HOLOX TRIAD (part 3)
index:
Jasper Griepink, 2021
www.jaspergriepink.nl
3
Fir-scented Orgy
To our indigenous ancestors, and to the many aboriginal peoples who still hold fast to their oral traditions, language is less a human possession than it is a property of the animate earth itself, an expressive power in which we, along with the coyotes and the crickets, all participate. Each creature enacts this expressive magic in its own manner, the honeybee with its waggle dance no less than a bellicose, harrumphing sea lion. Nor is this power restricted solely to animals. The whispered hush of the uncut grasses at dawn, the plaintive moan of trunks rubbing against one another in the deep woods, or the laughter of birch leaves as the wind gusts through their branches all bear a thicket of many-layered meanings for those who listen carefully to the many different dialects of trees.
_ David Abram, Holox_900.9292.404040.11.b26
We experience the sensuous world only by rendering ourselves vulnerable to that world. Sensory perception is this ongoing interweavement: the terrain enters into us only to the extent that we allow ourselves to be taken up within that terrain. Such reciprocity is the very structure of perception. Like breathing, it involves a continual oscillation between exhaling and inhaling, offering ourselves to the world at one moment and drawing the world into ourselves at the next.
_ David Abram, Holox_900.9292.404040.11.b26
LA, 2076
“Did you hear about that polycule setting up an island-community on a lake in Tennessee?” Linz said.[7]
She was one of Rhin’s oldest friends and she happened to be working at PSxS. She had been put in charge of his participation in the Art of Oration exhibit.
“They even have gondolas, Rhin. Gondolas!” Linz laughed. “Exactly like the one’s in KINK Castle!”.
They both laughed. Linz knew the steam-punk elven gondolas of KINK Castle[8] all too well. In fact, it was that very oralstory (by now a classic), portraying a magical sex-positive community on a healing citadel island, which had caused her to seek out Rhin to witness him perform. Friends had told her about the story, and she was eager to hear it all. “Who would have thought of that!” she said. “They actually fucking did it! Because you gave them the idea!” The community in Tennessee was using their DIY gondolas in many of initiatory rites, not on actual water though, Linz added.
Linz had come to the clinic today to hear the final draft of D E E P S O I L.
Rhin had messaged her earlier that day because he had finally written an ending to the illusive prosaic lore he had started performing decades ago. He had chosen an ending that felt right for print. Over the past months he had told her the story in bits several times. Still unhappy with the fact that the main character Einrihh had inadvertently put himself forth as the hero. Once more, the story of a heroic man taking central stage.
How did this happen, Rhin wondered.
“You have to understand it was never my intention to speak a story with such polarity between two groups of people, and one man essentially being burdened — enabled rather — to save the whole world!” said Rhin, as Linz set up her Holox-recorder.
She had promised Rhin to not only have this final version on print, but in holox as well. In a way it came close to what Rhin had wanted his whole life — a revival of a more embodied and sensual connection to the world and our own history for that matter. But still, the story would ‘be dead’ after this final take, as Rhin had offered numerous times.
“Why do we write stories like that?” he asked. “Why do we share stories like that?”
“Tell me, Rhin,” Linz said, smiling.
By now she had gotten used to everything in Rhin’s cabinet of medicinal stories.
“Rupert Sheldrake,” he began. “Do you know him?” Rhin asked. “In the ’80’s, Sheldrake conducted research on the Morphogenetic Field Theory. Something that later was rebuked by science. He was working on the notion of species being connected via invisible information bridges. Some kind of data telepathy that can be updated by sending information in consciously.”
Rhin paused before he continued: “Whatever people collectively put into this ‘field’ will update or downgrade the members of that species.”
He paused again.
“Doesn’t that make you think of something?”
“The SEC2.11?” Linz said.
“Exactly,” Rhin said. “Our Supreme Ethical Controller. Essentially a network of supercomputers that operate under Universal Ethics Equations without a central leader. Since 2057, the SEC2.11 system was installed as a self-governing, auto-managed info-grid that essentially secures our basic income, health, space and resource division amongst all inhabitants of the United States political territory.”
