(go to: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4)

People had always wondered about the end. The branch of human thought devoted to the development of the universe— cosmology— generally included a section devoted to theories on the end— eschatology. Eschatological speculations were interesting while they lasted. Ideas ran from ascension, thermodynamic decay, tide of chaos, cosmic implosion—to fire and brimstone, battle, peace, glory, and oblivion. Many theories came close to the mark—most theories, in fact. But the necessary determinism of any eschatological answer overlooked a key feature of fate: chance.

Perhaps the universe was doomed from the day Jean Paul Renault unleashed his Principle. Certainly, from that point on, destruction of some magnitude was unavoidable. But if he had initiated the sequence to Ultimate Destruction, its inevitability remained hidden until the last instant. The delicate point of equilibrium required for the universe to explode was attained by the play of such erratic forces that any calculation of an outcome would have been impossible. A hair in another direction and the crucial momentum would have collapsed. Fortunately, after 2299 or so, no one wasted their time trying to guess at ends. Instead, Gardening spread across the world, and with its grand influence, eschatology was dismissed.

The adoption of Gardening as the main pursuit of mankind was the immediate consequence of the murder of Brother Edgar. Renault’s act was enigmatic, but its violence silenced debates over the truth of Edgar’s discovery. The reactionary outburst displayed to the world an immaturity, in the face of progress, that people could no longer stomach. All reasonable people were shocked into seeing that Brother Edgar’s find was of revolutionary importance, unavoidable, unparalleled in human history—and the events transformed a surprising percentage of the world’s population into reasonable people. Thus it was decided by society that the time had finally arrived for all utopian daydreams to come to fruition. Renault was deemed a madman.

After their new beliefs settled, people found psychic projection easy to achieve. Confidence and a little concentration were all it took to get their backyard plants moving. It was fundamental; no one found themselves entirely lacking. A new enchantment with reality uplifted them, and change came swiftly and effortlessly. Local structures transitioned naturally into independent Gardens, almost covering the globe in their escalating glee—ballets of growth and color, swelling plays of form and matter burst out from the plots of land and matured elegantly into writhing webs and towers. Each garden was an individual masterpiece, never constant over time, a unique profusion of harmony and vitality.

In the cheer and spirit of Gardening, a cosmology was put forth whereby the universe would never die. The universe had Volition and could choose to continue, just as man had and could. Simplicity and clarity guided the Gardeners in all their thought. With some experimentation, they found that metaphysics remained pleasantly consistent when cut down to three concepts. Volition, one, was the combination of the other two: Will and Willing-but-Willed Action. This was the simplest and clearest schema they could maintain. Within it Renault’s Principle was inconceivable. When the issue arose, the Principle was muddily dismissed as both immoral and impossible, but it rarely came up. There was no room in the magnificence of Gardening for the agitation, the meandering desires and frustrations that would nurture such a dangerous idea.

But in the wastelands outside the Gardens, reasoning was not so easy. There was an element in the world that remained incurably aloof to the beauty of Gardening. Like everyone else, they turned to plant work, but the movements they created couldn’t succeed in captivating them. Everything fell flat. There was a distraction which defeated their focus and left their dances uninspired—a nagging image of something greater. They were unable to shake the stubborn notion that it was the spectacular Renault who was the real revolutionary, not Edgar.

Unfortunately for these outliers, there was no immediate answer to their doubts. Distrustful of the repression of the Principle, they couldn’t buy into the Gardeners’ notions of utopia. But neither could they provide a strong counterpoint, a decisive inflammation of the Principle of Equivalence. The driven clarity an explosion demanded was elusive, and impossible to muster from the scattered confusions and suspicions they had been left with. Incapable of incorporating themselves into the new world, they became unattached, solitary vagrants, making their way through the scraps Gardening had left behind.

The endeavors of these wanderers were torn. Fires flickered but never consumed them. Forms and dances flowed effortlessly but never gripped them. On one side a wild, luminary impulse taunted them, while on the other the melancholy escape of psychic play called to them. In the uncultivated lands, their drives flailed for direction then atrophied in the unforgiving elements. Their gifts seemed destined to flounder, steps toward something that could be, but that they could never lock onto.

Some lost themselves in wonder, hypnotized by the responsiveness of life their new powers revealed—the world would give under their look and they would give right back, falling into the pulse and undulation of every moment. Some laughed uncontrollably and made dances that mimicked fires and little fires that grew like plants. Some became lackadaisical, others turned angry. Unchecked in the open wastelands, the outcasts grew wild. They were maniacal with time, or they were broken.

But when nothing mattered anymore, and every one of them agreed on that, they finally found their answer. The fire-mad look in their eyes had drawn them together and wound them so tight; their lunacies had flared so colorfully and ridiculously for all to see—there was no other option. They began to Party. They were Revelers of course, Hedonists, spectacular growths of their own making with a limited time on this planet. They called themselves the Pyromaniacs—their party lasted 400 years.

(go to part 6)

part one, part three 

Hamachandra grew up in a small poverty-stricken village in India.  His subsequent destiny was put in motion by two life-shattering events:  a deadly illness, and a mistaken mail-delivery.  Near Hamachandra’s home village was an affluent British colony of a similar name, and mail was often misdirected to one or the other.  What Hamachandra’s family received, one day, was about 40 books from a man’s library, being delivered all the way from war-ravaged England (the year was 1944).  Overjoyed to receive such an abundant supply of kindling, bed straw, and toilet paper, they put it to use immediately.  Hamachandra, a naturally curious 8-year-old boy, found these pages of printed symbols intriguing at first, but was very soon back outside playing with the other village children.  Only weeks later he fell terribly ill with an allegedly deadly disease (what disease this was is not known since Nogen’s remarks on the subject are vague) that left him bed-ridden for more than a month.  With nothing else to do, he spent his time gazing at the pages of the surviving books.  During his feverish delirium, he began seeing inexpressible patterns among the symbols on these pages (he was neither schooled in English nor in reading) and claims that he spent many long nights having nightmares concerning them.  His parents, wondering if the books were doing him harm, took them away.  However, at this point his condition worsened drastically, and they quickly returned them, at which point he started getting better. 

