FEX & COO

The old man tapped his cane three times before he took a step and then three times again for the next step. In this way, stooped and bent, and hands shaking a bit, he made progress, slow but sure, to the librarian's desk. He tipped his red beret to the young women standing there watching him. She smiled in greeting and asked if she could help him.

"Yes," he said. "I'm in need of a book."
"Well," she replied, I hope we have what you are looking for. What is the title?"
"I know longer remember it, nor the author, but it is exactly the book I need now."
"Well then, do you recall what it is about?"
"Well, I have an image that's clear, but I can't seem to get the words to describe it."
"If you close your eyes, can you see it?"
"Yes, I can see it."
"Maybe you don't need a book."
"Why do you say that? You are a librarian."
"But sometimes, the book you need is not yet written. Perhaps your seeking the book is a way to find that you are the author. Could that be?"

~ral

There is a website (wombo.art) that uses artificial intelligence to translate words into artistic images

in various genres (etching, pastel, dark fantasy, mystic, etc.)

Here is the image for the words Fex and Coo in a fantasy style.

What is your reaction to this?

ral

The world may objectively exist but our encounter with it—in whatever way—fictionalizes it.

From most books on writing the novel, you will find that dreams are taboo. “Do not go there” is the general advice.

No one ever asks what novel the dream would write. Truth be told, all dreams are incipient novels.

Dreams, of course, are the focus of endless analysis, but analysis does not write novels, is not interested in this potency, always turning the dream into something else—to be generous, perhaps this too a fiction.

James Walton has reviewed Keith Ridgway’s new novel A Shock, titling his review, “Everything is Fiction,” in the December 16 edition of The New York Review of Books. Read it. Then read Ridgway. Then read your dream.

ral

To Russ and John,

John, talk about ships passing in the night! Thank you for your clarifying assistance. I think I have been able to make a mid-course correction here and get more in tune with your comments (although you may disagree). Your examination of language as a mirror to the movement of the soul must be like gauging how the movement of deep subterranean tectonic plates cause earthquakes and volcanic eruptions on the surface. And you are right that the practitioners of all cultural practices “simply focus on the content, or information, or references outside their language in their rhetoric”.  So you are monitoring what their language is trying to say about their souls (both individual and collectively) that they are unawares of.  There you find “soul movement on a collective level, and another picture looming up”, especially in the description of the quantum physics experiment at the heart of this discussion.  So, are you saying that unbeknownst to the experimenters, their ‘factual’ observation that objective reality cannot be hammered into the ground and made fast is actually the rumblings of the soul breaking out of the subject-object split defined by scientific objectivity?  And that as the collective souls of us all are overtaken by the ‘acceptance’ (willing or unwilling) that our notion of quantifiable objectivity must sink, torching the very fabric of our world that relies so relentlessly on the notion of subject-object objectivity, on the notion that one stands apart from the other and that both are real?  And this appears to you as being apocalyptic because we are not prepared for “this relativisation of our conviction of being individual, isolated centres.”  So, as the center melts, the individual will not find a suitable container to migrate to because he cannot shake his sense of himself or all that he knows as ‘real.’  And this will blow his foundation and  everything else to Kingdom-come.  Your foreboding is powerful, just as Jung’s was for me, and I am curious if you can envision an alternate scenario where there is a profound ‘evolution’ where people can accept being not the center, not the subject, but the object for some other subject?  And is it possible that the more we experience and plumb the deepest  psychic layers that we will find ourselves meeting up something that will not destroy us but bring a reality that is true and fixed but different and non-overlapping with any other observer?  Can the ego and the self coexist in two different, but nonetheless, equal realities where they ‘appear’ to be in one reality or the other but are actually in the same reality and it is only the observer that gets a false impression?

You must forgive my meanderings but this is not a subject that I have thought much about. Moreover, I have a firm image of myself as occupying the role of a step-down transformer: one lead into the rarefied world that individuals like you and Russ and Paco inhabit, and the other lead into the world of the common man (struggling and confused).  I am trying to link the two worlds. I am  also unduly influenced by having been a scientist my whole life (cancer research) and marveled at the ability of the DNA in a cancer cell to tap into its billion-plus years of learned tricks and escape routes solely to live another day.  So I would naturally ask, if there no escape routes for the coming conflict you mention between the subjective and objective realities?  I was very impacted by Paco’s book and his lifelong struggle to overcome this very type of dissension.  While I admit he is a rare bird (or more precisely, a heron) but he embraced the transcendent that was his burden and he did not fail us.  But all this discussion has made me a think of a poem I wrote long ago but is still relevant to me now.

