dear_mun | Lesson Learned: Do not write Flagg tags before bed

A shadowed figure blamed for dreams of fire and ruins. Be still my Jungian heart.

Vocatus atque non vocatus, deus aderit.

Jung was an interesting kinda guy, in my estimation, very much about connection and connectivity. And, you know, I appreciate a good symbol as much as Freud appreciated a good cigar.

Jung would have had some fun with her, but that's beside the point.

Funny how thoroughly the meaning changes when you remember that deus referred to Ares.

Very well said. I should have you write my resumé. And yes, I was going to ask about such images being "the usual thing."

Yeah, but ain't it cool how it gets all spun out to a million myriad broken and shimmering alternatives? There's the source and origin and the scattered reflections of the same with all their variations and skewed features. It's very "insert your god here" by now. Which is just getting Jungian in and of itself.

Are we really sitting here talking about theories of human psychology? I don't object. I'm only asking. I've talked about more and less of a day.

Oh yes. Quite the dreamer, this one. Obviously, I told you about last night. I think before that there was something about great jagged desert canyons (still not my fault, but she'll just keep looking at me and saying "J'accuse!"), and before that it was a key to an abandoned classroom which was both a gift and something she was to defend with her life.

But, shh: she's mine.

[:c I'm not comfortable with this arrangement.]

Well, or Erasmas made it up. Not that it matters, really. Same reflections for a photocopy. And I've still not fully convinced myself this isn't one of my psychotic breaks, so sitting around talking about Jung feels quite appropriate.

Far be it from me to encroach. The canyons – day or night?

Now it's getting Platonic in here, if we're going to start talking about reflections of copies. Same difference.

It wouldn't be the first time I've been taken (mistaken or otherwise) for a psychotic break, so I'll take no offense there. At least it gives you leave to play with your hallucinations, if that's what's going on here. And doesn't that all wrap around together nicely? Hallucinations, dreams, Jung. Cute little trio there.

Jung's pleasant because he, at least, left some possibilities open where others closed them off entirely. They're only just getting around to looking at those sealed passages now. But it's probably too late. That's how it usually goes.

Anyway--

Day, albeit late afternoon--and I hope dearheart's listening to this.

You're certainly more fun than the usual. I would gladly pick asphodel flowers for a millennium to see Plato and Jung have a conversation.

More 0 than XVI, then. If Rider-Waite is to be trusted and you're into that sort of thing. And I wouldn't go that far. These things come back when they're needed.

Well, thanks! Wait--did you really just make passing reference to the Asphodel Meadows? Bravo. Well done, indeed. I wonder if that meeting could be arranged.

[SUDDENLY HYSTERICAL LAUGHTER FROM THE HOODED CONVERSANT HERE.]

Oh, I'm very much "into that sort of thing." XVI happens to be a personal favorite of mine. Oh, yes, very much a personal favorite--

[IT CONTINUES.]

She likes XVIII better. That comes back. But--

[MORE LAUGHTER.]

--ah, yes, very much a personal favorite, yes. I remember very specifically showing that card to someone I knew, a very long time ago. Yes...

[Tapering off to just giggles now...]

But, I quite agree: daylight cliffs and canyons are more in line with 0 than XVI, as you said. And well said too. The Fool and his dog and his white rose. I'd not bothered to try and make alignments and associations with these things before--I mean, really, since it seems like I'm stuck here in nothing more than a very long layover. An entertaining layover, but a layover nonetheless. I've deserts to go back to sooner or later myself. Mayhap I've found more to do with myself than I thought. Sweetness, are you listening? Pay attention to the nice man in the midst of what may or may not be a psychotic break.

These things do come back when they're needed. Quite so.

A woman of good taste. I've been under its frown long enough to know I really should have preferred its predecessor. Can't say I'm as much a fan of yours, but we're sufficiently acquainted.

[Laughter tends to be contagious for him and he can't help but grin a little, even though he really knows he shouldn't and tries to fight it. So many threads of conversation, such a tangled skein – he should really try to pull things back in before he gets lost among them.] Probably best not to ask for the full story, I imagine.

