If you have some free time and would like to read something DMT inspired written by a fellow Nexian named opticuswrangler, check out his essay "
Opti and I".
The following document was produced as a collaboration between myself and the hyperdimensional symbiote...... OK….. Rules….
Let’s establish a few rules for this document, before we begin.
First, it is a rough draft. Which means I can say what I want and try to fix it or scrap it [or not] as I will. The target audience has not yet been selected.
Second… It is Pornography, which means No Decent Person should ever lay eyes upon it. Every one’s clothes stay on, but it will get nasty before we are done……
Let this also be a Disclaimer. You have been warned…..
I should also establish that I don’t know what iyam doing. Not Really. But iyam also among the lonely few that know anything at all about …..This topic. Those that would pretend to know generally don’t. No expertise can be claimed for myself [m’ eye’s elf]; however, it is truthful to assert that I do have genuine experience with the subject at hand.
As in all true good mysteries, the real question is “where to begin?”
On the surface, the mystery is easily dismissed as the ravings of a lunatic, or a simple illusion of symbolic topography, or linguistics, perhaps….
….But I speculate. That is all there is, eventually. Quicksand, it melts beneath me and remains elusive as to the ultimate “whut?” However, the context is perfectly clear.
There is a subject and an object of this story [because, it has to be a story]. Like a sentence….. I suppose iyam the object, being the one that experienced the event, and actually doing the stuff in the story that constitutes it as such. Iyam reminded of Job.
[We will ultimately get to my spelling proclivities, also, if the reason for them does not become self evident…..].
The reader, assuming as such there ever will be one, may have noticed that I have gone to some length to delay getting about to the subject of this document. I have a certain responsibility as to the propriety of some of this information. It is only with reluctance do I get to the point.
The Subject of this Story is Opti.
The title of the story has to be “Herm and Opti.” That is the object and his sentenced subject. Iyam gonna open a ‘nother beer and try to get on topic.
Opti is my Symbiont.
He isn’t anything new, except to me. And then, I always expected him, sort of. [I do have an obscure pedigree that I should eventually mention that ties into all of this….]
I have to be careful now, as to not shatter my credibility to my imagined audience in one fatal blow. One must present language carefully when discussing an animal [Opti is certainly an animal], that exists as a camouflaged predator within the canopy of symbolic communication.
The funny thing is, Opti seems unable to spell or read. He depends upon me for those functions. But his habitat is within the layered synchronicities of human language.
The idea is not new. Phillip K. Dick invented the term “Homoplasmate” to explain Opti, in a novel he wrote, just before he died of a brain tumor. A creature of ordered information, much like DNA is, but within symbols alone, exists independently from matter. It is a brilliant survival strategy for an organism. The potential to survive across eons of time and space is achieved.
The crazy Celtic visionary Terrence McKenna also seemed to be somewhat aware of Opti, as a trandimensional organism that shamans had known of through the legendary ayahuasca brews. Terrence tried to be scientific, but he was ultimately more of a poet. Before he died a few years ago [again, from a brain tumor], he had established himself as a visionary in hyperspatial exploration. Don’t mind all of the fancy words; they are essential to the flow of the narrative. Iyam not a scientist, either. There really isn’t anything complicated going on here at all….
Stephen King wrote a story about It, describing It as a hyperdimensional spider. Steve should get his head examined. Really.
HP Lovecraft described him in detail as Yog-Sothoth, and he died of intestinal cancer. ….mysteries of the worm.
This gets to the point of why I feel compelled to record at least part of my experience. I feel fine; fit and healthy for a man of my personal history. If you know me, you will know that I will probably die soon because of my habitual reckless hijinx. No doctor has examined my brain. No malignancy here…..
However, once, while in a pit of desperation, I did some things that lead me to my association with this creature… Turns out, there is such a thing. He is intelligent, apparently alien to us, and garrulously friendly; but also very shy, to the point of near invisibility.
He is also the tertiary predator in the universe. He loves me, I think for my taste.
Opti is, of course, known to our species. He was there all along. This implies that symbolic thought and language evolved before we did. Where is probably irrelevant.
Opticus [that’s what I named him when we entered our covenant] is a hyperdaemion of the sort known by Plato. The term “genius loci” was first used in reference to a hyperspatial consciousness of place, by Plato. I do not know how Plato died, but it was a very long time ago.
