I didn’t find fear in a dark alley. Nor did I find it in some lonesome backwood cabin. There was no metro labyrinth. Monsters and ghosts are but paper tigers.
I found terror at the end of a cigarette.
It was mere tabacco. No one had laced it. I’d taken nothing but a coffee prior.
Yet as the last ring combusted and collapsed as ash onto the porcelain I died.
It was a silent explosion. A silent explosion in my head. Like an old camera flash sans sound.
As bright dust settled everything had changed. I looked at the roundheaded blonde with the outsized blue eyes but I didn’t see her.
I was sitting in the diner but I was no longer there.
She asked what was wrong and my lips merely smiled.
Despite the bright fluorescence of the resteraunt lights I felt the dark. I felt it pressing in from every angle.
All eternity was pressing down upon us. Every sentence that had been and every sentence that would be drowned this period. We were merely punctuation.
I traced the outline of her skull. Totentanz was here. Whirling and laughing the mad company mocked with invisible suggestion.
Her every freckle a star. Stars that formed constellations made of the dust of the infiinite dead.
She looked up form her absent minded sketching on the napkin. Again asking what was wrong.
I could not answer. My mouth was stuffed with the pitch of the abyss.
Death eternal, the only constant, the ground base against which faint viol peals of punctuation grasped haphazard for a melody.
She told me that my eyes had changed color again. A trick of perception born of inattention. My eyes are hazel. Grey, green, brown, and blue and what you see all depends on what the light wants.
But what seized me was the opposite. It was not a trick. It was perception. Cutting with a sharp dullness it showed what the dark wants.
She wants us to know that she is our mother. That from her we spring and to her we shall return.
Uh OH! Looks like YT formatted out the clip I had in the video…bbl. It’s no big probably has to do with the fact that it was webm clip. Should be fixed sometime tommorow. Apologies.
I didn’t have much reason to hang around the dawning of Atlantis. So I cleared my mind and rejoined the expedition.
“Is it elevenses already?” Sam inquired.
“Huh?”
“What’s with the teaball man?”
“Oh..uh..I just had forgotten I’d put it in my pocket.”
“That’s pretty weird my dude. Heh..say what’s in that tea braheem…?”
I actually had no idea since I’d just gotten it from a Victorian ghost. But, I did know that now was not the time to consume it.
“Maybe I’ll let you try some later. And we’ll see if you can sit with elders of the gentle race.”
I stepped off the trail and let the expedition troop past me as I deposited the item into my ruck.
Doctor Cook came up on me after a bit.
“I have been talking to Senhor Hoyt.”
“O?”
“Si, and he says that the map merely leads to another map.”
“Jesus.”
“Yes, that’s what I said. I love the jungle. I love the ruins we are seeing but…even I have my limits.”
“I think I reached mine before this party started.”
“There are many limits to be broken.” Graham muttered melodramatically.
“So Ipsissimus…” I quipped. “Where the hell are we?”
“We are a hundred some miles northeast of the true coordinates of Dead Horse Camp.”
“Are we there yet, are we there yet, are we there yet….!” I taunted.
“We are within fifty miles of the location of the second map.”
“Please tell me that there are only two maps. Please….”
Graham merely smirked .
‘What a dick.’
“You’re not going to tell me where the second map is gonna take us are you?”
“Why do you assume I know.”
“Because you’re fucking demon possessed…”
“Am I?”
I was getting really tired of that statementesque question.
“Yep.”
“You know that they said the same thing to Jesus.”
“And Satan often dresses up like Jesus.”
“Isn’t it teatime?” Graham prodded.
“Um…” There was no way he had seen my recent acquisition. Though given all his newly acquired parlor tricks I took this as a sign that it was indeed time for elevenses.
We had been trooping since dawn and my suggestion was roundly accepted.
Graham, Cook, and I found a spot away from the expedition and sat down to tea.
The Sketch of Sam Monroe is a weird fiction thriller. Follow the adventures of five quirky Black Ops pharmacologists as they globetrot their way to the Mato Grosso jungles. Philosophy, psychedelics, and banter are infused throughout this literary comic-book.
When looking for a flow state we immediately want to make drastic changes to our environment. Or to run to a totally different environment. Why is that?
In my teenage and early twenties years this desire manifested itself as rather unworkable visions of hoboing around the states. Living in forests. Or some remote set of cheap apartments whose antique spartan interiors would be the catalyst for lots of work.
Now approaching thirty I’ve come to view this as a form of procrastination.
That being said I don’t think this is necessarily just an adolescent phase.
Work is transformation and whether internal or external so is travel. These things are likely associated on a subconscious level. So it’s no wonder that folks of all ages crave pilgrimages of various stripes.
The idea of sequestering is not without merit. There’s a lot to be said with laying back after chopping up some fuel and watching the evening moon bob between swaying trees. It is a superb catalyst for creativity and flow states.
But for most folks camping trips are vacations. Yes, if you’re dedicated to being a crazy forest dwelling artist then it can become your life. But of course you now run the risk of the new normal. Perhaps getting over the lack of novelty is part of the art of longer journeys.
But…if that’s the case why not simply get over the lack of novelty right now and pull out that notebook?
Made this last night. Given hardware limitations it took three hours just to render two clips stuck together. Ain’t nothin spectacular just riffing on various odds and ends like: dealing with procrastination, what’s actually vulgar, and then there’s a bit of musical nonsense.
Was hoping to refine it but it was all I had time for.
I still got a more in depth look at McNamara, Shindo Renmei, and Psychology on my other channel later in the week. Thanks for watching.
This is from my informal/music YT channel which you can subscribe to here.
“Well, sonny Jim I’ll answer for you. You are a period. I am a sentence.”
“More like a dime novel caricature.”
“Yes, much more.”
“So you’re just hanging out here in prehistory? All ethereal like? How’s that goin for ya?”
“Why can’t you divide by zero?”
“Because something being operated upon by nothing does not transform.”
“It doesn’t?”
“Yes, nothing happens.”
“How can nothing happen?”
“By not happening.”
“So, sonny Jim all this time you’ve been learning how to become undefined. Well, I am undefined. As such I am not dead. Nor am I strictly speaking alive.”
“Far out.”
‘Did Sam spritz some psilocybin onto my pork n beans again?’ I mused internally.
“This is far beyond psychedelics child.”
“That’s what all the mushrooms say.” Mind reading dead guys are a pretty strong indicator that your own brain is producing the experience.
“You will pass through the gate. Like me, you will pass through the gate as flesh. Death needs not be the mechanism of release if you pass through rightly.”
“I remember what happened to the last couple of assholes who thought they were Enoch.”
“You have not forced your way. So be as placid as a Zurich lake.”
“Poetic.”
“What is the ultimate sum?”
“Inifinity.”
“And what is infinity.”
“Forever.”
“No, what is the state of inifinity.”
“The ultimate sum.”
“Which is the addition of everything to everything, correct?”
“Sure.”
“And when you say that you have added everything to everything. Have you really transformed something?”
“You have done nothing.”
“So doing nothing is doing everything. Zero is the ultimate sum.”
“These games are amusing Colonel. But I’d much rather have coordinates.”
“You have a map. What you need is a key. Which I’ve just given you.”
“Ugh.” I sighed disdainfully.
“Digestion takes time with a zero sum game.” He said handing me a tea ball and vanished.
The Sketch of Sam Monroe is a weird fiction thriller. Follow the adventures of five quirky Black Ops pharmacologists as they globetrot their way to the Mato Grosso jungles. Philosophy, psychedelics, and banter are infused throughout this literary comic-book.
The Fractal Journal 