war, vengeance, justice

 '... there is only a single character. it is the barbarian character war, but it has other senses too. it can stand for vengeance, and, if you turn it upside down like this, it can be made to read justice. there is no knowing which sense is intended. that is part of the barbarian cunning. 

it is the same with the rest of these slips.' I plunge my hand into the chest and stir. 'they form an allegory. they can be read in many orders. further each single slip can be read in many ways. together they can be read as a domestic journal, or they can be read as a plan of war, or they can be turned on their side and read as a history of the last years of the empire - the old empire I mean. there is no agreement among scholars about how to interpret these relics of the ancient barbarians. allegorical sets like this can be found buried all over the desert...'

- j.m. coetzee, waiting for the barbarians, king penguin edition, p112.

this forms part of the judge's defence (or maybe provocation).  the judge has no idea what the characters on the slips mean, but he claims he does so that he can teach his captors a lesson.

waiting for the barbarians  is a good read but it is also kind of unsatisfactory. it is unsatisfactory to offer an allegory when what is required is direct speech (or at least others far away in the safer seats might think so). this makes it different from the other j.m. coetzee books horsemouth has read - these are faked biographies  of literary life (summertime, disgrace, elizabeth costello). 

the notion that turned upside down or laid on its side the symbol will come to mean something else makes it like a tarot card in a spread. justice indeed is a tarot card (though when it is upside down it does not necessarily spell war). there is something tarot-ish about the cover illustration on the king penguin edition by bascore. 

last night horsemouth listened to a number of ten minute album reviews of the kind of cosmic jazz he likes - pharoah sanders, alice coltrane, this sort of thing. he listened to one on the first return to forever album by chick corea, one recorded for the ECM label (this horsemouth had forgotten) and featuring a young stanley clarke. 

he also listened to a dj set by three of casual gabberz (most enjoyable) - strangely it started with uk apache and shy fx's original nuttah mixed into origin unknown's valley of the shadows (jungle classics).

yesterday a quick zoom meeting on building the consortium (decarbonisation) and another one today. later it is someone's birthday in the park. saturday howard may be round to visit. next week (wednesday) a communal endeavour.