Well, the reason why Thomas Merton ended up in the United States at all is that his mother was an American, and his father was a New Zealander, a painter. And sort of a book of feckless bohemian type. They never had any money to speak of. And his mother died when he was... He had one brother who was about three years younger. And then a little while after that brother was born, his mother died of cancer. And so his father carted him off to England, where he had relatives. This was in the United States? He was born in New Zealand? No, no. Merton was born at Prad, in South France, P-R-A-D-E-S, where his parents were at that time living. An American and a New Zealander. Yeah. His mother was an American, his father was a New Zealander, but his father had all his relatives in England. So after his wife died, he carted Thomas and the baby up to England and parked them with relatives who in turn parked Thomas with some other people.

[01:06]

And then he went to private school and then he had his mother's father and mother lived in New Jersey. And so in 1935, he came over to go to America and presently was going to Columbia University. When was he born? Fifteen. Nineteen and fifteen. So... How did he get the money to go to Columbia, I think? Well, his grandmother and grandfather got it, some of them. They owned their own home up in Douglas, New Jersey. Somehow or another, they got together scholarships and stuff, I suppose. I don't remember the details. I haven't earned any of those biographies. I just have this book, which is sort of a general thing, sketch put together by Edward Rice, who was an old college friend of Milton's, with lots of photographs and drawings and one thing or another.

[02:08]

It was a very nice little book. This was done in... It's called An Entertainment with Photographs by W.G. Rice. The Good Times and Hard Life of Thomas Hurt. M.H. Books, edition 1972 by arrangement of Dubley Day. previously published material by Thomas Martin Coffee Boy, trustees of the Thomas Martin Legacy Trust, copyright 1970 by Edward Rice. So anyhow, a lot of the people that he knew at Columbia, like Rice and some of the other ones, were all very philosophic ones.

[03:09]

He was busy playing the piano and working on the college magazine and having a lot of fun and drinking a lot, running around with lots of women, and having a great time. But at some point he got religion. I forget now. I read The Seven-Story Mountain only once. It's autobiography, and I can't remember what it was that... And it was probably from reading Thomas Aquinas and other people that he found out that it was really real. And also, earlier on, he had made a trip to Rome and he realized that all that architecture and whatnot was actually Jesus and that it all meant something. So he'd had an earlier kind of superficial or artistical conversion. But then later, when he was in Colombia, he got more interested in the idea of joining the church. And so after a while, he found somebody to, some priest who gave him the instruction in Catholicism.

[04:10]

And then on a day certain, he was baptized as a Catholic and confirmed. Was he brought up in a Christian church at another sort of... I don't think so. Unless when he was in school in France, it was a Catholic school or something like that. I don't know. He didn't seem to belong much to him. His folks were sort of advanced. They had to make it all up. No, apparently not. He just sort of made it all up out of his own necessity. And so anyway, he got all converted and everything, and then... Mark Van Doren, who was one of his teachers, says, oh, that's nice. You're converted. Now you have to be a saint. And he says, what? Well, now you've got to practice being a Christian. You can't just sit around. And then also, a few days later, a close friend of his told him the same thing. Now you've got to be a saint. Now you have to do Christianity.

[05:12]

He said, what? I thought, you know, all I had to do was go to the Mass every Sunday and go to confession once in a while and do all those things like that. And that's what you did. Well, buddy, you've got another thing coming. So then he was really worried. And what have you got into it? And then he fussed about whether maybe he should be a priest if that's in order to practice completely and to be able to say Mass and do all that really important stuff, he should be a priest. But then he decided he didn't have any real call to that, to the priesthood. And he was in a quandary for a while, but at last he decided to remain a layman but to live in a in a religious community, and he got a job teaching at a little Catholic college, a little Franciscan college in upstate New York. And in the summertime, his friends from the city would come up, and they had a cottage or something up in the toolies there nearby. And they would all get drunk in the hall and eat potato salad and drink beer and have a lot of time, a lot of fun, listen to loud music and stuff.

[06:19]

But he taught there up until a couple of years, I guess, and then he kept fussing about should he have a clerical vocation or not or whatever. And he made a Christmas or Easter retreat to Gethsemane Abbey in Kentucky, this very tough Trappist monastery, Cistercians of the Strict Observance, C-S-O. And he was quite impressed with the scene there. And then he went back to his school and was fussing around. But after a while, he started really sweating and praying and fussing about what should he do. And he was out sweating and pacing up and down the school grounds, and there was a little outdoor altar to St. Teresa of Lisieux or some such personage. And he started talking to that one about what's he going to do. And he made all sorts of promises if he could get this thing straightened out.

[07:24]

And then he claims that at that point, while he was sweating and walking and praying, that he heard the bells of Gethsemane Abbey ringing very clear and very plain. And so he took this to be a sign that he should leave. And so he went immediately to one of the superiors there and told him that he had to leave and go be a monk. And he'd already been examined by the draft people. This was 1941. And he had his teeth all terrible and he had something wrong with his back. And so they didn't really want him very much. So anyway, he was able to, you know, he told them he had to leave also. And then he went off to Gethsemane Abbey and signed up as a novice and stayed there for 20 years, a little more than 20 years. And there's a book called The Sign of Jonas, which is his diary, or it's drawn, anyway, from his journals and diaries for the first 10 years he was there.

[08:29]

the monastery, and it's quite interesting. If you've ever put in much time in Tazari, it sounds quite familiar, a lot of his feelings and experiences. He goes on to explain how marvelous it was when he was ordained as a deacon, and then later on he's ordained as a full functioning priest with the name of Father Louie. uh after his patron saint louis france and uh he uh well when he was he was still i guess pretty pretty young and they were still just doing lots of heavy work and running this farm and and uh making hay and stuff, and it was hot. And they would wear these great woolly habits out in the field, and I think they had all this sweat and itch and everything. It must have been quite wonderful. And they couldn't talk or sing or dance or anything. They would all go together to the chapel, and then they would do the Gregorian chants.

[09:35]

They would chant all the offices several times a day. And he said it was terrible because the kid who played the organ had never played an organ before. or not very much anyway, was still learning, and then the guys who were chanting couldn't do it on key, and it was all sort of wretched. But anyway, it bothered him for a while. And so then he has all these great takes anyway, and how exciting it is to go through all these ordinations and stuff. And then he just sort of goes on, and they put him, finally they have him translating letters because the headquarters of the Cistercian is in France, and they wrote letters to the head man in French, and Merton had to translate them into English and then translate the old man's replies into French and send it back. And at some point he was kind of the guest master and novice master and whatnot and took care of visitors and they took care of the youngsters who were first coming in there to teach them how to be monks.

