I didn't invent Crazy Hassan. He was created by Derek Robb, Doctor of the Universe, who included the signature line (that is what they call it, isn't it?) at the end of his posts:
Nothing is True, EVERYTHING MUST GO!!
Crazy Hassan's Clearinghouse of Delights
This is a take-off, of course, on Hassan i Sabbah and his Garden of Delights, and the saying attributed to him: Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted. Is there a Doctor of the Universe in the house??? Derek, this was, after all, your invention. Don't let me do all the talking! Let's hear what you have to say about all this.
Crazy Hassan sprang to life for me while I was doing a spell. Suddenly I
found myself in the Clearninghouse of Delights. I do not mean that I was
hallucinating and seeing things out there. Rather, I was seeing in my
mind's eye. I was in the real world doing my spell, and at the same time,
in my mind, I was in the Clearinghouse. Crazy Hassan is running around
his huge store, hustling his customers and selling as enthusiastically as
he can. "Ho Ho Ho, Everything Must Go Go Go!!!!" As I look around his
Clearinghouse I can see a phangasmagoric jumble everywhere, baubles and
trinkets, sparkling goodies and hideous horrors. "Everything must go!
Fantastic bargains, prices slashed! Anything you could possibly want is
here in my Clearinghouse of Delights!!"
Crazy Hassan is running past me, his turban cockeyed and his robe flapping. Ancient secrets and modern fabrications dance beside sunsets and tv dinners. The wind blows through the trees, snow falls, and warm ocean waves crash on tropical shores as women fight over ceremonial robes on the bargain basement table. Jewels and gold and silver baubles dangle from wires together with the moon, planets, and the stars. Ancient pyramids, hanging gardens, flush toilets and indoor plumbing are piled up on top of boxes of sigils and piano music as the oboe sings and the flute answers. "It's gotta go, everything must go", crows Crazy Hassan as he flies past on a threadbare oriental carpet.
To me, the Clearinghouse of Delights is a metaphor. "Metaphors are on special today. Gotta get rid of them, prices are low low low, gotta go go go. And try our similes as well, we have the best", says Crazy Hassan as he runs over to haggle with a fat lady in a feather boa over the price of the square root of minus one. "Languages for sale in the Clearninghouse of Delights!! Languages to say anything! Tools to invent anything!! Means to create anything and everything in the Clearhinghouse of Delights! Anything goes, Everything goes, Everything must go!!!" The Clearinghouse represents Totality for me, All and Everything, the Multiverse in all its entirety and complexity. "Multiverses for sale!! Universes, Duoverses, Triverses, Verses of all kinds, sonnets, villanelles, freeverse, unrhymed iambic pentameter, you name it, we have it all here in the Clearinghouse of Delights!!!" Crazy Hassan materializes from behind a stack of oriental rugs. He runs around the Clearninghouse shouting, "Big Sale Today in the Clearninghouse of Delights!!", leering and grinning, peddling one miraculous ware after another. I sit here and write to you as a shoplifter stuffs a university full of professors under his coat. "I never worry about shoplifers," says Crazy Hassan. "There's nowhere for them to go. They can never leave the Clearinghouse. There's nowhere else for them to be."
I can use the metaphor of Crazy Hassan because he's funny. I spent years doing Zen Buddhism, as I've said a number of times, and everyone was so goddamned serious. "Seriousness for sale, and serials, and cereal. What will it be, Little Ladies and Gents? Froot Loops or Cheerios? Everything must go!!" Crazy Hassan is winking at a group of dazed tourists who bumbled in by accident as wind chimes tinkle and colored lights flash. Some people do seriousness well, but I just don't. And dogma confines me. There was plenty of dogma in Zen Buddhism. "Dogmas and Catmas for sale, get 'em while they're hot, they have to go!" Crazy Hassan looks over my shoulder and makes faces at my monitor. "Pet snakemas and hamstermas and gerbilmas, pet parakeetmas! Points of View!! Absolute Truths!!! Rights and Wrongs, two for the price of one!! 'Things' for sale!! Ten Thousand 'Things'!!! You make 'em, you create 'em, you buy 'em and take 'em home!!! No 'truths' exist!!! Everything must go, go, go, at every moment, things go go go, from nanosecond to nanosecond!!!! Come to the Clearinghouse of Delights and get yours!! Everyone can have as much as they want!!! Buy now at totally affordable prices!! Everything is for sale, prices are low low low, 'cause everything's gotta go go go!!"
The Crazy Hassan image provides the laughter and funniness I need. To me, seriousness is the opposite of light and enlightenment, and mires me down in my own ego. "Egos gotta go! Deconstruction tools can be found in the hardware department!!! Check our prices, none lower anywhere!!!" Zen Buddhism did bring me the powerful awareness of impermanence, which is why, I believe, I resonate so strongly with Crazy Hassan's "Everything must go" metaphor. "Impermanence! Impermanent waves, Ladies. Come to our hair salon here in the Clearinghouse of Delights for your impermanent wave!" Crazy Hassan goes by on a unicycle. "Nothing lasts, everything passes away. No permanence anywhere. You really can't keep anything, it will slip out through your fingers, and finally even your fingers will go."