A SCREAM AROSE

A scream arose

from me, or at least,

in a dream of mine

which I claim ownership of,

but not supremacy of.

It arose, it seemed to me

at a time of least interest,

that is, at the time of

horizontal dispassion,

and I thought it arose

from someone else,

someone other than me.

But I claim the child.

I accept its genealogy,

too like mine to be

anyone else's.

I must confess

I did not recognize the dreamer,

that distorted face,

those stricken hands.

I raised my feet higher

so my soles

(or souls) would be above

and so look down on me.

And I waited

for grace to trickle

down my globular legs.

I learned this trick

lying upside down on

Freud's couch.

It works

but only partly.

The screamer saw

into and past this trick

and surprised me with

one of his own

(men do scream, you know).

I surrendered.

Pulled my legs up to

my chest and looked

terrified.

What I felt

I can't describe.

Russ & Paco

I'd like to share a series of experiences that I hope will be of interest to yourselves and the Fex & Coo members. I believe they point toward a ‘novel’ way of story writing and in this way are related to F&C, especially since as you’ll see I am heavily indebted to Russ’ work in many ways. I should say that I have avoided reading F&C for the most part as I didn’t want it to influence the story I’m working on. Hopefully I’m not just rehashing things that you have already covered on the F&C website. I also hope there is a reasonably coherent thread running through the message, I’ve tried for the most part to include only the most relevant dreams and synchronicities.

After reading Psyche Speaks and Words as Eggs a few years ago and following Russ' prompt to 'play' with words, I eventually stumbled across a method of making poems as follows:

I gather words together that stand out to me as I go about my day or present themselves to me in a synchronistic way, then when I feel the list is complete, I go through them one by one looking up their etymological roots and making short notes of whatever findings grab my attention. Using the completed list as a prompt, I scan down the page in an imaginative state and allow a poem to come through based on the notes.

Although especially in the beginning the method seemed strange and confusing, I felt the poems were highly relevant to me and were not random or accidental. As I continued to write these poems sporadically, eventually a distinct knowing would come whenever I came across the right words to use. Very often they would all come at once, via the packaging of some household product for example, or some advertisement on the street. The poems that continued to come were always surprising in that they seemed to be linked together somehow. Then for a while they stopped coming. I kept the method in the back of my mind, feeling that there was more to it.

A few months ago I had a dream that I seem to have lost in written form, though I remember the relevant points:

I'm in a huge professional kitchen. As I look around there are three experiences happening simultaneously. 1 - me looking around the kitchen 2 - a friend of mine filming me doing so 3 - a huge celebration involving many people of bygone ages is taking place. I walk up to a door and open it, expecting it to lead to a small cupboard or room. It's actually an oven of huge proportions, bigger than the kitchen itself. Something big is going to be cooked here. I close the door and walk over to a brick wall covered by some kind of climbing plant. There are three taps on the wall, I turn one on and banana ice cream flows from it and into my mouth.

The following day I walked by a shop window and saw a stuffed banana baby toy in the display, so I took a picture. A couple weeks later or so I was on the train coming home from visiting a friend. As I looked out the window I briefly spotted a transit van with its back & side doors opened in such a way that the first half of the company name could be seen twice. It read 'LOWLOW'. The word impressed itself on me, then I looked across and out the other window where I got a glance of an advertisement. The slogan read: 'Remember the Name'. I took out my tablet to jot down the name, and when I unlocked it I saw the picture of the banana toy on the screen. That's how Lowlow Banana came to be.

