Incompatible

by Mauricio R B Campos

  “How did you know it was Giacomo? That the confinement was here?” he wanted to know.

  “I didn’t say anything, but Erica, my friend, had already prevented me as for this Giacomo. They worked together in the City Hall and she assured he was a scoundrel that had even blackmailed the mayor to raise money. I knew he lived here, because it was where he gave the interview for the documentary, beside the sculpture, and earlier today you had brought me here to know the ecovillage. So, I knew where it was.”

  “But this doesn’t explain your knowing it was him...”

  “I heard you saying on the phone. When I was on the road, the call got silent, but it didn’t drop, so I heard you saying you had recognized that goofy.”

  The sirens sound increased and then they could see the shine from the lights of the police cars in front of the house. So, they distinguished the sound of the cars stopping abruptly in the garage and in the street. The lights were turned on again, and the two remained in tense expectation, then the back door was abruptly open, and a police officer appeared with a gun in his hands, making tactic poses and tracking the entire perimeter in search of threats.

  “This is the kidnapped!”, Lara shouted, before they were wrongly shot.

  The police officer agreed with the head and soon other several ones came through the door. A sergeant and a lieutenant came and greeted them.

  “Are you ok?”

  “If you could set me free from the handcuffs...”

  “You broke down the face of the suspect. Is he a little fatty hairless individual?”, the lieutenant asked Lara.

  She stewed her chest:

  “Is he so bad?”

  “Did you catch him?”, Arthur asked.

  It was the time for the policeman to stew his chest:

  “Yes, the scoundrel tried to escape, but he bumped into our team, we enclosed him at the exit of the farm, he was quite burst. I hope he gets blind, congratulations, miss, you did an excellent work!”, the official smiled.

  A Bearded man of the civilian police appeared with a badge hanging on his chest and a gun on his waist:

  “But you ran a serious risk, little miss, if the gun was true, you perhaps wouldn’t be here to tell us the story.”

  “If you had come to do your work, I wouldn’t have had to do everything by myself.”

  The police officers looked at each other, with that expression of it’s always the same story.

  When a military policeman released Arthur from the handcuffs with the help of a plier, he looked at his wrists hurt.

  “It’s not true handcuffs, it’s from sex shop”, the police officer informed, with the voice full of despise.

  “It seems this criminal was all a fake. Fake gun, fake handcuffs, nothing was true”, the civilian police officer concluded.

  “It’s because he was not a true criminal...” the official completed.

  “But he will be a genuine detainee”, Arthur said stretching his arms.

  “How many years do you think he will take?”

  The police investigator was the one to respond.

  “For private confinement, he may take up to five years, but if he left a message in the mailbox asking for rescue, the promoter may get up to fifteen years of stay in one of our pleasurable penal installations.”

  The bearded man asked them to follow them to the police station, they needed to undergo corpus delicti and there was much paperwork to be completed. The expertise was coming.

  They passed by inside the house that was full of policemen looking for more incriminating items. When they reached the garden, they were taken aback by the movement. The ecovillage was around the residence, whose entry was surrounded by yellow tapes. They passed by the curious mass as they headed to the civilian police car.

  Placido managed to approach and apologized for the criminal attitude of the ecovillage accountant.

  “I never imagined we had a criminal among us.”

  “I know. It’s all right, Placido, it’s not your fault”, Arthur got into the car.

  “I don’t understand, Arthur, they are saying Giacomo kidnapped you to ask for a rescue. But weren’t you a salesman?”

  Arthur lowered his head and kept silent, while the car slowly opened the way among the curious people that had taken the street.

  Lara, who was also at the back seat of the car, consoled him with a hug:

  “All of us have our secrets, Arthur, you still don’t know mine...” He stared her in the eyes, full of love and understanding:

  “Does it have to do with these tattoos you’ve always hidden from me?”

  “I think the time to hide is left behind. Arrested in that confinement.

  Now it’s new life, isn’t it?”

