These are only the beginning of sorrows, my children.

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Hi Ellie, Welcome back! I have attached my meditative work concerning the idea of the "time warp", Edgar Allen Poe - A Descent into the Maelstrom and some images/text. I think that the idea of this loop of time connects with my last email.
It all started when I bought a music CD by Philip Glass. On the cover was a picture of a spiral/funnel. The music was influenced by the work of Edgar Allan Poe -- A Descent into the Maelstrom.

This lead me to a website about Poe and the metaphysical code in his work of science fiction.

This is the story, of a man caught by an enormous natural force, who uses his knowledge of science to escape death. It is an exemplar of the rigorous methodology of hard science fiction at its best. It is also worth noting that it is a sea story.

Sea stories have a very long history, dating back to Homer´s Odyssey and before. Because of this, sea stories have a highly codified interpretive framework -- all the elements of sea voyages have a conventional meaning, sometimes allegorical.

On the other hand, since throughout the history of sea stories, real people have made real sea voyages, returning with marvelous tales of their adventures, sea stories insist upon their literal level, despite the conventional meaning of virtually every element of the sea story.

This story is then a founding document of the whole science fiction approach and attitude of the Golden Age and its vision of a great dangerous natural object, the whirlpool, is perhaps the ancestor of such "black hole" stories as Poul Anderson -- Information Behind Poe´s Code.

Poe´s Maelstr?A Space-Time Singularity -- Poe composed a story which symbolically describes the process. The story has two narrators, a primary and a secondary. The primary narrator has employed the secondary, as a guide to usher him to a mountain top where they shall observe the Moskoe-strom.

The secondary narrator, to all appearances, an old man, is quite familiar with the strom; for he and his two brothers had used to daredevil fish the regions, which at certain times of the day are ruled by the strom´s powerful currents.

As the two perch atop the highest crag of the mountain Helseggen, small whirlpools begin to subside into larger pools until the maelstr?ssumes "a distinct and definite existence, in a circle of more than a mile in diameter." (Poe 129) The whirl is defined by a circular belt of spray gyrated outward from the strom itself.

Narrator One describes the interior of the strom´s funnel, a smooth, shining, and jet-black wall of water, inclined to the horizon at an angle of some forty-five degrees, speeding dizzily round and round with a swaying and sweltering motion, and sending forth to the winds an appalling voice, half shriek, half roar, such as not even the mighty cataract of Niagara ever lifts up in its agony to Heaven. (Poe 129)

The old man, having demonstrated to his younger companion that the gigantic maelstrom actually exists as a phenomenon, requests that he get lee of the crag so that he may relate his harrowing confrontation with that whirling cataract.

Once when he and his brothers were fishing in the vicinity of the maelstrom, they missed the slack time of the currents, were besieged by a colossal hurricane, and then, were caught in the mighty currents that drew their fishing vessel into the maelstrom.

The initial blast of the storm claimed Narrator Two´s younger brother, for he had been lashed to the mast, which broke off from the boat. He and his elder brother then entered the whirl of the maelstrom. Believing that all was lost, the fisherman transcended the terror which surrounded him.

As events unfolded, his acute observations and reflections regarding natural laws which ruled the objects captured by the strom, saved his life.

He observed, first, that objects of greatest mass plunged fastest toward the frothy vortex. Also, cylindrical-shaped objects descended more slowly. After endeavoring in vain to shout to his brother the plan for saving their lives, he lashed himself to a barrel and abandoned ship.

From the barrel Narrator Two watched their boat, carrying his brother, whirl its way to destruction; but he and his barrel descended more slowly. Before the barrel reached the vortex, the strom abated and his life was spared. But he emerged from the maelstrom an old man. He had related from the story´s outset:

Not long ago ... I could have guided you on this route as well as the youngest of my sons; but, about three years past, there happened to me an event such as no man ever survived to tell of--and the six hours of deadly terror which I then endured have broken me up body and soul.

You suppose me to be a very old man -- but I am not. It took less than a single day to change these hairs from a jetty black to white, to weaken my limbs, and to unstring my nerves, so that I tremble at the least exertion, and I am frightened of a shadow. (Poe 126)

The old man´s account of his accelerated aging process indicates that the maelstrom which he describes constitutes much more than just a gigantic whirlpool. Here we encounter more of Poe´s mystification; we enter the realm of allegory.

