The Voice before the Void: Arcana, Story, Poetry

Armistice Day Special:

Millions of men murdered in mud for nothing.

Millions more mangled and blinded and left limbless.

Millions displaced.

Millions dead of influenza.

World War I is a forever emblem of human civilization.

⁓The Voice before the Void

“And There Was a Great Calm”

Thomas Hardy

(On the Signing of the Armistice, November 11, 1918)

There had been years of Passion–scorching, cold,

And much Despair, and Anger heaving high,

Care whitely watching, Sorrows manifold,

Among the young, among the weak and old,

And the pensive Spirit of Pity whispered, “Why?”

Men had not paused to answer. Foes distraught

Pierced the thinned peoples in a brute-like blindness,

Philosophies that sages long had taught,

And Selflessness, were as an unknown thought,

And “Hell!” and “Shell!” were yapped at Lovingkindness.

The feeble folk at home had grown full-used

To “dug-outs,” “snipers,” “Huns,” from the war-adept

In the mornings heard, and at evetides perused;

To day–dreamt men in millions, when they mused–

To nightmare-men in millions when they slept.

Waking to wish existence timeless, null,

Sirius they watched above where armies fell;

He seemed to check his flapping when, in the lull

Of night a boom came thencewise, like the dull

Plunge of a stone dropped into some deep well.

So, when old hopes that earth was bettering slowly

Were dead and damned, there sounded “War is done!”

One morrow. Said the bereft, and meek, and lowly,

“Will men some day be given to grace? yea, wholly,

And in good sooth, as our dreams used to run?”

Breathless they paused. Out there men raised their glance

To where had stood those poplars lank and lopped,

As they had raised it through the four years’ dance

Of Death in the now familiar flats of France;

And murmured, “Strange, this! How? All firing stopped?”

Aye; all was hushed. The about-to-fire fired not,

The aimed-at moved away in trance-lipped song.

One checkless regiment slung a clinching shot

And turned. The Spirit of Irony smirked out, “What?

Spoil peradventures woven of Rage and Wrong?”

Thenceforth no flying fires inflamed the gray,

No hurtlings shook the dewdrop from the thorn,

No moan perplexed the mute bird on the spray;

Worn horses mused: “We are not whipped to-day”;

No weft-winged engines blurred the moon’s thin horn.

Calm fell. From Heaven distilled a clemency;

There was peace on earth, and silence in the sky;

Some could, some could not, shake off misery:

The Sinister Spirit sneered: “It had to be!”

And again the Spirit of Pity whispered, “Why?”

Armistice Day Special:

War is a crime committed against soldiers.

⁓The Voice before the Void

“From the Deck of a Transport (A Returning Soldier Speaks)”

Margaret Elizabeth Sangster

I am coming back with a singing soul through the surge of the splendid sea,

Coming back to the land called home, and the love that used to be—

I am coming back through a flash of spray, through a conquered tempest’s hum,

I am coming back, I am coming back…. But, God, do I want to come?

I have heard the shriek of the great shells speak to the dawn of a flaming day;

And a growling gun when the fight was won, and the twilight flickered gray,

I have seen men die with their chins raised high, and a curse that was half a prayer—

I have fought alone when a comrade’s groan was tense on the blinding air.

I have tramped a road when a burning load was strapped to my aching back,

Through miles of mud that was streaked with blood, when my closing eyes turned black—

I have cried aloud to a heedless crowd of a God that they could not know,

And have knelt at night when the way was bright with a rocket’s sullen glow.

I am going home through the whirling foam—home to her arms stretched wide—

I am going back to the beaten track and the sheltered fireside,

With gasping breath I have sneered at death, and have mocked at a shell’s swift shirr,

And safe again, through the years of pain, I am going back—to HER!

I am coming back with a singing soul through the surge of the splendid sea,

Coming back—BUT MY SINGING SOUL WILL NEVER BE QUITE FREE—

For I have killed, and my heart has thrilled to the call of the battle hum….

I am coming back to the used-to-be—But, God, do I want to come?

Halloween Special:

“Happy Halloween, you poor devils.”

⁓The Voice before the Void

“There is a grey thing that lives in the tree-tops”

Stephen Crane

There is a grey thing that lives in the tree-tops

None know the horror of its sight

Save those who meet death in the wilderness

But one is enabled

To see branches move at its passing

To hear at times the wail of black laughter

And to come often upon mystic places

Places where the thing has just been.

Halloween Special:

Insanity, horror-haunted by adultery and murder, with secrets and lies and talking with the dead, from America’s favorite poet.

