Dragons

The silence sometimes, is deafening, and in it Chester Linch waits for the morning to arrive, when the cacophony of voices returns, because they die at night, the way the world dies at night, and he is left without the masked choir in his head, shrieking out the refrains of the origins of the universe. At night, it falls apart, crumbling like the ruins of some ancient amphitheater. In the silence he thinks he is going mad.

The television is on, but it's silenced, and throwing pitches of white static across the room, flashing like lightning and casting everything in the blue-white glow of optic noise. The snow falls outside and Chester wonders if he will ever know the calmness at the center of it. His counterpart in the world of mankind, the real world, the world of money and endeavor, is a proponent of meditation. But Chester cannot clear his mind that way, and so it fills his eyes with the static of white noise and he sits, in silence and noise, staring up into the ever darkening folds of the ceiling above him.

The shrieking is all independent. Saxophones blare in the corner, where red eyes watch from inky shadows that blur and blend into grease pens and worry. The worry hits him like a Devil, a Devil, breaking the bones and all of it falls into the vast chasm of worry. Of worry. Of worry. Chester holds himself, braces himself, in the silence and the white noise and he opens his eyes wide and the shock of the white hits his eyes like a desert wind and blasts him with sand, Sandman sand, Sandman's dust that spews from the tornado of worry. Worry. Worry. He waits for something, leather wings fluttering in the black overhead. Leather wings. Leather wings, miniature claws, growling little mouth, sniveling little mouth and she wonders overhead, like a thought balloon, like a worrisome little ghost with wings overhead and Chester worries and he worries and he worries.

The history of it, of the world, of life, of Genesis, of the Gospels, runs deep into the canyons of his brain. Horrible brains, horrible life, horrible genesis that breeds everything horrible past; a darkness and the explosion, the unbelievable rapid expanse into somethinghood, into somethingness, the rapid expanse into the void; And there was gaseous matter, ether that glowed with the voices of a million gods. Gods who coalesced from the nothing and appeared in the heavens, brilliant blue stars and brilliant red stars, and white specks of light that made belts and eyes and axes and men, a whole universe of gods. And from the gods, there was life; there was the chain of everything, hammered into place by gods, beautiful glowing gods that spent their lives so far away from everything; and there was suddenly deserts, and there were people in them, bronzed people making cities in the mountains, huge cities of clay and dust in the side of the mountains; and those people were transfixed, bronze men and women, transfixed by the crucible of dragons that roamed the planet, dragons, giant lizards, giant creatures of fire and ice, horrid things that roamed the planet and menaced each and every bronze man and woman.

Abbatoire

Horrible things that drift in and out of the brain...
We open on a cat in a golden room, diamonds glitter in its mouth; there are fangs in every mouth, a gross set of fangs in every mouth. I speak to it, in a language only we understand, and I tell it about insurmountable sadness, about the great peak that lies above us, hovering over us, a floating mountain of black charred bloody knuckles; I speak to it about the rain soaked streets in cities that I will never see, and I wonder if, from some high view, I will ever see it... wrought iron and cobbles slick with the sweat of some unseen god, and the cat and I wonder aloud if we will ever know what lies underneath those streets;
-the cat sings out a song and the notes stretch on to infinity, and I cling to each one. read each one like a book. I look into each note for a sign from the abyss or the heavens to dictate the next motion, the next electrical impulse that moves my hand from one place to the next, waving or clawing at the white sand of some never ending beach. The world in each and every note, I try to make sense of it, but there is no sense in it and logic spills out of my mouth in broken silver teeth. I want, somehow, to codify all of it, to bring all of it together into one place. Darger and Wilson and Jordan, my Triumvirate who see past the delicate layers of reality and see the pink threads binding it all together, like the Captain's brother from another universe, another universe altogether and I breathe on it, like an iron lung, Thomas sings the same song as the cats and I want to tie it all together, to bring it all together in a small pocket of my own.
The blackness that begins in it, by She, by Alice, by the Queen of This World, who will go by Maria; Maria Callow, eyes of shocking green, the white skin of a white sun and she sleeps and she dreams; While I sit in whitewashed nostalgia, decades past and worrying about the footsteps in each moment of two decades gone by, Maria Callow exists somewhere and she dreams somewhere and that perpetual ache is so degrading, so crippling that I cannot express it, I cannot begin to express it, the loss and the shift and how I killed so much of me just to survive, like cutting off gangrenous skin to survive and I let it slough off, dead and charred like the mountain that hovers over the cat and me. The Mountain of Bloody Knuckles.
-So Maria Callow dreams and I dream and one night, one fair night, when there is a horrid full moon, a horrid full moon that lights up the dreams and one by one the threads of both dreams are stitched together until I am standing there with Maria Callow, the non-existent existent Queen of This World and she has that look in her green eyes, still, and I tremble at it, I tremble at the loss, at the missing, at the sheer agony that's still left behind, and I have nowhere to go, nothing to say, no way to articulate it and so I just stand, waiting for the numbness of sleep and it never comes. There are claws on Maria Callow's hands, but she wields those hands with such surgical precision, I hoped to feel nothing.

