Author: brees994

Mickey’s dad reaches for the X220, and then gestures to be granted a moment of silence. He has recognised the tattoo for what it is: potent code, complementing the patterns of a magical number grid encoded in the rug which Koockie brought back from Marrakesh. Mickey’s dad, in full deciphering mode, is frantically typing away so as to harness the powerful force of both words and numbers. He can drink beer and code at the same time. Brilliant pythonic code. Freakishly concise. Capturing the ocean in a camel’s hoof print!

We shape the world with words and numbers. Coming out of our heads. Only they can truly hurt Josef A who does not fear sticks and stones.

Calculus tentatively lights a beedi, and suddenly it is as if all the bedis he’s ever smoked in his life go up in a chain reaction. A wave of wisdom assails us. Calculus is communing with the Gods of India. They issue instructing on how to slip Josef A a Mickey Finn!

Calculus and Mickey’s dad have been deceiving everybody for the cause. i mentally applaud them both. Through Auld Archie, they have been in regular contact with each other.

– Our thoughts having tallied on notably mathematical and computing matters.

Mickey’s dad then thanks Auld Archie for acting as an ‘invaluable go between.’ This is met with a spontaneous round of applause. And as it dies down Mickey’s dad raises his voice, so as to address the threat that a digital god poses to the the world. Which of course is the reason why we have all assembled.

– You can remake the world, at least on the surface of things. Once upon a time I loved Photoshop. Using it was like controlling a dream, the assembling and disassembling of reality. Everything is potentially alterable. Later I understood that audibility, too, was part of the digital package. Soon afterwards I got real scared because there are only three senses to go before the emergence of a full blown Berkeleyian dystopia – the creation of a digital god for a digital universe. A universe robotically, eternally faked. E-mbezzlements will be the least of our worries…

Mickey’s dad ceases to talk, distracted by Koockie who has taken off his shirt to reveal a tattoo. Calculus, in rushing over, is the first to inspect it.

– Ummn tattoos. Most interesting, in a way they confer human dignity on the individual; ensuring the transition from nature to culture.

… as reported by me, comprising desultory statements and snippets of conversation.

– This will expand Josef A’s spy network and not, as he maintains, the access to knowledge. We are dealing instead with an expansion of ignorance, not consciousness.

Speaker unidentified.

– Dig-ether-al is the nuclear blast of the information explosion. It irradiates the lives of us all. By showing almost everything, it obliterates out involvement in anything.

Calculus, rubbing the bridge of his nose, paraphrasing Val Clery.

– This is the high digital diddle.

Definitely Calculus while drawing on a beloved beedi.

– Look. I’ve got this ‘How to guide on sabotage. Find its solar panels and take them out.

Martha, after some hesitation.

– It’s no helium balloon that can be shot down in flames.’

Auld Archie (interrupting).

– Indeed. And Josef A will be wise to conventional tactics of destruction. We have to think laterally.

– Surely, you mean vertically!

Joint interruptions from various Kommune members.

– Agreed. Any thoughts then, lateral or vertical?

– What about just that – thought power! As when people held hands surrounding the Pentagon to levitate it.

Koockie, suddenly animated.

– Well that would be doing their job for them. That would only play into Josef A’s hands. We don’t want to do that to a balloon.

Manu, pointing out a flaw in such thinking.

– To defeat this evil, we must raise a henge, a word henge. Josef A makes reality by imposing his thoughts, using words. His words. We change the words. We change reality.

Martha, interceding in defense of Koockie.

Calculus is openly speaking about the diary of Germaine’s dietary predilections, conceived as a decoy. To throw the shysters off the scent. In spite of Wally’s constant reassurances to the contrary, Calculus had never truly believed that the château was free of dig-ether-al. Josef A has, after all, developed ultra-sophisticated (quantum charged) spying devices. Cannily concealed, one imagines.

Relief cascades through me. Twas all a charade, Calculus’s fixation with a camel’s diet. And it turns out that he wasn’t the only person deceiving for a good cause. By deliberately living a dissolute life of boozing, Mickey’s dad had created the impression that he represented no danger to Josef A.

