more interested in the idea of joining the church. And so, after a while, he found somebody to... Some priest who gave him the instruction in Catholicism and then, on a day certain, he was baptized as a Catholic and confirmed.

[04:17]

Was he brought up in a Christian church of another sort? I don't think so. Unless when he was in school in France, it was a Catholic school or something like that. I don't know. He didn't seem to belong much to it because his folks were sort of advanced folks and they didn't push him around too much. They had to make it all... Didn't they follow anything themselves? No, apparently not. And he just sort of made it all up out of his own necessity. And so, anyway, he got all converted and everything. And then Mark Van Doren, who was one of his teachers, says, Oh, that's nice, you're converted. Now you have to be a saint. And he says, What? Well, now you've got to practice being Christian. You can't just sit around. And then also, a few days later, a close friend of his told him the same thing. What are you doing? Now you've got to be a saint. Now you have to do Christianity. He says, What? I thought, you know, all I had to do was go to the mass every Sunday and go to confession

[05:20]

once in a while and do all those things like that. And that's what you did. Well, buddy, you've got another thing coming. So then he was really worried. And what did he get into? And then he fussed about whether maybe he should be a priest, if that's in order to practice completely and to be able to say mass and do all that really important stuff, he should be a priest. But then he decided he didn't have any real call to the priesthood. And he was in a quandary for a while. At last he decided to remain a layman, but to live in a religious community. And he got a job teaching at a little Catholic college, a little Franciscan college in upstate New York. And in the summertime, his friends from the city would come up and they would have a cottage or something up to a reserve nearby. And they would all get drunk and yell and eat potato salad and drink beer and have a lot of fun. Listen to loud music and stuff. But he taught there up until a couple of years, I guess.

[06:27]

And then he kept fussing about should he have a clerical vocation or not or whatever. And he made a retreat to, he made a Christmas or Easter retreat to Gethsemane Abbey in Kentucky. It's a very tough Trappist monastery. Cistercians of the Strict Observance. C-S-O. And he was quite impressed with the scene there. And then he went back to his school and was fussing around. But after a while he started really sweating and praying and fussing about what should he do. And he was out sweating and pacing up and down the school grounds and there was a little outdoor altar to St. Teresa of Lisieux or some such personage. And he started talking to that one about what's he going to do and he made all sorts of promises if he could get this thing straightened out. And then he claims that at that point while he was sweating and walking and praying that

[07:29]

he heard the bells of Gethsemane Abbey ringing very clear and very plain. And so he took this to be a sign that he should leave. And so he went immediately to one of the superiors there and told him that he had to leave and go be a monk. And he'd already been examined by the draft people. This was 1941. And his teeth were all terrible and he had something wrong with his back. And so they didn't really want him very much. So anyway he was able to, you know, he told them he had to leave also. And then he went off to Gethsemane Abbey and signed up as a novice and stayed there for 20 years. A little more than 20 years. And there's a book called The Sign of Jonas which is his diary or is drawn anyway from his journals and diaries. For the first 10 years he was at the monastery.

[08:32]

And it's quite interesting. If you've ever put in much time at Taznari it sounds quite familiar. A lot of his feelings and experiences he goes on. And then he goes on to explain how marvelous it was when he was ordained as a deacon. And then later on he's ordained as a full functioning priest with the name of Father Louis after his patron Saint Louis of France. And he, well when he was, he was still I guess pretty young and they were still just doing lots of heavy work and running this farm and making hay and stuff. It was hot. And they would wear these great wooly habits out in the field and all this sweat and itch and everything. It must have been quite wonderful. And they couldn't talk or sing or dance or anything. They could go, they would all go together to the chapel and then they would do the Gregorian

[09:34]

chants. They would chant all the offices several times a day. And he said it was terrible because the kid who played the organ had never played an organ before or not very much anyway. He was still learning and then the guys who were chanting couldn't do it on key and it was all sort of wretched. But anyway it bothered him for a while. And so then he has all these great takes anyway about how exciting it is to go through all these ordinations and stuff. And then he just sort of goes on and they put him, they have him translating letters because the headquarters of the Cistercians is in France and they wrote letters to the head man in French and Merton had to translate them into English and then translate the old man's replies into French and send it back. And at some point he was kind of the guest master and novice master and whatnot and took care of visitors and they took care of the youngsters who were first coming in there

[10:36]

to teach them how to be monks. And they had to do a lot of, he wrote tracts, you know, terrible things all about coming to Jesus and so on that they give away in the front of churches and to translate some of the dumb ones out of French into English. And he was slowly going dotty, doing all this dog work and he was getting sick all the time and whatnot from the hard life and the poor food. And they finally, they encouraged him to write and so at some point he cranks out the Seven Story Mountain. Well, first of all, I guess he published a little book of poems, New Directions, and then it was later that he cranks up this enormous autobiography, The Seven Story Mountain, which became a bestseller and brought enormous notoriety to himself and to the Abbey. Is that, is the first one the notes of an apocalypse or something like that? Um, what is that called?

[11:38]

The Seven. Wants it to be about, right? So, so, so. Thirty poems, 1944. A Man in the Divided Sea, 1946. Figures for an Apocalypse, 1947. Figures, that's it, for an Apocalypse. The Tears of the Blind Lions, 1949. Strange Island, 1957. Original child poem, 1962. Emblems of the Season of Fury, 1963. Caples to Ace, 1968. And the Geography of Low Career, completed in 1968 and published posthumously. And where's the Seven Story Mountain? Isn't that 49 or something? I think so. Well, these are just the poems. Oh, those are just poems. In the back of the Figures for an Apocalypse, my, the Mechanics Library has the original edition of that. Is that so? And in the back of it, the only thing I've written in that poetry, there's a wonderful essay about how art and religion are, you know, art and poetry and religion all come from the same source and the experience of the mystic and the experience of the poet

[12:41]

are all correlated somehow. Is that so? He raps on and on about that for about 15 pages. It's not, like, the earth shaking from that, but it's quite interesting, quite explicit. The bed was too narrow and too short and Merton was bothered by the smell of the straw in the very cold room in which they all slept. Day and night they lived in their robes, a light one in the summer and a heavy one in the winter. There was no heat. The fire in the chapel was not lighted until there was frost on the windows. The fasts were unusually strict and the hours of communal prayer longer than in later years. The food was hardly more than bread and fruit and barley coffee. There was a lot of manual labor, felling huge trees and sawing and splitting them into logs and work in the gardens and fields and ordinary household chores. He'd always worried about his health and I guess suddenly he tried not to, even though he would work long hours of manual labor in the cold. And then in his sweat-drenched robe stands shivering in the drafty basilica during the office. This was a penance for him. He knew it and still worse worried him that he was even then concerned about his health

