{"id":12290,"date":"2014-09-05T13:00:42","date_gmt":"2014-09-05T17:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=12290"},"modified":"2014-09-11T15:45:13","modified_gmt":"2014-09-11T19:45:13","slug":"an-alchemical-journal-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/an-alchemical-journal-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Kelly: An Alchemical Journal (4)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"15mutusliberDET\"<\/a>\u00a0\u25a1<\/p>\n

In 1955 I & some school-fellows attempted a revival of Batman <\/i>as an object of inquiry. It does not feel good to have been in the avant-garde of kitsch. Yet my fingers smell of her <\/i>authenticity, She Who Is To Be Obeyed, She who is wet.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u25a1<\/span><\/p>\n

These are the books: The works of Gerhard Dorn
\n<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Michael Maier
\nJakob B\u00f6hme
\nRobert Fludd
\nThomas Vaughan<\/p>\n

Not one of them but wrote with <\/b>a goose-quill. Over the hen-yard, the scream of the chicken-hawk. Over the stream (Hortonville 1939), the blue scream of a kingfisher. Men who like to read books & watch birds. Presidents of the United States. Men who blow fine glass flasks with wild birds inside. Cegeste (F*lc*n*ll*’s name in the special bars of Toulon) worked it out just fine: L’oiseau chante avec ses doigts. Which means, when it comes to the Vessel of the work: the ouzel chants a wake six dights. Six nays. And on the seventh, breasts. Or casts a storm spell on the Wash. The Wish. They come to life again. L’auzel. L’aura amara. We picked the right road & the wrong goal. For a long time the kingfisher sat on the branch.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u25a1<\/span><\/p>\n

Peonies in the olive jar, white water. Wise men read the labels. Water salt & acid added. But they are peonies, her holy flower, how the rain stinks of them. I love her. Wise men need no labels.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u25a1<\/span><\/p>\n

There is something about new morning, dew on the sun & the people out on the loose again, that moves the bowels.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u25a1<\/span><\/p>\n

After all this crap, time to understand. Yes, that was it; the Daring. The Irrevocable. Death as game. You will notice I do not speak of Death. I do not like that game. If you go on playing it I will take my life & go home. The Gnostic says. When I was a child I heard several sermons each summer (though once in a life would have been enough) about the boy who wilfully missed Mass on Sunday to go to the beach, & came back in a box. That’s the way they always said it: in a box\u2014& there was no doubt what that meant. It is only now, in my thirty-first year, that I begin to doubt the relevance of the priest’s report. Yet each sin measures me & limits my work. When I have sinned I write in a box.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u25a1<\/span><\/p>\n

We made love by the waterfall. Later we saw a snake. It was eating, ugly. I had no compassion for its hunger. Forgive me.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u25a1<\/span><\/p>\n

As a strong man, I love to receive the commands of beautiful women.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u25a1<\/span><\/p>\n

The course of love-making follows the phases of the moon. An ignorant girl wrote: ‘My dog flowed me to school.’ Dont everybody laff at once.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u25a1<\/span><\/p>\n

What did she mean coming into my office & seeing the big picture of the fish &, asking me if I were the Fisher King? Yet she was beautiful. I clapped a hand to my thigh & worshiped \u2014for the length of that casual, meant-to-be-humorous gesture\u2014the woman secretly inside it. O unborn twin sister of mine, o death in my body come to life. I was black & blue from the injections, etc.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u25a1<\/span><\/p>\n

So many birds of morning. Elephant on the desk. To each unit of the biological world belongs its proper gesture. We call it lucus, <\/i>‘grove,’ a non lucendo, <\/i>from the fact that it is not bright inside it. Dark birds. The traveller asked for an empty glass. One tusk is longer than the other. In a poem of Rene Char’s we read of deujc pointes semblables, <\/i>sun shining on two like tips, of the horn of the bull, of the sword that kills him. I have kept him all these years at the door, waiting for one to become empty.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/b><\/span>\u25a1<\/p>\n

Its earliest glyph was the Ka, the upraised hands \u00a0\"KaGlyph\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

When we leave our house, only the wisest of us throws up his hands.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u25a1<\/span><\/p>\n

The most remarkable event of the week was a mock crucifixion wherein a young man was lashed to a yellow cross propped up before the people. After saying of pretending to say certain words, he pretended to die. If one pronoun had slipped out of place, I honestly declare I would have lost my mind.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u25a1<\/span><\/p>\n

But I didnt say what it was, <\/i>of which the Ka, the upraised hands, was symbol. Call it in the simple jargon of our time, my time, a process. Fresh & light-footed <\/i>Dante called Guinicelli’s love poems.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u25a1<\/span><\/p>\n

All things are finally brought into the Furnace of Love. We have that assurance. The temperature.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u25a1<\/span><\/p>\n

Mosquito bite on my thigh, a gentle enough punishment for all the thighs I’ve bitten. I mean all the times I’ve bitten thighs.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u25a1<\/span><\/p>\n

In a play of Joel Oppenheimer’s, the classical historical western desperadoes look down from cowboy heaven on the struggles of the characters of the play. At times they speak. When I saw the play performed, the desperadoes were enacted by poets. The fertility of a contrivance is out of all proportion to its meaning. Or a sentence.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u25a1<\/span><\/p>\n


\nHoping to learn by a sign how the Work prospers, I look out the window, first moving the curtain on which the terra cotta\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span>\u2640<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>Mirror of Ashtaroth reflects no image.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u25a1<\/span><\/p>\n

I’ll try again to say it straight. Hoping to learn by a sign how the Work prospers, I move the curtain & look out, morning<\/span><\/p>\n

\u25a1<\/span><\/p>\n

The language has roots in me, by it I am grown, leaf & hand & tongue. Who is this language? Who is this King of Glory? <\/i>I have sharpened my pen. I have opened the gates of the Temple.<\/span><\/p>\n

[…to be continued]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u25a1 In 1955 I & some school-fellows attempted a revival of Batman as an object of inquiry. It does not feel good to have been in the avant-garde of kitsch. Yet my fingers smell...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1576,645],"class_list":["post-12290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-an-alchemical-journal","tag-robert-kelly"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12290"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12328,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12290\/revisions\/12328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}