[10:38]

And they had to do a lot of, he wrote tracts, you know, those terrible things, all about coming to Jesus and so on. They give away in the front of churches and to translate some of the dumb ones out of French into English. And he was slowly going dotty, doing all this dog work, and he was getting sick all the time from the hard life and the poor food. And they finally encouraged him to write. And so at some point he cranks out the Seven Story Mountain. Well, first of all, I guess he published a little book of poems, New Directions, and then it was later that he cranks out this enormous autobiography, The Seven Story Mountain, which became a bestseller and brought enormous notoriety to himself and to the Abbey. Is the first one the notes of an apocalypse or something like that? um what is that called that's uh 30 poems 1944 a man in the divided sea 1946 figures for an apocalypse 1947. figures that said from apocalypse the tears of the blind lions 1949 strange island 1957 original child bob 1962

[11:53]

Emblems of a Season of Fury, 1963, Cables to Ace, 1968, and the Geography of Locre are Completed in 1968 and Published Possibly. Wasn't that 49 or something? I think so. Well, these are just poems. Oh, those are just poems. In the back of the figures for us, Figures from an Apocalypse, the mechanics library has the original edition of that. Is that so? And the back of it, the only thing I've written is poetry. There's a wonderful essay about how art and religion are, you know, art and poetry and religion all come from the same source and the experience of the mystic and the experience of the poet are all correlated to that. Is that so? It wraps on and on about that. We're about 15K. Totally. So that's all. The bed was too narrow and too sharp and Merton was bothered by the smell of the straw in the very cold room in which they all slept.

[13:01]

Day and night they lived in their robes, a light one in the summer and a heavy one in the winter. There was no heat. The fire in the chapel was not lighted until there was frost on the windows. The fasts were unusually strict and the hours of communal prayer longer than in later years. The food was hardly more than bread and fruit and barley coffee. There was a lot of manual labor, felling huge trees and sawing and splitting them into logs and work in the gardens and fields and ordinary household chores. He'd always worried about his health, and against that he tried not to, even though he would work long hours at manual labor in the cold, and then in his sweat-drenched robe stand shivering in the drafty basilica during the office. This was a penance for him. He knew it and still worried him that he was even then concerned about his health. When he stood sniffling and sneezing, he considered his chills a penance for worrying about his health. He told himself to be happy that Jesus wanted him to learn to forget about his body and not let his fears keep him from sitting in the peace and silence of his soul's inner house. He believed that it was hard to be indifferent about what was happening to his body, but he believed it essential to the pure love of God.

[14:06]

But at the end of his novitiate, his health broke down. He was taken off hard manual labor and put to translating French books and articles. Where is he? Is this Rice? Yeah. He continued to write poems. Let's see. Blah, blah, blah. Figures for an Apocalypse. One of his first books was called Figures for an Apocalypse. Blah, blah, blah. it sounds a great deal like in the realm of Dolan Thomas' poetry. I met a traveler from the holy desert, honeycomb, beggar, bread eater, lean from drinking rain that lies in the wind, prince of rocks. He continued to write poems, and the most touching was his evocation of the death of John Paul as his brother, who had joined the Royal Canadian Air Force and had come to say goodbye to him or to get them me. In the late summer of 1942, John Paul had wanted to be baptized, and Merton crammed him with religious instruction, and John Paul was received into the church.

[15:12]

In the seven-story mountain, Merton's most poignant and revealing passage is concerning John Paul. Oh, wait a minute, I thought it would tell me when it was, that book. It was in the 40s. Yeah. But it came out at a time, you know, at the tail end of that period when American intellectuals were all... Seven Story Mountain, the title refers to Dante's ascent toward heaven, is the work that catapulted Merton into the eyes of the world. The book was written in 1944 when he was still in the first flush of monastic euphoria and disgust of the secular world. He had once remarked to his confessor that he was, quote, tempted, unquote, to write an autobiography. The confessor laughed rather scornfully, but Dom Frederick, then the abbot, encouraged Merton, and the book was set down. It not seemed like one long swoop of enthusiastic writing, with the freedom and vitality that he was unable to attain in the biographies of saints that Dom Frederick had assigned to him to write during the period.

[16:14]

Merton's agent submitted the book to Robert Giroux's at Harcourt Grayson Company, late in December 1947. Giroux accepted it immediately. The original manuscript of the immense work, which covered Nolly Hurton's secular life in close detail, he seems to have had almost total recall of for the past. The many later sections are based on his journal, but also in his first years at Gethsemane. Then came the immense job of editing. Robert Giroux was Kerouac's first editor. A few years later, it was 1950. So this is... four and then forty-five or forty-six that that book came out and it was a thing but as I was going to say this was comes into the tail end of the time and many intellectuals uh... and uh... celebrities and all that were all being uh... raptured and raptured and told away into the church by uh... Monsignor Sheen and uh... The leading Catholic types around that time were Henry and Clare Booth Luce, and people like that were really being thought of as serious Catholics and intellectuals and so on.

[17:33]

And people were fretting quietly about all sorts of French people like Jacques Maritain Everybody, they were writing seriously about them, the Protestants and everyone, but just like that. It's ridiculous. And those other French Catholic writers that, The Day of the Mountain Pill, that's that guy's name. Anyway, there's about, there's three or four of them who were thought of as terribly important intellectuals in the 40s, middle and late 40s. Anyway, Claudel, Maritain, who else? Moriarty. They're all dreadful, dreadful people. I think it was Claudel who came to visit, came to have tea or something with John Cocteau and Cocteau's housekeeper says, who is that priest that was in here?

[18:35]

That was not a priest, that was a Greek poet called Claudel. I think it was that son. Well, anyway, as I was saying, the war converted a lot of people, of course. There was a famous book that came out called There Are No Atheists in Foxholes. Like I was saying, and then some guy read a book about it. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition and all that kind of stuff was around, of course. And... So there was a kind of a quiet Catholic risorgimento which had been going on that had succeeded the Eliot movement into the academics and moving into the Episcopal Church under the leadership of Uncle Tom. There was this big Catholic number coming in that people were really serious about. And it was fashionable, too. know about Thomas Aquinas and such a person would you put that and Aquinas was very serious and I imagine that

[19:41]

I can't, well, I don't imagine, I can't exactly remember, but it's quite possible that Thomas was included by Mark Adler in the Great Books series that was coming out of the University of Chicago that set it. Yes, I can guarantee you. things like that. And St. Augustine, all this was all in the air. And so maybe that's what got to Merton, I don't know. He was responsible for his finally going Catholic. In any case, the part of the Seven Story Mountain where he's telling about being in Columbia and getting converted and that from there to the end of the book is quite interesting. The early part is very draggy about his childhood and youth and so on. It takes too long, the book is too long for him, it has to say. Anyway, he's a huge, huge success. He made pots of money off of it, which, of course, went into the coffers of the Abbey.

[20:45]

And it has a, well, like this book, it has a big, is it this big? No, this isn't. But this one, has it on the back of the title page, uh, What Magic? The Magicness. I'm not sure, anyway. What, they ate them cream of children? Yeah. That's all. Right. I'm surprised it doesn't... Maybe they didn't want to mess with the poetry and they figured it was too... too crazy. Copyright by New Directions. Copyright by Our Lady of Gethsemane Monastery. Copyright by the Abbey of Gethsemane. The Abbey of Gethsemane, Inc. Thomas Merton. Trustees of the Merton Legacy Trust. William Davis. Copyright by the Trust. Trust of the Merton Legacy. Simon Schuster. Trustees. Abbey of Gethsemane, Inc.

[21:51]

Did he only start writing after he got quite follow through the time in here, but after he went to Gethsemane? Oh, no. He was writing a lot in college. I was saying he was helping to write to college. Well, what I mean, I guess that... Oh, no. No, that's true. When did he put the first line of poetry in Gethsemane? When he was in college, but probably some of it he refurbished for his first book. Well, it says early poems, 1940 to 42, and by then that's when he was only 35. No. No. So anyway, he did all these other books, and then at some point, I forget why, he kind of understood Eastern philosophies and religions.

