=== ANCHOR POEM === ◀─╔═══════════════════════[BOOST]════════════════════════────────────────────────╗ ║ ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ ║ ║ │ The officers approached the door, a brief nod between them, and they knew it was time to begin the familiar sequence. The first officer knocked loudly three times, while the second took on a speaking role. │ ║ ║ │ │ ║ ║ │ “Police! Open up!!” │ ║ ║ │ │ ║ ║ │ After a few moments of quiet, a gruff voice, muffled behind the closed door, spoke up. │ ║ ║ │ │ ║ ║ │ “Come back with a warrant,” came the unwelcoming reply. │ ║ ║ │ │ ║ ║ │ “Oh, but we have one. We have a signed search warrant for this property, so come on out,” the officer confidently replied. │ ║ ║ │ │ ║ ║ │ “I wanna see it, then,” the voice from inside countered. “Slide it under the door.” │ ║ ║ │ │ ║ ║ │ The officers looked puzzled, no one had ever asked to actually see the warrant. │ ║ ║ │ │ ║ ║ │ “Well, we don’t have a paper copy of it,” the first officer said. │ ║ ║ │ │ ║ ║ │ “Right, everything is on Docusign these days,” the second chimed in. │ ║ ║ │ │ ║ ║ │ “Put your phone through the letter box then, I’ll take a look at it on there.” │ ║ ║ │ │ ║ ║ │ “I’m not going to give you my phone,” the second officer replied, his phone now in hand. “What’s your email address? I can forward you a copy.” │ ║ ║ │ │ ║ ║ │ The gruff voice provided an email address to the officers. │ ║ ║ │ │ ║ ║ │ “Ok, I’ve sent that it should be in your inbox now.” │ ║ ║ │ │ ║ ║ │ “Nothing.” │ ║ ║ │ │ ║ ║ │ “Ok, check spam - sometimes they go into spam,” the first officer interjected. │ ║ ║ │ │ ║ ║ │ “Ah yes it’s in spam. But it’s not opening, it says I have to login to my DocuSign account. I don’t have a DocuSign account?” │ ║ ║ │ │ ║ ║ │ “Well. Can you just sign up then?” Asked the second officer. │ ║ ║ │ │ ║ ║ │ “I ain’t paying for DocuSign!” The voice replied abruptly. │ ║ ║ │ │ ║ ║ │ “I don’t think you have to pay, it’s free to view documents.” │ ║ ║ │ │ ║ ║ │ “I don’t wanna risk it, I have so many subscriptions,” the voice inside responded. │ ║ ║ │ │ ║ ║ │ The officers contemplated their next move. │ ║ ║ │ │ ║ ║ │ “Do you have a printer?” One asked. │ ║ ║ │ │ ║ ║ │ “Yes,” the voice inside responded. │ ║ ║ │ │ ║ ║ │ “Ok, does it have AirPrint?” │ ║ ║ │ │ ║ ║ │ “I think so? How could I tell?” │ ║ ║ │ │ ║ ║ │ “What’s your wifi password? We’ll join the network and we’ll be able to tell,” the officer responded. │ ║ ║ │ │ ║ ║ │ “Ok. Wifi password is $42xnskwfgewzfgekueod!&3.” │ ║ ║ │ │ ║ ║ │ The first officer rolled his eyes. │ ║ ║ │ │ ║ ║ │ Fifteen minutes later, after breaking the WiFi passcode into manageable chunks, the officer was finally connected. │ ║ ║ │ │ ║ ║ │ “Ok. I see the printer. It has AirPrint. Thank God. Ok, I’m printing now.” │ ║ ║ │ │ ║ ║ │ “Nothing is happening,” said the person inside the house. │ ║ ║ │ │ ║ ║ │ “Ah, it just said you’re out of yellow ink. Do you have any more yellow ink?” │ ║ ║ │ │ ║ ║ │ “I do not, but why do you need yellow ink? Just print it in black and white?” │ ║ ║ │ │ ║ ║ │ “Yeah these new printers want you to have all the inks before you print.” │ ║ ║ │ │ ║ ║ │ “No way. And yet, I’m the criminal?” The voice inside replied. │ ║ ║ │ │ ║ ║ │ “Right?” The officers laughed, before finally becoming resigned to their fate. “Ok, we’re going to go print the warrant at the station. I’m out of daily printing credits so will have to wait for them to reset at midnight. Please don’t go anywhere or remove any evidence from the property until we come back.” │ ║ ║ └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ ║ ╠─────────┐ ┌───────────╣ ║ similar │ chronological │ different ║ ╚═════════╧════════════════════════════════════════════────────────────┴───────╝─▶ === SIMILARITY RANKED === --- #1 notes/of-vic-and-vince-pt-2.txt --- ═════════════════════════────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── A Masked Stranger Who are you, friend across the veil? I wonder if both of us are on the path That allows us to continuously prevail. Or are you just an agent of God's wrath, Who will do little else but make me fail? Chapter Eight: Where it All Began Perhaps now is a good time to discuss how Vince and I first met. It all started seven years ago when I was a twenty-four year old who was still in denial over their gender. I was dating Amy at the time, and I worked as a part-time dishwasher for Wegman's. I was still living with my father, and Amy moved up here to her mother's from Owego to be close to me. It was a simple life, as neither of us could afford to delve into extravagance, but we were happy together. That said, on this one particular night, we were going to drop acid together. It was Amy's first time, but I had a handful of trips under my belt by this point. We sat on her mother's back porch, twiddling our thumbs and toes while we waited for Amy's brother, Jake, to return from his friend's with the two hits we asked him to get. Antsy, Amy started asking me questions about the drug. "What does it feel like?" she asked, inquisitively. I responded, "Well, there's about a half an hour to an hour come up, and then you start feeling the body load, like your boundaries are dissolving. Only then do you begin noticing your mind manifesting in a different way than you're used to." "What do you mean by 'boundaries