Poe´s strom contains a time warp within its funnel, just as one would expect a space traveler to encounter as he enters the maelstrom of a black hole.

As the fisherman approaches the vortex of that watery gyre, he brushes shoulders with Death itself, and in a period of six hours, he ages many years. He also witnesses in the destruction of their boat and in the death of his elder brother, the power concentrated at the vortex, where individuation is lost, just as all matter loses its particularity in the Oneness of the primary particle.

Then, too, in this story the reader witnesses Poe´s obsession with the tendency to death; he allows this fisherman narrowly to escape death so that he may return to describe Poe´s own concepts of transcendence.

The transcendental aspects, within the context of a collapsing cosmos are also manifest both in his choice of the maelstrom as the symbol of destiny and of the vertiginous pattern which the maelstrom assumes. Its form matches precisely what Poe needed for an allegory of the cosmos he envisioned.

Evident is the similarity between spiraling universes and galaxies and the swirling motion of a maelstrom.

In "A Descent Into the Maelstr? Poe has exploited quite well his symbology, describing the affinity possessed by all matter for its own dissolution. We can readily perceive Poe´s bias again at work, observations shaded by his belief that unity is the posture which the universe longs to assume.

Poe´s whirling maelstrom displays nature in what would appear to be her ulterior motives. Interestingly, Poe chose also a hurricane, another cyclonic fury, to enhance the maelstrom´s intensity. Had Poe lived in the American Midwest, he would probably have been enchanted by tornadoes, which also wreak havoc at the vortex of their writhing funnels.

In his examination of the universe, or, for that matter, of all of Nature (including the human psyche), Poe reveals the horrors of losing individuation.

His vision of collapse constitutes a remarkable consistency within the body of his writings. He speaks to his readers´ conscious and unconscious fears, which were, too, the poet´s own fears -- fears, which, in his genius, Poe illumined through the symbology of imagination -- fears which occupy the mind of contemporary man much more than did they interest the public of the 1830´s and 1840´s. "Poe anticipates the special hell of modern man.

Poe endows the imagination with Godlike power, but...is...an epitome of our own condition--ahistorical, unfaithed, deracinated, suffering." (Hoffman 17)

In reflecting upon "A Descent Into the Maelstr? an image comes to mind--that of the luminous star spiraling into its invisible companion, a black hole.

Like Poe´s maelstrom, the black hole consumes whatever happens to be within its event horizon, only this on an astronomical scale. In the story, Poe reveals a concentration of matter-energy at the vortex of the maelstrom -- as in the vortex of a black hole -- the intersection between the natural and the supernatural, between body and soul, between time and space.

In the mist above the vortex of the maelstrom "hung a magnificent rainbow -- the only pathway between Time and Eternity." (Poe 137) [Rainbow Bridge]

To traverse that path is to die. Poe believed that no amount of material, intellectual or spiritual scaffolding can prevent the return of all matter to Oneness, our inexorable dissolution.

From Ellie ... Thanks Robert. Once again we find metaphoric content in the program created by the observations of the poet peering through the eye.



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Catching up ....

[link to www.crystalinks.com]

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Hello Maitreya,

I thought that post above may be of some help...

And from whithersoever does thy knowledge and wisdom emanate, oh great Matreiya?

"my children"

and why aren´t you out there taking care of your ´children´ instead of spewing sh*t on a useless message board?

Let me know how that whole thingey turns out for ya´ LM!

just remember... whenever someone starts spouting off about ´equality´... to check your wallet

>"Yes, my children, the recent hurricane you in America are contending with represents only the beginning of sorrows."

Wrong.
Maitreya doesn´t have children.
In fact, Maitreya see us as His brothers (or His sisters). Do you get that ? Jesus !

And it is of course not the beginning of ´sorrows´. Stop messing up things. If you want to make a point, simply repeat the words you can read on the homepage of SI : "In the midst of war, fear and famine, new hope is in the world for us all."

Simple words and still so difficult to understand for many...

And stop confusing the American People with the American government. The American People do NOT deserve this governement (in fact, the chimp wasn´t even elected twice).

The real Maitreya is at this moment among his brother and sisters right there where they suffer the most. Do You copy that ?

Bye.

You are all my children. I am with those who suffer even now, just as I am with you.

Very funny, Dave. C´mon, take off the mask now. Quit kidding around.

get behind me satan......yawn

I have children your age.







Z