Zen-Fuzz the Yoda-Buzz

I think it's high time to add a new deceit to an already beefy list of delusions. If you recall, I regard the life of Fat, Cholesterol, Language, and Love as heavily misconstrued and wasted by the culture. What of Religion, that textbook word unknown to any individual faith or myth? What of that word used by distant disoriented sceptics to dissect and compartmentalise a universal state of Awe into the reflexes of environmental, social, and psychological forces, all determined by 'Nature'? I've already implied that Religion ought to be added to the above list, serving as a mirror or indicator for other perversions. That is, the good in it, like the good in fat, words, or love, is rarely got. Why? Because it, like global warming, comes at us all pervasively yet subtlety, cosmically yet locally. We can’t PINPOINT it. We smell religion in a pot of milk as much as in the Milky Way. Logically, the Milky Way cannot have anything more wondrous about it than a pot of milk. But that's exactly not the point, unless you're a religion analyst. If Existence itself becomes a miracle, a mindbending wonder, we've already come halfway to orthodoxy. Disbelief is suspended in awe the clearer we see our porridge. The more hum-drum the reality, the more fantastic it becomes – because it teems with inborn wonder as well as evinces greater things still. We don’t need the ‘spectacular’ in order for us to stare in awe, but neither do we need the godless anti-mythic Modern to blind us from the Stupendous.

What happens when modern popular culture finally scoops some cosmic cream?
We get Star Wars. Much better than textbooks or Joseph Campbell, and like Puff the Magic Dragon compared to Smaug, Star Wars isn't fit to replace any mythic worldview preceding it. If Christianity was blind to Nature, Star Wars is blinded BY it. These Jedi stories barely oust any meany judeo-christian negatives without sculpting a world of far greater horror. An eternal vista of sidereal cafeterias sides with treeless plains of red spectrum slag. All vegetables live indoors. All travellers travel indoors. All fast movement happens indoors. To do one’s daily work, you fly around indoors, imprisoned in an amusement park of heart failure speed and lung-smother space. The cosmos pulses with trapped thought, minds swell like gaseous beams of energy.

Suddenly that porridge you are eating seems either really hum-drum, or a bowl of Salvation. Either way, EVERYTHING about porridge is more religious than Star Wars. Once again, we have it all wrong. If it weren't for Hobbiton, we'd be even more sunk.

Let’s hear in bold print how Yoda is going to save us.

“Be careful of the fear of loss. It’s a path to the Dark Side.” And remember, Drain yourself “of everything you fear to lose.”

For the life of me, I can’t understand this, no more than I understand ‘the Dark Side’. Fear, fearlessness, pleasure, pain and painlessness can ALL (indirectly) lead to dark deeds, if dark deeds do exist. They could equally lead to deeds of Light. Surely the emotional state is beside the point. Draining yourself of all you fear to lose - it may help free you from pain and pleasure, but it won't help those who fear to lose YOU. It's also a good way to shun loving anything too much; and this noncommittal stance may itself be a dark deed. As an antedote to Yoda’s advice, I think the theistic religions have more to offer: Namely, that emotional commitments are no more a sin or risk than emotional ‘equilibrium’ (sterility), and often less. It’s the deeds and beliefs, not the emotions, which count. Emotions are there to help you, if you let them, and they’re more ancient than meditation.

What’s perhaps most philosophically absurd in Star Wars is the focus on EMPTINESS versus ANGER as the ulimately desireable state. The focus is strange, because both anger and emptiness are mere secondary, learned emotions. The primary emotions are sadness, joy, love and awe, and they may be subverted into other states (depression, fear, anger, serenity, resignation), each of varying usefulness. None of these states, in my view, are all bad per se, but the idea that emptiness trumps anger when NEITHER emotion is common to newborn babies strikes me as laughable. I think both anger – productive forms of anger – as well as emptiness, i.e. serenity and equanimity, may be beneficial, but neither one has the moral edge over the other, nor is either one ideal. Sadness and happiness will get you plenty farther. Resignation has a long association with succumbing to heroic defeat and death. Plenty of chieftains of old resigned themselves to death in battle or to sacrificial execution; Hitler resigned himself to suicide. Was he angry at the time? I doubt it. (Actually, he was a trembling whacked out meth addict!)

“Do not miss or mourn people who die [or whom you lose].”

