I don't typically like to give higher criticism and analysis of my own work. Such a task is better left to the scholars of the future when my posthumous heap left can be sorted through. While I'm alive, though, it is still possible to write down my insights and whatever extra I have to offer about any of it worth saying. That way there is no question or dispute over what was really intended in places where I know for sure.
While I'm bereft of those I love, God would have me know that my emotional longings, memories, and perceptions are valid. If it seems I wrote about someone that I loved, it was not make fun of them. It is that my grief brought about a sublimation of content in a work.
I think to understand my novel Mostafarian Stir Fry Spectacular as a whole, it has first to be understood that the paperback release preceded the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. The novel was published February 24th, 2020, and the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic as of March 11th, 2020. It goes without saying that I toiled on the first draft for the year prior to the completion date- the initial concept far preceding any mentions of the virus (the first of which were December 2019). If you were to ask me how the book reads as though it was after the COVID-19 outbreak, it is because I was on the leading edge- astute and sensitive to society's direction. None of it was really truly known about when the scene outline was crafted, and for most of the time that the first draft was put down.
To read on from this point is to accept spoilers to the book's ending.
A duplicate or different version/form of the Earth is considered typically an unacceptable trope or cliche' in science fiction. In this case, as a COVID-19 prophecy, I think it's fine as speaking about a different form of the same world to come. My characters Jeff Ahrens and Dietrick Marlowe venture out in a space craft only to find a different version of Earth where the language is different. They venture onto what seems to be a religious college campus and encounter a young woman inexplicably speaking their version of English wearing some "hard rock style" and "adult baby" apparel and carrying some drumsticks ready to play a show. The page 208 commentary of her intending to "chide the bourgeois class" with her rock drum playing (intending to be reminiscent of Dave Grohl from Nirvana) I now realize could symbolize (and I emphasize here this is all in vague and mystifying symbols) a speech from Ein Sof declaring that he is about to close the restaurants, bars, coffee shops, and non-essential businesses on Earth. For "with the lights out it is less dangerous," as Kurt Cobain sang in "Smells Like Teen Spirit." (Ein Sof is, of course, the hidden and reclusive God from Kabbalah equal essentially to "The Father" in Christianity). With the "adult baby" component, we have here a "type of" "Son of Man," as though eternally begotten of God forever. The endless rhythmic variants possible on drums signifies the very emphasized "endless" and "limitless" attributes of Ein Sof. All of this is really in symbols and not literal by any means imaginable. The character's presence there is supposed to presumed as legally impossible, which is suggestive of the negation attribute talked about with Ein Sof. I found some good commentary on this right here-https://aleph.org/resources/god-and-gods-name-part-2-endlessness-and-the-light-of-ein-sof
"I have composed a trope within the lyrics of highly variable synopsis," as spoken by the drummer girl on page 209, reminds me for example of the literary trope or expression in the title "Black or White" by Michael Jackson. The songwriter does not clearly mean only the races whose skin are colored black or white, but is indicating all the races at once through a literary trope. This seems to be synecdoche. At times like this with heightened concern over one threat to society our guard goes down over other concerns such as equality and being accepting of differences with our fellow citizens. COVID-19 doesn't give people an excuse to be racist or harmful to those different from ourselves.
Reaching Ein Sof is not supposed to be easily done. If depicted, it should be a pain-staking and long journey or venture with highly meditative aspects, and that is the case of the matter when it comes to the story in the book that I've written. Ein Sof is supposed to be highly unreachable to man and not part of the visible, known, physical world. Thus, the symbolic form here emerges in a hidden planet/world that is only reached on a maiden voyage space journey.
It is also probably worth mentioning that the title contains a near-anagram of "Ein Sof" in the first word ("Mostafarian")- borrow "e" from "Spectacular."
I would like to give one final caveat that I don't hold to Kabbalah necessarily as a worldview, (and my approach is informed by Christian biases where there could be an "incarnation." Metaphysical symbols work as an alternative). The novel seems to tread on Kabbalah territory more, as I am writing about characters on the other side of the dividing line from me where a valid "point of contact" with their types might be actually Kabbalah, as its original origin/basis is found in the Old Testament. I don't doubt there is more here to say that I have overlooked. For example, the ten sefirot (emanations) might be symbolized in the book as the nine planets and the darkness of space. I look forward to further unraveling this analysis as time goes on.