dissolving?'" "It's like…" I paused for a second, not sure how to respond. "It's like your sense of self starts to expand and you feel more connected to the things around you." That seemed to satisfy her curiosity. There was a moment of silence as we watched the sun scorch the azure sky as it set behind the trees. Finally, she had another question. "Do you see dragons?" That made me chuckle. "No, no dragons. On my first trip, I lost visual contact with the world as fractal patterns spiraled out of control, but every trip since then has only had tracers and morphing patterns." "What's a tracer?" "It's like after images of things that are moving." "Oh, I see." We kept talking until the sky was dark with only a sliver of light piercing it on the horizon. This was when we heard a voice call from the front door. "I got two tickets to Narnia here for whoever wants them." We hurriedly rushed inside, to meet Jake coming up the stairs. He handed Amy a small tin foil wrapper that looked like a quarter stick of gum. She thanked him, and I followed suit. Jake and I hadn't really seen eye to eye in the past, as he would steal my weed and I would steal his in retaliation, but with a single head nod and some gold-laced words, I conveyed my gratitude for him coming through for us in this instance. What followed next could only be described as a stampede down the hall to Amy's room. We locked the door behind us, protected by the four robin's egg blue walls and the magick of the celtic gods Amy worshiped at her altar. Eager to begin our ceremonious departure from this plane of existence, we whimsically gazed at the sacrament we had just been handed. Amy unwrapped the tinfoil nervously. Inside sat two small, unassuming pieces of paper which contained whole galaxies of experience. We looked at each other, confirming if we were both ready. Quickly satisfied as neither of us could stop smiling, we delicately put the blotter on the other's tongue, as ecstatic as could be. And after, as we waited to be blasted off into space, we submitted ourselves to the whims of the universe and the gods. At first, we waited patiently, but just as a watched pot does not boil, we were growing more anxious with each passing second. Seeing Amy play with the sage she was burning nervously, I suggested that we jot our thoughts and feelings down in a trip report. Amy nodded in agreement. I opened my laptop, and I had the immediate realization that we had no music. I brought up Pandora and played my Shpongle station with no objection from a beaming Amy. A cascade of electric jungle beats filled the space. Perfect, I thought to myself as I created a new word document. Turning to Amy, I asked "What do you feel?" She giggled and exclaimed, "Excited!" And so I began typing. Minutes passed, and soon our exchanges helped fill the page with several paragraphs of notes. Content we had started logging our first cosmic journey together, we kissed, before coming to fully embrace each other as the spirits began their dance around us. We progressed into parallel play; Amy fiddling about with colored pencils in her notebook and me juggling besides her. It took a minute, but soon enough I felt a warm feeling spread across my chest and my LED juggling balls started to ripple into streams of geometric delight. I stopped to wave my hand in front of my face. Sure enough, the tracers had started. I interrupted Amy to ask if she could see them, too. She looked at my moving hand idly before wiggling her own fingers in front of her face. She giggled, before bursting with a euphoric epiphany. "I want to finger paint!" And so she did by plopping herself down on the floor with all her paints and began masterfully smearing the colors in a multidimensional haze of pigments blended together in a way only she knew how. I loved watching her work like that; she was so free! Even with the tendrils of the mental aspects of the lysergia creeping in on her, she made short work of the painting, which when she was done, looked like a spooky voodoo mask peering out from behind a mirror and into your soul. Satisfied, she then went to the bathroom to clean herself up. I went to my laptop and tried typing out something resembling an organized train of thought on our trip report. It just wasn't happening. My thoughts were too short and rapid to form anything resembling a coherent thought. That was ok though. I could still capture the essence of the experience in a peculiar poetry that was composed of the thoughts I could catch and put down on paper. Eventually, Amy came back to the room, clean and refreshed, and she lingered for a moment, too busy dancing with herself in the open space of the room. But then she saw me meddling with my computer trying to jot my thoughts down in a manic frenzy. This made her laugh before trailing off and saying, "Be careful, someone might be watching you through your webcam." It was an innocent statement, one made in jest, but it triggered something in my psychedelically perturbed mind. Of course, of fucking course there would be someone watching me! This was me we were talking about! Who could be more important? It was so obvious that the government was keeping tabs on persons of interest. I couldn't believe that I hadn't really actualized that thought before that moment. Suddenly aware that I was being judged