Each chapter of Cosmicomics begins with a blurb which sounds like the dry,�tasteless extract of a physics, astronomy or geology textbook, describing�how solar systems formed from nebula, the universe started from a point�smaller than an atom, the orbit of the moon changed long ago, dinosaurs�became extinct, space is curved, expands, etc. On each of these topics,�our narrator, Qfyfq, immediately launches. His idiosyncratic voice,�omniscient, blithering, self-centered, unerring, ridiculous, is�recognizable, exactly consistent, no matter if he is talking about his�life as a mollusk, a dinosaur, a moon-being before color, or life before�there was form, when the whole family lived on a nebula, or in the point�before space.

Most of Qfyfq's friends and relatives have unpronounceable names. Xlthlx,�Rwzfs, Mrs. Vhd Vhd, the beloved Mrs. Ph (i) Nk0 (actually a special�typeset must have been developed, now that I think about it, since my�keyboard doesn't have all the options necessary to even write these�names), Z'zu, De XuaeauX, etc. However, they, and he, have distinctly�human foibles (neuroses, competitiveness, love triangles, gambling,�boredom, incomprehension of their bodies and environment), although in�most cases they are not human. And while Qfyfq tells tales of many�different lives, seemingly beginningless, which seem to imply�transmigration and transformation, all mention of death and birth is�conspicuously absent.

Qfyfq seems to have always been, although he doesn't waste time�speculating on this fact. It's simply true that whatever is mentioned he�remembers, or can look up in his diary. For instance in one case, he's�looking through his telescope, as he does nightly, and sees a sign hanging�off a galaxy 100,000,000 light years away, "I saw you." He hastens to�check his diary and finds out he had been doing something he'd wanted to�hide and hoped was forgotten on exactly that day, two hundred million�years ago. Throughout the chapter, he worries about what people on�galaxies all over the universe think of him, and keeps scanning for signs,�and speculating what each sign means about others' judgements of himself,�and wondering how to respond. "What of it?" Or, "Did you see it all, or�just a little bit?"

Qfyfq is the stripped down being. All ordinary meanings are called into�question, into the light, so to speak, examined and dispelled. Finally,�Qfyfq does often end up in human form, and we're forced to abandon our�anthropocentric habits, but with a chuckles, instead of a gut-wrenching�death rattle. Likewise, we can sit back and watch the seemingly�indisputable concepts of physics unravel in a satirical solvent, or by�choice see the stories parabolically, finding layer after layer of�reflection of ourSelf, a much more fundamental self than the one�identified with a particular body or otherwise "ephemeral" life. The easy�elasticity of the mind is explored by changes of quantity and scale in�time and size. �

We see ourselves macro and microscopically, singular and plural. And�through it all, we feel basically uncertain, restless, proud, conceited,�and most of all, in love! The beloved, of course, usually eludes me. And�when she doesn't, I often lose interest. I might desire her more if she�lived on the moon (chapter 1), unreachable. But she drives me to build a�shell (last chapter), which is really the prototypical architectural,�evolutionary and artistic feat. Making a thing to be seen, I instigate�the fact of the visual field, and the apparatus of sight, through the�creation of something to be seen. Me! It was My doing. (The world, and�all it contains, I had foreseen it all!) Elsewhere, I make the primordial�sign, which is later copied and distorted ad infinitum, until the�original, forgotten, in it's purity, is lost, and space is so full of�signs and signs referencing other signs, there is no longer a speck of�clear space anywhere.

This is the gist of it. Like a multifaceted reflecting device, the reader�is reminded of many other writers. In subject and certain passages, I'm�reminded of Witman's Song of Myself. In tone, EJ Gold's Creation Story�Verbatim comes to mind. Italio Calvino has been compared to Marquez and�Jorge Luis Borges, I guess because of Qfyfq's manner, which beguiles,�comforts and seduces the reader, making it impossible not to accept the�magical and downright bizarre statements he dishes up as True, ipso facto.�But comparisons gall us all. So let's not dredge the coprophagous�Cheshire Cat's invisible gut for cross-referenced erudition. We need feed�no Ivory Towared, mycelia-minded methodologists. Like any good work of�Zen, Cosmicomics is a rational, instant, uncompounded, thing-in-itself.