Reflect, refract, illumine (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} ywns) wrote,@ 2007-09-28 06:39:00 |
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Scrytch writing from 1998-2001: I
Bismillah~
Rescued old writings from the oubliette of archive.org, the only place they still existed to my knowledge. These were written on the scrytch listserv, which theoretically was a forum for a kind of collaborative re-mix writing, where any writing could be used, chewed up, sampled, quoted, re-written, or riffed on by other writers.
Some of the following under 'Admixtures,' which are basically cut-ups à la William Burroughs, use those explicit quotative/remixative techniques. "Preview to the 7-part epic..." has two riffs by other writers, possibly the only times my posts got scrytched.
'Psychophanies' are from dreams, ones that seemed particularly coherent and initiatic.
'Will & Wonderment' are either fictive pieces or meditations. A couple of them are actual stories. This seemed like the main style scrytch went in for as practiced by the best writers on the list. I was particularly inspired by one man whose writings have not been available online for a while. Jorge Luis Borges was the patron saint of scrytch; my ideas were more influenced by Lovecraft, Frank Herbert, William Gibson, transhumanism, and what I was learning about Sufism.
All of this (some of it R-rated) was a way of processing what I was going through in moving from a basically materialist though occultic worldview to a theistic one. I didn't know where I was going, of course, and I was pretty surprised when I got to the point of believing "God is One; all is He; nothing is He."
Building on the beach
The men shoulder around, a dozen brown eyes laughing on the beach after shift was done. "Gotta little something for you." "Don't let *her* see!" One pulls out a flat package wrapped in silks, several reach out hands to touch it as I take it and unwrap. Fuzzy brown daguerreotypes of harem women, painted and posed and opium-closed. Big laughs there on the beach after shift, big fuckinguffaws before the wedding.
Quiet midnight deep over the beach, surf-throb echoes a closer moisture and a closer beat. Distant salt vies with sandalwood and our pipe. Perched on the edge of the bed, she shuffles a hand through discarded clothes but returns with the pictures. A quick glance at each of the three paper women, turns back to face me. "The men gave you these to protect you from me."
Watching the sun rise over the sea, scanning the now nearly finished work. She lies beside me sipping tea. Kneeling I place my hands on her stomach and rub golden velvet skin; she sits up to look at me but I keep my eyes away from hers; can't bear to see my reflection. "You're going to have to leave, I think. Boss wants my mind here, not *there*," a softer stroke across her stretching belly down to narrow hips.
al-Kimia summer camp
Wading in. Playing the water through fingers, then skittering them against the surface tension. Fish fat as beagels brushing between legs. Deeper. Floating. Stars fading before dawn's Oil-of-Olayed fingertips. Dipping head under, face only half in the air. Eyes stinging for a moment, adjust. Feet sinking --fish tasting nipples in curious nibbles find them insufficiently wormy. Mouth filling with water cool and heavy as gin, tiny swallows. Tendrils of light kissing every nerve, fingers brushing belly, thighs, leaning back into the wind within the river. Flavor growing metalic, salty, thick-- thrashed my arms & kicked my way onto the bank, struggling to breath, the touch of cold sand against my knees louder than artillery, every grain a knife gossiping my sins in Braille. Tried to scream but could only gurgle and staggered naked into the nearest cabin. Had to reach the bathroom, wash out my mouth but i knew i couldn't go in, not with a dozen boys loitering there all night full of booze and speed, any of them twice my size. Breath getting hard to control, wind cutting through my chest, limbs jerking --i panicked, lurched back toward the river but tripped over my feet and mashed my face into the sand, each grain elaborating its accusations in branching detail. Couldn't hold the blood in my mouth any longer --belched it out like a sick dog, getting half on my chest and arms, coughing till i tasted bile behind the iron, dry-heaving, sobbing, waves bright as the new moon wracking me from root to crown. I woke dressed with the river & the sun risen over the woods.
Poet watches too much tv,
driven to absinthe
A moving painting, burning through the pages of a book:
Arthur Rimbaud lives in a multifloor building. Bats snap their wings outside a window; fascinating --how have these creatures adapted so well to city life? No book he has found offers a satisfactory explanation. Going outside, he watches animals coming out of the building for a move. A vast, elephant-sized horse is first through the gate, stepping delicately; a goat jumps from a second-floor window onto the huge horse's back and down to the street.
Rimbaud is watching a TV show on diving. An old man with wild hair stands on the ocean bottom, eating an equally hairy ape arm. He doesn't notice a shark's approach until it bites at him; fortunately it only snags floating hair. A commercial comes on, attention strays. Right then Mom comes into the room, sees my 3 videos on the floor, chastises me for my movie choice. A goofy anti-drug message graces one video's cover; noticing it, I say "They're just movies, they're no more harmful than roleplaying games."
Mom sighs, fretful. "Janet was telling me--" Knowing she's about to recount some 5th hand lie about RPGs, I start a defense; I pull up a file on a computer "Pleasurable activities come under attack as frivolous and harmful."