And the stick, though I always forget it as well – I suppose that can't bode well for my mental state either. Which I've just about given up on, since I can't say people are often this interesting in real life.

We're sufficiently acquainted. I don't need you to be a fan. As such, it is best not to ask for the full story. For one thing, it's a very long story.

[Seven volumes, plus individual stories, plus particular other novels, plus extraneous materials, plus potential sightings, plus pre-canon, plus comics. You busy son-of-a-bitch. Don't ignore me.]

Quite so. Every pilgrim needs his staff. I just find it easier to remember his rose. Perhaps it does say something after all.

But now I'm going to ask you for stories. We're sufficiently acquainted, after all. We'll pretend we're two fellow wanderers who have fallen in together over a shared fire--and whichever of us lit it has been forgotten and it doesn't matter anyway. For each fire is all fires, the first fire and the last ever to be. For fire does contain within it something of men themselves inasmuch as they are less without it and are divided from their origins and are exiles. But never mind that.

How came you by such things? Curiosity? Profession? Obsession?

[It takes him a moment to remember he's supposed to respond. That description of fire quite caught his attention.]

- All three, really, and if I'm lucky, in that order. [He proffers a hand.] James Violet, patternist for the Glaukopis Program. [Assuming I'm not just massively delusional, he doesn't say.] These days the Ants can analyze just about anything, so there's an occasional spot open for someone who knows their way around those half-sealed passages.

Hah! Most would hope for the first two and find themselves in the grip of the third. That final stumble, that final fall. But it's not such a far fall. Many have taken it, though some take it harder than others.

[He takes that hand. Never mind that his own is cold and lacks any lines. And he throws back his hood. He looks...ordinary?]

Reynard Fox. Good to meet you, Mr. Violet.

[Hey, "Reynard," did it just get a little Gravity's Rainbow in here, or is it just me? You're not listening to me. You're trying to remember if the "Glaukopis Program" was something North Central Positronics was into. Hell if I know.]

So you're one of those who knows his way around those half-sealed passages. With the help of your association with the party of Rider-Waite...among other things, I suppose.

Well--don't stop there. Tell me more.

[I firmly deny any possible inspiration from PISCES. Firmly. Also hello there, James is not at all adverse to the hood-removal.]

An absolute pleasure, Mr. Fox. [He'll leave it at that. Some tricksters are best left unprodded.] I at least endeavor to wander them. Sooner or later, everything leads somewhere, and the lost are only those without maps to fool them otherwise.

[A real grin this time, if a small one.] Oh, I can't say too much, they'd have my hide. But I could provide a story, if the offer still stands.

Edited (flows better) 2013-03-25 08:11 (UTC)

[Naturally. Everyone has to deny any possible connection with PISCES. That's standard. In any event, he's been trying to find an opportunity to use "Reynard Fox" as his traveling name. He figured it would be appreciated by present company.]

You'd make a very nice throw rug, I think, so let's take a gamble.

The offer still stands. I do very much enjoy stories. Provide me with one.

[He briefly evaluates the sentence for innuendo and considers a playful response. The musing is cut short when he recalls previous statements and decides there's a substantial chance the aptly-named "Mr. Fox" is being serious.]

All right then. You'll have to excuse me, I've not prepared one in advance.

All right then.

[Deep breath, roll the shoulders.]

Once upon a time...

[He coughs, embarrassed, and flexes his fingers.] Once upon a time...

[He pauses, again. This isn't working. He could – but can he take the risk?]

[He closes his eyes.]

[In the darkness behind his eyelids, it blooms.]

Once upon a time, there lived beneath the earth a great race of conquerors. Proud they were, and ambitious. For naught but glory they built a thousand and ten monuments, each stretching hundreds of golden miles down, down through rock and chasm until their tips drew fire from the impassable inferno beneath. Yet still their spirit was unsatisfied, and they hungered for greater dominion. In the flickering heat of that chthonic blaze...

[He self-consciously toys with his collar. A bit much, isn't it? But the story is begun now; no choice but to let it take its course.]

