14.05.2020 Omphalos, the demon of fiction

An idea for this blog came to me in a dream last night. In previous posts we talked about the line between fact and fiction often becoming blurred. In my dream I summon a demon called Omphalos, who I’m not sure existed until I dreamt him up. Omphalos, the demon of fiction and deception.

Omphalos could be a fallen seraph who attempted to remove the barrier between the corporeal physical realm and the ethereal of ideas in order to create a single perfect omnipresent truth, both real and unreal. There’s no way of knowing if he failed, or the experiment is still going on.

The name Omphalos, means centre. It’s a concept of reality you can hang everything else off, a belief system. Omphalos could be thought of as the centre or cross over between the two worlds of our reality and the fictional one, or of spinning lies and carving delusions in the minds of humans, depending on your point of view.

It manifests, from one angle as a scruffy imaginative child and from another a giant winged rat, and another a writhing confusion forever collapsing into itself vomiting impossibilities and pushing unrealities into reality and realities into unreality. If you encounter it remember the name, knowing a demon’s true name gives you some protection and control over it.

Delusion, confusion, lies, hallucination, deceit, falsehoods are other names for fantasy, fiction, poetry, songs, fables, myth. Omphalos is both.

In the dream, I succeed in summoning Omphalos who helps write this story in which I summon him, but the world stops making sense. The ordinary rules of reality are suspended. I am confused as to whether or not that has actually happened.

Is Omphalos real or just a Dungeons and Dragons character or did I make it up and in the process actually summon it?

I dreamed the other day the magic square of twigs had an opening on a different side to last time. I went back today and, I think the kids playing around there had just knocked a few out the way, but it was there.

If things start getting a little strange, I apologise.

Well, stranger. The last week was really tough. Confronted with the horror of what our government is actually doing, that strange, shameful Freudian death drive I mentioned the other day has gone away. It is terrible. It seems like at every step they have done what a comic book villain would do in their position. Basically the lockdown is ended, everyone is being forced back to work and we still have a very high death rate.

They’re not testing nearly as much as they say they are which wouldn’t be enough anyway and they only have 10% of the contact tracers they need. I’ve applied to do it through various recruiters but so far haven’t had any luck, and there’s no one you can actually speak to. My hospital porter job never happened, it was quite hard when I realised it wasn’t going to either. And the deaths on the news have been relentless.

I tried to cheer myself up thinking about King Arthur, but it only did so much good. I think for the moment retreating into these fantasy worlds is really helpful. Who would want to be in reality right now?

All the ‘it’ll be over by Christmas’ optimism I had at the beginning is starting to go. My hopes of a better world are fading. The key workers and NHS ‘heroes’ we’ve been applauding every Thursday evening are getting another pay freeze, after just coming out of an eight year one, which in real terms with inflation is actually a pay cut. They are keeping furlough for now but expecting employers to pay part of it, they’re kicking out all the homeless they put up in hostels, and not distributing the protective gear they have, because if they do they won’t have it which would be a bad story in the press. I’ve been applying for loads more jobs, I saw one the other day at £8.21 an hour which is now below minimum wage. Looks like we’re heading into the worst recession ever, and our government think they can just carry on as normal. The Labour party said it is against it’s values to suspend rents. There is an ugly propaganda war going on.

It’s heart-breaking to see what’s been done to this country, it will be painful, but at least we won’t be able to deny what’s happening any more.

I managed to see some of my family in person yesterday. The rules are unclear, they’ve changed, they say you can see one at a time or something, but we just kept our distance. It was my niece’s second birthday. She loves dragons, so I drew one for her and we got her a stuffed dragon toy and book. It was lovely to see her, a badly needed dose of optimism.

The graffiti is getting very 70s. Near my sister’s house someone wrote IRA on a wall. Among all the tags and nonsense is quite a lot of political stuff. BLOOD ON GOV’S HANDS and KEY WORKERS BETRAYED sprayed in red around Tottenham. Quite a few FUCK BORIS around Bethnal Green. I think there’s trouble ahead, a lot of people will have absolutely nothing to lose soon.

One last thing, I'm still getting bits from the eponymous pizza place. 

It looks like someone moved into the bike shed on a more permanent basis, and they've kicked them out. Bit sad really, someone and their dog trying to get by. I would have made a deal, tidy up and you can stay. I mean it looks like they were doing their best to do that anyway. What good is it kicking someone when they're down? 

I’m hoping for the best. Try and get any job and work it out from there.

Look after yourselves.