Tully’s Hour of Joy, Every Friday, 5:00 to 6:00 PM

As a dyed-in-the-wool Scot, Tully disapproved of lowering prices for any reason, even just a Friday afternoon “Happy Hour.” But being a good businessman with a sharp eye for profit, it did not escape his notice that his monthly margins always increased dramatically whenever he did break down and lower the prices for that one, end-of-the-week hour.

So he gritted his teeth and made the Friday Happy Hour, from 5:00 to 6:00 PM, a regular feature of his business. He refused to go so far, however, as to call it “Happy Hour.” That was too common. Instead, he called it “Tully’s Hour of Joy.”

Despite his grumbling, it was a big hit—crowds swarmed in every Friday after work, creating enough warmth and commotion to de-fang the cold-blooded, reptilian Seattle climate. Nor did the abundance of high-quality Scotch that was Tully’s specialty, hurt at all.

For those readers with a personal or professional interest in Tully’s personal quirks—and who doesn’t have at least a few?—we could say that his stony Highland frugality was joined with other peculiarities, by which we mean that “happy” wasn’t exactly a word that one would normally apply to Tully. Hence, no “Happy Hour.” There was always an underlying edge of dourness that emanated from Tully, no matter how much he joked around. Was he boisterous? Definitely. Volatile? To be sure. He was even joyous, especially when it came to boasting about the beauty of Gaelic poetry, or demonstrating the superior lyrics and melodies of pipes and pipers. But happy? Not so much.

Owl Man’s theory was that this dour quality derived from the ancient roots of Celtic culture—the prevalence of swampy moors, cold winds and a virtually eternal overcast. When Owl Man read that the old Celts went naked into battle against the invading Roman armies—freezing weather or not—Tully began to make more sense to him. In fact, Owl Man began to make more sense to himself! No wonder! he thought.

Nevertheless, and despite these caveats, Tully’s heart swelled with gladness when he saw his old friend Owl Man walk through the door at 5:00 PM sharp—for, happy or dour, no one could accuse Tully of not having a big heart. When Heron Man arrived two minutes later, Tully’s greeting was only slightly more subdued. First Owl Man, then Heron Man—those were the priorities. Owl Man was a full-blooded Scot, with a pedigreed lineage, whereas Heron Man was just a Scotch-Irish-Welsh mixture—Celtic yes, but no family crest, no famous ancestors—a rung or two down the cultural ladder. But Tully warmly welcomed both of them.

“Welcome, Mr. Owl, my old friend! And a good, good evenin’ to you, Mr. Heron! Come in, come in. I’ve got some new specials if you’re hankerin’ for something in the thirty-year range.”

“Now what castle did ye have to storm to lay your hands on that cask, Tulls?”

“Oh, nothing like that, Owl, nothing like that. No, I just got a personal contact in Glasgow. New supplier. Knows all the heads of the clans. He can get me anything I want, and ye wouldn’t believe the special prices he quotes me. It’s like robbin’ a bank, I’ll tell ye!”

Owl Man knew full well that Jasmine, who was on duty tonight, would be swamped with customers yelling for more rounds of Macallan or Glenfiddich and what have you—trying to impress their secretaries or bosses by ordering the most expensive single malts—so he wasn’t about to interrupt her. Nor was Tully about to bring up her name, because Jasmine was Tully’s version of a “cash cow,” so he couldn’t afford to lessen his profits by drawing her to Owl Man’s attention. Plenty of time for the lovebirds later on, he calculated, with a tinge of regret.

Heron Man found a quiet table in the back, away from the noisy crowd. He and Owl Man settled in for a talk, although their topics were not exactly laid out in advance. They never were, in fact. What ever needed to be discussed would come up.

When their Scotch came, it was brought by “Mitsy,” who was about 4’11” and in several respects resembled Dolly Parton.

“There you go, gents, can I get you anything else?”

“No, thank you, Mitsy, we’re fine. Thanks so much,” said Heron Man. Then, as she bustled away, he turned to Owl Man and said, “Is it me, or does she resemble Dolly Parton?”

“No. Dolly. Definitely,” said Owl Man.

Two simultaneous sips of the aged spirits sent clouds of bliss swirling through the brains and bodies of the two writers.

“Mmmm. It’s like “clouds of glory,” opined Owl Man.

“I definitely concur,” said Heron Man.

A few sips and minutes passed, then a cloud passed briefly over Owl Man’s face. Not a cumulo-nimbus, exactly, more like a high-altitude horsetail, a streak overhead, but foretelling more pending weather.

