Our Clairvoyant Physician
Epistolary short story with 100 collages. An inside-out, upside-down remix of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, hallucinated through a Jules Verne lens. Collages (shown at bottom) and text were made around 2015. In 2025 I processed the collages to resemble spheres, fed them into Midjourney, then stitched the videos into chapters via Adobe Premiere.
“Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth, that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning; that there is always another dawn risen on mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens.” —Emerson
Dear Linus,
You ask if I've been busy? Ridiculously so, I'm afraid. (Buster, however, remains devoted as ever to a life of sloth. Determined to mentor me in the art, he nips my cuffs each morning as I rush to the studio: come back, here is where you belong, we have bones, blankets, all that life requires! But I am a lousy student, failing him at every turn.)
My patients have no conception of the toll. I face them, hands clasped across the table as I dial in, until the voices begin to prickle. At first a hesitant spattering of rain. But soon the gates crack and I am swept along, channeling in tongues the speech of the ghost collective, administering their diagnoses. By day's end I collapse onto the davenport, hoarse, too weary to change into bedclothes. Buster's snout on my chest, his eyes disapproving: human, you're not listening.
The spiritualist papers and handbills here have caught wind of my growing clientele and several of the more prominent sensitives. In a weak moment I consented (no remarks about my vanity, please) and find myself burdened with a series of photo "shoots." I insisted they include Buster in every capture; it was the only way I could tolerate all their directives. A bossy lot, photographers! Image stealers, all.
This job, it eats at me. I have lost weight; were it not for Buster and my quirky inventions I might lose myself altogether. Please, I can "see" you roll your eyes, hear your response: Eury, find yourself a helpmeet! some comely companion! Appreciated, but the notion must sit bundled on the topmost shelf for now. Another day...
How goes the orchard? The twins, still climbing the drapes? (I noticed, when last I visited, how those two imps have sprinkled more salt than pepper about your noggin. Not to worry; it lends a distinguished air, little brother.)
My love to darling Lizzie. I do miss her cobbler.
yrs, Eury
ps: of late I have been visited by striking night visions and waking dreams. Evidence of need for better sleep, to be sure.
Linus,
I am in a state.
For a fortnight my sleep has been intruded upon by what I can only describe as a shower of transmissions, scenes of considerable distraction, the content of which I blush to relate. I am telling you but no other; I beg your confidence.
A woman is sending them.
They are arresting. Considerably.
I am accustomed to conveying the ruminations of the deceased unto the living but this is different. It is as if someone on an other plane has managed to, somehow, through means and machinations similar to those I employ, yet via routes unknown to me, break into my private psychic theater and plant her seeds therein. As if I were the spirit and she the agent beckoning across the gap, provoking contact.
In sleep, her hand all but touches mine.
Linus, I can smell the lavender about her...!
And now, just last night, from "the core of the celestial vault," a mental communiqué:
dear eury
I've been eavesdropping
on your connections
you seem competent enough at your job
considering
(we are all of us
here in the Centre
born receivers...
I saw you in your little newspapers
it stirred a fury in me
is this what one of your variety
calls being smitten
an understatement perhaps
these intimations and distractions
delivered into your sleep
they come from me
mine are the hands that deliver
mine the neck you long to bite
do not be taken aback
i am not shy
nor should you be
i am wanting you
i cannot be more direct
please locate The Entrance
it will be worth our while
— orpha
Linus: I am breaking out my maps!
-- Eury
Linus:
It is not one door; rather, all!
Which, collectively, co-locate the portal. There comes a time, after which one has ventured to sundry entrances "far and wide," certain gateways begin to chain. The act of stepping over the limen, traversing any threshold--do it often enough and with one's perceptive attentions switched to the "on," in enough disparate locales, and a network of hinged vectors declare themselves. They can also be plotted.
I retire my charts and prepare for the journey. Buster is more than up for a holiday. We venture, outward and down, armed with a sack full of soup bones and rope twists for chewing.
orpha has, after consulting with several engineers of her kind, sent instructions on how to amend and enhance "the chariot" (their term) they've instructed me to build.
What will be more challenging is the route through-in. Make note: it is not a straight plummet to the core. After all my repeated inquiries re: tunnels, waterfalls, caves, and passageways leading to continental chambers, orpha cautioned, with a hint of exasperation: dearest, leave your literalities at the door. Apparently there is considerable baggage I must shed if I am to have any hope of reaching the endpoint. Beginningpoint, I should say.
(I know you and Lizzie think I've "jumped the tracks." And in fact I have. Jumped, leaped, plunged. I have read your entreaties and cautions and know you are concerned for my faculties. Would that I could put you at ease. We have been staying up late, orpha and I. She reveals wonderments from H.E. that leave me voiceless. In turn I tell her of the bungles, misadventures and growing horrors that mark this world, our failure to grasp and make good on the unrealized possibilities of our gifts here atop the surface. (She understands; her species has studied us, not disinterestedly, from afar.) As for other of our nightly conferences, all I will say is never have I experienced such congress, corporeal or in dreamtime. She confides the same is true for her. Drugged together and all-a-tremble, the both of us.