The day his fever broke, Hamachandra claims to have had an incredible epiphany, upon which he not only new how to read English and modern mathematical notation, but understood in depth the contents of several of the books, in particular Russell and Whitehead’s Principia Mathematica, Charlotte Bronte’s Villette, several textbooks of theoretical physics and Greek mythology, as well as an English translation of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, the sizable fragment that was left of Marx’s Capital, and a bit of Freudian psychology.  His parents were convinced he had gone utterly mad, and promptly burnt all the books.

(Whether this account is entirely accurate is, of course, subject to doubt, but the British psychologist who examined him six years later confirmed that he had memorized many passage from these works and had an impressive knowledge of their contents.)

Following this experience, Hamachandra became more and more reclusive, and began suffering more and more intense migraines.  Without anything on which to read or write, he began thinking in earnest about both Hegelian philosophy and the foundations of physics.  To him there seemed to be some kind of deep unseen connection between the two, and he spent many a sleepless night in intensely concentrated contemplation.

At the age of 14, feeling an outcast and a freak of nature, Hamachandra fled home in search of the man whose books he had absorbed those six years ago.  Arriving at the nearby British colony, he shocked a certain bookshop keeper, Thomas Warren, when, seizing a pen right out of his hand, he began scribbling furiously in tensor notation right on the surface of his desk.  Even more surprising, the boy didn’t know a word of English.   He quickly became the town wonder.  They assigned him a schoolteacher, a nurse, and an interested psychologist (Robert Nogen) who examined him daily and took copious notes (see Nogen, 1968, p. 58-69, for a summary of his findings).

Soon it was realized that Hamachandra had completely outstripped their instructional resources, and since India was descending into civil war anyway, Nogen took him to Oxford, at the age of 16, to continue his studies in physics.  The year was 1952.

*

Two years later, after earning his Ph.D. by locking himself in a room without books or writing implements and thinking about quantum fields, he published his groundbreaking article, “A Theory of Hadrons.”  Termed obscure by even the most prominent quantum physicists, Hamachandra’s theory was smashingly vindicated by subsequent developments in the theory of the residual nuclear force, and in 1958 he was offered a position at Caltech.  During the meantime, however, having emerged from his seclusion, he became infuriated at the discovery that there were Hegel scholars at Oxford, when in fact he had been assured upon arriving there that “no one studies Hegel anymore.”  During the four year period between 1954 and 1958, Hamachandra went back into seclusion were he wrestled not physics problems, but philosophical ones, suffering terribly from migraines and the raging moods that came with them.  He dared not share his philosophical ideas with anyone, so great was his fear of ridicule, and by Caltech’s invitation in 1958 he was actually relieved to find a new distraction from his inner turmoil. 

At Caltech, leaving resident giants such as Richard Feynman and Murray Gell-Mann unimpressed, Hamachandra began studying the less glorified physics of phase transitions and stars, while emitting frequent unfounded “prophesies” of the physics to come, in particular on what would become the Standard Model.  Though his predictions were surprisingly accurate, his lack of rigor destroyed his reputation as real scientist. 

In time word of his work reached Princeton, and the controversy left the faculty deeply divided for several days, before the fact that the year (1961) read the same upside-down became the new favorite topic of conversation among the symmetry-minded intellectuals there (for an account, see Wheeler’s autobiography).

Flavia, however, could not shake the thought, and was in Pasadena by that November.

*

In order to meet the recluse, Flavia had to literally camp outside his apartment and wait for him to emerge.  When he did, she was impressed by his handsomeness and genial manner, and after a couple of meetings, she was complete bowled-over by his (according to her) profound and revolutionary understanding of Hegel.  Hamachandra, for his part, instantly fell in love with the woman, who seemed to him the only person in the world that understood his mind and its travails. 

By Christmas the two were practically living together, and by February of 1962, 35-year-old Flavia realized that she was pregnant.  At first she was infuriated.  Her idea had been to give birth to a new philosophy, perhaps, but not a child.  Soon however, the idea of a biological Apollonian offspring started to grow on her, and she secretly determined to have a child by Lewis as well.

Twenty-five-year-old Hamachandra, totally ignorant of Flavia’s ongoing affair with Lewis, had secrets of his own.  Flavia had always insisted on using condoms, but Hamachandra, who was completely in love and saw child-bearing as the sole essence and goal of love, had been discretely poking holes in them.

*

Within the span of one year Flavia had chanced upon her two Prophets and conceived a child by one of them.  But the actual dawn of the Blacktail Circle was not to occur for another four years.  In 1962, Flavia officially married her Apollo, whose interests (which couldn’t be dictated by his career or intellectual surroundings) had turned to mathematical puzzles, cryptograms, and ancient languages.  Having already deciphered the English written language from scratch at the age of eight, he found himself immensely talented at such pursuits, and by 1963 had dropped his physics researches altogether.  By this time, the CIA was becoming mightily interested in his talents, and soon he was their star code-breaker.  Meanwhile, Flavia had given birth to healthy baby boy, who they named Bharadwaj (meaning “lucky bird”) in the Indian tradition.  Flavia decided that he would inherit his father’s lack of a last name.  Also, being a trained philologist herself, she easily followed Hamachandra into the fields of ancient languages and cryptography, and was in fact offered a job by the CIA along with her husband, which she accepted—hiring a nanny for the child.

