BOOK OF THE DAMNED 203 



in the past, we accept that the absolute can't be the related. So 

 then that our quasi-state is not a real relation, if nothing in it is 

 real. On the other hand, it is not an unreal relation, if nothing in 

 it is unreal. It seems thinkable that the Positive Absolute can, by 

 means of Intermediateness, have a quasi-relation, or be only quasi- 

 related, or be the unrelated, in final terms, or, at least, not be the 

 related, in final terms. 



As to free will and Intermediatism same answer as to everything 

 else. By free will we mean Independence or that which does not 

 merge away into something else so, in Intermediateness, neither 

 free-will nor slave-will but a different approximation for every 

 so-called person toward one or the other of the extremes. The 

 hackneyed way of expressing this seems to me to be the acceptable 

 way, if in Intermediateness, there is only the paradoxical : that we're 

 free to do what we have to do. 



I am not convinced that we make a fetich of the preposterous. 

 I think our feeling is that in first gropings there's no knowing what 

 will afterward be the acceptable. I think that if an early biologist 

 heard of birds that grow on trees, he should record that he had 

 heard of birds that grow on trees: then let sorting over of data 

 occur afterward. The one thing that we try to tone down, but 

 that is to a great degree unavoidable is having our data all mixed 

 up like Long Island and Florida in the minds of early American 

 explorers. My own notion is that this whole book is very much like 

 a map of North America in which the Hudson River is set down 

 as a passage leading to Siberia. We think of Monstrator and Melan- 

 icus and of a world that is now in communication with this earth: 

 if so, secretly, with certain esoteric ones upon this earth. Whether 

 that world's Monstrator and Monstrator's Melanicus must be 

 the subject of later inquiry. It would be a gross thing to do: 

 solve up everything now and leave nothing to our disciples. 



I have been very much struck with phenomena of "cup marks." 



They look to me like symbols of communication. 



But they do not look to me like means of communication be- 

 tween some of the inhabitants of this earth and other inhabitants 

 of this earth. 



My own impression is that some external force has marked, with 

 symbols, rocks of this earth, from far away. 



I do not think that cup marks are inscribed communications 

 among different inhabitants of this earth, because it seems too 