[23:28]

and worked on revising somebody else's translation. I mean, he's credited as a translator. I mean, various stuff allowed him, which is rather odd because he couldn't read Chinese any more than I can, but somehow he's... You know, it's this modern thing about how you're a translator if you rearrange somebody else's work into literary form. and he got into a correspondence with Siddhiji Dasa, all about it, and that turned him up to the Zen problem. So he found that all very interesting, and then gradually he got... more and more excited about the idea that there was this monastic tradition in Asia that had survived all sorts of chops and changes, whereas in the Western Church monasticism was dying out. All the monks were leaving to get married, and the Lady nuns were changing their clothes and having simplified habits and one thing or another.

[24:36]

And the Mass was being done in English. All sorts of stuff was changed. And everybody was getting bored with the monastic Catholicism and leaving. And he kept fretting about why is Western monasticism falling apart while Buddhist and other kinds of Asiatic ones lasted forever and a day and were still happening. So that's what he finally persuaded them to let him go off to this conference about monasticism that was going to happen in Bangkok. and in nineteen sixty eight and uh... well they're season uh... to uh... to participate in this conference and uh... on his way there is the he got to spend some time in in india in northern india and meet to the to the all sorts of uh... tibetan love this and including the dalai lama and uh... from power in pochi and and Kalu Rinpoche and seven or eight other fancy lamas that were around him.

[25:46]

Karmapa, if I remember right. And then he went to Ceylon and went to all the big Buddhist monuments there and dug them and took some pictures that appear in that Asian journal. And then he went off to Bangkok and was planning to go to Japan And it was in Bangkok that he was in the bathtub and apparently reached over to do something to the electric fan, or it fell on him anyway. He was electrocuted. And so he never got to Japan to see the Zen in action. And anyway, it was after he was out of the picture that Mr. Laughlin had been holding this manuscript of the Geography of Gauguerre and got around to publishing it with many apologies about the fact that maybe this wasn't the form that the final, complete, polished...

[26:57]

that Merton might have made of it if he had lived. Still, he thought it was better to publish it so that people could read it than not. And I think I was surprised by it. I first read it in Japan. Sid Korman was living next door to me, and he came. He would come and see me every once in a while, and I'd go see him. And... One day he dropped in and he gave me this, gave me that copy that Norman has there of the Geography of Bill Greer to read and to see, just gave it to me for a present to see if I'd like it, maybe to see what I would say. I had, of course, always thought of Norton as a Catholic propagandist and of no interest to me, and I had seen a few poems that were all about God or something. That's all very well if you're interested in the Risorgimento, but not... So I was surprised that it was very snappy writing, in a lot of ways, compared with what he had been, compared to what I had remembered of what his sound was when he was younger.

[28:25]

It turned out to be very entertaining, and I liked the thing. There are some sort of blah passages here and there, but they don't work, it seems like, or at least they don't... You can sort of wander through them and forget about them very easily. Sometimes he makes things stick together by repetitions and other times by puns, all sorts of... funny tricks and clanks where it all where it all works in a very funny way but anyway he has this the endless description which seems to be about his early

[30:00]

reminiscences of his early life and of all sorts of strange religious bits thrown in. Sort of little bits of what's going to follow. And then he starts in with the food. And In that first part of that, it's all sort of variations on the blood of the Lamb, about that, and Vashti and Mabel. It just sort of swirls around in little tight circles, sort of a form that reminds me of some of those French rhyming things that just are very repetitious, like a trioleps and so on. Only these are spread out in a different way. And then there are these funny headlines that worked into it.

[31:06]

Rhyme admits ties to game. "'Temper is candy to Cain's daisy,' which I think is a marvelous line. I don't know what it means. It says, "'Why will not lambs stay forever well in skins? It may be two men met Sunday ten with the happiness beast, a raw lamb coming from the hollow tied to killer bishops for the feast.'" 100,000 Negroes, most of them, most of whom have thin black skin, tinder foot, Passover dry edge, light wells away, blow up a million temporary candy to King Daisy. In meetings red with rosy pies, all were had by a good time of ashes hollow. One narrow lane saved Lamp's friend, Paschal Kane. The idea of Kane being sacrificed for Easter is a strange turn. And then the second part is about some sort of war is going on.

[32:11]

And there's soldiers and streetcars and all sorts of stuff. It says, well, wasting money says hello. Deodorant here today. Stands day color change at white desk so sweet. Smell the blonde blushes. Oh, aim for the lonely wastes, says Gringo. And then he mixes up... Oh, then he goes on and says, 12. Boats alert. City all the way. Carrollton, Louisville, Owensboro, Paducah. Gates open for victors. Light is neo-strange. Music of lighted copperheads all over town. Wake day color. Neo sandstorm stars. Well, down city. Orange is awake. 13. Neo wristwatch kills whitey dead. He was just unlucky. Reminds me of Corso's line about how Uncle so-and-so pumped him full of dead watches. This gangster was pumped full of dead watches.

[33:13]

Do you remember how they do it? Yeah. Let me remind you of that. High speed ends, say, 14. High speed ends connect space. Now speak, say, Fort Knox is home of armor. 15. Maxwell, you son of a bitch, get off my place. 16. We've all made it to the truck on a dirty bet Sorrow has a wet face, a sign, quote, all losers leave by Westgate, unquote. Seventeen, Hazel Wentz fresh as the sandwich. 18. Through knocks at nightfall, army crater boys face down on the wet table. Gray misdreavus of nightfall lights up houses. Red grain music beat down house flats. A ghost dancer walks in a black hat through the gates of horn. Of course, the ghost dancers are going to appear in the last section of the poem. We're talking about the Indian ghost dancers. And then he has these hymns of low prayer. They're mixed up lines out of a whole bunch of Christian Baptist type of hymns.

[34:21]

Nearer, my God, to rock of eyes, or to my chariot of thee, that is Elias, rider of red skies. Nearer, my cherubim, to the crimson fruit in chariot three, wishing everybody well from now to Monday, two. Signed on the dome, expect thy next tread. Don't tread on the marine. Three, you were sixteen, my village queen, shining in sun-filled paint with your strip all recent from customary behavior. You stood alarmed, oh, dark-eyed, thankful of the very barrels, and I wished you cunning glasses and all. Which was the time we broke the furniture, trying to get me over my own wall. Then he said, for Miami, you're about to be surprised. You're going to be pleasantly surprised by this. You will find yourself sweetly insulted by earphones, and you will also be pleasantly wet where you are going, for you shall make expensive waves meeting the answer to women's questions in a swift novel of suspense.

[35:27]

And then there's in capital letters, if you have heart failure while reading this, the poet is not responsible. I think that's the best line in the whole... And you will meet a lot of friends falling into hopeless spray as if that were what you wanted and limbo dancing non-lethal will focus the muscles of science on your waistline. You can't control so many wonderful people. Well, there are a lot of good lines in there once in a while. Yeah, once in a while. The two moralities is a Tonga lament from Africa, which apparently he found in some anthropology book. about the blue oxen are coming with the fathers and so on. The thing about the coming from the fathers and so forth is going to show up again in the cargo cult section and the famous tunnels and so forth that Kirk appears later on when he's talking about New York. And then there's another little story about the hair from the Hottentot. Then there's the clever stratagem or how to handle mystics.