Some days later I was running a bath when I spotted a bottle of 'banana bath blend' in the cupboard I'd never seen before. The colour scheme on the packaging was made up of distinct blocks of yellow, green and brown. I thought of the three taps in the kitchen dream and felt the colours corresponded to them. It also occured to me that the three colours might represent three characters in a story. I decided to run the main text on the bottle through the method described, but this time I'd write it prose. 'body shop banana bath blend hydrating bath foam with banana puree, coconut & avacado oil'. Here is the result:

**

Lowlow Banana stood with his long and trusted companion Musa Mouse before a little stall that had for sale a single lot. It was an old wooden trunk with a lock on it. Lowlow, possessing as he did a certain keenness of perception, had the experience as they were looking at the trunk of a strange insight flashing up from somewhere beneath him.

"There's life inside this trunk." Lolow said under his breath.

"Yeah? Just looks like an old trunk to me." Musa responded, but Lowlow wasn't paying any attention. He knew better than most that outward appearances could be deceiving, for he himself was able to peel up his skin from the bottom to reveal black and white cow spots underneath.

Concerning the trunk, he sensed that what was contained within it had to do with the very framework of matter itself.

"There's life in it alright. Death too, sure enough. But a warm death."

"Oh for God's sake not this again! Why do you always have to do this? Can't it just be an old chest and stay that way? Your weird ideas cloud my head, Banana."

Heavy though they made Musa's head, Lowlow couldn't help but proclaim it when he was stricken by one of his magical insights. They would come to him right out of the blue and when they did, an inward grin belied his grimace.

"We ought to see the doctor right away" said Lowlow, close to a pace of jogging.

Although the Mouse protested it was in vain. She soon followed after him. Such was the strength of their bond. As they made their way toward the RYP Centre, where the doctor's offices were based, not a word was spoken between the two. They were each dealing in their own ways with their racing thoughts, and to mix them both together would have been a thick soup indeed.

At long last they arrived at RYP, which was always a devil to find, and were then stood, the pair of them, outside the clinic door upon which read the inscription: 'The Offices of Dr. Koko P. Nutt'. Before they went in, Lowlow pleaded with musa,

"I need you with me on this one, my sweet Mouse. It's no good us barging in there at odds with one another."

"Cross my heart." she replied, and she really meant it.

With that, Lowlow knocked three times and he and Musa were invited to enter by some syllable from the doctor.

"Ah yes!" the Doctor burst, not skipping a beat and flinging his arms out to the sides. He then lowered his tone. "So...you found the chest?"

Mouse and Banana shot each other a puzzled look. Eventually Lowlow managed to let out:

"...What?"

"The chest.You found it." Another long pause followed. "You must have found it, if you hadn't you wouldn't have come at just the perfect moment… Am I right?"

"Yes, but I don't get what's going on, Doctor.”

“You know about as much as I do by sound of it, Lowlow.”

“Please, Dr. Nutt, let us know what’s happening. How did you know about the trunk? What’s inside it?”

“Lowlow, please call me Koko. Regarding the trunk I’m afraid I’ve nothing I can tell. Everything I know was told to me by the Olive Tree. You are to consult her on your next move.”

“Oh this just keeps getting better.” Musa interjected. She couldn’t stop herself from rolling her eyes. She’d heard enough nonsense for one day.

“Musa! Remember what we agreed?” Lowlow pled, digging her with his elbow. Musa shook her head and looked away to the side.

“Sorry about that Dr. Koko…what was this about an olive tree?”

“It’s just Koko, Lowlow. Please. Take this, it will get you where you need to be.”

Koko handed Lowlow a little card which read: ‘The recipient plus one guest are permitted to board the Medishi Clipper. Ticket good for one way. Valid on the date shown. 17/09/1994’. He looked blankly at the card for a few moments and then cracked a smile.

“Very good, doc!”

“I insist that you call me Koko. And this is not a joke.”

“I suppose you’re in on it too, Musa?” Lowlow side eyed them both, waiting for one of them to fold. When it never happened his face became serious. “Doctor…sorry, Koko, I don’t understand what this ticket means. It expired years ago. Are we to travel backwards in time to catch the…what was it again…Medishi Clipper? What even is it anyway?”

“The miracle is the only device at your immediate disposal for controlling time.”

Musa by now was ready to boil over. Lowlow knew it was time to leave.”

**

At this point in the story my list of notes was not exhausted, but I felt it was the right time to wait and see what developed.