Tree
I didn't pray for an absence of "all your base..." dreams last night. I didn't pray at all, in fact, and I haven't been for some time, not with the intensity that drove me for much of the past year, though I did spend time in simple presence. Too much lower-level work to be done, I've told myself; too many solar panels, antennae and instruments to secure before I resume accelleration. Oh, and I want clearer schematics of the power supply and drive. The Arabic instructions I've been consulting are rich with comments from earlier crews, FAQs and specifications and elaboration; but the weight of adaptation aches my bones and strains my knees. The very fact that I can offer the analogy of religion and illumination as a spaceship, offer it without more than a moment's thought for coherence on the very superficial level that I'll use it at, expresses something about how I'm going to relate to any set of instructions, something I don't have the patience to begin to english. Anyone who's read this far will have a good idea of what's bugging me, I believe. The Arabic/Farsi instructions --and the Hebrew, and the Sanskrit and Greek and Chinese and Enochian and all the rest-- still work and will continue to work, but only with an immersion I don't know if I'm incapable of or just unwilling to pursue. God forbid I should lose my post-modern, post-LSD distance from over-arching narrative! Only when the instructions are automatic can they be transcended; so is it possible to skip the instructions and make with the transcendence already?
If there arise among you a dreamer of dreams
and gives a sign or a wonder
and the sign or the wonder come to pass
saying
Let us dip into other times which you have not known
and let us mind them
you shall not drink the words of that dreamer of dreams
for the time --your time-- proves you
to know whether you love the time your time
with all your eyes see and with all your hands build.
You shall walk in your own time
and know it and keep its dictates
and clutch its silence
and you shall not serve another.
And that dreamer of dreams past or future
shall be put to death
because he has spoken to turn you away from the time your time
which brought you out of the mirror
and reclaimed you from the clock
spoken to thrust you out of the way
which the time your time commands you to walk in.
So shall you put the falsehood away from your sight,
for there will be no exit.
I dreamed of a tree pregnant with spite and envy, a tree pocked with rotten holes and glass shards and broken limbs. I wanted to cut it down and burn it to drive out the two evil spirits occupying it, get the damned thing out of my garden and scatter the ashes well away from the lake. And I cut it down, but then I hesitated to burn it, not knowing if such dismissive force would actually benefit the spirits. Then a cat woke me up, and I wondered.
2nd Tree
The sawdust responded to Jan's puff of breath with the obedience we expect of matter, scattering from the surface around the hole through bark and into sappy gold wood, twisting down to the ground and onto our boots and the muddied snow. I inserted the last sensor and with two fingers tested again the solidity of the others and the input prong. We creaked back on our stools and waited, initial data scrolling through our huds as the first set of xylopsychic protocols attacked the tree's slow thoughts. Chemopathy from the surrounding grove. Environmental response matrices. No sign it was aware of us yet. There --solicitation from certain meso-scale awareness constellations. We were the tree's dream of waking. I switched to an imaginal processor to better control the interaction while Jan monitored. A face appeared before my laser-painted eyes, broad old cheeks and nose and white beard, eyes gently washing something below the horizon. Graphs and textual monitors flickered around the old tree-mind, and I deployed my tools of inquiry like fat rodents in a cage.
Then I was the one awake and the tree was still dreaming me, and my own defenses corruscating to the visitor to my side. Eyes open and twisting my body as soon as the paralysis dissolved, I finally caught sight of the little bastard, strobing black on black on red like an afterimage, the size of a grapefruit and framed in an anatomy whose geometries hurt my eyes. I gave a series of commands and requests, and glanced at the clock. 2:30. Within 15 minutes of both the last encounters, the only times I'd notated more of the visit than "middle of the night". I sought to remain aware but distracted myself, wondering why I continued to let this happen. Not that I felt fear or in danger --only disgust, only a sense of trivial violation tempered with absurdity, as when a tiny dog tries to screw your leg.
I don't let myself talk to you the way I used to. The phrases of greeting and modes of address all strike me now as pointless, and I spiral off into the usual clutch of separation as soon as they spring to my mind's lips. Part of me even refuses --again, like so many years before-- refuses to acknowledge you as a you, a thou in whom there is no us, only the We with which creation begins, with which the waters separate and a thing comes to be for no other reason than We desire it to be. I told myself I'd find new words, find new motions outside the weight of all those centuries, outside cultures and liturgies and all the glory of the tomb. But I haven't. It's so much work --more time, just let me read my novel and I'll *get* to it, really I will, only there's so much dust in here--
You're waiting. You know, and I'm starting to remember. How many times will I have to go through this before I don't have to remember to remember? Breathe. Walk. Pause, don't stop. I'll keep this up. What else can I do?
C. S. Lewis needs his rock
The signature game began just as a solidifying experiment --putting flesh and script to cold email, finding random signatures left by our friends. Then there was that one doc cosigned by somebody of some celebrity, forget who, always would, and that sparked it off into some kind of horseshit competition to find more Spectacalized names.
So late one night in downtown Cleveland, snow crunching amidst the stale scattered french fries and occasional street diamonds, I found C. S. Lewis guiltily checking something out in a window display; staring, then glancing quickly around... He was bundled up, scarf tight and fists jammed deep in jacket pockets, swaying slightly in the Ohio cold. Cautiously, slowed to watch him. Naturally I had my copy of The Magician's Nephew; began to wonder to myself, "If I were a famous apologist on the streets of Cleveland at 3 am, how'd I react to a random freak approaching me for an autograph in one of my weirder juvenile novels?" Obviously the best tactic was to follow him and see where he went.
Damn! Noticed me! Tucked his chin down and headed off down the street, loafers crunching broken glass and fries. Aw, fuck it. Nobody likes a starfucker, I told myself, and how would it look anyway if I bragged about my Lewis chop? Me, with all my "Y'all are wasting your time, hunting signatures!" posts. Like an asshole, that's how.
