The Prospero Papers

For to live is to love

For to love is to live

For to die is to love,

For to love is to die,

For to live is to die,

For to die is to live.

For to live is to love

For to love is to live

DOES DREAMATISATION DRIVE YOUR DAY?

DREAMATISING ME: POET PHILOSOPHER, WRITER LIAR.

When you choose one word,

Then you become part truth.

Then you become a liar.

When you know you are liar,

Then you become truth,

Then truth becomes you.

(See Paul Dirac's "Superpostion of two Translational States" of a photon.)

First there was the light or was it the lie?

Improve your Fiction: The Writer Liar loves to leave his lair to share others air. Entanglement in action.

Taras Shevchenko's Ukrainian pain our pain.

Polluter general stood up. All were ears.

“We have nearly eradicated non human forms from the planet.”

Cheers.

“You polluteriats 1st class have led the way to this wonderous day. We have feasted to full on non polluteriat meat.”

Cheers.

“We have survived, other perished. All is good.”

Cheers.

“Unfortunately polluteriats 1st class, we the elite have now run short of meat to eat. So you will sacrifice yourselves on the altar of the high priest polluter.”

No cheers. Realisation.

“The gases you have been breathing will teminate you now. But your flesh will feed us, the polluterelite, for millenia. Fare well.”

Mass gasps and collapses.

Massive machines sweep into the stadium.

Operation presevation had begun.

For some.

These were the words of the Pollutercrats. Winners of many polluteritzer prizes. Polluterized planet now all but dead. Enough said.

Is there a story behind this micronarrative?

Can’t see the words for the Elegies.

Coda1

The end was near. It was an early spring night in late April. The Mediterranean Sea crests were white topped. The dim sickle moonlight reflected surprising, stark. The wind blew as never known. The clouds had spilt, no rain fell. The air salty spray of the lashing sea. All receiving, all unfurthered. All Yin. All Yang. All together.

The gardens of the stunning Castillo Duino precariously perched on the Dalmatian cliffed coastline. Gulped the air like new born: fearful multiverse filled. Words were torn. Sudden seized by the sky the sea’s strong mistful mystiful breath.

“Can you hear angelic painted lady!” the wind took words and spread them to amongst the uncountable stars, galaxies and birth nebulae wander-lustful. Words whipped creamily from mouthed last breath gone. Out-flowing their unspeakableness. She fluttered her multiversal eyelashes. She blowing like a whale gale.

A voice from the darkness spraying.

In the misty tearfulness Dante's purgatory there lingered. Hanging man Boltzmann tragically took his own breath. There knowledgeable despair, dejected saw and heard. A ghostly spooky at a distance image draped in the garb of a gladiatorial hero. Chance randomly saluted owned death. Presence filled with the fullness of a selfunmade masked moment. Time’s arrow walked in doubt, mystery and uncertainty

“Is it cancellable, irreversible, invisible?”

Amused, disembodied.

“Who, what, how, when or when in the universe could hear?”

“Chance is a strangeness to live with. The random mistress of the skies will not aid.”

Try to look. It disappeared in full gaze. It stared away. It appeared again. Shimmering, wistful, warningly whispering:

“If the painted lady could hear, would she take essence invisible into her heart or would it disappear into an unbearably more powerful existence?”

The beauty of the gardens perched precarious was frightening. The nascent terror of an epiphany came. This being here became virtually unbearable. It staggeringly caught in the destructive shrapnel gale of a gas shell bursting. Eyes swimming with tears unbidden.

Felled by words.

Flailing desperately rasped the buttressed railing. that stood by the precipitous tear drop to the surf flecked dark invisibleness below. Dante's Boltzmann was ready for the fall, a noose about his neck, tempting a leap of faith.

“Don’t look back I heard him say”

Fear however, was disdainfully refraining to destroy. A cry 2 to the make-up muse of the night infinite within and without was swallowed sobbing darkly, a crawling pitiful echo of self.

Was it a question, or a quest emerging superposed through the blinding terror?

“Neither the universe nor men can you make it useful. Realise that the world of the word is a noplace: neverlandless ne'er at home, ever alienated”.

The painful rose, dragging up the railings, only dimly aware of the gravel that pierced profusely bleeding body. The words destroyers, seducers, solaceful saviours. The voice beside self in the wind now bade search saint elsewhere for quest questions. Turning slowly as if pushed by the elements aghast a glazed gaze formed the silhouettes of olive trees thrashed about by the wind. These reminded a pauperish Caspar David Friedrich tree, thrashed by the planets turmoil to cling to the steep slope regardless. There a small shadowy figure secured by an anklet of iron agonising also.

“The cryptochrome painter had captured the image just as loyally, recalling the “rues d’antant”, invisible habitual blue eyed places that reminded affectionately, as if never arriving or ever left. It was painted make up that recalled sending you into ruptured rapture”

I saw her now too, as the trees were highlighted against the clear wandering dishevelled stars and slivered silver moon. My angelic painted lady incandescent. There was the endless night! I gasped anew, shaking exhausted and full to giving. I had to grasp to railing anew to stop my descent. I wondered who this lover was whose celestial wind wore out my face as I sought solace at her breast.

There was no staying to succour the tarot cards of a solitaire heart. Was It who who had yearned for, caressingly gentle, standing before barely faceable, questing, questioning.

“Does the needless night hide us and lighten us allowing love to flow?”

Feel the delicate form in the room and the fire flickeringly lit, the wombness of it all.

How abandoned fate in inbetweeness, threw it away in the moment juices burst forth to nothing. Kin on skin emptily hid in other. That emptiness sprang out into that space where were was and weren’t was, so the earth could breathe again. Perhaps birds could feel these earth inspired and expired magnetic thermals of existence more intimately in their crypto-blue-eyed light flight?

It is maybe when the snow drop photosynthetically first shows its pale head that realisation of renewal was fresh in veins and each star was there to feel it. The wind suddenly gusted and like a wave of universal exhalation lifted out of the past and future, the cerulean mystery that lit the once polarised path uncollapsing the lost waves of being. There sat in a side street cafe in Prague away from the dreaded military academy my father had sent me to in fear for my masculinity. There inevitable verse rose, opening petals poetic pistils potently coming. While just learning to surrender, to forgive to the quest of questioning, there arose from a tenement window a violin, caressingly candid, totally disowning thanksgiving of itself, this was living the question harvested in answer form.

“But what question my love?”

this was also experienced in Rodin’s studio, as his secretary, sitting quietly for hours watching the creation of lovers and fighters, seducers and soldiers: born from chiselled stone, the complete giving of the admixture of artist his tool, his material.

Just as in the field hospital a dying Tommy, words written on the back of the daguerreotype that slipped from hand when he breathed out the last of the yellow slime that had sucked him, the fighter, thinker and kisser, from us in an act of ultimate hospitality.

“Steffi, forget-me-not”

And Keats lying painted on his, so Victorian, so English, death bed of negative capability also pointed to a giving that even death cannot stem.

All this seemed as natural as the missionary position, but was it something that the questioning quest could paint the lady with?

The shapes of the constellations were there dashingly between the broken clouds; astrological expectation, Boltzmann’s expectation of entropy of ever increasing possibilities plotting to distract. Closeted close together, with the distant sun’s strange thoughts filling to overflowing excess.

Could It contain your vast intellect, lover, with its ins and outs, as you do in this night sky?

A stare saw the shape and form of the cosmos, flowing in tandem with the vast swathe of the Milky Way thence to the Virgo cluster. An untouchable matter of darkness; but now, for one night only, entirely.

In this desire waveform of the music of the spheres, a notoriously finite aria feelingly forsaking those enviously who found satisfaction in love.

The Aeolian harp strongly played in this dreamy symphony an endless counterpoint, unattainably praising the heroes who extend their lives in the cosmos. Castor, Pollux, Orion, Diana, Venus and bloody mouthed Jupiter: there in the sky immortalised, though in our pantheons they were merest echoes in many a narcissist’s academic archive.

This finite infinity in the cloud flashing night through the little light of the sickle.

Here the cycle by which lovers are periodically taken back by knackered Nature.

Taken regularly into herself as if there were not the power to remake them.

I remembered fucking Gaspara Stampa and her totally giving violently potent verse; how this periodic time table grasps when her gasps come up empty, just as the shooting star forebodes the worst. But I also jealousy regarded her passion, her stellar passion, and wondered why I couldn’t be like her. Just being full of penis , just enjoying being on top.

Why shouldn’t her ancient wisdom, her suffering be fecund for me and you too? The wind-fallen olives that will be strewn upon the ground,

“why can’t they fruitful for all of us Gaspara?” I gasped

I felt stronger with the passion of this woman in my heart, and moved down a path to a fountain whose innumerable nuances spilled up and back over itself, but now was caught in the grasp of the storm and mistily spread in a more obliviously random way, like a virus in a sneeze, infecting, inflecting the skies beyond, inevitable. From the cloud there emergent was a cupid rising on a plinthed spray of flowering water. Flanked by the physicist and the lover I stood statuesque.

“See the arrow of time enduring the restrictive harshness of the bow trembling and beloved ready to free us. Agonising in the flight and suffering of love to make it something more than it is in essence, impossibly fertile!” their voices intertwined interconnectedness undeniably potent.

I sat on the stone edge and saw as from a distance the blood drip from my hand into the sheltered water of the fountain’s pool. The dark drops fell forming mesmeric small waves like a quantum contradiction; a small blood sacrifice, a realisation that flowing is all, remaining is being nowhere.

It was as the bloody martyrs sacrifice, whose voices heard the heartbeat of us all, of the coherent completely joined quantum universe. Voices upon voices raising us from the earth. Though we lived on habit they knelt on and ignored the impossible that we lived, so acute was their hearing that the stone pierced flesh procured for them.

Now me. It’s not as if I could stand the voice of the painted lady physicist; universe modelled incoherently after our own fashion; as the blood spreads forth and I feel light headed distant from that consummation unwished for.

But the breath of the universe blowing through me here, listen to it!

Hear its unbroken sound resolve into a Morse code of silence, the telegram reaches its destination as the death of a callow youth in a trench, rushing to you too.

Like the memorials that I saw in Passchendaele stretched out arms of stonily topped youth, or in a graveyard high in the alp’s clean air where he was not supposed to die; I heard their insistent quiet impressions in the exultation of a few words.

“In Dulce et Decorum est pro patria mori”

I had travelled to Naples and Rome many winter past and heard their quiet deaths speak fatefully to me.

I had wandered into the Venetian church of Santa Maria Formosa, perversely balanced high at the end of a windy dusty summer path to be exalted by a tableted inscription that impressed itself onto me like a soaring eagle, like a Gutenberg printing press. I saw the voices heard the lightening of the stained glass wordlessly praising.

“Now there, now here: what do these impressive impressions of the foetal Cosmic justice will of me, Socrates?” I heard myself say.

I find myself in court, a building of just ice, it is a miraged admixture of all ideas of such things but with a personality of quiet insistence stopping the free flowing painted lady whose essence was all. The examined examiners, assessed assessors, consumed consumers, possessed possessors; their awareness of the injustice of it all hindering a pure moving on that I felt we should gently remove, like the mote of dust from a lovers eye.

This court was indeed unearthly in all its aspects, and the feeling of the terrestrial was here alien, profoundly strange. There all the habits newly acquired were not new. Le future et L’avenir are devoid of any rose like promise, not to be identified as an individual anxiously acting out ones delicate role: in doing so you even set aside your own proper name, a broken toy no longer of any use to you.

This disconnected courtroom of in just ice does not allow us wish our wishes. Strange it is to see all that was as clear as daylight, all our certainty floating like so many lost particles in space, but also seeing our interconnectedness with these random flowing stellar islands of freedom. We released from vain feigned singularity like the big-bang.

It’s hard when the judgement day has come, trying retrieve all the alienness of being before we gradually drift from nothing into nothing, slowly feeling the gradualness of the little eternity.

It’s when we are living in this palace of just ice that we make the mistake of distinguishing between us and them.

When in the dynamic of the painted ladies mating ritual, it is said, one would not be able to be discriminate between the living or dead. It’s because the eternal coherent current sweeps all space time destabilising all concreteness as Vesuvius did Pompeii, with the stony figures cowering in disbelief. What was inanimate became massively dynamic, while the animated was ossified. Such a current swirls and eddies through both the decoherent and incoherent and coherently resounds inside and outside and in both of them.

These youths who stood in their blood and dust caked armless uniforms, camouflaged in the garb of manifold nations, in the court house, both accused and accusing. They all speak their local dialects and understand. They don’t need us, they the early-departed of all ages taken from suckling breast of living, just as their mothers had gently weaned them they outgrow us. As the hand reached towards red eyed death.

Their great secret is beyond us, mystical, an overarching mayfly coupling which bids us cry for them who don’t need our salty tears. But as we progress spiritually via this poignancy, could we be without them?

And I am brought to an arid valley where titanic Saturn sits, dethroned, at his feet Mnemosyne whose tears of absolution she is crying upon his feet. Her who was once human made immortal by memory. There is a vibrato in the air producing ironically a tune of trenchancy so deep echoing from her breast unbeknownst, an originary Narcissistic song which held the valley, all the startled universe in rapture.

It was then that though these images were beyond touching that I was inwardly touched by hunter gatherer ancestral path, caressed by the thermal and quantum quivering of the deathly dreamy peculiar, particular waves and loops that underlay all in a speculative ocean of being, which aided me and comforted me as waking contrived to undo me.

Coda 2

Knowing totality, knowing the painted lady, her heartbeat universe, fear arises. As I sleep this terror forms as a monarch migrating inward and outward. We are held floating upon a dreamy cloud high above the cities of the world, laid Mercator flat upon a silk handkerchief flowing in the solar wind. And staring into the faceless face, and recognising it I invoke you nearly lethal soulful flier.

“Where are the snows of yesteryear?” we swoop buzz-less like invisible workers bees over mountain tops and land our feet leaving no prints in the peak’s crystal covering, the angel bends and picking up a ball of the stuff licks his ethereal tongue upon the surface, a fleck of white rests on the tip and is gone.

We stood on the threshold of the mountaintop the radiance of the terror and the sky blending together ready for the departure both the ethereal and terrestrial disguised in a troubadours garb for the syncretic journey. We were not awed by each other but joined mystically as one, like curious disciples we looked out questioningly on the universe spread at our feet.

But then suddenly the sky turned dark and dangerous. A transparent Arch-angel was behind the stars ready to step down to self, to us, light and dark entwined; now I was both these creatures and they were me. The surge of being that held me at the top of a hill after a day’s climbing, with the surrounding glacier ground greens and greys, the small tipped gorse winking yellow in the night and day alike below pricking us with the fragrance of being. And all of us sharing the heart that was mine: beating us up and beating us down upon this dreaming spire of aqua-tint.

About us goblins and gargoyles spouted from the growing stone chiselled by the hand of times arrow. This creature that we had become I asked both individually and collectively, a bell peeling away the zest of lostness:

“What are you?” And in answer a question was formed showing the universe looping the loop stringing the needle and coming together upon a ladder of energy which we ascended to the ground as one and saw the ancient gods favourites.

And they were as the architecture of this huge cathedral of the landscape, where we stood as me. The Ancients favourite ones, were revealed as we now like bats in the vaulted ceiling saw with sound the red sky in the morning spread across this magnificent echo of existence.

The origin of much could be seen in the flowering of a volcano standing like a font baptising the earth with steamy water pollinating the planet with minerals and goodness to sustain us in all our finite empty majesty. The vast stained glass windows we saw as Aurora not just the northern and southern as they are now but flashing with all the polar switches that had alternated over the past aeons, opening us to the solar wind again and the multifaceted effect it had on our very essence. The cloisters, stairs and thrones were formed with of beams of light and dark, seeming to matter; the huge spaces lit and shadowed with being, with us struggling and shielded by the tempests and storms reflected in the hand mirror that I looked into now seeing the ultimate beauty of my Cosmic out-flowing from the convex glass back into the face of all three of us.

This glass morphed into a microscope mirror and we were so small that we were able to evaporate and breath ourselves in and out, and like oxygen flow in the fire ember to ember now flicking black and red in the ashes, the fragrance of sandalwood fresh as we sensed and incensed.

Our voice warming their hands upon us the dying fire said:

“Yes I see you in my blood, in the red fire-lit room, see spring is sprung from our overflowing”

But isn’t that useless? For rooms cannot hold us, we simply walk through the walls of time and space disappearing within and without ourselves.

And when I come upon a face of beauty, a body of intimately clutching desire can I hold them back from the fatal embrace that appearance has bound them with. As it stands and delivers of its ephemerality and is gone from us as if it was never quite there.

Lying in the rich grass after our cloying encounter we are like warm dishes that have been fed from and we become droplets of dew re-sparkling, basking in the sun’s first rays, little lenses coolly heating the universe.

There is on our lips the smile of the smug after beauty has passed by and through us, it’s a rising upward thing. If we had been given a name we would have self satedly torn it up and thrown it into the city gutter and turned our back on it. Then our look strays to the high tenements about us, newly feeling the warmth of our heart, feeling its particularised waviness vanish, it is that which we are. As our gaze drifts higher we feel ourselves dissolve into the cosmos wondering if it tastes of us.

Are the angels delighted perhaps only to take what they possess, that is what they have given to us by their furtive flybys? But together we see that they take our own daily doing; the walking the talking the stalking, the questioning that drives us ever on to a super abundance of pleasure and poverty. Do not these domes opiate created by poets and paupers then not give the pause for thought also for an angelic commingling. It’s the lush blush on the cheek of a child bearer and her bile rising with aurora, Diana’s cyclic infusion of blood giving substituted by a foetal fulfilment of death that our bodies give us. It’s the indeterminism in the mother’s eye, for there they are the angels: in this giving, this returning to themselves. They can’t see it in the womb swirling of being as it moves from the death before us to the death after us. But how would they espy the transience that is not theirs, but ours?

I show the angels who share me the intimate moments where lovers move themselves up and down on a divine fulcrum between the pre and post life.

They gasp uttering strangeness to the night air that engulfs them with an embrace that seems to hide us from everything. The caresses, the penetration the gasps the sweaty bodies clasped in a Rodin pose. The hardness of the Kisses unyielding stone, look at it, the solidity that will outstretch its giving past us, just as trees do still ring upon ring adding and our homes bricked still stand and watch our passing.

That kiss, an exchange of air, a sigh of impending flea bitten dog who nuzzles against us to assuage his eternal itch. We are as the dog and the fleas and the itch, we with our identity hidden as treasure in a cache behind the painting of Dorian Grey, whose aura is half shameful, half inexpressible hope.

Seeing the lovers on a carpet before this portrait, under which a huge grated fire blazes, I look questioning their mutual satisfaction.

“Do you have a sign for your unified separation?”

At once I am there, apart and a part of the sticky cloyed coupling on the carpet: examined and examiner. I feel my hands touching and being touched, I am thrust and thrusting, within and without, the face that I wear hides itself between the lovers. An iota of sense this gives me, is this what we dare to exist for, just this?

It’s the Cosmic that grows with the delight of their embrace until they beg:

“Enough” and lie back glassy eyed and exhausted. Wine darkened.

The universal connective that grows richer as the special years of the grape. The feet felt these were the vintage even before the chemical process mixed it into the blood of a youthful rebel. In a caveau we sipped the harvest of years gone and to come, all blurred so that we vanished, angels and men in the ascendency of the other, that which is not us.

I ask you to tell us of us, you the other. The caveau changed slowly, or was it us? The rock showed us how it’s cold wall caress was once unbearably hot, bent by the forces of the earth’s core, and how we stood there not disappearing because the feeling that sustains is just that, pure duration.

Your promise is eternity, from the stone kiss, from the volcanic font spilling the first terrible looks that you bear. From a cottage window you see a figure of yearning that walked with you just once through the idyllic garden of planetary fecundity.

You who drink from the loving cup aren’t you the same, suspended sip to sip, lip to lip? We can see in this gesture that the drinker escapes to dens of alcoholic delight strangely lost from the lovers action of giving, Appearing as Dionysian carvings on stone needles erected for amazing us, but always, oddly erring on the side of caution.

Is it because loving and leaving were such light burdens that they didn’t seem to be made of visible matter at all?

The tempest had laid our ship a wrack and my body alone upon a tropical beach. I breathed CBT instructions after pressing the panic button on commonwealth. I walked to a small hut that lay in the shade of a palm tree and sat on the veranda step. My hands lay in my lap not subject to gravity wishing to float but the energy of a lovers flexed body powerfully pulls them to resting restiveness.

Me and my angelic companions know together self-possessed that this control that it is masturbation, the self-loving self gives us much. But the eternal forces of nature will weigh us down full fathom five with pearls as our eyes. So I sit drownded and not pressed down by the impossible possibilities that the ancients gift us.

But that is their giving, and we do not own it.

I upon this cusp between dead and alive, calm upon the beach and resting as fish feed with my crown of thorns in the coral. I just need to capture the innumerable nuance of the air and water in my alveoli lungs making the heart exceed itself, even as the gone forebears did.

We lingered on shore and saw no more the scenes that act as balm to calm us in our eternal dream forms where we are totally restrained from this piteous act of eye opening wakefulness by a digital alarm conjured.

Coda 3

Upon the sea bed we entwined and the wetness of my dream almost drowned me.

“let me go on top” you insisted, just like Gaspara.

We had met very recently but the intimacy between us was an eternal act upon an infinite stage, the promise of you ethereal; reflected in your strawberry blonde hair. You had invited me through a door behind a reredos which hung in a strangely intimately manner in a great cathedral like structure which we had penetrated as bats via the star vaulted roof. We entered a cosy wood panelled room a welcoming fire burning was the only light, glistening upon the finials gold and gilded spines innumerable. There stood an expectant antique writing desk set with ancient writing materials which were for my use only. Being drawn irresistibly to it, like Merlin, I followed its gleam.

Its shape once I approached it became uncertain to me, was it a table or a bed? Husserl would have known. I sat behind or on it, an implement in hand. I dipped it into the well and saw that I was the ink and the papyrus, the sperm and the donor. I felt myself double entering us and the egg at the same time singing “fuck me”. There was a commingling there of a river-god of our blood, joining and splitting as one in twain for the first time on the way to the spilling of a life.

As you thrust down on me, I didn’t know myself, I was in a down coming wave of particles, seemingly a Valentino of the firmament coming to a sticky end as a young lover. She only knew me distantly as the universe took hold of my solitariness and pulled it into her balmy invisible incalculable dripping depth. It was the moment that we became the volcano and the sky, the carbon cycle we rode, redly erupting into the dark bespangled sky.

It was within a stratum beyond time, in a fertilised seed bed that we sped to some fecund trinity held by Poseidon. His terrifying bloody trident attempted to assail us. More frightening though was blowing from his conch horn, a hurricano twisting in our shell likes so the night seemed so dilute that it was like an echo in an endless tunnel. This winding of the horn swept us up with the wandering dishevelled stars, guided by Fergus upon his brazen car so we as lovers were the source and the result of all this quantum energy which lit our faces constellation bright. So intense we could not look into each other’s eyes without falling...falling...gefallenen. I never realised there were so many stars, one for every life ever earned and spent. Then I saw her face caught in the shadow of invisible matter, full of loving and fertility like a swarming star womb at the rim of a galaxy. Spiralling between Charybdis and Scylla, we were on a precipice of insight seeing our love’s explosive power from the purity of a chain reaction, climbing or descending Pauli’s ladder. Was there here the very moment of my own birth shining through in the fecundity of our own stellar nativity?

