I said hello. Can you hear me, Joe?

Back in November 2023, I posted “Read my lips: no new syncs,” calling a moratorium which was almost immediately violated by Tim, who required that I be asleep in order to deliver his message and accomplished this by chanting “Sleep now, O sleep now” until I obliged.

In my “no new syncs” post, I included this page from Dr. Seuss:

William Wright, who had been on the point of proposing a female identity for my sync fairies, saw Tim as an impostor and identified him with Saruman and with the wire-cutting mouse.

This year, on Joan’s Day, William revealed that he had also been planning on identifying Joan when things were interrupted by Tim.

A few days ago, I posted a dialogue from a textbook which begins with Joan saying, “Joe! Joe! JOE! Hello?” She wants Joe to wake up and go to the window to see the snow, but Joe wants to sleep. I tied this in with a scene from Help! in which the baddies call Ringo on his black telephone and chant, “Go to the window. Go to the window.”

Here’s the page immediately preceding the one I posted in November:

Fourth Down

I’m not actually all that clear on what a “fourth down” is in football terms (don’t tell my Cousin Lou!), but it’s the name of one of my uncle’s songs, which I quoted recently because it name-drops William Butler Yeats:

I sent my Butler to the Land of Ire

To bring me back some Yeast

Because I needed to bake some bread

For my wedding feast.

He came back empty-handed,

And I thought my heart would break

When he told me he’d been robbed

By a bandit named Billy Blake.

That postponed my wedding,

And I had to shed a tear,

Then locked myself in the bathroom

So I could shake my spear.

And then the chorus:

Drown my head in water.

Lay it on the chopping block.

You can turn that oil up hotter

Cause I’m singing, but I ain’t gonna talk.

I had quoted the first lines earlier in connection with The Tarot by Richard Cavendish, which has a portrait of Yeats in it. Today I started reading it. On p. 15, Cavendish mentions that some packs of cards, both Tarot and ordinary playing cards, have portrayed the court cards as historical figures. The first he mentions is Shakespeare (Jack of Diamonds in an 1879 German pack), and another is “La Hire . . . a supporter of Joan of Arc,” whose name is used by the French to this day as a nickname for the Jack of Hearts.

I looked up La Hire. His nom de guerre is believed to have come from the English word ire, with reference to the wrath of God. (Note that as far back as 2016 I had connected the name Claire with the divine ire.)

“Fourth Down” references both Shakespeare (apparently as a euphemism for masturbation!) and the Land of Ire. The chorus is about how torture will make him sing but not talk. I recently quoted Rimbaud saying, just after a Joan of Arc reference, “I am of the race that sang under torture.”

The arrow through the window

I found this in my Drafts folder, last modified September 20, 2021, with the title “The second baptism.” I post it now, unfinished, for synchromystic reasons.

My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof!

Elijah said unto Elisha, "Ask what I shall do for thee, before I be taken away from thee."

And Elisha said, "I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me."

And he said, "Thou hast asked a hard thing."

-- 2 Kings 2:9-10

But Jesus said unto them, "Ye know not what ye ask: can ye drink of the cup that I drink of? and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?"

And they said unto him, "We can."

And Jesus said unto them, "Ye shall indeed." 

-- Mark 10:38-39

John answered, saying unto them all, "I indeed baptize you with water; but one mightier than I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire: whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and will gather the wheat into his garner; but the chaff he will burn with fire unquenchable."

-- Luke 3:16-17

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The prophet John promised a baptism "with the Holy Ghost and with fire" and implicitly identified Jesus as the one who would perform it. I suppose orthodox opinion would connect this prophecy with the extraordinary manifestations that took place at the feast of Pentecost six months after Jesus' death, when "there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost" (Acts 2:3-4).

What did John have in mind, though? What could "Holy Ghost" even have meant to a pre-Christian? Well, ghost, spirit, and wind are all the same word in the original Greek, and the very next thing John says is "whose fan is in his hand." A holy wind to separate the wheat from the chaff, and then a fire to burn up the latter. (For what it's worth, a "rushing mighty wind" also figures in the Pentecost story.)

