Monoliths, Beamed Down

Alan Moore, Jerusalem (London, 2016).

OK. Ben has met Marla (see here) and we have found out what happened to her. We knew that she had got into a car and we think now that she was in the crashed car but it is something else. Ben reminds me of our Ben in Lancaster who is an amdram merchant, not a published poet.

Alan Moore's Ben recalls a historical miracle that sounds familiar from Voice Of The Fire although I am not about to check it out at this time of night after watching an episode of Arrow, then reading more of Jerusalem.

This is good - two tower blocks are:

"...black as Stanley Kubrick monoliths, beamed down by an unfathomable alien intelligence..." (p. 239)

Two sf screen references right beside each other. Monoliths, beamed down. We all understand it. And it is just two blocks of flats. But Ben, who thinks the comparison, is a published poet, of course.

Addendum: See comments below.

Reflections On Earlier Reading

Alan Moore, Jerusalem (London, 2016).

One conversation between two people is one event but two experiences. This was never more clearly shown than in the two accounts of the encounter between Marla and Ben. We have no idea of what is going on inside Ben when all that we have read is Marla's experience of their brief bizarre dialogue.

"Chaotic" and "embedded" (see here) seem contradictory but I am sure that they are thesis and antithesis although the synthesis, reality perceived and understood as both dynamic and complete, eludes me. Each person is simultaneously a part of the totality and a part of its self-consciousness but only a part. As yet, I know only seven chapters of this million-word novel although the rest of the text already exists, stretching ahead of me from p. 245 to p. 1174. Right now, most of 2017 also stretches ahead of us. I am certain that it is real although not that it is present - but I am about to read about Snowy Vernall's "...glimpse of the elusive fourth plane, the fourth axis, which was time." (p. 245)

Happy New Year.

Endings

This image shows the "monoliths," mentioned here.

Alan Moore, Jerusalem (London, 2016).

The Prelude, "Work in Progress," ends with Alma's exhibition about to begin. This is indeed a prelude.

"A Host of Angles" ends with Ern's death, a closure.

"ASBOs of Desire" ends with a cliff-hanger:

"She walked towards the car." (p. 93)

"Rough Sleepers" ends with anticipation:

"This looked like it was going to turn out to be quite a night." (p. 123)

"X Marks the Spot" ends with the monk Peter's death and last word, another closure.

"Modern Times" ends with anticipation or apprehension:

"Somewhere not too far away, he hoped, an audience was waiting. The gas mantle hissed a dismal premonition." (p. 173)

"Blind, but Now I See" ends with a revelation.

"Atlantis" ends with another cliff-hanger as Ben tries to return to writing poetry:

"His right hand trembled, inches from the snow-blind, empty page." (p. 241)

That is as far as I have read but it is a great deal of human life and death already, to say the least.