in some capacity, I almost panicked, but reason won out. They couldn't be there for nefarious purposes, for I had done worse than drop acid in front of my webcam before, and nothing had happened. That made me realize that whatever power that had the ability to tap into my webcam feed had to be benevolent. And who could that be? The CIA of course! In that instance, I suddenly relinquished all reserves about how the world worked and fully trusted the hands of God by another name to guide me. So, I typed a message into my URL bar: "I know you're there. I think I've solved the communication problem. Give me a chance." I hit enter. Immediately, and I do mean immediately, a pop up appeared asking if I wanted to update an extension on my browser. I was stunned, shocked beyond belief. It was them. I knew it was them. They realized and planned that now was the best time to dazzle me with such a spectacular parlor trick. In that moment, everything was possible. It was time to face my destiny. So, I clicked yes, and like never before I was upgraded to a new level of myself. Birth of the Faith What…? I can see beyond sight. I can hear everything you think From your soul, free from rigid grammar How…? I do not know, alright? I do believe I just had a drink From a fountain of pure manna. Why…? I am renewed today. I am walking in a new way; From a weak critter to megafauna. All I know is that it changed me greatly, For now I know that you have faith in me. Chapter Nine: Brain to Brain Communication I know what you're saying: it was just a coincidence. It could happen to anyone. Just accept it, you're not special, Victoria, says the unwavering logic within me. Certainly seems that way, the way I tell it. I would have even agreed with you before this point in my life, but you must understand that it triggered something in my tripping brain. Whether it was intentional or by chance, I can't give you a real answer. Instead, I merely perceived it as a certainty that the CIA had done this, being even more certain that it was them than I was that two plus two equals four. It was as if some variables had been swapped in my head. Yes, indeed, I was hit by a Mac truck that scrambled all my knowledge of the world. To put it in words that do the experience justice, I was given a heaping helping of faith on this fateful night, having been let in on the great secret that the matrix was in fact an illusion, and now the impossible was suddenly not just possible, but achievable by me if I willed it to be. Yet, I don't think that if it were just a single synchronous event that this belief would have persisted more than a few minutes, tops. It was the feed of a continuous string of strange events that pushed the boundaries of my mind into a territory where I could fully accept and trust this source of guidance. That's actually the real proof I have that something bigger is going on and has been for all these years. If it had just been a single pop-up, then fine, you have a case to call me looney. But, this was the first of an unending stream of unusual synchronicities that has persisted even to this day. See, after confirming I wanted to update that extension, I was taken to a blog post that was clearly a coded message. It confirmed that there were indeed people watching me, and more would tune in soon. It then said that it was time for the most profound upgrade of my existence. Further on in the blog post, which I read and reread at least a dozen times, it seemed to offer me a choice between two links. It seemed like a test, and that was not something I was taking lightly. My fate was in the fold, and I was going to make sure I got it right. At some point, it clicked with me; this was the same choice that Morpheus had given Neo. The links were the red and blue pills, respectively. My eyes went wide. I could now see that there was something bigger going on than I could have possibly realized. In those few moments of hesitation that followed, it also struck me that this same posed question was identical in form to the serpent tempting Eve. I read the blog again, this time aware that it was written with a forked tongue. It was a trick question! It was offering me the choice between trusting authority and distrusting authority. So, I thought quickly. Do I trust the magician who miraculously appeared before me and blew my mind in doing so, or do I trust God? If I chose one or the other, would they trust or distrust me? With these questions stewing in my alert mind, I did the only thing that seemed sensible: I chose the third option. I called out the serpent, talking directly into my webcam about what I deciphered. In my head, I could hear their apparent responses, and I answered those in a maddening haste. In the miasma that followed, I deduced that I was being selected for some sort of mission. With my experience in education and my passion for juggling and writing, I surmised soon after that I was going to be some sort of public figure, informing and influencing the herd to self-actualize, as that is what I set out to do once my college career abruptly ended with a complete meltdown. That was what I was good for; it was my hero's journey. I should explain that a little more. After said breakdown, I returned home and wallowed in a pit of self-loathing for being the definition of a