{A Dream: The Mouth of Hell [continued(3)]}[31st May 1985]

[Redbook2:361-363][19850531:1038e]{A Dream: The Mouth of Hell [continued(3)]}[31st May 1985]

19850531:1038

[continued]

The mouth of Hell* was exactly as depicted in paintings: which suggests the importance of visual Art as teaching the language of symbols, and possibly accounts for the apparent meaninglessness or superficiality of much contemporary art.

*[See last two previous entries]

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{A Dream: The Mouth of Hell [continued]}[31st May 1985]

[Redbook2:361-363][19850531:1038d]{A Dream: The Mouth of Hell [continued]}[31st May 1985]

19850531:1038

[continued]

The door* immediately spiralled inwards to a glowing point, and vanished. I found myself back at the point from which I had started my diagonal movement, facing in the opposite direction. I was sitting on something like a low wall, next to a young man who certainly seemed familiar from the 19821114.1915** entry and other experiences***. He said (words to the effect of): 'I shall' (or 'Shall I'?) 'tell you where you went wrong'. He proceeded to make a series of short, precise statements, each describing a stage of my life; and I, recognising each description as precisely accurate, said after each one****: 'Yes.' But the only one which I remember was the last, immediately after which I awoke: 'And then you thought you were a great man.'

*[See last previous entry]

**[Redbook2:264-265][19821114:1915]{[1]: A Visitation]}[14^th November 1982]

***[Redbook2:191A][19810704:0500c]{A Dream of Visions, and the Soul's Uncertainty? [continued]}[4^th July 1981]

****(except the last, presumably!) [No, surely including the last – as nothing suggests that in real life any of the stages had actually occurred at the time of the dream]

Chance would be a fine thing.... <951021>

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{A Dream: The Mouth of Hell}[31st May 1985]

[Redbook2:361-363][19850531:1038c]{A Dream: The Mouth of Hell}[31st May 1985]

19850531:1038

[continued]

Yesterday morning I awoke from a dream in which I found myself moving confidently across, in a diagonal sense, an area of high ground (the sense of which was that one could go round). I moved fast and was aware of my own successful development, strength and power. On the far side I approached a featureless double door. I thought I knew what this was; but as I was about to enter, the door very slightly seemed to shift sideways, so that for a moment I was in doubt as to whether that was the door I wanted. I entered anyway; and found myself, beyond, faced by a huge gaping mouth, as large as a doorway, filled with flames, and surmounted by two flaming eyes. I recognised this at once as the doorway of Hell; and as I walked towards it, knowing that I must pass through into Hell, I felt only a pure and overwhelming sadness (at my stupidity and the waste resulting from it), and said aloud (and intensely felt): 'I am very* sorry.'

*(?)

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{An Experience: of Inner Silence}[31st May 1985]

[Redbook2:361][19850531:1038b]{An Experience: of Inner Silence}[31st May 1985]

19850531:1038

[continued]

On the evening before yesterday, after a day spent sitting and then lying (and dozing) in the sunny, windy garden [at [C]], as we started supper (in easy chairs), I found myself virtually unable to speak, as a great sense of silence descended on me: I could only stare at the fire while everyone else spoke. This lasted for some minutes: perhaps ten?

We had on the previous day visited my old [first boarding] school, where I had been rather bewildered to be (very slightly) 'lionised'*, and had suffered afterwards a strong sense of melancholy at the futility of lives.

*[Possibly on account of a student newspaper produced in the final term at secondary-level school; or perhaps just welcomed.]

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{A Dream: Of Giving Birth}[31st May 1985]

[Redbook2:360][19850531:1038]{A Dream: Of Giving Birth}[31st May 1985]

19850531:1038

Friday

([C])

A few mornings ago here I awoke after a dream like those necessary ones in which one wants to go to the loo to pee but every loo seems not quite suitable – in a sitting room [for example], or a public square. But in this one, at the end, I was in bed and surrounded by other people in beds; and my problem was that I was trying to pass turds but could not actually get it fully out. This went on for some time. Nearly overhead an elevated railway brought car-loads of passengers towards me and then curving away again at right angles. It was similar to the railway in 19841118.1935*; but we had just before this (in waking life) driven round the Isle of Dogs** and seen the partially constructed Docklands Light Railway, whose new sections had as yet pillars but no deck or bridges.

It seems fairly clear the process was symbolic of giving birth, which is due within a few weeks. The direction of the rail car was consistent with right or forward direction on the curves in the dream of 19841118.1935*, if one follows that direction on to the inner end of the bay.

