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That same Tuesday 4/1 overcast and chilly here in west NY rain in the PM ☾ on Equator ☌♃☾‧☌☾ U.S. to reduce B-52 raids Gas explosions seal Mexican coal mines 145 feared dead Eisenhower funeral train goes to Abilene China convenes 9th National Congress Mao in complete charge Cultural Revolution accomplished 2nd Revolution waiting to be RESET Full of that weary exultation which only true revolutionary lovers can RESET We toasted the moment with cordials of apricot nectar and pushed the Printout button for the 1st trial draft of the RN NOTES a 1 and a 2 give us an N give us an O No no whats this a 1 and a 14 and a 1 and a 7 and an 18 and a 1 and a 13 12 5 1 6 25 et cet exclamation point
I.e., no NOVEL no NOTES but a swarm of numbers exclamation point Merope and we looked into each other’s RESET On and on 13 1 187 1 1256 1 25 then a string of 55’s and 49’s alternating page after page after RESET Not got all the chinks out of the ointment 17 rules for the comma et cet push PUNCT Point No Stop No
? Yes. Check:,!()? OK, OK.
Words ca
That was Tuesday. Thursday 4/3 was Maundy Thursday, also Nisan 15 and 1st night of Passover. Description. The sky cleared over Lake Cassadaga; the air was mild along the Niagara Frontier. As we took our constitutional about the grounds of Lily Dale, where a few early spiritualists raked their yards and spruced their cottages for the coming season, we could see clearly atop the hills on the farther shore the low buildings of the Pope John XXIII Retreat. At Merope’s direction, and to distract us from our gloom (the great pile of printout lay still untouched at LILYVAC’s feet), we vowed to put all numbers out of our minds until the Friday, just as LILYVAC avoids all references to, whether by deletion or by artful substitution, e.g. bean for bean. We had searched and destroyed on the Wednesday night all leavened bread in our cottage against the 7 days to come. Now toward sunset she arranged on the Seder tray the 7 symbols: matzo, baked egg, lamb’s bone, haroseth, karpas, hazereth, and fillet of a fe
also its designation of sabbatical and jubilee years, the 7 days of Levitical purifications and of 2 of the 3 major Jewish feasts, the 7 weeks between the 1st and 2nd of the latter, and the 7 years of Nebuchadnezzar’s beasthood and of Jacob’s service with each of his wives; we were reminded of the Hebrew tradition that the 7th son of a 7th son has a special destiny; that God is called by 7 names and created Creation in 7 days; that Solomon had 700 wives and 7 seals, and his temple 7 pillars; that Balaam would have 7 bullocks and 7 rams sacrificed upon his 7 altars; that Naaman was commanded to dip 7 times into the Jordan; that 7 priests with 7 trumpets marched daily for 7 days around the walls of Jericho, and 7 times on the 7th day; that Pharaoh dreamed of 7 kine and 7 ears of corn; that Samson’s wedding feast lasted 7 days, on the 7th of which he told Delilah the secret of his strength, whereupon she bound him with 7 withes and shore him of 7 locks of hair; that Salome danced with 7 veils. That Mary Magdalene was exorcised of 7 devils. Dialogue. Never mind the goyishe stuff, Merope protested, before I could mention the 7 deadly sins and cardinal virtues and gifts of the Holy Ghost and Champions of Christendom and years of their ordeals and joys of Mary and sorrows of RESET Sayings on the cross holy angels churches of Asia parts of the Lord’s Prayer, also the candlesticks stars trumpets spirits horns vials plagues monster-heads and lamb-eyes in the Book of Revelations. Back to the Hebes, then: that their very verb to swear means to come under the influence of 7 things; and that the Torah itself, according to one Kabbalistical tradition, had been a heptateuch before it was a pentateuch, 1 of its books having disappeared entirely and another shrunk to 2 verses (#35 and #36) in the 10th chapter of the Book of Numbers.
Dialogue. Next year in Jerusalem! You know, said Merope, that reminds me of LILYVAC’s printout. Oh? All those numbers. Ah. Remember back in Year O, she went on, 1967/68, when we programmed LILYVAC II with Thompson’s Motif-Index to Folk-Literature plus the fiction stacks of Lily Dale’s Marion Skidmore Library plus Masterplots plus Monarch Notes and like that? Yes. Plus everything we could think of that comes in 5’s, such as the fingers, toes, senses, and wits of Homo sapiens, the feet of pentametric verse and Dr. Eliot’s shelf of classics, the tones of pentatonic music, the great books and blessings of China, the bloods of Ireland, the (original) Nations of the (noble) Iroquois, the divisions of the British Empire, the books of the Pentateuch, the weekdays of the week, the vowels of the alphabet, the ages of man, the months of Odysseus’s last voyage as retold by Dante, the stories framed by Scheherazade’s Tales of the Porter and the 3 Ladies of Baghdad, and a few non-serial odds and ends such as quincunx, pentagon, quintile, pentacle, quinque
Narrative. That day we reclined no more. We now pass over our night-long ardor in the workroom among those sheaves of numbers, every one of which, aha, was under 27 except the 55’s and 49’s — no problem there, 5 5 is the letters of our NOTES and the years of our plan, and 4 from 9 is 5, right, E, our prime letter and the year to come. But it were too much to expect a 1-to-l correspondence (1 to 1 = A to A, a mere tautology; we gave it a go anyhow, why not; the 1st dozen letters came out MARGANAYFAEL, forget it).