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026: Masonry

Plots are built like Lego projects: you draw pieces out of a pile and assemble your tower by interlocking the pieces together. Each piece, by itself, has no shape or form and only works as part of a larger structure. Did you ever play with Legos as a kid? I did. I spent hours fabricating and refabricating war ships. It took me awhile to figure out the trick. I could make tall, spindly ships bristling with guns and extraneous wings; I could make flat vessels like airborne flounders that had absolutely no grace to them. Slow and solid. I had a hard time making the vessels that were strong and graceful. I would spend a few hours and would eventually come up with something that would work, but never anything that I fell in love with and left assembled on my shelf for months and months.

Plots are like Legos. I took my apart over the last few weeks. There have been a number of holiday distractions and, when I returned to the BOOK OF LIES, I was struck by the gracelessness of what was there. In fact, I started to obsess about some hidden flaw in the design which would come out at the most inopportune time and bring everything else down when it erupted on me. I took the whole structure apart and laid the pieces out on the floor. I left them there for a few days and, when I returned, I started to piece them together again. In fact, I put a number of them back in the bucket and drew new pieces out.

The thought which had sent me along this path was that I wasn't quite sure what I was building. You know that moment when you've started to snap the pieces together? Just what the hell have I got in my hands? Yeah, I had one of those moments. I took everything apart, mixed up the pieces, and put it all back together again.

I was building a rocket ship. It looks much like the previous one did, though fatter around the back end. Stronger boosters is my guess. Escape velocity is a bitch after all. I'm still not quite sure what sort of craft these boosters are taking into space -- I'm still tinkering with the deployment vessel -- but the body of the ship seems much better. I'm not nagged by the possibility that I've forced two pieces together which weren't meant to touch. I can bang my knuckles against the side of the craft and feel pretty good that it isn't going to fragment.

This one needs to be strong, you see. I've built enough rockets and war planes and medieval castles to fill a thousand Sunday afternoons. And, at the end of the day, the pieces all went back in the box. For a change, I want to leave this one on the shelf.

---
A new year and a new design lends itself well to a quick recap for those who might be just wandering in. The on-going journey charted here in SYMBOLIC is the progress of a novel started last November as part of the NaNoWriMo challenge: write 50,000 words in one month. 50k wasn't enough to get the story out (nor was it ever really planned that way) and SYMBOLIC continues as I thrash out this book. In addition to discussions and observations of the authorial process from the first word on the page to the last signature penned at the inaugural book signing, we'll be looking at the nature of symbols and how they affect us.

I'm the monkey in the glass cage, picking up things that I find interesting when I'm not banging on the typewriter. You should feel free to throw odd trinkets over the wall if you like. The truly fascinating thing about symbols is how they facilitate and obfuscate communication.

Posted by Teppo at 08:23 AM | Comments (0) January 21, 2003

025: 25 degrees

From my astrology chart generated by alabe.com: "Neptune is in 25 Degrees Scorpio. You are extremely interested in anything deep and mysterious. You will explore and idealize the benefits that can accrue from the study of the occult, healing and psychology..."

The 25th Degree of the Masonic hierarchy is the Knight of the Brazen Serpent. According to Biblical legend, during the Exodus some of the folk began to complain about the length of the hike. God sent serpents among the people, biting the whiners. Moses, after getting a mental clue from God, made a bronze serpent and wound it around a staff. Those who had been bitten and were suffering looked upon the staff and were healed. The symbol of the Masonic degree is both this staff (reduced to an ankh for simplicity) and the serpent biting it own tail. Ouroboros.

[An interesting aside because, as you know, these things fascinate me: the snake biting his own tail was an image I took and modified for the logo of the first web-presence I did for myself. The details of the 25th degree I didn't know until I went to write up this entry.]

The 25th Enochian Aethyr is VTI, a winged angel who represents the Voice of Silence. He is usually pictured standing on a large rock which is nearly submerged in a thrashing sea, and he symbolizes the emergence of the intuitive nature through the troubled waters of the intellect. He is the small voice which we all have down in our guts, and his full robes symbolize the mysterious and hidden nature of this mental process.