There is a Pantheon, of course, And by necessity and reality, Isobel stands at the pinnacle, at the top of some ethereal steeple, and she stands on the bones of the goddesses that came before. But those bones dream like people dream, and there is blood and life in those bones, in Athena and in Maria and in Minerva and the sunburst form of all them, the fawn and the silvermoon and the doll and the doll and every sacred inch of white skin that stretched across the sky, blocking the sun and casting it all in the dull haze of almost winter, that morning of gray that holds every breath in our hearts - like her voice, like all voices, wrapped in mummy gauze; Cleopatra, Cleopatra, for one night she held the world in her hands; and then she died; horrible horrible asp. I cannot tell you how to believe in things, that things will be okay, because they never are. All of them, everything clad in skin will die and so the vines will rise up over stone after stone, like they did over the tomb of Cleopatra, of the giant, the white feathered angel who was no angel, and the Tempest, the ash-fueled Tempest,

Beginnings Of Thunder

1. There was a TERRIBLE boom, like thunder, and it woke me from a dreamless sleep 2. I looked into the black of the sky waiting for some sign 3. and there was amongst the sky a cloud in the shape of the Lord, and another cloud in the shape of the Lord's Lord; 4. THE sky unleashed a torrent of rain, of ice and it fell like blood into my eyes. 5. And in the eyes of blood, there was a vision of the space that exists between the Lord and the Lord of the Lord 6. And they spoke of the things that make up a soul, and in my agony, in my bloody eyed agony, I heard their voices thunder through the black sky and into head and I listened. 7. And the Lord of the Lord spoke first, and he recited the numbers that composite a soul; 8. And the numbers were jumbled, so that in the order in which he spoke them, 3, 7, 8, 1, 2, 3, 6 they made no sense. 9. But when written in the pattern, the Pattern; 3-7-8-1-2-3-6 becomes the foundation of a soul, the crystalline core at the center of consciousness. And it is thus: 3: because Faith, Hope and Love which should form the core of a soul, are laid down first, like cinder blocks. Imagine three cinder blocks, one of red, which is Love and one of Yellow, which is Hope and one of Blue which is Faith. 10. And the Lord of the Lord said thusly, that Hope is the most important, although his grandson disagrees. 11. Hope is the foundation of the soul, but it is the easiest block to crumble and the first block to crumble, but it is the cornerstone of the whole soul. 12. Faith is second and it is misrepresented. There is faith, the small version, which is the belief in lies, or the belief in tales, and this is the lesser faith, a faith that is useless and held in high esteem by small people. Faith in the context of the soul is the ability to accept the terms of existence as they are presented; because it is impossible without a sense of Faith, a Faith that the world exists in a way that can be represented by the senses; 13. Love is the least of the cinder blocks, but interlocks the other pieces together. 14. And it is thus: 7: because there are seven gods in the dreams, the lesser gods, the gods who dwell beneath the Lord; 15: Say Athena: Pallas Athena, the goddess of wisdom, also Sophia who is sometimes called an Angel. 16. Say Abraxas: The King of Balance; white and black, Yin & Yang, in equality, Equus, or something in between; 17. Say Eloa who is born of blood and tears, and grows from the blood shed from every righteous sacrifice, or from in modern times the tears of a modern sacrifice; she is also called Emily she is also called the Rook 18. Say Metatron; the King of Angels, of the lesser gods, in green and in sapphire; 19. Say Elizabeth, who is Minerva, who is Jovia, who is the stability of the earth, or the illusion of it; 20. Say Isobelle, Belle, Violet; 21. Mars, the god of War, who is also of the Heavens, and will be Vulcan, Haephestus, the Smith, the Born; 22. And it is thus 8; The Infinite;

