Tag: death
Logboom Update
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.
The Sepulchre of Malignia
The Damnation of Drumph
Act 1, scene 1–Video projection screen shows a newscaster.
Newscaster: We go now to Bedminster cemetery, old site of the Reality Theme Park and final resting place of the ancient Drumph line, where a meeting of the Executors of Fate are gathered for their annual rites.
The screen lifts to show a rocky, wooded landscape. In the center is a small stone building from which emerges the sounds of the chorus.
Chorus: We bearers of the sacred flame lift our praise to the blessed real and true.
Two cemetery groundskeepers enter and sit down for lunch under Malignia’s tomb.
Juan: As a boy I came to the Theme Park. I got lost in the Deep State Labyrinth, saw the radioactive Butoh Trolls, and rode Mister Moglievich’s Wild Ride. Those were the days.
Rosalita: We had crossed jungles, trod the scorched highways of Mexico, only to be caged by ICE–all for our share of reality.
Chorus: Caged by Ice and detained.
Juan: But then came the fall of Drumph’s brand, and now these weathered stones are fallen; haunted only by wraiths and the ambiguous birds of augury.
Chorus: The ambiguous birds.
The Entombment of Drumph–Storyboard continued. Malignia’s lament echoes over the Bedminster Cemetary, haunting the gravedigger’s toil. Manuel sings of the old days when the tremendous tomb of Drumph was being raised high above the 18th green, and the townsfolk grieved under the oppressors yoke to produce the ultimate reality show–Death. But who can emerge unscathed from the Plutonic realm?
A View from the Wheelhouse 