Konsk: The Great Takeover of the Place
16 In the Realm of the Greater Hippos
VORTEX, VORTICES
Semi-autonomous, temporary abstractions that appear and may persist for limited periods within the general flow of Konsk.
Examples of various types of vortex include;
an emotion (for example, despair)
a thought (such as "I am no good.")
a personality or character
a belief system (such as science or religion)
a base pattern (such as the concept of individuality or self)
HIPPO, HIPPOS
A term first coined by the human being Spicer to describe the vortices he encountered on his initial experience of Konsk. It was later adopted by others as being a more friendly sounding word than Vortex. It was taken up and used by the Fair Family in particular, to refer to specific types of vortex, considered by them to be especially limiting or dangerous, namely, the Greater or Larger Hippos.
Analogies include;
meme
belief system
state of mind
indie patterning
strange attractor
It should be noted that by avoiding any general belief systems or rigid ideas about who or what they are or where they are going etc., the Fair Family are able to enjoy something approaching freedom.
Konsk: Appendices; Words and Definitions.
Konsk. Learner the Traveller's account. Part two.
There are no surface as such to define or contain these hippos, so called and this is the case with all apparent structures in Konsk. Rather, the medium that is everything, including a traveller, undergoes a subtle thickening or complex folding or fractal interpenetration such that distinctions between environment and a separate object become more or less meaningless.
More importantly, what marked the approach to a larger hippo is something which could be described by analogy as gravity or a rip tide, for these amorphous billows are attractors. As I pass them by I feel a tugging at even the mass-less smear of my own representation, such that my slow tumbling passage is drawn towards the them. It takes an a delicate effort of perception to maintain my faint purpose and so avoid still closer approach.
One hippo looms largely, emitting dull booms and a baleful green glare. I recognise the precursors to thought stirring in my awareness, a growing rigidity accompanied by a sense of distrust and despair. The hippo exerts a strong pull upon my representation, a pull that increases as I close with it, as too do the emotional flickers of loss and the gloomy booming. With a subtle effort (though not too much) I increase my relative position such that I spurt passed, feeling the relaxation of its woeful grip as its attractor field lessens.
Another appears to rotate slowly, chattering and squawking as though in a frenzied delight. Here the lurch of the inward tide is sudden and fierce and vague inconclusive images hover at the edges of perception. Again, I direct my attention beyond the swirling mass and hurry on.
Yet another manifests as regular solids, though on closer inspection there are still no surfaces, only hideously complex inter-penetrations of outside and inside. The volume transposes from a massive cube to a tetrahedron to, quite suddenly, a multi-faceted monstrosity and then slowly to an apparently perfect sphere.
I veer carefully away, allowing not the slightest trace of concern to register in my awareness, let alone anything so overt as fear. As the sphere recedes, rolling gently and taking on the three dimensional form of a complex equation, the sounds that had almost become words, fade also.
The hippos occupy a vast inner curve within Konsk and many are the dangers that they pose for any but the most seasoned of travellers or the uncontrolled rapidity of the sudden entrant. I extend my perception and choose a course from the faintest stirrings of memory, thus avoiding close encounters with the more powerful of the hippos, widely skirting their fields of influence, employing diverse techniques to disable their siren callings and so pass through with my vague purpose undiminished.
As I progress, the toobs diminish in numbers, more and more having fused into the amorphous volumes of the hippos. Larger spaces appear and now, at last, there comes the beginning of a change to my descent. There comes a clearly perceptible thinning of hippos, in terms of both number and their relative opacity. The toobs are few and far between, coiling and swerving within the fields of the hippos, drawn inexorably towards one or another. Their apparent surfaces thin also, becoming ever more tenuous, the flicker of the movement of their occupants less frequent.
Yet as the hippos lessen in number, so to do they increase in size and strength such that though they appear to reside at greater distances from the smudge that is the manifestation of myself, they call yet louder with thunderous groanings or piping stammers. From their atmospheric bulks appear sudden showers or fountains of colour, blazes of purples and blues that reach out towards me, as though to encircle my manifestation and draw me within.
At these moments the precursors to words are almost solid in their clarity, like black webs forming in the void before me, congealing from smoke, forming crude letters that strive to combine into words. Or out of the doleful cacophony of sounds more precise emblems or motifs form that hint at a voice calling, that if I allow my attention to slip for one instant, to focus for one instant, would resolve themselves into a clear message and I would be lost. Yet I maintain my poised aloofness, see and hear only ever changing patterns without meaning and thus successfully penetrate the realm of the greater hippos.
Now the journey nears its greatest challenge and climax. I allow my gold band to emit a more resonant tone, still unpredictable in terms of its regularity, the change allows a refocussing of attention. The greater hippos recede behind, consolidating into an enormous, amorphous wall, curving into a distance beyond perception, above, below and to either side. In a different, more individual manifestation, I know that they describe a gigantic sphere about centre but here, poised on the boundary of the indie horizon, there is no memory of this, not that it matters.