25 is the square of 5 which, if you write it out in mathematical notation, is one of the few equations where you utilize the same numbers on either side of the equal sign. 5 is the PENTAD in Pythagorean theory. It is the first number which can be achieved through the addition of an odd and an even number. It is the third prime number. The third prime squared is 25. (3, 2, 5. It gets out of hand.)

The Gematria of the first Hebrew word in the Bible, "let there be," is 25.

If the first six numbers of my cell phone are added together, the result is 25. Those two digits added together make 7 which happens to be the seventh digit of my cell number.

25 is my favorite number and has been for years. My earliest memory of the infatuation goes back to the days when the quarter could actually buy you a comic book. I would put my hand in my pocket and feel the shape of the single coin, knowing that I could go the racks at the supermarket and buy anything that I wanted. Usually it would be Conan or Beowulf because I was going through a swords and sorcery pulp phase, or even a Marvel Spotlight if Son of Satan was starring. Twenty-five cents used to be worth something -- 22 pages of pulped paper, covered with ink -- and now the sole reason to carry quarters is to feed the parking meters.

But, for some reason, the mystical importance of the number sticks with me and I find myself alert to signals imbedded in the presence of the number when it arises. The reason may simply be because Neptune had moved 25 degrees into Scorpio on the moment of my birth and all the occult influences swirling around at the moment I first had conscious thought separate from my mother may have imprinted that number in my brain. My fascination with the number may be a product of planetary alignments and celestial positioning. It may be the harmonic frequency on which I am most likely to be attuned. It may be the number of transmigratory lives I have had prior to this incarnation.

In the end, I am somewhat disappointed that my subscriber number at the local comic shop is "26." Cosmically, this seems somewhat unfair.

Posted by Teppo at 10:27 PM | Comments (0) January 14, 2003

024: Villainy

Two things merged in my head over the weekend. First, Gangs of New York. Martin Scorsese builds experiences; his are films which swallow you. While he is in fine form for Gangs of New York, it is too bad that the same couldn't be said for the script. With a little prejudicial editing, the film could have been salvaged from a hollow-eyed revenge tale hung on Leonardo DiCaprio's sulky single-expressioned take on the character of Amsterdam Vallon and turned into a ripe character study of the film's single engaging character. If this had been William Cutting's story instead of a sad bleating of "you killed my daddy," Scorsese could have savaged the audience, leaving us emotionally devastated by the death of William Cutting: the erstwhile villain.

[As an aside, for as much shit as Daniel Day-Lewis has taken along the way for how he prepares for his roles, I hope that his entire acceptance speech for the Oscar is just two fingers to everyone who took a shot at him. Unlike the rest of the cast, Day-Lewis disappeared on-screen. There was only Bill the Butcher and, for the three hour duration of the film, Bill was alive.]

The second thing: an infomercial drones in the background as I make breakfast Sunday morning. They're pushing the Miracle Blade III. "These blades never dull. They can cut sheet metal and still slice a tomato. Cutting your own bread has never been easier. Sixteen different blades all for only $39.95. Call in the next ten minutes and we'll throw in a free gift."

I wander out of the kitchen and watch for a second. The guy pushing the knives is a wearing a white chef's hat and looks like the most work he's ever done in the kitchen is to use a utility knife to separate out his dosage of amphetamines. He's got an obsequious co-host, a fawning sycophant whose entire existence is simply to act amazed and astonished when the Miracle Blade manages to slice cheese.

You know what would really sell knives? William Cutting. Put Bill the Butcher on that table-top, crouching over the fawning assistant who has been strapped down and had an apple shoved unkindly into his mouth. Watch Bill the Butcher with his wild steely eye shout at the camera, "Loin or shank, the Miracle Cleaver is the perfect instrument to carve up a good piece of meat. Bone or sinew, the Miracle Cleaver never loses its edge. You can carve up steak all day and never feel it in your arm. Look at how this separates the meat from the bone."

Yeah, the phones would never stop ringing. We love a good villain. They're Men of Action and Conviction. We get so little of that in reality these days. Too many weasels and back-biters. Too many Mr. Tweeds.

I miss Bill.

Posted by Teppo at 08:21 AM | Comments (0) January 05, 2003

023: Extortion

I had a dream last night about strippers. There was some sort of truck stop style strip shop that I was familiar with, and this time I was specifically after some sort of take-home style magazine. And this place catered to that sort of shopper, though the whole place was laid out like a convenience store at a highway truck stop -- all the items were scattered on low shelves with little or no organization and I distinctly remember getting annoyed that I couldn't find the basic nudie magazines.

