(About 4 pages. This work has been cut up into the novel [white elephant sale]. Available here:http://anewgnosis.com/2021/04/09/71/
Reverberations through unmoving light startle the myths out of us and hang continuously as constructs built out of set resonant fields, differentiated from the energy underlying our world. Large solid forms made of a compressed gelatinous substance, each encased in a static electricity envelope the same color as the rest of the field, house solid tentacles whose suckers have intra-dimensional reach. We live lives of pretend, believing we are freed from their grasp.
Disregard thought…
Eyes shut, world fuzzes in like off-signal transmission. Lost in cavernous words, a dream flashing across a void, in silence spawning voices upon voices through my vacant mind, and this must be the speaker’s fault. Otherwise, image of fingertips gracing my shoulder, seated in the third to last pew, thought of the usher leaning forward startle-shakes my head awake and I snap straight up in my seat. His return to his post haunts the rear corner of my eye, backward steps, not to turn his back on the idol-plaster sufferer, call it what you will, this, us, all things will end, so,
“Why not congregate?” –In the name of what defines our lives, their minds, and how strange it feels to not belong.
…Our constant struggle to capture this spirit’s amusement…
A need to have witness, one to attest that everything that any person knows of your life is the outer shell of a divine intrusion. -Not the greasy smiles and gold threaded robes of their pay-the-toll-man divinity. Eyes gentle drift back, lids’ fall to weighted rest, head slops over to the right, world fuzzes out like off-signal transmission:
Smiles stretch across canyons formed of echoing words, all bodies wrapped in comfort comatose. In the translucent belly of a mechanical fish delving through depths, swirling, scales falling, rising like stars to black unending fathoms below or above, vision delivering us to void.
…I looked down too long and became transfixed…
Heard warbles of voices, made an auditory mosaic, tried building a message out of too many voices, picking out one to listen to will drive you mad. Otherwise, image of a seated crowd lowering to their knees and the sound of a thousand creaks, as knee pads swung out from the backs of pews hit thick maroon carpet in countless soft thuds echoing the hall.
(Hands clutch and tighten around my neck, becoming short of breath, panic deep within reverberates to my surface.) Head snaps awake, everyone in the room is kneeling, corresponding with the priest as a group, reciting rehearsed answers to the widest of questions. Sorrow and incense thin on the conditioned, dusty air. We bow our heads to the altar.
…Structured to find yourself for you…
Outside we discuss speeds relative to capacities and what’s possible if you can’t lose your body. If a leaf falls from a branch at a specific rate of approach, would the ground or the tree cease to be? Inside they claimed a construct exists between our universal ground of being and our physical bodies. Or, that’s how I heard it; there is an all-being evil someone circumvented a long time ago – in that guy’s disembodied and very real hands, it will work out. Strive to bring a speck of divinity into the world but nothing will match his return, it’s just around the corner; it will pick all of us up out of the mire.
“Now get out there and don’t get too dirty.”
In the parade you want the incremental piece by piece dripping of works and facial contortions. Half smiles, invisible bruises present beneath spoken tones. Wails of agony thin as they cool from magma dream sequences and turn over to convey empathetic revival, awakening again to choose my costume. Expectations of the day, the hunt or salvage for survival planned.
“It’s not half as bad as you think.”
Everything is noisier than it seems and only heard in its full breadth if I’d just shut up. I heard the paraphrased accusation, overacting the scene, translated as a matter of course inside an unarticulated cognitive process. It’s not the whole parade scripted, rising from my bed, like the air awaits movement, a moment of weakness praying for companionship. Three day old ticker-tape-tallied up gains and losses, my last visitor’s voice echoes, invisibly shifts my mood and we’re not likely to meet again. Phantoms disdain this solid, sedentary nature – a sacred, punctuated realization, slicing up thin strips of paper, because if the satellites wanted to see this you know they could.
Gather up all evidence from all unacknowledged corners of conception. Print-out-cut-out; rain down mockeries, tree corpse nondescript congratulations. A ‘Welcome you home’ type parade, you’re convinced you were at war, now the fighting’s stopped but the battles never cease, they just switch arenas.
“You know, think about it. The whole world conspires for your benefit or demise?”