[36:34]

If you're a missionary, how to take care of these guys who get out of control. When I was out in the Nyasa land missions, we held a meeting for the 5,000 converts, which religious fervor naturally mounted to the highest pitch. So much intensity of religious feeling required to be carefully channeled to prevent outbursts. Fervor must not be permitted to dissipate itself in wasteful, even riotous disorders. One morning, two of the leading teachers came to report some experiences they were having. They had been out in the bush all night praying, and they had felt their bodies lifted up from the earth while bright angel beings came to meet them as they ascended. What did this mean? I replied, not in word, but in deed. I went to the dispensary, took down the salts, gave them each a stiff dose, and sent them off to bed. The visions and ascensions immediately ceased and were replaced by a sweetly reasonable piety that disturbed no one. A missionary must combine spiritual passion with sound sense. He must keep an eye on his followers. Of course, again, it's going to cross-connect with the cargo thing.

[37:40]

And then he goes on with more African bits. Sub-leaders keep telling the message like it was new, confirming my charism as prime leader in management. I shall continue in office as president for all time until the earth melts as full leaders stand over you wearing their watches, molding you by government of thought. I return, while to the origin, ruling through a female medium from an obscure place. Quote. Hold this mitre while I strangle chickens and throw them in the air, covering the sacred stone with bloody feathers and surround the altar with lie detectors. There's some sort of voodoo number. And then he has, he goes out to Mexico with all his flower trip, all his ladies and flowers and for some reason or other they are all going crazy and They said, can I have a fast of flowers and corn soup with a flower floating in the middle?

[38:45]

He's copied this out of some translation, out of the Aztec or whatever. But it did. It all sounds like somebody else's poem. The piece of the green turtle they dance on tall, still suffering the god, corn, liquor, peacocks, heads. Dancers come and play dogs and bread. dog with black shoulders that his virgin has sacrificed. And then Bishop Landa says, such were the services that the demons commanded them. Bishop Landa was the one who wrote the history of the Yucatan and the history of the Spanish in Yucatan and how he destroyed all of the Mayan manuscripts and tore down the temples and had a great time converting the savages. And then this part, he says, based on some pictures out of Miguel Covarrubias' book about Mexico, which is very charming because it gets all mixed up with present and past and middling.

[39:50]

times, the ladies of Tlaltilco, one, effigy vessels, shapes of apes, men, peccaries, rabbits, coons, ducks, acrobats, and fish, long, charming little bottleneck pots, bowls, and inventions. For example, quote, When liquid was poured out of the funnel-shaped tail, the animal's ears whistled softly on a double gargoyle note. There are sake bottles in Japan that do that also. A little tokori in court with a little bird molded on top of it. Mr. Mishtek Gurn, Old Man Tiger Crown, Bolts Dog 9. Three, nine dear apogee coon song, fondest little bowl offered to song-struck dead. It's maize and cactus milk, small red beer, peppers and chilies in bowls of warm red clay. Living acrobats stand in a pyramid.

[40:53]

For if they carved wood, we shall never know it, somebody said. The thing is that at Harvard, in the Peabody Museum, they have a cache of some Mayan wooden doors that they found at Ushma or someplace. I forget how it was they happened to be preserved, but anyway, they did do wood carving, and it's quite interesting. Look, his brute spear nails place name. Look, he has a glip. Stone eyes. Seek conqueror at day. Too late. The ladies of Tualtilco wore nothing but turbans, skirts only for a dance. A lock of hair over the eyes held only by garland, tassels, and leaves. They bleached their black hair with lime, like the Melanesians. Seven, feminine figurines of two heads or with four eyes and ears, two noses, or double mouth on the same head, reminiscent of Picasso, perhaps connected with the idea of twins. Eight.

[41:56]

The most provocative perfume. Wicked, wicked charms. Natural spray dispenser. A special extract for four-eyed ladies at fashion. My sin, quote, and my most wicked, provocative, lewd, dusting powder excitement sent two noses on the same head. Nine, the most thoughtful gift of the year with a Queen Anne Rose, patent number 3,187,782, budding with Terry Luke's, parenthesis, two nuns fighting for the same title, parenthesis. Ten, a flowering bath, your long stem skin, your patent rose. It is all in lutes. It is all in tones. Bleach your black hair with a coat of lime and dance in your turban. Eleven, I saw two moons in dreadful sweat. fit perfectly under a rounded collar jacket. I saw two moons in shades of toast, coming to calm my fright, sweet mother rose and gypsy nun in a new trim toast collar. I saw two moons coming from certain kind of store, where the ladies of Tlalteco were nothing but sweaters, laced their black hair with lime, or looked like fireclay, reddening their hair with dye from seeds of achiote.

[43:09]

Twelve, two ways to tell a primitive bath figurine. With an expensive book your skin can tell, quote, all her goings, graces, and quote, in taupe or navy, cashmere, love it, wine. In maize, my moons, oh, so serene. In cardigan, charcoal, blue, shetlands, hunter green. Two ways to tell a primitive nun fighting for a towel. 11. Oh, patent gypsy London rose on fire with inventions looking out of a red hood upon acrobats, shaved heads, wizards, and trumpeters. 14. Oh, fervent gypsy blue, we love your diamonds. We are Boston experts, and we understand, quote, the whole actively involved female world, unquote, which is red with achiote seeds, rich in naseberries, octanique, having great fun at a natural spray, dispenser of sin, with lime like the Melanesians. But Picasso was not thinking of twins.

[44:14]

Then there's a quotation from the book of Chilam Balam, translated by somebody like Silvanus Morley, I think. I can't remember who does that translation. It tells about it in the notes, anyway. All about the priests of Shiu and so on. And then more out of the same, and about flowers and bearded men and how they bring down all power, smash men to earth, make green skies weep, blood hard and heavy as the maize bed of this cartoon. Strangled is the flute hero, the painter Yashal Chuen, the jeweler, the apishkan yultu, precious voice, his throat is now cut. God's driven out, singers scattered. Gone is the day. Flower dancing on the rock pool. And so on. You shall feed them, said the prophecy.

[45:18]

You shall wear their clothing. You shall use their hats, and you shall talk their language. But their sentences shall speak division. They are destroyed beyond days, and that show the way. Pay heed to the truth which I give you in the cartoon of dishonor. Cartoons, in turn, are all the time periods in the Aztec and Mayan calendar. And so he goes raving on for my own best about how everything is going, we are degraded, why is it that aristocrats take money to sleep with the enemy? I shall prove, yet prove my name, it is Martinez. Do hummingbirds cheat one another? And then he goes on about all that, about how how he ends it all up.

[46:19]

He says, on the day of 9 Ock, arrival of the turkey cocks, strutting and gobbling, redneck captains of clips, fire in their fingers, worse than it says. Fires behind every rock, every tree, doing business, bargaining for our souls, book burners and hangmen. Sling the high rope, they stress the necks, lift the heads of priest and noble. Our calendar is lost, days are forgotten, words of unaku counterfeit. The world is once again controlled by devils, The world is once again controlled by devils. We count the pebbles of the years in hiding. Nothing but misfortune. Then all of a sudden he's quoting from one of those wonderful catalogs, number 24. Protect the lives of your police. Put out the small fires with fog or foam. Mark the troublemakers with dyes. move the crowd with water-based irritants, keep the crowds away from the car with electricity, drive the snipers out of hiding, tear gas, grenade, break up crowds with smoke.