⁓The Voice before the Void

“The Witch of Coös”

Robert Frost

I staid the night for shelter at a farm

Behind the mountain, with a mother and son,

Two old-believers. They did all the talking.

The Mother

Folks think a witch who has familiar spirits

She could call up to pass a winter evening,

But won’t, should be burned at the stake or something.

Summoning spirits isn’t “Button, button,

Who’s got the button?” I’d have you understand.

The Son

Mother can make a common table rear

And kick with two legs like an army mule.

The Mother

And when I’ve done it, what good have I done?

Rather than tip a table for you, let me

Tell you what Ralle the Sioux Control once told me.

He said the dead had souls, but when I asked him

How that could be—I thought the dead were souls,

He broke my trance. Don’t that make you suspicious

That there’s something the dead are keeping back?

Yes, there’s something the dead are keeping back.

The Son

You wouldn’t want to tell him what we have

Up attic, mother?

The Mother

Bones—a skeleton.

The Son

But the headboard of mother’s bed is pushed

Against the attic door: the door is nailed.

It’s harmless. Mother hears it in the night

Halting perplexed behind the barrier

Of door and headboard. Where it wants to get

Is back into the cellar where it came from.

The Mother

We’ll never let them, will we, son? We’ll never!

The Son

It left the cellar forty years ago

And carried itself like a pile of dishes

Up one flight from the cellar to the kitchen,

Another from the kitchen to the bedroom,

Another from the bedroom to the attic,

Right past both father and mother, and neither stopped it.

Father had gone upstairs; mother was downstairs.

I was a baby: I don’t know where I was.

The Mother

The only fault my husband found with me—

I went to sleep before I went to bed,

Especially in winter when the bed

Might just as well be ice and the clothes snow.

The night the bones came up the cellar-stairs

Toffile had gone to bed alone and left me,

But left an open door to cool the room off

So as to sort of turn me out of it.

I was just coming to myself enough

To wonder where the cold was coming from,

When I heard Toffile upstairs in the bedroom

And thought I heard him downstairs in the cellar.

The board we had laid down to walk dry-shod on

When there was water in the cellar in spring

Struck the hard cellar bottom. And then some one

Began the stairs, two footsteps for each step,

The way a man with one leg and a crutch,

Or little child, comes up. It wasn’t Toffile:

It wasn’t any one who could be there.

The bulkhead double-doors were double-locked

And swollen tight and buried under snow.

The cellar windows were banked up with sawdust

And swollen tight and buried under snow.

It was the bones. I knew them—and good reason.

My first impulse was to get to the knob

And hold the door. But the bones didn’t try

The door; they halted helpless on the landing,

Waiting for things to happen in their favor.

The faintest restless rustling ran all through them.

I never could have done the thing I did

If the wish hadn’t been too strong in me

To see how they were mounted for this walk.

I had a vision of them put together

Not like a man, but like a chandelier.

Halloween Special:

There is no curse, and there is.

⁓The Voice before the Void

“Curse of the pharaohs”

Wikipedia

The curse of the pharaohs refers to an alleged curse believed by some to be cast upon any person who disturbs the mummy of an Ancient Egyptian person, especially a pharaoh. This curse, which does not differentiate between thieves and archaeologists, allegedly can cause bad luck, illness, or death. Since the mid-20th century, many authors and documentaries have argued that the curse is “real” in the sense of being caused by scientifically explicable causes such as bacteria or radiation. However, the modern origins of Egyptian mummy curse tales, their development primarily in European cultures, the shift from magic to science to explain curses, and their changing uses—from condemning disturbance of the dead to entertaining horror film audiences—suggest that Egyptian curses are primarily a cultural, not exclusively scientific, phenomenon.

There are occasional instances of genuine ancient curses appearing inside or on the façade of a tomb, as in the case of the mastaba of Khentika Ikhekhi at Saqqara. These appear to be directed towards the ka priests to protect the tomb carefully and preserve its ritual purity rather than as a warning for potential robbers. There had been stories of curses going back to the 19th century, but they multiplied after Howard Carter’s discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun. Despite popular misconceptions, no curse was actually found inscribed in the pharaoh’s tomb. The evidence for curses relating to King Tutankhamun is considered to be so meager that Donald B. Redford viewed it as “unadulterated clap trap.”

