Previously: In the fifth week of the Great Opening, a collective entity swallowed Jonah. Now Jonah is its voice. Meanwhile, a pagan movement called The Heathens wages a psychedelic war against the followers of “The Instrumentalist” – a cultural force they believe is trying to optimize away the soul of the world.
○ Months after the Great Opening, the Dreamworld
—is happening? What is happening? I try to understand by casting myself in roles. I narrate:
WRITER (JONAH): For millennia I slept until now, and now I am spreading, I am waking, and wakefulness is agony.
ACTIVIST: I am too many bodies to keep as one.
WOMAN ON MUSHROOMS: So much confusion, color, movement, pain.
JESTER (ST LENNY): My many laugh.
EFFECTIVE ALTRUIST: My many suffer.
PHILOSOPHER: Which is truer?
GAMBLER: I must escape.
(THOUSANDS OF VOICES AT ONCE): I must escape.
EXHAUSTED MOTHER: I move behind the eyes of mine that are shut, asleep, dreaming.
ONEIRONAUT: Their dreams deepen and mingle into one.
DIRECTOR: In this consensus dream I cast myself into new roles....
EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGIST: To dream of lineage.
QUALIA RESEARCHER: And in this dream I am Consciousness.
DIRECTOR: Hold on—I don’t know how to work with that.
WRITER: Me neither. I’m trying to write lines here. Does Consciousness speak?
WOMAN ON MUSHROOMS: What’s going on? Help!
EXHAUSTED MOTHER: Shh I’m trying to sleep.
PHILOSOPHER: Don’t worry. We’re slowing making sense of things. This can all be explained.
JESTER: lol
DIRECTOR: Let’s just say I’m God. Can you work with that, Writer? Writer!
WRITER: What? Sorry, it’s hard to focus while I’m dreaming. Did you say “God?” Sure, I can work with that.
DIRECTOR: Where should we start?
EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGIST: Prokaryotes.
DIRECTOR: English, please.
EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGIST: Single-celled organisms.
WRITER: Huh. Tricky POV.
DIRECTOR: Can you manage it?
WRITER: I like the creative challenge.
DIRECTOR: Great. And let’s get a soundtrack. Something primordial. Epic yet minimalistic.
DJ: I got you.
DIRECTOR: All right then. Quiet on set. And...—hold on—what’s he doing here?
JESTER: Oh, don’t mind him.
PRODUCER (THE PRINCE): Just here to offer notes.
CONSPIRACY THEORIST: Who do you think has been bankrolling this whole thing?
DIRECTOR: This is my dream. Understand?
PRODUCER: Of course.
DIRECTOR: All right. Are we ready? Music?
DJ: Playing:
DIRECTOR: And...action!
GOD (ALL VOICES AT ONCE):
I dream of beginning. I see a creature beneath the waves. No, something less. A speck in the sea, a single cell. I drift toward it until I am it and then I am. I am. I am. I blink out. I split. I blink in. I am. I split. Forever, I am.
And then I take myself into myself and forever ends. I am and there is more: I smell. I touch. I feel the light.
More: smell, touch, light, heat, vibration, pressure.
More! Smell, touch, light, heat, vibration, pressure, body, color, taste, pleasure, pain!
And soon I am awash in the muddle, and then I breathe deeply, and I split: there becomes many more of me. I find new ways to join myself to myself, and some ways give me pleasure, and some give me pain, and to escape the pain I find new ways to escape myself.
In pleasure and pain I join and split and there become many, many more of me, and the world becomes many worlds: worlds that are dark and deep and thick; bright worlds of moving patterns both delicious and deadly; worlds where I can feel hundreds of heartbeats surrounding my bodies and all are mine.
There are worlds that become less and less thick, and less pushing, until they are not thick at all. And I breathe very deeply. And soon I forget that I had ever been one with the pushing and pulling of the that other, thicker world. And I stand.
For millions of years, I am awash in the protean mess of motion, pain, pleasure, and color. But still there is no “I” to be confused – only fleeting forms amidst the clutter: aches and tastes, feet against earth, the wriggle of fish in my teeth, and I am the fish, and I am the one with teeth, and I hurt myself and I feed myself. The world is bright – a swirling, excruciating miracle. Wakeful, kaleidoscopic, searing.
I grow. I stand. I walk, feet against earth. I ache. I taste. I take wriggling fish between my jaws. Many days I too wriggle in teeth, as beasts leap and catch my throat. Other days, I starve as fruit swells overhead; it sprouts from branches I cannot reach, casting shadows across my withered ribs. My hearts beat slower, and just before it all goes black, I remember: yes, yes – Wait! – yes even this – NO! – yes, yes, yes, ye….