"Mostafarian Stir Fry Spectacular" is a fictional novel by David I. Black available for sale on Amazon.com https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBY96
While I'm bereft of those I love, God would have me know that my emotional longings, memories, and perceptions are valid. If it seems I wrote about someone that I loved, it was not make fun of them. It is that my grief brought about a sublimation of content in a work.
I think to understand my novel Mostafarian Stir Fry Spectacular as a whole, it has first to be understood that the paperback release preceded the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. The novel was published February 24th, 2020, and the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic as of March 11th, 2020. It goes without saying that I toiled on the first draft for the year prior to the completion date- the initial concept far preceding any mentions of the virus (the first of which were December 2019). If you were to ask me how the book reads as though it was after the COVID-19 outbreak, it is because I was on the leading edge- astute and sensitive to society's direction. None of it was really truly known about when the scene outline was crafted, and for most of the time that the first draft was put down.
To read on from this point is to accept spoilers to the book's ending.
A duplicate or different version/form of the Earth is considered typically an unacceptable trope or cliche' in science fiction. In this case, as a COVID-19 prophecy, I think it's fine as speaking about a different form of the same world to come. My characters Jeff Ahrens and Dietrick Marlowe venture out in a space craft only to find a different version of Earth where the language is different. They venture onto what seems to be a religious college campus and encounter a young woman inexplicably speaking their version of English wearing some "hard rock style" and "adult baby" apparel and carrying some drumsticks ready to play a show. The page 208 commentary of her intending to "chide the bourgeois class" with her rock drum playing (intending to be reminiscent of Dave Grohl from Nirvana) I now realize could symbolize (and I emphasize here this is all in vague and mystifying symbols) a speech from Ein Sof declaring that he is about to close the restaurants, bars, coffee shops, and non-essential businesses on Earth. For "with the lights out it is less dangerous," as Kurt Cobain sang in "Smells Like Teen Spirit." (Ein Sof is, of course, the hidden and reclusive God from Kabbalah equal essentially to "The Father" in Christianity). With the "adult baby" component, we have here a "type of" "Son of Man," as though eternally begotten of God forever. The endless rhythmic variants possible on drums signifies the very emphasized "endless" and "limitless" attributes of Ein Sof. All of this is really in symbols and not literal by any means imaginable. The character's presence there is supposed to presumed as legally impossible, which is suggestive of the negation attribute talked about with Ein Sof. I found some good commentary on this right here-https://aleph.org/resources/god-and-gods-name-part-2-endlessness-and-the-light-of-ein-sof
"I have composed a trope within the lyrics of highly variable synopsis," as spoken by the drummer girl on page 209, reminds me for example of the literary trope or expression in the title "Black or White" by Michael Jackson. The songwriter does not clearly mean only the races whose skin are colored black or white, but is indicating all the races at once through a literary trope. This seems to be synecdoche. At times like this with heightened concern over one threat to society our guard goes down over other concerns such as equality and being accepting of differences with our fellow citizens. COVID-19 doesn't give people an excuse to be racist or harmful to those different from ourselves.
Reaching Ein Sof is not supposed to be easily done. If depicted, it should be a pain-staking and long journey or venture with highly meditative aspects, and that is the case of the matter when it comes to the story in the book that I've written. Ein Sof is supposed to be highly unreachable to man and not part of the visible, known, physical world. Thus, the symbolic form here emerges in a hidden planet/world that is only reached on a maiden voyage space journey.
It is also probably worth mentioning that the title contains a near-anagram of "Ein Sof" in the first word ("Mostafarian")- borrow "e" from "Spectacular."
I would like to give one final caveat that I don't hold to Kabbalah necessarily as a worldview, (and my approach is informed by Christian biases where there could be an "incarnation." Metaphysical symbols work as an alternative). The novel seems to tread on Kabbalah territory more, as I am writing about characters on the other side of the dividing line from me where a valid "point of contact" with their types might be actually Kabbalah, as its original origin/basis is found in the Old Testament. I don't doubt there is more here to say that I have overlooked. For example, the ten sefirot (emanations) might be symbolized in the book as the nine planets and the darkness of space. I look forward to further unraveling this analysis as time goes on.
"Mostafarian Stir Fry Spectacular" is a fictional novel by David I. Black available for sale on Amazon.com https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBY96
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