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These thoughts are the product of being an avid Twin Peaks (and Lynch generally) fan since its inception and reading Ballard’s ‘Cocaine Nights’ for the first time. I don’t think for a second Ballard tried or needed to try to copy Twin Peaks in any sense. His imagination seemed to have been perfectly self sustaining and the trope of the weird small town was not invented by Lynch -just perfected. However some things leapt out at me enough that I felt forced to commit them to writing.

Ballard once reviewed Blue Velvet saying it was ‘like The Wizard of Oz reshot with a script by Franz Kafka and decor by Francis Bacon.‘ Ballard’s gaze is spot on of course; Lynch is both a massive Wizard of Oz and Kafka fan. I think this is pertinent to Cocaine Nights insofar as there is definitely something Kafkaesque about the way Charles tries to penetrate the deeper layers of Estrella del Mar only to be perpetually told he’s looking in the wrong places, or won’t find answers. In the end Charles Prentice is assimilated by the Estrella del Mar machine, a move he believes works in favour of his investigation when really his subconscious complicity is greater than he understands as is his misrecognition of where the power lies.

My Twin Peaks observations are fairly straightforward. The most obvious is that Estrella del Mar is of the Twin Peaks ilk. A seeming small town paradise —albeit of a different kind to TP- with a seething underbelly of crime. Of course as the book evolves we can see that the two, whilst having a kind of structural isomorphy are functionally quite different. Twin Peaks dark side is shunned by the residents or at least repressed. Whereas in Estrella del Mar the life of the place emits directly from crime and deviancy that runs through it.

These are two analyses of societal functioning. Twin Peaks appears idyllic but is shot through with crime and corruption whereas Estrella del Mar appears idyllic in a different way. Estrella del Mar is very culturally active in a middle class way, Tai Chi, pottery classes, gyms, painting and all such activities flourish. The theory employed in Estrella del Mar is that if you awaken people by targeting crime at them in a specific way they become more alive, become involved in the community and want to partake in projects of all kinds. A persistent underbelly of crime in this way keeps people on their toes and keeps the machine ticking over. This is explained as the activation of primal defence parts of the mind which awaken the animal to a more heightened state generally -due to the threat of crime. But of course since the crime is not so perpetual that the state of alert is required all the time, the surplus energy of the people becomes sublimated into the various sports and arts.

In Twin Peaks one might say (if the theory was right) that a) the demographic is different -Estrella del Mar seems a largely 30-60 year old adult population whereas Twin Peaks seems to have a more normal age range of people and b) the crime is just regular crime and not the targeted crime of Estrella del Mar. In this way as ‘normal’ crime it exists only in certain peripheral zones which enable its repression thus disabling the mechanism that Estrella del Mar utilizes.

And what is the apparent driving force of Estrella del Mar’s crime-social machine? The answer is probably the key synchronicity between the two worlds. Bobby Crawford is the name of the part psychopath, part saint who creates and facilitates both the crime and social threads of the town. He seeks to reawaken people from their TV slumbers by generating a wave of aesthetic crime to bring them to life. One of his biggest associations is: fire. We have frequent sections in parts of the book where the protagonist refers to Bobby as having a taste for fire.

Bob and fire, where have we heard that before? Now Bobby Crawford is by no means straightforwardly evil and indeed his connection with the central conflagration of the book is largely rebuked by the end. This doesn’t however distract from his burning down a car and two boats in the course of the story. We’re repeatedly told that Bobby is dangerous and even though the protagonist becomes criminally complicit with him and sympathetic to his methods, we know that Bobby still facilitates rape videos and possibly worse. All the time everyone loves Bobby Crawford and his easy charm and playful nature —he is Bob eager for fun, he wears a smile, everybody runs. Bobby Crawford may have sincere motivations and be morally ambiguous in some ways, however his role as a kind of dark Dionysian agent is quite clear. Twin Peaks’ Bob is largely an unambiguously evil presence, except that there is some sense that Bob’s activities are in a sense just what is fun for him. It is not simply that Bob plots to be and do evil, it is just that he acts according to his nature —which happens to be terrifying and dangerous to humans. In this sense he is similar to Bobby Crawford —and they both like fire.

