Sunday, March 5, 2023

Early Days in the Vortex/ Part One


 Having lost your privileges at the Akashic Hall of Records, you have been forced to see through a cone of 55 degrees. Once, before the Deluge, you could see by simply entering into the depth of the world body, which meant, of course, that you should be fearless in exiting from your own. Your current methodology is more cautious. Still, in spite of your amnesia as to origins, by some natural blind reckoning you can sense when you are doing what you should, when chance is cooperating, and when all is moving in accordance with the preexistent death-flash video. This is, at any rate, a good description of your experience when your life is going well. So you tell yourself at the time.

 You will probably choose to overlook the fact that several days have gone missing, along with several continents, and that there is no way to un-brand the barcode from your forehead. If only the world body had not been turned into a shopping mall, in which there is no way to tell if you are product or consumer. If only your guides were more consistently supportive. If only no other forces were at play. If only you could interpret your harsh punishment as proof that you had taken a wrong turn. If only Pollyanna were omniscient. To the extent that you can judge, the operative principle is as follows: if you are good, you will get patted on the head; if you are bad, you will get spanked, or vice versa.

Beneath black domes, the all-seeing eyes of the video-cameras watch. They are motion activated. They come equipped with the latest in backscatter x-ray technology, which does only minimal damage to the chromosomes, or so your masters say. There is no point in pretending to keep secrets! There are few embarrassments that are not yet part of the archeological record, few atrocities in which you have not yet indulged, including those about which you are dreaming at this moment. The cameras move with you, step by step, as you attempt to probe more deeply into the mystery of the labyrinth.

 ***

There are those who say that Worcester, Massachusetts, is a city. It is more like a collection of discontinuous neighborhoods. It is a place of factories and colleges, of Gothic spires and freight yards. Worcester was the only U.S. city that Freud visited. Robert Goddard, the inventor of the first liquid-fueled rocket, was bounced out for scaring the cows. There were trees to climb and hills down which to roll and corner lots where friends could throw a last- minute baseball game together. It was a city where men might work for the same factory for most of their adult lives, where schools taught them to sit up straight and not complain, where molten steel could put a sudden end to a career. It was, in retrospect, not a bad place to grow up. I get sentimental when I think about the twilight of the American working class, about the culture that formed me. Yet this was also a city in which it was possible to get stuck. At the age of 18, I was ready for adventures. I was willing to travel light. I would bring only a few books and some clothes and a sleeping bag and a radio. From Worcester to Boston it is only 45 miles. A bus can take you from one to the other in an hour. I am puzzled that it should have taken me two years.

 Even now, there are times when I wonder if there are pieces that I left, if it was only the subtle essence that I took, if these last 40 years have actually taken place. It is possible that my imagination is more powerful than I know, as well as more deceptive. Beneath an upright oar, I may be peeking through the soil in the yard of my three-decker, breathing slowly in and out, with a view of the Seven Hills. There is not much left of the industrial powerhouse that I knew and towards which I once felt so large an amount of ambivalence. I am no longer tempted to pass judgment on this place, this city of filled-in canals, this navel towards which railroad tracks converged, this target for Nazi bombs. The city blinks to let us know that it is there. As Anonymous, I now just barely have such an urge. I am in the world but not of it. In passing, I take note of how desperate I was to prove that I had talent. I smile to see how eager I was to say goodbye to my home.

 Continue reading at Scene4: International Magazine of Arts and Culture: https://www.scene4.com/0323/briangeorge0323.html

My book Masks of Origin: Regression in the Service of Omnipotence is available through Untimely Books: https://untimelybooks.com/book/masks-of-origin/

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