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Globes, by Peter Sloterdijk – Conversation 1

November 17, 2017 By Mindful AI

Spheres Reading Group:
Volume 2

Globes, by Peter Sloterdijk – Conversation 1

By
  • Cosmos Co-op logo
    Cosmos
 |  November 17, 2017
Feature Image: fdecomite, Eclipses [via Flickr, CC-BY]
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This is the first in series of conversations on Peter Sloterdijk’s Spheres trilogy, Volume 2: Globes.

We kick off the second round of our Spheres reading group, with our first conversation on Volume 2: Globes: Macrospherology.

In this session, we catch up and welcome a new member, discuss our plans for the reading and desired outcomes, and exploring the initial sections of the book:

Prologue: Intense Idyll
Introduction: Geometry in the Monstrous
Access: Anthropic Climate

Pages 13–151.

Participants:

Marco V Morelli
Geoffrey Edwards
TJ Williams
John Davis
Heather Fester

Recorded: 11/30/2017

SEE ALL CONVERSATIONS

Filed Under: Books, Hide from home page, Philosophy (Eteolegeme), Society (Multitudes) Tagged With: Globes

Shiny Happy Lizard People

February 12, 2019 By Marco V Morelli

Shiny Happy Lizard People

By
  • Barsley Rosenbridge
    Bardsley Rosenbridge
 |  February 12, 2019
Feature Image: AK Rockefeller, Discoh [via Flickr, CC BY-NC]
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the biggest secret: 

REPTILIANS!
     United States lizard government
     help. Bloodlines).
     people think they know

Yes.
     lizard overlords
     hints. Images.
     videos. Clues.

people communicating
a “conspiracy” awakening
"evil". evil agenda, soon race cloned fade to Grey
     shapeshifters shape our reality today

do you have a sense that the Queen is
     Not human                         ?
do you fear what other people might think about you?
 (See:
eyes.
Queen Elizardbreath.
 (See:
david

impending natural disasters. The ridicule set him free
     hand it to Icke, But

do you have doubts ?
     ok—
     the president certainly has weird eyes.
and the world is ruled
     by money power. by secret this. hidden that.
     have banks and large influence
     more and more by Corporations
repeated abuse over time. Yes, the government is here
     keeping illusion bars prison,      "piercing"
     masses dumbed through poison of message
     food,($). media, supply
Yes.

ok- They are here
Who            ?
LIZARDS!
     times; philosopher, David insisted godhead,
     scaly evidence: So:
     conspiracy only of reptiles) called George Wogan for control

count the number of the New Anunnaki
these Sons (the turquoise suit says Theorist
     The new Age nutjob who
sees the Queen among George W. Elizabeth,
the Ancient and Clinton Bush,
Kissinger and Henry Bill Hope.
even Bob Hillary the conspiracy claims
     others Entering
     Icke territory
     Carey and some "paranoid of the latest written Conspiracy,
                                             the spirit Guide"
Icke presenting his arena tour in 2012
Icke’s theories turning out to be

                                 “true,” you say           ?
                                 lucrative         certainly

but Rumsfeld, a reptilian. is
     so here, have our planet
     acquiesce. need a new world order
     What a compliance, what is
     We cannot go back.” [They] [they] take our planet
                           and our energy away

DNA technology
double-helix demigods spiralling out of all control
Draconian agenda. (Earth)
No.

we are missing the point. The vast majority
     ignore the rabbit hole
     it’s all about controlling our vibration
     from above.”
knowledge is reality. to say 3D is to be aware that This mankind thinking
ABOUT THE TRUTH
*Note the reptilian

EVIL!
Yes. They are.
known as Reptoids. Seeking to utilise the humans
     for Icke's global arena tour
     New World Order
     yet another lucrative global war
     with old politicians
     sold out in multiple countries

bloodlines Over
pull: the strings etc.)
they push (illuminati, Agenda
and the secret direction of society

REPTILIANS!
     glimpse of far-off Icke
     kneels with Compassion Chief" Post: Washington
     General Caduceus.
missing children
an underground hidden world,
Icke says. Pope Benedict
blackmail sex murder
he has challenged people’s perceptions of reality to backlash.
      Bush announced ritual abuse with a gesture, and even
      blood sacrifice. In secret elite tunnels beneath the streets
some. Rumoured
past Earth
naked eyes?
UFO scales
reptile On his forehead.
thwarted the outright Alien Today

Soon a revolution will take place
     the Aliens and the Transgenda of the elite
so, Yes, you see Obama's eyes
The "fall man" to the serpent
     the abuse power circles
     Westminster Vatican Bohemian Grove

This information
ABOUT REPTILIANS
may be difficult to process
as the light from Sirius.) (See:
     David Icke,
Lizard control
people think they know

Filed Under: Featured, Poetics (Originary Powers), Poetry, Society (Multitudes) Tagged With: conspiracy, illuminati, new world order

The Goddess as Active Listener (Parts 5–10)

December 22, 2018 By Marco V Morelli

The Goddess as Active Listener (Parts 5–10)

By
  • Brian George
    Brian George
 |  December 22, 2018
Feature Image: Minoan Fresco from Akrotiri, circa 1650-1550 B.C.
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Editor’s Note: The full text of this work comes in ten parts, which we have broken into three installments. For Installment 1: Parts 1–3, click here. For Installment 2: Part 4, here. Below we present the final installment.

5

Minoan Fresco from Akrotiri, circa 1650-1550 B.C.

When I remember Sue Castigliano, I think of almost naked dancers vaulting above the gold-tipped horns of Cretan bulls, to the sound of waves breaking in the distance. Wandering with the ghosts of an exploded island empire, I enter the doors of a library that I first thought was an octopus. When I think of her, I see wheat bound in sheaves, corn hanging from a makeshift wooden peristyle, grapes being stomped by rhythmic feet in vats. I think of the minute preparations of a glad community in the month before a human sacrifice.

When I remember her, I think of a face that encompasses multitudes, whose each component is distinct, the dark face of the goddess, projected against lowering clouds. I think of Ceres, of Inanna, of Isis, of Coatlique, and of Oshun. I think of olive oil sleeping inside of prehistoric jars, the Sibyl smoothing out her wrinkles in the shadow of the arch of Constantine. I think of a young girl standing on a cliff above the sea, the wind playing with her hair, as she listens for the voice of her drowned lover.

Her body is the world tree. Her navel is Omphalos, the place of interconnection. Her womb is the cave where stars can get changed into their human suits. In her left palm Saturn, time’s comptroller, tilts and revolves. The fingers of her right hand touch the Earth with a gesture of abundance. And then, quite unexpectedly, she stands before me in a robe. In her eyes, I can see ships sailing back and forth. There, beneath the gigantic shadow of a wave, a wave that towers, still swelling, up and up, they go in search of a dock that is nonexistent.

Above our heads: a roof, whose beams have disappeared. There is only a charred corner. The shore is not far away. The astringent scent of salt is softened by the scent of moss and rosemary. “Beloved, come. Like fireflies, the ghosts of all past seers flicker in the dusk, where, if you hurry, you might catch one in a jar. Our fingers touching, like our souls, by its light we will read an elegy on the metastasis of Rome, on the triumph of the Age of Iron, the last statement by a master who is called by some “Anonymous.” Upon your lips, my breath: the elixir by which your name will be alchemically removed.

“Many years have passed since the day that you were buried, facing east, with a luminous stone clutched tightly in your hand, with much to say that would never be expressed. It is reasonable that your knees should start to tremble and give out. A drum beats in the distance, in the labyrinth of your ear. My pulse suspends you. Are you dead, or are you not, or is there some third alternative?

“In my eyes, you can see your culture, falling. Do not dare to look away! A slow spiral has returned you to this spot, and it will do so once again. You can even now feel how spaces open in your stomach, how your heart breaks with the ocean, how the sky reroutes the tangles of your nerves. And who is that small echo, now dancing on your tongue? As you fall into my eyes, you can even now feel how your thoughts are not your thoughts, how these thoughts belong to a figure that you lack the strength to recognize, how the wind sucks the marrow from your bones. There is more to fear than you know, but do not fear too much. We are free, in this silence, to calmly see and then celebrate the worst. Each throwing his/her arms around the other, as the light fades, we will weep.”

This is the role that my teacher acted out for me. It is not, of course, who she was in her day-to day existence. In hindsight, my memory manufactures images, which, no doubt, obscure far more than they illuminate, and yet they point to something not entirely untrue.

6

Oddly, there was nothing supernatural about her persona, quite the opposite in fact. She was a middle-aged woman from Ohio, about 42, the wife of an Episcopal priest, in no way unusual in appearance. She confessed that she found it difficult to lose weight from her hips and thighs. A few varicose veins were visible. The birth of two of her three children had been difficult, resulting in a number of physical problems. To me she was quite a beautiful, and even glamorous, figure. Her imperfections removed her—almost—from the realm of mythological fantasy. They made her real. Few noticed the live snakes that she wore instead of bracelets.

7

Minoan “Snake Goddess” figurine, circa 1600 B.C.
Minoan “Snake Goddess” figurine, circa 1600 B.C.

I am tempted to say that Sue Castigliano’s method was that of direct communication between one human being and another. To some extent this was true. One might note in passing the resemblance of her approach to the “logical consequences” theory of Dreiker, the “self-awareness” model of Meichenbaum, the “reality therapy” of Glasser, and the “teacher effectiveness training” of Gordon. In retrospect, I am surprised to see to what extent her actions were informed by developmental theory. When she interacted with her students, no abstractions were allowed to show.

A prerequisite for the guide is a mastery of what Buddhists call “skillful means.” The good teacher disrupts. He or she has a killer instinct for the best way to subvert the status quo. After interfering, the true catalyst allows nature to take its course. Speech class took the form of a circular discussion group, in which every voice could be heard. Sue would subtly steer but not dominate the conversation. She would set an idea in motion, she would set up a scenario, and then she would sit back to see what might develop.

One morning, for no apparent reason, I decided to attack a girl who had transferred from St. Peter’s High, the school from which I had been terminated, with extreme prejudice, two years before. I was outraged by her wholesomeness, and I finished a nonsensical diatribe by saying, “Did you leave your fuzzy pink bunny slippers at home? You should wear them to school. They would complement your outfit.” The girl launched herself across the room at me, swung once with her book bag, and then yanked with the intoxicated fury of a maenad at my hair. Its two-foot length allowed her to wrap it securely around her hands. When she had almost succeeded in removing it from my scalp, my psychopomp said, “Enough.”

Another teacher might have put a stop to things before they went that far. She later asked, “What do you think you said that made her so upset? Were you really angry with her, or were you angry about something else?”

8

Victor Brauner, Origin of Love, 1957
Victor Brauner, Origin of Love, 1957

I remember Sue’s response when I informed her that I felt I was growing stupider every day. I could not imagine what was wrong with me. My mind felt numb, and passively chaotic. My sentences self-destructed. My tongue was an alien artifact. It no longer fit in my mouth. Words flew across the horizon, to drift like litter through the streets of empty cities, to lose themselves on the other side of the globe. Could I really have become stupid? Was this a thing that humans did? An irrational fear, perhaps, yet there was no mistaking the symptoms. I could feel the active force of petrifaction, like a boa constrictor, coiling, each day a bit tighter, to squeeze the life-force from my neocortex. Pretty soon I would be too stupid to even bother to complain. My teacher did not argue, or offer to help, or in any way attempt to talk me out of the experience. Practicing a bit of reality therapy, she said:

“Why do you think that your stupidity is so unique? You do realize that there are stupid people all around you, and that one of them is speaking at this moment?

“I have been searching all week for an image for the end of the poem that I’m working on. It is right on the tip of my tongue, but it refuses to come out. You probably would not like the poem. It does not have any exclamation points.

“It’s about slowly getting up each day to change one small part of the world.

“I often feel as though I am moving under water. Everything seems too difficult. This morning I reached for a box of cereal on the top shelf of the pantry. My fingers were not long enough.

“I look at myself in the mirror. I am not young. The years just disappear. At times it does not seem possible that the girl that I used to be is gone. Who is this middle-aged woman looking back at me from the mirror?

“And then I think that I was able to reach the cereal box after all. The image that I am searching for will probably arrive tomorrow, or perhaps it will be waiting for me to notice it in a dream.

“My husband is a good man. I love being a teacher.”

It may seem odd that such a confession should have a liberating effect. The reason is not complicated. My teacher gave me permission to be human, to begin from where I was. It was wonderful to know that the goddess too had doubts. She also said, “Why don’t you keep a notebook to write down everything that comes to mind, stupid or not?”

Shortly thereafter I was inhabited by a swarm of primordial energies. Like an egg, the world cracked open. Tiny whirlwinds split the seed inside my heart. The “I” was shown to be an “Other,” just as Rimbaud had once theorized. At 2 AM one morning, to the sound of crickets chirping in a field, I wrote the first installment of my own ancestral myth—about 16 pages-worth in a matter of four hours. The writing was so illegible that it might as well have been cuneiform. It was a good thing that I copied it soon after. The piece had way too many adjectives, of course. How free and generous was my use of the exclamation point! I missed few chances to insert them. If memory serves, the piece was not especially good, or really any good at all, but that is not the point. It occurred to me suddenly and with violence, “You have the power to create.”

9

Victor Brauner, Birth of Matter, 1940
Victor Brauner, Birth of Matter, 1940

By contemporary standards, the “personal influence” model was no doubt pushed to an extreme, and then, in my own imagination, beyond that. This was the heyday of the counterculture. Boundaries were fluid. We would sometimes talk through the afternoon on the back porch of her house, sipping lemonade from tall plastic glasses and discussing the merits of peyote versus psilocybin, as the shadows projected from a distant war lengthened slowly across the grass.

Black pajamas from a Viet Minh girl would follow her burnt scent, flapping, turning this way and that in the cross-winds of the Pacific. With the banging of a door, the girl’s pain would slip into the wide heart of the goddess, there to find a home, there perhaps to find some tiny bit of rest. We could hear the blasts from the 30-foot mountain horns, along with the struck gongs, which together were like the sound of tectonic plates scraping. We could hear the interdimensional elephants trumpeting, with the blood of gods on their tusks. We could hear the Paleolithic bird-squeaks, growing louder, as the Nagas climbed from their atonal graves.

Troops would reenact on a cloud the opening games of the Mahabharata. Suddenly, we might note that the sun had vanished from the sky. Revolving on one spot, which just happened to be the spot where we were seated, the wheel of time would appear almost motionless as it flew. “Have you read Thich Nhat Hanh’s The Lotus in a Sea of Fire?” she once said. “In luminous prose, he explains the reasons that monks burn themselves. According to Hanh, it is not correct to call this suicide, as most Western reporters do. It is not really even protest. Can you imagine how much love it takes to set yourself on fire? He says, ‘In Buddhist belief, life is not confined to a period of 60 or 80 or 100 years: life is eternal. Life is not confined to the body: life is universal.’ By burning himself, the monk shows that he is willing to suffer any pain for others, not only to call attention to the suffering of the oppressed but also to touch and open the hearts of their oppressors. Hanh’s language is simple enough, but it has the force of great poetry.” A kind of natural hallucinogen was produced by the mere proximity of the beloved. A storm would make the oak leaves rustle. The scent of lilacs would overwhelm the senses. Rooting itself in the moment, the self moved deeper into incarnation.

10

Hiranyagarbha, (The Golden Egg), Kanga School, 18th Century
Hiranyagarbha, (The Golden Egg), Kanga School, 18th Century

Again, my teacher has moved into a dream that powers the perpetual beginning of the world, whose initiates will at length restore the transparency of space.

The beloved now becomes anonymous.

It is of no importance who or what she was, but only that she play each role that memory invents.

Falling as though from a distant planet, the shadow of Sue Castigiliano opens like a door. The footprints of a prehistoric goddess lead straight across a tiny but quite terrifying ocean.

