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Gifts for yourself, and for any of your friends who are still awake and
thinking. All drawn from the sometimes boistrous, sometimes beautiful pages of Magellan's
Log. Click here for more info about, among other things,
the funniest book of the 21st century (so far).
Dorothy Hood: Persephone (1976).
What is
Texas Mysticism Anyway?
Parsing the Tagline of Magellan's Log
by Doc Cuddy
Readers continue to inquire about the line below our logo:
The World’s Biggest
Magazine of Extremely Low-Bandwidth Texas mysticism
One reader went so far as to observe that on a list of great
oxymorons ("military intelligence," "world peace," "American
civilization"), the term "Texas mysticism" would surely rank near the top.
Au contraire, mes amis.
1. Texas Mysticism and All That
Ponder, if you will, the painting above by the late, great Houston artist,
Dorothy Hood. Ponder also, please, the novels of Mr. Kinky Friedman. While you're at it,
take a listen to that non-pareil Austin band, the Thirteenth Floor Elevators, and their
8-minute exposition of the view from Texas called "Slip Inside This House."
Finally, since you're already here, spend a few minutes wandering around Magellan's Log
itself.
If you think about those and other similar Texas-based disparities
long enough, you come to one very weird conclusion (hold onto your Stetson): There is a
Texas yang to George W. Bush's stupid, terrifying, greedy yin, and it is... mysticism.
Now that we've lost the riff-raff who have clicked away to
biggerpenisesnow.com or adoremusronaldreagan.com, courageous readers can proceed to
consider the following unlikelihoods.
A glance at history will confirm the observation that the great
mystics and the great schools of mysticism have never arisen in hotbeds of urban culture. Enlightenment
may have come to some during intermission at Lincoln Center or during the few minutes one
is nowadays permitted to linger in the Sistine Chapel, but if so, we don’t know about
it.
No, mystics have tended to appear in your more minimalist landscapes
and environs (the hair-shirt stereotype was not made from thin air), most famously Tibet.
Vast reaches of West Texas in fact put one in mind of nothing so
much as Milarepa; barren, snowy peaks; icy, hermit-infested caves; and the
headache-inducing concept of "roof of the world" generally. Nearer my God, to
thee, indeed. (Startlingly, the original buildings of the University of Texas at El Paso
were done in the Tibetan style; go there, squint your eyes, and you can almost hear the
prayer wheels turning.)
The monstrously clashing I-Thou, Self-Other contrasts presented by
such pristine and primitive settings served the past well, giving us everything from the
baffling paradoxes of the Tao Te Ching to the wholesome hummings of Hildegard von Bingen.
The 21st century presents us with new challenges
and new landscapes of contrast, irritating the hell out of many but stimulating
the weird few into, well, you should pardon the expression, transcendence, or what passes
for transendence these days. Modern-day Texas presents one such arena.
What, then, is Texas mysticism exactly?
We might put it like this: Texas mysticism is a non-organized,
meta-denominational, frequently errant, illusorily religious pursuit which willy-nilly
winds up at, or at least tends to put one on a road in the general direction of. the
place, toward which classical hardest-core Zen ineffably points. Think Lao-Tze in
chaps, Bodhidharma in boots.
In more practical terms, try the following suggestions.
Texas mysticism is the state of mind that enables the seeker:
 to remain non-suicidal while meditating on the fact that
George W. Bush was elected by hook, crook, or otherwise, not
once, but twice.
to maintain equanimity in a state where "suburban"
is no
longer a charmingly domestic adjective conjuring images of
ranch-style bliss and backyard cookouts but has become an
upper-case, four-wheel-drive, 6,000-pound noun complete with
GPS and eight seats covered in the skin of unborn platypusses.
to converse calmly in the course of necessary daily
interactions
with other Texans, most of whom are pleased as punch about
of the near-nightly executions at the state penitentiary in
Huntsville.
to try to retain a largely undamaged sense of esthetics in a
state
whose second largest city outlines its already tasteless
skyscrapers
in various garish shades of neon lights for better night-time
viewing.
to listen straight-faced while Austin residents, fresh from a
two-hour
twice-daily commute, go on at length and without a hint of irony
about
the laid-back, slacker charm of the state capital.
to see the positive side of the smoke from dozens of
maquiladoras
blocking the 150-mile view in Big Bend National Park by admiring
the bizarre, new sunset coloration produced by the daringly
creative
new chemicals in the smoke.
to immerse herself in the mystery of yin-yang by living in
the state
that sent both Barbara Jordan and Kay Bailey Hutchinson to
Congress.
to learn how to avoid the sin of pride that comes from living
in a
state which, taken in its entirety, pretty well demolishes the
so-called
theory of "Intelligent Design."
to be forced to realize that much, if not most, of what takes
place in
very large air conditioned buildings beneath large signs
containing
the world "church" has nothing to do with religion and
everything to
do with 1) demonization of non-believers (and even believers, if
they happen to be of a certain sexual orientation) and 2)
tax-free
enterprise.
to acquire knee-jerk awareness of the ultimate futility of
ALL
metaphysical speculation when one is daily faced with such
yin-yang irreconcilables as:
Tom DeLay / James Byrd,
Lone Star Lite / peyote cactus growing wild,
The Museum of Biblical Arts / the Rothko Chapel,
The War on Terrorism / the War on Poverty,
The Alamo (Texas version) / the Alamo (Mexican version),
Glen McCarthy / James Dean,
Dan Rather / Kinky Friedman,
The Dallas Morning News / the Texas Observer,
Dale Evans / Janis Joplin,
Texas A&M / everybody else,
Oceans of oil / oceans of bluebonnets,
Cowboy Cadillac six-wheeled pickups / Cadillac Ranch,
Closed minds / open range,
Dalhart Winberg / Dorothy Hood,
Karl Rove / Magellan’s Log.
Dalhart Winberg: Visiting the Old Homestead.
2. The Rest of It
A. Size
Judging by our email, other elements in the tagline require some commentary.
"World's Biggest"? Living in a
geopolitical entity whose westernmost city (El Paso) is closer to Los Angeles than it is
to it easternmost city (Houston), one knows in one's jeans that size doesn't just matter.
Yes, size is important. But what really matters, in these latter days of Late Capitalism
is the simple (but often overlooked truth): Size SELLS.
You doubt us? Consider both General Motors and
Ford, which survived way beyond their sell-by date through the skillful promotion of
behemoths such as the Chevrolet Explorer and the Ford Expedition.
Thus, since we really ARE the world's biggest
magazine of Texas Mysticism, it behooved us to call everyone's attention to that fact up
front and up top.
B. Bandwidth
Though some thin-skinned readers apparently think we aim our cutting insights at
their so-called religion or their so-called politics, in fact our ideal reader (comparable
to the New Yorker's legendary "little old lady in Dubuque") is a half-starved
but very intelligent, sensitive, and horny teenager in the outback of Zimbabwe whose shaky
Internet connection is somewhere below dial-up speed. Getting into the mind of that
challenged person (male or female) is our goal, and there's no way we're going to use
fancy-shamncy cascading style-sheets, Active X effects, or Flash player fireworks, none of
which would play well (if at all) over a staticky 56 kbs line into the heart of Africa.
Therefore: "Extremely Low Bandwidth"--and extremely simply page design.
C. Authorship
As in the universe generally, there's more going on in Magellan's Log than first
meets the eye. For further revelations, proceed to the Masthead
page and scroll to the bottom. The truth will out.
END
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