Some comments on Fex & Coo from subscribers:
John Woodcock
Perhaps a breadcrumb or two that may be of interest to readers, as the plot “thickens”. Pay attention to verb tenses like this one: “I’ve never met Fex before in my life. At least not before later today.” Let it gently twist your mind in preparation for what is to come. You will need a gently twisted mind…
Tanya Hurst
(softly) No, John…not to be figured out, but figured in… You can’t see Fex and Coo by looking in the usual way. The time is neither early nor late, Fex and Coo have always (and never) been there. Hurry over to Tully’s before you miss them. Those two are up to something…subversively legit. Sorry I missed you this morning. I’ll be heading over after work this evening for a cinnamon latte, hoping to get a another glimpse of the Owl Man. Page 8.
John Woodcock
HI Tanya, your response is very interesting to me. Thank you. So, you seem, as the reader, not to have your mind gently twisted. This is because you know what is coming in advance (as in your quote). This is a perspective available to us, as readers for sure (we can read ahead). However you must agree I think that the other characters in the story do get their minds twisted a bit by what is happening. So maybe that will happen to the reader who enters the text, becomes a character too, as it were. But what does it mean for any one character to make that extraordinary mind-bending statement, “I’ve never met Fex before in my life. At least not before later today.” This statement shows that there is two characters, Owl Man and Heron Man, who hold BOTH perspectives, participating character and writer, simultaneously and know that they do. They both “see ahead into the future” and take part in the now. Imagine someone in real life making a statement like that.: "I’ve never met Fex before in my life. At least not before later today.” What style of consciousness would that be? It's a dual consciousness. This to me is what makes this novel, novel!
Of course many books have narrators who tell us ahead of time what is going to happen to this or that character, even if that character is the "I" of the narrator (think of Amercing Beauty where the narrator is dead). That is not happening here in this book however. It's much weirder.... hence the breadcrumbs.
I was just beginning to read about Fex and Coo after a long work day, and found myself around page 8, barely able to keep my eyes open, not for lack of interest. I was very much enjoying the interplay of the characters, and finding it refreshing. True, I had been up the night before until 4 AM, and up at 6 AM this morning, so my drowsiness was attributed to this fact.
I awoke next morning from the tail end of a dream that I could not recall, except that I was discussing Fex and Coo with one of the co-authors, Russ Lockhart. This was mysterious to me, as I had not expected to dream of Fex and Coo.
I needed to begin morning rituals to prepare for my workday, but as I made my way to the bath, running water, I found myself reflecting on the dream, and asking myself, “When did YOU first meet Fex and Coo, Tanya?” It was not last night when reading, nor today.
Ah yes, I was looking for a transcript of a presentation made by Russ some years ago, searching through the library, inquiring of the librarian…but instead of the intended transcript, I found a cassette tape of a recorded lecture by Russ about cancer, which I had attempted to transcribe. But no, it was not on that day that I had first met Fex and Coo.
Cancer. A synchronicity of sorts, coming to mind just now, since I had just posted a story on my timeline with the title, “Artisanal Cancer,” by Jessica Johnson. In this story, a true account of one persons experience of chemotherapy and radiation, the author had written from the future, looking back on cancer treatments in the early 21st century. Sort of dreamlike, the story was bringing the past into the future in a new way, with a lean toward a forward-looking perspective, into a world where cancer can be picked up by choice, or fully treated, on a whim.
So, when did I first meet Fex and Coo? It was when, now three years later, I was again looking for that same transcript. This time, searching on the internet. Again, I did not find the intended transcript. Instead, I found a reference to Fex and Coo, which if I remember correctly, was in the Dream Network Journal. That was the day I first met Fex and Coo!
At this point, like a pop or snap, I realized that I was IN the Fex and Coo story. This took me by surprise, and I at first had a bit of an argument with my self. “Am I in the story?” “Is that presumptuous of me?” I then said, “I AM in the story, or rather, COULD be.” That’s when I realized that “I” did not have a choice over the matter. It wasn’t a question of “could be” in the story. I was somehow, mysteriously, “in” the story. Not “I,” as in, not me in my present countenance. And yet, yes, I was very much in this story. I contemplated. Is that how it happens? One comes across Fex and Coo and you are “in.” Did I find Fex and Coo, or did Fex and Coo find me?
