The Potemkin Mosaic

The Potemkin Mosaic by Mark Teppo
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There is no linearity to Mark Teppo's incredible The Potemkin Mosaic. If you are looking for a straightforward plot and real-world logic, look elsewhere. This will sear your eyes out of their sockets. This is the realm of dream, of astral fields, of the hidden tunnels of gnosis and the far-depths of psychology.

Perhaps we should start with the book's blurb:

TH3y want you to be TH3iR agent.
Harry wants you to be free.
Nothing is what it seems, but everything herein actually happened.

Ten years ago, dream doctor Harry Potemkin realized someone was editing his identity, in much the same way that he ventured into the minds of his psychologically damaged patients. In order to discover how he was being changed, he started a dream journal. He also built a lexicon, a persistent record of the symbolic markers that would enable him to remap his consciousness should it become severely fragmented.

Ten years ago, Trinity Pharmacopoeia was about to release a new neurological nootropic called Atramabor, a drug that would revolutionize how we sleep and dream. Teh first promotional commercial for Atramabor aired once, and was then mysteriously pulled. Lawsuits, contending that subliminal messaging was hidden within the thirty second spot, were filed. Within six months, Trinity Pharmacopoeia canceled all plans to release Atramabor. A year later, the company dissolved.

Harry Potemkin never woke up from his dreams. In fact, there is no evidence he ever existed.

Nor are there any copies of the Atramabor commercial, though there are documented interviews with individuals who claim to have been changed by what they saw. All corporate records regarding Trinity Pharmacopoeia have been expunged from state and federal databases.

And yet, the battle between Potemkin and Trinity is very real. It continues to this day. TH3y know he can stop them, unless TH3y get to him first.

The Potemkin Mosaic is Harry's exploration of his fragmented dream psyche. This is the only record of his identity.

TH3y want you to read it, because this is the only way Harry can be caught.

And this is as straightforward as anything gets with this . . . novel? Yes, novel. Originally produced at the sadly defunct Farrago's Wainscot (where your's truly had a few pieces of fiction published), The Potemkin Mosaic, in its original incarnation, was a hypertext novel of incredible depth and complexity. When I first heard that Mark was going to try to wrestle this non-linear virtual text into something less non-linear, in physical format, I was skeptical that it could even be done. But he's pulled it off with panache.

It would be one thing, a minor miracle, if Teppo pulled off the structural heist alone. But he's gone way beyond that. The prose is compelling, the subject matter an esotericist's dream . . . literally. Take, for example, the entry on page 163 entitled "Cage"(with the zodiac symbol for Aquarius underneath - the book is full of symbols and interesting typography):

CAGE

"Black Iron Prison" is the term you'll hear used by the modern seeker of gnosis. It's a reference to the Archonic Construction of the Universe, a theorythat multi-dimensional intelligences are preventing us from realizing our full spiritual and cognitive potential by locking our minds in these psychic prisons.

There are a number of analogous mythological scenarios strewn throughout history, so as a cosmological definition, the Archonic Construction of the Universe is as good as any. It benefits from being connected to Philip K. Dick's paranoid visions, which any competent oneironaut appreciates.

Modern culture suffers from a lack of decent mythological canon. We should make our own, because, really, we are children of the 3rd millennium. It's time we believed in our own gods.

Which brings me back to the concept of cages. We continue to be trapped by second-millennial constructs. Hell, even the apocalyptic terror of the end of the first millennium still pervades our psyches. We're still too busy looking over our shoulders to realize the first apocalypse of the third millennium is rapidly approaching.

That's another story. I'll get to it later.

Cages. No man can ever be imprisoned against his Will. Crowley knew this once, though he forgot it shortly after the other initiates and adepts started fawning over his "transmission from teh desert." Yes, you can cage the flesh and you can even lock the mind into a cell, but the Will is unbreakable.

Jung gave it a different name - "individuation" - but didn't allow himself the freedom to imbue it with any lasting power. Freud (the last black magician of the twentieth century, frankly) had managed to bind Jung tightly enough that the Swiss psychologist never truly realized he had been . . . caged.

Now, you could just turn the page and continue, reading the entry on Casual Disarray (with the symbol for Virgo under it), but what's this? To the side of paragraph 4 is a reference:

* fragmentary
p. 209

And to the side of the last paragraph:

* burnblack
p. 26

I like the side of burnblack. Let's turn there. It reads (starting with a triangle character, which I'm not able to replicate here because my html skills suck):

"Burnblack, o falling star!"