(Yoda also warns Anikin more generally of forming too strong attachments to others lest these feelings lead to suffering, injury, and split loyalties. In other words, emotional ‘equilibrium’, or better yet, serene Emptiness, is the ideal.)

Emotional sterility, again, supposedly gives you a moral edge, and more self-control. Ironically, emotionally austere people can injure others just as much passionate people, if not more, since they are less likely to forgive, relent, lavish, embolden, or weep for remorse. They are also more likely to reject suitors, and leave them hopeless and jilted. How many raging females has Yoda jilted and left to exact their vengeance on the cosmos?!

"Search your feelings!"

Well, I would if I had any. You told me to relinquish them all, you toady Imp.

“Attachment leads to jealousy” [Therefore, avoid attatchment.]

So attachment leads to JEALOUSY. Ah. Ooooo. Oh. So? Where’s the moral teaching here? Why is jealousy ‘bad’? Because it may lead to suffering? Well, so may lack of jealousy! Must attachment lead to jealousy? And why is suffering necessarily bad? Doesn’t it depend on the context - the why, what, and how, the cause, motive, result of the suffering? In other words, ignoring the ethical dynamic of human action and experience leads to nonsensical proscriptions, Yoda Yarns, Thous-Shalt-Nots without depth.

For sake of argument, let’s say that, regardless of context, ALL suffering really is evil. By this, I mean the circumstance itself is evil, as well as the paths along which such suffering becomes possible. Alas we’re not out of our conundrum. What the blazes is Evil? Yoda already alludes to it in circular fashion (er, evil is suffering, weren’t you listening?). Yes, but what constitutes the evilness of it? Evil is a not just the experiencer's state or perception (which, we all know, are relative to the victim anyway), it implies a moral category as well. Not according to Yoda. Nope. Categories are extensions of our ego, and lack any explanatory force. Perhaps Good-and-Evil Dualism is an extension of Yoda’s ego then, since he seems to love that category.

It's no use calling something Bad if you can't pinpoint why. Destruction, Death, Immortality, Suffering may all be Good in some contexts. Is delight in another's suffering Bad? In my view, Yes. But that's because Good and Bad are not amoral tensions or poles, but one is derivative of the other. Bad is a manipulated shortfall of sham Good, that's all. Delight itself is Good, but delight in another's pain is Sham Good. There's nothing cosmic or eternal about Bad. It's a sham. If we don't have a belief and intuition about Good, Bad has no meaning, moral or otherwise. I don't think Bad means much to Yoda - he's just squeaking about the Force. If the wellbeing and pleasure of a living thing is Good, or some mini good branching off from some cosmic Good, then it's easier to see how torture is evil. The act of torture is petty - it's cosmically blind. The wrongness of it far exceeds the wrongness of suffering in general. By this token, not all suffering need be evil, even if the state represents some sort of fall from the ideal. We make a distinction between pain and torture, and for good reason. Suffering may happen 'accidentally', as a helpful warning, or as a result of health being restored to the sick. Ever get a virus? The suffering you feel is your body's helpful attempt to kill the virus.

Do listen to me and Yoda, and don’t get all glossy eyed! You twits. This is weighty, and no lethargic levity is allowed. Yoda really does believe in Dualism, or at least he tries to. Dualism, in this form, has nothing to do with the ancient Good-versus-Evil struggle of fairy tales. It has much more to do with late Indo-Iranian philosophy of religion, and finds expression in Buddhism and somewhat in Zoroastrianism. It teaches that each FORCE (there’s that word!), both Good and Evil, are co-eternal and co-equal, and CO-EXIST. Begad, they’re even CO-DEPENDENT, and that's worrying. They exist in eternal polar tension, balancing one another out, and staying very wary and aware of each other. Each is necessary in its own way, and each exists somewhat APART from moral categories. Hence the word force, amoral and vague. In fact, so morally neutral are they, that the labels and roles may sometimes be flipped, and no earthling may quite tell the difference. In either case, it’s important to understand that neither position has the high ground, for they exist to hold each other in balance. Neither one will ‘win’, neither one is more all-defining or basic, neither one is a perversion of the other, and neither one existed before the other, since both exist in eternity past and eternity future. Star Wars, finding that teaching unpalatable for an unconsciously Judeo-Christian audience (itself included), works in just enough Semitic Monotheism, the teaching of one ultimate reality - eternal Good, to excuse its plot of an inferior, morally failing Dark Side.

