Brion Gysin - The Process

“Black Man,” preaches Francis-X. Fard, “must sweep away forever that white man’s fable of Genesis and all the curt, brutish history of the last six millennia. All that rubbish may, indeed, be the history of a sub-race of white freaks first produced by genetic mutation about six thousand years ago but that is of no concern to us. In the Beginning was the Word? Right! Word came, therefore, before Light. Ergo : the Word was Black!

“Go take a look at what’s written all over our mountains down beyond Tam. I’ll have my girls at the office make you a copy of the material I’ve gotten together on this, along with a preface I’m writing for the first book to come out on the subject in French.”

I clearly remember, Freeky looked frightened and said something like: “Don’t you think I should type it, dear; here at home?” Francis simply snapped back. “No!” and that was that. Some spy in his office ran off a Xerox for the eyes of the colonels who were already preparing their coup. That was part of the evidence used against Fard when they overthrew the First Wave government and arrested him, too. Jailing the ex-ministers was simple but, for reasons of international cultural prestige, even the junta jibed at Francis. In the end, they sent them all down to Tam and put them in prison but with Dr. Fard nominally, at least, in charge of the place. The fort is new since you were down there; a military marvel delivered by the Chinese and assembled in a star-shape of stainless-steel sheets designed to bounce back the rays of the sun: I don’t know that it works. The joke of it all is that Fort Tam was ordered by the very same First Wave ministers who find themselves prisoners there in Present Time. Francis is a prisoner, too, really; although his title is splendid enough: Doctor in Charge of the Desert and Civilian Governor of Tam. The fort is now named Tam Psychiatric, but everyone calls it Star Citadel. The junta colonels announced to the world press: “Our revolution does not devour its children: it sends them to hospital!”

We’ve seen this hospital, from thirty thousand feet up; before we were warned off by their radar. It was very clear and we got some good pictures. In them, the fort looks more like a crinkled pop-bottle top at the bottom of the ocean than it does like the Chinese twenty-four pointed star. It can look, if the light hits it right, like a gem on a spar of black glass set out on a tray of fine sand in a jeweler’s window. Due west of there lies Reggan, the atomic center set up by the French. Beyond that, even as the jet flies in a couple of long hours over nothing but idle desert, you begin to see the blue wash of the Atlantic where it separates out from the blue of the sky. Below it, the endless gold bar of the beach bends over a whole arc of the earth and, in the middle of that like a stone set in a ring, stands “Malamut,” alone. Hassan, that’s heaven: that’s home! You’ll see what we’ll do together down there; we’ll start a new world.

Now, what we want to do with you is … or, rather: what we want you to do with us is …

Thaaay!

Yes, Mya; I’m out here recording …

Sorry, Hassan, but that was Mya for Imsak , again; it’s a regular ritual with us like prayer. We like to sustain at least an hour of Ultimate Orgasm several times a day, every day, you see. Or, rather, you don’t! No need at all to put on a show, is there; my dear man whose name is not Hassan? It’s perfectly simple: I won’t. You’ll have to work out your own ratio with Mya when you meet her: I can only tell you again that I am her seventh husband and last. You can see, can’t you, how easily life itself could become just one more fretful fantasy for Mya, as it often has done for many a girl a lot less rich. Mya packs so much power herself that the trick is to keep making it real. What is real can be real only in Present Time, you’ll admit, and that — I’m sure you follow me — is what Imsak is about. The consort “withholds” the Queen “Be” in Perpetual Present Time on the prong of his prick. Without her phallic plungings several times a day into real reality and beyond, she could not be what she is. I’m not her Pygmalion: I don’t claim to have created her deep-strata geology but I have staked it all out. If she should start singing you siren songs about becoming Sultan of the Sahara or some such, just throw it out of your mind: steer clear of that reef. Mya will not, indeed cannot, remarry unless she comes across a man higher in Imsak than I am and I am about to take the Fourth Degree, now.

We are, all of us, about to enter Phase Four, as our cable to “Malamut” ordered today; but each one of us, naturally, has his or her own move to make in the game. I abhor the word and hate having to use it to refer in any way to our activities, but Mya, being a woman, has to be “played with,” of course. Do not make the mistake of playing the Seal over to her; no matter what she may do to try and get it away from you, under any pretext. The moment Mya is in full possession of the Seal of the Sahara, she’ll drop you and it so fast that she’ll shatter both of you: you’ll think the whole thing never happened at all. Imsak , call it “Withholding,” if you like, that is the only control. Withhold the ultimate object from Mya or you are lost. Mya’s ambitions are, like Mya herself, potentially limitless. it would not be good for her or for anybody else if she became what she wants to be: the Ace of Space!

As the man who first uncocked this power-release in Mya by thrusting Present Time perpetually into her, my own next move can be accomplished only in silence — utter and absolute silence. I mean this quite literally, Hanson; don’t laugh. I am about to become as mum as a monk. Time is running out and so is this side of the tape. I have little more to say beyond what I feel I owe you as a fellow-male who has been drawn abruptly into this tale of ours. Mektoub : It was written! The rest is up to you. Be as cautious as you can, of course, for you know that as soon as you have anything like a kingdom, enchanters and conjurers will always drop in from all over Creation to take it away from you, naturally enough. The Saharan Scarab you hold in your hand is the pre-hieroglyphic Emerald Beginning and Ending of Word. So, spin out the rest of the story with Mya. She will be only too glad to give you a glimpse of what our common future holds in store for us all in the Sahara.

One thing. If it should ever become too much for you, Hanson, and you really want out, I’ll tell you one thing you really should keep to yourself: the World is contained in that Word. If you have understood, there is no other mystery. The Way Out is to permutate the zikr: “Rub out the Word …”

The next thing I knew was the telephone ringing outside the door of my room in the old run-down Hotel Duende , where I was staying: down in the Socco Chico, sure enough. As I woke and reached out automatically for my keef and my pipe, my ear caught the insistent flicking of a dry end of Thay’s tape still whisking around and around on the UHER beside my bed. I rolled over to switch it off and checked on the battery. It hadn’t run down too far so I couldn’t have been out all that long. I pulled out the bedside lamp and plugged the UHER in to recharge. My watch had stopped but I could tell more or less what time it must be by the roar of voices coming up through my shutters from the little closed square of the Socco below. The telephone went on ringing out in the hall. In the Duende, they usually let it ring on like that until it rings off by itself. I was surprised to hear somebody answering it: “ Halloo Yass Halloo! ” It sounded oddly like Hamid and, when I peered out, so it was: Hamid in an elegant new white on white striped-silk jellaba; short because he is short, the jellaba swung on the ground. “Yass, the Merikani,” he was saying as he handed me over the phone. I was wondering where he’d got that very expensive jellaba from as, over his shoulder, I saluted a little group of his cousins the Master Musicians in the dimly lit hotel hall. They had shucked off their bright yellow leather slippers and hunkered down against the cold tiled wall with their white woolen hoods up over their heads. They gave me quite a shock, looking so countrified.