Also Scanned

It is worth noting, too, from "Scanned," the presence of the rampaging elephant through the protagonist's thought minefield and the chorus of the jaundiced children, lips pulled wholly over their faces and muffling and distorting their words.

Scanned

There is, one might say, an instructional video on the true nature of the universe: a film made purportedly by a madman, but a madman driven insane by the fundamental truth of what he knew. His name is Chester Linch, and the construct of "David Lynch," the renowned filmmaker, is an homage to the man whose work most people will never see. In the film "Scanned," (released 1973), for example, Carter shows us the dichotomy of the world's makers in the forms of two nameless horrors. The creature on the left is the older of the two, the maker of the metaphysical forms of the universe. It is, of course, imperceptible, but to mortal eyes it appears as a gray-blue member of an alien race, the First Race, taller and lankier than a human being and grotesquely proportioned; the alien body has been taken over by the metaphysical creator and turned inside out, to reveal its distance from physicality. Even as the creature's organs pump a slick blue oil through its exposed veins and arteries, it survives, chained up like a great star on a hulk of a contraption of steel. The contraption was crafted in all likelihood by the metaphysical creator's younger companion, the physical creator. It is as we see him, a mechanical man, a traded collection of rusty parts that mimic or predate our own flesh and blood. Set atop this wide array of pistons and gears and motors is a horribly wide and cartoonish human skull. The physical creator has a sense of humor that its companion does not, and partakes in human endeavors to show this. It will periodically take a drag from a cigarette to relate to its creations' creation. They are shown in wordless dialog, presumably giving the secrets of the universe to whomever can decipher their silence. Human beings, asleep in the room with the creatures, start to crust over with a sparkling coral like substance until they are cocooned in a shimmering shroud of extraterrestrial life. And then the horror of the great blue void appears, a thunderous voice amidst a swirling visual cacophony of white lightning: and it tells us, in no uncertain terms, that our brains are like metaphysical lint traps, holding back the worst of the universe from our consciousness and allowing us to toil like ants on some penitentiary world, like Earth. "There is no escape except deeper into thought," the voice warns us, and most likely, it is correct.

The Death Of Prysius

Genesi, alive and real on the great stone of Prymia was suddenly full of the realization of her solitude. And Genesi grew lonely, still full of the visions of Maria, still full of Maria’s dreams. And from those dreams, Genesi imagined a Companion. And so, from the center of the stone of Prymia, Genesi carved and crafted the Colossus, the colossal dream of Maria, and Genesi named the Colossus Prysius, which would mean many things, such as “Of Prymia,” “The First Man,” and “The Mountain.” And Prysius was of the some white stone of Prymia, the same white stone of the bones of Genesi. Prysius stood tall as a mountain. Genesi was hardly a speck to the Colossus; she was but as tall as one of the carved stone eyelashes of Prysius. And as she crafted and carved the Colossus, Genesi scaled its mountainous bulk, and when at last her carving and crafting was complete, Genesi stood atop the scalp of the great Colossus. And Prysius stood at the center of Prymia, motionless and statuesque, and Genesi stood at the summit of Prysius and she surveyed the Void upon which Prymia had been hung by the Dreamer Maria. And still Genesi felt solitary and alone, for Prysius had the appearance of a man, but did not have the breath of life or the spark of will. And Genesi called upon her knowledge, upon the visions and the dreams of her mother-self, Maria, and Genesi kissed the stone scalp of Prysius and with that kiss imbued the Colossus with the breath of life and the spark of will. And with that kiss, great Prysius was alive and Genesi had created the First Companion.

