Workshop edit
Jeremiah still had yet to while away the final Autumn of his twenties when he was accepted to join a group
of prominent Torah, Hebrew and Greek scholars in researching and translating the first of the Dead Sea Scrolls
following their discovery in the first of the Qumran caves in Palestine between 1949 and 1951. A lifetime of fervent
scholarship had led him to this fruitful point, and he accepted this bounty of his labors with the utmost grace and
humility.
Though the site of their research was to be in Palestine, the scholars were to meet in Israel, where, due to the
escalating conflict between the neighboring countries, those of Jewish faith among the group would by necessity
have to forego their traditional cultural dress and assume a more ‘Palestinian’ appearance in order to facilitate their
crossing over the border en route to the Palestine Archeological Museum where the scrolls were being housed.
Beyond the Scrollery - the room in which the scrolls were to be studied - the museum housed numerous
other curiosities and artifacts unearthed in the territory of Palestine, and, when Jeremiah was not pressed with
his academic rigors, he enjoyed wandering the halls, particularly around the wing housing remains of an ancient
Islamic palace discovered in the previous century; an artful arrangement of numerous stone and clay sculptures,
latticework, and bas reliefs which populated the palace. Archeologists had not been able to outline a determinate
historical framework for the site, and there was an utter lack of textual sources making reference to it, so, surrounded
by the marvel and ahistorical existence of the palace as he was, Jeremiah felt as though he had been thrown into a
new world, a world shrouded in a dense fog and clothed in a covering of mystery. There could have been no greater
site than this museum seated within this ancient city in which to research these mysterious scrolls, he thought, and
so it was with the utmost faith in God that he viewed it as his דועי, his ye’ood, his fate that he would be chosen to study
what would later come to be known as The Book of Mysteries.
A cursory skim of its contents revealed the ‘book’ to be a document penned by an unnamed teacher who makes
repeated usage of the term raz, taken to denote a sort of secret or mystery that is known first and foremost by God,
and whose wisdom may only be communicated from God to man through divine revelation. However, it was the
eschatological section of the text - the author’s commentary on the end of days - which most possessed Jeremiah’s
interest.
The author writes that the end time shall not arrive by the usual means of supreme judgment or catastrophe,
but by a gradual expansion of light which will compel the world’s darkness to vanish. Stricken by such a prodigious
image, Jeremiah, lying on the verge of sleep, would attempt to visualize such a miraculous end - the flooding of
Terrin Winkel
light through the phenomenal world, blinding the vision of the “adherents of the secrets of sin,” as the scroll called
them - in hopes that the image would follow him into dreams, and often, as his obsession grew more feverish, they
would.
In one such dream - serving as both subject and observer - he would see himself seated in an idyllic garden, his
oneiric Eden, in a circle amongst his childhood friends as they would often sit after school in Gravesend Park back
in Brooklyn, blowing dandelions and watching the florets carry the wishes they made off towards some inestimable
distance. After Jeremiah blew the first flower picked from the dreamed fields of dandelions - having wished that he
would live forever as was his repeated wish in his younger years - he and his friends noticed a wave of light forming
on the horizon; forming and rushing towards them; subsuming their bodies and obliterating their sight. Then,
before Jeremiah’s dreamed double could question the phenomenon of his blindness, he was exiled from the dream
- jolted awake, his heart throbbing - and would lapse into a dull, dreamless slumber soon thereafter.
As his research continued, Jeremiah came to stumble on a detail so slight; a detail that could have been so easily
missed, though it was no less fascinating despite its subtlety. His fixation on the minor feature of the scroll moved
his fellow scholars to tease him in good humor, and they began calling him Baal Shem - Hebrew for Master of the
Name, a reference to the ancient Jewish experts of the kabbalah who invoke the name of God in many varieties of
rituals - though this did not deter him from his fascination.
It was during a break in his research when Jeremiah returned to Brooklyn that he explained the oddity he found
in the scroll’s material. Seated in the familiar fields of Gravesend Park, Jeremiah, following a round of surface
conversational pleasantries, explained to his friends - each of whom were raised in a fervent Jewish community
and grew up reading and studying the Torah - that, in the fifth fragment of the Book of Mysteries, there was what
appeared a redaction, a striking of YAHWEH next to which was written the correction: the Hebrew equivalent
of “His name,” a strict violation of Jewish law which forbids the erasure or defacement of the ineffable name of
God. The author’s mistake then became Jeremiah’s own, he explained, as he was drafting the first of his cursory
translations.
