Konsk: The Great Takeover of the Place

6 Fragmentary manifestations

Learner the Traveller's account. Part one.

I forgot who and what I was. This is slightly more subtle than it sounds as I could not entirely forget, for if I did, I would neither have been able to achieve my intention nor return. I had to forget just enough and no more.

Best to admit now that this account is not easy for me. Oh, I have learned enough of your language, the word system of communication, its syntax and vocabulary, yet how can I describe an experience where words have no place, can never arise without ending the very experience they attempt to describe? Still, I have been asked by the Compilers, so I will try.

First then, I abandon my sensory experience. I find it easiest to begin with sight. This is not just a question of closing my eyes but rather a progressive stripping away of meaning. Depth of field is dispensed with, reducing vision to a two dimensional pattern of shape and colour. Next, I allow edges to loose their significance so boundaries blur, shapes coalesce and the image begins to flow. Any movement of the head or eyeballs is no longer differentiated from the movement within the image itself and this further encourages the experience of flow.

Next is the need to amalgamate all sensory experience. So the sensory data previously labelled as separate inputs, namely sight, sound, touch, taste, smell are reunited into a single sensory stream. This includes not just external physical sensation such as the touch of skin on the burdens- my apologies, clothes- or the flooring material, seat whatever but also the internal feelings of organs and operations such as digestion, the movement of blood, the breath. This combining of sensory information into a single flow has the advantage of leaving very little room for concepts such as time and space.

Without being overly self-congratulatory, my evolutionary status means I have little in the way of rigid character mapping and so the shedding of that layer requires only the slightest effort. Part of the ease, for me, lies in my lack of need for any form of internal monologue or dialogue. I have little use for words anyway. Excepting of course, requirements such as this account.

In this manner I enter Konsk This in itself is a laughably inadequate and oversimplified description of events. It is equally as relevant to say that Konsk entered me or that Konsk was me or that I remembered that I was Konsk.

No matter, in the arbitrary representation of Konsk that I employ here, it could be said that there was the briefest appearance of the four dimensional curve that is the space-time horizon before I passed into the higher dimensions.

Here, in the immediate interior, there are a multiplicity of tubes, or toobs, as Spicer would have it; and why not? We might as well use a word like bleegs or quarks or whatever. All and any are wholly inadequate and have no relation to anything in so-called physical reality!

No matter, the toobs, pack together in close proximity, they arch and spiral away and down or up or indeed sideways as there is no discernable direction to begin with. Some inter-penetrate and pass through one another, others swerve to avoid direct contact. In this representation they glow with a faint purple tinge, writhing into a distant haze of darker blues.

The fragmentary manifestation that still remains of my self awareness is dimly conscious of currents or particles of energy passing along the toobs, in both directions, like sparkles of light, flickering within the cloudy structures. My own manifestation is not so bound. Certainly, I could enter them but don't; though they pose no danger to me, some of their confined energies are capable of generating considerable distractions.

Instead, I allow myself, or what there was of myself, to tumble gently and notice now the slight attractive pull, as though I am sinking slowly, deeper and deeper beneath the surface of the time-space horizon.

By some process I am able to selectively tune the current experience of Konsk such that apparently distant subjects might be perceived as being within my immediate vicinity. A simpler way of describing this activity would be to say that I have telescopic vision; I pause to laugh out loud! This crude sentence contains so many assumptions, implicit or otherwise, that a progressive understanding of the nature of Konsk would become increasingly rigid and thus limited.

As well to say that I can hear the booming of a distant hippo (as Spicer called them), or that I could extend a sensory apparatus indefinitely and delicately touch or manipulate a buried experience. This latter is more appropriate as there is no way that anything can be hidden in this region. Indeed, it is as though perception can be extended, directed purposefully towards experiences which are obscured by other elements.

Enough of this; it will be necessary to accept the limitations of language in this ongoing action. There is no choice in the matter as yet.

I soon begin to encounter the first minor hippos, where toobs swell suddenly and combine to create their bulging, opaque forms. Almost in play I allow myself to be drawn towards their fluorescence as I float by, savouring something of their unique qualities, yet resisting any desire to encounter them in any significant way. They resonate, some as though with a glitter of humour, others a shimmer of frustration, yet they are mild and largely inoffensive to a traveller and make no real attempts to lay hold of one, much less enforce a possession.

Mention might be made here of my own representation at this stage. For my travels I assume an indistinct manifestation not unlike a smudge of soot upon an en-lichened rock, though without the rock. I differ from this in that I allow a certain movement like a swirl of smoke that sets small eddies coursing through the smudge. As a concession to form I have adorned my smudge with a single bright yellow band which emits a soft peeping at apparently random intervals.

Moving my perception outwards I sense for other free travellers. There are many and various, all distant, including, of course, several resonances which are my own, on previous and subsequent ventures. I am, after all, well versed and a seasoned traveller.

There is no concern. The lazy, unthinking descent continues; unthinking because thought is not possible here, only awareness and the vaguest sense of presence and purpose. Only an adept such as myself could hope to cope with such free movement beyond the directive body of a toob or the possessive clasp of a hippo. Awash in the loose energy that fills and swills within these interstitial spaces of Konsk, I am as though in my true element, slow turning and delighting in the unfettered flow, though not too much.

As time is without meaning in this representation of Konsk, enough to say that after eternity, changes became apparent, or that next something else happens. Again, I have to laugh at the ludicrousness of these futile attempts to describe a reality so far beyond or so different from the crude approximations of words, so impossible to use here.

True, I might chose to approach and even enter certain of the hippos, those that create an emphasis upon a word language, or even engage in some form of communication with those coalitions of energy which reside within such amorphous patterns or proliferate about their surface. But to what purpose? Here I have not the slightest use for words. If I had had a head, not even the idea of words would have entered it. And just as well, for no single occurrence is more likely to curtail my current purpose.

Differences appear within the flow as many toobs draw together. Great swellings take on more distinct form where the coils unite, though there are no directly perceivable boundaries, for such are not possible in Konsk.

Now these swollen smears take on vast proportions, like titanic clouds, billowing, some shining as though with a radiant internal light, others dark and bleak like an amorphous stain in water. Yet others flicker and emit jagged beams, not unlike lightening, that penetrate the spaces between toobs, sometimes distorting the vague structures in their passage.

The fringes of my awareness, where they blend with the flow that both surrounds me and is me, take on a mild greenish tinge of caution. Thus I approach the realm of the greater hippos.

Here is one that seems to roll towards me, or rather, my representation. It expands and contracts, lurches in fits and starts, folds in upon itself, unfurls like a poisoned flower or a yawning maw as though to swallow me.

As it nears the faint precursors to thoughts begin to coalesce, to almost take on form and something relating to sound arises in the massive preponderance, almost a singing or howling or groaning with complex chorused voices.

It looms over me and something very close to the concept of fear begins to stir within…

Just when you think life is sort of understandable, something strange comes along…Illustrations are all mine except for the following which is from H. H. Trueman’s notes made prior to the publication of his Postulate, included here for further reference.

Many thanks for reading. Next up, the Once Wetlands of Coed Y Brenin before more Konsk. Take care all. Hwyl!