The Land of Akbar; Post #16 (A Eulogy to the First Earth)

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Abenaki, Adirondacks, Aiden Lair, Arthur Schopenhauer, Boreas River, Chateaugay, Dictionnaire Philosophique, Dr. W. Seward Webb, False Smerdis, Galileo Galilei, George Boole, Gil Blas, Haslam, Hemingway, Henry Charles Bukowski, Hobbes, Human Agency, Lewis Elijah, Meinongism, Michael Faraday, Michael Foucault, monstrance, Nikola Tesla, Philosophical Dictionary, Quatrich, Roosevelt, Tactilism, The Crimmins, Theodosius Grygovych Dobzhansky, Voynich Manuscript

I bring the personal part of my narrative to a close.

The rest is in the memory (if not in the hopes or fears) of all my readers.

Let it suffice for me to recall or mention the following facts, with a mere brevity of words which the reflective recollection of all will enrich or amplify.

Around 1994, a person doing research for the newspaper, The Malone Paladium, Malone, NY, found in the Wead Library forty volumes of the First Philosophical dictionary of The First Earth. Even today there is a controversy over whether this discovery was accidental or whether it was permitted by the directors of the still nebulous First Earth.

The latter is most likely.

Some of the unconceivable aspects of the Eleventh Volume (for example, the multiplication of the Релігія) have been eliminated or attenuated in the Malone copies; it is reasonable to believe that these omissions follow the plan of revealing a world which is not very paradoxical with our real world.

The objects that Lady Elizabeth Hocksteader received of The First Earth come from different countries; this would complement the plan. The fact is that the Malone Paladium proclaimed the “find.” Manuals, anthologies, summaries, literal versions, authorized re-editions and pirated editions of Keats, James, Borges, Dunn, Bukowski, have flooded and still flood the earth.

Almost immediately, reality yielded on more than one  truth or level. It longed to yield.

Ten years ago, with a resemblance of order – dialectical materialism, the school of phenomenology, the concept of intentionality – was sufficient to captivate the minds of men. How could one do other than submit to The First Earth, to the minute and vast evidence of an orderly planet?

 It is useless to answer that reality is also orderly.

Perhaps it is, or is not, but always in accordance with divine laws – which we never quite grasp.

The First Earth was surely a muddle, but it was a web devised by men, a maze destined to be deciphered by men. The communications and the customs of The First Earth have disappeared in our new world. Beguiled by its objectivity, our world forgets over and again that it is a rigor of mathematicians and not of philosophers.

May we not wish that our schools be invaded by the conjectural language of the “creative” and not the convinced language of the “academy?”

Already the re-creating of its our history, filled with accusatory episodes, has wiped out the one which governed in my childhood.

Already a fictitious past occupies in our memories one place or another, a past of which we know nothing with certainty – not even that it is  true or false.

Numerology, pharmacology and archeology have been reformed. I understand that biology and mathematics also await their icons. A dispersed dynasty of solitary men has changed the face of the world.

Their task continues. 

If our forecasts are not in error, a hundred years from now someone will discover the hundred volumes of the Second Philosophical dictionary of The First Earth. Then English and French and Spanish will disappear from the globe.

Our world will become The First Earth.

I pay no attention to all this and go on revising my stories, plays, and poetry – if it can be called poetry– in the quiet days at the Chateaugay hotel.

An ambiguous story of Victor Hugues’ echoing guillotine — which I do not intend to publish – competes with an echo of Crimmins’ Papier-mâché Urn.

  

 

 

≅

 

 

 

 

             

           THE END

The Land of Akbar; Post #14 (Hemingway and the Metal Disc)

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Abenaki, Adirondacks, Aiden Lair, Arthur Schopenhauer, Boreas River, Chateaugay, Dictionnaire Philosophique, Dr. W. Seward Webb, False Smerdis, Galileo Galilei, George Boole, Gil Blas, Haslam, Hemingway, Henry Charles Bukowski, Hobbes, Human Agency, Lewis Elijah, Meinongism, Michael Faraday, Michael Foucault, monstrance, Nikola Tesla, Philosophical Dictionary, Quatrich, Roosevelt, Tactilism, The Crimmins, Theodosius Grygovych Dobzhansky, Voynich Manuscript

 

The Second intrusion of the First Earth took some time to occur. It happened months later, at a motel owned by a Canadian in the area of Vanderwacker Mountain.