It was not Oedipal blood that spilled in this joining that arched my eyebrows into a curve of expectation. Nor was it the feeling that my lover had for my just being here close bosomed friend to the maturing sun that made the labia that had also softly spoken became, so bend into a shape more profoundly fecund.

I saw us as aliens on an internetted Thai beach, her and me heads smashed to a pulp by a jealous religious fanatic lover. I lay wide eyed in the water penis flopping in the waves. And she lay legs wide, lips still showing the last entrance and her nipples and lips volcanic ash grey. Her blood lay about her crushed skull like a red halo, not a blonde but a redhead.

Remotely too I observed and participated and posed questions of us both, of us all who are bound Promethean to the Higgs Fields that sprouted clumps of boson fruit in bunches of visibility that seemed to be matter of fact that posed yet more questions in its wake.

“Was it dawn that shuddered us to our core, like a shower wandering with the wind, like the sea washing us ashore?”

I was absolutely petrified by this thought but saw that it was not just me, it was us it was the join of all those ancestors who walked frighteningly behind, beside and in front of us had laid this touching material honey trap. Were we now truly fucked?

As if in response I hear your voice impelled by the non-passage of time trying to persuade, trying to cajole me from the apparent darkness of invisible matter that swallows me in its own possessive embrace.

I do want to be free of these crushing hidden arms where I feel so lost. I find myself in your codified depths, caches of your givingness bearing gifts of relief, whereby I find Pyrrhic victory in my hands allowing me to start, but start what?

It was not me who started anything. Was it not my mother who dropped my wee lump of fragileness into the lottery of being? My newness was not mine but something that I got from your suckled breast, your small gentle form hiding my eyes from all the mischances of the world, the abysses you simply wiped off like puke from my chin.

I recalled then in vision my smallness that you had maternally donated to me as a gift from the hospitality of your torso’s play centre, the strangeness and bigness of it that you tried to hide me from. My unfocussed eyes then that were frightened of nothing but saw all as it was supposed to be. I saw the ghosts before during and after life wandering in hoards about me, comforting me. But all the while you tried to protect me with mellifluous words and music while you work, these sounds ironically would persuade me to become human, all too human. It was your smiles that were real. The fear came from the words that you spoke which were not yours and which were now taking me over slowly, restricting my vision with possession. But you were still my friend, the words that are not said, that are ours proclaimed this as you placated the creakings of a dark water boarded and floor-boarded room to me as I became enmeshed in interpretation, as I became visible and naked beneath the eyes and wheels of fire, with just a touch of your tender hand on my brow.

You knew what you had done to me when you slept and the painted lady's path was revealed. I was encouraged to walk this alley of dreams where my shrouded fate comforted me potently. However words gradually invaded even this boyish sacred place and from behind the wardrobe and curtains all kinds of demons arose that were a portent of my fearful word-full possessed restive future.

I laid there gazing, just before sleep, the cusp where possessed possession could not assail me, relieved of the wordy burden now, knowing that I was not a creature of such a place, for I had tasted the pre logos sleep long ago. Thus it was the dams broke allowing the flood of Cosmopolis, of creative energy to flow, finding there splintered poesis: praxis, techne and phronesis unprotected and near suffocated by classifixation.

This dreaming threw caution to the winds and I was exposed as a child exposed on a mountain side, my ankle manacled, my body thrashed by the unrelenting elements; it was a feverish opening up of all things, this beginning that was not a beginning, but a speechless return to the mountain passes, to the constellations of being. There were beasts of many sort here in this dark tangled jungle, its multi-faceted greenery itself seeming to threaten my being but I just gave myself to it all- I loved it as totally other, within and without me.

These roots connected us like a universal fungal network the lattices of clumped matter so formed had assumed the shapes of my beloved inner outback where the creatures, rock, scrub and corroboree received me whole. Then we fire started and all was raging and death ruled. But so soon green shoots appeared out of the horror of the fountain of fire, phoenixes out of the ashes bred from the deep, in the water places of this landscape that was the very blood of the lands heartbeat. This I gave to myself as a gift of the pen to a swan, then I gave it up and there too was love, upon the paths that my ancestors had walked and fed from and rebirthed with fire. And I saw my hand prints in the red rocks of the scarred hills mixed with those of my forebears feeding to overflowing on the symbols of invisibility made clear by the ochre, red and black images that nudged me to tell their story full of love, horror and comfort.

This filled me with a dread that smiled upon me with warmth that was rare even on mother’s lips. And even in the womb where the dread was filtered through the placenta lightening the floating embryo that I had become, full of love in solution.

It’s said that we don’t love as flowers do annually, we have an immortal sap rising within flowing between us as fluids exchanged.

We both share this streaming. I feel it as those fathers who are our foundations like scree or terminal moraine. You perhaps like mothers of yore whose dry watercourses dendritic scar the landscape. These scenes rest silently clarified or clouded by destiny, coming before us.

The dry arid landscape where there is thunder and no water is where we conjure up the primeval, the prime evil in ourselves, loving being as it is. These lives that are wandering (un)heimlich in the manoeuvred desert; how did the feelings spring from them? I see there women hating me and sinister men stirring my virility. Was sought too by dead kids haunting in their respect for my spectre, my sceptre?

Oh please gently show me your love confidently as a diurnal work, take me by the hand, bring me into the Garden. Are you in me overcoming those nights we shared? Was it as if I was bearing you, you bearing me, caught in the rose, sepal, anther, seed and compost, the human, the foetus, sperm, egg and corpse all fecundly (de)composed?

Shanti,

Shanty,

Shandy,

Tristram?

Coda 4

The war raged and I was stuck here hoping, looking for a refuge inside-out questioning. I walked alone not alone in the schwartzwald bathed in spice and thyme.

Oh black forests where are your grey leaf be-topped offspring, ashen, silver snow sewn; seemingly frozen in times coldest darkest hours of being?

Grey hamed goose steppers, we see the trees add formulaic rings reflecting the ways disconnected from the winds of the world, separate, seasoned by solitariness. Wood sees not trees. The huts felled from the woods form dams that Drowned us in duty where lies are behind the barbed wire. As you enter under the gate surmounted by the cast ironically arched slogan Arbeit macht frei.

The trees marched past woodenly. We ate so much we were sick. They locked us back up the GI turnkeys. Schritt Zuruck? Aufklaung?

But even here the fluttering monarch, the painted ladies that we see from our gas ready huts remind us that there is something beyond us floating free. As we put the larva between our hunger drawn lips we tasted the cosmically guided strange force at a distance. We conjoined to the caterpillar, to the cocoon and the thousands of miles of knowing connected by their quantum entanglement wordless to the flowing that we have lost in diurnal drudge. In gassed untouchable alabaster chambers we wait forget-me-not stone laid on stone.

The ground we were buried in en masse does not remember us, the water where we we are thrown unshod either. The flowers that entangled the butterflies nectarly we see slavishly as memoria wreathed to our disconnectedness. Whether within or without the gulag wire. The green shoots seen just as signs of our pandemic death, herded to extinction by our betters, who have wagered humanities future on empty unfulfillable promises. For all of us lost. And when the Plains of the world are become animaless even though we cannot see it, the lion will majestically roam, despite our own goneness.

When we realise the dazzlingness of the loss we shed crocodile tears. Anguish does not become us so butterflies demise has created hostility in our hearts. We the imprisoned imprisoners, turnkeys of a relentless ignorance that somehow sates us by locking us up. So the open empty wilderness has no reason but irony in the soul to be. We hear then the inevitable clatter of 4x4 and pixelated shots slaughtering a specially bred beast. Not wilderness but virtual scenery made of a binary reality that entanglement will readily unravel. The eyes are easily fooled. The nays have it, they have a sex driven fantasy finite free falling in them denying the sky, accepting the vicariousness of their short termist being.

The dig it all digital pornography that this wilderness engenders shows lovers sprawled on volcano edged ecstasy; that lava that forms a world of space, of hunters, of hunted all at home in planet spew sated.

These pixels show us the contrasted sub imagery dream. like the momentary sketch of something not quite captured by the camera camouflaged in pink and grey hues intermixed, daring us to see it, our binary self-loving seconds espouse intervened interconnectedness. Waiting. Patient. We had unbeknownst donned rose tinted lenses.

“Action” the show begins,

“You on top, you moan. Don't feel it just look it. The shape is what matters. Feeling doesn't have a shape, his face will be pixelated its just you who is important Gaspara. Scream! Moan! You bitch! come for me!”

The bell rang: glas! Klang!

“for whom doth it toll?”

The application registered bitcoin payment from those sat far seeing “dig it” all hearts fast faster beating spurting seconds behind the curtain. The stage sticky with blood, the backdrop opening sweet sorrow.

“cut”

Nice and sleazy does it every time. “Savee?”

The naked forms rose from the divan set in a famous fig leaf garden. Prompted by whispered wispy Wills wave appears an autumnal wind-fallen snakeskin, the writhing serpent,

“no not him!”

the light follows his dance. Shocked to his corroboree core.

The stage is empty so he turns the screen off, knowing the history needing to wash his hands of the whole thing. She is glad its all over. He walks through his well appointed apartment through her hung sun kissed combinations into the kitchen, his mask slips. He smiles at his inflatable wife sat on a kitchen chair, waiting, here not on the computer. He picks her up forcing himself on her wired husk of a body her sheer appearance of desire. The camera picks it all up, as he sits on the seat her on top, if the lights go out the infra red will kick in.

“ I can't see if there's anything more” he cannot see or feel the drifting vacuum of grey ground state energy. The off stage wind drifts through the hanging sheer slips emptying each other. two dolls in love.

He is blind. He gouged out his own brown squinting eyes. Crowds of ghosts are gone, none remain. Not even a woman breast feeding a boy who is there neverlandless fucking my father.

The remains of him are still here, in an urn on the shelf: watching me watching you.

“I'm right you old bastard, aren't I?”

his ashes stare down at me bitterly.

“Drunken son do not go gentle into the night”

We travelled the country lanes and you told me of fears not caring about mine.

I was a lumpen proletarian, not allowed to be. You had to be me, demeaning me subduing me as I grew trying me as judge and jury clouding my gaze fading unphased.

Did you smell my fear stalking your death mask with a silent shushing sonambulance.

The graveside manners grew thin, the body too long for its last home. The questioning hooded man stood by protecting the green valley by sacrificing his children.

I shook with DT rage hiding from you in a vacuum with a ground state energy slowly ceding to fate. Did you ever miss me missionary father?

Your religious zeal to cover the base metals rusted my hope drowned my waving.

Particular I heard you kill me inhaling poisons deep. You tasted me and spat me out-flowing.

This is where love transubstantiated to hate.

“I'm starting to be right aren't I, you old bastard?” “you are just like the other ghosts on my ancestral path, translucent and tragically transient.”

Lost in the space of your face, paternal love.

You were gone then, with the rest, and relentless relief overcame me as the multiverse opened cavernous at my feet all engulfing.

Thus dolls and puppet angels staged a staggering expose of themselves on the holographic screen revealed. swallowing the wallowing me whole.

I held my breath as the dimensions became melded mellifluously, entangled by super-numerous ever returning goneness of an eternal fountain of knowledge.

The gray be-topped trees seasoned thus march with me showered with the multi-spice of becoming. The monarch and his angelic painted lady danced about me. They knew wordlessly the unspeakably distant flights of fancy.

The dying see this cycle too soon, looking at themselves in their cankerous mirror. They reflect and surely suspect that the inevitable smith slavishly stares back at us. Us the pre-text the con-text, foreshadowed vicariously virtual in daguerreotype amber.

The children of these images are the inheritors who stare into a pensieve for hours. There seeing themselves become a spoon jumping over the moon the rhyme and reason lost along the border between l'avenir et la future, betwixt Mme l'amour et Mme la morte.

The stage becomes dim and the words fade diurnal in bingo crepuscule trapped.

I looked out-flowing at the pandemics evensong

the Dreamtime serpent dragging me along.

Dying to meet my maker.

Wanting to grow into it too quickly seeing it from the pram perspective, where the toys were all the shadows beyond my small hands grasping. Before words destroyed the future. And when we first used them lying through our milk teeth we cried incessantly knowing that we were destroying all that we were, everlasting self-entertaining alone but one with the butterflies pure event. Caught betwixt the astrolabe and its meaning, beginning the multiverse pivoted upon a Pythagorean divine fulcrum.

There was a way, being a child and the future wrapped warped and whisperful. The toy that wore a mask; hamlets helmet spectre, sceptre swords thrust. Then the poison in the early-departed dearly departed ear, we knowledgeable see shakescenes unkind nature staged before us. An ultrasound of the fully formed 5 or foot fetus centre stage in Galen's theatre.

“I murdered my kid” the mother and father foundations of guilt, death-givers, killers.

But the constellation of child soldiers chained by the secret police to harvest the prison camp crops contains more dark energy and matter fungal clusters than we can counterpoint.

The murderous guards we understand, they cant destroy anything with their tattooing zeal the zyklon b shower rooms, merely releasing, unleashing the fungal spores, the painted ladies wings wasp infested.

The death-givers precipitous drop of blood infuses our being with supernumerous returns, fluxes and refluxions beyond words. Unspeakableness ensues.

Coda 5

who are they the transients, the poor pululating pupated puppeteers dancing on the screens of the desolate mined landscape, delicately poised throwing the clay of being into an urn painted with the future passed by They fly. Pablo's Pierre pierrots.. Located in poverties grip, painted ladies dancing fragileness in the desolation of apocalyptic landscape foreshadowed. The atomic wind takes the bodies and throws them high or vapourises them to tearful mistiness unspeakably there in a guilt ridden constellation of consciousness. Suns sparked fusing gases that became tears for the gefallenen. These tumblers the death-givers of paradise rising and falling by the hourglass tide. At a distance we are mesmerised, neutered by numbed numberlessness, beyond hope. The sky floor-boarded, watercoursed to lightening the lodestone of electromagmetic lava, freezing the corpses corroboree in no time.

We became a black hole, our event horizons entwined milky way and Andromeda evolved from spiralling to ellipsoid spinning our own webs of unforgivable intrigue. The jugglers jugular opened pouring forth a strangeness of staggering starryness.

Leaping lunging, rolling the balls of our feet balancing as atlas did to the tambour music of the spheres. We hold the whole on a carpeted magical spell speculative.

Glistening costumes clingingly reveal gossamer fragility, frail fortunes misspent alcohol fuelled vacuo..pastis past is pissed.

The poverty of the momentous leaping stilled under the painted ladies handkerchief, fluttering in the eternal wind-fallen unhinged boulevard's desolation. We sat on the wooden bench in the urine stinking bar. She was naked under her thin chemise. We had just descended from my garret where my paint hung wet on the canvas after capturing her even as I had entered her. A few sous in her pouch she skeletal, baby on her breast taking sips of her as she did of the aniseed poison. As I had of her, I had her on my mind and body. The cluttered room darkly quiet waiting for the return of her troupe from the ragged tumbling Parisian urban decay to obliviate themselves in pissed soaked drunkenness. The gruel they consumed was of little help. Their deaths were written in the suckling sounds of the babies efforts to find sustenance in this dry eyed desert.

The group was flower like blooming In the street four more word swords cutting cutting to the quick. There was leading them an Augustus the strong bending the cheap poisoned pewter plates and sloughing his skin as age and poverty take his jizz, and bury half of him improvising his jazz, her blooming arms catching his ash tray remains. The forehead crenellations the crows nest eyes espy us sitting, he knows her then and smiles painfully handing her a pathetic poesy of dust to dust blooms whose soiled soil clings still to the rusty roots.

I was lost then in her floweriness the fragrance that the butterfly had sought soulfully in us and found me wanting. But she was eternally in her Titania bower; my asses cuckold ears a testament to the praiseworthiness of her suckling pig beatitude. Picasso had been there. So had we, me and Rainer, poets, philosophers paralytic parasitically feeding fungi on the grey flesh.

The sky was then full of itself sudden roof hole shining, us exposed and total in the humanness of the huge canvas that dwarfed us all, sitting now in a Munich town house gloating at the belongingness inexorable. The trams clattered outside bells deafening, horse hooves crunched the cobbles and the air was rank with city stinks.

The smells of the shops the hatters Madame Lemorte or was it Lamour, I couldnae recall. Hope Crosby and Lemorte Lamour? The perfumiere was pungently aware dropping quantum energy into the air, flitting flickeringly instinctual painted ladies strutted their werewolfessness mercilessly. The oils dripped as I scraped the canvas overplastering the older sketches that x rays would reveal in New York a hundred years on, monochromed by the future. I touched her hand as it reached for the ashtrayed cheroot and she glanced demurely swiftly away flirtatiously flitting the fag mouthwards. She spoke softly to the sun of a neck and a nun whose once huge behind was perched precariousness the end of the bench. The smells of the paints pervaded me like the ingredients of rich odorous ladies of the night. I saw the scene as I sipped the aniseed laden liquor feeling the laudanum that I had swigged earlier working in tandem with the poetic elegy that flowed slow about me still. The mind of the Prague boy in dress uniform fearful of the draft, drifting into Switzerland and a peaceful cuckoo clock stupor swam about me. But that was notoriously not the rhymeless rhythmic dynamic that now drove me, the words once translated were wolfessness lost, floundering in shallow water as sharkbiteshock rendered me bloodily tranquil, the salty brine washing me clean, sting ray certain, lashing rain started to fall, dripping drowsily through the perforated colander ceiling.

The acrobats were not unduly affected and retained their elegance in the newly sodden sawdusted stench moving as if they had on the flying carpeted dirt floored stage they had so forlornly forsaken with so little reward. Their empty pockets, so empty they rattled, deathly. The few coins that had purchased their lives so cheaply tossed into their fated fountain of no return, Trevial? But they were also still afloat, the eyes full of the life that these few sou had given them. The tavern owner would feed them for a show or two, poverty they shared in the thralldom of slaveborn surety. The seasons they lived so closely to became a pet of their make-up, ash white lead, blood red rouge rendered them eternal, feeling the wordless planet move without and within them. The canvas that I spat their lives upon revealed this. They were undimmable, nothing to lose; the couloir a choir of heavenly creatures, shining slick sweaty cloyed sexually sensational. The formulaic squares where they performed were full of passers by whose totality could not be thus questioned. They were numbered amongst the stars, constellations of hope entertained by the ragamuffin troubadours in dancing square after square exponentially unstoppingly expanding . Each show the same show; rain or shine, in rags or Sunday bespangled best. All there on the rug spread multidimensional; all knowing ignorant, that dark energy dragged us kicking from a childhood that was unmolested by an ever expanding fantastical future by just being there attracted distracted. Fusion and fission fired..

Coda 6

Walking near the regimented olive grove, ruhiger, the sun beat down Grecian urn potent, there we came upon it carved heart butterfly, resting on a low branch.

Fruition figlike fomented my eye, her painted vagina opened powered by osmosis and photosynthesis, pulsating red licked sweetly to heroic Eros's recipe bringing the rapture of rupture. The trees fingers pointed to the sky directing us to the threshold of being. I held your body against the bark post posiedons sinking, Scylla Charybdis, Coriolis close we joined, rock and rolled.

It was a mountaintop experience clingingly the white body endured the unattainable height a box of unused swan vestas lighting the candle of our desire. Why? Because it was there. We shared our moment even as you bore me and I bore you. I slid down you avalanched by the need that drove me to attempt this conquest. From the heroic trenches this desire had emerged, the whistle blew and I cocked and rose over the parapet hot lead flowed about me. How none of it penetrated me I don't know. Barbed wire tore at my flesh. A loop wrapped biblically about my new testament head. A beard had suddenly appeared. I bore the cross by trying to climb on top of you glacial love of my life. And you thrust me off just as we had reached the peak, I clung fingernails clutching to you whiting out-flowed as my arse holed by time was watched by newer heroes, born of my fall. Of our fall. there, heroically, clingingly was the downcoming tree. Caspar David's Oedipal creation alone on the slope, the eagle and asp in hand out going across a glacial bridge of death. Dasien. Dionysian recurrence recrudescent, concupiscent, crepuscular.

On the isolated slope a dendritic digit fingered a single fig, powered by the ground state of a non existent sun, me and my painted lady entwined eternally. Then the ground gave way swirling toward the deep fjords depths, sinking, slipping and sliding, gurgling sea engorging itself on land; a slurpingly salacious satisfaction, swallowing wallowingly. The fjord burped and farted, sated?

That was the joke of partiality. Wholly I was lost on you, lost in you, without you within you. Each brushstroke a testament to the teasing traitor, time. We both laughed then, we were come to the same point in the story where something significant was 'bout to happen. We hung on to this precipitous moment held by the will of a fingernail holographic cliff-face, ready to plummet. Both on the edge, at the gates of ecstasy. The sea onrushing as the land slipped oceanward.

The depths we delved then were untenable, prosperos painted children coming to life as wombwards we were unborn. We walked then in the alabastered chamber of your garden. Edenward we wander-lustful came together. Your words tenuously traced the universe swerving between plain planes of existence hand in hand, your butterflied being enhanced by the strokes of fortune and pain the had painted your poems into fantastical freehands of fate. Your pale face stared at me as we turned into an amorous arbour. Your dead respectable breasts, nipples hardened as temptress eyes still sensually time cheatingly lip lickingly luscious. The sky agonised over your tremulous tenacity, the words wretched stretched parchment like on the wrack of time. The shadows dark highlighted your paleness more, your eyes brightly outlined the meaning of the figs that we consumed slowly juice flowingly upon the hyacinth tresselated love seat where we again made photosynthetic osmotic self-creation ours, thrustingly.

You were wolfless aware in your fluttering fulsomeness, you had been here many times before with many others manifesting your joinedness with the prequantum reality of your silky sallow skin, echoic in a chamber of maiden thought that bore us to to a threshold that overarching whisked us away making more hay than any words could say...nonny nay..

“I say” you intoned, surprised but notoriously not.

The fingering of the black and white keys to unlock the mysteries. Of your hand and bow stroking the strings of reality. Shaking then stopping the organ's slow movement. My tears upon the parchment of your soul.

Whole.

I curl up in the comfort swirl of your blanket warmth, in the drawer of desire. The lies that hide in the words opened to multisided serenity.

Heroic of course I am: Samson, hairlessly hairy in Gaza, my pillar of salt elapsing even as is spurts forth.

“I desire you as my heroism desires me. Worshipful you smile at my bald head upon a platter”

The crowd aroused us. We heard the sex in the room above and we fell into each others arms, “recrudescently concupiscently crepuscular?” I hear you ask. Laughter in the dark, matter over mind?

“Come again”

Coda 7

“Ready to walk Rainer?”

Peripatetic precarious pre-priapatic words allowing potion potent painful to Hyde. Seduced by the universe. Wooing wowing. Throw the die. Tie dye. Let the photons go, floweriness fractaled menger sponge sucks up, into zero volume of infinite area emergent.

Was ready to walk with you again Rainer? Your words allowing me potion potent painful to Hyde the explosions started in my heat. A frozen song of a blitzkrieged lass sowing seeds of dirtress unconsolable uncertainty uncollapsing. Doubt notoriously the instinctual instability of humanity. Each leaf falling a missile that kills and cures. Pharmakon. The palm of peace concreteness that takes without givingness. The fig opens the wounds of many. The fecund orifices of redly succulent death-givers.

Your words are enough lover, to save me. To kill me. Sweetly with diplomatic word swords.