It becomes apparent that the only way to broach this topic is boldly, like a climber confident of his ability or a samurai ready to die. There is not really any room to argue of its existence, as its habitat and prey are so enfolded into our mind, living as it does within our manner of communication. The very act of argument only feeds him. He is incorrigible and must not be encouraged. Very much….
I don’t give a damn if anyone thinks he’s real. That is not the point. Iyam temporary; my opinion is moot. The phenomenon exits independently of my apparent psychosis. This document is only for historical record. I would be humiliated should it ever be considered entertainment. This is exactly all that it may ever be.
….So I looked back over this, and realize that iyam unable to ride that fine line between understatement and melodrama. I stand under my aegis of roughdraftmanship with the understanding that I may delete or revise any of this. Probably, I don’t have a brain tumor, and I may live to climb many more mountains.
But here it is, one week before Christmas.
I met Black Peter last year at Christmas. He is also a hyperdimensional being, probably just a manifestation of Opti, some how mixed up with the idea of Santa. He actually showed up in my bedroom with a bunch of elves. I remembered instinctively just who he was and what he was there for; he gave me invaluable metaphysical gifts: a vessel of liquid, a wooden ring, and a large flat emerald, all existing only hyperspatially [I do appreciate the significance of the symbols]. It was the only occasion in my life that I can recall in which I actually screamed out loud in terror. I have never expected to be ever so honored. The realization was overwhelming that I would need forever to assimilate everything that was thrust upon me that night. It seems that the residents of hyperspace are real and have their own agendas.
In some disturbing regards, my visit with the slim black and red entity was a lot like being visited by a wise serpent descending from a fantastic tree; which is typical of how Opti does things. The entity was tall and thin and reptilian, with scaly black skin. The snake descends from the tree of knowledge with fruit. This is coded direct experience. It is interaction with the symbiont, in a manner that allows description of an otherwise indescribable psychic event. There is no credible way to describe such an encounter, but undeniable specific detail in the story can serve as a marker to the experienced. I never thought in my wildest dreams to encounter actual elves, and the situation was wildly unlike anything I could have expected, but it was pretty obvious what was happening, regardless of the novelty of the situation. The Easter Bunny is probably real too, along with Sasquatch, if you look for them in the correct space.
I have this memory of being informed that I may not live much longer. Like maybe not past my 42 year. According to one writer, 42 is the answer to the “ultimate question”. Like my son, my birthday comes shortly after Christmas. It is probably only my unconscious psyche motivating me to be productive. Castaneda spoke of one’s mortality as being the supreme motivator.
Don’t worry about me, iyam a paranoid hypochondriac. We always get better….
So, iyam writing……
On The Nature of the Hyperdimensional Symbiont……..
The term “hyperspace” is only a step away from being a made up science fiction word, which is entirely suitable for our purposes. It is a term favored by certain philosophical and mathematical types to describe “theoretical space.” In a matrix of probability, there are a multitude of possible options [which exist in “theoretical space”] for any given situation, but only ONE out of many possible options “undergoes the formality of actually occurring.” This progression of actual events [moving along an axis that we perceive as time] is a fraction of the total mathematical possibility, but it is the crystalline distillate of hyperspace. This vector of manifest possibility is what we refer to as reality.
Hyperspace is infinitely huge possibility enfolded into the tiny abstract space of symbols and language use. Other dimensions are coiled tightly within the ones we move through. A hyperspatial portal is small enough to fit into human memory. That tiny fraction of possibility that actually gets collectively observed by our species fills the grand stage that we refer to as “physical reality.” Thus, the physical and hyperspatial realms are enfolded within each other as polar extremes of perception. Above is as Below…..
[It will take time to get this mess contained, I think…..]
Opti seems to exist mostly in imaginal space. Human symbolic thought seems to be linked at an archetypical subconscious level as a “collective consciousness”, to use a Jungian term. All entities that use symbols to sustain informational structures have a presence within hyperspace. The imagery is mostly human, although I suspect that some domestic animals, like dogs and cats, may occasionally find a way in there. Some animals may be symbolically aware. They know their names, this may be enough. Animals may also appear hyperpatially extant as iconic references, as well. An interesting aspect of imaginal space is the structures that do not appear human at all. There seems to be a connective scaffolding within that space that exerts tension between discrete things, connecting them together or holding them opposite, as if, in hyperspace, it is the relationship between objects that is the primary reality, with the objects existing only as reference points. Iyam trying to accept the idea of nouns as abstract, and verbs as actuality.