Acid mice
And then it was my turn, opening circle finished, the basket passed into my hand. Reached into the hollow and pulled out a handful of tiny mice, rated at 100 mikes per mouse. *Really* tiny things, small as bugs, tiny twitching tails and big big rodentrippy eyes and curled up claws. Passing them on, I picked up my tiny friends and one by one crunched them down to paste. Bit of tail took up shop between two teeth; worked at it with a corner of a magazine, but no use, so I did what I always do when neither Things nor Stuff goes like I plan: come up with corny platitudes:
"Sometimes you *need* a bit of munched mouse stuck in your teeth; otherwise you forget you're depraved.
"*Other* folks have jobs prepping crash test dummies or dressing willful children; as long as my biggest worry is the relative weirdness of my toys, I'm probably alright.
"It's like when I'm out peddling my bike around the junkyard and I come across an industrial-sized cannister of cider, only it's been sprayed with lavendar paint so thick it's sealed. Getting it open's the only thing you can think about, and you forget about the roaming dogs."
Only the ends are remembered
If there arise among you a dreamer of dreams, and gives a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder come to pass, saying, Let us dip into other times which you have not known, and let us mind them; you shall not drink the words of that dreamer of dreams: for the time --*your* time-- proves you, to know whether you love the time your time with all your eyes see and with all your hands build.
You shall walk in your own time, and know it and keep its dictates and clutch its silence, and you shall not serve.
And that dreamer of dreams past or future shall be put to death; because he has spoken to turn you away from the time your time, which brought you out of the mirror, and reclaimed you from the clock, spoken to thrust you out of the way which the time your time commands you to walk in. So shall you put the falsehood away from your sight, for there will be no exit.
Self-sharer
It was definitely the funkiest church we'd ever seen, with a high hollow roof painted bright blues and reds and all trippy Jesuses and Persian women dancing on steppes of gold coins, and we waited for the parishoners to come and fill the cushions on the floor with their bodies, waited for the ecclesia to stretch arms up to the lady crossing the sky on her cherubim. Ashurbanipal built a mechanical bull to mimic the lady's flight, but his nobles had no cheer at the spectacle; they murdered the king just as he murdered his father, smashing open his skull with a wooden idol.
...
I and my family drove two days to get to the ceremonies. My cousin Gala and her family in their great empty house were hosting a knot of college flesh; hundreds of them, and more family than I'd hoped to remember. Everywhere I smelled vasoline and scents to rub on the skin. Dad chuckled, thinking himself particularly worldly for realizing there was sexndrugs going on. I did my best to stay out of sight.
The third afternoon of the convention, everyone put down blankets on the fenced hills surronding the house. I made my way across piled art student crowds and their pieces, laid out on the grass. More than once, a nice round buttock or a row of tiny biomorphic sculptures distracted me. If I wanted, there was enough dyed hair and formal vacuum cleaner dust to keep me busy all day, but I completed a circuit of the grounds, stepping over fences and apologizing as I put my foot too close to somebody's canvas.
As we went round packing and collecting our things I tried to make time for my cousin, but she was off in her own noise. I climbed a ladder into the attic hideaway and pushed open the plank. It tore easily through a wooden trellis laid over the board. My other cousin Tatia and her boyfriend were already in the attic tousling a bit. I didn't expect them; I wanted to prepare the space for Gala and me but I was happy to find two already there, and they were happy to accept me rolling around with them too. "Nothing --*you* know-- let's act like we took e without bothering to take it." Maury stretched his calf across my shoulder and cheek; I put a hand to Tatia's chest.
"Wait. Gala should be here." They let me go impatiently, and I climbed back downstairs where my parents, sister and uncle bustled around, getting ready to leave, stepping over the last snotty students. Gala stood crying in a corner of the living room. I walked up from behind and put my left hand in the yellow of her hair. We hugged and I whispered, "Come up to the attic?" A nod, no eye contact; we picked our way back through the now dark and cooling house and climbed the ladder.
Tatia and Maury jumped as the plank banged down again, and we stared at each other (Who will hyperventilate first?). While I looked for Gala, they'd shed some clothes. Tatia peeped, "We're a nervous family, aren't we? Go back down, it's too late."
Things unseen
Two old friends had come to visit me. We sat on the couch watching a movie; the phone rang. It was my next-door neighbor, whom I'd never met. "Your TV set is too loud. I can't sleep," he groused; his voice was elderly, gravely, bitter. I turned the set down a bit, though it wasn't very loud.
"How's that?" I asked.
"Still too loud. You're making a racket!"
"Well, if we turn it down any more, we won't be able to hear it. We'll turn it off soon anyway."
"You have no consideration!"
"I'm sorry. Isn't there anything we can do?"
"I despise you, sir." Every word distinct.
"Um, I'm sorry to hear that! Maybe we can meet and talk about this?"
"You'll never talk to me."
"Well, maybe we--" But of course he'd hung up. No way I could have gotten the last word anyway.