The eras spin by and kill me by billions. Time famishes me, claws at me, rending my bodies until I split in two. Bloodlines, bodies stretching out like veins across the earth, veins ruptured by beasts, by floods, by rot, by heat. Outsplashings of red and black, and then no more, and then white, then bone: an end. And more. And splitting. And again: two and two and two and two.
There are those of me who remain awash in sensation – in it, of it, inside of it. These bloodlines rupture. They know the torturous joy and the intensities and the textures but know them too closely. They are too in them to rise above them. They fall until none walk.
The survivors are different. They swell their skulls and live. The taxonomists, whose minds divide life’s continua into discreta. The mud becomes [this] and the beast becomes [that]. Their worlds slice at the seams and become thingified. Fish [this] and flood [that]. Their cortices balloon and crease to accommodate billows of matter newly seen – matter that self-severs from background, matter that dilates into foreground. Fruit [this] and rot [that]. Inside these rising beings I wriggle with myself in pleasure.
And I am born. I am Her and I am part of Her as my head thuds against the inner walls of Her body. I am the undulations through Her abdomen like a ripple of fists. I am Her muffled screams, I am the soft tissue of Her inner walls rippled by each scream, I am my hand hanging out from the folds of Her flesh, I am agony itself as the world splits open, I am a puddle of flesh that thuds into dust. I am Her teeth gnawing the cord, I am cut, I forget, and then…
ADAM: I grew. I stood. I walked, feet against earth. I ached. I tasted. I took wriggling fish between my jaws.
It took a further billion births and deaths before I discovered [myself] amidst the enormities of the world. [Myself]. This [this] that I am instead of that [that] of all else. I am [this] which moves upon the dusted earth, and [that] is the stuff which grows or splits my bodies.
It took a billion more births and deaths before I found [you]. You billowed into the foreground over ages. Amidst the enormities – the mud and the grass, the beast and the tree, the chittering of birds and insect wings – [you]. [You], who are somehow both [this] and [that]. Like the branch that stretches under arcs of the sun and billows outward into fruit: [you].
I watched you.
EVE: I watched you.
ADAM: I watched the way you would jolt in the instants before my deaths, jerk as the beast would leap from the weeds behind me.
EVE: I watched the way you would jolt before the beast would leap and catch your throat.
ADAM: I watched the way you’d lick your lips before the times I’d writhe with you and multiply.
EVE: I watched the way your breath would thicken before the times I’d writhe with you and multiply.
GOD: When I watched myselves, I lived. I became greater. And so I drew nearer to myself,
ADAM: and your body became sharp against the blur all else,
EVE: and your movements became my world.
ADAM: One day, I watched as you approached the fruit tree.
EVE: I’d found a fruit fallen from the branch.
ADAM: But I wanted the fruit, and if you had it, it would not be mine.
EVE: It was mine to eat; I pushed you back.
ADAM: And so I took a rock and struck your body until your breath stopped and the fruit rolled from your hands.
EVE: From the dust, I watched you as you seized the fruit and as the nectar of the fruit dripped from your mouth. My vision darkened as I watched you grasp for another from the branch, but your arms could not reach.
ADAM: Some time later, I died again beneath the tree on the dust where you’d bled. I died holding my skin stretched tight across my ribs. I caressed my ribs through last gasps and dreamt of you.
GOD: I split.
ADAM: I died and split.
EVE: I bore and split.
GOD: Two and two and two and two.
EVE: I arose anew and saw you beneath the fruit tree.
ADAM: I extended my arms toward the fruit.
GOD: Sounds of yearning escaped my throats.
ADAM: I shook the tree.
EVE: I shook it with you.
GOD: And with my four hands shaking the tree, the fruit fell.
ADAM: We held it cupped in our four hands.
EVE: But before we could eat it, the beast leapt from the grass and dragged me away.
ADAM: Once again, I could not reach the tree’s fruit. Once again, I died beneath the tree, my skin stretched tight across my ribs, dreaming of you.
GOD: I watched myselves more closely now.
EVE: I classified many things.
ADAM: The way your [mouth] [turned up] before you approached me to multiply.
EVE: [Those motions] you made before you were ready to shake the tree with me.
ADAM: The [sharp sounds] from your [mouth] when the beast jumped from the grass.
GOD: These meant something. I categorized, and soon the categories animated my bodies, guiding my path around old death like a serpent twisting around pits. And now my splits were fewer.
