Tag: arcana

Posted in Euphrates Voyage

At Nebuchadnezzar’s Quay

Posted on by Dogfish Bay

The Samamaris was making frightful leeway as we rounded the bend towards our moorings at Nebuchadnezzar’s quay. But it lightened somewhat on our approach and Captain McWhirr eased her up as if it were a Sunday family cruise. The storm, fierce as it had been, died down as quickly as it had risen.

“Make off the bowline to the second bollard Mister Spencer.”

“Easy now professor.”

After making fast and shutting down the boiler, we jumped ashore for a look around. It was an ancient mound—or tell—that slowly sloped down into the depths of the river to form the quay. The lower strata was made of baked mud bricks coated with bitumen, some of which were stamped with the seal of Nebuchadnezzar himself. To the Northwest, the mound rose high against the hot afternoon sun. An Arab Shepard stood gazing down at this apparition of a stern-wheel steamer with a wheelhouse that sat on her deck like a little hat on a frumpy British dowager.

Soon, a short guy in a white suit and pith helmet walked up and made an obsequious bow.

“I am Joesph Cairo of the customs office. Would you be the Captain of the steamer Samaramis?”

“I would.”

“The customs office has impounded your vessel due to a minor technical matter regarding…”

“Bakshish?” interrupted McWhirr.

“I wouldn’t put it so indelicately. But there are certain processing costs incurred by the Museum trustees sponsoring this worthy effort to preserve our priceless treasures for the future edification and enrichment of both of our great nations.“

“For the enrichment of somebody anyway.”

Cairo smiled placidly: “I heard you were a man of few but laconic words, Captain McWhirr. Shall we go to my office? It’s just up the promenade.”

McWhirr is well accustomed to Cairo’s ilk. Recent digs and spectacular finds have brought out sleazy shysters to exploit the ignorance of scholars and archeologists. Especially vulnerable to such scams are the rapture tourists, who seek affirmation of scripture by marking the river’s depths, which— as is prophesied in the Book of Revelations—will dry up as a sign of the end times. The chandler in Bagdad enjoys a brisk trade selling sounding gear to these New Age fundamentalists. But these days, all that’s needed is a pool cue, so they may have a point after all. An inch drop will have them speaking in tongues, talking to lizards and enthralled by the thought of total annihilation of a third of humankind. But we were concerned with more prosaic matters regarding the water’s depth. A blow like we had earlier could drive our shallow draft vessel sideways onto the bank, prey to bandits who roam this desert with impunity.

But events that were to unfold cast a new light on the prophesied end-times, and gave us—if not eternal salvation—a hard-won appreciation for the convoluted twists of fate.

We walked up the towpath—or “promenade” as Cairo so generously called it—and came to the customs house. It was no more than a shack of mud brick and bundles of reeds. A guy in a green visor and sleeve garters sat next to a fake banana plant contemplating a calendar. This month’s model was Theda Bara tricked out as the Goddess of the Underworld. Those dark eyes followed me around the shack; eyes that can go from abject terror to ecstatic elation without so much as a smoke break between takes. We paid the gentlemen who were, after all, only playing their parts in the perpetual exchange of vice and virtue; where everything evens out in the end—more or less.

Later, as I lay on the pilot house bunk listening to the eerie keening of jackels far into the night, I could hear the professor intone:

“He set sail; the father set sail,

Enkei the God of Wisdom set sail for the underworld

……the waters of the sea devoured the bow of his boat like wolves.

The waters of the sea struck the stern like lions.”

I flowed downriver. The bleak boatman had abandoned his tiller, leaving me adrift. But I escaped shipwreck and the scene suddenly changed. I gazed into the blue eyes of the glittering goddess. We embraced and kissed. It was a sweet soul kiss that I could still taste when I woke to McWhirr’s hail.

“All hands on deck!”

McWhirr runs a tight ship, even if it is a mode of propulsion he thinks unseemly for a man of working sail.

O. Handy Bey—Director of the Imperial Ottoman Museum, 1888 CE
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Posted in poetry, Seal log

Logboom Update

Posted on by Dogfish Bay

Number 25 of the season–whom I shall name William–was born around 0400 hours this morning. Marty, rising early for work, kindly kayaked around them in order to avoid disturbing the vital, bonding ritual between mom and newborn pup. Good on ya, mate.

The drama on the logboom is always entertaining. A yearling deposed William from the choice haulout spot for the latest pups, while Will’s mom growled and waved her flipper in righteous indignation at the clueless interloper. Harumph.