Caligawr
Caligawr was a mad scientist. He was very bad and he had a plan to put all the people of the cities floating on the sea in his power. We didn't like him, so we went after him. He had a base inside a giant mechanical shark, only the mouth was on top & the teeth stuck out front like tusks. We used our super speed boat to go after the Sharkship and we scubadived off the side. Basheeda tried to use her tools to cut the hull & get us inside but that didn't work so we swam around trying to find a way in but there wasn't one. Then some of Caligawr's robots came after us. They walked on the hull with magnet feet & shot nets at us & caught us. The nets got very tight & the robots walked up to the mouth & went inside. They bent down & went into tunnels in the mouth which was also a hanger & went past the other ships & robots & pushed the nets with us in them in front of them & blocked the tunnels & the water drained away & we were in a big dark space. The air hummed & there were sort of mechanical screeching noises & suddenly we felt ourselves dumped on a conveyer belt & going down down closer dark you saw you say we felt a light a giant's hand a flood of angels you circled with once you say you forgot you listened and spoke and forgot forgot down left down up around me you me us you i he us he only he then less light then cold then through & up & we popped out & Caligawr stood over us in a robe with a face mask & gauntlets & we were covered in black rubber except our hands & feet & faces & he said "If you're numb, it's because i've numbed you."
Witnesses
Nineteen men bear witness. Their testimony is taken in a room in back of the school; they stand without speech, without sight, without forgetting, though the crickets nest in their pant cuffs & the bload soak their sleeves, dripping down arms from shoulders, down chest from faces, over belly, hips & feet down drains meshed with steel into conduits stretched between the sixth nights of the worlds.
Eliyah left the basement as Salih entered. They traded kisses, coats, shirts & shoes in silence, & each went to his next station.
Eliyah bought a rifle on his way over the border, then a green coat, snowshoes, tobacco, dried fruit & salted fish. He hiked to a certain clearing & sat down to wait. One week. Three. Foxes came by, & jays & deer, all with gossip. In the fourth week, just after dawn, a tiny soiled dog preceded a boy into the clearing. He wore unseasonable clothing & fell as he stepped out of the trees, spilling gear. Eliyah jumped half his own height in the air & bellowed, "You gutless wonder! Knew you find you barber here, eh?"
Swinging the rifle by the barrel, Eliyah struck the boy to the ground. Oofing, the boy gaped & held up one hand as he raised his torso with the other. The dog ran circles around the two. Swinging the rifle around, Eliyah brought the stock to his shoulder & fired into the boy's breast. Knocked onto his backside, the boy just looked down at his heart, exposed from behind layers of pigmented glass, now molten & dripping not without additional pain down his skin. A rabbit bolted from the clearing into the undergrowth.
"Won't leak no light never again, will you? Stand up & fight me, boy!" Eliyah turned the rifle parallel to his chest & threw it into the boy's lap. He cried as it landed, cried as he stood & pointed the weapon at his attacker, mumbled a curse as he fired. The shot went through Eliyah' legs & felled the dog.
Without another word, Eliyah shouldered his pack & stalked away into the woods. The boy crawled over to the dog & lay on top of it. Their blood pooled around them. The sun warmed the ground, & the rabbit hop-stepped back over to the two prone, nestling beside them.
Peacenix
Before Marnie's party, we wanted to check out the orbital hopper the Dadj Ru had parked near the hotel. I'm frankly surprised they let us in, but then again, the Mauve Moon's atmosphere has been shown to mellow militant hive-mind pods before (in 5 cases out of 7, if you believe MauveKo's stats). Stepping through the doorfilm, the smell went up my nose like an amphetamine-crazed leech. The Dadj Ru's main crew were encased in the bulkheads, beetles tethered by delicate fibers tending their skin, and all their brushed aluminum, honeycombed aminosteel, shiny implant prongs & delicate pastel mood lighting didn't really distract.
Pod Adjutant Ve Mabv Dho smiled till we saw the mossy vibrissae growing in his pharynx. He strobed our media interfaces with promotional literature before laying on the sale. Got to admit, i was tempted by the offer of a free trial marrow stabilization gland with no obligation of additional neural work, but latent paranoia prevailed & we bid him adieu.
Assorted Dream Insights
tidal pools
The words have to come; the choice is dictated by the strength of the vision. Where the vision fails, so do my words, and I'm left using duct tape to hold pieces of the set together. And for pity's sake, and hope's, don't look for interpretations while getting it down!
Nanites built a civilization out of vacuum cleaner dust (See Self-sharer)
Closing my eyes to try and go back into the dream, all I see are fat conveyor belts and puffy machines sputtering with the bounce of a twenties cartoon. That's not what I need --those fuckers and their endless motion are there any time I care to look.
Translation implies motion; motion implies...
Dozing before i was fully awake, i tried to remember my dreams. Hints of faces, implications hanging around like drowsy bats, but no access back into the narrative space itself. I found a list of titles instead, plain text in a grey dialog box, one title per line. Some named memorable dreams of the last few months. Opening each dream, i stood in the middle & knew it as a whole, a holographic field of meaning, not a series of vignettes like i would once awake (as in fact i'm recalling this now). The unfamiliar titles, once entered, revealed dreams i had lost all conscious connection to but immediately recognized.
Dreams, like awareness in waking life, present themselves moment by moment, with transitions only half-remembered if at all. Assume i experience waking life as a *now* smeared a few moments into the past and prickled with thoughts of possible futures; assume also i recall the waking moments of my past as holographs & have to fish around to put discrete events into the framework of a story (as we must to translate memories to language). If i then live dreams in a *now* with no memory and no expectations, is it by this presence, this lack of duration that i recall my dreams as stories and not as wholes?