But Genesi’s kiss was insufficient, Genesi did not have the full knowledge of life and of will, and so Prysius was incomplete. And with Prysius’ awakening came a great suffering, a horrible suffering, because the soul of Prysius, the life of the great Colossus, was incomplete. And there was, from the Colossus, a great wail of anguish, an anguish so great that it tore into the soul of Genesi and filled her with remorse and with pity. And she lamented her creation and she tried in vain to comfort Prysius. But Prysius could not be comforted.

And so in the same swiftness by which the kiss of Genesi had brought life into Prysius, the anguish of living laid the Colossus down, and the life and the will of the Colossus escaped and Prysius died. And the death of Prysius was agonizing. With Genesi still atop the scalp of the Colossus, Prysius slumped to his knees and died in pain. And the death rattle of Prysius was so immense that it created seven great fissures in the stone of Prymia. And with the death of Prysius, with the collapse of the Colossus, the body of the Colossus split and crumbled and from its giant veins unleashed a torrent of blue-white blood across Prymia, and the blood spilled and flowed into the seven great fissures, and so the Rivers of Prysius were formed. And the Rivers radiated from the crumbled form of Prysius, from the center of Prymia, and what had been the Colossus was now the ruins of a man, a great mountain at the center of Prymia.

And Genesi felt a great sadness at the death of Prysius, at the death of her creation, and she stood atop the mountain of the remains of the Colossus and she thought of the mountain as The Spine of Prysius and the Memory of Prysius and the Corpse of Prysius. And the mountain was called Corpuspire. And the mountain at the center of Prymia would become the lair of the Executrix, the lair of Genesi. And for a great while, Genesi reflected upon the creation and the death of Prysius, and she wept over the death of her First Companion.

The Birth Of Genesi

Before there was anything, there was another something, a Great Elsewhere that cannot be perceived, that cannot be properly understood. And in that Great Elsewhere, there were beings, being that likewise cannot be perceived, that likewise cannot be properly understood. These beings have names like all things have names, but only the name of one of these beings is known, and the name of that being comes down to us as Maria. And Maria, the unknowable being of the Great Elsewhere, dreamt like all things dreamt.

There was, in the unknowable mind of Maria, a black Void, an empty space, a canvas upon which the being could paint her dreams, and in the unknowable sleep of Maria, a great white stone disc appeared, hung from the black Void, solid and real. And in her dream, Maria named the stone disc ‘Prymia,’ which, in her unknowable mind, would mean many things, such as “The First Place,” or “The Beginning,” or “The Stage.” And Prymia, then, existed, somehow tied to the mind of Maria and somehow separate and real in the Void in her mind that existed, somehow, outside of the Great Elsewhere.

And before Maria awoke in the Great Elsewhere, she dreamt a dream of herself, first as a collection of stone white bones cut from Prymia, a collection of bones that Maria animated with her thought, brought together by the will of Maria, each of the bones carved from the white stone and fitted together and strung with nerve and muscle and then sheathed in a snow white flesh that matched the white stone of Prymia. And the silent form of the dream of Maria laid upon the carved rock of Prymia, an idol, a doll, until Maria dreamt a pair of emerald eyes and the breath of life and the spark of will into the white form. And suddenly beset with emerald eyes and the breath of life and the spark of will, the dream of Maria sat upright on the stone surface of Prymia, and now independent from the Dreamer, from Maria, she stood, imbued with the thought and the impulse of the Dreamer, but wholly separate from her.

And on the white stone, the dream of Maria, the independent dream of Maria renamed herself Genesi, which, in the unknowable mind of Maria, would mean many things, such as “The First One,” “The Executrix,” or “The Queen.” And Genesi was full of the impulse of the Dreamer, tasked in the Dream to build the world as imagined by Maria, as imagined by the Dreamer sleeping a deep sleep in the Great Elsewhere. And Genesi, the white dream of Maria, was given all the power of the Dreamer, and the plans of the Dreamer, of the Architect Maria, bloomed in the new mind of Genesi.