Filed Under: Featured, Longform/Essays, Mythos, Story Tagged With: education, goddess, memoir, pedagogy

Poems of Annie Blake (Part 1)

December 18, 2018 By brigidburke

Poems of Annie Blake (Part 1)

By
  • Annie Blake
 |  December 18, 2018
Feature Image: Die Sunde by Franz Von Stuck [CC, Wikicommons]
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FELIX CULPA

for Annie Rose

i kiss her hand / i hold onto her reeds for she weaves me when the water falls / her body loosened by men / discernment and her sacrifice / she has taught me there is no such thing as loss / she unroots in the forest / thick incense on a white horse / the red horse and the blooded skins of indians / 3rd archon of the winds / she will reign for a thousand years / he won’t open his seals until she is able to come from his mouth /

blackbirds rise like a word from a hot hovel / satis house and her letter / and her first wedding gown / fires blank and face clocks / my hands / their spell / swelling the mouth of a match / the stone thrown into the sea and circulatio /

i see the devil in my room / my mother always told me he would come / my cross and the antichrist / one thief is the serpent / the other is the dove / as many feathers / tongues swollen with forgiveness / her lips / the afterbirth / parallel and larded like the tracks of carriages / sirens ring red / his hot colored eye / eupeptic syzygy / body from trees and / how i sunder for my people in clay

WE THAT ARE YOUNG SHALL NEVER SEE SO MUCH, NOR LIVE SO LONG

for my children

my cloche in the lake / waiting for him / with a feather and without a father / will the wind sail green / i’m on the pier on a summer’s day / i was in sweden / or switzerland / snow and summer make spring / a door i have never walked through / her body floating like a boat / she was a girl with a beautiful voice / and articulate / which was rare from where i came from / and how we read king lear in class / doll stuffing clouding the lake / the lining of cordelia and the rise of the third reich /

boats like funeral jackets / air like sails / i’m wearing a sailor blouse / kick-pleat skirt and ankle length / i’m not young anymore / theocracy / my god / bars across my window / my knuckles white / my face is strained wet / but more silent than when i was in childbirth / the skin of my body / tafetta or velvet and a coffin birth / my father hitting his head against the wall because that is the only way he can tell me he is frustrated and doesn’t know what else to do /

emendation / anacoluthon / shotgun window / where is the sky / burning lilies in the forest on the moon / there is a man there / i remember him from somewhere / he kicks a ball a long way off in the field / and gold and red sulphur to the sun / that is his answer to me / my children are handing in their ballot papers / i lay them like a map / on the table / the lake is green / a glass meadow / the boats serene / unleavened bread / how they are rising for me /

it was her that day / a mist of breath / single flaw of a feather / joseph of arimathea and the sabbath / i am a mother / he gives me another wedding ring / i fly through my shotgun house / my skin is all cut out / a basket made from a poplar tree / hickory lacing / for my son

SOTERIA

for Annie Rose

people are divisions / the shrinking wilderness / house lots / backyards / fenced and gated / so i’m viewable from the city / she sang and she dribbled / we kissed / danced ballet / because she was so infantile i carried her and helped her bend her legs /

my bedroom chair / i flew around in it for seven days / the wishing chair and circumambulation / nigredo and albedo / seven round planets / turned around / to show mourning and how the light is coming / the chair / shell motifs / curvaceous vase-shaped back splat / horseshoe seat / chairs have knees and cabriole legs / the dragon’s claw / the ball is stuck in my throat / a cat / guilt like loose string / i ate a mouse /

i want to wear the crown on my head / like osiris / his atef-crown / chairs can crumble like sucked bread / i penetrate things like men do / fly through glass / i stole her crown / she was a queen / eve and my mother / poison apple / redback / riding in the wood / chewable stone / virgin well / fountain of consequence and the cleaved sea / wings a cross / i followed her / until i touched her cloak /

the little girl asks / why doesn’t the ghost come / and when he came he was black / sheer voile curtains / mounts the dawn / i had just risen out of my bed / he sniffed my hands / holding a pomegranate and splitting seeds / and told me i was the devil / my mother was there / and told me to scrub myself clean /

our church was profound but the wind left me too separate / cloistered walnut shell and a sacrificial table / i struggle to lift my children from deep water / breathe them from the caves tucked high in their arms / when i can’t find air / their bodies dark water /

knees rise instead of mouths

Filed Under: Featured, Poetry

The Goddess as Active Listener (Part 4)

December 12, 2018 By Marco V Morelli

The Goddess as Active Listener (Part 4)

By
  • Brian George
    Brian George
 |  December 12, 2018
Feature Image: Victor Brauner, Disintegration of Subjectivity, 1951 (detail)
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Editor’s Note: The full text of this work comes in ten parts, which we are releasing in three installments over three consecutive weeks. For Installment 1: Parts 1–3, click here. Below we present Installment 2: Part 4.

4

“Gnothi Seauton” or “Know Thyself”—attributed to Socrates

But also to Chilon of Sparta, Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Solon of Athens, and Thales of Miletus. Juvenal, in his 11th Satire, claimed that the precept actually descended “de caelo”—directly out of heaven.

Fresco from the Temple of Isis, Pompei, 1st Century A.D.
Fresco from the Temple of Isis, Pompei, 1st Century A.D.

When I met Sue Castigliano, my speech teacher during senior year at Doherty Memorial High School, it was not at first apparent that she would one day change my life. I had never before had a teacher who had any sense of who I was, of the hole in my heart or the blockage in my psyche. She was from the Midwest, not obviously countercultural—I would find out otherwise—and her most noticeable virtues were such things as calmness, openness, acceptance, and curiosity. She dressed simply. She wore very little jewelry. She was not at all theatrical, and she certainly did not announce that our speech class would be about so many things other than speech. Gently pushing aside my defenses, she reached out and down through the soul to touch me on the most elemental level. Even now, looking back from a distance of more than 40 years, and far removed from the melodrama of that period, it is hard for me to imagine who, what, or where I would be if that meeting had never taken place. Again, I exhale a sigh of relief. 

It is said that when the student is ready the teacher will appear. Luckily, the teacher may also choose to appear when the student is not at all ready. She drags him, if need be kicking and screaming, into a new, more direct, but also more paradoxical relationship with the self. Socrates’ injunction, “Gnothi Seauton” or “Know Thyself,” which, according to Pausanias, was inscribed on the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, is far more demanding than it has any right to be. It is a simple statement, composed of only two small words. The injunction becomes more demanding, not less, as we attempt to translate our all-too-often inflated insights into action. Who, exactly, is doing the knowing? What is the nature of the self that presents itself to be known? Perhaps what we see is the illuminated crescent at the edge of an—almost—unimaginable sphere. As with the subtle but subversive presence of the teacher, this crescent becomes more visible as we are forced to grapple with the limits of our vision, until, quite suddenly perhaps, we are led into the dark. To begin to grasp the “what” of what we are, we must let go of the fixed version of the “who.”

Is the ego the knower of the self, or is the self the knower of the ego? Perhaps the soul is itself a mask, soon to morph into a different form with the astronomical rotation of the fashion industry. Although, as a matter of convenience, I use it here, I do not like the word “ego.” Over the past six years or so, I have tended to use it less and less. I have just as little use for or patience with the all too popular term “seeker.” I far prefer Picasso’s formulation. He states—somewhat arrogantly, perhaps—“I do not seek; I find.” The term “teacher” I like more, but this term, if casually used, has problems of its own. Too many students of famous gurus, for example, can’t seem to wait to give away all of their own intuitive authority to the teacher. It can be difficult for the teacher to be idolized, either spiritually or intellectually, and many are tempted to want to turn their students into small, submissive versions of themselves. This can be as true in a PhD program in archeology as in an ashram. 

Clearly, good teachers are needed to transmit information, to help students to discover themselves, and to model certain skills. We cannot do without them. Even the most abstract of knowledge is not abstract; at least in the first stages, it must come attached to a living body. In this essay, however, it is the more primal concept of “teacher”—the teacher as spiritual catalyst—that I am attempting to explore. If such teachers are, in a different way, essential, they may sometimes tend to hold themselves to a lower standard than their students: They may stamp the void with their brand; they may speak highly of their total unimportance; in an energetic contest with Joe Average, they may judge themselves the victor; they may take themselves as seriously as their most obedient followers; they may believe that the light has more to teach them than the darkness; they may take as much as they give; they may have the power to catalytically intervene but be unwilling to let go.

It is not that such teachers lack the knowledge that they claim; they may very well possess it, but they do not give it freely. They do not prefer to overflow. Rather, they choose to portion this knowledge out, and, in the process, they can come to believe their own P.R. How easy it is for the once enlightened teacher—accidentally on purpose—to be sucked into the vortex of his own charisma! Power intoxicates, and the gods do like to drink. The student may then become sadomasochistically attached to his own childhood, to the deadness of his feet and the blockage in his spine. He will not make of his heart a meeting place or expect that his head will click open like an aperture. He will see his mind as an electrochemical databank, as an empty space to be filled up with the teacher’s big ideas. He will not learn how to leap from a great height, to move into and beyond death, or to hatch the universe from an egg. He will not dare to trust that his energy is a kind of self-existent vehicle.

I think that seekers often fixate on the “shattering of the ego” as a way to prove to themselves that they actually do exist; if they do not possess any breadth of cosmic vision, they are nonetheless experts in the role from which they are trying to escape. It is far more problematic for the seeker to accept that he is where he is supposed to be, even if he has no memory at all of when this choice was made. This is not to say that he should not speak truth to power, or take action against injustice, or withhold his empathy from a person in a dead-end situation because supposedly this person has “created his own reality”; no, I say only that he should challenge himself to grasp the larger shape of his life-story, to intuit how daimon and persona fit together. The real challenge is not to be elsewhere; it is to be, more fully, here. And that, of course, is the question: just what do we mean by here? 

Fresco from the Temple of Isis, Pompei, 1st Century A.D.

Once, we lived in a city that we loved, a city in which humans mixed freely with the gods. That city would seem to have long ago disappeared, and yet it calls to us from the depths of the horizon. Our hand rests on the doorknob of the house where we came of age. Driven by implanted memories, the human genome dreams of a real voyage to the stars. 

It is 1971. And, as my hunt for occult wealth intensifies, I am attempting to round up my predecessors. I would determine, first of all, if there was ever anyone else like me who had existed on the Earth. Arrogance and Insecurity, my twin ravens, have returned with a few drops of mercury for my cup. I have set up Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Rimbaud, and Giorgio de Chirico as my makeshift Holy Trinity. At midnight, periodically, a black pyramid will descend to crush my skull. This is less fun than it sounds.

In a manuscript from 1913, Giorgio de Chirico writes

To live in the world as in an immense museum of strangeness, full of curious multi-colored toys which change their appearance, which, like little children, we sometimes break to see how they are made on the inside, and, disappointed, realize they are empty.1Giorgio de Chirico, “Manuscript from the Collection of Paul Eluard,” from Giorgio de Chirico, James Thrall Soby, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1966, page 246

As if to prove that my potential genius is a toy, and indifferent to the scale of my embarrassment, not de Chirico but de Chirico’s daimon seems to reach inside my head, whose contents he then removes to view them from odd angles. O infinite extension of the Argonaut! The daimon’s arrogance is breathtaking. It is clear that he feels no obligation to put the original contents back, so that de Chirico, the 1913 version, from his squalid studio in the rue Compagne-Premiere, somehow stares out of my eyes. In the end, I can barely recognize my mother, who begins to look suspiciously like a manikin, so that I jump when she suddenly appears, with a plate of sardines, at my door.

“The first man must have seen auguries everywhere,” writes de Chirico, “He must have trembled at each step that he took.”2Giorgio de Chirico, “Manuscript from the Collection of Paul Eluard,” from Giorgio de Chirico, James Thrall Soby, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1966, page 248 It is 1917. The end of the Vietnam War is at hand, and, disoriented that it is not his shrapnel wound but the flu that has carried off Apollinaire, I am recovering from a bout of nervous exhaustion in Ferrara. “Stone engineers, though silent,” I shout, “please WASH UP ON THE BEACH. Give praise to Hygenia, the Muse.” Depositing treasures, a wave lifts me, and I can hear my floorboards creak like tectonic plates. It is 1971, the year of the industrial-strength slaughter at Verdun, and I struggle to understand why I am hovering six feet above my body. My head looks fine, so why can’t I get in? Luckily, the luminous acorn of my genius is intact. Depositing treasures, a wave lifts me, and I can hear my floorboards creak like tectonic plates. When I turn, the door’s frame is the only thing that stands.

Giorgio de Chirico, Metaphysical Composition, 1914
Giorgio de Chirico, Metaphysical Composition, 1914

Between 1954, the year of my birth, and 1973, 4.6 million tons of explosives are dropped on North Vietnam. Eggs of jellied fire do not play favorites with the pawns of geopolitics. Napalm burns both actors and observers to the bone, and then keeps on burning, in the souls of US citizens as well. Agent Orange defoliates at least 11,969 square miles of the land that is said to be “beloved by snakes.” I am shocked by the infinitely ballooning shadow of my country, and yet, and yet, this shadow is familiar. At my feet, an abyss opens, and I stare into its depths. “How noble are your objectives!” a voice calls from below. “You have stamped your tiny foot against the Empire! You have raged against the war machine!” My innocence sticks in my throat, and I find that I cannot breathe. 

Suitably chastened, I bit by bit withdraw my energies from the stage of social justice to refocus them on a more pragmatic goal, on my slapstick perfection of the role of poete maudit. My anger then prompts the transvaluation of all values. Revolution by night prompts the achievement of omnipotence, that is, of a hollow, toy-sized version thereof, which is nonetheless somewhat satisfying. Following in the sacred footsteps of Rimbaud, I do my best to practice the “systematic derangement of the senses”—as though my senses had not so far been adequately deranged, as though I had not lost some 98 percent of them at birth. I begin to wear a beret and smoke a historically-accurate clay pipe. The grand rhetorical gesture is supreme, as in this passage from A Season in Hell, in which Rimbaud reminisces that “Disaster was my god. I called to my executioners to let me bite the ends of their guns, as I died. Spring brought to me the idiot’s terrifying laughter.”3Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell, translated by Wallace Fowlie, The University of Chicago Press, 1966, page 173

“Je est un autre,” “I is an other.”4Letter to Paul Demeny, Charleville, 15 May 1871 As was specified by Breton, true beauty should be convulsive. Nietzsche is a better friend than Jesus, who had followers, who were Christians, who in their current versions are far less likeable than when they had volunteered to be martyrs. What a nerve to have chickened out on the Apocalypse, the one in 72 AD. An experience of the “Eternal Return” is triggered by the turning pedals of my bicycle. It is almost certain that, any day now, Parmenides will provide me with the key to perpetual motion. A dragonfly landing on a milkweed pod is somehow taken for a prophesy. Yogic breathing exercises will yet give birth to a race of cyborg Ubermenchen. Always, the entire visible world is about to pass out of existence. 

Victor Brauner, Disintegration of Subjectivity, 1951
Victor Brauner, Disintegration of Subjectivity, 1951

If I, as “Brian George,” now exist in more than one location, you must place the blame squarely on the other one, the other Brian, who is dead. As the bird-chirps of the Underworld echo in my ears, I can feel the hand of a goddess still resting on my shoulder. 

The process of self-discovery is a paradoxical one, as I have said, which for most of us demands the steady hand of a guide, of a living person who is fated to perform the role of the psychopomp. His or her magnetic power draws us into the orbit of the self. The teacher confronts us with an inexplicable presence, a presence which, as we torture our minds to demystify its movements, we understand less and less. There is no way to encircle the motives of such a presence in advance. They cannot be grasped from the outside in, or as a matter of theory. They are always more and other than they were. For each clear purpose, there is always an unmediated shadow, within which a far vaster purpose breathes. Given the importance of this role—the fact that billions of bits of information may not add up to real knowledge, and that knowledge, left to its own devices, is no substitute for vision—it is shocking that students can go from k-1 through grade 12 without ever meeting a teacher who might serve in this capacity. But then again, a public school is probably the last place that one should expect to find such guidance, and the tarred and feathered pyschopomp would most often be run out of town on a rail.

What would have happened to me if I had not met this particular teacher when I did, if she had travelled to some city other than Worcester from Ohio, if she had made use of the more typical “one-size-fits-all” approach, if the snakes from Minos had not wrapped around her arms? I might have eventually become more or less who or what I am—assuming that I did not slip and fall into psychosis—but I would lack a sense of trust in the origin of things, a sense of confidence equal to my desire for self-realization. As self-determined as I like to believe myself to be, so much of what and who I am is the result of the well-timed intervention of others, in this case Sue Castigliano, who so generously gave what I could not provide for myself. 

Through the years of adolescent angst, I had grown away from childhood without making any progress towards adulthood. My parents had divorced when I was four years old, and my mother never quite recovered from the experience. From the time of their divorce until the day he died, my mother spoke less than a hundred words to my father. His name had gone into her black book of real and imagined wrongs. She did not forgive. It would not be taken out. As though out of nowhere, the happy nuclear family had exploded. I remember the shock of being evicted from the garden, at whose gate a fiery sword revolved. I remember how, in the short period before this, I would get into fistfights for no particular reason, from a sheer excess of energy, for the joy of it. I would wake up singing with the birds without even being aware that I was singing. How I treasure those few early years as an extrovert.