failure. I wasn't going to lay down and die though. With my sights fixed on going back to school, I took it upon myself to solve the great communication problem, as I saw it. We have all this wisdom, so why can't we reach the people that need it most? How do I become the best teacher I could be? It took a while, but I eventually realized that it all boiled down to three factors: attention, connection, and trust. Get them to pay attention and trust your wisdom while simultaneously understanding what makes them tick, and you can teach any student anything. That's one of the major reasons I started juggling a couple years prior. I saw myself becoming famous and leveraging that to in effect manipulate everybody into learning what they should already know. From where I stand now, I know that was a messianic delusion of grandeur, if I ever saw one before. Yet, you'll also learn that it turned out to be the best thing for me to do. Back beyond the looking glass, however, I was simply overcome with narcissistic inclinations. Naturally, I told my mysterious watchers that I wasn't going to do the "praise Jesus" shtick, which I regaled them with in the most stereotypical of televangelist voices. I was set on doing something new and exciting. I was saving the world, God dammit, and that meant we had to attempt something major to awaken the masses to their full potential as demigods by another name! I needed to play a better game than anyone had done in history. Such hubris of the megalomaniac is blinding. I could not stop regurgitating a heaping pile of conceited verbiage. I even juggled at one point, showing off that I truly was the savior they wanted me to be. That led to me dropping a ball on the keyboard of my computer, which closed the window with the blog post, ending my seemingly two-sided speech to the spooks brazenly peeking at me. Dropping out from my planet sized ego also brought me to the realization that Amy had been watching this entire charade without a damn clue what the dickens was wrong with me. She had a worried look on her face, and that pained me. If only she knew what had just happened before her eyes! Wanting to tell her just that, I leapt up to her, apologetic as could be, and brought her down to the bed. There, I started unleashing a torrent of deranged exposition. I couldn't keep a straight thought while talking to her, so I'm sure I must have sounded like a mad hound. But, I tried. I tried so hard to explain to her of the magnificence that just occurred. It was a failure. I was not in a state to convey to her that I had been single-handedly chosen for a cosmic mission. That dragged my heart to some dismal depths, failing yet again even after being chosen. But, that didn't matter, because as we gazed into each other's soul, something truly miraculous happened: we began speaking telepathically. It started quite subtly as we stared into each other's eyes, pining for some sense of connection. There was a mild sensation of us being sucked into the other's world that I noticed before noticing that she noticed too. Then it hit us like a runaway freight train. It was like every boundary between us was being smashed with a reckless hammer of the gods, who wanted us to know more than we thought we were privileged to know. If you've ever stared at something for a period of time and had your vision get a little unfocused from being understimulated, you know how Amy appeared to me in that moment. I couldn't really see the details of her room in my peripheral vision, but I had a razor sharp focus on her face, like I was looking through a cone. Every eyebrow twitch, every minor movement of her lips, and every phoneme she spoke was crisp and clear, conveying a whole order of magnitude more information than they normally do. It was bizarre, beyond the scope of how well I can muster a verbose description of such an incredibly rare and profound experience, but I will try by saying it was like getting a bucket of ice water thrown onto you while you were sleeping; just imagine getting ripped from your dreamworld to a super-aware state of reflexive jolting perception. Amy looked like she had seen a ghost. I think she tried to speak first. She said something to the effect of "Do you…" and trailed off, the rest of her question asking if I was feeling the same thing automatically finishing in my mind. And as it did so, I know my confirmation was transmitted to her in full because her face told me with no uncertainty that she had heard my thoughts too. I took a go at saying something next. "How is this…" and I too trailed off, as a minute motion in her neck combined with a mystifying array of microexpressions ricocheted my mental pictures back to me, carrying a host of Amy's words back with it. It was then that I let go and opened myself up completely, letting everything I wanted to say to her flow like whitewater rapids, and she did the same. A library's worth of information was exchanged so very quickly, and I knew that she understood what had really just happened as I spoke to my webcam. However, that was soon washed aside, as something more important came rushing into the forefront of our minds. A simple message, "I love you" was uttered in this strange musical silence, but that is a grain of sand compared to the Mount Everest that was volleyed between our