The title slug is from a weirdly beautiful song Buffalo Springfield did on Last Time Around called "In the Hour of Not Quite Rain." While the album title probably derives from some fundamental misconstruance of the Buddhist Wheel of Life (and mostly Death) combined with the fact that the band was breaking up -- hard to do, Buddhist or not; anybody around my base is it -- the song owes its provenance more to certain herbal essences . That was my take, at any rate, as I was deep into some pretty fine mescaline when I first heard it. Modern or not, the mirror was definitely giving back more than it got. Angle of incidence, angle of reflection: equal in most phases of the moon, but not all.

I woke at dawn this morning. Unusual, to say the least. I finally bailed last night after realizing I was so off in the weeds there was no way back. Not that that's unusual. Hardly. But to give you an idea... I was developing graphic proof (too ugly to replicate here) that the CDC used the Microsoft Comic Sans font for one of its pages on Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), which you may know better as Mad Cow disease. Now that's funny. Sort of.

And because it once somehow got lodged in my stash of odd and disconnected facts that BSE/Mad Cow is a prion disease -- prions being neither bacteria nor viruses but rather, rogue proteins -- I rabitted off in search of CDC prion pages. The weird thing about prion diseases is that they seem to be caused by cannibalism.

Kuru. e.g., is a human prion disease. I have an interest in these things. When I was a kid, about ten or twelve, I had a bacteriology lab in my basement. I don't often admit this, especially these days, when the government doesn't want anybody to know what a piece of cake it is to culture anthrax and smallpox and stuff. Actually, smallpox isn't quite that easy, as it was eradicated a few decades ago. But if you believe The Demon in the Freezer (and why not?), the Russkies have got twenty tons of weaponized smallpox floating around the black market, no one knows quite where. Nice, huh?

Then, without warning (there usually isn't any): bam! I ran across this genuinely strange page about Unicorns. Now, I feel I should explain -- if only for those who have perhaps dropped by this blog for the first time -- that I am not your basic Unicorn kinda guy. I am more your basic Elvis on black velvet with the eyes that follow you around the room kinda guy. So this is a bit hard to explain. I guess the only way to do this is to show you the picture and hope you get the... well, picture.

And here, thanks to the miracle of Firefox's "View Selection Source" feature, is the the verbatim caption text.

South Netherlandish, The Unicorn Is Found
from Hunt of the Unicorn (1495-1505)
Wool warp, wool, silk, silver and gilt wefts, 368 cm x 379 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of John D. Rockefeller Jr., 1937 (37.80.2)
Cover topic: Prion Disease

Unicorn Tapestries, Horned Animals, and Prion Disease

Polyxeni Potter*
*Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

Click on the cover, above (or here), to read the whole thing. Amazing. Really. Prions. Unicorns. Who would have guessed at such a connection? Something about your philosophy, Horatio. But again, as I was saying, off in those weeds so deep there was no way out. I mean, what hope was there, really, of explaining where I'd gotten myself to? So I went to bed.

On waking, before dawn (did I already say that? it's evening now, and a thunderstorm is rolling in off the plains) I returned like Sisyphus to my endless surfing -- and found this on my Amazon recommendations page: Memory and Narrative: The Weave of Life-Writing. I guess I paid closer attention than usual, three-quarters asleep as I was, because well, does that guy on the right have a really long arm? Or what is that exactly? I've always prided myself as being an intellectual, and sometimes it shows more than others. Other times, I mean. Yeah, whatever. So look, I haven't read this book, not sure I ever will, but something about it got me writing this at first light today, and you learn to go with these things. Never look a gift muse in the mouth, even if all you get out of it is typing practice.