I was quite enjoying this “play,” it was whimsical, as though my imagination had come to life.
The cancer synchronicity nagged at me from the sidelines, and there was a tiny drop of terror in the backdrop. Cancer? Quickly, one of the opening lines came back to me from the night before, the part about, who was it that said it? Suddenly it was gone.
Then, from nowhere, a figure appeared at Tully’s. She was an old dame, a redhead, wearing some deep green, kind of satiny top, but it was slightly crumpled, the green top. I heard her voice, raspy, as though she’d been smoking too many cigarettes, for too long. I couldn’t catch her words, because, frankly, I was feeling a bit of low grade terror, about this old dame, and cancer.
Oh it was the part about ending it, Fex and Coo had decided ending it was key. A tiny dark shudder came over me.
And just like that, I thought about some work that I do with clients, concerning the knights of the round table, in King Arthur’s court. When there’s a particularly noisy part of the personality, such as a very anxious part, (one person named him Sir Pain in the Ass), I ask that the client consider this a noisy knight around King Arthur’s table, just one knight among many. Sometimes, King Arthur has to tell that noisy, anxious knight, who certainly has a very important role, making sure the knights use caution on whatever mission is at hand….but sometimes King Arthur has to tell that knight, Sir Pain in the Ass, to pipe down, and give the other knights a chance to speak. I mean, if Sir Pain in the Ass is doing all of the talking, running the show, then Arthur’s mission will never get off the ground.
That’s when I thought, is this red headed dame, with the raspy voice, one of the knights around my table? Well, I’m not sure I like her. She’s rough around the edges, and I’ve no idea what might come out of her mouth! And what does cancer have to do with all of this? What’s SHE doing in there?
That’s it! My bath is ready, and find myself hurrying out the door of Tully’s, head down, in the general direction of Owl Man who just blew this popsicle stand! Good idea.
But then, next day, I’m curious. What was that old redheaded dame going to say? She’s obviously a regular at Tully’s, almost a fixture. I have to get to work, but I’m thinking about Fex and Coo, anxious to get back to Tully’s!
That’s when I saw John’s post, and I thought, not out there, in HERE. You can’t figure it out, out there. You’ve got to come in, in to Tully’s, and experience the “play” of it. I was already missing Tully’s, and these characters I’d only just recently, earlier than today actually, met.
Tanya Hurst
This morning I’m a little panicked. “Tanya, you’re the one who says too much!” Thinking, how to get back in, and delete my post. I do not see a delete button, or edit, for that matter. In moderation…thinking, I’m fixed, goose cooked, can’t get back, and I hope, maybe, maybe Owl Man has some answers, knows what’s going on here.
Then, my phone pings with a new message. A synchronicity. Seems my supervisor’s plane is stuck, and it will be another week before she can get back to the area…so supervision sessions will be delayed by one week!
Here we go, the inner and outer mingling like a mixed media painting, colors swirling together.
Tanya Hurst
Hi Tanja, well I’m glad for one that there is no “delete” button for you to press. Your post is fascinating. I also have been “plagued” by the fear of “saying too much”, for decades, wanting to pull it all back, “unsay it”. I had to go a bit mad to say things for a while. I revisited my fear in my latest essay on the Holy Grail:
https://www.academia.edu/49594935/GRAIL_MYSTERY_Beyond_the_Physical_Brain_2021_
I loved your careful description of crossing the threshold “from outer to inner”, including the “pop”. Yes I thought that is how it is! Regarding Russ’ drawing attention to the connection between quantum phenomena and synchronicity, I came across this amazing quote:
“Persons and things, which, dropping out of the ‘to be’ into the ‘has been,’ out of the Future into the Past, present momentarily to our senses a cross-section, as it were, of their total selves, as they pass through Time and Space (as Matter) on their way from one eternity to another; and these two eternities constitute that Duration in which alone anything has true existence, were our senses but able to recognize it.”
The author? One Madame Blavatsky! My attention is being drawn more and more to the 4th dimension, or to put it another way, the bilge water that Owl Man sent Fex to– by pressing the delete button, by the way!
(Even now I feel a similar nag, “Am I saying too much here?” Well, I’ll not press the delete button. Never know what might happen….)