Another thread of connection I noticed was upon the introduction of Dr Sanger in a ‘tropical suit’. The eccentricity of the tropical suit at the introduction of the psychiatrist immediately brought to mind Dr Jacobi. The similarity continues insofar as the murdered (by fire) Bibi Jansen (a drug troubled young woman) was under the supervision of this psychiatrist. Sanger, like Jacobi is morally ambiguous. He seems to genuinely want to help and at the same time seems to sleep with his young female patients.

Lastly there is Charles Prentice as agent Cooper. Prentice comes to the town to hopefully free his ‘obviously innocent brother’ (a whole Kafkaesque routine in itself) Frank, from the accusation of burning down the Hollinger house which resulted in the deaths of five people. Like K of the Castle, Charles is sucked into the inner world of Estrella del Mar. The same thing that also happens to agent Cooper in Twin Peaks. Cooper readily allows his assimilation into the wholesome aspects of the town and in doing so permits himself to fall in love with Annie Blackburn. Ultimately though when faced with the test of the Black Lodge, Cooper fails. His soul is too riddled with guilt and he is doomed to 25 years of residing therein.

Charles Prentice is seduced by Bobby Crawford into helping with his criminal re-enlivening schema, believing this is the powerhouse of Estrella del Mar. He feels so close to uncovering the secret that he does not spot the dark machinations of the real power seat closing in on him -also involving a woman for whom he has feelings (Paula Hamilton). When Bobby Crawford is killed, Charles Prentice’s guilt makes him pick up the gun that killed him, thus implicating him in his murder and condemning him to plead guilty to it, as his brother has to the fire. Like Cooper, he has been caught by the Black Lodge, just when he thought he was on the verge of solving everything.

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Jim Meirose 

A Rare Sort of Fungus                                                

At the top of Back City environment news today, a major event is taking place that, if taking place nearly anyplace else would be nothing but, eh, hey—for the first time in ten years one of us’s leaving Back City for the main’man—ando. And that is, Dr. Toby VanDer-Uncle, Back City Psychologist of nearly fifteen years’ duration, has abandoned our beloved and venerable peninsula for the Mainland. Rum’ording has it’s ’tan he will be ‘btaining a private practice hot shingling low-keyer of a job someplace far as inland as he can acquire the distance from deep down inside him to strain as faraway from we here as can be gotten. It would have been mystical enough were he jus’ plain vanilla Back City but, he was more. I have here an interview with Bandiana Christman’s-Son, retired old time Back City documentalist living on the edge of Face-Forward beach north of the Sockets, that mysterious series of what look like blastholes, concealed ten feet out under the surf, which some backcitian wags have suggested through the years may be found to hold, if excavated, remnants of the great sea-heaval that long story short rendered the tip of the peninsula, now the site of Back City, barren of vegetation and clear of the near presence of the hungering Back City swamp, which is now known as the JungleSwamp. He says and I quote; the manifest of the big-Louie shocker of VanDer-Uncle’s departure seems funny and odd and suspectionalus of some funny adherence of the psychologist with the totally out of character apparent defaulted to failure mayoral bid to unseat Wicki-Wallace Boole, or whathinder she smacks off herself into, good spelling and fat memory being no longer a talent of mine, since I turned ninety seventy-three years ago. Ahem. Ahemahem. I think—and at this point the listeners should keep in mind that Mr. Christman’s-Son was granted off long-backer’s widely deep ceremonial shovel her gift to him to, on the few occasions that one of his shy breed would see fit to speak to Back City, that he will never be interrupted when speaking his piece; his expanding time will flow o’er and drown down everything, and this is quite more like the type of rule one’d apply to God himself when speaking, as on the time he spoke down from Mt Sinai; like the time his son delivered the sermon on the mount, or the Commissioning of the Twelve, or the Parables of the Kingdom, or like any other time he spoke to great crowds. Neither God nor Bandiana would have or will be moved from their spot by an overrun of a playgame in extra-innings, sudden death overtime, or late start due to a bad weather event—though the lord would no doubt, knowing of everything that has happened, will happen, or is happening now, although; there is really no such time space as now because it is an imaginary line invented to keep us upright in the wild-windy jumble of the flow of time over us—to appreciate that just view the readily available amateur and surveillance videos viral of the recent Javanese Jumbler tsunamianette, the nick coined on the old relay channel which preceded the current world-wrap of an inxri-knette—so veryies, now all overdraped with this hoary old disclaimer, Mr. Christman’s-Son, go-ho. 

Thank you, Mr. Pip. So, where I was is; everybody loves a fat juicy scandal; as a matterypunc’ta let me don my Vancy-Graced voicetone and its surrounding deep-sawn violin bumpertunes. Here it is. That better? Good. So, anypost; fine publican’s information is on file, as are the required test cases for this type five event, that Toby the prissychologist was cahooting quite closely, yes closely, quite closely up the ‘hind of the candydate. This in itself might not be something but, well in this case it might be, in itself or all out the of—phew—the Chandra-date pasts theirselves may be checkermanned. S’not ‘ften a politicanunderman of this low calibre carries the weight of being undra lendi-leasy of some need for mood modification, the inplicitave ripples of which a after ‘xapanding all circular may possible ah yes, even probably prove to be filled with the pus of dishonesty when pricked with even the lightest scrutiny, the featherlike brush of which in itself may be unable to poke ‘pen th’ wall, but; the wave of interest in her backstory may provide the pressure to burst the entire ‘fection of ‘trut’ out in it’s free. Ah! But, in the manner of anything brand new, the sheen of the data is peerless. That’s the first segment, whose ragged red edge indicates there’ a mating piece drifting ‘bout summerwise since that is currently the season of this; and on the opposite border, the truth of McMatter—which we shall use as a variable name for this fast-festering big equatitonal problem—so big that if written on paper the paper would have to be football fields huge, and the lines traced down writing it would have to be several yards wide; the quality of ink needed would have be freighted in from megatankers and the pen, well, the pen, well, My God what pops is that now we’re in territory where it gets often shouted, Give me a place to stand and I will move the world! Into interstellar freezing plathe-space, all meditatively we have passed the overing edge of all things now, Sam, please drop ‘nothing to that big new abyss stretched out down below, for fear of setting off multiple blasts each capable of the delivering the complete shatterment of their assigned planetary globes—the reality of which is less than illusory, big Packie. Opp, so… 

<dead air> 

Uh, what? Control room, what’s flown over cutting Bandiana down? 

Oh. But—oh. Okay. 

We are sorry, dead listeners. A pseudo-nondeliberate technical beatdown has taken Bandiana’s full message out and down. We are so sorry. We know you all wanted to know when and how it would end. I can tell you the gist of it, as the technical staff investigates, backed up by local law enforcement, Candidate McMatter is suddenly nowhere to be found. Days later, her psychologist leaves Back City, apparently permanently. This may or may not be a coincidence, but we will continue to follow up. More at eleven, if more is available. We will present the last half of Bandiana’s statement, well—certainly someday. If not, soon after. 

In other news; the great tree of justice, behind city hall, appears to have contracted a rare sort of fungus. We will let… 

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Seed. 

Orange rust.

Squinting from the flavour that blinds the room, Stephen cuts slits in the wood of his vision rather than suffer the vitamins headache and it allows him to take in the sudden actions of his landscape. 

The floor, made from dissolving gypsum and limestone rock, is craggy and breathing with so many pores. The orbital sunshine of the orange rolls in along the many dimple sized holes and it wobbles near Stephen’s foot, trying to get a handle of being round. On being a ball. On not having any sides and rather slipping into the craters of your foot’s fall. 

Once it stabilizes, Stephen takes in the background vision. The bars that make the invisible wall that is his cell, the broken away at limestone karst walls, the lack of sunlight dripping in from any windows.

The artificial light inset in all the imperfect scones.

The footsteps dropping away behind closed doors where police might scheme of criminal code.

Realising he may be all alone, Stephen makes a bird of his very own. “Hey!” He whimpers with a hard front beneath his teeth. “What’s going on?” As if to say he demands even though his spine is rolling out behind him.

No one returns his call.