“So you defaced HaShem,” his closest friend, Elijah, joked. “That’s it for you, then. You know what happened
to our people every time they angered The Lord.”
“I have noticed my vision blurring since I made the mistake,” Jeremiah said in the same humorous spirit.
“Oh, well there you go. Seems like your judgment’s already begun.”
Jeremiah chuckled.
“I just need a good pair of glasses, is all. I spend all day reading through all these texts, and my eyes just get
exhausted after a while, you know?”
The jovial spirit of their reunion carried on from there for some time until the streaks of evening’s fire blazing
across the sky were beginning to die out.
“Before we get out of here,” one of his other friends began. “Let’s all make a wish. Like we used to do as kids.”
Laughing, they each plucked a single dandelion.
“To my research,” Jeremiah said, although, before he could commit to that fateful dispersion of the flower,
Elijah cut in.
“I thought for sure you were going to wish you’d live forever.”
Jeremiah laughed, then corrected himself: “How about this: I wish that I’ll live long enough to finish my
research.”
He then pursed his lips and blew. The others then followed suit, blowing one by one, although, once Elijah, the
last in the group, finished, Jeremiah was quick to inform him that he hadn’t stated his wish.
“Oh. I wished that you’d have perfect vision again.”
Jeremiah made an effort to laugh, but something caught in his throat and he began to cough.
“Sore throat?”
Jeremiah nodded.
“I think I’m coming down with something. It’s been like this for the last week at least.” Then, with a faint
chuckle, went on: “Since about the time I noticed my vision starting to blur, actually.”
“Well here,” Elijah said, then picked another dandelion. “I wish that HaShem will show you mercy in your
judgment.”
Jeremiah jabbed his shoulder, laughed, and shook his head.
Elijah blew, and, though the rest of his friends were pleased to watch the cloud of dandelion florets float away
on the timid currents of the evening breeze, Jeremiah was afraid to admit that they were as beyond his sight as the
wind itself.
channeled and rigorous application of Language
logically leads to exhaustion, and, as a rule,
void itself it reached, into the im m
aterial - the void w
here the spirit once rested before it w as given form
and fl esh - and dow
n to the underw orld
to destroy the body is to deconstruct the language w hich form
ed it
was my j udgment
to invok e this pla
gue thro ugh the e
rasure of
The Lor d’s name
: the dea th of Go
d’s tellur ic domai
n
: v om
it, O
sp ea
ke r,
an d
sp ea
k in
w av
es o
f pl
ag ue
; y ou
w
ho a
re n
au se
ou s w
ith th
e vi
ru s o
f la
ng ua
ge ; s
pe ak
in th
e se
rv ic
e of
e xt
in ct
io n,
to b
an ish
a ll
m an
ki nd
to th
e in
fe rn
o
if L
og os
re ve
al s w
ha t i
s c on
ce al
ed ; i
f La
ng ua
ge e
xp os
es A
le th
ei a
in h
er
un co
nc ea
le dn
es s t
he n
th is
pl ag
ue h
as re
ste d
do rm
an t w
ith in
a ll
sp ea
ke rs
si nc
e
this swimming sickness - realizing thereafter
this v omit-
langu age -
a lexi con d
rafted in str
eaks o f bile
birth s thes
e
infest the speaker; poison those w ho are spoken to;
to vom it upon and cannibalize the language itself,
impotent, stillborn fetus oozes from the mouth in a gory, bloodworn babble: Language must be preserved with the ultimate aspiration of
Lan guag
e in the s
ervic e of
man ifest
ation ; the
tran smis
sion of p
lagu e, of
sem iotic
dise ase
<<though the body incurs fatigue nonetheless>>
<< th
ou gh
th e b
od y i
nc ur
s f ati
gu e n
on eth
ele ss>
>
language; a body of water, a planetary body, the body
of a cell: it is all language; all prone to pollution
a fl ood like w
aves o f acid
from the co
rrosiv e
ocean of lan
guage disint
egrati ng tha
t whic h
a smoking acrid nothingness where the world of
essence - of signs and symbols - once stood
once Langu age - fertiliz
ed by the sp ermatozoa
of
thought - re aches peak
maturation that manife
station of
plague occu rs; a physio-
linguistic m echanism w
hich
the fev
er; wh
at sic
kn ess
is for
- t he
fev er
dem an
ds rec
ove ry;
de ma
nd s
tha t th
e b od
y a nd
m ind
sp oke
n o r w
ritt en
to exh
au stio
n c oll
ap se;
: language, as the architecture of dreams, is the peremptory issue
םיהולא השעש המ לכ היה הז
‘where has G_d gone?’ comes the perennial cry, and I shall tell you: we have not killed him, you and i: it is
He who is our murderer: but how have we done this; how have we invoked His wrath? or, rightly, how was it that
i myself have come to find the existential burden of the death of humanity pressing upon my conscience with its
unfathomable moral weight? how have we <<mankind>> come to vomit the body of language itself ? who cursed
us with these cataracts to obscure the entire horizon; this worsening arthritis in every knuckle and digit of our
laboring hands? do we not feel the extraordinary and violent presence of a semiotic space thick with clouds of
sickness? do we not smell anything yet of man’s decomposition? language too decomposes - language now rots the
body, paralyzes the hands, and blinds the eyes. and how shall i, murderer of all murderers, console myself ?