At the age of five, I had been unofficially appointed to serve as a kind of surrogate parent for my mother. As though she and not I were in need, I would sometimes rock her as she sobbed, uncontrollably, in my arms. I had to pretend to be strong enough for both of us. 

I was left with an unacknowledged sense of abandonment. Distantly aware of being angry, perhaps a bit more aware of having lost my sense of trust, of the ache in my heart, I knew these emotions only through their symptoms. I did not choose to confront my reflection in the mirror, for fear of falling through. I no longer enjoyed getting into fistfights; it had become a chore, not a pleasure. Instead, I got into arguments, in which I would go to any lengths to prove the dolt-like nature of my opponents. Somewhat later, starting in my senior year of high school—at the same time, curiously, that I took my first literary baby steps—I would often be very hesitant to drift off into sleep, for fear that I would not know who I was when I woke up, of not being sane. Planets would taunt me with their superior musical ability. I could barely play the recorder. I went through a long period of being terrified of perspective. I saw distance as a threat. I would not allow my eyes to drift down the converging lines of Main Street, for fear that I might be sucked out of my skin, for fear that the horizon would eat me. I was careful to focus only on signs and objects in the foreground. 

Black magic had turned the too conscientious child into a headless plastic doll. “What a stupid place the world is,” it thought. “Let me share my new-found freedom.” Where the self should be, there were atoms, clashing. There were voids inside of voids. Used to being around adults, I could camouflage my thoughts in articulate form. On a good day, I could pass for a responsible young revolutionary. In due course, my comrades would overthrow the government. The industrial age would spontaneously combust. Chants would levitate the Pentagon. An urban gorilla at 17, I could strip and reassemble my attitude like an AK 47. Bourgeois robots would creak and beg for oil on a forced march to the amber fields of grain. A part of me was still very much a child, hurt and confused, who had no desire to expose his vulnerabilities to others. I wanted to disappear into the branches of my favorite apple tree, to daydream for hours as the clouds changed shape, to feel the Earth darken as the afternoon wore on. I would watch in secret as smoke billowed from a factory, beneath whose stacks the ant-sized workers crawled.

I cannot say exactly how Sue Castigliano changed me. I can only say that through and because of her a change took place. Stepping from the cave-mouth of a dream, the Goddess of Active Listening took my hand. By the end of the year, my concept of strength had been dissolved and reconfigured. I was less afraid of fear. Without yet knowing how to access what I knew, I had begun to see my wounds as so much raw material, the dark matter with which an alchemist might one day create wealth. It is as though my teacher had said, “What you see before you is now yours for the asking. The world is no longer a vast and anonymous space. It is a book that waits to be opened. Here, open it, and read.”

Continue to Parts 5–10

Notes   [ + ]

1. ↑ Giorgio de Chirico, “Manuscript from the Collection of Paul Eluard,” from Giorgio de Chirico, James Thrall Soby, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1966, page 246
2. ↑ Giorgio de Chirico, “Manuscript from the Collection of Paul Eluard,” from Giorgio de Chirico, James Thrall Soby, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1966, page 248
3. ↑ Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell, translated by Wallace Fowlie, The University of Chicago Press, 1966, page 173
4. ↑ Letter to Paul Demeny, Charleville, 15 May 1871

Filed Under: Featured, Longform/Essays, Mythos, Story

The Goddess as Active Listener (Parts 1-3)

December 3, 2018 By Marco V Morelli

The Goddess as Active Listener (Parts 1-3)

By
  • Brian George
    Brian George
 |  December 3, 2018
Feature Image: Tomb of Ramses VI, North Wall (detail)
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Editor’s Note: The full text of this work comes in ten parts, which we are releasing in three installments over three consecutive weeks. Here is Installment 1: Parts 1–3.
 
Tomb of Ramses VI, North Wall

Tomb of Ramses VI, North Wall

 

1

When I was first introduced to my wife, I told her that I had always missed her but had never realized it until we finally met. She was present as a kind of pregnant absence. I was aware on some alternate level of the self of a kind of negative space, like the shape of a missing puzzle part, to which her image corresponded, and into which it would one day lock to complete the predetermined structure. We might certainly wish that this process were more foolproof than it is, that so many things could not potentially go wrong, and yet, in its own wonderfully slipshod way, this tendency of linked fragments to reassemble themselves into an image sometimes takes us where we need to go.

Are we meant to have certain experiences, or to connect with certain people rather than with others? At a multidimensional intersection—at a 19th Century train station as designed by Giorgio de Chirico, let’s say, where the newly arriving and newly departed search for their respective tracks—it is possible to see how precarious forces constellate, not always to our advantage. Habit is not harmony. Safety is an illusion of the microcosm.

Listen, and I will whisper in your ear. Perhaps earth-shattering events happen every day around you, more or less invisibly, as you brush past in your haste to buy a donut. A catastrophe that occurred in 9800 BC is only just now informing you of the whereabouts of your heart. After so much time it has decided to return, again to advocate for its role as the seat of true intelligence. If you do not “stop the world,” for just a moment, to talk to the stranger standing next to you at the Pan Am luggage-belt, it could be that you have thrown away your one and only chance to meet that significant Other. A mutual friend may demand to introduce you to a soul mate, or else he or she may turn suddenly around a corner at the Museum of Modern Art, with a puzzled expression, to ask a pregnant question about Kandinsky. But where was the music of the occluded sphere hiding, and why did love’s messengers take so long to appear? No doubt you are bad.

The more romantic among us are used to thinking that there may be one true soul-mate for each person. It is less common to imagine that friends or teachers may also play their parts in this apparent drama of predestination. Perhaps the meeting with the teacher had all along been programmed by a bird at the Institute of Interplanetary Symbols. Each student of a good teacher might well view the meeting as a one of a kind event. Such interventions by the avian programmer most often have about them a great sense of “uncanniness”; the world has changed, and it is not possible to return to your earlier and simpler view of existence. The experience of transformation can go so deep that it forces you to invent a mythological cause. A kind of right to left reversal then alters your mode of vision. This mythological cause then becomes the origin of all of the wrong turns and disjunctions that led you to the teacher. You might ask, let’s say, “How do you know when a bird has scheduled a key meeting?” And I would answer, “It is enough that you would know. You would know because such a meeting should never have occurred at all.”

Where you first exclaimed “Aha!” and breathed a sigh of relief, you later are forced to read through the person to the presence just beyond, to a presence that you suspect might see your every flaw, to a presence still sympathetic but also more demanding. The seers of the World Maritime Empire had once given you a thread, before their lines of transmission were disrupted by a comet. This presence demands to know if you have taken care to preserve it. “Speak!” she says. “Is your thread in working order? Have any of its three strands started to come unwound?” The person hands you a copy of Par Lagerkvist’s The Sybil. The presence reaches into the center of your skull, where the pineal gland is located, massaging it in such a way that it almost stops your heart. The person reassures, but the presence regrets to inform you that all your nightmares must hatch out, that your mind is an unopened oyster, that no one seems to have bothered to teach you how to breathe, and that there are valid reasons for your enemies to hate you. Oh, and by the way, some two-thirds of what you take to be your good habits are a joke. The seers of the World Maritime Empire shake their heads. They had hoped for more, and they are unsure which mishap or mutilation should come next.

Perhaps the soul’s alignments can be best explained as just an accident of geography, but so often such accidents would appear to erupt on schedule. Do those special people remind you of someone in your past, or do they remind you, much more strangely, of themselves? When you encounter a person who is meant to be important to you, it can expose a need that, until then, you did not consciously know to exist. The ache that you felt but did not know that you felt becomes somehow pleasurable in becoming more acute. There is nowhere left to hide. There is no need to avoid the pain that has tied a knot in your solar plexus, a knot that is as inscrutable as it is essential to your being.

Yes, “mistakes were made,” as the hoard of your nameless accusers has suggested, although not quite in those words. By accident, no doubt, you have killed those persons whom you loved, those causes for which you vowed to give your life. This has led to some degree of paranoia. You have learned to assume the worst about those who have come to teach you. Why else should you be so terrified of the chanting that now streams from the horizon?

Your error was not the atrocity itself but rather your refusal to see the action clearly. “What do we have here?” a kind but terrifying presence asks, a slight smile on her lips. As a finger points to a wound, there is no reason to be embarrassed. A touch sets the healing sap in motion. One simple look communicates the lost history of an era, reversing the great wheel of devolution, and freeing you from the crimes of the last 52,000 years. Green buds open on the derelict branch. Hallucinatory blossoms are not long in arriving. Messengers bring fruit from a tree already old when the first Earth had contracted from a dream.

2

Head from Nepalese scroll, 17th Century

Of whom does the inner teacher remind us? Perhaps the outer teacher is a key to unlock the inner teacher’s door, beyond which breathes the most luminous of shadows. Demanding that the code of silence be removed, each synchronistic meeting is like a knock that echoes through the Hall of Records, that hall that our Antediluvian betters once built from the skull of Akasha. “Who is there?” asks one of the bird-headed eunuchs who attend to its every need. We are usually too busy talking to respond. And if we do put aside our distractions and take a moment to respond, we will probably say something stupid like, “Who is asking?”

This may be one of the key functions that good friends perform for each other. Our first meeting with such friends can be a shock, a slap to the face of our common sense, which shows us how things can make sense without having to make any sense. We are called to develop talents that we thought belonged to others. And, just as easily, the magnetic force that attracts two friends can later push them apart. If there were no parting, we might never gain the distance necessary to come to terms with their influence.

A good teacher is not a friend, as such. Unlike a good friend, a good teacher is never more than partially accessible, a moon of which we can only see the cusp, and yet, being gone, he/she is still capable of answering a question. If the inner teacher can justly be called “good,” this goodness may depend on us. We have only to redefine the meaning of the term. We have only to find some way to invoke this teacher’s presence, in such a way that our question can be posed, in such a way that the absent can answer, in such a way that student and teacher are speaking the same language. In a strange land, our lips must form the words of a song that we learned in childhood; this time around, however, its effect will not be innocent. This song may sound like the howling of a ghost; like the gasping of a city’s population, buried while alive; like the banging of a door in the blood-drenched beer-hall of the gods; like the whisper of the rivers of mercury in the tomb of the first Chin emperor.

Let us posit that the inner teacher is led by the hand of the preexistent one, that teacher as demanding as he/she is omniscient, whose influence is most often not seen nor heard but rather felt in the peculiarities of external circumstance. Is there any moment at which the teacher behind the teacher is not present? Yes and No. There are those who say that no good teacher would throw away his student, that cruelty is not love, that she would not leave him, cold and naked, with only a few well-worn platitudes to chew on. How absurd! There is a grammar to such silence, which the teacher expects the student to remember how to parse.

If the bird-headed eunuchs subject us to surveillance, if their wide eyes do not blink, if there is no way to escape from the life-pattern that they guard, the teacher may yet serve as an articulate ambassador. In pushing the student to come to terms with this life-pattern, the teacher may leave him with no choice but to rebel. There are few actions that will lead in a straight line. Threads can be cut without warning. Whole cultures can be ripped from their coasts. As intimate as the breath, as well-positioned as the tongue behind the teeth, the teacher subtly supports. To the dead student, this type of support is a mixed blessing. It may not, at first, be of use.

3
Omphalos

Fresco from the Temple of Isis, Pompei, 1st Century A.D.

Each of us starts life as a world center, indifferent to the laws of time and space, sure that our call will result in a response. At first, our solar plexuses have only a few shadows, like the cities on the sun. Our unconscious minds are as inhabited by symbols as an ocean is by fish. New sensory data float on the surface. We are everywhere, but in need of much.

Soon enough, we are shocked. We find, as we steadily expand the sphere of our discovery, that the world does not cooperate in affirming our self-image. Maddeningly, few recognize our age. There are theorists who dismiss our clearly audible demands as no more than mechanical reflexes. Q: “Does the young world center feel pain?” A: “No, of course not. He is only a pouch of biochemical intersections, whose random spurts of electricity cause him to make noise.” Donations from the maternal breast aside, perhaps there is something wrong here. It is not that others do not also come to kneel, or offer tribute, or express their joy and wonder. They do, but their actions are unpredictable. Colored toys revolve like intoxicated planets. When we dream of other lives, our hands no longer return with the objects that they clutch. It is necessary for light to fall on objects in order that we should see them, and it is more difficult to see at night than in the morning. Some whisper that we are “cute.” Doors open and close for no reason. A revolt is imminent, perhaps, and we note that, one by one, our caretakers have begun to disobey.

Earth is cold and wet. Life will kill you. It is probably better to keep the real story of your predestination hidden, even from yourself. Once consciousness was big. There was no fear. By sharing songs all species could communicate. Little art was needed to interpret the self-dramatizing image, the self-illuminating text. There was a mountain that rose from the bowels of the deep. To stand on it was to scan each period of history, like a landscape. The new body in which you find yourself is small. The mask that you wear cannot mediate between incompatible scales. After all, it is a mask. The bigger you get the less of your original face can be remembered.

As humans, we are not the puppets of the gods; no, we played a part in the creation of the world as well as all of the other bands of emanation. The human function goes as far back as the Bindu, as the primal point of origin, and then even possibly beyond. These bodies are the most recent version of an archetype. The human role remains the same; it is only its associated powers that may expand or contract.

You had come with a gift. It was not like any other gift, and there was no one else who could offer it to the world. It was not that you were special, as this word is normally understood; no, you were anonymous, and each person ever born had brought some particular gift, however much they may not have remembered what it was. This gift was not an object, at least not in the usual sense. It was an aboriginal totem on the move, a baroque feat of geometry, the fixation of one of the sub-powers of the zodiac, a kneeling of the wind before the wind, a monstrous prodigy of disinformation, the opening of a clean, well-lighted space, an offering from a child of the gods to the beyond; it was, in short, an individuated Uroboros, whose tale, from the first of days, was hidden in its mouth.

How strange that it took the form of a not-yet-spoken story. Already close to perfect, it went in search of a new audience. Such a gift could not be separated from your nature. It simply was, a matter of fact, beyond argument, and also was why you were here. There was a task to perform for which no one else was suitable. You should find some way to make a living, yes, but there were other, more complex obligations.

There was a task to perform for which no one else was suitable, or perhaps, for which no one else had been dumb enough to volunteer. Each year, the path back to the instructions in the seed would grow more and more circuitous. Not many of your goals would be achieved. That, too, is something that you would earlier have known. For obscure reasons, like the other 6 ½ billion people on the planet, you had picked this time and place. Leaps of imagination would be waiting to transport you, if and when they chose. This was not at all convenient. You could hear the ticking on an inner clock. This had led you to regard your more personal objectives as irrelevant, to the extent that you had the sanity to judge. It would have been so much easier not to care at all, not to sense the growing disturbance in your bones. There were many modern devices to which you could have turned.

To not have to see with your eyes: what a joy! To not have to hear with your ears: what a joy! You were broken, perhaps. There was some sort of a screw loose, or an extra piece or a piece that did not fit. Once, the spirits had collaborated in taking you apart. They had shown great skill. They were much less certain about putting you together. Was your vision accurate or was it not? That would be for good swimmers to say.

In the end, what luck was yours. What an influx from the dark side of the sun, where you had once, so pleasantly, had sex. You no longer had to depend upon your own imagination; there was no way to determine whose imagination it was. You could hear the ticking of an inner clock; the dead, with their long shadows, laughing; the Earth cracking along its geometric seams; the birds weeping; the plants of the Amazon shriveling up; the cities buzzing like white nuclear reactors; the gods getting drunk; the hedge fund managers jumping out of windows; the chiming of the eight-dimensional vimanas in the clouds; the zombies gnashing; the snails roaring; the oceans whispering as they plotted their long-delayed return. It would be useful to be able to figure out how to diagram a sentence. Some help would be offered, but not, of course, in a form that you were ready to accept.

