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Zdzislaw Beksinski, Untitled 1972
A challenge had been issued: "Find the past!" Most records had
disappeared. The ones that survived were not worth the DNA they were
printed on. The reasons for the body count—which, each year, grew by
exponential leaps—were as variable as was the scale and appearance of the
labyrinth. Some claimed that the labyrinth was actually just a concrete
pillbox bunker, left over from the days of World War II, whose iron doors,
streaked with salt, had long ago rusted shut. On one door: a large eye
beneath a pair of horns, and on the other one: an octopus. Perched on a
plateau, the complex gave access to a 360-degree view, and there were
"wheel tracks," cut deep into the stone, which led from it in a network of
straight lines to the beach, and then continued on, straight down through
the surf and down into the depths. Every seven years, of course, would
come the drawing of the lots, though few had ever met the occult
corporatists who would materialize to serve as judges on the pageant, and
the doors never did appear to open or to close.
Now, it was obvious that a new Reich was in charge, and that, from their
makeshift cybernetic Bindu, they were ready to wrap their spell around the
next 1000 years. At each of the 28 U-turns, they had cut the throat of a
professor of geometry. It was a time for glad preparations. With his gold
-tipped training horns, a tiny and scrunched-up bundle of omnipotence
had arrived. It seemed possible, however, that the director of the WTO had
been incorrect in his reading of the entrails. Many objects had been
thrown, noses had been bitten, and ears had been torn off. A seizure had
occurred, it was said, which had somehow split an atom. Great fissures had
opened up in the holographic stage-set, which, as the Minotaur continued
to stamp his tiny hoof against the world, had all the more aggressively to be
closed. Amid the glow of the radioactive fallout, it was possible that the
Guardians of the Double Ax had begun to lose control. It was possible they
too might succumb to the madness that, until then, they had found the
means to micromanage.
Commandos in black parachutes had dropped like electrocuted birds and
then landed in broken heaps, to form two rings around the steadily
expanding complex. No direct assault could prevail against the Minotaur,
no challenge to his force-field from without, no intrigue of rogue sub
-departments of DARPA from within. He existed, as was scheduled in the
stars. To attack the Minotaur was to amplify his strength. To turn against
the labyrinth was to magnify its breadth.
Felix Labisse, Troisieme Voyage a L'interior du Pays, 1957
Hoarse bellowing had flown across the black waves of the ocean. Foam had
gathered on the lips of the scrunched-up bundle of omnipotence. His eyes
rolled, striking fear into the hearts of even those in the inner circle. Was
there some way to distinguish between a tantrum and a seizure, some
method marked with the thumbprint of the Ancients, some safe way to
harness the convulsions of the beast? This issue was a source of ongoing
speculation among the Long-Skulled Seers of the Federal Reserve, yet both
of these phenomena had pointed towards one end. It was feeding time. The
technology that had been meant to keep the monster in had instead
provided him with access to fresh victims, who were even less able than he
was to escape.
The beast must be fed, that much was certain, yet strange reversals had
conspired to cloud the vision of the Rulers, even they who had access to the
best corrective lenses, even they who had perfected the most invasive
algorithms. Once, in the gray sky of the Underworld, there had appeared
an alternate sun. It shone, for some period of centuries, coldly, on the cities
that a race of ant-like workers built, and then stopped at three o'clock. It
had been put there, perhaps, by Daedalus, because the real sun had
disturbed him. At present, none were old enough to determine the source
of the false light.
Turning back and forth through the labyrinth of the self, around each of
the 28 U-turns, I probed almost to the circumference and then back again
toward the center, where the scent of blood was strong, where, row upon
row, the archaic glyphs began to look me in the eye. Some looked like
broken eggs, others like DNA, others like snakes with walking sticks, others
like humanoid knots. Some looked like portable oceans, others like pulsing
shields, others like severed heads, and still others like overturned boats. As
I stared at these glyphs, they more than met my gaze, and I slowly realized
that I could not move my limbs. My lips buzzed. Some force was attempting
to twist them into shapes.