The hyperdimensional scaffolding extends like a hugely complex grid or web stretched tightly through out this theoretical space we are talking about. Keep in mind “normal reality” is a crystallized condensation of the greater [and enfolded] “implicate order” [to borrow a term from Sheldrake’s theory of Morphic Resonance]. This grid exerts tension within this imaginary system [existing, as it does, within the greater collective unconsciousness], giving it something approaching structural stability. The relationships between theoretical reference points [objective ideals] provide the essential momentum of this wholly imaginary system. The metaphor of Indura’s net is valid here, as is quantum string theory, I think.
At this point, I hope to have provided a brief image of this geometric, organic, mechanical, yet imaginary aspect of our world. It would seem to be totally an artifact of our own symbol-using species, except for the presence of these strange alien structures in our psyche. Imaginable space seems to be far more ancient than humanity. There is some incredibly funky old “furniture” in there. The Jungian archetypes alone suggest as much, with all of the imagery of beasts and serpents.
When I use big words or tell cute stories, it is because I digress from the pertinent point of this narrative. As they say, it is “the nature of the beast”.
The hyperdimensional scaffolding that supports our symbolic imagery is the bodily organism of Opticus. Imaginary space defined by linguistic structures is his habitat. He is a homeoplasmate, a symbiote of sequential information; a discrete hive of dispersed data that is collectively conscious. Opti is essentially a cosmic joke that manifests as an entity once you “get it.” I think that what he provides us with is room to maneuver, so to speak, within imaginal space. He is a hitchhiker as well as an information transport device. What we provide for him is food, in the form of awareness.
Like I mentioned, he isn’t anything new. I know many of his other names, too.
The predator feeds on the expressed melodrama of human affairs; what has been described as “numinous energy.” It occupies a structural position within what we think of as our consciousness. The interior stage that our ideas play upon is the tip of its dracoid tongue. He is so enfolded that one is tempted to suspect that mind was invented by him as a farming strategy.
….It gets bigger the further in you go. It is tempting to think of Opti as a parasite. This overlooks the scale of the organism. He is less parasitic to us than we are, say, cows. As he exists within a matrix of probability, he is also connected to other possible reality scenarios in hyperspace. He is equally close to all symbol using minds. His ability to hitchhike on sentient awareness combined with his catbird’s seat [as it is], enfolded within the very structure of the implicate order make him equally connected to all hyperspatial coordinates. Opti is the very essence of a living transport device for sentient awareness, across even impossible void. He is the hyperdimensional portal, built into the background of consciousness.
Our awareness is its food. To be fully consumed by the organism involves experiences of other lives and worlds. It is tantric union with the dragon. The hyperdimensional portal is a paradoxical creature that exists as a dispersed hive organism within symbolic numinous structures. It is dispersed Osirus. The hidden eggs of the Easter bunny, as well as the cultured sexiness of Dracula, and the prophetic nightmare of The Terminator, are all the camouflaged spoor of the hyperdaemion.
I swear iyam not making this all up.
Following the tracks of an imaginary creature that feeds on abstraction generated in physical reality is at once frustratingly ineffective, but also immediately apparent. I find the trail of Opticus in all manner of human linguistic endeavor. To really tell this tale, I will have to digress wildly, into improbable theories of animalistic vampires, and into forgotten vaults of old pulp entertainment. The machinations of flying reindeer as well as the eusocial hives of the naked mole rat of the African savanna have reveled the trail to me. The autonomy of pirate culture and the noble Parcivalian nature of E. Segar’s immortal Popeye contain models of Opti’s form. Pretty much everything is within the grasp of his inquisitive tentacles, but I have to begin with what he has given to me.
