The Gorgonic Cranium

and Thirdness Lost

byGREAT SKULL ZERO

At every quanta of referentiality, every node of symbolisation, we reenact, we "face" a mythic confrontation with the Gorgon.... Language is the Medusa, or rather Medusa is the guardian of Language.... The Gorgon in Greek myth, were fantastic monsters which when looked upon by the unsuspecting veiwer, caused that unfortunate to be turned to stone. In effect to see the face of the Gorgon is to be 'literalized', to be made absolute, to become a noun, deanimated, dead, or Monumentalized, an ikon of failure, or final judgements. It would represent an 'absolute interpretant', similar to Peirce's 'final interpretant'. At the other end of the continuum lies a threshold point at which the number of interpretations is infinite. This is the threshold of semiosis. This line spans the 'semiosic field' upon which all interpretation takes place. Beyond these limits, one loses the essential relatedness intrinsic to semiotic action: in Peirce's terminology, one loses Thirdness. One falls off the edge of the World so to speak, into the abyss of fire.... eternally falling, through a sea of monsters, a no-space-space where delire' beomes horror. The Flat-Earth theory is a resonant analogy. Semiosis then is the shield against the Gorgon, the mirrored shield, and the flaming sword, the "speaking in tongues" which deliteralizes the Gorgonic Apparat. That Perseus is frequently depicted unbearded before taking the moster-maiden's head and bearded after doing so provides some clue, as does the fact that he straightaway proceeds to find a wife who does no less than bear him the ancestor of all Persia. Language is a monster, a rite of Passage, for the mythic hero of the labyrinth, in this case, the labyrinth of the socius... The Head is a wedding offering for a bride... The task is indeed to slay or transform another kind of order, or otherwise symbolically transform it, by bringing the Gorgon to life again as Aegis or mask- an apotropaic device that he uses to establish social order upon which Mycenae will be based... Hence the micropolitics of the logos... S/He who wields the Gorgon, becomes its master.... rhetorician as logomancer... Through his/her rigour, The Stone prison of Interpretosis is avoided and the Perseusian Interpretant becomes the master of Beams.... or the fire swallower... And beams know no boundries; for as the master becomes a formless Agent, a kind of Seik Jina, a flaming effervescence, a miraculating engine. He recognizes the face of the gorgon in the lands of the King.... another test, already conquered... these lands all are one... the smooth space of the Jina who passes by civilisation and its Ozymandian detritus: I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, half sunk, a shattered visage lies.' But having surpassed the first Gorgon, there are a hundred new lands, a multiplicity of times and spaces, The Perseusian logojina is now the Morphemic Nomad... Performing miracles, desiring, setting the world on fire.... The trickster or Nagual bears this same totem.... Language becomes a secret myth of spacial mechanics... The activation of space by incorporeal dynamics, beams... Gorgon eye-beams.... a Vermeer painting whose central area is left empty, activated only by the gaze of the interpretant... The looker beyond the frame (of the window)... E=mc SQUARED.... Bindu, a mark on the forehead, Vajra, and ambiguity, an archetypal test... Knowledge of the beast... The dragon which sleeps in every brow... Dewey spake as if in a dream: Information is power (over current I times Voltage) ....formulas.... Ones and Zeros... magic incantations.... whole universes of integration.... the unfolding of the lotus... Burroughs said: Wise up the Marks! Street Lingo... Cosmic Graffito on the dungeon walls of the Gorgon .... and finally bleep bleep... Watt next... Watt nexus O hole... O blimeTC... Bertrand Deborn weilding his own head, the Gorgon withing, the componential self, the sentence/body, whose magic Mask is lifted like a lantern to be a beacon of truth.... to reveal the apocalyptic fire, the final judgement, the everlasting bonfire, is here now, Truth is error burned up! Bertrand Deborn surfing the Web! Spreading the word about the illusion of the nation-state.... Non-sense displaces Sense becomes Sense and displaces Non-sense.... The Algebraic Nomos...From shadows to reality... It is always daybreak.... Kenneth Patchen is at your bedside "Sleepers Awake."