swarm 2

The triumph of Western hierarchy. 'Universal' Capitalist Civilization; the saints march on (regardless); progreSS marching Straight through Linear Causality and Causal Linearity - no Queers here; signing over Agency and Subjectivity to the military (state) - the Subjective decision of an active Agent. Rationality precedes Knowledge. Equations cracked, patterns mapped, heralded Truth; Objectivity. Anti-Subjective but reliant on the acceptance of the Subject.

It's the truth even if it didn't happen. (Kesey,1962:13)

Masculinity is it. The cornerstone of transcendent culture is Man. Mankind, the Ubiquitous Centre, the Disciplined Subject. He is made in the image of God , from God's image. Natural Evolution to a Solid state, no need to go on, Stabilising forces. Solidified, Hardened, a Utopic metastasis shielding him from the uncertain and unpredictable world over which he presides with a mandate from God - Caretakers during the deep-freeze.

The Dominant/Dominating Agent over every Other, master of destiny, Master of the Universe. He invests heavily in the status quo, repelling as best he can the flood of change, whilst attempting to draw the changed into His Omnisphere.

Immanence.
Fin de Siecle. Masculinity is the pervasive (aesthetic) illusion of transcendence. (Masculine) Order can only be temporal, a traced superimposition creating an illusion of order in kaos. It is "riding the surf of their present, problematic wealth." (Baudrillard,l993:42)

Simmering below the surface, the eruption prepared itself. The heat of liquid subjugation boiled frantically against the sedimented crust of the masculine. All which is not masculine opposes (the) logic of constancy, (the) logic of the straight, (the) logic of capital, (the) logic of structure, (the) logic of discipline.

As the transcendence of God was swamped by Man, once immanent, so man has lost his privilege. God , The symbol/symptom of transcendent masculine excess. Can man even look forward to this future? The present is always immanent to its future. The Objects infiltrate and take over.

Cunt and Cursor.

No rapture, no peril, is greater than that of the sea. And the man has still to come who will live that love out beyond the reach of any port. Letting go of his rock, his ship, his island, and even that last drop of oil on the water, and so that he can feel the intoxication of such vastness. (Irigaray,1991:47)

Masculinity thrown overboard. The solidity and stability of the boat pale in comparison to the strength (and beauty) of the ocean. The facade of masculinity is inadequate protection against Her might, but it is here at the Queer outpost that the security system must be tested. When this sea bears its teeth, masculinity and its crew will sink. The voyage is doomed to failure...

...the journey is infinite, there can be no Straight path across the body without organs. "[The BwO] remains fluid and slippery." (D&G,1983:15)

This is where the cursor finds itself, surfing across the BwO. Rhizomatic wanderings across the sprawl.

Rhizomatic direction...[it] know[s] how to move between things, establish a logic of the AND, overthrow ontology, do away with foundations, nullify endings and beginnings. ...The middle...is where [She] pick[s] up speed. (D&G,1987:25)

The THINGS that man possessed, ruled, controlled, exploited, cum into their own. The darkest most terrifying male phantaSEAs speak out and switch on. (Genital/Identital) Castration is imminent..

The clitoris is a direct line................to the matrix (VNS)

God sez: Jeezus! I've created a monster

Eve sez: These apples are fucking overrated.

The bright lights over Gormenghast castle make it impossible to hide between the shadows, at any time day or night. A floodlit boundary. Movement restrictions are enforced by law, but no one could leave even if they chose to. The agents of disciplined masculine excess, trapped in an agoraphobic consensual hallucination; a facade masking the lack of anywhere REAL to go. REAL movement abolished, prevented by teleological mythology. Enter the dark mazes of Gormenghast...

Turning this way and that,...lost in a labyrinth of stone corridors, lit here and there by candles sunk in their own wax and placed in niches in the walls. (Peake,l992:25)

Lost in the frigid lifeless corridors of power. Exits barricaded against White Heat/White Light(s). Frostbitterness. The paths from A to B no longer run Straight. Icicles, once the evidence of sustained negative temperatural feedback, block the routes. God, ensuring ordered continuity "Isolate[s Himself]behind walls guarded by guntoting private police and state-of-the-art electronic surveillance." (Davis,1990:223) God assumes things will never change.

The rigid structure of the castle, brittle. Maximum vulnerability, fragile after a millennium of constant freezing. Maintenance dictates accelerating hypothermic conditions; survival is intractable. Post-destination Crash. Positive feedback kicks in. Gormenghast is hotting up.

God, rimed and glistening in the aftermath of suspension, sez: A curse upon Kelvinator - It s hotter every time I return.

