Phoebe Caulfield and the Death of Reason

I have met Phoebe Caulfield several times. Holden is like Yossarian - disheartened by the insanity of modern life (The 'Phoney' Bits) but unable to do anything to change it. Phoebe has the same intelligence but is either too young to be worried by the madness or too clever to let it affect her. Is "The Catcher in the Rye" really an introduction to a book all about Phoebe? a sort of extension to the Glass family. Even when I was being forced to read TCITR, and not liking it one bit, the sections with Phoebe in stood out as more interesting. She is an adept in the making though what at I don't know.

Doctor Invincibilis

There is too much madness in the world - in the main we are all sane but for some reason the collective result of all this is an insane society. We all know it is wrong and are striving for simplicity (Do not Posit Plurality) but cannot go against the general complicated flow. When I was young I used to try and think about all the Universe in one go and then think about nothing - Everything and Nothing - a sort of mega binary state. This was long before I had heard of the big bang and the possible non-existence of time and space but at the time it was easy to imagine and exhilirating to think that I could understand what I thought was the ultimate in cosmology. Doing the same thing now gives me a headache; I have to break the ideas down into something smaller but even then these smaller components of everything and nothing are far more complicated than my childhood thoughts. Maybe, like Picasso we need to be like Children again to bring out the most wonderful ideas and designs for living.

The Rice Goddess

Split seritou seritou and more,
The rice Goddess, linked in four dimensions,
Visits every tiny house
To taste the offerings, these daily gifts
So freely spared, so placed as music is;
Once placed is gone
As proof of animism, dynamism joined,
A major world religion
Hidden in the homes and food.
It’s in the trees, the air, the rice field.
There we find the takers of the offerings,
The fragrant flowers, spiritless without their scent.
Special flowers, damp with sea and salt,
With trails to light the way
Along the paths of ancestors.

The wind has taken incense,
Lifted it across the island
To please the God of the Caldera,
The ruler of the cool dyspeptic earth,
And closed his smoking mouth.
His eye is high and seems to boil
The water in the air.
My arms steam in rays
That link me to the azimuth.
I’ve pressed a switch and all is white,
A stop or seven up the dial.
My rice, my flowers, my incense fail me
Within my reasoning.


The room is full of whirling crying spirits,
Drilling through the tiles to me.
They know my smell, my taste of milk and oil.
My colour, being no deception
To these networked gods
Has made me disappear against the sand,
Against the sky.
With my books, the milk,
The foreign office linen,
The diplomatic core.