A DIVINE IN SHOW
a graphic novella
by J.B.Pravda (c) 2012
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CHAPTER ONE: FAUST OR FAMINE
Call it a kind of false sleep----the way I mimic the phantom photographer, draped in black after the fashion of Daguerre’s own artful technique of standing momentary time still. That magical art, now advanced by our invisible digits scribblings manipulating Leibniz’s holy 1s & 0s, wholly expressed as lines, circles, schemes and characters.
I awake from just such a lumbering slumber, the artificial starless sky peeled away, that sky no longer shields my gaze onto the neatly boxed plasma as those symbolic ghostly back grounded characters---and their schemas---are made to perform their electronic algo-rithmic dance, my multi-function digital watch reminding me that night and day are randomly alternating imposters of whole days which, half-faced, pursue academia’s doctoral appellation, however Faustian the one-sided bargain.
It’s ante meridian 7:38, day uncertainly mundane, anonymous, my hands, like those now obsolete on that high-tech timekeeper’s face, now mere digits free to fondle a prickly facial forest, feed-backing me up to speed that shaving’s been optional lately and that my visage has taken on the bumpy bas-relief of my keyboard.
"Gotta get up, outta this too-bright cage" I slang into action and, as if some experimental proof of concept, I ambulate out the door into a 3D space I only visit as absolutely needed.
Grass, unseen birds greet me, then, the general auditorium, where coffee tractor beams me into its dimly lit air-chilled embrace. It’s usually deserted this early, its rows of empty seats reassuring me; like that Abbott fellow said about his ’Flatland’: ’O, day and night, but this is wondrous strange.’ I refuse to play solitaire with that (relation)ship’s deck of canards, adrift though it be on the black witch’s brew’s juice now just ebbing onto the shores of my blank screen of a mind.
A banner’s being hoisted silently relying on a bold old English font announcing what its hoisters intend to foist...........on this unseen audience of one, for now.
"RE-REDE-ING C.P. SNOW’S LECTURE,
OR
MARLOWE’S METAPHYSICS OF MAGICIANS"
Not sure the strict grammarians will approve of the diction of it all but what they’ve done with it alliteratively old school slide-rules into my math-loving brainpan---what the Hell are letters, lines and these characters we know as words, anyway?---symbols, just another code, code for something else........what Kant (who could, by the way) called ’the thing, in itself’; the word ’water’ ain’t gonna get you wet---I deeply dig his logic, another code, thanks, gods of math.
I decide to open my transducers.....untrustworthy as they are, kudos to one of those non-medical doctors name of Fourier, pal of Napoleon who liked to surround himself with concentric circles of scientists; this one enabled Dr. Champollion to decipher the Rosetta Stone---my sort of fellows, code-breakers are the best code makers.
I begin to listen with my aural dishes, knowing, thanks to Joe ’The Baron’ Fourier that what I’m about to hear is approximately accurate, blame it on the imperfect basilar membrane---he did, bottom line: incomplete sounds. Maybe that’s a good thing, let’s me tune out, automatically. Thanks, again, Joe. As for another poor sense, I don’t think they can see me too well, or at all. Relax, and listen, imperfectly.
"Ok, now, we’re expecting some of the Department Heads at 10, so let’s look and sound sharp; if it goes as planned, you’re all gonna get academic credit, so make it your best effort. I’ll start, remember your cues."
An older sort is standing off center under the banner; he’s a Brit, maybe Canadian anglophile, part of the brain drain back in the day when the Empire was losing colonial plunder, like the proper sleep I can’t seem to find, lost, for good or bad. He dons the standard issue pince nez, poised to blab, almost oozing that perfunctory thesis oral preposition: ’Soooooo’....., we’re here to commemorate the lecture and book ’The Times Literary Supplement’
in 2008 named one of only 100 scientific work products which most influenced Western public discourse since WWII. Quoting Snow, both novelist & physicist: ’A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who by the standards of the traditional culture are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I’ve been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the 2nd law of thermodynamics. The response was cold; it was also negative. Yet I was asking the scientific equivalent of ’Have you read the works of Shakespeare, or Marlowe?’ So, the great edifice of modern science goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the Western world have about as much insight into it as their Neolithic ancestors!"