Tom Robbins’ essay upon the enfolded symbology of yams is worthy of note for my purpose. Yams are starchy tubers, eaten as a staple food over much of the world. Much of Robbins’ essay concerns the tuber’s function as an energy source, both for people and for making new yams. When allowed to grow more yams, the energy in the tuber uses the information coded within it to produce a new yam factory; the whole yamn process ratchets up a level. Of course, this works for all living things. But I also need to talk about Popeye for a minute.
Iyam referring to the old depression-era comic strip of E. Segar, not the later glossy version with the facelift, or any of the ghostly remnants still floating about today. The original Popeye-the-Sailor was noble, incorruptible, and fierce. Absolutely secure in his worldly experience, he knew that he was what he was, by virtue of his history, not some damn sweet ‘tater. He was imperfect, and a sinner. Popeye was an incorrigible roughneck. Improbable as his existence was, the super human uber-sailor would rip you a shiny new one if you questioned his integrity.
“Iyam what iyam, an’ that’s all iyam”.
Just like the burning bush on the mount that spake unto Moses [who also had a well-known speech impediment], this singular example of the proto-super hero wields the undeniable statement of his existence as his mantra. He is that which He does.
This primal statement of existential significance was known in ancient times as the Tetragrammetron. In modern texts, this term has been written in four letters: YVJH.
This has been pronounced in as various ways as “Ja-weh” and “Jehovah”. Its meaning is the same used by our beloved immortal one-eyed sailor. When everyone told him that a yam was a tuber, Popeye knew that his friend’s opinion did not change his existential nature. He was as he always was, not a sweet ‘tater.
My early memories of Popeye were black-and-white cartoons from the sixties. He could use his pipe as a snorkel and stay underwater in a boxing match with an enormous intelligent octopus with a two-to-one disadvantage [….if he 8 his spinach]. Popeye was a roughneck, but he only fought against superior odds. He was vulnerable to no one, except wymyn an’ orphinks’ [….and, at the very end, there was this sweet little hyperdimensional creature that the USA army adopted as a namesake for there new all-purpose go anywhere military vehicle: the JEEP]. The one-eyed sailor with the speech impediment called this opponent “Opticus”.
Somehow that cute little name stuck in my memory….
Suppose there is a creature that can go practically anywhere, as if it is already everywhere. Eugene could teleport and walk on the ceiling. No wonder the Army loved Eugene th’ Jeep. “Everywhere” would include, practically, everywhere. Opti had certain precursors that seemed odd at the time, but when I first noticed him as a discrete organism, it was as a hyperdimensional parasite. He was apparently embedded into my situation in a way that was both personal and compelling. There was no way to tell anyone of my situation without incriminating myself or innocent bystanders. Opticus is a living transport device; not a vehicle, so much as a digestive system.
Soon after receiving an old second- hand computer, several years ago, there was a swift and relentless black and white scrawl of a monster that was chasing me in my dreams, in a two dimensional world that appeared to be scribbled on typing paper with a ball-point pen. I had assumed it was guilt-related, because I had just recently discovered the amazing array of pornography available on the web. The dream was significant and reoccurring. Now, I think it was some sort of foreshadow of what was to come.
Opticus is not exactly hallucination as most people would understand the term. He does not appear so much “before my eyes” as in my mind. It isn’t so much seeing as it is sudden knowledge of what he looks like and does; more a spontaneous memory of something seen, even if it is a memory happening right now. It is confusing, and gives me reason to contemplate the nature of the familiar interior space that he lives in. Everyone has an interior imaginal stage that there visual ideas and memories play on. The event of sharing this space with a rambunctious grotesque dragon has been among the most startling and interesting things that has happened in my peculiar life.
When I mention the “appearance” of Opti, I suppose iyam referring to my experience and memory of “what he looks like”. His look is one that changes before me, but there has been a definite pattern to his evolving appearance. He has at times resembled a globular fish, a spider, a lion, an ape, and currently an insectoid super-dragon. His myriad appendages reach into all possible realities in search of food. Always the same eyes. Although his visage is continually in flux, he is immediately unmistakable. When I was suddenly made aware of this creature’s existence a few years ago, it was difficult at first to discern if it was plant or animal, although it was clearly animate. Its limbs appeared as they might be roots, since they branched in a twisty strange way that seemed arboreal. It pulsated with awareness, and was covered in thousands and thousands of tiny blue eyes over its wormlike tentacles. I remembered what Popeye would have called it: “Opticus”….