Blind to this unworkable contradiction, Star Wars tries to stick to its Indo-Iranian guns, and shoots itself down in the process. Is Yoda really who we think he is? Or is he just a Sith Lord who’s achieved Force Balance in himself, having chosen to go too far to neither the Good Side nor the Dark Side? Yes, I do think so. But Star Wars wants you to think he’s a compassionate Ghandi too, not just a well balanced individual.

Well, I think Jinnah had more compassion than Ghandi, just as Christ has more than Yoda. Christ communes, seeks to give us complementarity and unity with the Deity through the path of interpersonal co-mingling, while restoring the original spark of Creation to all things in an act of generous extravagance. This creates infinite unity and diversity, infinite individuality and co-mingling. Buddha (Yoda) meditates, seeks to relinquish all attachments to external things and beings, and thereby empty his awareness of all pain or bliss until no conscious thought is left but that of an expanding and contracting Universe. This creates unity (with something), but forever annihilates diversity and individuality. Deities, or other beings, may not intrude their creativity upon this cherished Nirvana, but they may chill out and join up. Such beings would otherwise be intruders. I hope they intrude.

By now, you should feel distinctly and resignedly anti-religious, and quite un-aweinspired for the whole harlequinade of spiritual apologetics. I’ve done no more or less than Yoda himself would have done. I've given you a talkin, after my own fashion. You now prefer to deny or submit your soul, experience Life maybe, but never read about it again. I understand. You choose well. But I haven’t led you down the path to Awe here. I’ve only given you a textbook to it. If you want Myth, pure unadulturated story populated by Beings, I suggest you read (or have read aloud to you) George MacDonald’s Lilith, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillian, or Lady Gregory’s Gods and Fighting Men. You may also consider oral folk poetry: the Kalevala, the Vedas, the Avesta, the Poetic Edda, the Book of Leinster, the Lebor na hUidre (Book of the Dun Cow), Siberian fairy tales, Iroquois prophecies, Aborigine dreams, or the Psalms. If you must see a movie, try The Silver Chair, Watership Down, Kristin Lavransdatter, or the 1973 Wicker Man.

Organ Misplacement

My true love hath my heart and I have his,
A just exchange, one for another given.
I hold his dear, I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss.
There never was a better bargain driven.
**Both equal hurt, in this change sought our bliss --
My true love hath, my true love hath my heart, my heart, my heart, and I have his.

His heart in me keeps me and him in one.
My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides.
He loves my heart, he loves my heart, for once it was his own.
I cherish his because in me it bides.
**

His heart his wound receivéd from my sight.
My heart was wounded with his wounded heart.
For as from me, for as from me, my hurt on him did light.
So still, methought, in ME his hurt did smart !
**

-Work (song) of Sir Philip Sidney. Arcadia, 1590.

Spencer the Rover

These words were composéd by Spencer the Rover
Who travelled Great Britain and most parts of Wales.
He had been so reducéd, which caused great confusion
And that was the reason he went on the roam.

In Yorkshire near Rotherham he had been on his rambles
Being weary of walking, he sat down to rest.
At the foot of a mountain there ran a clear fountain –
With bread and cold water he did him refresh.

And it tasted far sweeter than the gold he had wasted,
Far sweeter than honey and gave more content.
But the thoughts of his children lamenting and crying
Brought tears to his eyes which made him repent.

The night fast approaching, to the woods he resorted,
With woodbine and ivy his bed for to make.
There he dreamt about sighing, lamenting and crying,
‘Go home to your family and wand’ring forsake.’

On the Fifth of November, I’ve a reason to remember,
When first he arrivéd home to his family and wife,
They looked so supriséd when first he arrivéd,
To see such a stranger once more in their sight.

And his children they gathered round him with their prittle-prattling stories,
Their prittle-prattling stories to drive care away.
Now they’re all united like birds of one feather,
Like bees in one hive, they’re contented to stay.

Now they’re all living in a cottage most contented,
With woodbine and roses growing all around the door.
They’re as happy as those who have thousands of riches,
He’s contented to stay and go rambling no more!

-The Copper Family. Version as sung by the Watersons. Roberts and Barrand do it with equal love.