I named the latest two pups after William Blake and his brother, who appeared to the poet long after Robert’s passing; to guide him in the alchemical process of gravure. This relates to my last post about negative capability. Robert’s physical absence gave way to spiritual presence, which guided Blake into the mysteries of relief etching. This technique–which Blake was the first to use–requires a disolution of the copper plate in acidic hellfire in order to exalt the spiritual form as pure light.

Kathleen Raine writes of how the ancient Persephone myth appears in Blake’s poetry to symbolize the soul’s descent into the the material world. The Neo Platonists–whose philosophy Raine says informed Blake’s work–saw birth as death or banishment of the most vital and ineffable part of us.

O life of this our Spring! Why fades the lotus of the water? Why fade these children of the Spring, born but to smile and fall? Ah! Thel is like a watery bow, and like a parting cloud, like a reflection in the glass; like shadows in the water.

Posted in Aria, Art, libretto, opera, poetry, politics, Stage set design

Damnation of Drumph storyboard continued

Posted on by Dogfish Bay

Act 3, scene 1–Bedminster Cemetary, the Bardo of hungry ghosts. Demeter emerges from the woods at the base of a rocky hill to challenge Drumph.

Dem: Who dares violate the dark Goddess’s sanctum?

Drumph: This place has tremendous potential. Only the best people will come to my Ultimate Death theme park.

Chorus: All will come to the awesomely, spectacular, incredible Death.

Drumph: Malignia’s friend, Winston, can do the decor. Real class.

Chorus: Doom golden doom awaits the discriminting dead.

Posted in Old Hand's Indonesian Voyage

Old Hand’s Indonesian voyage–part 6

Posted on by Dogfish Bay

 “To the Toer wharf,”  said McWhirr. 

 With indomitable energy, Rubio peddled his bicak and sang Unchained Melody for all he was worth.  For reason I’ve yet to fathom, Indonesians consider the Righteous Brothers to be the apex of musical accomplishment.  We soon arrived at the dock to see a steamship being loaded by scrawny Malays carrying heavy sacks of rice.  She was an absurdly stout vessel of Victorian pedigree, whose small wheelhouse perched on her coach roof like a petite hat on a frumpy, lady dowager.  On the ornate paddle boxes were emblazoned the words: The East India Company.  The thick cloud issuing from her smokestack showed she was building up a head of steam for immanent departure.

As we ascended the ladder to the wheelhouse, I saw that the balustrade of the gallery which extended from the house to the rails was ornamented by a carved frieze of twined figures writhing in chained attitudes of torment.  We were about to knock on the weathered, oak door when, through the blinds, came a low voice intoning:

“It is thou, O river, who judges man’s judgment… O river of sanctuaries. ..O river of light…”

 
McWhirr opened the door. a beefy guy in shorts, stockings and pith helmet bent over a chart table reading from a weathered scroll.  Without turning he said: “What say ye,? Does the ocean refuse the river’s tribute?”
  He fell silent and gazed out the wheelhouse windows.  The dawn light shone violet, as though the dirty chaos of the waterfront had been suddenly transfigured by the celestial Light of Glory.
This was our engineer, Thaddeus Budge, and a wackier coot I’ve never known.  But Hans had assured us that he would keep the old Polly steaming past mud banks and typhoons; the first we were to strike in short order, the latter, we were to find, swept through the middle reaches of the Ciliwung with all the frenzied vehemence of doomsday.
 
“Full ahead, Mister Budge,” McWhirr called into the speaking horn by the wheel.
 
With a creaking shudder, the paddle wheels began to churn the water into brown froth, and we bore away from the wharf into the gently flowing waters of the River.
  We chugged past endless shacks and mountains of rusty, flattened cars.  It was as though alluvial deposits had washed up all the planned obsolescence of millennia; and the foundering hulk of Pantijasila– those lofty 5 principles of the new Indonesia–had fetched up on a reeking bank of industrial wast and these half-naked laundresses whopping sarongs in the stagnant waters of the canal were singing an eerie monody for some dimly descried apocalypse.
 
The only charts we had were from the 20th century.  I searched for sailing directions to the upper reaches of the Ciliwung in vain and ransacked the tattered tomes that lined the mahogany shelves of the wheelhouse for any clue that might disclose the real purpose of the voyage we were fated to undertake.  
 
