Arise moon, our silvery orb! A tentacle Unreels a creative brain's roomy loot (Esoterically, one mourns a rite. Bravo!) LITERARY ANTEROOM - (unsociables rove) I blur a voiceless monotony, err at ear. A rare noble orator slices my vein out:
"You rare moonlit lovers, sit, be arcane!
A moil rots your entire verbose canal!"
Arise moon, celestial orb! Envy our art! Eternity roars, unrolls above me. Ciao- To my villa: I, a robot, a sorcerer unseen...
Such words recite themselves as I make my way toward what appears to be a library, its entranceway labeled with the text:
Librorum tene ris
at least one of its letters (in between the “e” and the “r”) obscured by a small bunch of dead, dry flowers: (rosemary, violet, carnation).
I glance upward and, sure enough, there hangs our not-yet-silvery orb just as frozen on the canvas as that Wright Flyer descendant destined to run on forever towards endless non-arrival. Even from this distance I clearly perceive the pilot shouting garbled messages to me by megaphone:
“So you’re back to murder!”
I think to myself: “I’m back to not knowing where I am.”
The voice: “The most natural place to be.
But it seems a little peculiar to come back here.”
“It looked like a good place. I let myself in with
the key I found. I’m keeping the key in my possession.”
“It might be found. It might be traced to the girl.
Just drop it somewhere. Toss it into a trash can.
What sense could be made to come here to the killer’s spot?”
“Right back where I was . . .
where it started . . . but . . . murder . . . ?”
“The one thing we know about is
the missing snapshot on the beach.”
“But you are imagining incriminating papers!
It’s nice to have a picture of her – the kind of thing
that’s perfectly innocent in itself.”
“perfectly all-right until it’s killed her . . .”
“I’ve killed her. It’s worked out badly. What kind of killer am I? Where do I get rid of the frame? I can’t tear the frame up and flush it down the john. I have to walk out of the damn frame. It’s late. I’m unlikely to meet anyone. If I should happen to run into someone, though, I’d like to be as unmemorable as possible. I make sure I’m leaving nothing.”
“You can walk by whoever it is as long as you look ordinary enough.”
For some reason this compels me to check my other pockets to see if I might find something in addition to the note, previously mentioned. Interestingly, I find a wallet. I say “interestingly” because the wallet is unfamiliar to me. Of further interest, perhaps, is the scant contents of the wallet:
- a photograph of a young woman, not unattractive
- a photograph of a rather unremarkable tree
- a transfer ticket stamped once with the number “26” and bearing a crescent-shaped hole punched in the box labelled with a number “6”
Approaching the neglected building, I see more clearly now the faded black lettering on its white facade:
Libri tenebrarum
Furthermore, there is a sheet of typed paper tacked to the front door that reads:
ein Riss im Stoff, im Felsen
Arise moon, our silvery orb! A tentacle
Unreels a creative brain's roomy loot
(Esoterically, one mourns a rite. Bravo!)
LITERARY ANTEROOM - (unsociables rove)
I blur a voiceless monotony, err at ear.
A rare noble orator slices my vein out:
"You rare moonlit lovers, sit, be arcane!
A moil rots your entire verbose canal!"
Arise moon, celestial orb! Envy our art!
Eternity roars, unrolls above me. Ciao-
To my villa: I, a robot, a sorcerer unseen...
Reaching for the black handle of the door, I see that it is already open just a crack….
Entering, I find myself in a solitary room with avenues of shelved books. Reflexively, I start wandering down the nearest row, my eyes floating from title to title waiting for one to call out to me to pick it up and open the cover releasing its unique murmurous whisperings out into the heavy silence.
How easily we fall back into old habits! I have no idea where I am or what is happening. Somehow, though, it is all too apparent to me that this building is uninhabited – that it has been unvisited for quite some time now – a place of rest for all these shuttered voices. Which leads me to wonder…
What happened? To us? To before? I wish I could remember. I wish I could be more certain that my forgetting has some genuine source in an actual event forgotten. Instead, the forgetting itself is, for now, the event and includes my groping for something hidden that the forgetting both hides and points to without guaranteeing. I wish I knew which lesson to draw from this.
For now it seems there is only a great silence in place after place-less place. But there was a time that countless books such as these upon countless shelves in countless rooms within countless public and private premises spoke, shouted, whispered, confided, explained, revealed, edified, concealed, mystified, affirmed, denied – in short, communicated – naively, perhaps, but communicated – one transparent truth (or lie) after another as though the pages were made of glass and the words composed so as to obstruct the window as little as possible. Hold it up in front of you and it’s as though there’s nothing there at all!