Wind and fire call to mind Elijah, carried away in a whirlwind of flame, and in fact John, in promising a fire to come after him, may have been thinking of his role (denied by himself but affirmed by Jesus) as the apocalyptic second coming of Elijah.

For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings . . . . Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord" (Mal. 4:1-2, 5).

As John has it, the fire is only for the "chaff," but Malachi and Acts tell a different story. For Malachi, the same fiery Sun that burns up the wicked will heal the righteous. The Christians at Pentecost were engulfed in flames but not consumed. The fire is universal; what differs is how people are affected by it.

"Ye shall conceive chaff, ye shall bring forth stubble: your breath, as fire, shall devour you. . . .Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings? He that walketh righteously, and speaketh uprightly" (Isa. 33:11, 14-15). Breath, in Hebrew as in Greek, is the same word as wind or spirit. For Isaiah, too, the righteous are not spared the fire but are able to live in it. As some old writer cited only as J. Spencer once put it, "Such is the condition of all God's children, . . . true salamanders, that live best in the furnace." (Fellow Mormons can likely guess how I happen to know that quote!)

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When Elisha was on his deathbed (2 Kgs. 13), the king of Israel came to him and, through streaming tears and with trembling voice, repeated the words Elisha had uttered long before, at the assumption of Elijah: "O my father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof." Did he think this magic formula would call down the flaming whirlwind of God? Did he see something Elisha didn't? At any rate, no manifestation was forthcoming.

Elisha did not immediately respond, but then -- "Take bow and arrows," he said. "Put thine hand upon the bow, open the window eastward, and shoot."

The king did so.

"The arrow of the Lord's deliverance," breathed Elisha -- and though later writers were to embellish the scene, those were his last words.

They buried him. No whirlwind, no chariot of fire, no flaming horsemen. Another generation passes, and a little more magic passes from the world. "Man is in love and loves what vanishes, / What more is there to say?"

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Jehanne Darc's surname evolved, after her death, into d'Arc -- "of Arc," that is, "of the Bow." A friend sent me the section on Joan of Arc from The Saint Book by Mary Reed Newland. It ends thus:

The pyre, unusually high so all could see, prevented the executioner from giving the customary coup de grâce to shorten her suffering and as the flames rose she cried, "Jesus, Jesus." An English soldier swore that he saw a white bird rise up out of the flames. He stood transfixed until his companions led him away.

What did the white bird mean? Was it her spirit leaving her body, in bird form like an Egyptian ba? No, it was the Dove, and its meaning was that here was another baptism like that of Jesus, but this time by fire. Its implicit message, delivered in the age-old language of signa ex avibus, was, "This is my beloved daughter, in whom I am well pleased, in whom I have glorified my name." (Does that parallel strike you as blasphemous? But why should it? Do you really think Jesus never intended for anyone to follow him?)

The original Dove that flew over Jesus' baptismal waters echoed the dove of Noah flying over the flooded earth. After the Flood, the rainbow -- l'arc-en-ciel, the arc in heaven -- was given as a sign that the earth would never again be flooded. Because, according to later tradition, the next Deluge would not be water but fire. What can survive a deluge? Only an ark. Is it a coincidence that Jeanne d'Arc

And there the draft ends. I would complete it now, but the thing is gone from me.

Just how far did Hinbad and Rinbad travel?

William Wright has persuaded me to take my recent nonsense poem “With?” more seriously than the spirit in which it was written. I mean, why not? Nonsense writing has long been recognized as a modality of inspiration.

Hinbad the Hailer traveled far

By riding in a yellow car.

I wrote this with no deeper thought in mind than that a “hailer” could be someone who hails a cab. Reading it now with my interpreter’s spectacles on, though, I can scarcely believe I wrote it without noticing a second meaning. Who traveled far in a yellow car? Who but Elijah, who ascended to heaven in a chariot of fire?

The j, pronounced as y in Hebrew, is not really a distinct sound from the adjoining i, which is why it is omitted in the Greek form of the name, Elias (which even begins with an H in Greek). Notice anything about the title Hailer? Try spelling it backwards.

