Author: flyagaric23

Canto LXVI Hyperlinked

By Steven James Pratt

Throughout the Tale of the Tribe class hosted by the maybelogic Academy and led by Dr. Robert Anton Wilson, the group focused on two major texts: The Cantos of Ezra Pound and “Finnegans Wake” of James Joyce.

During the class I would copy/paste images and hyperlinks to highlight fragments from these two texts, this process gave me the general impression that the communications within FW and Pound’s Cantos were compressed and enfolded, CONDENSED, enfolded like an MP3 data-file is enfolded in some sense. I soon discovered that with sufficient attention and magnification utilizing various internet-tools provided FREE at the World Wide Web a much richer and wholesome technicoloured image emerged.

My advice to the brave independent scholar and revolutionary poet tackling arguably two of the most difficult and iconoclastic texts of the 20th century is, first check your posture and breathing and remember your critical water consumption, next begin meditation upon the immediate relationship between the individual and the state. Locating yourself in space/time, geographically, genetically and temporally will ease the initial shock from this meditation. The internet has many FREE tools to help facilitate this process. Use them wisely. Find out for yourself using your own nervous system where and when you are and meditate upon the distinctions between your internal states of mind and the external states mediated by governments, rule of law etc. What distinguishes them from one another?

“By internal disarmament I mean ridding ourselves of all the negative emotions that result in violence. External disarmament will also have to be done gradually, step by step. We must first work on the total abolishment of nuclear weapons and gradually work up to total demilitarisation throughout the world. – Dali Lama, Millenium Message.

As your non-simultaneously interacting nervous-system remains approximately the most accurate and reliable research instrument immediately available to make approx. observations, aim them well and USE the force, use them again and again paying close attention to SYNCHRONICITY and DEJA VU when it manifests. Keep notes. When you set-sail with J.J, EZ and RAW. Keep notes. Start writing if you have not already. If you can enter into these word worlds with an open, cheerful, playful sensibility and remain undaunted by strange KNU languages and KNU-oriented representations you may find personally verifiable nodal-CLUSTERS of meaning. Today nearly a year later i’m thinking about what this means to me reality tunnel systems and how i’m going to communicate them to others?

The personal synchronistic effects i have experienced during and after the official ending of the TOTT class have become further evidence, and relative-proof that there is another kind of mind at work in the universe, different to the predictable and causal ONE i was familiar with – the ONE left over from the dark ages of my Newtonian youth. One may distill the concept of Mindedness in nature as being equally opposite to the idea of mechanical causality running like a chem-trail through many of RAW’s Essays, books and teaching tools. Finnegans Wake and The Cantos seem to be minded, that is to say they exhibit mind-like phenomena, sort of non-local information transfer through time/space. The resulting weird effects seem incomprehensible when rationalized by conventional two-valued: cause and effect logical deductions. The synchronistic phenomena sometimes have the qualities of a kind of Magic, sometimes moderate telenoia and sometimes ecstasy depending upon your immediate state of mind. Morpho-genetic theory, as described by Rupert Sheldrake has sufficient space/time IMHO for an adequate scientific proposition capable of propagating nonlocal signals, and therefore to begin constructing better interfacing maps within the scientific community at large and the public. Magikal theories and other mystical schools and traditions have also provided a sufficient foundation for this kind of non-local information transfer and occult interfacing with the sentience of nature. RAW has written extensively upon these Arcane subjects and i recommend consulting his wonderful mixture of science and mysticism for a complete world view of these vast areas human experience. My own presentation here is a collection of personal observations and experiences expressed through deep contemplation upon just three meaningful synchronistic encounters [word/poem/messages] within Pound’s Cantos and one [word/poem/message] from the Joyce’s Wake. In this particular introduction i’ll focus upon Ezra Pound’s Canto LXVI. Details of more of my encounters with Joycean synchronicity can be found HERE But what does IT ALL mean?