Continue to Parts 5–10

Filed Under: Featured, Interviews, Longform/Essays, Mythos, Poetics (Originary Powers), Story

Tales of a Venezuelan Expat: Dispatch #1 (Don’t cry for me, Argentina)

November 3, 2018 By Marco V Morelli

Tales of a Venezuelan Expat: Dispatch #1 (Don’t cry for me, Argentina)

By
  • Amílcar Ortega
 |  November 3, 2018
Feature Image: Image via Time magazine article, "Inside Colombia and Venezuela's Border and Refugee Crisis" (published September 8, 2015)
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I’m lost in space. Lost. As it turns out the poets were right, you can’t go back home again. The Venezuela that raised me doesn’t exist anymore, that much everybody knows, but the situation got so unendurable that I’m finally aware of my limits. As it turns out I’m not an indestructible machine but a leaf floating in the wind, directionless and at the mercy of the gods.

I haven’t admitted to myself that I left my country for good. If you ask me, I’m on vacations, looking for business opportunities and establishing contact with likeminded people. Everyone I’ve met told me not to go back, to at least get some kind of legal documentation from another country, to spread my wings. They all want to talk about the crisis, most of them ask me for possible solutions I don’t have and look at me with understated pity. And I understand.

On one hand the stories you see on the media are way off and exaggerate some aspects of the whole. On the other, the situation is much more desperate and hopeless than reported. I equate it with watching a loved one go through a slow death, losing all of its faculties one by one, becoming a shadow of its former self. It’s incredibly sad and frustrating, what can you really do? If people from other nations knew just how deep an economy could sink…

As Kramer once said, “I’m out there, Jerry, and I’m loving every minute of it!” I’ve been thinking about leaving for a long time and here I am, loose in the world, out in the wild. I had to pull the trigger without a plan though. I’d been searching for prices and alternative ways to leave Venezuela, fantasized on doing it by bus, briefly considered a bicycle, I was just looking around aimlessly and a promotion for an airplane ticket to the exact place I wanted to go for almost half the price came up. I packed my bags and off to Córdoba, Argentina I went. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse.

I don’t feel comfortable discussing politics or economics, but I’ll say that every article I read about Venezuela’s situation, from both sides of the conflict, feels shallow and agenda driven. I wouldn’t even consider the opinion of an outsider that gets its information from the media, I’m talking about high level journalists that live inside the country. All of their analysis seems to be evading basic truths, facts, causes. They seem to ignore the macro, the big picture, and what a small but crucial dot in the grand chessboard Venezuela is.

Tightrope

There’s no way around it, I don’t have a safety net underneath anymore. I live on the tightrope now. There’s no room for error and every step counts. I have to stay on the right side of the law and don’t overstay my welcome in any country, I have to keep moving until my number comes up and I can present my case before a jury of my peers. Luckily, in this brave new world people can work on and through the Internet and not break any laws, but still, my situation is risky. Or it would be, if I had left Venezuela for good, which I haven’t.

The most pessimistic analysts fell short on their predictions, they imagined the future held an unmitigated disaster and we all got the fall of Atlantis. You’ve probably read about the merciless devaluation of the Bolívar, about the scarcity and the infinite lines of people begging to buy bread, about the four months of protests and the savage response they got. What you don’t know about are the brutalized faces, the denial, the resignation, the empty streets at eight o’clock, the desert it all became. Everyone left and now their parents are trying to sell their houses to follow them.

I seriously doubt they have a fate similar to Venezuela in store, but I arrived at an Argentina shaking with turmoil. The price of the Dollar raising by the minute, the public Universities on strike, protests in the streets every other day. Concern in the voices, stress on the faces, newspapers screaming bloody murder. And I feel like I’m in a resort. If people here knew just how awful the situation could get. If they knew how good they have it. If they knew how deep the sinkhole goes. I can’t express it in words, and when I try I sense nobody believes me, they think I’m exaggerating for dramatic purposes. It’s usually the other way around.

The other day I was in Buenos Aires, the city had me in a hurry and I got an Uber for the first time in my life. The driver was Venezuelan. He told me that he dreams of returning to the country every day. His mom is there. He was as puzzled as I was on a new law that came up that seems to prevent people abroad from sending money home, a law I still don’t understand and shouldn’t be discussing. Still, what could possibly be the reasoning behind something as nefarious as that? Dark entities lie in the shadows, creeping behind every corner.

Warehouse

We used to be very proud of our heritage but nowadays Venezuelans are the scorn of the earth. When our nation exported tourists with full wallets everybody received us with open arms, as migrants the scenario is a little different. And I understand. It’s too much, we’re too many, we’re everywhere. And we’ll do anything for half the price. We have nothing to lose and nowhere to go back to, so we have to make it happen.

I have to make it happen. Soon. I used to make fun of the social media pictures of recent migrants in supermarkets, so surprised by the variety of products offered in their destination that they felt compelled to immortalize the moment. I’m currently staying in a remote town in the mountains and my first visit to the local shop almost made me faint, I faked it and kept my cool but it was an experience. I’m near the edge of the world and there’s everything here, how can Venezuela be empty?

Before leaving, I kept the same job for several years. It’s hard to process that it allowed me to live by myself and eat out every other day, nowadays with that salary I couldn’t even take my girl out to dinner once. It effectively equates to two or three Dollars. If by some miracle I could afford the date, the food would probably be terrible. Money is so tight that the restaurant business is on the outs; and they have to make money somehow, so both quality and quantity have taken a hit. And if they used some imported product as an ingredient, forget it, that flavor is long gone.

One would think that those last few years in Venezuela would have taught me how to be poor, but I don’t have a clue. How do people do this? Work as a freelancer online is fleeting and the two clients I had put me on hold weeks before my escape. They both couldn’t afford to blog until their respective business picked up, what are the odds on that one? Also, they both used to pay me on Bitcoin and we all know how low that price is. I would love to work on a bar or as a waiter in a cheap restaurant, but the law doesn’t allow me to do it yet and I’m too old to break it.

I asked for my DNI appointment and they gave it to me for a year from now. Too many Venezuelans broke the system, a year ago the whole process took two or three months. I’m broke and my tourist status expires the first days of November, but I’m sure something will come up. My situation is not dire at all, I’m enjoying my holydays and nothing more. Don’t cry for me Argentina. And no, this article is not a cheap ploy to stir up sympathy and get some reader to offer me a job updating his or her company’s blog, how can you even suggest that? I still have my dignity.

The last time I set foot in Caracas it offered me a sad and creepy spectacle. It was a Saturday and a shopping mall I used to walk by frequently when I lived there was almost deserted, most of the shops were closed and only a few lost souls were there. The streets weren’t empty, but they weren’t exactly beaming with life, and the traffic was so light you might as well have been in a frontier town. And the faces, oh, the broken faces… As it turns out, Venezuela is an abandoned warehouse with barricaded doors and several leaks on the roof. There’s structural damage and the whole building could collapse any minute. And I can’t wait to get back in there.

Filed Under: Featured, Society (Multitudes), Story

Consuelos de Cocina

October 10, 2018 By Marco V Morelli

Consuelos de Cocina

By
  • Maia Maia
    Maia
 |  October 10, 2018
Feature Image: Photo by Arthur Savary on Unsplash
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Hands of the dead here in my living hands
as I split stony squash with a crack of the blade,

scoop seeds, oil flesh for the fire—hands
of women and men in my hands, generations

repeating these gestures, the old pleasure
of sliding squash into fiery oven, testing

impatiently for tenderness—the first bite
that singes the tongue, the voluptuous

swallow whetting lust for another, for heat,
the gravity of a full warm belly, irradiating

bones of the face and chest as this fruity vegetable
deity becomes human flesh—

offspring of sun and hairy vine strung with leaves,
gives winter calor y sabor, consoles our doubt

our solitude, consuelos de muertos, de silencios
y dolores here in my kitchen this morning, gracias

for this dark Mexican mound, this creamy
piedra with its gold miracle turning

inside out, singing the blood of the living
and the dead, changing

hunger to praise.

–

Maia
Fall 2018

Notes: Cucurbita moschata, Butternut squash, is a native of Mexico
On the Spanish: articles in Spanish omitted deliberately for rhythmic simplicity
-Consuelos: consolations -Cocina: can mean kitchen, cuisine, cookery, cooking, stove/oven, and I mean all of them here -calor y sabor: heat and savor -consuelos de muertos: consolations of or from the dead -de silencios y dolores: of silences and the pains of yearning, grieving, missing -piedra: rock or stone

Filed Under: Featured, Microdoses, Poetics (Originary Powers), Poetry

The Glory of Groove

October 3, 2018 By Marco V Morelli

The Glory of Groove

By
  • Liane Gabora
    Liane Gabora
 |  October 3, 2018
Feature Image: Liane Gabora, The Glory of Groove (view full image)
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Sidney woke to the distant sound of blissful sighs, and then sank back into a dream about a funky mama strutting her stuff to a groovy number, sporting a swanky frock with tiny pockets. Coins bounced out of the pockets as her hips swayed to and fro. Some coins landed and spun in time to the music. One by one they toppled over, except for one, a penny that was gyrating in a lopsided way because it was chipped. Instead of, “In God We Trust” it read, “In Groove We Trust”! The penny swerved, almost toppling, but kept going. Its Lincoln, who had a pierced nose, was nodding in time to the music. In a booming voice he said: “Keep spinning, Sidney, no matter how chipped you are. Glory to Groove!”

“Ahhhhhhh!” It was a ferocious, almost caveman-like moan of pleasure. Unmistakably Bruno. Coming from Alyzia’s room, which was next to hers.

Sidney crushed her pillow over her ears to muffle the sound.

But she had to pee.

On her way to the bathroom, a poignant high-pitched carnal cry emanated from behind Alyzia’s closed door.

Sidney slammed the bathroom door and peed. Peeing made her think about gravity, which made her think about gravitational lensing, the phenomenon wherein a large mass bends light as it travels from a distant object to an observer, potentially even blocking that distant object from view though it is in the observer’s line of sight. She imagined how, in Bruno’s mind, she was blocked out by Alyzia. And in Alyzia’s mind she was obscured by Bruno. She felt betrayed by them both. You’re not supposed to shift your interest from one person to her best friend. And the best friend isn’t supposed to go along with it. Especially when you live together!

She stared up at a paper maché mermaid hanging from the ceiling, trembling. There was a timid knock on the bathroom door.

“Sidney,” Alyzia called out softly.

Alyzia must have seen Bruno’s tattoo of the number tau, Sidney thought. She looked down at the tiny π engraved in the tender skin of her left breast, just above her heart. Should she show Alyzia the number pi on her own chest? That might make her stop and think.

More knocking. This time a little more urgent.

She couldn’t stay in the bathroom forever.

When Sidney opened the door, the first thing she saw was Bruno’s plaid shirt, inside out, on Alyzia’s small frame. Alyzia was sporting a strikingly pretty, disheveled, freshly-fucked look. Her face was flushed, and her long blonde curls were in disarray.

“Hi,” Alyzia said.

There was something in her voice that Sidney had never heard before. A note of guilt, or pity, or both. It was shocking to learn that Alyzia was capable of speaking like that, and doubly shocking she could speak that way to her. It was repulsive.

Sidney couldn’t go back to sleep. She put on her housecoat, lit a candle, and walked down the hardwood stairs, toward Olive, a mannequin at the front door with a styrofoam scalp and pimento-olives-on-toothpicks hairdo, the handiwork of Alyzia. Olive’s left arm was outstretched as if in greeting, but in the flickering candlelight both arms grew and shrank and shifted direction, as if in warning. Her heart pounded as she walked past Olive. She nestled herself in the paisley couch and thought back to the events in that room that had led to this moment.

Exactly one year later, the Sacred Scribe would describe this night for her listeners as her first real encounter with Groove.

π

Sidney kept finding herself looking up from the exams she was marking to catch glimpses of Bruno in a somewhat ridiculous frilly apron with images of floating frying pans splayed across it. She was sunk into a salmon-colored corduroy beanbag chair in the living room, which was partially separated from the kitchen by a waist-high partition. The house was run-down, with chipped paint and worn surfaces, but it held unexpected pleasures like stained glass panels above the windows. Curled up at her feet on the braided multicolor rug were Glimmer, a mostly white calico cat, and Inkling, an almost-black Bengal cat.

Sidney felt the beanbag chair smush into a different shape as Alyzia curled up next to her with a book. With Alyzia’s baby-fine, moon-colored curls rippling across Sidney’s shoulder, and the scent of Alyzia’s ylang ylang oil enveloping them like a bubble, the world seemed to soften. Boundaries melted, metaphorical meanings glimmered.

Raj was bundling newspapers and arranging sticks into a teepee in the fireplace. Once the fire was lit, he went over to investigate the stereo system, which was intermittently, and with varying degrees of distortion, playing ‘Water from a Grape Vine’ by William Orbit.

“Nice fire, Raj,” Alyzia said.

“Fire is primal,” Raj said, his eyes glinting like drops of maple syrup. “People have been hanging out around campfires for hundreds of thousands of years.”

Sidney stared into the fire and fantasized about cave people. A man and woman cuddled up together before a blazing fire, wrapped in furs, stars twinkling above, grateful for the plentitude of their little world. Og and Oga. Objectively they were ugly, but they beheld one another as the most exquisitely magical creation of the universe. Not that they treated each other like china. Og was a caveman, after all…

“Too bad we’re too cheap and too broke to buy electronics that actually work,” Raj said.

They laughed.

“Only a DJ would hear the difference between this stereo system and a thousand dollar one,” Bruno said. “The problem is that the music’s so languid it’s causing the speakers to melt.”

Sidney watched Bruno’s broad hands roll a lump of pastry dough. She was watching the pastry dough flatten so intently that she became it. It was her that Bruno was draping over the pie dish, her softly yielding to the touch of those capable knuckles with curly golden-red hairs.

The amplifier emitted an earsplitting screech. Sidney put her hands over her ears. The cats leaped in surprise and fled under the paisley chesterfield. The music stopped. Raj frowned.

“Sid, what do you make of this,” Alyzia said, looking up from her book. “It says: Without explicitly looking at it, focus your attention on his private parts and feel yourself to be a delicate flower that is waiting, living only in anticipation of the moment he will open you.”

“What are you reading, Al?” Raj asked. He was fiddling with the stereo system again. His dark skin had a golden gleam in the light of the now-blazing fire.

“A Girl’s Special Guide to Intimacy. Written in the 1950s. Banned due to scandalous content.”

Sunk in this primal cradle of warmth, with Alyzia’s clothing draped about her in filmy shadows, Sidney watched, entranced, as Bruno cut off the scraps of dough that hung around the edges of the pie plate. He carefully coaxed a mixture of rich, red loganberries into the waiting pie shells, and then placed the pies on the divider between the kitchen and living room. She remembered hearing that humans acquired red hair by breeding with Neanderthals, and that although most humans have only 2% Neanderthal DNA, some people have up to 4%. She suspected Bruno had closer to 4%.

The music came on.

“Success!” Raj said. He started dancing, hip-hop style.

Alyzia got up and joined him. Her multicolored scarf and long red skirt billowed as she swirled. Sidney missed being curled up with her, but she liked how her silhouette moved with hypnotic fluidity against the flickering reflection of firelight in the windowpanes.

“Hey Raj,” Bruno said, “how did your DJ gig go?”

“Incredible!” Raj said.

“Too bad you missed it, Bruno,” Sidney said. “Some colorful characters called in to talk on the air with Raj about life, religion, the groovy tunes he was playing…”

“We celebrated the glory of Groove, my friend,” Raj said.

“Aha!” Bruno exclaimed. “Some hungry devil has already dug into my pie. And it’s still raw!”

“The glory of Groove,” Alyzia said in a thoughtful voice. “You know, since ancient times music has been seen as a means of tuning into the divine—bringing it down to the human plane.”

“Raj,” Bruno called out, “Was it you who took a bite of my uncooked pie?”

The front door screeched open. “Hello!” Seung Gong said cheerily, peeling off a knapsack. He had large, kind eyes that sparkled appreciatively when he looked around the room and saw that everyone was there. Last year, shortly after he moved in with them, when he spoke virtually no English, one of the first things he said was “my family,” gesturing to everyone present.

“About time!” Bruno called out, looking up from the cheese he was grating.

“Very sorry to be late!” Seung Gong said earnestly. “Today was the deadline to finish our documentary. But now I cook.”

“I’m the cook tonight!” Bruno called out, looking up from the cheese he was grating. “I eat at you guys’ place so often I figure it’s the least I could do. You can boil the corn if you want. The rest is under control.”

“I don’t know about that,” Raj said. “The kitchen looks completely dysfunctional to me. Every nook and cranny of available counter space is stacked with dishes.”

“Dishfunctional you mean,” Bruno said, carefully tucking a layer of noodles into a lasagna pan. “Perhaps a tad. Sign of a good cook.”

