THE LEGEND OF UR
AS TOLD BY R.NIDD
'Tis back to misty times, the mistier the better, so misty in fact that the very idea of the Primordial will be regrettably obscured, no telling what exactly the beginning point is but rest assured at least that something had begun. A legacy quite long and surprising, this Ur, this efflorescence, this renewed city-state. Working knowledge of cuneiform is unnecessary ("like bird tracks in the mud"), a generous host of folks having paid many hours to suchtranslations. But as we embark on this epic, my friend, abandon all hopes of brevity or accuracy because it is that unarticulatable thing, that certain something, that you-know-what-I-mean that we are after, that misty dance from misty times, the mistier the better, so misty in fact that the very idea of the Primordial will be regrettably obscured. Mysterious Sumerians, where did they come from, to whom are they related? A strange race, a small pocket, speaking a tongue entirely unique. Odd ducks.
There is a land between two rivers, later given a name: Mesopotamia (trans: the land between two rivers). A multiplicity of fertilities in this Dilmun, this paradise: plants, animals, bi-peds with complex lives. Six millennia before zero. A city, a location, a kingship: Eridu. A founding bit of Sumeria. The oldest temple in history. Misty: Eridu is dedicated to Enki, the god of water and wisdom, musty wisdom, inexact to the external eye but assuredly somewhere inside there. Kings round these parts last a long time, 36,000 years, some of them, and when the old fellow dies the city is abandoned and the kingship moves to another town. Badtibara, Larak, Shuruppak. But then a great an undeniable mist comes over the land, a mist that clusters into raindrops and pours upon the earth, a veritable flood, the great deluge, and our antediluvian long living kings are vanished quite away. But one man survives the flood with his boat, and from the mists, headquartered at Kish, come a second line of Kings.
We wouldn't know much from the mists before the flood if not for poetry and it is for this reason that poets are the most honored cousins of the dance palace. But I skip ahead.
There was a flood, a great raiment of waters, it was said the gods were unhappy with one of their projects, a flawed creation, humans. Was it cleverness or was there a tip-off, or perhaps some aching in the knees, in the bits of torn ligaments that told Ziusudra, then king of Shuruppak, that the flood was coming? Good counsel from somewhere, and a boat as made, and the animals on board, three by two, four by six, seventeen by forty.
THE STORY OF GILGAMESH
The waters subside, a culture reborn, five kings each living about a thousand years reign in succession, until Gilgamesh. O Gilgamesh, lord of Kullab, great is thy praise.This was the man to whom all things were known; this was the man who knew the countries of the world. He was wise, he knew mysteries, he knew secret things. He could articulate his tailbone; he was king. He went on a great journey, was weary-work, and came back with a story engraved on stone. He said herein lie instructions for a dance. He brought stories from before the flood. He grappled with the concept of mortality, he decided to perform well in his appointed moment. He perfected a handstand, he fought monsters in the land of cedars, he excelled at delicate gesture and had a good memory for complex spatial patterns.He traveled a strange road to fight a long battle, he set out to write his name with the names of famous men. He loved to eat plums. He cried to the great god Shamash. He set out on a dangerous journey with his great friend Enkindu. The wise men said, let Enkindu press first into the passes, let him be watchful, let him attend to proprioception, let him find mobility in his scapula. Gilgamesh studied elephants and pears, he crossed seven mountains and approached the gate of the forest with wonder. He experimented with ways of spinning and wielded his mighty axe. He was resolute in action, he rendered moments with exactitude and perspective. The way was broad and the going was good. He subdued the monster in the land of cedars, who shook and trembled and promised to build him a great palace. Gilgamesh said yes you shall, a palace of cedar, a grand palace of cedar, and he and Enkindu were united in hope and they did a dance. They knew mysteries, they knew secret things, they offered workshops. They returned to town. Enkindu knew he was dying. They both dreamed dreams. Gilgamesh said, "Strange things have been spoken, but why does your heart speak so strangely, why does your arm move so strangely? The dream was marvelous but the terror was great. We must treasure the dream whatever the terror, for the dream has shown that misery at last comes to the healthy man, and that the end of his life is sorrow." And Gilgamesh pondered these happenings and grappled with the idea of mortality and decided to perform well in his appointed moment. He perfected a jig, he built a palace. He spoke a poem to his brother. The joy of the worm turned out to be joyless. He grew his hair long and spent time