  He replied to her question with a kiss.

  EPILOGUE

  One year after...

  Lara worked on her client’s skin as her mind wandered through memories of one year before. That day would be Giacomo’s final judgment, and the happenings of the year before returned to her mind. So many things changed since then, as she became more and more Arthur’s intimate and companion. Right after the occurrence, she told him her story with Chaos Magic and all her journey for the ego break to materialize.

  He made sure to call Fermin and ask what he thought of that all. The answer of the wizard for the questioning was so remarkable that she never forgot it:

  “This Chaos Magic is not the only one. There are others. I believe the intellectual understanding you regard, in opposition to the physical, chemical and psychological resistance may not have as its sole antidote the aggressive change of paradigms. Those experiences have never had their efficiency proved, and nothing indicates this. The psychological studies indicate exactly the opposite: the destruction of the personality will always end up causing a return or realignment, even backward, to the departure point. I believe it’s not intelligent to destroy all the pieces that you will later necessarily need to remount the apparatus. For the very human nature such fact is impossible, departing from the principle that we are the fruits of the evolution of our consciousness”.

  From then on, both searched for an alignment in their lives, a conversion not for the point of departure, but for a position of balance between the idealized and the possible.

  Lara finally cleaned the skin of Erica, who was receiving her first tattoo. It was a cuddly black cat with its little paw raised to a little floating red heart. The tattoo was drawn in her calf:

  “So, do you like your first tattoo?”

  “I never thought I could say this, but I love it.”

  The tattooist smiled with that comment, since she began to tattoo in some weekends, as a guest in the Alexandrina Tattoo, that was the tattoo she enjoyed doing the most. It was little and relatively simple, but it was such a satisfaction to leave her mark in the skin of her dear friend, who was extremely loyal since they knew each other.

  The tattooist, owner of the studio, called her; she wanted to show her something on TV:

  “Take a look, it’s about the judgment!”

  On the TV, the newscaster had already given the details of the crime, now it was showing the judgment:

  “... the kidnapper Giacomo Ferragalli was sentenced to four years and a half and have to meet at least one third of the sentence in closed system. Since the period the kidnapper was arrested waiting for

  judgment is computed in the sentence, the defense lawyer informed that if he has a good behavior, in six or seven months he may go for the semi-open regime or for conditional release.”

  The image was now of street interviewees, people who were enjoying the breeze in the square or waiting for the bus at the stop responded what they thought of this sentence with statements of scorn to the legal power with the famous commonplace sentences: that’s why Brazil is like this, this is an absurd, we’re still going to sustain this vagabond in prison, and other pearls of the same meaning and content.

  In the studio, the same question was asked to Lara herself:
<
br />   “I don’t know, I think one day in jail must be already a hell, let alone one year and seven months.”

  “But don’t your fear that he leaves prison and comes behind you?”, the guy who worked as a clerk in the studio asked.

  “This Giacomo is a great coward. I don’t think he’s going to attack us, but anyhow, since the occurrence, Arthur is always attended by a security guard.”

  Lara made up the tattoo material in her Félix the cat, and son Arthur got into the studio to bring her. He got in, greeted the persons in the place and asked Lara to hurry up:

  “Today we’re having the opening of our wood burner and oven in the community kitchen, we cannot get late”, he explained.

  When he was impressed with the kidnap and all the twists around him this had resulted, he decided he should not remain at Tibiriçá Ecovillage anymore. However, this didn’t mean he was resigning to that way of life he learnt to enjoy. He was entitled to explore his family’s farm after negotiation with his parents. Arthur decided to transform it into a high standard ecovillage, a pioneering and much more ambitious project than Tibiriçá. Lara was drawing the installations, and their team still had a landscape architect, an agronomist specialist in permaculture and a master builder.

  Lara said goodbye to the tattoo studio people and got in the car. They went to Realignment Ecovillage, where they were building a new future together.

