Simon Everett
Mount Gox
A Tale of Climbing a Non-existent Mountain of Symbolically Inauthentic Profiteers
for René Daumal
Mount Gox is a long poem that is a part-parody of, and spiritual successor to, the poet René Daumal’s unfinished novel, Mount Analogue. It is set in a pseudo-reality of present day, where the Poet (the speaker), equally bewildered and intrigued by the latest trend of cryptocurrency trading on social media platforms and forums, investigates the emerging fad, ‘Dogecoin’. Accompanied by none other than René Daumal as his fellow detective and guide, the pair meet and begin their ascent of the Securities and Exchanges Office in the hopes of understanding more about Dogecoin, and of tracking down the exit-scamming, near-mythical trading exchange, ‘Mt. Gox’…
The Poet steadily realises that currency relies on the fragile relationship between what is concrete and what is notional, between Truth and Value; and that meaning in language itself is threatened by the fractures in those relationships.
The following two sections are extracted from the beginning of the poem.
1.
it began late January
the word was Dogecoin
delivered fresh on 24-hour feeds
& sub-Reddits seeping down
the runnels of blacklisted
sites & WiFi backwaters & I
unfamiliar with TikTok where all
the cool kids were & even
such a thing as Instagram
a foreign shore to me
on which the waves lapped & tossed
& whispered ‘$DOGE…
$DOGE…’
I did not know what to make
of such a thing a meme
a shiba made into a coin? but tell me
what is the use of it
I demanded of my PC
when we can pay for everything
in pounds or cents?
at first I was inclined to dismiss
all this as nonsense but
it kept its tug throughout the hours
with constant news reports &
people tweeting outrage losing
FORTUNES all because of ‘$DOGE’
& so I traced the source of this
incoherent stream through pages
of wild & inappropriate copypasta
& woke & stimulating allegations
to no avail until at 3am
not long after posting for
an explanation on several obscure
message boards my email server
spat out a letter with the subject
‘Important!’
it went:
hello friend, my name is René
forgive me Sir for this sudden message
I too wish to know of $DOGE
it is a mystery to me
& wrecks my brain at night
then wracks me thru the day
although I know it is a ‘crypto’
a kind of electronic money
made from blocks of data
& so it comes & so it leaves
& thus transacts between the teens
smearing thumbprints over screens
but in my wanderings thru
the digital lands I was tipped off
about the root
Of This All
& tho it may be myth
I have sensed the heart & height
of something deep & monstrous
that compels me onward
to a large & shadowy mass
shrouded by incomparable encryption
I know only as
‘MtGox’
& that itself is hard to place
these people said
indeed it’s not a place per se
some say it’s an exchange
of sorts, nonphysical, unusable
but still it must be
there is no analogy manifest
except some now redundant IPs
& janky racks of servers
bleeding data into the sewers
leading back to Error 404s…
something tells me there is
more to this & I must know!
W’d be glad to hear from U.
all things must start from here.
signed René Daumal
a fellow seeker of Truth.
to which I sat & scratched
my neck perplexed of what
to make of such a brazen &
compelling draft
& in the short hours backlit
by the blue of LCDs
I hammered out a reply
that went as such:
hello of course René
I too am intrigued & also must
confess to trawling thru the
dregs of internet
& all that disgusting backwash
in search of something sound
from which to comprehend
this $DOGE
as a Poet I cannot
leave these things be without
Scrutiny
but what you mention
this ‘MtGox’ you really think
it will lead to sense
of everything?
I mean the World and the Word
of the people is so lost
chasing tails of Doges
will we ever find the cause of that
& bring it to some rational
standing?
to which this René must have thought
me a kindred spirit or brother
of sorts & sent immediately
with a flourish
my dear Poet!
we must meet in the flesh
& discover all of this
together
in the city I have an address
of a place where I feel we may
chip away at some of these q’s
here is my number
we must WhatsApp with haste
& thus we conversed further & January
came to a close
& the incessant fervour
of $DOGE circled the forums & fields
& fibre optics falling
from cloud servers thru Sky
& collected in useless
wallets, backed seemingly by
nothing, nothing
2.
then one day in early February
I stood in the city during opening hours
with the winter light of morning
filtered by excessive dust & CO2
& I waited before some slick revolving doors
of the Securities & Exchanges Office HQ
where I had been guided on the
express request of my e-friend René
via instant message only three days
prior in our pursuit of $DOGE
& it was not long before René
who said he would be wearing
clothes akin to someone off to roam
the hills that I assumed was
just a means of facile identification
popped into view striding down
the pavement with purpose & vigour
& with two spiked canes that trotted
beside him from his hands like
two more legs (the kind that are
used for hiking)
um, René?
