CANCRI 55(e) EPISODE 7: “PEDAGOGY OF THE OPRESSED”
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EOT: ARCHIVES, BORE-HOLE 0x2A.
A line on a graph. A tidy sum or a fixed symbol with connotations of calm that belies all kinda chaotic possibilities beneath the graph-placid surface. A fetish (the anthropological kind, pervert) is a thing that stands in for another. A suffering Christ or a father placing his trussed-son on the altar. The fetish rolls across the page and takes focus (while casting enough silt in the motion to hide the referent (the thing itself (that which was only-ever adjacent-present))). The Spiders have something quite human-familiar in their mytho-history: Door-Deh’Ghal, the mother, big mamma.
Door-Deh’Ghal (let’s call her Dee-Dee (over the objections of my Cancrin-ghost archival colleague)). Dee-Dee carried the first brood of Cancrins out of the dirt-below-dirt–the underworld. How many spiders? All of them. All the tribes of Cancri on her back. Dee-Dee dies the death both lovely and sacrificial (of course). But her great labor-that-costs-life is the gift and ur-source of all life known by the spiders to grow on-and-in their world. Mama’s sacrifice is the first and greatest boon and the gift to the (spider) people scattered like grains of sand across the desert. The gift is the scattering itself. From Dee-Dee’s carapace spring all the other living things (good and bad and all points between).
Dee-Dee’s great body falls to dust over time-mythic. First day-decades-long spiky spider hairs take to the wind, from her fuzz and dry dander come the float-algae colonies. Big Momma’s spikiest hair follicles take to the wind to form the siphonophore filter feeders that ride miles high and many Reform-Kilometers long in the hazy Cancrin gale.
The gale itself is Dee-Dee’s last breath, and as sure as the spiders climbed off her back, the larva of the first Feast Flies dropped from her belly. From her ass came the pestilent (now extinct) rats. Big Mamma sank her fangs and claws deep into the bedrock to brace for the death-shakes, and from those quakes that snapped tooth and nail rose the calderas, caves, and shield walls.
When Dee-Dee rolled on her back, belly up for her body to fall to dust and ash and all the sand the Cancrin Desert would ever need, that’s when her body birth-shuddered and spit-forth the dragons and millipedes that patrol and own the deepest desert (where not even the biggest, bravest, spiders dare to go). All the critters on Cancri ate her, Dee-Dee’s meat. They feasted on the flesh that was left, ate the gift of her body and grew strong (and if that isn’t the most fucked up take on a familiar story I’ve ever encountered? Reader, I do not know what is).
Sacrificial love. 41 light years from Earth (give or take) on a whole other rock called Cancri 55 (e) and we mortal signifying-dirt can’t escape that sad soul sickness that permeates everything sentient: the disease that is Sacrificial Love (or perhaps the Archivist infected Cancri with that human disease–this suggestion from a Cancrin archivist). Yes, sacrifice of a loving nature could be done kind and gentle and generous (that is, without coercion). But the stink of that Oedipal/Electra stuff is (always) there too: eating Dee-Dee like they eat their mates (or used too). As with humanity, Freud will get you way farther than he perhaps should in understanding the space spiders and what makes them tick (and how they tock). My Cancrin colleague objects to my bringing Freud to bear, and to him I say this, politely even: eat a bag of dicks (cigars, I mean cigars). Stories that run on sacrificial love always stink and always-already have a godthefathermother looming in the background and trussing Isaac for the slaughter. That’s no good. And I really wish fractal self-similarity didn’t make Freud so fucking useful across species, but here we are.
Enter a Parson. Bless her, and her A-series tendency to put her (my (our)) nose in others’ business. Verily, when the preacher lady licked LSD sweat and did fall into the silver plates beyond the end of time. She peeked in and past the plates eating the Mad Archivist that dared to alter them. In profane circumstance, the Parson had this sacred vision: a basalt altar and three spiders climbing up onto it to the rave applause of an unseen audience. Footfalls. Heartbeat heavy and metronome heavy and gold threads on the wind. The three were present and permeated the space un space. Three weird sisters. Preacher bargained with the fates for the lives of three spiders.
There is no lever, cudgel, or threat that can move the weird sisters. The Greeks lied, tied them subordinate to Zeus. Reader, I don’t fear lightning and neither should you. I fear their shears and sickles. The sisters are the whole show. There’s no coercion that works, and you have no chance at beating or besting them (and the effort to leverage the sisters always ends ugly and badly, always only). Preacher engaged the Fates the only way any being (mortal or otherwise) can: she begged. The Parson pleaded to the fates for the lives of three spiders.