Eternal return--loopfuck.

The temperature of Eve['s libido] rises as she fucks Her way around the Labiarinth.

Eve sez: Gog and Magog is a cool place to hang out; Beelzebub and his sister make Hot fucks.

Woman is the devil's [plaything]. (Hugo in Blackwood,1990:76)

The Labiarinth is a network; "built in such a way that every road connects..It has no centre, no periphery, and no exit, [it] is virtually infinite." (de Lauretis;l987:61).

Sprawling, the orange air is offset by a uterine blue that darts about the boundless pathways; the setting for carnal lust and desire. Hermaphrodykes and eunuchs fuck, as Eve immerses herself in their "polymorphous perversity." (Lyotard,l993:xxi)

God sez: "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." (Genesis,3:16)

Eve sez: Fuck you."Nothing can pain me anymore, I am no longer the one you knew." (Peake,1992:171)

A four poster bed creaked in the west wing of Gormenghast. His brutal body clambered over Her's. She longed to find an exit.

The seduction was brief. There was no apparent escape for Her. Within the castle's walls there were no acceptable excuses.

The woman carried the man as the sea carries a ship, with a light rocking motion, which rises and falls, barely suggesting the violence below. In the course of their voyage they sobbed and murmured; their movements accelerated, generating an unbearable force. The man groaned, he allowed his weapon to go faster, deeper, stronger between the woman s thighs. The venom spurted; and suddenly they felt suffocated, on the point of explosion or death - an instant of [his] intolerable joy, chaste and wanton - terrifying. (Ouologuem,1971:43)

She carries and He rides. He takes. His-and-Her's violence. Their voyage? She sobbed, He murmured. His explosion. Her Death.

He... "After [H]e has fired...all that is there is a dead woman, but she doesn't appear to have been killed by his bullet." (Theweleit,1987:202) His venom. She is not dead. It is just too fucking hot to kill. She calmly leaves, He remains limp and sweltering on the bed.

He had swung full circle. He had given himself up to the crowding forces. He, the rationalist, the self-contained!...And so, in a paroxysm of self-indulgence - or perhaps in the grip of some elemental agency over which he had no power, he had denied his brain, and he had lost the ONE and only moment of time in which to strike before his enemy. (Peake,1992:743)

Eve sez: "I hate nature, I hate it, the rotten beast." (Peake,1992:707)

God sez: "[T]ut, tut, you can t talk about nature like that, my ignorant child. Good gracious, no!" (Peake,1992:707)

Oh, but She can.. After the masculine; UnNATURAL. Feminisation. No longer masculine, no longer human. She writhes in exuberance as She becomes the Labiarinth.

Inhuman unbearable angel exquisite, abysmal fluid thick. Trashed, flattened, torn by the brutal speedcore of sounds, until [She] adjust[s], and [is] meshed. (Roberts,1995:viii)

This was the darkness [S]he knew of. She breathed it in...There was here no taint of those shadows which had oppressed [H]er spirit...She stretched [H]er arms above [H]er head in [H]er liberation.... "I am home again." (Peake,1992:166)

The kaos enchanted Her. This was It. Relaying Her Story would be easy here, all pain removed, a seemingly distant past. "Dice entre las piernas, She speaks from between [H]er legs." (Pinkola Estes,l993:338)

"Gormenghast stank of fear, thawed rotten Meat..."

The Vagina Dentata is the mouth of hell - a terrifying symbol of woman as the devil s gateway. (Creed,l993:106)

"...he was scared enough to want to kill me, but he burnt up. Fireballs consumed the corridors."

The dancing female was very magical indeed, for she had no head whatsoever, and her nipples were her eyes and her vulva was her mouth. (Pinkola Estes,1993:338)

Because when God created Woman, he finally got it right. (Raven,1995:169)

"What are we waiting for lover, let s perform." (Cronenberg,1983) She took Her into Her mouth. Enveloping her wetness. Electric absorption, becoming. They fucked relentlessly. The heat never too much to bear. [Here] I am in love with all things, pain and all things." (Peake,1992:174)

A liquid world where bodies float. (Kroker,1993:115)

Eve sez: In the Labiarinth it tastes and swallows, in Gormenghast "it bites! What kind of teeth do you think it has?" (Cronenberg,1983)

God sez: They were all made in my image. This is my phantaSEA. What can I say? I had a disappointing childhood.

Eve sez: Tough shit, that was your phantaSEA too. YOU fucked up .

The last tree wilts. The tree of knowledge. The Garden of Eden. Gormenghast's barbed wire strewn wall, towers above it. The boys ever optimistic, put it all down to global warming, and continue to grasp at the last few apples.

