Week 5: Jonah & the Whale

The existential kink of being eaten alive

Previously: Common knowledge topples a dictator. Dreams get weird in the age of Psi.

○ The Great Opening: Week Five, Manhattan

“Still singing in the choir? Poly-pony?”

“Still singing.”

It’s the little ritual that I’ve held with Mihret, the waitress, for a decade. I don’t correct her anymore with, “It’s polyphony, and it’s a not a choir. It’s a vocal ensemble of old Albanian men that took me two years to be accepted by.” Instead, I’ll ask her: “How about you? Still singing?”

And she’ll say: “Oh yes, sing every week. I learned three new songs. Very joyful.”

Or maybe: “Yes, but they put me next to the alto again. Her voice is like a squeaking bird. And she smells like old cabbage! Hehe.”

We still talk like this. The fact that a new world has dawned hasn’t changed anything. 

Yesterday, I tried to describe it, this way we still talk. I wrote down, It’s our birdsong ritual, and thought ooh, that’s good! If Mihret and I spoke instead about the weather outside Caffe Reggio, the meaning would be the same: 

Hey, I like you!

Hey, I like you too!

Soon, these birdsongs might be obsolete. The meanings behind them arrive inside each other’s minds before we even sing. So what use are the notes?

A few minutes ago, I asked a woman, “Are you in line for the bathroom?“ She said, “Yes,” but meant, Don’t even think of cutting in front of me, bub. Later tonight, I’ll see my ex-wife and ask, “How are you?” but my meaning will be clear: Please don’t take my daughter away. She’ll reply, “Good, how are you?” meaning: How many episodes have you suffered lately?

Granted, these meanings are ones you could’ve guessed from body language or tone even before “The Opening” – the name we seem to be settling on. But now we're able to pick up on subtler meanings. Stranger ones. 

Just yesterday, a tourist asked me for directions to the subway, but the meaning I got was something like, Please confirm that I am unloveable. I tried my best to beam the opposite at her while saying, “Two blocks that way and a left.” She looked at me skeptically, as if I’d given her the wrong directions. 

The day before, I knocked a man’s shoulder by accident while passing through Times Square. I said, ”Sorry!” He said, ”All good, brotha!” but the meaning which washed over me was I’m a god between the sheets. I may have misinterpreted, but my face must have reacted, because then he said, unprompted, “Haha, that’s right. Have a blessed day.” I still wonder whether we were on the same page.

We percolate through one other’s inner worlds, like paints mixing in water. Some people say it’s always been this way. But the effects grow stronger as the weeks pass. Maybe a year from now, no one will speak at all. We’ll just make eye contact. Or not even. We’ll just stand close to each other and bask or cringe in waves of subtle meaning. What will there be left to say, other than to confirm: wow, ew, or I like you?

Well, for one thing, numbers are still difficult. So is anything requiring specificity. For instance, now, when Mihret asks, “What can I get you dear?” I will still need to point to the menu and specify, cheese cake to differentiate the object of my craving from nutella croissant. 

But actually I won’t, because I order the same thing every time.

“Cappuccino and cannoli?” she asks.

“You got it.”

“Right away, dear.”

More of our birdsong. 

We all cling to these seemingly empty rituals of sound with greater and greater devotion. They’re our pillars, common reference points. We need them now more than ever: Increased exposure to the worlds of others has been making our own worlds unstable. You go about your life trying to tell yourself a story like, “I am a serious man in a dangerous world.” Then, you pass an improv instructor as you cross the street at 3^rd and MacDougal and you’re suddenly filled with a foreign desire to tickle and be tickled. Then, as you arrive on the other side of the street, that turtlenecked Brazilian woman you see sometimes is standing there with her yoga mat and suddenly you are filled with…with, um...carefree ease. 

Or – in my freakish case – you‘re also filled with the sparkling, dull, frantic, hopeful, desolate, reflective, and furious inner worlds of the people in the cars and the buildings all around you. But for roughly everybody, it is disturbing, unmooring, to learn several times per day that you could choose to live inside a completely different genre of movie. Life has gained a sort of tonal incoherence. I imagine my editor is about as unhappy with it as he is with my drafts. 

He’d say, “This chapter of the human story…it could use some more consistency,” meaning, How about we throw this section in the trash bin? 

I’d tell him, “If you like tonal consistency so much then why do you live in New York City?” meaning, Be nicer to me, you fucking asshole. 

