Meditation II: Oneironaut, by Quentin S. Crisp

Meditation II: Oneironaut

O, children of a future age,
Reading this bewildered page,
Know that in a former time,
Dream, sweet dream, was deemed a lie.

But children of the future age, you are not separate; or only so because you know there is no future. And so you sit inside the circle, and I must begin my address across time with the O that cancels time, dialling zero with nothing on the non-existent, telepathic oneirophone. And who is the oneironaut, and who is on the ground, I do not know.

The dreams began in caves - stalactited space capsules. In future, as past, physical travel is obsolete, only the transition of the present moves. I see the cockpit cave where future and past are a single sky of Dreamtime, viewed through a scanner of rock and paint, navigated by serpents and rainbows, steered by song.

There are not two serpents, only one. Watch their writhing closely, and the double image is resolved into single. There is only this rock. There has only ever been this rock. We have not moved an inch. Where can we go? But only close your eyes and a jungle of possibles leaps upon the screen of nothing.

There are no controls upon the console of this rock, but only close your eyes...

The sand is the same in this box, but the patterns change. The colours are continous, but the dream-clouds rearrange themselves with greater ease than mercury, in an endless series of complete transformations, night after night.

I am the oneironaut. There seems to be a problem - a malfunction somewhere. I am aware of distance. I drift in space and since I must breathe, a tube connects me to the base I cannot see. Only through this thin tube, twisting into the distance where it disappears, do I live and breathe. Suddenly, I realise, as any oneironaut must, that this umbilical cord is a serpent.

It writhes, and sinks its fangs into my stomach, injecting the necessary venom. Without this poison there is nowhere to go. The scales of the serpent are a rainbow. They change colours like the pigment of a cuttlefish, flashing a virulent code whose language will be translated in the body of the oneironaut - translated by pain and fever. Now my helmet fills with images of dream. They slide across my visor, like a film upon a screen. I see nothing else. This helmet has become a magic lantern, suffocating me with alien landscapes, other-dimensional skies, pavilions of telepathic conference where invertebrate dignitaries of dream federations recallibrate my concepts and perceptions with wreathes of synaesthetic incense, geometrical dances of universal pandemonium, biological catacombs connecting worlds, fireworks of synchronistic superclusters building to the crashing of a fractal wave, Disney deities promulgating abundant cartoon universes, primogenitors of strange aeons who are mere bacteria in a microcosmic slime culture beneath the dewlaps of primogenitors, which wheels-within-wheels break when the Tao becomes not-Tao into strange aeons curving to vaster cycles that become once more the Tao, from which there crawl and slobber the primogenitors of strange aeons,

At this point the message was interrupted. There is only crackle from the receiver.

The skeleton of the oneironaut, suited, drifts through space, the dreams still playing in flickering colours, an aurora borealis of beyond, across the screen of the visor.

Justin Isis - Kingsley Amis is Tired of Life

Life under late capitalism offers few pleasures.




I spend my days watching Korean dramas and imagine myself sodomising the leads.




'Lovers in Paris' left me in tears.




I wish Satan existed so I could sell my soul for fifteen minutes of licking Kim Jung-Eun.




I try to apply myself to mathematics, to the investigation of Calabi-Yau spaces.




But the Fields Medal won't get me popular in Korea either.

Justin Isis - I Attain To the Level of Fucking Your Basic Hairdresser

A: Okay man, right now I'm talking to you, right, but I mean I'm not really saying anything, you know, I'm just trying to make it seem like we're really having a conversation

A: I mean if you just see one guy sitting there alone it's like...but if there's two guys, right, that are talking

A: ...then it's cool because they obviously have some kind of, I guess, point of interest. Right now we're just getting that down. Say something back.

B: Something.

A: Right.

A: It's like, I read this review of 2001, cant remember who wrote it, but the guy was saying how...okay, you know how there's really no big dialogue in the movie?

B: Yeah.

A: Well like, he was saying that most of the time when people are talking in that movie, it's just to show people talking. Like it doesn't move the plot or anything, it's just kind of the idea.

B: Kind of interesting. So the conversations aren't for exposition; they just create a kind of iconic idea of communication.

C: Hey.

C: Are you guys having one of those metaconversations?

A: What?

C: One of those self-referential conversations.

A: Yeah.

A: You know about them?

B: Wait, no.

B: We were talking about 2001. The conversation started off as self-referential like you said, but then it changed.

A: I thought we were just trying to keep it going.

C: So you're saying the conversation evolved.

B: It seemed to be, yes.

B: But then you jumped in and altered the conversation's dynamic. It went from an extrapolation of the original, to use your term, meta-conversation, to a conversation about the nature of the original conversation.

C: Is that a distinction?

B: Well, of course. Before your intervention, the conversation had arguably turned into a legitimate conversation, that is, a verbal exchange of ideas facilitating genuine communication; but then you subverted that possibility by reverting to talking about the nature of the conversation.

A: What's your name?

C: Alyssa

C: Okay, I see your point, but the current conversation has that expression of ideas too. I think it's still developing.

B: We're talking about the conversation, though.

B: It's become self-referential again. Before when we were talking about 2001, that was a legitimate conversation. Right now, we're having a metaconversation.

A: So, have you seen 2001?

C: Uh

C: Your argument's flawed. We're talking now about the conversation you guys were having before I joined in. We're not talking about the current conversation, therefore the current conversation is not a metaconversation.

B: That's because when you joined in you changed its course.

C: So

C: You admit the conversation has evolved after all; it's not the dead end you thought I made it.

B: Um...no.

B: The first conversation didn't end; it was just continued.

C: If that's true, then my presence in the conversation didn't affect its course as a conversation developing from a metaconversation to a regular conversation. If it was a separate conversation, then this conversation isn't a metaconversation because it refers to a previous conversation, not itself. Logically, you've contradicted yourself.

B: So you think, but by discussing whether or not the current conversation is a metaconversation, it's been turned into one by referring to itself.

A: So yeah,

A: I liked the part in 2001 where that computer flipped the fuck out and took everyone out.

A: Alyssa, what are you doing this weekend?