But in March of 1963, mere months after giving birth to her first, Flavia was pregnant with a second, by Lewis, who would spend his time between tours living with the married couple, never showing any signs of jealousy.  (Flavia made sure that it was Lewis by timing her intercourse with the two to take full advantage of her menstruation cycle.  This is never 100% effective, of course, but Flavia had unshaking faith that fate would make it work.)  Though Hamachandra was still unsuspecting, he found Lewis not only boring but irritating, and frequently questioned Flavia as to why this “vagrant” was receiving their charity.  Flavia, of course, gave highly theoretical answers to this question, alluding to a new era in Western civilization brought on by the blues aesthetic.  This would plunge Hamachandra instantly into a silently contemplative mood, though he still had the nagging feeling that some piece wasn’t fitting together right.

That August—as Flavia became “fully determined” to tell him the truth “soon”—Hamachandra, after one of his longest and most intense migraines (during which he reported that “sounds became colors and colors became explosions”), intuited it on his own in a sudden flash of clarity.  According to him, his new understanding was so profound that he almost decided to stay with Flavia for the sake of her project.  But he left, he said, because he perceived a fatal flaw in her philosophy that would spell doom for them both.  Unable to kick her out of the house (which was now in Washington D.C.), he quit his CIA job and went back to Caltech, where he continued his now blossoming research in information theory as well as ergodic and non-ergodic sequences.

Flavia’s distress and pregnancy prevented her from doing further CIA work, but she did receive ample support for herself and her baby from Lewis, who had now achieved moderate popular success with his third album, “Poor Baby Child!”  During the next few years their friendship became much closer, and the blues guitarist began reading literature—something he had never done before—including French aphorists, existentialism, and poetry from antiquity.  Flavia also gave birth to her second child, which turned out to be Lewis’s indeed.  They named it Gray George.

The time was almost ripe for the inception of the Blacktail Circle.  But first, Flavia had to overcome the “fatal flaw” in her philosophy, and Hamachandra and Lewis had to become reconciled.  Both these events would happen two years later in mid-1966.  To understand how this happened, we’ll need to take a closer look at the biography of George Lewis.

part two, part three

introduction

The small and mysterious literary society known as the “Blacktail Circle” is still thought by most scholars to be apocryphal, a hoax, or simply a reference to a group of unscientific cranks.  It is my aim in this article to argue that it is none of these, based on recently uncovered evidence:  the two dozen or so pages that survive of the diaries of Frank (“Franky”) Hammond, and their corroboration of material still accessible in the memorized poetic fragments, scholarly articles, role-playing game scenarios, blues albums, and films noir published by members of the circle. 

The circle formed—originally only three members—in 1966.  What began as an ascetic club soon ventured into code cracking, and after laying the groundwork for a modern aphoristic style, it eventually broadened into an all-encompassing intellectual, artistic, and criminal society.  It is thought that the untimely demise of the group was due to continual tensions and resulting open warfare with the Mafia and other underground rivals, some undoubtedly anarchist in nature.  Most of the manuscripts and core works of the Blacktail Circle were eventually seized and destroyed by these enemies, and were not, as is usually supposed, merely mythical (—not even the infamous Trax Persephone).  Nevertheless, I will argue that this circle was—despite all its ethical and organizational shortcomings—a genuine intellectual phenomenon of unprecedented scope and depth.

The group was a motley crew.  Of eight members, five were convicted criminals (three of these were clinical sociopaths), one was a diagnosed schizophrenic, and the group’s own “genius” suffered from incurable and unimaginably intense migraines (with all the neurotic and occasionally psychotic psychological features that can accompany these).    At the same time, the group included a rock and roll legend; a blues pioneer; a wandering ascetic with no criminal background, a long history of charitable activity, and philosophy professorship at Princeton; a co-inventor of the modern “role-playing game”; an incredibly prolific psychology professor; a practitioner of both eastern orthodox Christianity and Islam; and a groundbreaking theoretical physicist and emigrant from India.  It is, I grant, an unlikely story that such a group could engender any truly interesting new philosophy, rendered still even more unlikely to the imagination by the alleged “complete destruction” of the group’s two core texts (the philosophical treatise Trax Persephone, written by Hamachandra, and the epic poem Blacktail, written by Franky Hammond himself) and the disappearance of even the next two most important (the immense working manuscript entitled The New Art, by Flavia Karadordevic, and the mystically inspired Cosmogonic Cricket by George Lewis).  The last-mentioned Cosmogonic Cricket was actually published (on the blues fame of the author), but only 10,000 copies were actually printed, and fewer than 300 were circulated before the rest were destroyed.  No surviving copies are known to me, and if any were to appear it would be an immense find, despite the obvious difficulties that would accompany the interpretation of a mystical treatise written by a schizophrenic blues artist with no previous writing experience.  (According to Hammond’s diary, reading Cricket was like reading something out of “Talmudic scripture, but with all the naivety of Greek philosophy, and all the obscurity of that of the Germans …”)

The first section of this paper will sketch a provisional history of the Circle, including biographical material on each of its members, as can be pieced together by available evidence.  Once the stage has been set, the second section will review the evidence in favor of the view that the group was (a) extant, (b) academically interesting, and (c) ethically neutral in character, rather than truly criminal.  I will rely primarily on parallels between Hammond’s journal and other surviving materials.  In the third section I will try to sketch out the group’s cosmological, philosophical, and aesthetic world-picture.  This section will be mainly theoretical, but supported in large part by the surviving fragments of the Trax Persephone.

section i

The founder of the Blacktail Circle, born in 1926, was an eccentric and withdrawn art critic from Serbia named Flavia Karadordevic.  She is most infamous for her nationwide search, in the early 1960’s, for two young geniuses to be her polygamous spouses, one of whom was to be the new Prophet of Apollo, and the other the new Prophet of Dionysius.