Spyspeech and Skis

Taken from Daybook's Entry 11 Dec 2007

Today was blundersome and burdensome, though I'd strength and will to enjoy many moments. I met Bretski at Sunroom at 12:45 p.m. Our table neighbours were deutschreder and our spyspeech pattered on without privacy. Soon we were back to English. B was eye-weary, depressed, down on the New World Colony, none of it beyond comprehension. Most of his countrymen make little eye or word contact, dismissing strangers and acquaintances alike for the sake of cosmetic comfort. They nose at their phones, feet, papers and pyooters, or blank-scope the world to their material advantage, allowing the stimulative rush of job and recreation to block out the pain of facing their identities, the very risk of interpersonal existence, hushed and unhasting. Drat the timepieces. The public also enjoy friends who keep them comfortably locked into this illusion of frantic productivity and meaning. Any true confrontation is likely to earn rejection and enmity, and thus the folk flock keep safely employed, enjoyed, stimulated, inert. In the face of bigger forces - governments and corporations - they sit cowed, craven, depressed, demoralised, and conned. They are deathly afraid. These suppressed and unrealised fears turn people's stimulation into a jolt of relief by contrast - into safety and ecstasy. The oligarchic State and Corporation affect and taint people's love and friendships, as mind, body and heart are sold to workplace, market and real estate. They've been bought and bribed out of the bliss of Domestic Diversion and Home's Handiwork. Even when they desire Home, such leisure's denied them. They've no love to spend there. No wonder they've no true friends.

I had to rush to work (irony inserted) and bid the B a quick farewell. He pressed me to let him use my computer, and he came at it all in a panic. I knew he'd been alerted to some stock market dynamic. He panted that he had to check something in 15 minutes or all was lost. In my hurried jumbling to fetch my skis, poles and skiboots for my mad dash, I knocked a longbow above a shelf so that it fell, then struck and tipped over a cubby-stand perched on a bench. The stand held an iron dobermann, an Italian leather-sheathed wineflask, three egg-shaped stones, and many cassette tapes. The iron dog smote and chipped the edge of my white chamberpot, pouring piddle onto the rug. A stone landed in the pee-pot, splashing more p. The wineflask cracked in seven pieces on the floor. A further stone split off the rim of an English ale-mug, and now I was cussing. About ten cassettes had shattered or sundered cases. No time to mend or clean anything. HOME must be left behind! I was out on skifeet, scudding to work. By wetsnow and slowsnow, it didn't work. Hopped an omnibus as the snowfall faded and refused to coat the earth. I stowed my skis upright in the bus back and then glided across the CapTel parking lot bang up against the entry doors. Removed my long feet and took them straight in to the head-desk where they received many smiles and minced honour, as I took my hero's seat among the host. One co-worker looked at me in an awe of disbelief and cried "Man, you're a Nordic dude !"

Two-hour return on the longskis. The air had cooled, but it was still too damp to hold good cold. I kept to icy sidewalks. Slick ice shifted ongoingly with scratchy cement patches. In evasion I rode on the sludge-slathered roughs.

I buried some of my heart at Wounded Knee the next day as I watched the eaglehearted movie of that name. I identify to a flaming degree with Lakotas, their dignity and vision, their face-to-face approach to life and lore, their health from herds and abhorrence for sickly soil-divelling and pulp-petty pap. So stirred was I that I rang B at 2:30 a.m. to say the federal government are not my people, nor do they care a wit for any common citizen's peace. In France, as recently pointed out in Sicko, the government rules in fear of the people. Here the people fear the government's rule. Neither vigourous nor happy, our people are easy to govern. If we demanded too many basic pleasures, we'd be a bear to govern, we'd be like the bygone paleoamericans - obsessed with human dignity. The Rights of Man...how little we give ourselves today. At movie's end, I was amazed to learn that the State still owes the Lakota ('Sioux') 600 million dollars, the appreciated landprice for the land they were denied which they forfeited to South Dakota. No such money (alone) could fix what was lost. Neither can our kinds of careers make grass or hearts blossom. The film's Sitting Bull was the splitting image of my grandfather, Bascom Paul Hillman, a man still alive, Scots-English-Irish mixed with Cherokee.