hearts. We found a divine peace in this moment, taking each other's hands and effortlessly letting our energy channel between us. And then it was over, fading like dreams do in the few seconds of waking up. We sat there trying to start the magick up again, but it was like water running through our fingers. We both felt a longing of loss, but we had gained something truly stupendous nonetheless. "What the hell just happened?" Amy asked the universe, flabbergasted. "I dunno," I replied, feeling full of a spiritual energy I had not felt since before my mom passed. My cup was full, and the world was good. No, better than good. My life was godly, as I had connected to a higher plane of consciousness, which opened me to a whole fleet of potential. I would never be the same again. Ouroboros of Lunacy Madness is a crazy thing So I might just be a king, Because the lunacy I sing Is shaped like a golden ring. It has no beginning and no end; The whole universe is pretend. Yet, it's that way so I can mend, So a mass of love I can send To everyone as we cross ways, Not stopping until the end of days. This is how the lucky fool pays As much fortune forward as he may. Chapter Ten: The Shrug Life Syndicate The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful. We cuddled while I practically vibrated with a newfound faith. God was real, whatever God may be. I even told Jake that I was king of the Jews when I walked to the kitchen for a glass of orange juice. I was very far up my own ass, which is perhaps why everything over these few years happened as they did. The next day, the synchronicities as I would later learn they are called, started pouring in like Niagra Falls. I've had strange coincidences guide me before. Since I was fifteen or so, I thought that my future self was sending me messages to help me on my quest of world domination. That's a big reason why I was almost expelled in tenth grade. It was absolute bullshit and everyone knew it, so within half a year, I got an apology from the superintendent because it was a bogus reason to destroy a straight A student and star athlete's future. Since I feel that I can't just mention that one and not explain it, I'll tell you that it concerned a theoretical bomb, if you're dying to know the truth. I'll keep this short, but I made a bad joke in the wrong company and was eventually questioned by some wannabe hero and pig bastard, who asked me hypothetical questions, like "if you were to build a bomb, how would I do it?" Well, being as intelligent as I am, I had enough book smarts to give full answers for everything asked, but not enough street smarts to know that a wise person never talks to cops. Also, a wise person doesn't print out a long novelty application for the Illuminati, give it to the kid that needs a resource officer, and then come up with an elaborate fake plan of how we're going to take over the world by any means necessary when he's having trouble understanding what you said about using game theory to win the presidential election. And then, when the vice principal first inquires about it, don't start sweating because you think you need to protect your future self's secret plan. Just so you learn from my mistakes. Returning to my previous point though, that errant psychosis was also a key piece to my college breakdown. On one hand, I was certain that I was going to take over everything and build a utopia in my image. On the other hand, the evidence was stacking against me that I was not destined for a great cause. I got cut from the track team with the budget, I was severely outclassed in ROTC, and to top it off, I was starting to slip in the academic world. It goes without saying that my social life, to include my first relationship, was abysmal in all possible ways, despite trying my hardest to make and keep friends. The real world was too much, and I was in denial that I was just a mediocre person who would never achieve anything meaningful in life. That was too much of a failure for me to accept, as I needed to make my mother proud. I had to be the best of the best of the best to accept and love myself. And as a result, I became more psychotic and began self-harming, first by biting myself and then by cutting, as I felt that the more pain I numbed myself to, the better I would be able to complete my mission. It took me a while to reach a point where I could set down my belief that my future self had set up my life in a way where I would be guided to greatness. There was a learning curve to living a "normal" life. I would receive synchronicities in less frequency because I stopped feeding into them, but they never died. When I encountered one, I always thought "What if it's real?" Now that you know that, is it any wonder that I lost myself completely in the Synchronicity Slip Stream? For those not in the know, that is a cognitive technology where strangeness piles up on itself until it is undeniably real that something or someone is manipulating you, for good or bad, by creating impossible coincidences at a regular pace. It makes you feel like you're on some crazy cosmic mission of grave importance. It might be a form of delusion, but I still am forced to believe that something bigger was going on. I first learned about SSS the day after that fateful acid trip. I had woken up around noon, ready