Then she’d tell me the second description of the vortex. This is in Africa, remember, in Zaire, at the site of the main vortex, the big one, the one that everybody talks about.
Zaire. 1982. River basin. Some guys are out in a truck, a news van. They’re like with National Geographic or something. It’s a pickup truck. Their equipment is in the back. It’s three guys. They’re wearing hats like Indiana Jones.
Then they see it. But they don’t really see it—because if you’ve seen it then you don’t live to tell about it, remember? But they see evidence of it. Right? These guys get out—or some of them do. They don’t know they’re looking at the vortex. They don’t actually see the vortex. But what they do see are these little balls of light. Each one is shaped like—I don’t know..from Jules’ description it sounds like they’re shaped like a pound cake..one of those round cakes that you make in a mold? I guess you can make different kinds of cakes in those molds..but it’s shaped like one of those molds..like a doughnut, but not symmetrical from top to bottom. It’s like that, but light. Have you ever seen research in hyperporous solids? Probably not. It’s like..these lights are like something between..a cross between a solid and a gas. It’s like: it’s has a shape..it keeps its shape like a solid, but if you touch it, you can go right through it, like a gas. It’s like a sponge, if there was hardly anything to it. That’s what these lights are like. That’s what these guys saw, on the edge of the vortex.
Jules says it looks like the part of my painting I made with a string. I think what she’s trying to say is it looks like a spirograph. That’s how the lights are arranged. If you were up above, you could see this clearly. From the ground, it just looks like every once in a while there’s a light—one of these spongy pound-cake-looking lights, set on the ground like cow dung. After you go along a ways, though, you start to notice that they’re arranged in a pattern—a spiral—interlocking spirals like a spirograph. It’s a moiré pattern, based on her description: there’s overlapping spirals of these things, and there’s an interference pattern between them. Once you see the pattern, you’re in danger of never returning, because that’s when you start to see the vortex—that’s when you start to know it’s there.
I imagine these guys, these first guys who saw it. When they got there..when they stopped their truck..they’d be amazed. They’d see these pound-cake-shaped lights..well first they’d see one of them. They’d stop the truck. They’d see this..thing..on the ground. Maybe they’d drive past one first, and all just think they were crazy. Then they’d see the second one.
One guy would get out. He’d see one in this direction. Another guy would get out. He’d see one on the other side of the road. They wouldn’t talk. They’d just stare, in amazement, as they put their feet into these miracle balls of light that were settled on the ground, and they’d wonder if they could touch them. So they’d try. And they’d discover that they weren’t harmful—they weren’t hot, they didn’t burn—in fact, they were kinda cool. But they were heavy—you couldn’t kick them..and you couldn’t pick them up. They just liked to sit there, in their spirograph pattern, getting closer and closer together as you followed their trail. And at the center? Well, that’s what you wanted to figure out—and that’s why the vortex was so dangerous. It tempted you, with a little piece of information, and it laid itself out, along the ground, in a path that you would follow—right to the center—where it was too late.
Jules saw this in my paintings. She insisted that it was I who was telling her..about the vortex. I didn’t argue with her. Because, as I said before, I don’t think it’s necessary for people to believe the same things to be in relationship. Or to even have the same frame of mind. But it’s not the kind of bedtime story I’d ideally like to listen to. And I have to say: I was a little scared—especially when she told me she was only telling me things I had already told her—I was a little scared of what was going on inside her mind.