Immortal Diamond:
O'Hara, Hopkins, and Joyce

Release Date

From Dr. Mac's Cultural Calendar —

• Novelist William S. Burroughs [of the Burroughs adding machine family], author of Naked Lunch, was born on this day in 1914.
• The Charlie Chaplin film "Modern Times" was released on this day in 1936.
• The adding machine employing depressible keys was patented on this day in 1850.

"It all adds up." — Saul Bellow, book title

"I see my light come shining
 From the west unto the east.
 Any day now, any day now,
 I shall be released."
     — Bob Dylan

"The theme of the film is heavily influenced by its release date...." — Jonathan L. Bowen, review of "Modern Times" At left: Judy Davis in Naked Lunch

5:10 AM Feb. 1 Judy Davis as Kali, or Time

9:00 AM Feb. 1 TIME

From Robert Morris's page on Hopkins (see note of Sunday, February 2 (Candlemas) below):

"Inscape" was Gerard Manley Hopkins's term for a special connection between the world of natural events and processes and one's internal landscape--a frame of mind conveyed in his radical and singular poetry....

This is false, but suggestive.

Good News and Bad News

And there we were all in one place 
A generation lost in space

— American Pie, by Don McLean

"It's not a space shuttle
launch... it's sex."

Steering a Space-Plane

Head White House speechwriter Michael Gerson:

"In the last two weeks, I've been returning to Hopkins.  Even in the 'world's wildfire,' he asserts that 'this Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,/Is immortal diamond.' A comfort."
— Vanity Fair, May 2002, page 162

Yesterday's note, "Time and Eternity," supplies the "immortal diamond" part of this meditation.  For the "matchwood" part, see the cover of The New York Times Book Review of February 2 (Candlemas), 2003:

Cover illustration by Stephen Savage

N.Y. Times Feb. 2, 2003 'A Box of Matches': A Miniaturist's Novel of Details In Nicholson Baker's novel, things not worth noticing eventually become all there is to notice.

See also the Times's excerpt from Baker's first chapter,
about "steering a space-plane."

For the relationship of Hopkins to Eastern religions,
see "Out of Inscape," by Robert Morris.

Time and Eternity

Kali figure Shiva figure

Windmill Victory

Yesterday's meditation on St. Bridget suggests the above graphic summary of two rather important philosophical concepts. Representing Kali, or Time, is Judy Davis in "The New Age." Representing Shiva, or Eternity, is sword-saint Michioka Yoshinori-sensei.  The relationship between these two concepts is summarized very neatly by Heinrich Zimmer in his section on the Kalika Purana in The King and the Corpse.

The relationship is also represented graphically by the "whirl" of Time and the "diamond" of Eternity.

On this day in 1944, Mondrian died.  Echoes of the graphic whirl and diamond may be found (as shown above) in his "Red Mill" and "Victory Boogie-Woogie."

Irish Fourplay

"...something I once heard Charles M. Schulz say, 'Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia.'"

 — William F. House

"Forewarned is four-armed."

— Folk saying

The painting at left is by Mary B. Kelly, a 1958 graduate of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College. Kelly is an expert on portrayals of Goddess figures in art.

Today in Australia is February First, the feast of St. Bridget.  As several websites note, St. Bridget is a combination of Christian saint and Goddess figure... rather like St. Sara (patron saint of Gypsies, also known as Kali) or like Sara Pezzini in the classic TV series "Witchblade."

"Aww... Irish foreplay."

— Sara Pezzini in Witchblade, Episode 6

"Mighty in the gift of purity
She was pleasing unto the Bridegroom on high."

— Song of St. Bridget

"Brace yourself, Bridget."

— Definition of Irish foreplay

Saint Bridget's Cross: Four people can form this cross by joining hands as shown.  Of course, a Goddess like Kali (shown above) or Sara Pezzini could do it all by herself.

For futher details, see The Swastika Goddess,  the history of Jews and the Roman Catholic Church, and the history of Irish neutrality in World War II.

Postscript  of 11 PM —

The Goddess Bridget in Literature

The Goddess Bridget (or Brigid) is incarnated in two classic works of American literature —

• The American patriot and Communist Party supporter Dashiell Hammett gave an unflattering portrayal of Brigid (O'Shaughnessy) in The Maltese Falcon.  For a Jungian analysis of the relationship between Sam Spade and Brigid, see the perceptive remarks of Ryan Benedetti:

"In Jungian terms, Brigid becomes a projection of Spade's anima, a contrasexual replica of his own face as expressed in someone of the opposite sex.

Spade wears a variety of masks in his work. Masking allows him to get underneath the scam most clients lay on him. He is closer to the darker side of his unconscious than any of the other characters in the book, and he is so, because of his role as shamus. His function in his society is to expose all of the underlying darkness of the human psyche."

One way of looking at animus and anima is through the following archetypes:

A diamond and its dual "whirl" figure —
or a "jewel-box and its mate"

• Mark Twain, in Life on the Mississippi, describes the way Goddess Bridget (again, O'Shaughnessy) arranged the conveyance of her late husband to the next world:

"D'ye mane to soy that Bridget O'Shaughnessy bought the mate to that joo-ul box to ship that dhrunken divil to Purgatory in?"

"Yes, madam."

"Then Pat shall go to heaven in the twin to it, if it takes the last rap the O'Flaherties can raise!"

"We stopped at the Trocadero and there was hardly anyone there.  We had Lanson 1926.  'Drink up, sweet.  You gotta go some.  How I love music.  Frère Jacques, Cuernavaca, ach du lieber August.  All languages.  A walking Berlitz.  Berlitz sounds like you with that champagne, my sweet, or how you're gonna sound.'"

— John O'Hara, Hope of Heaven, Chapter 11, 1938

"And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance."

— Acts, Chapter 2, Verse 4

"Lps. The keys to. Given! A way a lone a last a loved a long the

PARIS,
1922-1939."

— James Joyce, conclusion of Finnegans Wake

"Using illustrative material from religion, myth, and culture, he starts with the descent of the dove on Jesus and ends with the poetic ramblings of James Joyce."

— Review of a biography of the Holy Spirit

Illustration added at 3:21 AM Feb. 3, 2003:

Firefall

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