Precinct the Eighth: The Oubliettes
In which is written the nature of the Oubliettes in practice both philosophical and practical
notably including the Hall of Hecatonchires, the Crystal Ballroom, the Throne, and one other,
and the Uncertain End of each

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Cup your hands and hold them up; you are begging and offering in one gesture. Cup your hands and hold them down; you are discarding and concealing as well.

Now you understand everything there is to understand about Oubliettes. There are as many Oubliettes to the Labyrinth as there are hearts, and each one is a cupped hand emptied and a cupped hand filled at the same time. Only a few are of particular interest to the careful traveler.

"It's a place you put people to forget about them," the Dwarf had cautioned, but the Oubliette is also a place where you go to forget yourself. The infinitive form: Oublier, French: "to forget."

There are three Oubliettes, and possibly four, that the devotee to the traditional story might know, also knowing that the Labyrinth is as full of them as it is of sexual symbolism.

The most subtle Oubliette is the Throne of the Goblin King-one of those recurved cups which holds the wine of the soul. The omega arms of his raised throne cradle his body like a mother or a lover, but the Goblin King has neither. Behind it gleams the horned crown all in gold, the repeated emblem of his office—even if Jareth's head bears neither horns nor crown.

An Oubliette, it is also a prison, caging the thing inside for the dubious pleasure of the ones allowed to forget and remember. Like pursing a hard-to-get lover, the Goblin King pursued the path to the Throne of the Goblin Kingdom, only to find when he'd won it that it was nothing like how he'd imagined it might be. He found he belonged to the goblins and not the other way around. "Jareth is, at best, a romantic, but, at worst, he's a spoilt child, vain and temperamental. . . under duress" (1). The goblins do spoil and flatter and pinch him—they love him best of all things in all worlds anywhere. He's used to having his own way—which is actually their way, twelve times out of thirteen. No mistake, the goblins have their King well in hand.

The throne is an Oubliette where the goblins keep their King, never forgetting that he is a King and their King, but not wanting him to remember that he might be several other things as well. "One feels that he's rather reluctantly inherited the position of being Goblin King, as though he would really like to be—I don't know—down in Soho or something" (2). The Goblins are jealous of their treasure, exceedingly jealous of loose talk about their fae King, driven to outright rampage at the idea of someone outside their purview remembering just what else he is and the power he's forgotten. On the throne, he sings to them, dances with them, consults and plays with them, enduring treatment that would pull a mortal mind and body to bits but only bruises the King very slightly. On the throne he can be remembered and disdained, kept on a short leash. The King cannot fail to remember the responsibilities of his Throne, but he also never misses an opportunity forget them, by flying like an owl toward humanity and night. Memory. Self. Words. Someone, someday, will hand those dreams back to him, but he's forgotten just how the right words of that story fit together.

The most obvious Oubliette is the Hall of the Hecatonchires, which styles itself helpful. The Hundred-Handed ones, the Hecatonchires assisted the Olympians in their battle to overthrow the Titans. The first children of Mother Earth and Father Sky, they were locked deep, deep in the depths of Tartarus until their Mother persuasively in the ear of Zeus. This Hecatonchires, the least and littlest certainly, is most likely Gyges Ouranid, or the forgotten fourth Hundred-Handed one.

yes, given the nature of the Labyrinth as a refuge for the lost and lonely, it is probably a fourth brother who slipped beyond the prisons of Tartarus and landed, enchained, in the Labyrinth, which is itself an a curving ovarian follicle of Gaia's womb

It is a very old thing, malicious but not particularly fierce, and dwelt in solitude for quite some time.

In the ten thousandth year of its imprisonment, the Hecatonchires in his cell began to talk, slowly, to itself. Loneliness is too great a burden for any creature to bear; look at Chuck Noland's friend Wilson, who was created out of blood and solitude from a volleyball. The Hecatonchires turned inward on itself, alimentary fetal formation in reverse, and gave a part of its broken consciousness to every one of its hundred hands. The terminus of its belly is fitted in sand and rock. When it encounters a stranger, these Helping Hands are just as likely to lift its victim out of the pit as swallow it down, ejecting it like sputum from its un-mouth. More often, though, the process of peristalsis draws the stranger down, down, into the stomach of the lonely, insane thing. Cries for help and for remembrance echo there in its gut, and it feeds very well on the rare meals of despairing cries for "Mother, Mother!" "Father Father!" "Lift me up, get me out of here!"

The most sought-after Oubliette is the Crystal Ballroom.

The fae have a marked contempt for humanity which reaches beautifully creative heights when they feel they've been insulted. The Uncrowned King of the Labyrinth, who all respectable persons know as Jareth, Goblin King, was more interested in humankind than all his type at that time, and therefore more aware of insult than any of his people. When he saw the pictures of the Cottingley Fairies, and heard what a din that mundane humanity was making over them, he did what any righteously angry creature in his position would do: he held a fete. The Crystal Ballroom was meant to be an antidote for cuteness, the bitter poignant taste of sex to cut through childish treacle.

Where was this party held? All places and none, a space between places, the door a porous membrane that, like a roach motel, allowed the human guests to check in but never check out. When was it held? Midnight to midnight with never a beginning or an end. Invited: everyone who was capable or interested in coming. They came: fragile mortals whose virginal longing for sexual delight would grasp them up into the game. They came: ravishingly beautiful women, the belles dames sans merci, the belly-tingling seductive men, demon lovers, incubi, succubi, fae—those cruel and glorious beings who understood the merit of breaking the human heart on the wheel of desire. Mirrors reflect the faces of the guests; masks mock the nudity of the bare-faced. Golden-skinned slaves offer platters of fruit and aphrodisiac thimbles of wine, and couches and pits and velvet flesh-pots are stages where ravishment is performed for the delight of the inhuman guests upon their human prey. All here is now, and never, and five minutes can become a lifetime. The coin that pays for the experience is memory, and no one can cheat the fee.

All the dances of desire are performed here. In particular, the waltz. The waltz is a scandalous dance. Other dances, older dances, allowed couples to meet only in the touch of eyes to eyes, hands to hands. The waltz is a reversal of this; the bodies of the dancers press close together along the length of breast and belly and groin, but the hands are filled and the eyes look elsewhere. It is a dance to lose your mind in the ecstasy of your body. A black-silk hip pressed close into the interstice of a white-voile thigh. The heat-seeking, stimulus-fleeing friction of partners who are pushed and pulled in a 3/4th sliding beat of time which is also a fall. The chafing frottage of naked jeweled décolletage against diamante-barbed frock-coat—little wonder the assembled voyeurs carry fans. Only the Devil wouldn't blush at such things.

In the Crystal Ballroom, the dark nucleus of the white bubble is Jareth, Goblin King. This is his party, his game, his offering. He draws the eyes and the hands of mortal and supernatural alike. He sings to the maidens and youths a song of desire, of himself and others moving inside them, changing them, breaking them open into configurations more pleasing. He sings of pain and praise to the broken hymen. He is adored by his own people, this much is clear. They care little whether he is a Goblin King or not; he is their youth, their beauty, their strength, and their treasure. He wants for nothing; they want everything for him. The Crystal Ballroom is a place where his memory of that fete lives an immortal life separate from his experience. He is there, and not there, and the dancing never ends. Sweet summer sweat: some dance to remember, some dance to forget. (3)

But he doesn't wear his insignia of office in this Oubliette. Is it a place where he spends time away from his responsibilities to his Kingdom? Is it a place before or after or beyond his rule? Definitely an Oubliette, but is it a place for him to experience memory, or forgetfulness? Never ask him this; data indicates extraordinary danger considering events re: S.W.

Yes, but he wears a mask in bronze, the shape of his amulet reversed. Yet it is separate from himself, not tied to his face or form. Is his mask his amulet?

Is his amulet his mask?

Is his amulet an Oubliette?

Notes:

1. David Bowie: Interview: "David Bowie Talks." Movieline. /realm/?p=27
2. David Bowie. Interview: Inside the Labyrinth.
3. The Eagles. "Hotel California."