: what are our books, our tapes, and written records now if they are not the tombs and sepulchres
of man?
*
i have witnessed its manifestation - occuring to varying degrees in every individual - in the bodies of those i
loved and those i have known <<or some among them, since distance has often proven a greater obstacle than my
failing faculties of sight>>: first came the strained rasp in the throat; words torn from the trachea like auditory
abrasions of sandpaper scraped along the windpipe: then endless screaming; perpetual and incessant screaming;
endless caterwauls casting titanic waves across the befogged ocean of my haunted memory; screams sounding like
a bone-dry guttural grinding; screams of pained, desperate pleas against their impending muteness|against the
obsolescence of the vocal cords|against the flood of vomit that marks the body’s expiration, or the misting of the
lens of the eyes|the gradual thickening of the ocular fog until both eyes are painted over with a dense cataractic
film
: i can’t see, i can’t see elijah cried with what little of the tightening throat had yet to vomit the last of its
language|before the throat closed once and for all: if only i could have told him, neither can i; neither could i see
the seeds of our dandelion wishes flitting away in the breeze; neither did i dare, in your final moments, to offer a
spoken apology for fear of what greater sickness would follow <<a regret that will follow me into the fire>>: my
friend, i watched you vomit on yourself|watched the filth and bile bubble in the basin of your throat as the last of
your labored breaths struggled to break the surface of the vile pool
: then, from vomit to silence to the flames with you
*
if only you would have listened|if only you would have known from the first autopsy
: cause of death of the first victim - my closest friend -: unascertainable, or so you wrote before needing to fear of
the arthritic symptoms of the plague; but was it not indeed ascertainable?
: so puzzled over his corpse you were, though my testimony should have sufficed for a body of evidence <<literal
and figurative>> - language alone should have affirmed what elijah’s corpse could not -: the body alone merely
betrayed the marvel of the emerging sickness|of the semiotic plague given me by G_d to spread <<unwittingly>>
the world over: the cataracts clouded across the lens of the eye|the concomitant soup of vomit and sputum flushed
from the stomach|the violent lily bloom of the hematoma lining the neck; a consequence of the constriction and
closure of the throat following the exhaustion of language - almost beautiful, wasn’t it - the hematoma - with its
lush spread of purples and reds contoured to the exact dimensions of the trachea; blossoming like a bed of flowers
sprouted from a field grown fallow
: our excruciating demise; in some ways so beautiful in its tragedy; so tragic in its beauty
: tragic more still that i could not describe the mere phenomenon of the plague without then transmitting the
sickness: considerably more tragic was your scoffing at my pleas to assume a vow of silence|that all words written
will only waste your hand|that the friction of every orthographic figure grazing across your eye was due to blind
you all
: your new-age skepticism could find no tolerance for my so-called old-world idiocy, and perhaps you were on
to something: after all, it is through the old world - from the G_d Who instantiated the world through Language
alone and Who once manifested as cloud, as flame, and as man alike; from the Book of Mysteries dating back to the
1st century BCE - that this plague was transmitted to this body, this feeble skeleton dressed in atrophying muscle
and sallow flesh
: were it only that my body was thrown to the flames before the utterance of the first fatal
word|before the semiotic sickness could come wafting from the mouth of the man who dared to
deface the ineffable name of G_d
*
arthritis worsens with every labored stroke of the pen: the sound of synovial fluid popping between the joints
of fingers: fingers tense over keys of typewriter; proximal phalanx of thumb now scrapes over connective joint of
metacarpal bone: interphalangeal joints of fingers constrict and cramp momentarily; loosen moments later