And, today we pose the skepticism of Shakespeare’s contemporary---some even argue that he WAS the Bard, using that pen name after his feigned death----Kit Marlowe who, in his brilliant ’Dr. Faustus’ drama pronounces perhaps a third culture to Snow’s two----that of the metaphysics of magicians.’
True to my imperfect Fourier ears, I begin tuning out and Learily turning on and dropping in on my own skull-bound voice:
’...metaphysics......of. Magicians......huh, that’s what got me at first, as a kid,
a young one, anyway; Beatles, India, Eastern ways of seeing, having....feeling ecstatic experiences, the kind of high you can’t smoke, or whatever, your way into but the voice in this head spoke differently, not just ’all you need is love’ like others voices sang along, but more like ’do the math’....that’s where you found it, that meta-magic, above, beyond the physically imperfect....what this Marlowe dude/savant called ’a divine in show’.....no idea where I saw or read that, maybe I’m not such a philistine after all, straddling old Snow’s cultural divide, at least not like the people I work with and around.
To them Marlowe’s some private eye who resembles Humphrey Bogart
, in his black and white world.....we could use a Bogie with all the melodrama clouding, fogging up (read as ’fucking up’) my Department’s atmosphere.
I’m back outside my skull-scape, and one of the grad stu’s in mid-riff: "....
sweet analytics, ’tis thou hast ravished me: Is to dispute well logic’s chiefest
end? Affords this art no great miracle? ....A greater subject fitteth Faustus’
wit......a pretty case of paltry legacies, such is the subject of the Institute.....
this study fits a mercenary drudge who aims at nothing but external trash! Too
servile and illiberal for me.....These metaphysics of magicians and necromantic
books are heavenly! Lines, circles, schemes, letters and characters! Ay, these
are what Faust most desires....O, what a world of profit and delight, of power,
of honor, of omnipotence is promised to the studious artisan....a sound magician
is a mighty god. Here, Faustus, try thy brains to gain a deity."
I’m wide awake now, nothing to do with coffee’s tamer stimulus, or artful science,
or scientific art. But....Marlowe, Philip Marlowe, a crafty spy’s glass alone can
help me revive my dying ecstasies.
Chapter Two: Marlowe’s Mighty Line
’Science has become the new priesthood, you ask me, too much sex ’n scandal ’n very little goodliness, you ask me’ she urges semi-literately upon a half-interested ex-cop.
’Does this mean um gonna be readin bout male students bein buggered at that school a yours?’ Jokes are the official argot of his ’been there, undone that’ fraternal order’s unique school of ex-copper thought.
She spots a copy of ’Philip Marlowe’s Guide to Life’ on an otherwise vacant lot full of literary trash posing as a reference library. On his desk another such lonely tome with a less acid-filled content sat, as if it----if not the private eye----were expecting her, winking at her.
It was liberally dog-eared, it’s cover announcing in bold black letters ’The Mysterious Case of Kit Marlowe Case’ (see ’literary trash’ comment, infra). She fully expected him to brag that the dog ears in question were those
of a bloodhound. ’For a man named Bonde you seem to like this Marlowe fellow’ she ice-breaks with all the finesse of a Russian sub in U.S. waters. She’s black and she’s nervous---why shouldn’t she be----the neighborhood seems to have more been slap-dashed off by a hard-drinking architect’s pencil borrowed by a guy named Chandler, Bonde’s office the last minute addition during some wannabe indoor graffiti artist’s beige period.
Smirking unknowingly----he’s never heard of this Chandler (he intuits using a gift for mind-reading he tells no one about, fearing it might be contagious and, therefore, very bad for business)----Bonde quotes Marlowe, the one endearingly called ’Kit’ by intimates, among whom he arbitrarily counts himself:
"That which nourishes me destroys me."
’Sounds better than the original Latin Marlowe uses a lot, especially in this neighborhood’Bonde opines the obvious.
’What’s more, he’s a lousy architect, you ask me, this Chandler.’ He realizes he’s slipped up, but before she can ask how he knew (she having only thought, not spoken the name) he points to the lonely book behind him sitting on that empty lot of a shelf; that seems to do it. He picks up the other Marlowe book, the night watchman of the relatively valueless.