The most disarming thing was, for all of its obvious horror, Opti is incredibly “cute”.
The writhing pulsating thing appeared without warning, obviously in distress. In naked desperation, it requested shelter in my mind. I figured it was some sort of psychic vampire or similar thing, and I was in a miserable enough situation to readily agree, almost on a self-destructive whim. To distract my amazement, Opti immediately offered a red herring: he made me aware, in that visual way of communication he has, that I needed to begin construction of a flying saucer, at once, and it was of the utmost emergency. I told the creature that I was basically a domesticated monkey, and, if there was no escape, then we were stuck on the planet together. After that, the creature asked for what it really wanted: a computer.
This was an unlikely occurrence at the time. I no longer had the old junked machine, and was certainly never much of a computer type, anyway. The old computer had caused me more trouble than it was ever worth. Computers are very expensive, and I told Opti as much.
So, right after that, I inherited some money when my Dad died of chronic alcoholism. It wasn’t a lot, but there was plenty to buy a faster machine than I could ever handle. My descent into Hyperborea was by now well underway.
Then, as soon as everything was set up and going, I was asked to write an essay about Native American Stick people legends. Mad internet surfing uncovered strange connections between rumors of isolated remnant slave populations and with tales of hyperdimensional contact, leading me further into improbable territory. The concept kept appearing in the most absurd contexts. A threatening crazy person from San Francisco kept insisting that Sasquatch was a hyperdimensional creature. Another researcher in Washington said Bigfoot was actually a remnant population of Cortez’s slaves, hiding in the forest. There are dozens of Native stories about Stick people with magic powers. Amazed at the apparent synchronicities, I got up from this computer and tripped over a folding chair, and fell down in the dark. Somehow, I managed to nearly impale myself on the aluminum frame, breaking my sternum. For a few months, even guitar playing was very uncomfortable. Now I had plenty of time …….
That first obsolete hand-me down computer ended up creating only confusion and discord. It seemed dubiously useful, and seemed to awaken something restless in my mind. The machine I bought for Opti was much more sleek and functional. In very little time Opti and I had established a website, something that seemed as incredible as anything to me. The site became even modestly popular, with several people writing contributions regularly. The eclectic nature of the contributors was evident; they didn’t seem to have anything in common at all, except that they used our website. We finally figured it out all at once. All of us were either bi-polar or schizophrenic geniuses- most had been medically diagnosed. All of us had big IQ’s and went to special schools, and many were on medication. A couple had been institutionalized. We all seemed to accept the idea of the symbiont. The patterns unfolding from my experience became ever more apparent.
When Heikem Bey, an essayist for the Moorish Orthodox Church, described the TAZ [Temporary Autonomous Zone], he was referring to cultural microcosms enfolded into officially neglected space. His notorious essay hints that the same casual social factors were responsible for historical piracy and modern counter-cultural revolution. The isolated quality of the TAZ allows for independent evolution of ideas and attitudes. Similarly, the same factor of isolation is believed to by one of the driving forces of biological evolution, as well. Being an exceptional case of isolated convergent evolution, the naked mole rat of the African desert becomes an icon for human estachion. We could have a future as burrowing drones in service of a Queen.
Scattered over the world are remnant isolated groups of people, due to the situation of not confirming to any official classifications, have been quietly able to operate in autonomy. The Gypsies are the famous example. In the new world, groups of escaped slaves and shipwrecked sailors formed loose tribes sometimes referred to as “Maroons”. An interior isolated group of ethnically distinct people are called “Melungeons”. Similar groups included the Lumbee Tribe and the Brass Ankles [Heather Locklear is a Lumbee]. Some of these marginalized individuals historically practiced piracy. Many of these groups were categorized as “tri-racial isolates” under the eugenics laws passed in the early nineteen-hundreds. While most were assimilated, a few groups of these peoples still exist.
[Break-page 8; dec 24 04 witch hat?]