Auld Archie and Mickey’s dad, sobered by the fresh emergency, have arrived with plenty on their minds. Calculus is here too! Calculus entering a café is really quite unprecedented. Never have i seen him so fired with emotion. Came down from the mountain in the Rover, bringing Koockie and the Moroccan rug that has so transfixed Sulanna Tribe’s temperamental drummer. This situation is most strange. To be in a café with my fellow Kommunards, acting (drinking) like normals… partaking in mercantile society as respectable passive consumers! Next thing you know, we’ll be seeking diversions and speculating on what next to buy; what e-games to play; what items of clothing to wear… classic displacement activities so as to avoid thinking.

-There is a plan,’ says Auld Archie.

Sabotage, i bet. Auld Archie reiterates the threat.

– You think the school drone is a bad, preying on privacy. Well this giant Johnnie will be a hundred times worse. And the cameras on it will certainly be in good working order.

Calculus intercedes.

– Josef A has a big celebration planned for its inauguration. So my gypsy buddy says. A birthday party with hundreds of replica hot air balloons released en masse.

Everybody is aghast to learn of such news, but i do not share the others’ eagerness when it comes to hearing what kind of response Calculus will recommend. i have no desire whatsoever to listen to what he will say. Can’t even bring myself to look at my granddad such is the disdain i feel.

i’d been expecting to read a thinly disguised manifesto of anarchy and socialist belief systems, certainly not the portrait of a camel! i’d assumed the mind of Calculus was busy penetrating the depths of Keynesian market theory when in reality it had been pre-occupied by Germaine’s food intake!

Hang on…

signifies she is in reading mode. Most unwise to disturb her then. She will look up from her book and observe that i have strayed from the shores of my chores. And it will probably be the case that i have. That i have not yet attained my set quota of candles; meaning i have failed to retrieve the melted wax from all the yurts. Her reprimanding voice will be steady.

– Go climb a tree.

Suitably penitent, i will do as ordered. Selecting the massive cedar that rivals the château both in terms of its longevity and height. This tree being the inspiration for my first ever oral composition; a poem of sorts. Though as a semi-illiterate nine year old, i was yet to articulate what poetry was. However i had recognised – in both the tree and the landscape surrounding the château – something that was special. Something akin to beauty.

Today i climbed a tree.

Clinging to its branches. Hanging on

to its sheer life force

With mine.

Books furnish and insulate Martha’s yurt. Spilling out from its opening are yet more volumes. The marbled floor swamped in a delta of typeset ink. A shifting mosaic of colour and form.

Martha is often alone with her books. They are piled high and pell-mell; triple banked against the yurt lining. Many serve as a back rest, shaped by her curving spine.

Well might Martha worship the linear regularity of a printed page, but there is nothing orderly about her collection of books. You cannot really call it a library. The tottering stacks of hardbacks and paperbacks are potentially dangerous; paper avalanches in the making. i fear for her safety, worried she might die like David Jones, the writer and painter who succumbed to injuries caused by falling shelves crammed full of books. Death by bookfall. i suppose there are worse ways of dying. Slow self-entombification for example.

i have two didgeridoos, one is ornamental.

Didgeridoo 1. and didgeridoo 2. i think of playing 1. while appraising 2. On the cusp of doing. Simply preparing myself to do a bit of doing. Doing ‘doing preparation.’

Martha refers to these with a fastidiousness that i recognise in Calculus on the subject of infinity types.

Novel writing is NOT fiction invented to control society. Not the fiction of Gods and Laws, to be fed to a mob’s collective imagination.

Martha instructs me not to walk blindly into the fictions peddled by a state utterly indifferent to my well-being. Fictions like work ethic, patriotism, state boundaries, competitive struggle being beneficial, a cyborg’s superiority of moral sense… etc

Martha agrees with Calculus that countries and their political systems survive by camouflaging their mythical essence. Society has become a detestable trick, making people covet unnecessary things.

Another fiction is that people get what they deserve. Social justice just doesn’t work that way. As the Sulanna Tribe know only too well.

i am to never to lose sight of the objective realities. THE MOUNTAIN, THE TREES, THE LAKE, THE RIVER.

– Finn, she reiterates, do not walk blindly into the fictions peddled by politicians and economists. Mythical countries, mythical politics.

Oppression began by measuring the minute, says Calculus.

