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Spring 2017: If Not Then

A Daoist Fragment of Questionable Origin.

March 31, 2017 by Exangel

by Ronnie Pontiac and Tamra Lucid.

 

Here in Beijing I feel as if I am now working on two Ph.D.s: my doctoral thesis but also an understanding of this culture.  China is like an amnesiac slowly remembering.  Ah! What treasures of wisdom wait to be discovered by the people to whom they belong most!  Beijing reminds me of a dream in which you hurry to reach someone only to find that instead of getting nearer you’re now further away.  Sometimes so charming as to appear magical, yet also disturbingly institutional and indifferent.  There’s no getting used to the air pollution.  I’ve worked my way up from a terry cloth surgical mask, which seemed to do no good, all the way to my current charcoal filter mask but my eyes still burn.   You could have linked me to a blog about gas masks when you advised me to specialize in Chinese Imperial history!   But enough about life abroad.  My investigations in the museum archive have left me with a strange wonder.  The object of my wonder is a page of writing that may belong in the collection of some distinguished professor of ancient Chinese philosophy.  But I must warn you it could simply be a hoax, a mistranslation of the common English phrase “if not now, when?”  If possible please forward the following to a scholar who might be able to establish authenticity. 

EDITORIAL NOTE: These translations and comments present a mystery.  While they seem straightforward they in fact correspond to no other known facts regarding Chinese history.  Of course, that might be expected when a document purports to unmask secret societies.  But historians have so far failed to identify the province described in this fragment found among the papers of Isabel Ingram, but not in her script. Ingram tutored Wanrong, the last empress of China. This attribution is not entirely trustworthy as it derives from hearsay by way of a mid 20th century antique dealer of dubious reputation. The translations by the unknown author of the commentary, or perhaps by some other translator, appear in italics. No date occurs anywhere on the page.

Item 1:

Inscribed on a 10cm by 21cm rectangle of lavender jade found in a Chinese tomb:

“How certain is tomorrow?  We postpone our desires turning them into dreams.  A marriage, children, a house, a business, wealth, beauty, adventure become ghosts haunting our lives as we wait for a day that most despair of ever seeing.  This is not the way.  Equally wrong is the belief that nature will satisfy our demands when we make them.   We may want wealth and so we miss a good marriage.  We chase a business only to lose beauty.  So then for each of us the most important practice is listening.  Hearing not with our ears.  With quiet minds and soulful hearts we follow where we are led.  We call our school the Way of the Mare.  We do not miss the opportunities put before us at every moment.  In the right moment we rest.  In the right moment we act.  We are easily led.”

The Mare School produced especially lovely art.  The beauty of nature presented not only with great realism but also with a sense of charming moments.  However the school over time proved to be a breeding ground for not only hedonists but also bullies.  Hedonists found ways to exploit pleasure at every turn, while bullies seized whatever they could in the name of the way.  For the masters of this school life was simple as they showed a quiet but obvious relationship with serendipity.  They did seem to be at the right places at the right times.  But for lesser elements of this once popular school opportunism proved to be a poor spiritual practice.  Still, the school continued as a minor cult at the royal court long after it had lost credibility among the local people.

Item 2:

Inscribed on a broken tortoise shell found in the ruins of a Chinese temple:


“You did not have it then.  So you have it now.  If you had it then, would you need it now?  Did not having it then teach you the importance of having it now?  Are you ready to have it now because you did not have it then?  How long will you be attached to then before you realize you are missing now?  If you realize now where is then?”

The Riddle School can best be understood as a reaction to the effects of the Mare School.  Under the influence of the Mare School society had become less patient and responsible as many searched for immediate and unearned rewards.  In reaction the Riddle School offered an austere devotion to responsibility.   For example, a woman who suffered an assault was advised to learn martial arts and to teach others.  A beggar was offered the chance to work at the temple long enough to learn skills worthy of pay.  No task earned higher praise than providing stable homes for children.
Whereas the Mare School held up the ideal of the individual with freedom to react to whatever life offers the Riddle School celebrated community and self sacrifice in the name of the greater good.  For the revered masters of this school life was the simple repetition of wholesome actions.  However over several generations it became clear that the Riddle School fostered hostility to new ideas, to anything or anyone unusual.  Since so many advances and beauties of life come from the unusual the culture stagnated.  Secret vices occupied many and authorities quickly became corrupted, although ceremonial displays of superficial honesty were still practiced and celebrated.