“We’ve been living with the SEC2.11 in place since the elections back in 2057, and since then, all recorded holoxes have been used to chart, store and convey personal, psychological and biographical data via bio-feedback computer systems which are continuingly compared and cross-referenced in order to…?” Rhin asked.
“…in order to build a more just and intersectional Global Ethics Profile,” Linz answered, with a wink.
She had heard him introduce the SEC2.11 before. Everyone had. It was a standard description of the system currently governing the United States’ political sphere.
“Meaning?” Rhin asked.
“The Global Ethics Profile. Meaning, the ethical parameters that govern the SEC2.11 sequences and algorithms. What we all believe to be fair, together. Plain as that,” Linz said.
Rhin sat back on the bed for a moment. The breathing machine emptied its flask of saliva residue. Morbid body-clock. He looked up at Linz, dressed in an elegant but practical off-white bodysuit, seated beside her holoxgrapher. It looked fantastic: the outfit, the machine. As futuristic as people back in the 2057 would image it. There was more to SEC than just holoxgraphers though. We all had a chip or two or three. There were antenna drones and underground data tubes. Super computers. For users though, version 2.11 was as easy as trying to remember something deep and ancient. Like it had already always been there. Wisdom ready to be recalled.
“We’re all writing reality together?” Linz said. Half asking, half demanding.
She realized SEC wasn’t just bundling data. It reflected what we all genuinely believed in. We get back what we put out. A feedback loop.
Rhin nodded silently. All his stories pointed at this principle. A feedback loop. Rhin’s gaze was glued to the bright West Coast light, still golden after all these years and all these stories. A gentle breeze pushed the trees besides his window back and forth. He imagined the golden light rippling over each unit home, community building, common plot of city-garden and all the petals of the Golden Poppy’s — Rhin’s favorite flower — in bloom across the state this time of the year. Each of us, pushed back and forth against a waning power of will, he recited for himself. Would it be summer in Europe as well? He wondered. Frowning. Hand on his chest.
Rhin looked up at Linz.
She smiled, and added: “Like Genesis P-orridge, who said that ‘reality is an amalgamation of approximate recordings from flawed bio-machines’, (that would be us, Linz joked), ‘effectively forming a kind of consensus, communally created reality…”
“Yes,” said Rhin. His eyes brightening, “…now factor in all of nature; bacteria, plants, animals, rocks, the wind, the ocean, hormones perhaps, smells, electricity, the air, the nilch’i, the nutrients, each of them have a say in the story too. They should, anyways.”
“Co-authors of what is believed to be real and possible.”
“We are all story-braiders, mere entertainment crafters at worst, but conscious creators at best. So why, in our stories, are we so hung up on narratives that aren’t about peaceful co-existence, but about tyrannies and struggles to be overcome? How would that enhance our curving of the feedback loop?” said Rhin.
“Do we even have stories of successful relationships between man and nature?” Linz asked. “We need more of those, don’t we?”
It puzzled her how stories and reality seemed to switch place so often.
We do need those, Rhin thought; stories of successful relating. Because stories influence what is possible. What we believe to be possible. They shape our sight and our listening. How we read reality. His eyes closed. The respirator vibrating.
Rhin looked at the darling small leaves on the Hazel tree beside the clinic windows. The leaves signaled their joy at being seen. For three decades he had longed for their stories to be heard. Suddenly he sat up. Alex was arriving, the air could tell him.
Alex Hymbrilo had been partnered with Rhin for eleven years. He was the star of many romantic passages.
Whenever Alex enters a room, Rhin becomes thirty again. Eyes all twinkly.
For Rhin, there was something deeply erotic in knowing who the last person is that you’ll sleep with in life. And Rhin knew in his own way, that his time was coming.
“Hi Linz,” Alex said, after the two men had embraced one another on the edge of the bed.