While she waited for a response those women would never offer, the Parson did battle (not with but for) the soul of the story some fool’s hubris set in motion. While she lies on the floor of a library, mutter-mumbles illuminated in a profane tongue (a language not even the Stewards know), three fresh plates of silver .gif glitch flicker into being beside the one named Cancri 55(e), aside the one devouring the Archivist Author. From these three plates then proliferate three more and three more exponentially a while until a whole other Alexandria comes to being in the Borges-babel bore-holes.
Effect and cause co-mingle and B comes before A, as above so below, it happens in your world and in-time too (it’s just far harder to see in mortal motion). Every collection in every library bore hole grew. Every tiny Borges library sitting salt-shaker formation beneath the packed ash past the end of everything metastasized new shelves to hold fresh plates etched with every kind of commentary (from amateur anthropology to theology) on Cancri 55(e). And every desk and shelf and information-kiosk within ever library blinked into being fully staffed (as always) by half-mad ghosts that died (or would or might). Everything the Parson and friends would ever write (and much of what they might’ve written) on the spiders comes instantly into being. But it would-and-will take time, a great many long boring lifetime’s worth to read, to eat whole archives with my eyes and see if she achieved anything at all on the spider’s behalf.
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Whew. That was exhausting. Lot of reading. Deep dive (for me (not thee)). I could explain the distinction between narrative time and time-proper, but that would be worse than explaining some Platonic-love ladder. I would be better served trying to teach a broke asshole’s ghost the difference between private property (factories) an personal property (your toothbrush or your skid-marked drawers no one wants to take from you). There’s a very fine distinction between time and vector and consequence-in-motion one has one hell of a time seeing when one is in the river (or on the shore (because the river is in you (if you were born in the river))). Time (not in motion) is a multifaceted gem distinct from causality and consequence and the things we etch on it by simply being. We cannot stop it ever, even if we stand still–dragging our jagged ass across time’s carpets akin to a record-needle ripping vinyl. And even if we escape “when” (our when) our trajectory still carries us on narrative arcs. Suffice to say, Mortal Reader I can Montage (verb) in ways you wish you could (but absolutely should not want to).
I shall do you a solid in the form of this summation–summary of every Alexandria-bunker-Borges-hole’s commentaries and gospels and criticisms of the Book of Ruth:
Before Ruth’s life myth-metastasized it was simply a life, and one blessed with the simplicity, plenty, and intellectual pursuits that come of that delightful boredom born of a full belly. A life pretty simple till it wasn’t. Before the Book of Ruth came into being, Cancri was a ‘basement’ world that should have lived and died quiet and Ruth was a spider with a name but no legend. What follows is more of what came before and more of what we’ve already seen: the life mundane that myth would make metastasize into a thing that eats other lives. What matters elsewhere, out in the firmament (and beneath it (and out past the edge of the sky)) is this: does the myth eat the spider? Is there anything left of Ruth-actual-ruth in the book thus named? And if the myth ate the spider (it did/it will) how many other bugs lives will it mar and wreck and ruin on its centuries-come-millennia-run?
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CANCRI 55(e). CLEVELAND SUBURB: ALKALI LAKE.
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“You go. I go.” Gary is not menacing, quite the opposite. In fact, he is the exact opposite of ornery in posture and bearing. But little spider fella stands his ground, water lapping at his back heels, red lava-lamp-wrath lights the night–that first-and forever-Cancrin night. The air smells burnt and the wind is warm-too-warm. The great metal mining rig, the machine beast, temporarily occupied slurping the molten everything beneath Cleveland.
There, before Ruth and after the end of days, the small male spider with the glorious moustache and bulbous ass shimmy-digs his tummy and bubble-butt a little deeper in the dirt, scared but defiant. Gary snuggles the symbolic rock too small to actually drown him close to his body and tries to repeat his plea: “You go, so do..”
“Fuck you, Gary.” Ruth rears angry, tops her baby-boulder–fangs out and arms splayed. She and Gary are just about the last two on Lake Alkali’s shore. They’d done the Duty to Warn. The writhing blanket of life, the town full of panicked spiders crawled over itself to fly–singles and tandems ballooning on loops and whole families gliding on hastily woven airfoils. The old. The desperate and charge blind braved the sands. The Weather Spiders set off to work duty-to-warn on toward every settlement east of calamity. Almost nobody’s left but Gary, a few freshly recruited guardians and medics and Ruth who is presently trying to walk into the water with a rock.