Hallucinations are the only way we have left to feel alive. (Baudrillard,l993:93)

The illusion of knowledge is poisonous..The boys ignore the ancient (high quantity) pip warnings..it is the core that can kill... The cyanide levels in their bodies are increasing.

People get so used to the dirt they forget it's there. And that's a big mistake... You let the rubbish pile up, and sooner or later it'll take over. If you don't control the garbage, the garbage will control you... (Zahavi,l992:98)

God once sed: "For when you eat of it you will surely die." (Genesis,2:l7)

The demise of the tree preempts ructions. One amongst the group is a pessimistic cynic. Amidst attempts to shout him down he speaks of Gormenghast's Meltdown. A prophet is never accepted in his place of birth. Fists wave and tempers rise as blood begins to boil.

The prodigy of an upper echelon securocrat, will not tolerate such heresy.

Sharpened control, reallike. He s been through mind control. He turns off fear and pain and fatigue and sleep, like he s got a switch. He s like a Cybo[rg], almost! He can control the fibres in his spinal cord, control his body temperature. He's a fighting machine. (Piercy,1976:297)

The walled garden was their haven. No Women, no Queers. And now this fucking hothead...

This time they let the hate build up too high and overloaded and they re gonna tear one another to pieces before they realize what they re doing! (Kesey,l962:10)

Heatrush. Flipover. In a flash, temperature shift. Liberal rationality melts into libidinal aggression. Sparks fly. Ignition. Arborescent knowledge implodes. Concatenated Kaos.

[The Faithful] no longer wanted to kill his foe in the darkness and in silence. His lust was to stand naked upon the moonlit stage, with his arms stretched high, and his fingers spread, and with the warm fresh blood that soaked them sliding down his wrists, spiralling his arms and steaming in the cold air - to suddenly drop his hands like talons to his breast and tear it open to expose a heart like a black vegetable - and then, upon the crest of self-exposure, and the sweet glory of wickedness, to create some gesture of supreme defiance, lewd and rare. (Peake,1992:742)

Eve sez: ''The fin de siecle has already arrived, complete with its necro cultural pathos." (Baudrillard,l993:93) Everything eclipsed by the New Order; "the secret order of catastrophe." (67) Perdition. The way things were can never be again. "Creation exists only in regard to destruction." (Virilio,1995)

Open Access to the Labiarinth, but the framework for decision making has been removed. No longer rationality and logic. "The props of a safe, comfortable way of life that is now gone forever." (Burroughs,1977:xi) No map to the Labiarinth. You can't see the way. Feel, Taste, Fuck your way there.

Eve sez: It's fucking great - "The City of God in flames." (Land,1995:4)

God sez: "Bitch, after all [I] did for you." (Atwood,1985:306)

The Labiarinth's infinity seems accentuated since the entropic deterioration of Gormenghast. An influx of both new and morphed 'characters' has prompted an apparent self-reorganisation. Feminisation of previously non-feminised forms. The Sex just gets better. Strap-Ons sodomise, whilst hooks pierce. Breeding is not a problem. Free Floating Fluidity.

Everything is supposed to be fluid, everything should accelerate inexorably. The placing of strictures upon sexuality...seems absurd. (Baudrillard,1993:65)

There are no longer any geographical, moral, gendered, racial, financial, biological, ontological or historical parameters concerning who, when, what or why. Pasiphae's desires are now entirely satiable (see Graves,1992:293); it's open season for carnal expression.

Eve sez: "We always want more whether it's tactile, emotional or sexual...l live in a highly excited state of over stimulation." (Cronenberg,1983)

The Labiarinth, unleashed from the decayed influence of masculine culture, sets no limitations. The paranoid phantaSEAs of the male ego fulfil themselves in abundance. Tekno-fetishists and others forced to hide at the extremities of Gormenghast open up to network potentials. The territory of the sprawl evolves laterally. Kaotic planning allows for a near random configuration. The physical collides with the digital, and very few can even remember what the difference is. "Voodoo on the VDU" (Land,1995:11)

There is a (physical) place that it is possible to encounter. It is mythologised across the Labiarinth because it speaks of what the Labiarinth is. It could be a desert, for all that can be seen is sand. Exceptionally hot, but there is one species which thrives and is exonerated there...