Beside his shaking, heavy, crownless head is a stainless steel bench hung from chains on the wall. Placing his hand on the cool metal and the other hand on the cool floor, he lifts himself from hobbled into a more confident position in his room, his cell, his justice for all.

Stephen pulls in a stuttered breath that fills his tiny chest with the stale air, it’s cavern drafts not fresh but recirculated stone. He holds it. The cave of his cell in his tissues, making stagnant folds of the reticulated tides that are his fleshy lung organ. It attracts bats and moths, and they eat away at his lacking confidence, his all alone.

“Shit!” He mutters to himself as he buries his eyes and sagging cheeks into the mud of his palms.

Low sobbing in the cold of handcuffs not worn.

“Hey! Relax Stephen!”

Slash white through the trembling heart as the words take Stephen’s shoulders like predatory claws and he whips his head from hiding to the direction of the words that came from the dark. Heart like thin black balls at the top of the music sheet, pupils in and out of focus as the beads of sweat dart around the cell. Stephen checks every inch of his ten foot apartment twice and finds he’s all alone. 

“Hello?” He calls with the suspicion of a ghost, half standing to see if there was someone down the hall from his cell, assuming it was a hall and not hell.

“Hi!” Said the voice with chipper in its octave swell.

Falling back into his seat, Stephen’s eyes match the declination and he looks to the ground. Shock. Strips of white in his hair.

But just the orange there.

Turning on its smooth porous skin, opening its eyes, forming words with a pulpy mouth. “Hello Stephen, I’ve been waiting for you.” It says.

“Oh good.” Says Stephen. Surprised that his throat let anything be said at all.

Then nothing happened. Seemingly forever nothing happened. Just the orange and Stephen staring at each other as if the other one might dry and crack and fall into pieces… the dust of it settled in the cracks of Stephen’s brain and it made him want to sneeze and smoke at the same time. If only he had a cigarette, if only he had smoked ever before.

The orange made a faint smile, lifting one side of its white lined mouth closer to the bright slice of its left eye. Awkward, even though it was the orange and Stephen was not. “Were the boys gentle with you?” Asked the orange, its juicy mouth flopping around the way a puppets might, if the hand was drunk and the stage was set in the light.

Stephen nodded, not sure if he remembered coming in at all at this point.

“That’s good.” Said the orange as it produced a cigarette from the back of its mouth. Without hands, the act was autonomous and reminded Stephen of an assembly line as the cigarette rolled out long-wise and careful–despite its being lit already and it suckered up to the flat lips of the orange’s bright skin. The cherry lit for a moment and then smoke rolled out of the orange’s eyes. “Would you like a smoke, Stephen?”

He nodded again and the orange reared its lack of neck into a Pez dispenser and another cigarette stood straight up in the flattened out surface of its mouth. The other cigarette lay half flat on the floor, angled from the fruit’s maw.

Stephen reached out and grabbed the tobacco roll and the orange turned back to its normal stance, smoking fish eyes and cool nineties Japanese aesthetic all at once. 

Inspecting the smoke up close, Stephen found the paper to be damp with citrus. The spark already fired, he placed the cigarette on his lips and pulled the scurvy from his gums as his lungs went black and calm. He didn’t cough. He breathed out. His head was already rushing, but not from the nicotine, not at all.

“Sorry, they always come out a little wet.” Said the orange.

“Not at all.” Replied Stephen. Still polite.

“So we have some work to do tonight and it’s a lot. It certainly won’t get done on its own.” Said the orange.

“Yea.” He chuckled, not sure if he should do anything at all. “Don’t… don’t I know it.” Forced smile.

“So, we should probably get started.” 

Stephen sucked on the smoke again, letting the fluoride and dry leaf tickle the itch at the back of his throat as he held the puff of char somewhere between his chest and his uvula. “Are you uh, are you related to the fauna spirit’s that ummm, you know… “

The orange stared at Stephen with one orange eyebrow tilted high up into the seed of its thoughts.

Stephen continued, now too nervous to leave the room silent. “When I practise herbalism, sometimes the plants and their spirits would give me a little guidance but… they were only voices.” He exhaled the smoke that had been lingering in his nose and it made the room fuzzy. “Not… ” he gestured with his tar stained hand at the orange in circles. “Full grown… fruit. You’re not related to them, are you?”