Where does Hinbad the Hailer go? “Outside,” presumably, the same place Joan goes to make her snowball. Europa?

Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? or hast thou seen the treasures of the hail, which I have reserved against the time of trouble, against the day of battle and war? (Job 38:22-23)

There may also be a link to the One Mighty and Strong:

Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and strong one, which as a tempest of hail and a destroying storm, as a flood of mighty waters overflowing, shall cast down to the earth with the hand (Isa. 28:2).

The ice must flow! And doesn’t “cast down to the earth with the hand” sound like throwing a snowball?

If a Hailer takes a cab, a Railer must take a train, which was all I had in mind with the next couplet:

Rinbad the Railer, in a sleeper,

Traveled just as far, and cheaper.

Doesn’t that suggest someone who goes as far as Elijah, not in a spacecraft but simply by dreaming true? Perhaps a certain “Lucid Dreamer of Faery” whose middle initials were R. R. and who put his dreams in the mouth of a character called Ramer?

There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification.

What shall we do with the drinking salesman late in the morning?

I read The Drunken Boat, which is bound together with Rimbaud’s most famous work, A Season in Hell. (Incidentally, Rimbaud is basically pronounced as rainbow. I think Nabokov has a joke about that somewhere. The Sylvester Stallone character Rambo is also named after him.) This stanza’s reference to “islands” in outer space caught my eye:

I’ve seen sidereal archipelagos! Islands

Whose delirious skies open for wanderers:

“Is it in such bottomless nights you sleep, exiled,

O countless golden birds, O Force to come?”

I haven’t read A Season in Hell yet, but I did find this:

In cities, suddenly, the mud seemed red and black like a mirror when the lamp moves about in the adjoining room, like a treasure in the forest! Good luck,I cried, and I saw a sea of flames and smoke in the sky; to the right, to the left all the riches of the world flaming like a billion thunder-bolts.

But to me debauch and the comradeship of women were denied. Not even a companion. I saw myself before infuriated mobs, facing the firing-squad, weeping out of pity for the evil they could not understand, and forgiving! — Like Jeanne d’Arc! — “Priests, professors, masters, you are making a mistake in turning me over to the law. I have never belonged to this people; I have never been a Christian; I am of the race that sang under torture; laws I have never understood; I have no moral sense, I am a brute: you are making a mistake.”

I’ll stop there, since the next paragraph uses the nigger word six times in four lines, and I wouldn’t want to invite the wrath of Google. I may not have much more moral sense than Rimbaud, but I at least understand that you never ever say or write the nigger word, not even when quoting a dead French poet who used the nigger word, not even if he was using it metaphorically and without reference to actual niggers. Even one nigger word would be reckless; six nigger words in one paragraph would be inviting a calamity on the scale of the Night of a Thousand Shits from South Park.

But I digress.

Joan’s snowball, combined with A Season in Hell, made me think of the TMBG song “Snowball in Hell”:

I had forgotten that it includes this line:

I didn’t expect to find a salesman drinking coffee this late in the morning. How long you been here, Joe?

The reference to the drunken (drinking) sailor (salesman) early (late) in the morning is surely intentional. Coffee is something people drink to wake up, and of course the salesman’s name is Joe!

Joan: Look out the window. Come over to the window.

In his latest post, "Spelling Bee, Abseil, and Waiting for a Star to Fall," William Wright revisits his son's math homework in which he had to solve an anagram for "a spelling bee." He notes that the Scripps National Spelling Bee final coincided with Joan of Arc's feast day this year, and he also finds the Elvish word for "bow" (the weapon) hidden in the homework assignment. I left a comment pointing out that the French for "bow" is arc.

A few hours after reading that post, I taught a student who is working on improving his pronunciation. We use a book where each unit focuses on a particular sound and includes dialogues that use that sound a lot. Today's lesson was brought to you by the letter O -- or, rather, the phoneme /o/, the "long o" sound. You know what name includes that sound? Here's the dialogue from the book:

Joan woke up a few minutes ago, but Joe is still sleeping.