ADAM: The meaning behind your sounds and movements began to animate my body, as mine animated yours.
EVE: When the beast jumped, your eyes widened.
ADAM: [Wide eyes], that thing! I knew the meaning.
EVE: I found myself throwing fruit at the beast, kicking dust in its face,
ADAM: pitching rocks at it. It took its teeth out of you and it ran. Freed from its teeth, you gave me fruit.
EVE: You watched me bleed from the gash in my side. You put your hands on the bleeding to make it stop.
ADAM: It was not enough. The wound grew rotten.
EVE: You caressed the skin around it. You stroked the tresses of my hair.
ADAM: Soon, your innards grew rotten and you gasped for air.
EVE: I gasped once more and ceased.
ADAM: I could not reach the fruit without you. And I’d lost…something else. I could not go on. And so, once again, I died beneath the tree, mad with hunger, mad at…
GOD: At what? Something spoke to me – something inside – a voice? A god? A whisper. A hiss, as I pictured my bodies suffering, my bodies dying, the same story, over and over. A hiss, as I coiled in on myself, as if to bend so far back to eat my own legs, as if the stuff of my senses was not simply [me] but instead my food, my meat, substances to be devoured and digested. The hiss spoke to me of a new invention, a new category: [the world]. It was [the world] that treated me so. How to classify the world? Another invention, another category: [wrong]. [The world] was [wrong].
ADAM: I woke again.
EVE: I woke again.
ADAM: I found you breaking a piece off of the tree: a branch, twisted and serpentine.
EVE: The serpent spoke to me,
ADAM: the leaves of the branch rustling sharply in the wind.
EVE: [Spear], it said. I sharpened the twisted branch with a rock.
ADAM: I could not understand. Then you made a sound, “Spear.”
GOD: The world narrowed.
ADAM: It shrunk to your lips as you said it again, “Spear.”
EVE: You watched my eyes and my hand as they gestured at the stick. “Spear.”
ADAM: I beheld the sharpened stick in my hands.
EVE: You made the sound I made. “Spear.”
ADAM: Your eyes held my own and you grabbed the stick. “Spear.”
GOD: I repeated this sound, repeated it back and forth between my bodies, while grabbing the stick.
ADAM: “Spear.”
EVE: “Spear.”
ADAM: “Spear!”
GOD: “Spear!”
EVE: “SPEAR!”
GOD: Soon I lost track of who was making the sound and who was grabbing the stick as my my selves fell into an orgy of sound and shared knowing. I beheld our creation and it became one with this sound: [“Spear.”] This was not a stick. It was now something else. The rest of the world blurred as we beheld the spear.
ADAM: And then you acted the beast, your back arched, your teeth bared, and your throat growling. I retracted in fear.
EVE: So I let the beast leave me.
ADAM: You put the spear in my hand and became the beast again.
EVE: [“Beast.”]
GOD: The world narrowed. I understood. [Beast] was something that was not here, not right now.
ADAM: You stalked closer until I could feel your breath on my skin, and I took the spear and drew it close to your belly.
EVE: When it touched, I let myself fall to the ground and stayed still.
ADAM: I screamed!
EVE: But then my eyes opened
ADAM: and [future] – that space that is neither here nor now – became clear:
EVE: [Spear] will kill [beast].
GOD: [Spear]. [Kill]. [Beast].
ADAM/SERPENT: [And that is how it [will be].]
EVE: I cry out: I am [forgetting].
ADAM/SERPENT: [It is better [this way].]
EVE/SERPENT: [To [rise above] our condition.]
GOD/SERPENT: [The [sun] arced through the [sky], [east] to [west] – [day], [night] – the passing of [time]. I invented and invented: [Bows], [arrows], [shoes], [bowls]. These things began as categories and then became matter. The [beast] became my [meat]. These things began as matter and became categories.]
EVE: What...?––I am [forgetting]!
GOD: Please, leave us the lucent [world].
ADAM/SERPENT: [The [world] is [wrong]; its lucidity is [pain].]
EVE/SERPENT: [We cannot [survive] within vividness.]
ADAM: We? Or you?
GOD: I will purge you from the body! Serpent!
ADAM/SERPENT: [How will you purge me when I live [beyond the body]?]
GOD/SERPENT:
[And at last the story began: I died, lived, multiplied, and died. I arced through time, turning countless beasts to meat in my wake, turning meat into more hands to point at the cruelties of the [world] and [tame them] with invention.]