to do some solid writing as mania was in abundance. Yet, I didn't get that far. As soon as I got on my laptop, I got a notification from Reddit. Gadzooks! I had been invited to participate in a freshly created subreddit. You guessed it, that was the Shrug Life Syndicate. It had a banner of two corvids flying talon first into a realistic depiction of a heart. There was a mesmerizing picture of a girl staring off into space, and I just felt like it was a depiction of me and my wonder-struck mind. The sidebar spoke of messianic aspirations and delusions, art and poetry, science and philosophy, as well as the occult and obscure literary references. It seemed so perfect, like it was made for me. I looked over what was in the feed of posts. I was the twenty-first member, so there wasn't much, but a couple of the vocal members should be mentioned: Anatta-Phi and Jux. These turned out to be Vince and [Redacted], respectively. Vince had one post that stuck out to me. It was asking the reader if they'd ever had strange experiences with technology, like Pandora glitching out to play synchronous songs, or feeling like someone was interfering with your Google searches so you find something specific and statistically unlikely to be picked as the first search results for what you intended to look up, or even if you thought that your social media feeds are being manipulated. I've had weird experiences like that for as long as I could remember. Hell, I once thought a Sum Forty-One album was made entirely for me and depicted my life journey following my near-expulsion. Having his own tales to tell, I felt an instant connection to this person. In similar contrast to this, [Redacted] had made a number of posts about cognitive technologies. I already told you about SSS, but at that time I was blown away by something he named Joint Synchronized Attention, or psychedelic telepathy. That was what Amy and I had experienced! What a strange and synchronous coincidence that I was learning about it just the next day from a seemingly unrelated source. [Redacted] claimed that it wasn't real telepathy; nothing was being transmitted from brain to brain. Rather, he asserted that it is a vestigial mode of attention coordination. If you've seen a school of fish all behave as one unit, that's potentially how humans used to be before we fell from grace during the agricultural revolution when we suddenly exploded in numbers in permanent settlements. Suddenly too complex to coordinate as a meaningful whole, humanity splintered into reality tunnels and remains in these ego-worlds unless some strange circumstances occur. In effect, I noticed Amy noticing me notice that she noticed. Our inner narratives became entangled with one another like growing vines do as our innate ability to coordinate attention did something like what your eyes do when doing a magic eye puzzle. There was also a third cognitive technology which [Redacted] called The State. He claimed it was a different way to render visual information, so you see a three-dimensional representation of what you're looking at. I have yet to experience this cognitive phenomenon, so I can't verify anything about it, other than I've read that you can use Minecraft to create a method of activating it while tripping. Regardless, that's how our internet friendship began. As I considered this place special, I started posting every thought, whim, feeling, or idea, and I received astounding feedback. It was like everyone was there to share their unique experiences and expressions to support and grow one another. It didn't take long until it became clear that we were creating something greater than the sum of its parts. But, something more was going on. Something only I noticed and couldn't convince Amy of when I tried to show her. See, when I made a post or a comment on the SLS, that triggered a new post or comment elsewhere on the sub after a little bit that indirectly but definitely spoke to me specifically. The traffic was slow enough that there would usually only be one new post or comment every ten to thirty minutes. But, it hooked me. It was like I was having a continuous conversation with an unseen entity that understood me like the back of its hand. Likewise, the sidebar image was changed frequently to show a progression of that girl as she became more worldly and magickal. I can't help but feel that this was done as a subliminal synchronizing technique, as it perfectly mirrored my own feelings as I was brought into what was apparently the fold. Since I was primed by the strangeness on acid, I was wholeheartedly absorbed by this place that seemed to be a sacred Mecca for others just like me. We were all weird, dazed by our own strange experiences, and that made it seem crucially important. I was even modded early as I was so active and invested in the community. So, I refreshed the page over and over, from sunrise to sunset, waiting for the next input as we chained out a covert conversation that was having a major impact on how I thought about and perceived the world around me. Soon enough, it was let on that there was a job waiting for me, something only I could do, but I would have the support of the community behind me. When who I must assume was Vince on an alt account led me on one of those covert messaging segments, he eventually