You have our permission to skip this introduction, SO CRANK ON IN, OK NARCOS? Jump in anywhere you like. Eat in either direction. Dress optional.
As you must already realize, Dear Reader, this is not a regular book, even if it looks and feels and behaves like one. No, it's actually an exceptional and fantastic sort of beast, a literal *amphisbaena* and a real prodigy, a being much more two-faced, fork-tongued, and cross-eyed than any regular book could possibly hope to be. So, in all honesty, we should call it by a different name, say a KOOBLAI AL-BOOK, if you would, to suggest that it is rather more something from out of a dream or far kingdom. For us at least, it has taken on the character of a Moby-book as well, a great white tome and extended meditation, if not a fanatic quest....
"AH! A BAHA'I AHAB! AHA!" you say?
No, that's an understandable and even a clever guess on your part, but we're not really either a Baha'i or an Ahab in particular (no more than you're a narc or a narco, except possibly in the sense of "wordplay junkie"), nor are we even any more plural than you yourself are, save perhaps when going in both directions at once.
It has occurred to us, now that the question of religion has come up, that all beings are really one mind, one God, and that she's therefore indeed black, and sometimes he is white and often even read, and that she, too, no more than he or half again as much, sometimes speaks in both directions at once just to make it perfectly clear who's saying what.
Now 'that' is where we think this book, or nonbook, begins and ends, and we'd have said so sooner if we hadn't felt it was a good idea to soften the kiss.
But for anyone wanting a little more orientation in such an admittedly strange universe as the one we have begun to present, we can tell you that two-directional writing, which was a practical basis and preparation for palindromism if not yet the full-blown manifestation of it, developed early in the history of writing. Early writers and readers, notably (but not only) our Mediterranean forebears, were for a time very happy to go in either or both directions, as well as up and/or down. They usually did this by traversing their rock or tablet or papyrus in a pattern called *boustrophedon*, or "as an ox turns while plowing a field," that is, naturally, alternating directions with each word row. This was surely plodding work, unless they somehow managed to get fluent at it, which we doubt because they dropped it rather abruptly around 500 B.C., presumably as soon as they realized how much easier and more fun it is to maintain a single direction of flow, and to get a pause at the end of every row for a bonus. This was the birth, or rebirth, of reader-friendly writing. From then on, writing and reading have been perforce almost exclusively a one-way street, albeit not always one heading in the same direction.
So there is evidently an innate if untutored ambidextrousness in human nature, a gift for going "both ways," as they say in baseball. And this ability or talent, which expresses itself as an impulse here and an inspiration there, will not be denied or restrained by prevailing norms. Indeed, somehow it erupts in many people -- and rewards those who allow or ply it. You may want to think of *palindromic* outbursts as a sort of cultivated dyslexia. In any event, it is a historical certainty that by no later than about the third century B.C., those people who were not able to get enough of this very primitive form of two-part harmony found themselves, willy-nilly or deliberately, 'composing' it. And ever since, though the *palindrome* has had its ups and downs, to turn a phrase, people have generally taken great pleasure in relating to its symmetry and grace, have often admired its verve, and have been endlessly entertained by its elfin wit. Now and again they have even discerned that the reason *pal*s are so special in all these ways (and more) is that they are not just sentences or phrases or poems but are also living thought forms -- real gnomes at play, truly rare and golden probabilities in motion, the flesh become Word, the world DEIFIED.
The classical joker who traditionally gets all the credit for being the father of the palindrome, and who appears at least to have been the inventor or an early practitioner of the palindromic sentence and verse, is *Sotades of Maroneia* (or third-century-B.C. Thrace). He was certainly the palindrome's first recorded major light, and though history remembers him as something of a barbarian, he wrote, we are told, in both Greek and Latin. These two languages were, fortunately for him, a lot easier to compose palindromes in than are most of today's languages. This built-in ease is owed partly to their generally more reversible letter patterns; partly to their peculiar rules of syntax, which permit a more flexible word order; partly to their almost total natural avoidance of anything so distracting as word spacing or punctuation or dual letter types; and (at least in Latin's case) to a high tolerance or carrying capacity for things abstract, open-ended, imaginative, and even illusory.
Anyway, as you might expect (and as we are actally only guessing), people admired and laughed at Sotades' scurrilous, often coarse, often satirical palindromes, and soon it must have become clear (if it wasn't from the start), first to Sotades himself and then to others, that there was indeed an unusual power in them. Eventually (we continue guessing), he somehow must have lost his touch with this power, gotten disconnected from his source, and let his thought flow unhappily and foolishly enough to attract the wrath of the local despot, Ptolemy II, Philadelphus. Sotades' reported offense was a lampoon -- whether palindromic or not we don't know -- on the occasion of the monarch's marriage to his own sister. Ptolemy, and this is recorded history, had Sotades rounded up, sealed in a lead box, and thrown in the sea. The event is widely thought to have been the end of Sotades. Yet, as he must know, he is down there eternal as Davy Jones or Narcissus, and dry to boot. Palindromic verses, though not exactly rampant and though sometimes not allowed, have been written quietly and called Sotadics ever since.
We could tell you more right here about the history of palindromes, but history is just one person's version of what he partly saw or, more often, didn't see. Moreover, you will find that the artifactual highlights at least (that is, the goodly *'dromes* themselves), so far as we are acquainted and/or in love with them and believe we may rightfully honor them in this format, are all here in this our nonbook somewhere or other, usually in an appropriate place, for you to find when you desire. Here, too, are *palindromists*, ancient and modern, as well as indefinite definitions and important hot spots of the world. In that sense it is an encyclopedia (though by its palindromic nature a *casual* rather than a complete one), and not only of our self-love. Like any collection, it and we happily have somewhere to grow.
Ah, but where? Somewhere symmetrical, we're certain. For this nonbook is also a master key and treasure map to some cracks and hot spots in reality, well defined by cross-hairs (degrees of latitude and longitude, as in "X marks the spot"), to help us find them. The whereness of a palindromic name or place is vital to its identity, for it tells us where to go to dig for the promised or hoped-for treasure and how to continue our advance into the heart of symmetry (or into the cracks between the worlds). Palindromes not only issue from but generally exhibit and point or beckon toward any such place where we may expect additional outvasions from inner space to occur. So these points could be thought of as the gnomic navels or springs or acupressure points of the planet. And since palindromes are actually crosswords -- words crossing in two directions -- the geographic coordinates of palindromic places serve to "fix" them.
A more interesting topic for introduction is: Why indeed this preposterous nonbook at all, which perhaps really oughtn't to have existed? Well, to begin with, I -- for again it is me here as well as we -- wanted many happy returns. And I wanted to know the heart of symmetry. And I wanted to make a magic mirror and a master key and a treasure map, at least to such places as I myself had discovered or explored. And I wanted all-round trips. And I wanted something with a little reverse English on it. And most of all, really, I just wanted to make the world stop and laugh -- to flood the joint with value -- and I realized at a certain point that this manifest nonthing, the very one your eyeballs are by now possibly bulging at in disbelief, was my very best shot at fulfilling all the above desires because, as I have already thoroughly suggested, few things if any are as beguiling or charming or gracious as fine palindromes.
So, let the games begin, and on with the show -- or, as we be jammin' in WORDROW, that peculiarly immersed and bubbly vernacular:
NONWORDS, DROWN ON!
SOTADES WORDROW-SEDATOS
(HRH Chameleon Rind, MD, I)
Royal Court of Barbaria
Twin Lakes Ct
Twin Lakes CT
6/9/96