Here, I am allowed a last sense of self. Behind, the great wall of hippos, before, only emptiness and void. This void is like a black hole but with one, intense point of light at its centre. The light beckons.
There comes a final opportunity for individual experience. I allow myself to remember my purpose. And then, I let go, begin to fall in towards centre.
Almost immediately there is a perturbation. This in itself is not unusual. There was not yet the desire to move directly to centre, for in this would lie a final end to individuality. Hence, the slightest recollection of a memory, of purpose or intent, results in a perturbation. Only the slightest of distractions is required such that my passage would merely graze centre, as a comet passes the sun on its route through a solar system, its accelerating path drawn in close to that greater body, the turn tightening under the huge gravitational influence, the speed increasing until, like a slingshot, it hurtles past and round and returns in its vast orbit.
So I begin to fall towards centre. There is a plummeting into the void. All this is to be expected, as too the fact that the void is not empty; it is as though faint echoes of structures flow here, coiling in towards centre, translucent colours, so faint as to be hardly perceptible.
As my little smudge hurtles inward, gradually drawing out along the length of its passage, the transparent colours might be perceived as faint sounds or the lightest of touches, a subtle, unnameable texture, a hint of a taste, the glimmer of an unknown, long forgotten emotion, the barest stammer of an idea. The last vestiges of personal consciousness might just discern these faint sensations, savour their taint as it were, though not too much.
There is such a savouring, a savouring of the perturbation and the resultant deflection. There is the awareness that this is a further distraction, for the slightest act of will required to produce the concept of savouring was also a perturbation in itself. The orbit was deflected further. Here comes the awareness of an emotion. There is a corresponding increase in the perturbation and the deflection.4
My little smudge, drawn out into a long thin line by the speed of passage, becomes turbulent, swirling and thickening. The gold band peeps more rapidly, though ever avoiding the trap of falling into a distinct pattern. The vague awareness that was all that was left of my self turns perception away from the perturbation, focuses on the intense point of centre. That is, I try to forget about the emotion, without trying too hard of course.
To no avail. The emotion manifests as a dark, blue-black cloud. a dull groaning and a smell which cannot quite be identified but presumably is unpleasant.
The seriousness of my situation cannot be overemphasised, though this was the last thing I would have wished to do. The entrance and descent into Konsk requires a progressive divesting of the sense of self. If in the early stages the sense of self is too strong then the traveller will simply be drawn into a toob. From there they will be either returned to the event horizon or deposited within a hippo.
In either case they will remain thus, attached to a sequence of actions in the eventscape or fixed more rigidly within the grasp of a hippo until a state of awareness occurs which allows their escape. The type of experience then arising will be more or less related to their previous experiences and will generally be interpreted as a continuation of their manifest life.
If however, they are of sufficient experience and evolutionary development so as to freely choose to go beyond the indie horizon and enter the inner spaces of Konsk (as opposed to the uncontrolled entrance resulting from profound trauma or other major interventions), then the slightest return of a sense of self will result in a radical redirection. Almost inevitably this will correspond with the involvement of a greater hippo and all that that entails, or the re-emergence of the protagonist in a completely different area of the eventscape, usually with no continuation of memory or sense of self history.
A blue-black cloud begins to coalesce, howls with a rough, course texture that would have brought blood to torn flesh. My thin gold band discolours as though heated in fire, purpling like a bruise. My peeping cry slows, becoming more drawn out and pitiful. The smudge shortens, thinning as it does so. In the surrounding space, the translucent colours writhe as though a fierce charge assaulted the volume around and within the cloud, distorting the tracery network that were the echoes of toobs.
This is not what you could call a happy hippo. Its been waiting for me. It is always waiting for me!
Many thanks for reading and thanks for the likes and comments which are always appreciated. So too are suggestions, additions, corrections and the like, to help steer this ongoing work. Please share or otherwise pass on to whomsoever you think may be interested. Thanks again. Till the next time, hwyl!
All illustrations are mine unless otherwise stated in footnotes.
In the same way that Konsk cannot be expressed or described in words, so too with images; only an analogy can be created. Neverthe less, images appear which seem particularly appropriate as visual suggestions of representations of Konsk, such as this graffiti tag by Busk.
Graffiti tags, Busk, Crack and Spire.
As above; Rough, Several, Frame and Crack.
Given the limitations of language, one considerable one of which is an implicit time framework, it is inevitable that we should separate out reality into distinct experiences that we place in a causal order. That is, in the above, the awareness of an emotion causes an increase in perturbation which, in turn results in an increase in the deflection. This is a significant error that is responsible for enormous confusions. In Konsk it should be made clear that all possible events occur simultaneously. Another way to express this is that all possible events have happened, are happening and will happen.
Konsk: appendices. From Latter Commentaries to The Book of Konsk: The Voyages of Learner.
Graffiti tags, Frame and Erase.
From a Celtic knotwork design. The Celts (whoever they were) seemed to have a concept of an interconnected reality within which individuals were bound. Here, in this partial view of a knotwork disk, there are many centres, or vortices, all linked by flowing bands, yet there is no overall centre.