Thank you, Tanya for your posts which raise a number of intriguing problems. I am working on a post concerning what I mean when I say something is psychoactive. In the meantime, note that the relation between psychic fields is like quantum phenomena and this too underlies much of synchronicity. For example, while writing on Dreams, Bones & the Future: Endings, I needed to refer back to the story Erysichython. This is a story I discussed in my essay “Cancer in Myth and Dream.” This is what I was working when you had your experience.
According to John’s post above, “I’m late! I’m late! For a very important date!”..:Must get to that part about the delete button!
And Russ, giggle. Intriguing problems…thank you! Maybe a Toni Wolff disclaimer is in order, about inviting a “my type” to the party.
But, no delete button opened me up to the idea of allowing for whatever comes, as I read Fex and Coo, here in this space, which I rarely ever do. Only because of trusting the sources here, of course.
Ep. 1, Page 20 “Tears dripping like garbanzo beans into his hanky….”
I’d just been listening to Fex and Coo while finishing up some notes from the week, when I settled into my chair, to read some more of Fex and Coo. But, before opening the serial, serial novel, I was scanning online posts and came across a video about a distant family member, that activated an old wound that never heals. The hour was late, and so, I decided to stop there, on the garbanzo beans, and turn in for the night.
-Next morning, still contemplating the video, and feeling cut, again, I decided to turn to poetry, the writing of it, which is how I’ve become accustomed to processing what is unsayable.
-In the poem, I’d intended to type “never ending fountain,” but either because of clumsy thumbs, or autocorrect, instead of “neverending,” what appeared was “Ne We.” And so, the missing letters, along with the appearance of the unintended “W” reminded me of the way in which Fex and Coo had become visible. So, I decided to ditch the title of the fountain intended, “Neverending Fountain,” in favor of “Ne We Fountain,” which gave this fountain just the mysterious quality I had originally intended. In fact, the title of the poem became, “The Ne We Fountain.”
Trusting the process…
-The Ne We Fountain
I am wounded
Broken open
Fifteen million hundred cuts.
And every time you cut me
New
My blood pours out
All over broken Souls
All over
All over
All over
All over
All over
All over
All over.
I died so many times
In your hands
By your words
Under your calloused feet,
Just yesterday.
Now I’m stomping over ancient rites,
Dancing voodoo circles
In the blackened cave.
When I was locked in a moonlit shed
Under your psychotic bourbon breath,
Outrunning the yellow car
White car
Red truck
Green wagon
Blue sedan
The flashing lights
The sick smile,
Tin Man,
Roller skating away from you.
I take your poison then
And add some spit
With incantations
Chanting
Chanting
Chanting
Whoa whoa grrrrrrmmmmm
Mmmmm sheeeyah sheeeyah
Sssssssss
Sahhh sah sah
Eeyah yah yah yah eeyah
dancing in circles.
Tin trickster man,
My Soul knew where to hide,
Laid in wait for me
For three hundred years,
Shapeshifting
Into colors
And mud
And trees
And singing rabbits,
Singing to me
Singing to me
Singing to me
Still singing to me.
You broke me, you said,
Ten times to the power of ten
When I could not figure you out.
But I took the tail end of that star comet
And dragged it down into my garden
And planted ten pomegranates
With anise seeds in between
Swwwwishhhhh tap tap tap
Sssssssss
Watered by an eternal Ne We fountain,
I figured you in
Healing
Healing
Healing
Healing
All the severed Soul.
And that is what I do with you,
Every time you come slashing,
With your heavy empty metal
Arms reaching out over half a century,
Tin Man.
-Tanya Hurst
Ep. 2, Page 8. Finishing up episode 1 and moving into episode 2, I began to notice key words in the main text that I had included in my post; giggle, spit, tap tap tap, and of course, the delete button. Reading along, I realized there were actually words in the main text, that I originally had as a line within my poem, but had decided for whatever reason, to remove. Those words were, “knocking, knocking.” This was quite mysterious to me, the sort of synchronicity that means something to the individual, or becomes alive.
Reflecting some more, I found myself attempting to get a glimpse into Owl Man and Heron Man through the characters, and their own actions within the novel, and also trying to decipher where Owl Man or Heron Man had been the author, respectively, or rather, looking for discernible breaks in the pattern. This was quite difficult.