[47:27]

Memory of the cartoons and years swallowed up by the red moon, then fired to guard the people of Israel and the prophets. It's lively business in police helicopters. 26. Somebody says, 150 years later there was an agreement with the foreigners. That is what you are paying for. There was a war between the whites and the people here, the men who used to be great captains of the nation formerly. That is what you are paying for now. 27. The year 1541 of the Zulis, 1541, day 5 Ik-2-Chen. Quote, a high-frequency blower that delivers a banshee howls beyond the tolerance of human ears. another wonderful weapon to protect your, protect the lives of your police. And then he says in that prologue to North, he says, why I have a wet footprint on top of my mind to begin a walk to make an air of knowing where to go, to print speechless pavements of secrets in my forgotten feet or go as I feel, understand some air alone around the formerly known places like going, when going is knowing, forgetting.

[48:37]

And so he's dreaming and explaining in geography, I am all here. He's there. And then he does this set of variations on the Queen's Tunnel, which he mixes up the New York subway and Triggered Hill and a picture, well, it's held pictures by Bruegel or or another German, what's his name? Matthias Greenewald, or something like that. What did you say? Bruegel, or Matthias Greenewald, or who was another one who did, another funny man who did big hell fire scenes all the time. Yeah, yeah, Hieronymus. But then... Yeah, Greenewalt did a celebrated altar piece called the Isentimer Altar, which, among other things, shows the temptation of St.

[49:47]

Anthony by all sorts of horrible devils and monsters and wanting another alt to lean, playing the strange instruments of trying not. G-R-U-N-E-W-A-L-D, Matthias, M-A-T-T-H-I-A-S. He lived in the 15th, 16th century. And the other guys, one of the Bruegels whose nickname was Hell Bruegel, but I forget which one it is. It was Peter the Elder, Peter the Younger, and one of the other Bruegel family who painted hell scenes all the time. Seriously enough, there's a... oriental tradition of doing scenes of Buddhist hell, sort of people having to climb the mountain of swords and people being sawed in half right up the middle and people being boiled and speared and conked and whatnot.

[50:49]

And there's, I think there seems like somebody told me there's a movie, a Japanese movie about this celebrated artist who set fire to his house or to a palace or something in order to have all these flames and have people wandering around looking scared and horrified and whatnot so he could paint this paint convincing scenes of the hell worlds that the buddhas go to if they're naughty and so uh in this in this thing he's mixing up uh in the Queen's Tunnel. He's mixing up partly black, some sort of black fantasy, plus the police and the Tonto Makut, this terrible secret police from Haiti. And this... In this picture, certain images out of the Bosch painting, I think, one about the guys with the funnels for heads wandering around.

[52:13]

It's quite a long section. It has some marvelous takes in it. First of all, of course, like Eliot, he starts in with lots of... It's a classical. I used to go to the river, sing my orange song, very deep bridge to the field, how proud of life you did. They didn't know I was a hummer. Van is in the apartment where he used to sing. His girl is kept in a trunk. Food for novel, basket of flowers. My bunny lies over the station at Queen's Plaza. Remember Rosa, stay away from Queen's Plaza, boy. It's all full of heat and they come out of the There's too many policemen there and whatnot, so all of you lush workers and dope fiends and whatnot, stay away from Queens Plaza. At Queens Plaza, they come with baskets of bread, Italian bread, mafia geography, Sicily and Queens.

[53:22]

Name one biscuit factory near Woodside. I can't. Sunshine before the tunnel. Tracks all honed by Boxy Meadow come Mad Mountain winter. Mafia Alp. Name a stadium with a sign for cough medicine. Castoria River Run Cough Drum. Put under a blanket into his tunnel with the Italian champ. One. The Funnel House moves, looking all over the then-wide country and down come planes full of Mafia fight fixtures. Top to the apartments at Pillbox Hills, firing tennis at Jews. Out of the roars come vendors. If it am tutor at cue to a tennis, tennis Latin for the Long Island Railroad. Back and forth to drum, drum, bubber. The funnel top is watching you. The kettle moves away from the burners. A building speaks. Turn left for the racetrack. This is the geography of LaGuerre. Ahem.

[54:24]

And then he goes into a litany. Most holy incense burners of Elmhurst save us. Most coronists screen us. House of Hungarians feed us. Give us our Schenley labels from day to day. Give us our public lessons of love. Swimming lights down to the bottom. Even the island is long one. Trams to the end. House of Hungarian spirits. Holy incense burners of Elmhurst dissolve us. Trains come and go. Their own hot smell and passage snuffed entirely under. Save us. Anglouti. Periodic swallowing of travel under the east sound. Then hell gate. Dread. Winter dazzle. Yards. The metropolitan asshole. Most holy incense burners. Smoking tops. Crowns of mafia. Caruso with his box tops all over the train. Corona. Then the dumps. Deserve us. Sort of a fake kid, I think. Spider tracks out. Spike on some home. Rattle away to legendary capitals of the rulers of Loguerre, a land of sand spits without a single mountain.

[55:31]

There go lemons. Every boy is called from Ansys. And then he goes into some story about Lawrence's begging week with glasses, and then he says it was a light week in Loguerre. It goes through that for a while, what that's like. Queens, he says, it was like we can look where in all the phones. I'm back from Curacao, she said. They have wires in their voices when they want to, when they want to get a little prayer. When they want you, when they want you should come by trains to the tunnels. Bruegel, very funny, under the city. When they want you should come via Elmhurst. Save us the burners. via the gas tank, via the town Queens Burners Defend Tunnel. Ruthie had a friend, a big faint from Ohio, too big for the apartment. He was too big for the bathroom.

[56:32]

He blew down three walls. Very fast cars in and out the poles under the woodside elevator. Name a factory where they make bathrooms, big ones, little ones. Bill worked for the bathrooms. I used to say... I cannot come, I said. First of all, I said, back from Curacao, she told, come and see why I have wires in my voice for you now. All of a sudden, I cannot come, I said. I have dead people to attend to. I have to travel the gas tanks again to Elmhurst. The gray-eyed church is going to get me, I said. The blue sides in the fishery shop, I said. The wines and mafias at Corona. I have wires in my voice for you to come, she said. I come in very fast cars. If I can make it, I replied. If I can make it past Elmhurst. That's how much the New Jersey...

