Eso’s Chronicles 195/ 5
Peqd America (5)
© Eso A.B.

The death of the capitalist monstrosity may be dramatic and tragic, but even more notable is its inevitability. These last five blogs have given a rough sketch of the rise of capitalism from the vikings (raids) of Vikings to secure themselves women and slaves to its present end in bankruptcy.

True, my view is somewhat unconventional, in that I see its success in having had the perception to organize itself from the very first around an old folk religion that lent itself to being rewritten into a religion, which through the power of the letter could be interpreted to be law. That religion is Christianity as contained in the story of fiction known as The New Testament.

The trick the writers of this fiction used was to build a new story plot around old and traditional values: deep respect for all nature as the creation of the same forces that created humankind, and agape, love and respect that goes far beyond the sexual urge. The fiction was written as a spectacle: a just man (Jesus) unfairly accused of working against the government by the very forces that represented the old and traditional values, which were specifically identified as of the Jews, though this was done but to divert the anger of the common folk on the Jews rather than the capitalists, the princes who were the real power behind the tax collectors. In some ways, the plot behind the ‘Christian’ spectacle reminds one of Thornhill (Cary Grant playing the folk), who is/are introduced as the non-existent ‘Kaplan’ (Judas) in Alfred Hitchcock’s film North by Northwest. Eva Marie Saint plays Mary Magdaline https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRfmTpmIUwo.

In a ‘rewritten’ story of my own (actually—if you include the original-- the 3rd  rewrite of the story when you think of it), http://OedipusRexRewritten.blogspot.com , I reinstate the original values that likely guided the plot of the play over what we today are led to believe is a story of incest. I suspect that both the New Testament and Oedipus Rex were written and rewritten sometime in the 13^th or 14^th centuries.

The problem with the power of impotence vis a vis the impunity of power, is that impotence cannot unseat capitalist impunity by force. It must wait for “…no one knows the day or hour….” Fortunately, impotence weighs heavy on the heart, which is why there are writers who expose the story through writing. Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” is one such story and is brought to our attention by the commentary of Chris Hedges at Truthdig: 

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/we_are_all_aboard_the_pequod_20130707/ .

Herman Melville has no doubts about the fact that he lives in an age where religion is Capitalism. He puts the words in the mouth of Ishmael (speaking for himself and us): “If I had been downright honest with myself, I would have seen very plainly in my heart that I did but half fancy being committed this way to so long a voyage, without once laying my eyes on the man who was to be the absolute dictator of it, so soon as the ship sailed out upon the open sea. But when a man suspects any wrong, it sometimes happens that if he be already involved in the matter, he insensibly strives to cover up his suspicions even from himself. And much this way it was with me. I said nothing, and tried to think nothing.”

And then again there are impotencies that are impatient as those of Iahn Basil and Jesus, who decided to express the power of their impotence through self-sacrifice. Apparently this power of impotence is so powerful that even the impudent powers dared not overwrite this factor from the last words of Psalm 22:1 attributed to both: “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me!?”

The way of Iahn Basil the Bogomil, who did not shirk being thrown into a pit of fire (see Anna Comnena’s “Alexiad”), remains open for all of us. Yes, it is to enter upon another “…so long a voyage”; but then the mercy over those asleep and dead is that time does not exist; and the reward may be an awakening with a foot on the step out of the grave of religious Capitalism and its way with Christiany.

Tibet socialist villages http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-23100427   

Eso’s Chronicles 194/ 4
Scholarship as Political Prejudice (4)
© Eso A.B.

Anyone who for whatever reasons of his-her own has read my blogs for over a period of time will have noticed I do not pretend to scholarship as such, but my perspective is that of a layman looking at the stories pursued by scholars with regard to history and religion especially.

Since the perspective of religion so obviously effects the ways society arranges the rituals of its daily behavior, which behavior has led to the destructive behavior of most of today’s governments, independent scholarship would seem essential. However, scholarly independence is obviously suspect, because the daily behavior of society at large is not dictated by religion, but by governments that have taken on the role of religion. Furthermore, the government’s role as a religion is furthered by a complaisant and pliable privately owned public media.

I have perceived my role and my story-telling of history and religion as a goad to help the reader break out of the shell of government dictates that end up constituting the materialist presumptions and ritual over our daily lives. If the reader has minimal respect for me, which he-she would show by returning to read another blog after reading one, and disagrees with my material, he-she is invited to look into the matter further by going to the library or searching the internet. On the other hand, if the reader shares my prejudice that much of what passes today as ‘information’ is information poisoned by the politics of a questionable majority loyal to a tiny violent minority, then over a period of time, we would be pushing scholarship away from government influence toward greater objectivity.