’’School of Night’, his crowd, not unlike the bunch you spoke about back at the University’ he adds, showing off his default setting, for any case---knowledge of all things Marlowe. ’Atheistic fella, got him into some tight jams, and not the door kind’ he adds, exploiting California’s otherwise irrelevant incidence of quakes whose evasion the jambs of doors helped.
’Well, you know, that sort of does describe the Department where I work----they’re always there, it seems, at night, working late in the computer labs; some of the students even cover their monitors and their heads with black cloth to keep out distractions, they say’.
Bonde knows his Ian Fleming, even if he’s pawned his first editions owing to sporadic business, and his Marlowe connection, thanks to his compact yet relevant library
of two.
’Spying for the government’s high priests, to use your term, including old Johnny Dee---sounds like some do-wop singer, don’t it?---part of that gang from night school.....Johnny came up with that whole 007 code, ya know’ he Bond(e)s.
’Yes, well, that’s what they do back in my Department, like I said, computer science, really advanced math, and such, 1s & 0s, 1s & Os’ she offers, showing that the code lifestyle’s rubbed off, maybe a little too much for comfort.
Bonde jumps in like Fleming’s hero dangling shark-like on her line about those precious lines of code, high above the fray, confident his line won’t fray at the edges of its deductive reasoning.
’See the point?’ Bonde, losing his words like shark’s expendable teeth, unsure if he’s making a logical statement or putting a question---’It’s instinctive, see’, he tells himself.
’Govment funding, more research, more rhythm, of the ’Algo’ kind----bingo, get your name on it, big payday; just like that, you’re the highest priest of the cult of the true believers in the church of science.’
She’s thinking it’s more like scientology, and he reads that loud and clear telepathically. ’So, what they’re all spying on each other, these brilliant scholars, and students, like Tom Cruise up on sistah Oprah’s couch?!’
Bonde’s not touching that one, aware that someone like Oprah, or Tom, for that matter, might be able to employ mind-readers whose range is close to unlimited.
Instead, he plays librarian and opens the Marlowe ’kit’ in front of him, turns to a page so dog-eared he gets the feeling he may have to feed, walk and pet it.
’Fido---for faithful----what I call this bloodhound’s domain; get this, seems old Kit
’s not only got juice with the Queen and court mucky mucks, he’s got the skills
ta put up the ’caution’ sign on the narrow, tricky road to some kinda magic, land
of, beggin your pardon, colored black, calls its head wizard Dr. Faustus.
’Sides, he worked for a queeny dude name of ’Burghley’---even sounds like the patron saint of burglary.
’Yes, I think I’ve heard one of our most, um, obsessive professors speak of him, Marlowe, I mean’ she dopes out enough of his commentary to reply.
Bonde feels reassured, puts his feet up on the desk, drags a match across his thinning sole.
’Yes! I almost forgot, there was a fire, the Department head....it was horrible....they found a suicide note, but..’ she can’t believe it took the match’s flame, but Bonde’s a trip she hadn’t booked.
’I’m in the ’but’ business, lady’ Bonde parrots the line from page 69 of the previously pointed to tome, forgetting that she’d almost forgot to mention this basic fireplace of a fact.
She gets back on the train carrying her thoughts. ’One of our instructors, the obsessive one, Dr. Wicke, he, he openly threatened the Department head, and...now, he’s dead!’
Her tears are the cue for Bonde’s next hackneyed aphorism.
’Where there’s fire....’ his neural train collides with hers doing a faster clip than
his, one of the hazards he’s still not okay with, telepathic or no. He wills a
repair crew from just beneath his crew cut onto the scene.
’......um, where there’s fire, there’s generally a starter, and every candle’s got its
burnt-out Wicke; I’ll take the case’ Bonde’s neurons fire and add a ’d’ onto ’Wicke’, then makes it official: ’He’s Wick-ed, or I’m not the dick I think I am.’ At that, she smiles, he frowns.
Ch. 3: Quod Me Nutrit Me Destruit
Bonde phones ’I’ on advice from Ms. Jackson, the bleak black lady, a reluctant moth closest to Wicke’s flames------this is what he learned:
He doesn’t so much look at you as into you, brass knuckling fists for eyes, doing more than seeing---it’s like Dylan’s punch-like staccato poetic take on some of the NY streetscape inhabitants of Greenwich Village when he locks onto a character or two from the Beat days of the late 50’s/early 60’s:
"There was a fire between him and everybody else....he had blood in his eyes."