Her mother was an Orthodox Christian, and her father was apparently a Muslim, but how this fared with the community we have no records to show.  We do know that she remained as loyal a follower as she could to both religions for her entire life.  A child prodigy, she was already studying Philology at the University of Belgrade at the age of 12.  Three years later, while Flavia was working on a senior undergrad thesis refuting Nietzsche, Hitler turned his wrath on Yugoslavia.  Her parents were both killed in the Luftwafte’s infamous 1941 bombing of Belgrade, while young Flavia set out on a lone journey to reach the Soviet Union and freedom from the Gestapo, who she had convinced herself would have no mercy for a Nietzsche critic.

Eventually she found her way to America, where she completed graduate studies in art history at Harvard in 1949.  Struggling against the rampant sexism in academia at that time, she still managed to write a fairly influential dissertation, a theory of aesthetics tempering the ideas of Nietzsche with those of Schopenhauer and Kant.  Though her work was considered too radical and anti-rational by most, the rampant positivism arising in America at the time left the field of art history relatively untouched, and due to her perseverance and natural genius she even found a professorship at Columbia University, where she achieved tenure (after another terrible battle) in 1955.

For years, Flavia struggled to make connections among her peers.  However, her completely eclectic interests prevented any of her professional relationships from blooming until she founded the Blacktail Circle in 1966.  During the interim, her exclusive enthusiasm for the “low” arts—including everything from J.R.R. Tolkien to noir film and rock and roll—earned her nothing but derision from her traditional-minded and all-male contemporaries.  (It has been suggested that she was a bit ahead of her time in this respect, among others.  Note, for example, that Sontag’s “Notes on ‘Camp’” wasn’t published until 1964.)

According to surviving essays written by Flavia during this period, her interest in the low arts stemmed from an almost personal conviction that they signaled the modern revival of the Dionysian spirit, as well as the intellectual idea that all new and vital art is essentially popular and “low.”  Her thinking in this vein reached a sort of climax in 1957 with the dual publication of “The Iliad and Modern Physics” and “Rock and the Dionysian,” heralding the dawn of a new tragic art born from the synthesis of the two.  Their lukewarm reception immediately turned cold when she announced, in 1959, at the age of 33, that she would drop her post at Columbia (her colleagues were overjoyed), gather up her immense savings (she had had a professor’s salary, no family to support, and an exceedingly ascetic lifestyle), and embarked on a journey across the country to find her two “Geniuses of the Age,” one of rock and roll, the other of theoretical physics.

*

Whether this behavior demonstrates that Flavia Karadordevic had gone mad will be discussed at a later point in this essay (where I suggest that she was quite likely a clinical sociopath, as evidenced also by subsequent behavior).  Nevertheless, the results of her search are no less than striking.  At this point Flavia was likely the world expert on rock and roll as an artistic, aesthetic, and cultural phenomenon.  Soon realizing that the true source and inspiration for rock music was actually the blues, she promptly took to the deep south to find her blues “aesthetic genius.”  Unlike her academic peers, many musicians and beatniks she met during this period (late 1959 to early 1961) found her fascinating and mysterious, and soon she took on an aura of sagacity among blues and jazz musicians in Mississippi, St. Louis, and Chicago.  Nevertheless her quiet and distant manner still kept her from making any truly close friends, until she was introduced to a black man who was reputedly the best blues guitarist of the day, George Lewis.  Lewis could outplay most blues and even jazz musicians on almost any instrument, and on the acoustic guitar he was utterly unrivaled.  He remains famous as one of the major innovators in blues and gospel music, but unfortunately his central role in the Blacktail Circle remains almost completely forgotten, except as an occasional “interesting” side-note to his blues fame. 

Flavia was more ecstatic to meet this man (only 25 at the time—ten years her junior) than any she had encountered on her travels so far.  And, what is initially surprising, she had no trouble making him her lover and converting him to the cause.

However, we should not be too surprised, given the following factors.  First, though Lewis was socially outgoing, he was also very odd (clinically schizophrenic, in fact) and had never managed to be with a woman up to this point.  Second, despite his fame among the most skilled musicians, he had had little popular success and was in dire monetary straights, whereas Flavia still had a substantial savings.  Third, we know from Hammond’s diaries that she was not trying to convert Lewis to any sort of academic philosophy or worldview (this would be impossible, since Lewis only had an 8th grade education), but rather to an ascetic lifestyle she had developed for herself based on her religious beliefs and aesthetic theories.  Lewis, who had divergent religious tendencies, found this new spiritual horizon exciting.

Too exciting, as we will see, because over the years Lewis eventually lapsed into complete psychosis and institutionalization.

*
The interracial love affair between Flavia Karadordevic and George Lewis, starting in early 1961, created a furor in blues music and academic circles (which quickly died down in the cultural climate leading up to the civil rights act of 1964).  But even as early as the summer of 1961, after being together for just three months, Lewis went on tour and Flavia took off on the next leg of her quest:  to find her budding Apollo.  She went directly to Princeton.

Her reception among the theoretical physics community there was, unsurprisingly, quite cool.  While flattered that a well-known art historian would take so much interest in their discipline, they were completely confused as to the reason for it, which she had trouble explaining without saying too much.  Nevertheless, she was persistent in her wooing, and by this point, despite her undying social reserve, was becoming proficient at making the rounds at social gatherings of all sorts, from classy cocktail parties to beatnik drug parties.  Most became convinced that she was there to write a popular book or biography.  She was soon tolerated as a bizarre, if strangely fascinating, addition to the Princeton social community, which included the likes of mathematicians Kurt Gödel and André Weil, and physicists John Wheeler (the so-called Father of the Atomic Bomb) and E. P. Wigner (known as the Silent Genius, and thought to rival the late Einstein in profundity if not prominence).  In fact, Flavia managed to sit in on seminars of all sorts, scientific as well as literary.  But it was at the parties where she first heard gossip about a new physics genius, utterly mad and reclusive, who had arrived in the country some years previously:  Hamachandra.