An interesting clash between a private media platform (the Fox News) and an individual scholar shows up at this interesting confrontation between one of the ‘talking heads’ at Fox News, Lauren Green and Professor Reza Aslan, a muslim and a scholar of religions: http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/fox-hosts-bigotry-exposed-reza-aslan?akid=10742.171186.EECk_R&rd=1&src=newsletter875520&t=3

As the clip shows, the Professor is first attacked for being a Muslim and therefore questioned about his legitimacy to write about Christianity, while Lauren Green presents herself as a Christian bigot and as representing (beyond question) the view of the religion of the American nation.

My view regarding Christianity does not in any way parallel those of Reza Aslan. The first difference, I would argue, is that the events concerning Jesus very likely did not occur in Palestine, but in Constantinople (I take the view of the Russian scholar Anatoly Fomenko on the matter), nor that Jesus was crucified, but that another holy man was pushed into a pit where a fiercely burning fire consumed him. The latter is not Fomenko’s view, but stems from my own conclusion that Jesus Christ is a creation of fiction to replace the now forgotten victim of a nascent capitalist government, and that one of the early sources of capitalism is to be sought in the late Byzantine Empire. Anyone interested in the source for my opinion can check out at my blog site JesustheBogomil.blogspot.com   My other disagreement with Professor Asan is that the Roman Empire that he is talking about never existed in the geographical location of present Rome, but was simply was another name for the Byzantine, aka Israel, Empire.

As I discuss in the three previous blogs, the present Rome and the fiction that it ever was the capital of an Empire, is a government supported fiction project, which began with the establishment of the Papal residence in Rome by Pope Gregory XI, who abandoned Avignon and arrived in Rome, Italy on January 17, 1377, thus officially ending the Avignon, France Papacy. As we ought to know, the Vatican itself was officially established only in 1929, when it became a ‘country’.

What the skeptical reader will have to acknowledge (perhaps unwillingly) is that from 1377 to 2013 (the hear this is being written) are 636 years, of which the early years are total fiction (probably due to the change from oral and flexible to written and rigid-legalistic communication). As I contend, the fiction begins with the creation of the capitalist system, where money and tax collecting dominates (represses) the common man in favor of the princes. The unpopularity of this system is obvious, not only because of the violence it created in social affairs (re: cataclysmic violence in Languedoc, Aragon, and the so-called Shepherds Crusade and Lepers Plot in France, but as history of long duree led to the holocaust against the Jews by the Nazi regime in Germany in the recent past.

The unpopularity of the Capitalist religion (behind the False Flag of Christian goodness) continues today in the capitalist attacks on the Muslim countries in the Middle East: Palestine, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iran, and Afghanistan. Nary is a word said that this is a religious war led by Capitalism with its God Money against Egalitarianism with its God come with the Gift of life.

Tibet socialist villages http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-23100427   

Eso’s Chronicles 193/ 3

Vikings Continued (3)
© Eso A.B.

The question of whence capitalism, is also a question of where to humankind? Even at the finish line of the demise of the Western economic system, capitalism does not appear to accept “learning from experience” as the answer, but chooses to “push the gas pedal to the floor” as the way of its reason.

The African proverb mentioned in the previous blog: “They are our enemies; we marry them”, appears the only choice that capitalism offers to those who not only disagree with them, but think of them as people who believe that being “killers” is the way of humankind.

Whence this stubborn determination to cannibalize the planet?

One possible answer is that it arises from an adventurous spirit and an inadvertent overstepping of human limitations. Such a situation may have arisen when animal herders (caribou, reindeer) in the area now known as Siberia, but anciently known as Tartary, failed to make a timely return south, and were trapped in the northern region and had to endure the winter there.

Those who survived the winter, could not return to their original homes, because their way was blocked by a sea (the Baltic), and they had no boats. The resolution to the problem was not a matter of a season or a year, but one of many years. When the herders finally had boats, they probably had also eaten the last of their reindeer and other game that was an easy catch. In short, by the time the herders discovered the solution, they had become fishermen, were destitute, desperate, and hungry.