[13:45]

when he stood sniffling and sneezing. He considered his chills a penance for worrying about his health. He told himself to be happy that Jesus wanted him to learn to forget about his body and not let his fears keep him from sitting in the peace and silence of his soul's inner house. He believed that it was hard to be indifferent about what was happening to his body, but he believed it essential to the pure love of God. But at the end of his novitiate, his health broke down. He was taken off hard manual labor and put to translating French books and articles. Where is he telling us that? Who's writing this? Is this Rice who's talking about Martin? Yeah, yeah. Is that a quote? He continued to write poems. Let's see. Blah, blah, blah. Figures for an Apocalypse. One of his first books was called Figures for an Apocalypse. Blah, blah, blah. It sounds a great deal like Martin in the realm of Dylan Thomas's poetry. I met a traveler from the holy desert, honeycomb, beggar bread eater, lean from drinking rain

[14:48]

that lies in the windprints of rocks. He continued to write poems. One of the most touching was his evocation of the death of John Paul as his brother who had joined the Royal Canadian Air Force and had come to say goodbye to Merton Gethsemane in the late summer of 1942. John Paul had wanted to be baptized, and Merton crammed him with religious instruction, and John Paul was received into the church. In the seven-story mountain, Merton's most poignant and revealing passage is concerning John Paul. Wait a minute. I thought it would tell me when it was, that book. This is in the 40s, isn't it? Yeah. 40s, 40s, 47, 49. But it came out at a time, you know, at the tail end of that period when American intellectuals were all... Seven-story mountain. The title refers to Dante's ascent toward heaven as the work that catapulted Merton into the eyes of the world. The book was written in 1944, when he was still in the first flush of monastic euphoria and disgust of the secular world.

[15:50]

He had once remarked to his confessor that he was, quote, tempted, unquote, to write an autobiography. The confessor laughed rather scornfully, but Dom Frederick, then the abbot, encouraged Merton, and the book was set down in what seemed like one long swoop of enthusiastic writing with the freedom and vitality that he was unable to attain in the biographies of saints that Dom Frederick had assigned him to write during the period. Merton's agent submitted the book to Robert Giroux at Hart Corporation Company late in December 1947. Giroux accepted it immediately. The original manuscript was an immense work which covered not only Merton's secular life in close detail, he seems to have had almost total recall for the past. The many later sections are based on his journal, but also his first years at Gethsemane. Then came the immense job of editing. Robert Giroux was Kerouac's first editor. A few years later, in 1950, this is... So this is 44, and then it was 45 or 46 that that book came out, and it was a sacola thing,

[16:51]

but as I was going to say, this comes in at a tail end of the time when many intellectuals and celebrities and whatnot were all being raptured and raptured and told away into the church by Monsignor Sheen. And the most... The leading Catholic types around that time were Henry and Clare Booth Lewis and people like that were really being thought of as serious Catholics and intellectuals and so on. And people were fretting quietly about all sorts of French people like Jacques Maritain and everybody, they were writing seriously about the Neapolitans and places like that. It's ridiculous. And there's other French Catholic writers that... The Day the Mountain Fell, what's that guy's name? Anyway, there's three or four of them who were thought of as terribly important intellectuals

[17:58]

in the 40s, middle and late 40s. Anyway, Claudel, Maritain, who else? Moriarty. They're all dreadful, dreadful people. I think it was Claudel who came to visit, came to have tea or something with John Cocteau and Cocteau's housekeepers. Who was that priest? I wasn't a priest, I was a great poet. Well anyway, as I was saying, the war converted a lot of people, of course. And there was a famous book that came out at some point called There Are No Atheists in Foxholes. And what that was saying, and then some guy wrote a book about it and praised the Lord and passed the ammunition and all that kind of stuff was around, of course.

[18:59]

And so there was a kind of a quiet Catholic resurgimento which had been going on that had succeeded the Elliott movement, the academics moving into the Episcopal Church under the leadership of Uncle Tom. There was this big Catholic number coming in that people were really serious about. And it was fashionable to know about Thomas Aquinas, such a person as he was then. And Aquinas was very serious. And I imagine that, well I don't imagine, I can't exactly remember, but it's quite possible that Thomas was included by Mort Adler in the great books series that was coming out of the University of Chicago, that set of things like that.

[20:03]

And St. Augustine and all this was all in the air. And so maybe that's what got to Merton, I don't know. He was responsible for his finally going Catholic. In any case, the part of the Seven Story Mountain where he's telling about being in Columbia and then getting converted from there to the end of the book is quite interesting. The early part is very draggy about his childhood and youth and so on. It takes too long, the book is too long for what it has to say. Anyway, it was a huge, huge success. He made pots of money off of it, which of course went into the coffers of the Abbey. And it has, well unlike this book, it has a big, or is it this book? No, it isn't. This is the one that Merton's... But this one has it on the back of the title page, that magic, the magic nest. Right, I'm surprised it doesn't.

[21:16]

Maybe they didn't want to mess with the poetry and they figured it was too crazy. Copyright by New Directions. Copyright by Our Lady of Gethsemane Monastery. Copyright by the Abbey of Gethsemane. The Abbey of Gethsemane, Inc. Thomas Merton. Trustees of the Merton Legacy Trust. William Davis, whoever that is. Copyright by the Trust. Trust of the Merton Legacy. Simon Schuster. Trustees of the Abbey of Gethsemane, Inc. I wonder who Robert Williams is. Did he only start writing after he got to quite follow through the time in here, but after he went to Gethsemane?

[22:17]

Oh no, he wasn't writing a lot in college. I was saying he was helping to write in college. Well, I guess he didn't publish anything. Oh no, no, that's true. Why didn't he put his first five poems in his first book? When he was in college, but probably some of it he refurbished for his first book. Well, it says early poems, 1940 to 1942, and by then that's when he was only 35. And that's his fourth. No, 25. So anyway, he did all his other books, and then at some point, I forget why,

[23:23]

he became interested in Eastern philosophies and religions, and worked on revising somebody else's translations. I mean, he's credited as a translator. All his books and stuff. Various stuff allows him, which is rather odd because he can read Chinese any more than I can, but somehow he's, you know, this modern thing about how you're a translator if you rearrange somebody else's work. Into literary form. And he got into a correspondence with Suzuki Daisetsu all about it, and that turned him on to the Zen problem. So he found that all very interesting, and then gradually he got more and more excited about the idea that there was this monastic tradition in Asia that had survived all sorts of chops and changes, whereas in the Western Church, monasticism was dying out.