Elfin Antics

While Sleeping on Monday morning, the Eighteenth of January, 2005,

I Dream: I attend a No Underwear Party in a thickly forested neighbourhood bordering Lake Mendota. The streets have been 'walled off' to form a maze in which each street is a walled corridor leading to a walled park. Representatives from all Madison Community Co-ops are preening in their finest buff. I can't understand why I'm present at all, even less why I seem appropriately dressed for the affair: I arrive half-dressed, en route from a romantic picnic on a big sunny boulder. It's embarrrassing enough to be half nude, but my nude half was everything below a shirt which was just long enough to cover my doodle if I walked upright. But this is the perfect attire for the Game of the Evening: LIMBO. I look over to see people walking horizontally with their thighs thrust forward. Their upper bodies are thrown back so they don't bump their breasts on the pole. Some of the thicker fertile female thighs I look at in contemplation...until I'm wakened from my reverie by name-calling -- my own name, that is. The others all seem to have found ways of strapping their shirts or skirts or cut-out pants so as to hide their crotches. Now I'm in a jim-jam. I stoop down, yank off my socks, and tie each sock to one of my upper thighs wrapped in a scrunched up bit of my shirt.

I've not tested this in waking life, but even Mr Bean would struggle with this winkle cover. I'm obliged to any Readers who have tried this, waking or dreaming

I'm done with the party and have retired to my room. I hear little knocks at my door. Looking through the looksy-hole, I see an army of little people removing their tiddley shoes in front of my door. They know they are not allowed to enter my Lair-Den shod. Off all shoes must come and they know it. One or two of the Big People pop up as group guides, but then pitter-patter away downstairs. I stand hidden behind the door as I tilt it open in half welcome. Then I bounce back to my bed and wait, now stark naked, poised like a wolf. When the whole crowd get all the way into my room, I spring up and out of my covers with a "BOO!"
All twelve of them leap back in terror, bouncing as one body in panic out the door where they stand still as stones with crooned necks and gawping eyes. Like fertive squirrels, they measure and tip-toe their way down the stairs until every man jack of them is standing one landing below, staring up at me in astonishment. Everyone but their shoes! Many many wee wee shoes. . . . I gather them all up into my room and close the door part-way. Then, shoe by shoe and pair by pair, I spring back out the door. Each time, I place a shoe assiduously next to another shoe in a long straight line. I politely close the door, get another shoe. Softly open the door, then BOING! Gently open the door, then SPRING! I leap out with shoes. I place each shoe and shoe pair down fastidiously. Fast as a mongoose out the door, then slow as a buddhist I set a shoe down, while the tommyknockers gaze up at me maniacly. Fast out I go, slow down shoe goes. Fast out, slow down. Soon all the shoes stand in a row in the hall. Softly I foot it back to bed and sleep.

An Autumn-Hike with Bri-Tyke

20 October 2007

I raised myself perforce at Eleven, having nabbed three hours sleep. Felt...fair. Needed nod-naps a couple in the day. A bit wobbly in the legs, but otherwise could swagger up and down some stony wooded hills. Bri-Tyke and Paleo-Nate, we Two, left as a twosome in the woodsum, comrades cantering on El Campo. Venison, celeryleaf, broccleaf and coffy in hand, I joined Bri in the car-ride to Dewelsmere, the Lake of the Devil, near Bara-BOO! He'd a wish to walk trail-less parkland south of the south entry. We footed off and up, clambering over stick and stone, leaf and loam. Our poach-eyes darted, perked for edibles, and squirrel and deer. Right off I found worms and grubs and fed me gob. Just swallowed -- no need to chaw. Except for lichen and barberries (which barred and pricked our way till we went mad), the main 'food' I found was mushrooms, and dared not eat any. On a hollow beheaded oak, I found steepling heaps of oyster-shrooms. So I deduced, but feared the produce. In cloying clumps, they grew with high-arched gills in the armpits of oak-limbs, in the cradles of forks and furrows. Ate no bite nor wit of any 'Fun Guys'. I did munch a morsel of hard shelf fungus, believing fungal bookshelves of kinder kindred. I'd much have preferred a soft Fun Gal morsel, but found no morels, only poison belles. Moulds without morals.

I urged Brian southwest and downslope, admonishing that a lowland stream or bog would give lusher eats. Down and down doddered we, dodging Goblin Town. No snip snap Black Crack nicked us. Instead, a golden halo fell from fall heaven over the tops of big-boled oaks and maples. Incandescent Lórien light lit the leaves in the gap of the sky. We stood between sunlight and shade, engirdled by pale-lit tree girths, soughing boughs, falling crowns. Fall of woodland kings. Death and day rustled down the dryad rexes.

