Decameron

On the road this morning, I found myself thinking about the Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio. It's a work I've only read once, in translation (by Mark Musa, a translator whose Comedy did not earn my trust!), and that was a while back (2009). I guess what brought it to mind was recent speculations about the possible medium-term effects of the birdemic pecks. Although people don't usually put the Decameron in the post-apocalyptic genre, that's certainly where it belongs. The whole feel of the work, its Robinhoodish atmosphere of gay nihilism, is inseparable from its setting: a Europe which just lost a third of its population to the plague. A Steve Earle lyric came to mind.

When it all was over, the slate wiped clean with a touch,
There God stood, and he saw it was good,
And he said, "Ashes to ashes and dust to dust."

"God saw that it was good" reminded me of the meaning of the word Decameron -- "ten days," a word created by Boccaccio by analogy with Hexameron, "six days," a title used for various theological works on the six days of Creation.

I thought of the "ten days of darkness" the Q people had promised back at the beginning of the year.

Then I noticed a huge electronic billboard in front of me: a man making a kabuki "soy face" and holding some packages of frozen meat. Under it, the flashing words "買十送一哦！" -- "Buy ten, get one free!"

I'm not about to try to cobble these syncs into a prophecy. I'm just taking notes.

So, apparently nothing happened on August 1

Or on January 8. If I were smart, I would stop making predictions about specific dates, since everyone (including me!) knows that dated prophecies never come true. However, I think specific -- and therefore testable -- hunches should be reported, so that the reliability of whatever it is that generates the hunches can be tested. So far, that reliability is: Low.

If Heaven is reabsorption, then Creation had no point

In vain produced, all rays return;

Evil will bless, and ice will burn.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Uriel"

The return to the Father, by resurrection, is like reabsorption into one's source. Just as you are not consciously awake while sleeping, so you will have no conscious recognition of this ultimate glorification. . . . Imagine for a moment that God is a pond of clear water, so still and smooth that it is not visible; one cannot see the still clear water, but can only see through it. It seems invisible. But when conflict is introduced the surface of the pond is violated and waves run counter to each other and there is splashing and chaos, a scene of violence, making the pond very visible. . . . Ultimately, the redemption of the world will be a cessation of the splashing, of such changing, and there will only be the nature of God left.

-- Roger Hathaway, The Mystic Passion

God's gonna trouble the water

-- Negro spiritual

It is a very common idea among mystics, including Christian mystics like Roger Hathaway, that salvation ultimately means losing one's individuality and being reabsorbed into God. In Heaven, Hathaway says, "There is no longer a self, nor even a history of one . . . . The conscious individual self doesn't exist, even in memory. There is only 'Godness.'"

This is basically the Indian idea of nirvana, expressed in theistic terms. The ideal of nirvana arises from the recognition of the futility of the merely cyclical. Samsara -- the endless cycle of birth and death, birth and death -- is intolerable. Why gain only to lose? Why grow into maturity only to decline into senility? Why be born only to die? The point, then, is to escape from the wheel of samsara and enter nirvana -- or re-enter it, rather, since it is from that state that we originally came. This of course implies the corollary that samsara-and-nirvana is just another pointless cycle like birth-and-death -- a sort of higher-order "meta-samsara." A Taiwanese Buddhist friend of mine once explained that we were all originally Buddhas but had fallen into the world of maya, and that Enlightenment and parinirvana were a return to that original state. "But if Buddhas can fall into maya," I said, "how is becoming a Buddha a permanent escape from maya and samsara?" The answer of course is that it isn't and can't be. If state X led to state Y, then a return to state X is obviously no guarantee against Y. In vain produced, all rays return.

Returning to the Christian version of this doctrine, as expressed by Roger Hathaway (but certainly not only by him!), if there is "no longer a self, nor even a history of one," then the reabsorption -- the return to a former state -- is complete; and whatever it was that caused our "fall" from that former state to this present one, it can be expected to happen again. This is the myth of Sisyphus -- generally understood to be an encapsulation of hell, not of Heaven.