The orange pursed its lips, lifting the half burnt cigarette into a vertical question mark and then spoke. “You know how crazy that sounds, right?”

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In order to develop the hyperqabalah it has become necessary to reformulate the names of the nodes. These barbarous names have a certain significance that will be revealed later. Doing this means that the previously given names of the accretions becomes an aspect of them rather than the central defining feature. The table here gives the aspect and node name.

The node Lehe whose aspect is Freedom is missing from the list for reasons not yet revealed.

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An excerpt from Alchemycal Memory.

By: Sean Duffield

Book 7, Part III: Beasts Wearing the Pelts of Humans

A thousand pardons of sunlight permeated the close knit synthetics of her morning window’s curtain dance. They curled and whirled in the lent swirls of UV spectrum fanatics wrapped in wine and red dresses and a penchant for mischief. They lulled her sleeping eyes back into dreams that would fade or disappear upon reawakening. The fantasies that horse riders could drum up, under whips and torn cuffs, under factual trophies and fictional names several syllables long on the newspaper’s page. They were a thousand pounds of furious finessing and they drove Anabeila’s eyes to close as the hooves drove further from the sand and closer to her mind. Warm. Shoulders. So many hands high. 

Culminating fascinations on the cornerstone of vision’s eye. A happening of natural design. The armies of robed botanists marching in a single file line. Amongst the Bodhi trees a flower licks sunlight, dripping with nectar, sweet pollen, semen from the cosmic wasp left on the entrance to doorsteps and doorways. Gates. Keys. Fog. Define.

They marched and sentinel sentiment drew the closed fist tighter to wrist, completing actions in four-four time. Fur laced mongrels under satellite iron ore hold it. Golden. From nectarine necks carved out. It falls out. Placed in a jar. To cover the scent of cosmic radiation. 

The birch wood bric-a-brac. Stronger formulas wait behind mathematicians walls. Where does the time go? 

Anabeila reaches out. Where has the time gone? 

Atomic clocks making sounds somewhere.

What time is it now?

“Anabeila! What time is it now?” Cried a doting mother’s carefully chosen vocal chords, casing rhetorical questions in thoughts of her own.

“It’s five o’clock.” Returned Anabeila. Don’t answer. It’s rhetorical.

“Where has all your dream time gone? Down the drain, I imagine.” Said the mother in another room.

“No… no. I still have time.” 

“You don’t. You’ll be late for temple. Notum requires you there on time. You’ve none left to waste!”

Water blips pooled and drove echoes in her perspectives. Anabeila carved up the blankets she rested upon. Scooping them into piles beneath knees and sundresses. Her eye dew colouring patterns together in geomantic rituals beyond the eyelids that hung droopily from carried on facades. 

She stifled a curled up neonate, tail thick beneath heels driven into waists. Hair thrown out on all sides, mistaken for shadows from above. Crevices of pillow fights. The sun still parading about the curtains that waved morning doves at her window spread straight lines perpendicular across her entire stature. Carved stone in museum windows. Censored. She wrestled with internal thought. Jaws and fig tree gods. Then they blipped. The sensation of dreaming dropped from the radar.

Her feet kicked out. Splayed out. Toes as far apart from each other as possible. Hands holding pillows prayed then threw jubilation behind them towards the spine that circles Jupiter. Her entire body rolled back, forward, back. Pillows tossed to the messy floor. Blankets torn, strangling the last bits of heat from her sleeping once now woken core.

“Dammit!” She muttered.

“What was that love?” Asked the mother in another room.

“Nothing…” how could she hear everything?

“Are you getting up?” 

“Yes… ” Dammit.

Anabeila’s feet tingled as blood returned from her head to all the regions of herself. And heart. She rose in her room. Small. Tucked in amongst a tower of church families. Bare. Mostly. Plants. Rectangular box. Viewing wall. Windows all opening slowly as the housebot recognized her routine morning caws from branches covered in frost. The shards opening. Wall in front of her, slowly growing tall. The closet visible now.

