Basal Ganglia Read online

  Basal Ganglia

  by Matthew Revert

  A Lazy Fascist Love Story

  ALSO BY MATTHEW REVERT

  A Million Versions of Right

  The Tumours Made Me Interesting

  How To Avoid Sex

  Lazy Fascist Press

  an imprint of Eraserhead Press

  205 NE Bryant Street

  Portland, Oregon 97211

  www.lazyfascistpress.com

  ISBN: 978-1-62105-127-5

  Copyright ©2013 by Matthew Revert

  Cover Art Copyright ©2013 by Matthew Revert

  Edited by Cameron Pierce

  Proofread by Vanessa Rossetto and Robert Hamilton

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  All persons in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance that may seem to exist to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental or for parody or satirical purposes. This is a work of fiction.

  Printed in the USA.

  “it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience

  which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it”

  —Frank O’Hara

  1.

  He is Rollo. Rather, at one point he was assigned the name ‘Rollo’ and was referred to as such. Rollo’s name now lives beyond memory. Unuttered in longer than time recalls. A name signifies identity. Something Rollo has lost. The complex information packaged in the label ‘Rollo’ is dead data. Why voice a name when the need to differentiate one from the other disappears?

  A second person shares existence in the fort. This second person has also been assigned a name, but like ‘Rollo,’ it has lost its voice. In a world of two, who is addressed if not the other? What use is a name?

  She is Ingrid. Unlike Rollo, Ingrid remembers her name. Although unvoiced, its memory survives in writing. Ingrid wants her name and protects it. The death of memory within Rollo calls toward what little memory Ingrid still has, wishing to consume her morsels of identity, rendering both he and she empty. Ingrid knows Rollo’s name. It features in her secret writings as regularly as her own. This way, a part of Rollo survives, even if he does not know it. Even if she does not want it. Within Ingrid, the data comprising each name fights against complete corruption.

  He is Rollo and she is Ingrid.

  …

  Lost in the repetition of another in a never-ending set of maintenance tasks, Rollo feels the peace of insignificance. Within the endless hunger of the pillow fort there is no outlet for significance. His hands perform with the intricacy of Bharatanatyam dance, forever reinforcing the fort walls. There is a drive to protect, but the danger is ambiguous. Commitment has a way of becoming purpose and Rollo’s commitment to protect Ingrid has become the sole arbiter of reality. There are always slackened blankets to tauten, or pillows to plump. Maintenance never ends, a fact that comforts Rollo, solidifying his purpose. A projection of external danger must remain stoked with new fear, lest it ebb toward complacency. Complacence has no place within the illusory movement of stasis. When one commits to upholding the illusion, stasis becomes purpose.

  Rollo has concluded as an individual. Charting his history suggests nothing about his present as the divide between then and now consists of an ambiguity. One suggesting the existence of something long-faded. Even a memory still burning with its inspiration possesses fraudulence. Rollo was once an accumulation of incorrectly remembered experience. It would be inaccurate to suggest Rollo has no concept of his pre-fort self. He understands intellectually how he moved from where he was to where he is, but the impression of experience is absent. What may be considered a remnant of memory lacks any tangible core, only succeeding in further clouding a grasp on what might have been. For Rollo, the consumptive power of an eidetic experience is an unknown concept.

  It is in this context Rollo’s daily life is carried out. As is typical for those engaged in what consumes them, he bemoans the encroachment of hunger and sleep. Anything severing him from his self-imposed duties is regarded with frustration bordering on contempt. His life has been sacrificed to the fort’s need, which he satisfies from the Parietal Chamber. Within this Chamber are the myriad building tasks he invents, in various stages of completion. Wherever possible, maintenance work is performed here and transported to the area of need once complete.

  He is replacing the stuffing in a pillow from the Prefrontal Chamber. His eyes are no longer required when performing this task. Hands subservient to muscle memory divorced from conscious understanding, moving in patterns. There is a time before pattern when all that exists is imperfect sequence. Sequence that alters with increased understanding. Steps removed. Steps added. Steps streamlined. Eventually the steps are forgotten. Merely performed. The pattern becomes its own existence and Rollo is a simple conduit. This dissolution from conscious engagement suits Rollo. He exists in clouds that float above his performance. Within these clouds, his mind reaches toward the next task. The next pattern.

  As his hands perform – one gaping the emptied pillow, the other filling it with new stuffing – Rollo’s eyes survey the Parietal Chamber. He marvels at the light bleeding through from the Occipital Chamber. A flawless level of luminescence. Detail is revealed as needed. His many projects sit around him. Some forgotten, most simply waiting their turn to be forgotten. He must devote his time to essential maintenance, but sometimes wishes there were an opportunity to explore non-essential projects. Fort beautification. Luxury. A prototype bed sits to one side. One made of higher quality materials that adapts readily to individual contours. Something Rollo believes Ingrid would appreciate. The belief has no evidence to support it. There is a possibility Ingrid communicated her discomfort at some point. He engages in a simulacrum of recall that retrieves illusory moments. He makes a mental note to clarify Ingrid’s position regarding a new bed and immediately forgets it. The new bed is an item of luxury and must remain abandoned.

