Pages torn
from the unexpurgated memoirs of Far Gresham
Fragment
dated 1/26/1992
Edited by
R.E. Prindle
Do you
remember me? Or did I ever introduce
myself? It doesn’t matter. I am the master of reality. You know me; I encompass you. You and I are one, not two, One. I am what you think you are; you are the sum
of my thoughts. Last night I had the
strangest dream. You were in and out of
my consciousness as I dreamed my dream.
You were the woof; I was the warp.
Do you remember that dream?
I had been
reading Justine by De Sade. De Sade
lives in your subconscious, rolling around, directing your actions, but you are
afraid to look him in the eye. You deny
the basis of your existence and thus falsify your perception of life and refuse
to come to terms with the contradictions of your nature. Did I say you and your? Did I say I?
I say a fusion, there is no individuality, all flows from the godhead in
an uninterrupted stream, now one aspect prominent and then submerged and then
another and yet another.
Parmenides? Yes, he is here too.
It was at
the part leading up to Teresa’s escape from the church of St. Mary in the
Woods; from those monks, those priests who lived so far beyond the edges of
self-control. Before dropping off to
sleep, the passage having struck me so forcibly I ruminated once again on those
twin engines of despair that that emerged from the furnaces of modernity, the
Revolution in France to dominate the thought of and characterize the nature of
the tumbling years that spewed forth from the cornucopia of Time in a flood,
the washes of which trouble the minutes of the moment, railing about the limes
of our consciousness as though a stereo played so that only the loud passages
intrude into our awareness but the quiet passages still trouble our dreaming
awakeness.
Despair,
despair, the negation of hope. The ugly
overwhelming beauty; beauty submitting to the ravages of the hopeless. Life as it is now lived. Holy Mother full of grace, grace us with relief.
I dreamed my
dream or my dream visited me in the depth of the night when I was ill prepared
to receive it or defend myself against it.
It blazoned through the mirror of my mind which was unprepared and
failed to capture the photographic clarity, the cinematic verity with which it
existed for that moment, for that eternity which vanished. But let me tell you what I remember or perhaps
now invent, perhaps the gleaning of a lifetime of observation, viewing, reading
or phantasizing. In my dream, shared by
you I was sitting on a sofa in a long narrow room. The sofa, a normal sofa, perhaps brown,
perhaps maroon, more likely I would own a maroon sofa. Am I molding the dream to my own needs? No, I don’t think so, for my dreams are of a
fabric with myself, with you. With you,
who need me who are me.
My book lay
open on my lap as the bible is required to lay open in the church
ceremony. To be closed would be
sacrilege. Neither I nor you, we are not
sacrilegious.
Before me
was a woman and a man. I can only guess,
but perhaps the woman represented the concept of Sex and the man represented
the Libertine. The woman was
lovely. She was the dream of that you,
I, we, the One ever hoped that the warmth of the flesh could ever be. Her figure was opulent, her throat and
copious breasts defied description. The
memory of her features is vague and perhaps unnecessary. The promise of the fulfillment of desire
overwhelmed the atmosphere.
The two were
about to engage in sportive sex. I was
asked whether I wished to join. I looked
blankly back, extending my senses to penetrate the nature of the
situation. A vague aura of soft danger emanated
from the two. I politely declined. They,
she was sitting or reclining in what was either a plastic swimming pool or a
rubber life raft, he was poised over the
Sex Goddess, posed to begin his redemption.
An aura of tentative horror began to fill the room. As the moment
approached an innocent, yielding threat began to emanate from the woman. She smiled one last inviting smile at me and
then two began to sport about. The woman
never lost her self-possession, following or leading as the moment
required. Her sense of anticipation of his
desires was marvelous to behold. The man
never attempted self-control. The man
quickly roared through arousal to excitement, high excitement and into frenzy
and beyond as shall be seen.
When his
frenzy had attained an intensity beyond which I could ever have imagined the
woman suggested an injection of some strong chemical drug. I had then and have now no idea what it could
have been. The very smell of the drug
which immediately overwhelmed my senses not only hinted at but exclaimed
destruction. The acrid and corrosive
aroma was such that I wanted to shout out a warning, but he was so eager for
the sensation in his excitement that I thought better and clutched the book I
was still holding more tightly in an attempt to still my quaking hands.