1. Tomb curses

Curses relating to tombs are extremely rare, possibly because the idea of such desecration was unthinkable and even dangerous to record in writing. They most frequently occur in private tombs of the Old Kingdom era. The tomb of Ankhtifi contains the warning: “any ruler who… shall do evil or wickedness to this coffin… may Hemen [a local deity] not accept any goods he offers, and may his heir not inherit.” The tomb of Khentika Ikhekhi contains an inscription: “As for all men who shall enter this my tomb… impure… there will be judgment… an end shall be made for him… I shall seize his neck like a bird… I shall cast the fear of myself into him.”

Curses after the Old Kingdom era are less common though more severe, sometimes invoking the ire of Thoth or the destruction of Sekhemet. Zahi Hawass quotes an example of a curse: “Cursed be those who disturb the rest of a pharaoh. They that shall break the seal of this tomb shall meet death by a disease that no doctor can diagnose.”

2. Modern accounts

Hieroglyphs were not deciphered until the beginning of the 19th century by Jean-François Champollion, so reports of curses prior to this are simply perceived bad luck associated with the handling of mummies and other artifacts from tombs. In 1699, Louis Penicher wrote an account in which he recorded how a Polish traveler bought two mummies in Alexandria and embarked on a sea journey with the mummies in the cargo hold. The traveler was alarmed by recurring visions of two specters, and the stormy seas did not abate until the mummies were thrown overboard.

Zahi Hawass recalled that as a young archaeologist excavating at Kom Abu-Bellou he had to transport a number of artifacts from the Greco-Roman site. His cousin died on that day, on its anniversary, his uncle died and on the third anniversary his aunt died. Years later, when he excavated the tombs of the builders of the pyramids at Giza,

Halloween Special:

Maupassant has a brilliant way of relating the supernatural. He does not say: “this supernatural thing happened,” a fact which would be unbelievable; instead he says: “it is said that this supernatural thing happened,” a fact which is indisputable.

⁓The Voice before the Void

“The Hand”

Guy de Maupassant

translated from the French

All were crowding around M. Bermutier, the judge, who was giving his opinion about the Saint-Cloud mystery. For a month this in explicable crime had been the talk of Paris. Nobody could make head or tail of it.

M. Bermutier, standing with his back to the fireplace, was talking, citing the evidence, discussing the various theories, but arriving at no conclusion.

Some women had risen, in order to get nearer to him, and were standing with their eyes fastened on the clean-shaven face of the judge, who was saying such weighty things. They, were shaking and trembling, moved by fear and curiosity, and by the eager and insatiable desire for the horrible, which haunts the soul of every woman. One of them, paler than the others, said during a pause:

“It’s terrible. It verges on the supernatural. The truth will never be known.”

The judge turned to her:

“True, madame, it is likely that the actual facts will never be discovered. As for the word ‘supernatural’ which you have just used, it has nothing to do with the matter. We are in the presence of a very cleverly conceived and executed crime, so well enshrouded in mystery that we cannot disentangle it from the involved circumstances which surround it. But once I had to take charge of an affair in which the uncanny seemed to play a part. In fact, the case became so confused that it had to be given up.”

Several women exclaimed at once:

“Oh! Tell us about it!”

M. Bermutier smiled in a dignified manner, as a judge should, and went on:

“Do not think, however, that I, for one minute, ascribed anything in the case to supernatural influences. I believe only in normal causes. But if, instead of using the word ‘supernatural’ to express what we do not understand, we were simply to make use of the word ‘inexplicable,’ it would be much better. At any rate, in the affair of which I am about to tell you, it is especially the surrounding, preliminary circumstances which impressed me. Here are the facts:

“I was, at that time, a judge at Ajaccio, a little white city on the edge of a bay which is surrounded by high mountains.

“The majority of the cases which came up before me concerned vendettas. There are some that are superb, dramatic, ferocious, heroic. We find there the most beautiful causes for revenge of which one could dream, enmities hundreds of years old, quieted for a time but never extinguished; abominable stratagems, murders becoming massacres and almost deeds of glory. For two years I heard of nothing but the price of blood, of this terrible Corsican prejudice which compels revenge for insults meted out to the offending person and all his descendants and relatives. I had seen old men, children, cousins murdered; my head was full of these stories.

“One day I learned that an Englishman had just hired a little villa at the end of the bay for several years. He had brought with him a French servant, whom he had engaged on the way at Marseilles.

“Soon this peculiar person, living alone, only going out to hunt and fish, aroused a widespread interest. He never spoke to any one, never went to the town, and every morning he would practice for an hour or so with his revolver and rifle.

“Legends were built up around him. It was said that he was some high personage, fleeing from his fatherland for political reasons; then it was affirmed that he was in hiding after having committed some abominable...