Item 3:

Embroidered in white silk thread on a triangular 2m x .30m yellow silk banner:

“If not then, now?”

This famous koan of the Invisible School became so popular among the people that it eventually degenerated into slang meaning something along the lines of “get on with it!”  Understanding the excesses caused by the two previous schools of their lineage the masters of the Invisible School live ordinary lives in every possible way.  They make no claims to spiritual authority.  They only become visible because their lives so clearly marked by serendipity cannot be ignored.  Because it advocates no program of behavior, and because anyone attempting to gain favor or profit from it is immediately recognized as a fraud, the Invisible School endures to this day, influential in subtle ways.

Another of this school’s sayings “live the life you are given” is still hotly disputed.  Some consider this saying a gesture of respect to the Mare School, meaning “take every opportunity life gives you.”  But others argue that the saying refers to the Riddle School, with the meaning “conform to the responsibilities of your station in life.”  The most famous saying of the Invisible School is a riddle but it would not be accurate to claim that the Riddle School influenced the Invisible School.  It would be more correct to say that the Invisible School influenced the Riddle School and the Mare School.

 

 

Potsherds and Roadside Deer.

March 31, 2017 by Exangel

by Colin Dodds.   Shades pull and shutters shut Doors seal to mirrors and conclusions occlude Concrescence culminates and defaults envelop Verbs vanish and nounhood eclipses Our substance unfairly then fairly exposed to the warm afternoons and enormous nights of planet loops embroidering ovals and cut off The happy-go-lucky merry-go-round halts, its calliope fermenting to […]

She Said Budapest.

March 31, 2017 by Exangel

by Laura Roman.   She said “Budapest.” The way she said it made me take notice. I was in a cafe, inadvertently eavesdropping, when I heard her say “Budapest.” She said it incorrectly, that woman in the cafe. The “s” should have been “shhhhhh.” She said “s” as in “sssssss” and it conjured up my […]

No Mokşa in the Offing for Albin Balbus.

March 31, 2017 by Exangel

by C.S. Kraszewski.   f-fukfuk f-fukfuk f-fukfukfukfukfukfukfukfukdiiiiickkheeeeeeeeeeeadd… for the sins of contempt and backbiting committed during fifty four years and seven months in rumpled khakis and a damp duplex smelling of cold stew after his death Albin Balbus was metempsychosed into a weed whacker the calloused hands stained yellow with nicotine of an undocumented landscaper […]

You don’t know.

March 31, 2017 by Exangel

by Judith Arcana. You think I didn’t care about that baby, didn’t wonder if we’d like each other when she turned fourteen; didn’t think he’d follow anywhere his older brother went. You think we take them out, like gangsters; disappear them, like generals. You don’t know how it works then, do you? You don’t know […]

The Tower of Babel’s Brief War on Heaven.

March 31, 2017 by Exangel

by Colin Dodds.               The golden age might have lasted longer, but the astronomers failed to mind the stars. Like so much, I know this because I was charged with concealing it. The report from the Fire Ministry investigators said the bitumen roofing caught fire, which should have been impossible. Yes, the lead investigator […]

Who was Robin Hood?

March 31, 2017 by Exangel

by Bruce E. R. Thompson. When I was a puppeteer, I performed at Renaissance festivals and medieval fairs, so my repertoire naturally included tales of Robin Hood. My favorite story was Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne, in which Robin Hood slays Guy of Gisborne, a cruel robber and assassin from another forest, and then […]

Her feet belonged to the ground.

March 31, 2017 by Exangel

by Marie Davis and Margaret Hultz. Such a curiously mobile child. Born a nomad, more had passed under her feet than the average person. Great calluses rimmed her soles, lifting her an additional four inches off the ground. A bit more than a wisp, she was three-feet, nine inches tall—great calluses included. And walking was […]

Fascinator.

March 31, 2017 by Exangel

by Marissa Bell Toffoli.   Wicker chairs where guests perch, triangle sandwiches with the crusts removed. The perfect setup for tea, only nobody dons dainty gloves anymore. Out upon the grass, you pinwheel your arms, turn your face toward the sun. It’s off-putting, such a large gesture. Too much openness. Oh, honey, your lace dress […]

Evading the Evil Eye.