…

The Captain’s mare jolted him back awake. From under its hoofs a storm of pebbles and desert brambles scratched at his stiff knees, tearing away at his pants and spurring him onward. How long had he been out? He could ride miles asleep, but he doubted it had been long. The night air still felt the same, crisp and far from dawn. His horse was calm and alert. If they neared the rose the mare would let him know, he thought. A flower like that didn’t let itself go unnoticed. Not this rose, so old and wild…

Dammit, he had to keep riding. His men were waiting for him back in the cave, surrounded, low on ammunition, supplies. Six miserable soldiers, sitting around the fire. They were patient boys, his troop, or they were dupes. Captain—they’d asked him—where are you headed? What’ll we do, sir?

Hell if he knew.

There were no answers to their questions so he hadn’t tried any, just left. He’d snuck past the enemy troops, all asleep anyway, and set out on his mission. Maybe he would bring the rose to his men. Why couldn’t he? Dig it out of the desert then shuffle back in that cave and announce in his curt drawl—Here ya go boys!—and hold it up triumphantly, crimson in the firelight. They would turn to him in waiting and he would summon up another breath of air—The Rose of Immortality.

To the rescue. He would take the flower over to Saul first. Saul—he would say—you’re my closest friend, my right hand man; I owe you my life. The rose is our salvation, I want you to smell it first.

Saul would be touched, in his crusty way. He’d lean in and sniff quickly, covering his bashfulness with abruptness. Then the Captain would go over to Garcia—Garcia: you are our best gunman, a loyal soldier. Tomorrow you’ll lead us out of here.

Down the line from there. His men had an order of their own. Leonard would be next, then Brian, and Rory. Finally he would reach Michael, the youngest of the fighters. The Captain’s name was Michael too, but only Saul knew that. Michael—he would say—smell the rose, then take it with you.

Michael would look confused, put upon somehow, but the Captain would have none of it. He would press on—I’ve seen you eyeing that girl in town, Michael. You’re too young to stick it here with us. You’ll have to smell this now, or you’ll never survive tomorrow, but when it’s over…leave us and take this to her.

I think it’s true love, kid.

The Captain chuckled to himself over the wind. The Old Man had cracked, lost it for sure. Unwound. True love and the Rose of Immortality—it was a cruel time to play a joke on his boys, their last night together. But he was a funny man, they’d never appreciated that. When the squad would swap tales, huddled around the fire, the Captain would make sure to tell the funniest one, but the men would take it in somberly each time. Stiffs.

He could say it now, out for the night, under the stars: bless these men—they were loving, loyal, pieces of wood, as good as anything else for the shredder. He would run back to the cave with a damn rose and push it in their faces—Guess what, boys? Guess. Guess! They would guess all night long with sober faces and when dawn came he would tell them: time’s up. Suppose we’ll have to play again.

Something bitter began to rise up in him, but he shoved it back down. Ahh, he would take them the rose anyway, those stuffy laugh-less suckers. That’s the story he should have told them for a laugh: The Beast and Her Magic Rose. He’d always thought it was a funny one whenever his mother would try to tell it to him. Boys—listen carefully now: my mother used to tell me this tale about a flower, and every time I heard it I’d cry like a baby. He would have to set it up that way, trick them, or they’d never laugh.

His mother had told the tale differently each time and now, searching for a clear story, the Captain could only see her hundred variations. The rose grew from a woman lost and forgotten in the desert—that much remained constant. A forsaken spinster, a young virgin, a pale neurotic, a shy girl, one day she made her way deep into the wilderness. Her family had sent her away, too old; her beau had stood her up and she’d wandered out unthinking; she’d gone exploring on a whim, never imagining she could get lost.

It was his mother’s favorite story, not his. She would tell it to his little brothers, but he was too old for it. He’d never gotten much into fairy tales.

Still, he had remembered this one now for a reason. Instincts should be trusted, he believed. The rose was hidden somewhere in that endless underbrush of milkweed and nettles, and he couldn’t miss it. He should have looked for its trail years ago. He’d been too stubborn, perhaps, but why admit to that? He was still stubborn, and it would lead him to what he needed.

His skin felt rough against the cold leather reins and he squeezed them tighter to muster some sensation. He hadn’t thought of the Rose of Immortality for years until tonight, sitting around that fire one last time. The evening was quiet. There was nothing more for them to say to each other; time had dragged them out too far. They were tired, and the enemy outnumbered them now without a doubt. It was ten to one at least, and they were cornered.

But they had looked to him anyway. Captain? Sir?

Shit out of luck, boys!—had been his only thought, but he couldn’t let that fall out of him. It wouldn’t be proper. Somewhere along the way he’d drawn his lines too close, but looking back he couldn’t see when or how.

Wait for me until tomorrow morning—he’d told them instead, and left.

The girl’s horse had stepped on a cactus and gone wild, leaving her stranded and disoriented in the dirt. She wandered for miles diligently searching for an end to the desert, but as night neared, panic took hold and she began crying out for someone to find her. She yelled and screamed as loud and as long as she could, but no one could hear her over the wind and the miles. Her voice became harsher as the dust caked her throat and desperation set in, but she wouldn’t stop. Her features became fierce and her resolve thickened as she twisted sound out into the sky with all her might, sure someone would hear it. Her skin cracked with the strain and dehydration. But after hours in the dark she felt her strength fading.