At this point, they also had a bit of luck. The Baltic Sea in harsh winters could be crossed, but then again in milder winters it could not. The Baltic Sea is also known for having very shallow shorelines. The latter factor contributed to the fact that the Vikings built shallow boats that later proved as if made to order for navigating far up river of other countries. Since the herders and survivors were mostly men, their first use of the boats during the navigable season was to go in search of women.

Known as Vikings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikings, the name these men originally called themselves was probably entirely something other. Nevertheless, the word closely parallels the English word ‘hiking’.  At the above link, under Etymology, we read that: “The word víking derives from the feminine vík, meaning ‘creek, inlet, small bay’”. If we shift our mind into paradolia mode, we can readily imagine ‘vik, creek, inlet, bay’ as words symbolic of female genitalia. Thus, to go viking or wading upriver may go back to the ancient custom of wife stealing or for the male to take for himself a woman through an act of rape.

However, when rape is no longer limited to the experience of one woman, but symbolizes the experience of many villages, the reaction to the violence of Viking raiders was not limited to a scream, but led to a series of earthshaking cultural changes. For example, what had been but herder’s switch or pole, metamorphosed into a sword and spear. When the ‘treasure house’, then the temple of the tribe, was robbed of its precious objects, the tribe felt that not only had it suffered a loss and humiliation, but its very being (a temple commemorates also one’s ancestors) had been attacked. Worse, the acquisition of a wife evolved into acquisition of slaves, even enslavement in situ, by taking the whole tribe prisoner and occupying lands that formerly had belonged to it.

Needless to say, going ‘viking’ put an end to subsistence economies and popularized enslavement and acquisitiveness. In due course this led to taxation (animal furs at first), which led to money and global dependency on  enslavement as a facilitator of human ‘development’.

One may go on to speculate that the word ‘capitalist’ derives from the name of the Capetian dynasty. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capetian_dynasty, which derives its name from (in words of the link): “…the Capets, which ruled the Kingdom of France from 987 to 1328, was the most senior line of the Capetian dynasty – itself a derivative dynasty from the Robertians.” Hmm: Robertians? The source for the word “robbers”? Another hmm: “bright fame”? Yes, contradictory, but not for paradolia. Robin Hood?

The sole opposition to this materialist trendline came from the sacred: the sensibility that life and consciousness is something special, a movement which unlike that of a river can chose a path of its own. This is perhaps why water was supplanted by the wind as a symbol for spirit and soul. No matter how ephemeral, the sacred was sufficient to empower the mind to discover (imagine) the story, that everything is sacred (the past, the present, the future, all nature and humankind itself) consequent to having been  created by a Creator or a Creatrix, who upon completing the act of creation had so exhausted themselves as to be thought of as sacrifices.  This act of sacrifice necessarily put an obligation to His-Her highest creation, humankind, to learn and be able to imitate it.

Apparently this obligation is so integrated in the very being of humankind that only extreme violence and brutality may succeed in repressing it. Because repeated violence is an onerous and brutalizing endeavor of Self, the materialist powers (the latter tribal leaders, barons, and princes) began a globalizing ‘reform’ movement.

Since the story about the sacrifice of the creator Gods disturbed the Vikings and Roberts, their agents made attacks on and questioned the authority of the Sacred King, whose role was to imitate the Creator Gods. The attacks were successful: the Sacred King (often of a young age and not ready to die) felt compelled to accept the Viking ways, thus losing authority in the eyes of the people.

In a remarkable book called “Communities of Violence”, Professor David Nirenberg, describes the agonizing process that led to the creation of capitalist society http://press.princeton.edu/titles/5827.html. Though none of the reviewers of the work that at I have read emphasize ‘capitalism’ or ‘taxation’, given a perspective that does not feel obliged to fall in line with historians of the academics of the West, I take the point of view that the book nicely describes the consequences of fiscals at an early stage of the capitalist economic phenomenon.

Indeed, the manipulation of the Creation story by the Franks rewrites the Basil Iahn/John story into what we now know as the story of King Jesus Christ, who contrary to the first named is accepting of tax collectors http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+19%3A1-10&version=NIV and an unrestrained ‘free market’.

 
Tibet socialist villages http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-23100427  

Eso’s Chronicles 192/ 2
State Dept of Religion (2)
© Eso A.B.

My disagreement with post-capitalism era capitalists is presented in the blog preceding this one. I remind the audience that we have, before our very eyes, a clear picture of the collapse of an over a thousand years old psychophisiologically misguided civilization, yet ‘capitalist radicals’ cannot think of its failure as anything but a passing spectacle. This only proves that capitalism leads to increasing levels of insanity and delusions of power.