Finally, as I contemplated my words arising in the future text prior to my having read the lines, I began to have a tiny, tiny feeling of having been written, as in, I am being written as I write, and while this was not a completely bizarre notion to me, I found myself wondering about the mechanics of this, how much is written and how much my volition informs the writing, and also whether I felt the same conviction about volition. I thought of Fex, and how much of his own volition contributed to his being temporarily deleted, and realized that having been written that way, there was no volition on Fex’s part alone, but rather, I had a glimpse of the “two” who were writing Fex, and not the twoness of Owl and Heron either, at least not that I could discern, but another.
Roseline, I love the title of your poem “The Ne We Fountain”. And how the whole poem seems to bypass the cerebral process of thinking & rethinking what to say. The words come aliv, like the characters in FexandCoo, as if production themselves on the page. The ritual incantation of all those blood-soaked “All Overs”. I could for a moment feel the resonance of your own resurrected ancient rite of the “dancing voodoo circles in a blackened cave” & how your incantations give you the power to shapeshift. I’ve actually written a book about shapeshifting women in a blackened cave.
Hi Merilee,
Thank you for taking time to share your reflections on my poem. I was interested in reading about shapeshifting women in the blackened cave, and went looking for your book out there. Is your book, “The Iron Labyrinth?” If so, i was intrigued to see in the description, that it began with an abduction, as the Ne We Fountain poem also has an abduction in the belly of it.
I’ve started reading Episode 3, but I wanted to note a physical sensation that I experienced in one area of Episode 2.
It was here:
“Owl Man stood and bowed to Foxy. The lighting seemed to shift with his courtly manners, altering the mood, as if they had been transported to a different time.
“Oh, madame, it is so exciting, so frappant, to hear the gurglings from the nest of your throat. It reminds me of the sweet baby birds in the Bois de Boulogne on that spring
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morning when I arrived to fight the duel, from which I returned with my life, but marked forever with this scar across my face.”
While the words themselves seemed to harken back to an earlier era, I found myself wondering about the “history” of Owl Man and Foxy; and the idea of a past life connection between the two came to mind.
But while the words seemed to speak of “past,” which appeared like a movement on a timeline, moving to the left on the line, not from center, but from somewhere in the future on the timeline, the farther right side…
that was the image, but
the “sensation,” I felt, was not a move toward the past, but the feeling of “dropping down,” as though moving to a deeper level. I had an expectation here, that I would read more evidence of this “drop,” but did not discern any more evidence of it.
It was an interesting experience to have the “image” tell one story while the “sensation” told a slightly different story.
Tanya
Thanks for your comment, Tanya. The iamge, of course, is IN the text, but the sensation is in YOU. Another example of psychoactivity. How then to “further” this by beginning to explore the world that opens up from the “dropping.”
I had to break off Episode 3 as a memory just crashed the party. I was about 25. I volunteered to live in a half-way house dedicated to R. D. Laing’s work, allowing schizophrenics to go through their madness to possibly another side, without drugs. So here I am sitting at a large table wondering nervously who is the staff, who the patients, when a white apparition that I had noticed out of the corner of my eye suddenly launches at me and punches me in the face. I then learned how fear can ignite aggression in the sensitive….or Eros! We became friends as time went on. Madness comes in tsunami surges. Some days everyone was quite sane, calm. I cooked for everybody but then, you could feel it, a tension building and then the waves. Chaos ensued and went on for 3-4 days. At the climax of one such surge I still remember my paranoid schizophrenic friend in her thin wraith-like cotton dress, screaming raucously in the living room which she had commandeered, along with the screechings of her pet sulphur crested cockatoo, long into the night. Right now I am wondering if in fact I saw her totem animal, or spirit guide goading her on. Well, that’s just one delicious memory of that time in PALA house. I think it may also be a second breadcrumb—what does madness lead to, what doors does it open? Take my memory, I just now re-read the sentence “I cooked for everybody”. I only just now read the unknown future contained in that sentence. That episode “in the past” contained the future within itself, unknown at the time…. I am now looking back at my own future. Is that what Goethe experienced on his horse that day, coming towards him? O the joy of scrambling verb tenses…..
