Most Wretched Thing Imaginable: Or Beneath the Burnt Umbrella - Softcover

Stephen Moles

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1944697152 ISBN 13: 9781944697150

Publisher: Sagging Meniscus Press, 2016

Synopsis

Stephen Moles' remarkable novel THE MOST WRETCHED THING IMAGINABLE could be described as any of the following: A modern-day Book of the Dead which uses important events from relatively recent history (such as the Mayerling Incident and the Eastern Air Lines Flight 375 crash) and elements of popular culture (such as the Beatles and Shakespeare) to give expression to the same basic narrative found in all the ancient funerary texts from around the world. A semi-autobiographical novel about the author's work with the Dark Meaning Research Institute and his efforts to stop their ground-breaking parasemantic findings from being appropriated/suppressed by the authorities. A sister publication to Moles' previous novel, Paul is Dead, offering insights into the book's main themes (such as how to create a Möbius-strip-style twist in one's life story and make contact with an alternate self). A poetic work in which the imagery (which has its own grammar and syntax) tells the story instead of the words: the entangled symbols are brought to the fore to such an extent that the reader is able to see the unconscious beneath the partially visible surface narrative and decide on the full literal meaning of it (rather than the other way around, as with all most books, where the literal meaning is made explicit and the underlying meaning remains partially or completely hidden). By whichever corner it is picked up, no matter how gingerly, what will be uncovered is an endlessly inventive and delightful work of wit, ingenuity, personal charm and no little substance.

About this title

About the Author

Stephen Moles lives in London, UK, and is the author of seven books, including 'The Most Wretched This Imaginable: or Beneath the Burnt Umbrella' (Sagging Meniscus Press, 2016), 'Paul is Dead' (CCLAP, 2015), and 'The More You reject Me, The Bigger I Get' (Beard of Bees, 2015), as well as many other shorter pieces. He regularly carries out undercover literary assignments aimed at both fighting the centralisation of meaning and bringing about the linguistic singularity for the benefit of society. Stephen is also the founder of the Dark Meaning Research Institute, a group of parasemantic investigators and quantum linguistics pioneers who are currently working on a way to blast him off the page and turn him into the world's first zero-person author.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Most Wretched Thing Imaginable or Beneath the Burnt Umbrella

By Stephen Moles

Sagging Meniscus Press

Copyright © 2016 Stephen Moles
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-944697-15-0

CHAPTER 1

Many birds, through no fault of their own, are forced to carry terrible secrets around inside them ...

A feathered creature can be forced into becoming the custodian of the memory of a dark human deed for the rest of its days simply by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

A bluebird that builds a nest near a road may find that the sight of a fatal hit-and-run incident becomes a rotten egg that it has to sit on for the rest of its life to stop a plot for revenge being hatched out elsewhere and causing even more lives to be destroyed. While the amnesic driver wakes up the next day with a hangover and experiences mild confusion about why there is a dent in his Volkswagen Beetle, the traumatised bird suffers intense recurring nightmares about the terrible burden it has taken on.

A dove that happens to be sitting on a telegraph wire may glance in the direction of a bedroom window and be left with the knowledge that the upcoming marriage of two humans should not go ahead because the bridegroom has had an illicit liaison with the chief bridesmaid. The poor creature will have to forever hold its peace as the secret pecks away at it from the inside.

Next time you admire the sweet-sounding song of a lark, it is worth remembering that the melody may be the means by which the bird is drowning out the sour notes being played repeatedly in its head because of the selfish actions of someone you know.

The dawn chorus covers the screams from the night before.

What can those creatures with their infamously tiny brains teach us?

Quite a lot, as it happens.

As part of his search for deeper meaning, Stephen Moles decided to disconnect from his fellow humans after their habit of reducing complex ideas to 140 characters became widespread, and he attempted to discover what the original twitterers had to say instead.

Arming himself with a notebook, a pen and a strategy for translating their tweets into English, he went to interview the birds in their homes. He did this by walking around woodland areas while reciting the alphabet over and over again in his head and jotting down the letter he was on whenever he heard a bird try to convey something with its voice.