At another blog site (http://jesusthebogomil.blogspot.com), I present the argument that the prevailing religion of our time, Christ-ian-ity, while having its origins in what is now called ‘folk art’, was deliberately destroyed in order to give birth to capitalism. In its early days the capitalist inklings were first received by what we today know as CEOs.  oligarchs, and jhenerals, but were then administrators working for the office known as the ‘sacred king’. Because their office enjoyed the authority of the sacred office, they fractured the aspect of the psycho physiological One that theoretically belonged to the Sacred King only, there arose what we today know as the human rights of the individual.

Today the fractals of the Sacred Unity in its human form embody themselves not in sacrificial princes or individuals, but in idiosyncratic individuals. A recent example are the young women of a group known as ‘Pusy Riot’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pussy_Riot , who invaded a temple of Christ-ian-ity in Russia. What was the reason for this act?

The punk rock group projected itself as an opposition group to Vladimir Putin, who was then running for the office of President of Russia, and who was supported by the Russian Orthodox Church. Though many consider the actions of the punk group as frivolous, their self-projection in politics, nevertheless, causes one to analyze their actions ‘with dead seriousness’ and some déjà vu.

History allows us to see the Russian Orthodox Church as a religius community which was humiliated during its clashes with the establishment of Christianity in the West by the Frank kings beginning sometime in the 8^th century (some claim earlier) of our era, when these fled the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions for the northwest of Europe. While such a flight is not recorded by Western historians, the equally sudden and surprising appearance of the Franks by the North Sea is not denied. This is not to say that their flight (and attack against the indigenous tribes in their way) may not have been influenced by the Vikings, who had for some time been known to have established themselves in the Byzantine controlled world.

In any event, the Franks attempted to consolidate the newly occupied lands by instituting their own form of Christianity. Whereas Byzantine Christianity was built on a foundation of folk religions practiced by tribes whose economy was based on animal herding, and which therefore were self-sustaining economies, which did not know taxation, the Christianity of the Franks attempted to introduce a ‘rewritten’ Christianity by which taxation was accepted as ‘normal’.

When the Franks had succeeded in establishing a Christianity that accepted taxation, it attempted to infiltrate this ‘reformed’ religion in the guise of Jesus Christ on the East during a period known as The Great Schism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East%E2%80%93West_Schism .

The Eastern Orthodox Christianity was humiliated when it was forced to replace its basic religious story about John Basil with the story of Jesus Christ. I discuss the Eastern story in my blogs on JesustheBogomil. Still, despite its humiliation, the Eastern Church retained much of its rituals (the ever present bees wax candles continue to remind of the death of John Basil by fire), and refused to unite itself into One Church by joining the West with its permissiveness toward taxation. Indeed, the separation persists to this day, and by the perspective of history known as long duree http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longue_dur%C3%A9e  was the foundation for the cause of the Russian Revolution in 1917.

To return to the conflict picked by Pussy Riot against Putin, we again must apply the long duree perspective. In short, Pussy Riot represents the anarchistic forces unleashed by the Money Economy, which was made possible by taxation (which made possible a fiscal economy), while Putin continues to represent a civilization that favors a self-sufficient or autarchic economy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-sufficiency and a Sacred King for its government.

In the present instance, Pussy Riot represents a post-neo-capitalism in its hour of desperation. That the desperation of the West is real is confirmed at this very time by two events. The first is the propaganda visit of the Pope to South America http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-23483478, where Western Christianity continues to accept the legitimacy of taxation of individuals but not corporations. Second, the U.S. State Department http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/2013/07/26/79eeada8-f643-11e2-9434-60440856fadf_story.html  is stepping in on behalf of ‘religious freedom’ with all means of psychofiz gimmickry available to American descendants of proto-Enlightenment Franks. As professor Nirenberg states with regard to Enlightenment (on a broader basis than mere Frankishness): “…it is virtually a commonplace of post-Enlightenment political philosophy that violence and aggression are forms of association”, adding by way of clarification the African proverb: “They are our enemies; we [are forced to] marry them.”  

 

Tibet socialist villages http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-23100427  

Eso’s Chronicles 191/ 1
Capitalist Radicals? (1)
© Eso A.B.