There are numerous exceptions, of course. And yet, so many self-important books by so many professional authors or amateur authors hoping to become professional authors all so easily impressed by finding their own name on the cover of a book – writers with agents and editors and other assorted professional middlemen – writers so self-satisfied with landing blurbs on their book by other appropriately respectable writers and critics nodding their bland approvals to the newest slew of mediocrity – professional academics with banal and yet not-nearly-banal-enough careers, most of them all too willing to bend to the system’s demand that we never stop selling ourselves – each desperately hoping and driven to be one of the few that succeeds in selling themselves and is able to springboard into the comfort of the leisure class where they no longer have to concern themselves with the merit of their work – only the market price – and a platform from which they may endlessly speak. Such writers care less about what writing can do as writing than they care about the attention and money that writing might bring to them.
It is no moral failing to pay someone who legitimately opens doors of possibility or joy for you – but it is unconscionable to pay someone who does nothing more than steal your time and attention. Vapid writers, entertainers, influencers, politicians and their ilk are like a person who calls on a prostitute to pay them some attention and somehow convinces the prostitute to pay for the attention the prostitute has provided.
But here all are on equal footing – each book speaking an opaque silence – a hushed wind whispering unintelligibly thru the countless vertical branches.
Wasn’t this same enigmatic voice of sadness from the skies telling me the story of the world? The story of unassailable artificial abundance, of discarded refrigerators and rotting swimming pools, of unseen never-ending landscapes and abandoned thrift shops full of pitiful paintings of those landscapes – but no spaces or gaps or holes in which one might find some relief or discover a strange new world – merely one landscape after another and another and another . . . ? Was this tired version of actuality now finally beginning to crumble upon the weight of itself into that immense silent night without any dawn?
In another time I could have sat here in a comfortable chair with no more concern than to enjoy a hot cup of coffee, appreciate the craftsmanship that went into creating this cozy space, and delve into the world-space of any book from these shelves that happened to spark my interest. But there is no time for that anymore. It is already too late. It has been too late for far too long. Too long for me to remember . . .
The neglect here is even more palpable than it was in the creamery – as though the now-ancient process of its congealing had never been successfully interrupted. The general store was the light social marketplace – the place of public worship where faces flaunted themselves. This odd little library, despite the previously mentioned profanations, was still permeated by a dark, dense sort of monasticism.
Staring blankly in front of me, the words begin again:
- The Meaning of Truth
- The Will to Believe
- The Animate and the Inanimate
- Book of Vendergood
- The Prison-House of Language
- hinter dem gelben Vorhang
- Library: A World History
- Staircases: History, Repair and Conservation
A strange thing is the spirit of this place . . .
The meaning of this scene pointed and gave the orders swallowing all being and returning it with a deeply deliberate unreasoning.
I don’t remember . . .
But I suppose I now must find a way into that other room to experience that great cycle of historical dreams which replaced the dreams in the memory of my mind and into which the city now threw itself – as if at last it had divined a responsive subject through which to express the collective desires, the collective wishes, which informed the way the route went on.
I could hear their voiceless moving lips down through the remorseless darkness somewhere – a quotation from an ancient poem, no doubt – Being’s poem whose stuffing must slowly leak out and be replaced over time – re-upholstered in some heavy damask material – the fluttering veneer of culture.
I had first encountered the poem in that very room there – I had undergone a great transformation. And now my lips began to move, my eyes to unfocus themselves . . . softly disengaging into a completely public trance – a breathless character standing on set for the first act of a play which began with these words:
Behind a drab yellow curtain was the locked door that led downstairs to that other room where politics, riches, and even rational scrutiny disappeared into the poverty of that busy night.
But the little gold key . . . where was it?
I don’t remember . . .
I stared at my own reflection in the proverb-shaped mirror for a long time, comprehensively. I suppose it must have been curiosity that had stolen it but with a somewhat startled air I took from my waistcoat-pocket the little key and examined it.
I simply cannot think how this came into my possession.
Am I going mad?
I simply shrugged my shoulders, I sighed once and in some foolish way, it warmed me. Ready to answer its invitation, to experience the latest expression of the collective situation which lies behind the recollections of every individual, boldly I closed the door softly behind me – realizing only much later that this door only ever opens from the inside.
I walked slowly down through the arches heavily carved of moonlight – tortured by the unbearable exactness of human logic, the absurd wild asses preaching to us about morality. It is mentally vulgar to spend one’s time being so certain of good and evil.
Whistling a desolate phrase, I rode playfully backwards and forwards laboriously inhabiting the ruins of an overlapped reality like a clerk recording all he saw and felt in his diaries, patiently wishing and ordering the world into a special private state useless to anyone but himself: its inventor, its mentor and guide.