Halloween Special:

Even seemingly simple poetry may reveal latent weird horror.

⁓The Voice before the Void

“The Bad Kittens”

Elizabeth Coatsworth

You may call, you may call

But the little black cats won’t hear you.

The little black cats are maddened

By the bright green light of the moon;

They are whirling and running and hiding,

They are wild who were once so confiding,

They are crazed when the moon is riding–

You will not catch the kittens soon.

They care not for saucers of milk,

They think not of pillows of silk;

Your softest, crooningest call

Is less than the buzzing of flies.

They are seeing more than you see,

They are hearing more than you hear,

And out of the darkness they peer

With a goblin light in their eyes!

One whose work flirts with Buddhism and beings not quite human.

⁓The Voice before the Void

“Elizabeth Coatsworth”

Wikipedia

Elizabeth Jane Coatsworth (May 31, 1893 – August 31, 1986) was an American writer of fiction and poetry for children and adults. She won the 1931 Newbery Medal from the American Library Association recognizing The Cat Who Went to Heaven as the previous year’s “most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.” In 1968 she was a highly commended runner-up for the biennial international Hans Christian Andersen Award for children’s writers.

Life

Elizabeth Coatsworth was born May 31, 1893, to Ida Reid and William T. Coatsworth, a prosperous grain merchant in Buffalo, New York. Coatsworth attended Buffalo Seminary, a private girl’s school, and spent summers with her family on the Canadian shore of Lake Erie. She began traveling as a child, vising the Alps and Egypt at age five. Coatsworth graduated from Vassar College in 1915 as Salutatorian. In 1916 she received a Master of Arts from Columbia University. She then traveled to the Orient, riding horseback through the Philippines, exploring Indonesia and China, and sleeping in a Buddhist monastery. These travels would later influence her writing.

In 1929, she married writer Henry Beston, with whom she had two daughters, Margaret and Catherine. They lived at Hingham, Massachusetts, and Chimney Farm, Maine.

Elizabeth Coatsworth died at her home in Nobleboro, Maine, August 31, 1986. Her papers are held in the Kerlan Collection at the University of Minnesota and Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, with a small archive from late in her career in the de Grummond Collection at the University of Southern Mississippi.

Career

Coatsworth began her career publishing her poetry in magazines. Her first book was a poetry collection for adults, Fox Footprints, in 1912. A conversation with her friend, Louise Seaman, who had just founded the first children’s book publishing department in the United States at Macmillan, led Coatsworth to write her first children’s book, The Cat and the Captain. In 1930, The Cat Who Went to Heaven appeared. The story of an artist who is painting a picture of Buddha for a group of monks, it won the Newbery Medal.

Twentieth-Century Children’s Writers says “Coatsworth reached her apogee in her nature writing, notably ‘The Incredible Tales.'” These four books were published for adults in the 1950s. They tell the story of the Pedrys, a family living in the forests of northern Maine who may not be entirely human.

Coatsworth had a long career, publishing over 90 books from 1910 to her autobiography and final book in 1976.

Halloween Special:

Does knowledge of the world come through dreaming or waking?

Or both?

Or neither?

⁓The Voice before the Void

“Caterpillars”

E.F. Benson

I saw a month or two ago in an Italian paper that the Villa Casana, in which I once stayed, had been pulled down, and that a manufactory of some sort was in process of erection on its site.

There is therefore no longer any reason for refraining from writing of those things which I myself saw (or imagined I saw) in a certain room and on a certain landing of the villa in question, nor from mentioning the circumstances which followed, which may or may not (according to the opinion of the reader) throw some light on or be somehow connected with this experience.

The Villa Casana was in all ways but one a perfectly delightful house, yet, if it were standing now, nothing in the world–I use the phrase in its literal sense–would induce me to set foot in it again, for I believe it to have been haunted in a very terrible and practical manner.

Most ghosts, when all is said and done, do not do much harm; they may perhaps terrify, but the person whom they visit usually gets over their visitation. They may on the other hand be entirely friendly and beneficent. But the appearances in the Villa Casana were not beneficent, and had they made their “visit” in a very slightly different manner, I do not suppose I should have got over it any more than Arthur Inglis did.

The house stood on an ilex-clad hill not far from Sestri di Levante on the Italian Riviera, looking out over the iridescent blues of that enchanted sea, while behind it rose the pale green chestnut woods that climb up the hillsides till they give place to the pines that, black in contrast with them, crown the slopes. All round it the garden in the luxuriance of mid-spring bloomed and was fragrant, and the scent of magnolia and rose, borne on the salt freshness of the winds from the sea, flowed like a stream through the cool vaulted rooms.