“Come to think of it,” Sidney mused, “music isn’t the only groove worth glorifying. Deep down, everything is Groove.”

“…and Groove is God,” Bruno said, pouring a thick white mixture onto the lasagna.

“Groove works in mysterious ways,” Raj said, with a half-embarrassed, half-delighted smirk.

Sidney looked at the mountain of papers she had left to grade. “Could Groove and its devotees dampen their vibrations a bit so I could get some work done?” she said.

They were quiet for a while, until the smell of lasagna wafted through the house. The heat sensitive tiles above the stove were shimmering through a kaleidoscope of colors.

“I’ll set the table,” Raj said.

He went to the cupboard in the dining area—which was part of the L-shaped living room—and gathered some chipped, mismatched garage-sale dishes. He put the pink plate with a fading rose in the center in Sidney’s spot, since she once said she liked it, and put the vanilla-bean-colored pottery plate in the guest spot where Bruno would sit. Everyone else got square green glass plates that would have been considered modern in the 1970s.

“What are you writing, oh sacred scribe?” Alyzia asked.

“I’m grading cosmology exams.”

“The Sacred Scribe of Cosmic Vibe!” Bruno cried out. He bounded over to Sidney, kneeled before her, and kissed her toes. A hunk of white lasagna goop somehow landed on her ankle. She left it there and smiled beguilingly.

“We could have a radio show,” Raj suggested as he placed king-sized goblets on the dining table. “An inspirational hour with the Goddess of Groove, played by Al, and the Sacred Scribe of Cosmic Vibe, played by Sid.”

Sidney and Alyzia smiled at each other. Every nuance of expression had infinite meaning for the other. Sidney couldn’t have imagined someone so like her yet so unlike her.

“So God Almighty becomes Groove Almighty,” Alyzia said. “It has a ring to it. But what’s the point?”

“What’s the point?” Raj said. “I’ll tell you the point. If there’s something God-like in the universe it’s vibration, it’s Groove. Groove is a more appealing Almighty than God.

Alyzia danced over to the kitchen, picked up a cooked lasagna noodle from the counter, and started twirling it. Strands of blonde hair bounced as she mockingly swayed her head in time to the movement of the lasagna noodle. The motion made Sidney think of Alyzia’s love of words like ‘tendrils’ and ‘flourishes’.

“No really,” Raj said, “I think I’m on to something. After all, everything is vibration.” He touched the tine of a fork to a goblet and it went ‘ting’. He raised one eyebrow. “Everything we do touches everything else. The flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Kugluktuk can affect a hurricane in Africa. The vibration of your spinning lasagna noodle will reach the Pleiades one day. Right Sid?”

“There’s a glimmer of truth to that.” Sidney suddenly felt as if she were about to make a tiny wrong move that could set off a chain reaction of wrong moves.

“See? The Sacred Scribe is already providing scientific content for the show.”

“What does the Goddess of Groove do?” Alyzia asked.

“You read devotional passages replacing the word ‘God’ with ‘Groove’,” Raj said. “Science meets spirituality. It’s profane yet profound.”

“It’s ridiculous,” Sidney said.

“Maybe,” Alyzia said, “But wouldn’t it be fun?”

“Ugh!” Bruno cried out. “What’s that green stuff? You’ll ruin my masterpiece.”

“Stop, you fool,” Seung Gong said affectionately. “Yellow pepper is a most delicate, fragrant vegetable. It will barely taste at all.”

Sidney watched Seung Gong carefully cut a pepper into thin, circular cross-sectional slices, starting from one side of the pepper and working inward toward the stem, the place where the cross-section was Q-shaped. Then he cut away the stem and seeds, turning the Q into a U. It occurred to her that she had never seen a word with a Q but no U. It’s intriguing, she mused, how the letter Q is big and round and complete-looking, yet dependent on the letter U, which is hollow and empty, yet manages perfectly well without Q. She liked how Q and U combine to create an emergent sound that transcended the sounds of other letters.

“Come dance with me Sid,” Alyzia said.

“Dancing is sinful. Leads one astray off the narrow path of grooviness, you know.”

“No Sidney!” said Raj. “That’s the point. Everyone knows it’s not sinful to dance, or screw someone you’re not married to, or eat green eggs and ham on Sunday. Everyone knows the God thing is dead. Groove gives us something new to believe in.”

“Great heavenly father of Mary,” said Bruno raising his floury hands in feigned horror. “This may be cosmic truth, but it’s irreverent! Where are my rosary beads? Where is my bible?”

“The bible is just a story,” Raj said. His voice was intense, yet controlled and precise.

“What I would like to know,” Seung Gong said, “is who bites pie before it cooks? Sorry to change topic,” he added apologetically.

“No problem,” Bruno said, as he put the pies in the oven. “Your tangent struck a chord in me. Heh! Get it? Damn, I hate it when my brilliant moments of mathematical amusement fall dead on the ears of artsy fartsies like you guys.”

“Got it,” Sidney said, glancing at Bruno to savor the in-joke with him, but he was smiling at Alyzia. First fleeting moment of jealousy.

“Luke and Matthew just made the bible up!” Raj said. “Well, they didn’t make it all up. Some of it they copied from a now-missing document called Q.”

The letter Q again, thought Sidney. Great letter, actually. Reminiscent of a heart with an arrow through it, but less voluptuous, less vulnerable, without a cleft threatening to break it in two.

“Dinner ready!” Seung Gong announced.

“Groove is great, groove is good, let us thank it for this food,” Raj said, hip-hopping to the table.

Sidney looked down at her chipped pink dinner plate with the faded rose on it. It must have been around for decades. She imagined generations of children listening to their fathers say grace, looking at the gentle beauty of that plate and wondering how it was possible that a world with such a beautiful plate could be ruled by a harsh, vindictive God.

“You will see, Bruno, how good can the vegetables be!” Seung Gong exclaimed eagerly, placing the steaming lasagna on the table.

Bruno raised an eyebrow, and poured five glasses of wine.

“Here’s to Raj’s new DJ gig and the Glory of Groove!” Alyzia said.

They clinked glasses.

“This corn is, um, interesting,” Raj said.

“Corn, that’s the one vegetable I do like,” Bruno said. “I picked this corn myself.”

Alyzia bit in. A look of surprise spread across her face.

“What’s the matter?” Bruno said.

“It’s sort of, like, a pre-Columbian experience,” Alzyia said.

Bruno took a bite.

“A bit, um, woody, I admit,” he said. “It’s the kind of food that in order to really appreciate it you have to pin a lizard to your chest and sacrifice a virgin or two.”

They burst into laughter.

Sidney became aware of the almost-too-sweet aroma of loganberry pie. The aroma matched how she felt, with Bruno glancing over at her from across the table. Like a delicate flower waiting. But she also had a foreboding feeling that had to do with the effect men sometimes have on women, including herself. It was shockingly easy for a smart, together woman to become a satellite, to let her wavefunction flatten into a phony, two-dimensional roadkill of her former self. Right now her thesis demanded her total attention. Once she finished it she had the whole rest of her life to find a man if that’s what she wanted.

She was wearing a deep red blouse that brought compliments but the buttons opened a little too readily. She checked to make sure none of them had popped open. They hadn’t.

“And now,” Bruno said, proudly setting a golden-crusted masterpiece in the middle of the table, “I present you with the pinnacle of my culinary abilities.”

“Mmmm!” Alyzia said. “I love pie!”

“Me too,” Sidney said. “One of my favorite numbers.”

Bruno cut into the pie. Purple loganberries, warm and luscious and vulnerable in their translucent goo, spilled out. Sidney winced at this act of penetration. It occurred to her that the word ‘pie’ could be penetrated in such a way that it dished up not just her favorite number, pi, but also her second favorite number, e. And she realized: the fascinating thing about the letter Q is that it is caught in the act of being penetrated.

π

After dinner Sidney and Bruno cleaned up. She liked the streamlined way they worked as a team, but it seemed that as the kitchen got cleaner her life was getting messier.

“Maybe Raj is onto something with that Groove idea,” she said.

“Why would a radio station bother with a skit cooked up by freaks like us?” Bruno asked, raising one of his bushy orange eyebrows.

“Not any radio station. The university station where Raj works, on his late-night show. The people who listen to the radio at that hour need something to laugh at and believe in. To most of them God is probably a meaningless concept, but not Groove, the substrate of reality itself.”

“People who feel isolated could try sex,” Bruno suggested with a sheepish smirk.

Sidney was embarrassed that such a dumb comment made her blush. She dried the lasagna dish and put it in the cupboard. “Having sex might make them feel even more isolated if they’re not really connecting with each other.”

“They could get drunk first,” Bruno said. He looked at her intently.

He filled her half-empty goblet and held it out to her. She took it, almost dropping it. Her hands had gone clammy.

“I think we’re done,” he said, suddenly switching to a softer voice. “Let’s go to the living room.”

Everyone else had gone to bed but the fire was still ablaze. They sat on the couch.

“I never noticed your eyes before,” he said. “The right one is blue and the left one is kind of thundercloud grey, almost purple. Awesome!”

Sidney felt self-conscious about her weirdo eyes. Strands of espresso-colored hair fell across her pixie face. Strange how quickly her heart was beating. Her mind was fishing out memories of Bruno… telling some funny story so enthusiastically that he didn’t notice bits of egg salad falling from his sandwich… helping Raj fix his bike…

Hesitantly but tenderly, Bruno put his arms around her. A blaze of scintillation ran through her and she was suddenly aware of how hungry she was for human touch. He leaned back against the side of the couch and she leaned against him so that she was half-sitting, half-lying. His large nostrils seemed to suck all the oxygen out of the air in the vicinity of his nose, so she turned her face from his a little and looked into the fire. She listened to his steady breathing, feeling slightly awkward and slightly ecstatic at this newfound intimacy. She heard Raj shuffle to the bathroom. His bedroom was on the main floor. She wondered if he could hear them.

Bruno gently caressed her arm and shoulder. A log collapsed. Tangerine sparks flitted upward. Sidney’s heart fluttered; she felt disoriented. Bruno’s hand was above her left breast. She took his hand into her own, and sure enough it felt like the hand of a caveman: large and rough, but gentle. When Bruno started to release her hand, as if to continue exploring her, she tightened her grip on his. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to go further, but the firelight was bright enough that he would see the π etched on her breast, and she felt self-conscious about Raj hearing them. She considered suggesting they go upstairs to her bedroom, but Bruno’s entire body was now perfectly still. Perhaps he was wary of crossing her boundaries, or perhaps there was some other reason. She was smitten with longing, but it was probably best to take things one step at a time.

In the middle of the night she awoke to a tremendous crackle from the fire. She was so startled she almost fell off the couch. There was reaching and clutching and the next thing she knew she was lying entangled with Bruno, her blouse mostly unbuttoned. She wished she had worn a camisole, or at least a more substantial bra, but it was too late. He was staring at the π just above her heart.

“Your favorite number!” he exclaimed. “Sid, that is so awesome. It’s an unusual tattoo, not just because it’s pi but… it couldn’t possibly be a birthmark shaped like pi, is it?”

“I feel exposed.”

“It’s beautiful.” He buttoned up her blouse and looking at her adoringly. “I should maybe go home,” he said hesitantly.

“I do have an important meeting with my PhD supervisor first thing in the morning.”

“Ok.” He kissed her softly. “I look forward to seeing you soon.”

It was so long since the last time she’d been kissed that it took her by surprise, and she didn’t kiss him back. But she liked the feel of his lips on hers. “Me too,” she said with a shy smile.

Bruno let himself out the front door as quietly as he could.

As Sidney walked upstairs she could still feel him and smell him. The dream she’d been having before they woke up came back to her. It was about the letter Q. She had seen that the tail of a Q isn’t necessarily long and pointed after all. It was like how, if you took one of those magnetic letter Qs that children put on the fridge and held it perpendicular to the light, the shadow it cast would be a straight line, though it itself is Q-shaped. Sidney now saw that the tail of one Q could be the shadow of another Q, each Q harboring the cue that leads to the next. Perhaps every Q is just the initial, relatively corporeal link in an endless chain of increasingly transcendent Qs.

It would have piQued her interest to know that she was the heroine of a story about the trials and tribulations of an alienated youth who finds meaning in a seemingly meaningless world by cultivating a personal relationship with Groove.

π

The Glory of Groove radio show rehearsals gave Sidney periodic breaks from the quantum level of reality, gave her a sense of purpose. The first thing she thought of every morning was whether or not there would be a rehearsal that evening. And if there was, the whole day sparkled.

But beneath the sparkle was tension. Bruno often put his strong arms around her, or took her hand in his, and it took her breath away to imagine making love to him. But in some indefinable way he seemed to be keeping her at bay. Whenever they were on the brink of feeling close, a veil would fall across his amber-green eyes, and he would say something clever and irrelevant, or caress her with startling rapidity, or clown around. It was driving her crazy. She shouldn’t be thinking so much about a man right now; she should be thinking about her thesis.

One evening Sidney was sitting on the porch working. She had a feeling Bruno would drop by. Sure enough, she looked up and saw Bruno walking toward the house. He sat down next to her, and the dilapidated sofa dipped to accommodate his stocky build. She braced herself so as not to fall onto him.

“You don’t look so happy, Sacred Scribe,” he said.

Sidney smiled wanly at the phrase ‘Sacred Scribe’. She shivered, and noticed that the afghan had fallen off. She didn’t want to pull it back around her because he might expect her to pull it up around both of them, and she wasn’t sure about what that might lead to. She had a feeling that this was supposed to be the night they would make love for the first time. But she was—for once—making progress on her thesis, and it was good to be on a roll.

“I think you’re great,” Bruno said, pulling her close.

“I think you’re great too. Although… I do have a lot on my plate right now,” Sidney faltered.

Bruno clearly registered this. Then he perked up. “I got a new tattoo. I think you’ll like it.” He lifted up his shirt and revealed a ד tattooed on his chest.

“Tau!” Sidney said, genuinely surprised and somewhat flattered. “In the same spot as my pi.”

Sidney had etched her π into her skin years ago with a razor blade. It had been both horrendously painful and stupendously satisfying.

“Tau equals two pi,” Sidney said thoughtfully. “Two pi’s together…”

She tried to read Bruno’s expression to see what significance this held for him. He was looking at her with a tenderness she had never encountered before.

She looked down at the π in the equation she’d been struggling with on her laptop. She realized with surprise that the equation looked like gibberish. She looked back to the preceding equation, and then the one before that, and she couldn’t make heads nor tails of them either. Then she remembered: she had to submit the first chapter of her Ph.D. thesis by the end of the week. Bruno had pulled her into a state of mind that was worlds away from the state of mind she needed to be in to write her thesis.

She and Bruno were no longer sitting snug against each other, though she hadn’t noticed him pull away. She was startled by how quickly he’d gone from friend to romantic possibility, imbued with significance. A feeling of certainty washed over her that she was at a bifurcation, a fork in the road, and if she took the wrong fork the consequences could be devastating. She thought of all the women throughout history who had sacrificed their interests, their career, their independence, for a man.

Suddenly Bruno stood up. “Well, don’t want to distract you,” he said, patting her on the knee.

Sidney opened her mouth to ask him to stay, but no words came out. She watched him stroll into the suburban blandscape, tingling with desire and a confused sense of regret. She tried to turn her attention back to her thesis. She was midway through the section on the ‘measurement effect’. It explained how the state of a quantum entity evolves as a superposition of many potential states, described by an equation called a wavefunction. But the instant it is observed, it collapses to one particular, definite state. A good thing about being single, she thought, is it’s easier to evolve as your own free wavefunction, to be yourself without getting collapsed into someone else’s conception of you.

So then why did she feel like she’d just made the biggest mistake of her life?

π

“Get down here, Scribe!” Raj called one Saturday morning. “We’re all waiting.”

Before the science-infused comedic spoof on religion had taken over their lives she’d cleaned her room every Saturday morning while listening to the ‘Quirks and Quarks’ science show on the radio. Now her bedroom was always a mess. Finally she found her Sacred Scribe gown. It didn’t matter how she looked for a radio show rehearsal, but she wouldn’t feel the part without it. Sapphire blue silk with a V-neckline and flowing sleeves. Alyzia had found it at a thrift shop. As she put on the gown her sins and follies seemed to drop away. Walking carefully down the staircase so as not to trip over the long robe, she saw Bruno laughing and gesturing, looking in full command. Her skin tingled when he looked up and saw her.

“Let’s get started!” Bruno said.