Carry on the inner struggle or accommodate, subdue, congeal your person to the generally accepted frames of surrender. Sigh, there’s nothing that can be done. Giggle, set attention prone for entertainment. There’s time to pass; parasites to feed; pain to attend, lives to numb. Don looks of concern, engage piecemeal awe and surprise, place a phone call. Send a text.
“I just never chose. -Fought because I sensed a fight.”
Works through our every procession, any pause; from our rise to our return to our collapse in euphoric exhaustion. Plays what you know to be you against what you hope you are and what you refuse your sight. Convulsion, yawn the disdain for your position. After the marching band, in front of the cash register, pretending you forget overheard customer conversations as they happen.
They’re all just instruments being fingered, beaten, stroked, and forced to orgasm against their wills – by a companion no one admits is present – climaxes belonging to this other are expressed in people’s motions. Make you feel dirty for synchronized glandular secretions led in concert by god, angel, devil or demon. Each shudder, every empty glare – dead-end signposts to make you glorious and place your order. Smile, glance silent articulations of being, reach for your drink and off to your place.
“You’re not in control then, no one is.”
Regions refused self-navigation contract, constrict the iris and the pupil, being a perfect black body, is complete shadow, allowing the indweller vision. What awaits a man that intuits their existence? -Welcomes their participation, discerns their outlines inside his being and with his evidence gathered, demands they relinquish control? All surrounding topics constituting normal life become runoff swirling downward. Every communication becomes façade behind which motives are surmised, and unspoken intentions are taken as poorly masked metaphoric content in literal speech. Standing in the shower, feeling the water in the pipes more than what’s falling, no- the heat of the metal carrying the message, laughter circling the drain. Second to third block down main-street, a crowd of onlookers starts to thicken. Begin with an ice cube behind the nose between the eyes and say,
“Hello, how are you?” to melt the tension. Nonsense of the sort that shoots sparks into the frozen solid, building microscopic tunnels strike by strike. Failure to listen is confirmation of being heard. More thoughts to attend regarding where you parked, what time you might get a call, and listing how many words you know that are shorter than three syllables because they’re easier on your thumbs.
The ice cracks, starts dripping ice cold down your nostrils. You wonder if its wind-stirred allergens, things you know you dislike founded on opinions you’ve adopted as your stance. Fire, now raging in sinus membranes behind the eyes drives thought. Invisible cartoon-steam rises through your scalp, sweating miniscule outbursts out in salty droplets, forcing your calm.
“…I am wrestling to claim myself and bodily control, the same thing most anyone assumes is theirs. It is not, more than can be said for…”
The lowest price will no longer be available tomorrow. Snort, smoke, drink and swallow this to forget. Bat eyes bashful, practice enticement, suggest incentive and experience mastery. Everything is louder than it seems and the total sensation is transmitted on more shades of grey than I ever imagined. Sometimes, walking parallel in the rank and file, I treasure my uniform. It helps me blend in and sickens me at the same time. Basic, understated calculations; crowds cheer at intervals opposite periods of silence taken to maintain the most foundational biologic functions. Breathing articulates commitment.
“Maybe you could just leave it for someone else to figure?”
You’ve become entangled and hindered by a force you unthinkingly disregard. Enraptured and made whole by the presence of something sharing your body, identifying more with others of the indwelt, sublimely ignorant of the inhabitants you mutually host. My presence gradually grows disquieting in any group. It works through us as shells and without emotive impetus to intensify bonds between parts of its body. Your greatest weakness is your persistence to reason once the enemy is identified -to personify the basal inhumane, be comforted rejecting a person that fights to remove what has no right to live inside them.
“What you’re trying to get at is apparently beyond my grasp.”
-Internal distance thereby traveled rendered you magnanimous by self-evaluation, makes me an onlooker and I’ve left the parade. Getting hungry, suddenly have thought enough to address my needs and observe what best contributes to your sunset. How comfortable you’ve become at night and estranged from accomplishment. I hear your songs and admire your delivery. You are a silhouette cast by porch-light. Nodding agreement without knowing what you’re saying, modifying expressions to convey interest and offering guttural nuanced sounds to encourage the melody. Your song continues, I’m standing at the base of your stoop, your song continues. I’m watching from the street, in front of your house and sitting across the same table.