Joan: Joe! Joe! JOE! Hello!?

Joe: (groans) Oh, no. What's the problem?

Joan: Look out the window.

Joe: No. My eyes are closed, and I'm going back to sleep.

Joan: Don't go to sleep now, Joe. Come look at the snow.

Joe: Snow? It's only October. I know there's no snow. Leave me alone.

Joan: Come over to the window.

Joe: Stop joking, Joan. There's no snow.

Joan: OK, I'll show you. I'm going to put on my coat and go out and make a snowball and throw it at you! Then you'll open your eyes!

(If the first line of that dialogue made you think of the Garden of Eden, you might be a Mormon.)

The way Joan keeps trying to get Joe to go to the window made me think of a scene from the Beatles movie Help!, so I looked it up:

I haven't watched that movie since I was a kid, and I had forgotten that the scene also includes a bow. The Leo McKern character is trying to hypnotize Ringo (Japanese for "apple"; his real name, Richard Starkey, is also interesting) into approaching the window so that they can shoot him with an arrow that has a balloon full of red paint attached to it.

Joan's line "I'm going to put on my coat" also caught my eye, since the immediate context is William's blog, which is called Coat of Skins -- referring to the physical body. "I'm going to put on my coat" could mean something like "I'm going to assume physical form."

The baddies in Help! want to hit Ringo with red paint. Joan threatens to hit Joe with a snowball. Snow and red dye are connected in a famous passage in Isaiah: "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow."

Later, I thought I should go through all my 50-some posts tagged "Joan of Arc," but I got sidetracked by this one: "The Stadium Arcadium covers." There's lots of Eden symbolism there -- the bitten apple, the four rivers -- but what really caught my eye was this:

Here, Joan's coat of arms is juxtaposed with the words snow and arc ("bow"), and with two red swords (though Joan's own is white). Red weapons sync with the red-paint arrow in Help! and also with my comments in "Humpty Dumpty sat on the counter" about stained swords becoming bright as a symbol of repentance and redemption.

What shall we do with the drunken Railer?

For whatever reason, that ridiculous passage in Ulysses with its interminable list of chaps whose names and titles rhyme with Sinbad the Sailor -- the one I expanded on in my May 25 post "With?" -- has been on my mind these days. After posting "Yeats, Joan, and Claire" yesterday, I even looked up the French translation to confirm my assumption that the French version of Darkinbad the Brightdayler (Dark = d'Arc) would include clair. It does. The rest of the translation is pretty uninspired. Instead of finding lots of real words that rhyme with sailor, as Joyce does, the French just sticks the first letters from the English onto Sinbad le Marin, yielding Tinbad le Tarin, Whinbad le Wharin, etc. -- pure nonsense, lacking the charm of the tailors and whalers of the original. Only two (not counting the already anomalous Darkinbad) deviate from this schema. Minbad the Mailer becomes le Malin ("the wicked" or "the clever"), and Rinbad the Railer becomes le Rabbin ("the rabbi") -- which I think has retroactively made my own verse about Rinbad (who travels by train because he's cheap) antisemitic!

Due to that context -- Rinbad, sailors, French, translation -- a small book on one of my shelves caught my eye this morning: an English translation of The Drunken Boat by Arthur Rimbaud. I didn't have time to look at it, but I made a mental note to add it to my reading list.

Later, in the afternoon, I had to stop into a shop to buy something and was amazed to hear the background music they were playing: some kind of pop version of the sea shanty "Drunken Sailor." I couldn't make out most of the lyrics, not even enough to tell for sure what language they were in, but the tune was unmodified, and each verse still ended with the singers belting out "Ur-lie in the mor-ning!"

This obviously suggests a new way of adapting the Ulysses passage:

What shall we do with the shrunken sailor?

What shall we do with the trunken tailor?

What shall we do with the drunken jailer?

Ur-lie in the mor-ning!

What shall we do with the whunken whaler?

What shall we do with the nunken nailer?

What shall we do with the funken failer?

Ur-lie in the mor-ning!

and so on until you run out of consonants. It could be the next "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall."