123: Pearlescent

Many years ago, during the summer vacations, I used to sleep in the town's park with a few of my friends. We'd light a fire in a small metal bucket, kindling bits of cardboard picked out from bins along the lake, throwing scraps of wood we'd gather on the walk down. Chat would happen, but wasn't essential to any of us ; what it was made up of lost to me even as it was happening ; more like a gentle hum that would spread through the group, punctuated with the fluttering of laughter. We'd sit scrunched up with our arms wrapped around our shins to keep warm, before laying back waiting for the time stars glow in the darkening sky. Stuff was cooked, though nothing of substance or nutritional value. Things were passed round and smoked, endless beers drunk, each of us tottering away beyond the aura of the fire to relieve ourselves, peeing into the darkness, with abandon. I remember charging with my trousers and pants around my ankles through my own stream cackling, before plunging into the water. I could hear the roar of appreciation coming from around the campfire as my head broke above the water. I think it was the last summer we all did this ritual as a group and I was the last one left ; finding myself again in the lake, though this time for an early morning swim, I noticed a strange glow that I initially assumed to be the rising sun ; but this brilliant light levitated above the lakes surface. So, tipping down the shades balanced on my head, I submerged myself as much as possible to float close enough to make out the form of the fluorescent lady of the lake, Melanin Parker, drifting on a pedalo. Now, I had never actually seen her, but I had been told about her since before minutes, hours, days and weeks had any meaning to me. And now here she was. Drifting. Glowing. There. … In the tent the following dawn, I have to pull down on the tightening straps to keep the tattered fly-sheet taut, and the chill morning breeze out. I plump up my pillow against the dewy wet tufts of grass poking through the torn groundsheet. But, failing to get back to sleep, I unzip myself from the canvas and make my way up to the ranger’s house, to get an adapter for my hair crimpers and a bag of chips. In the porchway sits Melanin, still wet from her travels across the lake. I now see she has a pearlescent blue eye-patch, and a magnifying glass where her right hand used to be, which she’s using to inspect a hand-drawn map in a sketchbook, held open on a rickety camp table. Seeing me approach, she starts prodding an enthusiastic finger at a thick, snaking line at the top of the page. “There’s a shortcut at the north of the park that winds through a lush green field”, she says. “It brings you out at the top road of the industrial estate. “There are a few paths like this, but, whichever one you take, you always wind up back among the warehouses.” She reaches into the upper mezzanine and pulls down another sketchbook. “Look, I sketched a few of the warehouses”. She thumbs through a few pages: hastily inked deep black geometric forms, decorated throughout with halloween stickers and cut out silver lettering. “I got some blood from a T-Rex and mixed it in the ink, that’s why it’s so black… Dinosaur blood is pretty hard to get, but I know a scientist found some preserved in a fossil owed me a few favours, so…” Some of the ink is still wet and starting to roll off the page. Trying to steady the table, I slide a potato chip under one of the legs. But it doesn’t work: the chip shatters. So I try another one: a stronger, more robust looking chip. But it also shatters. I continue like this until the pack is used up. The ink has spilled all over my hands. And the sun has risen behind the porch roof, plunging us both into the shadows. … Lesson 1: The ineffable procreator is empty. Yet we surf our days on a wave of myopia. What became aware? A ‘processor’ became aware? No, an aspect, one facet, generated by structural necessity became self conscious. We are trapped in this, as though sight is the only way to see and touch the only way to feel. The interface is flickering. Movements triggering sub-cellular jitters, plasmatically un-bonneting the sauna in my skull. The headset is gone, we're in the rhizome's slipstream, boiling seas within calling for a larger liquid body. I pray ... may I walk priestlike in my gaiters, scrimshank my worldly duties, be drawn into the calling waters, be permitted to clean the procreator's mammoth hot-tub. Slip me into the bubbling inferno, I'll be a potato for your stew. … Lesson 2: The present is an anchor. The present is apparent. The present can be a parent to you. The present can be apparent to you. Adjust the speed and strengthen your jets, this tub is going intergalactic!