humanity is in the greatest danger.
‘The Cross in the mirror of celestial mathematics is sometimes a net that salvages all wreckages of time in which to build the Virgin Ship anew.
‘Remember Francisco there is a curious fragility to your Dream-book, the log-book of the fleet. But its true spiritual capacity lies therein. It wreathes itself in the collapse of high-sounding garments and punishments and glories to illumine Bone or Cross.
‘Celestial mathematics of space! That is how I see the evolution of the divine huntsman in our ragged flesh. That is how I see a procession of brothels and wrecked architectures and wrecked fleets and marketplace cathedrals backwards into the stark Wombof the Virgin – shorn of intercourse with violence – from which the true, compassionate huntsman may yet evolve and arise … Remember all this, Francisco.’
Deacon had caught the drift of Mr Mageye’s conversation with me. He seized upon ‘celestial mathematics’ as a platform for his own ambitions, his own perverse longing for glory.
‘Celestial ambition,’ he said to me and to the apparition of Mr Mageye, ‘fires a peasant like me to perform great deeds, to fight unimaginable duels, to frame arenas for impossible (yet I believe possible) duels in space. Think of the Moon! What an arena for duels and commerce and sport. We shall fight on other planets, believe me! Buy yourself a ringside seat now, Francisco, before the price soars. Shall I – a mere peasant – dwarf Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan? Why not? I am born from the obscurity of the stars as they were! Poor Jonah believes in eternity. And that is why I have forged a pact with him. He will bring me the chance to duel with eternity. And if I fail then celestial mathematics will provide me with a ladder to climb back into heaven, to wrestle all over again with the Titans, the Tricksters of heaven. Yes – remember Francisco – civilizations fail and perish and begin all over again in some remote forest … As for you, Francisco, I shall give you a taste of my fallen angel’s blood when or if I fail. I shall clamp my Mask into your head. I – and an Old God you shall meet (you love epic theatre, don’t you?) – shall imbue it with conviction and lifelike appearance. Carnival’s great Francisco.’ He was laughing uproariously.
I said nothing. I was familiar with his taunts. I was familiar with his mockery of others and his self-mockery. Self-mockery was a moral fable, a moral truth, that fuelled peculiar underground sympathies between us though at another level we scorned or hated each other. Such self-mockery illumined hypocritical patriotisms, hypocritical loyalties, and it strengthened the pact between us and Jonah Jones. We seemed to eat our own mutual flesh in order to expose salutary lighthouse or Bone or Cross.
Mr Mageye eyed me with the oddest approval, the approval of self-questioning conscience, self-questioning imagination. He relished Deacon’s joke – if joke it was – about Tricksters of heaven.Sacred Jest! It appealed to him as a nourishing resource of comic flesh-and-blood: comic, yes, but curiously divine in flesh-and-blood’s ambition to equate itself with Gods.
Such comic divine equation enlivened the apparition that he was in my Dream-book. He had died in Albuoystown the very year that I left for San Francisco to take up my scholarship. I recalled standing over his grave on the eve of my departure. He was my beloved schoolteacher, the wisest, strangest man I had ever known. He saw all his pupils as potential tyrants, potential liberators, potential monsters, potential saints. He roamed all texts, all worlds, all ages to help them see themselves as stripped of everything yet whole and majestic and comical (all at the same time). I visualized myself sailing with him into futures and pasts. I visualized the Nemesis Bag on my head. Three more threads fell from it and took root on his grave. This had happened on my mother’s grave as
‘The Cross in the mirror of celestial mathematics is sometimes a net that salvages all wreckages of time in which to build the Virgin Ship anew.
‘Remember Francisco there is a curious fragility to your Dream-book, the log-book of the fleet. But its true spiritual capacity lies therein. It wreathes itself in the collapse of high-sounding garments and punishments and glories to illumine Bone or Cross.
‘Celestial mathematics of space! That is how I see the evolution of the divine huntsman in our ragged flesh. That is how I see a procession of brothels and wrecked architectures and wrecked fleets and marketplace cathedrals backwards into the stark Wombof the Virgin – shorn of intercourse with violence – from which the true, compassionate huntsman may yet evolve and arise … Remember all this, Francisco.’
Deacon had caught the drift of Mr Mageye’s conversation with me. He seized upon ‘celestial mathematics’ as a platform for his own ambitions, his own perverse longing for glory.
‘Celestial ambition,’ he said to me and to the apparition of Mr Mageye, ‘fires a peasant like me to perform great deeds, to fight unimaginable duels, to frame arenas for impossible (yet I believe possible) duels in space. Think of the Moon! What an arena for duels and commerce and sport. We shall fight on other planets, believe me! Buy yourself a ringside seat now, Francisco, before the price soars. Shall I – a mere peasant – dwarf Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan? Why not? I am born from the obscurity of the stars as they were! Poor Jonah believes in eternity. And that is why I have forged a pact with him. He will bring me the chance to duel with eternity. And if I fail then celestial mathematics will provide me with a ladder to climb back into heaven, to wrestle all over again with the Titans, the Tricksters of heaven. Yes – remember Francisco – civilizations fail and perish and begin all over again in some remote forest … As for you, Francisco, I shall give you a taste of my fallen angel’s blood when or if I fail. I shall clamp my Mask into your head. I – and an Old God you shall meet (you love epic theatre, don’t you?) – shall imbue it with conviction and lifelike appearance. Carnival’s great Francisco.’ He was laughing uproariously.
I said nothing. I was familiar with his taunts. I was familiar with his mockery of others and his self-mockery. Self-mockery was a moral fable, a moral truth, that fuelled peculiar underground sympathies between us though at another level we scorned or hated each other. Such self-mockery illumined hypocritical patriotisms, hypocritical loyalties, and it strengthened the pact between us and Jonah Jones. We seemed to eat our own mutual flesh in order to expose salutary lighthouse or Bone or Cross.
Mr Mageye eyed me with the oddest approval, the approval of self-questioning conscience, self-questioning imagination. He relished Deacon’s joke – if joke it was – about Tricksters of heaven.Sacred Jest! It appealed to him as a nourishing resource of comic flesh-and-blood: comic, yes, but curiously divine in flesh-and-blood’s ambition to equate itself with Gods.
Such comic divine equation enlivened the apparition that he was in my Dream-book. He had died in Albuoystown the very year that I left for San Francisco to take up my scholarship. I recalled standing over his grave on the eve of my departure. He was my beloved schoolteacher, the wisest, strangest man I had ever known. He saw all his pupils as potential tyrants, potential liberators, potential monsters, potential saints. He roamed all texts, all worlds, all ages to help them see themselves as stripped of everything yet whole and majestic and comical (all at the same time). I visualized myself sailing with him into futures and pasts. I visualized the Nemesis Bag on my head. Three more threads fell from it and took root on his grave. This had happened on my mother’s grave as
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