“Mirror please.” Said Anabeila to the housebot.

Acknowledge, it returned. And the smooth white wall in front of her shimmered and crawled with pixelated servitude. The sunlight, now fully engrossed in the room. Stuck its front teeth out, appendages drawn. It scurried across flat, angular surfaces, grimacing, jumping to the mirror’s reflection where it pounced on its metallic surface. Only to sink into, absorbed into the wall. The mirror’s surface glimmered dull as it redirected and tinted its automated will. Anabeila stared back with fat fingers, tongues on the glass… her morning face was crying in its surfaces. They were not emotions. Just morning slumber pitfalls. 

“Ugh.” She wiped the gleen from beneath her eyes. Robbed them of their smooth decline. Blinked hard at herself in the mirror wall and studied her features with a child’s grace. Little in way of preconceptions. 

“Mirror off please.” 

Acknowledge.

The wall returned. Closet visible. Anabeila stood up from her bed and the jaws came clamping down on her from above. Shuddered elbows rose while knees fell and kissed the dirt beneath studious members of the church. Bits of dream still stuck in her teeth, Anabeila stood up straight and spit them out. Shook them off. She opened her closet and removed the white robes. Time for the sacrilegious to attend the sermons of another’s call. She sighed, the room alongside her took a deep breath-in, making room for her sunken chest and puffed up eyes.

Anabeila was dressed in righteous robes and tiptoeing through the hall of her parents’ apartment home in the tower of a church followers mob. Always quiet as a mouse, ‘fraid to disturb the dreams of plants that filled the nest perimeters recessed shelves with lush green tones, flowering buds and long hidden roots… She slid along the recycled black tile floors, encased with white walls and hung over ceilings. The imbedded bioluminescent lanterns above her gave the floor a purity like opal. It gave the plant leaves a stark background from above. A painting of dark silk nurtured love.  

She entered the kitchen of a similar stretching of lodgings, black tile floors and luminescent heavenly bodies. Her mother stood tall at a sink, filling a glass with purified hydrogen and oxygen. She was at the far wall, back facing across the table. Betwixt the black framed pass through on one side, and the stretches of air fresh windows that cornered nineties around her, taking up the entirety of the far side of the kitchen sprawl on the other. Membrane meshes that allowed the fresh air to exhale into her kitchen. Unaltered nitrogen from the mouths of cloud top gods emptied the room of stale breaths and feathered in new psalms from the empyrean.

“Well morning Anabeila.” Her mother said as she turned from the glass spun countertops. The morning’s sunrise somehow on both sides of the planet melted red sapphire hues in behind her mother’s smile, its effervescent particles jumping stilted halos from around her head, its image warming the back of mothers neck, illuminating the ray shine squabbles that filtered out her mouth as she spoke of broken bread. “I hope you are as ready as you desire for choosing day.”

“Well morning mother.” Anabeila’s courtesies abound as she slipped into the kitchen, pulled a dark rimmed high-back chair from the table and sat down. Her elbows gracing with little weight on the surfaces, high gloss finish and viewing wall shine. “I will be, I’m sure.”

“Does that mean you’ll crusade for the church?” A deeper tone rung from the pass through. A warm self assured voice that passed through mustache charm to orbiculate amongst the room of daughters.

“Father!” Mother dashed out quickly, her cheeks flushed with vinegar and sour tastes. “Anabeila will let Notum know. It is not for us to tread through. The part is only for specific hearts. It is truly not a choice made…” she turned to Anabeila. Mother’s colour tones were adjusting and her voice slowed into more placid lanes of direction “But a position granted in the grand chorus of prayer voices.”

“Humph. Of course. Of course. Don’t uhhh. Well, good luck today, Anabeila. Or whatever thing is acceptable to say.” Said the deep tone from the other room.

Anabeila smiled at her mother. Even when she wanted something of Anabeila, there was always a choice to be made. Nothing ever came of stone hands, she would say.

Those same smooth wet sand skin hands brought the glass of fresh spring to the table in front of Anabeila. They placed it in front of her and in a hidden palm tree they formed the nutrient seed in line, its blue surface sparkling in the natural light from above.