Suspicious to the Core (1 / foYr)

Fearful Symmetry & Other Fables

There seems to have been no response to the classicist ruminations inspired by Nathan’s enchantment and consequent disillusionment with fantasy saturated affair with Dunja. No wonder, given the perplexity of the situation and the pervading mindset deeply steeped in the belief in arousal by decay, insipidness of surfaces, nondescript verbal exchange, absurdity driven mental extravaganza, emotions coded in packages of information about depixelation terabytes per nanosecond, stature estimated based on the number of digitized uploads, regal status of celebrities, power imagined as translatable into the vocabulary of derivatives, semantics of stocks, epistemes of dividends. No wonder, given the hollowness of a communicational tunnel within which verbal chunks bounce around like satellites in pursuit of long lost planets, where inconsolable linguistic lumps wander around unlikely orbits of desire, where detritus of vocabularies are being dispersed across etherized celestial laceworks.

There is a scene in the movie entitled Wassup Rockers (2005) by Larry Clark that is among the ones with the most salient subliminal (for lack of a better word) message. Namely, the scene features two teens seated on a bed in her well off L.A. house. She tells him about her busy father and her words seem to be colliding with their own echo throughout the mansion crammed with riches, and yet, devastatingly empty at the same time. He tells her about the slums where he spends his days hanging around with a gang of the like-minded, excelling in cunning ways of resisting the imposed modes of thinking adopted as norm by the ghetto. They smile to each other. There is nothing pretentious in their communication. There is nothing weird about the weirdness of their stories. Nor is there anything awkward about the way they exchange them. There is, however, the odd detail that in all its multiple disguise of domesticated alienation might even pass for a communicational paradigm. There is a tiny gap within their somewhat hesitant conversation. The girl feels she might sooth the discomfort and says that he can undress if he wants. Nothing spectacularly strange, one would think. And it wouldn’t be were it not for the tone, the context, and the characterization. There is something about the characters--strangers to the worlds of power addicts--that is reflected in the utterance, an invitation to nakedness, that sits uncomfortably with the imposed norms, one of them being coded in the vocabulary of sexuality devalued by hyperinvestment.

One wonders if it is possible to learn anew to appreciate simplicity, and yet not become susceptible to vulgarized emotionality, to immerse oneself in lyric cornucopia, and yet not succumb to the charms of sentimentalism, to exercise the right to ceaseless reciprocal re-discovery of another human being, all the while resisting sensationalism, i.e., to incessantly reclaim the right to the remix—reintegration of those inestimable remnants of the potential for refacement, winning them over from a scavenger grip of deceitful infatuation with freudian-darwinian-babylonian mentality. In a word,  as suggested in the short story entitled “Fearful Symmetry” from the collection War Dances (2009) by Sherman Alexie, one wonders whether it is possible to regain the purity of the dark theater where the memories of the adolescent, unadulterated romance still await to be rediscovered.

It seems that David Cronenberg’s medical narrative is indicative of the possibility to recuperate, i.e., reawaken the realm in question. Interestingly, such invaluable potential lies hidden in the most unlikely of platitudes in the novel—among seemingly adjacent commentaries. One such instance, perhaps, occurs within the conversation between Naomi and Ari of their Tokyo episode. During the interview, Naomi finds out that there is a gap in her erudition. There is, apparently, an essay that could be the key to the mysterious disappearance of Célestine Arosteguy--text that is allegedly a source of information about insect religion, an inspiration for her and, by extension, for Aristide to destroy it. Naomi entertains the idea of lacking knowledge about the crucial essay. For a moment, she recalls her friend Yuki’s ability to shamelessly embrace such a lack and indulge in superficiality. And yet, there is an awareness of a distinction between the two of them (David Cronenberg, Consumed 175), that despite their friendship, each of them remains within their respective boundaries, within one’s distinctiveness. Paradoxically, only so contained can one contribute to the thriving communication with the other human being. In a word, it is perhaps this inexplicable capacity to withdraw before and preserve a distance toward a delusionary image of self-grandeur and omnipotence, and choose the power of weakness instead that is constitutive of disentanglement of knots in the communication channel and (self)dissolving noise.

The potential for the remix stems from the very ambiguity of Naomi’s wake up call. Namely, the narrator’s observation negating identification between her and Yuki might signal Naomi’s denial of  the propensity to flaunt not being familiar with sources such as bug-religion manifesto on which Célestine bases the invitation to a counteract. Naomi might not claim the ability to be in possession of all and any piece of information that can be constitutive of the cultural capital from which the conglomerate called erudition is extrapolated. The observation certainly indicates acknowledgement of the distinction between the two. This awareness of the distance ensuring dissolvement of blurry amalgamation, within which boundaries, distinctiveness, and individuality become suspiciously fluid, is also the anchor to the integrity of selfless, yet re-individualized, fellow humans.

One wonders if Nathan is also capable of discerning such distinctions. Can he disentangle the six breast knot, one wonders. He himself might not have an answer to that question, as he is spiraling further along the corridors of investigation. Partly driven by a professional obligation to excavate as much information as he can in order to harmonize the crumbling jigsaw puzzle, partly tracking the origins of the infection he contracted through the relationship with Dunja, and transmitted it to Naomi. Guilt? Curiosity? Search for remedy? Potential for recuperation.

Naomi knows the name of the “bug.” It is called Roiphe’s disease after Dr. Barry Roiphe. While allegedly noone has had it since 1968 (72), Dunja’s suppressed immunity allowed the infectant to inhabit her body. How did Nathan and Naomi manage to turn their respective bodies into hosts of the pollutant visitant might not be an easily answerable question. The answer to it might not even be a direct response  in the form of an epistemological deciphering apparatus. One rather finds it within the vital ingredient of the redemptive potential of the remix : resistance to noise.

Whether Nathan is attuned to such a streak of inquiry is uncertain. What is quite sure is that in order to find out, he, instead of flying home to New York, goes to Toronto--to the source of information--where the doctor himself resides alongside his mysterious daughter named Chase. Chase is allergic to French due to a trauma she experienced as a second rate, English speaking citizen during her Sorbonne days. Hanging out with the Arosteguy professors, as most of their young philosopher students did, she, too, was infatuated. But, she also seems to have developed immunity to whatever the Paris episode might have engendered as traumatic to her. Her weapon of choice is a techno-philosophy nexus embodied in a miraculous lab of astonishing 3D printing. Her FabrikantBot 2 model is an appliance unlike any other. And yet, she desires a more advanced model, The RepliKator 3, because it can manage colors more faithfully. However, the doctor-father resists buying it.

The technological device is the generator of three dimensional imagery. It spits out stories into the space populated by humans. Those stories can be digitized, uploaded, and posted on the internet. They can be disseminated throughout the web. They can reach readers. Readers can interpret them. One such story might have been the one about the tragedy of Célestine Arosteguy. The other may be a 3D printed “phantom book called Consumed” (240)—the core of Roiphe’s project--that Nathan hopes to have made by the FabrikantBot:”Renewable organic plastic books by the thousands” (240).

Perhaps dispersable, too. Just as the characters in David Cronenberg’s novel are. Scattered across the globe : Célestine is in North Korea, Nathan in Toronto, Naomi abandoned in Tokyo, Aristide reportedly dead in some dodgy corner of that techno mecca. Like planets looking for their orbits. Like satellites in pursuit of their planets. Like 3D imagery searching for the printer. Imagery detached from its signification. Dissolving in etherized proliferation of  melting pixels. By virtue of noise.