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23cn
May 2008 
ENLIGHTENMENT IS A KNOW-KNOW
AlexNoble
1) ENLIGHTENMENT IS A KNOW KNOW!
2) In The Twenty Third Century Novel, we are like time travelers who travel light, sometimes never meeting except in spirit and in our shared thoughts. We have become like data packets, shuttling about the cosmos, touching lightly in electronic spaces, but remaining invisible and ephemeral. We now represent ourselves in iconic mode (I am a flower, a seascape, a tree, a sunset, a puppy, a garden, a logo, a Xeroxed version of myself when I was five years old, a letter in the Greek alphabet). We attempt to capture our souls for others in word-pictures that convey our dreams and sometimes our worst nightmares too. In our novels, we are free to be anything we want to be, kings and queens, poets and mystics, voyagers moving at warp speed through the thought-fields of digital storage media. For example, V liked what she read from W, and wrote back to him: “You have discovered my password, broken through the Public Key Crypto of my personality, endeared yourself to my algorithms, psyched out my codes and walked right into my Profile. A bravura performance. Shall we exchange excerpts from our novels?” And so it begins.
3) “Octavio Paz practiced poetry like a secret religion,” writes Edward Hirsch. “He dwelt in its mysteries, he invoked its sacraments, he read its entrails, he inscribed its revelations. Writing was for him a primordial act, and he stared down at the blank page as if it were an abyss until it sent him reeling over the brink of language. The poems he brought back are filled with ancient wonder and strangeness, hermetic knowledge, a dizzying sense of the sacred.”
4) We live in times when we must be ready to make sudden, sweeping changes in our lives again and again and be able to rethink everything regularly. We must be willing to let go again and again and again. Nothing will do but a willingness to sacrifice everything and start over every morning if necessary. Who I was yesterday may have absolutely no relevance for who I am today. What I told you last night may no longer be true. For example, now they are saying that your region is headed for a 400-year drought. Does this mean you should start thinking about moving, and if so, to where? Current reality at both the personal and global levels has become a moving target. There is no more reliable “status quo.” We have entered a churning white-water river of unprecedented turbulence and unpredictability, with so many shifts and revisions, so many uprootings and disruptions, that only the greatest flexibility and adaptability will allow us to stay calm and centered in the midst of the surrounding chaos. There is a new course in our planetary curriculum, and it is called “The Art of Flow.”
5) Yesterday there was a light spring rain. At first, rain so gentle it was more like a heavy mist. Then, after awhile, icy raindrops slowly gathered density and substance from the darkening storm clouds overhead. The moist morning air was delirious with the fragrance of orange blossoms, wet grass, and sweet pittosporum flowers. I went out into the meadow and lay down in the midst of poppies and lavender, letting the rain wash over me, a few moments of transcendent peace in the middle of the breaking storm.
Alex Noble
An Excerpt from The Twenty-Third Century Novel
Copyright C 2007 by Alex Noble & Integral Inspirations(tm). All rights reserved in all media.
Access: Public
What a fantastic piece of writing, looking forward to reading more!
Make today a GREAT DAY!
Matthew
Thanks! The novel needs winning attitudes! Welcome. Now, go do ONE KIND ACT!
I will be especially interested to see the type of framework you hang this idea upon. Right now it feels like a handful of beautiful diamonds. To me I also sense not only a tremendous sense of inspiration, but a very solid reliance on intuition which will make your discovery process quite fun.
I might suggest taking a look at the novels of Mark Z. Danielewski: Only Revolutions & House of Leaves.
Only Revolutions as it is described on Amazon “comprises two monologues, one by Sam and one by Hailey, both “Allmighty sixteen and freeeeee,” each narrating the same road trip, or set of neo-globo-revolutionary events—or a revolution's end: “Everyone loves the Dream but I kill it.” Figuring out what's happening is a big part of reading the book. The verse-riffs narrations, endlessly alliterative and punning (like Joyce) and playfully, bleakly existential (like Beckett), begin at opposite ends of the book, upside down from one another, with each page divided and shared. Each gets 180 words per page, but in type that gets smaller as they get closer to their ends (Glas was more haphazard), so they each gets exactly half a page only at the midway point of the book: page 180—or half of a revolution of 360 degrees. A time line of world events, from November 22, 1863 (“the abolition of slavery”), to January 19, 2063 (blank, like everything from January 18, 2006, on), runs down the side of every page. The page numbers, when riffled flip-book style, revolve. The book's design is a marvel, and as a feat of Pynchonesque puzzlebookdom, it's magnificent.”
House of Leaves on the other hand I can tell you is equal parts terrifying and fascinating. An incredibly dense exercise with that has quite a cult following. It warrants looking over the description, because I can't even begin to describe what all takes place. At the very least, it can be described as a novel within a novel about house which is in fact, larger on the inside than the dimensions outside.
Neither of these are necessarily what you are doing but there still could be inspiration here. In fact, there is a great little piece here with Danielewski talking about the structure of Only Revolutions. It's interesting, because if fiction has an edgy rock star it's Danielewski. And I think some of the ideas that he mentions in the piece will carry great resonance with you.
Then again, there is also the last novel of one of my favorite authors, Umberto Eco. The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana is still on my to-be-read list, but again I suggest you read the editorial reviews on Amazon. I heard Eco talk about the book and read from it when it first came out, and it looks to be an amazing attempt at encapsulating the fleeting and untrustworthy nature of memory.
God, just thinking about it makes me think I should actually try picking up a book for sheer pleasure again. Time frustrates me so, these days…
Anyway, it's just a bit of light reading to consider. ;o)
Thanks as always, for sharing!
–D.
Oh! And I forgot to add…
Check out the website of a friend of mine who is a published author and graphic designer. Locus Novus is an interesting union of text and images. This is something that Faruk does for fun! Realizing fully, that your interest in the digital element will probably be rather limited in relationship to the 23CN, it still may serve as additional inspiration!
Enjoy!
–D.
Memory plays tricks on time and time returns the favor. In a TV interview, actor Peter O’Toole spoke about seeing LAWRENCE OF ARABIA for the first time. He had avoided the premiere and visited a small movie theater in London anonymously months later. As he watched a scene in which he rides across the desert, dismounts and enters a tent to speak with Anthony Quinn, a growing horror came over him. From the shot of him on camelback to the cut inside the tent, four never-to-be-recovered years of his life had elapsed. O’Toole left the theater, found a bar and didn’t leave for three days.
Burt! You have captured the interactive spirit of The Twenty Third Century Novel exactly! This is what I mean when I say that here in the 23Century, we weave in and out of each others stories, never losing our identity exactly, but benefitting from the stories and life experience of others. More! More! :)