  WARNING

  About ketamine: The recreational use of ketamine is dangerous and should be avoided, because, in addition to other harmful reactions, it may cause Olney injuries. Olney injuries, also known as NMDA receptors antagonism neurotoxicity, are potential forms of brain damages caused by high dosages of dissociative anesthetics, especially those regarded as non-competitive channel blockers NMDA, like ketamine, phencyclidine (PCP) and dextromethorphan. This is a fiction work: the only place where these drugs are safe is within this fictional universe.

  About quimiognosis: All drugs are poisonous, and the substances mentioned can act as lethal toxins. With many natural psychoactive components, the difference between fatal dosage and merely psychoactive dosage is impossible to determine by amateur methods. This is a fiction work: the only place where these drugs are safe is within this fictional universe.

  Be faithful to yourself and find your way.

  CHAOS MAGIC — GLOSSARY

  Alastrai Skull: Not much is known about him, he was only known by those who had contact with his blog in BlogSpot. It may be a pseudonym that sometimes is found in Darknet.

  Aleister Crowley: Aleister Crowley, or Edward Alexander Crowley, was a member of the Golden Aurora Hermetic Order and influent British occultist, responsible for the foundation of the Thelema teaching. He was the co-founder of A∴A∴ and later the leader of O.T.O.

  Banishment: Magic action of protecting or cleaning the subtle environment.

  Chaosphere: The symbol was created by the fiction and comics author

  Michael Moorcock, during the production of the work Elric de Menilboné. The symbol later appeared in RPGs of several titles and seems to have been used for some time by the D&D system. According to Michael Moorcock, the idea seems to have come from the wind rose, in view of the directions you may follow and choose. This definition was used in the sixties; after that, it was used by Peter Carrol in the Order Illuminates of Thanateros (IOT).

  Chaos Magic: Chaos magic, also spelled chaos magick, is a contemporary magical practice. It was initially developed in England in the 1970s, drawing heavily from the philosophy of artist and occultist Austin Osman Spare. Sometimes referred to as "success magic" or "results-based magic", chaos magic claims to emphasize the attainment of specific results over the symbolic, ritualistic, theological or otherwise ornamental aspects of other occult traditions.

  Chaos magic has been described as a union of traditional occult techniques and applied postmodernism – particularly a postmodernist skepticism concerning the existence or knowability of objective truth. Chaos magicians subsequently treat belief as a tool, often creating their own idiosyncratic magical systems and frequently borrowing from other magical traditions, religious movements, popular culture and various strands of philosophy.

  Early leading figures include Peter J. Carroll and Ray Sherwin.

  Even that a few techniques are exclusive of the Chaos Magick, it is fundamental and deliberately borrows from other systems of belief the central trust that belief is an instrument. Some common inspiration sources include several areas, such as scientific fiction, scientific theories, traditional ceremonial magic, neoshamanism, east philosophy, individual religions and experiences. Notwithstanding the great individual variety, the chaos wizards frequently work with chaotic humorous paradigms, such as Hundun of Taoism and Eris of Discordianism. (Adapted from Wikipedia).

  Chaos Magick: The same of Chaos Magick.

  Choronzon: Also known as ‘Coronzon’ or by the number ‘333’. A devil originated from the writings of the sixteenth century by the occultists Edward Kelley and John Dee, in the Enochian magic system. In the twentieth century, it became an important element in the Thelemic system, founded by Aleister Crowley, where Choronzon is the inhabitant of the abyss, and it is said to be the last great obstacle in the way of the Insider. Thelemites believe that, in case it is found with the necessary preparation, its function will be that of ‘destroying’ the Ego, which allows the follower to move beyond the abyss, to reach the Pyramids City.

  It’s also known as the Dispersion Devil and is described by Crowley as a temporary personification of the delirious and unconscious forces that occupy the abyss. In this system, Choronzon receives its form as an evocation, so it can be dominated.

