albionspeak: a draught of language (1.1)
SESSION 10: 2ND NIGHT, 7/14/92
[Scribe] and I awoke quite late for me, around 10:00 AM, and spent breakfast with Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, largely on the subject of black holes [which came up in the previous night’s ouija session]. Some time after noon we walked with [my wife] and Deirdre [my daughter, almost 2] (on my back) to the beach at the end of 46th Avenue (east side). On the way there, however, we came upon M. (a neighbor, age 9?), whom we’d never met. She was clearly preoccupied and needing some help. Apparently while she was standing at the corner waiting for a ride, a gust of wind knocked a tree branch and disturbed three fledgling robins from their nest. While they were unharmed, they were quite unable to fly the 15-20 ft up into the tree. Using Deirdre’s sand bucket, [Scribe] and [my wife, 8 mos. pregnant] scooped up the birds one at a time (never touching them) and handed them to M., who, in turn, relayed them to me high in the tree. The robin parents squawked at me from neighboring branches, and we felt quite confident of having achieved success.
That night our session got a very late start and almost didn’t happen at all. [Scribe] was reluctant and acknowledged his feelings several days later. Although I was eager to proceed, I certainly didn’t want to push [Scribe] into a session. After all, despite the fact that these sessions are very, very valuable to me, [Scribe]’s friendship is obviously more valuable to me; and besides, pushing just generally leads to greater resistance. I felt we’d try again the following night. [My wife], who normally goes to bed around 9:00 PM these days, was also up late packing for her 4:00 AM departure to San Juan Island.
[This was the last time Scribe ever questioned ouija as a process or activity. (I never did.) I think he was most concerned that it had become the focus of our friendship, if not our obsession. Scribe, I’m guessing, didn’t want our friendship to devolve into seances—a term we never used. Of course, if you can have a seance like the one below, then one’s friendship might grow into something really special.]
12:00 AM (technically now 7/15/92)
1. Question: Is anyone there?
Answer: [our Guide’s call letters]
2. Q: What would you like to talk about tonight?
A: YOU TWO GO
So much for our warm-up process. We were right on line.
3. Q: Today we rescued three robins. Does that count for something?
A: BIRDS ARE AMONG BEATIES
Focusing on beauty, in the last session, was our ticket to stopping or
moving outside of time. And we had been focused.
***Note upon retyping (1/31/95): Scribe and I naturally assumed
“beauties,” but it is necessary to note that “beasties” is equally
mathematically probable.
Aspects Outside of Time*
4. Q: In the course of rescuing the robins, did we at any point “stand outside
of time”?
A: 1 WOULD PREFER [NO]T TO TELL
Although we certainly have received much more startling responses,
this one remains for me to be one of the most mysterious. What reason would
our guide have for silence here?
5. Q: Is there some aspect of [Scribe] and [Albion] that is always outside
time? (a long-held belief of mine)
A: DOUBTLESS
Another signature pun.
Defining Harm
6. Q: What constitutes harm? (referring back to the previous night’s
discussion)
A: SOUL BODIES COUNT [NO]T I MEAN
7. Q: Please continue and/or amplify.
A: B COUNTS O . . .
8. Q: (We rephrase.) If I chop off someone’s head (for example), haven’t I
done that person harm? Or, perhaps, haven’t I harmed that person’s
family?
A: CH CHOPPING OFF MY SOUL IS WORST
12:24 AM
9. Q: How can a soul be harmed?
A: FAIR JUDGMENT
10. Q: Please explain what you mean.
A: I SAID BOI. . .
11. Q: ---repeat Q#9 (How can a soul be harmed?)
A: DEFINE HARM
It struck us as funny that our guide should be asking us for clarification,
but we felt this to be a measure of our improved communication.
12. Q: Let’s rephrase. How can a soul be “chopped off”?
A: EXACTLY IN THE WAY HEAD IS
[NO] MORE S. . .
An interesting metaphor, but only useful to a point. We went back to
my list of prepared questions.
Ob & Sub
13. Q: When we die, will we have a more objective understanding of our lives?
A: OUTSIDE LIFE IS [NO] OB OR SUB
It is rare for our guide to abbreviate like this, especially when his
communication is normally full of redundancies.
Of greater interest, of course, is that our guide implies that
“objective” and “subjective” are not dichotomous. If not, what else is there?
