David Means: Hystopia

Dr. Ralph Stein

Early indications of schizophrenia? I’d say the temporal lobe seizure suffered by the patient [Meg Allen] was an early indication. Hospitalization for that condition, at her age [15] is rare but not unheard of.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

A Compact Primer on the Theory of Enfolding

by Eugene Allen

1

The process of reenacting particulars of the causal/trauma events turns (enfolds) the drama/trauma inward. Confusion is undoubtedly an element of the curative process: a mysterious blurring of the line between what happened and what is reenacted. One folds into the other, and during the period of adjustment the patient typically experiences disjunction and bewilderment. He or she may vehemently reject the curative process, making statements to the effect of “This is pure bullshit. I remember everything. Nothing has been tucked away. I’m the same old screwup. You can’t just yank me in here, make me reenact a bunch of the shit I went through, in a lame-assed way, not even close to what it was really like, and expect me to forget about it.” But in most cases, the patient does forget about it, becoming fully immersed in the reenacted trauma’s nullification of the real trauma. (Editor’s note: The author John Horgan has coined a term — Ironic Science — to define a brand of science that “does not advance hypothesis that can be either confirmed or invalidated empirically.” The enfolding process may be Ironic Science at its worst, or it may be visionary science at its best.)

2

General theory: objective cure to a subjective illness. Enfolding rejects etiological description of the specific illness and instead simply objectifies it into itself.

3

Avoid diagnosis. Submit to the fashionableness of the cure. Pure theater above all.

4

Inherent in drama and reenactment is a blurring of the distinction between the originating causal events and the apex events—“the moment.” Creating an artificial apex calls the originating events into question.

5

Replication alone isn’t sufficient to enfold the illness into itself. Asklepios must be invoked by way of communal rants, articulated gesture exercises, and ecstatic submission to pure chance.

6

All cures are bogus.

7

Without the drug Tripizoid the enfolding process doesn’t work and the reenactment of the trauma isn’t properly confused with reality. Tripizoid somehow incites a doubling-back of memory, a mnemonic riptide — the great drawback of water before the tsunami of pure memory arrives, except that it never arrives but is simply conjoined with the withdrawing currents. Conversely, in cases of unfolding , liquid memory returns to its original stasis, although, as has been noted, there may be slight “frustrations” in the form of alterations wrought by older, pre-traumatic memories, which may be discerned in the jumbling of proper nouns and subtle deviations in spoken syntax.

8

Theorists like to cite, by way of illustration, the example of two waves of identical amplitude but opposite phases, which cancel each other out when they coincide.

9

Enfolded memory can be unfolded in two ways:

Immersion in cold water. (Extremely cold.)

Fantastic, beautiful, orgasmic sex.

Original research on the processing of enfolding was funded by Kennedy Grid Project initiation grants at the University of Michigan. It was presumed that a state shaped like a hand capable of holding itself was superior to other states as a venue for enfolding projects. Florida was rejected on account of its unfavorable climate and its lack of clearly defined seasons. Extremely high humidity, it was found, early on, fosters too keen an awareness of the skin/mind division.

Although reenactment was initially tested in New Mexico and at a cavernous Chicago complex, these tests were both top secret. Michigan quickly became known as the Psych Project state. The process of enfolding was perfected in its lower peninsula with funding from Kennedy’s initiative.

EDITOR’S NOTE

Most historians of the curative technique commonly known as enfolding agree that its widely acknowledged bogusness was a necessary correlative of a bureaucratic structure created well in advance of the cure, just as the Eisenhower freeway project created a new cartography of driving needs. Most authorities now agree that the beauty of the enfolding cure lies precisely in the fact that its practitioners, inspired by the vastness of the project and by the excitement of Kennedy’s post-assassination survival, bravely admitted, early on, that the cure was a dreamy and even absurd concept, and that therein lay its wild effectiveness. The paradox was that the cure was actually often effective, so that the claim of its bogus nature was itself partly bogus.

EDITOR’S NOTE

Historians have speculated at great length about the concentration of veterans in the state of Michigan. Most have resorted to a geographical theory, in which its peninsular shape acted as a lure. (The same theory can be applied to other end points, Provincetown, Key West, etc.) Wayward souls find themselves longing for some terminus.

A smaller group of historians has argued that the Black Flag motorcycle gang, originally twenty or so in number, helped spark the mass migration of vets to the state. Others simply argue that a large number of vets, particularly those who served the second big escalation after the first assassination attempt, originally came from the Rust Belt region and were simply returning home. Whatever the reason, a decision was made to establish a transitional Grid stretching from the southeastern shore of Lake Michigan, north to Benton Harbor, east to Kalamazoo, and then straight down highway 131 to the southern border. A year later, the Grid was extended to include Battle Creek and the area west of Route 69. The extension area remained rebellious, with some farmers and townspeople refusing to evacuate.

As the designated Psych State, and with hospitals, reenactment chambers, and a release Grid area in place, Michigan received a vast share of federal Psych Corps funding. Before there was an established cure rate, or true understanding of the nature of enfolding, the great hospital boom was in full swing. Magnificent edifices of mental care sprang up in the countryside in every architectural style, from retro castles to immense geodesic dome structures. Grid signs sprouted in equal numbers. The Grid symbol appeared on handbags, paper dresses, and tattoo parlor walls. The idea appears to have been to systemize the unholdable.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The fires began in two places, the outskirts of Flint and the center of Detroit, before spreading house to house and across fields and uniting near Auburn Hills. All sparked by the raid on the Blind Pig in Detroit that night by the police, who were steeped in the dialectic of revolution and keyed into the idea that a revolt might start at any time. It was on the 266th anniversary of the day that Cadillac stepped ashore on what became known as de trois . The National Guard came in to shoot up at the “snipers” after the police were repelled. Soon the Detroit streets were ringing with the chants of “Motown, if you don’t come around, we are going to burn you down.” An aide to the mayor came up with the idea of burn squads. They would get ahead of the riots with Molotov cocktails and flamethrowers. Let it burn, the governor reportedly said. But the dynamics were simply too intricate to sort out accurately. The big map in police headquarters couldn’t handle the information that was being teletyped in — squad cars akimbo, nobody sure where anybody was, rumors spreading even faster than the fire. The governor had begged Kennedy for federal troops, telling him the whole state was at risk, and the federal troops were mustering along the Ohio border — the rumble of tanks could be heard in Toledo. The rumors had had a head start on the fires, anyway: a revolution was at hand. The Negro was going to avenge three hundred years of slavery. The uncured vets would join in; the vagabonds, the waywards. Already the structure of the Grid area was in negotiation; eminent-domain strictures were being argued in the Supreme Court that summer. Several thousand farmers and home owners were bracing for the order to move. Some had taken the offer and moved down to Indiana, where state law forbade the construction of Grid zones. If the wayward want to be wayward, let them do it in Michigan, Senator Clam of Indiana said. Senator Holly, of Michigan, led the fight for the creation of a Grid zone for Michigan, allowing for a safe place — not wilderness, but not urbane — in which certain patients, after treatment, might go to have a controlled transitional experience before being released into the general society.