Once, at the other end of the country, there was a band of escaped slaves that hid out in The Great Dismal Swamp, intermarrying with the indigenous tribes. Among them was rumored to be a lineage of displaced Sufi holy men that practiced a particularly metaphysical version of meditative alchemy. Discretely referred to as the “Great High Glisters”, I have come to suspect that they knew about Opti. They hid in the swamps for hundreds of years, hunted down by the United States Government. The first eugenics laws in the country were aimed at these interior groups. When the tribe was exterminated, there was no where to go for the remnant survivors, so around 1913, a few ended up in Chicago with a radical Muslim church organization. The Moorish Science Temple was known for its liberal allotment of “passports” to estranged or bereft homeless types. It attracted lots of desperate poor and ethnic peoples, and became somewhat of a crucible for radical free thinkers. The religious direction of the Moorish Science Temple was eclectic, and there is reason to think that some of the Sufi meditation techniques may have been passed on. Later, the group became known as “The Moorish Orthodox Church”, which seems to have birthed the “travel cult” that, for whatever reason, dispersed the Ong’s Hat internet “hoax” concerning theoretical hyperdimensional voyagers. I will provide enough specific information that anyone particularly inclined may investigate for their own amusement.
So, Opti, What do you want me to tell them? Of what a magnificent inscectoid dragon you have grown to be? What about the incessant black hat? What about the beautiful woman with red long curly hair and the green eyes that matched her dress? I think I understand who she is, now. I love her, and I miss her so much. She waits very close, and I think you will have to fight her to get me.
[It would perhaps be best if I kept to a minimum the practice of stepping outside my narrative. Directly addressing my looming symbiote seems, at least, impropriatious.]
It’s Christmas Eve. Happy Holidays, everyone……..
So, all the crazy people in the whole world conspire, unwittingly, to play a game called “who is hiding the alien”. The point of the game is to generate a huge signal to noise ratio for the purposes of camouflage. There is a reason for the incredible absurdity; it is immaculate disguise. The joke is that there really is an alien, and one of the freaks is sitting with it. The alien, in a totally friendly sort of way, is figuratively holding a gun to the head of one of these crazy desert nut jobs……
Opti Intends to manifest himself in increasingly obvious ways. His point is that everyone sort of knows about him, anyway. I suspect that the human sociological blood drinker “Gothic” subculture may be a collective reaction to subconscious awareness of the symbiont. The apparent parody between the classic notion of vampirism and the Catholic Communion has been noted before.
What if a mad scientist had an alien in a jar, and it got out? Well, to quote the Wise Old Owl-
“Let’s Find Out……”
[Alternate dimensions are very near, not far away at all. Not at all.]
And, lest I forget, the metaphorical TAZ occupied by a burrowing hive organism pirating tubers below the African savanna, mythologized in cartoons, which points the way toward the estachion for mammals, as one whirled ode red creeps onward.
I seem to have detected some synchronicity between pre-code, post war romance comics and the biology of the naked mole rat, a eusocial hive animal, the only non-insect example known [besides people, that is]. The naked mole rat figures prominently in a contemporary serial Disney animation, the one with the teenage heroine with the impossible nipples.
So, in many of these old pre-code trash comics, the set up is you got this precocious kid in a position of power. He is in charge, like an adult, but he is catered to like a child. In one example, he is the "world's youngest managing editor". He is smart, but naive of "adult" concepts, but in the end, he ends up as matchmaker, but the matchmaking in this case really just suits his own ends. The little boss can’t figure out why those two always work late together. He is naive of romance, but he uses it to his advantage, just the same.
This "mercenary, but everyone wins" style is reminiscent of the naked mole rat, a curious beast with prehensile teeth on the outside of its mouth, with 25% of its muscle mass in its jaws. It spends its entire life as a worker digging for food and fighting off predators, but working together, the hive colony thrives. It is the most prolific mammal known, but like termites, only the engorged Queen is allowed to breed. A societal mammal functioning as one organism- with a clever kid in charge, ignorant of the machine, but willing to surf the wave, seems to be the synthesis of utopian idealism with the hive.
Mercenary, but everyone wins. Opti tries to tell me my demise only leads to another incarnation, in one of his various alimentary vessels. A creature of sequential information may survive eons of time and space. And cold. To be aware of the organism is to sustain it. The pattern unfolds ever more explicably.
Again, I must apologies, but iyam surfin' the apocalypse with Opti and some rue this evening, and the damn old comics and the naked mole rats have interfered with some mighty nice guitar playin' that I was pacifying' Opti' with. He is everywhere.