  Egregore: An Egregore is how we call the spiritual strength created from the sum of collective energies (a field of extra physical energies created in the astral plane from the energy emitted by a group of people through their vibration standards) resulting from the congregation of people. Peter J. Carroll describes the psychical force of all living beings that have already inhabited the Planet Earth to have created a being formed by parts of all animals and vegetables that exist and have already existed, and this being would be Baphomet.

  Evocation: Evocation is the art of dealing with magic beings or entities through several actions that create them or contact them and allow them to be invoked or commanded by means of pacts and exorcism.

  IOT: The Magic Pact of the Illuminates of Thanateros is a community of individuals who practice magic individually and in groups, and support, inspire and stimulate one another to explore the large field of magic. In an abbreviated form, this entity is called ‘The Pact’ or ‘IOT’ (English acronym for Illuminates of Thanateros), and the first came from the second one.

  The first announcement of the formation of the IOT occurred in TNE (The New Equinox), the eclectic magazine of occultism by Ray Shervin, published between 1976 and 1979. Peter Carrol was a regular collaborator and wrote frequently about his trips to the Far East, and sometimes signed on behalf of the Psychonaut Institute. The articles of this period include The Posture of the Death, Daring, Will, Gnosis, Keeping Silence, The Siddhis Way and Ego. (extracted from the The Book, available in the South-American section of the Illuminates of Thanateros ([http://www.iot-sulamerica.com.br/].)

  Khaosfuzer: A legendary Servant that can promote the change of destination of the simplest mortal people. A few have heard to talk about it out of the high initiating Irish orders.

  Liber Null and the Psychonaut: Books by Peter J. Carrol, basic for the understanding of Chaos Magic, published in Brazil by Penumbra Livros.

  Magist: The follower of Chaos Magic.

  Magistic: Relative to Chaos Magic.

  The Pact: “The pact is a vehicle for the search for the Great Work of the magic and the pleasures and benefits resulting from this search. The Pact also works as a psycho-historic strength in the Aeon battle” (Peter Carrol, 1992).

  Servant: Servants are semiconscious entities created to perform a given task. Initi
ally, they use part of the vital force of the magist to be created, but later they can have power loaded in several ways. The three steps to create a server are:

  Creating a relationship: define what the servant must do and its limits;

  Lending energy: the vital energy of the magist, initially;

  Banishment: the servant must be forgotten by his creator, so that it be free to do what it was created to do.

  Synchronicity: synchronicity is a concept Carl Gustav Jung developed to define happenings that relate not by causal relation, but by meaning relation. This way, it is necessary that we consider the synchronistic events not related with the principle of causality, but for having an equal or similar meaning. Synchronicity is also described by Jung as “significant coincidence”.

  The expression was used for the first time in scientific publications in 1929, but Jung took still 21 years to conclude the work Synchronicity: one principle of acausal connections, where he exposes and proposes the beginning of the discussion about the subject. One of his last works was, according to his own opinion, that of the more detailed preparation due to the complexity of the theme and the impossibility to reproduce the events in a controlled environment.

  In simple terms, synchronicity is the experience of the occurrence of two (or more) events that coincide in a single manner that is significant for the person (or persons) who lived this ‘significant coincidence’, and this meaning suggests an underlying standard, a synchrony (from Wikipedia).

  The Forty Servants: The Forty Servants are a creation of Tommie Kelly, of the Adventures in Woo Woo. The forty blades may be used both as oracle and as an instrument of magic. Kelly began to create the servants for his own use with focus on Chaos Magick. When he shared some images in the social networks, some friends became interested and asked to acquire a copy. He formatted A5 cards, but they sold a few. Their purpose was to compose an altar to evoke those energies. The idea of use as an oracle came after, but he expected that people would forget about them some weeks later. Perhaps some 10 sales, he reckoned. What he did not imagine was that so many people would begin to use and talk about them. Several discussion forums were started about the subject; on Facebook, there is the American, the Brazilian and the Spanish forums.