So, having no idea, really, what this book is about, I'll have to really on Kirkus Reviews, which says:

Another cardinal shift effected by Rousseau and passed along to latter-day writers was fragmentation of the "I" and skepsis about the adequacy of language for life-writing. A prominent inheritor of the autobiographical tradition, Beckett declared the whole enterprise impossible, based on a postmodern doubt of reason, cohesive narrative, and the unified voice. In Krapp's Last Tape, The Unnamable, and other works, Beckett wrote specifically on the life-writer's failure to account for the past in any objective way. Mixing the first and third person, Beckett's narrators reminisce about their prior acts of memory, incapable either of pinning down the original event or completing their narrative. Detached from reality and trapped in incessant self-referentiality, the memory of postmodern writers signs a death sentence to the genre of autobiography.

Personally, I would say signs the death warrant. The death sentence is what is then carried out -- a bit too abstract to "sign," if you ask me. This is merely a quibble, of course, but at least it's not self-referential -- unless you count the bit about asking me. Good thing this isn't my autobiography I'm writing here. God alone knows what it is. And I'm not holding my breath on that one anymore than Beckett was waiting for Godot. I almost named my daughter Selene Godot, thinking it sounded cool. But the in-laws said what? God-dot? What are you thinking? So then I thought of Selene Mirage, but someone said Mirage sounded like a stripper's name, plus, much worse, Mitsubishi had just brought out a model by that name, and I figured if it got big, Selene would sound like a sports car. However, this is getting a bit attached to reality and trapped in cessant referentiality, so I'd better, you know, move on...

Saving my narrative's virtual bacon at this thorny juncture, the nothing less than amazing Highbeam Research database comes through once again! I swear, I didn't look this up there first. I searched on "Memory and Narrative: The Weave of Life-Writing" and found this footnote in the second hit.

from: Genome and Genre: DNA and Life Writing
by G. Thomas Couser
source: Biography, 1 January 2001
via: HighBeam™ Research
Copyright © 2001 University of Hawaii Press

In his recent book Memory and Narrative, James Olney has argued that "memory and narrative, together and alike, are the two major epiphenomena of consciousness, the dual defining conditions of our being human and not something else" (417). This works well as a descriptor of the species as a whole, not so well as a test of membership in the species; that is, I would not want to conclude that an individual deprived of the capacity for memory or narrative thereby ceases to be human.

So I guess that means that memory and narrative are, like, real real important, but not necessarily indispensable. Whew, that's a relief! Because now I can't remember why I started writing this. Or what it's even about. If anything. So I suppose I'm more in the Samuel Becket camp. It's a fact, after all, that he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969 and I did not. I feel that connects us more deeply than had we been brothers. To finish this off then -- once and for all, perhaps -- here's a little clip from his book, Watt, via and thanks to...

Here he stood. Here he sat. Here he knelt. Here he lay. Here he moved, to and fro, from the door to the window, from the window to the door; from the window to the door, from the door to the window; from the fire to the bed, from the bed to the fire; from the bed to the fire, from the fire to the bed; from the door to the fire, from the fire to the door; from the fire to the door, from the door to the fire; from the window to the bed, from the bed to the window; from the bed to the window, from the window to the bed; from the fire to the window, from the window to the fire; from the window to the fire, from the fire to the window; from the bed to the door, from the door to the bed; from the door to the bed, from the bed to the door; from the door to the window, from the window to the fire; from the fire to the window, from the window to the door; from the window to the door, from the door to the bed; from the bed to the door, from the door to the window; from the fire to the bed, from the bed to the window; from the window to the bed, from the bed to the fire; from the bed to the fire, from the fire to the door; from the door to the fire, from the fire to the bed; from the door to the window, from the window to the bed; from the bed to the window, from the window to the door; from the window to the door, from the door to the fire; from the fire to the door, from the door to the window; from the fire to the bed, from the bed to the door; from the door to the bed, from the bed to the fire; from the bed to the fire, from the fire to the window; from the window to the fire, from the fire to the bed; from the door to the fire, from the fire to the window; from the window to the fire, from the fire to the door; from the window to the bed, from the bed to the door; from the door to the bed, from the bed to the window; from the fire to the window, from the window to the bed; from the bed to the window, from the window to the fire; from the bed to the door, from the door to the fire; from the fire to the door, from the door to the bed.

The room was furnished solidly and with taste.

Funny guy, that Beckett. Heh.