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Stephen did, and winced inwardly, then instantly winced again, as a reaction to the initial wince. He was embarrassed at the suggestion that he might be mentally unwell, coming from a strangely authoritative orange. Jesus Christ.
Feeling that he should show, if not exactly, spirit (That damned word again) then at least some spark of autonomy, he swallowed another lungful of smoke, coughed amateurishly, and spoke.
“You said that there was work to do?”
The orange seemed pleased. “Oh yes. A big job. A dirty piece of work I’m afraid, but it needs to be done. None of the boys want anything to do with it, that’s why we need sombody like you.”
Stephen raised himself from the bench, causing the chains to jangle, an oddly jolly sound. “Well, I don’t suppose talking about it is going to get it done.”
Again he sensed approval from the fruit. The cell door swung open and he found himself walking slowly down a glum, grey corridor, the orange by his side. It wasn’t doing anything so obvious as floating along, it was just there, on a level with his head, and slightly in front of him.
Following its lead he turned down an even gloomier, greyer corridor, down half a dozen metal steps and found himself standing in front of a heavy, steel sheathed door labelled “Room Q3.”
“I glanced through your file,” offered the Orange, “and you’re the right man for this job. No doubt about it. Just one thing I want to know, what’s the Pr business about?”
Stephen did his best to explain, but felt that he hadn’t perhaps, been as successful as he might of liked.
“So it’s like Dr for Doctor, but with a P?”
“Well, in essence, yes.”
“How’d you say it? Poctor? That’s wild. Poc for short. If you’re gonna be working for me, I guess I’ll call you Poc. I like my boys to have a nickname. Fosters cameraderie, you know? Keeps things light.”
Again, the door was shut, and then it was open, the orange made a motion which clearly indicated “after you”.
Steeplton walked into the room. Originally painted a drab cream colour, now, inevitably, it was gray. Two heavy wooden tables stood at one end of the room beneath a ventilation grille garlanded with dusty cobwebs. Upon them were piled boxes and ringbound files, here too, a thick covering of dust was in evidence. A yellowish and dim light percolated through dusty lampshades which hung listlessly from the gray ceiling.
The Orange was beside him again. “Well there you go Poc. Brushes, mops, cloths and detergents are in that cupboard there, think there’s some stepladders , you can get hot water down the hall, second left. I’ll pop back in a few hours and see how you’re getting on, how’d you take your coffee?”
Stephen made a faint noise in the back of his throat. “You want me to clean up?” He asked incredulously, his voice tight with confusion and helplessness. “You brought me here, like this, to clean up?”
“Sure. And sort those files out too of course. I don’t know whether chronologically would be best, or by year and then alphabetically. Have a poke around and let me know what you think would be best.”
“But I thought, I mean, this is insane, you said a big job.”
“Looks like a big job to me Poc.”
“But, but, I get taken from my car by the Police, thrown in a cell, then, you, I mean…” He tailed off, feeling a certain delicacy, despite his mounting anger and yes, disappointment, in again broaching the fact that he was talking to an orange. “I mean I thought…”
The Orange laughed delightedly. “Oh I get it, you thought you were gonna identify the exotic alkaloid that offed the Duchess! Figure out who put the psilocybin in the ambassador’s cocoa? Oh Poc you boob. You’re adorable. Wait till I tell the boys.”

Stephen felt his throat tighten. He was hurt. And, yes, disappointed. He realised with a pang of guilt that he had actually been looking forward to some type of adventure. He began a bitter retort, then choked it back. The Orange’s expression, however it was conveyed, was one of such good nature that he felt that he did not want to upset it. And then, it had been a very, very long time since anyone had called him adorable.
He sighed. “Second left for hot water you say?”
“Attaboy Poc! I knew we could count on you! Didn’t I tell Krampus and Odd Legs that you were the man for us? Sure, second left. The tap’s a bit tricky, you have to kind of wiggle it.”
“What’s in the files?”
“Oh, the files? Well Poc, those are our miscellaneous and irritating files. Poltergeists in kebab shops. Inexplicable series of deaths by burning of lawnmower repairmen. Complaints about refractory milliners. Lost shoes. Haunted geese. You know the sort of thing. You must get stuff like that all the time in your day job?”
“Well, not really exactly like that, but yes, I suppose, hang on, haunted geese?”
“Happens all the time. Gap in the psychic world hedge or something. Very much prone to it. Not much we can do.”
“But should I see these files? I mean, I’m sure there must be some kind of data protection regulations or something.”
Stephen realised how absurd this was, but he was after all, a medical professional. The Orange however seemed to take it in his stride.
“Hell yeah, I forgot, I ain’t sworn you in. Raise your right hand and repeat after me, “I Poctor Stephen Steeplton” you ought to have an E in there by the way, “do solemnly swear to serve and protect, and uphold the law.”
Dazedly, Stephen did as he was told. The Orange beamed, “Here’s your badge Poc. Welcome aboard!”
This last was said with such human, well citric, warmth, that Stephen felt a glow of pride. He was in. Accepted. He felt that he should celebrate somehow.
“Do you think I could have another cigarette please, er, sorry, what should I call you?”
“Call me Chief. Sure Poc, here you go, I told you about the wetness already right?”
“Yes Chief.”
“That’s good. Did I tell you about the time we had a murder down in Chinatown? Back when I was a rookie? Well Old Leopardskin, he was the Chief back then, sent me and Bobbing Head McCarthy down there to see what we could shake loose out of the community. There was this old, and I mean old Chinese guy, hanging around the crime scene just a bit too persistently, so Bobbing Head says to me “Charley, why don’t you go see if you can get anything out of that guy?” So I looks over at the guy, then back at McCarthy and I says, “Why me Bobbing Head? Do I look like I speak Mandarin?”

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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.