  The pillow’s innards have been replaced. Rollo considers the old stuffing strewn about his feet and cannot bring himself to dispose of it. There was a time when this grey, deflated filling was pristine. When it impregnated the pillow with the promise of comfort. There is no possible maintenance for the stuffing. Rollo knows he cannot imbue it with newfound life. The stuffing is a casualty of the maintenance process. Replaced and forgotten. Keeping it would serve no purpose. He is best to dispose of it in the Medulla Shaft and continue as though it never existed. He collects it. Hugs it to his body and feels within it a desire to expire. He walks to the Medulla Shaft and lets it fall. The pieces float and interact with one another as if to say goodbye before disappearing into darkness.

  The knowledge he has to let go is much worse than the moment it happens. We invent attachments that feed on past loss. Silent fear finds its voice in objects we keep, reaching a volume we cannot ignore when goodbye arrives. Deflated stuffing can be more than its form. Deflated stuffing can become a manifestation of every forced goodbye. The manifestation finds resistance when the object is discarded. As the stuffing becomes immersed in the collected waste of the fort, he has already forgotten there was a time where he cherished it. A time when it reached toward past goodbyes. The newly plumped pillow is studied closely. It requires no further work. He moves it to an area of the chamber designated for completed projects. Until he delivers the rejuvenated pillow to the Prefrontal Chamber, the job’s conclusion lies in wait. Rollo withholds this final step. The memory of this success will disappear upon delivery, and this memory is one he would like to experience a
while longer. Before it becomes the numb expanse of familiar mental nothing. He will deliver the pillow when it is time to eat. As food sustains him, the memory will disappear and Rollo’s nothingness will fill with the next task – the nightly atmospheric readings. Numbers will be deciphered, recorded, measured and analyzed. Discrepancies will be investigated.

  Satiation via repetition. A comforting sense that no process meets its end. Rollo is a warrior gorging on the excess of minutiae. His insignificance redefines significance. Turns it around. He inflates the smallest unit of measurement until it possesses enough size to break it down further.

  …

  Unless they are eating or sleeping, Rollo and Ingrid never occupy the same place. The fort has dictated the two should exist in separation, as though unified presence will invite discord. The discord refuses to acknowledge itself. They have been together since the age of thirteen. Both share the same birthday. Neither remembers when that is.

  Sometimes Rollo worries he will forget Ingrid. Most days pass without her entering his mind. On occasion he will take a break to try and remember her name. ‘Ingrid’ is a word that has died inside him. It is not rare for panic to thrive when the erasure of ‘Ingrid’ from Rollo’s lexicon is reflected upon. The dream sense of falling shifts his equilibrium, forcing him down, absconding with his breath. Light becomes difficult to discern and he must wait for it to flood back in. He strives to forget that he has forgotten.

  He has taken to sitting in the Cerebellum Chamber and trying to write letters to Ingrid. A one-sided epistolary attempt to keep Ingrid alive within him. He forgets so much. Written language has escaped him. There are words he sees when his eyes are closed, but these mental words cannot be conveyed in written form. He wishes everything could be communicated in numbers. Numerical values can convey untold complexity. Numerical values can calculate the world. Yet there is no number that equates to Ingrid. If there is, he has not managed to find it. The divide between the fading Ingrid in his mind and the physical entity he understands to be Ingrid increases. Rollo believes in the language-bereft letters he tries to write. They are a bridge, something that exists beyond him but because of him.

  These reflections bother Rollo. There is always maintenance that must be done. Reflection is a punishment. The antithesis of action and progress. Maintenance must be done.

  2.

  Expansive love exists within Ingrid deprived of outlet, growing with the weight of unexpressed feeling. Feeding on her perpetual fight to suppress everything it wants to be. She cannot remember what she looks like, but often wonders if she is beautiful. How could such love exist where there is no beauty? There are mirrors in the Occipital Chamber, but they are used for surveillance. The mirrors reflect like any other, but they are already married to a process, and Ingrid has no desire to become a part of it. She believes in the possibility of her beauty because she cannot recall anything she considers ugly. Everything possesses beauty within the details of its details. Ingrid knows details. They are the atoms that cling together and form all things.

  Meditation is found in the sensation of her hands moving over the contours of her face. Skin surprises her. Touch ignites her. A beard pushed through her chin some time ago. Cobweb-thin at first, but evolving with the assistance of time into something thick and strong. Her face wears this masculine trait with feminine pride. Everything her body exhales into existence is something of which to be proud. How could any manifestation of her body be incorrect? Mental fingers sift through memories and find nothing. If women have no beard, then why do I have a beard? I am a woman and I have a beard, therefore women have beards.