She injected
the eager man and he at once disappeared into a deeper frenzy which intensified
as he indulged his fantastic desires on the woman. His frenzy, I say, expanded as he ran through
his excesses. Incredible as his earlier
exertions had been he now was reaching a new plateau. Without asking his permission, her own face
now glowing in anticipation, she reached for her hypodermic. Once again the air was rent by that terrible
odor as she injected him another time.
He had no means of assent or denial.
I was horrified, watching quietly and objectively as he immediately
redoubled his efforts as he sought to realize the mystery of her nature and
perhaps his own. The woman submitted to,
encouraged, led him into his most outrageous desires. How she survived his, what were now brutal
attacks can only be explained by the irreality of the unreality of my dream.
Suddenly the
narrow room was filled with a dark light.
I was unable for a moment, almost a moment too long, to apprehend the
vision which arose before me, for the man under this extreme stimulation had
realized his inner reality, the reason for his existence. A holographic image of his hopes and fears
terrifying and ugly but with a beautiful mathematical symmetry and intense dark
tones sparkling with an impossible black light.
As the image gained definition and a clarity of reality it became
apparent that the vision was emanating from the mind’s eye of his desires,
filling the room before me. As the man’s
vitality was eroded and his essence consumed the vision faltered and began to
fade. As much in awe at her achievement
as myself the Sex Goddess exclaimed excitedly, ‘Can you see it too, Far, can you
see it too?’ She hoped I too would enjoy
what she had conjured as intensely as she did.
I sat amazed, stunned, stupefied.
I was shaking uncontrollably. I
understood what I was seeing and accepted its impossible reality but could not
make consciousness accept the fact. I
was terrified as I watched because I knew that in the realization of his
desires he had sacrificed himself on the altar.
His effort
spent, the clamor, noise and commotion in my room subsided. My ears cleared, my eyes refocused, my dazed
and dazzled mind sought its equilibrium, my breathing lost its rapidity and
sank to normal, my body stopped quivering, my hands stopped shaking, my book
saturated with perspiration was shredded and ruined.
As I say, my
senses returned to me, my perceptions were startled anew. I saw the woman holding a transformation in
her hand. The man was no longer with
us. He had turned into a white cat. He sat hind quarters down, his front paws
rigidly distended supporting his emaciated panting heaving body. His ribs were plainly visible while his
pulsating belly heaved rapidly. His fur
was distended into sweated tufts. He
appeared not insane, not mad, but still in a frenzied state of rut. I noted with a revulsive horror, mixed with a
grudging sympathy, that his eyes, little red eyes, bulged beyond their sockets,
their pupils forming a raised blip on the ball.
At first glance he appeared ferocious but then the truth became apparent
that he was a frozen, immobile panting statue.
His tongue extended, he was panting heavily and would pant that way
forever.
Trapped
within the realization of all his desires he was now separated from the external
world. Like the man who got on the
subway with his dime in his pocket only to learn that the fare had been raised
to fifteen cents when he tried to exit he was doomed to ride forever, unable to
leave the subterranean world for the lack of a nickel. The Libertine was trapped within himself; in
a tunnel at which there was no light at the end.
The woman
who had endured brutal treatment and had shown cuts, bites, bruises and welts which
had made me dizzy with fear for her was now miraculously returned to a wantonly
inviting freshness which aroused a hunger deep within me which I fought to
resist. She appeared to be filled with
remorse rather than gratitude that it was all over. As the traumatized cat sat in her hand, she
would flip his desensitized head up which would then fall back to its former
position, alive but lifeless. She did
this repeatedly muttering, perhaps in a low wail possessing a shadow of
satisfaction, perhaps in a plaintive plea to undo what she had done: ‘I only wanted him to have a good time; I
only wanted him to have a good time.’
She turned a warm, succulent, inviting smile on me, a smile that would
have made the nose on one of the faces on Mt. Rushmore twitch, and said once
again: ‘I only wanted him to have a good
time.’
I don’t know
that I made a move to go to her or whether my resolve not to was weakened for
at that time the night faded before the dawn and the rising sun cast a beam through
my window and one reality gave way before another.
Exuent The Dream
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