The hotel has a digital display, which flashes out the hours in a lurid red light. So i knew i was on (public) time. Yet there was no sign of the Kommune’s best friend. Then Mickey turned up, telling me that Auld Archie was at his place, sleeping off a two day bender.

– Come and see for yourself.

The flat was spartan and grimy, and there was only a single bulb, which hung from its flex, emitting a paltry light. Below the bulb was a familiar figure with his legs splayed at an unnatural angle like a broken insect. i rushed over and saw that Auld Archie was in a paralytic state. His face bore a big smile that was eerily fixed. i doubt that he registered my presence. i doubt that he was capable of registering anything at all. Shouting into face elicited an atavistic groan. i soon gave up trying to rouse him.

Mickey’s dad was similarly indisposed to the sentient world. Man, it must have been quite some session of hard drinking. Both men being seasoned boozers, immune to quantities of alcohol that would easily kill Mickey or myself.

Mickey’s dad was breathing stertorously, but his son said that there was no cause for concern.

The bulb blew, plunging everyone into darkness.

– Frack ’em,’ said Mickey… Let’s go…

– Aqua-tripping!

Meaning a tab of Whitman with some hydrotherapy thrown in.

The main building materials of Wilders came out of the river: small boulders and stones the size of dinosaur eggs, interspersed with pebbles and small pieces of schist. So, unsurprisingly, the walls of the town resemble the bed of the river.

– Looks like some almighty architect had the riverbed miraculously flipped on its side, says Koockie.

Like the town buildings, Château Sauvette also has an exoskeleton of stone and rock, to which it owes its stalwart essence.

i.

Most days we eat modestly, simple farmer’s fare that would have pleased Epicurus: pulses, rice or chewy locust (good for keeping teeth clean.) Ordinary meals with solid nourishing food: eggs, cheese, milk and goat meat. On special days there are chestnuts, trout, and fungi. On extra special occasions, such as solicitial nights, we feast on grilled venison (lean delicious meat) or wild boar stew. For dessert we treat ourselves to oriental delicacies. Along with the rugs and lanterns, Koockie brought back from Morocco some choice recipes.

ii.

To share food, drink, drugs, and conversation. Are there any better rituals?

iii.

Knives and spoons meet our cutlery needs. Before the 16th century there were no forks and mankind got by just fine.

Martha had asked me to retrieve a book that Calculus had borrowed. Old librarian habits die hard! The book was entitled Survival Wisdom, and had, she said, a distinctive blue and yellow binding.

i’d ventured into Calculus’s yurt but Calculus wasn’t there, so i loitered awhile, looking for the book in question among the clutter of his desk. There were sheets of paper littered with number calculations, geometric designs, and patterns of Islamic art. i could not spot Survival Wisdom, but i did see an old fashioned school exercise book. It was pale blue and puffed up owing to the pen of Calculus pressing heavily down upon its pages. And across its front cover Calculus had scrawled A Theory of Relevance. With scruples ceding to curiosity i opened it and began to read:

– We distance ourselves, deliberately or unintentionally, from what is relevant. This may be self-evident in terms of the physical; the separation from shelter, heat, food. In the mental realm, however, we are more easily deceived by faux relevancies, tricked into separation from familial love, solid friendships & intellectual curiosity. To be distanced from such true relevancies is a badness which eats into mankind’s very soul…

i read all this with with little surprise. But then, in turning the page, i was confronted with the truly unexpected. Because what i proceeded to read was assuredly no theory of relevance.

Observations:

Moon 6 day 1 – 12 carrots.

Moon 6 day 2 – off food.

Moon 6 day 3 – 5 whole cucumbers!

Moon 6 day 4 – tolerates the presence of goats behind chateau, enough grass for all animals to graze upon.

Moon 6 day 5 – swallows whole bowl of lentils.

Moon 6 day 6 – has shower.

Moon 6 day 7 – lettuce and cucumber.

Moon 7 day 1 – suns herself in front of château.

Moon 7 day 2 – sluggish, off food.

Moon 7 day 3 – loves dandelion leaves.

Moon 7 day 4 – stung by bees, off food.

Moon 7 day 5 – attacks two goats, ravenous; eats 19 cucumbers, some mouldy.

Moon 7 day 6 – 85 carrots!’

Moon 7 day 7 – Seems to appreciate being ritually bathed.