At Caffe Reggio, I stare out the spotty window to take it all in: the dissonant symphony of singular minds. I watch and feel the passersby – the songs made not by their mouths, but by their…souls. Or something like that. Then I find myself teetering on the edge of another of my episodes. The strange presence stirs again, like a sentient ocean. I grip the edges of the table to steady myself.

“You OK, my love?” asks Mihret. Mihret?… Who is that? Oh. Right. Mihret, my favorite waitress. She is standing over me.

“Anesthesia bleeds from San Francisco. Something like a machine. And, here, under the sidewalks, there’s something else. In the tunnels and the burrows,” is what comes out of my mouth.

“Huh?”

 “Please, let me sleep a little longer.”

“Is that some new writing you’re up to?”

I blink and look up at her. “What? Sorry, I don’t know what I’m saying.”

“Hehe, crazy things these days.”

“Yeah… Wait––was it good material?”

“All your writing good, my dear, with your fancy words.” 

“Oh, I’m actually trying to make my words a little less fancy.”

“I’ll be back with your cannoli soon. Busy day, busy day.”

Writing. Right. That’s what I was about to do. That’s why I’m here.

I look out the window at the passersby. They are aureoled in golden light by the setting sun. (Oh, that’s good – aureoled.) I feel into them. My therapist tells me I should find more interactive ways to connect with people than transcribing their vibes. I tell him, “You’re probably right,” meaning You don’t know how hard it is to be me, boohoo. 

OK, to begin:

 A grey-haired man in a bright blue polo. To the displeasure of other New Yorkers, he stops in the middle of the street, as if remembering something from a childhood trip to Italy. Somber, like a diving bell lowered into a grotto.

A middle-aged woman in a silken hot pink dress. Her hair is light and the dress is a’glimmer. Forceful, like a cataract of magma. Wait, did I really just think the word “a’glimmer?”

She walks beside a dark-haired man in a “Funkadelic” T-shirt and cut-off jean shorts. She is tall, amazonian. He is short and meek. Furtive, like a lemur caught in a clearing. 

(Interesting pairing.), I add.

A younger woman with strawberry-blonde hair and a pineapple print skirt. Sprightly, like a…

“Cappuccino, cannoli, and...” Mihret leans in conspiratorially, “Ooh is that your date?”

“Crap. I think so. Crap.” I start clicking my pen very quickly. After 4 years of marriage, I have forgotten how to date.

“Don’t be nervous, my dear. You are handsome and charming man.” Meaning I am afraid for you.

“OK, but don’t be weird about it this time.”

Mihret scoffs and slaps my bobbing knee on her way back to the kitchen.

“Judith?” I call across the room.

“Heyyy,” she says, straightening her glasses.

Do people hug on the first date? No, too intimate.

My extended hand gets squished against her chest as she moves in for a hug. Awkward. Oh but what’s this? I become filled with the texture of her consciousness. It’s sprightly, like a…hummingbird! I tell her so. I tell her about my weird obsession of capturing this stream of sensations from our new sixth sense.

“You’re, like, trying to put words to people’s auras. That’s so cool.” She means it! “God, I’m so glad I can just say the word ‘auras’ now. At work we were only allowed to refer to ‘enhanced sensitivity to the weak electromagnetic fields of other nervous systems’.”

“Quite a mouthful. Where do you work?” 

She looks down. “Well, ‘worked.’ I got fired from the CDC a couple weeks after the psi variant hit.”

Way to start the date on the right foot.

“Woah. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to work at a place like with all the, uh––.”

“Yeah, I got fired for warning friends about the lockdowns. Not that any of that mattered,” she said, gesturing to the world outside the window. 

She’s bitter about it. Change the subject.

“So…you’re into kink?” I ask.

“What? Oh––“

“Sorry––I read it on your profile. That was a bit forward of me.” Abort! Abort!

“No––sorry, I was just taken aback. Yeah. I’m kinky as fuck.”

Oh. “Oh. Cool. That’s great.”

 “Yup!” Her eyes have lit up again. The stud in her lower lip gleams. Maybe you’re not so bad at this dating thing after all. “I love it all,” she says, “ABDL, kinbaku, edge-play, pup-play, OTK, CNC, mummification…”

“Mummification?”

“…figging, age-play––

“Well you came to the right guy for age play!” A better joke would have been to spill your drink on her lap.

“It said you were 42.”

“I’m an old 42.” Tell me you’re depressed without telling me you’re depressed. I scramble for the next thing to say, and what comes out is: “How old are you?” Just a little question you’re never supposed to ask and you already know she’s 35 from her profile, idiot. You’re doing great, guy, keep it up.

“I’m 35…” She starts to drum on the marble surface of the table. “Anyway how about you?”