Sidney took her place on a tasseled cushion a few feet from the Goddess of Groove, who was on her own tasseled cushion, looking regal in red velvet.

“In ancient times,” Raj said in a deep, reverberating voice, “Music and dance were forms of worship, the earliest expressions of devotion to the Groove. Let us now pay tribute to this legacy with The Glory of Groove. Testimonial evidence reveals that this radio show guides the woebegone, the pilgrim on a rhythm quest, to cultivate a personal relationship with Groove.”

“Good morning devotees of the Groove!” Alyzia said, smiling at Sidney.

“Glory to Groove in the highest,” Sidney said, smiling back.

“Today’s reading is from The Tao of Groove,” Alyzia said, opening up a notebook adorned with dried flowers. “And Groove said: Let there be music. And there was music. And Groove said: Now let there be funky-ass music! And the people danced to the music, and all was groovy.”

“Well chosen, Goddess,” Sidney said enthusiastically. “That passage truly aligns the spirit with the will of Groove.”

“Sacred Scribe, please tell us: what is Groove from a scientific point of view?”

Sidney unfurled her hands in the air suggestively. “Well,” she said, “every massive object absorbs and emits a stream of virtual ‘gravitons’, the mass of which is determined by the ratio of absorption to emission…”

“Whoa,” Alyzia said. “Your gravitons are streaming ahead of mine. What are gravitons exactly?”

“They’re not like anything we know of. They act like waves until the instant they’re measured by bombarding them with another mass. Then suddenly they act like solid particles.”

“I get it,” said Bruno. He clasped his hands above his head and slithered goofily toward Sidney. “Now I’m a wave!”

“You look more like a sperm,” Raj said.

Bruno bumped into Sidney and looked up at her, beaming. “Now I’m a particle!”

“You boson,” Sidney said. “That’s ridiculous.”

Bruno turned around the other way. “Now I’m a wave again,” he said, slithering the other direction until he bumped into Alyzia.

Alyzia smiled. “Bruno this is a radio show,” she said. “No one would see that.”

He stood up authoritatively, put one foot on the stage, and leaned toward Alyzia. “Ring dingy ding,” he said.

“What are you doing?” Alyzia whispered.

“I’m testing your ability to improvise,” Bruno whispered back. “Goddess,” he said loudly, “Am I on the air?”

“A listener is calling in with a question,” Alyzia said. “Yes earthling, we hear you.”

Bruno gently took Alyzia’s microphone. “Could you tell me if there’s life on other planets?” he asked, and held the mic in front of Alyzia.

“That’s a question for the Sacred Scribe of Cosmic Vibe,” Alyzia said, passing the mic to Sidney.

“There is life out there,” Sidney said theatrically, “But it doesn’t need a planet to walk around on. It’s based in another dimension.”

“Marvelous!” Bruno said. “Is it benevolent?”

Sidney grinned. “Temperamental is a better word. Full of divine radiance, but prone to contamination and darkness. It’s very curious about us. It enters those who provide it with a portal.”

“What kind of portal?”

“An opening. A flaw. A vulnerability.”

Bruno smirked, almost imperceptibly. “Thank you Goddesses!” he said, and pretended to put down a phone. “Ok, let’s go back to the bit where Al talks about music.”

Sidney didn’t like being cast out of Bruno’s limelight. She played her expected role, casting forth pearls of scientific knowledge at the right moments, but her thoughts kept turning to him. The more he lured her in with his bodily magnetism, the more he seemed to barricade himself. Or was she imagining it?

“Seekers,” Alyzia was saying, “The time has come for us to return to more sanctified realms. Stay tuned next week when Swami Salami joins us to talk about… what was it, Swami?”

Bruno sat down next to Alyzia and looked her in the eye. “Tantric enlightenment and weapons of mass seduction,” he said.

“Right,” said Alyzia. “Until then, may Groove be with you.”

“Cut!” said Bruno with a flamboyant hand wave. “Good. Our listeners will be eternally grateful for the heightened communion with Groove reverberating through their bodies.”

“Swami Salami?” Raj said incredulously. “What was that about?”

Alyzia giggled and looked at Bruno. He winked back at her. Sidney cringed.

π

Over the next few weeks Raj started dropping hints on the air about something special he had in store for his listeners: ‘Groove is great. Groove’s our fix. Let us thank it for the mix!’

Sidney often worked late at the university, where she could get more done than at home. Sometimes she was there for Raj’s entire shift at the university radio station. They would drive home together in the pre-dawn hour.

“What was that you said on air?” she asked. “Groove’s our mix’…”

“You haven’t heard anything yet.” He slowed down as they approached the top of a hill, and the darkness was broken by an ethereal splendor of distant lights. “Groove is great. A smash sensation. Let us thank it for this radio station!”

Sidney managed a feeble smile. “Don’t give up your DJ gig to be a poet.”

Raj looked over at her with concern. “Hey, you doing ok?”

“Whad’ya mean?”

“Well… I wasn’t sure how you felt about Bruno and Alyzia flirting.”

“They were?” Sidney said, suddenly sitting up straight.

“I could have been imagining it,” Raj said.

Sidney frowned.

“I heard you together that night he made dinner at our place. And you didn’t seem so happy at the rehearsal.”

It occurred to Sidney that she’d never told Alyzia about that night. She’d never even told her she was interested in him. Usually they told each other everything. Alyzia had always admiringly ‘collapsed’ her into the archetype of a strong, independent woman, an archetype that wasn’t compatible with how vulnerable Bruno made her feel.

“Are you saying there’s something going on between them?”

“I may have jumped to conclusions,” Raj said quickly, glancing in his rear-view mirror.

They drove in awkward silence. The fluorescent lighting of new condos reflected eerily across the bay. Sidney thought about how little time she’d been spending at home, and how much Bruno liked to hang out there. Men are like electrons, she thought. If there’s only one slit for an electron to pass through, it just passes through the slit, no problem. But if there’s two or more possibilities the electron goes haywire. There’s no predicting what it will do.

π

The next rehearsal went badly. It felt staged and awkward. They kept starting from the beginning and everyone got irritable. Sidney made mistakes. She thought it was because she and Bruno hadn’t talked. They needed to clarify whether they were just friends or something more.

He seemed to have come to the same conclusion. They found themselves alone in the living room after the rehearsal, sitting on the makeshift stage.

“I sometimes think of cave people,” Sidney said. “Og and Oga. A couple.”

Bruno looked baffled.

“Are we… moving in the direction of becoming a couple?” she blurted.

Bruno looked down. “I thought you were avoiding me.”

Sidney’s pulse raced. “I thought you were avoiding me! And I’ve been super busy with my thesis.”

“That’s important.”

This was more painful than Sidney had imagined it would be. She put her hand on his.

“I gotta go,” he said suddenly, removing her hand.

It was the second time that Sidney was watching him walk away, wanting to run after him. If she’d done it the first time, everything would have been great. Now it was too late. Her heart ached. Could it have been her pushing him away? She laid her head in her hands and listened to the faint sizzle of the ailing sound system.

π

Sidney started arriving late to rehearsals, or skipping them entirely. It didn’t exactly make her feel groovy watching Bruno and Alyzia pretend not to fawn over each other. What hurt most was the soft voices they used with each other, the cherishing looks. No barricades.

The Groove rehearsals became stagnant. They argued about the theme song.

“How about that song by Delight, ‘Groove is in the heart’?” Alyzia suggested.

“Groove forbid!” Raj said. He blew on a small flame in the fireplace.

“‘Shake Your Groove Thing’ by Peaches and Herb?” Sidney suggested.

“I was thinking something with a gospel vibe,” Bruno said. “An occasional ‘Hallelujah’. Something devotional, powerful.”

“Yeah,” Raj said. “The Goddesses need to come across stronger. The kind of beings that snap their fingers and thunder roars and lightning bolts through the sky.”

“Gimme a break,” Alyzia said. She was sitting at the couch with newspaper spread across the table constructing something that looked like a paper maché groundhog with wings.

“What I mean,” Raj said, “is Sidney acts too cosmic. Spaced out. And Alyzia giggles and bats her eyes. You’re supposed to be Goddesses, above this petty world.”

Sidney flinched.

Bruno began to sing ‘Groove is in the heart’ and dance around the room in a silly manner. Except that he didn’t really know the words, so he was just singing “Doop dooby do be do doop be dooby dooby dooby ….”

Alyzia opened her mouth as if she were about to start singing along with him.

“For the love of Groove, shut the fuck up!” Sidney snapped. What right did they have to try to diffuse the tension when they were the ones who had caused it?

She wondered why she was hanging out watching her best friend and ex-almost-boyfriend flirt when she had a doctoral thesis to write. How had she ever had the nerve to consider herself a divine being when she was so full of jealousy and bitterness? Not to mention she had no acting experience whatsoever.

Thus, the Glory of Groove damped to a standstill before making it on the air.

π

A week later, Sidney was sitting on the front porch (the only place one could get some peace and quiet!) projecting observables onto eigenstates represented by self-adjoint operators on a Hilbert space, when through the open living room window she heard Raj say, “She can be prickly.”

“Prickly?” Seung Gong said.

“An irritable pain in the ass.”

She went inside. She could tell by the way they looked at her that they had been talking about her. The hairs on her arms stood on end. She felt prickly even to herself.

That evening, Alyzia waved Sidney into her room.

“Look at my latest lonely endeavor,” Alyzia said, holding up a seasoned pair of jeans newly adorned with a flourish of yellow rickrack.

Sidney didn’t feel like marveling, but the word ‘lonely’ caught her attention. She had assumed she was the only one feeling lonely. Had Alyzia been missing her too?

“The rickrack is great,” Sidney said, trying to sound cheerful but not pulling it off.

“I have some left over,” Alyzia said. “You can decorate your pants too.”

Sidney spotted Bruno’s argyle vest hanging over Alyzia’s chair.

“No thanks,” Sidney said.

π

Sidney picked up her guitar and started strumming it just loud enough to block out any lovemaking sounds that might make their way through the thin living room ceiling, but soft enough so as not to awaken Raj and Seung Gong. She was impressed by how expressively she was improvising despite playing so softly.

As she played, a feeling of grace descended upon her, and her thoughts began to coalesce. It began with glimpsing an understanding of Groove at an abstract level. Groove, she thought, incorporates the totality of all possible impressions of all possible things from all possible viewpoints.

Then a more personal understanding of Groove dawned upon her. Even if your best friends let you down and lose all interest in you, that doesn’t mean you’re crap, because they’re limited by their particular perspectives. Beyond all the ‘collapsed’ opinions and impressions of humans lies a universe of potential perspectives from which she—or anything else—could be seen. Having a personal relationship with Groove meant not relying too much on what other humans think but bathing in this infinitely rich reservoir of untapped vibrations, going through life knowing it’s there and feeling it in your heart. She’d heard this kind of message before, but now that she understood it in her own terms it didn’t seem so hokey.

Last came the most inexplicable part of the experience: a certainty that Groove loved her and believed in her.

There were tears in her eyes and a fledgling melody gasping itself into existence in her brain. While they were doing the rehearsals, she hadn’t had time to play the guitar. On a whim, she turned it upside down so that her left hand plucked the strings. She was, after all, left-handed. It sounded terrible because the strings were upside down. But it felt right.

Memories of Glory of Groove rehearsals permeated the living room and seeped their way into the slowly emerging melody. Though the unfamiliar string arrangement made her fingers fumble, playing the guitar left-handed put her into a state of mind in which she was composing music more poignant and authentic than anything she’d ever come up with before. It almost sounded as if it had been composed by a Sacred Scribe of Cosmic Vibe. Except for the lyrics, which were about a funky mama with coins spilling out of her pocket.

Addendum:

Sidney continued composing music all night long. You can hear the next song she composed here: https://soundcloud.com/liane-gabora/be-you-2018-09-28-1107-pm. (It’s on a piano, since unlike Sidney the author doesn’t play the guitar sung. It was recorded without a mic, with my untrained voice, using GarageBand, but hopefully sufficient to give a musical glimpse into the feeling that washed over Sidney that night.)

When she finished this second song, the first rays of dawn were streaming down on Olive, who, to Sidney’s surprise, was attired in Alyzia’s Goddess of Groove robe, and sported a new hairdo: marshmallows and raisins.

Sidney smiled. “May I still call you Olive?” she whispered.

 

Filed Under: Culture (Transformation), Featured, Fiction (Intensification), Philosophy (Eteolegeme), Story

The Face

October 2, 2018 By douggins

The Face

By
  • Ian Cumings
 |  October 2, 2018
Feature Image: Drawing by author Ian Cumings
Print

As the face fell down through countless dimensions into timelines which were tighter and spaces which were more self-contained, it had a chance to see itself. One of its sparks was experiencing a highly heightened state of consciousness. The face was being pulled towards that moment. It was being summoned by the splintered version of itself. It was about to be revealed.

The face felt its age, somewhere between 30 and 35 years old. It saw how male it was. Rugged, sun-dried skin but attractive features. A bald head, sometimes by choice, sometimes by design, and dark, thick eyebrows above chaotic brown and hazel eyes. There was always a single piercing in the left earlobe. Whether it was utilized or not depended on the personality in charge of that specific lifetime. The nose was large but not out of place, wider than it was long and always a little skewed to the right side of the face. The nose fell down to the mustache which hugged the upper lip tightly and snuggly. It made a smile appear devious and a smirk appear obvious. The teeth were bright and distinct despite a lack of care. There was a space between the front two which added character where none was needed. The jaw was covered with a strong, masculine beard made of jet black hair. The face knew this area was there to be constantly groomed when deep thoughts or heavy contemplation occurred.

The most striking thing though was not the way the face looked but the way it stayed consistent throughout lifetimes and dimensions. Whether the face was inhabiting its highest self or squirming through its most minuscule life, the features remained similarly distinguished.

The splintered self had not been aware of this reality. In fact, his amnesia had been so complete that he believed that his own face was his and his alone. That it was not borrowed or part of a larger creature’s reality. But now, looking in his mirror, on a heroic dose of LSD, he saw the reality morph and his face became new and different while remaining exactly the same. He saw that the face was not his alone. Or, he saw that he was more than his face and that the bigger his awareness became the more his previous concept of selfhood diminished.

With each breath his awareness grew.

He climbed up the pathway that the face had created for him during its fall. He breathed and he climbed and he grew until he couldn’t see the face anymore. Instead, he was the face and the face was him. He acclimated himself to this new space, finding great power in the simple rise and fall of his breath. It was life.

With each breath in, a new creation. With each breath out, a new creation. The small space between breaths was transitionary.

A birth, a death. It didn’t matter. Nothing was lost, nothing was gained.

It was as it is.

He breathed.

Slower, quieter, stronger. Silence. Peace. Suddenly, he felt himself falling back down. He looked up and saw the face looking down at him. It got smaller as he fell. He reached his hand out but couldn’t touch it. It had disappeared.

As his high wore off, he fell through countless dimensions, slowly returning to his body. Upon landing, he lamented, breathing shallowly. He was stranded here, in this body, in this small space, in this little envelope of reality. He was himself again, splintered off, isolated, alone.

But he remembered.

He was but a breath, a simple creation of some greater existence. Nothing implied, nothing necessary, nothing required. Just a breath. As was the face. And is the face. And always will be the face.

Just a breath.

In. Out.

Up. Down.

Slow. Savor.

In. Out.

Filed Under: Featured, Microdoses

Candy Countdown

September 12, 2018 By brigidburke

Candy Countdown

By
  • Richard Sleboe
 |  September 12, 2018
Feature Image: Elevator, Old Post Office Pavilion by Steve Snodgrass. [CC]
Print

“I’m a character in a story.”

“Of course you are,” Daniel says, like that’s obvious.

“So I’m fictitious.”

“No.”

“Wait. I’m a real person?”

“Define real.”

“You bastard.”

“Is that a question?”

“Seriously, am I real?”

“You are to me.”

“I’m a real person, but I’m also a character in a story.”

“Exactly.”

The game is Candy Countdown, and I’m losing to Daniel. Candy Countdown is our private version of Twenty Questions. We’re at the Maria Negra, a run-down coffee shop on the unfashionable end of Avenida Allende, right next to the Tobogán subway station. They have decent coffee though, and it doesn’t get too busy, at least not in the daytime. We always find a table there, and it’s quiet enough to have a conversation.

