Off to Khentii in a couple of hours – about 850 years ago the birthplace of a babe of great destiny, young Temujin, who the world would soon regard in awe as Chinghis Khan, taking just 25 years to lead his horsemen in creating the largest contiguous land empire ever amalgamated, before or since. Brother Don just traveled there himself, in the more rustic style to which he is accustomed, and regales us with tales and pix here.
To keep you entertained, I direct your attention to two blogs just added to the Mongolia column – Wandering the World (shh, don’t tell him Don’s is called World Wide Wanders) is the creation of a Yank named Jim who’s wandered into Central Asia and found a gig teaching English at FPMT’s local Buddhist center. The other is penned by a British VSO volunteer and, most significantly, rabid birder named Brian under the enigmatic title BrianUBplus. Brian and I, having just met and confessed our mutual avian obsessions over lattes, are conspiring to peep at the migrating & local birdies sometime this weekend. He tells me there’s another twitcher named Tom about. Lovely! Lunacy loves company.
Finally, another short excerpt from Pynchon’s Against the Day, sure to tickle Trekkies and metaphysicians alike. In today’s epistle, a new figure enters T.W.I.T.’s sanctum sanctorum:
“A gent of average height and unthreatening appearance was approaching them with a watercress sandwich in a gloved hand. ‘Clive Crouchmas. You may recall his voice from Madame Eskimoff’s séance the other night.’
“This person greeted the Cohen by raising his left hand, then spreading the fingers two and two away from the thumb so as to form the Hebrew letter shin, signifying the initial letter of one of the pre-Mosaic (that is, plural) names of God, which may never be spoken.
“’Basically wishing long life and prosperity,’ explained the Cohen, answering with the same gesture.”
Aaaahahahaha! After some description of Crouchmas’ slightly corrupt stint as “your bog-standard public official...at the Ottoman Public Debt Administration,” we read:
“Ordinarily, Crouchmas had little to do with metaphysics, would not, indeed, recognize any appearance of the metaphysical even in the act of morsus fundamento. It was as alien to him as frivolity, of which there was plenty at these functions he seemed to be haunting these days. ‘Oh, Clivey!’ three or four female voices at the edge of self-induced laughter would sing out in unison across the palm-abundant reaches of some hotel ballroom. Crouchmas was not even willing to say ‘What?’ in reply. It would open doors allowing too many creatures of farce to commence running in and out.
“But, oddly, he had been resisting material temptation. As the Eastern Question degenerated into an unseemly scramble for the vast wealth of the Ottoman Empire...Clive was observed at Chunxton Crescent, silent, robed, for all the world like someone seeking a more spiritual path, though according to gossip – a secular force the T.W.I.T. would never transcend – he was there out of a mute fascination with Miss Halfcourt, welcoming any excuse to share her company, since he had mastered as yet few of the arts of moneyed lechery, being in that phase of his career where work still claimed priority over leisure pursuits.”
Then Crouchmas seeks advice from the Cohen (T.W.I.T.'s guru) about whether he was wrong to succumb to bureaucratic larceny, while at the same time wondering why all the “precognitive talent around this place” wasn’t raking it in themselves.
“’Were I not out here walking free amongst you all,” declared Clive Crouchmas, “I should be Best Boy at Colney Hatch. The other night, just for half a second, I saw...I thought I saw...’
“’It’s all right, Crouchmas, one hears this sort of thing all the time.’
“’But...’
“’Enlightenment is a dodgy proposition. It all depends how much you want to risk. Not money so much as personal safety, precious time, against a very remote long shot coming in. It happens, of course. Out of the dust, the clouds of sweat and breath, the drumming of hooves, the animal rises up behind the field, the last you’d’ve expected, tall, shining, inevitable, and passes through them all like a beam of morning sunlight through the spectral residue of a dream. But it’s still a fool’s bet and a mug’s game, and you might not have the will or the patience.’
“’But suppose I did stick it out. I’ve been curious for some time – as members here move closer to enlightenment, is there any sort of discount on the dues we pay?’”
Hello Konchog! I'm so glad that you are still in buissnes! I know I have not been in contact to long and that you have probably forgot about me- I am very sorry I didn't read DODR I had much work in last year and half but I was often thinking about you, Mooj, Floki and all! I promise I will now try to comment more if you'll have me here once again! Btw, will you be in UB in June next year because that's when I just might be in town if things are to be auspicious enough
Posted by: Vedran | October 08, 2008 at 01:10 PM
I've not read Pynchon, but might do so on your recommendation, if you can expand a bit on your remark that you read him in exactly the way you listen to great jazz. I ask as an avid listener to great jazz (see Facebook entry for Michael Lewis for a list of my favorite jazz masters): what way is that?
Posted by: Lama Kunzang | October 10, 2008 at 09:26 AM
Vedran! Welcome back, we've missed you. Now you must go back and read every post! I should be in UB in early June.
Lama-la: How are you? Didn't realize we had a shared love of jazz. With Pynchon...I guess what I mean is that there seems to be a basic melodic structure, sometimes overt, sometimes obscure, around which he masterfully improvises. On the first read-through, I kind of hear the whole thing at once. On subsequent readings, I can beam in on the different improvisatory lines. Know what I mean? My all-time fave is early Ornette Coleman. Yours?
Posted by: Konchog | October 13, 2008 at 03:55 AM
Yes, that's how I listen to my favorites, Ornette emphatically among them. It all starts with Ornette, i.e. "the New Thing", with lingering backward listens to Miles and Trane, then forward to Eric Dolphy, Art Blakey, Archie Shepp, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Cecil Taylor, Roland Kirk, Don Cherry, &tc.
Posted by: Lama Kunzang | October 14, 2008 at 05:11 PM
But back to Pynchon, should I go back to his early work and read in chronological order, or just start with the latest (and perhaps best?)?
Posted by: Lama Kunzang | October 14, 2008 at 05:42 PM
Hi Lama-la,
Sorry for the delay. I'm trying Google Chrome as a browser and its giving me fits, such as the inability to comment on my own blog.
Next summer, we are so gonna talk about music. I was a deep fan of all the musicians you listed, and beyond.
AFA Pynchon, a good appetizer is his shortest, "The Crying of Lot 49." Then it might be a matter of the historical period you're into. The one that made him famous, "Gravity's Rainbow," is set during the London Blitz of WWII. I'm personally crazy about Mason & Dixon, written in hilarious 18th c. vernacular, about those two most famous of American surveyors and astronomers. "Vineland" is contemporary California. "V." I forget. And "Slow Learner," which I haven't read, anthologizes his short stories.
Posted by: Konchog | October 24, 2008 at 09:59 AM