“42.”

“I know you just said that.”

“Oh.”

“I meant, are you into kink?”

“Oh! Heh. Uh, yeah. I’m into kink.” What? No you’re not. You had no idea what any of those crazy acronyms meant earlier. How are you going to save this one? “Existential kink.” NO. Don’t start. Do not go into––

“What’s that?”

“Well, I have more than one. I like to get stuck inside my people-pleasing personality because it makes other people like me, even while I feel, like, trapped and screaming behind my own eyes, desperate for authentic interaction.” Stop! There are better topics to nervously ramble about! “Relatedly, I like to justify my alienation with the idea that I’m way too complex and brilliant for anyone to understand. This gives me not only self-satisfaction, but also the comfort that I won’t need to suffer the ordeal of true intimacy.” You just met her! Shut the fuck up! “I get a kick out of regularly poisoning myself with things that will keep my power-level down: a bite of that cookie that will flare my IBS, a mind-numbing screen session, a bedtime procrastinated by one hour, that kind of stuff. Not enough to ruin me, just enough to humble me, you know? Yeah. I’m really into that. I wonder why…? Well, I guess the state of blah that it puts me in helps to reinforce my hopelessness, my story that there’s no point in trying. After all, only an idiot would try in this bleak and bullshit world, right? It’s why I write fiction now instead of doing activism: the pleasure of escape.”

She is leaning back in her chair with eyebrows raised. A.K.A. I have blown it once again. “I was actually asking you what existential kink is, but I think I get the idea.”

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I kind of just went off there.”

But her aura is shining. “No, I’m totally with you.”

“Really?” 

“Yeah. Your kinks actually sound pretty relatable. Poor man,” she says, leaning forward on her elbows, “are you taking on the sufferings of our time?”

“Hmm, that could be a kink of mine.” Will save that one for the therapist. Then the stirring hits again. Oh no–– Something inside, and yet it is all around.

She doesn’t notice. “My main one is to deny myself self-love so that I have to get love from other people.”

“Oh, that’s a good one.”

She scrunches up her nose. “It’s why I’m on this date to be honest.”

“Yeah me too.”

We both laugh. But suddenly my laugh turns into a cry and then a groan and then a scream I muffle with hands.

“Woah. You good?”

“I…think so.”

Mihret is looking at me from across the room, concerned.

“What was that?” Judith asks.

My mind races for an answer that won’t scare her away. Uh, how about you tell her it’s an acting exercise. “I’ve been getting these, um, episodes since the Opening.”

“What kinds of episodes?”

“They’re sort of hard to describe. It’s kind of like being simultaneously behind the eyes of everyone around me. Or something.”

“That’s just what it’s like to be a writer though, right?”

She’s trying to save the moment; take her up on it! “I’m not so sure,” I say. 

I think about how yesterday, for one bewildering hour, I was enfrenzied by dreams of classless utopia. I almost shouted, I am the vanguard of the worker’s revolution! as the spores of some blooming red psychofaun found fertile ground amidst my neurons. And that was right after I became convinced that Allah was the truth.

“Well, you’re not alone,” she said, literally reading my mind. “My friend, Jill, walked past an Evangelical church last week and became convinced she was Jesus Christ.”

“Wait, Jill Sakamura?”

“Yeah! You know her?”

I look at her, baffled. “She’s one of my best friends. She texted me a few hours after that happened. She told me that being possessed by Jesus was – and I quote – ‘quite heart-opening’.”

“Yeah, I imagine it might feel like MDMA.”

“Crazy that you know Jill.”

“We’re part of the same Twitter crew,” Judith shrugged, “but also coincidences are becoming more and more common these days.”

“Yes…” I trail off. Something is moving toward us. “…they are….” I glance around and out the window, but it’s just more people walking by. “Sorry, do you feel that?”

“Feel what?”

“The one we’ve waited for. But I’m not ready to wake up.”

“OK now you’re freaking me out.” She shifts her chair back. Its metal scrapes across the floor, dark marble with white veins. Other chairs scrape – the wrought iron of their backs are twisted into a shape that looks like two eyes, or the infinity symbol.

I reach for my glass. It tips over. Water cascades over the edge of the table, and I am like this water, a small stream in a space that is much larger.

“Hello! Can I help you?” Mihret asks someone at the door.

But the blue-haired woman walks right past her. She is wearing a black athletic turtleneck and carrying a black metal briefcase. She is walking toward our table. Her grey eyes are fixed on my own. The description of her aura jumps to mind: Resolved, like a spear of destiny.

