Telluric Psychogeography (part 2)

Telluric Psychogeography part 2

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I awoke one morning to find that I was a hair on Blake’s Buttocks.  Peering through a dense miasma at the cold grimace of a Pittsburgh morning, I was startled to see William Blake himself.  At first, I thought that perhaps he had contorted his body in such a way as to place his rotten teeth in close proximity to my unusual position within his anus.  A moment’s thought showed me how unlikely that was:  this was clearly an astral projection of the author, and one to which I was accountable in some as yet undisclosed fashion. 

I have seen a self portrait of William Blake, a pencil sketch in which he is walking along the street, turning back to look at the artist.  He is wearing a hat - a hat the same style as one given to me by Kathryn as a gift in winter 2008.  I assume that this is somehow responsible for the situation - inserted in Blake’s rectum -  in which I now find myself.

Blake spoke to me from this obscure advantage:  “In  the body, as the city, to the land” , he says.

I know  that when I am walking, my stride begins with some hesitation.  I am counting malas, laboured with my early morning breathing, muscles still tight, alignment of the spine to skull base still unsure (each morning feels like I am reliving our purported ape ancestors' descent from the trees and ascent  onto 2 legs).   The snot I blow directly to the ground, the odd occasion when I am forced by necessity to urinate upon the street.   This is a metabolic understanding of my self, the gradual deepening and strengthening of breath as my legs loosen to the hip.  Lungs, heart, skeleton:  all organs holding a specific pattern reflective of immediate experience – the drink I had last night, the food I ate beforehand – and of my genetic history – complex and challenging. 

The city responds to this .  The lark rises in the morning chirping merrily for the flaxen milk maids.     Blake wrote about a 'vegetal'  intelligence.  Victorian ancients discuss leylines and green men in gothic carvings, stomp across the dales and vales.  This human activity  activates the cityscape - recall Wordsworth on Westminster bridge 

“The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
 Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
 Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
 All bright and glittering in the smokeless air."

 But No - a grimace crosses Blake’s face (and a surge of gas supports his displeasure).  I am obviously not answering.   Let me pull a copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses  from my own behind, and quote: “ Through spaces smaller than red globules of man’s blood they creepycrawl after Blake’s buttocks into eternity of which this vegetable world is but a shadow.  Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past”.  I am ejected!  Oh what sweet release.   With a finger in the snow before blessed forgetfulness removes the thought, I draw this table with the stains of my tribulation:

BODY:   Metabolic, Neurologic, Akashic.
CITY:  Local, Remembered, Sacred
LAND:  Geology, Manipulated, Cosmic.

 A sequence to which no doubt I will refer in future walks and writings.  There is a space in which the human body, the developed City, and the evolving cosmos can all be viewed as a resonant structure - one that 'plunges to the past', extracting architecture from chronology.

Comments

[Kathryn Kane]

You have quite the brain. This window into your world fills me with something like awe. Or disgust at the totality of the Blake's bum analogy in this piece. Or something disturbing between these two, which may be indicative of your true purpose. Dude.

[ZenGlop]

Who said anything about an analogy..or metaphor. THis is just another day walking the dog.