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Some Call It Trypophobia
Everyday life is more terrifying and bizarre than vampires or zombies. A potent narcotic called Routine numbs you from its primordial strangeness. The essay and stories in this collection peel away the thick callus of familiarity, revealing the world in all its raw horror.
Clusters of small holes present no obvious danger, yet they induce a primal fear reserved for snakes and Death. A recent study only augments the mystery, raising more questions than it answers. The first essay examines historic precedents and alternative explanations. Trypophobia is a misnomer for existential dread, an encounter with terrible wisdom, the first step on a convoluted path to some dark enlightenment. It's a discovery, not an irrational aversion. Found so often in nature, object of apprehension and meditation throughout the ages, this pattern is a symbolic code. Some Call It Trypophobia deciphers it and reckons with the message.
Other stories include:
Join the Sentinels of the Chandelier. The idea that enlightenment requires a seated posture of meditation is wishful thinking. Accessing the Chandelier of Consciousness, the transcendent mind of which each sentient being is a crystal, demands great exertion and danger. The first amendment protects freedom of religion but not felonies. (Based on an undercover exposé.)
Why does a man climb a mountain? To taste the distilled essence of life, to glimpse the clandestine maneuvers of his soul, and to learn the illusory nature of personal identity from a prehistoric ground sloth. (Inspired by a disastrous attempt on Denali.)
Defilers of burrows, scourges of the underworld, are Dachshunds not magnificent? Yet it comes as a surprise that the purpose of creation is them, not us. When you meet a wandering sage and his wiener dog, worse news follows. Apparently Schrödinger did not have a cat. (This story has been expanded to convenient novel size.)
Letting your girlfriend drag you to Burning Man, what were you thinking? Her brainless ideas -- foolish in theory, disastrous in practice, subjected to the analytic rigor of a child at Chuck E. Cheese’s -- why don’t you act as the brake of sanity? This is worse than meeting her parents. (Inspired by events that would have made Sophocles groan.)
Clusters of small holes present no obvious danger, yet they induce a primal fear reserved for snakes and Death. A recent study only augments the mystery, raising more questions than it answers. The first essay examines historic precedents and alternative explanations. Trypophobia is a misnomer for existential dread, an encounter with terrible wisdom, the first step on a convoluted path to some dark enlightenment. It's a discovery, not an irrational aversion. Found so often in nature, object of apprehension and meditation throughout the ages, this pattern is a symbolic code. Some Call It Trypophobia deciphers it and reckons with the message.
Other stories include:
Join the Sentinels of the Chandelier. The idea that enlightenment requires a seated posture of meditation is wishful thinking. Accessing the Chandelier of Consciousness, the transcendent mind of which each sentient being is a crystal, demands great exertion and danger. The first amendment protects freedom of religion but not felonies. (Based on an undercover exposé.)
Why does a man climb a mountain? To taste the distilled essence of life, to glimpse the clandestine maneuvers of his soul, and to learn the illusory nature of personal identity from a prehistoric ground sloth. (Inspired by a disastrous attempt on Denali.)
Defilers of burrows, scourges of the underworld, are Dachshunds not magnificent? Yet it comes as a surprise that the purpose of creation is them, not us. When you meet a wandering sage and his wiener dog, worse news follows. Apparently Schrödinger did not have a cat. (This story has been expanded to convenient novel size.)
Letting your girlfriend drag you to Burning Man, what were you thinking? Her brainless ideas -- foolish in theory, disastrous in practice, subjected to the analytic rigor of a child at Chuck E. Cheese’s -- why don’t you act as the brake of sanity? This is worse than meeting her parents. (Inspired by events that would have made Sophocles groan.)
114 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 5, 2013
15 people are currently reading
31 people want to read
About the author
Petronius Jablonski
7 books17 followersPreserving thoughts for the enjoyment and edification of strangers, renouncing revelry, friendship, and love for the unlikely esteem of men unknown, is this not madness incarnate, or the closest one can come to rule over day and night, divide them, and see that it is good?
Petronius Jablonski studied Philosophy, Psychology, Mathematics, Philology, Classics, and Physics at UW Parkside. Some Call It Trypophobia is a collection of published stories and an existential analysis of the phobia. Schrödinger's Dachshund is his first novel. Mount Silenus began as therapy for Post-Traumatic Mountaineering Disorder and never looked back. Jablonski writes extensively about music, though there is only one song he reviews.
See his magnum opus and masterpiece, The Annals of Petronius Jablonski, for a thoroughgoing critique of Western Civilization [sic]. Included are the paradigm-shattering contributions of Petronius’ Shovel©, Petronius’ Blender©, Schadenfreude Before-the-Fact©, Quietude©, and Petronius’ Garage©, each equal in momentousness to Occam's overrated Razor and Plato's much-ballyhooed Cave.
He grew up in Cudahy, Wisconsin, where he began chronicling versions of the Mary Weatherworth meme. This urban legend about a blind, mirror-infesting apparition endures and mutates like some Campbellian myth. Bizarre and horrifying accounts uncoil across Schrodinger's Dachshund, winding toward their origin. Jablonski went undercover with the Sentinels of the Chandelier to study the mysterious connection between their Gnostic teachings and the Weatherworth meme. Lawsuits pend. Less abstract threats loom.
He is working on a book titled The Sweetness of Honey: A Novel of Vengeance, Honor, and Bobbleheads. If he abandons this project he would be a man without dreams, and he doesn’t want to live like that. He’ll live his life or he’ll end his life with this project. (Herzog)
Of all the books in the Library of Babel he could read, the one where Proust dumps Albertine and adopts a Basset Hound is his top pick.
Petronius Jablonski studied Philosophy, Psychology, Mathematics, Philology, Classics, and Physics at UW Parkside. Some Call It Trypophobia is a collection of published stories and an existential analysis of the phobia. Schrödinger's Dachshund is his first novel. Mount Silenus began as therapy for Post-Traumatic Mountaineering Disorder and never looked back. Jablonski writes extensively about music, though there is only one song he reviews.
See his magnum opus and masterpiece, The Annals of Petronius Jablonski, for a thoroughgoing critique of Western Civilization [sic]. Included are the paradigm-shattering contributions of Petronius’ Shovel©, Petronius’ Blender©, Schadenfreude Before-the-Fact©, Quietude©, and Petronius’ Garage©, each equal in momentousness to Occam's overrated Razor and Plato's much-ballyhooed Cave.
He grew up in Cudahy, Wisconsin, where he began chronicling versions of the Mary Weatherworth meme. This urban legend about a blind, mirror-infesting apparition endures and mutates like some Campbellian myth. Bizarre and horrifying accounts uncoil across Schrodinger's Dachshund, winding toward their origin. Jablonski went undercover with the Sentinels of the Chandelier to study the mysterious connection between their Gnostic teachings and the Weatherworth meme. Lawsuits pend. Less abstract threats loom.
He is working on a book titled The Sweetness of Honey: A Novel of Vengeance, Honor, and Bobbleheads. If he abandons this project he would be a man without dreams, and he doesn’t want to live like that. He’ll live his life or he’ll end his life with this project. (Herzog)
Of all the books in the Library of Babel he could read, the one where Proust dumps Albertine and adopts a Basset Hound is his top pick.
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July 29, 2017
An existential romp serving as a fantastic precursor to the epic "Annals" by the same gentleman, this collection stands out from a sea of slag in recent modern literature. If you are not running immediately to your nearest home and garden store to demand lotus seeds after reading this, you weren't paying attention.
Displaying 1 of 1 review