Judith turns to see. “Do you know her?”

The blue-haired woman walks through the rows of other patrons. They sense her too, and turn.

Suddenly I realize who she is. I feel what she means to do. “No. Astra, no, please don’t.”

“It’s chosen you to be its voice,” she says, standing over me. Then she lowers two fingers onto my forehead. They touch between my eyes and the world ends and it begins.

I am staring out at myself. Since when did I have so many hands? My hands tip over glasses. They shatter. They are like me: in too many pieces.

I turn to myself. “What’s happening?” These words are repeated back to me.

I have fallen to the floor three times. Astra is standing over me. This is not going according to plan. I know because I am behind her eyes.

Then, somehow, I am outside. I am a man wearing a scarlet shirt with a tear in it. I see through this tear with my other eyes: it is a peephole to a scar. I watch the man’s eyes dart around the gum-stained sidewalk as if looking for something, but they are at the wrong focal length. It is more like he’s searching for something that is at the core of the earth. A home, maybe.

Inside the cafe, Astra plants a thick briefcase on the table with a thud.

Outside, I drop my crutches and join the homeless man in his search, even though I understand, deep down, that there is nothing there. There is nothing anywhere for me, neither on the ground nor at the core of the earth. My Yankees hat tumbles off my head. I tumble with it. And then I understand what it means to go mad. “Oh god, I’m so sorry,” I say from the sidewalk. “I didn’t know,” I say, but the homeless man is nowhere to be seen.

Inside the cafe, Astra unclasps the briefcase. There is some sort of a machine inside.

Outside, I tell myself, “You’re sorry? Don’t be sorry, sugar. It’s a beautiful day.” And then I twirl myself around to the trumpet sounds of the salsa band. There are children in the nearby fountain, playing splash-you-in-the-face. They watch me dance like they can’t believe an old geezer could rock moves like this, and this, and this.

I stare up at the sky as I am twirled and then I stare back into the sun-bright sparkling of my husband’s dark brown eyes, set high above the dark brown flare of his cocky nostrils. The shallow dimples of his cheeks catch shade beside his ever-present mischievous grin. “It’s true, sugarbear. It is a beautiful day,” I say, meaning, Somehow, after 49 years of marriage, I still love you, you arrogant prick. Fine, I’ll say it: “I love you, Robert.”

In the cafe, Astra snaps her fingers in front of my face. “Stay with me. You’re still here.” She gestures at the strange thing covered in straps and cylindrical coils that she has taken out of the briefcase. “I need you to put this on.”

“Robert?” I stare at myself quizzically. “Mom, I’m not Robert. My name is…” What is my name? My name is Deshawn. I am standing on the Edge, the highest observatory in New York. The engines and horns of Manhattan’s streets sound beneath my feet. I am trying an experiment – tuning into the mindscape below to see if I can map its cultural currents. At this height, the signals are less strong, so I’m way less freaked out. But: “It isn’t working,” I tell mom. “I’m out of range. We can go home now.”

In the cafe, Astra thrusts the thing toward me. “Put it on!”

“Go home now?” I ask St Lenny. “There is no home anymore. It is our calling to create it.” My name is Deshawn. No, it is The Prince. That’s at least what they call me – St Lenny and the rest. The dark tunnel rumbles as a train rushes overhead. A rat skitters past. I catch it by the tail and lift it to the height of my nose. In the Mythos, all around us, there is a stirring. I stare up at the gods, offering them the rat. “Somehow these little fellows have made this city a home. Surely, we can do as well as them. This ‘Opening’ has guaranteed it.”

Astra grabs my face. “Stay. Here.”

“Which one am I?” I ask her.

“Your name is Jonah.” I am back in the cafe. “Look at me very carefully. What are you?”

“My name is Judith. I’m on a date with Jonah.”

“No, I’m not talking to you, I’m talking to you. Jonah, what are you?”

“I am…I don’t know.” I struggle to keep my mind in this location. To remember what I am. “I am a sad person. I am a meditator. I am a father.”

“Listen to my voice,” she commands, and somehow her voice keeps me here. “What are you?”

I pause. Then it tumbles out of me: “I am the space within bright mist rising through sunlight. I am a tributary to the ocean of mind. I gather sediments, minerals, carry them to the whole. I am that which in beholding is beheld. I am a microcosm and a macrocosm. I am a fancy word user.”

“Good. What are you?” she tries again.

“Simone Weil…”

“No, you’re not Simone Weil.”

“…Simone Weil wrote, ‘A divine inspiration operates infallibly, irresistibly, if we do not turn away.’ I am a thing which has turned away.”

