Buddhist Third Class Junkmail Oracle, January 1968

Buddhist Third Class Junkmail Oracle, January 1968

For creating these dada assemblages for Project 68, one of my favorite underground newspapers is the Buddhist Third Class Junkmail Oracle, a rough-and-ready journal published from 1967 to 1968 in Cleveland, Ohio. The pages were pasted up from typescripts and freehand drawings, which, when digitally digested today, gives Optical Character Recognition (OCR) fits & produces some delightfully weird & pointed passages. I could never have thought up phrases like “@ poen is mirthier than The sky” and “whose l0ader Jesus- the Teacher of of the :ea Scrolls” to mention just a couple.

What I am looking for in Project 68 is how memory works in the digital world. I lived through those years, so I have my personal recollections of the events and personalities covered by the underground press. But how it all comes back to life in the digital age is a proper mystery, a jigsaw puzzle, a mosaic of references and juxtapositions that, for me, wholly erupts themes and devices for thought and perception that can be had no other way.

These assemblages should be shocking and disturbing, evocative in ways that even I cannot imagine. Every person’s take will be different—that’s the way memory works—and every take will be valid.

A kind of mnemonic collage waiting to be intuitively translated by the viewer & reader. Make what you will of:

Y:rnK- uS0d- bei;j
-iu-‘it-a c1assj:c’ .
s’tlord. II
’IThe future – that is what

It may all look crazy. But . . . well, it was a crazy time, just about as chaotic as our own. Every week, hundreds of Americans and Vietnamese died in a war with no end in sight. Think about that. So certain themes run though the accounts by witnesses, even when these statements are unintentionally valuable yet as mundane as a classified ad that begs for free furniture for a commune’s daycare center or a plea for a shared ride to San Francisco.

The world of 1968 was a mad fabric of anti-war resistance, black liberation, labor agitation, class struggle, sexual freedom, feminism, Buddhism, drugs, rock-n-roll . . . and the underground press.

Is this just dada-nostalgia, “curious but so what” kind of stuff? Well, I hope there is meat on these tired bones. Half a century on, we still worry with these issues. The struggle for a sane world community never ends, so I figure that every contribution to its progress has merit. Plus it’s fun.

Buddhist Third Class Junkmail Oracle, January 1968

@
Vel.l#IO
V£HSUS S0.lA3LISHMSNr
TnE BlTlDHIST JUNKMAIL ORACLE
THb I @ poen is mirhtier than
The sky as a scr.oll alone could carry
the complete story of all the poets
who aimed their pens at the powerful
Milton, Shelley, Heine, walt Nhitman,
Swinburne, and so many !Dore.

Here let us only catch the sky
in a little mirror, and observe
that it was on the eve of the
thundering crash of 1929
that the American authorities
sF.ized and held for deportation
the Anarchist poet lvlareus Graham,
compiler of Anthology of Revolutionary ?oetry,
for the crime of possessing
a copy of his own book.
And of late the beefy rulers of
lfoscow, who had seemed so successful
in satisfactorily
everybody,
have been puffing
and grunting in their
to ferret out, run down,
arrest, try, jail, and smother
– poets.
Simon Emler

:>
OniQ 1968 the artists are. rt
Oscar

Subscriptions Not Wanted /
Dona- tions for the this paper
may be sent to
c/o The Asphodell
306 Superior A,e.
Cleveland, Ohio – 44112.
This iS,a mailing ad ress only.
I cannot be reach- ed tIlere
by pho!,e or by personal visit.
& Photos still wanted.

BzRDO TRODOL for Tommy Bell
Go Peaceful in the-Cities of Beauty, Tom:
ride as you rode among us, easy, unafraid.
Whisper back to us, as we carryon,
speak of the Cities of Paradise, rider.
I wanted to whisper thRt in you, Tommy,
as you died.
Ride easy, gone from the City of Hell,
Whisper back of the Cities of
go peaceful in Cities of Beauty, Tom:
RIDE.
by Mike Aldrich
(Free Poems Friends, Buffalo, New York)-
Tom Bell was the pres- ident of The Road Vultures Club of Western New York and Canada-

In This Issue
On Underground Movies by Geoffrey Cook
THE Yoga Of Sex by &Rita A SEEarate
(notes on underground) by Joseph Kay etc.
What Educetlon?by Antt-Buddhist Propaganda
reprinted From Van Hnnh Universltv
TIlE Poet ’18 ‘.rhe Establishment — -by Simon

Y:rnK- uS0d- bei;j
-iu-‘it-a c1assj:c’ .
s’tlord. II
’IThe future – that is what

The Talmud.
……… .
IV, Ikhnaton, Ser- vant of Aton
the first indivijual in history –
was a poet. He wrote the
in the IG4th Psalm in the Bible.
He drove away the horde
of beast-headed gods,
booted out the priests
who fDttened on the cults,
end closed their temples
with a banp-.
.t,’ ; ,t.’. ,ita on recor4, U’ . “
read by Kenf.Nbrcl… f wi th mnsic
“ h)T’ rhe Ken 1rd,’1.
But after the
died, the priests rallied
and genera.tion –
reformer restored
cultic power.

arose Yahweh, the great .
Shokespea re who writes the drama
of history and men their
oart3 on the stage of the world.
His of poets the Hebrew prophets
poured forth a torrent of verses
the high and )o’../c=r-corrupted.
Heir to the prophets were the
whose l0ader Jesus- the Teacher of
of the :ea Scrolls – wrote his
inspired by David, ‘:Iho
had been a poet too.
About 80 years before the pra,
this weird pre-Christian Jesus
W&S stoned to deoth and hanged
on a
had offended the lions.
The J o h n was a poet,
un1 opened his Fospel
with a ch,;Jnt.
’rhe Ijp:ht shone into
the darkness, and the
darkness could understand it
nor overcome it. • •’I
Christopher was the Star ‘)oet
of Sir .•alter .. al-
School of a Nhlch olsnned
to overthrow the :{1).’)en
and. :nal{e a. secret Free-
thinker, the K i n p o f
An avant of secret
t o
’Tesrs leter – – , – •. ; J
b?he?dcd, leaving a
6srlding the that ruIe:: church and court.
fl ‘I
Shs’,cespeere waileJ of .,nrt ll

CLEAN YOURMilD AND EMPTY YOUR POCKETS

AT EVERY TOP-NOTCH RECORD SHOP AMERICA GET CLEAN

mede by Authority, and company
fot into trouble bec-use of a
11 t o o
;;’ueen “:;lizabath.
{oung poet Karl ..K arx ‘,
irote to his Jenny,
”Ins:.ired by thy love I stride forth to
defy the ‘tlorld.”
Later burned ail his to turn
to out “reat peaks of prose.
2fter 068 pages of he ed
n a nHad I the of my friend
Eeinrich Heine. • •”

t9

AS ‘I1IIS HIT LPON PHiliPS

beok of the

IJr0 up••••

.

(An assemblage inspired by digital copies of the Buddhist Third-Class Junkmail Oracle.)

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