[24:26]

All the monks were leaving to get married, and the lady nuns were changing their clothes, and having simplified habits, and one thing or another, and the Mass was being done in English, and all sorts of stuff had changed. And everybody was getting bored with the monastic Catholicism, and leaving. And he kept fretting about, why is Western monasticism falling apart while Buddhist and other kinds of Asiatic ones lasted forever and a day, and were still happening? So that's what he finally persuaded him to let him go off to this conference about monasticism that was going to happen in Bangkok in 1968. Hello there. How are you? To participate in this conference. And on his way there, he got to spend some time in India, in Northern India, and meet all sorts of Tibetan lamas, including the Dalai Lama, and Trungpa Rinpoche,

[25:35]

and Kalu Rinpoche, and seven or eight other of the fancy lamas that were around at that date. Karmapa, if I remember right. And then he went to Ceylon, and went to all the big Buddhist monuments there, and dug them, and took some pretty pictures that appear in that Asian journal. And then he went off to Bangkok, and was planning to go to Japan. And it was in Bangkok that he was in the bathtub and reached over, apparently reached over to do something to the electric fan, or it fell on him anyway. He was electrocuted. And so he never got to Japan to see the Zen in action. And anyway, it was after he was out of the picture,

[26:36]

that Mr. Laughlin had been holding this manuscript of the Geography of the Rare, and got around to publishing it, with many apologies about the fact that maybe this wasn't the final, complete, polished form that Merton might have made of it if he had lived. Still, he thought it was better to publish it so that people could read it than not. And I think, I was surprised by it. I first read it in Japan. Sid Korman was living next door to me, and he came, he would come and see me every once in a while, and I would go see him. And one day he dropped in and he gave me this, gave me that copy that Norman had there of the Geography of the Rare, to read and to see, and just gave it to me for a present,

[27:37]

to see if I'd like it, maybe to see what I would say. And I had, of course, always thought of Merton as a Catholic propagandist and of no interest to me, and I had seen a few poems that were all about God or something. That's all very well if you're interested in the Risorgimento, but if not, not. So I was surprised that it was very snappy writing, in a lot of ways, compared to what he had been, compared to what I had remembered of what his sound was when he was younger. It turned out to be very entertaining, and I liked the thing.

[28:42]

I mean, there are some sort of blah passages here and there, but that don't work, it seems like, or at least they don't... You can sort of wander through them and forget about them very easily. And sometimes he makes things stick together by repetitions and other times by puns, all sorts of funny tricks and clanks where it all works in a very funny way.

[29:47]

Anyway, here's the endless description, which seems to be about his early... reminiscences of his early life and all sorts of strange religious bits thrown in, sort of little bits of what's going to follow. And then he starts in with the Tho. And he just sort of, in that first part of that, it's all sort of variations on the Blood of the Lamb and whatnot, and about Cain and Mabel, and he just sort of swirls around and around in little tight circles of that Lamb, sort of a form that reminds me of some of those French rhyming things that are very repetitious, like a triolet and so on,

[30:58]

only these are spread out in a different way. And then there are these funny headlines, and he worked into it every once in a while. Lamb admits ties to Cain. Temper is candy to Cain's daisy, which I think is a marvelous line. I don't know what it means. It says, Why will not lambs stay forever well in skins? It may be two men met Sunday ten with a happiness beast, a raw lamb coming from the hollow tied to killer bishops for the feast. A hundred thousand negroes, most of them, most of whom have thin black skin, tinderfoot, Passover dry, edge light, welds away, blow up a million. Temper is candy to Cain's daisy. In meetings red with rosy pies, all were had by a good time up ashes hollow. One narrow lane saved Lamb's friend, paschal Cain. The idea of Cain being sacrificed for Easter is a strange turn.

[32:02]

And then the second part is about some sort of a war is going on. And there's soldiers and streetcars and all sorts of stuff. He says, Wasting money, says, Hello, deodorant here today. Stands day color change and white desk, so sweet. Smell the blonde blushes, oh, aim for the lonely wastes, says Gringo. And then he mixes up. He goes on and says 12 boats alert city all the way to Carrollton, Louisville, Owensboro, Paducah, gates open for victors. Life is neo strange music of lighted copperheads all over town. Wake day color neo sandstorm stars blown down city. Orange is awake. Thirteen neo wristwatch kills whitey dead. He was just unlucky. Reminds me of Corso's line about how uncles, so-and-so pumped him full of dead watches.

[33:09]

This gangster was pumped full of dead watches. How did you remember how they go? Yeah. Reminds me of that. High speed ends, say 14. High speed ends connect space. Now speak, say Fort Knox is home of armor. 15. Maxwell, you son of a bitch, get off my place. 16. We've all made it to the track on a dirty bet. Sorrow has a wet face. A sign, quote, all losers leave by Westgate, unquote. 17. Hazel winds, fresh as the sandwich. 18. Through Knox at nightfall, army crater boys face down on the wet table. Gray mist rivers at night, fall lights up houses. Red grain music beat down house flats. 19. A ghost dancer walks in a black hat through the gates of Horn. Of course, the ghost dancers are going to appear in the last section of the poem, where he's talking about the Indian ghost dancers. And then he has these hymns of Lo Grare.

[34:12]

They're mixed up lines out of a whole bunch of Christian Baptist type of hymns. 20. Nearer, my God, to rock of eyes, or to my chariot of thieves, that is Elias, rider of red skies. Nearer, my cherubim, to the crimson fruit in chariot. 3. Wishing everybody well from now to Monday. 2. Sign on the dome. Expect thine next tread. Don't tread on the marine. 3. You were sixteen, my village queen, shining in sun-peeled paint with your strip, all recent from customary behavior. 4. You stood alarmed. Oh, dark-eyed, thankful of the very barrels, and I wished you cunning glasses and all. 5. Which was the time we broke the furniture, trying to get me over my own wall. Then he says, 4. In Miami, you are about to be surprised. You're going to be pleasantly surprised by this.

[35:14]

6. You will find yourself sweetly insulted by earphones, and you will also be pleasantly wet where you are going. 7. For you shall make expensive waves, meeting the answer to women's questions in a swift novel of suspense. 8. If you have heart failure while reading this, the poet is not responsible. 9. And you will meet a lot of friends, falling into hopeless spray, as if that were what you wanted. 10. And limbo-dancing nonlethal will focus the muscles of science on your waistline. You can't control so many wonderful people. 12. Well, there are a lot of good lines in there, once in a while. Yeah, once in a while. Then he says, the two moralities, he has a Tonga lament from Africa, which apparently he found in some anthropology book, about the blue oxen are coming with the fathers and so on. The thing about the coming from the fathers and so forth is going to show up again in the cargo cult section. And the famous tunnels and so forth, of course, appears later on when he's talking about

[36:18]

New York. 13. And then there's a little story about the hare from the Hottentots. 14. And then there's the clever stratagem, or how to handle mystics, he says, how to get rid of these, if you're a missionary, how to take care of these guys and get out of control. When I was out in the Nyasa land missions, we held a meeting for 5,000 converts, which religious fervor naturally amounted to the highest pitch. So much intensity of religious feeling required to be carefully channeled to prevent outbursts. Fervor must not be permitted to dissipate itself in wasteful, even riotous disorders. One morning, two of the leading teachers came to report some experiences they were having. They had been out in the bush all night praying, and they had felt their bodies lifted up from the earth while bright angel beings came to meet them as they ascended. What did this mean? I replied, not in word, but in deed. I went to the dispensary, took down the salts, gave them each a stiff dose, and sent them

[37:20]

off to bed. The visions and ascensions immediately ceased and were replaced by a sweetly reasonable piety that disturbed no one. A missionary must combine spiritual passion with sound sense. He must keep an eye on his followers. Of course, again, it's going to cross-connect with the cargo thing. And then it goes on with more African bits. Sub-leaders keep telling the message like it was new, confirming my charism as prime mover in management. I shall continue in office as president for all time until the earth melt, as full leaders stand over you wearing their watches, molding you by government of thought. I return, while to the origin, ruling through a female medium from an obscure place. Hold this mitre while I strangle chickens and throw them in the air, covering the sacred stone with bloody feathers, and surround the altar with lie detectors. Some sort of voodoo number.