...they forged innumerable iron insects, until they had assembled a swarm that extended beyond the reach of vision. And when the work was done they unleashed their creations upon the darkness around them. To delve into the furthest reaches, to bring light into every crevice. To cross paths a thousand times and ten until every hollowed mile had been claimed for the conquerors. To earn for their makers the right to boast their mastery of all that lay beneath the earth.

[A pause, this one not aware at all. As though, for a moment, the story has caught him up as well. His voice is quieter, now.]

Yet still, their spirit was unsatisfied.

[And now faster.]

No direction, then, but up – no path left but toward the vastness above. And so, for the first time, they climbed. Back along their burrowed pathways, back up through their golden glories, until at last the bravest fools had made their way to the place where the earth did end. There, staring out into that endless abyss, they understood for the first time the nature of the world they had believed conquered.

“Surely,” said one, “this is beyond even our abilities.” And another: “Surely no force can bring civilization to this, the demesne of irrationality.” “It is the nature of the element,” agreed a third. “For surely this aether, which according to its own whims first rages then quiets, blows first this way then that, is anathema to the deepness of the earth which birthed us.” “Surely none,” concluded the last, “could traverse this great emptiness and live.”

But even as the words were uttered, the peregrines heard a cry from above them – a piercing, hollow cry, and the flapping of wings.

[In barely a whisper -]

And then every card was played, and the pieces had nothing left to do but dance out their parts.

[And growing stronger-]

The day was still bright and the pool beneath their feet clear, and in it the crow’s reflection clarissima. Understanding, the conversant four seized the fifth, who had been silent. They pressed his face against the surface of the water and with flashing voices demanded “Be our crow!” The fifth trembled and responded “I cannot be your crow, for I cannot bear the weight of its feathers.”

They lifted him onto their backs and brought him to another pond, in which was reflected an eagle. They pressed his face against the surface of the water and with flashing voices demanded “Be our eagle!” The fifth trembled and responded “I cannot be your eagle, for I cannot bear the sharpness of its beak.”

In the third was reflected an ibis, but he trembled against the water and responded “I cannot be your ibis, for I cannot bear the need of its hunger.” In the fourth was reflected a dove, but he trembled against the water and responded “I cannot be your dove, for I cannot bear the span of its wings.”

“Then what,” they asked with frustration, “will you be?”

Edited 2013-03-25 17:03 (UTC)

But by then, the birds had pecked away all that was left.

And nothing answered them

but the whisper of the wind.

[Silence.]

Edited 2013-03-25 17:05 (UTC)

Quite the story. I rather liked it. And how perpetually comforting to find such similar patterns rippling out everywhere. I do like it. I do.

Anyway, that's my story.

It's only fair to ask for one in return.

I suppose it's only fair.

I've told this story to another before. I'll tell it to you because I wonder what you'll think--not what you'll do with the story, but what you'll think. You can't do anything with it. I know that much.

It's a twice-told tale, but you don't care, do you?

[A pause.]

The universe, of course, is the Great All, and offers a paradox too great for the finite mind to grasp. As the living brain cannot conceive of a non-living brain--although it may think it can--the finite mind cannot grasp the infinite.

The prosaic fact of the universe's existence alone defeats both the pragmatic and the romantic. There was a time, yet a hundred generations before the world (a certain world at least) moved on, when mankind had achieved enough technical and scientific prowess to chip a few splinters from the great stone pillar of reality. Even so, the false light of science (knowledge, if you like) shone in only a few developed countries. One company (or cabal) led the way in this regard: North Central Positronics, it called itself. Hush--it sounds prosaic again, but endure it a while, or think of it as a set piece to the story, use it as you please. Yet, despite a tremendous increase in available facts, there were remarkably few insights.

