Monsters

When I was quite young, I became aware of a certain force in the world. Something deep and primal which lay underneath the structures of the ordinary world. A kind of existential terror which was at once phosphorescent, and all consuming. Was dark, but seeking nothing, merely existing truthfully, like the cosmic background radiation of the mind. In Russell Hoban's 1987 book The Medusa Frequency, this force is represented by a mythical unconscious energy which manifests as the Kraken. It was there in that tome that I early on sensed the total pervasive calm of terror. In a more recent year, I decided to tempt it out, to inhabit it. Leaving Toronto I travelled deep into the wilds of Quebec, where I stayed exhaustively long in a cabin, with no visitors or outside stimuli save for the night which crawled malevolently at my door. There I experienced the dense excitement of lawless nature, supreme and unconforming, and lush with the dark mysteries of consciousness. With no enduring reference points to which I could attach, I found the self wavering -gross, but sleek, and glowering in a corner. When the sun rose one uncaring morning, the sea of fog cleared in my head, revealing to me what I had drawn: a protoplasmic vision of future life.