In one last, monumental effort, she reached deep and plundered every capacity in her. Putting it all into the cry, she stripped herself down to a howling vessel and threw her scream as sharply into the air as she could. The terrified wail soared through the sky, unstoppable, finally making it all the way to her village. But the cry had become monstrous in its flight. The villagers shut their ears in horror. Her old beau shuddered at the sound; her callous family closed their windows. No one dared heed the call.

Defeated, the girl crumbled to the ground. Her cry fell with her from the sky and planted itself in the dirt beside her, becoming the Rose of Immortality. So the story goes. Whoever finds the rose will be saved from death and solitude. Both of them.

The Captain had always felt that only the dead themselves could roam the desert long enough to find such a silly rose. It was one of the many ironies his mother had never recognized. He would bring his boys the damned flower, his night find, and he would fling it in the fire. We’re dead, boys, we’ve always been dead! Your Captain has been keeping a secret from you all these years with his poker face…

…But what secrets could there be in this day and age? He’d never found one. There were no mysteries hiding under the thousands of faces. There were no hidden treasures. The world constructed its vaults so carefully no one could sneak back in to place the riches.

Well, they’d forgotten to lock tight tonight, he thought with a wry smile. They’d finally slipped up. Was there a key for his, floating around out there, hiding under some rubbish? Had he dropped it somewhere without thinking? Had he given it to someone not to be trusted?

He would bring them the rose and they would look up. Eh Michael, welcome back. They’d pass him the pipe and he’d leave the rose in his satchel—than you, Saul, thank you. A warm breath of tobacco would tighten his lungs, and they’d settle in around the fire for the night. He would exhale slowly and fill the room with his smoke, remembering its old spaciousness now with the rising wisps of tobacco and the flickering shadows in the corners.

The desert shook violently and he found himself hitting the ground, rolling away from his horse’s frenzied hooves. The sky spun and the crazed mare was gone before he could grab her.

But it didn’t matter.

The rose was near—he could smell it. A perfume of spicy cinnamon, dark roasted garlic, and endless traces of unknowable but familiar scents gathered in a steam around him. The flower’s scent wafted up from the ground, more pungent than he had imagined it in his mother’s home, more frightening. But he realized he never had imagined the fragrance of the rose back then. His mother’s story had always ended with a rosebud, the scent locked up tight. He couldn’t see anymore, the night was too thick. But he’d found the rose now, honing in on its heat then feeling it suddenly, moist and velvety beneath his fingers.

Just like nothing, he picked it, and sat down next to the bush smiling. Have faith and you shall find. He’d always known he’d get a happy ending. He twirled the rose in his hand, letting its aroma fill his chest, then spread through his body. No, he wouldn’t take this flower back to the cave. It wouldn’t be proper, not with his men, not with this laugh. Stiffs. They would have to find their own damn rose, some other time.

The sea kings underground were getting restless.
The floor beneath their thrones had come undone.
The clouds above their heads were getting darker.
But the dread within their hearts could find no step.

Why is the floor beneath us crumbling?
Who calls the clouds towards our heads?
What rumbles in our hearts so lately quiet?
What sound within us creeps without?

Surprise, the creepy crawlers whispered…
Surprise, the land beneath cried out…

Arise, my little kings and darlings.
The day is here, and aching to be met.

(go to: part 1, part 2, part 3)

The unforeseen development was ludicrous but unshakable. Every media outlet on the planet visited the Brothers’ garden to independently verify the news, hoping perhaps for an end to the display—after which there might be room for more reasonable scrutiny. But the tree kept dancing and the Brother kept beaming. Skeptics and rationalists were flown in, but the evidence before their eyes was irrefutable: there sat a man; there danced an oak tree. On sight, the scene was too dynamic to deny. A hoax was impossible.

The preposterousness of the turn sent many people off the edge. The more rigid minds melted to putty under the attack, their capacity for sophistication blown away. Dutifully they had to concede the facts but after that surrender they were lost, never again sure of their own two feet. The loosest minds slipped entirely. The streets filled with trumpeters of all the other ridiculous claims of the ages—aliens again, resurrection, super powers. Only a few people in a clear-sighted middle ground could see it for what it was: a simple expansion of action. And no one but Renault could see its full potential, its disastrous pinnacle.

Jean Paul saw the connection to his work immediately. The Principle of Being—the Equivalence of Orgasm—the Brother’s rapture: the active impulse missing from his thesis, the means of excitation, had been discovered by Brother Edgar. Only the final violence of the act was missing.

While the world reeled, Renault pondered carefully. Was his secret a danger, or a blessing? Should he bury his work forever, or reveal it immediately—and how could he do it? He felt the grimness of his final vision, a vacuum—that what had seemed to him the essence of life was now, very clearly, the destruction of it.

But the more he stared at Brother Edgar’s grinning face in the videos, the less he struggled. He became filled instead with a strange kind of glee which grew and grew. Finally, Jean Paul—he said to himself—you have done it! The glee built until he couldn’t control himself any longer and began laughing, tears streaming down his face. You‘ve done it—he said—finally—you have gone mad! His life-long quest was clearer to him now, revealed, a simple, delightful choice there for the taking: insanity. He had searched for it long and hard. And now here he had arrived—Jean Paul Renault—not just insane, not just any madman, but the luckiest madman who ever lived!

He was a madman in a world of dancing trees and psychic monks! The most educated madman in history—in a world of jugglers and discus throwers—the most interesting world, the last such world! He was a madman in the springtime. The whole delicate spectrum of achievement had unfolded and now rested colorfully, just waiting to be overwhelmed. He knew his task now, his Luciferian mission. The Great Jean Paul Renault! It was fate. Wild but lucid, he sent a post to the press and the academy explaining his behavior and the Principle, then set off to the monastery with a flamethrower.

