Log24

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Thursday June 14, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 2:00 am
Unscholarly Notes

The time of the previous entry, 1:06:18, suggests both the date of Epiphany, 1:06, and Hexagram 18 of the I Ching: Ku, Work on what has been spoiled (Decay).

Epiphany: A link in the Log24 entries for Epiphany 2007 leads to Damnation Morning, which in turn leads to Why Me?, a discussion of the mythology of Spiders vs. Snakes devised by Fritz Leiber.  Spiders represent the conscious mind, snakes the unconscious.

On Hexagram 18: "The Chinese character ku represents a bowl in whose contents worms are breeding. This means decay." —Wilhelm's commentary

This brings us back to the previous entry with its mention of the date of Rudolf Arnheim's death: Saturday, June 9.  In Log24 on that date there was a link, in honor of Aaron Sorkin's birthday, to a short story by Leonard Michaels.  That link was suggested, in part,  by a review in the Sunday New York Times Book Review (available online earlier, on Friday). Here is a quote from that review related to the Hexagram 18 worm bowl:

"… what grabbed attention for his early collections was Michaels's gruesome, swaggering depiction of the sexual rampage that was the swinging '60s in New York– 'the worm bucket,' as Michaels described an orgy."

Related material for meditation on this, the anniversary (according to Encyclopaedia Britannica) of the birth of author Jerzy Kosinski— his novel The Hermit of 69th Street.

Kosinski was not unfamiliar with Michaels's worm bucket.  For related information, see Hermit (or at least a review).

In Leiber's stories the symbol of the Snakes is similar to the famed Yin-Yang symbol, also known as the T'ai-chi tu.  For an analysis of this symbol by Arnheim, see the previous entry.  See also "Sunday in the Park with Death" (Log24, Oct. 26, 2003):

"Ay que bonito es volar  
    A las dos de la mañana
…."
— "La Bruja"

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