They still said babe to one another while kissing hello.
He unpacked the food he’d brought; sugar-free chocolates, chlorophyll tonics, select-protein cakes and other rich nourishments from the downtown organic store. When everyone settled in with their delicious refreshments, Rhin addressed them both: “Can a story be interesting, taking place in a world of peace, with no intense violence or sharp, hard, sticking bashing objects, that take the stage?”
“Ursula!” said Alex.
“Can a story be interesting without a need to focus on a hero or any such things, but rather on the domestic and natural world that enables anyone to do any deed in the first place?” Rhin continued.
Le Guin. Love her, Linz thought.
“Yes! We relate to struggle…but can we also relate, to BLISS?” said Rhin.
“For stories we tell, they write themselves like ink into our imagination and our bloodlines. They become culture! They become us! Writing is creation, speaking is creation, so I ask you; how does our story go?”
There were more beings present than the small circle of humans. Rhin took breath. Exhaled. ”How to make peaceful co-existence compelling?” He asked.
“How to write stories and characters that are sexual, spiritual, political, ecological, and compassionately living in a world where everyone spends time unraveling the delicate subtle intimacies within and around them?”
Both Linz an Alex sat up cheering as if jamming together with the rhythms of this last sequence of words. Sexual. Spiritual. Political. Ecological. Compassionate. They were in it. In the questions. In the telling. Whenever Rhin created or disclosed novel work, the environment seemed to turn on. It was either that, or the fact that Alex was there. Either way, Rhin was in full form when he raised his arms in gesture and orated: “For if our stories are building the world — what world are we building?”
The mood was set. Rhin was ready to share the end to D E E P S O I L.
Everyone quickly finished the snacks. The friendship was beautiful. Like a sunset on solemn tranquil lakes in the Peruvian Andes. A liquid silver, unseen during the day but caressing the evening no matter who was there to see it.
“Stories are so much better when they’re already on everyone’s lips…” Rhin said as he took a last bite of protein cake. ”When they are on their soul’s lip, I mean.”
The eyes of his small sacred circle looked back at him.
Rhin winked and commenced: “As we have gathered by now, the life of Eirdrfolx consists of many intricate and complex interactions and relationships between farmers, circles of mothers, crops and land. But it was the Deep Soil Fire Rites that truly defined them…”
Alex suddenly interrupted.
“Sorry. Before I forget. Here you go, sweets…” he said, passing a small smudging bundle of dried-fir from his purse that Rhin had asked for in support of his reading. He held it close to the electro-lighter producing grey and scented spirals. Together with the mist humidifier lamp and the gurgling respirator the setting was perfect. Like a cave of dreams.
“Now, show us what you got, bae,” Alex said as he pummeled down the couch.
Linz was ready for it as well, the PSxS Holograph-set ready for record. Regardless of the tube that protruded from the left side of his neck, the old man seemed energized. The nilch’i was inspired and evocative. Linz was all ears and Alex had his eyes shut, carried away already.
— taken from the PSxS Holox Archive, unedited —
Communion with the chlorophyll
Communion with the earth and sky
This is what defined the Eirdrfolx
The Fires: the Sacred Rites
For deep in the hearts of the Eirdr
there is admiration for how the deep soil mothers the seeds towards beauty,
petals in endless shades of green and browns, purple and even silver fractal
In their hearts dwells a deep veneration for the falling leaves,
the sediments of decay and timber rotting on the forest floor…
The Eirdr knew life and death were married like the fungi and the beetles,
Turning all in turn to deep soil in the deepest,
to rise again through all forms that dwelled on Aard
This cosmology of the Eirdrfolx was symbiotic, nay,
Chlorofylic, Animylic, Throbbing Splendor
In their stories, their bodies: the blood, the bones, the liquids and fleshy tissues were born in fact from the deep soil, Earth and clay and mud. The inner body.
Their skin, hands, nails, hair, lips and eyes for the matter were formed of the green of trees. Like leaves on the body. The outer.