It fits, even if it doesn’t acquit, unless....yes, as in ’Wicke acquits himself a little too well’; Bonde quickly ( & unsuccessfully) abandons word play, calling it half-ass time. It’s as if his public school headmasters (cue the Pink Floyd tune) were pugilistic Plancks in the foundation of his impetuous act as a computer scientist, those planks with faded paint bearing the now faint aphorism of the first seer of the quantum fuzziness of underlying physical reality:
"Science progresses funeral by funeral."
I say ’act’ advisedly---his math skill set is what we real mathematicians call some numbers: irrational.
This is my Ph.D. advisor, justifier of my borrowed poetry---’tis the sport to have the engineer hoisted with his own petard. ‘Off
-balance....his boasted-of stratagem outside the boxing rings of his youthful public education in the peculiar bastion detailed by many a surviving student of note as a puerile pit whose regular offerings were de Sade’s favorite fetishes, de Wicke, the giver of the Dickens to one and all takers.
Neither an idiot nor a savant, his cultural exposure is idiotic, his sagacity a one-off wonder mostly honored in its breach.
He’s a jerk, and caffeine’s his chosen legal stimulant, what LSD (then
legal) was to Tim Leary, and it makes me and everyone else in the Department leery of him, our very own....Tim.
He’d effectively dropped out....of society’s quotidian hygienic and other rituals,
often sleeping in his office. Turned on by his tsunamic bean extract, he was tuned in to a frequency disc-jockeyed by some lone Wolf-man Jack virtually conjured by lines and circles under his eyes, and the schemes inherent in his second-rate algorithms. And what fed him’s little to do with food ordinarily consumed, thus hastening his gradual self-destruction.
But such philistines can be dangerous, their Goliath arrogantly overshadowing we Davids, unless, that is, our name’s Bonde, equipped with a certain ’Kit’ of a slingshot labeled ’Marlowe’. And this Goliath he senses is a ’mercenary drudge who aims at nothing but external trash’.
One particular bit of trash is Trish, an on again, off again groupie in the Department who’s earned her binary-like trademark handle the hard way, by handling, then mounting/dismounting the available philistine phallus.
’Takes a dick......’ Bonde smirk-mutters as he peruses his zoom lens’s relevant harvest. ’Whore-vest’..... smirklessly refusing with his gut’s counterpart neurons the fleeting file name’s consideration by his already taxed brain’s neurons.
She’s the townie that never went off to school, away from home, anyway; modeling herself on the phantasm longed-for by any geeky character whose American-style graffiti could inscribe a blood chronicle of devotion’s angst.
Trish is very real and augments that reality with details such as the ‘57 Tbird (albeit with dings here and there) and a dye job every two months to keep her albedo cabeza sufficiently vixened. Like me, she cruises through the UC undergrad system’s underbelly owing to (in her case) hands-on skill sets when applied to science in general, and in her special case the artful applied biological science of fellatio, a favorite with her growing Latin-spouting professorial ‘chicklist’.
One such grader of hers is so taken with her he promises the keys to his heart, family man be damned. She settles for the keys to that T-bird---his wife’s ‘57 model Thunderbird. (He becomes a divorced regular ‘gas money’ customer).
And her binary code isn’t limited to two digits when it comes to a reported threesome. It wasn’t, concluded Bonde who easily acquired a dim video caught by a forgotten camera long-abandoned by a Gates wannabe whose plan it was to upload his sequel to ‘Animal House’ onto the servers of the school which had flunked him by the lack of virtue in his oral exams. The dildo in his pocket protector hadn’t helped. Speaking of threesomes, Trish gets pregnant. Seems some stud-ent Lothario with a yen for her 38D strange attractors only cared for the sort of strangeness known to inhabit complexity theory’s numbers---he dumped her for a size 40E. No matter, her matrix happened to interest old Dr. Janek, the head man in the Department, his Neo to her Morpheus. Her strange attraction for him was more ‘of’ him, and seems to have had a kind of perverse fire’s lighting, ignited as much by Wicke as the loosely hinged doors of his misperception.