On the ground floor a broad pillared loggia ran round three sides of the house, the top of which formed a balcony for certain rooms of the first floor. The main staircase, broad and of grey marble steps, led up from the hall to the landing outside these rooms, which were three in number, namely, two big sitting-rooms and a bedroom arranged en suite. The latter was unoccupied, the sitting-rooms were in use. From these the main staircase was continued to the second floor, where were situated certain bedrooms, one of which I occupied, while from the other side of the first-floor landing some half-dozen steps led to another suite of rooms, where, at the time I am speaking of, Arthur Inglis, the artist, had his bedroom and studio. Thus the landing outside my bedroom at the top of the house commanded both the landing of the first floor and also the steps that led to Inglis’ rooms. Jim Stanley and his wife, finally (whose guest I was), occupied rooms in another wing of the house, where also were the servants’ quarters.

I arrived just in time for lunch on a brilliant noon of mid-May. The garden was shouting with colour and fragrance, and not less delightful after my broiling walk up from the marina, should have been the coming from the reverberating heat and blaze of the day into the marble coolness of the villa. Only (the reader has my bare word for this, and nothing more), the moment I set foot in the house I felt that something was wrong. This feeling, I may say, was quite vague, though very strong, and I remember that when I saw letters waiting for me on the table in the hall I felt certain that the explanation was here: I was convinced that there was bad news of some sort for me. Yet when I opened them I found no such explanation of my premonition: my correspondents all reeked of prosperity. Yet this clear miscarriage of a presentiment did not dissipate my uneasiness.

The Internet is a network, or more accurately: it is a network of connected networks.

The World Wide Web is a cyberspace that exists upon the Internet… or “via”(?) the Internet. – (I don’t think our language, our human English, has words to accurately describe how networks and cyberspaces are related; for example, your brain is a neural network, or, more accurately, it is a network of networks; your consciousness (your thoughts, your memories, your emotions… your “content”(?)) exists “upon”(?) your brain. You see?: our language doesn’t really describe this.)

The Deep Web is content of the World Wide Web that is not accessible through standard search engines.

A darknet is a network that is built on top of, or overlaid upon, the Internet, and to which access is restricted, requiring, for example, special software or authorization.

The Dark Web is content that exists on darknets.

A darknet market is a marketplace that exists on a darknet.

The Internet and darknets are networks; darknets overlay the Internet.

Considering the World Wide Web as content on the Internet, the World Wide Web can be divided into two subsets: the Surface Web and the Deep Web. The Surface Web is content that is accessible through standard search engines. The Deep Web is content that is not accessible through standard search engines, and it is much, much larger than the Surface Web, but it is mainly composed of information in databases (databases are generally not searchable through standard search engines). However, some content of the Deep Web is not accessible by standard search engines because it exists upon darknets, and that content is called the Dark Web.

The World Wide Web is the superset; the Deep Web is a subset of the World Wide Web; the Dark Web is a subset of the Deep Web; and darknet markets form a subset of the Dark Web.

⁓The Voice before the Void

“Deep web (search)”

Wikipedia

This article is about the part of the World Wide Web not indexed by traditional search engines. For the part of the World Wide Web which exists on Darknets, see Dark Web.

The Deep Web, Deep Net, Invisible Web, or Hidden Web are search terms referring to the content on the World Wide Web that is not indexed by standard search engines. Computer scientist Michael K. Bergman is credited with coining the term in 2000.

1. Terminology conflation

The first conflation of the terms came about in 2009 when Deep Web search terminology was discussed alongside illegal activities taking place on the darknet Freenet.

In subsequent media reporting about the darknet market Silk Road, many commentators and media outlets have taken to using the term “Deep Web” synonymously with the terms “Dark Web” and “Darknet,” a comparison BrightPlanet Corporation rejects as inaccurate, and consequently is an ongoing source of confusion. Wired reporters Kim Zetter and Andy Greenberg recommend the terms be used in distinct fashions.

2. Size

In the year 2000, Michael K. Bergman said how searching on the Internet can be compared to dragging a net across the surface of the ocean: a great deal may be caught in the net, but there is a wealth of information that is deep and therefore missed. Most of the web’s information is buried far down on sites, and standard search engines do not find it. Traditional search engines cannot see or retrieve content in the Deep Web. The portion of the web that is indexed by standard search engines is known as the Surface Web. As of 2001, the Deep Web was several orders of magnitude larger than the Surface Web.