The end result was a vast archive of bird words (or "bwords") which is currently housed in the Dark Meaning Research Institute's secret underground liboratory. It contains entries such as "gwillterposch", "bemsbunsh", "hesperryheha", "oytiwincks", "fotizosh", "whoulamang" and "ghilowrax".

These are just some of the words that Stephen Moles found to be trending on the avian social network. #kwank was another, and it seemed very meaningful to the writer, so he made use of it in his work as part of a heartening message to those who had unknowingly brought him into existence:

There is a way out, via the Globe, the Swan, the Rose, the Hope, to a place where all the suffering finally has a purpose — the birdman who was the eggman is already flying out of something that hasn't even been described yet. It is a vision of beauty, ours to see in all its brightness, with other rare and undescribed animals, designs copied from nature and curiously coloured after life.

The green language", also called "the language of the birds" or "the language of unsaying", is a supposedly perfect means of communication. It is believed by some to be a universal language which was spoken by all creatures until division entered the world; others believe it is a form of secret communication that allows birds to communicate with the initiated.

"When for much my love that happy heart; world of paparazzi, my love green girl parasol."

'I am a thought in the mind of the forest,' said Stephen Moles. 'The birds singing are the neurons firing as the network of trees thinks me.'

Grtash! Ploof! Kwank!

When the words are read in the sequence they were given by the birds, they form a sentence that describes the path of energy through a higher mind when it thinks of the receiver of those words. This illustrates how, unlike regular language, this language of the birds works by uniting rather than separating: Shakespeare can be found in the character of Hamlet, and Hamlet can be found in the head of Shakespeare.

In order for you to have this thought right now, there may be somebody walking around your mind and building up a new language with the help of the environment, and that person may only exist because you are currently thinking them into existence.

How I wonder ... #wtf

The project grew from a tiny seed into a huge tree that stretched across the entire Globe. All kinds of travel became possible in the Bark of Millions of Years, but because it was structured like a Möbius trip thanks to a mystical space-time signature, the action led back to the centre. The two hemispheres of the big grey ampitheatre gave expression to night and day and the rotating hemicycle turned theatregoers into theatrecomers, up the Falcon Stairs and down the trapdoor within the evolutionary stage at one and the same time.

When all living things were spun out like vines and branches from the Cosmic Egg by the supreme deity of the Dogon people, the septenary structure of everything to come was inscribed on the bark of reality: 'Bird A loves Bird B forever and ever and over and over again.' The omphalus marks the navel of the world, where the two eagles sent out by Zeus came together, and the Globe is pulled by the force of grAmma into an ovoid shape that conceals the most wretched thing imaginable.

As I walked through the forest, I had the tune of the 'K-I-S-S-I-N-G' playground song in my head, but the lyrics were different somehow. Once I was finally able to see the words for the trees, a deeper meaning became visible in the spotlight of the glade. First and Last were sitting in a tree, forming a nest that housed the egg from which they hatched.

Enigmama @specialbranc h 7yrs ago

Walking through the trees here reminds me of walking through a library. #powderisland #books #magic The optical-fibre cables used in woods and forests are typically coated with a layer of bark so they blend in with the environment and are not noticed by most humans. Light signals are sent through the cables to express, in the vernacular of the stars, the beauty of a lightning strike or the poetry of a fatal car crash.

The flows in the cables can be interrupted and sections of scintillating text sliced off to make the pages of e-books. One of the best tools for editing a libretto is a mouth since it ensures a continuation of the flow of material through the body towards the anus with which it is connected. Beginning and end can both be wiped with sheet music made by the Dung Beatles, and the songs of the wires can be interpreted as portents that the murderer of Carmen will eventually be found innocent when it is revealed that the whole tragedy took place in the Theatre of Cruelty as a test of the unwitting actor's endurance skills.

