EHMH

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In 1995 Eurydice Eve first published excerpts from EHMH: An Anatomical Prophecy, a long book where the history of patriarchy took place inside the living body of a vast woman. EHMH is a mythical giant mermaid, a natural being from the ancient world, who accidentally drank the water of immortality that her brother Alexander the Great had found for himself. Ever since, she lives in deep waters, away from harbors and cities, and interacts with lost sailors. According to their reports, she inquires after her brother’s well-being and they must reply that he’s well if they want to live. She lives off plankton and unknowingly ingests most humans who are lost at sea. Her thoughts are influenced by their moves and interactions inside her. Will she be found out by explorers? Will the people living inside her manage to escape? Will they motivate her come out into the world? Will she be killed as a lethal monster? Will she manage to communicate to her fellow humans? What will she have to say? (Read to find out) 

The protagonists are three women, Atalanta, Medea, and Pasiphae, whose distinct lives converge in their need for liberation from a life of absence. They eventually seek salvation by jumping into the sea.

Atalanta is a woman who runs non-stop but cannot escape. Medea is an immigrant who shops non-stop in a consumer-mad West. Pasiphae is a successful professional woman who has sex non-stop. Atalanta represents the celestial, Olympian aspect; Medea reps the terrestrial, materialist instinct; Pasiphae reps the infernal, creative force.

Together they form a human trinity populating the inner arteries of EHMH who reps the godhead. EHMH (Yahweh-gone-softporn Emmanuelle) is an immense mermaid whose body shelters history's dis-enfranchised, the countless victims, killers, prophets. 

The second chapter relates the voyage of the women who get drawn into the gargantuan EHMH & together they chart a hazardous course through her body until they reach her brain, where they blast open the abandoned safe of her consciousness.

This initiates EHMH's decision to come out into the world. EHMH has a deep internal logic that drives her journey. She speaks for a world filled to capacity & cacophony & she looks for new harmony and new clarity.

The third chapter describes the apocalyptic changes EHMH's shocking presence effects on the socio-political prejudices of the West (where she is treated alternately as God & Godzilla, and where the commodity value of EHMH’s blood grows exponentially), & culminates in a celebration of the end of history-as-we-know-it on EHMH's body-turned-city, capital of the new world.

In this world of ephemeral electronic transmissions & virtual realities, Eurydice believes that the novel can serve a Promethean purpose. Human logic cannot begin to fathom what human beings are capable of.  That is the difference between fact & fiction.

Eurydice uses fiction as a communal healing rite that surpasses meaning in order to humanize fact and expands reason. Realist fiction attempts to homogenize us, to perpetuate the artificial stability of our civilization, to turn life into a summary in order to save the world from chaos. Language & narrative are the systems we made up to make sense of reality. The information highway is an indiscriminate equalizer.

When fiction seems more realistic than reality, our writers are scared. In capitalism, power is in numbers, not in quality.  Sensationalism defines our democracy. All our words are euphemisms. Life is not the sum of its parts, and if fiction is to explain life, it has to overcome its limits. There is no cause & effect in reality. We’re back to the world of Gods, where anything goes.