— Oh, what difference does it make let us not discuss it.
— All right we’ll change the subject. Hmm. You change the subject my mind has got stuck on the one and only, and when I say my mind I mean three channels at least and more than my five senses.
— Do you know anyone with the initials B.C.?
— B.C.?
— Someone who seems to know about the racket, can find out where one goes or will go, though too late.
— Me of course. Incognito.
— Du Witzling.
— True I’d turn up on time. Unlike you mein Liebes do you still not wear a watch? I really must give you one, or a travelling clock.
— No please don’t. They get lost or broken.
— So you still live anticlockwise?
— Of course not. Clocks hang everywhere.
— They never agree however. Hence your unpunctuality.
— Never at work though.
— Only at play, ah well. Er, man or woman?
— Bărbat.
— So you know he has a beard?
— Witzling. No. Just a Man.
— Merely a man. Well, let’s see. Some cher collègue pursuing you eh? How romantic. I thought they had replaced us almost entirely with gorgeous young computers. Forgive me. And does he keep finding himself on another plane?
— Not exactly. Though he lives on another plane all right look at these. Do you know that writing?
— No. Oh, but wait. Yes. The style. Aha. Natürlich selbstverständlich. Ma chère collègue but you have made a somewhat belated post-factum conquest of dear old Bertrand retired if I may say so several centuries ago.
— Bertrand! Good God.
The cloud has cleared. The jet exhausts invisible in their power save for a tremor on the blue or the propellers invisible in their speed save for a hinted halo che fa tremar dì claritate l’âre, no man-made object passing to show that the heart flies immobile at eight hundred and ninety kilometres and no man to come and bring you out of this or that zone of tickled fancy inside the distant brain way up with a tremendous force of a love lost or never gained lying forgotten under layers of civilisation thickening sensibilities such as for instance a language that actually means something in the light of that love or vice versa, but only a decrepit fond old man well sixty-five and plus whose surname you never remember do you Liebes but then no wonder in this case he always fell in love with young secretaries inaccessible, writing them flowery letters full of Provençal quotations about fin amor lonhtano and the princesse lointaine so that we used to call him Bertrand de Born.
— But didn’t Rudel write about the princesse lointaine?
— Oh, you know everything my pendantic Liebes. I travel in electronics now not simultaneous interpretation, remember me? Or have you closed the circuit?
Et au départ, n’oubliez pas qu’en roumain “la revedere” signifie “au revoir” et que le sourire avenant de la Roumanie signifie “à bientôt” in the lively rhythm of a prodigious development representing only some of the accents of the renovating present.
Whereas in modern Greek elios means sun and gyneka means woman. The meaning has remained. Logariasmo parakalo for that matter means the bill please according to the phrase-book in a mere smattering acquired with the Wolga Boatsman Hara-Kiri Roumanian Cocktail Bloody Merry Whyte Lady in low square black armchairs the bar lit up like a reredos vous prendrez quelque chose chère madame? Nothing at all, just personal effects like furry eyes and the fact that in this air-conditioning the body floats in willing suspension of loyalty to anyone inside the giant centipede where I want narrow trousers. Without folding-up. I prefer it double-breasted. With two buttons. When shall I come for the rehearsal? In six days I go away.
Or did you want to test by means of engagement?
And we saw yesterday afternoon mesdames messieurs, in the Byzantine Museum of Athens, a remarkable example of this inversion by double negation so typical of the imaginative function in its descending aspect of depth, night, femininity, container which becomes contained, swallower which becomes swallowed, as opposed to its upward masculine aspect. Je fais allusion au Saint Christophe cynocéphale, dating from the 17th century, and represented with a dog’s head. Two myths converge here, that of the man-eating giant with the head of a dog and that of the passer of souls, Cerberus, a transposition of the Egyptian Anubis. Here the Christ carried by death inverts the meaning of death, coming down through the neutralised transmitter in the brain behind the closed eyelids which open to catch a glimpse of Sandra working so young so fresh into simultaneous English with eyes ears voice and un amour de soutien-gorge no hands as she watches the speaker through the glass booth accompanying mortals in their perilous journey, et qui devient symbole de l’in-ti-mi-té dans le voyage, as well as protector and talisman against death itself, especially violent death. The mythical imagination invokes death against death in a characteristic double negation. Le Christo-phoros porte le Christ. And in a gulliverisation typical of giant myths, as for example the Gargantua legends, the swallowing mouth gets euphemised into a sack, a basket, une hotte, a container, which, like the mandala mentioned in Professor Strebbing’s excellent paper this morning, represents a sort of porte-manteau centre-of-perfection, prêt-à-porter si vous voulez, like the prayer-wheel or even the prayer-rug, a miniature temple, cavern, womb, stomach, belly, vessel, vehicle, ship, sepulchre or holy grail, with the same confusional sliding from active to passive, from swallower to swallowed, from container to contained that we find in all the myths of depth, night, descent and femininity. They come so young nowadays, doing the same work with ease and careless poise from the start who have known no war no national groups as when les grandes personnes talked of la Guerre l’Allemagne and yet not like that at all, a different species altogether who can learn from simply living simultaneously all channels alert at all levels unless they merely block off different ones, witness le complexe de Jonas with which I dealt briefly earlier on in the foetus position with diagrams of a fish thrown upside down on the screen the lantern-slide projector behaving like an antipodal eye telescoping time with an error, la pointe pressed home on the meridian of the heart C7 here on the wrist which stops hysteria at once and the vessel of conception CV 52 as a recommended alternative for relaxation and absolute calm.