The drama of Anti-Oedipus or Anti-Carmen Electra is laid like an egg at the end of the ordeal by an Om of the body's trapdoor. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the most wretched substance in a baby carriage.

'Here,' said the professor, shining a light from his forehead as we came to a standstill in the middle of the forest. 'This is what you wanted to see.' I peered through the bark which had become transparent due to the headlamp being shined onto it by the bword expert and I laid my eyes on a tiny feathered creature sitting in a nest of wires created by the entanglement of First and Last.

'It's a star-throated antwren,' he explained in a whisper. 'It's doing its bit for universal symbols. Some archetypes are endangered species, you know, and symbolic music acts need to be created to keep them alive.'

'Amazing,' I said. 'But why is it called star-throated?'

'Look ...'

I poured my gaze down to where the spotlight from Ramon's forehead pointed and saw the nest begin to sparkle as light appeared in the wires.

Bright are the stars that shine,
Dark is the sky;
I know this love of mine will
never die,
And I love her.

'Pretty Polly in the sky with diamonds!'

We had travelled such a long way, through the forests and the ruins of various evolutionary stages, and my endurance had been severely tested, but there was no doubt in my mind, as I watched the wondrous little creature describing reality in celestial symbols for us, that all the effort had been worth it. The growth of the tree had taken me to the centre of the seed; I was looking down at the drama on the stage of the theatre, but at the same time I was looking up, into the open air, at the players in the sky.

It was symbolism stripped of its symbols ... by its symbols, even. It was like lifting the cover of The Infinite Book to view the unconscious of literature, like lifting the bonnet to see the archetypal engine running on a mysterious black liquid in the baby carriage.

'It's singing the light into existence and ...'

'Yes, yes,' I interrupted. I know what you're about to say. I've seen the future.'

Miroirs en obsidienne et en pyrite de fer, photographer unknown, ca. 2018. La langue en vert et la langue inverse, Theatre and Its Double, DMRI R24/64.

Earth's mother tongue is the green language, the solumbrella that sprouts from the red breast of the earth. The shape of the branches of the trees in the forest are the letters of an ancient alphabet and each leaf displays lines which you can read between in order to get to the root of the problem.

By simply pointing this out and leaving more gaps than normal between the veins of these pages, something important is communicated to you.

All's Well That Ends Well is only complete when it's revealed to be unfinished ...

A lost connection to the Tree of Meaning is re-established at the same time as a hole is punctured in the green parasol that was opened at the height of the Dog Days.

Still humming the 'K-I-S-S-I-N-G' song, I looked up at the night sky through the branches and made a breakthrough in my understudies. The tune rustled in the leaves is also written in the bark of the tree and the letters of the Hebrew alphabet are said to have been derived from the stars.

'I know what you're about to say ...'

'I see what you mean ...'

When the stars spoke about their reality they weren't telling me about themselves; they were commenting on the blackness around them to give me the chance of finding myself in the negative scenery. 'Speaking on behalf of all nonliving things, white is a description of black, old chap, and the thing is to wonder what you aren't. The light and the meaning exist in the darkness of your ignorance, up above the world so high, like an egg laid in the sky by a Cosmic Goose.'

Plutarch called it , the Leader; but , , , , , or simply ('the star') [...]

After spending the evening acting as a lookout for Sirius, I waited patiently in the heart of the forest beneath the par-alune (the green parasol that was now being used at night) for Ramon to arrive and relieve me of my duties.

Just before the professor materialised among the mud and leaves, I thought I heard a group of insects rustling a popular tune but the name of it remained stuck on the tip of my tongue.

'Everything alright?' the professor asked as his headlamp suddenly shone into my eyes like an oncoming Lotus Elan.

'Oh, er ... yes,' I said, feeling slightly startled. 'Sorry, I was miles away there.'

'Yeah, you looked it. I'd estimate you were as far away as Liverpool. Anyway, you've nothing major to report, right?'

'Right. Nothing to report. Apart from a bit of cryptographic sheet music, it's been a quiet night.'