Bismillah~
Rescued old writings from the oubliette of archive.org, the only place they still existed to my knowledge. These were written on the scrytch listserv, which theoretically was a forum for a kind of collaborative re-mix writing, where any writing could be used, chewed up, sampled, quoted, re-written, or riffed on by other writers.
Some of the following under 'Admixtures,' which are basically cut-ups à la William Burroughs, use those explicit quotative/remixative techniques. "Preview to the 7-part epic..." has two riffs by other writers, possibly the only times my posts got scrytched.
'Psychophanies' are from dreams, ones that seemed particularly coherent and initiatic.
'Will & Wonderment' are either fictive pieces or meditations. A couple of them are actual stories. This seemed like the main style scrytch went in for as practiced by the best writers on the list. I was particularly inspired by one man whose writings have not been available online for a while. Jorge Luis Borges was the patron saint of scrytch; my ideas were more influenced by Lovecraft, Frank Herbert, William Gibson, transhumanism, and what I was learning about Sufism.
All of this (some of it R-rated) was a way of processing what I was going through in moving from a basically materialist though occultic worldview to a theistic one. I didn't know where I was going, of course, and I was pretty surprised when I got to the point of believing "God is One; all is He; nothing is He."
Psychophanies
Building on the beach
The men shoulder around, a dozen brown eyes laughing on the beach after shift was done. "Gotta little something for you." "Don't let *her* see!" One pulls out a flat package wrapped in silks, several reach out hands to touch it as I take it and unwrap. Fuzzy brown daguerreotypes of harem women, painted and posed and opium-closed. Big laughs there on the beach after shift, big fuckinguffaws before the wedding.
Quiet midnight deep over the beach, surf-throb echoes a closer moisture and a closer beat. Distant salt vies with sandalwood and our pipe. Perched on the edge of the bed, she shuffles a hand through discarded clothes but returns with the pictures. A quick glance at each of the three paper women, turns back to face me. "The men gave you these to protect you from me."
Watching the sun rise over the sea, scanning the now nearly finished work. She lies beside me sipping tea. Kneeling I place my hands on her stomach and rub golden velvet skin; she sits up to look at me but I keep my eyes away from hers; can't bear to see my reflection. "You're going to have to leave, I think. Boss wants my mind here, not *there*," a softer stroke across her stretching belly down to narrow hips.
al-Kimia summer camp
Wading in. Playing the water through fingers, then skittering them against the surface tension. Fish fat as beagels brushing between legs. Deeper. Floating. Stars fading before dawn's Oil-of-Olayed fingertips. Dipping head under, face only half in the air. Eyes stinging for a moment, adjust. Feet sinking --fish tasting nipples in curious nibbles find them insufficiently wormy. Mouth filling with water cool and heavy as gin, tiny swallows. Tendrils of light kissing every nerve, fingers brushing belly, thighs, leaning back into the wind within the river. Flavor growing metalic, salty, thick-- thrashed my arms & kicked my way onto the bank, struggling to breath, the touch of cold sand against my knees louder than artillery, every grain a knife gossiping my sins in Braille. Tried to scream but could only gurgle and staggered naked into the nearest cabin. Had to reach the bathroom, wash out my mouth but i knew i couldn't go in, not with a dozen boys loitering there all night full of booze and speed, any of them twice my size. Breath getting hard to control, wind cutting through my chest, limbs jerking --i panicked, lurched back toward the river but tripped over my feet and mashed my face into the sand, each grain elaborating its accusations in branching detail. Couldn't hold the blood in my mouth any longer --belched it out like a sick dog, getting half on my chest and arms, coughing till i tasted bile behind the iron, dry-heaving, sobbing, waves bright as the new moon wracking me from root to crown. I woke dressed with the river & the sun risen over the woods.
Poet watches too much tv,
driven to absinthe
A moving painting, burning through the pages of a book:
Arthur Rimbaud lives in a multifloor building. Bats snap their wings outside a window; fascinating --how have these creatures adapted so well to city life? No book he has found offers a satisfactory explanation. Going outside, he watches animals coming out of the building for a move. A vast, elephant-sized horse is first through the gate, stepping delicately; a goat jumps from a second-floor window onto the huge horse's back and down to the street.
Rimbaud is watching a TV show on diving. An old man with wild hair stands on the ocean bottom, eating an equally hairy ape arm. He doesn't notice a shark's approach until it bites at him; fortunately it only snags floating hair. A commercial comes on, attention strays. Right then Mom comes into the room, sees my 3 videos on the floor, chastises me for my movie choice. A goofy anti-drug message graces one video's cover; noticing it, I say "They're just movies, they're no more harmful than roleplaying games."
Mom sighs, fretful. "Janet was telling me--" Knowing she's about to recount some 5th hand lie about RPGs, I start a defense; I pull up a file on a computer "Pleasurable activities come under attack as frivolous and harmful."