Sleeping hearing the music of the night. Curfew. Cur few. Dogsome. The cruising death-givers arrive in the cacophony of curfew. Visiting the end. Our bodies destroying by sleeping as dropping off destiny defies endlessness. The small songs kill us all, the composers of the death music talk shit and we die. The putrescent tune music of the tears. Its our song. We dance limbs unlocked and bloody. Sleeping we knew nothing of the hit that played us to eternity. That raped us, shell like shoved us into a crater rubble filled synthesized sound seized the moment. You crane your neck. It is cut off. Stuck out too far. In sleeping nodding off. Sodding off. The leaves of the foreshadowed forest found us chopped up and ready to mass gave burn. The trinity tossed our lives interconnectedness foetal formed. No way.

Praiseworthiness of the praiseworthy.

The music of the all clears. Sirens sooth our blood soaked passages to futures Passchendaele. Entrenched meaning. Rat infested hole our home. Shake his parapetted hand. Sudden sodden. The body evacuating it self-creation. Relief bas. We applaud our epitaph. What a laugh, an eyed human skin shade.

There warning us, the dead canary in the bottom of the cage. The Davey light extinguished, exhausted, shell sucked us dry. In the darkness of au fond de la mine by Nobels fine product illumined is your Eckleberg hoarding, signifier signified.

Hand outstretched to be shakescened notoriously stirred. The silent traffic in the sunset sky seduces me again. An advertising slogan for the planet. Make it gang-greener. The stench cut off in the pile beside the hacksaw surgeons table. That is the vision that we elastoplast over with complacent zeal panicking. But butterflied we can shed crypto-blue-eyed tears to clean the sullied feet of transgressors all who haunt themselves and us to precarious prematurity.

It is our choice. See it in the crypto-blue-eyed you would cry 2 if it happened to you singers. It is our sonambulance song as we dance with the camel through the needles eye.

Chartres was in your eye as you tried to fingernail find yourself Rainer. I was there with you in the Munich streets that shone in the evening showers as the trams sparked along the thronged avenues. Then the Swiss mountains where walks and clean rains washed your soulless soul for the ungodly angel's present prescience.

Yes your sexual prowess moved the Rodin in you to erect ejaculation elation. The angel satisfied you too, though you were not sure if the angel could come too.

You opened your handkerchief to wipe, to come clean. It was empty, full of enmity, espousing eternity of that angel's wind-fallen wing.

Did it hear your advertising slogan?

By two get on free. No fare is enough to pay, no return either. The womb to the tomb tour. Wait for it.

These grand tourists inhabit the hinterland of greed where totalitarianism is ignored, is actively encouraged; if it enriches the rich and impoverishes to pauperisation the poor.

The tourists reap the harvest of death-givers that they devoutly wish foreshadowed for gefallenen all.

Coda 8

Feel the words wordlessly flower flowing rewolf:

“welcome to the reel world”

“Spool”

Mind blowing disappeared disconnected inviolable invisibility of multiplicity. The eyes are open: hydra all seeing being. All eyes open themselves interconnectedness in the open. Multi-faceted eyes of the painted lady cry too:

”True blue ocean of mindless maternally mountaintop mounted tears. Uncounted concreteness counterpoint ordinally ocularly ordained.” Play wordlessly “I'm game”.

The animal-likeness emerges as godhead-idle idolatry ensues.

“You can't keep a good man downcoming” the tightrope walkers tale, told by a snake and an eagle: tongue flicking, feathers flying.

They contradiction contained and exclaimed.

”we slither and slide grandiloquently glide; we are the glistening spectres of the astrological sphere. As Hermaphrodites we appear to give birth to ourselves; succours succubus' inner incubus”

“one born every minute”

Seeing the seething movements in the street in the queues foreshadowing food. The solitary figure in the corner. The unemptied bins. The car exuding microcellular crap. Take a lungfishful.

Crawling gasping from a primordial sea of pollution the motes in the eye of the cosmos, small-floweredness self pollinating empty poseurs gone as soon as framed by us all. The conners conned.

“Welcome to the newsreal world” butterflied in you-would-cry-2-ness. The small tweet the shuffling feet. Fast foodness fondly fattens us for slaughter.

See it in masked eyed enmity. Ibiza bound. Nepenthe pharmakon of the white island's fauna falling... falling....

You Noah speaks

“Eunioa”

Espousing wife and animal-like we look at our own double-opened death-given moments. Becoming crypto-blue-eyed seeing our childhood shrink to nothing as our furtive future grows to every thing via the osmosis of tidal Hamiltonian forces, driven from ebb to napes and tatties flowing. Diana knows. Her white skin glowing in the afterglow of afterbirth.

“Eat up, it's good for you-would-cry too boo hoo” terror Tories exclaim, frightening the animals they are themselves. In the mirror they narcissistically give nothing coming from nothing on the empty eyeless in Gaza beach they beseech blindly.

The rhizome aboressence keeps our growth uncontained, Noam is close:

“Dendritic streams of thought tree bien?”

Gilles and his maternally mass disturbation mate are nodding by shaking their heads.

“oui et non interconnectedness interdit, right up our street.”

in the crypt crypto-blue-eyed hand searching for the burst artery their eyes meet and the boys last drop spurts. Walkabout ensues, the blood on the bus, the young bums in the teeming streets strangeness awaken the spectral traces as cluster bombs fall, a turban clad idiot grins stupidly, smugly, snug in his own empty snappy happy nappy backdrop, a pantomime idiot's perambulations. I smile, tear stained face falling falling....seeing the horses rear appear.

She was awake her healing hands a creol traiteur's gift; hermaphrodites handkerchief now torn from her headlessly, binding wounds, binding loops, spool life spoil spilling...Eugene's Eugenides at war.

The blindness that we all are, that everything is, soon gone sooner forgotten, seen only by the entirety that is usnotus menotme: the poetry that is undelineated multiverse uninformed, uniformed.

The child dead on the bed tells us this tale. We all know it laying wreaths of fear about the grief that is not theirs but ours. Those who are left in their morning clothes. Dank and dirty in the moist London smug smog. Still suffocating our smallness. Which we can celebrate it is minute man's monument, reflected in the vultures eye as we become carrion of our own make. Self consuming small-flowered graves will not suffice to bury the remains of what was never really here. Just a wasted word or two in the epitaph of mankind. Rot In Pieces.

And unmonitored the inverse will with meandering starryness enjoy our finity, now it it is gone. Swan song gone. Animal of death, free from death.

Coda 9

Unfettered by dailyman I stand tiptoe hill topped streaming a freehand sketch ketch floating aimless oceanic in the midnight garden free rooted dream tree Iggle Piggle and me sleeepeee...

Awaking from blissfulness, I see the scuttling crab like daily rule of small self-deceiving liars whose petty beanocomic egocentric irritable reason driven splitting blinds us, masking the big issues: atishoo, atishoo we all fall downtrodden...where are the tissues?

The early-departed started. Why have to be human shimmering in polarisations multicided melancholia? Like the smile in the wind-fallen gefallenen branchless bayleaf. Felled fell flower rewolfed crown of thorns mimicking breeze blown lamentable cheshire cat laughing laurel. Nestling negative capability comforts the read reader, lit au lit. Once only once and never again, invisible arising inevitable liar lying on Freudian counterpoint couch, Kant be erased, dazzled dazed. Take your medicine, wear your mask Pan, demic daemon. Shunning the fatally rational random, but desiring its underbelly softness, its caressingly close demise. Devise, device. Once just once its deterrestialised uncancellableness unwholesome unheimlich-kite in f-f-f-light untergang, ubergang, supercomposer's eagle and asp down coming tightrope tripping tragically, strangenesses contradiction contorted consorted, necking in the decking. Happiness pre-priapetically prescripted, postscripted preforms preconciously a small-flowered smile thanksgivingly failed harvest festival donation. Give and not to count dracula the 10 billion light year distant natally cosmic counted canine costed painted lady multicoloured prebirthing in my bewebbed blue lit bed. Chest of draws becottted, a beautifully blanketed manger sponge soaking up multiversal calm of vertrualiche tod thanateros rain driven? Daddy mummy me.

Then all roads leading to; do as they do Rome and Thebes on the ropes and pottery were handmaiden intervined, so in sweven sexually woven tension preserved. Their lies unseen by the infinite, things only for our finite futurelessness; finding that painted ladies divine hymenoptra RNA heartbeat spellbinding.

The blood that one springtime earth shed enough to eternally sate me, leave me lying in stateless paradise.

And my fami-liar following before me is Death, my pecu-liar pen pal transcendental, translational superposer of life. This mulifaced reality stands dark cloaked, scythe in skeletal hand pointing poutingly womb-tomb wards. I smile wearing a welcoming liars lair stare starry-eyed with sated satisfaction we shake on it. Kin on kin.

See still I live. On what? My Superpostioned lying death wish donated heart swells as if to volcanically vitally mushroom multivariously.

Coda 10

Egypt caught clingingly evercartouched, tin trumpets sound in my karnak ear Memphis myth pyramided Cheopsward. Kings valley dug up by dead men. Rhamses' Pchent spent: Taras Shevchenko's ukrainian pain our pain.

The Great Prospero's last Seance

Work in Progress

short story updated 2023

Chapter I

I was sitting in my Virginia white wood slatted house after just talking to Melissa and Jack about what we would do about our recent discovery.

They had just left when there was a sound of many cars and sirens. I started from my chair.

“FBI!” The door was smashed in and was hit to the ground as I walked towards the front door. Three men sat on me, crushing the air from my body. They lifted me to my feet and one frisked me while the other two almost pulled my arms from their sockets. I screamed in pain.

“Shut up you fucking terrorist”

“You’re under arrest for murder of Police Chief John Dough,” The cop grabbed my neck and read me my rights.

The man was wearing a swat uniform, black and foreboding, my heart beat so hard I thought it would explode. One of the men roughly put cuffs on me and I was handed to a couple of local cops, men I had known since childhood,

“What’s happening, why are you doing this Chuck?”

My uniformed school friend looked disdainfully at me.

“You know very well you son of a bitch” and he shoved me like a sack of corn into the rear seat of a cop car, but not until he had given me a good smack across the back of the head.

I did not come to for a while, when I did I found myself alone in a small cell, I started to feel my body which was a mass of pain, but it did not show in anyway. Their beating had been very careful, done with some skill, I thought. I realised then that It was the end of the beginning for me: a period of amazing growth of awareness and adventure that had started when I decided to visit my dying father.

“You haven’t visited me for 10 years, why come back now” he complained when he opened the door of his sheltered accommodation to me. He was sat in a wheelchair with a drip feeding into his arm, looking up at me with a mixture of disdain and amusement. There was a glint in his eye that belied his illness. He was a lot thinner than when I saw him last month. The huge 6 foot three soldier and sportsman reduced to a skeleton. There was still a yellow mark on his smoking fingers and the odour of cheap roll up tobacco smoke on him was unmistakeable.

“I’m nearly dead, what’s the point of it.” He shook his head as he spoke, much as he had when admonishing me as a kid. I smiled.

“Aww dad, you know that’s not true I’ve been down at least every few months, not like Frank junior”. I had a brother who had not visited at all. I thought dad’s mind may be going, but the glint in his eye said otherwise. He knew who I, who he was.

“You only stay a few hours, you know its lonesome without your Mum. Your brother is too busy with High Finance to visit you know, otherwise he would have been down far more often” I could tell he was getting into his stride now.

“Aren’t you going to invite me in dad?” it was a lovely autumn Virginia morning, “Baby It’s cold outside” I intoned. It was his turn to smile, he did so broadly. He reversed his wheelchair and the drip trolley carefully, and gestured me in with a flourish of his arm that nearly pulled out the catheter. He winced and I laughed.

“Have a care for your old man” he laughed raspingly and smacked me weakly on the ass as I walked into the small residence, which was spotlessly clean.

He was right about the brevity of my visits, which I felt guilty about.

“Are you still doing that madcap stuff on TV?” he asked.

“I’m thinking about quitting Dad”

“I bet it’s something to do with that woman of yours?” he said tuning into my thoughts, I turned back and looked enquiringly at him. “I warned you about her. I told she was a gold digger, but you wouldn’t listen. Mr smart arse you were, you are.” I shrugged, he was right, he knew all along but I thought I was in love and I wouldn’t couldn’t listen.

“She cleaned me out Pop, she’s got really good lawyers behind her, and I thought I could do it on my own”

“Yeah I saw it in the papers, we still have them here you know. I wouldn’t trust that internet news of yours anyway” He was trying to make light of the whole thing for me, “Don’t be so bitter son, it’s good that you’re here, you can maybe think about making a new start, do something with your education, you are a doctor after all.”

“I was always proud of your PHD. How you got to be a magician after being a neuroscientist I’ll never fathom.” He had never admitted to being proud before. Maybe things were changing for the better. I certainly felt better.

“I told you Dad, that it’s all to do with the ability to create Holographs using the brain. It’s easier to make the holograph appear and disappear than anything real, because it’s not there in the first place.” I gestured, “there’s loads more money in magic too, especially when you create magical scenes from history, but that’s history” Trying to make light of it.

We stood in the hallway, he smacked me playfully again and pointed to the small dining room. This time it reminded me of not so playful smacks that I had from him when he was the worse for drink.

But he had given up many a year ago and though memories were painful I knew his upbringing in a hard drinking Irish family had left him with many scars. We had shared many an evening since I got back in contact with him a few years back and talked it through.

“Let’s have a cup of coffee son. You know my mind goes blank when you start getting all smart arse technical on me”. We walked into the room and the first thing that my caught my eye was the huge illustration of the Battle of Fredericksburg that had been on our lounge wall at home and was now here. The impact it had on my imagination was always a shock to me, I felt like a soldier going to the slaughter.

The next morning I took Dad for a tour of the town in his electric wheelchair. He dressed himself in an immaculate white suit and a fedora. So he was like an old cotton plantation owner surveying his estate as we moved around the town.

“That’s where the confederates shot a whole squad of “pillagers” after the battle. They had been hiding in that church.” The firing squad was Irish and those they killed were New York Irish.

“They were following Stonewall Jackson’s orders, because when he was asked what should be done with them he had said, “Kill ‘em, Kill ‘em all”.” He seemed to know many small details that didn’t appear in history books. It was like he had some source unavailable to the academics.

As we went about the town as directed by my Dad, we met no one on foot, though many a car would sound their horn and wave, and many a:

“Hi Frank, how’s it going?” greeting would be made by people from their rocking chair verandas.

After sometime, when we were near the Railway station, a cop car came up and drew up alongside us. We stopped.

“How’s it going guys” The window wound down and a smiling face looked out on them.

“Hi Chuck” I said recognising him immediately, “Dad this is Chuck, I was at High school with him, remember, he was quarter back on the team. The cop nodded at my dad.

Chuck looked at me with interest.

“I like your TV séance show spectaculars” he said, “My kids and wife would love to see one, any chance of some tickets?” He said conspiratorially. Before I could answer my Dad piped up.

“I wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire” he spat.

“I remember you chuck, Yeah I remember you well,” Dad said in a voice tinged with deep wrath. “Wasn’t it you and your pals who put Frank junior in the Mary Washington hospital that time?” I glanced at Dad and remembered the beating they had given him. It was dangerous to be gay in a town like this.

“Yeah I guess, I’d forgotten that.” I said and looked balefully at the cop who had stopped smiling as soon as Dad spoke and turned and grunted to his partner with a thumb point over his shoulder at us

“weirdos.” He said just loud enough for us to hear. His partner, who I also knew, looked across and nodded.

The cop said clearly: “He got what he deserved, queer fucker. You watch that tongue of yours old man, it may get you into trouble one day.” With a cynical nod to his partner he wound up the window and drove away.

“You didn’t have to be so short with the guy” I said, always the diplomat.

“He’s a complete jerk off, and you know it” I thought for a while and said

“Yeah I guess he was one of the most arrogant sons of bitches at school”

“That’s right, He and his gang nearly killed Frank Junior. That punk only came over to talk to you ‘cause you’re a famous star on the TV now. Most regular people in this town know to leave you alone when your home.”

I nodded and we tried to shake off this encounter by breathing in the fresh autumnal new world symphony air.

The City was beautiful in the Virginia fall weather, the trees were multi-coloured the lawns vivid green and carpet like, the houses pastel shaded, wooden slatted, raised high on verandas like old southern mansions on a small scale. Even the shabbier ones looked quaint and attractive. We would call in and chat to the people Dad knew, and he knew a lot. So it took us at least two or three hours to complete what should have been a half hour walk. We soon forgot Chuck.

Dad stopped me by a larger residence where an old lady dressed in elegant southern dress, straight out of “Gone with the Wind” stood and shouted a greeting.

“That’s Nanny Haskins”, he said waving back. “Her ancestor was a famous civil war nurse”. She waved to us with all her ancient willow wand of a body. There was something more going on there I thought. Dad had a reputation for being a philanderer, and did not deny it. Dad tipped his equally elegant white fedora to her in a way that I found intriguing. We walked up to her place and she came down the steps with a delicate assurance, she was some years younger than my Dad.

“Good Day young men” she said and Dad doffed his fedora again and I without thinking bowed at the hips. She acknowledged each of us with an elegant nod.

“Hi Nanny, you know who this is.” She nodded. “You’re the Great Prospero aren’t you?” The name used here embarrassed me, theatrical as it was, every one knew me by my magic name.

“Yes, that’s me, Hi Miss.” She looked me over carefully.

“You take after your mother you know. You have her eyes and the look of an Old Virginia gentleman”. I was flattered. “Not like this Joshua Chamberlain moustachioed Bowery boy” Dad smiled shyly.

“I used to be a student of your Mother’s you know. She was one of the first woman History Professors at the University. Boy was she good, knew history so well she could teach it to us like we were there.”

“Everyone went to her lectures, even those who were not learning History.”

“It was a shame she died so young, she was a great loss to us all.” She spoke with a sadness that I could sympathise deeply with.

“It’s a pity she was buried so far away.” She said, Dad nodded.

“That was her father, he wanted her to buried in the Family Plot in Richmond” you could hear the hackles rising, this was an old still open wound. Nanny realised that she had ventured too far.

“I’m sorry Frank, don’t get riled. I know how much you miss having her around.” He looked abashed, this woman calmed him in a way that Mum had. There was obviously more going on between these two than friendship.

“I think you two had better go now, I need my beauty sleep”. She came over and kissed dad on the cheek, whispering something in his ear as she did so. And shook my hand.

“Its good to see you Prospero, your Dad values your visits more than you realise.”

Dad doffed his hat again and left.

We continued our perambulation, “You seem to be quite close to Nanny” He ignored me and drove on, pointing out various war sites that none but he knew about.

My suspicions were I was sure not groundless. He had spoken to me of what he called his “wicked” ways on a previous visit.

“I was not good to your mum son. I had a wandering eye and when I had a few inside me I wouldn’t hesitate, given the chance,” He was a good looking hunk of a man when he was young, so I wasn’t surprised by this. I also felt prone to being wayward, but because I didn’t drink, and I was no way near as good looking as my Dad, I was never really tempted to carry through on my prick driven fantasies.

I never really noticed it when we was young, mom who had married beneath her station, never made any comment except when she caught him beating us.

“Frank…” she would say, “I know why, you know why, don’t do it. Away with you”. Dad would turn like a wild animal caught in a headlight and slink away to sleep it off. He never raised a hand to her even when he was drunk, it was as if she had some kind of deep control over him. It was tragic she died so young.

We eventually arrived at our destination the sunken road Tourist Centre.

“Up and at ‘em” He shouted pretending to be a soldier from an Irish New York battalion rushing up the hill to the sunken road. We had always done this when we were kids, Dad me and Frank Junior, at weekends, rushing up the hill with us falling over after being shot by the six nation men who haunted the wall above us.

He started up the steep part of the hill at the highest speed the chair could reach, he sat in the chair like a kid in a push chair trying to make the thing go up this slope. But it could not make it.

“Shit son give me a push, this dang machine won’t make it” He was right, it started going backwards. I rushed up and took the handles.

“Faster, Faster, you son of a bitch” he shouted “faster!” he exhorted and I had to push him and the heavy chair hard up the steeper slope, I was wheezing hard, trying to catch my breath, and I was fit, my magic shows required a lot of physical effort, which I employed a personal trainer for.

Clearly his fascination with the American civil war had not dimmed over the years, it may have deepened in intensity, I wondered why.

It was a blessing when we got up the hill to the gift shop cum museum. I stood catching my breath Dad managed to get the wheelchair in motion, and propel himself inside, where he manipulated the chair skilfully around the nick knacks and battlefield paraphernalia that sat in a junk shop way around the place. The owner was an antique of a local man who had made another sort of killing from the battle when he astutely bought this small part of history for tourist purposes.

I followed Dad in when I had recovered and saw him turn to the owner, who had just come from a back room.

“Hi Lee!” He said in a mock southern drawl, and this did not amuse the proprietor, with his precarious ginger mop of a wig wobbling, in the least.

“Frank I told you not to use that tone with me” Dad winked at me and did some more,

“What happened at Appomattox court house?” The man cringed in sullen disbelief,

“You know Frank, Lee surrendered to Grant.” Lee said with a sigh.

“Why do you always bring this up, you Yankee scum?” Lee said, My Dad replied

“”Because it’s always worth it” The man was fully aware of Dad’s Irish humour and played along with the obviously well-worn script and just said:

“Fuck you Yankee, Get out!” as we passed over the threshold he held the door and spoke with a smile of affection in his voice. “See you tomorrow Frank, you two have a good day”

Across the road from the Museum was the beginning of the preserved sunken road, the stonewall, from which so much death was dealt from on that day in 1862, still pock marked by bullet and shell holes from the civil war battle. We went slowly over to the carefully tended memorial and felt the atmosphere sink into us, feeling the eerie silences that often descended here. Even the trees seemed to stop breathing.

“Listen” Dad would say. “That silence is the sound of the gunfire and deaths of 20,000 men and boys. They never counted the civilians who died in the street fighting.”

Dad had brought me here often as a child and described the history so well I could always picture battle scene as if I was there. I could hear his voice as if commentating live:

“The union troops marched up the hill as if they were on parade, across the old fairground with no protection at all. They came on up Marye’s Heights and their bodies were ripped apart by the cannon balls and horribly mutilated by the soft lead bullets of the rag bag confederate Georgian farm boys who stood in ranks sheltered behind the wall of the sunken road.”

“Son, Lee and his generals had known of the Federal army’s major general Burnside’s approach for over a week as he had to wait for pontoon bridges to arrive to cross the Rappahannock.”

“Just along there 3000 Irish Georgians stood rank upon rank in their strong position, not believing the stupidity of the union army generals as they ordered the Irish New Yorkers attack. The Georgians could not help but slaughter their kinsfolk from New York, cheering drunkenly their equally inebriated northern brethren’s bravery as their rifle fire felled line upon line of the blue uniformed enemy.”

“It was Robert E Lee’s first great victory in the war, made his reputation” Dad shook his head, “And it was all based on the rank stupidity of a General’s trying to impress Abe Lincoln with his attack mindedness”

I glanced over to the wall just yards away.

The road alongside which the wall is built is now part of a tourist pathway. This passes through a beautifully manicured Virginia park with grass and trees rooted in the fertile bone meal of the battlefield abattoir. The park contains a 100 metre chunk of the sunken road and protecting wall together with shell holed Cottage that is still standing from the date of the battle. Above the path wound up Marye’s Heights which gave panorama of the field and here is situated the well-tended battle graveyard and a couple of 19th century cannon permanently posing for the cameras.

“It’s getting hot Dad let’s move on.” The autumnal sun was reaching its zenith.

We went down from the memorial and into the Tourist centre, where dad exchanged pleasantries with the volunteer Tour guides. They knew Dad and were clearly intimidated by this “expert” in their midst. They were perfectly aware dad knew far more than them about the battle.