Under the headline “Kyle Bass Hunkers Down: "We Dramatically Reduce Portfolio Risk"

”, Tyler Durden http://www.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden initiator of one of the few publicly accessible pseudo-‘radical’ financial and business oversight blog sites ZeroHedge offers the following quote from the enfant terrible Kyle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyle_Bass :

"China’s direct contribution to global growth is enormous, but perhaps equally as important is its role in generating growth in developed and emerging economies. A slowdown, whether significant or extreme, in the Chinese economy heralds very bad news for asset prices around the world. A growth crisis centered in Asia will further exacerbate the instability and volatility in Japan and have a devastating impact on second derivative marketplaces such as Australia, Brazil and developing markets in South East Asia. The combination of rich valuations and further threats to growth has led us to dramatically reduce risk in the portfolio and actively position ourselves to withstand the uncertainty and instability ahead"

This is not to say that Tyler and Bass have not brought their readers occasional insights into events in the financial and business world, but my complaint is that both sing as the fat lady sings: yes, in the last act, but short of shattering the glass https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17tqXgvCN0E Neither has the guts to tell their audience that for all purposes the show of capitalism is over, and that “…to position ourselves to withstand the uncertainty and instability ahead” and to live out a life, we must let our ‘super’ civilization go fallow and not to reconstruct a society in the throes of destroying itself.

In light of the approaching final crisis of capitalism, Kyle Bass’ observation with regard to the Chinese economy is not only shortsighted, but absurd (and paradoxically brilliant), because the Chinese leadership is clearly bringing war to another level http://dissidentnation.com/chinas-ambitious-plan-to-move-500-million-settlers-to-africa/

No doubt, a war where the soldiers go under the name of ‘economic tourists’ will be welcome by all the failing ‘borgeois tourist’ ship lines, even though they risk having their ships sunk on open seas by drone torpedo boats directed by Somali pirates become legitimate.  On the other hand, the Chinese may be able to disembark enough unarmed ‘Chinese Jewish’ emigrants to continents chosen by China’s leadership to act as ‘Chinese liberation camps’ before the selected countries awaken to the fact to their ‘chosen’ status forces them to become guards of their home lands, which the headless Chinese media will counter by calling them concentration camp guards.

Let me try to put it another way (and not put all the blame on the Chinese leadership) that wears shiny suits and ties https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC0pYaE0rRQ just like their western counterparts.

Most of us know that contrary to the praise of cities by capitalist businesses, in actuality cities are vast areas of ‘canned’ deserts, where imagination, natural to chameleons, makes money for idiots when it comes to politics. Take for example the East Coast of the U.S.A., which is said to be one long coastal city from Maine to Florida, which originally spread in all directions (about 50 miles inland, but stopped dead by the sea) from such mega centers as Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_megalopolis and on to northern Florida down south—a dust storm of human intelligence.

However, the oil that lubricates the cities is not the gasoline that runs cars, but money that robs the surrounding landscape of life. Of course, this ‘desert being’ is overlooked when there is money to ‘oil’ it with, and as Jane Jacobs once so convincingly persuaded her readers (this writer including) that the city was in fact an “an engine of wealth” http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320550163l/85401.jpg .

Unfortunately, the city also becomes ‘catastrophe in action’ when in the course of time, capitalism has chewed the cud and sucked all its juices and spits it out. As George Orwell is reported to have said: “To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.” Today the bankrupt city of Detroit provides us with visual evidence of what the expectorate as a bankrupt city looks like. True, ‘spitting the cud’ is today better known as ‘outsourcing’.

The media of the city serve it as its shamanistic healers and the mushrooms it encapsules are known as Agaric Polypositivisimus. All one has to do is turn on the radio or television and hear and see polypositivisimus in full bloom: the lack of money or its lack of buying power is never mentioned. Happy consumers still flock to shopping malls, and there is nary a mention that banks send the countryside peasants to the woods with chainsaws to further desert-ify our planet and kill wildlife. The hapless ‘would be revolutionary’ can only welcome the attack of the kudzu bug http://www.ajc.com/news/news/state-regional/kudzu-bugs-a-pest-to-homeowners-growerslittle-inse/nWK47/ , and thus further facilitate the desertification of our planet.

 

Tibet socialist villages http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-

Eso’s Chronicles 190/ 4

Back to the Present
© Eso A.B.

With a flip of its tail, the fish sent Clever John and the entire sand dune to the gate of Yenghis Khan’s castle. Soon there was, however, another problem: How to bring the gold to Yenghis Khan? John had neither a horse, nor a wagon, nor servants to help him.

