vOYAGE:O'Side

by Francis Kroncke

CHAPTER 42

  That’s it?

  Isn’t it clear?

  Without the flesh there’d be no paradox, no Conundrum?

  Sure. Even now. Your question. It reveals your fleshiness.

  But flesh decomposes. Dies.

  Does it? Isn’t that oxymoronic?

  Okay. Don’t get silly. Seeing is believing.

  Back to that?

  Every story has that. It says see what I have to say and believe it is reality.

  But you know better?

  I do? Why?

  Flesh.

  Frantz would have accepted, without an angel’s hesitation, that he had died. That he was now “not in the flesh”—maybe “of the flesh”...in sum, that he had the body but…? Yes, he knew Friar Otto. Remembered him. Was not unaware that he was still about. Not only in Memory but in Dream. He was there. Of this Frantz was assured. But of Dagmar—it was a shock.

  Not in his dream but on top of the mountain. He looking out and seeing the Grand Story of America as the fulfillment of Christian Eschatology—of the Final Things, the Final Days: outlining its history as just that, the Final Days.

  He saw it all concatenate in Joseph Smith. Another Joseph: simple joe. Another Smith: smithy—forger; fire master...herculean yet Sisyphean...a handyman, yet it all being just another Catastrophe—how the Almighty worked! All being the Biblical Dream layering itself over other dreams: native, aboriginal, savage—ready to layer itself over any other dream: global…Frantz understood the Baptism of the Dead: layering itself over every dimension of existence—cosmic.

  He had no problem with the transformation...the new translation into Mormon terminology...for at every great juncture in the Story there was such—Saul of Tarsus fusing Hellenism with the Aramaic parables...Thomas Aquinas stabbing the heart of the Holy Ghost with the cold blade of Aristotle’s ratio—it happened, is happening, will happen, again.

  Dagmar. She was the last vestige of Otto...of body and belief, which he had to surrender. The last trick of the clerical cock: her nonexistence—that she had died.

  “Where do we want to go from here?”

  His head snaps at the sudden fright of an unexpected visitor: friend, enemy? clips his ears. Like a gust of wind, he is whirled about…beholds her.

  “You were expecting someone else?”

  Silence. A malleable quiet.

  “Not Mother Dolor, I hope,” she chuckles.

  “No. No,” he fumbles, “I knew. I expected. Now that you’re here, I….”

  She didn’t care about what was, only with what would be, could be.

  “This is the Final Days of all this…crap.” She eyes him, detectively: “Best word.”

  Frantz hesitates—questions whether he is self-deluding.

  She winks at him. “Just crap.”

  AxZ: It is flesh which demands space and so time. Memory and Forgetfulness. Consciousness and Unconsciousness. All the diametrical opposites. It’s more like the ellipse—two focal points, always in tension. Dynamism. Dying is Living. The individual is the group. And so forth.

  MxZ: Flesh is the Conundrum. Wow! Finally, at least one answer!

  SxZ: Easy answer. Fool’s Quest.

  AxZ: Maybe. But a Fool’s Quest—the voyaging, doesn’t it always Begin where it Ends and Ends where it Begins?

  TxZ: Seems so.

  AxZ: Is it a strange loop or a spiral or a Mobius or a nth dimensional—which? Why?

  SxZ: If I’d be honest. It’s just a damn dot. Only one point. Now.

  Dagmar: They will never see us.

  Never?

  Though we be legion—never.

  But they are coming towards us.

  Are they?

  They come without Original Sin.

  Truly?

  They are Saints—isn’t that what’s being revealed?

  What was the Original Sin?

  I fear to hear your answer.

  Fear?

  I fear the blindness.

  Then let me place hot coals upon your eyes. Let me slice off your lobes, stop-up your ears. Let me corset you with chains. As such, you will be set free.

  Stuff my mouth, carve out my tongue—so that I cannot cry out!

  Dagmar complies. Frantz is so cocooned; molting.

  Mother of the Shade—She brooded over the darkness, the void, the uncreated...she is the darkness, the void, the uncreated—She is nonexistence…the Story is the one She wants told...authorized—She made males in Her peculiar image...having them just as fuckers, seeders, one-shot bangers...She gave them no other way—She is death and dying, wanting children, allowing children, populating with children but only insofar as She could eat them, destroy them—mandating Her warrior male to “Kill!”...making everything and everyone on the Earth, “Enemy!”

  Her trick: Dominion.

  To name the nameless.

  To name themselves and so self-deceive.

  Not to know that all are one name...every name is one name, “Living.”

  SxZ: The Well. The Embrace. The Conundrum. Only aspects, dazzlings of the flesh?

  AxZ: Can you remember when you didn’t remember?

  SxZ: Silly.

  No it’s not. Look, it’s even more elemental. We’re all just elements. As simple as single letters: A, B, C, D, E, F….X, Z.

  But letters aren’t simple. They have sounds.

  Only if you have ears. You do, don’t you?

  It’s like deja vu?

  Something like that.

  In the flesh you are totally singular—unique. But you are constantly fired by all who lived to make you who you are…and who you will make live. Uniqueness from uniqueness.

  Humph.

  In the flesh you are deep slept.

  Each presence of flesh...named as Frak or Darlm, Frantz or Dagmar, Frank or Dalores…each is F or D, of every F and D which is or was or will be.

  But why aren’t they aware of this? Why wasn’t I, back then?

  Frank: “The Collective Unconscious—now, I’m almost dead...putting to 85 next month!—my kids are older than you here—do you know how many “Introductions to Psycho-Mythology” I’ve taught?!

  Okay, your old professor strays—my wife, bless her memory! She’d always say I have a mind like a puppy, wandering off at every scent…but let me get back. There’s been some progress. Some changes. Some beginnings of people trying to reimagine…but why isn’t it easier?

  Does the Earth itself restrain us? Are we imprisoned? Is it our exoskeleton? All the exo-biological experiments, all the satellite voyages—old Voyager itself! And we still find ourselves alone? …Or is it because we want to be alone? That we persists in dreaming alone? …Sartre’s right: Hell is other people?”

  They scribble; he scratches the back of his head.

  “We’re here Earthside. Just a glob of water with some dirt in it. Like a cosmic droplet with Brownian movement. Flesh is this movement: mixture of earth and water—the wind, our breath; vapor.

  Did you ever stop to think—that we’re all created at the water’s edge? Oceanside. Where the Earth meets the ocean. Or the dirt meets the water. Or the desert thirst meets the quench. That’s where Consciousness is—the thinnest edge of the wave cresting at high tide.

  Flesh. Our body’s—what? 80% water. Whatever.

  What new dream are we dreaming? Or are we dreaming?

  You are practicing Collective Dreaming, aren’t you? Deep sleeping?...Should I flunk all of you?!

  The Mormons and their Nephi and all that—was it, is it, the Final Revelation...are we in the Latter Days? Will another “New World” be discovered? Inside the Earth. Such foolishness! Rubbish.

  But there’s something to Oceanside. New Jersey. California. O’side.

  That’s what the Earth is. What we are.

  What will always be. Is.”

  (“…down by the rive
rside, down by the…”)

  SxZ: But there is more than one Earth?

  AxZ: As long as they remain Conscious, there isn’t.

  Deep sleeping from the Dream to the Dream through the Dream—don’t make me laugh!