I could smell salt in the air, and the iodine of seaweed, and the creaking of
masts was not too far away. There was also another smell, like that of
copper, and the taste of rusted iron. I could feel the coolness of the air
around my ankles, inching up, then further up. When I woke, I saw then
that the glyphs were random scratches on the wall. Whose eyes were those
that saw, though? What had happened to my tongue? In my search to
penetrate the top-secret lair of the narcissist, probing almost to the
circumference and then back again to the center, where I could sense that
some human had just been yanked out of his shoes, I asked myself eight
questions, each corresponding to one of the eight primordial elements of
the cosmos. These are as I present them here, or would be, had not
circumstances pulled the notebook from my hand, had not the questions
and the questioner been lost.
***
Sego Canyon petroglyph, circa 2000 B.C.
Most records have gone missing, and those that survive are not worth the
DNA they are printed on. Some catastrophe would appear to have
intervened. The Earth tilts at a different angle. As I attempt to remember
the eight questions that I asked, I often seem to be moving in slow motion,
as though walking at the bottom of an ocean, in lead boots. My intellect is
approximate, my bones creak, and my heart is filled with the fog of a shore
that does not exist. So, instead, I will ask a substitute set of eight, which are
as I present them here:
1) How can narcissism be considered a disease if the narcissist is superior
to all but one percent of the race, and Fate has chosen him to be rich,
smart, beautiful, and famous?
2) Is the narcissist aware that other people exist, or do they exist only
insofar as they act out his scenarios, which are grand, and unlike any that
mere mortals could imagine?
3) If the narcissist can create an artificial self, which he then engorges with
blood, can he keep it in a state of maximum tumescence, and does that
mean he is happy?
4) What is the source of the narcissist's rage against the world?
5) If the narcissist is driven by rage against the world and contempt for
other human beings, how is he able to project so much charisma?
6) Is not industrial-strength sacrifice the birthright of the narcissist, the
very reason that he was placed within the center of the labyrinth?
7) Is it fair that the narcissist should be forced to answer to any law,
whether man-made or supernatural, when there are 8 ½ billion who are
begging to blamed?
8) Is narcissism a disease, as defined by the A.P.A.'s "Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders," or is the narcissist, in fact, the
proponent of a cosmology, the priest of an occult Reich, whose forces will
soon dominate the world?
I will attempt to answer these eight questions, in both a personal and a
more general way, by exploring an incident that occurred in August 2002,
when I reached out to a friend I had not seen in ten years. I will describe
what led up to the phone call, the deep background, the immediate cause,
as well as what followed from it. Then, I will probe the reasons for why this
phone call haunted me for weeks.
***
Andre Masson, The Workshop of Daedalus, 1943
Virgins had gone missing. They were fuel, which had been consumed. They
were not dead; they had simply "disappeared," for such are the rites
demanded by the agents of the IMF. In search of a drop of blood, the
Rulers of Prehistory had set up sweatshops in Honduras, where clothing
for the Gap is manufactured, as well as Nike slave-labor factories in China,
and tantalum mines in the Congo, without which no iPod would see the
light of day. That the Many were created for the enjoyment of the One was
a secret that few dared to speak aloud, and fewer still to celebrate, with no
slight-of-hand, in public, although lately that had begun to change. Truly,
the Elite were those who did not hesitate to kill.
The years had taken a circuitous route. Lost innocence demanded justice.
Such demands would, for the remainder of the time-cycle, continue to fall
upon wax-plugged ears. Blackened bones showed teeth marks. Ghosts
cried from pyramids of skulls. The labyrinth was a paradox. There was no
clear inside or outside, even as it served as the most foolproof of
containers. I turned back to go forward, out to go in. When I woke, I found
that I was standing in the spot where I began—where my sense of smell had
long ago abandoned me. The narcissist was just a breath away. As shadows
had magnified the monster's strength, making him look taller than he was,
the contest, when it did occur, was brief.
In the process, I was forced to take the Minotaur by the horns, with their
terrible gold tips, to tear away his mask, to disentangle the thread of my
own breath from the labyrinth, as turn by turn, I discovered the identity of
its builder. And, finally, I was forced to mourn the ruins of a friendship that
was dead but not yet buried. This essay is the epitaph.
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