…Decided long ago to be alone and removed until I could return with an answer…
Spent hours, days, and weeks on shorelines, in forests, deserts, and used substances to impose artificial solitude until my every movement was hindered. It’s a part of us laughing at the rest of us, a part balling up in the throes of whimpering, gasping-for-air crying, and a part screaming to be left alone and be included, but only on our terms. White light is the spirit of death in one canon and the bringer of awareness in another.
…Indwellers are the agents of what lurks behind both theories…
Nothing quelled an occasional inner shiver that grew over time to portents of convulsion; comes on like a secret attack from under your skin and leaves you just as you start to notice the effect. You have no choice. The choice is yours. You will be medicated to under-normal, nurtured into diapers, or have your problems strewn into a pageantry we’ll direct with pokes and prods. We’re here to help. I fit where they want me, doing my best to not whore out my mind. They promise me I’ll get comfortable on all fours. They get around to me once a week, the beauty I’ve found in these confines is the razor’s edge, foot before foot, mile after yards. Can’t be tracked as distance moved or a path traveled and it’s more than pacing the hall.
Madness is easily diagnosed from their side of the plexiglass, we wear gowns. They share eyes, their names wear letters, we snicker inside and they laugh aloud. Pondering where psychiatric care becomes psychological torture over meals cooked to order, gnawing meat from the bones of the matter, placing the line between unsettling differences in character and psychiatric assassination. Will not watch TV; will not use a cell phone; will not entertain small talk as something worthwhile.
“Patient dreams of spaces between stars, refuses to share, increase dosage as recommended.”
I have a choice. Straighten-up, define what straight is using the pops and fizzes their pills cause my brain, or get nice and comfortable inside my cage, assured they’ll dispense accordingly. You unexamined holders of mischief proclaiming beliefs held too long without question: I am not akin to your likeness. Listening is less than prognosis. Your satisfaction does not announce a cure. We’ve played in the same field long enough, this world is not a neural construct, a composite sketch for a crew, a stage commanded by directors.
“Are you listening? Can you stop?”
The energy drawn upon by your nervous system every time you move, every time your heart beats; it’s all orchestrations of cell-based homeostasis being maintained throughout your body, each spark in every cell is sparked forward from static energy sitting differentiated, closer to manifest by our constantly drawing upon it to keep this operation moving – a gelatinous field beneath the physical world, stretching in clear, glowing compressed plasma, the same color of the sun but with no heat. Rub a balloon against cloth, move it close to your forearm and a field of static electricity fills in the space, it tugs at your arm hair; the gap between the body and that realm is felt like the static electricity the balloon causes, and the connection provides continuity for this mind of narcissus locked inside the body of father time.
Persistent damning judgments delivered by an invisible court, sentences decided for masses so concerned to keep smiling they won’t let on how much they’re bothered, this civilization of society, with sponsors who encourage codified explanations and discount answers. I am a whole man, not compartmentalized into what fits each situation. Not the light handed, empty minded sort of schizophrenia that passes as refined in your world.
When I found the enemy I cried myself to sleep for nights at the hopelessness, at the purveyance of this monster’s grasp. Eventually I found a way to fight and, more, over time, I found the will. This war does not seek to make soldiers from men and women or drones from people. It aims to part you away and alone from those around you and expects you to augment the social atrophy by purchasing services and hoarding goods, each of you has been ordained bit proprietors of a personal manifest destiny, enjoy the inner calm this brings – the disembodied voices will follow soon.
Structures slowly assemble, piece by piece out of atrocity, terror and deviance. Knowing our bodily functions, their indescribable root causes, and triggering sensory outbursts, they tighten their control. Their construct branches out through void to electric wire canopies affixed to warehouse rafters and each array overlays, doubles through the circuitry running through the roofs of the buildings we live our lives in; our days are spent feeding their strength. Each unit encloses an allotted darkness, where innocents are sent according to degrees of offense. Methods of conveyance, any transferred evidence, still unknown. …Inferred are the indwellers, we the indwelt.