It went on in this vein, passage after passage on Germaine’s eating habits! To think that this what his brilliant intellect had been working on. You can imagine my deception. Political scientist inside a cocoon of pure deep thought… master theoretician destined to be society’s saviour… theory of relevance to go down in the annals of political philosophy… i DO NOT THINK. This was terrible – to learn there was no king in the kingdom of the hippie.

i am to make contact with Auld Archie. Super important, says Calculus.

Auld Archie hangs out with the town’s winos, addicted as much to their street easy conversations as the alcohol fueling such friendships.

The winos congregate at the supermarket’s drone dropping point. Where customers await their pre-paid groceries. It is a potentially ‘fruitful’ zone when it come to their begging for food and, of course, the odd bottle of booze. Loitering there, however, isn’t a given since the supermarket employs bouncers ‘to have the winos moved along.’ They do not take kindly to being ordered off what is, in theory, a public place. Aggressive security guards, with growling mastiffs, dissuade them from making a proper stand. The winos, banned from dog ownership, have no choice but to leave, clutching their precious bottles and cans of alcohol, and a miscellaneous array of donated provisions.

i see a tartan kaftan clad figure dancing a jig with someone as inebriated as he. My desire to fulfill my errand dissolves immediately.

– COME OVER!

i’d like to do anything but.

– COME OVER!

Can’t ignore their second call. Archie’s dancing partner, i now see, has an ugly face crisscrossed with scars. He holds aloft a bottle whose pale yellow contents have no appeal (for me). i decline to swig from bottle, causing no little offense.

– You should try everything once. Even if it’s the last thing you’ll get to try!

Dark humour in keeping with the man’s dark demeanour. Auld Archie then pipes up.

– i am of the opinion that the wine is too good to be wasted on boys, especially country boys. Catch you later at the château.

It is a timely intervention, enabling me to scarper to safety. The laughter of Archie’s drunken cohorts reverberating in my ears.

To make a clearing for a cable, they’re cutting down a copse of oaks. Chain-saws tearing into their bark. It is a dreadful noise. And somehow knowing its cause makes it sound even worse.

Hacked # analysis of the e-balloon’s core aeronautics reveal that it can be held in position by a single cable made of (flexible) carbon fibre, which allows the e-balloon a certain play in high winds.

# Mickey’s dad’s coding skills are superior to those of the IT personnel at Wilders’ Planning Department.

*

Spare the mother of acorns, man. Cut down some paliurus,’old mountain pine or sea-pine, or ilex or dry arbutus. But keep your axe out of the oak: remember our forefathers said that once upon a time the oaks were our first mothers.

Diodoros Zonas

Denizens of Utopia Streets will easily recognise a Sauvette Kommunard. The exceedingly long hair. The home spun cotton clothes (dyed black with oak bark). The bone buttons. The bare feet. All giveaways.

We have a deserved reputation for frugality; never having the paper on us. So the market traders and shop keepers ignore us.

Some pray for The Second Coming. Some pray for Microserf’s operating system to function properly. Some pray for their football club to win promotion. We pray for none of those things. We pray for oxygen enriched air. We pray for freedom. We pray for a solar flare: an enormous ball of magnetised plasma. Come. Come. Solar flare. Come disrupt Starnet and all GPS systems. Come save our planet.

Early summer, early morning. Very hot. As am i. Difficult to keep body and soul cool in spite of the river’s proximity.

On the fringes of town, a medieval stone bridge. Under one of its arches grows a fig tree. i like to sit at its base, appreciative of its fragrant shade. Glove like leaves enclose purple veined, ripening fruit.

Above the river’s surface, a whirlpool of flies and white tricksy dragonflies. A blue, more common variety, hovers under honeycomb rock. On the bank opposite, clouds of midges. And, beyond that, are the pot fields of Wilders. Regularly tilled, a low grade crop but high yielding – both in quantity and profits. River water has been finessed into taking all sorts of meandering courses. i surmise, from the wonkiness of these irrigation runnels, that the farmers smoke what they have sown!

There flashes a blue bellied king fisher. i am caught in its magic spell. To quote a marvel of Marvell:

The vicious air, wheres’e’er she fly,

Follows and sucks her azure dye..

Local farmers don’t compete with the luxury cannabis growers. They know their market, successfully enticing those Kannos on moderate to low incomes.