[57:33]

With Lightweek and LaGuerre, the wine was free. Connie had a bowl. All the boys' names were Frank. And so he goes on about life in Long Island and how they were singing in front of Fat Tony's. Don't. Trump on the Macare. Tonto Makut is in the area and watch the manholes. Protect the lives of your police. Lively traffic on all the phones. Helicopes. Famous John is downstairs under the speakeasy. So it's sort of a double take on a toilet and a name for some wild Haitian character famous john is downstairs on the speakeasy he is conducting all the spillways he is the demiurge of all ways out to devil of the toilet if you don't know my care you can't make it to the subways but famous john is sinister he runs the undertow of a big city it is all controlled from under sugared hill the hill where the diamonds are

[58:47]

where Finneran fell, the diamond's eyes, Edison's elves, living and loving in mighty coves. Famous John lives under all the night spots in an invisible office. He is the city's liver. If you know my care, he can fix it for you to get away with. But Ruthie has a friend, a big girl from Bassett College, mom in a tent followed by graffitiing. Famous John puts a sign on the door. Tonight, baby, all the Edisons are going to blink. A message from Sugar Hill. Famous John is writing his name on your apartment door. Try to call the Edisons and see if they are still in business. You can't do this anymore. You have to pay my care. Tonton sticks his funny head up out of the manhole. Yes, everywhere. Famous John is inviting you to a wondrous trip with his spies. You'll ride in roofless vans to see the tall smokes all over the experience, the smokes of Edison, the spinning winter bridges, the lovelorn whooping crane, the warehouses of Coney's unbeatable fun.

[59:50]

Famous John is inviting you to drink at Connie's Inn, where the bowl is for everybody, wine-dark East River for everybody. And on the wine-garbage waters of Spittin' Devil, we face Big John, the New York Central Steamer, with our plucky college shell. Insane. Famous John is inviting you to the Catskills for a lightning summer. Observe poetry in a spell. Pony Islander trees and a waterfall. and then this funnel house is running around again, and the police helicopters and whatnot are everywhere. Every way you turn, your car is still there, the electric. Madmen in a vacant lot bet on a walking kettle. A runner gets his foot caught in the teeth of a field. Cola gardens around the clock. Intent golf counters win. Never mind. The fight is over furniture, over a bowl, over a lighter, over a burner. The city is observed by invisible buzzards of silk, and a big fat ass from Ohio is a sitter in Elmhurst.

[60:57]

Top the funnel, house, eyes, nose, wherever you go, to the burners, to the houses, to the chapels, to the nooks, to the stores. Who can win? When he ripped kitty in these streets, all people turned away and pretended not to note. And so then he gets the Raging Rabbit, the Secret Books, and the Colbys. So see you home under the lamp of lights and guys at protection. He has more variations and words and twanglings going on, which are more or less entertaining. depending on whether you will expose yourself to it or not. Number 22 says, They, the cronies, are sending spikes. Make sure the payers get their plates. Best deliver the bountiful weights to cash softsters.

[61:58]

Striped contours pop colors, red squares and blue stills and green sails. Sweet juleps mend us on our Virginia ways. Sweep minutes under the old bank tank. Hops out the window and snores a curse over Bank Street. You come too late and I'll call the police. They, the cronies, are having a party of twists. Pairs of precious emblems in the window sites. Why pay extra money for the one on the left? Walking and waking in tropical ranges. Two exposures. Tricolor delivery in the middle of the stage. Rectangles and monochromes. Segments and interfaces. Media mean. mass mass celebrate the wonderful name oils recently placed in sync block block let out it's like let ups body fits under tub and then he does some more uh sonatas Oh, rise again, you vacant square pipetones, acrobatic barbers.

[63:04]

Topes are now in all mole games, winning the dimmer midnight spears. Dimmer midnight spears. Tope is a French word for mole, isn't it? I think it's either of both words. Greeny glass box wall benefit the same. Layout bumper, lookout to shore, coon sails, con mix, cats and jobber picnics, yo-yo silver rushing onto the cop shops. Tom mix riding into place of ownership. Mama muttered for lessening its pay. She has a size under her left and stores information. She has a viewfinder and holds, finds the shapes, confession to consider them investment. Northlands, everybody knows, is very Nord. It is athletic. Speaking of famous drinks, there might be a lot more in there yet.

[64:09]

Oh, hell, a blue flame from under the mine. Less than human phones. Celtic masters leap aboard the park. Bell, blue flame. Oh, bell, blue flame from under the mine. I confess it to the blue bells. You ought to speak to the films, Oprah and I.D. Lane. We were blue bells in another on the river. Great, gray, serious river of nothing. Run, Ezekiel, run, run, run, Ezekiel, you are on probation. Famous John is inventing you a trap with his agents. Old effigy with Anglican sabers. That turning there goes up to a stone tiger. Tiger burns at his own secret fright. Sinners are betting on walking kettle of eyes. Tiger, tiger burning in the bay escapes double vision.

[65:11]

Letter trap for old posthumous. Set our clock in rye. The clock flutters. Oh-ho, fliers, posthumous. Oh-ho, the airmail letters flip over and glide away in butterfly paper. Ten-a-penny prayers, guarded petitions pouring into palls with evident vital flames. Turned out of a lug-lorn long summer in Elmhurst, Ruthie has a friend. Simplicissimus, not funny, but the lovesick butterfly who bathes. Sing it all out. Sing, sang, sung, song, Cleo to the welkin. The musical Nord is forever equilonic. Of course, what he's doing there is playing with the ode of Horace. Alas, you are putting away posthumous, my posthumous friend, and so on, so on. Posthumous my friend. Hello, Argus. Yes, this is Argus.

[66:13]

Police, please. I have to report a walking kettle. Yes, every day. Sinners active in every street. Send agents, tear gas, bazooka, mace to slightly broken homes of double trouble. Run to our tumble here at Connie's Inn. Signed, Boston. Of course, Argus was the man who had eyes all over him and was set to watch, what did he watch? He watched the golden apples of the sun or something like that. Until something turned him asleep so that they could steal the oranges and Argus' eyes all got closed up. And later on, the eyes were all put in the tail of a peacock to cheer you up and mind you. And there's a pheasant also called the Argus pheasant, which has got a pretty tail. And he mixes up, My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean and the St.

[67:13]

James Infirmary Blues at one point. And then Mr. Judge, some sort of judge, appears with frosty eyes from so many movies. Oh, mercy. Bottles with hips. Oh, mercy. Jugs with hands. Little gleamy, unkind jars. Files stick out tongues. A crow flies out of the picture. Judge Doubletink condemns an ice cube. Restore his senses, sense, visions, touches, taste buds. Stop that kettle walking up the wall on all fours. Stop those swinging flocks of locum. Stop that paper. Stop that glass. Stop black. Too late. Every instrument is moving. Geography is in trouble all over Loguerre. Dear Togs, I have chosen electric life with spades. The lines here are almost new. Home is underwater now. Conscience is a bronco well-busted memory secured by electronic tape.

[68:14]

Gunshots on the glassy swamps of night. Uniforms made under willows calling to the dead. So Christ went down and stayed with them niggers and took his place with them at table. He said to them, It is very simple, much simpler than you imagine. They replied, You have become a white man. It is not so simple at all. And then he rhapsodizes O'Carla in the manner of William Blake, quoting from the Jerusalem. There's a grain of sand in Lambeth which Satan cannot find. There is a child God in the sacred cellar undressing Louise. My little brother is climbing all over Catherine. There is a seed of light in us that cannot be bought by Grove Press. With a pat by the shoulders in late afternoon, the sailboats did not see it. Tall elms meditate all night, and the big dog looks into the back seat. The daughters of Shenley approach and withdraw. They have to giggle.