But no sooner is there trouble, a solution, too, is at hand. Out of the cloud appears Crazy Jane again. This time, she sets herself down on earth. Next to her stands the Mother of the Devil. The mother’s hair is yellow streaked with red. It is all over her face or stands straight up in the air. In her hands she holds the reins of Rocinante, who—whereever she fell--appeared to have survived the fall in good shape. Her reins and bridle are of gold and gold mesh.

Crazy Jane and her mother help Clever John lift the pile of gold into the wagon. Crazy Jane whispers into John’s ear yet another piece of advice: “Don’t be in a hurry. Walk slowly as if you are a prince. You are no longer just a mover of hay and catcher of crickets. Yenghis Khan is good his word.  Your Princess will not disappear. You’ve practically paid your life for her.”

Jersika, the Devil’s Castle

Having loaded the wagon with gold, Clever John drove to the main door of Yenghis Khan’s castle.

Over the gate hung a large sign, where in large letters was written “JERSIKA”, a Latvian word that stands for “Jerusalem”. In other words, Clever John stood at the entrance to the very heart of the proto-Latvian people. Here six guards rolled their drums to summon the king. Yenghis Khan, aka John The Great, himself came to the gate. This time the King wore leather boots. His eyes shone with happiness. Even he had never seen so much gold in one place at one time.

When Yenghis Khan had inspected the quality of the gold, he called for his daughter, the princess Complete Satisfaction. The six drummers picked up six horns and trumpeted: “Com-plea-at! Com-plea-at!  Sa-sa-tis-faction! Sa-sa-tis-faction! Sa-sa-tis-fac-tion-tion!”

But the King and Clever John waited in vain. In a while, a guard came running to announce that Complete Satisfaction was delayed. Yenghis Khan apologized to John for the inconvenience, and said he hoped that Clever John understood that Complete Satisfaction could not be anything but what her name foretold.

“Since you are clever, John, you surely know how women are,” said Yenghis Khan. “They exhaust men by making them wait, then give them one apple instead of two. But do not worry. You will surely meet her in bed. I am told that she is preparing a surprise for you. You will be no worse for the anticipation. Besides, the custom in Jersika is to celebrate the marriage ceremony without the bride. It is thus that Complete Satisfaction builds up to the ‘lihgo’ or halleluia event.”

Thus, Clever John had some time to preparee wedding ceremony. He took some of the surplus gold and hired a full orchestra to play him and the Princess a fanfare. He also sent an invitation to his brothers. The whole day of the ninth day after “Johns Eve” passed in rehearsing dances and preparing tournaments of strength and wit. Among the dancers were the revived six sisters of Crazy Jane.

When the six brothers of Clever John finally arrived, no sweeter reunion of lovers was ever seen. Even the Mother of the Devil and King John the Great were seen dancing.  

As for the six brothers: they would not cease praising Clever John: Who could ever have imagined that bathing seven crickets in the sea would lead to such awesome results and a feast that would last a week?

At last, came the evening and it was time for Clever John to go ‘lihgo’ with the Princess of Complete Satisfaction.

King John the Great along with the Mother of the Devil lead Clever John to the bedroom door. When they arrived at the door, they gave Clever John last minute advice: “The moment you go inside and see (by the light of the door) where the bed is, do not wait, but dive into the divan. Your bride (the Latvians call her “dahvana”) will be waiting for you. Do not hesitate. If you do, the Princess may lose, both, heat and her desire for you.”

 A servant then opened the door of the Lihgo room. Clever John saw the double spread divan and ran for it. As the servant closed the door, everything went pitch black around him.

Clever John, once under the blanket, did not waste time beginning to feel for the princess. He soon felt something soft beside him. He felt a night gown, fond its buttons, and… and… he felt straw. Can it be true that he had been fooled?

“What the Devil…,” he began to shout and would have shouted some more, except the door of the room suddenly opened and a shaft of light discovers Clever John on all fours in bed feeling up a straw doll.

Into the Lihgo room come a servant with a large candelabra alight with candles. Right behind the servent came Crazy Jane.

As soon as the servant put the candelabra on the table and left the room.  Crazy Jane wasted no time and said what was on her mind:

“What do you take me for, Clever John?” she screamed. “Was I not the woman who you proposed to? Do you really believe that some princess named Complete Satisfaction was just waiting for you with her butt raised in the air?”

For the first time in his life Clever John is speechless. “But, but…”, he began, but no other words came. Then he noticed that Crazy Jane was holding in her hands a pair of leather boots. With her eyes flashing lightning, she threw the boots on the bed.

