Telluric Psychogeography (part 2)
March 04, 2010
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.