For some, their many-times-great grandfathers conquered the-disease-which-rots, which they called cancer, almost conquered aging, walked on the moon... They made or discovered a hundred other marvelous baubles: they split the atom, unwound the twin strands of DNA, found elements that vanish as quickly as they are formed, created means of communication through the very air, means by which to speak across empty air, the ways and means to walk on the moon itself, built robots and contraptions sent into outer space that could be controlled at great distances and which would send back sights and sounds on that invisible wavelength, a network of instant communication that linked up the whole of the world and was as much toy as tool. But this wealth of infomation produced little or no insight. There were no great odes written to the wonders of artificial insemination--having babies from frozen mansperm--or to the cars that ran on power of the sun. Few if any seemed to have grasped the truest principle of reality: new knowledge leads to yet more awesome mysteries. Greater physiological knowledge of the brain makes the existence of the soul less possible yet more probable by the nature of the search. Do you see? Perhaps you do. Perhaps your wandering down those forgotten passages have left you with some ability to comprehend for the moment. But nevermind--that's beside the point. Here is the point:

The greatest mystery the universe offers is not life but size. Size encompasses life, and the Tower encompasses size. Here you see why I laughed at Key XVI and it's dreadful summit of the cliff that beetles o'er his base into the sea. Here now you see why I laughed and though you think you don't understand, you do. You know these things in the depth of your heart and in the depth of your mind. You know without knowing. You know what connectivity and centering such a thing, such a place might be.

Size. The child, who is most at home with wonder, says: Daddy, what is above the sky? And the father says: The darkness of space. The child: What is beyond space? The father: The galaxy. The child: Beyond the galaxy? The father: Another galaxy. The child: Beyond the other galaxies? The father: No one knows.

You see? Size defeats us. For the fish, the lake in which he lives is the universe. What does the fish think when he is jerked up by the mouth through the silver limits of existence and into a new universe where the air drowns him and the light is blue madness? Where huge bipeds with no gills stuff it into a suffocating box abd cover it with wet weeds to die?

Or one might take the tip of the pencil and magnify it. One reaches the point where a stunning realization strikes home: the pencil tip is not solid; it is composed of atoms which whirl and revolve like a trillion demon planets. What seems solid to us is actually only a loose net held together by gravity. Viewed at their actual size, the distances between these atoms might become league, gulfs, aeons. The atoms themselves are composed of nuclei and revolving protons and electrons. One may step down further to subatomic particles. And then to what? Tachyons? Nothing? Of course not. Everything in the universe denies nothing; to suggest an ending is the one absurdity.

If you fell outward to the limit of the universe, would you find a board fence and signs reading DEAD END? No. You might find something hard and rounded, as the chick must see the egg from the inside. And if you should peck through the shell (or find a door), what great and torrential light might shine through your opening at the end of space? Might you look through and discover our entire universe is but part of one atom on a blade of grass? Might you be forced to think that by burning a twig you incinerate an eternity of eternities? That existence rises not to one infinite but to an infinity of them?

Perhaps you have already seen what place our universe plays in the scheme of things--as no more than an atom in a blade of grass. Could it be that everything we can perceive, from the microscopic virus to the distant Horsehead Nebula, is contained in one blade of grass that may have existed for only a single season in an alien time-flow? What if that blade should be cut off by a scythe? When it begins to die, would the rot seep into our universe and our own lives, turning everthing yellow and brown and desiccated? Perhaps it's already begun to happen.

Think how small such a concept of things make us. If a God watches over it all, does He actually mete out justice for such a race of gnats? Does His eye see the sparrow fall when the sparrow is less than a speck of hydrogen floating disconnected in the depth of space? And if He does see... what must the nature of such a God be? Where does He live? How is it possible to live beyond infinity?

Imagine the dust of the Mojave Desert, which surely you have seen or have seen something akin to it, and imagine a trillion universes--not worlds but universes--encapsulated in each grain of that desert; and within each universe an infinity of others. We tower over these universes from our pitiful grass vantage point; with one swing of your boot you may knock a billion billion worlds flying off into darkness, a chain never to be completed.

Size, Mr. Violet, size.

Yet suppose further. Suppose that all worlds, all universes, met at a single nexus, a single pylon, a Tower. Key 16 if you like, Key 19 as I prefer--but, hush, that's perhaps an idiosyncracy and you might not understand. Still. And within it, a stairway, perhaps rising to the Godhead itself. Would you dare climb to the top? Could it be that somewhere above all of endless reality, there exists a room?...

You dare not. You cannot.

I've told you the same story that I told the one I showed that card to so long ago. It matters less to you than it did to him. To you perhaps it's entertaining, perhaps it's pretty sounds in the air. And that is all it must be to you. It is not for you to seek. It is not your intended end.

