Never Whistle While You're Pissing...

R.I.P. R.A.W.

I didn't know what to do, so I just went to my bookshelf, took down a copy of The Illuminatus Trilogy, opened it to a random page and typed what I saw...

"I call it the no-ego trip. It's the biggest ego trip of all, of course, Anybody can learn it. A child of two months, a dog, a cat. But when an adult rediscovers it, after the habit of obedience and submission has crushed it out of him for years or decades, what happens can be a total disaster. That's why the Zen Roshis say, 'One who achieves supreme illumination is like an arrow flying straight to hell.' Keep in mind what I said about caution, George. You can release at any moment. It's great up there, and you need a mantra to keep you away from it until you learn how to use it. Here's your mantra, and if you knew the peril you are in you'd brutally burn it into your backside with a branding iron to make sure you'd never forget it: I Am The Robot. Repeat It."
"I Am The Robot."
"Hagbard made a face like a baboon and George laughed again at last. "When you get the time," Hagbard said, "look in to my little book, Never Whistle While You're Pissing- there are copies all over the ship. And keep in mind: you are the robot and you'll never be anything else. Of course, you're also th programmer, and even the meta-programmer; but that's a lesson, for another day. For now, just remember the mammal, the robot."
"I know," George said. "I've read T.S. Eliot, and now I understand him. 'Humility is endless.'"
"And humanity is created. The...other...is not human."
George said then, "So I've arrived. And it's just another starting place. The beginning of another trip. A harder trip."

I'm sure there is something appropriate in there. Maybe lots of things. Or maybe nothing.

I learned of his passing in an e-mail from Travis. That's kind of appropriate since it was Travis who introduced me to the mind bending works of Robert Anton Wilson when we were at Cal.

His books, well, most of the books I've read, anyway, are amazing. They aren't for everybody, but if they are for you, they will open your eyes to see everything around you both as they are and as they might be if you looked away for a second. To this day, when I read the mainstream press or watch television news, I can't help but shout out, "I have seen the fnords!" in my mind. If I shouted it out loud, those who haven't read any of his books would think I'm crazy. Plus, I not exactly sure how 'fnords' is pronounced. But I've seen them!

I don't pretend that I understand even half of it. It's a weird experience for me in that I get a lot of jokes and come to understand some deep truths, but all the while, I feel like I'm missing more than I'm getting, even though I'm getting a lot.

23 is a perfect example. I know there's something to it, but I would not be able to tell you what. But when Bush's approval rating falls from 26 to 23 percent, watch out!

I can't think of any other books I've read that while reading them have such an impact on my everyday reality. And I'm not the only one that has experienced this. You'll start seeing 23s everywhere - on license plates, addresses, phone numbers. Golden apples will pop out at you from weird places. And you'll never look at George Washington's face, or anything else, for that matter, on the dollar bill the same way again. It's almost entirely impossibly plausible, or perhaps implausibly likely.

He was also responsible for one of my favorite experiences with literature. He wrote a trilogy called "The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles." Basically, it was the story of Sigismundo Celine and serves as something of a back story to the later works - gives some of the (unlikely) history of free-masonry and cults and conspiracies and such. I came across the first book in a used book store, probably in Berkeley. The series was out of print, but I kept looking for the second book. I found it at a used book store on one of our Gualala trips years back. But the third, Nature's God, proved nearly impossible to find. I remember talking with Travis about it and he mentioned that some people think it doesn't exist. That would be just the sort of Grand Joke you might expect from Wilson, until it proved not to be true. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and Schrodinger's Cat definitely apply to that time period when the book may or may not have existed. It was a quest that lasted several years for me. Occasionally I would see copies for sale on eBay for a few hundred dollars. But I got the first two for a couple of bucks each used. And something in me made me question the authenticity of the items for sale. When I finally did get a copy (it was reprinted, so I guess there were a lot of people out there like me trying to find it - enough for another run, anyway) it was, unfortunately, a huge disappointment. I'd like to read it again to see if maybe I read it at a bad time, but when am I going to find time for that? Especially now that I am all in to Against The Day, I've got Infinite Jest on hold at around page 500 (and my weight seems to be hovering at 234 until I pick it up again), I'm supposed to read Extremely Loud, and Incredibly Close, with my friend John, and I just got The End Of Nature in the mail. And I think I loaned my copy to Dolores, anyway.

The funny thing, to me, anyway, is that he is one of my favorite authors and I always forget to list him or his books when I list my favorite authors and books in those "impress people"entries on MySpace or whatever. Now I have to add him to my ever growing list of authors I failed to see live when I had the chance.

I hate that list - Bukowski, Ginsberg, Burroughs, and now I have to add Robert Anton Wilson.

I did manage to see Hunter S. Thompson at Zellerbach, though. And I saw Jimmy Carter getting in to his limo outside of Cody's. We got there late. He was a lot shorter than I thought he would be.

Anyway, I've always taken "Never whistle wile you're pissing" to mean, be in the now, and focus on the task at hand, so to speak. I try to keep that in mind every day. The fact that I am no good at whistling makes it a little easier.