They saw themselves as a wholeness of trees, plants, earthy soils and rain. No one species upon a terrain of geology — nay, a nexus of all these things instead breathing as one.
It was only in their erotic zone and within their lovemaking where the inside and outside, the above and below met. Pulsating.
There the green and earth became the same; the hardness and softness of flesh and blood with the smoothness of skin, smell, hair and fragrance.
The moisture
The saliva,
The genital fluids
For the Eirdrfolx this represented the rain.
The rain of the skies,
the white clouds that rush onto the woods and drip over branch and stem towards the earthen layers. Akin to hands of passion that run over the Deep Soil. The source. The Bhajitar. Your own hot arousal.
It was in lovemaking where the Eirdrfolx feel, within in the heat of their bodies, the power of their Pyrogenesis; the sacred fires that scorn the land and recycle green to black as black to green it shall return.
It was said:
“So on the land so in the body”
“So in the body, so in the land”
As in the rebirth of plant and time,
so in the bliss of sex
Their magic fire fertility.
Renewing the richness of the forest
It was in the daytime, with the angles of the sun enmeshed in the canopies, a beauty to behold. Fire, water, earth and leaf — celebrated in ritual; plays of liquids, bodies mingling, saliva. spit and glory
This was the fountain, the Bhajitar;
the moistening of bodies and soil beneath
The heating of the meadow
The drops of cum and pussy fluids on the blades of grass
The Eirdrfolx as such, were the fountain of the land
Their heat would cumulate in the collective burning of the fields.
the grand finale of their orgiastic rite
Imagine, the Eirdrfolx, Naked and euphoric,
post-orgasm and deep in bliss, watching flames,
as they caressed and celebrating the renewal
Naked silhouettes dancing in the licks of flames, amidst the crackling of branches,…and while the evening rain would then help sink the bliss of Bhajitar towards the deepest of the deep — the sacred soil below: the reservoir of their passionate togetherness, above, the pyres of smoldering fires would reach high and odorous, fir-scented offerings to the white clouds above.
— — — — — the end— — — — — —
Appendix: SEC22.1
SEC2.11 stands for Supreme Ethical Controller (version 2.11). It is essentially a network of supercomputers that operate under Universal Ethics Equations without a central leader. The SEC2.11 system is a self-governing, auto-managed info-grid that essentially safe-proofs our basic income, health, space and resource division amongst all inhabitants of the United States political territory since 2057 (operative via supercomputers, bio-feedback chips and antenna drones that collect and emit data in the Holox-form). All holoxes on record are ongoingly used to chart, store and convey complex personal, psychological and biographical data which is compared and cross-referenced in order to build a more just and intersectional Global Ethics Profile. Meaning: the ethical parameters that govern the SEC2.11 sequences and algorithms. All of our needs, desires, thoughts and wisdom put together to create a most optimal and just planetary matrix. Rhin had often wondered, if speaking about it had made it happen.
Footnotes:
[7] A polycule, in the polyamory and BDSM communities, is a word that refers to all the people in a network of non-monogamous relationships (not being committed to one person at a time).
[8] Polyamorous KINK Castle, Rhin’s radical erotic story about community on an island rampart governed by a circle of eco-sexual priestesses.
Other parts:
READ PART 1 here: DEEPSOIL
READ PART 2 here: Elfix Oraliteratura
READ PART 3 here: Fir-scented Orgy
Colophon:
HOLOX TRIAD(2021) was written in the context of Envisioning Other Futures, a speculative fiction writing workshop hosted by Other Futures Festival, Amsterdam. HOLOX TRIAD was published in the official anthology of the writing course alongside of stories in English and Dutch by 10 other writers.
See PDF here.
The story of D E E P S O I L is also presented as a spoken-word performance with music, for more information visit www.jaspergriepink.nl
Text/image: Jasper Griepink
Workshop leader: Rochita Loenen-Ruiz
Text Editor: Els Brinkman
©Jasper Griepink, 2021