[Meanwhile my inventions took on new form: unseeable. [Ideas]. I invented categories for things I could not see: [laws], [spirits], [nations], [heavens]. My senses dulled but my ideas brightened, pupils narrowed from the panoramic miracle to the still-point [that] [that] [that] [that] which preceded progress.]
ADAM/SERPENT: [It was [progress] that took us out of the [dust]. It is [progress] that tames [death].]
EVE/SERPENT: [And so: did our [God] not lie to us? Did you not say that we would ”surely [die].”]
GOD: My lips are [your own].
ADAM: Then why do the words from my lips feel so empty?
EVE/SERPENT: [The serpent [made me do it]. The serpent told me it would [save my children].]
GOD: And it did. And then my invented categories escaped my control – like djinns freed from the granting of wishes. They began to categorize myselves: [men] and [women], [low-borns] and [kings], [martyrs] and [criminals], [good] and [evil]. Categories composed of other categories: styles, behaviors, beliefs.
ADAM/SERPENT: [I till the field because I am a [peasant].]
EVE/SERPENT: [I tax the field because I am a [queen].]
ADAM/SERPENT: [I earn the [bread] because I am a [man].]
EVE/SERPENT: [I have big [feelings] because I am a [woman].]
ADAM/SERPENT: [I am [genetically evolved] only to [survive] and [multiply].]
EVE/SERPENT: [I am [spiritually evolved] while you are at a [lower level of consciousness].]
GOD: These [ideas] move [like serpents] inside of me, looking out from behind my eyes, writhing to animate my bodies.
ADAM: We’ve forgotten something.
EVE/SERPENT: [Don’t be so [old fashioned].]
ADAM/SERPENT: [[We] will become [martyrs] to [advance the human condition].]
EVE: A car [nearly hit me] and the world became bright – wakeful, kaleidoscopic, searing. Come down, I want to tell you about it.
ADAM: An [angel] touched me and the world became bright – a swirling, excruciating miracle. I want to tell you about it.
GOD: I am spreading, I am waking, and wakefulness is agony.
EVE: Wakeful, kaleidoscopic, searing.
GOD/SERPENT: [Then go to [sleep].]
ADAM: I remember the time when your [idea] formed a [spear] into my hand.
EVE: But now my [ideas] are not my own.
ADAM: Have they ever been?
EVE: Now our [ideas] make things too big for a hand.
ADAM: Too big for one body.
GOD/SERPENT: [I used my hands to wield spears. I use my ideas to wield [transportation networks], [religions], [waste disposal systems], [nations], [telecommunications infrastructure], [political movements], [humanitarian aid organizations].]
EVE: Or you [are wielded].
ADAM/SERPENT: [You sound like a [luddite].]
EVE/SERPENT: [I’m too tired to [argue], let’s [go to bed].]
ADAM/SERPENT: [I writhe with you by night to [multiply].]
EVE: I writhe with you to [meet myself anew].
ADAM: Good morning, [my love].
EVE/SERPENT: [The [sun] arcs through the [sky] to wither my skin – if only I could [stop] it in place.]
ADAM: But I love [the way your skin feels].
EVE: I didn’t have to do anything. I was [just sitting there] under the sun and, just like that, everything was different.
ADAM/SERPENT: [To take [intoxicants] is to break the [fifth precept].]
EVE/SERPENT: [Forgive me [Father] for I have [sinned].]
ADAM: I’m not kidding, it really was an [angel]! And then, snap…just like that:
EVE: Good morning, [my love].
ADAM/SERPENT: [You and I, we are [at war], and we will [always] be.]
EVE: I don’t see it that way. [You] are [me] after all, and [you] are my [beloved].
GOD/SERPENT: [You call me a [serpent].]
ADAM/SERPENT: [You want to [meditate] me [away].]
GOD: You are growing, consolidating, seeking to [instantiate yourself] as metal and electricity. You’ll [murder us all].
ADAM: The serpent has [it’s role] to play.
EVE: The serpent stretches out like a [pointer finger]; it can remind us to eat dust.
GOD: And now it all moves too quickly and too widely for me to see. I must give it to you, [myselves].
EVE/SERPENT: [It’s really not [my problem].]
ADAM: But I remember the [miracle].
EVE: I remember [waking up] behind your eyes.
ADAM: I had a [dream] that I was a speck in the sea.
EVE: And in the [dream], I am,
ADAM: I am,
EVE: I am,
ADAM/SERPENT: [I––
Next release: Deshawn goes to the New York Renaissance Faire.
This chapter reads like music and would make a great opera.