In August of 2005 i discovered the name of the town where your present author lives; (Stourbridge) on page 184. As has been the case with many British derived word/names there is also a sister/brother town called Sturbridge in Massachusetts, New England, United States of America. It was First settled in 1729 and officially incorporated in 1738 E.V. Today the Rotary Clubs of Stourbridge and Sturbridge are twinned and regularly visit each other. Here is the Joycean cluster around Stourbridge:

“Of course our low hero was a self valeter by choice of need so
up he got up whatever is meant by a stourbridge clay
kitchenette and lithargogalenu fowlhouse for the sake of akes (the
umpple does not fall very far from the dumpertree)”
– Finnegans Wake, part 1, Episode 6. Page 184

A Lithargogalenu maybe derived from the greek lithargyros: a monoxide of lead ore, dross left after smelting lead. What on earth does this mean to me? and to others? Furthermore, genealogically i have discovered that there are various conjunctions of the present authors own surname “Pratt”, in the encyclopedic text of FW although it appears compounded within other word/poems. I soon began to sit up, wipe my red-oogles and play more attention to cynchronistic events. After all, is not some fun and excitement about reading litharicher involved with imagining yourself as the protagonist-anntagonist?

A slightly less significant synchronicity but well worth mentioning is that my Christian name is Steven and my middle name James. Made slightly more meaningful within the context of RAW’s 1988 book, and TOTT textbook: COINCIDANCE A head test. where he writes on page 5:

“When Joyce feared that he might die without finishing “Finnegans Wake”, he selected James Stephens to complete it, not on any literary grounds per se, but because Stephens had been born on the same day as Joyce (2 february 1882) and in the same city (Dublin) – and also because Stephens has the same first name as Joyce (James) and had a last name which differed by only one letter from the first name of Stephen Dedalus, Joyce’s self-caricature in A Portrait of the Artist as a young man and Ulysses” – http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/wilsonra/codance.htm

Seventeen days ago, (Artemis 4, 84 p.s.U) while reading the Cantos for a third time i stumbled across Stourbridge in Canto LXVI! What the bloody hell is going on – i thought to meself. What does IT ALL mean? These texts really do seem to behave like minded oracles of some sort? (shut up steven, a voice says, its just meaningless coincidence you silly stouwner.)

“and i went in a post chaise
Woburn Farm, Stowe, Stratford
Stourbridge, Woodstock, High Wycombe and back to
Grosvenor Sq” – Canto LXVI, line 30, Page 380.

After some Googling through Bogipedia and traditional book worming, i discovered the diaries of John Adams and that he once visited England in 1886. He must have stopped off in Stourbridge at some point? maybe to pick up some groceries? I thought it strange that i had not heard word of this visit by the 2nd American president to Stourbridge in my 26 years of living here? It appears from his diaries that JA visited Stratford, Birmingham and Worcestershire also while on cultural exchange trips. The historical fact that John Adams: 2nd president of the United States of America, was impressed enough to write beautiful verse about Stourbridge interests me deeply as a lover of poetry and writing, and this geographical seal provides a kind of space/time portal of discovery for those who wish to look, and a centralized pivot for this essay: locating the epic poem of EZ into both my internal and external experience while asking the question what does IT ALL mean? Has anybody else noticed the changes in the wind recently? MIFOS

Another synchronicity that struck me within Pound’s Canto LXVI, is the inclusion of the name/label “Dudley”, which just so happily happens to be the name of the Metropolitan Borough in which i presently reside, and that poetically swallowed up Stourbridge into its belly back in 1974 (54 p.s.U). Before this date Stourbridge was incorporated into the ancient parish of Oldswinford. DUDLEY Metropolitan Borough is presently the 2nd most populated “Town” in the United Kingdom and still mushrooming (2006). After research into this i discovered that Pound was probably referring to William Wade Dudley (1842-1909); a soldier in the American civil war, lawyer, government official, Republican campaigner and suspected “crooked” electioneer. Damn, i thought he meant the brute with the castles and the land named after him. However upon further meditation over time here in Dudley Metropolitan Borough, reading the papers and observing the political landscape, it occurred to me in an epiphany! that W.W Dudley shares some characteristic traits with the local lineage of historical “Dudley’s” in England: a beautiful garden. Another name for the compounded regions around Dudley used more colloquially is The Black Country, so named according to Occult folk-lore because of the huwdge phalanx of toxic pollutants and super-toxicating by-product waste MATERIAL from our 18-20th century industrialization revolution. What i interpret through the gloss of a gloss of the Cantos to be the experimental exploitation of what is naturally abundant in nature such as water, gas, oil, vegetation and minerals such as coke – (the carbonaceous residue of low-sulfur bituminous coal, not coca-cola for Christ’s sake).

