Day of Domain

The long, seemingly endless, bitter-cold, testicle-tightening Julian month of January is finally over and done with, although Childwinter lingers on.  Today, the 32nd day of Childwinter, is Day of Domain in the Universal Solar Calendar.

Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing is a 1952 allegorical adventure novel by the French writer René Daumal. The novel describes an expedition undertaken by a group of mountaineers to travel to and climb the titular Mount Analogue, an enormous mountain on a surreal continent which is invisible and inaccessible to the outside world, and which can only be perceived by the application of obscure knowledge. The book was one of the sources of the film The Holy Mountain by Alejandro Jodorowsky. 

The novel features the first use of the word "peradam" in literature, an object that is revealed only to those who seek it:

"One finds here, very rarely in the low lying areas, more frequently as one goes farther up, a clear and extremely hard stone that is spherical and varies in size—a kind of crystal, but a curved crystal, something extraordinary and unknown on the rest of the planet. Among the French of Port-des-Singes, it is called peradam . . . The clarity of this stone is so great and its index of refraction so close to that of air that, despite the crystal's great density, the unaccustomed eye hardly perceives it. But to anyone who seeks it with sincere desire and true need, it reveals itself by its sudden sparkle, like that of dewdrops. The peradam is the only substance, the only material object whose value is recognized by the guides of Mount Analogue."

In 2020, while the rest of the world was in cautious quarantine from the covids, the international experimental sound-art ensemble Soundwalk Collective traveled to the Himalayas to record an album based on Mount Analogue. Singer, songwriter, poet, painter, and author Patti Smith, the so-called "godmother of punk," contributed vocals to the project.

The resulting album, Peradam, may be three years old now, but I just discovered it late last year. The title track - the whole album really - skillfully evokes the mystery and allure of the mountains, and the spiritual rewards of climbing and exploration.