“Heron Man, I’d like to thank you for meeting me here tonight.”

“Well, you know it’s my pleasure, Owl Man. We haven’t spoken in quite a while.”

“Yes, I’ve been—preoccupied.”

“Oh? That’s new,” said Heron Man, joking.

“I don’t know if you’ve heard about my recent conversation with Helen.”

“No, I haven’t. Did she call you?”

“Well, not exactly. I called her.”

“Oh, really? That’s a switch. May I ask what your conversation was about?”

“That’s why I wanted to meet you tonight. And what better way than with some of Tully’s 30-year-old Scotch?”

“Ambrosia, certainly,” said Heron Man. “Why did you contact Helen? Not that there’s any reason why you couldn’t, of course.”

“Well, there have been recent developments with Fex, who has taken it upon himself to teach me how to write at a ‘lower, more common’ level, or so he says.”

“That sounds interesting. What’s the problem?”

“The problem is … the problem is … that despite Fex’s active imagination, and Helen’s exquisite “musing” assistance, I still can’t write.”

“What does Jasmine say?” said Heron Man.

“She says that ‘it’ will come when “it’s” ready.”

“That makes sense.”

“Yes, it does, except that ‘it’ doesn’t seem to want to come.”

“Excuse me, Owl Man, but is this perhaps your old dour Scottish nature showing its gnarly face? Do you really think that you will never be able to write again?”

“No, no, of course not, no, no, no. Well, actually, I’m starting to wonder.”

“Have another sip of this 30-year Macallan, Owl Man,” said Heron Man.

“Good idea,” said Owl Man, and he took a long, slow sip of the aromatic, vaporous liquid. “Mmmm. Bless Tully’s big Celtic heart.”

“Cheers,” said Heron Man, and they toasted again and again, several more times — to Tully, to Jasmine, even to Fex.

As the magic Macallan worked its wonders, Owl Man’s dilemma began to subside, and the two old friends began telling jokes. Soon enough they were laughing out loud.

Mitzy glanced their way at one point, and smiled.

Hi Daniel,

Thanks for your contribution of the neologism, “nausoleum.” Like Estela’s, I like yours too. I can already see that, little by little, if we keep at this, we might be able to string these “entangled” neologisms together, perhaps to see a bit more clearly what is only dimly visible at present. Who knows what they will reveal in the longer run?

For now we can practice greeting the sparks that presage the Coming Guest, by saying:

“The ecotastrophic psychotrauma of this nausoleum that we are rapidly bringing about on earth, as we flail about in our liebestraüme (plural), does not appear to be something that we can correct with any of the antiquacious ways of doing things. We need more novelinguini, aka linguino-novellae, in a word, more neologisms.”

When I think of "zombies" or the "undead," frankly, I think of ghoulish politicians shambling across the public scene today, mugging for the cameras — their teeth bloody and fang-like, their faces half-rotted, etc. You know: zombies!

Many thanks, Daniel.

Paco

Hi Estela,

My apologies for having taken so long to reply.

As if there were any need to advance proof of my “brain-shutdown,” I offer the fact that I did not see your reply, Estela, or Daniel’s, in response to my “call for neologisms” — not until today, that is. ¿Por qué? Why? ¿Quién sabe, kimo sabe? Who knows?

At any rate, thank you both for responding.

Estela, I like your neologism: “psychotrauma.” It readily encompasses the global situation, and fits so many different contemporary dilemmas. And when I look at your "new word," I do see the clinical aspect you mention. But I also see something poetic, buried in or behind both word-elements: Psyche, as you know, from the Greek for “butterfly” and “soul”; and Trauma, from the German for “dream.” It reminds me of Franz Lizst’s “Liebesträume” for piano. The German translation of liebestraum (singular), of course, is “dream-love,” or “dream of love.” Which further reminds me of the "sturm und drang" motifs in Romantic stories such as Wagner's opera, "Tristan und Isolde." The dual motifs of love and death practically define Romantic poetry. The black sail on the approaching ship, the mistaken signal, Tristan's death in mistaken despair, Isolde's tragic death next to him. The two trees that grow out of the grave, forever interwoven in love and death. Getting pretty Romantic, it seems. Love and death. Love in death. Love after death. Lots of room for poetry, for angling toward the “root level” as you felicitously put it.