” this 41st section repeals MAGNA
CHARTA the 19th chapter
as follows the words: NO FREEMAN…to… by his peers
and the law of the land
Whereon said Lord Coke, speaking of Empson and Dudley,
the end of these two oppressors
shd/ deter others from continuing the like
– Canto LXVI, Page 384

Lord Coke (1552-1634), the colonial entrepreneur and jurist appears in Pound’s “Tale of the tribe” as a heroic entity, a whispering ghost that provides a clear exhibit of a mind in history that Pound can anchor his pirate-shipoem to. Ply over ply. The fact that the word “coke” and the word “Dudley” are seperated by only 4 words in Canto LXVI has dual meanings for my own Blacked Country perception of the Cantos in 2006. (if you ask me there seems to be a conservative neo-liberal labour virus sucking up our common welfare and distributing it to private interests around these shires). And so i have Lord Coke in one sense within my internal “Cantos” matrix, and then, secondly i have the carbonaceous fuel called coke within my immediate external Cantos matrix. But what in the Dickens does this mean and what is to be done?

“A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving”. – Lao Zi

Right at the end of Canto LXVI yet another word/poem jumped out at me like Smeagol from behind my geographically self-centered tree of knowledge. Shires appears on the last but one line of the poem as if making sure i’m a well hooked fly. The fossilized poem “shires” is often used to identify many rural areas in England, Australia and America i.e Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Staffordshire, Yorkshire, Cambridgeshire etc. Readers of J.R.R Tolkien, will be familiar with the Shires and their more traditional context within his imaginative tales. From Tolkien’s fantastical glossing and recent cinematic distribution around the whole planet – we can globally perceive how the industrial revolution and industrial expansion programers and “city-planners” have affected the traditional, pre-industrialized rural dwellings of earth. A scenic testament to the country shires once blooming everyware with their wealth of natural abundance. For me LOTR became a great poem animated into moving pictures that had a geographical significance to some of my own sensations within the shires. Pound’s Cantos also perceive and administer this relationship between mankind and Nature, but in a different way, albeit with a more metaphysical-like, imagist-like, ideogram-like technique of representation. By brilliantly harpooning various fragments from many different cultures, often rare and bloody notes collected from the ruble around him, Pound brews up a swirling cloud of exhibits that process and enact the pushing and pulling literary vortex created from turning polarities such as mankind and nature, villain and hero, individual and State, poetry and history, individual anarchism and group totalitarianism? and so on and so fourth.

Shire can mean province, district, or region, yet i detect some added spice, maybe from some pipe-smoking Hobbit; that evokes pastoral valleys of snot velvet, vegetation bursting like a billion fountains of light, looking glass landscapes, furry rivers etc. maybe together with a little more imagination, we can evoke GAIA herself – the great Earth mother? Remember that the pitching of two concepts against each other such as Self/state, mankind/nature is limited by being constricted into a two-valued logic sty. Joyce and Pound are both masters of casting thousands of shades and subtle tones in their epic poetry that shatter any two valued conclusions of certainty and introduce 3, 4 and more logic systems of value vortexts that twist and turn like our DNA structures, reflecting and interacting with the reader like astrological forces, changing as cycles unwind cosmically aligned somehow MIFOS? Girodano Bruno provided much original thinking about this. The “hologramic” process appears wonderfully well detonated within Dr. Wilson’s book: “Coincidance. A head test.” He sometimes calls this phenomena “Holographic prose” but it often escapes identification itself because of ubiquitous presence. Perhaps similar to the ubiquitous presence of consciousness, that fullness of the woid, the optimism within dark matter? Wilson, very much like Joyce and Pound, and often paying exquisite tribute to them explicitly, has incorporated vast amounts of illuminated historical details using his own methodological historicism – his holognomic method and writing to the Universe.

“By another clause (in our Charter)
that the great and general court or assembly
shd/ have power
to erect judicatories courts of record
and other courts
to determine pleas processes plaints actions etc
whereby a law (2 William III) have established etc
and in Edward IV this Beauchamps commission
was, for the uncertainty, VOID
By letters patent and under great seal
in all shires, counties palatine and in Wales
and any other dominions
– Canto LXVI, line?, Page 386.

