Book of the Labyrinth: Invocation

(We’re looking at excerpts from my Book of the Labyrinth, a blank book into which I have written inspirational stuff, divided into the sections of RITUAL in Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy.)

Listen: there’s a hell
of a good universe next door;
Let’s go.
— e.e. cummings

INVOCATION

It occurred to me in yesterday’s post that INVOCATION as a stage in RITUAL might take on added significance during the Captivity. Inasmuch as most of us are struggling to get started MAKING THE THING THAT IS NOT, our INVOCATION may require more than just politely notifying the Muses that we’re getting to work.

I think that the INVOCATION passages that jump out at me in the Book of the Labyrinth now are the ones that acknowledge that we are being called upon to do the impossible, to confront the frightening possibility of failure or of paralysis.

Let go, or be dragged.
—Zen saying

Whoever you are, some evening take a step out of your house, which you know so well.
Enormous space is near.
—Rilke

Act like a crazy dog. Wear sashes and other fine clothes, carry a rattle, & dance along the roads singing crazy dog songs after everybody else has gone to bed.
—Crow Indian

Failure is always an option.
—Lichtenbergian saying

So rather than an amiable request of the external Universe, the INVOCATION becomes instead a challenge to ourselves: a wake-up call to risk it, to have the nerve, the bravery, to take that next step and to DRAW THE CIRCLE.

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What is the knocking?
What is the knocking at the door in the night?
It is somebody wants to do us harm.

No, no, it is the three strange angels.
Admit them, admit them.
— D. H. Lawrence