I also like your notion of “secondary PTSD.” Secondary afflictions are no joke. Increasingly, I’m even wondering if there might be a “tertiary” PTSD, as in “Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder.” In other words, more and more we’re suffering stress over things before they’ve happened — I certainly am. I take it as perhaps some aspect of Russ’s “quantum scribe” ruminations.

I certainly agree with your description of the Duende experience found in the “shadow play of the light and the dark.” That necessary inclusion of darkness in our deepest formulations is implicit in what García Lorca said in his essay, “Play and Function of the Duende”:

“The duende only approaches when death is near.”

Thanks again, Estela.

Paco

Russ, I recently had an unusual experience while immersed in reading through some Deathling Crown Lottery text and backstories. There was a lot of material—large blocks of print, hours and days of reading. One evening after I’d turned out the light, I began to notice a strange effect. Something different was happening. The various texts I’d been reading were starting to “come alive.”

 

Though I had already closed my eyes, I was still “seeing” pages of text. The sheet I envisioned, however, was moving—“crinkling and glimmering,” as if some “ingredient” was being revealed to me, something buried in the laminae of the (imagined) paper itself, as it were. It was as if little flares were dancing up and down, or candles flickering in a cave.

 

What was happening?

 

It felt like a borderline alchemical experience—in modern times. Was that the shadow of the paper itself, yielding secrets, hidden yet emergent? Or was I seeing into the writing itself, which I found to be excellent—funny, interesting, portentous. And since it also felt like I should not forget this experience I was having, I sent you a note:

 

“Meanwhile, and in case you didn’t already know it, Russ, there is a lot of really rich and surprising material in both the “FC-DCL Transition" file and the DCL Original Document file. The writing is excellent. It’s loaded with imagination, crawling with creative “spontaneities,” as Thomas Berry called them—like tiny little sparks or beacons, or flying hearts, or fishes’ eyes … luminosities of the darkness itself, unknown messengers. The words that once we wrote, now open up and illuminate the assembled text, as candles illuminate the space in a cave. A really subtle, luminous, serpentine spirit glides over, and attaches to, this “material.” Or does it emerge from the text, as if spawned by it? In any event, it is a creative spirit. Perhaps like the Creation-image in Genesis, where the Spirit hovers over the water, brooding. I never really saw any of this before, in our text. Now the whole thing is starting to glow.”

 

Many years ago I had a similar experience.

 

I was reading two books by the French Islamic scholar, Henri Corbin. The titles were: Avicenna and the Visionary Recital, and Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi. I was interested in reading them because of Corbin’s mastery of the phenomenology of angels. I had been working on the notion that what people used to call “angels”—messengers in Greek—and how they could appear as figures and phenomena in dreams—including, or especially, animals in dreams. I had intuited that angels were virtually universal, autonomous psychic factors with real effects in the world, above all in synchronistic events, which join psyche and world.

 

Ultimately, Corbin did not disappoint.

 

At first, though, I found the writing oddly complex, but I wrote it off to the French academic tradition. Piling up convoluted clauses until they resembled the Watts Towers.

 

Then, on several occasions I noticed this “phenomenon”: I would open Corbin and start reading, especially the second volume: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi. After about ten or fifteen minutes, and with no intentional prompting from me, the page would open up further, and suddenly I would see dozens of white wings fluttering, as if white doves were boiling up out of the pages. It was like a meta-communication from the creative background of a “magical” text, and I had to admit that the ghostly effect of the fluttering white doves came from something Other that seemed to have found its way into Corbin’s words.

 

To me, such experiences validate the sense that dreams, fantasies and creative fictions can—in ways simple and rare—bear vital life-energies along the path to their arena of realization. It makes me wonder how much concerted imagining would be required, if we wished to situate such “new” intuitions within the orienting framework of our creaking civilization. And would such imagining be directed, or “free”?

 

You’ve written about such things before, Russ, as for example in your essays, Dream As Angel and The Fictive Purpose of Dreams; and we’re touching on similar, resonant issues in Volume Three of our Trilogy, Dreams, Bones &the Future: Endings. Similarly, in Fex & Coo, in the Scene where Owl and Jaz “celebrate quantum foam,” you wrote this lovely poem for a fictional book of old Scottish poetry—an antiquarian gift from Owl Man to Jasmine:

 

The great stones set upon one another

Hide the threads of connection, those strands of mystery

That time has wrought forever outside man’s intentions

That time itself dare not reveal but to those minds

Likewise wrought in the piecing together of soul stones

Beyond, beyond the piping sounds calling kin to task

 

—Paco