Embers of Einar: White Binder

Authors DG FARNSWORTH and RODRIGO GARCÍA OLZA

RODRIGO GARCÍA OLZA Novel Series Part 3

Einar often mentions his vivid imagination and the emotions that he lets control his thoughts -- admitting he is "rather easily carried away." He makes a surprising assumption that the ghosts' intentions are to "get hold of him." The 21-year-old appears to unconsciously project his most horrific thoughts and faults upon the ghosts and, then, condemns the apparitions for this.

Einar is usually alone in a Gothic intimidating Twin Peaks mansion; forbidden to explore its long narrow corridors and rooms never visited, filled with mysteries, collections of eccentric objects, and secrets; where eyes of portraits and murals appear to follow as he explores, and where weird haunting sounds echo through the estate.

A need to have space of one's own is a strong theme. Einar grew-up in the witch town Tella, Spain, among caterers and servants with not much privacy, little space, no need or capability to maintain secrets, and no awareness of his own personal failings or how they could be related. The Secret Garden on Alcatraz Island offers room to develop unhindered, unguided, and without help.

Similar to flesh diminishing from the skull of a cadaver, while gruesomeness amasses, the quaint lighthouse that once restored a sense of physical well-being effectively falls away into a hellish tomb of stone and bone. Nowhere to hide on the island with inward fears transfigured by an almost intangible menace of too much imagination.

Two sets of eyes of the ghost gaze upon him. One set of eyes had the world explained but didn't have the clever ways of persuading or tricking someone to do what one wants; which is needed to use this knowledge effectively; someone who learned empathy's secret but not the capability to direct it to the correct object, and was delivered wings but wound-up not operating inside the family facade. Einar certainly knows that he's alien and intrinsically different to himself: the remains of two - something excluded by or opposite to another thing.

During their first meeting, the psychiatrist gave Einar four multicolored notebooks (he calls binders) to keep record of thoughts, feelings, and dreams. One of the first things Einar expressed was that he was technically a twin but it doesn't actually count because Joaquín died in the first trimester. Dr. Ravencraft jumped all over this statement saying, indeed, it does count, that he's still a twin: a womb twin survivor. The doctor, very interested in the strange phenomena, wants to know more; so Einar tells his story the best he understands. The psychiatrist's intense interest centers around the fact that little academic writing exists about ghost twins. While living in Tella, Spain, Einar went to another psychological counselor about this, who belittled him - expressing no empathy, knowledge or understanding of vanishing twins. His previous therapist emphasized that his twin was only a mass of cells and it was quite apparent not destined to survive, that his sensitivity and concern should be more directed toward his mother's miscarriage, instead - to not make such a big deal about it. Einar never discussed the matter, again, after feeling shamed. He sincerely feels the need for some respect, to be listened to, including maybe some sort of validation about his own grief and trauma.

The modus operandi of "Embers of Einar: White Binder" is the elimination of inauthentic elements of the self in order to reach the core personality within. It's a serial form of vanishing act, like Einar's vanishing twin, thus the death of the archetypal (never-seen, only spoken-of) transgressive person to overtake the personality. For Einar this identification with the unthinkable is an act of defiance, a way of burying that shame about what is perfectly natural. Tension between losing himself and finding himself in others often overwhelms.