I ventured hoping I would not be left
embarrassed before a total stranger
but immediately this man’s
face washed over with a great lightness
& he beamed at me & enthusiastically said
ah yes, my dear Poet! hello there
I hope you’re well
& ready for an expedition today?
to which I had no real idea
of that which he spoke at the time
& so I nodded half-heartedly &
asked about the need for such
a well-prepared attire with
rucksack rolled up coat
& even a harness strapped
into place around his midriff
to merely go into an office block
and ask some questions re: this $DOGE
well said René
I am a mountaineer & so I usually
dress prepared to climb in case
the mountain comes to me
as real & non-Euclidian
incremental undulations or simply
the mountain of the mind
& at any rate we will both ascend
this urban scaffold
is there much difference
if any?
to which I had no real riposte
& out of politeness
simply bobbed along with his
general view & said
yes… so, we go in, René?
he gestured to the revolving doors
& up to the floors & floors above & said
before we go just look, Poet
look up
how far can you actually see?
it was a thing I hadn’t considered
in all the minutes I had waited there
the shine of steel & glass went fairly far
a few hundred feet above before
the greys assimilated into off-white sky
& all the sheen of metal & dull of mortar
receded into one homogenous tone
just one
& I said I must admit René
I can only see so far before my eye
gives way to a point of absolute grey
& I trust it’s the same for you?
René replied
of course it is & that is why
it’s my hunch we need to climb
TODAY
to get above that point you see
this is the place where securities
such as tokens such as tradeable
assets are affirmed & licensed
that we agreed would be the place
to start our inquisition into $DOGE
& it strikes me as peculiar
out of all the buildings in the city
this one is high & so high
it’s obscured to the naked eye
& likely to any other means of sight
down here on Terra Firma
it leads me to question what is
being hidden there
in that veil of sky beyond
& he was right
the grey was so consuming &
pallid & engulfing that it seemed to
coalesce about the building more so
than the others adjacent
to which there were
clear flat-ended rooftops
& looming spires barely clear in
the thick air
but there to see all the same.
it is odd for sure today
I agreed
but what about on my Map APP?
& brandishing my Smart Phone
I fired up the APP & swiped
around in the hopes that
street view might dispel the
sense of foolish intrigue
felt between us
but to my amazement on the
camera-captured blue & sunny day
the dazzling panes of glass &
chrome-like steel became nothing
but one blue & so the whole screen
at the furthest point was sky
& nothing more than that.
I blinked & René laughed
HA I knew this was weird when
the whole concept of exchange
became involved.
how so I pressed.
& René looked at me seriously
& his face became stiff & slightly dour
& he went on
I want you to remember one thing
my dear Poet one thing that must be
our question here & in all we find
from here on out
& that is this
what is VALUE?
he adjusted his round-framed
goggles strapped about his eyes.
we must ask
‘what does VALUE mean?’
in all things because it is the root of all
exchange & thus the measure
of this damnable $DOGE.
so.
he paused…
let’s find out what’s going on.
& with that we
(& I, not able to find my
tongue to say much of any worth)
went step-by-step up to the entrance
of the SEO building & dove
into the rolling compartments
shunting people in & out
like a great glass ventricle
circulating, circulating
Dr Simon Everett is a poet and poet-translator. His latest pamphlet of poetry, Tamám (Litmus Press, 2020), is an experimental reimagining of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. His translations of Chinese T’ang dynasty poetry have been published in magazines such as STAND, and his translations of contemporary Chinese poet Zhang Yangyang appeared in Chinese Arts and Letters journal. He holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Essex, funded by the Consortium for the Humanities and the Arts South-East England (CHASE). Simon was also the Layout Editor of the Brief Encounters open access journal from 2017-2019, and is currently Editor-in-Chief of Muscaliet Press.