[38:20]

And then he goes into Mexico with all this flower trip, all these ladies and flowers, and for some reason or other they are all going crazy and getting sick, and they have a fast of flowers and corn soup with a flower floating in the middle of it. He's copied this out of some translation, out of the Aztec or whatever. But it all sounds like somebody else's poem. The feast of the green turtle, they dance on tall stilts, offering the gut, corn, liquor, peacocks, heads. Dancers come with little play dogs and bread. A dog with black shoulders said his virgin is sacrificed. And then Bishop Landa says, such are the services which the demons commanded them. Bishop Landa was the one who wrote the history of Yucatan, and the history of the Spanish and Yucatan, and how he destroyed all of the Mayan manuscripts and tore down the temples

[39:28]

and had a great time converting the savages. And then this part, he says, based on some pictures out of Miguel Covarrubias's book about Mexico, which is very charming because it gets all mixed up with present and past in the middling times. The ladies of Tlaltilco won effigy vessels, shapes of apes, men, peccaries, rabbits, coons, ducks, acrobats, and fish. Long, charming little bottleneck pots, bowls, and inventions. For example, quote, when liquid was poured out of the funnel-shaped tail, the animal's ears whistled softly in a double gurgling note, Covarrubias said. There are sake bottles in Japan that do that also. A little tokori, and you pour it, and there's a little bird molded on top of it. It makes a little whistling noise. Two, Mr. Mish-Mish-Tek-Ern.

[40:32]

Old man tiger crown holds dog nine. Three, nine deer effigy coon song. Fondest little bow offered to songstruck dead, maize and cactus milk, small red beard. Peppers and chilies in bowls of warm red clay. Living acrobats stand in a pyramid. Four, if they carved wood, we shall never know it, somebody said. The thing is that at Harvard, in the Peabody Museum, they have casts of some Mayan wooden doors that they found at Uxmal or someplace. I forget how it was they happened to be preserved, but anyway, they did do wood carving. It's quite interesting. Look, his brute spear nails place name. Look, he has a glyph, stone eyes, see conqueror date. Too late. The ladies of Tlal-Tilco wore nothing but turbans, skirts only for a dance. A lock of hair over the eyes held only by garland tassels and leaves.

[41:36]

They bleached their black hair with lime like the Melanesians. Seven, feminine figurines with two heads or with four eyes and ears, two noses or double mouth on the same head, reminiscent of Picasso, perhaps connected with the idea of twins. Eight, a most provocative perfume, wicked, wicked charms, natural spray dispenser, a special extract for four-eyed ladies of fashion. My sin, quote, and my most wicked, provocative, lewd, dusting powder excitement, two noses on the same head. Nine, the most thoughtful gift of the year with a Queen Anne rose, patent number 3,187,782, budding with terry loops, parenthesis, two nuns budding for the same towel, close parenthesis. Ten, a flowering bath, your long stemmed skin, your patent rose. It is all in loops. It is all in tones. Bleach your black hair with a coat of lime and dance in your turban.

[42:37]

Eleven, I saw two moons in dreadful sweat, quote, fit perfectly under a rounded collar jacket, unquote. I saw two moons in shades of toast coming to calm my fright, sweet mother rose and gypsy nun in a new trim toast collar. I saw two moons coming from certain kind of store where the ladies of Plautilco were nothing but sweaters. Bleach their black hair with lime or look like fire clay, reddening their hair with dye from seeds of achiote. Twelve, two ways to tell a primitive bath figurine. With an expensive book your skin can tell, quote, all her goings, graces, unquote, in taupe or navy, cashmere, love it, wine. Eleven, in maize my moons, oh, so serene, in cardigan, charcoal, blue, Shetlands, hunter green. Two ways to tell a primitive nun fighting for a towel. Eleven, oh, patent gypsy London rose on fire with inventions leaking out of a red hood

[43:41]

upon acrobats, shaved heads, wizards and trumpeters. Fourteen, oh, fervent gypsy blue, we love your diamonds. We are Boston experts and we understand. Quote, the whole actively involved female world, unquote, which is red with achiote seeds rich in nays berries, oh, tanique, oh, the hay-tay apples. Having great fun in a natural spray, dispenser of sin with lime like the Melanesians. But Picasso was not thinking of twins. And then there's a quotation from the book of Chilam Balam. It was translated by somebody like Sylvanus Morley, I think. I can't remember who does that translation. It tells about it in the notes anyway. About the priests of Shiu and so on. And then more out of the same. And about flowers and bearded men and how they bring down all power smash men to earth,

[44:42]

make green skies weep, blood hard and heavy is the maize bread of this cartoon. Strangled is the flute hero, the painter Yashal Chuen, the jeweler, the ape Ishkan Yultu, precious voice. His throat is now cut, draw gods driven out, singers scattered. Gone is the blue day. Flowered dance around the rock pool. Count a lot of hair of Khobain. And so on. You shall feed them, said the prophecy. You shall wear their clothing. You shall use their hats. You shall talk their language. But their sentences shall speak division. They are destroyed, the olden days. And that showed the way. They heed to the truth, which I give you in the cartoon of dishonor.

[45:43]

Cartoons, in turn, are all the time periods in the Aztec and Mayan calendar. And so it goes right to the end. He's waving on for a while about how everything is going. We are degraded. Why is it aristocrats take money to sleep with enemy? I shall yet prove my name. It is Martinez. Do hummingbirds cheat one another? And then he goes on about all that, about how he ends it all up. He says, on the day of Nayanak, arrival of the turkey cocks, strutting and gobbling red-necked captains with flips, fire in their fingers, worse than itsas, friars behind every rock, every tree, doing business, bargaining for our souls, book burners and hangmen. Sling the high rope. They stretch the necks, lift the heads of priests and nobles. Our calendar is lost. Days are forgotten. Words of Hunaku, counterfeit. The world is once again controlled by devil.

[46:46]

We count the pebbles of the years in hiding. Nothing but misfortune. Then he ends. All of a sudden he's quoting from one of those wonderful catalogs, number 24. Protect the lives of your police. Put out the small fires with fog or foam. Mark the troublemakers with dye. Move the crowd with water-based irritants. Keep the crowds away from the car with electricity. Drive the snipers out of hiding. Tear gas grenades. Break up crowds with smoke. Memory of the cartoons and years swallowed up by the red moon, then fired to guard the people of Israel and the prophets. Lively business in police helicopters. Then 26, when somebody says, 150 years later there was an agreement with the foreigners. That is what you are paying for. There was a war between the whites and the people here. The men who used to be great captains of the nation formerly. That is what you are paying for now. 27, the year 1541 of the Zulis.