As far down as the land fell before skirting Beaver Pond, we crossed a windling creek, and Brian shore and whittled himself a [maple?] staff. Meanwhile, I'd crossed the crick again where it elbowed west and sat on a large log to chew on venison roasted in pumpkin and maple sap. Behind me rose quiet grey cliffs, walls wrought of boulders. I sat between sunbeams and cliff-shadow. Hornbeams grew at the water's edge.

Squirrel-Bri nibbled on his nuts and frittered away fruit from his bag, sultanas from his sack. He shared the munch - for me a nunch where I'd broken my fast with feral buckmeat, flesh from the stag.

Waywise Brian now led us south and up, where we swivelled around pointy patches of barb-bearing barberries, which battened me as I ate them. Their 'thirst-quenching' foliage I tested, mandibling the juicy leaves.

At hilltop, we found a road and camp, then fled the toys of civilization, turning tail downward again. We bore back full upon the boredrill berries. My hazehead made my legs sway some, and my words trailed off their trails. Gravity gave grace to my footfalls.

Nearing the entry drive below, Fox-Bri marked (as in noticed san urination) where a former road had long ago run downhill past the Beaver Pond and beside the remnants of a dwelling.

Peckish Brian now wanted food, and he looked for it like a falcon from the driver's seat. Prolonging our hunger, we popped in Delaneys flea-shop which had more odds than ends. We found much of this and none of that.

A commensal meal was had by all in Or-e-Gond, which some name Gond-or. One settler, faltering and faint, had not eaten for many days. A morsel of maple-sweet venison healed his hunger and mended his weakness. The folly of fasting!

The world's only made of wonders. -Nathan Paul Hillman

Memory of Memorial Day

29 October 2006

Came home to routh of grilled rother and plenty pork. Good feral feed. A tub of tater salad. Browsed for abandoned beer. Insipid stuff - ach! - to be had: Mickle Lob and Dud Wiser. Jerked my nose from the brackish wrack. Yuck dud ale. Bail it out! Save yourself! American tailgate runagate fun, synthetic patriots. Pfui! Better to be buzzed by barley wine. I let out for over a litre of the lush liquid - ten percent per volume of sweet swat. It purled down fine with meat and tatties.

Hans Ander-Sud Ander-Dud-sen, son!

Evoking October 9, 2006

Burden of work, gradelabour. Paper pile. Student stack. Slothspeed. Slugspeed. Snailswift. Grubslow. My quickneed impeded. My walking unipeded.

Wynless I work at UW Comm-B. Andersen Gander-Son. Andersen Pander-Son. Andersen MEANDER-Son. He hinders me, son! He hampers me, son!

Run Run Run Run Run Run Run

}}}OR{{{

Hans Ander-Sud Ander-Dud-sen, son!

Burden of work,
gradelabour.
Paper pile,
Student stack.
Slothspeed, Slugspeed.
Snailswift, Grubslow.
My quickneed impeded.
My walking unipeded.

Wynless I work at teaching Hans
Andersen Gander-Son.
Andersen Pander-Son.
Andersen MEANDER-Son.
He hinders me, son. He hampers me, son!
Run Run Run Run Run Run Run

I, Rook, Cook

I put my chef hand to the Cookery this Sunday past. I cooked for the Rookery, also known as the Inter Amicable Commune whose tenants are my inmates. I took German sourdough sunflower-seed rye-bread and fried it in butter till crisp. Next i thinly spread mango ginger apricot chutney upon each slice, on top of which went thin slivers of fried porkchop, flesh cooked in salt and ginger and butter. Atop the swine-cuts fell the snow of grated mozarella or parmesan cheese. The whole was heated in oven. Its gasey fire melted shavings of cheese till they cloyed. That was main course. One side dish I squeezed from the rinds of squashes, yellow, fiery, green and tan - about five different kinds, all scooped out of hot middles and blent with cheese and butter and pepper. It stirred into cheesey babyfood. A second side I knived into thin strips of stag's skin-muscle (used by deer to shiver or twitch), fried in butter and maple syrup. For dessert, i smelted butter with pure cacao meal, adding cream and honey and mango powder, to make a darksome darkling chocolate fudge, later laid into broad pan. The cacao-cake got all spiced with coriander and glossed with honey spill. I pressed banana circlets, fried in butter, besprinkled in mango dust, into the chocolate quadrant.