Wandering throughout the shop were the working girls and I knew some of them by name. Evidently I was that sort of regular, but not regular enough that I spent any sort of money on the live entertainment. There are five women clustered around the display rack where the magazines I'm looking for are stacked and there may be a couple more on the next aisle over. I politely decline the constant offers for some private fun -- I'm just after a magazine I can take home after all -- and I say hello to the two ladies that I know.

Suddenly I note they are all holding two liter containers of Coke product (apparently this place really is a truck stop) and, as I'm trying to figure out which magazine I want to buy, they all start to shake these bottles of soda. I know what is going to happen and shake my head and decline the experience of watching them all hose each other down with high-pressured foamy Coke products.

Ah, too late. I hear them laughing and giggling behind me, accented by the whoosh of pop shooting out of the pressurized containers. I feel some carbonated beverage splash on my sleeve. It's going to be a wet, sticky mess. I'm trying to put some distance between myself and the event, but no luck there.

Mr. Big and his enforcer are waiting for me at the front counter. He wants to talk about my bill. "What bill?" I ask. He nods over my shoulder. "The soda splash," he says. "You think the entertainment is free around here?" I know it isn't and say as much, trying to point out that I made several attempts to decline participation in the visual entertainment. I just came in for a magazine, I tell him.

He jerks his head towards his office. "Step inside," he says, "Let's talk about this." His enforcer cracks his knuckles. I go, meekly, my magazine left on the front counter. Inside his office -- all done in leather and walnut with video monitors arranged on shelves behind his chair -- he sits down in his big seat and starts fiddling with a pencil on a pad of paper. His enforcer is standing close behind me. "Seven girls," he says as he works out the math, "at $79.95 a pop. That's what you owe us." There must be some sort of state luxury tax that gets included because the whole total comes to $598.00.

I wake up when he says the number. I wake up and think: No, that's not how it would play. It's 3:30am and I'm lying in bed, my mind rapidly starting to edit the scene which just played out.

I've been reading Michael Ondaatje's The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film. In their first conversation, they banter back and forth about the basic editing process, about taking the entire lot of raw material that has been collected for the work and starting to cull it for the precise bits which you really want to keep. Both admit that the work (film or text) is an amorphous object at this point, a vast and overwhelming collection of dense matter. It takes them longer to edit the work than it did to generate the raw material. The shape of the final work is unknown. There is a metaphor of the sculptor which comes out of the conversation, the artisan who molds and shapes the basic material until some form emerges.

I hate editing; I find it tedious and dull. I must not be doing it correctly. I've not worked on the BOOK OF LIES for several weeks now, having been distracted by other things and numerous familial visits over the holidays. This morning, as I'm lying in bed, recutting the scenes from the truckstop strip shop, the word which comes to mind isn't "editing" but "negotiating."

It's time to get back to work.

I rerun the conversation between myself and Mr. Big a few times, tweaking and shifting the scene, until I get to a bit of mental film where I stand firm on $200.00 and two lapdances from "Sue." He smiles and agrees. We both know it is extortion, but it is a price that is acceptable to both parties.

I don't remember what happened to the magazine, but it's not important anymore. The intent of the scene has changed. These things happen when the editing starts.

Posted by Teppo at 08:31 AM | Comments (0) January 01, 2003

022: Hanging, Suspended in Space

I'm in the airport on New Year's Eve to pick up family flying in the from the East Coast. I've never seen Sea-Tac Airport so empty at 5pm. There is no one queuing up to the counters. Most of the shops are already closed, and the scattered people waiting in the airport all appear to be here for the duration. No one is moving; everyone is waiting. I pass a threesome playing cards. Next to them is a couple who've already gone to sleep in their stiff chairs. Over half the world has already made it to the new year; we're still waiting for it to arrive on the West Coast. Who waits longer than us for the beginning? I wonder. Alaska. Hawaii. Some tiny atoll out in the Pacific. We're not the edge of the world, but you can see it from here.