[48:00]

1541, day 5, Ik to Chin. Quote, a high-frequency blower that delivers a banshee howl beyond the tolerance of human ears. Another wonderful weapon to protect your, protect the lives of your police. And then he says, in the prologue to North, he says, why I have a wet footprint on top of my mind, to begin a walk, to make an air of knowing where to go, to print speechless pavements with secrets in my forgotten feet, or go as I feel, understand some air alone around the formerly known places, like going, when going is knowing, forgetting. And so he is dreaming and explaining in geography, I am all here, this is there. And then he does this set of variations on the Queen's Tunnel, which he mixes up the New York subway and Sugar Hill, and a picture, one of those hell pictures

[49:04]

by Bruegel or another German, what's his name, Matthias Greenewald or something like that. Bruegel or Matthias Greenewald, or who was another one who did, another funny man who did big hellfire scenes all the time. Yeah, yeah, here I was. Yeah, Greenewald did a celebrated altar piece called the Isentimer Altar, which among other things shows the temptation of St. Anthony by all sorts of horrible devils and monsters and one thing or another all tootling, playing strange instruments and carrying on. G-R-U-E-N-E-W-A-L-D, Matthias, M-A-T-T-H-I-A-S. He lived in the 15th, 16th century.

[50:09]

And the other guys, one of the Bruegels, whose nickname was Hell Bruegel, but I forget which one it is, it was Peter the Elder or Peter the Younger or one of the other Bruegel family who painted hell scenes all the time. Curiously enough, there's an Oriental tradition of doing scenes of Buddhist hells where people having to climb the mountain of swords and people being sawed in half right up the middle and people being boiled, speared and conked and whatnot. And I think it seems like somebody told me there's a movie, a Japanese movie about this celebrated artist who set fire to his house or to a palace or something in order to have all these flames and have people wandering around looking scared and horrified and whatnot so he could paint convincing scenes

[51:14]

of the hell worlds that the Buddhists go to if they're naughty. And so, in this thing, he's mixing up in the Queen's Tunnel thing, he's mixing up partly black, some sort of black fantasy plus the police and the Tonton Macoute from this terrible secret police from Haiti and this picture, certain images out of the Bosch painting, I think, the one about the guys with the funnels for heads wandering around. And it's quite a long section,

[52:18]

but it has some marvellous takes in it. First of all, of course, like Elliot, he starts in with lots of sort of classical things, from Brooklea River, Sing My Orange Song, Radiant Bridge to the Funeral Parlor, Life and Death is Evening, My Leading Mama's All Alive, Hummer and so on. Man is in the apartment where he used to sing. His girl is kept in the trunk. Food for novel basket of flowers. My bunny lies over the station at Queen's Plaza. Remember, Bureau says, Stay away from Queen's Plaza. Boy, it's awful. They eat and they come out of the... There's too many policemen there and whatnot. So all of you lush workers and dope fiends and whatnot, stay away from Queen's Plaza. At Queen's Plaza, they come with baskets of bread,

[53:19]

Italian bread, Mafia geography, Sicily and Queens. Name one biscuit factory near Woodside. I can. Sunshine before the tunnel. Tracks all home by Boxi Meadow come. Man Mountain winter. Mafia alp. Name a stadium with a sign for Kaufmann's. Castoria River Run Cough Drum. Put under a blanket into his tunnel The Italian champ won. The Funnel House moves, Looking all over the then-wise country, And down come planes full of Mafia fight-fixers. Top to the apartments at Pillbox Hills, Firing tennis at Jews. Out of the roars come vendors. If it am tutor, At cue to a tennis, Tennis Latin for the Long Island Railroad. Back and forth to Drum Drum Bubber. The funnel top is watching you. The kettle moves away from the burners. A building speaks. Turn left for the racetrack.

[54:19]

This is the geography of Loguerre. And then he goes into a litany. Most holy incense burners of Elmhurst save us. Most Corona's screen us. House of Hungarians feed us. Give us our Shenley labels from day to day. Give us our public lessons of love. Swimming breath lights down to the bottom. Even the island is a long one. Trams to the end. House of Hungarians spare us. Holy incense burners of Elmhurst dissolve us. Trains come and gone. Their own hot smell and passage snuffed entirely under. Save us. Angrootea. Periodic swallowing of travel under the east sound. Then Hellgate. Dread. Winter dazzle yards the metropolitan asshole. Most holy incense burners. Smoking tops. Crowns of Mafia. Caruso with his box tops all over the train. Corona. Then the dumps. Deserve us. Sort of a fake thing. Spider tracks out.

[55:21]

Spike on some home. Rattle away to legendary capitals of the rulers of Loguerre. A land of sand spits without a single mountain. There go lemons. Every boy is called Francis. Then he goes into some story about Lawrence was big and weak with glasses. And then he says it was light week in Loguerre. He goes through that for a while. What that's like. Queens. He says it was light week in Loguerre. And all the phones. I'm back from Caruso, she said. They have wires in their voices. And they want to. When they want in Loguerre. When they want you. When they want you should come by trains to the tunnels. Rugal very funny under the city. When they want you should come via Elmhurst. Save us the burners. Via the gas tank.

[56:23]

Via the town. Queens burners defend tunnel. Ruthie had a friend. A big thing from Ohio. Too big for the apartment. He was too big for the bathroom. He blew down three walls. Very fast cars. In and out the poles. Under the wood side. Elevated. Name a factory where they make bathrooms. Big ones. Little ones. Bill worked for the bathrooms. I cannot come. I said. Well, wait a minute. First of all it says. Back from Curacao she told. Come and see why I have wires in my voice for you now. All of a sudden I cannot come. I said. I have dead people to attend to. I have to travel the gas tanks again to Elmhurst. The gray eyed church is going to get me. I said. Blue sides in the fishery shop. I said. The wines and mafias at Corona. I have wires in my voice for you to come. She said. I come in very fast cars.

[57:26]

If I can make it. I replied. If I can make it past Elmhurst. So much. The New Jersey is. It was light week in LaGuerre. The wine was free. Connie had a bowl. All the boys names were Frank. And so he goes on about life in Long Island. And how they were singing in front of fat tone. Fat Tony's. Don't. Trump on the Macare. Total Macute is in the area and watch the manholes. Protect the lives of your police. Lively traffic on all the phones. Helicopters. Famous John is downstairs under the speakeasy. So it's sort of a. I have a double take on the toilet in the name. Some. Some wild Haitian. Character. Famous John is downstairs on the speakeasy.

[58:27]

He is conducting all the spillways. He is the demiurge of all ways out. The devil of the toilet. If you don't know my care. You can't make it to the subways. But famous John is. He runs the undertow of a big city. It is all controlled from under sugar hill. The hill where the diamonds are. For thinner and fell. The diamonds eyes. Edison's elves. Living and loving and mighty codes. Famous John lives under all the night spots. In an invisible office. He is the city's liver. If you know my care. He can fix it for you to get away. But Ruthie has a friend. A big girl from basic college. Mom in a tent. Followed by graffiti. Famous John puts a sign on the door. Tonight baby all the Edison's are going to blink. A message from sugar hill. Famous John is writing his name on your apartment door. Try to call the Edison's and see if they are still in business. You can't do this anymore.