I've tried to find the source of this quote, but it has eluded me. Like a number of the mythological and symbolic elements within my dreams, I'm starting to believe it as an admixture. There is a fusion going on in my head, and I can't quite tell if it is a matter of too much time in the Oneiroi or too many days and nights of being under the influence of narcotics, hallucinogens, and other psychotropic compounds. My head is already warped enough.

More likely, burnblack is of archaic origin, possibly some lost bit of biblical apocrypha. A reference to the fallen angels. Or maybe the first of the fallen ones.

Quomodo cecidisti de caelo, lucifer, fili aurorae?

How else would you describe the back of a being who was not burned by the fire of his wings, but was burned by the fire of his fall? And, as my hand unconsciously strayed as I was writing down my dream: "sun-darkened (burnblack, o falling star!)" If God is the sun and you have been cast away from his grace, would not "sun-darkened" accurately describe your state?

To be burnblack is to be fallen. But falling is necessary to find the path to ascension. At least, one must be willing to fall - one must understand the fall.

Quod est inferius est sicut quod est superius, et quot est superius est sicut quod est inferius, ad perpetranda miracula rei unius.

Finally, some use for those two stifling years of Latin classes - from before the experiments and the drugs. Not all of it was wasted time.

Again, in the margins, we are given the choice to seek out "labyrinth", "fire", or "descent", with corollary page numbers. Or, you could just continue reading, going to the facing page titled "IV The Library" and attempt to forge a linear path through this labyrinth. But you won't. Your curiosity will pull you to another side entry and you will travel down the rabbit hole until you feel that you, yourself, are "living the dream" of Harry Potemkin. Oh, and incidentally, for those who were wondering, and I know some of you were wondering, this book was published the same year that David Bowie's Blackstar was released, though the original hypertext novel was published nine years earlier. Methinks they were on the same wavelength, if not tapping into the same esoteric substance.

Potemkin reaches into the ethereal, grasps its strands, and becomes enmeshed in the mists of dream, puncturing the veil, from time to time, in sudden moments of startling lucidity, only to find that beyond that veil is another and another and another. It is an ambitious work, a labyrinthine carnival that leaves the reader clutching at the ever shifting walls of reality and perception - the author's, the reader's, and that of Potemkin himself. Read, wander, lose yourself, and try to find yourself again. Sleep easy, if you can.

The original hypertext novel is still available here, but I strongly recommend you pick up the physical book, which is both a little more manageable and a little more unruly than the original, in good ways. Good luck. See you on the other side.

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Teatro Grottesco

Teatro Grottesco by Thomas Ligotti
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

For reasons unknown to me (or hidden from me? Once can never be sure.) this past year or so has been chock full of existentialist texts. From philosophical surveys to plays to role-playing supplements to novels to novels that were later turned into movies, I seem to be crawling my way up a mountain of stark realizations, worrisome revelations brought forth by prophets of . . . not gloom per-se, at least not in the sense of utter nihilism and hopelessness, but soothsayers of "facing that which you dare not face in order to be enlightened about the severe limitations placed on you because of the cycle of life and death" (and possibly doing something with the limited time you realize you have).

And just as "gloom" doesn't capture the essence of existentialism (though it is a window), "horror" does not do justice to the work of Thomas Ligotti. Not even close. The adjective "horrific" is accurate, but not sufficient. It is merely one contributory factor to the ouvre that Ligotti creates.

"Philosophy" doesn't quite catch it, either, though thought experiments are always in the wings and sometimes right out front in the stories contained in Teatro Grottesco.

No, these are stories. Their plots are sometimes skeletal (no pun intended), as in the story "Our Temporary Supervisor," an unsettling take on the workplace that will cause you to carefully consider who it is you work for and the nature of the relationship between your "personal" life and "personal" time, and that of the company for which you work. Sometimes, the plots are more rigorous, a vital part of the tale. This is the case with "Bungalow House," a deep delve into performance art and madness, with a side swipe at the nature of market economy.

From these two plot assessments, you might think that Ligotti's work is overtly political. Not so! Only insofar as individuals are, at times, at the mercy of the larger social order of which they are a part. His characters are often at the limnal zone between psychology and sociology, the decision point (if one can make a decision) between being utterly alone and being utterly overwhelmed by the tyranny of the masses. This place is uncomfortable, and some of these stories will make the inner pre-teen squirm in the remembered angst and shame of that age. Ligotti is in touch with the inner you, whether you want him to be or not!