“Hello Frank”, the eldest guy said in a drawl. It’s nice to see you again.”

“Have you dug up any new information recently?” The guy, who was dressed in tweeds asked.

“Yes I have actually, Prof. I’ll get back to you when it’s fully documented.”

I could see the two men look askance at one other.

“As you wish Frank.”

“We’ll just look around for a bit if that’s Okay Prof?” The tweed man nodded. There was a huge circular three-d model in the middle of the room which showed the extended front which was several miles long. We looked at this for a while and some of the exhibits as well.

“I’m getting hungry son” Dad said, “Let’s go eat.” The men looked relieved and ushered us out enthusiastically.

“See you Later Prof.” Dad remarked, “I’ll bring the new stuff over when I’ve crossed checked some other sources.”

“He’s an emeritus professor in history up at Mary Washington University. He’s written a couple of books about the battle. Mostly based on interviews with me. I’m never cited though.” He seemed amused by this the subservience of these academics, who I knew from college days, he did not have much truck with.

We went over a small road to a row of trees. Benches were set by the trees between the Tour Centre, the Shop and the inevitable car park. There were more people walking here than I had seen all morning. In front of the benches a 12ft by 8ft notice board cum hording stood. It had a large map of the site, some description of the battle and a large contemporary image of the battle was prominently displayed. I knew this picture well as it always been on the Lounge wall, and now adorned the dining room wall of his new home.

We sat on one of the benches to eat our lunch.

“We’ve got a pack lunch of cold chicken and salad, with a thermos of the hot thick black coffee just as you like it Dad.” I knew he would want to consume this southern feast here.

It was a scene that again drew me back to my childhood.

When I was young I sat on this same bench and when the sun was high I saw their faces on a tree trunk,

“Look Frank, can you see the soldier’s faces?” a few small circular images had formed on the tree trunks as the dappled light shone through the leaves of the trees.

“Yeah bro, I see ‘em. Them trees is haunted by the souls of the rotten bodies of the Yankees” These trees whose roots delved deep into the mass graves of the many who died.

“Dad, are the tree’s haunted?” I asked, Dad looked at the contorted shapes on the trees as they appeared and disappeared with the random movement of the light through the leaves.

“It’s a dance of death son.” He continued “A dance of bad Death”

“What’s a bad death Dad?”

“It’s when the living relatives can’t say goodbye to their loved one son.” He made a sweeping gesture with his arm.

“All the guys killed here were either buried in huge pits where they fell or in mass graves up on the hill there, there are no graves that their relatives can visit and say goodbye to their dead loved one.”

“They can’t go and see their lost relatives like we do with Mom?”

“That’s right son. There’s at best a cross with the regiment’s name for 5 to 20 buried. That’s up in the cemetery, only a few hundred of the thousands killed are up there. The rest are under our feet” I could see the faces in the trees in a new light. I was sure they were talking.

Dad’s present voice interjected and brought me back to the here and now from my childhood reverie. I was still looking at the projected faces 40 years later. Dad looked at me knowing what was going through my mind.

“This is where my great grandfather and your great great grandfather Frank fought and was nearly killed.” Dad suddenly announced. I hadn’t heard about this this before. I was taken aback.

“Why the hell haven’t you mentioned it before dad?”

“It’s because I only found out the other day, two days ago to be exact.”

“How did that happen?”

“Well you know the old gal we talked to earlier this morning” my curiosity was now well piqued.

“Yeah, Nanny Gaskins or something,”

“Haskins, don’t you ever listen?”

“Yeah okay, whatever, go on.”

“Well I have got to know her quite well recently.”

I remembered the suspicions the conversation had aroused in me.

“Yes I understand, you don’t have to stand on ceremony with me Dad.” He was playing me like a fish, and enjoying it. I was itching to know what he had found out about our New York ancestry, most of which I knew of was unsavoury to say the least.

“Go on dad, Pleeeese.”

“Well as I said her great grandmother was a nurse right here and she tended the Yankees as well as the confederates.”

“Yes, go on.”

“Well it turns out that she kept a diary with her most intimate secrets in it, and one of them was a dalliance she had with a Yankee from New York, an Irish lad.”

“What!” I exclaimed, he looked gleefully at me.

“To be honest me and Nanny been good friends for many years”

“I could tell there was something going on between you two”

“Really” he said trying to sound innocent still playing the bait in front of me.

“Stop fucking around dad, spill the beans.”

“Well…..”

“Come on..”

“The diary came to light when Nanny was cleaning out her attic the other day. It had his name and his address in the Bowery in New York, his real name and address that is. He signed up under a bogus name because he was on the run from the Law.” This was edge of the seat stuff.

“She also had his false name as well so I was able to look up his record in the war.”

“What a small world” I remarked and dad continued

“She was called Nanny too, and he was called Frank” this was unbelievable.

“Nanny called me straight away when she had read it and came round and she showed me the diary.”

“She was overcome with emotion and lurrrst”

“Daaad, I’m not interested in the sex just the war.”

“I copied out all the days relating to her hunky Irishman and his nurse. It turned out that she kept him hid until he was ready to travel. He made it back to the union lines with no problem.”

“Aaaaand..”

“He was with the union army for the rest of the war, and survived all the carnage of Grant’s campaign against Lee and was actually at Appomattox court house when the surrender was signed, he was promoted to an officer too”

“That explains his disappearance for all those years.” I said. No trace of Great grandfather Frank could be found in the records post 1861, though the fortunes of my Bowery House ancestors had improved during these years with them ending up living in the 1890’s in Washington square.

We had thought he may have died in the war or in a street brawl, both equally likely possibilities. But this was something else.

“Come on Dad, there more isn’t there?” he smiled playing me again,

“Cheeky old bugger, get on with it!”

“The liaison between Nanny and Frank did not stop after the war He came back and stayed with Nanny,”

“No, you two don’t have the same great grandfather do you?”

“You guessed it”

“It’s not incest is it you two..?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care. We didn’t know about our relationship until the other day.” He continued smiling mischievously, “You don’t think I’m still at it do you?”

“I wouldn’t out it past you, you dirty old man!” He loved it and giggled as he picked up and munched noisily on a sandwich.

“By the way dad, I’ve decided to move back here for a while” It was his turn to be surprised, he stopped munching and looked over at me, I thought I detected a tear in his eye. I certainly had one in mine.

Chapter 2 

Dad told me about his favourite confederate General, Stonewall Jackson had said when asked by one of his confederate officers what could be done about the pillagers: “Kill ‘em, Kill ‘em all”. That seemed to be a feeling that pervaded many in the US today too. A tear came to my eye. Dad knew about my feeling for this place and touched my shoulder as I sobbed silently for a minute or so.

I wept at the eternal recurrence that echoed through history

“kill ‘em all”,

“Kill ‘em all”: I recited and Dad started to weep too.

We wept not just for the 15,000 Northerners and 3000 confederates perished and now lay under the housing that covered the old fairground and up on cemetery ridge. We wept for the civilians who died in the first place to witness street to street, door to door combat. We wept for all those who had shed their blood and were still doing so. The blood of violence was everywhere.

Dad had said that one of his favourite writers, Shelby Foote, had said that you could get a Masters by working out the number of handkerchiefs it would take to soak up the blood spilled in the civil war. Dad said that this was based on some stupid senator’s assertion early in the war that only one would be needed to do this.

I could thus since I was a child see the slaughter feel the pain and the vainglory of men in battle. I think it was this touch with the devastating mortality of battle that gave me a taste for things mystical and scientific. I was looking for answers. Perhaps where there were none, but it didn’t stop me trying to find them.

Chapter 3

It was thus I became interested in models of how the mind worked, why people would do such things to each other fascinated me. I excelled at mathematics at school and easily gained a scholarship to Harvard where computer science was a nascent subject, and “got in” as it were on the ground floor of Neuroscience. Using computers to model the brain. But when I was at college I became involved with more mystical Ideas as well, I had always had an interest in literature and this blossomed when at college as most of my girlfriends turned out to be literature students, who I went out with because their minds were full of ideas that expanded my vision, my desire to live in a world of the real and the imaginary which was dynamic and ever expanding. Poetry I saw had this kind of feel to it and sought out those who embraced it.

One of my earliest girlfriends introduced me to Emily Dickinson.

“You will like her” she said, “She’s a loner with an unbelievable imagination and brain, just like you” Of course my vanity and my curiosity were stimulated by her sexy words. And, Pamela or Pam, I think her name was, was not wrong. For Emily became my very favourite for some time because her poetry contained all sorts of imagery that I could relate to from truthful looks of agony to swinging arcs of light that reminded me of multi-hued galaxies gyrating endlessly through space-time.

I had an intense interest in Quantum mechanics from an early age too, and found the equations that others found hard easy to calculate, and the unsettled probabilistic nature of the universe was opened up to me, creating an oddly settled idea of a totally interconnected universe underlying all. Solving these equations was also a kind of mystical event for me, each time I did it, I had the feeling I was intensifying my quantum link with everything and everybody.

Thus both Schrödinger and Dickinson between them has sealed my relationship with spacetime, it was just up to me to work out what to do with this opportunity.

[college life] The beginning of the development of holograph production program, meeting the gold digger the neuroscientific discovery of a reverse eyepiece hard ware that would allow the projection of quantumly produced interference patterns in the mind, by de-cohereing them! Using collapsed observables like individual frames in a movie to produce a pseudo-coherent holographic image.

Chapter 4 

[the magic business] use the chunks of technical stuff from the séance business to outline the act by putting it in a show context, also bring in human interest by reference to protagonists relationship to the gold digger of the first chapter

Chapter 5 

the séance business

The career I followed was in magic, a false kind of response to the deep insights I had as a child. It was not until I had fully grasped the art of illusion via Pepper’s ghost and afterwards holographic magic. that I realised that was what all the world was about: illusion. I was fooling myself as well as my audiences. I couldn’t do it any more, good though I was: with my own TV show and massive spectaculars that earned me hundreds of thousands of dollars. My life seemed empty, the success and all that went with it was as false and illusory as my magic.

It was when I came to Pop’s funeral that I sat again in the battle field by the sour apple trees, the bang of the falling fruit thrown by the squirrels high in the trees sounding like shells bursting in my mind. The sun shining through the leaves projected shadows onto the gnarled trunks and revealing tortured faces, contorted in agonies of lord knows what wounds crying out the heedless world. Except I wasn’t heedless. I heard the voices, mixed and jumbled though they may be to the ear of a waking being, they were deciphered in my dreams and came fresh to me in the morning when I woke, telling me of their lives. Pop was never comfortable with my empathy for the grey as well as the blue and we were never close until his illness became grave.

He could then tell me, not the tragedy of their useless deaths but the tales of their families and the loss of a life not lived, but not wasted. It was as if these entangled voices were telling me of the value of life lying in its intimate connection with death, joined not separated. They were all insistent on this point although the different shades of meaning were evident in the different lives that were and which could never be cancelled. I saw that each life and death contributed irrevocably unrestrainedly and wonderfully to the very fabric of the universe.

It was because of such insights that I returned to my home town and started my séance business. My dream awareness had indicated this path to me: I woke one morning just after finishing a TV spectacular where I had been talking to the holographic ghosts of past presidents, and in particular to Abe Lincoln, and getting his opinion on the current world situation. I had guidance, if you could call my dream awareness such. But the whole spectacular was an illusion created for the bogus world of the media and its mind shredding mediocrity was perhaps the main reason I decided to turn away from the mass mind mutilation that was entertainment.

My first attempts at séance were quite successful, not because of any connection I made with the bereaved peoples loved ones, but because my clients had actually shared their lives and breathed the same air and so some of their brains were actually made of stuff that was physically connected to the other person. This was another dream insight I had had. I managed to make them aware of this connection during the séance by means of illusions which baseless though they were, gave an insight into death that few people had nowadays.

It was a case for most of: “everybody wanting to go to heaven, but nobody wanting to die.” The idea of death as a return to a wholeness and oneness with the universe is not new, but I was able to create holographic images of pre and post life experiences of my clients that had melded into their living waking existences, using the interference properties of quantum mechanics inherent in the holographic process. It was via a special dreamtime program I had written that picked up on the quantum connections in the brain, the interference patterns of memory, if you will. I fed set information to the clients in a dream state when they had access to an internal holographic multiversal communication web which gave them some of the dreamtime insight I had always had. It created a feedback loop which enabled them to access this multiversal quantum connection when they were awake. This connection allowed them in a very real sense to connect to the information that about their loved one they had always possessed but been unable to access when awake. They were able to create interference patterns of the dearly departed within their own neural networks by meditation of a sort, which were able to be modelled by my program and thus projected as Holographs into the theatrically lit séance room where we sat, hand in hand.

I had gained access to this program when I was lucid dreaming, where increased awareness was available to me and I was able to see the demise of humanity due to its illusory self-destructive nature, and act as a guru and a sort of archivist for our species, laying trails of remembrance in the quantum information web so that our race would not be lost as a part of the multi-versal imagination. In such dreams I was always given the impression that to attempt to interfere with this process would only accelerate it. It was something that I was impatient to do, but if I did not heed the interference patterns and the delicate balance of the potential and kinetic energy of dynamic wave equilibrium of which the fabric of the multiverse was woven I could condemn humanity to a complete schism form the memory of the multiverse. It was indicated when I woke each morning, that I was simply not able to walk such a tightrope as yet.

To get back to the séances. I could outline my feelings on these occasions as follows.

The room was cold and misty. Frozen co2 will do that. I often wondered how the customers didn’t notice. Dry ice for the visitors to cool the ardour for their lost ones.

The convention requires that I show an example perhaps you may find the scene more convincing if I do so.

Those around the table were often people I knew from the local community. I had acquired a notoriety locally because of my frequent visits to the sunken wall and its environs, I also had the habit of filming the trees to gain scientific credence for my speculative theories on life and death. Because people did not understand they attached to me a label of medicine man, Shaman or Druid due to my tree of dead communication project.

I also gained additional publicity from the many TV stations that included my studies as a matter of habit in their parapsychological programming, though I insisted what I did was entirely spectre-lative, their presentations always took the route that higher ratings would provide, “The famous ex magician in search of a universal truth”. The religious networks would also use my work to support their absolutist notions, which were entirely antithetical to me. I was now ironically making more money than before, because of the publicity loop I had been inducted into made all my publications sell in huge numbers, in many different languages.

It was so then that often relatives of the victims of violent deaths many different persuasions would come to me. Those whose close kin had been killed in uncertain combat or other suspicious ways in general came to me for solace. For these consultations I would charge whatever I thought that client could afford. Often I did them for nothing.

On this occasion the police chief and his wife were my clients, Captain John and Melissa Dough. Their son, John JNR, had been killed in combat in an unnamed war zone.

The wife was, I noticed, a very attractive younger woman who, as I found most women were, more open and aware to life’s possibilities. There was a problem with the equipment that night. An electrical storm was in full force out side.

She fell into the dream awareness leitmotiv easily and could feel her oneness with her son, with whom she was still entangled with in a quantum sense. The image appeared in the room as my software amplified the woman’s neural interference patterns that were strongly indicated as the image was clear, and then the lightning struck the holograph disappeared and there was a smell of burning in the room. I had to stop the proceedings.

“Sorry guys, I need to check the equipment.” If there was anything wrong with the system I could not discover it. He police chief was getting impatient.

“I didn’t pay to sit out here like a lowlife!” His wife tried to calm him I decided just to go ahead with it. Even if there had been some corruption of the hard or software I was sur that it would be harmful, because there was no “real” interface between the clients and the silent holographic images they produced. (in the tv spectaculars the images were provided with voices, it was a flimflam man production indeed).

I started thing up again and the wife again fell into a state of mindful awareness.

and actually talked! This was unheard of.

But her husband the police chief was sadly immune to the process, he sat confused as I let go of his hand which fell limply onto the table, in my excitement at his wife’s talking holograph, I didn’t notice his inert demeanour. As I was wearing an integrated eyepiece I could access my software through my own neural net and although I had no way to pick up his words as yet, I could see the harmonics of them on one of my virtual monitors. I was able to very quickly adapt a voice recognition program and soon we could hear him speaking, albeit in a Stephen Hawking voice.

“Hi Mom.” She had given birth to him when she was just 17, the police chief sweeping her off her feet with his tales of gungho gallantry. She replied indistinctly tearfully, happily:

“Son”

“Sorry I can’t be here in person” He was apologetic in an amused way.

“Ohhh Jack, my little Jack.” She turned to me, “Whats wrong with his voice?”

“I can only give him a synthetic voice in the waking world.” I pondered for a second “do you have any recording of his voice, digital or analog, either would be good”

“Why yes, I can get them for you.”

“Then your next visit will be with a son more like the son you remember.”

The woman got up, clearly wanting to touch to embrace her son.

“You can’t do that here Mom. I’m only the light of your mind, a quantum being here. We can hug, as we’ve done many times in the dreamtime.”

She nodded and sat back in the chair her hand folded sedately serenely in her lap

The room was silent, flowing with expectation with holographic ectoplasm, I was taken aback because I had never encountered an interactive holograph before. Jack spoke again:

“What’s the matter with pa?”

We looked away from Jack to John.

The husband sat open mouthed unseeing and unhearing. This was because perhaps he was too solipsistic, unable to shake of his sense of loss and resultant emptiness. This is not unusual, but the extremity of his reaction was. This was in my experience because there are a few people who are completely indifferent to the taking of a life, as I knew this man to be, could not accept death as anything but an end for something alien, something unknown and therefore dangerous. In some sense the termination of a potential life was a deserved end merely because of superficial difference.

This was what defined such people, superficiality It was also that such people could not accept their own deaths in the same way as they treated others. I could see from his readings, the code of which was an open book to me, that he thought his life was a selected one, and only the few could look forward to some kind of life beyond death, in this way he was actually condemning himself to a solitary confinement of sorts, with minimal entanglement possibilities. It was beings such as him who had consigned our species to the status of universal museum exhibit. In an infinite glass case, all but a few of us.

Suddenly He twitched and sat bolt upright.

“OHHHH God what’s happening to me!”

A mass of tangled light appeared, I looked at my internal neural network monitors and his measurements were going of the scale. John slumped back in his chair comatose.

“What’s happening” the mother and son said in unison, clearly concerned, clearly very much concerned for this man.

“Wait I said, it’s a massive neural eruption. Like a volcano of interference. It seems to be looping though. I’ll get it sorted”

A mass of interference data had produced a continuously changing web of tangled strings of light which was dancing contortedly about the room. I tried to tune, to de-cohere the frequencies by using my pre-set program, the images slowly formed into a recognisable grid pattern and a rainbow arched over us. The secret was tuning the observed image so the dynamic between kinetic and potential energy was retained otherwise the holograph would just be a static single shot photograph of a moment in non-existent eye-blink time from his neural net. I did not want his dynamic wave equilibrium to collapse or it was lost. This was not just a matter of the program, but of my interaction with the program as well. I had never experienced such an amorphous mess before, and felt like I was losing the connection to this man’s images, even losing connection with myself.

Then I felt something entirely new sweep over me.

“I can help you.” It was the dead soldier Jack, and he had appeared in my neural net computer. I was agog, confused and elated, I had never shared any one’s life outside of the dream world in this way. I had never met this guy in real life. His persona was made up of his quantum entanglement with his mother, “What is this?” I thought, excited beyond metrics by the infinite probabilities opening out before me. I felt the entanglements his mother had being take up by my brain, new neurons and synapses being formed and recorded on my computer/brain.

“Calm down” He said, I can help you. Look. He drew me along a path, out of the secure neural well I had been in and opened out the possibilities beyond the model that I thought I controlled, but now saw it controlled me. He gathered the amorphous images streaming from his father for me and presented them to the program’s image generation interface.

The holographs that were now clearly floating in the room were like a window into the police chief’s life. I was so obvious why he was like he was, it was the removal of the balance between kinetic and potential energy from the complex equation of life, by taking it from others in an unthinking manner. I was now able to project such images using much the same methods as I had for my spectaculars, and saw on one of my monitors these images immediately repressed by the police chief, who sat in a not here state, as if his body had been evacuated of his being, a zombie maybe.

But to us, the mother son and me, a host of images of shooting unarmed people were projected into the room, because of my data manipulation the images were shown as sequential and fitting to our restricted waking experience, even though in quantum terms these things all happened at once, as they do in dreams.

A scene emerged from the rainbow of a shabby village in a steamy jungle as ragged band of brother soldiers trudged in battle wearily. Their first concern was a clean supply of water and something to eat, preferable not poisoned. But one of the group was not like this. He was bright button fresh, eyes glinting, slavering like a predator, he was alert and ready to kill. He had his rifle ready for action and entered each building by a John Wayne like kicking in of the rickety the doors. Any one he found he would immediately machine gun as a potential enemy. No matter whether they were man, woman, child or animal. The rest of his platoon sat around smoking dope and watching his behaviour with a glassy eyed detached air. It was as if they were not involved with this man’s violence, as he killed indiscriminately screaming “U S A!” at each murderous trigger pull. The eyes of his victims hanging around his neck.

His murderous violence seemed to continue when he left the army, for we saw images of him involved in a vigilante group waylaying and disposing of people using Klu Klux clan methods, the image we saw he wore such a uniform, as a young man was hanged from a sour apple tree and set alight. “We are doing God’s work!” we heard his holograph hawking voice intone many times over as the images unwound.

Then a different scene was shown, we saw a flashing of events as he was voted in as police chief because he would be strong with recalcitrant aliens. We also saw some strangely tender images of him courting his wife, oddly out of kilter with the rest of the violence that his mind contained, topped up daily by the media it seemed.

His image was now seen patrolling the pedestrian empty streets in his car and used the same killing tactics if he came up against any alien behaviour. He was trigger happy and many died as a result due to them being different form him too many for us to count. And many turned a blind eye we saw too.

And all because he lacked empathy, the images were so frightening, it’s not really surprising he repressed them. And this repression had seemingly manifested itself in his physical presence with bloody consequences and his peers allowed him to do this.

He sat automaton blank, but his wife, her son and I watched spellbound at the quickly flashing scenes which though they only lasted a few waking seconds seemed to take up hours of time, for the images we saw also triggered a miasma of other interconnected conspiratorial imagery that we were aware of only indirectly. We were dumbfounded for the police chief did not appear to have experienced any of this.

He started as if awaking from a trance, and the images stopped as if they had been turned off.

“This mumbo jumbo hasn’t worked” he said “I can’t see a thing” His wife tried to talk to him but it was useless. He could even see the image of his son.

He was lost. All because he couldn’t accept what he was and what he had done. It was clear that the images I had seen on the dreamnet of the demise of mankind was due to the limited collapsed dynamic wave equilibrium behaviour such unaware beings, trapped in a completely material world of their own making.

This sparked a lot of thought in me. The couple left. The wife promising to arrange another meeting the husband dismissing it all as hokum and hocus pocus. He told all his friends the same, and my client list dried up. But I was not concerned, I had more than enough to live on. It was the implications of this séance that haunted me.

Was there a solution for this poor creature and so for mankind as well? Our current waking logic would indicate either punishment or rehabilitation. This was an age old dilemma and I did not seek to unravel it, I thought that both processes would need to be applied in some as yet undivined way. The process of punishment would be the revealing, the realisation of the destruction of the potential and kinetic energy dynamic balance that their behaviours had brought.

For the next few weeks I discussed this matter at length with Melissa and her Jack, who had become my closest allies, because we had shared this moment of revelation.

