Intro Orc

 

Note: Entering the water of the deep unsanctified maybe derives from “the wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest.” Troubled sea, shadow flickers, dreams of passage in the bowels of earth are all images of sanctification sought. Another is the voyage into the sea of fire pictured as islands ablaze through which the boat weaves. These are early Anglo-Saxon quests, Beowulf descending the mere. So McNamee in An Allegory of Salvation says “in early book illuminations, especially of Anglo-Saxon and Germanic origins, Christ is frequently represented as leading souls out of fiery caverns.” Early celtic romances parallel these with water voyages to accomplish a quest in the Imrama, or sea expeditions. Water and fire decide the sanctification of those who travel there, which is almost the same as saying light and dark.

A burning sea occurs in the Voyage of the Sons of O’Corra.” The sons, once plunderers have set forth on a sea voyage after accomplishing deeds of restitution and come upon a series of islands, like St. Brandon:

“they reached another island, with dead people on one side of it, and living people on the other side: and many of the living people had feet of iron. All round was a burning sea, which broke over the island continually in mighty waves” (413) This is like the image that occurs in the description of Grendel’s mere.

Quests for sanctification, in The Voyage of Maildun” he puts to sea in order to avenge his father who had been slain in a burning church by plunderers. In his travels he comes upon extraordinary monsters,  at one point the Isle of Red hot Animals:

“they perceived with astonishment that the animals were all fiery, and that their bright color was caused by the red flames which penetrated and lighted up their bodies” (129) More to the point, they come to the Island of the Burning River where “Germane dipped the point of his lance into the water, which instantly burned off the top, as if the lance had been trust into a furnace.’ 135 So the Immura a analogues of the description of the mere, fantastic romance, unabashedly so, description of such lands known as both secret and otherworldly. Old Celtic Romances. P. W. Joyce.

 

Note: In the whole sheaf of psychic bonfires a priesthood of intellect wrote, argot of special ceremonies, mysteries,  trappings of advanced charcoal lightings,  prophet poets, intellect priests,  a Byron of revelation, a Wordsworth divine missionary among indigenes.

Wind

I was hunting fish with gold fins at the base of Irazú,  the closest I came to my dream to catch tropical fish in the Amazon, unless I count myself the fish who took the hook and was caught, Jonah who turned the light off and watched his pupils dilate. Among people all different I left without the help of God.  But even in the sea, darkness dawns.

I went natural, was spit back up, so dark in the fish. I was made what fled from me as much as I did seek. The colors in those pools mudslip and turn. Fish, butterflies, flowers could have been stars. But clay does not ask, why have you made me? Vision followed alternates of  lives to the Amazon or Grand Canyon. “Great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung.” I‘d been in Chile for Allende’s deposition as much as in Dr. King’s south in ’68, but don’t chose the tale. My return was regurgitation, gone within  hours of receiving the news. I was now oldest, but given a hand in the swallowing. During the six hour layover on the first leg of return, guided through the outskirts of sheol with a taxi tour of the Zone and the locks in the dead of night, the LORD commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land. That’s how it feels to be born of the spirit. Wind is greater than water.

So what is being born, kite flying, flute playing? I want to resolve it with a joke, respond without end to affirming and denying, the way wind blows through apertures of the garden. What is a horse?  Our sons tell us. It is different from what we said is a horse. They point that out. Affirming and denying is horsing around, "separation led to completion, then dissolution.” Then we gave up devotion to our own views to adopt the "ordinary" use of things. The ordinary is so arcane it can't be found. Immortality, sageness, superior men are idiots. We give up for the commonplace.

Come clear, palimpsest. On top of ancient texts  the lists remove. Write  over precepts to scrape off and see beneath, tell, retell. Pure praise can do, somehow spare the bones that washed ashore. Mules talk, the ape becomes a man. The dog speaks, mouse sings in front of giant forms, to hide, reveal a nature too close to approach. We want to show what it is while people ask, what are you saying, as if one escaped shadows, got to the light and turned.

Number gives body in doctrines of the past, Plotinus spinning, being reborn. Pythagoras writing to Orpheus at dawn. Not an animal bereaved, or a plant accumulating sulk, Baubo, Bilbo. So many Bilboes you will say, unconscious layers till we name. Everything  built on everything else. No act an integer in itself, many tosses, all related down. The hymn all smooth as one. 

That is its illusion, it changes as it stays the same. No inoculation, long emerging beauty, rhythm easily overcome. We measure the rapids of anger  in principle, what happens when people learn what changes them. The touch  ignites a change.

The word is a coat you wear for warmth and confidence to give away. You've been praying these years to extend the word written in earth's center?  We combat Ocean. Yarrow horses quiver the field. It's a tortoise! Cedar branches shoot from hands and stump. Your words establish the word.

Wind, first element, Wind like water is greater than you! "Be great to support great wings.” You see it in the old man tree, cracked skin, stout limb. What the sapling gets is unsaid. We think we are doing something else and for different reasons. It’s not pretty to admit.

Of the formless that wants to be, what do I have to do?  It is its own without me, with me, but saying is always shape. So the clay thought. What do you call utterance?  Declaration of name. Let the potter show the shape, whirling accidents, contradiction.

Like reborn trinkets every trip to the store, skid marks printed on cartons, pressed before cut from binding, equal parts great and small, the rest thrown to mix in earth with finite seeds, a book on sale in Athens for a drachma at the end of the fifth century, no lack of incarnates see behind the Navel of all Rooting, genital organ of creation. Julian of Rome maintained he was Alexander Glass. How cool is that.

 

Herds change form, air clashing, sea spewing. Sun hurled ether when the Emperor annulled without telling, as if any boy could just live and bear, he overturned the system of death and rebirth, judge if you will, take consequence of life, before life, before death. Alibis give, denials, excuses which amount to what we know. Honesty is written above the gates. Here comes the man who loosed the  billions from death and rebirth, from themselves, from sin, from the grave.