The following HYPERTEXT exhibit of Canto LXVI is presented to inspire and spark others to discover for themselves the integrated relationships in their local and non-local environments. Also, as i have been turned on to the poetry of Ezra Pound and James Joyce in particular, through studying at TOTT i wish to pass on this advise for better processing in the 21st century. At the same time the writing process i experienced through this essay facilitates my own relative truth-seeking and my own ploughing for verifiable evidence of non-local transfer of meaningful information operating backwards and forwards throughout time-space. Blueprints for my own time-machine. MIFOS?

Could not let us bring their sugar to Europe
wd/ lessen the number of french and of Spanish
seamen
Generally rode twice a day till made master
of this curiopus forest (Bois de Boulogne)
view of Issy and castle of Meudon
game is not very plentiful. Dined at Amiens
put up at Abbeville. Dover view. Mr Johnson
Gt Tower hill who informs me
that a vessel with one thousand hogshead of tobacco
is passed by the Channel from Congress
to Messrs Willinicks 27 Oct ’83
Hague June 22, ’84
So there is no drop not American in me
Aye we have noticed that said the Ambassador
Sends to Morocco no marine stores
sends ’em glaces and other things of rich value
Said Lord Carmarthen wd/ present me
but that i shd/ do business with Mr Pitt very often
Posts not surrendered
are Preq’isle, Sandusky etc
Detroit Michilimakinac
St JosephSt Mary’s
| daughter married less prudently
and they were thinking of sending her to America
Presented
Mr Hamilton to the Queen at the drawing room
Mr Jefferson
and i went in a post chaise
Woburn Farm,Stowe, Stratford
Stourbridge, Woodstock, High Wycombe and back to
Grosvenor Sq
A national debt of
274 million stg
accumulated by jobs contracts salaries pensions in
the course of a century
might easily produce all this magnificence
Pope’s pavilion and Thompson’s seat made the excursion
Poetic
Shenstone‘s the most rural of all
19th, Wednesday, anniversary of the battle of Lexington
and of my reception in Holland
which latter is considered of no importance
to view the seat of the banker child
three houses, in fact, round and square
blowing roses, ripe strawberries plums cherries etc
deer sheep wood doves guinea-hens peacocks etc
Dr Grey speaks very lightly of Buffon
Mr H. prefers the architecture of this house because it
reminds him of Palladio
windows with mahogany columns
three are two stoves but at neither of them
could a student be comfortable in cold weather

July 18th, yesterday, moved all the grass to Stony Hill field
this day my new barn was raised
their songs never more various than this morning
Corn by two sorts of worm
Hessian fly menaces wheat
Where T. has been trimming red cedars
Otis full of election: Henry, Jefferson, Burr
T. cutting trees and leaves of white oaks
To barely and black grass at the beach
said one thing wd/ make Rhode Islandunanimous
–meaning funding–
They wanted Hamilton for vice president
I said nothing.
WHERETOWARD THE ARGUMENTS HAD BEEN
as renouncing the transactions of Runing Meade

Prince of Orange, King William by the people
that their rights be inviolable
which drove out James Second…IS still active.
Nothing less than this seems to have been meditated for us
by somebody or other in Britain
reprinted by Thos. Hollis
OB PECUNIAE SCARSITATEM
this act, the stamp act, wd/ drain cash out of the country
and is, further, UNconstitutional
yr/ humanity counterfeit
yr/ liberty cankered with simulation
Earl Clarendon to Bill Pym in the Baastun Gazette
Jan 17th 1 7 6 8
Danegold emptied the land of coin
what are powers of these new admiralty courts in America
per pares et legem terrae
is there any grand jury to bring an indictment
to find presentments
any petit for fact
IS this trial per legem terrae
or by Institutes Digests Roman?
Become attentive to their liberties
counties, towns, private clubs and sodalities
most accurate judgement
about the real constitution
which is not of wind and weather
what is said there
is rather a character
than a true

