|k| clippings: 2014-11-20 — two sleeps, perchance to dream?

Sometimes an incidental line, a throwaway, worms its way into the deepest recesses of my feeble brain. “They scrutinize the small print on packages, wary of a second level of betrayal” is one such sentence, etched into my mental circuitry.

WORK

“The supermarket shelves have been rearranged. It happened one day without warning. There is agitation and panic in the aisles, dismay in the faces of older shoppers. They walk in a fragmented trance, stop and go, clusters of well-dressed figures frozen in the aisles, trying to figure out the pattern, discern the underlying logic, trying to remember where they’d seen the Cream of Wheat. They see no reason for it, find no sense in it. The scouring pads are with the hand soap now, the condiments are scattered. The older the man or woman, the more carefully dressed and groomed. Men in Sansabelt slacks and bright knit shirts. Women with a powdered and fussy look, a self-conscious air, prepared for some anxious event. They turn into the wrong aisle, peer along the shelves, sometimes stop abruptly, causing other carts to run into them. Only the generic food is where it was, white packages plainly labeled. The men consult lists, the women do not. There is a sense of wandering now, an aimless and haunted mood, sweet-tempered people taken to the edge. They scrutinize the small print on packages, wary of a second level of betrayal. The men scan for stamped dates, the women for ingredients. Many have trouble making out the words. Smeared print, ghost images. In the altered shelves, the ambient roar, in the plain and heartless fact of their decline, they try to work their way through confusion. But in the end it doesn’t matter what they see or think they see. The terminals are equipped with holographic scanners, which decode the binary secret of every item, infallibly. This is the language of waves and radiation, or how the dead speak to the living. And this is where we wait together, regardless of age, our carts stocked with brightly colored goods. A slowly moving line, satisfying, giving us time to glance at the tabloids in the racks. Everything we need that is not food or love is here in the tabloid racks. The tales of the supernatural and the extraterrestrial. The miracle vitamins, the cures for cancer, the remedies for obesity. The cults of the famous and the dead.”

—Don DeLillo
—from White Noise

WORD(S)

ondinnonk. noun. An Iroquoian word for the soul’s deepest desires as expressed in dreams; special dreams. Or, as quoted by multiple sources but without attribution, “the innermost desires of someones’ soul and its angelic nature.”

“To extirpate these repressive desires, or to communicate the supernatural interpretation of an omen, the Iroquois relied on a host of rituals that sought to alleviate what they called Ondinnonk, the secret desire of the subconscious or the soul revealed in a dream.” (Edna Kenton)

“The Iroquois believed that the soul revealed hidden desires through dreams; these desires were referred to as Ondinnonk. If the Ondinnonk was not satisfied the soul would take revenge on the physical body through illness or death.” (Art Rogers)

“The yearly festival of this traveling dream theater was known as the Onoharoia; it allowed many Ondinnonk (special dreams) to be acted out very dramatically.” (Denise Linn)

WEB

1. On the electric light, segmented sleep…and its effects on creativity and productivity → “Broken Sleep”.

2. An interesting diptych → “In Defense of Technology”, arguing the positives of iPhone attachment and “the end of loneliness” vs. “Words Without Meaning & the Reality of Networked Communication”.

3. Via Reader T., who simply comments “Vape!” → “‘Vape’ is the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year”. Really?? The also-rans are also mostly uninspired.

4. “After a nuclear war has devastated the planet a group of survivors journey through the barren wilderness to find refuge. They stumble across a secret installation and are offered a new beginning—but there is a catch.” → ► Phoenix 9, a short (22 minute) film.

5. Today in 1936, novelist, playwright and essayist Don DeLillo is born. A polarizing artistic figure—critics tend to either love his work or really, really hate it (I side with the former)—DeLillo remains well-known for his detachment from his own press; his acceptance speech for the National Book Award, in its entirety: “I’m sorry I couldn’t be here tonight, but I thank you all for coming.” My favorite work of his is, naturally, White Noise, the novel that is most casually dismissed as being lightweight. But I say it’s funny and painfully insightful into the strange predicament of being a self-conscious animal. Trivia: the band Airborne Toxic Event took its name from that novel.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader C. doesn’t object to humor here, but… [following on “ganch” as Monday’s WORD]: “I will only continue to subscribe if you have less art and more torture.”

• Reader S. writes: “Speaking of Jack Spicer, I assume (perhaps wrongly) you already know about Alex Irvine’s novel One King, One Soldier, which ties together Jack Spicer, Arthur Rimbaud, baseball, and the quest for the Holy Grail?” — I did not know of this but now must have it. Ordered.

• And Reader S. also notes: “…today I learned that one excuse given for not purchasing TV licences in the UK is ”polymorphous light eruption.“ Which is much more prosaic than it sounds.” — I’ll leave it to the Clamor to google this for themselves. But it rolls off the tongue and SOUNDS interesting…kind of like “light harvesting.”

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