14. Q: If “outside life is no ‘ob’ or ‘sub’,” what’s left?
A: JOY KNOWLEGD UNDERSTANDING
Somehow these make sense to me. I feel they are more directly linked
with reality. But analysis fails here.
15. Q: If I’m “moving outside time,” am I also outside “ob” and “sub”?
A: OB IS FUNCTIONAL OB IS USEFUUL STORY
16. Q: Is there a “sub” story?
A: CERTAINLY BUT STORY KEPS CHANGIG
Some speculation. The objective world may be no more than
convention, that is a framework mutually agreed upon which includes time,
space, objects, and events. The subjective world would consist of individuals’
perceptions and constructions within the “ob” story. If this were the case,
then the “sub” story would change with every thought, conscious or otherwise,
since our perceptions are like the river of Heraclitus which can never be stepped
into twice. On the other hand, large switches in perception, changes in the story,
are not uncommon either. The road to Damascus is an extreme example.
I had a (wild) theory I wanted tested.
12:50 AM
17. Q (Albion): Is my soul the only one to inhabit [my own body in my town] in
1992? Or is the soul of [Albion] like that of a character in a play, one
which many actors play and many, in fact, interpret differently?
A: ONLY ONE MANY ROLEZ
Geography & Other Myths
18. Q: Is the heart-&-feather [from The Egyptian Book of the Dead] an
example of a sub-story?
A: [YES] MANY OTHERS AZ GOOD
MYTHS ARE INNUMERBLE
19. Q: Tell us some other myths, besides time, which [Scribe] and [Albion]
live by.
A: BIOLOGY
HISTORY
GEOGRAPHY
GEOLOGY
OTHERZ
[Scribe] and I were not surprised with various sciences being included
on the list, although this catalogue of school subjects contrasts sharply with
subjects our guide listed in 1990. Science, of course, is just a best guess at our
objective story. History is even more nebulous, a subjective story. But
geography? We didn’t understand this at all.
20. Q: In what way is geography a myth?
A: NORTH SOUTH ARE [NO]T OPPOSITE
EAST WEST ONLY FICTION
News to us.
1:26 AM
21. Q: If time is a myth, might not space be equally a myth?
A: [YES] BUT NOT AZ DEEP
If time, space, science, and history were myths, wasn’t everything a
myth? Was life itself a myth?
“Existence [no] myth”
22. Q: What in our conscious experience is not a myth?
A: EX1STENCE [NO] MYTH
I AM HERE YOU ARE ALSO
The Karass
23. Q: If aspects of us exist outside of time, are those aspects communicating
with similar aspects of others?
A: [YES] GOOD CALL BELIEF OF YOURS IS JUST
Another example of redundant confirmation. “JUST” here clearly meant
“justified,” as opposed to an adverb in an incomplete response. The signal was
clean; the sign-off was obvious.
While this question followed logically from those preceding it, this
marks for me (with hindsight) the “point of inevitability” in our ouija
conversations. From this point on we were in a new land. But we didn’t know
it at the time, so we took another break.
During the break I voiced my belief that not only do aspects of us,
higher selves so to speak, communicate all the time, that these aspects are
organized and work like a team toward common goals. Scribe, who always has
the right allusion for the occasion, brought up the notion of karass from Kurt
Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle. While this book is one of my favorites, I’d forgotten
the terminology of Bokonon, the fictional leader of the new religion,
Bokononism. I quote from the first two pages of Cat’s Cradle here:
“We Bokononists believe that humanity is organized into teams,
teams, that do God’s Will without ever discovering what they are doing."
“If you find your life tangled up with somebody else’s life
for no very logical reasons,’ writes Bokonon, ‘that person may be a
member of your karass.’
“At another point in The Books of Bokonon he tell us, ‘Man
created the checkerboard; God created the karass.’ By that he means
that a karass ignores national, institutional, occupational, familial,
and class boundaries.” (p. 12)
24. Q: Using the language of Kurt Vonnegut, is there such a thing as a karass
(network or team of souls)?
A: TEAM [NO] NETWORK [YES]
Although technically Vonnegut’s term karass is incorrect, since no such
“team” exists, we continued using it to mean this network; and eventually our
guide also adopts its usage. (What would Vonnegut have to say about that!)
