Just when you thought my blog couldn't get any more conspiratorial... The Santiago Times has run a story about the Tenth International Ufology Conference where members of the Chilean Military presented reports of encounters with UFO's.
"Also presented at the conference was a report by Rodrigo Bravo, Captain of the Army’s Fifth Division, who talked to a rapt audience about his thesis, entitled 'Observations of unidentified aerial phenomena identified by the Civil Air Force.' While Bravo’s talk was not technically representative of the institution’s position on UFOs, he had been authorized to give it by his commander-in-chief..."
"...Also present at the conference was retired official Armando Valdés, who is noted for his involvement in one of Chile’s first documented UFO abductions, which became known as the Valdés Case. On April 35, 1977, Valdés, along with five members of an army patrol, saw two bright objects descending from the sky. Valdés set out alone to investigate and, according to the men, simply vanished. Fifteen minutes later, they said, he reappeared, tried to speak and passed out. The date on his watch had been advanced five days, and he had about a week's growth of beard."
"According to his comrades, when Valdes was beginning to regain consciousness he said: 'You do not know who we are, nor where we come from. But I tell you that we will soon return.'"
23 has been my muse for the last 11 years almost... I was infected one afternoon in Berkeley when some friends who dosed me with LSD on the curb in front of my apartment building pulled up in a white Toyota Corolla that more closely resembled a primate cage at the zoo on wheels than a motor vehicle; a crescendo of weirdness that descended upon my existence at that moment opened its shaking, rattling trunk out of which spilled the two swirling pupils and wild hair of Stephanie Spanjian who stood dumbfounded on the sidewalk staring at the numbers on my apartment building. Mouth agape and then a "You live at 2317". I looked up at the numbers and saw them really for the first time. "Those numbers are following me everywhere. 23 and 17." And back into the trunk. That was how 23 and 17 introduced themselves to me.
Of the two numbers, 23 definetely has the better sense of humor and became my immediate, petulant muse. At first it was like an elf that would bound from out of the shadows to tap my shoulder, giggle, and run away. In the beginning I was naive enough to give chase, but 23 is like a cat and will come to you in its own time. To sit at the altar of 23 is to take an ice-pick to a glacier. It delights itself in its own mystery; its element is surprise.
All these many years later we are like old friends. When it darts across my internal screen of consciousness I no longer greet it with surprise or rush to decipher its meaning. The amusement it brings is like that of a long-running inside joke with an old friend that has built itself into a tower that spirals into the sky; or perhaps its more of a cosmic stalactite, dripping endlessly from the vaulted ceiling of the realm the mystics and saints call "the indescribable" and the one above it, "the unimaginable".
Today I was driving in the car with Rebekah and I looked out her side of the car as she was talking at a video store in the Tenderloin and saw a movie poster with a big, red 23 in the window. To my mild surprise and amusement I realized the face on the poster was that of Jim Carrey (a capricorn like Stephanie and myself, who was born on January 17, 1962). I have always had a special affinity for him ever since the dolphin trainer impression from Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.
I have stayed true to him all these years because of that one scene (and also the one where he talks to Ton Loc thru his ass), but in recent years his movies have left a faint stink of mean-spiritidness (Lemony Snicket) and egotism (Bruce Almighty) in the air.
I didnt want to interrupt Rebekah's story so I made a mental note to find out when I got home if it could be really true, that Jim Carrey has actually done a movie about 23. When we got done having lunch and moving some of her stuff over to her boyfriend's place we were sitting on the couch and she suddenly turned toward me and gasped out of the thin blue air "I totally forgot to ask you.. Have you heard that Jim Carrey has done a movie about 23?"
Yeah.
All afternoon the question in my mind has been: will the movie will do it justice or taint it irrevocably in the common consciousness. I have noticed that the M.O. of the negative powers-that-be that reach out to us thru movie and television screens (and in other ways thru pop culture) tend to almost formulaically take something that is inherently positive or neutral, imitate it to the point of perfectly mimicking it, and then putting a sick, twisted spin on it to pervert it with negative connotations. So that's been the question on my mind all day. Will this Hollywood movie starring one the world's biggest jackasses be the negative power's answer to the cosmic giggle of 23? Having just read a synopsis of the movie which attempts to link the number to the murderous impulses of a dog-catcher, I am convinced that it might be. Which is sad but not entirely unexpected.
According to this wikipedia article about the early 20th century popular saying "23 skidoo":
"An article in the June 26, 1906 New York American credits the phrase to one Patsey Marlson, then a former jockey hauled into court on a misdemeanor charge. At his hearing, Marlson is asked by the judge how the expression came about. He explains that when he was a jockey, he worked at a track called Sheepshead Bay. The track only had room for 22 horses to start in a line. If a 23rd horse was added, the long shot would be lined up behind the 22 horses on the front line. Apparently, "23 skidoo" implied that if the horse in the back was to have any chance of winning, it would really have to run very hard. Marlson also says in the article that the expression was originally '23, skidoo for you.'"
So we find that 23 is the trick pony; the dark horse that nobody gives a chance except for the few ticketholders in the stands who pray for and believe in miracles.
Over the years I have met a good deal of people who are similarly obsessed with 23 because it has jimmied the lock on their suspension of disbelief. There's alot of us out there.
The sleeping mystic Aleister Crawley entitled the 23rd chapter "Skidoo" in his 1914 "Book of Lies":
What man is at ease in his Inn? Get out. Wide is the world and cold. Get out. Thou hast become an in-itiate. Get out. But thou canst not get out by the way thou camest in. The Way out is THE WAY. Get out. For OUT is Love and Wisdom and Power.(12) Get OUT. If thou hast T already, first get UT.(13) Then get O. And so at last get OUT.
I will leave you with a list of my own personal observations about the number over the years:
23 has an excellent sense of humor and comic timing.
23 can be a trickle or a flood; an all-night download or a dangling thread.
23 is gnosis.
23 will reveal itself when its good and ready and not a moment before.
23 is a challenge to ordinary human consciousness.