Renault entered the garden confidently. He had figured out precisely what had to be done. He didn’t approach the oak or Brother Edgar but went instead to the edge of the garden and began slowly setting the enclosing shrubs on fire. The smoke rose and the tree seemed to dance harder, clearing its air. He paused, making sure not to outpace the Brother—it was imperative that Brother Edgar not give up. Renault set fire to the flower patches, one by one, then the bushes and the saplings. He let the smoke gather. He needn’t have been worried—Brother Edgar was intent, and the tree began to swirl violently, creating a vortex of motion to push away the smoke and heat. Renault watched for a moment, letting his smile grow as wide as the Brother’s. Laughing once more, he finally aimed his flame at the tree. A moment elapsed, and then the garden exploded. Ten square miles went with it. The fate of the universe was sealed.

(go to part 5)

(go to: part 1, part 2 )

On May 7, 2298, three months after Renault’s paper began obscurely circulating through the stalest academic circles, The Brothers of Botany discovered—-with certainty—-humanity’s psychic powers. It must have been inevitable given the persistent spiritual rumblings through the centuries, but no one had seen it coming. Psychic powers were down there with purple elephants—unseen and by now untrue.

The Brotherhood had not intended to release anything so spectacular on the scene. They had been established fifty years prior to explore a quiet pursuit: vegetative attentiveness—they embraced the pun wholeheartedly. The Brothers concentrated on vegetation vegetatively, hoping to observe something new about the nature of the plant kingdom through intimate empathy. They were a dedicated sect, a lifelong commitment, and as the end of the century approached their first generation of elders was maturing. For the first time in human endeavors there existed plant-watching adepts, disciples who had spent their lives honing the skill.

Brother Edgar was one of the oldest elders, and the most revered in the order. He was the strictest member and rarely spoke. Unlike most other beginners, Brother Edgar had not started his practice on an eye-catching vine or sapling. Arriving in the first few months of the Brotherhood’s existence, Edgar had situated himself in the very center of the group’s garden and planted a single oak seed. It took two years for his seed to germinate, but he didn’t seem to mind. Everyday he would sit in the center of the garden, waiting patiently, the same before it sprouted as after. He didn’t sing to his plot of land as some brothers chose to, and he didn’t name his tree. He didn’t prune the branches or rake the leaves or stroke the bark. He just sat. For decades he watched as his oak spurted upward, hardened, and slowly twisted outward. Leaves fell around him building a thick blanket of detritus; a few branches snapped. He remained, inscrutable.

But subtly over time he did begin to smile at the tree. It was imperceptible at first, but every year the smile grew a tiny bit. For awhile, his smile reached an appearance of beaming serenity. Was he enlightened in some fashion—-the brothers wondered—-had he seen something they could see? They pondered in awe for a few years.

But Brother Edgar’s smile continued to widen, until it looked more goofy than serene. Then it got wild…gleaming, knowing…almost naughty. If anyone asked him what he was doing he would reply—-waiting for the right moment. His left eyebrow began to rise suggestively and his breathing became heavy. It was a curious energy to be around, and a few of the brothers gave up their own plants to sit with him around the oak. They breathed heavily too, trying to summon whatever arousal had hit Brother Edgar.

One day, out of nowhere, the right moment came. Brother Edgar sat down without ceremony, as he did every morning, but this time he sat a little closer, looking up. He sat and he waited half the morning. The brothers were tense with expectation. Then with a sudden intake of breath, Edgar’s nostrils flared and he whispered to the oak, “Dance for me.”

It was as though the tree had suddenly un-paused. The natural curves of its limbs began to carry throw in a hypnotic flow of motion. Its trunk swayed towards and away from the brothers, guiding the weight of the branches. The tree danced.

(go to part 4)

(go to part 1)

For the next fifty years, ecstatic union remained dormant as a cultural theme. The subject had become bloated and ungainly with the movement, and anyone approaching it was easily dismissed as a ‘hopeless One-Lobe’—–no one bothered with the mess. It took the millenium’s best and last metaphysician to resuscitate it.

The great Jean Paul Renault was French, with a German mother. Raised on rotten cheese and the memory of German spirit, Renault never felt comfortable in the 23rd Century. The world was a strange place then. People would later view the time as a calm before the storm—a bubble between the listlessness of Before and the drive of After—–but within that bubble there was such a sense of stillness it seemed permanent. Having survived the 21st Century, humanity had drifted into prosperity and, as though given a second chance, wonder. Monklike organizations, splintered sects of extreme interest, cropped up in dedication to every imaginable pursuit: fire spinning, glass arts, dancing, architecture, memorization, food preparation, jumping, computing, screaming—–everybody seemingly fell into something.

Gradually, the world had become more fantastical, and Jean Paul sensed that from the quiet of his small mountain town. But something in the practical devotion of his peers distanced him and turned him inward. The multitude roared, but the call of any one vocation felt faint. Jean Paul, painfully observant, felt he perhaps tendered the last flames of frustration, ineffectiveness: the last blocked dam, the only one left with any pressure able to wish for release.

There was an idea out there they were missing, he thought. Things were settling without a piece of the puzzle. He’d wander the woods in the morning and read in the fading afternoon when the bellowers practiced in the hills. The diligence and practicality of his times were his only tools, and so, with the kind of dedication that can only expect death, he pursued his atavistic longing for explosion down every dusty register of philosophy, through the overlooked byways, the forgotten digressions, the concealed corollaries—-searching.

After thirty years of study, with a stream of circuitous convolutions only his mind could hold in entirety, Jean Paul Renault was finally able to prove The Grand Principle. It was a Principle of Being, he said–—a principle rather than a truth. It was at once a declaration and a creation. The Grand Principle stated:

If every element in a universe is excited together into Pure Moment, said universe will explode.