Tree
I didn't pray for an absence of "all your base..." dreams last night. I didn't pray at all, in fact, and I haven't been for some time, not with the intensity that drove me for much of the past year, though I did spend time in simple presence. Too much lower-level work to be done, I've told myself; too many solar panels, antennae and instruments to secure before I resume accelleration. Oh, and I want clearer schematics of the power supply and drive. The Arabic instructions I've been consulting are rich with comments from earlier crews, FAQs and specifications and elaboration; but the weight of adaptation aches my bones and strains my knees. The very fact that I can offer the analogy of religion and illumination as a spaceship, offer it without more than a moment's thought for coherence on the very superficial level that I'll use it at, expresses something about how I'm going to relate to any set of instructions, something I don't have the patience to begin to english. Anyone who's read this far will have a good idea of what's bugging me, I believe. The Arabic/Farsi instructions --and the Hebrew, and the Sanskrit and Greek and Chinese and Enochian and all the rest-- still work and will continue to work, but only with an immersion I don't know if I'm incapable of or just unwilling to pursue. God forbid I should lose my post-modern, post-LSD distance from over-arching narrative! Only when the instructions are automatic can they be transcended; so is it possible to skip the instructions and make with the transcendence already?
If there arise among you a dreamer of dreams
and gives a sign or a wonder
and the sign or the wonder come to pass
saying
Let us dip into other times which you have not known
and let us mind them
you shall not drink the words of that dreamer of dreams
for the time --your time-- proves you
to know whether you love the time your time
with all your eyes see and with all your hands build.
You shall walk in your own time
and know it and keep its dictates
and clutch its silence
and you shall not serve another.
And that dreamer of dreams past or future
shall be put to death
because he has spoken to turn you away from the time your time
which brought you out of the mirror
and reclaimed you from the clock
spoken to thrust you out of the way
which the time your time commands you to walk in.
So shall you put the falsehood away from your sight,
for there will be no exit.
I dreamed of a tree pregnant with spite and envy, a tree pocked with rotten holes and glass shards and broken limbs. I wanted to cut it down and burn it to drive out the two evil spirits occupying it, get the damned thing out of my garden and scatter the ashes well away from the lake. And I cut it down, but then I hesitated to burn it, not knowing if such dismissive force would actually benefit the spirits. Then a cat woke me up, and I wondered.
2nd Tree
The sawdust responded to Jan's puff of breath with the obedience we expect of matter, scattering from the surface around the hole through bark and into sappy gold wood, twisting down to the ground and onto our boots and the muddied snow. I inserted the last sensor and with two fingers tested again the solidity of the others and the input prong. We creaked back on our stools and waited, initial data scrolling through our huds as the first set of xylopsychic protocols attacked the tree's slow thoughts. Chemopathy from the surrounding grove. Environmental response matrices. No sign it was aware of us yet. There --solicitation from certain meso-scale awareness constellations. We were the tree's dream of waking. I switched to an imaginal processor to better control the interaction while Jan monitored. A face appeared before my laser-painted eyes, broad old cheeks and nose and white beard, eyes gently washing something below the horizon. Graphs and textual monitors flickered around the old tree-mind, and I deployed my tools of inquiry like fat rodents in a cage.
Then I was the one awake and the tree was still dreaming me, and my own defenses corruscating to the visitor to my side. Eyes open and twisting my body as soon as the paralysis dissolved, I finally caught sight of the little bastard, strobing black on black on red like an afterimage, the size of a grapefruit and framed in an anatomy whose geometries hurt my eyes. I gave a series of commands and requests, and glanced at the clock. 2:30. Within 15 minutes of both the last encounters, the only times I'd notated more of the visit than "middle of the night". I sought to remain aware but distracted myself, wondering why I continued to let this happen. Not that I felt fear or in danger --only disgust, only a sense of trivial violation tempered with absurdity, as when a tiny dog tries to screw your leg.
I don't let myself talk to you the way I used to. The phrases of greeting and modes of address all strike me now as pointless, and I spiral off into the usual clutch of separation as soon as they spring to my mind's lips. Part of me even refuses --again, like so many years before-- refuses to acknowledge you as a you, a thou in whom there is no us, only the We with which creation begins, with which the waters separate and a thing comes to be for no other reason than We desire it to be. I told myself I'd find new words, find new motions outside the weight of all those centuries, outside cultures and liturgies and all the glory of the tomb. But I haven't. It's so much work --more time, just let me read my novel and I'll *get* to it, really I will, only there's so much dust in here--
You're waiting. You know, and I'm starting to remember. How many times will I have to go through this before I don't have to remember to remember? Breathe. Walk. Pause, don't stop. I'll keep this up. What else can I do?
C. S. Lewis needs his rock
The signature game began just as a solidifying experiment --putting flesh and script to cold email, finding random signatures left by our friends. Then there was that one doc cosigned by somebody of some celebrity, forget who, always would, and that sparked it off into some kind of horseshit competition to find more Spectacalized names.
So late one night in downtown Cleveland, snow crunching amidst the stale scattered french fries and occasional street diamonds, I found C. S. Lewis guiltily checking something out in a window display; staring, then glancing quickly around... He was bundled up, scarf tight and fists jammed deep in jacket pockets, swaying slightly in the Ohio cold. Cautiously, slowed to watch him. Naturally I had my copy of The Magician's Nephew; began to wonder to myself, "If I were a famous apologist on the streets of Cleveland at 3 am, how'd I react to a random freak approaching me for an autograph in one of my weirder juvenile novels?" Obviously the best tactic was to follow him and see where he went.
Damn! Noticed me! Tucked his chin down and headed off down the street, loafers crunching broken glass and fries. Aw, fuck it. Nobody likes a starfucker, I told myself, and how would it look anyway if I bragged about my Lewis chop? Me, with all my "Y'all are wasting your time, hunting signatures!" posts. Like an asshole, that's how.
