Oh! I Guess You Could Call That Uncanny?

Previously: Oh! So You Call That Jouissance, Do You? The joy which disturbs and upends all things – this is what it looks like – just as you say. Well. Well! Call it whatever you like, says I. Why not jouissance? If the cup is small, the surplus arrives all the sooner. Bonne chance! Bon vivant! Laissez les bons temps rouler! ...If you call that rolling, of course. And why shouldn't you!

Yes, I'm ready. You can go ahead whenever you – Oh! I am sorry. This is what you call the uncanny, then, what we're looking at presently? Just now, this is your idea of the uncanny? My mistake. I do apologize. I had thought – but that is of no importance. It was only that when you said "uncanny" I expected to be shown something mysterious, and more than merely mysterious, a strange blend of the frightening and the familiar, the known and the unknown, the half-forgotten and the not-quite remembered, but I expect I must have gotten my definitions muddled up somewhere.

So – er – I take it you find this somehow, perhaps, taboo, or unsettling? I myself have rarely felt more settled. But I am sure I could be haunted by something there, if I were to simply put my mind to it! I'll start now. I'll let my eyes drift slightly out of focus and wait for something to vanish or materialize just beyond the limits of my ability to perceive and understand...

Of course, I see the repetition and doubling that is haunted by the "outside" it circles around but can never fully penetrate or reject, now that you've pointed it out. I can't imagine how I could have missed it the first time around! It's right there in front of me, as plain as day, although of course not merely plain as day but also paradoxically insubstantial, evanescent, creeping, et cetera. Hah, hah!

Clammy? No, I wouldn't say clammy...could clement, perhaps, be the word you were reaching for?

Dread is such a subjective and interior sort of experience, I think. I wouldn't be prepared to say whether I thought a particular scene or outlook was likely to make someone else feel dread – I really couldn't say. But I'm sure a real spell of some sort could be cast here. A real spell! Possibly of disquiet? Yes, I could imagine experiencing disquiet here, or a bit of unrest. I'm not tingling now, but that doesn't mean nobody else in my position couldn't experience a bit of tingling, if they were here.

Have you tried recursively instantiating the processes to which this refers? Of course you have. My mistake. I thought perhaps that might help, if you hadn't already, but of course that would have been one of the first things you tried.

Oh, negation! I misheard you. Yes, right-ho.

Strange compulsions? High and reedy music that comes in through the window – and yet somewhere never arrives on the wind, as if it were propelled by some other, unknown force than the air, and perceived by some invisible apparatus besides the ear? I'm afraid to my untrained senses – Well, you know best. If you find this landscape evacuated of meaning but haunted by presence, if you find it spectral, if you feel some fantastic figure dogging your steps – spy some dark and rapidly-turning figure rolling over and over in the foaming waves, then that's what really matters, not what I see. Perhaps I have just been rendered so helpless and speechless by the uncertainty of what I may or may not see around the next bend in the river that I have become unable even to whisper the name of what frightens me! Which makes this very, very eerie indeed; I congratulate you.

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