His dense work would surely have been ignored had it not been for the most spectacular coincidence in the whole course of reality.

(go to part 3)

Lois Lane read her own headline one more time.

SUPER ROBOT AGAIN: SAVES 8 FROM FIRE

It was spare. Informative. Like Bot9 had been on that windy night. “Lois,” he had said gravely, “it simply cannot be. The force of my mechanism is too much for your human form.”

“I can’t bear this, Bot9!”

“Lois. I have done the math. I don’t think we should see each other again.” And with that, he had flown off, disappearing into the night with his super robot speed.

There was a knock on the door. Lois sighed in frustration—-it was Robotta, caked in makeup, ready no doubt to gossip about her latest frivolity. “I’m busy,” Lois snapped, perhaps a bit too harshly.

“Are you sure? You look…I heard about Bot9.”

Lois was too tired to wonder how she knew. “Oh, Robotta…”

 (to be continued)

On Dec 12, 2703 humankind finally blew up the Universe. Their devastating success can be traced back to the formation of a small sex cult in the early 21^st Century. The One-Loves, rallied by charismatic British guru Bhagavan Lito and inspired by an indecipherable blend of pre-millennial traditions, proposed—–for the first recorded time in history—–an all-powerful Preeminence of Orgasm. Adherents to the doctrine believed that if the instant of orgasm were spread to every living being on Earth at once, a fantastic event would occur. The nature of the event varied: implosion, transcendence, enlightenment, eternal life, and alien revelations were major theories. Though the movement was largely incoherent, eventually collapsing under its own confusion, the original pronouncement of Bhagavan Lito was shockingly precise:

THE ULTIMATE CONVULSION IS THE EQUIVALENCE RELATION THAT BRINGS EVERYTHING TO NOTHING.
BOM SHIVA.

The One-Loves carried on for around a century after the death of Baba Lito, thriving in the political and social upheavals of the time. Followers reveled in public nudity but kept their impassioned fornication rituals strictly private. New members were drawn in by the mystery, especially alluring to the curious, confused, and adolescent. For a few generations traditional culture watched, appalled, as the familiar counter-cultural arc of youthful rebellion burning to middle-age dissolution played out with unprecedented overtness. The most vital and enthusiastic were worked into gibbering, unbearable sexual and superstitious frenzies. Mimicking the previous century’s calls for a ‘politics of ecstasy’ and riling them up to new heights, they would repudiate their old society with unforgivable masturbatory acts and disappear for a decade of underground orgies. When their juices ran dry, they would reappear on the streets—-swollen, middle-aged orators, continuingly drawing in the impressionable with their irrepressible ramblings and provocative wrinkled nudity. The spectacle of their jiggling, exhausted elders eventually smothered the appeal of their mystery, and by the mid-22^nd Century the One-Loves had mostly dissipated.

(go to part 2)

Ben,

Of course, you’re completely correct. But you’ve forgotten—-if there are robots there are X-Men.

–Luki

Dear Luki,

I have no illusions of a hippy victory on this front. The ratchet of progress is irreversible. Gradually, no doubt, we’ll all become robots, the more so for having an entrancing artificial scent.

The next step in our transformation will occur when people start saying that thick, flamboyant layers of makeup are themselves an indispensible medium for self-expression, that the bare face in daylight is a Gorgon to behold. Nevermind cases already where it takes 15 minutes and a scouring pad to discover the landscape beneath.

As for gesticulation and poetry. A gracefully witty expression, improvised on the spot, is worth a thousand exquisite bottles of commercially-bought perfume, in a million creative combinations.

Ben

Dear Ben,

Thanks for sharing. I generally perfume myself through shampoo–the options provided to a woman in that market are the most manifold and supremely fruity.

Right now I’m just transmitting the overflowing juiciness of late summer with my Mandarin Balm, a moderate whiff for anyone to groove on, but I’ve been known to be more insistent. It’s important to project, ya know? People are starving for that, and artificial fragrance is one of humanity’s most well-developed means of expression. Its potential for nuance and the ease of its dispersion rival any modern form.

Everything is a matter of communication–which is a giant matter. Gesticulation and poetry are crude and culturally enmeshed. Instead, my guess today for the human soul smell: orchids and coconut milk. My guess floats across the room. It puts the talkers to sleep and triumphs over the senses of the male beast.

Now maybe you could ask: “Well. Isn’t your natural born stench a good and clear guess of the soul smell?”

Of course it is, you fucking hippie, but then what’s the point of anything? You go ahead and worship your armpit as the godhead in your own damned house. We’re out here in public to have some fun.

Best of Wishes,
Luki

Dear Luki,

The first two drafts of this letter, despite the fact that they each discussed entirely different topics, were unsatisfactory and I tossed them both.  This draft will concern something yet again completely distinct.

The story of deoderant.

By the end of this story, you will know why I put deoderant in the same category as Islamic veils.

There was a time when each person not only had a face, but a smell.  Some people, like many young women, had good smells.  Other people, like annoying dorks, had bad smells.  Smell was just another way to transmit information about a person.

The problem arose when people started living crowded together in cities.  Now smells didn’t just waft around and blow away.  Instead, they collected and overwhelmed.  If you smelled bad, you were screwed.  Therefore smelly people soon figured out that a bit of perfume could change their social life completely.  Soon, the somewhat less-smelly people also used deoderant, and eventually everyone had to, because even the smell of sweat marked one out as unconscientious or poor.  Meanwhile, expensive perfume marked one out as rich.

It took me a long time to figure out that the natural smell of some women is actually quite lovely.  But a few stinkers, plus technology, has ruined everything.  Now all women smell like the same fruity shampoo.

Yours,
Ben