Acid mice
And then it was my turn, opening circle finished, the basket passed into my hand. Reached into the hollow and pulled out a handful of tiny mice, rated at 100 mikes per mouse. *Really* tiny things, small as bugs, tiny twitching tails and big big rodentrippy eyes and curled up claws. Passing them on, I picked up my tiny friends and one by one crunched them down to paste. Bit of tail took up shop between two teeth; worked at it with a corner of a magazine, but no use, so I did what I always do when neither Things nor Stuff goes like I plan: come up with corny platitudes:
"Sometimes you *need* a bit of munched mouse stuck in your teeth; otherwise you forget you're depraved.
"*Other* folks have jobs prepping crash test dummies or dressing willful children; as long as my biggest worry is the relative weirdness of my toys, I'm probably alright.
"It's like when I'm out peddling my bike around the junkyard and I come across an industrial-sized cannister of cider, only it's been sprayed with lavendar paint so thick it's sealed. Getting it open's the only thing you can think about, and you forget about the roaming dogs."
Only the ends are remembered
If there arise among you a dreamer of dreams, and gives a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder come to pass, saying, Let us dip into other times which you have not known, and let us mind them; you shall not drink the words of that dreamer of dreams: for the time --*your* time-- proves you, to know whether you love the time your time with all your eyes see and with all your hands build.
You shall walk in your own time, and know it and keep its dictates and clutch its silence, and you shall not serve.
And that dreamer of dreams past or future shall be put to death; because he has spoken to turn you away from the time your time, which brought you out of the mirror, and reclaimed you from the clock, spoken to thrust you out of the way which the time your time commands you to walk in. So shall you put the falsehood away from your sight, for there will be no exit.
Self-sharer
It was definitely the funkiest church we'd ever seen, with a high hollow roof painted bright blues and reds and all trippy Jesuses and Persian women dancing on steppes of gold coins, and we waited for the parishoners to come and fill the cushions on the floor with their bodies, waited for the ecclesia to stretch arms up to the lady crossing the sky on her cherubim. Ashurbanipal built a mechanical bull to mimic the lady's flight, but his nobles had no cheer at the spectacle; they murdered the king just as he murdered his father, smashing open his skull with a wooden idol.
...
I and my family drove two days to get to the ceremonies. My cousin Gala and her family in their great empty house were hosting a knot of college flesh; hundreds of them, and more family than I'd hoped to remember. Everywhere I smelled vasoline and scents to rub on the skin. Dad chuckled, thinking himself particularly worldly for realizing there was sexndrugs going on. I did my best to stay out of sight.
The third afternoon of the convention, everyone put down blankets on the fenced hills surronding the house. I made my way across piled art student crowds and their pieces, laid out on the grass. More than once, a nice round buttock or a row of tiny biomorphic sculptures distracted me. If I wanted, there was enough dyed hair and formal vacuum cleaner dust to keep me busy all day, but I completed a circuit of the grounds, stepping over fences and apologizing as I put my foot too close to somebody's canvas.
As we went round packing and collecting our things I tried to make time for my cousin, but she was off in her own noise. I climbed a ladder into the attic hideaway and pushed open the plank. It tore easily through a wooden trellis laid over the board. My other cousin Tatia and her boyfriend were already in the attic tousling a bit. I didn't expect them; I wanted to prepare the space for Gala and me but I was happy to find two already there, and they were happy to accept me rolling around with them too. "Nothing --*you* know-- let's act like we took e without bothering to take it." Maury stretched his calf across my shoulder and cheek; I put a hand to Tatia's chest.
"Wait. Gala should be here." They let me go impatiently, and I climbed back downstairs where my parents, sister and uncle bustled around, getting ready to leave, stepping over the last snotty students. Gala stood crying in a corner of the living room. I walked up from behind and put my left hand in the yellow of her hair. We hugged and I whispered, "Come up to the attic?" A nod, no eye contact; we picked our way back through the now dark and cooling house and climbed the ladder.
Tatia and Maury jumped as the plank banged down again, and we stared at each other (Who will hyperventilate first?). While I looked for Gala, they'd shed some clothes. Tatia peeped, "We're a nervous family, aren't we? Go back down, it's too late."
Things unseen
Two old friends had come to visit me. We sat on the couch watching a movie; the phone rang. It was my next-door neighbor, whom I'd never met. "Your TV set is too loud. I can't sleep," he groused; his voice was elderly, gravely, bitter. I turned the set down a bit, though it wasn't very loud.
"How's that?" I asked.
"Still too loud. You're making a racket!"
"Well, if we turn it down any more, we won't be able to hear it. We'll turn it off soon anyway."
"You have no consideration!"
"I'm sorry. Isn't there anything we can do?"
"I despise you, sir." Every word distinct.
"Um, I'm sorry to hear that! Maybe we can meet and talk about this?"
"You'll never talk to me."
"Well, maybe we--" But of course he'd hung up. No way I could have gotten the last word anyway.