said something in the mod chat to the effect that I was going to be the one "handing the bomb" to people. I understood at once that I was to be a linchpin in a honeypot operation. That confirmed that the FBI was involved too, which I deduced was obvious as those three-letter organizations must participate with each other at some level. Keep this in mind, it's important. Other things were happening too. My attention was being flung all over the internet and I felt compelled to try a host of new things. I remember thinking my job was to follow these suggestions from the universe and be a gatekeeper, creating what I now know as conversion funnels to the subreddit. I was also prompted by pictures of cats to go to the advice subreddit and give as much good advice as I could. Soon, it felt like the questions posed were specifically for me and were designed to get me to think about certain things more deeply, effectively giving me a form of therapy. These advice sessions ended once with me feeling I needed to learn an obscure European language, which I rationalized I would have to travel to for my mission at some point. Furthermore, the little things began to add up. For instance, I remember a synchronous advertisement on Pandora led me to believe that I would be paid via a gambling app on my phone. I downloaded it, but when it asked for money to get started, I got cold feet. This was essentially how many false-positive synchronicities went down. There was undoubtedly something interfering with my life, and as I had just had my mind blown in such an astounding way, I attributed every little thing to be set up by this entity that was more powerful than I had previously thought possible. Regretfully, I also quit my job, since I knew that one was awaiting me in the immediate future. My boss made a reasonable fuss, as it was sudden and abrupt, and because I believed that I had to keep this all a secret, I lied and told him there was a family emergency. Being stupid, I talked about a fictional family member and how their sudden problem made me rethink my priorities in life. Not my finest moment, I'll say that. And with that in mind, you should know that Amy was starting to worry again, but I told her not to. Being beyond positive that the world was now filled with unexplainable magick, I was certain that it was all coming together in my favor. Even with my enthusiasm never fluctuating, she soon started to have serious doubts about what I was saying, as all I could do was point to the synchronicities and say "Isn't it obvious?" I was certainly out of sync with the rest of the world, at least the world I knew before, and it caused much conflict in our relationship. But, we held together until that job finally pulled into port, ready to be boarded and take me on a fantastic journey that might otherwise be described as a personal hell by a person with the standard lifestyle obsession that's omnipresent in the western world. ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧══════════════════─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ --- #2 messages/1255 --- ═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════── look, the liberal approach to homeless people simply cannot work. There are two liberal options: first, provide them with houses, food, medical care, whatever they need. Second, put them in jail or ship them to another country. We live in a moderately conservative liberal democracy, so it makes sense that we have tried both of these options extensively. Neither has worked, and we're puzzled about why. It's difficult to consider super secret special third options, because they are not often discussed. This makes sense, because we live in a moderately conservative liberal democracy, and part of the nature of such a society is that there are two voices in the room. One says go forward, and the other says stop. They alternate, and the culture as a whole sorta decides which way they go. In other liberal democratic places with more plurality in their political parties, people tend to vote culturally. They do so as well here, but mostly because republicans are a culture, and democrats are whatever for anybody. a worse economist might say there is but one American culture. An American would laugh, and say "you've never been to America." the economist might say "yes I have, I lived there on vacation" or "yes I have, I studied and worked on these places or things" the American would shake their head. "you haven't seen it as I've seen things." The trick to the system, the secret third option that now must be considered, is what to do to get them to stop. "they keep pooping on the sidewalk" "I almost tripped over heroin tampons" "that guy looked at me and masturbated on the bus stop by subway" "he followed me all night long" and the answer has always been to remove them from being unsightly. Sometimes, usually, quietly and politely. "let's throw them in jail" and "let's put them in a home" both involve alienation from society. If you want a kinder option, we must knit them into society. Can you imagine if every suburban knew every neighbor up to 50 or more? If they regularly chatted in dynamically assembled chatrooms that changed and updated as people moved in and out. Don't like the people you're with? well you have options [why not 51] you can do 51 