“Put these on,” she commanded. Clever John noticed that Crazy Jane, too, wore boots and that her knees were shaking.

Clever John did as Crazy Jane ordered and put on the boots.

The moment the bottoms of his feet touched the inner soles of the boots, he felt himself seized by a big shake. His skin was traversed by shivers, and then he was seized by a heat wave that alternated with a cold wave. Crazy Jane pulled off her night gown and with boots still on jumped into bed and snuggled up the Clever John.

Those of the King’s court, including the Devil, King Yenghis Khan, and the Sun, the Mother of the Devil, who stood outside the bedroom with an ear to the door began to hear strange noises. The divan went: “Creek! Creek!” This was the signal for the court chorus of Jersika to break out in Lihgo a song: “O Jersika! O Jersika! Go lihgo! Lih-go! Lih-go!”.

The rest of the court joined in a chorus:

“Ai, Clever Johnny, son of the Sun,
Lih-ih-go! Lih-ih-go!
Ai Crazy Janey, daughter of the Devil,
Lih-ih-go! Lih-ih-go!”

After the song was done, the trumpets sounded once more the fanfare to Clever John and Crazy Jane. It sent shivers through every proto-Latvian who ever heard it.

That is how they once celebrated Johns Eve in Jersika, proto-Latvia.

The story ends here. Clever John and Crazy Jane live to this day in Jersika. They have never yet climbed out of the bed, and this is why the soles and heels of their boots have never worn down.

(The end.) -30-

The enslavement of human being to labor continues in China as it once did in Europe and America. See the process continue in Chinese concentration camps, aka “Tibet socialist villages” http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-23100427

Eso’s Chronicles 189/ 3

Clever John and Crazy Jane
© Eso A.B.
 

7 The Bottomless Bucket

Early next morning, Clever John saddled Rocinante, and rode to visit Crazy Jane. She was still pulling her bottomless bucket through the river and making gestures as if she were pouring the water from the right side of the river to the left even though her pail was empty.

The Sun continued to show no signs of rising, and the light that covered earth was like that during an eclipse, dusky and without shadows. When Rocinante stood with the boots on her front legs in the river, Clever John dismounted, took the boots off her, and approached Crazy Jane.

“Good morning, Jane,” said Clever John. “Look what I brought you. Your mother said you might want them back.”

“What happened to make your heart overflow with such goodness?” asked Crazy Jane with considerable, but taking the boots.

“I’m on my way to ask for the hand of the King’s daughter,” replied Clever John, “and want your and your mother’s good will and blessing.”

“Did you speak to the Sun?”

“Yes. Look, she gave me a present. A bear skin rug to put under my saddle.”

“My mother always has a sense of humor,” replied Crazy Jane; then added: “But if you want my blessing, you better give me the other pair of boots, too.”

Clever John realized that this was not a time when being clever would work for him and went to take the other pair of boots off Rocinante. These were the one’s on her hind legs. “That is what I love so much about you, Clever John,” said Crazy Jane as he passed the boots to her. “You’re so forthcoming. If you ever need my help, just call. I only hope that my mother will stop wanting to lope off your head.”

 “Don’t worry, Jane,” replied Clever John, “Your mother is a good egg (tell her I told you that) and she will come around.”

Clever John then pulled the bridle and tickled Rocinante’s ribs with his spurs. The mare neighed and galloped off as if she had the Devil’s boots still on. It was not long before Clever John came to the sea and the great fish. He slapped the wet sand, and whispered into the ear of the fish magic words only the fish would understand.

The fish thanked Clever John: “Clever John, if you ever need my help just call, and I will come and do what I can.”

Then Clever John came to the raven. He found the unburied child and buried it. The raven flew off, cawing after her: “Clever John, if you ever need my help just call, and I will come and do what I can.”

8 I Want Your Daughter for Wife

After Clever John had visited all whom he had promised to visit, he rode for the court of the King. The King’s name was John. He was the same John whose name is sometimes pronounced as Yengis Chang. It was the seventh day since Johns Eve and the Sun was still behind the clouds.

Yengis Chang was walking in his Para-dise Garden (which means ‘more than real’ garden)  when he encountered Clever John. Both were surprised, but--surprise surprise—Clever John was the more surprised. He saw that the King wore no boots. Clever John saw that the King’s toenails had not been cut for a long time. Only a King or a very rich man can afford to do so, and not care what the public thinks.

“What can I do for you, Clever John?” asked Yengis Chang.