Today, we’re sitting at a tiny table between the out-of-order jukebox and the out-of-tune piano. On the table, there is a small bowl filled with Galaxy Minstrels, the kind of candy you can always eat another piece of, no matter how many you have already had. Every time I ask Daniel a question about my assigned identity, he eats one of the Minstrels. If I find out who I am before the bowl is empty, I get to eat what’s left in the bowl. One time, we tried playing with Jelly Beans, but Daniel threw up before I got anywhere near finding out I was Zaphod Beeblebrox. We have stuck to Minstrels ever since. Right now, the bowl is half full, or half empty, depending on how you look at it.

“Am I famous?”

“As famous as it gets.”

“Would my parents know who I am?”

“Absolutely.”

“Am I alive?”

“No.”

“I am dead.”

“Yes.”

“Did I die a long time ago?”

“Not by cosmic standards.”

Daniel grins. He likes to show off.

“More than a thousand years ago?”

“Yes.”

“More than two thousand years ago?”

“No.”

“Did I live around the time Jesus Christ was born?”

“Yes.”

“Am I Jesus Christ?”

“No. Are you crazy?”

“You tell me.”

“You wish.”

“I’m a famous person who walked the earth two thousand years ago, and I am also a character in a story, but I’m not Jesus Christ.”

“That’s right.”

Daniel is munching Minstrels while I’m wasting precious questions reiterating what I already know. It isn’t much. I have no idea who I am, or what the story is. The level of Minstrels in the bowl is getting dangerously low, but I won’t go down without a fight.

“I don’t think I’ve read the story I’m in.”

“I know you have.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Just take my word for it.”

“Will it help me to find out about my profession?”

“No.”

Daniel reaches for the bowl and grabs a Minstrel.

“That was not a question,” I protest.

“It sounded like one to me.”

“I hate you.”

“It’s only a game,” Daniel says.

I know he doesn’t mean it, and he knows that I know. He really cares about this game. Paradoxically, he doesn’t like Minstrels very much. He’s not a candy person. But I love candy, and Daniel loves to see me suffer. There are now only three Minstrels left in the bowl.

“Did I live in the Middle East?”

“Yes.”

“Did I travel a lot?”

“Yes.”

“Did I know Jesus Christ?”

“Yes.”

Daniel eats the last Minstrel.

“Am I Joseph of Nazareth?”

“No more questions.”

Daniel points to the empty bowl.

“Seriously? You won’t tell me who I am?”

“That would be against the rules.”

“Since when do you care about the rules?”

“I do when it’s fun.”

It’s cold outside, but not as cold as I expected. I decide to walk home. I don’t like the subway anyway. I put my hands in my pockets to keep them warm. While I walk up Avenida Allende, I wrack my brain about my identity, but my thoughts are going round in circles. Without really knowing how I got there, I find myself in front of Dan’s Deli, one door down from where I live. It’s late, but Dan is still there. I go in to pick up a bottle of his homemade smoked chipotle sauce. It comes in three varieties: hot, hideous, and hellfire. I go for the hellfire. There is nothing in this world that fire won’t improve.

I fish for my key, let myself into the lobby, and check the mailbox. Today is Saturday. The mailman doesn’t come on weekends. I check the mailbox anyway. I always do. You never know. And sure enough, there is a little envelope. Somebody must have put it in the mailbox while I was out. There is no sender and no address. On the back of the envelope, there is some sort of logo—a pair of crossed hockey sticks, or tennis rackets, or bowling pins. I can’t really tell in the dimly lit hallway. It’s probably from one of the sports clubs in the neighborhood. It’s the kind of thing I tend to throw away unopened, but something about this envelope makes me curious. I tear it open. Inside, there is a little card, about three by four inches in size—larger than a credit card, but smaller than a postcard. On one side of the card, there is a message in an old-fashioned typeface. The message reads TAKE THE ELEVATOR. That’s all it says. The other side of the card is blank. I crumple up the envelope and throw it away, but I hold on to the card.

I never take the elevator, although my apartment is on the top floor. Taking the stairs is good exercise, and I don’t like the tiny car. I take the stairs. It’s a hundred steps in total, twenty steps for every floor. I count them out, like I always do. I unlock the door to my apartment and put the little card on the table. I heat up what is left of last night’s pasta casserole, fusilli with fried red onion and cherry tomatoes. I spice it up with a big splash of Dan’s hot sauce. It tastes much better than it did yesterday. I eat it standing up, right out of the pan. I wash the pan and go to bed, feeling very warm inside.

I’m in an elevator. How did I get here? The doors are closed, but the car isn’t moving. I reach for the OPEN DOOR button, but it isn’t there. There are only two buttons, shaped like arrows, one pointing up and one pointing down. That doesn’t make sense. These are the kinds of buttons you would normally find on the outside, in the lobby, to call the elevator. But inside the car? I haven’t taken an elevator in ages, but I could swear there are usually more than two buttons: one to open the door, one to close it, one for each floor, and one to call for help. I press the button with the arrow pointing up. The car jolts to a start. I can’t tell whether it is going up or down. It rumbles along for a while, and then it stops. The door opens with a menacing screech. Just as I am about to step out, the elevator dissolves around me. I’m back in my bed.

Did I dream it all? I guess I did.

But then I see the card on the table. I pick it up. It feels real.

TAKE THE ELEVATOR, it says.

Did I?

I call Daniel. He picks up on the first ring.

“I won’t tell you who you are.”

“That’s not why I’m calling.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m serious. Can we talk?”

“Isn’t that what we’re doing?”

“I need to show you something.”

“What is it?”

“It’s probably nothing.”

“I can’t wait to see it.”

“The Maria Negra, around three?”

“It’s a date.”

When I get to the Maria Negra, Daniel is already there, reading a battered paperback. There is an empty coffee cup on the table in front of him.

“Have you been waiting long?”

“I was early.”

“Any good?” I ask, pointing at the book.

“I just started. It’s too early to tell.”

“More coffee?”

“You read my mind.”

I signal the barista. Daniel closes the book and puts it on the table. The title is TRANSIT, spelt out in large red letters on a dark background. I can’t make out the author’s name.

I sit down across from Daniel and hand him the card.

“This is what you wanted to show me?”

“Yes. It was in mailbox when I got home last night.”

“Just like that? No address?”

“It was in an envelope, but there was no address.”

“A blank envelope?”

“It had a logo on it.”

“Do you still have the envelope?”

“No. I threw it out. I didn’t think it was important.”

“What did the logo look like?”

“I didn’t really get a good look at it.”

I try to draw the logo on a napkin, but it comes out looking like a bashed-up butterfly.

“That’s not really what it looked like.”

Daniel nods and examines the card very closely, front and back. I half expect him to bring out a magnifying glass.

“You said it came yesterday?”

“That’s when I found it.”

“Yesterday was Saturday.”

“Exactly.”

“Do you get mail on Saturdays?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Was there any other mail?”

“No.”

Our coffees arrive. Daniel drinks his down in one gulp. He takes another look at the
card.

“The typeface looks like Abbot Old Style.”

“I didn’t know that you knew anything about typesetting.”

“I’m not an expert. I could be wrong. I probably am.”

“What’s Abbot Old Style anyway?”

“It was popular in the Seventies. George Harrison used it on his album covers. I haven’t seen it in a long time though.”

Daniel pulls out his phone and taps the screen a few times, nodding to himself. “That’s what I thought.”

“What?”

“It’s not a standard font on any system. It looks like you can’t even buy it online.”

“So are you saying this thing could be old? As in decades old?”

“I doubt it. The card looks new, and the ink hasn’t faded.”

“Suppose someone had kept it under museum conditions?”

“Why would they?”

“I have no idea.”

Daniel hands the card back to me. I put it in the inside pocket of my coat.

“As you said, it’s probably nothing. I think you are seeing ghosts.”

“But somebody put it in my mailbox.”

“A kid’s prank maybe?”

“Too elaborate.”

“Why don’t you just take the elevator? See what happens?”

He’s right. How bad can it be? My neighbors take the elevator all the time.

I walk home and check the mailbox. It’s empty. I go to the elevator and press the call button. The door slides open. The car is already there, as if it had been waiting for me. I step inside. The elevator is even tinier than I remember it. The permit says it will hold up to ten people, but I don’t see how that could work. Unlike the elevator in my dream, this one has a panel with numbered buttons and a single-digit display. I press the number six button for my floor. The button lights up red, and the car starts to move. I keep my eyes trained on the display. It counts up, but it feels like the car is going down. When the display hits six, it flickers and jumps right back to one. The car stops and the door slides open. I am back in the lobby, facing the message board. A note is pinned to the board. I don’t think it was there before, but I’m not sure. I have lived in this building for five years, and I have never seen anything of interest on that board.

The note says HOLD ON TIGHT in what looks a lot like Abbot Old Style. But before I can go check it out, the door slams shut, and the car drops like the cable has been cut. The speed-up is so abrupt that I crash, head first, into the light fixture. I pass out. When I come around, I’m eye to eye with the key panel. Its dull red glow is the only source of light now. Apparently, I have knocked out both myself and the light above. I guess I should have held on tight. I have no idea how long I have been unconscious. The elevator is still moving, so it can’t have been long. Just as I try to get up, the car stops so abruptly that I fall right back down. The car must have hit the bottom of the shaft. The door slowly slides open. I scramble out. The door slams shut behind me.

I am on some sort of platform. It’s no more than five feet deep and about a hundred feet wide. There is a vaulted ceiling overhead, held up by a row of cast-iron columns. Beyond the platform, there is a single set of tracks. I had no idea my house had its own subway station. The tracks look dull, like no train has come through here in a long time. A timetable is bolted to one of the columns. There is only one entry:

SUNDAY SPECIAL—departs as needed.

The second I read this, the tunnel lights up and the platform starts to tremble. A sorry looking train pulls in. It consists of a rusty engine and a single passenger car. A door swings open. I wasn’t planning to take a trip, but what choice do I have? The elevator door is shut, and there is no button to bring it back.

I get on the train. I am the only passenger. The door slams shut and the train starts to move. It quickly gathers speed. I sit down by a window and look at my reflection in the glass. There is a cut on my forehead, and blood has run down the side of my face. I wipe it off with the sleeve of my coat. I take off the coat and use it as a cushion. I try to get some sleep, but I’m wide awake. I go to the door at the front of the car. Maybe I can get to the engine, talk to the driver, get some answers. But to my surprise, the door leads to another car. I could have sworn there was only one car. Then I see a crumpled-up coat lying on a seat by the window. I go to look at it. It’s my coat! I’m back in the car that I just left. How is that possible? I return to the door that I just went through, open it, and look over my shoulder. There is someone at the other end of the car. It takes me a second to realize that I am looking at the back of my own head. What is going on?

“Wake up,” I hear someone saying.

I’m back in my seat, feeling sleepy. A shortish man with a wild head of curly hair and some serious razor stubble is standing right in front of me. There is a smell of brandy on his breath. He’s in a conductor’s uniform that looks like it was made for a much bigger man. By contrast, his hat is so small that it’s almost swallowed by his curls. Something about him reminds me of Daniel, although he doesn’t look like Daniel at all. Daniel is tall and tidy, and he always smells like he just stepped out of the shower.

“Ticket please,” the conductor says.

Now what? I dig for the card in my coat and hand it to him. He nods and hands it back to me. He doesn’t seem to mind that it isn’t a proper ticket. I put it back into my pocket. “Have a good trip,” he says and tips his hat.

He disappears before I can ask him what kind of train this is, or where it is going. It’s pitch dark outside. I can’t tell whether we are in a tunnel or above ground. There are no stars. No moon either. No lights at all. What time is it? I have no idea how long I have been traveling, or how much further I have to go. It feels like the train is rolling down a ramp, or a long slope, taking me deeper into darkness. I go back to sleep.

When I wake up, the train has stopped. There is no sign of the conductor. I put on my coat and open the door. We are still underground, in a tunnel that isn’t much wider than the train. The air is very cold. I button up my coat and climb onto the narrow walkway that runs along the tunnel wall. I go to the front of the train. Apparently, we’ve come to the end of the line. There’s no more track ahead. On the wall, there is an arrow-shaped sign that reads HOTEL TERMINUS. It points to a recess in the wall. In the recess, there is a revolving door, all polished brass and frosted glass. It looks out of place in the grim tunnel. An ornate coat of arms is etched into the glass. It’s a pair of crossed keys with the teeth pointing up. I have seen it before somewhere. I wrack my brain trying to remember where it was. Of course! It looks just like the logo on the envelope that I threw away. It seems I’ve come to the right place without really meaning to, or knowing how I did it. I go through the door. Behind the door, there is a red curtain. I pull aside the curtain, and I’m in another world. It looks like a gentlemen’s club. Friendly flames are dancing in an open fireplace. The walls are lined with books. Newspapers in wooden holders are lined up on a marble-topped sideboard. A magazine is spread open on a coffee table, as if the reader had just been called away. In the middle of the room, there is a wooden reception desk, gently lit by a pair of floor lamps with honey-colored shades. I walk up to the desk. The tufted carpet swallows the sound of my steps.

A small man appears from the back office. He looks a lot like the conductor, but he is much more carefully groomed. His hair is cut short and his face is clean-shaven. He is wearing a white shirt, a silk tie, a dark suit, and a pair of polished lace-up leather shoes. “Welcome to the Terminus,” he says.

The badge on his lapel reads S. PETER. This is when it hits me. I am Simon Peter. The prince of the apostles. The rock of the church. The first pope. How did I not see this? I’m famous. I’m dead. I traveled with Jesus Christ. And I’m a character in the gospel.

“I’ve solved it!”

“Excuse me, Sir?”

“Never mind.”

“May I show you to your room, Sir?”

“Won’t I have to register?”

“Everything has been taken care of, Sir.”

“It has?”

“Follow me, Sir.”

He leads the way to a door off to the side of the lobby. It opens automatically as we approach. I take a peek inside. The floor is polished hardwood. The walls are covered in a lustrous orange weave. In one of the corners, there is an easy chair. Next to the chair, there is a low table. On the table, there is a little silver tray. On the tray, there is a snacksized pack of Minstrels, the kind you would find in a vending machine or a minibar.

“This looks very nice.”

“I’m glad you like it, Sir.”

“But where is the bed?”

Mr. Peter laughs. His teeth are very white.

“Oh, this is not your room, Sir. This is just the elevator to your floor.”

Now I laugh.

“I can’t afford this.” I gesticulate at the elevator. “Any of this.”

“Everything has been taken care of, Sir.”

“You keep saying that. It worries me.”

“It shouldn’t, Sir. Take a seat. Have a Minstrel. Relax.”

Mr. Peter sounds very persuasive. People in his line of work always do. I want to trust him, but I can’t help thinking that this trip will put me in debt for the rest of my life. This hotel looks like the kind of place that will charge you a fortune for every little thing.

“What about incidentals?”

“Everything is included in your rate, Sir.”

“I don’t get it. I haven’t even made a reservation.”

“Let’s just say it’s on the house, Sir.”

“Well, I guess it can’t hurt to take a look at the room.”

“I promise you won’t regret it, Sir.”

“How will I know when to get off?”

“The elevator will take you directly to your floor.”

“And when I get there, how will I find my room?”

“There is only one room on your floor. It’s a private floor.”

“How will I get into the room?”

“Just hold the keycard up to the doorknob, Sir.”

“Keycard? What keycard?”

“It was mailed to you I believe.”

I reach into my pocket and bring out the card that reads TAKE THE ELEVATOR.

“This thing?”

“That’s the one, Sir.”

I get into the elevator.

“Enjoy your stay, Sir.”

The door slides shut while I’m still wondering whether I should tip Mr. Peter, and what amount would be appropriate. Too late now. There is no OPEN DOOR button. There are no buttons here at all. I feel like I’ve stepped into one of Daniel’s paperbacks. I drop into the easy chair. It’s so comfortable I almost fall asleep again. But I don’t want to miss any of this. I open the pack of Minstrels and start eating them. The elevator accelerates swiftly, but smoothly. That’s what it must feel like to ride in a Rolls Royce. Just when I’m down to the last Minstrel, the elevator stops. The door slides open. I put the last Minstrel in my mouth, get up, and get out. I’m in a corridor that leads to a single door. I walk up to the door. The carpet here is even thicker than in the lobby. There is no lock on the door, but the doorknob is pulsing red. I take the card from my pocket and hold it up to the doorknob. Its color changes from red to green. I open the door.

Filed Under: Featured, Fiction (Intensification), Story

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Come Again

September 5, 2018 By brigidburke

Come Again

By
  • Joanna Hoyt
 |  September 5, 2018
Feature Image: Why I Am a Christian, No author attribution.
Print

The visitor scrapes the dirt off his broken-down shoes, steps into the gleaming entrance hall, returns the usher’s smile. Unlike the usher, he keep his lips shut—understandably, if his teeth differ from the usher’s as much as his clothes do.