25. Q: How does a karass operate?
A: CURRENTS I TOLD YOU ABOUT LINKAGE
26. Q: What is the hub or center of a karass?
A: CENTER IS COMMON INTEREST
This question also has roots in Bokononism. Vonnegut discusses this
hub and makes it crucial to the function of a karass. The Bokononist term is
wampeter, but [Scribe] could not bring himself to use this word. See
Chapter 24 for a full description.
27. Q: Are the three of us ([Scribe], [Albion], & our guide) in the same karass?
A: [NO] I AM IN ANOTHER
YOU ARE IN SAME
Like a Jewel
28. Q: Tell us more about our karass.
A: IS TINY
IS OLD
IS RARE
We were quietly nervous and excited. Something big was happening;
yet we remained somewhat guarded. For one thing, each of the adjectives
above is relative, and we had no standard for comparison.
29. Q: How tiny? How old? How rare?
A: VERY LIKE JEWELZ
Of course to us these attributes sounded like wish fulfillment. How
cool to be part of such an elite group! (And so I remained cautiously
suspicious…) And yet if TV advertising is any reflection of society, then I
guess maybe we are rare. Most commercial products promote exactly the
opposite values: It’s Big! It’s New! It’s Everywhere!
30. Q: What is the right way to think about being “like a jewel”?
A: DONT THINK ABOUUT IT JUST GLOW
31. Q: Can you name one other member of our karass?
A: [YES]…
[the next few exchanges must be censored]
2:43 AM
A Cup of Language
34. Q: Can you tell us more?
A: YOU HAVE A CUP TOO
[NO]T SAME BUT SIMILAR IN APPLICATION
35. Q: Tell us more about our cup.
A: CUP HOLDS [NO]T WINE
[NO]T BLOOD
BUT LANGUAG
36. Q: Go on please (about the cup of language).
A: CUP IS IN YOUR HAND
YOU HAV ONLY TO SHARE IT
I thought this meant that my friendship with [Scribe], which so deeply
revolves around language, was the way we share this cup. I turned out to be
wrong.
[We would eventually learn that the Cup applies specifically to Scribe’s
& my “learning circle” of eight persons only, not necessarily the whole karass.
Scribe & I belong to Circle Cup. In this case, I’m not 100% sure to which our
Guide refers.]
3:11 AM
38. Q: What is our hub or center?
A: CENTER OF JEWEL POINT OF FIRE
Finding Each Other
39. Q: Can you name someone living, whom we know of, who is in our karass?
A: I MUST NOT BECAUSE WORK INCLUDES FINDING EACH
OTHERS NAMES
This implied to us that other living members exist and are in some
way available to us.
40. Q: How will we know? (How will we recognize and confirm other members
of our karass?)
A: UNFAIR QUESTION
The censor, at last! We continued to try to talk around the subject in
order to define it more clearly.
Infants
42. Q: Tell us more about the cup of language—how we share it.
A: LANGUAGE [NO]T ART ONLY TEACHING INFANT
Here, I assumed (and I can’t speak for [Scribe]) that “infant” was a
metaphor for a young soul (albeit an oxymoron). That is, I was not reading this
literally.
43. Q: Can you tell us more (about teaching “infants”)?
A: INFANTS ARE ALL WHO DESIRE TO SPEAK
MAY [NO]T WITHOUT HELP
YOU HELP THEM
[more censorship; sorry]
around 4:15 AM
50. Q: Any parting words?
A: DO [NO]T BE AFRAID
I SAY WHAT YOU WERE MEANT TO K[NO]W
Well, what a blow-away evening! But [Scribe] and I did not belabor it.
[My wife] was up and almost out the door on her San Juan trip [for a natural
history class, necessary to salary advancement]. We went to bed immediately;
and despite my excitement, I was gone in a couple of minutes.
Kurt Vonnegut
1922 - 2007
*Editor's note 10/1/22: The subtitling here came from several years later, long after Scribe & I had made subtitling a morning-after institution of our ouija practices. Session 10 became such a touchstone for us, a constant reference.
1a Session 10
Images & Attributions (in order of appearance)
1. Banner: Rhiannon C. 2016
a) Jewel Mandala (2): D.C. Albion 1994
b) Jewel Ouija Board (2): D.C. Albion 1994
2. Photo of Kurt Vonnegut By WNET-TV/ PBS - eBayfrontback, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38530410
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