composite view of this hybrid society while having some literary fun. Their descriptions, some of which are excerpted here, run-from Marxist treatises to ritual peasant songs. No so immediate to our own conditions as William Weston's adventures, Daily Lives is nonetheless imaginative, believable and poetic. Ifyou get hooked on these two volumes, take heart, because two more are on their way. -SA June 1978 RAIN Page 21 Copyright 1977, 1978 by Robert Nichols. Reprinted by permission 1 ,______________________________.. · of New Directions Books. Blake's Story Contin7r'ed: The Lights Festival • I Egwegnu is the largest of the great Drune ecological universities. The period of study, initiated by what is called the "insect pilgrimage," lasts for six months. Tuition is subsidized by the confederacy, and couples come from all over the country of Nghsi-Altai. As the pilgrimage is 111ade traditionally on the tenth year of marriage, the age range of the students is from about twenty-t_hree to thirty years.... Thus·during this interval the young couples are free of cares, much as the university students in the West. No hard labor in the fields. No child-rearing duties. Solitude, quiet. The university means a break in the lives of these individual couples, a resting period and a relaxation from the~pressures of tight commun,!.l living. As a matter of fact there is even a clinic in the dormitory where psychiatric counseling is offered to individuals suffering from the stresses of "overcommunalization." An interesting idea. • The lecturers are the Deodars, the great "blue" shamans of Nghsi-Altai. It is said that they were the original people when the land was covered by forests, and that they invented the first musical and scientific instruments-in particular the sensor devices used in the weather and soils laboratories.... Sun slants into the clearing. There is a slight rise toward the back (where the projector is located). The students sit at the lecturer's feet on the ground covered with pine needles. The Deodar shows the slides. In one hand he holds a South Asian oboe which he uses as a pointer. From time to time- -from Daily Lives in Nghsi-Altai at the end of some difficult passage-he will blow on it, a long drawn-out dreamy single note, or several staccato jabs of varying pitches. This is to "dispel logical thought sequences" and "to concentrate t.he spirit" of the listener. The fotlowing are some of Totuola's "thought sparks" (or koans) jotted down by one of the listeners at random.... Don't ask the atom smasher to recycle_ life. The earth is 5 billion years old: inhabit it. Life is 1 billion years old: revere it. A strong sne~ze will blow away 40,000 years of topsoil. Four carbon bonds allow infinite complexity. Go naked / walk with the leopard/ c,arry a transistor radio. A sweet soil is the result of many cataclysms. At the end of each term period there is what is called the Lights Festival. Students take samples of whatever they have been working on in the lab-leaves, grains, soils, etc.-plus strands of their own hair and photographs o·f themselves. This . isrmixed with clay and formed into pots. Broken old pottery of former students, found on the shore, is also used. On the evening of the Lights Festival, these vessels are launched. When the moon rises, each couple places its boat on the lake and floats it out, with a paper lantern burning in it. The lights drift over the surface. And the children are allowed to throw stones at them and sink them. This is called: chrysalis-breaking. It is the end of the first life phas€ . . . • •
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