[59:28]

You have to pay my care. Tom Tom sticks his funny head up out of the manhole. Yes, everywhere. Famous John is inviting you to a wondrous trip with his spies. A ride in roofless vans. To see the tall smokes all over the experience. The smokes of Edison. The spinning winter bridges. The lovelorn whooping crane. The warehouses of Coney's unbeatable fun. Famous John is inviting you to drink at Connie's Inn. Where the bowl is for everybody. Wine dark east river for everybody. And on the wine garbage waters of spit and devil. We face big John the New York central steamer. With our plucky college shell. Insane. Famous John is inviting you to the Catskills for a lightning summer. Observe poetry in a spell. Coney Island with trees and a waterfall. And then this funnel house is running around again. And the police helicopters and what not are everywhere.

[60:30]

Everywhere you turn your car is still there. The electric. Mad men in a vacant lot bet on a walking kettle. A runner gets his foot caught in the teeth of a field. Cola gardens around the clock. Intent golf counters win. Never mind. The fight is over furniture. Over a bowl. Over a lighter. Over a burner. The city is observed by invisible buzzards of silk. And a big fat ass from Ohio is a sitter in Elmhurst. Top the funnel house eyes nose wherever you go. To the burners. To the houses. To the chapels. To the notes. To the stores. Who can win? When he raked kitty on these streets all the people turned away and pretended not to notice. And so then he gets raging around about the secret books and the police. So see you home under the lamp of lights and guys of protection. But he has more variations and words and twang links going on which are more or less entertaining.

[61:40]

Depending on whether you will expose yourself to it or not. Number 22 says they the cronies are sending spikes. Make sure the prayers make sure the payers get their place. Best deliver the bountiful weights to cash songsters. Stripe contours pop colors red squares and blue stills and green sails. Sweet juleps mend us on our Virginia ways. Sweet mints under the old bank tank. Pops out the window and snores a curse over Bank Street. You come too late and I'll call the police. They the cronies are having a party of twists. Pairs of precious emblems in the window sites. Why pay extra money for the one on the left? Walking and waking in tropical ranges. Two exposures trickle or delivery in the middle of a stage. Rectangles and monochrome segments and interfaces media mean. Mass mass celebrate the wonderful name.

[62:41]

Oils recently placed in sink. Block. Block let out. Blank let ups. Body fits under tub. And then he does some more sonatas. Oh rise again you vacant square pipe tones. Acrobatic barbers. Topes are now in all mold. Games winning the dimmer midnight. Sears. Dimmer midnight. Sears. Tope is a French word for mole. Dreamy glass box wall benefit the same. Lay out bumper. Look out to shore. Coon sales. Con mix. Cats and jobber picnic. Yo-yo silver rushing onto the cop shops. Tom mix riding into place of ownership. Mama muttered for less than you'd pay. She has a size under her left and stores information. She has a view finder and holds.

[63:43]

Finds the shapes confession be considered an investment. The north as everybody knows is very norred. It is aqualonic. Okay. Speaking of famous drinks there might be a lot more and there is. Oh hell a blue flame from under the mind. Less than human phones. Celtic masters leave aboard the barbed rope. Oh blue flame. Oh bell blue flame from under the mind. I confess it to the blue bells. You ought to speak to the elms. Oh brown ivy lane. We were blue bells and another on the river. Great grace serious river of nothing. Run is equal run run run is equal. You are on probation. Famous John is inventing you a trap with his agents.

[64:55]

Old effigy with Anglican sabers. That turning stare goes up to a stone tiger. Tiger burns at his own secret fright. Sinners are betting on walking kettle of eyes. Tiger tiger burning in the bay escapes double vision. Letter trap for old posthumous. A hue fugaces set our clock in rye. Clock flutches. Oh ho flyers posthumous. Oh ho the air mail letters flip over and glide away. Butterfly papers. Ten a penny prayers. Guarded petitions pouring into poles with evident vital flames. Torn out of a love lorn long summer in Elmhurst. Ruthie has a friend. Simplicissimus not funny. With a lovesick butterfly fugaces. They sing it all out. Sing sang sung song Cleo to the welkin. The musical Nord is forever aqualonic. Of course what he's doing there is playing with the ode of Horace. Alas you are flitting away.

[65:58]

Posthumous. My posthumous friend. Posthumous my friend. Um. Hello Argus. Yes this is Argus. Police please. I have to report a walking kettle. Yes every day. Sinners active in every street. Send agents. Tear gas. Bazooka. Mace. Two slightly broken homes of double trouble. Run to our tumble here at Connie's Inn. Signed Boston. First Argus was the man with had the eyes all over him. He was set to watch. What did he watch? He watched the little golden apples of the sun or something like that. Until somebody came and charmed him asleep. So they could steal. They could steal the steal the oranges. And Argus's eyes all got closed up. And later on the eyes are all put in the tail of the peacock. To cheer you up. And there's a pheasant also called the Argus pheasant.

[67:06]

Which has got a pretty tail. And he mixes up my Bonnie lies over the ocean. And the St. James infirmary blues at one point. And then Mr. Judge. Some sort of judge. Appears with frosty eyes from so many movies. Oh mercy. Bottles with hips. Oh mercy. Jugs with hands. Little gleamy unkind jars. Files stick out tongues. A crow flies out of the picture. Judge Doublethink condemns an ice cube. Restores senses. Senses. Visions. Touches. Taste buds. Stop that kettle walking up the wall in all fours. Stop those swinging flocks of flocons. Stop that taper. Stop that flask. Stop ack. Stop flack. Too late. Every instrument is moving. Geography is in trouble all over Le Graire. Dear togs, I have chosen electric life with spades. The lines here are almost new.

[68:07]

Home is underwater now. Conscience is a bronco well busted. Memory secured by electronic tape. Gunshots on the glassy swamps of night. Uniforms made under willows calling to the dead. Fifty. So Christ went down and stayed with them niggers and took his place with them at table. He said to them, it is very simple, much simpler than you imagine. They replied, you have become a white man and it is not so simple at all. And then he rhapsodizes Ophelia in the manner of William Blake. He's quoting from the Jerusalem. There's a grain of sand in Lambeth which Satan cannot find. There is a child of God in the sacred cellar undressing Louise. My little brother is climbing all over Catherine. There is a seed of light in us that cannot be bought by grope press. With pat by the shoulders in late afternoon the sailboats did not see it. Tall elms meditate all night and the big dog looks into the back seat.

[69:11]

The daughters of Shenley approach and withdraw. They have to giggle. We sink quietly into naked water where Satan cannot find any sand whatever, but where the condoms of others will float in full view on New Year's morning. There is a grain of sand in boarding school down the long hall and giant elms cover the cricket fields with shadow. I am photographed in an embarrassed collar. My Jerusalem is wide awake with watch fiends. I am searched and investigated by baying bitches. I am a grain of fear in village churches. There is a pebble of Jerusalem at Ealing. I listen to the everlasting piano in the next home. On spring nights when there is no sleeping because the rivers of life are wide awake and a child must die into manhood on the cricket field. There is a grain of sand and lamb with which Satan cannot find. While deep in the heart's question a shameless light returns no answer. And then all of a sudden he gets into the ranchers who operated in the late 17th century

[70:13]

at about the same time as the diggers were out on the loose also. All the common lands started getting enclosed by some funny law. Lands that had been owned in common for many, many generations where the cattle you could let your cow out to graze and your sheeps and whatever all got made into private property by a law that zipped through the parliament. And so there were a lot of people wandering around hungry but they didn't own any land and so they would start digging gardens in some of these enclosures and then of course they would get arrested and beaten up and they would go back and try it in other places. And then the ranchers were attacking the system in general and putting down the established church and the government.