Caligawr
Caligawr was a mad scientist. He was very bad and he had a plan to put all the people of the cities floating on the sea in his power. We didn't like him, so we went after him. He had a base inside a giant mechanical shark, only the mouth was on top & the teeth stuck out front like tusks. We used our super speed boat to go after the Sharkship and we scubadived off the side. Basheeda tried to use her tools to cut the hull & get us inside but that didn't work so we swam around trying to find a way in but there wasn't one. Then some of Caligawr's robots came after us. They walked on the hull with magnet feet & shot nets at us & caught us. The nets got very tight & the robots walked up to the mouth & went inside. They bent down & went into tunnels in the mouth which was also a hanger & went past the other ships & robots & pushed the nets with us in them in front of them & blocked the tunnels & the water drained away & we were in a big dark space. The air hummed & there were sort of mechanical screeching noises & suddenly we felt ourselves dumped on a conveyer belt & going down down closer dark you saw you say we felt a light a giant's hand a flood of angels you circled with once you say you forgot you listened and spoke and forgot forgot down left down up around me you me us you i he us he only he then less light then cold then through & up & we popped out & Caligawr stood over us in a robe with a face mask & gauntlets & we were covered in black rubber except our hands & feet & faces & he said "If you're numb, it's because i've numbed you."
Witnesses
Nineteen men bear witness. Their testimony is taken in a room in back of the school; they stand without speech, without sight, without forgetting, though the crickets nest in their pant cuffs & the bload soak their sleeves, dripping down arms from shoulders, down chest from faces, over belly, hips & feet down drains meshed with steel into conduits stretched between the sixth nights of the worlds.
Eliyah left the basement as Salih entered. They traded kisses, coats, shirts & shoes in silence, & each went to his next station.
Eliyah bought a rifle on his way over the border, then a green coat, snowshoes, tobacco, dried fruit & salted fish. He hiked to a certain clearing & sat down to wait. One week. Three. Foxes came by, & jays & deer, all with gossip. In the fourth week, just after dawn, a tiny soiled dog preceded a boy into the clearing. He wore unseasonable clothing & fell as he stepped out of the trees, spilling gear. Eliyah jumped half his own height in the air & bellowed, "You gutless wonder! Knew you find you barber here, eh?"
Swinging the rifle by the barrel, Eliyah struck the boy to the ground. Oofing, the boy gaped & held up one hand as he raised his torso with the other. The dog ran circles around the two. Swinging the rifle around, Eliyah brought the stock to his shoulder & fired into the boy's breast. Knocked onto his backside, the boy just looked down at his heart, exposed from behind layers of pigmented glass, now molten & dripping not without additional pain down his skin. A rabbit bolted from the clearing into the undergrowth.
"Won't leak no light never again, will you? Stand up & fight me, boy!" Eliyah turned the rifle parallel to his chest & threw it into the boy's lap. He cried as it landed, cried as he stood & pointed the weapon at his attacker, mumbled a curse as he fired. The shot went through Eliyah' legs & felled the dog.
Without another word, Eliyah shouldered his pack & stalked away into the woods. The boy crawled over to the dog & lay on top of it. Their blood pooled around them. The sun warmed the ground, & the rabbit hop-stepped back over to the two prone, nestling beside them.
Peacenix
Before Marnie's party, we wanted to check out the orbital hopper the Dadj Ru had parked near the hotel. I'm frankly surprised they let us in, but then again, the Mauve Moon's atmosphere has been shown to mellow militant hive-mind pods before (in 5 cases out of 7, if you believe MauveKo's stats). Stepping through the doorfilm, the smell went up my nose like an amphetamine-crazed leech. The Dadj Ru's main crew were encased in the bulkheads, beetles tethered by delicate fibers tending their skin, and all their brushed aluminum, honeycombed aminosteel, shiny implant prongs & delicate pastel mood lighting didn't really distract.
Pod Adjutant Ve Mabv Dho smiled till we saw the mossy vibrissae growing in his pharynx. He strobed our media interfaces with promotional literature before laying on the sale. Got to admit, i was tempted by the offer of a free trial marrow stabilization gland with no obligation of additional neural work, but latent paranoia prevailed & we bid him adieu.
Assorted Dream Insights
tidal pools
The words have to come; the choice is dictated by the strength of the vision. Where the vision fails, so do my words, and I'm left using duct tape to hold pieces of the set together. And for pity's sake, and hope's, don't look for interpretations while getting it down!
Nanites built a civilization out of vacuum cleaner dust (See Self-sharer)
Closing my eyes to try and go back into the dream, all I see are fat conveyor belts and puffy machines sputtering with the bounce of a twenties cartoon. That's not what I need --those fuckers and their endless motion are there any time I care to look.
Translation implies motion; motion implies...
Dozing before i was fully awake, i tried to remember my dreams. Hints of faces, implications hanging around like drowsy bats, but no access back into the narrative space itself. I found a list of titles instead, plain text in a grey dialog box, one title per line. Some named memorable dreams of the last few months. Opening each dream, i stood in the middle & knew it as a whole, a holographic field of meaning, not a series of vignettes like i would once awake (as in fact i'm recalling this now). The unfamiliar titles, once entered, revealed dreams i had lost all conscious connection to but immediately recognized.
Dreams, like awareness in waking life, present themselves moment by moment, with transitions only half-remembered if at all. Assume i experience waking life as a *now* smeared a few moments into the past and prickled with thoughts of possible futures; assume also i recall the waking moments of my past as holographs & have to fish around to put discrete events into the framework of a story (as we must to translate memories to language). If i then live dreams in a *now* with no memory and no expectations, is it by this presence, this lack of duration that i recall my dreams as stories and not as wholes?