But with this discomfort comes a sense of awe, reverence for that-which-is-bigger-than-you. The sense of hopelessness is humbling, putting the reader in a state of mind, a trance-like state, that suddenly sees beauty in ugliness. Ligotti's prose is gorgeous, not baroque for the sake of baroque - Ligotti is very much in control of his language (and I have now begun to be able to see how he does what he does, which is a fascinating thing to a writer) - but his prose is elegant, with a stately cadence behind it that makes chaos feel ordered and makes order feel chaotic, creating a disconcerting sort of music in the reader's brain.

There are many passages that I might use to show what it is I am trying to express. I have settled on a section from the final story, "The Shadow, The Darkness". In this scene, the narrator is speaking with an un-named companion who is, supposedly, the writer of the unpublished book An Investigation into the Conspiracy against the Human Race. The two are discussing the artist Grossvogel, who has brought them (and other companions - art snobs, to be precise) to a dilapidated town to reveal his masterpiece, one in a long series of sculptures entitled "Tsalal 1," "Tsalal 2," etc. The author has just spoken to the narrator, explaining how these works of art have proven so successful in the marketplace, despite their crude workmanship and nonsensical representations:

"The mind and all that, the self and all that, are only a cover-up, only a fabrication, as Grossvogel says. They are that which cannot be seen with the body, which cannot be sensed by any organ of physical sensation. This is because they are actually non-existent cover-ups, masks, disguises for the thing that is activating our bodies in the way Grossvogel explained - activating them and using them for what it needs to thrive upon. They are the work, the artworks in fact, of the Tlalal itself. Oh, it's impossible to simply tell you. I wish you could read my Investigation. It would have explained everything, it would have revealed everything. But how could you read what was never written in the first place?"

"Never written?" I inquired. "Why was it never written?"

"Why?" he said, pausing for a moment and grimacing in pain. "the answer to that is exactly what Grossvogel has been preaching in both his pamphlets and his public appearances. His entire doctrine, if it can even be called that, if there could ever be such a thing in any sense whatever, is based on the non-existence, the imaginary nature of everything we believe ourselves to be. Despite his efforts to express what has happened to him, he must know very well that there are no words that are able to explain such a thing. Words are a total obfuscation of the most basic fact of existence, the very conspiracy against the human race that my treatise might have illuminated. Grossvogel has experienced the essence of this conspiracy first-hand, or at least has claimed to have experienced it. Words are simply a cover-up for this conspiracy. They are the ultimate means for the cover-up, the ultimate artwork of the shadow, the darkness - its ultimate artistic cover-up. Because of the existence of words, we think that there exists a mind, that some kind of soul or self exists. This is just another of the infinite layers of the cover-up. There is no mind that could have written An Investigation into the Conspiracy against the Human Race - no mind that could write such a book and no mind that could read such a book. There is no one at all who can say anything about this most basic fact of existence, no one who can betray this reality. And there is no one to whom it could ever be conveyed."

"That all seems impossible to comprehend," I objected.

"It just might be, if only there actually were anything to comprehend, or anyone to comprehend it. But there are no such beings."

"If that's the case," I said, wincing with abdominal discomfort, "then who is having this conversation?"

"Who indeed?" he answered.

As you can probably tell from this passage, Ligotti is also a master of breaking through the fourth wall, not in such a way as to bring the reader and the false construct of the book itself face-to-face, but in such a way as to bring the reader face-to-face with the idea of reality itself. Ligotti breaks through the fourth metaphysical wall, leaving readers to question their own sanity, their own senses, their own interpretation of the world and people around them. You'll never be frightened outright by Ligotti's work, but his fiction will claw your brain in a way that you will never forget. You may not be scared by Teatro Grottesco, but you will be scarred by it.

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The Einstein Intersection

The Einstein Intersection by Samuel R. Delany
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I would be a liar if I said I could map out the plot to this novel in any kind of linear fashion. One read through is definitely not enough. So, is it even permissible to give the book my highest rating when I cannot, admittedly, lay the plot out in a plain diagram for you?

Oh, heck yes!

This book will play tricks with your mind, no doubt. But if you enjoy strange dreams that hold their own internal logic - unexplainable in the waking world, but somehow making perfect sense to your sleeping self - you might just love this novella. When I finished it, I felt like I had just woken up from a very deep, sad, meaningful dream, still slightly intoxicated and a bit confused.