“That Bekert guy gives me the creeps.”  McWhirr’s said.  “I didn’t believe for a minute all that bull about his interest in antiquities.  He might just be sending us on a fool’s errand in this tin pot steamer.” 
  McWhirr unrolled a dog-eared chart that look like it was printed during Leopold’s reign, pointed to a particularly sepentine section of the river, and said:
“There’s death at every bend of this blasted river.  There are treacherous sandbanks and bandits that will cut your throat for a song. Here is the passage of Bulak Bindah.  Winds can funnel between those rocks like the fiends of hell.”
“Aye, on top of that, the very guards appointed by the museum trustees who sponsor these excavations deal in the illicit trade of artifacts. Their collusion with Javanese authorities can land innocent shippers like us in jail. 
“Crooked trade in antiquities is nearly as old as civilization itself. These sites had already been plundered in ancient times by looters who sold to dealers in Bangkok.  Now the plunder is conducted on an industrial scale by the East India Company. The stones of sacred Temples are looted to build the brutal towers of Tomorrowland and the stolen images of the Holy Immortals now entice consumers, like sheep, into endless malls of mediocrity.  This must stopped.”
 
Like some portly, winded spinstress, the Polly steamed past camps of water buffalo herders, laptop recyclers, and armed horsemen whose dark eyes followed her wake with unconcealed contempt.
Posted in Old Hand's Indonesian Voyage

Old Han’s Indonesian Voyage–part 4. I meet the Great Marlow

Posted on by Dogfish Bay

DSC01918

Soon, having to pump the bilges, I made my way to the back of the Stygian nightclub where I saw a distinguished, bearded gent who sat before an old Underwood typewriter. His gaunt frame mummified in musty, moth-eaten tweeds while his ponderous brows were wreathed in a smokey corona of golden light. On closer inspection, I saw he was merely one of the automated fortune-tellers found in the Batavian Capitol. His face was vaguely familiar. On the table front was displayed a sign which read:  The Great Marlowe. Your fortune 25 cents.
I dropped a coin into the slot. There was a slight sound from under the table which again halted, began again and increased in speed and volume until the music of bellows and steam pipes sounded over a cacophony of grinding gears like the high registers of Saint Mark’s Cathedral organ. The tweedy automaton typed, sputtered to a wheezing halt and ejected a sheet of paper at my feet.
It read:  You will soon meet a distinguished monkey.
Posted in Old Hand's Indonesian Voyage, Saturnius McWhirr stories

Old Hand’s Indonesian Voyage–episode 1

Posted on by Dogfish Bay

The bewitching breezes that had vexed our northerly course along the bleak, rocky coast gave way to an absolute calm as we steamed into Sunda Kelepa Harbour and brought up under the ornate, lofty spires of Jakarta.  It was as though the anchorage were under the spell of some vengeful deity that held the stagnant seaport in irons– a fitful sleep of waking dream. I gazed up at Jakarta’s towers and heard, high on the ramparts, Rama’s  gong-struck plea to deliver a flute-weeping Sita from Ranga’s jangling curse.  A sword held against a blood-red sky by masked Barong tragediennes brought down the threadbare, red curtain in the ritual re- enactment of the primal leave-taking and arrival; when carved gods glared from the bowsprit, holding vigilant watch against marauders while we were moored off the savage isle of dreams.  I too, have sat hungry around those ancestral fires, a villan, hero or common swab, subject to the changeable turns of karmic law..

.“Skip lively, Mister Spencer.”

The resonant voice was hoarse, as if weathered by eternal watches on the Greenland ice, or worn ragged from hurling oaths into the teeth of a gale. I flaked out 5 fathoms of chain from the locker with hamfisted elegance.

“Nicely done, lad. Ye’ll be a sailor before long.”

McWhirr is a pain in the ass sometimes. He’s a relic of working sail and can be as dark as Ahab in rehab on a bad hair day.  He stood stark against the red sky like a weathered piling on a  rocky cape.  Light flickered through the dark shrouds, his shadow looming on the limp stays’l behind him, as if projected on a movie screen.  The  harrowing passage through the Sunda Strait had frayed my nerves and I groped clumsily the 3/8ths chain from the locker.

“All right, Mister Spencer.”

I let go the anchor. There sounded a low rumble as I paid out 3 fathoms of chain into the muddy bottom of Sunda Kelapa Harbour.

“Have you paid out enough scope, lad?”

“I cast the anchor in 6 fath…” I said.

“Avast, Ya greenhorn! You don’t “cast” anchors. This isn’t fly-fishing! My gorge rises at such lubberly misuse of sailing language.”

His wrath, like a line-squall, subsided as rapidly as it came.

“Did you know that to raise an anchor you must first let it go?”

“That’s true, sir.”

He always makes these pithy pronouncements like they were scripture.  And, for McWhirr the act of sailing is a religious rite. He hails from Zoroastrian, Quaker stock and, for him, a ship is a vessel to carry his weary spirit ascending through the seven concentric spheres of corporeality to the final landfall of essential being. He has seen the beatific vision reflected on the sea’s mirror and it draws him ever northward in search of the true face of divinity behind the mask of appearance.