What is The Seep? The Seep, in essence, is ultimately another, new reality, one enhanced with alien influence and energy, initially subtle and gentle as it permeates and slowly refines what was previously known as "normal". Like Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's Roadside Picnic (1972), the aliens come to Earth, go, and leave something behind. Unlike that story, however, the aliens in Chana Porter's The Seep don't leave behind a toxic wasteland, allowing the world to breakdown into acidic, decrepit landscapes and soul-crushing decay. What's left from the aliens in The Seep is benevolent, seemingly sincere in a belief of progress and mutual benefit; a theory put into practice through technology, through cultural institutions, and through a kind of auric, sensory magic that flows through everything, rendering everything part of the same "Source" and thus interchangeable. Underlying the Seep is the idea (or, for the cynics, the ideology) of healing. And perhaps embodiment, too.
"Just yesterday Trina had used The Seep to erase a tumor from a woman's breast. No cutting, no incision, no radiation or chemotherapy, just the power of Seep consciousness speaking into this woman's cells, telling them how to die gracefully, to let go and become something new." (p. 32)
At turns blissfully serene, the Seep also offers a harsher, more psychologically violent materiality of its power that lies in its ability to modify objects, and subjects like the human body, at extreme levels. Horizon Line, the main character Trina's friend, is able to completely change his face by exchanging his own for his dead friend's. And Deeba, Trina's wife, decides to leave her life completely, to disappear, to be reborn as a baby with completely new experiences that have nothing to do with her old life, leaving Trina in a state of depression, reaching to find the meaning of her existence.
The Seep offers these extremes as another mode of expression - but the question remains: is it worth erasing your entire identity, made by personal experiences and actual history, just to begin again? To wipe the slate clean so to speak? Arguably, the characters in the book, for example Horizon Line and Deeba, ask the Seep to alter them so they can start over away from their grief and trauma - or is this actually a manifestation of their selfish vanity? The way in which Seep-tech is used and what it's done for, of course, makes a huge difference in what these Seep procedures actually mean. Stealing another person's face and passing it off as your own is one thing, starting a life from scratch without the baggage of a previous life is another.
"But the Seep taught us that true paradise included all of us - no matter what, no matter what, no matter what." (p. 73)
All this - the Seep's severe inclusivity - leaves Trina feeling at a loss. She finds herself alone, unable to grasp the meaning of her existence. As she descends into the dark well of despair, she becomes disembodied, unable to feel anything, as if her senses have been shut off. Just barely keeping herself together, Trina holds on to small threads of communication between strangers and friends that keep her afloat. But she too has to make a choice within the Seep. Not choosing to modify her body or her character, she instead figures out what it is she really wants - and needs - to live a worthwhile life. Surprisingly, this isn't found in the comfort of an intimate romance, simple self-care, or a delusion of some unattainable future, all of which she attempts. It's something more foundational and cognitive that reminds her of who she was then and who she can still continue to be. As the Seep tries to convince her to forget everything that's happened to her to live happily and in peace, to live comfortably and without grief, she chooses her own path:
"'My memories are who I am. You take away my memories, you erase me. Existence is memory. Do you understand? You'd kill me. You'd murder Trina FastHorse Goldberg-Oneka, daughter of Rita and Samuel, a child of love. Trans-woman. Artist. Doctor. Healer. Native American. Jew. You erase my memories, and you erase my lineage of ancestors - their pain, their triumphs, their passions, their dreams. No matter if the memories bring me pain. It's my pain! Let me have it.'" (p. 177)
Trina slowly arrives at the choice that is hers to take by simultaneously critiquing Seep dogma as well as taking what she finds useful about it rather than living in denial. She interacts with it, rather than blindly following what the Seep advises her to do, knowing all the while that the Seep will mock her as she evaluates its doctrines. Porter demonstrates this as the narrative of the Seep crescendos from kindness to a deeply psychedelically sardonic and increasingly jeering tone, like a terrible acid trip that one must fight against to remain sane.
Brilliantly, Trina doesn't forget the harsh, violent predicaments of others besides herself caught in the Seep's beautiful and terrifying logic. As the society she once again enters back into becomes a chaotic, indecipherable swarm, with character distinctions severed and personalities melding together without form (in a grotesquely literal way; i.e. the flesh blob scenes), Trina doesn't fail to notice exclusion, oppression, and suffering, taking into account the slaughtering of consciousness that the Seep performs unwittingly (so it seems). The actions Trina takes upon noticing these remainders - like the boy she accidentally meets after her life is ruined - is part of what allows her to be who she really is, married or unmarried, friendless or socially stable, with or without the seep's power. She holds both ends of the spectrum as truth to her reality.
"'This is a door,' she said, drawing an invisible line on the floor with her foot. Her words became a magic spell. She had decided it, and so it was. 'It's a threshold between possibilities.' She reached out to grab hold of the boy, pushing between the densely packed bodies. Finally, she seized his shoulder and did not let go." (p. 168)
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