A man seeks his own destiny and no other. Will or nill. Any man who could discover his own fate and elect therefore some opposite course could only come at last to that selfsame reckoning at the same appointed time, for each man's destiny is as large as the world he inhabits and contains within it all opposites as well.

That same desert upon which so many have been broken is vast and calls for largeness of heart but it is also ultimately empty. It is hard, it is barren. Its very nature is stone.

Edited 2013-03-25 19:52 (UTC)

A tower at the center of the cosmos' infinitude of infinities. Rather trivial from a Freudian vantage, but – from mine, more than a little. Well. Terrifying. I have a... difficult relationship, with bounds. And boundlessness.

[Perhaps it was not such a good idea to hear such a story immediately after telling his. He feels as though he is untethered, floating. The words seem more real than he does.]

At the least, it's an enchanting notion. An escape from scale through truth, intellect, the heights of the mind. Le monde par le soleil. But in my experience, that path lies only through insanity.

Edited 2013-03-25 21:28 (UTC)

Perhaps it does lie only through insanity. But so it goes.

[He nods idly and watches R.F. for a few moments, his expression growing once more faintly amused.]

Somehow, Mr. Fox, I can't help but feel I should be afraid of you.

Now why in the world--worlds, maybe?--would you think that? Aren't we just two equals swapping stories over our metaphorical and imaginary campfire?

Why would you feel you should be afraid of me?

Oh, fairies whispered it to me. "J'accuse!" they murmur, and play toothily with their cards. Will you tell me they are wrong?

It isn't wise to contradict the fairies, is it?

Sometimes not. Other times I get tired of their smug little smiles and it seems like the best idea in the world.

Too bad fear's instinctual – I can't take the credit for ignoring them.

And what do you fear?

Such a personal question for two strangers at a campfire.

Wanderers are often curious, don't you think? There's some inherent curiosity in them, some inherent questioning in them, that makes them roam. No wonder I should ask such questions.

Besides, it seemed like the next step in the conversation.

And we wanderers are so fond of steps, after all. All right, I fear –

[That I'll go too far, he thinks. That I'll wake up and find blood on my hands. The frenzy of the bacchae. The sparagmos I hear in the rustling of fox-skins.]

– control, I suppose, in excess and in deficiency.

[The fox, burying his grandfather under a hollybush. And what is the question?]

A fair thing to fear. In all ways and directions and times. Control held over one, the control one holds over another, control held over self--in excess and in deficiency. A fair thing to fear. A fair answer.

[Precisely. And that does earn a full smile.]

Glad you approve. [Ridiculous, but true.] And you?

Aren't I your psychotic break? Shouldn't I, therefore, fear the same things you fear?

Oh, everyone fears everything. I'm just curious which one you'll pick first.

Let's say I want to know which facet you reflect.

You're going to give me that kind of control?

I have absolutely terrible judgement, Mr. Fox, and I certainly am.

Perhaps I fear...nothing.

Blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein. Good answer.

["Whatever his antecedents, he was something wholly other than their sum, nor was there system by which to divide him back into his origins, for he would not go. Whoever would seek out his history through what unraveling of loins and ledgerbooks must stand at last darkened and dumb at the shore of a void without terminus or origin and whatever science he might bring to bear upon the dusty primal matter blowing down out of the millennia will discover no trace of any ultimate atavistic egg by which to reckon his commencing."]

Oh, are we doing that? All right.

Viel von sich reden kann auch ein Mittel sein, sich zu verbergen.

He should've seen social networking. And what could a hallucination and its dreamer have to hide from each other, after all?

Quite so. What have we to hide from each other, after all?

Lesson Learned: Do not write Flagg tags before bed

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well, clearly I have a project for when I've finished rereading House of Leaves

Mmmm... House of Leaves...

I'm actually starting to run out of margin space, which is ridiculous

There's not too much to begin with in that book...

1/actually quite a few, oh dear

2

3

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5

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7 done good lord

I don't care I loved it

:) aww thanks!

1/?

2/2 done

that was awesome, absolutely awesome

Thank you--also, btw, our game does, indeed

; ) I'll keep that in mind

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