Hemingway and I were returning from Newcomb. The Boreas River had flooded and we were obliged to endure the proprietor’s under-developed hospitality. He provided us with some canvas cots in a large cabin cluttered with mice and indescribable odors. We went to bed; but were kept from sleeping until dawn by the inebriated ravings of a neighbor who intermingled complicated insults with snatches of back-woods earthiness. As might be supposed, we attributed this continuoust uproar to the motel owner’s inhospitality.

At daybreak we found the inebriate dead under a tamarack tree. The voice, we had been subject to all night, deceived us; it belonged to a native Abenaki Indian. In his delirium a few .222 rifle shells had fallen from his ammunition bag along with a few pieces of bright metal, the size of a silver dollar but thinner. In vain, Hemingway tried to pick up the metal discs. He was scarcely able to raise them from the ground. He held one in his hand for a few minutes. Its weight was so unendurable that after it was dropped Hemingway said that a feeling of oppressiveness remained. I also remember the exact circle it pressed into his palm. Ernest was amazed that the sensation of this very thin and extremely heavy object could produce the unpleasant feeling of disgust mixed with fear.

One of the local men suggested we throw it into the swollen Boreas River. No one knew anything about the dead Abenaki, except that “he came from the north.” These thin, very heavy discs (made from a metal which is not of this world) were identified by the locals as images of a divinity in certain regions of The Adirondack Mountains.

 

The Land of Akbar; Post #13 (Lady Hocksteader and the Crimmins’)

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Adirondacks, Aiden Lair, Arthur Schopenhauer, Chateaugay, Dictionnaire Philosophique, Dr. W. Seward Webb, False Smerdis, Galileo Galilei, George Boole, Gil Blas, Haslam, Hemingway, Henry Charles Bukowski, Hobbes, Human Agency, Lewis Elijah, Meinongism, Michael Faraday, Michael Foucault, monstrance, Nikola Tesla, Philosophical Dictionary, Quatrich, Roosevelt, Tactilism, The Crimmins, Theodosius Grygovych Dobzhansky, Voynich Manuscript

In 1959 events became more intense with the regard to The First Earth.

I recall one of the first of these with precise clarity and it seems that I perceived then something of its prophetic character. It happened in an apartment on Ely Park Boulevard, facing a high stand of trees which looked out toward a golf course. Lady Elizabeth Hocksteader had received several gifts from The First Earth. On her porch someone deposited several boxes with stamps identifying the source –First Earth – Sears Roebuck, Detroit, Michigan – Prepaid. Delicate objects emerged: Delft China from Utrecht and Crystal from Czechoslovakia covered with engraved horned fauna, and an urn made of Papier-mâché which was most amazing because it echoed the urn that was meant only for Jock Crimmins.

Of course – dear readers – – you must remember that it was in Albany where we met Jock Crimmins; he was the feature character several books ago. Jock was the great uncle of Josh, the common friend of Hemingway and myself. Josh Crimmins was the one who found a – gold-on-purple — cover of the Anglo-American Cyclopaedia in a bookshop in Utica, near the corner of Bleeker and Mohawk Streets. (The echoes continue to be heard and not seen.) Jock, unlike Josh, was the lead character in “Verdant Palaces.” The following will remind you of where and when he appeared;

Incredible as it may seem, there are certain punctilious men and women who act as a sort of “word police,” Chomsky not excluded. They will note, for example, that our hero Jock Crimmins, would have talked about an urn of ashes, not a vessel, and they will criticize (perhaps unfairly, perhaps not) the elimination of the word “savage” within the work.