[71:18]

Is that the origin of the contemporary diggers? Yeah. Hmm. There was a man around this time in the late 17th century called Gerald Winstanley and he had to do with all this tract writing and diggers and ranchers and whatnot. And he wrote a lot of essays and whatnot. And then there was another guy, a poet who wrote The Fable of the Bees. And I can't remember his name because it's the same name as that of an early lesbian travel writer and I've got him mixed up in my head and I can't remember either one of them. Maybe I'll remember it presently.

[72:25]

Mandeville. Sir John Mandeville. I guess it was John Mandeville who wrote The Fable of the Bees. It's a big satire on society. All about how private vice is public virtue and all sorts of wonderful things like that. And so there was a lot of foment and mess going on at this time. The revolution had taken place in 1640, isn't it so? 1640 or 1641 or so that they got rid of Charles I by removing his head. And then Oliver comes in. I forget, how long did the Commonwealth last? Well, so then it would have been... 1659? Because then it was 1660 was Annus Mirabilis, wasn't it? When Charles II is brought back. So we're right at that, right near that point when things are all in the fuck up and religious fanaticism and whatnot was at its height.

[73:30]

Anti-Catholic. Hanky-panky of all kinds. And also anti-Anglican stuff. The party of Cromwell had this huge Presbyterian army down from Scotland that was running everything and putting everybody down and wrecking churches and having a great time stamping out stained glass windows and overturning organs, which they called idols. And making a mess in general. I've only asked this before. I've never been able to make a history of people that hang together. Well, why should you? I've been taught it in pieces in school and stuff. Well... I know all sorts of incidents, but... There's a very... There's a very readable one in two volumes. Um... I didn't say his name. Trevelyan. George Trevelyan. History of England. It reads very nicely.

[74:32]

It puts all that stuff together in some way. Yeah, if I remember right. T-R-E... I guess. That's a good start. T-R-E-V-E-L-Y-A-N. Trevelyan. George. He may be Sir George by now. But in any case, his name is Trevelyan. History of England. That would do you. And then the more classical ones are the earlier... The big 19th century ones are by a man called Green. And then the more... Some of the greater ones, of course, are the 18th century ones written in a hurry to make money by... To buy a Smollett and various other hacks and grubs

[75:34]

which turn out of History of England every once in a while. To sell it by subscription in order to make some money. And so... There is a greatness in Lambeth which Satan cannot find. Of course, Lambeth is the site of the Bishop's Palace. The Archbishop of Canterbury lives in Lambeth Palace across the river from downtown, the center of downtown London. So anyway, these ranchers were into being revolutionaries and making a thing about how they were really radical Protestants.

[76:37]

And... That there shall be a general restoration wherein all men shall be reconciled to God and saved. The commentators of the impious doctrine did dishonor and cried down on the church. I would relate also other errors of that. If a man were strongly moved by the spirit to kill or to commit adultery, and upon praying against it again and again, it continued, and he was still strongly impressed, he should do it. And I am here witness of more true and fully discovery of the doctrine of love. Quote, Now is the creature damned and rammed into its only center, into the bowels of still eternity, its mother's womb, there to dwell forever unknown. This and this only is the damnation, so much terrifying the creature. In its dark apprehension. Grand impostures, abominable practices,

[77:41]

gross deceits lately spread abroad and acted in the county of Southampton. Anyway, Mr. Merton was enchanted by the by the figures, the fancy figures and visions and so forth. Nay, I see that God is in all creatures, man and beast, fish and fowl, and every green thing, from the highest cedar to the ivy on the wall, and that God is the life and being of them all. As all things are let out of God, so shall they all give up their being, life and happiness, unto God again. Though the clothing dissolve and come to nothing, yet the inward man still lives. I find that where God dwells in his comfort and hath taken men up and wrapped them up in the spirit, there is a new heaven and a new earth, and my heaven is to have my earthly and dark apprehensions of God to cease and to live on no other life than

[78:43]

what Christ spiritually lives in me. Sin is the dark side of God, but God is not the author of sin, nor does he dwell, nor does he will it. Sin being a nullity, God cannot be the author of it. Of course, this is all heretical doctrine, and, but, yeah. He's getting this from actual mentors. Yeah, yeah, and they call it libertinism and wickedness and heresy and so forth. Then God does not hate, not even sin, so heaven and hell are in debt to it. Wilrich, Battersea, and Lambeth. Burn him through the tongue! That was one of the punishments. They would grab a guy's tongue and poke a red-hot iron through it for talking naughty. Then they have, all of a sudden, he throws in this thing about trying to rescue this expedition, this polar expedition, and all the trouble that it caused and how pretty the icebergs and the whales

[79:43]

and so forth were. And... I was cold. And they had quotes from different journals about the expedition itself and from the rescue. Is this the expedition that's written up in the current National Geographic? I don't know. And something, some kind of polar expedition that totally perished is a feature article. Yeah, well, this is... They went and tried to reproduce it and almost perished or something. Oh, really? Yeah. Well, this is one in which I think everybody was undone. All right, where does it say in the notes here? Somewhere... They actually did it with a skin boat in the National Geographic expedition without board motors.

[80:45]

There we go. All right. Cane Relief Expedition, 1855. Dr. James Law's journal of the Cane Relief Expedition, the Stephenson Collection at Dartmouth College Library. So it all comes to law. Then he goes east. Love of the sultan. A slave cuts off his own head after a long speech declaring how much he loves the sultan. A quaint old Asian custom. Love of the sultan. East of Ibn Battuta to Cairo. And they are given sugar, soap and oil for the lamps and the price of a bath. And he talks about how these people are living gently

[81:50]

in this strange religious way, but quite different from... various heretical people, namely the... what do you call them? The Sufis. That's what he's thinking, what he's talking about here. There was a stranger who came to the Nusairis and told them he was the Mahdi. He promised to divide Syria among them, giving each one a city or a town. He gave them olive leaves and said, these will bring you success. These leaves are warrants of your appointment. They went forth into city and town. When arrested, each said to the governor, the Imam al-Mahdi has come. He has given me this town. The governor would then reply, show me your warrants. Each one of them produces olive leaves and was flogged.

[82:50]

So the stranger told the heretics to fight. Go with myrtle rods, he said, instead of swords. The rods will turn to swords at the moment of battle. They entered town on Friday when the men were at the mosque. They raped the women and the Muslims came running out with swords and cut them to pieces. It made a sort of confusion. The Meccans are very elegant and clean in their dress and most of them wear white garments which you always see fresh and snowy. They use a great deal of perfume and coal and make you free use of toothpicks and green arachnid. The Meccan women are extraordinarily beautiful and very pious and modest. They too make great use of perfumes to such a degree that they will spend the night hungry in order to buy perfumes at the price of their food. They visit the mosque every Thursday night wearing their finest apparel and the whole sanctuary is saturated with the smell of their perfume. When one of these women goes away the odor of the perfume clings to the place after she has gone. Hello there. What's happening?