'Glad to hear it,' said Ramon, slapping me on the back. 'Well, you're free to go. I'll take over now. Thanks for all your hard work.'

'No problem,' I said. Good luck and goodnight.'

'Goodnight, old chap.'

For some reason, I still felt like I was rooted to the spot even though I was free to go. As Ramon took up his position as the new lookout, I kept my watch for a few extra moments by staring at him while the lines on his face became deeper and the colour of his skin grew darker. Eventually the image of a human disappeared completely, and I was left looking at an ancient tree, strong and wise.

I wanted to remain at my post and interpret the lines of that mighty oak in the hope of gaining a full understanding of the septenary signature that had been carved into the bark of reality by bodies employed as artistic instruments, but for the time being the bark of the Dog Star seemed to be guarding against it, so I took my leave ...

Back down Taymount Rise; left along London Road. A memory is just a thought travelling backwards in time. Right at the Esso garage, where the oil bubble would one day burst; up Honor Oak Road with the roots of the Tree of Life clenched in anticipation; a trail of sparkling breadcrumbs to represent the arrow of time. "That is my journey, and by journey I don't mean journey."

A memory that works backwards walks the backwoods so it becomes difficult to tell Hugin and Munin apart. The run-out groove following 'A Day in the Life' sounds like "Stephen Moles is a wanker" when played forwards but "he'll fuck you like a superman" in reverse, which is enough to make you wander through your green thoughts with a notebook and pen, creating inadverdant scryptures as you put your movements down in writing.

In the Vedic scriptures, the story of two birds in a tree — one of them eating the tree's fruit while the other watches in silence — expresses something about the relationship between the lower and higher self. It is similar in some ways to the story of Adam and Eve, except the first story describes a rise while the Biblical one describes a fall.

When the lower bird stops eating the fruit and focuses on the higher one, it is finally able to move up to the same branch as its magnificent companion and realise that there was only ever one bird on the tree. Unlike regular language, this language of the birds works by uniting rather than separating.

The fruit eaten by Eve, on the other hand, creates the illusion of separation because the division of things, especially a person against their self, leads to a kind of knowledge, but of a very limited nature which needs to be transcended at some point.

Perhaps the Garden of Eden is Part One and the Tree of Jiva and Atman is Part Two of the same story, and the humans just turn into birds halfway through. Nommo, the first living being, split into four pairs of twins shortly after being created ...

It is generally believed that the Beatles were made up of four distinct elements (fiery John, watery Paul, airy George and earthy Ringo), but some people have posited the existence of an ethereal fifth member. Although the term "the fifth Bea-tle" is often used, there is no agreement about who this should be applied to, which means the total number of "fifth Beatles" is actually seven (manager Brian Epstein, producer George Martin, artist Yoko Ono, bassist Stuart Sutcliffe, drummer Pete Best, press officer Derek Taylor and road manager and personal assistant Neil Aspinall).

The recurring search for "the perfect fifth" therefore proceeds according to the same magical 7/4 time signature of All You Need Is Love' because the "Fab Five" consist of two separate parts, of seven and four.

Hidden inside the pentangular star is a cast of hidden characters and a great secret. They can be brought into the light by pointing out that the way to identify the ideal additional member of the symbolic music act is to sing the beginning of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,' because the relationship between the first twinkle and the second twinkle expresses an ascending perfect fifth.

It should also be pointed out that the lyrics of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star' refer to Sirius the Dog Star, which is a binary star system consisting of Sirius A and Sirius B, or Twinkle One and Twinkle Two.

Yes, the place to which the newspaper taxis are tasked with taking the person listening to 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' is the same place where the star in Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star' is found: up above the world so high, like a diamonde in the sky. We follow the pentagram back to its origins and find it refers to Sirius, the star associated with the god Anubis.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Most Wretched Thing Imaginable or Beneath the Burnt Umbrella by Stephen Moles. Copyright © 2016 Stephen Moles. Excerpted by permission of Sagging Meniscus Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: Sagging Meniscus Press
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1944697152
• ISBN 13: 9781944697150
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 132