But suppose that what originally caused our "fall" from Heaven was God's free choice to create us as separate beings -- and that upon our return God will choose never to do so again. The Sisyphean cycle is thus avoided, but we are left with the question -- What was the point? Why create in the first place beings whose only purpose is to return to their pre-created state? It seems to reduce God to the level of the G.O.D. of York -- who, you will recall, marched his ten thousand men up a hill and then marched them down again.

There is certainly a sense in which Heaven is a "return" to God, but it cannot be entirely that. Nothing makes sense or has any point unless Heaven is a fundamentally new state.

Llamas for Lammas

Quoting Chariots of Fire from memory, and apologizing in advance for any inaccuracies, "I believe that God created me for a purpose -- but he also made me fast, and when I pun I feel his pleasure."

For Lammas, then, this classic from the poet Nash:

The one-l lama,

He’s a priest.

The two-l llama,

He’s a beast.

And I will bet

A silk pajama

There isn’t any

Three-l lllama.*

*The author's attention has been called to a type of conflagration known as a three-alarmer. Pooh.

Funny how he overlooked two-m Lammas. Well, even Ogden nods. For me, Lammas will forever be associated with Old Boggy, "Lady of Spain," and blackface minstrels.

But Minnie had a heart as big as a whale

Eunuch.
I'm shock'd, young chaps, I truly am --
To turn down jingon-berry lamb,
Imported from the Persian court,
With Medish sweet-balls for dessert!
Are you so bold as to propose
To scorn such gifts with upturn'd nose
And ask for river-wine and beans?
The King will wonder what it means!

Daniel.
It means the King is sitting pretty:
Two wonders in a single city!
"Come see the Hanging Gardens. Then --
The lunch of these four Hebrew men!"

-- Yes and No

Once he tried to feed all the animals in all the world in one day, but when the food was ready an Animal came out of the deep sea and ate it up in three mouthfuls. Suleiman-bin-Daoud was very surprised and said, 'O Animal, who are you?' And the Animal said, 'O King, live for ever! I am the smallest of thirty thousand brothers, and our home is at the bottom of the sea. We heard that you were going to feed all the animals in all the world, and my brothers sent me to ask when dinner would be ready.'

-- Rudyard Kipling, "The Butterfly that Stamped" 

After getting 11,000 fake Swedish visitors from the devil knows where, followed up by a roughly equal number of authentic Swedish puns courtesy of  Sean Fowler (plus a Kraken pun of my own), I've got Sweden on my mind -- so, while washing some dishes, I found myself humming, "Swing low, Swede chariot . . . ."

And then the good old associative machinery threw up this:

In this version of the classic swing song originally by Cab Calloway, Minnie the Moocher is described as "a low-down hoochie-coocher" and is given "a platinum car with diamond-studded wheels" by the King of Sweden in a dream. Swing, check. Low, check. Swede chariot, check.

Minnie's ridiculously luxurious auto reminds me of the They Might Be Giants song "Mink Car" -- from the album of the same name, which was released on September 11, 2001. 

It's knocking off my diamond wig

Knocking me down onto the platinum ground

Woke up in a beautiful dream

Alone, alone

I got hit by a mink car . . .

Ever wonder where the word mink comes from? Turns out it's a loan-word from Swedish.

Hugh Laurie ends his version of "Minnie the Moocher" by repeating the line, "But Minnie had a heart as big as a whale!" What creature, I thought, would have a heart as big as a whale? Surely only the Leviathan -- or its Scandinavian equivalent, the Kraken. (Technically, I suppose the Kraken would have three such hearts.) And then I thought of Kipling's Animal that came out of the deep sea. Isn't a moocher someone who exploits the generosity of others, like the Animal in the story? And wouldn't Minnie -- or, more properly, Mini -- be a natural nickname for "the smallest of thirty-thousand brothers"?

I nevar go to worc

Gangsta's Paradise

I'm not into rap at all, but for the past couple of weeks I've been listening obsessively to "Gangsta's Paradise" by Artis Leon Ivey Jr., alias Coolio. It just sort of popped into my head.

The video is part of the experience. I like watching his mouth move, and I like how intense the backup singer is.

Yesterday, Bruce Charlton mentioned in a comment that August 1 is Lammas. This led me to the Wikipedia article for that date, and it turns out it's Coolio's birthday.