: vision worsening by the day; the neurotic compulsion to frequent and obsessive revision <<for whom; for
what audience?>> only expedites my inevitable blindness: a pair of glasses - given by prescription on my return to
Palestine - grant the eyes a suitable field of vision, though it is still terribly blurry
: the end of days, the supreme and imperishable light i dreamt of so many years ago|which was written of
in the Book of Mysteries is soon|is sure to come: then, the vomit|the bruising|the blindness|the silence|the flames
: still, this must be written <<for a rapidly diminishing audience whose readership i can now only imagine>>;
my treatise|my desperate pleading; a cry to you who cannot hear|a signal to you who cannot see to abandon all
language- verbal|written|spoken
: you who still survive|you who scoffed at my so-called madness: you must feel my desperation: you must
feel the immeasurable weight of my guilt and understand, finally, after presumably millions have perished with
presumably millions more to pass, why the world faces the fateful plunge
: into silence : into flames
*
experiencing the preliminary symptoms of the plague - feeling finally the desperation which would at last
compel you to accept|to believe|to try anything - and understanding at long last <<or sinking low enough to
surrender the skepticism which threw you into the very thick of the sickness>> the dire seriousness of the situation,
you thought yourselves wise to contract your words|parse your sentence|forego all punctuation|exempt all vowels
from all written words until you|we|all of us spoke|wrote in a pidgin mutant language - speaking in portmanteaus
with deformed lines of idiot babble littering your pages|spattering from your idiot mouths since you did not yet
understand that the only solution was silence|an utter denial of the written word|the total abandonment of
language in its plurality of forms
: you spoke in english tu hablaste en español parlasti italiano gesprochen deutsche et français and nothing
worked: nada niente nicht rien: words wafted from a foreign tongue wasted what was left of your language all the
same, and so it was that your body was soon to be thrown into the fire
or
: had you only remained as silent as the flames
*
ill continu to write untli th arthritic hand closes once & fr all; continu to littr these sheets & paper th walls of
evry sign & structur i pas untl yu all understnd|untl my writngs cause yr blindnss <<inevitabl anywa>> - a modest
reveng against my evry naysayer -; until th lens of th eye becoms cloudd over altgthr w/ th impenetrabl film of
cataracts; untl all tht can be seen is light - pure, inextinguishabl light; a flood of lght as i hav dreamt of for al thes
years which wil delivr us al to Eden, to th wrld beyond ths one - this whrling cinder, this wrld the dvil was cast into
frm Heavn; which Satn made his own -: the fulfilmnt of th prophcy as writtn in Th Bk of Mystrs is wel nigh; that
great ‘steady increas of light;’ it comes w/ th gradual foging of th eyes, it comes w/ the mounting paralysis of the
hands, it comes w/ the constriction of th throat: the end; it comes
: & may this mesage rech yu befor th flames
*
th futility of communcatng th basis of th plag; th irony of wrsning its symptms thru its dscription, thru every
warnng - in you & withn myslf
: th laborng hnd grws arthritc, th eyes evr cloudy
*
my finl lettr to th wrld|to th Lrd our G_d tho he has frskn me; a writtn farewll to blind th rest of yu|to welcom
you to th inevitabl silnce|to th comng quiet: you al wll join me soon, in our asensory Eden
: i fel th vomt surfcing, rushng from th gut upwrds; th teribl dystrphy of th muscls|fngrs|joints - th muscls al
aflame w/ a terrbl pain: ths, my finl baptsm; anointd w/ th filth & th spew of ths wretchd body, th closur of the
throt, th finl breth pushd thru mouth gurglng th body’s wast
: thend cm so sn; passng bfr i cld acmplsh my redmptn, tho this’ my jdgmt, a fate iv no chc but to accpt, a burdn
iv no choice to ber, & thus, w/ the last of th strength this bdy hlds, i bid yu al welcm to th end|ushr yu al into yr
finl days; & on & on th spririt shal fly, out frm th bdy; onwrd & upwrd towrds