March 31, 2017 by Exangel

by Brian Griffith. One of the most prevalent “superstitions” in Iran and across the Middle East concerns the so-called “evil eye.” The evil eye is to blame for countless misfortunes, and many remedies are devised to ward it off. Naturally, people hope to protect their loved ones from the evil eye, as in the modern […]

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In This Issue.

  • Who Was Dorothy?
  • Those Evil Spirits.
  • The Screaming Baboon.
  • Her.
  • A Tale of Persistence.
  • A Conversation with Steve Hugh Westenra.
  • Person Number Twelve.
  • Dream Shapes.
  • Cannon Beach.
  • The Muse.
  • Spring.
  • The Greatness that was Greece.
  • 1966, NYC; nothing like it.
  • Sun Shower.
  • The Withering Weight of Being Perceived.
  • Broken Clock.
  • Confession.
  • Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse.
  • Sometimes you die, I mean that people do.
  • True (from “My Life with Dogs”).
  • Fragmentary musings on birds and bees.
  • 12 Baking Essentials to Always Have in Your Poetry.
  • Broad Street.
  • A Death in Alexandria.
  • My Forked Tongue.
  • Swan Lake.
  • Long Division.
  • Singing against the muses.
  • Aphorisms from “What Remains to Be Said”.

In The News.

That cult classic pirate/sci fi mash up GREENBEARD, by Richard James Bentley, is now a rollicking audiobook, available from Audible.com. Narrated and acted by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio, you’ll be overwhelmed by the riches and hilarity within.

“Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges is your typical seventeenth-century Cambridge-educated lawyer turned Caribbean pirate, as comfortable debating the virtues of William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, and compound interest as he is wielding a cutlass, needling archrival Henry Morgan, and parsing rum-soaked gossip for his next target. When a pepper monger’s loose tongue lets out a rumor about a fleet loaded with silver, the Captain sets sail only to find himself in a close encounter of a very different kind.

After escaping with his sanity barely intact and his beard transformed an alarming bright green, Greybagges rallies The Ark de Triomphe crew for a revenge-fueled, thrill-a-minute adventure to the ends of the earth and beyond.

This frolicsome tale of skullduggery, jiggery-pokery, and chicanery upon Ye High Seas is brimming with hilarious puns, masterful historical allusions, and nonstop literary hijinks. Including sly references to Thomas Pynchon, Treasure Island, 1940s cinema, and notable historical figures, this mélange of delights will captivate readers with its rollicking adventure, rich descriptions of food and fashion, and learned asides into scientific, philosophical, and colonial history.”

THE SUPERGIRLS is back, revised and updated!

supergirls-take-1

In The News.

Newport Public Library hosted a three part Zoom series on Visionary Fiction, led by Tod.  

And we love them for it, too.

The first discussion was a lively blast. You can watch it here. The second, Looking Back to Look Forward can be seen here.

The third was the best of all. Visions of the Future, with a cast of characters including poets, audiobook artists, historians, Starhawk, and Mary Shelley. Among others. Link is here.

In the News.

SNOTTY SAVES THE DAY is now an audiobook, narrated by Last Word Audio’s mellifluous Colby Elliott. It launched May 10th, but for a limited time, you can listen for free with an Audible trial membership. So what are you waiting for? Start listening to the wonders of how Arcadia was born from the worst section of the worst neighborhood in the worst empire of all the worlds since the universe began.

In The News.

If you love audio books, don’t miss the new release of REPORT TO MEGALOPOLIS, by Tod Davies, narrated by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio. The tortured Aspern Grayling tries to rise above the truth of his own story, fighting with reality every step of the way, and Colby’s voice is the perfect match for our modern day Dr. Frankenstein.

In The News.

Mike Madrid dishes on Miss Fury to the BBC . . .

Tod on the Importance of Visionary Fiction

Check out this video of “Beyond Utopia: The Importance of Fantasy,” Tod’s recent talk at the tenth World-Ecology Research Network Conference, June 2019, in San Francisco. She covers everything from Wind in the Willows to the work of Kim Stanley Robinson, with a look at The History of Arcadia along the way. As usual, she’s going on about how visionary fiction has an important place in the formation of a world we want and need to have.

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