The usher gestures him into the sanctuary. He stops just inside the door, staring at the banks of seats, the spotlighted stage, the screens filled with the rapt faces of singers whose music, prodigiously amplified, pulses in his head, flutters in his empty stomach. “I will bring praise; no weapon formed against me shall remain…” People in the congregation sing and sway. The visitor remembers men standing and swaying to the chant of prayer in another time and place; the words were different, but the movement was much the same.

Another greeter smiles in his face, gestures him to a seat in the back row. For a while he looks down at his hands. Then he takes a deep breath and looks around him again.

The music has stopped. The screens show the preacher’s face. The preacher’s eyes shine like his teeth; his arms sweep out in a wide gesture of welcome. “Have you believed the lies of this world?” the preacher asks. “Have you let the Enemy establish a beachhead in your mind? Have you let him tell you that you’re no good, that you’re poor, that you’re sick, that you’ve done terrible things? Have you let Satan tell you that Jesus doesn’t want you? Well, let me tell you the truth. Jesus wants you. Jesus came for you.”

The congregation leans into the promise. The visitor remembers another crowd leaning in as though it were midwinter and the words were fire, their eyes full of the hunger which bites as deep as the hunger for bread. Leaning toward him.

“Maybe you’re thinking, ‘That’s easy for him to say. He’s a minister of the Word, he’s a righteous man, he’s got a nice house, a good life—how does he know what my life is like? How does he know Jesus wants me?’” The congregation waits eagerly for the answer.

“I know,” the preacher assures them. “I know, because I wasn’t always the man you see before you now. If you knew the way I grew up… Brothers and sisters, believe me, whatever you’ve been through, it’s no worse than that.”

The visitor rubs his right thumb over the scar on his left hand, focuses on the preacher’s words to keep the memories at bay.

“I’ve known poverty. I’ve known sin. Drinking, porn … you name it, I tried it. I was lost, friends, I was lost in the darkness. I was destroying my health, I was bankrupt, but worse than that: my soul was dark and hollow, and I was a stranger to God.”

The congregation listens as though this is the first time they have heard his account of how the preacher hit bottom, fell to his knees and asked Jesus into his heart. The visitor studies the preacher’s face as though trying to remember something.

“And he came to me. He came to me, and He filled my life, He filled it with blessings, just the way he promised in his precious Word. Do you know what it says there? It says that God has plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to prosper you. Friends, that word is for you, for every blessing you need in your life. If you open your life to the power of God, if you surrender to His precious will, He will shower you with blessings. When you let God into your heart, then the blessings come until your cup overflows, until you think you can’t take any more blessing—and still they come! When you let God arise, he scatters every enemy. No more sickness, no more poverty, no more sadness, no more pain. When you let God arise, then health comes, then joy comes, then prosperity comes. The path of the righteous gets brighter and brighter. God will give you the victory. God will give you the victory in everything.”

The congregation laughs, claps, shouts out loud. The visitor in the back row clutches his left side with his right hand. The wound there is old, should be healed, but sometimes the memories bring the pain back. Drops of sweat fall from his forehead to the carpet.

“Are you ready?” the preacher calls. “Are you ready to say yes to the blessing? Are you ready to say yes to God, to put your life in his hands and let him fill your cup with every good thing? Then stand with me and tell our Heavenly Father…”

The congregation rises like a wave. The visitor rocks back and forth like a piece of flotsam battered by the tide. Words tumble from his mouth in fragments: Father…this cup…your will…your hands…

The visitor edges toward the nearest aisle; the people he has to pass by let him through, wrinkling their noses as he passes. His stomach growls, and as the preacher’s voice rises in prayer he makes his way to the exit, head bowed.

He stands on the steps for a few minutes, watching two sparrows chasing each other through the branches of the hawthorn tree by the door. Slowly he lifts his hands. One of the sparrows perches on his crooked finger, turns a bright eye on him, flies away singing.

Later he sits at a long gray table, one in a crowd of shabbily dressed people eating macaroni and hot dogs from paper plates inside the Good Shepherd Soup Kitchen. He looks around at his fellow diners. No one looks back at him. Some bend over their food. Others look toward the TV screen on the wall.

“I thank God for finally sending us a President who truly values and protects Christians,” the man on the screen says. His compelling blue eyes stare directly at his listeners. “Our Lord Jesus Christ told us that the world would hate us because we bear His name. We see that every day, don’t we? Look at the violent Islamists massacring Christians for their faith. Look at the terrorists who hate America, who hate us just because we’re free, we’re Christian, we’re blessed by God…”

“Amen!” says one of the diners. The visitor looks at her snaggled teeth and hair, the cross pinned to her sweatshirt, the hunger in her eyes.

He looks back at the screen as the interviewer asks about the church people who criticize the President for turning away refugees.

“That simply isn’t a Bible issue,” the interviewee says. “A country has laws, a country has the duty to protect its own. That means not letting in people who want to kill us.”

The visitor no longer sees the speaker on the screen. The memories are on him again. Earlier memories, this time. His mother’s hand over his mouth as they creep out of the village in the dead of night, and again every time a patrol might be passing near them. The heat beating down, the hurt in his dry throat and empty gut, the long, long journey through the desert. And when they arrive… His father—at least, the man he always called father–asking directions, first in the language of the country they fled from, then, awkwardly, brokenly, in the language of the new land. People not answering. People laughing, a hard-edged laughter. People answering—he didn’t know their language then, but he understood You are not wanted . That is one of the first messages any child learns to understand, especially a child of refugees.

He was a small boy then; many people would say he was too young to remember. Nevertheless he remembers. He also remembers what anyone would say he should not, what he was not there to see, what they fled, what happened just after they escaped the village. The soldiers shouting; the women wailing; the children screaming briefly, then silenced; the soft thuds of bodies dropped in the dust; the silence among the living that followed the soldiers’ departure, broken occasionally by a curse, a prayer, a sob, then settling again like dust over the hopeless and the dead…
“Hey, what’s wrong with him?” a voice asks. “What’s he staring at?” He pulls himself out of the memories far enough to see the faces of his fellow diners turned toward him, far enough to see the fear that stirs behind the faces. Some of them are looking at his dark troubled eyes. Some are looking at his brown skin, long beard and hooked nose. “Hey, where are you from, anyway?” the first speaker asks. He doesn’t answer. “Has anyone heard him say anything?”

“Yeah, I was behind him in line. He said he was hungry. Said he didn’t want a hot dog. Wouldn’t say why. He had a funny accent.”

“Don’t you eat pork?”

“Where are you from?”

“I was a stranger…” he begins; bites the rest off.

“What kind of accent is that? What kind of stranger are you? What’re you here for, anyway?”

“This place is to feed Americans.”

That look in their eyes. He remembers that look. He pushes himself back from the table, walks away, leaving his food uneaten. They don’t follow him. Their voices do, and their fear. The servers don’t look at him; they are still busy scooping food onto plates for newer arrivals.

Most of the diners don’t look either; they keep their eyes down, their bodies curled around their own treasures and wounds. A woman with a beaky face and a tangle of grey hair fumbles in her jacket pocket until the pocket tears out. Coins ring and roll. Scraps of paper covered in spiky writing flutter in several directions; her attempts to grab them make eddies in the air that only push them further away.

He kneels beside her, catching the papers as they fall. A girl with dark makeup around her eyes and a dark bruise on her jaw crouches on the woman’s other side, raking coins together. The woman screams, a high tearing sound. “No!” she cries. “Those are mine!”

“I know,” he says. She darts a glance at him. Looks away. Looks back, steadying her eyes on his; takes a deep breath; doesn’t start screaming again.

“Oh,” she says. “Oh. I’m sorry.” And to the well-dressed man hurrying over from the server’s line, “No, it’s all right. He’s helping. They’re both helping. I didn’t know.”

The girl bundles the coins back into the woman’s remaining pocket. The visitor holds the papers up to the woman in his cupped hands. She reaches down to take them. Leaves her hands in his while her breath comes deeper and slower. He feels something stirring inside him, something that comes from beyond him.

“You’ll be all right,” he says to her, knowing it for the truth.

She nods. “Will you be?”

He has no answer. He releases her hands gently, goes out the back door. Pauses to pick up a sheet of paper from the table by the door: The Daily Word, it says across the top. The woman at the table smiles encouragingly at him as he carries it out into the light.

The man from the television screen looks into his eyes from the paper. He reads the curly script under the photo: Hebrews 13:17. “Submit to your leaders and those in authority.”

“Listen, all of you, black or white or any other color. There’s no reason for you to be afraid of the police,” the message begins. The reader remembers other words like that: Have no fear of those who can kill the body… The words trail shadows, remembered fears. He shakes his head to clear it, looks back at the words on the page. “There’s a simple way to keep safe: OBEY. Follow God’s guidance. Submit to your leaders and those in authority. If a policeman tells you to do something, you do it. If they say freeze, you freeze. If they say lie down, you lie down. Obey. Don’t argue, whether or not you think they’re right—OBEY, as God commanded you. Remember Romans 13, the opening verses: Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except what God has established… He who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will not escape judgment… Authorities hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong.”

The reader crumples the paper in his hand. He’s not seeing the printed words now, he’s seeing the images from his childhood: the bodies nailed to posts along the roadside as a warning from the authorities, a sign to strike terror into the hearts of would-be rebels.

He shakes his head. That was another country and another time, he tells himself. In this land, in this time, when the authorities kill they may leave the bodies lying in the road for hours, but they don’t stick them up beside the road for days. Well, they hardly need to, now that the images of the bodies can pass from screen to screen in an instant, so that everyone sees and remembers what they can do to you if…

The memories catch him, drag him forward. He is a man, not a boy, back in that other country. He is a man, but the guards treat him like a beast; they have taken his clothes away, they have blindfolded him, they are hitting him again and again. They are authorities. They say he has rebelled. This is the beginning of the judgment.

He clutches at his side again. Sits curled around the wound and also around that presence like a fire in his bones.

A shadow falls across him and he flinches. The woman standing over him flinches too, drops something on the ground in front of him—on purpose, he thinks it’s on purpose—and backs away. He looks at her: the fish with the name JESUS on her sweatshirt front, the shirt’s frayed neck, the kindness and the fear in her face. She turns and hurries down the street.

He picks up the thing she dropped, examines it. There’s a portrait of a bewigged man over the words ONE DOLLAR. He flips it over. There’s an eagle, a bunch of arrows, the emblems the armies of the occupiers used in his other country. But the inscription says IN GOD WE TRUST. He looks back and forth between the pictures and the words. To whom does this belong? Who does she think he is, that she has rendered it to him?

The back of the Daily Word sheet is printed with the addresses of local churches that support the soup kitchen. The church he went to earlier is there. So is another church on the same street as the soup kitchen—a church with an afternoon service.

He walks to that church. Music spills from an open door. He waits in the foyer until the music stops; goes in quietly and takes a seat in the back as people sit back down and the preacher stands to speak.

By the time he has quieted his memories she is well launched into her message. She wears white robes and gold earrings; she speaks eagerly and warmly.

“Don’t let anyone lay a burden on you,” she says. “Those problems you think you have? God has already taken them away. They’re not yours any more. All good things are yours through the power of Jesus.” She makes a sudden gesture of throwing down. “There is no burden for those who believe!” she says. “Jesus took it all on himself. Jesus took all the evil on himself, so all the good was left for us. Jesus was wounded so we could be healed! Jesus took on our poverty so we could have God’s rich abundance! Jesus became a curse so we could have the blessing! Jesus died so we could live!”

It is only in his mind, the visitor knows—or in their minds; the distinction is not absolute—that the people of the congregation answer Yes. Yes, the blessing is for us. Let the foreigners stay in their bloody hungry countries: the richness of this land is for us. Let the rebellious die in the streets: the protection is for us. Let the people who didn’t get the blessing go hungry; we will want for nothing. Let Jesus suffer and die. We are the living, we are the prosperous, we will inherit the earth.

The visitor unclenches his fist, tears his gaze away from the preacher, looks above her to the crimson curtain and the empty cross that hangs in front of it, waiting. He flinches, looks back down, shutting his teeth against the phantom pain.

But it’s not just his own pain that moves through him now. It’s the pain of the people around him, the strain under their smiles. Their desperation. Their certainty that the curse remains, that if they ever set aside their armor of insistent faith in being blessed, if they ever relax their conviction that they deserve more than the rest, it might lay hold of them. He remembers that fear as well from the other country and the other time.

He knew words for that. Woe to you rich… Give to the poor, and then come, follow me… Woe to you when all speak well of you… Take up your cross and follow me… My kingdom is not of this world… Have no fear of those who kill the body… Be not afraid… Perfect love drives out all fear… Love your neighbor…Love your enemy… I was a stranger and you welcomed me… Enter into the joy of your Lord…

These people in the church with him today have heard all those words over and over, they can’t really hear them any more. He remembers other words: If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.

And yet, and yet…

He rises. The wound in his side is still throbbing, but the wind is blowing through him now, the light is shining. As their faces turn toward him, he opens his mouth to speak again.

Filed Under: Featured, Fiction (Intensification), Story

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grammatological monster

August 14, 2018 By Marco V Morelli

grammatological monster

By
  • Marco V Morelli
 |  August 14, 2018
Print

Jef Safi, Toroidal trigonomorphosis of the centripetal illusion of Being through the n‑sphere of the centrifugal In-Between in-formation outlining a Vanishing-Line in the virtual lineaments of the Path (dào) half-opened by the Median Void (taìjítú) Breath (qì). [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Author’s note

I was feeling restless one morning, and while meditating got the idea to experiment with writing a poem that would openly break with objective grammar and even semantic meaning. I was inspired by our recent Cosmos Café on Jean Gebser’s 1941 essay, “The Grammatical Mirror,” which argues that subtle changes in language are evidence of a mutation in consciousness which he calls the “integral.”

During the call, I noted that since the time of Gebser, our ‘grammatical mirror’ has exploded (while remaining mostly mentally fixated) but that we might ‘update’ Gebser by finding evidence of the post-postmodern (integral) now. This text (and accompanying audio) is meant to illustrate that point. This might also be an extreme example of the ‘crytopoetic’ style. It’s also fairly influenced by recent readings in Peter Sloterdijk (i.e., ‘spheropoetics’).


https://www.metapsychosis.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/03/grammatological-monster.mp3

download

if
as
were
to a-
light
in fine-like
for lake eyes turn
resembles
collapsing string quartet

deliver in
sync per containeresque
tear,
listening;
medicine sliver
boy-
fawn, dell-hollers, crow in-signifies
bottles, little
why

wave sign equanimous
sole
crustaceous skull crack, climb
c-
sector nyne time(s)
three whales
softs
calamity
alive—caught—a lips, a part

()

find me a fin, ye fall sunlappers, cry all a fine liner thru Cancer arc continued, form kind stranger, find me! define if i will (cram the finer) slide black blue bellower Calypso eye field a fill to fall with in turning-bind, triple-helix (spiral-O) sorrows—

as, as

be find me, kind stranger. remind silver moonson: penumbra doll, armed siren, illiterate sage. turn turn a-little, bedeviled; lava so, kissed-over, tucked away

beloved

.


Performed by Marco V Morelli
Music by Anna Thorvaldsdottir: Ró (excerpt)

Filed Under: Audio, Microdoses, Poetics (Originary Powers), Poetry

Interpreting Darren Aronofsky’s ‘mother!’

August 12, 2018 By Marco V Morelli

Spheres Reading Group:

Interpreting Darren Aronofsky’s ‘mother!’

By
Metapsychosis
 |  August 12, 2018
Feature Image:
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A series of writing and conversations exploring the many layers, folds, complexities, and intensities of director Darren Aronofsky’s disturbing tale of home invasion: mother!

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Metapsychosis is a project of Cosmos Cooperative, a creative co-op for people with "visionary tendencies." Learn more at Cosmos.coop »

Unless otherwise noted, all rights are reserved by the individual authors. Other website content is licensed under Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

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Metapsychosis is a project of Cosmos Cooperative, a creative co-op for people with "visionary tendencies." Learn more at Cosmos.coop »

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Metapsychosis is a project of Cosmos Cooperative, a creative co-op for people with "visionary tendencies." Learn more at Cosmos.coop »

Unless otherwise noted, all rights are reserved by the individual authors. Other website content is licensed under Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)