Geographical Sketches

The Cartography of Nihilism II: Where the Earth Fails Open

The sheet is a void. No entrance is evident. While the earth weather dominates, it is not total. A crack has opened in the cover. Collapse, not removal. Depth.

Legend

  • Phreatic: tube. Cut full of water. Will at full pressure.
  • Vadose: cut. Air in the void. A stream on the floor.

Water is will, lethe. An individual tunneling, entrained with artistic or philosophical hollows already opened. Earth — cult, idol, the They, the solid on call — has failed open. Water or air occupies the width. The surrounding is no longer entire.

Stations

Crawl

Space opened to a body-width. The minimum void. Chest on the mud, ceiling on the back. Earth failed, but not much. What remains looks like a lead. It is a crack you can occupy and not pass.

Canyon

Vadose. High, narrow, vertical walls. A stream still cutting the floor. Will has not left this reach. Downward, not out.

Borehole

After the phreatic subsides, now air. Round in cross-section, cut by a will that does not wander. The solid is removed entirely.

Maze

Passages intersect — a network of junctions standing ready. Horizontal proliferation. A trap.

Silt Banks

Mud. Fine sediment left by a flood that still visits. Layers of concealment settle here. The sheet begins to call the deposit ground again.

Breakdown

The ceiling yielded. Stones on the floor. Earth no longer entire, but nearly impassable.

Dome

Height. No path up. Space opened overhead, still surrounded. The failure went vertical and remained a room.

Pit

Horizontal stations fail here. A vertical view of the present moment. A break in the labyrinth.

Siphon

Water with the death of earth. The passage descends, fills. Air stops. The void is still being carved.



Read “The Cartography of Nihilism: Two Weathers of Lethe.”

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