[69:15]

We sink quietly into naked water where Satan cannot find any sand whatever, but where the condoms of others will float in full view on New Year's morning. There is a grain of sand in boarding school down the long hall, and giant elms cover the cricket field with shadow. I am photographed in an embarrassed collar. My Jerusalem is wide awake with watch fiends. I am searched and investigated by baying bitches. I am a grain of fear in village churches. There is a pebble of Jerusalem, and Ealing listens to the everlasting piano in the next home. On spring nights when there is no sleeping because the rivers of life are wide awake and a child must die into manhood on the cricket field, There's a grain of sand and lambeth which Satan cannot find. While deep in the heart's question, a shameless light returns no answer. And then all of a sudden he gets into the ranters who operated in the late 17th century. At about the same time as the diggers were out on the loose also, all the common lands started getting enclosed by some funny law.

[70:30]

Lands that had been owned in common for many, many generations where the cattle, you could let your cow out to graze and your sheep and whatever. all got made into private property by a law that zipped through the Parliament. And so there were a lot of people wandering around Hungary, but they didn't own any land. And so they would start digging gardens in some of these enclosures. And then, of course, they would get arrested and beaten up and whatnot, but they would go back and try it in other places. And then the ranchers... We're attacking the system in general and putting down the established church and the government. Is that the origin of the contemporary diggers? Yeah. The, uh, what, um... Hmm... There was a man around this time, in the late 17th century, called Gerald Winstanley, and he had to do with all this trap-riding and diggers and branchers and all that.

[71:54]

And he wrote a lot of essays. And then there was another guy, a poet, who wrote The Fable of the Bees. And I can't remember his name because it's the same name as that of an early Elizabethan travel writer. And I've got him mixed up in my head, and I can't remember either one. Maybe I'll remember it presently. Mandeville. Sir John Mandeville, I guess it was John Mandeville, wrote The Fable of the Bees, a big satire on society, all about how private vice is public virtue and all sorts of wonderful things like that. And so there was a lot of foment and mess going on at this time. The revolution had taken place in 1640, isn't it so? 1640 or 41 or so that they... Got rid of Charles I by removing his head.

[72:59]

And then Oliver comes in. I forget how long did the Commonwealth last. Well, so then it would have been 59. Because then it was 1660 was Annus Mirabilis, wasn't it? When Charles II is brought back. So we're right at that, right near that point when things are all in the fuck up and religious fanaticism and what not is said. It's anti-Catholic, hanky-panky of all kinds, and also anti-Anglican stuff. The party of Cromwell had this huge Presbyterian army getting down from Scotland and it was running everything and putting everybody down and wrecking churches and having a great time. stamping out stained glass windows and overturning organs, which they called idols, and making mess in general. I've probably asked this before. I've never been able to make a series of emails named together.

[74:01]

Well, why should you? Well, come on. I've been taught it in pieces in school one time or another and stuff. Well... I know certain incidents, but they're... There's a very... There's a very readable one in two volumes. Trevelyan. George Trevelyan, History of England. It reads very nicely and puts all that stuff together in some way. What's the name of it? Yeah, if I remember right. T-R-E I guess. That's a good start. T-R-E-V-E-L-Y-A-N. Trevelyan. George. He may be Sir George, but I don't know.

[75:04]

Sir George. But in any case, his name is Trevelyan, the history of England. That would do you. And then the more classical ones are the earlier ones. The big 19th century ones are by a man called Green. And then the more, some of the greater ones, of course, the 18th century ones, written in a hurry to make money by Tobias Smollett and various other hacks and grubs who turned out a history of being that they were going to sell it by subscription in order to make some money. So there is a grain of sand in Lambeth, which Satan cannot find. Of course, Lambeth is the site of the Bishop Palace. The Archbishop of Canterbury lives in Lambeth Palace, across the river from downtown center, downtown London.

[76:10]

So anyway, these ranchers were into being revolutionaries and making a thing about how they were really radical Protestants. And that there shall be a general restoration, wherein all men shall be reconciled to God and saved. The commentator says, The atheist doctrine did dishonor and cried down the Church. I would relate also other errors of that. If a man were strongly moved by the Spirit to kill or to commit adultery, and upon praying against it again and again continued, and he was still strong in the Christ, he should do it. and eye and ear witness a more true and fully discovery of the doctrine of love.

[77:18]

Quote, now is the creature damned and rammed into its only center, into the bowels of still eternity, its mother's womb, there to dwell forever unknown. This and this only is the damnation so much terrifying the creature in its dark apprehensions. Grand impostors, abominable practices, gross deceits lately spread abroad and acted in the county of Southampton. Anyway, Mr. Merton was enchanted by the figures and the fancy figures and visions and so forth. Nay, I see that God is in all creatures, man and beast, fish and fowl, every green thing from the highest cedar to the ivy on the wall, and that God is the life and being of them all. As all things are let out of God, so shall they all give up their being, life and happiness unto God again.

[78:22]

Though the clothing dissolve and come to nothing, yet the inward man still lives. I find that where God dwells and has come and hath taken men up and wrapped them up in the Spirit, there is a new heaven and a new earth, and my heaven is to have my earthly and dark apprehensions of God to cease forever. and to live on no other life than what Christ spiritually lives in me. Sin is the dark side of God, but God is not the author of sin. nor does he will it. Sin being a nullity, God cannot be the author of it. Of course, this is all heretical doctrine. Yeah, and they tell it libertinism and wickedness and heresy and so forth. Then God does not hate, not even sin. So heaven and hell are in Deptford, Woolwich, Battersea, and Lambeth. Burn him through the tongue.

[79:22]

That was fun to punish him. Grab a guy's tongue and then poke a red-hot iron through it for talking naughty. Then they have, all of a sudden, each of us in this thing about trains at rescue, this expedition, this polar expedition, and all the trouble that it caused, and how pretty the icebergs and the whales and so forth were. And I was cold. And they keep quotes from different journals, but the expedition itself went from rescue. Is this the expedition that would not be current National Geographic? I don't know. It's something, some kind of polar expedition that totally perished as a feature article. Yeah, well, listen. They went and tried to reproduce it and almost perished or something. Oh, really? Yeah. Well, this is one in which I think everybody was undone.

[80:27]

What does it say in the notes here? Something there. They actually did it with a skin boat in the National Geographic exhibition without board motors. There we are. Cane Relief Exclusion, 1855. Dr. James Law is a journal of the Jane Relief Exclusion at the Stephenson Collection at Dartmouth College Library. So it all comes to that. And then he goes east. Love of the Sultan. A slave cuts off his own head after a long speech declaring how much he loves the Sultan.

[81:27]

A quaint old Haitian custom. Love of the Sultan. East of Eden, Batuta de Cairo. And they're given sugar, soap, and oil for their lamps and the price of that. And he tells about how these people are... living gently in a strange religious way, but quite different from various heretical people, namely the, whatchacallit, the Sufi. It's what he's talking about here. There was a stranger came to the Nusayris and told them he was the Mahdi. He promised to divide Syria among them, giving each one a city or town.