“I have come to ask you for your daughter’s hand,” answered Clever John. “I hear said that she is a great beauty,” he added flatteringly.

 

“Well, truly,” answered Yengis Chang, “if you are that Clever John of whom I lately have heard so much about, before I give you my daughter, I would like you to bring me a wagon full of gold. If you bring it to me, the Princess—by the way, her name is ‘Complete Satisfaction’—will be yours.”

Clever John thanked Yengis Chang and asked him to wait a minute. Then he went to think the offer over. The King’s ablerequest was no ordinary one and not easily realizable.

For where can one find a big pile of gold on short notice? After all, Clever John did not wish to spend the rest of his life scraping for gold; life is too short for that. It would be good, if he could have it at the snap of his fingers.

As he thought about where to find the gold, Clever John turned to the north, the south, the east, and the west. But no answer came. Just as he was becoming desperate, Clever John began to rub the golden brooch that Crazy Jane had given him after their nap together at Roadsider’s Inn.

The answer came instantly. A voice—Clever John recognized it as belonging to Crazy Jane—whispered: “Go to the seashore and call the raven. When it arrives, both you and Rocinante climb on her back. The raven will take you to the pile of gold. It flies over it every morning.”

Clever John called for the raven. No sooner had he called out “Krah, krah!” than the raven arrived.

“Why are you looking sad, Clever John?” the raven asked.

“Well, my dear friend, I must find a wagon full of gold right away.”

 

“That is no problem,” answered the raven. “You and Rocinante simply climb on my back and I will take you both to it.”

Clever John was surprised of how easu it was, and therefore began to worry that he was being tricked or being made the but of a joke. He again began to twist his fingers about the golden brooch.

9 Crazy Jane as An Angel

This time, Crazy Jane herself appeared. She was like a sunbeam coming from a pocket in a cloud. Crazy Jane listened to John, then touched his ear and whispered:

“Don’t worry, Clever John. To tell the truth, my mother is the gold bug and has been preoccupied with gold since I came of marriage age.”

“I believe I can understand why,” replied Clever John.

“I should’nt maybe be telling you this, but she has always been worried about marrying me off to someone.”

Clever John did not ask more questions. Crazy Jane, too, thought better of it, and continued with instructions of what to do.

“When you are in the air and can see over the mountains, the raven will ask you: ‘How big is the sea?’ You answer it: ‘As big as a largest lake.’

“When you will see the setting moon rise, the raven will ask: ‘How large is the lake now?’ You answer: ‘As large as the largest puddle.’

“When you think that you can almost touch the throne of Cassiopea (it will be right over your head), the raven will ask: ‘How large is the puddle now?’ You answer it: ‘As large as the eye of a dead horse.’

“May your dreams true, Clever John,” said Crazy Jane and disappeared.

Clever John, still on the back of Rocinante, was lifted by the raven into the air. It flew high, then higher, and then higher again. Clever John feelt the cold seep through his jacket and took the bear fur from under the saddle bag and puts it around his shoulders.

Then—just as Crazy Jane had said it would—the raven croaked: “Clever John, how large is the sea below us?”

“As large as the largest lake,” answers John.

“Kra, kra,” croaked the raven and flew yet higher. After a while it asked: “Clever John, how large is the sea now?”

“As large as the largest puddle,” answers John.

 “Kra, kra,” croaked the raven and flew yet again higher. The mustache of Clever John froze solid. Rocinante began to tremble until it trembled no more.

After a while the raven asked: “Clever John, how large is the sea now?”

“It is as large as the eye of a dead horse,” answered Clever John his lips turned blue and nearly frozen stiff.

“We’re as good as there,” croaked the raven, and shook her wings from side to side, and did a somersault. Clever John and Rocinante fell off its back.

No one knows where Rocinante went, but Clever John fell into the dunes by the seashore. Sand flew in all directions and to his surprise, much of it shone bright and had many stars in it.

Apparently some pirates had buried and hid gold in the dunes. They forgot to think that the treasure would not escape the eyes of the Sun. Therefore, after she gave birth to Crazy Jane, she anchored the gold to the dawn sky.

Clever John did not know for how long he lay in the dune, but it must have been for all of the eight day. He was awakened by the Sun shining direct in his eyes.

As Clever John thought of what to do next, the big fish came to his help. With a flip of its tail, it sent Clever John and the entire dune and the pile of gold to the very gate of Yengis Chang’s castle.

………………

Tibet socialist villages http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-23100427