*[[Redbook2:350][19841118:1935]{A Dream: Of Destinations}[18^th November 1984]]

**[In London's Dockland, south of what later became the Canary Wharf financial centre.]

[Was so tempted to pass on this one...! But that would have been a waste and I would have dumped rather than discharged my duty to do a good job. In the end, I could neither a-void nor eliminate it, so have dung what I had to do.]

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{A Dream: A Poem about a Don [continued]}[12th March 1985]

[Redbook2:359][19850312:0037]{A Dream: A Poem about a Don [continued]}[12^th March 1985]

19850312.0037

Don*

1. A Spanish title, formerly confined to men of high rank, but now an appellation of courtesy

2. A Spanish lord or gentleman; a Spaniard 1610

3. transf, A distinguished man; a leader; an adept (colloq.) 1634

4. Hence, in the English Universities:

A head, fellow or tutor of a college 1660

+5. = DAN', DOM' 2 (rare) 1600

6. More fully, D. Pedro, a game at cards 1873.

+Don sb² rare 1524 A gift**

Don 1. trans To put on (anything worn etc.)

2. refl. To dress oneself.

– Sh. Ox. Dict.

*[See last previous entry.]

**(for which it is a common abbreviation in my [professional] work – for Donation.)

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{A Dream: A Poem about a Don}[12th March 1985]

[Redbook2:358][19850312:0021]{A Dream: A Poem about a Don}[12^th March 1985]

19850312.0021

'You have managed to write a poem about a don whom no one can now understand.

'This is so usual.'

This curious message (if I remember it rightly) was written in green felt-tip, in a forward slanting, rather angular longhand, on one rectangle of a twice-folded (crosswise) A4 sheet. The sheet rested in a parcel which contained (under the note) a neat pile of dirty sheets – in the sense bed-linen, I thought at the time, but do not now think. It had been delivered to me where I worked, which was not where I lived but not far away from where I lived – at [C]?

It was of course a dream, this morning, predicted the day before by the relaxed mental clarity which tends to precede this sort of dream*. This morning brought brief waking depression.

I hoped, and hope, to set my next book in Cambridge.

* -- This comment is interesting. If there is a link between that relaxed mental clarity and the more intense or significant type of dream – and I think there might well be – it is worth saying that for the last few years I have on the whole experienced neither that kind of dream (with perhaps a few exceptions earlier?) nor that state of 'relaxed mental clarity' – in two words, inner peace – for more than a moment at most. While this may be the nature of the times, I suspect it also has to do with the unending and stress-raising interruptions of family life. 'And tiredness overwhelms.'** <930119>

**[[Redbook1:268A][19721126:0022][The Window][26th November 1972]]

[continues]

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{Business Circles}[5th January 1985]

[Redbook2:357][19850105:0045]{Business Circles}[5th January 1985]

19850105.0045

The progress of our business since we started in [sic] at Christmas 1982 is an almost exact description of the Outer Circle: except that by being aware of the tendencies (although not consciously aware until now of the Circular pattern) we seem to have been able to guide it and keep it under control, keeping the initiative (as it seems) over events.

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{Birth and Rebirth}[1st January 1985]

[Redbook2:357][19850101:1225]{Birth and Rebirth}[1st January 1985]

19850101.1225

An analogy may be drawn between the spiritual birth of the third part in the cards XIIII to XX (on the Inner Circle), and the progress of pregnancy. Some of the cards are stretched a bit in these interpretations; the clearest are the first and the last.

XIIII Temperance (i.e. measurement) – Transfer of fluids from one vessel to another.

XV The Devil – ?A primitive marriage ceremony resulting from conception.

XVI The Tower of Destruction (La Maison Dieu) – ?Arrival of non-material essence?

XVII The Star – * – (Quickening occurs at c.18 weeks, the halfway point).

XVIII The Moon – * – ?A Scorpion-like creature (without the sting) stirring.

XVIIII The Sun – * – (One barrier remains in XVIIII).

XX Judgement – The child emerging in front of its parents

– at the star-sign Scorpio (see XVIII).

When these cards are placed against the Zodiacal symbols on the circle (i.e when the circle represents a year), the time-distance between XIIII and XX is nine months (Gestation is about 266 days i.e. 38 weeks – 9 months is 39 weeks).

* ?Stages in growth within? [– written here bracketed across all three lines]

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{Christ-Bearer}[8th December 1984]

[Redbook2:355-356][19841208:2300c]{Christ-Bearer}[8^th December 1984]

19841208.2300

[continued]

+C, therefore, is not, as some have imagined, the historical Christ-child (although he is that archetype in our minds)*: he is [the] Christopher, the Christ-bearer, the Cross of undifferentiated matter onto which the Godhead, the Centre There, incarnates in the beginning, and on which in the end that same Godhead is crucified out of material existence.