  Ingrid sits in the Prefrontal Chamber, turning a pencil in her hand, watching it with interest. Observation is Ingrid’s art. Like Rollo, she lacks connectedness with any aspect of herself before the fort. Observation replenishes mental content, replacing forgotten memories. The pencil in her hand is not merely a means to an end. The pencil is a buzzing swarm of electricity embedded with history. It came from somewhere. An idea turned reality. A factory line somewhere at some time gave birth to it. Somehow, from the whorl of machinery, it emerged and found its way to this moment. When Ingrid observes this pencil, she imposes a history upon it. Each imposed history is an effort to impose a history on herself. Unlike Rollo, she longs to be more than now. For Ingrid, everything preceding this moment in time informs this moment in time and every moment to follow.

  It is in the Prefrontal Chamber that Ingrid feels most comfortable. She casts her gaze from the pencil turning in her hand to the notebook sitting before her. The pencil wears a newly sharpened point. A point she will blunt with words. There are so many words living inside Ingrid and she wants to write them all. She wants to explore every possible sequence of words. She wants to know how words relate to one another. If words exist in conflict, she wants to observe the conflict.

  Most of Ingrid’s words, in one way or another, find their way toward Rollo. ‘Rollo’ is a word she will never admit she remembers. Ingrid would never let Rollo read her words, but most of them are devoted to him. She seeks honesty with her words and often feels guilt at the contempt they reveal. During the brief moments they share, it is difficult for Ingrid to look at Rollo and for him to look at her. It often feels like an unspoken game between the two – looking everywhere but at each other. She wonders if the two should attempt a conversation that probes deeper than Rollo’s maintenance narrative, but knows it is unlikely. She fears any attempt to probe beneath Rollo’s most exterior layers will reveal love within him that matches hers.

  Ingrid has noticed an evolution in her writings. They extend beyond words and have started including diagrams. An unknown fascination with concentric circles has developed. Ingrid’s hand seems compelled, beyond her intervention, to draw circles within circles within circles, concluding with dots wanting to be smaller circles. Were it possible, she would shrink herself down. She knows what looks like a dot must contain vistas of space in which to draw more circles. If only she were small enough to experience the extra space she knows is there. This space is wasted.

  Beneath the circles she writes about her desire to shrink. Longing has been building within her for some time. Days are passed wondering what this longing might be, but instead of answers, she finds only an amplification of the longing. At its worst, she envies Rollo and wishes to lose herself in the same menial activities that occupy the totality of his mind. She thinks too much, an activity that at times strikes her as absurd. What purpose do thoughts serve when they lack a means by which to manifest?

  She runs a hand through her beard and attributes to each bristle an identity filled with complexity and wisdom. She wishes Rollo had a beard and wonders why one does not grow. What lurks beneath the surface of his skin preventing it? Does he ever envy hers? Her hands would like to feel Rollo’s chin, but are terrified of touching him. The concentric circles on the page beckon her toward their center.

  She writes the next in a sequence of numbers on the top-right corner and makes her way toward the Frontal Chamber. The Frontal Chamber belongs to Ingrid. Rollo does not know she spends time there each day. He believes this chamber disturbs Ingrid, but he is wrong. Within this chamber, darker than the others, Ingrid feels a symbiotic connection. Whatever might have occurred here during the construction of the fort married her to this chamber. In this marriage, Rollo has never had a place. This chamber is an opportunity for Ingrid to try and understand what it means to be her, severed from any dynamic attached to Rollo.

  Within the Frontal Chamber is a cavity beneath the floor. She often feels as though the fort belongs to Rollo, which is why this space is so precious. By lifting the layer of blankets that comprise the floor, she is able to gain access. In this cavity Ingrid files everything she writes. She dares not stay inside the Frontal Chamber too long as time has a way of escaping when one is immersed in the self. When Rollo returns from his maintenance for supper, it is important to Ingrid that he find her in the Prefrontal Chamber – like always. It
is a pattern he has come to expect and Ingrid knows he needs his patterns. Ingrid’s own pattern relies on the successful execution of Rollo’s. She allows herself to luxuriate in this forbidden space for a moment after filing the latest writing. This chamber feeds her in a way that defies expression. Thoughts that terrify her elsewhere fill her with comfort here.

  When she returns to the Prefrontal Chamber, she wonders how long she has been gone, then immediately counters this with nonchalance. All that matters is Rollo is not back yet. The tryst between Ingrid and the Frontal Chamber remains their secret. For all Ingrid knows, Rollo has a space just like it for himself. She hopes he does, but knows with a great deal of certainty he does not.

  3.

  A limbo exists between the waking and sleeping world. The waking world has no place in the silent darkness. We exchange the day for a transition into a facsimile of death that masks complex explosions of biological function unfolding within. These functions wait for the mind to disappear. The limbo between wake and sleep is a ceremony that mourns the loss of another day.

  Rollo’s childhood suggested insomnolence, but his sleeplessness was a considerable act of will. In a time when Rollo still had the ability to remember, he remembered the wooden crib that housed him each night. Placed down so gently, as though he were in danger of breaking, onto soft bedding replete with infancy’s understanding. His arms reaching for the arms that had just released him. Wet lips pressed against his forehead, leaving a dampness that cooled before disappearing. The warm, orange hue of lamplight designed to grant him peace.