Crazy Hassan seems to function as a vehicle for my sub- or un-conscious to use to communicate with my conscious mind. He has this way of suddenly popping up out of nowhere to say something to me as he hurries off to sell snotty attitudes to the yuppies. He seems to appear when I need to be in touch with the deeper parts of myself. "Deep parts for sale, shallow parts for sale, everything is for sale in the Clearinghouse of Delights", Crazy Hassan is laughing as he hurries by to greet his customers. The sun shines sweet and warm over the Finger Lakes region in New York State, the lakes shimmer blue, the grapes are fat and sweet. A magician, touring the wineries, tastes the "Love My Goat" wine as Crazy Hassan goes by on a pogo stick, "Wine, women, and song, and men and children and goats and pigs and geese and cows!! We've chopped our prices, we've slashed our prices, we've cut, mauled, hacked, sliced, diced, and julienned our prices for quick sales!!!" He hurries off to meet the jeweler who is bringing his smiley face chaostars. "Joys and horrors, all of them must go, they come and go, beauty and delight, agony and terror, ho ho ho, everything must go!"
And the stars whirl around in the vast indigo sea, chaostars, pentagrams, unicursal septagrams, six point stars, spinning and dancing, wilder and wilder. Crazy Hassan's voice booms throughtout the Clearinghouse, "Go go go", as phantasmagorical horrors arise. Concentration camps, witch burnings, tortures, armies overrunning the land as terrified civilians plead for mercy. The Benighted States Army, the Prussian Army, the Russian Army, the army of Gengis Khan, the army of Hannibal, Alexander the Great's army, the Roman Army comes marching, marching, marching, carrying the golden eagle, and as Respighi's "Pines of Rome" comes clattering and tumbling to its bumptious conclusion, the musician, sawing away at his cello, blows his mind and dissolves into that VanGoghStarryNight sea of stars. "Man's inhumanity to man can be found over in that aisle, next to ignorance and duplicity. Prices cut! Move it out, everything must go!", Crazy Hassan is singing. Indians, Black people, Asians, minorities are brought into court on trumped-up charges. The lawyer, a chaos magician in an alternative personality, waving a huge sword, steps up to the bench and addresses the judge, "Your Honor, this is a travesty of justice, this is a violation of human rights!!", as Crazy Hassan howls, "Human rights violations are in the next aisle, beside the gas chambers and cattle cars. Prices are cut to the bone, everyone can have some!! Everyone can be both oppressed and an oppressor, nobody need be left out!!! Ho ho ho, this, too, must go!!"
My cat comes and jumps on my lap as I type. "All cats are liars," purrs the Cat. "Strange loops for sale, paradoxes and brain teasers for sale, get 'em while they're hot!!", says Crazy Hassan, as he bends over to pet my cat.
Night falls in the Clearinghouse, followed by morning in a circling yin/yang. On the wooded hillside the waterfalls sparkle. Fall drifts in quietly, followed by winter. "Drifts for sale, if you get my drift!! Everything must go, nothing ever lasts!" Yule passes, and the sun comes dancing in joyfully. Crazy Hassan catches the sun up in his hands and dances with it, faster and faster. The sky swirls, day sky, night sky, morning and evening skies. "Nothing is True!! No truth anywhere!!," sings Crazy Hassan joyfully. The jewels sparkle in the clearinghouse; integers, cardinal numbers, ordinal numbers do the jitterbug; earthworms, monkeys and parrots march in stately procession; chairs and tables join in. "Everything is for sale! There's nothing you can't afford! Cash, check, credit card, and if you haven't any money, then you can shoplift it, because it's already yours!!! But you can't keep it, because Everything Always Goes."
Mountains sing in their deep, rumbling voices, while oceans answer in harmony. Planets spin like tops. Crazy Hassan, riding a broomstick, flies through the star-bedazzled sky. "You can never leave the Clearinghouse of Delights!! There is no place else to go!! Ho ho ho!! Everything Must Go!!" The Clearinghouse spins with the stars, faster, faster. Fireworks blaze, stars explode with joy, the Clearinghouse shifts and sparkles like a crystal chandelier. Forms begin to shimmer and melt and morph. Everything disintegrates as Nibelungen Troglodytes mine molecules. The molecules crackle and split into atoms flying everywhere. Atoms dissolve into electrons, into particles, particles into quarks. And then everything explodes! Space dust forms suns. Suns and planets form solar systems, solar systems form galaxies, galaxies form countless multiverses which flood the whirling fabric of spacetime as Crazy Hassan's laughter roars joyfully throughout. Everything spins faster and faster, faster-faster fasterfaster, a dizzying, dazzling kaleidoscope,
EXPLODES
and dissolves
into the
Clear
White
Light
of
the
Void
......................
Back to the Chapterhouse
The Mass in Chaos (Z) A ritual for the invocation of Crazy Hassan.