Ruth wants to go Virginia Woolfe spider, and would’ve except: “Gary. Get the fuck out of my way, or..”
“Or you’ll what? Eat me? Ruth, where you go I go.” Gary hugs his pebble, sidesteps circle-strafe skitters to dig up a bigger rock, eyes-locked on Ruth.
“I lost everything and everyone.” Ruth advances, kiss-close but fangs-out angry, punching ghosts as she goes: “Every fucking one that ever meant shit to me. So don’t fucking act like you know..”
“So did I. Everybody I had was back home ” He hides. Gary shivers deeper into sand grit to shout up: “you don’t have a monopoly on grief or loss or anguish…”
Ruth relents: “Fine. Fuck you, I don’t own sorrow or want to.” She relents, attacks again: “It’s gonna get worse, Gary. So much worse. No food. Anywhere. We’ll run so far east we find Cleveland and our reward for living is getting to see that thing give birth to itself. We’re alone Gary. Alone with that and the big, strong stupid bastards that survive it.” She points to the doom looming over Gary’s shoulder.
“Yeah. Well… You’re wrong.” Gary says, refusing to look back at the death machine drink-slurping molten Cleveland–consuming the city in great levitating lava lamp globs.
“I’m wrong? Fuck you ‘I’m wrong.’ What are we gonna eat Gary? Each other, dude. People eat each other when shit goes south.”
“No. No we eat each other. Some portion of us, but….”
“The dumbest of us, Gary. Boy do they eat.” Ruth chides.
“Fuck me? Fuck you with that ‘most of us are bastards’ bullshit. If you believed that you wouldn’t have bothered coming here, to Cleveland. Why bother warning bastards?” Ruth is silent, staring over him at doom, fangs out and ignoring him like un-delicious prey. Gary goes on: “Duty to warn? We’re not done with that, but more importantly: most of us need to be shown a better way. Shown that we can do….”
“Please don’t give me a speech. We can’t beat that thing.”
“Maybe we can’t. Maybe nobody can, but they deserve the chance to try. We don’t get to surrender on behalf of the world, for the whole world. We just don’t.” Gary gives that speech he’ll repeat on the edge of cliffs and on rock faces far from Cleveland’s shores. He’ll sing the same plea on the peak of great marching dunes at the edge of the deep desert (sand sea where the wind sings certain death, where Ruth-exhausted-Ruth wants to swim at every point on their warn-and-evacuate adventure). “Duty to Warn. You keep going? I keep going. You give up? I give up.”
Ruth wants to brain Gary with the rock, and walk into the water. She wants to bite his face off and get to dying and says as much. Gary side steps, keeps himself between Ruth an the water and just out of reach. Exact opposite of the mating dance. He’s got a rock under an arm either side of his body like luggage, like infernal arm floaties. The two death dance a while-long-while in the doom light twilight that shouldn’t be beautiful (but is). The great glitchy lava lamp in one of hell’s finest basement apartments. “Gary, I swear to god I will…”
“Hark!” Above the doom hum din and under the wind the call of a messenger clod-hopper clomp-clacking down hill like she’s running in mop buckets. “Haaaaaark!” Kid spider comes clattering down toward shore in inherited soldier’s kit (armor she’ll need another molt (at least) to grow into). Her speech is as formal fuddy-duddy and performed as her movements in the museum pieces found in grandma-closet armories. The Guardian clatters to attention and past it: “Hark! Brunhilda wakes. In fevered speech, she calls for thee!”
“Why are you talking all formal, kid? Like you’re in a play or some…
“I know it not. But be quick, Brunhilda wakes. She beseeches, we beseech thee” and the guard clomps back uphill spear-wiggling all the way. And when they find the wounded Guardian, writhing in her own petrifying body, bruised brain pulse-thumping against her carapace-skull. Brunhilda speaks and repeats and repeats her concussion-poetry in a trauma-molt fever dream, leaving the other two to sus her meaning on the long wind-ride east to Fort Wallace: “I’ve looked it in the eye, seen it’s weakness. We can beat it.”
ASS-TER-ISK
END CANCRI 7
MORE TO COME
ASS-TER-ISK