*and the archetypal Christ Child? <880325>

I rather like the apparent misunderstanding as to why Mountaineers, after Mallory?, climb a Mountain: not because it is there (ridiculous), but because it is There. <870813>

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{The Centre Point: Here, and There}[8th December 1984]

[Redbook2:355][19841208:2300b]{The Centre Point: Here, and There}[8^th December 1984]

19841208.2300

[continued]

The two-dimensional representation of the essentially four-pointed cross of matter upon which these wheels revolve disguises the three-dimensional nature of the pattern: if the Universe is* in the two dimensions. There are not four, not even five but six points: North, South, East, West, Centre Here, and Centre There. From Centre There all spring, and to it all return: via Singularity (This is nothing to do with Expanding v. Contracting Universes: remember that, for example, No Rule ==> 1 Rule ==> Some Rules ==> Many Rules ==> All Rules ==> 1 Rule ==> No Rule; or, Art starts with a blank sheet, develops through simple lines and complexity to the simplicity of genius and so ultimately to a blank sheet). Here, the ideal is Centre Here: the analogous position, around which the Wheels turn without moving it, and** on the same axis as Centre There: which, however, is the other side of Death.

*[represented (– presumably)]

**[i.e. which is]

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{Differentiation}[8th December 1984]

[Redbook2:354-355][19841208:2300]{Differentiation}[8^th December 1984]

19841208.2300

Integration ====> Differentiation ...

        |

Singularity ====> Chaos ...

White ====> Black ...*

The problem – the worried [sic] problem – of +C as matter must be resolved by accepting it. +C** is pure undifferentiated matter: white including all undifferentiated colours. +Mk is differentiation: the essential process by which something is made of the Universe.

Entropy, the process of Singularity becoming Chaos, is the essential method by which that something is made out of the one thing which came from nothing. The continuation of that process is to pure differentiation which is one thing again, and so back to nothing.

Even our efforts to subcreate in the material differentiation are not, as we like to think, reversals or even arrests of the process of differentiation: they are pure distortions, slight decelerations or even tiny accelerations of the process. Note that differentiation, given time, adjusts itself to preserve its own steady progress: so the city is built by combinations of entropic reactions induced by humans, but decays all the faster than its 'naturally' differentiating environment – given time.

*[Diagram has been rotated through 90 degrees to assist typing. Some spacing may be lost in posting.]

**{Outer} How so?! (– symbolic)<930119>

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{Class}[25th November 1984]

[Redbook2:353][19841125:1105b]{Class}[25^th November 1984]

19841125.1105

(Sunday)

[continued]

We have had [F] to stay for the week before he goes in [to hospital]* – I first suggested it but [W] had already thought of it – and she finds it even more of a strain [...] than I do. It clears my mind, though, on 'class': not (for me) a matter of blood and parentage, nor of socio-economic groups, but of a refinement of mind: this makes [class] mobility, as between the generations, essential. I cannot stand his torture of the language; and his need to fill every space with things and himself, and every silence with his own voice. His manner of speech and movement proclaims him a low-grade villain, quite literally: anyone who bridles at such a description should first live with him on two occasions, as I have. But he is an old man in fear of pain and death, and I am glad if we have made a little less lonely what may be his last week of freedom.

We took him to see a ghastly show last night – 'Pump Boys and Dinettes' – surrounded by raucous laughter and farts, both of which one could see coming a mile off. The cast worked energetically and with skill on appalling material, and the theatre was packed (so far as I could see, anyway)

*[See last previous entry]

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{Cancers}[25th November 1984]

[Redbook2:352-353][19841125:1105]{Cancers}[25^th November 1984]

19841125.1105

(Sunday)

Last Sunday, while manipulating the patterns of symbols of the Astrologers' Zodiac, I became 'checked' on Cancer, * , realising that the double arrows of my dream** were virtually the same symbol, with the same meaning. I also wondered who this Astrological sign was appropriate to – without connecting that idea with the dream – and passed on.

Later, on Sunday night, [W] answered a message left that night from [F] on our answerphone and he told her that he had known since Thursday that he would have to go into hospital this Tuesday 27^th for an operation on his second cancerous lung and that he did not expect to come out. We had suspected cancer before but he had never told us.

