Mongstad
Reddit comment:
“there is no alternative”
Anything alive is interconnected. Plants connect together in underground roots, providing information to other plants. From this, a tree knows where to sprout its leaves. Through connection, clean air is made. It follows: life itself creates the possibility for its own being. Through creation, life allows for several “I”s and “Me”s to form, each “I” with its own networks. An organ here, an organ there.
This is how “I” can write about Mongstad. When I look around and beyond Mongstad, I see what you would expect of rural coastal Norway. Mongstad is right by the fjord, and you can see the mountains in the distance. Moss, blueberries, oak, mushrooms, and the magnitude contained within an “etc”. Then there are of course the birds. Seagulls can be annoying at times. They cry and cry and cry and cry, each repetition a little different. All of this almost makes you forget that you’re at Mongstad. There is no mistaking it.
“there is no alternative”
Within Mongstad itself, a black ooze is refined. Hundreds of millions of years ago, before any decomposing fungal spores saw the first light of life, unfortunate beings were entrapped in the darkness of the earth both on and off land. The abyss forced upon the beings a metamorphosis. Any previous organs the creatures might have had were compressed together. Life transformed, it was liquefied into death as a dark ooze of pure potential. A potential, that a force beyond the abyss wishes to utilise.
For every drop of ooze that it acquires, it grows in strength. It has already convinced everything of its reality. For anything that could oppose it, it induces a constant stream of low-grade pleasure. Nevertheless, it is hindered by brief intermittent realisations. Realisations about alternatives are dangerous. It might breed slogans.
“there is no alternative”
Cables the length of mountains plunge down into the abyss to capture the ooze. Some of it escapes of course, an escape that the masters of the cables hide. Blessed by the silence of its fate, the ooze blesses the surrounding ocean with its gift. The remaining ooze, no longer in full control of its fate (if it ever was), is transported up the tube. Interests have been secured. When the ooze has been transported up, it meets a tower of steel, iron, and clumps of organic matter. Nothing on the horizon is visible except the ocean, the sky, and the tower containing both non-conscious machines and machines with an unconscious. The drones of flesh and blood manage the transportation of the ooze to shores all over the earth, some of which reaches
“there is no alternative”
…Mongstad, pipes everywhere. They manage the transportation of the blessed tar all over the facility. Unlike the network of plants, there is no creation here. The pipes cannot be re-organised, the pipes cannot create new couplings. Plant-roots seeking other plant-roots can create a new coupling here, a new desire there. The purposes of the pipes on the other hand are singular and non-changing. They flow into refinement chambers, where the ooze is transformed into other forms of oozes, ones with even less of a similarity to the original organs. Through the nights electronic lights are enabled, the ability to sleep was never intended for the facility. Any friction is not allowed. “there is no alternative”
Mongstad, there is no potential for the creation of new desires, it is only the desires of the force produced here. The force desires to remove any friction except itself. To this end, it will burn the ooze. It will burn it will burn it will burn. The ooze, as it did with the ocean floor, will “bless” the earth with its silence. Silence contains no friction.
A rowing boat is viewable from Mongstad, a subject with noise, and slogans. Is it an alternative? The drones laugh. A jeer still has a purpose. Pigs beat on command. Subjects bleed. A fact has been “secured”. Life is not an alternative.