hanging over. He issued a proclamation and left town. He sought his father in the land of Dilmun, where there is no illness or aging. He convinced the mountain to open its gate. He walked 12 leagues in thick darkness. His minds eye tracked each vertebra and he imagined inefficient and amusing ways of walking. Then he was in the garden of the gods and the sun streamed out. The leaves were lapis. He met Siduri the goddess of the vine, and he told her his tale. He could articulate his tailbone, we was king, he was Gilgamesh. For him there had been built a great palace to dance in, but he despaired the loss of his friend. He perfected a slow shift of weight and rotated his forearm in a conical pathway. He beseeched Siduri to spare him from death. She said, "dance and be merry, feast and bathe yourself, for that too is the lot of men." He took a ferry and met Utnapishtim. He asked him questions about living and dying. Utnapishtim rotated his skull on his spine, he sunk his left collarbone and folded from the elbow, and he said to Gilgamesh, "there is no permanence." Gilgamesh tried to escape mortality by evading sleep but the mists of sleep crept over him. He returned home to his lands with the ferryman. He was Gilgamesh, this was the man who knew many countries, he was wise, he knew secrets, he perfected a jig and ate dinner. Eventually he died, but before he did, he stood on a great stone and said to his people, I have seen many lands and fought monsters in the cedar forests. I have walked through mountains and lost my friend. I know of vegetation audacious and unlikely. I know stories from before the flood and old-school beats. I know mysteries and secret things, I have written poetry. I am Gilgamesh and I say unto you, you must build a great dance palace in this land between two rivers, for there is no permanence but you may rejoice in dance.
And though they mourned their great king's death, the people of Ur did rejoice in dance, devoting large quantities of the public fund and mind to the contemplation and execution of such sequences of movement. The weather changed from day to day and no one sought to control it. Everywhere in the city-state of Ur were people taking the time to make or watch dances, finding meaning, fulfillment and happiness in their fully rendered moments.
BOOM TIMES FOR UR AND DANCING
These were good times in Ur. Centuries and millennia passed. There were some quarrels with neighbors, there were times when the neighbors brought cake. There were epochs of great building and a sequence of great thinkers. If it is the lot of man to live here in the impermanent world, if even the great king Gilgamesh is denied residence in Dilmun, where there is no aging or change or illness, then we must examine how we are to live here among each other. As they practiced their dances and meditated on impermanence, thoughts grew in the minds of the people of Ur. They shared their thoughts with their kings Ur-Engur and his son Dungi, who ruled so wisely and justly it was said that Dilmun had returned, this was their ancient paradise, for like everyone else in the world, the Sumerians had a lost paradise to think about in idle moments. A code of law was established which said, among other things: all citizens of Ur have a right to $5 morning class. All citizens of Ur shall honor their ideas and make performance offerings grow from such meditations. All citizens or Ur shall receive a quarterly handout of visuals and verbiage. All citizens of Ur shall have access to ukuleles and floors with some spring in them. All citizens of Ur shall be welcome at the dance palace for there is no permanence, but you may rejoice in dance. (This of course is the code which the Babylonian King Hammurabi later took up, with some small adjustments.)
The great Ur III dynasty brought on a flowering of performance never before seen in the land between two rivers. But conditions were not immune from the state of impermanence under which the whole world lived. The weather changed and no one tried to control it. While the good citizens of Ur were caught up in a certain question of spatial translation, the warlike and hungry Elamites raised a mighty army and brought terrible destruction upon the city. Such was the end of Ur. Or was it?
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT
Through the fires of that terrible sacking, a small crew of Sumerians and their very beautiful dog named Emmy Hennings rand to the dance palace and found the most sacred box of dance notations and papers which recorded their legends and the edict of Gilgamesh. They assembled a hasty basket of rushes into which the documents were placed, then sealed it with pitch. Just as the dog Emmy Hennings was fastening her strong teeth around the handle, a gang of attackers fell upon the group. She darted around them, took one last loving glance at her faithful owner, who saw her beautiful dog and whimpered a plaintive "urrrrr," (for that is the sound a citizen of Ur makes when they see a nice dog), and then turned towards the attacked and bellowed, in a might tone, "Ur!" (because "Ur!" is the battle cry of Ur).