The waking mind of consciousness had been suddenly torn in places, the marble stones began to fear for their safety – the inscriptions, thought at each stage of development, the fecund words, dazzled by moonlight and drenching shadow, resume with a devoted fierceness the whole universe anew:
“In the forest,” I think to myself, “I’m in the forest . . . “
Stelle, an der etwas gerissen, zerrissen, eingerissen ist
a desk with books and notes stewn about, a contract for the librarian detailing that the position also entails some forestry work – some of the books on the desk are on the subject of forestry…
ripped pages with scribbled notes including:
“In the forest,” I think. “I’m in a forest . . . the edges of it look like every other dense and thriving forest. The trees stand fairly tall. But their trunks aren’t thick. Strong winds blow pine needles into this pocket of isolation. These brief excursions into nameless nature had become nothing to get worked up over. I read that when you leave this house, there’s rarely anyone there – just a bit of a disconnect that feels impossible to speak about – some dark clouds pushing through the blue sky. But there were memories – dense and clunky – after I passed them, I stumbled and fell. But everyone makes their own choices. There are many ways to talk – various incarnations for decades – it’s discussion without end – just offer an opinion, just the right kind and the results are spectacular. Life is full of uncertainty, unsteadiness – but googling tells us they get the job done. I remember the look of fear in the eyes of civilization – crying selfishly, crying for home – or the ideal of home that had not yet been achieved. I think of the strawberry fields of my childhood, I think of unexpected objects suspended in my memory, afraid to awaken something old and sleeping and wild. I think of the original buildings that are gone today and all that’s left are long hallways leading to nothing. Later when we walked through them we came to a frontier of human system and servitude. All of these associations I can make now from the safety of my house where I think of an invisible wilderness all over this country but separated somehow by hundreds and thousands of miles – hiding in a place that seemed so remote to us, we can no longer call it home.”
(A place where something is torn, torn, torn)
Clan Comyn’s war motto: “Fhad ‘s a bhios maide sa choill, cha bhi foill an Cuimeineach (as long as there is wood in the forest, there won’t be deceit from Clan Cumming”)
photo of the beach, not unattractive
Cummington librarian also a forester
A collection? A research project? What is this?: photographs – amusement park? old b/w photos? my photos? Scotland? collages – Only One Cummington – Justine by Durrell – record collection (Echos) – seemingly endless notebooks and stray notes, the signs of an investigation of VK – 38 copies of The Charlatan (27 of them the Kessel novel, 9 of them a VK autobio with the same cover as the Kessel, 2 of them with altogether different covers and contents) – sheet with links between Scotland and Cummington: Cuming, Inchamahomie, cummingtonite….
lots of old library books with pages torn out, cut up, rearranged, etc
notes/diary?: searching for VK, this hidden one in a world that is already no longer there – echoes in my head that might perhaps be nothing more than a sign of themselves – but that nonetheless steer me in what feels like a necessary pursuit, the goal of goals…
bitter complaints about the banal interests of most ppl with a recognition of my own pretention – the struggle against the endless violence in world of hunters – hatred of myself as a hunter forced into this world of violent hunting and of banal monotony – to sit and enjoy a moment of silence with a cup of coffee and the comfort of being indoors in a well-built chair admiring the woodwork in the room – that this used to be a world where one could truly do that – we didn’t know what we had here, we took it all for granted…
der Vorgang des Reißens; das Reißen
(the process of tearing; the tearing)
You long to return to you-don’t-know-where – is it even a place you’ve seen or known before? did it ever exist? a lost future from the past to replace the present before you that appears as a dead end – [to the cottage with the trunk full of strange, homemade personal items created by who-knows-who for only those who happen to open that trunk]. You long for communion with things and people that are as unknown to you as you are to yourself, that are as far removed from the world as you are.
vom Fuchs o. Ä. erlegte Beute
(from the fox or similar hunted prey)
I wonder whose research and writing this was – the librarian, I presume.
on a piece of paper taped to the desk: “The lust for fame is the last infirmity cast off even by the wise” – Tacitus quote
Moon, tychepoiesis, Remington, amusement park…
I write down on a piece of paper: Von Kriege.
My handwriting does not match that of the papers found here. This must not have been my research then. My handwriting also does not seem to match the paper I found in my pocket featuring the same words – nor does it match the librarian’s…
Zeichnung, die nach den wichtigsten Linien oder nach dem Umriss angefertigt ist
(Drawing made according to the main lines or the outline)
(take a picture of my pages of roulette work)
countless pages of strings of numbers, red and black, the occasional green, calculations, percentages, diagrams with 3 columns with one 2 column block of the same size atop it (map?)…. the desire to investigate – and yet the impulse to burn everything in sight – how easily it would all go up! Not quite on the order of Alexandria – but still – for many of these books, it would allow the heartwood and sapwood to escape back into nature from its temporary violation for the sake of banal entertainment – but the Von Kriege Arkiv: these books are the orchard wherein the stuff of the universe forms itself into the endless path leading homeward.
also the green, red, yellow wallpaper/map folded out and hung on the wall? – hole cut into it? just black behind it?
Now as to what or who in this case had unexpectedly entered the darkness . . . out of the books, it is the same orator that has emerged.
[later chapters near the end 29/31?]
I exit through a doorway marked overhead with the letters:
Tenebris li num
a sole blue rose as a literary mask for the symbol that is unavailable by pure chance.
[next chapter: upon leaving the “library” I hear a noise from above, look up and see the plane still in the same position – it is a great distance away but somehow I seem to be able to make out a person on-board with a megaphone shouting down (to me??) accusing me(?) of murder.]
{ } VK Arkiv 