We decided to try and give the police chief physical evidence of what had just happened to see if he could be persuaded to admit to himself that his behaviour was part of a conditioning that many had suffered from, and eternal recurrence of the lack of balance between the kinetic and potential, the real and the imaginary. To do this the fundamental thought patterns of the man would need to be opened out. From the new/old sharing awareness that Jack had shown me in and outside myself I was able to trace that the collapse of his wave equilibrium had occurred at no particular point, but was due to a set of paths travelled that form a synaptic web that was almost without any connection to the possibilities of sharing, of interacting. The only mechanisms his body and mind required to keep functioning were internalised ones, spectres of illusional self-sufficiency combined with modern American social mores only made him more disconnected from what it was to be in a multiverse where to be was as Jack had put it when talking about his new oneness within and without:

“See I am, childhood and future are not growing less, super-numerous existence wells up in my heart”.

Which Jack said was a quote from Rilke, an Austro-Hungarian born poet and dreamtime visionary, who I had never heard of.

I could not carry out the therapy at my place so I was invited round to the Dough’s for suppers that involved the local dignitaries, who took pleasure in John’s dismissal of my work. I was able to work on John after creating a drinking man’s friendship with him. He would drink and I would talk to him while his soberness was leaving him, so I was able to start unlocking the repressive doors in him. After a few months of our new therapy, John became aware of some of the hidden alleyways of his neural pathways.

One morning after new neurons and synapses had opened a bridge to his misdeeds He came to his wife who was in the shower crying profusely. He embraced her from behind still wearing his night wear.

“I don’t know what’s happened to me but I need help I think.” She turned and embraced him in return.

“I’ve had some dreams that remind me of some things that I can’t face. I have done some terrible things. What can I do?”

We had discussed such things occurring, but never really believed it would happen.

“There, there I understand” She was tearful realising that her beloved may have a chance at some kind of redemption.

He continued after explaining some of the conspiracies he had been involved in:

“I must pay for what I have done”. He did not want to go to the papers, but had the idea of giving himself up to the FBI who as a third party would be able to action his accusations with some neutrality. Melissa thought that would be best.

But of course the authorities did not want to listen, because it opened up many of those complicit in his “crimes against humanity”, which he now called them.

When he talked the FBI in his confession he did not go into any detail of why he was suddenly coming clean, save to say:

“it was a revelatory hypnosis experience that I had given the magician that made him aware of his crimes.”

It was not long before the Police chief disappeared, his case swiftly dealt with by sweeping it under the administrative carpet.

During this whole period the authorities questioned me and his wife, but due to their completely blinkered thought patterns they could not see what had happened. So because of the insularity of those in power, they actually had no idea what was going on. Only with treatment would they. For they were all very sick beings. They, of course, thought everyone else was sick, but not them.

We did not therefore consider any action when the inevitable disappearance of the Police chief occurred. John had the feeling it was going to happen before it did:

“It’s a shame I can’t see you get all these bastards, if you can do it. But I guess it’s kind of ironic that I will suffer the same fate as so many of my victims” He told all three of us when he was able to see his son. He was a changed man and met his fate with the cool dispassion of an aware being. He added almost as an afterthought:

“Don’t you go looking for me if I’m disappeared, well not too hard anyways, it’ll only cause you problems with your magic spells to save us all.” He was right, and we knew it. We made cursory attempts to look for him that the authorities would pick up on. But we were in contact with him all along, up until the moment of his death and after, thanks to our relationship with Jack, whose entangled being had access to the whole dreamtime of which we as “living” only had a partial access. All the attempts to get information from John were fruitless because he the ability to a mindfulness that freed him completely from pain and distress, he could do this in a dreamlike state assorted by Jack his son, who he could see before his death without the aid of any device.

Because of the hypnosis that I had supposedly given John the authorities investigated my equipment to see if it had in some way brainwashed Him into a confession. But as they thought of me as some kind of flimflam man they decided before they arrived at my place they would find no evidence of anything underhand, so they didn’t. They wouldn’t have understood it even if they had found it, because the main ingredient was actually the empathic interaction between beings: a concept well beyond their ken.

We soon realised in our communications that to try and impose this new way of thinking was impossible as the powers that be would crush anything that would compromise their potency, which was in fact nothing but the power to destroy humanity.

So we let the case die down, and managed avoid problems by feeding the media with tales of how the Police Chief had been hypnotised by me to create a scandal for the purposes of self-publicity. This was lapped up by the media who also ran extended lude accounts of the police chief’s wife and me, which we did not deny, we actually prompted the allegations that we had disposed of the police chief as a crime of passion.

Some months later, after the press feeding frenzy had fully sated itself, we felt able to discuss the future. at the insistence of the wife of the police chief and her son, who had by now become my real and dream lovers respectively, we decided to create a dreaming detective agency to follow these results through, to see what impact we could have in the small matter of saving humanity from self-destruction.

Chapter 6 beyond death

With the help and of the guidance of Jack I was able to see I was not the only one who was active in such a way in the dreamtime. In parallel universes other teams picked up on my entanglement increase, which created an identifiable ripple in the dreamtime continuum and communicated new methodologies to me which exposed a whole new world of corruption that was gradually released to the public and those who had perpetrated such crimes, from no matter what time period could not only be brought to justice, but also gain an awareness of who they were and what a deadly effect they were having on the future of humanity.

So did we help them, the lost ones? The ones gone but not forgotten. The living lost ones we found maybe. Gave them solace, gave them a good death. That’s all we are after all, magicians. Illusion is our business.

Chapter 7 the arrest

We had become complaisant. The authorities were aware of our connection to the stories of corruption and so had to look for ways of defusing the implications of the revelations that were appearing on the internet. So they created a complete bogus case against me in regard of John’s death. I had not been keeping tabs on theses people as I considered them blind unthinking members of an outmoded way of life. But I had underestimated them. They were clinical in their corrupt practices.

It was a surprise when they burst into my House that Friday the 13th morning brandishing their guns and their desire to retain the status quo of which they were the creators.

Dreaming Detective Agency.

Updated Fergus Millard Jan 2023.

The Moor Mystery

Chapter 1

The moorland cottage stood starkly lit by a raging full moon when the clouds parted momentarily. Then trees too were revealed crouching ominously like a great winged creature guarding the equally ominous building. They drove towards it and the headlights of the car spot-lit the place, the trees looked like three witches, crouched about a cottage cauldron, the trees given more animation by the sweeping beam of the lights, they moved as if they were a characters on a stage waiting to start. The car stopped, darkness again hooded the cottage, the night was almost solid.

They had arrived at the moorland cottage late after battling through the unseasonal climate changed weather on narrow country ill-kept roads. The rain had turned to snow. The wind blew through the trees that lay close to and almost surrounding the millstone grit building. It lay at the end of a much potholed overgrown lane a mile away from the back road they had left behind. The place seemed to be living; although none had been there for many years. The planet was now due to aftermath of the Sinorussio/NATO wars sparsely populated, and as cars were generally banned no travellers would likely have ventured here. But still the important research of the Dreamatisation Institute was allowed to continue so here they were, laden with untold tools of discovery to aid societla recovery.

The car was parked as close as possible to the front door. As they got out of they were hit full in the face by swirling snow, battered and buffeted by the noise and the potency of the storm. They clutched close their equipment, provisions, sleeping bags and roll mats as they rushed to the door. Sheltering under the small porch, the keys were searched for and not found.

‘I thought you said you had them’

She was perplexed, he less so. His free hand was clumsily searching the many pocketed walking coat.

‘They're here somewhere. Don't be so impatient.’

She made a humphing noise. Then he felt the cold metal of the old keys upon his finger tips.

‘Don’t be so impatient, I've got them. Have you got the torches?’ she shook her head.

She humphed again and thrust a sleeping bag and mat into his over full arms. She turned and ran through the now heavily falling snow to the parked 4-wheel drive.

If it kept on like this they would be snowed in, he thought as he stood precariously holding the gear. He felt the night close in about him. With his trained senses he felt the cottage; it was as if it were breathing.

For a second or two he stood oblivious of the woman and the storm. There were many people seemingly about him. The here and now gone, lost amid the dreams of many ages at the threshold as he was now. Amidst this place he sensed there was a desire to be left alone. They were not welcome. His eyes had glazed over.

‘Hey! Wake up!’ He started as the torch light touched his face. He was brought back to a present haunting by the beam of modernity.

‘Sorry, I was miles away’ He was as one semi-detached. He looked at her. She was very attractive this partner they had lumbered him with. He preferred working alone, but there was something about this place that made him happy she was here.

‘Yes miles away. We'd be better off wherever you had in mind, the weather's terrible here. Bloody forecast wrong again.’

The joke fell flat. She felt the place closing in about her too.

They entered the cottage gingerly. She led with her torch. He followed, staggering somewhat under his heavy burden. The interior was simply though richly furnished. Little had been spared on the decor. There was also a mustiness of unlivedness in the air. The place had been abandoned and no one had returned. Cobwebs clutched at their faces. He dropped the camping gear as he brushed the irritant away.

‘Bloody spiders! They should charge them rent’

She laughed. He was not bad looking, older than her by some 5 years she knew, he was once a champion rower and very gifted in the Dreamatisation field. She had read and admired his work for the Dreamatisation Institute. But close up she saw him as a bit of a bumbler, a show off. A typical guy.

‘Leave the stuff there. Let's have a look round the place. See if we can't find the generator switch.’ He picked up the gear clumsily and dumped the stuff on a sofa she had pointed to. A cloud of dust billowed into their faces. They both coughed convulsively, taking a few moments to compose themselves, they looked and felt the room in unison.

The air was still and warmish, compared with the outside. But the wind that howled through the trees and down the chimney made it seem colder. They both suddenly simultaneously shivered.

‘Did you hear something?’ She said slowly, quakingly. She now held on to his arm. When she realised this she hastily let go and shook herself. He smiled a smug knowing smile and patted her patronisingly on the shoulder.

‘I'm not sure’

He was sure, though, that he had felt something; something more than the sticky caress of the spider webs, though something akin to it.

‘It's this cottage. It's as if it's alive’

‘I think the paperwork said the generator switch is in the cellar’ he said automatically to take their minds off the first time in a place reactions that were natural in their job, probably any job.

They had reached the cellar steps. She was half way down. She turned back and saw his shadow cast by her torch light eerily in the kitchen behind. She saw that he felt the closeness in the air, which was almost tangible.

‘Yes, it’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before’

She came to a box in the corner of the cellar.

‘Here it is!’

She pulled down a large lever. A humming began to throb through the cottage.

‘Good. It looks like the generator's OK. Try the light switch at the top of the cellar stairs’ she directed.

‘God she’s bossy’, he thought.

He walked carefully to where her beam pointed and flicked a switch. A small bulb flickered into life, casting a gloomy glare about the cellar. Suddenly there was a bang. They both started instinctively and looked at each other with the aid of their flashlights. The bulb had exploded and a mist like miasma formed and floated like a spectral cloud. The crystalline entity hung for a second and then a mystical snow fell and covered them with impossibly many thin slivers creamy glass.

They stood mesmerised for only a few seconds, but which seemed like an eternity. He gathered himself.

‘It's just an old bulb, there’s plenty of replacements in the kit bag’ He spoke with a confidence that he did not feel, he didn't seem too sure. She felt a chill thrill her spine. She ran up the stairs and grabbed his arm.

‘I'm not sure about this.’ She looked at him pensively, pupils wide open. ‘It’s a singular manifestation. I feel it clearly. I’m sure its way off the normal spectral spectrum.’ As she released her grip slowly, he saw intense connectedness to the place as she glanced round the cellar illumined by her shaking flashlight. She was no Dreamatisation novice he brooded. They brushed off the shimmering ectoplasmic dust.

He went to put his arms about her, but something in her eye held him back. She was new to the Dreamatisation Institute, but she had shown fantastic dreaming abilities. These he knew were extremely rare. He could tell that her QC was of a level that he had not encountered before. He was intimidated but he also saw concern and sexual arousal between them which would be good for the surface tension energy of their relationship together as a positive affirmative thing if it didn’t get in the way.

‘Don't be worried. It's just a building. It's not malicious.’

His words didn't seem to convince her. The hairs on the back of her neck were suddenly erect again in gut wrenching alarm. Even though they were experts in their field of Dreamatisation investigation, field work was new to her the basic instincts of fight and flight had unbidden kicked in. Using a calming slow breathing she controlled the feeling.

‘Thanks for the thought, but it doesn't make me feel better.’ He knew what she felt.

‘I know what you mean’. He said with obvious over earnest irony and could see her smile fleetingly in the half light.

They went up into the kitchen and turned on the light in there leaving a gleaming trail of star dust. The bright light that didn’t explode and shower them with glassy sleepy sleet and the shared experience each other's presence gave them a feeling of security. They spent half an hour or so unloading equipment onto the kitchen table cleaning as they went. They “plugged” it in and it all sparked into life miraculously. The central computer was a thing called a Subjectile that worked as a biomechanical quantum interactive detection device. The techies liked to call it a ‘sheep counter’ as it kept track of the quantum inputs and outputs involved in the quantum coherence of dreaming. The bio aspect was the user input and output which took dream data from the detectives and used it to interpret the quantum dream activity using a spectrum far beyond where any solely mechanical observer could venture.

She did a dream or Quantum Coherence (QC) scan of the house and found, as she had predicted, that the measurements went right off the scale. They were satisfied with this measure of quantum coherence as it seemed to explain the quantum behaviours in the cellar.

‘Wow’, she said in an excited tone, ‘this is an observation and place and a half, I’ve not even read of anything close to it!’

‘Remember that these decoherent measuring devices are only very inaccurate measures of actual quantum activity; we’ll have to do many more measurements to get anything that’ll satisfy our peers’ She nodded a little abashed by her over excitement. He saw this.

‘I know you can see this place better than any Sheep Counter. I think you’re right. We’re far too distant from a city for there to be any real interference but it could be an entanglement effect’. They looked at the output on the Subjectile screen with the extraordinary results gradually building up statistical certainty by taking ever more discrete samples. A satisfied grin spread over her face and she glanced at their hurriedly unpacked rucksacks.

‘We’d better get this lot sorted and have a bite to eat’ she gestured at the pile that lay in the centre of the living room next door.

They soon had the room as they wanted it. They found wood for the fire, and got a blaze going. They unwittingly moved together like dancers who had choreographed moves. He collected glass covered wood from the cellar and lit the fire and she taking the canned rations and warming them over a small gas stove they had brought with them. She didn’t even want to think about the possibility of an exploding oven. Soon they were sitting warmly eating the KP rations they had brought with them for their first meal here. The fire flickered in the hearth and illumined them redly as they ate. The mustiness gradually departing as the room warmed with the fire’s heat. They looked into the fire musing, the romantic picture they formed not lost on either of them. They spoke at once.

‘did you..’ they smiled self-consciously at each other.

‘You first’ She said. They stared at each other a second then both flicked their eyes to the fire.

‘Did you notice’ he went on ‘that there is an underlying atmosphere of romance and affection here as well as a contorted violence.’ She nodded slowly taking a mouthful from the can.

‘Yes I thought that’ the room strained a little at their words then seemed to relax, like it was breathing in then out in some kind of yogic exercise. ‘The place has got a string-like vibrational strength that is clearly quantum in nature. There’s a lot going on that doesn’t meet the eye’ she glanced at him. He looked deep into the fire.

‘This case is going to be one hell of a one to crack’ He put the empty can precariously on the arm of the chair the fork sticking out. He sat back and closed his hands contentedly over his slight paunch and was suddenly snoring. The can fell to a rugged floor noiselessly and he slept on. She shrugged, covered him with a sleeping bag and took the cans to the kitchen and tidied up. Here she again felt the hair on the back of her neck rise and saw in a flash the fearful dream that haunted this place but which calmed her with its total belonging to the complete sharing of Dreamatisation.

She got her toiletry bag from the ruckie and washed in the cool water of the kitchen sink. Her reflection looked back at her concernedly in the small dark window. Her eyes looked flaming red in the reflection. She was shocked for a second, It was like an evil doppelganger looked back her through the window. But she could feel no intensity of haunting near to hand. She stared more closely.

‘That’s odd’ She whispered to herself, which was a habit of hers. She stared past the reflection and could see two red lights at a distance on the moor that had appeared to be by chance to be directly behind her eyes. She wiped her eyes and they were gone. ‘Just a trick the light’ she said, but her instincts told her otherwise, it was like someone had just played a practical joke on her. Such incidents did not frighten her they just whetted her appetite to get on with the job. She looked around the kitchen to check that there was nothing there that could have caused the ludic phenomena. She found nothing so shrugged and made sure the Subjectile was running ok in its low energy mode. She grabbed another sleeping bag and moved to the sitting room. There she settled down on a recliner her legs tucked up under a sleeping bag, the seat pulled close to the fire.

‘We’ll have to get the central heating sorted out before we start’ she thought and before long she snored too.

Chapter 2

The initial inspection that they had made before they slept was, intuitively planned, made without any recourse to their training. This had filled them with dread but also with an insatiable curiosity to know what had happened here. Who or what had created such a clearly strong, many would have called it evil or malevolent, atmosphere in this coffee table magazine cottage? This was one of the main ingredient questions that fed into their dreams.

Lucid dreaming was the second part of their inspection. They had been trained by disciples of Astrid Formosa from a parallel healing universe in the arts of controlled ludic dreaming and they were able to take first dreamtime stock of their arrival. Their dreams were not yet used to this physical vicinity as they would have to be to be fully in tune, but they were able to work through the ‘facts’ each in their own rêvelationary way to accustom themselves to the task in hand. To equip themselves with the practical wisdom and creativity, the phronesis and poesis as the classical technical treatises would have it of their post-classical detective work.

The process involved a dream visit to the DI dreamnet site where they could go over the case together in a state of dreamatisation or entangled Quantum Coherence, and not be overcome by the symptoms of the decoherence and incoherence that were the prevalent conditions of waking. Also the activities took place in a Dreamatised Quantum Field (DQF) and so took virtually no time at all.

Their images of sleep combined in the dreamnet and they were able to pool the ideas in this state very quickly and completely. They studied first the d-documents associated with the case, seeing them as they would have been made by the police officers over the dreamnet themselves. To do this they attuned themselves with the two chief archivists on the case and arranged d-conferences with them. The first conference was with the d-archivist regarding initial investigation:

‘How did it all start’ he asked the archivist’

‘I’d been assigned to the case early on. We were called to a very remote place in the Lancashire moors. There was no way to get there without resort to polluting transport methods. I did enjoy the use of the old vehicles, it’s apparently a residual macho hangover from the past I found out later.’

‘Typical!’ she interrupted, they could see images of people and motors which were definitely phallogocentric, not necessarily male or female driven. The two seemed a little embarrassed. ‘He was just the same with the vehicle we used to get there. Took possession of the driver’s seat straight way. Sorry go on’

‘We got to the place which had been inhabited by a well to do retired couple who had one winter’s night disappeared completely. Their bodies had not been found at the time and it had been assumed that these had been taken elsewhere and murdered, the victims being hidden somewhere. The police thought this was the case as the house was untouched, nothing had been taken there was no evidence of violence. We were stumped.’

‘Was there anything else you can recall?’ She asked. ‘Do you know of a more mysterious nature.’ Multiple images flashed about them, phantasms fleeting and connected to all.

‘There were other aspects to the case that led me to suspect that there may be more to it than a simple missing person’s case. The archivist’s course I took at the DI made me aware enough to feel something untoward with the case.

‘Was the course with Astrid Formosa?’ she was excited.

‘Yes it was!’ They all transformed together automatically with a tremendously enthusiastic shared movement into a different dreamscape. The main dreamer was the archivist.

Chapter 3

‘Turn the light off love.’ Hal pleaded

He was trying to sleep but his wife was reading and the light penetrated his eyemask.

‘You know it’s the first dreamcast with the “Magistra Ludi” tonight,’ he explained, she humphed and snorted.”By the way, did I tell you that my course designation is 9000?”

‘No you didn’t. I thought you wanted to sleep and get off to your Dreamatisation woman?’ She turned the light off and smacked the pillow in protest. Soon he was asleep. The cortical stimulator kicked in. Hal’s head swam as the interface took effect, then he was fully connected to the dreamcast.

The virtual Victorian lecture hall was seething with excited sleeping students. It was the first mass seminar on the Dreamatisation of Narrative course the Magistra Ludi Professor Astrid Formosa was to present. She was a formidable bluestocking presence unusual in post classical academic years; communed with by the trillions and trillions who tuned in around the multi-universe through the interfaces of the Sino-American Corporation’s Quantum educational dreamnet. Her hair was grey held up in a silk tied chignon, over her tall aged elegance she wore a high lace neck white blouse, buttoned tight to the chin and blue velveteen skirt that swept to the floor. She virtually breezed up to the lectern and started with an ecclesiastical opening of her arms.

‘Welcome to the Dreamatisation Institute’s introductory lecture.’ Her eyes glistened with an unquenchable enthusiasm. ’it is gratifying to see so many of you not here.’ Laughter reverberated through the net. ‘I hope you have assimilated the information from our dreamnet site as was directed in the pre-lecture bumf.’ There was a general consensual response that indicated that it had been a pleasure for the participants. The bumf had told the sleeping audience that they had been dream-selected from vulnerable universes to learn Dreamatisation and hopefully avert the extinction of humanity in those most susceptible of the many-worlds to self-destruction.

‘Good. I will not stand on ceremony we will get straight into the serious stuff.’

‘We have three narrative types to look at on our course. It will be revealed that all narratives can be seen at work and play of these types through the music of the Dreamatisation (Dreamatisation)’. She was mesmeric.

‘First we have the Quantum coherent (QC) Narrative, the underlying narrative the total interconnecting horizon of all being is here.’ The sleeping people were connected by the quantum net and shared this as a fully coherent quantum experience.

‘This is our new mode of seeing the world, the key to Dreamatisation. just a couple of hundred years ago this was not the case.’

‘The most advanced model of thinking was the second of our trinity: the Quantum decoherent (QD) mode. This can be defined as refutable classical thinking, a mechanical model of cause and effect.’ She paused. Images of Einstein and atomic explosions seemed to predominate in response, she nodded, clearly picking up on this.

‘The third, which explains why QD was misused as many of you realise to cause most the self-destructive tragedies of humanity, is the Quantum Incoherent (QI) mode. We will see these in reverse order in the dreamcast. But they are not complete matches to our categories. No being ever is, please always recall this.’

‘We will then look at the healing and sharing power that combines all three in the form of Dreamatisation (QC,QD,QI)’

‘I will now run my interactive dream quantum program in which you will relive at a quantum coherent level three examples of this, drawn from the Quantum diary dreamscapes of three people involved in some way in a mass murder event of the early twenty-first century’.

‘I will now initiate the program.’ Hal could feel her exalted presence in the interpretive programming.

After a shivering and shimmering Hal felt himself with the Professor, sharing her very essence. Then another presence gradually overshadowed the professor’s, this male presence was in a multi-layered prison cell, of body, mind and spirit. Hal thought it was a case of clear quantum incoherence. The man who shared the dream with them was unaware of the sharing, he was not capable of it. Hal saw this through an image the man had of himself as a Quixotic knight in shining armour that appeared strangely every now and then. Hal was aware of his voice now, intoning some kind of religious rite.

‘I’d been practicing medicine for over thirty years.’ Hal saw the man in many different forms, including the knight, but mostly he saw himself as a caring doctor with his stethoscope and white coat. He heard the doctor’s voice again.