[82:29]

He gave them all of these. He said, these will bring you success. These leaves are warrants of your appointment. They went forth into city and town. When arrested, each said to the governor, the Imam al-Mahdi has come. He has given me this town. The governor would then reply, show me your warrants. Each one of them produced his olive leaves and was flogged. So the stranger told the heretics to fight. Go with myrtle rods, he said, instead of swords. The rods will turn to swords at the moment of battle. They entered town on Friday when the men entered the mosque. They raped the women and the Muslims came running out with swords and cut them to pieces. Anyway, this is so contrived. The Meccans are very elegant and clean in their dress and most of them wear white garments, which you always see fresh and snowy, and they use a great deal of perfume and coal. They make free use of toothpicks and green Arak wood. The Meccan women are extraordinarily beautiful and very pious and modest. They, too, make great use of perfumes to such a degree that they will spend the night hungry and hard to buy perfumes at the price of their food.

[83:35]

They visit the mosque every Thursday night, wearing their finest apparel, and the whole sanctuary is saturated with the smell of their perfume. When one of these women goes away, the odor of the perfume clings to the place after she has gone. Hello there. What's happening? Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. And then he goes on to Calcutta. I guess so. Some other world, all right. Aren't they big? Yeah, they're getting just a little bit enormous. They'll probably grow to be very large. And then he goes off to the east with Malinowski. Go and check them out there. How does that happen? One came out shorter than the other. I don't understand. What kind of twin is that? And so poor Mr. Malinowski is sitting in the South Sea, is having diarrhea, and telling about on the way to Port Moresby and McCann's Hotel, sherry in the gramophone, icy beer, and, quote, that woman vulgar beyond endurance.

[84:59]

Then he goes into the section about cargo songs. which I found very interesting because I had never heard about or read about the cargo cult. And so it was through this book that I was able to find Peter Lutnany's book about as it happened in Kyoto. I was able to get this kind of a copy of this gentleman's book about cargo, which was very entertaining, very interesting. Buck. Buck. So he says, Sir William McGregor, representative of Her Majesty the Queen, and Victoria, of course, saw the paramount chief enthroned on a high platform, went up and seized him by the hair, dragged him to the ground, placed himself firmly in the seat of honor. No one shall sit higher in Papua than I. The anthropologist lay low, shivered under the hot compress, red bronte and pissed black when the wind blew up the sea.

[86:06]

He thought he felt better. He seemed to hear the bell charm of St. Martin's and strand traffic coming in his head. He lay thinking of French chop houses in Soho, of anything, in fact, but Trobriand Islanders and Coral Gardens. Even his intimate fantasies were far away in Russia, a convenient system. How wicked I am, said the anthropologist, I need more quinine, and no one shall sit higher in trouble than I, said Malinovsky, of course. Meanwhile, four natives must hang, each in a different village, to impress the population. Proceedings throughout were watched with great interest by chiefs, and a number of other natives all appeared impressed by the solemnity. Hate-devil missionary has a waxen smell, long narrow trousers, find their way to hell. Rams, chickens, forbidden kava, and the vices of a river god seen between trees. An old man with a forgettable name lights Volcano 9. Captain notes odd behavior and shivers. Even though the anthropologist has laid low, there's still nobody higher.

[87:08]

After this, a native from the north side of Milne Bay, possessed by a tree spirit, warned of giant waves. All must throw away matches, knives, white men's tools, destroy houses, kill all pigs, withdraw inland, wearing only long, narrow leaves, quote, to show entire repudiation of the white man in front. On the following Sunday, the missionary noted with surprise that his congregation now consisted only of a few children. He learned that the villagers were all in the hills, expecting the return of the dead. He pushed inland without further delay. He found all men of the village sitting in tense silence. His courage of greeting met with no reply. But the missionary had come prepared. Quote, I had in my wallet a long, thin stick of trade tobacco. a delicacy very much prized by these people, and as I was sitting in the doorway of the chief's house, I took it out. It blew out to the persistent longing for my life. I'm... [...]

[88:11]

He fed the people with rice that had arrived secretly by air. The church burned down when the father was home in Germany, and this was a sign. He said, Ein undankbares Schmerzmissions, said the father on his return. Meanwhile, they had eaten everything. The village seemed unnaturally quiet, full of natives in European dress, sitting very still. They said their ship had now started from Rome, bringing fountain pens and removal of mystical penalties. Famous young couple originates new life, signed on this line. Be ready for big black fella Catholic steamers. Most sacred heart of Jesus limited. Turns brown man white in a quaking boat full of ancestors speaking in tongues. But saner elements visited the scientist and told him everything. Fido, a gifted virgin, dreamt of God who told her what he thought of white people. Anthropologists suffered a fit of nervous aversion for pointed objects. Philo said God had told her he was sending a truckload of rifles.

[89:30]

One man broke through the fence and nearly brained the father with a seashell. A mission brother slipped away across to the other island to bring the magistrate and officers. Some rebels got seven years. Philo returned under police escort. It was only a mild demonstration, though everybody knew some tobacco had really fallen from heaven. I gave them portions of tobacco and they all walked away without pausing long enough, without posing long enough for a time exposure. My feelings toward them exterminate the brutes, Malinowski said. Igua massaged me and told me in delightful motto about murders of white men as well as his fears of what he would do if I died in that way. But little wire can take a lot of juice and no man shall sit high or appropriate and deny it. And then he quotes from the... How all these Europeans laid their own names on these faraway islands.

[90:30]

And then he tells about... He gets back in more into the legend of the... cargo he says Tebid McClay came from the moon in a white ship stood without weapons in a shower of arrows sat in a bundle of full of remedies cameras optical instruments and presents walked in the night with a blue lamp Tebid McClay a culture hero from the land of figureheads inventor of nails mirrors melons and paint whose servant flew away over the horizon without wings Tebid McClay with a swede and an islander blue as a god her ancestor warned them there would be two kinds of white men Arriving later, a few good, the rest very bad, hostile deities, Jaman, with firearms, would rob them of land, work them under whips, shoot them if they ran away. People took this warning to heart. They could not understand. Soon came Herr Finch, a decent Jaman, saying he was the brother of Tibit McClay, so they received him gladly. He hoisted his flag over their villages while they celebrated his coming.

[91:33]

And all the others began to arrive. They gave the people two axes, some paint and matches, and then went into business, taking over the country. News traveled all over the islands. No end of visitors. Get ready to entertain. So they have a seven-day section. Seven days in an unknown country where aspirins come from. Pants and axes and corned beef in cans. It's far beyond the Green Sea, the White Sea, the Blue Sea, past Tokyo, North America, and Germany. In the same general direction, far beyond other countries, no one has seen this blessed land. The center of Snow Night Day is a more hidden place, even more unknown than Seven Day. The big front door of Big Belong, who got up very old out of himself in the beginning, left his endless bed in the morning and started the cargo company in which we now offer shares to true believers. Then the dreamer said, We must build a large warehouse in the bush We must do everything, he said, and then wait. In a short time, the warehouse would be filled with cans of meat, aspirins, hydrogen peroxide, soap, razor blades, rice, pants, flashlights, and everything.

[92:43]

Then we built the warehouse together, and after that, the dreamer said, we must wash away all our impurities. We all drew water and heated it and washed to get it. We went in silence to the burial ground. Nobody sang or danced or said anything. We just sat very still in the dark, waiting for the signal. At the signal, the women took theirs off and we took ours off. We all began. It was all collected in a bottle with water and poured over the burial place to bring cargo. When the administration heard about it, we had to tear down the warehouse and carry all the timbers right 18 miles and throw them in the sea.

[93:19]

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