[83:57]

Nothing. Nothing. And then he goes on to Calcutta. Yeah. I guess so. Some other world, all right. Yeah, they're getting just a little bit enormous. They'll probably grow to being very large. Then he goes off to the east of Malinovsky. Yeah. Go and check him out there. How does it happen one came out shorter than the other? I don't understand. What kind of twin is that? And so poor Mr. Malinovsky is sitting in the South Seas having diarrhea and telling about on the way to Port Moresby and Meccan's Hotel, Sherry and the Gramophone, Icy Beer and quote, that woman vulgar beyond endurance. Then he goes into the section about the Cargo Cult,

[85:03]

Cargo Songs, which I found very enchanting because I had never heard about or read about the Cargo Cult. And so it was through this book that I was able to find Peter Hootenanny's book about as it happened in Kyoto. And so I was able to get this Penguin copy of this gentleman's book about cargo, which was very enchanting, very interesting. Buck. So he says, Sir William MacGregor, representative of Her Majesty the Queen, that is Victoria of course, saw the paramount chief enthroned on a high platform, went up and seized him by the hair, dragged him to the ground, placed himself firmly in the seat of honour. No one shall sit higher in Papua than I. The anthropologist lay low, shivered under the hot compress, red Bronte and pissed black

[86:04]

when the wind blew up the sea. He thought he felt better. Seemed to hear the bell charm of St. Martin's and strand traffic humming in his head. Lay thinking of French chop houses in Soho, of anything in fact, but Trobriand Islanders in Coral Gardens. Even his intimate fantasies were far away in Russia at Razbutin, the convention's convenience system. How wicked I am, said the anthropologist, I need Mark Finine, and no one shall sit higher in Trobriand than I. It was Malinowski, of course, again. Meanwhile, four natives must hang, each in a different village, to impress the population. Proceedings throughout were watched with great interest by chiefs, and a number of other natives all appeared impressed by the solemnity. Hate-devil missionary has a waxen smell. Long narrow trousers find their way to hell. Rams, chickens, forbidden kava, and the vices of a river god seen between trees. An old man with a forgettable name lights Volcano Nine. Captain notes odd behavior and shivers. Even though the anthropologist is laid low,

[87:06]

there's still nobody higher. After this, a native from the north side of Milny Bay, possessed by a tree spirit, warned of giant waves. All must throw away matches, knives, white men's tools, destroy houses, kill all pigs, withdraw inland, wearing only long narrow leaves, quote, to show entire repudiation of the white men. On the following Sunday, the missionary noted with surprise that his congregation now consisted only of a few children. He learned that the villagers were all in the hills, expecting the return of the dead. He pushed inland without further delay. He found all men of the village sitting in tense silence. His cordial greeting met with no reply. But the missionary had come prepared. Quote, I had in my wallet a long thin stick of trade tobacco, a delicacy very much prized by these people, and as I was sitting in the doorway of the chief's house, I took it out. The blue outfit, the persistent longing for mud. Lovely. Ein ganz, ein ganz eigentümlich verkauft.

[88:17]

Blackfella Catholic mamboos prickled their organs with holy water and remained unmarried like a mission sister. He fed the people with rice that had arrived secretly by air. The church burned down when the father was home in Germany, and this was a sign, he said. Ein und dankbares, schweres Missionsfeld, said the father on his return. Meanwhile, they had eaten everything. The village had seemed unnaturally quiet. Quote, full of natives in European dress, sitting very still. Unquote, they said their ship had now started from Rome, bringing fountain pens and removal of mystical penalties. Famous young couple originates new life, sign on this line. Be ready for big blackfella Catholic steamers. Most sacred heart of Jesus limited turns brown man white in a quaking boat full of ancestors speaking in tongues. But saner elements visited the scientist and told him everything. Fido, a gifted virgin, dreamt of God who told her what he thought of white people.

[89:19]

Anthropologist suffered a fit of nervous aversion for quite a time. Filo said God had told her he was sending a truckload of rifles. One man broke through the fence and nearly brained the father with a seashell. A mission brother slipped away across to the other island to bring the magistrate and officers. Some rebels got seven years. Filo returned under police escort. It was only a mild demonstration that everybody knew some tobacco had really fallen from heaven. I gave them portions of tobacco and they all walked away without pausing long enough, without pausing long enough for a time exposure. My feelings toward them exterminate the broods. And Alinofsky said, Igua massaged me and told me in delightful moto about murders of white men as well as his fears of what he would do if I died in that way. But a little wire can take a lot of juice and no man shall sit higher in copria and benign.

[90:21]

And then the quotes from the how all these Europeans laid their own names on these faraway islands. And then he tells about, he gets back in more into the legend of the cargo. He says, Thibaud Maclay came from the moon in a white ship, stood without weapons in a shower of arrows, sat in a bungalow full of remedies, cameras, optical instruments and presents, walked in the night with a blue lamp. Thibaud Maclay, a culture hero from the land of figureheads, inventor of nails, mirrors, melons and paint, whose servant flew away over the horizon without wings. Thibaud Maclay, with a Swede and an Islander blue as a god, her ancestor warned them there would be two kinds of white men arriving later, few good, the rest very bad, hostile deities, jaw mounts with firearms who would rob them of land, work them under whips, shoot them if they ran away. People took this warning to heart. They could not understand. Soon came Herr Finch,

[91:24]

a decent jaw man, saying he was the brother of Thibaud Maclay. So they received him gladly. He hoisted his flag over their villages while they celebrated his coming. Then all the others began to arrive. They gave the people two axes and paint and matches and then went into business, taking over the country. News traveled all over the islands. No end of visitors to get ready to entertain. Then they have the Seven Day section. Seven Day is an unknown country where aspirins come from and pants and axes and corned beef and cans. It is far beyond the Green Sea, the White Sea, the Blue Sea, past Tokyo, North America, and Germany. In the same general direction, far beyond other countries, no one has seen this blessed land. The center of Snow Night Day is a more hidden place, even more unknown than Seven Day, the big front door of Big Belong, who got up very old out of himself in the beginning, left his endless bed in the morning and started the Cargo Company, in which we now offer shares

[92:27]

to true believers. Then the Dreamer said, We must build a large warehouse in the bush. We must do everything, he said, and then wait. In a short time, the warehouse would be filled with cans of meat, aspirins, hydrogen peroxide, soap, razor blades, rice, pants, flashlights, and everything. Then we built the warehouse together, and after that, the Dreamer said, We must wash away all our impurities. We all drew water and heated it and washed together. We went in silence to the burial ground. Nobody sang or danced or said anything. We just sat very still in the dark, waiting for the signal. At the signal, the women took theirs off and we took ours off, and we all began. It was all collected in a bottle with water and poured over the burial place to bring cargo. When the administration heard about it, we had to tear down the warehouse and carry all the timbers right, 18 miles, and throw them it the sea. They had us tear down

[93:20]

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