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Prism and Graded Monotony
Fiction. PRISM AND GRADED MONOTONY is rope for your neck, singular, a plurality of threads. Death and survival are the sum; myriad are the weird parts that comprise it. Black Death, accident-framed death, death as commonplace, death in the cycle of life, survival against death, survival through death—these modes are all identified within the study of life that is Prism. It is an existential philosophy, a companion piece to the violent commentary of Nietzsche.
196 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2010
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February 28, 2014
Strange and dark book. Death, death, drugs, death, other horrid things, death. I'm not sure that I really "got" it in a literary sense, but I did find myself drawn into the alternating rhythms and voices of the sections, reading ever faster to see where each strand led. And I picked up a number of new words.
I'm not sure if this edition had a disappointing number of typos, or if that is part of the "experimental" nature of this fiction. This only mildly distracted my inner pedant.
If I remember these two quotes (which are not really representative), I think I'll remember the gestalt of this book, as it struck me in my brief tear through it:
p. 139-40: "I had built up my practice. All up from the ground. Setting my own will to its direction. The AMA dogging me at every step. But I would not yield to them. And worked my own will. To my own ends. Their expectations of performance. An insult to all who see. A larger motivation in the spirit of medicine. A way of prescribing. That does see not [<--not "not see", or sic!] materials as above equal to their illnesses. That is chemistry. That is the pharmacist. Not prescription. Not the physician. The materials are as to their illnesses. And should be prescribed thus: where the patient can stand comfortably, they need not the medicine to lay them flat. There is an art in prescribing. And I have my repertoire. Mild doses at initial contact: MDMA; Oxycodone; Mescaline. Larger doses once I have established a threshold for the individual patient. As the patient progresses. So too does my prescribing. For those content with happiness, Morphine. For the curious, Salvia. To the depraved I offer Hyoscamine, Datura and/or Brugsmansia. And for those who wish. To see their own deaths. And the reduction of human life to the elements. DMT. In very high does."
p. 183-4: "2.2: Outside of the membrane that sheaths time is the abyss. The membrane is itself of energy and it is in this manner that energy provides for the movement of time. Although complete in its integrity, the membrane is selectively permeable, allowing the abyss to be intuited from within time.
2.3: The abyss may be intuited by forms or spirits with such a capacity to do so from any place in time. However, the abyss cannot be experienced directly. It is beyond time and thus a place of no potential and no form or spirit. It is in those moments when we intuit the abyss that we most closely know the subjectivity that pervades our experiences."
I'm not sure if this edition had a disappointing number of typos, or if that is part of the "experimental" nature of this fiction. This only mildly distracted my inner pedant.
If I remember these two quotes (which are not really representative), I think I'll remember the gestalt of this book, as it struck me in my brief tear through it:
p. 139-40: "I had built up my practice. All up from the ground. Setting my own will to its direction. The AMA dogging me at every step. But I would not yield to them. And worked my own will. To my own ends. Their expectations of performance. An insult to all who see. A larger motivation in the spirit of medicine. A way of prescribing. That does see not [<--not "not see", or sic!] materials as above equal to their illnesses. That is chemistry. That is the pharmacist. Not prescription. Not the physician. The materials are as to their illnesses. And should be prescribed thus: where the patient can stand comfortably, they need not the medicine to lay them flat. There is an art in prescribing. And I have my repertoire. Mild doses at initial contact: MDMA; Oxycodone; Mescaline. Larger doses once I have established a threshold for the individual patient. As the patient progresses. So too does my prescribing. For those content with happiness, Morphine. For the curious, Salvia. To the depraved I offer Hyoscamine, Datura and/or Brugsmansia. And for those who wish. To see their own deaths. And the reduction of human life to the elements. DMT. In very high does."
p. 183-4: "2.2: Outside of the membrane that sheaths time is the abyss. The membrane is itself of energy and it is in this manner that energy provides for the movement of time. Although complete in its integrity, the membrane is selectively permeable, allowing the abyss to be intuited from within time.
2.3: The abyss may be intuited by forms or spirits with such a capacity to do so from any place in time. However, the abyss cannot be experienced directly. It is beyond time and thus a place of no potential and no form or spirit. It is in those moments when we intuit the abyss that we most closely know the subjectivity that pervades our experiences."
Displaying 1 of 1 review