‘Many suffered, I could not help them.’ Hal saw him stealing drugs and giving them to patients. The patients died. Hal was stunned. The doctor was killing these people! But he could feel that the doctor was convinced what he was doing was right. The doctor made no attempt to escape, for he was lost in his own romanticised armoured solipsistic view of the world.

Many patients were worse off than me. I had done all I could to help them over the years. I had become very close to many, I cared about them, I was very professional they felt no pain. They were in good hands’ Hal saw the scenes change and the doctor was now talking to the patients getting their permission to change their wills combined with images of money filling the doctors pockets.

'I deserved paying, all professionals should be paid’ Then the scene started to become more gyroscopically chaotic as images of authority filled the dream and the doctor was closed in even more. He had been caught. Hal felt that this closure was more oppressive, broken by occasional images of his family whose plight were starting to penetrate this being.

‘I worry about my wife and kids all the time. It’s overwhelming. They would be better off without me.’

‘I’ll kill myself.’ Hal felt the finality and closure of incoherence emanate from the doctor’s being, lost in his own small armoured universe.

Hal felt the doctor’s presence become distant and the professor’s closer. Hand in hand she and Hal flew and through a wall into a TV studio come office. There was a dreaming presence here and she was thinking about the doctor. Hal could hear her thoughts clearly. It was a voice that contained the same self justification and self importance as the doctor he identified her as an example of a mixed incoherent and decoherent personality. Hal saw her voice filled the dream entirely, squeezing the shared element to a bare minimum although he could sense the professor in the background conducting some kind of interview.

‘He was a great story: character + conflict = plot, it was just right.’ The dream

Used unfocused camera shots and strange angles, showing her closed specialisation.

She enthused.

‘A doctor who killed hundreds of people, it doesn’t get much better. He was the caring killer who killed himself.’ She visualised the adoring viewers in their millions because it was good TV, because of her, she was convinced of her point of view but her insularity, her incoherence, was plain.

‘It was a very professional job we did, best coverage of all the media I thought, from TV to radio to the internet. We do the internet very well. That coverage was full of strong storyline, high hit levels too. The management were very pleased. So we must have done well.’ Hal saw that numbers not people were her guide.

‘There was the usual sensationalist rubbish in the papers which allowed us to give more air time to the story, making sure the public had our objective view.’ There was an uncertainty that reflected in a kaleidoscopic scene shifting in the dream backdrop, but her image was like a still. This he thought touched on the coherent and decoherent aspects of the trinity. He saw that there were touches of coherence in her but they were sadly subordinated to the exigencies of instrumentalism. Hers was the paradigmatic “comfortable” life.

‘Then there was the trial and we were able reuse much of the material again to make sure the public didn’t forget the gravity of the story. It ticked over nicely with various incidents in prison.’ Her pride was evident Hal thought, but she couldn’t see past the moment, incoherence again.

‘The hanging in the cell was a great ending, gave the story a unity which is very pleasing. Our coverage again was sensitive and intensive in a superficially easy to digest way.’

Hal could not believe the profound similarity between this person and the mass murderer, it was little wonder that this was an age of human centred death and disaster.

The unfocused image began to fade, and much to Hal’s relief, so did she.

Hal felt the guiding hand of the professor moving him to a much more beautiful dream scene, many wonderful sharing experiences were here, of family days out and school trips and parties; but there was a dark edge to it. A woman, who Hal saw was the doctor’s wife, was aware of him in this dream scene, he felt her clear quantum coherence and unity. The Professor’s Cheshire cat smile caressed Hal.

The doctor’s wife’s confusion and pain was clear, and Hal realised that she was talking to him, in some way. He listened attentively.

‘I can’t believe this has happened.’

‘He was professional, well respected by the community. He was great with the kids. He always provided for us well.’ Hal saw her conviction but also her caring for others. The trial scene was portrayed and she was coherent, fully sharing in her demeanour and interpretation.

‘He can’t have done this. It’s devastating. He seems his old self when I go to see him.’

‘At the trial he said killed over two-hundred people to help them. That’s not the man I know. But all these experts can’t be wrong.’ Hal looked at her, felt her and answered.

‘You can feel the doctor, you know what he is, what you are.’ She looked back at Hal, a glimmer of belonging and understanding in her eyes.

‘I think our phone is tapped judging by some of the stories that are printed.’ Hal empathised and her dream filled a sense of cohesion.

‘He says not to worry about him as he is watched twenty four hours a day. I do worry though. He’s changed.’ Her eyes rested upon images of the doctor in his cell, distant but close, she saw a man with an illness of incoherence caught from his incoherently decoherent upbringing.

‘It was terrible when I got the call about him hanging himself.’ Hal said to her that things would be better.

‘Things should be better for us now.’ She responded.

The doctor’s wife’s dream dispersed in a haze of coherent understanding.

The professor’s presence was again strong, and she indicated a small terraced house in the city. It was one of the victims of the Doctor, an old lady apparently sad and alone as the doctor had said his victims were. Hal was overcome at the sight. She had been poisoned by the doctor and had died at the hand of that man. Hal felt the healing hand of Astrid Formosa come into play. She soothed her confused mind, for the old lady had no idea why she had died before her time and had been cut off from the soothing balm of Dreamatisation because of this. But Hal could also feel the curative power of other dimensions at work here. The pure Dreamatisation of these other places gave not just the murdered woman’s dreams a shape that allowed her to see what had happened, but the relatives dreams were likewise embalmed with hope unforseen. The voices of these other dimensions fed through him and Formosa, through all those participating in the dreamatisation. The old lady’s history showed through as she recalled a vibrant full life that didn't deserve to be ended in such a way. A flash of hatred from her and those close to her filled the dream with a dolorous tone so deep that all halted. But words in the song of Dreamatisation came anew and wove a new thread into the elegiac theme of the victim’s very essence and it seemed she was given the choice to forgive the man who had wronged her so. The music of Dreamatisation had given her an insight that allowed her to make this judgement with the full knowledge of all the multi-verse that her intermingling with the Dreamatisation song had allowed her access to. She gave this gift of total hospitality to the murderer and brought the calm and peace of the whole of the Dreamatisation horizon to her and her family’s perspective. She was free, and all those who shared this dreamatisation were a part of this magnificent belonging. So it was that the session came to an end. The quantum cohesion that had built up during the dreamcast dispersed. Hal woke with a rush of adrenalin. His wife had turned on the light again and was reading. ‘You’re back are you? That didn’t take long.’ His wife said. Hal smiled.

’It was brilliant! I’ll ‘write’ it up in the morning.’ He was elated.

‘You mean you have to sleep on it?’ she said. He laughed and turned onto his sleeping side.

‘Turn the light off please love.’

Chapter 4

The trio realised that the Archivist’s dream within a dream within a dream was over. They all showed signs of the depth of beauty of the Dreamatisation as they went on. It was also interesting for the detectives to experience the lecture form another perspective. It was the same for the archivist who had seen everything through their eyes too. In this atmosphere of more intense sharing they returned to their d-conference mode.

‘That’s the introductory lecture from her to the DI’ She said, ‘she’s just amazing isn’t she?’

The archivist and her partner agreed, all their d-auras showed clear reverence. ‘You were about to tell us the more mystical side of the case.”

The archivist nodded and went on.

‘I looked through the reports from the locals in the light of my training, and they gave me some food for thought, not much in calorific value maybe. There was dark talk of the Cottage, called ‘Skull cottage’ by the old men who rumour mongered on the dark corner of the local pub, ‘The White Horse’, the cottage’s over ornately carved plaque proclaimed it more prosaically ‘Dun Roamin’’. The old men needed no explanation for the disappearances, they knew, just as generations before them had known. ‘It’s no good that place, been like it for hundreds of years, it’s the devils own dwelling!’ Another witness was recorded:

‘It’s not the first time’ one old gaffer had commented into his frothy bottomed jug of ale grasped skeletally in his fingerless gloved hand. ‘it won’t be the last’. Looking at this evidence, even with the strong activity at the cottage I considered it to be very flimsy as did my superiors. We put the case on ice’

They thanked the archivist for his input.

“No, thank you. That was one of the most wonderful dream sessions I’ve ever had. There’s a loving that you brought across that I’ve not felt before. Take care”. The archivist left them with a strange feeling that they were not entirely in control of this case.

The second archivist was d-consulted.

‘Tell us how the case rolled out for you’ they asked

‘Well I was assigned to this cold case when it had been triggered again. The bodies of the old couple had been found by a team of workmen who were preparing to put a communication pipeline the size of the euro-tunnel underground across the untouched beauty of the moor by laying the pipes out along the proposed route. We still couldn’t find any incriminating evidence. There were no marks of violence upon the bodies that forensics could discover. It looked like the two had just gone out into the snow and laid clasped together in a ceremonial death tryst.’

‘What did they die of?’

‘Why, they died of the cold. The peat had ensured that their naked bodies retained a remarkable amount of information. All the evidence showed it was clearly the missing couple but no guess could be hazarded as to how they had come to be there. We couldn’t even find their clothes.’

‘We decided that as the Chief constable had a personal interest in the case to bring in you guys, the ultra-forensic force. Since I did not know much of your esoteric team I decided to investigate you. Would you like to hear what I found? It’s not in the main report.’

The two detectives laughed, they were intrigued by this although it was not strictly part of their remit.

‘Yes please go on, it’s always good to know others views’. They were anticipatory. The archivist went on:

‘I found out that your team were one of the results of recent world wide acceptance of discoveries by the Dreamatisation Institute (DI), who had brought many things to light in the realms of human activity. By combining the 3 facets of human existence Quantum coherence, quantum decoherence and Quantum Incoherence into a triumvirate known as the Dreamatisation the world had come to see itself as a part of the universe and not as isolated people in an alienated isolated planet.’

‘Did you study under Astrid Formosa?’ she asked, always eager on that topic.

‘Hasn’t everyone’ he said. They could see the introductory lecture as a central presence to this conference as it had been the last. The sense of deep sharing was palpable.

‘As far as I could understand it the ultra forensics used these techniques to investigate cases at a quantum level. My take on it was that Quantum coherence was the level where all things were connected and this was a place we joined with completely when asleep, as we’re doing now. The World of Quantum Decoherence was simply the scientific community’s view of the universe.’

‘What do you mean by the scientific community?’ he enquired.

‘Well for me it’s those academics and others whose studies are not absolute. Basically their theories and practice are refutable.’

‘That’s a good outline of those aspects. What about incoherence?’ they were all clearly enjoying this conference.

‘I thought Quantum Incoherence was an absolute irrefutable insular world view that had no idea of sharing. It was just an amoral place of personal gain coming before community or simply creating a kind of non-communing community of separate personal or corporate entities of production and profit aimed at a combined strangely amorphous aims of what were called “progress” and “growth”.’ Their dream scene reverberated with the turmoil of the results of such thinking.

‘Did you look further into this?’ They could sense the need to explain here.

‘Yes, it was really interesting once I started. I couldn’t stop. I tuned into a dreamcast on the subject.’ They all experienced this as the archivist had done.

‘I saw the world descend into economic anarchy several times and just as the world wars of the 20th century had been triggered by the rise of this Quantum Incoherence where power and greed were the main drivers of existence. We didn’t learn as a community, because we had no communal history as such, just a fragmented narrative of random winners and losers. So it wasn’t surprising to me that in the 22nd century after a long series of Quantum Incoherent economic disasters had driven humanity too very high likelihood of extinction that a solution had been found or had emerged into human consciousness and was accepted by most of us.’

‘Did you look into what caused the emergence, I always thought it was in a sense the most enigmatic case of an “emergency” that I ever heard of’ she intervened brightly.

“Don’t be such a smart arse’ her partner said. ‘Please do go on, it’s a very clear exposition.’

‘Thanks. I reckoned that the intervention was perhaps not accidental, but the crisis perhaps triggered it, which was not really known at the time. It is now well documented that an incursion from another dimension within the form of the now legendary Professor Astrid Formosa triggered the change. It’s said that she was what’s called a Pan Dimensioner, aware of her existence in all multi-verses, so maybe emergency is a good description of what happened. It was said that there were enough of her disciples already in this dimension to allow her take the path of emergence she did. Her invention was the dreamnet which made everyone aware that they were connected at a quantum level, changed things dramatically.’

‘Yes, do continue’ they said. The archivist was in full flow.

‘I reckon it was the formation of the DI organisation that from a community that had spread far and wide in what had been called a bloodless post-classical “rêvelution”, great word that I reckon. It was Astrid’s dreamnet that caused a moral joining of humanity that it had lacked before. For Dreamatisation joined all aspects of being.’

‘How do you think this has changed thing for us all?’ she asked

‘Well, the world is still much same as it was before the “emergency” for most of us I reckon, except it’s a damn site cleaner and safer.’

‘Do you think it’s fair what happened to the incoherent ones?’ This was clearly an issue that mattered to her.

‘I reckon that power and mammon for their own sakes are as paths to the hell of closed dreaming and being. It can’t be good for these people not sharing their lives and dreams with anyone. They must be so lonely’.

‘But Dreamatisation is open to anyone who can open their lives to it. We need to protect ourselves from those who may destroy it’ he said, the detective toeing the DI party line.

‘I know we tolerate such incoherent people in their unseen lost lives, because their obsessions are diseased and corrupt. But is it right they have been further isolated by being given their own virtual communities to dwell in to supposedly stop them tainting the rest of us.’ She was not happy with the current solution to the incoherent problem. ‘After all we need incoherent traits as they have to be balanced sharers in the Dreamatisation.’

‘That’s true, but what about the Treatment given to these people? We try to save them but they’re so often such sad solipsistic lost causes revelling in their insular Hades that any help we give them has little long term effect.’

The archivist stood as a spectator to this argument. He was happy enough. A solution would be found in time. They caught this feeling and they stopped mid argument.

‘Surely’, the archivist said ‘it’s the victim treatment program was the most important and that was progressing really well.’

‘Sorry we shouldn’t waste your dreamtime like this.’ They emoted together. ‘Please commune the rest of your position.

‘You lot, the Ultra-forensic team came as an offshoot as DI also tried to treat cases from the past and save them from a tortured closed infinity of pre and past life. As you said it was to little avail, people who committed atrocities could never see it in themselves to see, except rarely. Now we are without these economically driven war mongers at large we seem much better off, every day’s a wonderful new learning experience. It’s like Professor Astrid Formosa said.’

“Every possibility has occurred so all has dreamed...has been, will be and is! This is what you share in the Quantum Coherence of dreaming as it emerges in the Dreamatisation of the all...”

‘It was a solution for us all, god knows where we would have been without her. The energy that had been wasted in economic selfishness had been transformed so that we now lived with the planet and not against it. The future for my kids is bright’

The Detectives thanked the Archivist for this shared dreaming, and asked that the end of the report to be also communed to them.

‘As I said, I recommended we use you lot, the Ultra-Forensic Force, what we call ‘dream detectives’ or ‘sleeping policemen’ to look at the case of what seemed to be a haunting. I understood from my training that such things now were recognised the presence of incoherent dreamers infecting the ‘living’ via acts that we need to uncover if we are to prevent them. That’s where you come in. You seem to be able to wander through the past present and future with no problem’

‘It’s not that easy’ he said. The archivist laughed. ‘You should see how the Ultra forensic healers from other dimensions cope with the trauma of our dimension. They have worked through most of the victims and their families, and given them the peace of Dreamatisation that they had been robbed of. These other dimensioners were actually at work before Astrid saved our waking world through those who had already emerged into affirmation.’ The archivist saw the implications of what the detective had communed and was struck even more by the massiveness of what they were all involved in. ‘We only deal with local problems really, small by comparison’

‘Don’t be so modest, both your insights are real eye openers. This conference has nearly blown my mind away. I reckon I’ll have to have a holiday to get over it. You do a great job. Good luck, not that you’ll need it’

The detectives smiled and left the Archivist to dream on in a less structured way though they caught a glimpse of a departing d-thought that he surely must have meant form them to hear.

‘What a pair. I reckon they’ll find the story behind this. If they don’t, I reckon nobody will.’

They smiled. All these images now began to form the music of the dreams that the quartet had played and the binary data of which were recorded on their respective local DPU (dream processing unit) equipment via miniscule implants embedded in their brains. Once the structured dreaming had ceased they too returned to their own normal d-modes.

They slept on oblivious and unconcerned, for the machines could gain no knowledge of their real quantum selves which were only discoverable to any real extent by ‘live’ interactive dream conversations. These would then be ‘dreamatised’ into events by the art and technical ability of the experts into fully combined Dreamatisation events which would be subject to peer scrutiny before any action could be taken in regard of the results, observations and recommendations gained thereby.

Chapter 5

They woke simultaneously from their night work. The fire had burned low and the room had a chill about it which had disturbed their slumber.

‘We should get the central heating seen to’ she said. He nodded wiping the sleep from his eyes.

‘Yes, but first things first’ She knew what he meant.

Slowly they went through the early morning tantric exercises that would enable maximum recall of the dream sates they had inhabited. They had connected themselves to a small head phone like device which would transfer their dreams to the central dpu (dream processing unit). It was needed to co-ordinate their ideas. But recall was most important for Dreamatisation. It was how the dream interfaced with the whole that mattered, equipment could not do this as it was decoherent, based in a classical not quantum world. Here locations and interpretations mattered as much as the coherence of the dream. Even the incoherent that was a part of being was needed to gain a full picture needed for the building of the Dreamatisation scape that the detectives used for their information gathering and problem solving case studies.

They washed and ate and discussed their findings. They decided that there was far too little information that they could find at the cottage as yet because their presence had disturbed whatever was going on here too much. The normal procedure would have been to visit the crime scene that had started the investigation first, they agreed on this action. This meant a trip deep into the moors. The pipe line excavation had been halted in the vicinity while the forensic team had been at work and now the Ultra-forensics were on the case the procedure was no less rigorous.

‘We should sort out the Central Heating first’ She said straight after they had set plans for the day. They ventured for the first time upstairs and found it again undisturbed. Everything as it had been, just dusty and spidery, there were probably rats and the like too, but they had catchers for these furry things which they set out in strategic places. They again worked seamlessly together, setting the house computer up to complete all the necessary tasks. They found that all the devices worked ok. He even managed to change the bulb in the cellar without it exploding. They set up mini-objectiles in each room, although she noted that the atmosphere upstairs was less intense. The equipment could not be so fine tuned as to pick this up, it really only made observation on an average of roughly the footprint of the building. They were also able to take a hot shower before donning their gear.

So it was mid-morning before the pair were in their walking garb heavily laden with their mobile equipment and camping gear ready for a long walk and a night’s stay at the site of the couple’s discovery. The day had dawned bright and seemingly more autumnally warm, but it was still chill here some 1500 metres above sea level. The sight that greeted them when they walked out of the door was breathtaking. The land about the building seemed to be under its thrall in some way and emanated an atmosphere that seemed to be added to physically by the presence of ground mist that iced them as it clung to the moor floor. Before and below them they saw, or rather heard and sensed a stream that ran from east to west in a valley that rose on the far side to a high moor where they knew the bodies had been found. He got his mobile Subjectile out and made the necessary adjustments to initialise the day’s activities. He looked at her, she was staring at the scene with a knowing look. I bet she could find the place without any help at all he mused.

‘I think it’s best that we follow procedures, you initialise your sheep counter as well, just in case’. She showed him that she had done this already, and waited for him to continue.

‘Did you get any specific undeconstructable dream data from last night that we haven’t gone over yet?’ he said, she looked coy.

‘Well I really feel a strong physical attraction to this place. The emotions are so strong.’ She went on a little abashed ‘it’s a vengeful helplessness mixed with a really strong loving; a really provocative sexual tension’

‘You don’t think that just us?’ She looked at him warily, the hint of a wry grin on her face.

‘I know that you’d like it to be, but no I don’t think that this strength of feeling is a waker’s one.’ She added quickly ‘Don’t get me wrong, you’re an attractive guy, but this kind of arousal is one that has taken hundreds of years of sharing to create. It’s way beyond my ken’

He smiled in his turn abashed. She saw his cheeks redden more and they smiled broadly inwardly.

‘By the way’ She said ‘are there any objects on the moor that could glow red in the night?’

He thought, for a minute and spoke.

‘Yes there are records of small iron kilns situated a few miles over that way, over there.’ He pointed where she had been looking through the kitchen window last night. ‘Did you pick up on them?’

‘Yes, I saw them alight last night after you had dropped off. I thought it was another trick of the house.

‘No that’s not the case, they’re supposed to be pre-industrial age bottle kilns for smelting iron ore. The locals say that they were use for making cast weapons for the Napoleonic war.’ She pleasantly surprised him with her amazing all-pervading sensory perceptions.

‘We’d better get on. I’ll make sure we have another look at those kilns before we go. Good job, well done’ he made a note on his subjectile and looked up and looked about, calculating.

A path zigzagged down from the cottage into the mist and disappeared. He looked at the GPS app on his subjectile carefully and put up his free arm and pointed to the path.

‘We’ll follow this for now, the normal path. Very carefully, just in case they went this way’

‘I think it’s more likely they took a straight route. This path will take us a log way round and about 4 or 5 hours to reach the objective’ He looked at her and nodded.

‘What we’ll do is take the straight route back, ok? I think it’s best to take the most obvious route first’

‘That’s a good idea, as long as we get as many perspectives as we can. I think these are the two most obvious routes at present.’ She sounded exalted. ‘This is going to be a pleasure; all this beautiful scenery with an undercurrent of sexuality. ‘

‘I think we’d better get moving before you get too excited!’ he said. They started on the deep soggy descent to the brook. The mist was beginning to be burnt off as the sun palely rose to its zenith and they saw that the brook wove through a canopy of trees garbed in the gold, amber, red and brown leafage of fall. It was here that the path led to and which they followed.

The path through the trees that sheltered the brook was refreshing and wonderful. There was little snow left, but the path was very muddy and this slowed them down. They took readings every 50 metres, which also slowed them down even more.

‘It’s going to take us all day to get there at this rate’ she said, a little annoyed for the potency of signals had dropped off and the activity of each observation grew less and less. It was then that the path suddenly rose out of the trees and towards another wider path. The activity grew much more here indicating more human activity on the Dreamatisation scale.

‘That’s a relief’ she said ‘there’s more activity, but I’m not feeling the same intensity that I did before.’

‘No, I think that’s because this path is the ancient disused way through the valley, If you look you can see it go there’ he pointed back along the way, and forward. He was more of an academic and had studied the area historically before they arrived. Her abilities were in another direction and study of such things would have actually blunted her acuity. She listened.

‘I would expect there to be more Dreamatisation activity here, but I think it’s not due to any unusual intensity but because of the comparative volume of traffic that’s past/passed here’.

‘It might be an idea to set up a mini-objectile here for archaeological purposes.’ Archaeology was no longer the violent act of desecrating sites by a crude physical violence, but had become one of the clearest beneficiaries of DI work and was taking great strides in knowledge and wisdom gathering via creative not destructive means. Ultra-Forensics had in fact been central to this progressive and enlightening development.

She nodded and they continued. The path was cut into the side of a moor that hung above them. They continued on the path carefully taking readings and leaving mini-subjectiles where they thought necessary. She got impatient at times but he calmed her by saying that they were a new team and needed to learn to co-ordinate their efforts for maximum effect. But anyone who had been watching them would have noticed their movements which produced an almost balletic affect; they were like bees weaving beautifully intricate flights at one with the Dreamatisation flowered landscape that they fitted in with so well.

They came to a crossroads after an hour or so and halted, sitting on the remnants of an old dry stone wall that had been here since the enclosures had removed much of the population from the moor, and made the path they had walked a redundancy for long trips.