One recurring theme when writing in this way is that characters always find a way of presenting themselves in the process. I have sent Russ a handful of poems in the past including characters such as ‘Minne the Blond’, ‘Father Clement’, ‘Alexis the Whacker’ etc. A good example of how this can happen is ‘Musa Mouse’. I was in a wooded area whilst taking etymology notes for the story. When I got to the word ‘banana’, one of the notes I took was it’s Latin name ‘musa’. This word held my attention for quite a while and I allowed myself to imagine how this word might fit into the story. Does Lowlow meet his muse? Is he a muse for someone else? Is he a musician? A poet? As I was pondering this a mouse popped out of the undergrowth and ran across my field of vision. So Musa Mouse was born. I will give one more example which led to the continuation of the story.

Sitting outside a row of restaurants,  I look at one called ‘Confessional’. But all I can see is ‘ESSI’. Next door is ‘Estábulo’ and the graphic of a bull’s head. ‘Essi Bull’ came the realisation. On arriving home a pack of razor blades sit on the counter, brand name ‘Bulldog’. I felt the dog was another character, and used the text on the packaging to continue the story. To try and keep some brevity I am skipping the ‘dog’ synchronicities that followed, and include only a section of the next part:

**

Lowlow and Musa arrived home to find an official looking envelope addressed to Lowlow. They opened it together and both began to read.

‘Dear Mr Banana,

I am writing on behalf of one Julius Dog the Mover concerning the invitation which was recently extended to you via Dr. Koko P. Nutt. Before I get to the heart of our message, there is a relatively trivial matter that I would wish to elaborate. As you will have noticed, the benefactor has included in the invitation an option to bring along a guest as part of your journey - their doing so is due to our understanding that yourself and a Ms. Musa Mouse are renowned for an apparently unswerving refusal to leave one another’s side under any circumstance. Whilst we respect this peculiarity, and would like to make express our assurances that Musa will be made to feel as welcome as possible should she wish to join you, we recommend that she does not do so. Having a notion of the highly unusual nature of the trip you will be undertaking on the one hand, and Musa’s characteristic need for orderliness and reason on the other, we feel obliged to warn you both that the Mouse is likely to become highly distressed by the situation that you will inevitably find yourselves a part of. We wish to make clear in no uncertain terms that the modes of perception upon which Musa generally relies during her day to day life - i.e. a sense of routine and order, the tendency to resist randomness and spontaneity, the need for logical conclusions and explanations, the strong inclination towards maintaining separation between things etc - are all bound to be entirely compromised….

**

By now I had the strong feeling that this would be an ongoing project and a growing sense that the method I’d been using to write was a valid and reliable one. I believe this was confirmed in the following dream and synchronicity:

Dream:

I’m informed that I’ll be given an expensive gift. I’m shown into a room to receive it. It’s a bar/restaurant, a woman my age is sitting at the bar waiting for me. She’ll be my date. The bartender brings out my gift. It’s a pair of mustard coloured leather shoes that fasten with a button. They are the same shape as a pair I had years ago from a shop called ‘office’. I try them on and they fit perfectly. I fasten them onto my feet using zip ties. I note that I’m wearing blue socks. My date could not be happier that they fit me.

Following synchronicity:

I go for a walk with the intention of doing some writing. An impulse takes me in a direction I’ve never been before and I eventually come across a solitary bench. It’s made of metal and a large spider is built into the backrest. It’s travelling between two webs along what looks to me like a climbing plant. (Picture attached) I couldn’t help but sit down to write. I sat down and crossed my legs in front of me. I noticed that I’d unconsciously put on boots and socks which matched in colour nearly perfectly with those in the dream. Then I took out my two notebooks (I use one for the note stage and the other to translate the notes into a poem/story) and realised the notebooks matched perfectly with the dream shoes & socks. The shoes had the same colour and material as my mustard notebook as well as the button from my blue notebook. And the socks were the same blue colour as the latter. I was a little embarrassed that I hadn’t made the connection sooner, but it made for a perfect moment. Then I began writing, with one book above the other. A tiny spider crawled across my hand and onto the uppermost notebook which was filled with notes, then back onto my hand, and down onto the lower pad.

There is much more I could say but I’ll leave it at that for now except for a final dream which I sense could be related to this process, though I may be seeing a link that isn’t there. I’m a bit reluctant to include it for that reason. Still, the dream seems to want to be included.