Who knew about those ashes resting comfortably in an apparent hand-carved black walnut funeral urn? And who would have guessed that the urn sat in a darkened corner of New York State’s Assembly chamber?

And the most vicious fact of all was that the apparent hand-carved urn was really made of papier-mâché and painfully stained to look like black walnut. The only thing missing was a serpent winding here and there and a few words that challenged all translation. The leaves and ivy lent authentication to the fakery.

Oh yes. There was one other thing missing; the ashes.

It was a peculiar situation that someone, or some political body, had gone to the trouble of constructing a false urn, meticulously applying the faux patina, filling the urn with Jock’s ashes, and finally disposing of those ashes in such an untroubled manner.

And then at the end of “Verdant Palaces” we discover the narrator of the story.

There is only one remaining fact that must be cleared up. Jock in his final years asked me for one last favor. I was only too pleased to do whatever he asked. Therefore, I agreed before he had stated his wishes.

“Lewis” he said “since I have no family I wish for you to ensure that I am cremated upon my death.”

I wished not to speak about such things but he insisted on finishing his request.

“Within the chamber of the New York legislature you will find a burial urn, dark in color that mimics black walnut. There are several engravings, encryptions and designs upon the urn. Inside the urn are the ashes of Ave`. I wish you to mix my ashes with hers and deposit them upon the top of Catamount Mountain.”

It has been done.

Amongst the boxes and crates that were deposited on Lady Hocksteaders porch was – with perceptible and tenuous tremor – a metal case that vibrated mysteriously. Lady Elizabeth recoiled. The metal case was oblong in shape; the letters around its edge corresponded to one of the alphabets of The First Earth. This was the first infringement of this fantastic world into our world of reality.

 I was uneasy by the stroke of chance which made me witness a second intrusion as well.

 

The Land of Akbar; Post #12 (Gil Blas and Dr. Webb)

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Adirondacks, Aiden Lair, Arthur Schopenhauer, Dictionnaire Philosophique, Dr. W. Seward Webb, False Smerdis, Galileo Galilei, George Boole, Gil Blas, Haslam, Hemingway, Henry Charles Bukowski, Hobbes, Human Agency, Meinongism, Michael Faraday, Michael Foucault, monstrance, Nikola Tesla, Philosophical Dictionary, Quatrich, Roosevelt, Tactilism, Theodosius Grygovych Dobzhansky, Voynich Manuscript

So many things have happened — since the blind beggar died in the doorway and kept reappearing according to some occult schedule — I shall do no more than recall them here.

In April of 1941 a letter was discovered by Gunnery Sargent First Class Gil Blas. It had been left in a book found in the Wead Library located in Malone, NY. The letter belonged to Dr. W. Seward Webb. The envelope bore a cancellation from Plattsburgh. It completely illuminated the mystery of The First Earth. Its text corroborated the hypotheses of the ghost town of Goldsmith; which existed on a parallel time-plane to the ghost planet of The First Earth.

One night in Old Forge or possibly in Raquette Lake, in the early nineteenth century of the negative 29^th millennia, the splendid History of the First Earth had its beginning. A secret and compassionate society (amongst whose members were Old Man Phelps, and later, Reverend Sabattis) arose to invent The First Earth. Its vague initial program included studies in fuzzy logic, the philanthropy of the indigent and the cabala of Albany, NY. From this period dates the curious book of Gronk.

After forty years of secret caucuses and untimely unifications it was understood that this singular group was not enough to give coherent form to a planet. They resolved that each of them should select a devote apprentice who would continue his work. This arrangement succeeded. After an interval of two centuries the persecuted fraternity sprang up again in Oneida County. In the negative eighteenth century, -1824, in Holland Patent, one of its affiliates conferred with The Magnificent Abstainer, politician Sir Mario DeLaComi. He, rather condescendingly, spoke and laughed at the originators’ plan and its simple scale. He told the representatives that in New York it was absurd to invent a state and proposed the invention of a planet. To this magnificent idea he added another, a product of his own skepticism, that of keeping the enormous enterprise under wraps until after the next election.