Saguaro, a fine and beautiful cactus that lives in the [Labiarinth]. Saguaros can be shot full of holes, carved upon, knocked over, stepped on, and they still live, still they store life giving water, still they grow and repair themselves over time. (Pinkola Estes,1993:221)

The lCEage is not totally over. Still, in the subterranean recesses of Gormenghast, the old school exhaust themselves fighting against the thaw. In the ancient Pool Room, the hardcore masculinists sit huddled at tables and recall the good [c]old days. Refusing to accept this catastrophic swing of history, they impotently plot retaliation. But they can no longer identify an enemy using their antiquated forms of reason.

Unable to join the other survivors of the great defrost who have managed to assimilate into the New Disorder, they wait, trapping themselves in the ruins of the castle; petrified of what they might find should they ever discover a way out. Their last hope of a return to former glory is in God, He who had assisted them before. But this time God was thawing out too. It was not to be.

Viral Heat. Infecting. Creeping through the rubble, the final barrier. Masculinity's last stand. Hidden in their bunkers, they only have so much time. The age of miracles has ceased to be.

They whisper to one another:

[We] are the shock troops, [we] will march out in advance, into dangerous territories. The greater the risk the greater the glory. (Atwood,1985:122)

Has no one told you that glory is impossible? Destination 3000 degrees and climbing. The remains of Gormenghast are being devoured by this thermovirus.

Under the reign of the virus you are destroyed by your own antibodies. (Baudrillard,1993:64)

The castle caves in. The dust of the rubble mingles with the heat/virus. Bodies are covered in a rash. The body's last stand. A last ditch warning attempt to get the fuck out.

Viral attack is the pathology of the closed circuit. (Baudrillard,1993:65)

Cold culture = Negative feedback. When the virus gets in to the system, the result is almost invariably entropic.

Eve sez: Everything you make a freak will infect and make you weak. (Homocult:l992)

Eve knows the fate that awaits them. There is no way out. She will not sympathise. It has been so long.

Eve sez: Force them to suicide...let their blood feed us... make clothing from their lily white skins...let worms crawl through their empty lives..let their bodies rot. (Homocult,l992)

Beyond the Judgement of God. (Land,1995:12)

It is now too hot for him to remain outside his thermally sealed coffin. His body screams with pain within seconds of resurfacing. The cryonic storage suite in the depths of his former stronghold is on the verge of breakdown. The heat demands more than the unit can stand. But the decision has been made. He will "cheat the castle or its jealous right and die of his own evil in the moonbeams." (Peake,l992:742)

The time has come. Grimacing in agony as he walks out of the once castle's grounds, and down towards the beach. "I just can't get used to these resurrections." (Tarkovsky,1972)

By the time he arrived, the sun was disappearing over the horizon. But it was still so hot.

Nothing. Gray void. ...He crouched on his haunches on the damp sand, his arms wrapped tight across his knees. ... The [castle], if it was a [castle], was low and gray. At times it was obscured by banks of mist that came rolling in over the lapping surf. At one point he decided that it wasn't t a [castle] at all, but some single building, perhaps a ruin; ... he turned his head and stared out to sea, longing for...anything at all. ...A wind was rising. Sand stung his cheek. He put his face against his knees and wept. (Gibson,1984:276/7)

Eve sez: What a fucking loser! "Mock the phallic god that failed." (Zahavi,1992:108)

God sez: "Suicides here are conducted with a degree of decorum. That's what I'm doing you understand." (Gibson,1984:220)

Eve sez: Don't try and cover your tracks, you fucked up so you're getting out.

God sits preparing to die, no longer prepared to prolong the facade of artificial immortality. Awakened from the "slow ice" (Gibson,1984:220) dream-intensive deep-freeze for the last time, his empire thawing with his blotchy body, tired of the orgiastic death-ritual gratifying his familial libidinal desires, the unnumbered Eve, Daughter/Clone, Construct/Replicunt lying on the beach next to him. He has at last realised that the imposition of freezing can no longer sustain his own life, nor maintain the barricades withholding the 'Monstrous Feminine' in the technocorporate ICEbox.

Even though one episode amounts to a crash and burn, there is always another episode awaiting us and then another. (Pinkola Estes,1993,221)

God raises his fingers to his head and pulls the trigger. (see Cronenberg,1983)

Eve sez: Long Live The New Flesh! and laughs... "You're lucky men. It didn't have to be him. It could have been any one of you. Any one of you could have got what he'll be getting. You're lucky men, believe me. You don't know what I am, and you wouldn't want to take what I'll be giving." (Zahavi,1992:101)

Freezing up is the worst thing a person can do. Coldness is the kiss of death...The ice must be broken and the soul taken out of the freeze...a thing cannot freeze if it is moving. So move. Keep moving. (Pinkola Estes,1993:184/5)

References
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