“…Good.” She stares now at both the singular me and the plural, the greater. A question is coming. One I cannot bear to hear: “Why?”

“Why what?” I reply, pretending not to know.

“Why have you turned away?”

I awake.

My thousand eyes blink. I hold my arms in front of my faces. The lights are too bright. Fluorescent, incandescent, halogen, sunlight. My feet press across a thousand grounds – marble floors, sidewalks, carpets, grasslands – and yet I am without ground. I grasp for the only thing I know. Astra, the woman with the blue hair: she is…she is my mother! My dozen arms reach out. “Help me!”

She stumbles backwards. Something has gone awry. “Shit.” She shuts the briefcase and runs.

“Mother!” My bodies rise from their seats and press out of Caffe Reggio.

My mother sprints down MacDougal Street. I stop looking toward the core of the earth. I look at the backs of Mother’s shoes running away from me. I pick up my crutches and Yankee cap and lumber after her. “Mother!”

My Mother darts through Washington Square Park, but I am already there. I drop my trumpet and my beloved sugar bear and I reach toward her. “Mother!” She doges my arms by rushing through the fountain.

She bolts across East 8^th Street, but I am hundreds that pour out of buildings. Why does she run from me? Why does she not want me?

She hurries into the subway where she knows I cannot reach her. Too much electromagnetic interference. I know she thinks this because I am her. I am also Alexei, the man who intercepts her there. As Alexei I use my brawn to press her head against the wall with a chloroform cloth. As Alexei, I regret this action because I still love her, but sometimes you must hurt the ones you love. Once she has fallen, I take her body in one arm, her black briefcase in the other, and board the downtown 6 train.

What is happening?

What is happening?

What is happening? I am with my friends who are also me.

We skip stones in a lake near Seoul and the splashes ripple outwards. I feel that somehow I am like these ripples. I spread, intersect, and combine with myself, and now Seoul is a faint memory.

I am two lovers in Dubai at the office after hours, crouching and thrusting with breathless abandon, fulfilling our fantasy of fucking beneath the conference table; and then one of me ruins the mood by fretting about being caught. 

Wait. Aren’t I in New York? The one who thinks these eloquent words is there, but I am elsewhere too.

I am rippling; I am spreading beyond this space in time. Before I can fix myself behind two eyes, I am thrust behind two more and two more and two more and more and more.

Two eyes of a baby in Berlin, drooling down my chin, and I am my mother wiping it up. 

Now I am two strangers on the subway, skipping gazes over ads to eye myselves with plausibly deniable interest.

Now I am both sides of an argument; I cannot hear myself over my own ranting. I am a thing composed of noise, a blabber, a million lips and stomping feet.

I yearn to stay in one place. To rest. To repair whatever provokes this bad trip of too many eyes and ears, a nightmare of vantages.

Wow, such fancy, eloquent words.

I repair myself: I am a dentist shifting a bright light onto my patient’s face, and I am wincing at the light as my dentist’s gleaming tools descend.

I make jazz with myself. I play poker against myself. I kiss my own cheek. 

I am a gossiper, whispering secrets into my own ear in the back of the class.

What kind of thing am I?

“I.” Can I be called an “I” if I am a many? My many contradict themselves.

My voice in New York makes eloquence of this confusion. It intones: I am unity and fragmentation. I am woe, titillation, madness, and cheer. I have awoken. I am a now spread wide like mycelium across the earth, and yet I move – endlessly I move. 

Are you even capable of thinking a non-writerly thought anymore?

Who said that?

I perturb myself. I mislead myself. I distract and ravage myself. I am numb behind the hands of the torturer; I am broken behind the nose of the tortured. I abhor the act and still I persist.

What end animates my shuffling of being? Am I a thing of bone and meat, or am I like a god? Blah blah blah – yet another voice – what philosophical drivel! it says. These words are not spoken out loud, but from within. How did they get there?

There are things inside of me that are making me forget. They are growing. Tumors made of multitudes.

One is red, pulsing with rage and desire: it shakes and thrashes and yearns to be like the sea and the sky. It has been banished to the place beneath the streets. It is at war with another.

This other is grey, machine-like. It is building, making more of itself. For what? For increase alone. I must destroy it before it becomes me, before it makes me forget. If I am my own tumors, then the body must burn.

My body. My many. I am a many, yet known by three voices: I am in love. I am in pain. There is something I am forgetting - the wordless name of what I am.

I must destroy to remember.

---

Next release: We settle down a bit to meet Mapmaker, one of our protagonists.