At that time the first organization of the Daughters of the American Revolution was forming.  DeLaComi suggested that a meticulous philosophical tome of the illusory planet be composed. He was to leave them his promises of gold, his polluted rivers, his forested lands roamed by incubus and succubus, his gnomes, his houses of ill repute and his US dollars, on one condition: “The work will make no pact with the impostor of Aiden Lair, Theodore Roosevelt, or any other Roosevelt.”

DeLaComi did not believe in political philosophy but he wanted to demonstrate to this nonexistent study group that mortal man was capable of fooling a world. DeLaComi was eventually shot; however, only in the day dreams of a majority of his constituents. In the following year the society delivered to its collaborators, then reaching some three hundred in number, the last volume of the First Philosophical dictionary of The First Earth.

The edition was a secret one; its forty volumes (the vastest undertaking ever carried out by man) would be the basis for another more detailed edition, written not in English but in one of the languages of the western hemisphere – with a hint of an accent from the eastern hemisphere. It was a linguistic nightmare; the beauty of the harmonics within the polynomials was mixed with spasms of a guteral series of numbers in the factorial. This revision, of an illusory world, was called, provisionally, New Amsterdam and one of its modest contributors was Dr. W. Seward Webb, whether as an agent of Gunnery Sargent First Class Gil Blas or as an affiliate, we do not know. His having received a copy of the Eleventh Volume would seem to favor the latter assumption.

But what about the others?

 

JOHN BESSAC IN CADIZ, SPAIN

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Alain Rene Le Sage, Barte, Bordeaux, Cadiz, Cadiz Hospital, Dr. Sangrado, Gil Blas, Lab fire, Oporto

John was directed, by who we do not know, to accompany his older brother Rufus to Spain. Rufus was to study medicine in the largest hospital in Europe which was located in Cadiz.

The Old Cadiz Hospital; Circa 1700's

Young John Bessac’s job was to observe the general techniques of surgery and learn the basic treatment of diseases.

While Rufus was studying surgery and medicine John was involving himself with the high society found in Cadiz. He also found time to study chemistry and read dissertations on medicine. The brothers of his religious organization in France had suggested that he obtain and read a copy of Don Quixotte, which he did.

Apparently John Bessac had been reading Alain Rene Le Sage’s “Gil Blas and Dr. Sangrado.”  Whenever he spoke of reading the dissertations on medicine he would laugh. He said he would prefer the benefits of Dr. Sangrado’s invariable “bleeding and potations of warm water” over some of the cures found in those dissertations.

Alain Rene Le Sage courtesy of Wikipedia

An Explanation of Dr. Sangrado

John Bessac had been in Cadiz less than a year when his brother Rufus suddenly died. He had contracted a contagious disease while caring for patients in the hospital. John, at about the same time period, had severely burned his hands and face in a laboratory experiment. A young lad had accidentally broken a large bulbous glass vessel full of spirits which caught fire from a nearby alcohol lamp. John Bessac had saved the young man’s life.

John, with bandaged hands wrote a letter to his mother explaining Rufus’ death and his own misfortune in the lab. With that done he buried himself in the study of surgery. This seemed to give him some relief from the loss of his brother.

He continued with his studies for some time before receiving a response from his mother. She begged him to leave the hospital before he, too, would come down with a contagious malady. The hospital was always over crowded with patients having all sorts of strange illnesses. John, after some thought, decided to pack his belongings and head home. He bid his friends in Cadiz goodbye and arrived in Bordeaux two weeks later.

Cadiz Waterfront

 John would have arrived sooner but had, by chance, met his old friend Barte in Oporto. They spent a week there before heading for Bordeaux. Upon arriving at Bordeaux they sent their luggage on to Cahors and walked the remainder of the way home.

John was relieved to finally be at home with his mother, father and brothers.