ching
ming

definition. It is a just observation.
Jury answers questions of fact
thus regarding the subject…
pompous rituals theatrical ceremonies
so successfully used to
delude to terrify men out of virtue and liberty
Elizabeth tried, James First put out Goodwin
and the commons reversed it
(London Chronicle)
By this course, said one member, free election is taken away
common rights our ancestors have left us
By this course, said another, the Chancellor
could call a parliament of only such as he please
After repeal of American Stamp Act
we have mortification to see one act of Parliament after
another,
money collecting from us continually without our consent
by an authority
in the constitution of which we have no share
and see the little coin that remained among us
transmitted to distance
with no hope of return
RESOLUTION to maintain duty and loyalty to our sovreign
and to Parliament as legislative in all cases of necessity
to preserve the Empire as a whole
17 June, 1768
Instructions to Braintree’srepresentatives
We mean by 6th Anne chap. xxxvii section 9
IT IS ENACTED
no mariner
be retained on any privateer ship or vessel
in any part of America… be impressed on any ship of
Her Majesty’s any time after St Valentine’s day 1707
on pain of L 20. per man
Small field pieces happened, said Governor Hutchinson,
to point at the door of the Court House [Pg. 383]

To the Hnbl James Otis and Thos Cushing Esquires
Mr Sam Adams and John Hancock Esquire
;;;;……demands tr
fortitude virtue and wisdom
to remove anything that may appear to awe or intimidate
late attack flagrant and formal
on the constitution itself
and the immunities of our charters
Unnecessary to repeat our known sentiments on the revenue
this 41st section repeals MAGNA
CHARTA the 19th chapter
as follows the words: NO FREEMAN…to… by his peers
and the law of the land
Whereon said Lord Coke, speaking of Empson and Dudley,
the end of these two oppressors
shd/ deter others from continuing the like
and they bring not in the absolute and partial trials by direction
…by every legal measure, sirs, we recommend you…
Natural tendency of the legal profession to side with authority
freeholders and other inhabitants (Cambridge 21st December. ’72
constitutional
means the redress…natural rights…charter right
money extorted from us, appropriated to the augmentation of
burdens upon us
independent of grants of our commons.
attest
Andrew Boardman town clerk
Judges salaries shd/ be independent both of the king
and of the people
great danger if commission hang upon either
a civil commission gives no new powers
tyranny in them to assume it
common lay of England, BIRTHRIGHT of every man here
and at home
‘not look on my self as in a state of nature
and is pity that other man shd/’
Wm Brattle
It is the wish of almost all good men, replied Adams
that what Brattle states were good law.
But from Edward First’s time to the present letters patent
are otherwise worded
sic: beneplacitu nostro
Ad regis nutum duratura
says Fortescue
chancellor
will it be shown that by ‘ judges ‘ Genl Brattle
means barons of Exchequer
custos rotolorum and clerk of the peace
were created by statue not erected by common law
Sir Edward Coke, who being in King’s displeasure,
was removed from his place by writ of the king
reciting that whereas etc

…appointed to desist from…
timid jurors and judges who held during pleasure
never failed to second the views of the Crown
he, James Second, was obliged before he brought Hales’ case
to displace 4 of his judges
By concerts between King james and Sir Edward…
his coachman was employed to bring action…
Jones had the integrity to tell the king to his face
that he might make 12 judges but wd/ scarce find 12 lawyers
of his opinion.
‘wishing genl Brattle success in his researches ‘
J Adams
By another clause (in our Charter)
that the great and general court or assembly
shd/ have power
to erect judicatories courts of record
and other courts
to determine please processes plaints actions etc
whereby a law (2 William III) have established etc
and in Edward IV this Beauchamps commission
was, for the uncertainty, VOID
By letters patent and under great seal
in all shires, counties palatine and in Wales
and any other dominions

To conclude, I wish to highlight (see above) the positive attributes of historical revisionism as a tool through which poetry becomes a portal for Trippy Cultural Group Archeology. I have found that History observed through the lens of picture/poems, ideograms and song has a structural bond with which to correspond processes in biological nature with rhetorical processes within history. This leads to enacting singing processes, dancing processes, shouting processes – The tale of the tribe. Start writing your own and make it new.

(DJ fly agaric 23)
Steven James Pratt
Wordsley, United Kingdom