Condor Wing 8: about mary (Into the Future) / Wittgenstein's Wristwatch / Message from the Captain

Hubert Selby, Jr.: fromThe Room 

Time seemed stationary, yet the painful pressure of time was constantly felt. If only the pressure would crush the life out of him and allow him simply to sink into the inviting movement of clock hands or feel the passing of time he could then feel he was getting closer to something or at least further away from something, it didnt really matter which. Nothing really mattered. If only there were some kind of movement. But everything remained motionless, the body not even moving on the bed, while feeling the tearing pressures from all sides in all directions. Feeling deep within him in that pit where there lived the violent and contorting pain of maggots crawling through your guts between the rusty cans and broken bottles and the screaming urgency to get time to move, to just move before every FUCKING GODDAMN PART OF YOUR BODY SCREWS UP INTO A FUCKING BALL AND YOUR WHOLE FUCKING BODY DISINTEGRATES, JUST SHATTERS and there was no escape, even with the lack of consciousness, for with it came dreams of wakefulness. There was no escape from the past. The struggle against it only entangled him deeper in the fear of the future. There was no place for him to go. No place he could hide. No place where his enemy didnt exist. No escape from unconscious wakefulness. There was no rest.

Hubert Selby, Jr. (1928-2004): from The Room (1971)

Portrait of Dr. Johannes Cuspinian (detail): Lucas Cranach the Elder, c. 1502 (Oskar Reinhart Collection, Winterthur)

Listen Fates, who sit nearest of gods to the throne of Zeus, and weave with shuttles of adamant, inescapable devices for councels of every kind beyond counting, Aisa, Clotho and Lachesis, fine-armed daughters of Night, hearken to our prayers, all-terrible goddesses, of sky and earth. 

Pindar:Fragmenta Chorica Adespota, 5

Can mercy be found in the heart of her who was born of the stone?
Were she not merciless, would she kick the breast of her lord? 
Men call you merciful, but there is no trace of mercy in you, Mother.
You have cut off the heads of the children of others, and these you wear as a garland around your neck.
It matters not how much I call you "Mother, Mother." You hear me, but you will not listen. 

Rāmprasād Sen (1718-1785), in David R. Kinsley: Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religions, 1988

If thou openest not the gate to let me enter,
I will break the door, I will wrench the lock,
I will smash the door-posts, I will force the doors.
I will bring up the dead to eat the living. 
And the dead will outnumber the living.
 
"Descent of the Goddess Ishtar into the Lower World", in Morris Jastrow, The Civilization of Babylonia and Assyria, 1915

Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death.

If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.

Our life has no end in just the way our visual field has no limits.   

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951): from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1921

Where now O Captain (Albertine's Memory)

A simple snip and nothing remains but
Time 
Paving the roads of deep space with
A soft blue dust
Left by the memory of light

Time is nothing but

A word

Time is hers
Atropos
No turning (forward or back)
  

A word

It's in her hands
Always paying out
The turning chain

A ship's anchor dragging behind

"He's got a lot of nerve"

But there's a difference

Between courage and nerve

Courage has heart in it a red mark
Stamped into the silvery turning of the chain

 
Bas relief of Atropos cutting the thread of life: photo by Tom Oates, 18 June 2008
 

Ishtar, Queen of Night: Old Babylonian period baked clay relief panel; image by BabelStone, 24 June 2010 (British Museum)

Representation of the goddess Ishtar, Queen of Night (Inana/Inanna), winged and wearing a version of the horned cap of divinity: detail of ancient Mesopotamian so-called "Ishtar Vase" (vase d'Ishtar), terracotta with cut, moulded, and painted decoration, from Larsa, early 2nd millennium BC.; image by Jastrow, 2009 (Department of Near Eastern Antiquities, Musée du Louvre, Paris)

Ishtar, Queen of Night, holding her weapon: terracotta relief, early 2nd millennium BC. From Eshnunna; image by Marie-Lan Nguyen, 14 January 2009 (Department of Near Eastern Antiquities, Musée du Louvre, Paris)

 

Triumph of Kali Devi (Hindu Goddess Kali): Richard B. Godfrey, 1770 (South and Southeast Asian Art Department, Los Angeles County Museum of Art)

Inside construction of typical HC49 case quartz crystal: photo by Altzone, 2006