Hi John,
Your memory evoked my own memories, and I found myself unable to tell who is patient and who is staff, much like I found myself unable to tell during my time within the memories invoked.
The memory was of my time volunteering with the Salvation Army’s homeless shelter, a place with much “madness” if I allow for that term, where I also “cooked for everybody,” but not alone. I had the help of a once client resident, turned employee of the shelter. When I began the work as a part of earning service hours in my undergrad degree, I had a secret mission, which was to observe and write about the role of “impression management,” in the homeless client population. This meant that I could sit in the early evening (after cooking) and listen to people tell me their stories, which has been a love since my pre-kindergarten age, and I still love this, both in my work, and in impromptu encounters in the community.
I love to lend my ear, and it’s not entirely altruistic, but also selfish of me, since I am gifted by hearing the stories.
The impression management observation revealed a desire for one to be seen by someone, but not just seen, but seen for more than being a now “homeless person.” Sometimes the stories were believable, and sometimes surely fabrications, I once thought, but now question that judgement, since having witnessed so many unbelievable, yet absolutely true, experiences of others, and in my own story. I peeled so many potatoes there, learned chocolate cake is a favorite at the shelter, that many donate sub-par, outdated, and downright stale foods to the shelter, but mostly learned that but for some wild accident, there was not much difference between “them” and “me,” the clients or the staff, which was at times, interchangeable. One minute a client may be lending support and an ear to another client, or to a staff person, “you want to heal somebody else, you gotta first heal yourself.”
I wanted to say, I’ve been hearing in your story, a bit about madness, and you seem to capture just all the complexity of it as I feel about it.
For instance, you’ve captured the importance of “being seen,” but also the “voice” in your post, which come together in your encounter with the “paranoid schizophrenic friend in her thin wraith-like cotton dress,” who was “screaming raucously in the living room which she had commandeered.” An image of a girl who is given the space to be seen and to scream, thus heard, and no doubt a confirmation of her beingness, not only through being witnessed, but being able to say what needs to be said, in the way she needed to say it. In this case, a scream. It’s beautiful, with the primary fear of the paranoid schizophrenic being, the fear of non-existence, “Am I real?” or rather, “Do I matter?” Do I have matter?
And I recalled the Owl Man’s encouragement for…was it Sally? to sing/scream the notes, which gave me a perspective of Sally I’d not had when reading the main text initially. I found myself contemplating…Sal…Sally…and wondering, is Sally then Sal’s anima? Or, is Sal Sally’s animus? Well, of course! Why had I not recognized this already? The Sal in Sally was right there all along, or rather Sally in Sal, but I could not see it, until suddenly I could, sort of like the Fex and Coo in FedEx and Costco.
Fex in FedEx and Coo in Costco. Playing then, does this mean that Fex delivers, while Coo supplies? Hmmmm. I guess I’ll have to wait and see.
But I digress here, getting into the play of it, this type of play, imaginative, which I consider a real privilege.
Your question is intriguing. You asked, “—what does madness lead to, what doors does it open?”
I have a complex relationship with madness, which you so astutely expressed in your post.
Then I considered my own projections and complexes…am I commandeering this space? Like the Sally in your memory? Well, I’m allowing myself to be seen, some, a fearful act, which is one of the most damaging aspects of my complex relationship with the effects of madness on those in its vicinity, which for you resulted in a punch in the nose, and for me resulted in being stolen. That’s what we called kidnapping in the early 70’s, “being stolen.” In this sense then, I think the schizophrenic experience and my experience had this in common, we were stolen, lost, much like Fex in FedEx and Coo in Costco, could not be seen, maybe didn’t even exist, until suddenly we did, like the Sal in Sally.
Did Owl Man and Heron Man encourage we readers to sing? Yes, yes I think they did.
The houseboat image seems to play in this liminal space, a transitional object, both above and below at once, seen and unseen.
Catch you next at Tully’s, John.
Make mine an Americano, Tanya. Here in Australia I have to go into verbal contortions to get an Americano: ‘Long Black with cold milk on the side. No not Flat White. No not Expresso. Big Cup 1 Shot coffee, fill up with water…” Cheers, j
Hi John,
Your memory is so full! I’ll say more later this evening when the day is done, cooked as you said, at risk of further cooking my own goose.
-Tanya