Linus, you and Lizzie, and the twins--after I get settled in--you must visit. I'll return to fetch!
In, innner still, and then--into the into!
-- eury
linus
further dispatches must arrive in this manner
apologies for tearing holes & poking into your dreams so
my sojourn, you'd find it disagreeable
given your fear of rolling coasters
quite a lurchy ride, this
still i do wish you were here
these sights, they turn a mind dumb
subterrestrial charts & entrancements
churling planets with their drowsy chromatics
showers of starmilk
i'd expected buster to be all nerves but he's quite at home
tapping into his inner adventure dog
is this space or is this earth
is this mind or is it pneuma
descent unto or an unfolding within
or a leaving of 1 life to enter its after
well i'm sure i don't know
navigation's no good here
the current owns me now
eury
linus
tumbled thru an eyelet in their sky
like a dandelion seed
to think a sibling sun might remit such warmth
small hairs on the neck come electric
you can hear all the souls who live down here
an illimitable chorus enters the ear
the citizens' embrace
one is "in the company" of all
a cell-splash pouring into the surrounds
their thoughtsong, a lazy drizzle
a communal washing
lives commingling, all "in the basket" of their kind
and Buster and I now added to the mix
cloud kiss, harmony sea
child and beast unabused by the other
forests aswim with fishes
gravity's nectar
and, through it all, popping like a crocus up through the congregation
orpha's
< ah
you've arrived >
crisp as a chime and reeling me in
-- eury
hello linus.
your sweet brother is safe.
albeit occupied.
soon.
orpha
linus
o boy am i sunk
drowned, glazed
& sunk
some more
did i mention how carnal time is here
the very air effecting intimacies
bliss, irreducible
bliss upon bliss
into bliss anew
well
it's all very blissy
( this heady oxygen has curdled my faculties
my language slips afritter
only music gushing out now
my crossing over's near complete, orpha says
you'll hear me singing but I'll not hear you
I have big news:
company's coming
a third grows in orpha
a baby girl
o bright pod of marvels
o saturated love rain
o thaumaturgy
e
linus
I send more pictures of your niece
growing like a weed her father says
(one of your sillier surface concepts
your brother's well, sings of you often, Lizzie, the girls
he's taught madrigals to the stones & lilacs
which they happily sing before dawn
each & every bloody day
who needs roosters :/
as for Aggie, a more restless imp you never saw
i am teaching her the arts of reception, other witcheries
on the surface she'd be learning to read but down here
children learn to braid, & harmonize, the frequencies
she has uncanny sensitivities
seems to need no schooling at all
her farsightedness spools into realms new to us
a product of her hybrid parentage i suppose
she returns from her reveries talking of a ghost county
peopled with kelpies & visitants
fleshy phantasms, revenants
assorted invisible friends
asks her daddy to retell the tale
of how he came to travel here
then plays all day in his cobwebby chariot in the barn
says "when i make my journey to the inside that's inside
i'll need no machine
i'll zipper-dream my own web across"
our wild-eyed psychic spider girl
I thought I knew joy when your brother opened my door
(& I did
but this twirling sprite extends it x-fold
-- orpha
Uncle Linus,
Just got off the "phone" with the parental units who reminded me I've owed you a call for forever and a day. Plz don't be cross, I've been a tad busy!
(A favor tho, when you speak with moms tell her it wasn't "some boy" who lured me down here! As if she could ever criticize. Don't get me wrong, some of the pickings are gorgeous. You wouldn't think ghosts could be so unrestricted, fleshy even. {One in particular, Orin, we've become fast friends.} But it was never one fella who dragged me under. It was the lot of them, the whole crowd what pulled me in. A girlhood of whispers sneaking into your sleep each and every night, let me tell you it can get pretty persuasive.)
So I got a job here. Apple doesn't fall far from the tree. But don't you agree the dead have as much right to talk with their departed as anybody else? They miss their folks and kids and grams too. And that's where I come in: I tune in, ferry their chatter back and forth. Guide the conversations. It comes easy to me. Daddy used to sing about how difficult he found his calling when he was up on top. I don't get that at all. When I spin a web between these dead and theirs my mind takes a little vacation. Bobbing under the sun in a little boat on a black ocean. When it's over my dreams feel as if they've been washed and massaged. Plus the truth is everybody loves me down here. They really do. My boss is this little butterball of a witch with pockets stuffed with sugar toadies.[1] Says I remind her of a daughter she once had. She lets me come in as late as I want. I'd do this job for free, you know?
I've accrued some vacation time so I'm going home for a spell. Moms is throwing a surprise return party. (I was dreamtalking with Buster who can't hold a secret to save his life, which is how I know.) Everybody'll be there, a regular reunion. I'm rehearsing looks of shocked surprise. Bringing the ghost boyfriend too. Can't wait to see the looks on their faces.
The twins tell me retirement agrees with you. And how much you all miss Aunt Lizzie. I wish I'd met her face to face and not just while dream hopping.
Daddy sings about dusting off the chariot to pay you guys a visit. But we both know that thing's not going anywhere.
Must run. I'll wire sooner next time. Mwah,
-- Aggie.