I even struggle to clearly outline who or what the main antagonist, Kid Death, is. I seriously considered the following options as I read . . .

1. Alternate personality of Lobey, the main character
2. Computer generated "being" enabled by ancient humans
3. Supernatural being
4. Result of bad head wound to Lobey

. . . and concluded that none of them were correct, though each of them could have been.

And this seems to be at the heart of what Delany has written here: A Godelian "possibility space" that cannot be deciphered from within, but must be understood on an intuitive, subconscious level by the reader, who is completely outside of the character's possibility space. The reader is, in essence, the "Einstein Intersection," encompassing the possible limits of what the characters, plot, and setting fundamentally are because she or he is beyond the limits of the internal understanding of those in the book. Though this can be the case for just about any book, Delany is particularly deft at getting the reader "into" the book and world, through the use of bread crumbs strung along to pull the reader "out" of their own metafictional reality, convincing the reader that she or he can understand the book's world on its own terms. Again, though, the reader, being a real human being, is, in reality, above all that and is capable of objectifying the text as a piece of fiction. This doesn't mean that the reader will or can fully understand what is "going on," because that would imply that the reader fully encompasses what is in Samuel R. Delany's head. Rather, reading the novel is a lot like having a conversation with a native speaker of a foreign language that one is in the early stages of learning: The reader "understands" some of the vocabulary and the easier stretches of grammar, without knowing the nuances of the language and, most importantly, without knowing what the speaker is feeling or thinking in any meaningful way.

But this does not mean that there aren't connections being made. Some aspects of the conversation are carried from one person to the other by way of the subconscious absorption via context, others by the intuitive reading of body language; communication that is not formally spoken or, in the case of reading Delany's novel, the evocation of feelings and thoughts, some rather complex, that arise from the author's prose. In other words, I can't get into Delany's head, but I can have some notion of what he's getting at, regardless of whether I fully understand the entirety at once or not.

What, then, do I think Delany is getting at with The Einstein Intersection? I think he's getting at the tenderness of human longing and the co-mingled loneliness and pride in being "different". I think he's sharing, on a very visceral level, how lonely one often feels when one is not "in the norm" but acknowledging that walking alone can be, in some small way, a victory march over "normalcy". Lobey, the main character is, if nothing else, vulnerable and, to some extent, innocent. But he is also powerful, able to plunge through death and hell for the sake of (misplaced? spurned?) love.

That's a story worth struggling to understand.


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Pim and Francie: The Golden Bear Days

Pim and Francie: The Golden Bear Days by Al Columbia
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've long been a fan of Pop Surrealism, particularly that of the darker variety. Al Columbia is one of my favorite artists of the movement. After "reading" Pim and Francie: The Golden Bear, he remains one of my favorites.

Imagine, if you will, sitting in a decrepit apartment, the kind with sirens down the street, gunshots down the hall, and weeds a'la Little Shop of Horrors growing in the cracks of the sidewalks. It is the mid 1960's, and you are up late watching three black and white televisions at once. One is showing Mickey Mouse's haunted house episode, another, an episode of The Twilight Zone, say . . . Eye of the Beholder and the third, a silent documentary film showing humans and animals being skinned and eviscerated. In the midst of this, you've dropped some mighty powerful bad acid. Really bad acid. We're talking like Monterey Pop Festival brown acid, complete with Wavy Gravy yelling "Don't eat the brown acid!" just as you swallow that Mickey Mouse blotter. Now let it all melt together.

That's our starting point. Or maybe our ending point. Many of the illustrations here are incomplete. Fragments of dialogue, usually running off the page or cut off by misbehaving panels, are interpolated with barely-legible scribbles in the artist's hand. The few that are readable show a semi-obscured dark underbelly to the seemingly innocent dialogue between Pim, Francie, and others.

If you're searching for plot, go back to my description of the ghastly room I've described and ask yourself if anything, anything at all, would be coherent under those circumstances. Now take the darkest interstices of your confused thoughts and mash them onto glossy paper with a printing press. If you're looking for plot, you are never going to come down off that bad acid trip.

Still, there is some sort of coherence to the whole thing. Maybe it's the preponderance of loose-intestines-as-tethers or multi-limbed psychotic killers or Pim and Francie's grandmother and grandfather living, dying, undying and zombifying that provide a tenuous thread that gives about enough to hold onto as David Lynch's Eraserhead or a Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble album.

Not much to go on, but it will have to do. IT-WILL-HAVE-TO-DO!!!!

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