Here begins the apocryphia, as reported by a certain pigeon:
The beautiful dog named Emmy Hennings ran out of the city and kept running, past Uruk, past Lagash, past Kish, past Nippur, all the way to the Tigris which she attempted to swim across, and not without some difficulty. A rhinoceros swam by, so surprising the dog that she let go of the basket. The basket turned in circles. A strange man walked on the bank, who did a strange dance and smoked a strange pipe. He called the dog and the rhinoceros, and when they both were on the muddy banks of the river, he turned to the basket and intoned, "Blago bung, blago bung, bossa fataka!" and the basket of rushes sealed with pitch began to float gently upstream, in complete opposition to the waters surrounding it, which made their dutiful path to the Persian Gulf.
From the pigeon, who was rather distracted with business in Alexandria, I gathered the following inventory of events. I hope that you, gentle reader, will forgive your humble author for lapses in the story. It is not easy to understand a bird.
AS TOLD BY THE PIGEON
The basket arrived after great length in a mountain monastery near the source of the Tigris. Now the inhabitants of that monastery spent several years in quiet contemplation of the contents of the basket of rushes sealed in pitch that had moved so strangely upriver to the source of the Tigris. The writing ("like bird tracks in the mud") was queer. Time yielded logic, and they learned to relate the drawings to their anatomies, realizing finally that conical rotation was the key to translation. Centuries passed and the dances of Ur moved from the page to the breathing body in a nod of abstract space.
And lo, the dances of Ur were perfected but for one thing: they related not to the world. "Like bird tracks in the mud, not lines in imaginary space!" shouted an ardent novice one year as he clutched the precious basket, stolen from the sanctuary, while descending the slopes of shale into the mists of the valley. He met a girl in a village and presented the basket to her as a gift, convinced of her superlative qualities of joint articulation. She in turn presented it to the town council, who held deliberations long into the night in which it was decided that, as the ancient Ur honored Nanna, them moon god, they would offer this basket to her, not on earth, but on the moon. So they built a giant catapult (one of the villagers had settled down after a campaign with Alexander's army and was familiar with such technology and scale), and sent the basket to the moon.
WHAT NANNA DECIDED
Nanna however decided that it pleased her best to look down on earth and see the dances. "Dance and be merry, for that too is the lot of men," she said. So she gave it to her best friend, the great astral wind named Harvey, to deliver back to earth, which he did, though he missed the actual earth and instead deposited the basket of rushes sealed with pitch in the ocean, for which we can hardly blame him--the earth is 75% water, after all. The basket floated for years until it washed up on a small island across from the harbor of Alexandria, where it stayed, 'neath the shadow of the great lighthouse for 500 years. (It was here that the pigeon had the opportunity to examine the basket and perform certain chemical tests to determine the locations and pathway of the basket up 'til that point.)
WHAT HAPPENED AFTER THAT
Earthquakes shook the basket looks and once again it floated in the Mediterranean, bouncing along the coastline of Europe for years until it landed in Plymouth, England, where one of the dock-workers, looking inside and seeing the legend "Ur" and mistakenly thinking it bound for the river "Ure" loaded it on the back of a cart headed up Yorkshire-way. Deposited at the river's edge in a small village on the dales, the basket was picked up by a lovely dog and taken home to its master, who examined its contents and thought it all to be quite nonsense ("now if it had said, there is no permanence but you may rejoice in ale..."). He sold it off to an antique shop, which in turn sold it off to one Henry Adams who thought it might make a charming gift for his cousin back state side, who had a growing collection of rush-pitch baskets. Finding its way back to America, the basket was only to be forgotten in dusty attic for many more years, visited only by that long living-pigeon (for the cousin had quite outgrown the fascination with baskets by the time Mr. Adams returned).
A GREAT MYSTERY
It is a great mystery what happened in the intervening century. The pigeon assures that it is an arcana of tedious detail, fit only for a librarian or other persons of extreme patience. I absolutely do not believe the pigeon but alas I am dependent upon his word. All we do know is that one day late in 2002, that very same basket floated up the Gowanus canal and landed at the feet of Mr. Chris Yon and Ms. Karinne Keithley, who, having an appetite for old things, were able to extract the edict of Gilgamesh from the faded crumbly cuneiform, monk notes, moon writing, and shipping directions, all quite water stained. As they read through the contents of the basket it crumbled in their hands, for there is no permanence, but safe to say they have taken wisely the worlds of Gilgamesh to heart, and built a great dance palace for the Ur IV dynasty, to support the re-emergence of those Sumerians and their melancholy bodies and strange behaviors, their minor shifts of weight, their conical rotations, their imitations and buffoonery, their sincere repetitions of phrases in 7, their walking, their pausing, their songs and fancies, their little dances.
* the end *
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