‘Wow this place is amazing’ she observed. ‘There’s a lot more going on here. This is a crossroads in all meanings of the word’. He nodded encouraging her to go on. ‘I feel that there is a joining of civilisations here. I feel an animosity of lots of men ill met by moonlight. The evocation of distant places is clear. It’s for me a clear indication of Roman presence.’ He was visibly impressed.

‘That’s right. This is a Roman road alright,’ he said gesturing to the more defined path that they had come to. ‘Which way do you think we should go?’ She pondered.

‘Well my feeling is that we should go right. Not because of any erotic indicators but it’s a strong hunch.’ He agreed, aware that her hunches were supported by more than mere intuition.

They finished their repast and continued at right angles to their previous path to the northwest. The road continued for some time and they busied themselves with tasks until she stopped and looked about her.

‘I’m feeling something new’ She pointed a barely visible path that rose steeply to the right. He could detect nothing on the subjectile, but these things were equally useless at close and long range, and sometimes if the shape of the ground were not amenable, not at all.

‘You want to go that way, yes?’ She nodded. It was as if she was in some kind of trance. He knew that they were not far now from the site and she had rightly seen the path that from here would take a direct line to it.

‘It’s not the most obvious route, but I think there is no evidence of any kind of the old couple on this route. We’ll go this way.’ They sipped their drinks to keep up their hydration levels and started up the steep slope. It was hard going for a while through the tussock grass for the path that seemed to be in evidence petered away after a while. When they crested the hill they saw before them a gaping unnatural scar that had been gouged out of the Moor’s edge. It was a huge disused millstone grit quarry, and this did register now on the equipment big time. She walked up to the rim and stared around feeling the presences that still walked here. She saw many people and some bad accidents that he could not see. It was a place of humanity, where all their worst classical excesses could be espied.

‘I think it was this that decided me on taking that path,’ she said. ‘The Dreamatisation haunting is very clear here without the present’s interference.’ Even the subjectile’s picking the intensity of the activity up.’ She was becoming more confident in her abilities encouraged by the positive feedback she was being given.

‘Do you see much of it?’ he asked

‘Yes it’s quite upsetting really. But most of these beings are on the open Dreamatisation horizon which is good for them and us.’ He looked more carefully, and as he walked up to her side he did indeed start to see the images of human activity here. A crowded scene it was. It was only in the most intense cases had he had this ability, such as up at the cottage on their first night. This was a new enervating enlightening experience; truly revelatory. They walked around the rim of the quarry and thence onto the moor beyond. There was no path but they could see in the distance the huge pipes that lay waiting in line on the horizon. They both stopped and turned, drawn by the strong Dreamatisation attraction of the quarry, but neither of them could see anything their minds had taken a different track, and so did they. It took them a lot longer to traverse the boggy moor to the pipes than expected as there was no path they had to navigate between the pools over thick grass tussock islands. They gradually became muddier as they went. They still took readings and left recorders, but not many. Then she stopped when they were about half way to the unburied pipe line.

‘I’m feeling slight evidence of the same atmosphere that was at the cottage, it’s very localised.’ They tried to get a fix on the subjectile.

‘What are you feeling?’ he was as excited as her.

‘Well it’s like but unlike the cottage. Here there’s no malevolence, but there’s an intense love in this broken dream. It’s the love and oneness with the landscape, a mutual respect if you asked me to define it.’ The feeling that she had was similar to that of déjà-vu, ‘walking over your own gave’ or a ‘broken dream’, the latter phrase had caught on amongst practitioners in the DI despite it being a classical usage.

‘You should make a clear note now in the log on this. I’m sure it’s important historically if not to the case specifically. It’s things like this that fill in the gaps and give depth in the unravelling and weaving of the text and texture of case narrative.’ She made notes quickly using all the interfaces available to her.

Once they reached the unburied pipe line they still had to find the site of the couple’s interment. But this was not as problematic as it may have been as a large orange Police tent marked the spot and they could now see this. They made their way along the more compacted ground to their destination with some speed.

When they reached the spot they again wove their magical dance and set up equipment and camp with marvellous ease.

‘The atmosphere of love is here too, but not violent. It’s very slight I can barely pick it up.’ He looked at her.

‘The equipment is not registering anything much either. I think we’ll have to sleep on it.’

Dusk was beginning to fall, it was a sunset beyond compare, bloody red over the black moor.

They set up camp, ate, slept and dreamt.

Chapter 7

The elderly couple were not evident in their dreamscape. But instead a young couple were prevalent in the dreamscape. They were naked and cavorting in the spring day and night draped with the flowers of the landscape. They were enacting a pagan ritual occasionally stopping and making hot love in the deep grass. The love making had started not here but several miles down a track, where they left their clothes piled up as if a rite of spring was being observed.

The love was not just between the young couple, but the land played a significant part as it seemed to be actually encouraging this act of renewal and renaissance. The weather was a confusion of spring and summer. The detectives saw that the couple were in fact many couples who had played out this scene over many years and they and the land communed in a way that reminded him of his study of aborigine tribes in Australia. It was sheer love of being shared by the landscape that had been dreamer and dreamt as the human playmates were now. It was absolutely stunning. The dream then took a new turn. They saw one couple come to the fore who danced not in the warmth of the moor in the spring and summer, but danced in the snow! Theirs was as the fusing of all the couples who coupled here, but was not.

The heat between them grew and grew and at the moment of joint climax they simply experienced the ultimate join of life to death. They came and went at the same time, hand in hand, body in body, in a complete Dreamatisation experience as was possible to imagine. But this was not a new life that had been created, it was a new death, that of the couple.

The detectives were aware now that the elderly couple were not themselves when they died here they echoed narcissistically a strange echo of folklore and mythic depth.

‘It’s them,’ she said to him as she became easily a part of the dreamscene. He remained stood back observing. ‘Let’s take a dream image of them, and we can check from records if it is.’

But they were both pretty sure that they had found the old couple. But why the couple should have done this strange thing they did not know, it was a mystery. The answers they were in agreement all pointed back to the cottage.

They précised their findings, they had found the site and using Dreamatisation techniques the story of the missing couple was revealed. The couple had become totally imbibed by the dreaming of the land and its lovers how the couples went out to the moor to consummate their relationships. These dreams were so potent due to the unknown happenings that occurred thereafter that their dreams were lived out in reality by the retired couple. This was found out by studying the dreams of the 20th century couple. The reason for the potency of the dreams is not yet realised by the dreaming detectives. It was clear that the couple shared such a love for each other so were susceptible to the dreamatic autosuggestion that was found so potently at the cottage.

The detectives collected ate a morning meal and broke camp. They were a little awkward with each other not knowing if they were both involved in the dream more deeply than they realised, for they had both woken naked in their sleeping bags. Neither had undressed the night before. They each convinced themselves that they had just got hot during the night. They had separate tents so this was easy to do.

Once they were on the move again they were more comfortable with each other just got back to the warp and weft of the now practiced routine.

‘That was an amazing night, she said.’ He smiled

‘I’ve never experienced the like of it before. It seemed to be this place as much as anything that created the dream saturnalia.’ Still other unasked questions lingered in the departed night.

‘I’ve got a good idea where the clothes are, follow me.’ They moved along the by the row of uninterred pipes that were to accompany them most of the way back to the cottage. The ground was again firm and the going good. She suddenly halted and looked about her. He looked at her and caught a quality of the waking dream that they had seen at the quarry yesterday; but it was her who appeared to him as an image of times past/passed. It was like she had become part of the waking dreamtime.

‘This way’ She said breathlessly. He followed mesmerised by her. Something had changed between them. He was not sure what it was, but he was sure that he liked it. Again she walked up a tussocked rise and suddenly bent down. They were about a hundred metres or so from the pipes. She had found the clothes of the elderly couple. He beckoned to him. He came up and saw that their attire was neatly folded and hidden under a rock. It was much as he had seen in the dream last night, but he could never have located them based on that. It looked as though there were more bits of material there as well.

‘We’d better do a forensic scan and get all this checked’. They could scan the articles without moving or touching them. All the information that could be gleaned by science could be done by the Central DPU using Dreamatisation technology.

A preliminary report was sent via transponders to their brains.

‘They are their clothes. There are fabrics also here from several thousand years. Looks like this ritual has been going on a long while’ He outlined the message that had come through virtually straight away. She was still having trouble deciphering the images.

‘That was quick.” She said admiring him.

‘I’ve done this loads more than you. You’ll get the hang of it soon enough.’ He was nevertheless pleased at her comment.

After two hours they stopped and took stock.

‘This path has readings of much greater intensity than any I’ve felt so far. I can see it in my mind go in that direction.’ There was indeed a visible trail. She pointed happily along it. ‘It’s about an hour or so along there to the cottage.’

‘Do you feel that something’s changed?’ he asked carefully.

‘Yes I do, now you mention it. I think we are more at one with the moor than we were. The loving that was visible to me now seems to be a part of both of us’ She was clearly not uncomfortable with any of the implications of this feeling.

‘Yes that’s what I thought’ It was probably no more that wishful thinking that he had imagined a joining at a more physical level.

They walked on and when they reach their destination, they are welcomed back to the cottage by a new awareness of themselves and the Dreamatisation narrative they were in search of and now a part of. It was now just a matter of hard work and patience. It was easy for him not so much for her. They were starkly aware of the risks of the case, but knew their training gave them a good chance of remaining aloof from the fate of the elderly couple and others who the cottage had perhaps disappeared.

Chapter 8

 [This could be expanded a further 2 chapters or so going back in history with archer sensed at each stage. The perspective needs looking at, eg 1st or 2nd person best or should it be interactive as in previous dream encounters. ]

They had been there a month and were starting to get a handle on the dreams of the people who had so affected the old couple. The love was a potent force that had bridged the centuries with no difficulty whatsoever. The strongest dreamscape that they managed to extract and piece together was a man’s. This man named, debatably, Archer, had a strong pan dimensional aspect to him. This allowed them a vivid insight into a shared dreamatisation narrative of what they discovered by research to be the battle of Towtown moor. Their combined dreamatic recreation took the following interwoven form though once a connection was made it was the strength of Archer’s dreampower that held the detectives in the background like thralls.

She whispered when the dreamcast began.

“I’m getting the strong feeling that this man is the presence we felt on the moor, when we were making for the pipes, as well as everywhere we’ve felt the love.” He bade her hush, and they tuned in with an even more heightened interest. The scene changed and again they were upon a moor in early winter, they were surrounded by the foul stench of unwashed bodies and alcohol, then they heard him.

‘The battle field was setting up gradually following classically set lines. I took on an analytic frame of mind to try and calm my rising panic. I had a great desire to run for it. I stood in the front rank with my fellows, and we talked discussing the layout of things. The detectives felt that he knew they were present and spoke to them also.

‘We’ve got more men than them’ I said to my companion, a doomed youth who was from a village some 10 miles from my cottage, Edgworth. I was trying to instil some real courage, on top of the Dutch courage of the huge amount of beer that we had already quaffed, into both of us. I noticed that the Yorkist lines were still being added to but that the soldiers looked tired.

‘Look they’re all knackered, they’ve marched 20 odd miles and us just 5. They won’t be a match for us Lancastrians, The Red Rose will win easily.’ I recalled the paper crowned Yorkist king’s head nailed ignominiously to the Micklegate bar. I was confident of our victory. The position of the two armies on the moor gave neither side particular advantage and it was obvious that the Lancastrians who had marched only from York were also fresher than the opposition. The battle would be bloody but there could only be one winner.

‘Just go over your bow and arrows just make sure it’s all in good nick.’ I always did this before a battle was to begin as it took my mind off the horror that was to come. Me and my mate had no part in the decision to make war. It was part of our contract with our Liege Lords that we fight for them and they protect us. But there hadn’t been much of that kind of mutuality since the War of the Roses had begun. We were just pawns in a power game played by idiots. But I knew I could literally pick up quite a sum of money if we won. And being an old hand I knew I could escape and make it home if we didn’t. That was where a moorsman like me should be with his love in the warm bosom of his little cottage that he had started to expand before this last bout of warring had begun. I too looked my bow over. I checked my arrows one by one eying each one’s trueness and tested the flights then carefully placed them back in the quiver. I was ready for the battle as usual. My companion I had little doubt though would probably be killed. He didn’t even have a sword. Mine was a beauty. I had forged it myself from local sweat, iron and charcoal. It had always served me well when my arrows had gone and the blood curdling cries of battle were about me. I was of the moors and knew how treacherous the weather could be, and I cursed my over confidence, for just as the battle lines had been drawn the wind changed swiftly and decisively.

‘Oh shit, look at that’ I said to my mate pointing at the winds change of direction and the dark clouds that now bore upon us from the south behind the Yorkist Lines. ‘They’re snow clouds if ever I saw them, borne on a strong wind god help us.’ we were hit full in the face by swirling snow, battered and buffeted by the noise and the potency of the storm. I looked at the distance between the lines and realised the horrific fact that we were in for a torrid day. My arrows would not reach the enemy lines now, but those of the White Rose would fall lethally thick into the body of our army piercing with their bodkin heads our main force of infantry and knights. How I wish that things could be changed but the pieces on the chess board had been set and there was nothing for it but to go ahead with the mass slaughter and bloody butchery that I knew must now go ahead. Our number advantage was now just an empty promise, a source of overconfidence common amongst his commanding Earls and Lords and would be Kings.

And so it proved, the Yorkists were indeed tired and their reinforcements were many miles away when the order was given to commence firing the yew bows that had so devastated the French at Agincourt, but now it was in use for both sides of Englishmen drawing their own nation's guts out for the view of the powerful. My Edgworth pal screamed as an arrow that had dropped short went straight through his helm. Such was the luck of battle. The rest of the Yorkist arrows passed harmlessly over much of the infantry and smashed their bodkin heads into the knights whose power would be needed for quick victory. There was devastation and panic amongst the men and stampeding horses, which caused much carnage to the footmen in front as well.

‘That’s not a good start,’ I said. The order came for the Lancastrian archers to deliver their first volley, and when it was fired the wind picked up again and the arrows fell short at the feet of the Yorkist archers who were able to replenish their supply. Their commander who saw this state of affairs ordered another two swift volleys fired; this caused still more decimation in the Red Rose army.

The Yorkist generals, Warwick and Edward the paper crowned king’s son, saw their opportunity and they launched the main force at the Lancastrian army which seemed to be in chaos. But they had been also smitten by overconfidence. The Lancastrians let off a fusillade of arrows that now did not drop short and the advancing White Rose was now filled with mutilated and screaming bodies, chaos ruled now on both sides. As was normal practice I was ordered with the rest of the archers to the rear of the red rose force and we released another shower of deadly arrow rain, this met with a rain of equally fatal force as the two armies then met and clashed in a hand to hand random slicing and cutting away of human life.

All day the battle raged on as many men were swallowed by the bogs as killed by hard cold steel and arrow. The snow fell but it did not lay, it just turned the peat field into a sticky mass of reddish black brown death. Archer had a good sword arm as a veteran and fought doggedly, though as the men became more sullied by gore and mud, he found it difficult to tell the difference between friend and foe.

The snow began to stop at about 5’oclock and the battle still raged though both sides were exhausted. However at the Yorkist rear trumpets suddenly sounded. Both the armies stopped for a brief strange second of silence. Joyfully the Yorkists screamed a battle cry of victory matched in intensity though not volume by the collective gruesome groan that was emitted by the Red Rose.

I knew what would happen next, and it did. It was like the desperate fighting bond that had kept the Lancastrian force together was suddenly cut. First the generals and then a moiety of the army panicked turned and fled. Arms and helms were discarded and the rest, their blood lust turned to fear, followed and took flight en masse.

There was a river burgeoning at the rear of the red rose many perished here. They were also harried and slaughtered mercilessly by the reinforcement Yorkist army. It was said that over 30,000 died that day, the bloodiest battle in English History.

But I stood my ground, I had a plan. I knew the moors and their ways and saw that a small copse could be a route to escape if I could make there. It was just to the rear of The Yorkist Line, I just need a reason to be going the other way. I picked up a White Rose emblem from a man who would not need it anymore and wound it over a flesh wound that had been dealt to my torso. I contrived to make it far more bloody than it in fact was and made my way with a staggering gait towards the copse. There was little concern given to me then as the predatory process of looting the dead had begun. The use of the bandage to cover my wounds and my retreat worked.

I made it to the copse and beyond. My plan was to go north and make my way slowly to my home at Broadhead moor in West Lancashire. Here my beloved and child would be waiting for me. Their home was remote and self-contained.

If I get home I’ll be safe, I’ll just keep my head down for a while. Things would blow over as ever they did.

I had a good trip, being a man of the moors I was at home in this land which had given me sustenance and the comforts of home over the years. But the main thing that kept me going was the deep love I had for my family and my moor. My mind was filled with the homecoming and with the warmth of my wife’s embrace.

When I arrived home it was to a sight worse than I had ever thought I could bear. The life of my wife had been taken. I found her my whole world and my child dead. They had been hewn many times by a sword. I well knew the mark such tools of war left. They lay brutally slaughtered in the half walled cellar of their cottage. It was too much for me I broke down completely. My reason to live lay butchered at my feet.

After this distress my grief turned to wrath, I became bent on revenge, and thought who could of possible done this. It wasn’t brigands for they didn’t carry such weapons. It could have been some marauding soldiers, but it was too remote here and very unlikely. Our cow had gone, they could have been killed if someone tried to take it. My wife was a fighter and if anyone had tried to take her cow she would have fought them. Especially if they were cowards. It could only be one of the local squires who did this deed I thought. His mind saw what had happened here and the murders too. It was the Bush and Blair double act, a pair of bullying yellow bellies as there ever had been. It’s dangerous, but what have I got to lose. I’ve got nothing now. I grieved for some hours and took some peat and buried with the rites of the moor my loved ones in behind the half built wall. I thought for a while that I might inter myself here with them and leave vengeance to god, but I had little belief in a deity that allowed the things I had witnessed in the past few weeks to go on. I did hear voices though that shared a secret with me. My forefathers had taught me the way of the land and how best to love and cherish it so get reward and bounty thereby. They had often spoken to me in my dreams in many guises. Their secret was that nothing ever really died and I need not fear. I made up my mind what to do straightaway.’

I stood straight and trudged the 10 miles to the manor, I knew the dangers. When I arrived at the buildings that clustered around the manor house I passed the frightened inquisitive eyes of the villagers, I knew a few of them. I bore them no ill will. I had helped all of them at one time or another with problems of life and land in times of hardship. I knew therefore that they would not to interfere my errand. I checked my weapons as ever bow over his shoulder he removed and twanged the string. “Just the right note” I said myself. I had replenished my arrows from home and I also checked these. I drew my beautiful strong stabbing sword and felt the edge sharp and lethal, ready for action. I stood in the square in front to the manor’s gate and did all this . It was a show that he knew that all who were watching would never forget. He could feel the Lord and his two rag bag mongrels quailing inside and knew that he would have to be admitted to save face. When I thought the moment was right I brushed myself down deliberately and strode up to the front gate of the fortified Manor and smashed on the huge iron studded door.

“Who is that disturbs my peace?” said Bush, I cursed him, but held back my anger.

“I am here to get the justice of the Lord of The Manor to which I am entitled. My wife and child have been slaughtered and my cow stolen, while I was away at war.”

The door creaked open for the lord was frightened of Archer as well, for his renown and prowess in combat and his potent shamanism were well known. Bush and Blair hid at the bidding of their master. He stood alone to meet me. I considered this a brave act and relented a little. We talked and he said that he would deal with the miscreants. On his word, he said. I knew how much I could trust his word, not much. But my eye saw into the place and what it had in store for these creatures and said I was satisfied with his words. But I saw he was not a man of his word. After all it was his men who had robbed me of my family and their precious cow.

I left but knew what came to pass. The lord was raging mad and strode about the hall smashing anything that came to hand. His two hopeless henchmen Bush and Blair had from slithered from hiding and cowered behind an upturned bench waiting until the tirade was over. They crept out from the new hiding place timidly making fearful placatory bowing grovelling movements and words to him.

‘Will no one rid me of this turbulent Archer’

Bush and Blair looked at each other and knew what they should do, and started plotting a way to dispose of Archer in the best possible way for their own safety and gaining their masters, so god’s approbation and reward thereby.

They planned it for the next day but when they got to Archer’s cottage they were very scared. They cowered and skulked around spying on the cottage for several hours. They seemed to be no movement at all. But Bush and Blair were still very frightened, they suspected a trap. Archer had a reputation for being descended from Druids. They waited all night sleeping in the shelter of a stone wall. When dawn broke there was still nothing. So about half way through the morning they drew their swords and gingerly made their way up to the cottage hiding behind every object they could find. The place was deserted. They double checked everywhere but could find no trace of Archer or of the wife and child that they had slaughtered. They were still very frightened for an atmosphere of foreboding hung over the cottage.

They ran quickly way never to return. They told the liege lord that they had frightened the family away. He didn’t believe these two miserable creatures but they had made his life easier. They all thought that was that, but it was not. A few months later the first post war fair was held at the manorial seat. A strange accident occurred. Bush and Blair were trying to sell a cow when it turned on them like some wild beast and trampled them to death. They were not mourned by anybody. The whole village saw it as natural justice. For few believed the stories of the fate of Archer and his family, but no one dared go there for fear of the power of the lost shamen. The whole community feared the area around his abode and none dared visit the place so it became ingrained in the local psyche that it was the devil’s moor. This being a very classical response: that of attaching the label evil to that which is not understood.

Chapter 10 [expand this to include Astrid Formosa and connect it with the creation mythology of the diamond dream world and to Olgos/Oglos, all the other dream meetings can be described in greater detail, again perhaps using the a dream dialogue method that needs to be developed further from earlier dream sequence chapters.]

‘The detectives looked at each other and were stunned.

‘I can tell you know too, he’s a pan dimensional definitely, a forerunner, if you can call him that of Astrid Formosa! It’s an unbelievable discovery” They felt that he knew as much about them as they did him, if not more. It was quite intimidating. They also had a clear direction placed in their minds how the rest of their investigations would be shaped, though they didn’t realise this.

The detectives got the rest of their evidence by communing more with Archer. It was apparent that he was acquainted with Astrid Formosa as well as they were. His awareness of them was new to him, and he welcomed it. He was able after several sessions to give them the whole history of the cottage.

The half built cottage was left for another couple of hundred years before it is finally finished. Strange incidents start happening straight away and the cottage gains it reputation for a dwelling of old nick. Archer seemed amused by this.

“I’m afraid that was to do with me. I wasn’t aware of the power my dreams had.” He regretted the deaths of the old couple, and said that he had communed with them and they had forgiven him. The detectives asked him to share this meeting with them for their records.

They are all dead, but not. They dream on.

After consulting with Archer, The detectives provide the authorities with their recommendations with regard to the case.

The Case is referred to the courts who rule that the family be consulted over the fates of their killers and their own bodies.

Their bodies were left in peace as they wished. It was with the agreement of not just Archer but also his wife and child, so the Dreamatic detectives are thus empowered. They find the location of the bodies in the cellar of the cottage using their equipment, an aura of love and beauty about them, that a snow shower of creamy glass snow had given physicality to in the first day of the detective’s stay with the family. The family thanks them for not desecrating their bodies and dreams.

They then commune with the family in respect of judging their murderers. They are so full of love that they are willing to forgive those who were involved in the slayings. The detectives say they will talk to the persons who murdered his wife and child and stole their cow. Archer asks the detectives to complete this task as he realises that he would scare them death, if this is possible with those already so.