I am speaking to my sister (who at the time was in late stage cancer), she impresses upon me the need for resilience at this time. One of my relatives is overseeing the restoration of a spectacular futuristic looking holy building. Everything starts to become more and more like an animation, and I am shown an array of animated character. ‘Minne’ is singled out - she’s a beautiful blonde woman wearing a white robe. She was created by accident when the voice actress who was supposed to be playing a different character delivered one of her lines wrongly. Now I’m weaving through an incredibly beautiful animated sequence. My entire field of vision is filled with characters of all kinds. Then the world is plunged into total darkness. The glowing outline of a male character flying through the dark void is the only source of light that can be seen. (He reminds

me of a character from the video game Fallout which is set in a post apocalyptic future) Eventually the light returns, but now what can be seen isthreatening everywhere I look. A giant metallic grasping hand is frozen in mid air. An authoritative woman’s voice begins to speak, a prophecy is being told. She explains that the giant hand represents something technological, perhaps artificial intelligence and suggests that it will be very touch and go whether it can be stopped in time. Then using characters from lord of the rings as touchstones, she explains that so

Thanks for your work and for taking the time to read.me are chosen to survive these catastrophic events and carry forward the new world.

A fascinating result in the quantum world.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/03/12/136684/a-quantum-experiment-suggests-theres-no-such-thing-as-objective-reality/?fbclid=IwAR1FPTVmo5IDgLa5I9JGCOmysbJb2m0giOnpZjpphON_oYFup5WtOS5QZfA

ral

I am moved by this latest instalment of DCL, more than that, a breath of fresh air lifts my spirits and gives me courage to continue. Fictional characters becoming conscious of their nature as fictional!

“You Life is a High Gothic Novel” a dream voice asserts, with unassailable authority. Some twenty-five years ago. A life become a narrative, in a somewhat disconcerting genre—High Gothic! Of course my mind went to—life as a work of art; history as autobiography; even an essay exploring soul as historical soul, and also, the connection between soul reality and texts. All these golden threads springing from this dream led me to fresh pastures where I played for years with how language reflects soul reality—soul phenomenology!

But I also knew that I had not served the dream as well as I might. I got a bit giddy with the impetus generated by the dream's astonishing claim about my life and its equally astonishing claim ON my life. But now having read 6 episodes of CCL, I am wondering if a fictive response may serve the dream’s intention more fully. Let’s see …

(5:32 pm to 5:33 pm)
I have to go back and insert another rich offshoot: I also studied Gothic literature based on my joy of discovering Edgar All Poe as a boy and reading all his heart-pounding tales with gripping pleasure…

(5:35 pm to 5:36 pm)
“Narrative thrust.” Just burst in. What an evocative phrase. A narrative thrusting into ordinary reality, upsetting the stability of a Queendom. Memories start flooding in now, got to slow it down a bit. O yes, in one of my books some years ago, I included a scene from a video that fascinated me. (I break off to get the link—now I am back). It starts with “Somewhere in a little Belgian Town”(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp5f3NEKiH0), the scent I meant to say “scent” oops I did it again (I meant “scene”) so now I am on the sent (now “scent” became “sent”). Shoaled, (o no I meant to say “should”, so now there is a shoal, of what, and can a shoal be shoaled?) I go back to “scene”for a moment, my intended word, but now disrupted by other emerging narratives, it seems. Too many narratives at once begging to come in and take centre stage. It feels like they are clamouring for attention.
“Some discipline please!!!!!”

Let’s go back to “Somewhere in a little Belgian Town”: the scene proceeds to show the townsfolk invaded by a series of catastrophic events that turn out to be dramatised for an advertisement. In other words, their ordinary lives are totally disrupted by a fiction that thrust into their lives. There I said it! What happened to these folk in the town also just now happened to me as several emerging incipient narratives (scent, sent, shoal shoaled) thrust their way into my life interrupting my intentions and changing the course of my action, my choices in my real life.
Whew! So that’s how a narrative thrust works! Watch out everybody! There is an inconceivably new and powerful narrative on its way and it is already thrusting through, disrupting our lives in so many ways. We must let it in even if it is unintelligible and we therefore sound mad. It’s coming anyway, as you see when I opened the door just a tiny bit here. Clamouring voices….

Very High Gothic!