Some of the topics urgently requiring detailed analysis:
1. Their poetry
2. Preferred positions of sexual intercourse
3. The street plans of their major cities
4. Religious beliefs and practices
5. Terms of endearment, heterosexual and homosexual
6. Ecological destruction, accidental and deliberate
7. Sports and rituals
8. Attitudes toward technological progress
9. Forms of government, political processes
10. Their visual art forms
11. Means of transportation
12. Their collapse and social decay
13. Their terrible last days
One of our amusements here—no, let me be frank, it’s more than an amusement, it’s a professional necessity—is periodically to enter the vanished pre-dynastic world through the gate of dreams. A drug that leaves a sour, salty taste on the tongue facilitates these journeys. Also we make use of talismans: I clutch my key in my left hand and carry my coin in my right-hand pocket. We never travel alone, but usually go in teams of two or three. A special section of the Center is set aside for those who make these dream-journeys. The rooms are small and brightly lit, with soft rubbery pink walls, rather womblike in appearance, tuned to a bland heat and an intimate humidity. Alexandra, Jerome, and I enter such a room. We remove our clothing to perform the customary ablutions. Alexandra is plump, but her breasts are small and far apart. Jerome’s body is hairy, and his muscles lie in thick slabs over his bones. I see them both looking at me. We wash and dress; Jerome produces three hexagonal grey tablets and we swallow them. Sour, salty. We lie side by side on the triple couch in the centre center of the room. I clutch my key, I touch my coin. Backward, backward, backward we drift. Alexandra’s soft forearm presses gently against my thin shoulder. Into the dark, into the old times. The pre-dynastic epoch swallows us. This is the kingdom of earth, distorted, broken, twisted, maimed, perjured. The kingdom of hell. A snowbound kingdom. Bright lights on the grease-speckled airstrip. A rusting vehicle jutting from the sand. The eyes and lips of madmen. My feet are sixteen inches above the surface of the ground. Mists curl upward, licking at my soles. I stand before a bleak hotel, and women carrying glossy leather bags pass in and out. Toward us come automobiles, berserk, driverless, with blazing headlights. A blurred column of song rises out of the darkness. Home…………unknown…………a rolling stone? These ruins are inhabited.
LIFE-SYNTHESIS PIONEER URGES POLICING OF RESEARCH
Buffalo Doctor Says New Organisms Could Be Peril
USE OF PRIVATE PATROLMEN ON CITY STREETS INCREASING
MACROBIOTIC COOKING—LEARNING THE SECRETS OF YANG AND YIN
PATMAN WARNS U.S. MAY CHECK GAMBLING “DISEASE” IN THE STATES
SOME AREAS SEEK TO HALT GROWTH
NIXON DEPICTS HIS WIFE AS STRONG AND SENSITIVE
PSYCHIATRIST IN BELFAST FINDS CHILDREN ARE DEEPLY DISTURBED BY THE VIOLENCE
GROWING USE OF MIND-AFFECTING DRUGS STIRS CONCERN
Saigon, Sept. 5—United States Army psychologists said today they are working on a plan to brainwash enemy troops with bars of soap that reveal a new propaganda message practically every time the guerrillas lather up. As the soap is used, gradual wear reveals eight messages embedded in layers.
“The Beatles, and their mimicking rock-and-rollers, use the Pavlovian techniques to produce artificial neuroses in our young people,” declared Rep. James B. Utt R-Calif). “Extensive experiments in hypnosis and rhythm have shown how rock and roll music leads to a destruction of the normal inhibitory mechanism of the cerebral cortex and permits easy acceptance of immorality and disregard of all moral norms.”
Taylor said the time has come for police “to study and apply so far as possible all the factors that will in any way promote better understanding and a better relationship between citizens and the law enforcement officer, even if it means attempting to enter into the learning and cultural realms of unborn children.”
Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird formally dedicated a small room in the Pentagon today as a quiet place for meditation and prayer. “In a sense, this ceremony marks the completion of the Pentagon, for until now this building lacked a place where man’s inner spirit could find quiet expression,” Mr. Laird said.
The meditation room, he said, “is an affirmation that, though we cling to the principle that church and state should be separate, we do not propose to separate man from God.”
Moscow, June 19—Oil industry expert says Moses and Joshua were among earth’s original polluters, criticizes regulations inhibiting inventiveness and progress.
Much of the interior of the continent lies submerged in a deep sea of radioactive water. The region was deliberately flooded under the policy of “compensating catastrophe” promulgated by the government toward the close of the period of terminal convulsions. Hence, though we come in dreams, we do not dare enter this zone unprotected, and we make use of aquatic robots bearing brain-coupled remote-vision cameras. Without interrupting our slumber we don the equipment, giggling self-consciously as we help one another with the harnesses and snaps. The robots stride into the green, glistening depths, leaving trails of shimmering fiery bubbles. We turn and tilt our heads and our cameras obey, projecting what they see directly upon our retinas. This is a magical realm. Everything sleeps here in a single grave, yet everything throbs and bursts with terrible life. Small boys, glowing, play marbles in the street. Thieves glide on mincing feet past beefy, stolid shopkeepers. A syphilitic whore displays her thighs to potential purchasers.
A giant blue screen mounted on the haunch of a colossal glossy-skinned building shows us the face of the President, jowly, earnest, energetic. His eyes are extraordinarily narrow, almost slits. He speaks but his words are vague and formless, without perceptible syllabic intervals. We are unaware of the pressure of the water. Scraps of paper flutter past us as though driven by the wind. Little girls dance in a ring: their skinny bare legs flash like pistons. Alexandra’s robot briefly touches its coppery hand to mine, a gesture of delight, of love. We take turns entering an automobile, sitting at its wheel, depressing its pedals and levers. I am filled with an intense sense of the reality of the pre-dynastic, of its oppressive imminence, of the danger of its return. Who says the past is dead and sealed? Everything comes around at least twice, perhaps even more often, and the later passes are always more grotesque, more deadly, and more comical. Destruction is eternal. Grief is cyclical. Death is undying. We walk the drowned face of the murdered earth and we are tormented by the awareness that past and future lie joined like a lunatic serpent. The sorrows of the pharaohs will be our sorrows. Listen to the voice of Egypt.
The high-born are full of lamentation but the poor are jubilant. Every town sayeth, “Let us drive out the powerful”…The splendid judgment-hall has been stripped of its documents…The public offices lie open and their records have been stolen. Serfs have become the masters of serfs…Behold, they that had clothes are now in rags…He who had nothing is now rich and the high official must court the parvenu…Squalor is throughout the land: no clothes are white these days…The Nile is in flood yet no one has the heart to plough…Corn has perished everywhere…Everyone says, “There is no more”…The dead are thrown into the river…Laughter has perished. Grief walks the land. A man of character goes in mourning because of what has happened in the land…Foreigners have become people everywhere. There is no man of yesterday.