First they search for the actual killers, Blair and Bush. They are discovered but they are lost to Dreamatisation they are in complete denial of what they have done. Their dreams are closed and filled with the conviction that they have done the bidding of their liege lord therefore the bidding of god. When the offer of forgiveness is given by Archer’s family to these two, they reject it and are again lost in their own closed finite dreams to reflect on their miserable lives again and again without the solace of the Dreamatisation universe to assuage their pain.

The Lord of the manor is also found and they he is profoundly shaken by the dream visitation and accepts the forgiveness offered by the slaughtered family for his transgression and welcomed into the open infinite dreamtime of the Dreamatisation as he has suffered the agony of insular closed dreaming for six hundred years.

POETS TALE

This is a walk through the Fall of Hyperion-a dream, by John Keats. I joined John in the 1980's to follow his dreamtime path to see Saturn and other dethroned Gods. I did this because the poem inspired in my heart such a brotherly love for Keats that I wanted to indulge in a bit of poetic tourism, so literally followed him to the very heart of this poem; it was an adventure beyond belief

Following in John's footsteps.

Waking suddenly in the darkness of an early winter's morning, I shuddered, frozen to the marrow. But it was not cold in this room, where the central heating burned hotly. What then had disturbed my slumber? It was a nearly remembered dream, formed in a tortured mind that had awoken me, but why agony and grief filled me at that moment I could not comprehend. Desperately I searched my mind for a solution, until a question slowly formed; dragging with it a train of thought which was to reveal the terrible contents of the semi-lost world of my unguarded soul as its mysterious baggage.

"Is it true that dreams can form the basis for religious madness?"

Driven on by a destructive belief, man sinks his prejudiced fangs in everyman. Inspired by a zeal that breeds hate, hate for those who are not as you and seemingly destroy your dream with every breath. I felt as one such might, felt that I had lost my reason to live, for the dream was now taken from me. But I knew it was not so. The images of the sweven were still upon me, though they were diffuse and meaningless. So I attempted to piece together the shattered reflection of my id, by concentrating myself wholly inwards. I closed my eyes and the darkness gradually resolved itself, first into a kaleidoscope of colour, then into a recognisable scene.

A savage in front of me slept. About his head was a halo, his body shone, captured in an aura of deathless holiness, reaching without movement for the heaven where he would find his salvation. I looked upon him with awe, but tinged with pity, for I knew that this man could never capture his sublime state in waking hours, he had not the key. About him lay strewn sheets of papyrus, each piece was stained with the juice of multicoloured berries and the shapes depicted were, it seemed to me, a wholly true representation of his life, tortuous and agonised struggles against himself. As I looked upon this man I began to cry, and not being able to stand the pain I turned my head away, for this savage was me. I kicked myself, and the savage did not move. So I turned from him, andforgot him.

I was staring now at the scene about me, the avenue of trees that stretched away into the distance and were lost in a mist of violet hue. The trees drenched in a steaming liquid, viscous, vapid. It was then I realised that I also was asleep, even as the now forgotten savage had been. It was then I heard the narrator speak.

"You are no writer, you cannot dream. Or if you can you shall make nought of them. You are Daily Man."

I looked about the nearly remembered landscape for the speaker of these words, and seeing no one I shouted to the sky; "Who are you to say these things, you worm of my thought! I know that every man who has words in his heart can speak them, if he so desires, and so share his vision, be it fair or foul, with all others!"

And so was the purpose of this maiden thought was revealed, whether the result is fair or foul is for you, dear reader, to decide: alive or dead.

I stood at the edge of a forest. Strangely familiar trees grew, from many different climates; palms, oaks and pines; sequoias, olives and cedars. All stood in perfect harmony with each other and I was inexorably drawn into their fragrant shade. I walked for what seemed like only minutes but must have been hours, for the sun had moved from east to west in the flickering sky, when I heard a refreshing gurgling sound near at hand. Attracted by the thought of cool water cleansing my body I moved towards the noise. Within a bower of sweet apple trees in bloom I found a waterfall, which dropped some thirty feet into a crystalline pool of unfathomable depth, dark, but not foreboding.

I walked to the edge of the mere, and stooped to draw my fill from the deep water. After drinking I again looked about me, breathing the sweet air with newly cleansed lungs. Then, glancing into the water I at once noticed something strange. There was no reflection on the surface; it was ebony as blackest jet, giving nothing except its radiant coldness to the universe. I staggered backwards, strangely shocked. It was as if someone had struck me a blow within my very essence. Stunned I stared about me, now blind to the beauty around. The silence inherent in the water's fall then also came upon me. As the water fell, it glistened and splashed playfully, but no noise did it make on entry to the lake.

Just seeing the curtain of life-burgeoning spray, my calmness returned, the deafness a forgetful balm to my being. I looked lovingly at the lively rainbow painted in the droplets, and over a bridge of slippery stones I ventured towards the wall of hope, and in a rejuvenating shower I passed through the waterfall into a cave hung gloriously with majestic stalactites, glowing in the filtered light.

The rays of the sun flashed through the water and danced upon the walls of the cave, creating a stroboscopic vision about me. I span for a minute on the spot, mesmerised by the staggering multicoloured light-show which, as my turning slowed, resolved into an image of seemingly solid reality.

I was, I saw, in an arbour, surrounded by an abundance of fruits and flowers trailed on trellises. I was certain that I could smell rose perfume in the air, so real was the flickering scene. Looking about me in awed wonder I beheld a table which was loaded with food of all nations, and from each dish it appeared that a sample had been ritually taken. Now a ravenous hunger overcame me and I ran to the food, not caring I ate massively, the amount on the table didn't diminish. I consumed the savoury and the sweet with no discrimination until I became thirsty. My first thought was the water of the fountain, but upon the ground I spied a flagon of glimmering liquid, which I took to be nectar, so perfectly it filled the vessel. I fell to my knees and drank a huge draught, and I was filled with a drugged awareness. Time slowed about me and I saw all with an unutterable calm. But this was no alcohol or opiate induced stupor, for I was completely in control of myself as I saw the universe open as a chasm at my feet and I leapt into the infinite with a total joyous abandon.

I was caught in a maelstrom of eternity, which seemed to drain my being of all its substance, against which I fought desperately, but slowly I fell into a timeless sleep, as if captured in an Egyptian wall painting, drowning in a Nile of never-ness.

For how long I slept was an unknown to me, but when I awoke I was no longer in the cave of colour, but in a darkened room of great immensity. As my eyes became used to the darkness I was aware that I stood in a cathedral-like building, surrounded by huge buttressed walls, which rose above to incredible height. So much so that the ceiling was as the sky, stratus beclouded, and where no cloud was evident, stars shone brightly. My neck began to ache, and my head to swim as I looked at this remarkable roof, so slowly I lowered my gaze to the floor. Around me were many strange artefacts, seemingly relics from a fabulously rich, ancient tomb. There lay strewn upon the opalescent floor voluminous vats of exotic liquid; large carpets of skilful make, whereon creatures of all ages seemed contentedly frozen in aspects of joyful praise; and everywhere ritualistic garments and holy jewels shone in the gloomy light.

These treasures, however, were insignificant baubles when compared with the hugeness of the place in which I stood and I again turned my head from these objects, gazing in awe about the immense structure. Totally entranced by its hugeness, it took me some time to realise that the building consisted of four massive avenues of intricately carved columns, of which I stood at the confluence. These avenues came from, I somehow knew, the four corners of the compass: I thus knew that I stood, in some way, at the centre of a universal nexus. This thought awed and excited me, and with a sharpened mind I looked down each avenue, carefully scanning each for a way to go. For go I now knew I must.

To the north and the south the ways ended in impenetrable mists. To the east there stood a great door, immutable and black, the sun, I felt to be locked behind this barrier. To the west I saw a huge statue, composed of shadow and ice, like a huge cloud passing over a stormy sky, a gloriously sublime vision. I was drawn magnetically towards this thing, and slowly, like a priest approaching the altar, I proceeded to the statue.

As I neared to the structure, I noticed that stairs rose from the plinth, which now seemed to be endlessly wide, climbing to fantastic heights. On the top of the base I could just make out a human-form, apparently attending to a small fire of, presumably, incense. I ascended the stairs tentatively at first, then more confidently. As I approached more closely the figure I saw it was a priestess, clothed in a white cloak. As soon as I recognised the shape, it turned and stared down at me, I was now some fifty feet from the watcher, and could see a censer swing from its hand. The pendulous object must have had some kind of hypnotic property, for gradually my progress was halted and I felt a deathly coldness rising from my feet, slowly paralysing my body. Each step took more and more of my quickly fading life force. I thought I might fall at any moment. Then the priestess spoke.

"Who are you, climbing Saturn's seat?" The question was clearly rhetorical, for she continued without pause, "let it be known human, that if you come with a frail heart you will die before you reach this place. Even now your life force is swiftly ebbing. But fear not, for the fulcrum of all things for you has come. Succeed or fail."

In her voice there was an eternity echoing, but also a quality which was so deeply sympathetic, its very profundity drove my totally exhausted body up on to the platform where the priestess performed her rite. All this time her gaze pierced me with a melancholy which strove against my will.

As I touched the ground where she stood, my body thrilled with a power of renewal, which heightened and enlightened, giving me the urge to talk to, to comfort this sad and incredibly beautiful creature. But no words could I utter, none would pass my lips. For her staring eyes had pierced my heart. At length she lowered her gaze and spoke to me in a voice which was deep and undyingly feminine.

"You have passed through the penumbral zone of death, and have come laden with the burden of that guilt. I know well how your body now feels the ecstasy of being and is torn by the realisation of the ephemerality that carries. Your journey has not been futile, you have discovered that your fate lies not in the world about you; but in the world within." she stood with her arms stretched wide, the incense burner swinging from her hand. I pondered her words, and saw they were not empty, but were filled with an almost human intensity. But she was not human. Though her suffering was great, it was incomprehensible to me, for it was not the pain of a woman she bore, but the agony of a whole universe. She had seen truth, it was there in her eyes, the depth and intensity of which had almost destroyed me.

"Oh, holy lady, priestess of eternity, I see that for yourself the infinite lies within, but it is not so for me." She suddenly raised her head, looking at me in shocked surprise. I continued, "I cannot perceive in your eyes deception, and feel that you were once human, but you see all with the jaundiced eye of the infinite. It is so I have felt what you say, but my being is imbued with all humanity, through all ages, and this joy, and this shame I cannot, and will not forgo. It is my place to share all the guilt of mankind. Let others see it through my stained, dreaming, words." her face softened.

"You have spoken well. Mayhap you see with a clear vision my plight, and your logos is beyond dream words. For once I wandered the green earth, and shared your weighty concerns. Amongst the immortals I am now, and as you have not perished you inhabit this boundless stage and you, as I once did, feel, if not understand their never ending plight." Her head turned towards the fire burning on the altar, her breast heaved, moved by a breathless sigh, and I fancied I saw a tear fall down her cheek. Her mouth opened slowly and again she spoke.

"Forgive my mood, for it is many years since I spoke with any in this place, and John is not now here and I loved him dear. He lays by the steps of one of our ancient homes, though his words live in the hearts of many, and will do as long as your species is. John the dreamer is now one of the entangled immortals. I spoke to you of our infinite trouble, and you, unlike John have not echoed my words with knowledge of our kind. Have you any idea of what I speak?" she turned to me, a questioning look in her pure, white face.

"I cannot pretend that I don't know the man you speak of, I have often reflected upon Keats; though, perhaps, without enough reverence. But he is of another time when the glory of the eternal still rang in men's hearts, not to mention its agony. It is so that I then know of your plight, and I do have some sympathy for you." laughing cynically I continued, "but you also know as well as I, that you brought me here to share in your eternal pain, so must have had knowledge of my desire." She looked at me, searching for more evidence, it seemed.

"It was not me who summoned you, but the dreaming words of John."

I nodded, accepting her word so deeply spoke.

"I shall then speak of what I know of the dream path that John followed."

I pointed at the monolithic figure above us. "Saturn sits sleeping here, and we are at his feet, small, but significant. For though your finity has left you, Moneta, yes know your name; you can lead me into his immortal land, as you and others have been led. But though I have come this far, and though I know what now drove me, I am undecided. I have lost my reason in this matter, help me" My words trailed off into the dark heights of the columns, like bats in a huge vaulted ceiling. She looked at me, then again turned away. Her hand reached into the fire and stayed there.

I started and rushed to pull it from the flames. The next moment we were standing in a glade hand in hand, overlooking a small valley through which a bubbling stream ran. On the other side of the brook in the shade of an ancient oak there sat a huge old man with a long white beard. He sat with his head in his hands, as if in a coma.

"You know then this man?" I didn't look at her or reply, I merely gestured towards an amazonian figure approaching the deity along the path he had taken long ago. The woman halted by Saturn and fell sobbing at his feet intoning a lament which silenced all the sounds of nature in the vale. I could at first understand none of the words, but slowly her reverberating voice penetrated my brain, sending an echoing message throughout its grey corridors;

"Oh Saturn, Oh father of creation, what has become of thee? I will take the burden, I will share the grief. The hour has struck thy heart, struck it a fearful blow, I will succour you, I, Mnemesone, will carry the load. Do not sit in shame, do not take the blame; it lies with us all. We are immortal and we have fallen, the timeless hours lie heavy upon us all. Oh Saturn..."

The goddess's droning filled all the air with a mist of melancholy, and imposed a monumental sadness on me, which extinguished my very essence and gradually I became aware of the infinite measure of the grief that pervaded these lamentable beings. I was about to speak when Saturn's bulk moved, as if a strong dream had pricked him, and from his lips there issued a mournful groan that all but shattered my ear drums.

"Ahhhh...! What has this boundless day brought me to? What creatures of deceit to unseat me? The bonds of my defeat are at my feet and they bleed as mortals do..." His thunderous voice trailed away to a pitiful anti-climax, as gradually his eyes opened to the land of his long slumberous entombment. There at his feet there lay the prostrate form of Mnemesone, whom he solemnly spoke to; "Why hast thou come to burden my shame with memory? You carry with you only questions that pierce my infinite heart with unfathomable pain, and each sigh you cry serves to strengthen only the profundity of that agony. I see now the region of my rule, when time was mine and my brethren held sway upon the eternal stage. Now because of my appetite strange I am laid waste, and with me all my kind. I shall to my endless slumber return..." and his magnificent head fell towards his chest. As the deity thus fell to indignity, my breast overflowed with his deep distress, from my mouth a soft intonation exhaled.

"Do not from your grief so escape. Immortal anguish have you suffered and will suffer. Do not compound your children's death by self consuming pity, for nothing shall be solved therein. There is blood about your lips, but it is yours as much as theirs. Thirst not for more. Seek out thy destiny! Fear it not, though destruction it shall find. Saturn, this you know, this is your ever seen path. Fear it not!"

My voice penetrated the silver embalmed ears of the god who lifted his head by degrees at each accusation, to look upon me with his galaxy filled eyes. From his stare I could not drag my gaze, for though his countless years of forgetfulness had somehow sharpened the pain he felt now, that gave me strength to encompass this being's over-full conscience and draw it to my mortal nexus, giving it shape and reality, giving a tangible dimension to this undying creature's failure. And through this bond I also gained sustenance and power which reverberated through me, surging within every nerve and sinew of my being.

Saturn suddenly rose, and cried ecstatically, "Oh mortal splendour I had forgot thy finite joy! Let us Mnemesone, find my brothers. We seek for the end, the boundary of my boundless existence! Come!"

As Saturn tore his eyes from mine I fell down into a dead faint, as if I had been consumed from within. But as Moneta touched my arm I awoke as if reborn, an eternity of elation burning within me.

We stood now in a cave where at first I could perceive nothing. Then gradually a sound of whispered conversation came to me. There were many voices speaking, not at once, but in turn, discussing a matter obviously often discussed before; for each spoke with a rehearsed tenor in their words, which were as eternal as the rocks that entombed us. I could not understand the language in any everyday sense of the word, but each voice carried with it an implication of some facet of our sensual existence.

First then I heard, and saw, the sea. The heaving inevitable mass of our own personal infinity, before me in a voice talking, I knew, of Saturn and the Titans, of the past days of glory. So it was that in words that none can read or write, I was deeply touched and moved, lashed by the foam and froth of the beached sighings that the god unionised. I felt great sympathy for this power with no power, but saw also in these words the early days of the sea, before Atlantis, before pollution. I wept, sobbing racked me, the guilt that I had carried so willingly struck me to my knees.

Through my tears I then heard a different voice, and there was a sadness here also, but a grief less lofty in its aspect. The voice was as fair as an early spring day and as refreshing as an April shower, and flowing through it was an almost human lament, the freely felt loss of an ever continuing vision to a newly blind person it seemed; though without the enhanced keenness of smell, hearing and touch that such a handicap might engender. The sense of sadness that I encountered here made an impact upon me that was total in its compass. I looked about and was aware of all these gods and their terrible aspect, and saw at once whence it arose. I turned to Moneta, who stood still by my side as mesmerised by the vision as I had been.

"Do not be fooled by these creatures, for they have in many guises come before many before, and they do not have existence of their own. They are here because of people such as you and I, they bear witness to our supreme folly, our extreme vanity!" and there was at this moment a tumult and storm that cowered me to the ground and consumed all of me whole, but I knew of it and it was of me, a ragged edge of my guilt, a solid tempest of dreaming reality. I let this mountainous mass of infinite energy consume me, for in knowing it had no end I had given it bounds- in knowing it had no beginning I had strained it of all existence.

And thus I stood in another cave, though not boundless in aspect but walled close, and there in the corner sat a jaundiced figure, he had been wracked and disposed of by some disease many years before my birth, though strangely a fever was still upon him. And I crawled as best I could to his side, for I wished to give him aid, to free him of his fanatic dream.

Although I knew his name, I could not use it, and I choked as I spoke "Hello, you have travelled this path before, I feel." There was no answer, and though I knew he could not talk to me, this somehow surprised me. But his gestures contained words enough.

He looked into my eyes with the full gaze that only the dead can employ, and therein was the god-land I had in this dream, his dream, just passed through. His eyes held no recrimination just an all-pervading acceptance of things as they are; as they were, as they will be. The whole of his being held the key that I was in search of, and he was not about to yield it to me! This much was clear and this was contained within the many faceted crystal of his gaze that made any singular interpretation impossible. This it was certain was the end of my quest.

"So you have found him!" I leapt to my feet, banging my head on the cave roof as I did so. Surprise had again undone me. There stood Moneta, now wearing the garb of a ragged witch, pointed hat and all. But her voice was as it had ever been; it was a magnet which I could not but pursue.

"I thought he was gone from my immortal soul, and you sought and discovered him with such ease. I have just returned from Apollo's stream, where I thought you may have gone. But you are as you said a dreamer. You know nothing of our eternal plight. But do not think this frees you of your obligation. You elected of your own volition to take this path, and do so you must! He will not aid you. His image is of your own making and the path he trod you did not tread, you merely followed the sign, and read it as your kind does. Remember each of us has a way which is born of contingency, you have stated it many a time! Listen to your own voice!"

She stood, now clad in simple white, and a silver cross hung from a chain down the cleavage of her pristine breast, which moved hypnotically before me arousing my forsaken gonads. I wavered for seconds uncounted taking in her words and sexual allure with the same lingering desire and suspicion. "You weaken, and again you have come to a critical point".

She now wore a different dress, and my desire for her was, seemingly, not the same. She was right; almost, my legs were a little unstable, my heart beating a little faster. But again I saw it was not her that I saw, but an idealised imagining; as I possessed her and she possessed me. And I saw that this was an eternity as empty as her heart. As empty as these gods who I had encountered.

She stood speaking more words but I heard them not, for the sky was now shining above and the wind rustled in my hair. These were the breaths of my living imagination, nurtured in the womb of my warmly safe dreams, and released into the life of Daily man by poetry and the stars. It seemed trivial that all had passed me by without a flicker, though when destiny chooses its victims it does so with no feeling. Or perhaps that what destiny is, an emotive pang excited by an ever empty mind.

Now I suddenly felt her close about me breathing soft into my hair, cooing in an eternal fulfilling of her own making. For now I realised that control was slipping inevitably from me, the way that would be followed, a route to my own dream-that was not my dream. Folly, felt in a moments rising cloying passion- this was sticking to me, and I penetrated her deepest desire with a sudden burst of inspired convolution.

"Woo me not infinite one, cannot you see our roles are reversed?"

She slid to the floor gazing into my eyes with an all too ephemeral pain gradually glazing her eyes. Tears fell on my feet and washed them of all sin, of all finity. And I felt guilt no more but a rush of meaning ensued by the emptiness of total knowledge. There was nothing left for me in this place, there was no place for me in this nothingness............

The total annihilation of purpose was about me, and my being floated in the realms of nowhere, my only connection with the living world: despair. Gradually acceptance of the sad finiteness of me overcame agony and produced a calm reflective feeling, through which I connected myself to nothing. But with a strange joy I now performed, aware that Moneta was a part of my existence as much as the emptiness that surrounded me. So I bathed in the boundless medium of nought and came again to the originator of this dream. Moneta touched my arm I awoke as if reborn, an eternity of elation burning within me.

We stood now in a cave where at first I could perceive nothing then gradually a sound of whispered conversation came to me. There were many voices speaking, not at once, but in turn, discussing a matter obviously often discussed before; for each spoke with a rehearsed tenor in their bruised voices.

They were people used to making decisions, these strangely clad creatures. They wore wool woven, magically closely woven cloth, as a kind of overgarment. Underneath I saw, at the neck only the lighter colour of cotton, around which was wrapped a silken cravat.

They all wore this ritualistic, shadowy, raiment. And they intoned words softly and assertively that widened and gained physicality. I determined to follow these words as they slowly formed; and turned to Moneta, and gestured at the departing words becoming world.

"Let me see these things, for they are truly magical." She sighed softly, and I caught the faint semblance of a smile on her soft lips.

"You seem to be entirely a person of your time. It shall be as you wish. For these are your own gods. And they in reality have as much substance as Saturn, who you saw through in your timeless arrogance." I looked at her quizzically, and in spite of the threat contained in her words, I followed the words by holding her hand.

We came to a large modern city. And here the words of these ones arrived, and they became huge buildings, full of people and money.

These edifices glistened in the afternoon sunlight. The roads that ran between the buildings had also formed from the words as did the teeming traffic, constructed of bits of earth, wind and sun. There was this in each of the objects. The sun, it reflected its own glory, and a huge beauty was revealed.

I clutched Moneta's hand and turned to smile at her as I saw the magnificence of all that surrounded me. She felt the glory of the moment also.

"There is nothing for you here she whispered."

And with these words I saw the decay that was creeping though all of this magical beauty. There was sadness and emptiness in all the buildings, some of which were gradually becoming old and decrepit, as did the people who had existed within these things.

He saw death and drudgery at every turn, the words that had floated from upon high were actually worse than Saturn's. For these words flowed from the mouths of a conscious, aware destruction.

Where there had been choice there were corridors of fate that all were bid to haunt. For these Gods were purveyors not of an infinite dream, but a pathetic sun-stealing death. My finity meant nothing to this callous dream. I was as empty as the gods who stood before these people daily, and who they created, and who created them. There was a deep foulness about this place.

And this place was mine. I had travelled here, I know at my own volition. None had coerced me.

And the darkness that had stolen the sun from me thrust me to the dawn. My eyes opened to a tumultuous rainstorm, my head throbbed with hang-over intensity. I smiled and wondered what it was that suddenly cleared my head, glossing over the coming day with a clarity and bliss so little encountered before.

It was just seeing, seeing as if for the first time insecure and open; as vulnerable as the Universe.

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