The plane from Detroit is delayed. It's the end of the year and there is nothing to do but sit and watch the clock. There is a punk girl sitting across from me, all decked out in tiger stripes and cheetah spots with dark-rimmed glasses, thigh high black boots and large hoop earrings. There is a bouquet of flowers sitting next to her. She projects attitude: both "look at me" and "what the fuck are you staring at?" When her friend arrives, she squeals with delight and leaps into his arms, all pretense gone. But that's thirty minutes into the future. Right now, like the dark-haired woman with the scarf standing behind her, she's waiting. We're all on hold.

Aleister Crowley talks about the Moon card in the Tarot as being the last moment of darkness, the final instant of winter bleakness before the resurrection which comes with the Sun. "This is the threshold of life; this is the threshold of death. All is doubtful, all is mysterious, all is intoxicating." The end of the Julian calendar is subjective; it is the West applying itself to the passage of time. The Egyptian calendar ends with five uncounted days in August. The Chinese New Year is in February. I'm not sure when the Mayan new year begins, not being clever enough to work out the Tzolkin and Haab markers. But in the West, we draw the shroud on December 31st.

6:15pm. The New Year is over the Atlantic somewhere, winging its way towards the East Coast of the United States. Times Square in New York City is already full of revelers. They are still partying in Paris, firework smoke off the Eiffel Tower has dispersed across the Seine already. In Tokyo and Australia, it is already dawn. I'm still waiting for the plane. It has landed, but none of the passengers have made the trek from the distant gate to the main terminal. I'm in a Schroedinger-ean fugue state: the passengers don't exist until they come up the escalator and I see them. I don't actually know the plane is here either. There is just a single word on the monitor -- "arrived" -- and a cluster of people waiting next to the gate. The rest of the airport is still and quiet. Even the maintenance crews have the night off.

This day is an arbitrary marker. A more personal cyclical marker is your birthday, but we've agreed that we will all celebrate the passing of one year into the next on January 1st. Mythologies celebrate the end of one cycle and the beginning of the next with instants of fire and destruction -- the old world being swept away to make way for the new world. The adherents gather around the pole to Heaven -- the axis mundi of their cosmology -- and wait to be remade in the fire of reoccurring Big Bang. They wait for that moment of light which burns away the past and fills them anew. And, in those final dark minutes of yesterday, they have a few moments to think about what they were and what they can be.

Tomorrow the airport will be full. The lines at the counters will be long and the lines through the security gates will be longer. All eighteen of the espresso stands will be working double-time to smother hangovers with caffeine. Someone invariably will try to board a plane with a six-inch knife in their pocket and will be outraged when they get pulled aside and strip-searched. Everyone in line will be hoping the fellow gets a good fisting for keeping them all waiting. There will be missed connections, children crying, and lost luggage. People will be moving again, traveling vast distances and multiple time zones as they circle this planet.

But right now, everyone is holding his and her breath. The escalator is droning, its teethed steps curling into the casing. An airline employee is looking down the moving stairway as if something has caught his attention. Two young women are uncurling a "Welcome Home!" sign in anticipation of the arrival of their friend. She doesn't know about the sign and will be embarrased as she arrives, turning red as her friends scream and cheer when they spot her. The punk girl has put her hand on the bouquet of flowers, the purple plastic crackling.

Time is so subjective. It is molded and bent around our globe. The sun is beating down on the oppositive side of the world. Are they a half-day older than me? Are my relatives getting younger as they fly west? We make our time, we make our rituals. We impose our structure on the cycles -- the 60, the 12, the 24, the 365 -- and that is the basis of our civilization. The sun doesn't care; the rest of our solar system doesn't care. The frogs, the squirrels, the lizards and the elephants on this world don't care. Time is ours. We hoard it, we obsessively count it, we grow restless waiting for it to pass. Another hour, another day, another year.

We're dying every minute, they say. Our bodies are counting down to zero. Every second is one that we can't have again. We hate waiting because it is time lost.

But time is arbitrary. We can't lose it. Our ritual cycles are arbitrary. We don't have to wait for them. You want to be reborn? It can happen on a Tuesday in the middle of the month, right after lunch. You don't have to wait for the end of the year. Your cellular time is all yours. Spend it as you want. Don't wait for anyone else.

Posted by Teppo at 12:01 AM | Comments (0)