On Monday morning I took a telephone call from the agent in Gloucestershire of the charitable trust from whom we had hoped to buy the old gamekeeper's cottage between Arina and Kenmore [in the Highlands], to be told that (a) that [particular] one was not available (although it had been empty apparently for 10 years and is falling down inside, an option expires in April and their trustee and ex-owner plans to 'do it up'); and that (b) although another property was becoming available, the policy of the Trust was to let, not sell, on a long lease at a yearly rent with reviews every 3 or 5 years – not an entertaining prospect. We decided to abandon the idea of moving there.

*[Astrological symbol of Cancer constellation in Zodiac inserted here]

**[[Redbook2:350][19841118:1935]{A Dream: Of Destinations}[18^th November 1984]]

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{Symbolic Lines}[18th November 1984]

[Redbook2:351][19841118:1935b]{Symbolic Lines}[18^th November 1984]

19841118.1935

[continued]

It occurred to me today that there may be more than one reason why people who never used them complained so loudly when their local (or other non-local) railway lines were closed or reduced. The obvious reason is that a railway symbolises connection and communication with Society in a more concise way than a road can. But it is a curious thing that although people rarely complained when an exactly duplicating and adjacent line (of which there were many) was closed, sensible attempts to single a double-track line in order to save it by reducing costs tend to be met with extraordinary opposition (e.g. on the Salisbury to Exeter line). 

 

It is just possible that this occurs because the symbolism is actually recognised at some 'level' by far more people than one would expect. The symbolism of the railway system itself might arise from the fairly rigid pattern of lines and choices involved, a part of and yet separate from the context through which the railway passes, and more easily comprehensible than the relative formlessness {of the network} of roads, tracks, paths and open spaces over which a vehicle might drive. The double-track railway might take this a stage further by symbolising the option to develop or regress. Or, for most people, this may be irrelevant – but I suspect it has something to do with* my own fascination with railways.

*[i.e. some part to play in]

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{A Dream: Of Destinations}[18th November 1984]

[Redbook2:350][19841118:1935]{A Dream: Of Destinations}[18^th November 1984]

19841118.1935

In a dream last night [W] and I were trying to see, from across a side-bay, the house we had picked on [sic] as right for us. We decided we could not see it because it was further along the shore than we had realised – at which point the dream became filled practically to overflowing with previously encountered symbols – such as the three Churches, and the cemetery [sic] filled with miniature statues – and some new ones: a railway overhead which looped back on itself simply in order to get round the bay and continue up the shore (rather as a railway might travel in a reverse curve in order to gain height); and a Church window stained only with the motif of two adjacent arrows pointing in opposite directions but each curving slightly towards the other: * (or something like that).**

*[Small sketch diagram inserted here exactly as described.]

**[See [Redbook2:352][19841125:1105]{Cancers}[25^th November 1984] (next entry but one)]

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{The Ends of Art}[21st October 1984]

[Redbook2:349][19841021:1315]{The Ends of Art}[21st October 1984]

19841021.1315

The led-up to the Booker Prize – I did not see the ceremony – led me to identify one wrongness in the Arts prize system.

A product of Artistic work as we see it – a painting, say, or a book – is the most visible result, the surface effect, of a most profound and subtle process. The prize system treats the product itself as the most profound aspect of the artistic process, the starting-point – on which the arts industry is to be built.

One response to this is to make discreet the whole business of prizes, so that they become a genuine support for those assessed (however crudely) as worthy of support – more like bursaries, perhaps, than rewards. Works need not be submitted formally by publishers etc. – although every artist should be able to publicize [sic] himself – but the prize 'judges' would be able to examine the whole of their field before offering support. The support, offered discreetly, could be freely refused*.

Artists, for their part, should learn to see the works produced as their own justification**. The need for recognition and for income should be met in whatever ways are most suitable, whether or not they involve the use of artistic products after completion, and without affecting the integrity of the artistic process.

*Of course! <930119>

**i.e. the works' justification <930119>

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{A Dream [continued]: ...and a Fear of Falling}[18th September 1984]

[Redbook2:347-348][19840918:1315c]{A Dream [continued]: ...and a Fear of Falling}[18^th September 1984]

19840918.1315

[continued]

Later* I was in a room similar to the 'Great Space' at [my first boarding school]. A production was being prepared or rehearsed. I was up a tall stepladder. A golden chalice (and plate? etc.?) took off and flew past me, returning in a wide loop at least once. Each time, I tried to reach out for it: each time, the ladder wobbled, I distinctly felt the fear of falling, and I withdrew too soon to touch the chalice. Eventually I descended the wobbly ladder; and although no one commented adversely, and life below continued as before with me among it, I was expecting something to be said, because I knew that once again I had failed at the test.

Many elements in these dreams can be attributed to persons or events with whom or which I have been involved during the past few days.

*[See last previous entry]

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