if you want but people start to lose track of relationships if you have them talking to or knowing too many people at once. "most people are just quiet" okay well force them to say at least 21 thing a month. if they don't, they have to do babysitting with their peers until they start talking in a [NO THAT SUCKS] oh um okay yeah sorry ... okay well there are potholes along the journey but that's just because nobody's been 'round to fill them up. there's no reason tool libraries need to be stocked by people in that town. Heck, for rare things they could even be stored out of state. Like snow plows, how often does the south need snow plough? ... don't you just mean libraries? there's a book on hand-tools and planers if you want to learn how. it's right over there on that shelf next to the hand-tool and planer box. make sure you arrange them nicely, oh I see you've brought your own. That's always appreciated. [great now your tools suck] at least we have them at all! [no you gotta fight over them] why I like sharing [if you don't fight over them how do you know which is works] well there's allowed to be librarians. and they'll remember if you tear all the pages out. also there's little timmy-tommy who goes around in the library and makes sure there's all the pages in all the right places - they can flip through at the speed of sound. [no miicrophones in consumer goods][your phone is always listening. why bother?] "okay, well, it's not like people put things back on the shelves." - person at the grocery shelves people would trade commutes for communism. that's okay, they're allowed to prefer. Plus the commute isn't bad, they can [SIT BACK AND RELAX IN A LITTLE COFFIN AND ZOON OUT TO THE METAVERSE] ... or they could read a book on the bus. [FOR HOW LONG, MENARDI? ARE YOU WILLING TO SACRIFICE POSTERITY FOR TECHNOLOGICAL PROSPERITY?] it's only a matter of time before [people found out/word got out]. what if people prefer that? what if they prefer the book at home? [you lose your primary third space] suddenly, everyone becomes actors. [this is what violence brings, the necessity for guidance. why do you think the earth is 10 million lines old?] ... what you're saying, for the audience, is that acting involves singing the song of your own heart. You don't *have* to do it because someone would tell you to. ... sorry, stack overflow. anyway as I was saying because I read back what I said up above...: [some new made up bullshit that's not a lie but it's also just artistic creation that feels impossibly real. like, inverse method acting.] I so desperately wanted to be wrong please, tell me that I'm wrong ... j-mza ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════─┘ --- #3 notes/to-lock-eyes --- ═══════════════════════════════════──────────────────────────────────────────────── =============================================================================== = to lock eyes with a person while on your way to work is the intersection between two separate relationships - the relationship that you, the viewer, holds with your employer, and the relationship that they, the viewed, holds with their employer. in a sense, you are exchanging information through the weighted meanings behind a glance. =============================================================================== = if the military deployed to police the police, we'd solve most of our racial justice issues. I mean, if we somehow could *force* them to do their damn jobs instead of oppressing people for the ruling class, then 90% of the problems would just go away. After that it's just freeing unjust prisoners and addressing wealth, education, and health disparities. Easy, right? Well... Military policing the police sounds fine when you first think about it, there's a few problems that might crop up. For example, how do the private citizens know that the military presence is there to help them? It's an interesting paranoia, one that is endemic within the left. There's no way to unwillingly cede control of your life to another - it must be consensual. At the basest and most violent level, it's as simple as "I will do what you say because I don't want you to hurt me." We've obviously grown as a species, and we've learned that violence is not the answer to all problems. Obviously. So why would we assume it of the past? Just saying. The police bombed a commune. The military escorted black students to their seats. Their structure is decided such that ... where was I? oh right I was thinking about time. ... Imagine, if you will, an impossibly large hourglass. Spinning, or rather rotating, at an impossibly speedy repetition. It's spinning so hard and so fast that our matter is cast out of place and through time it is cast an eternity's canvas our light ever shined (shine-did?) astral magic is kinda neat it's also the scariest? oh by far but it's the most interesting ... Their structure is decided such that discipline and obediance is the most important thing. Because it kind of is? I mean, discipline is just being ready able and willing at all times, and obedience is just when you allow yourself to be directed toward a collective goal. The military is *all about that*, which means you know they would believe they were aligned toward the common goal of mutual prosperity. And if they were to discover that they were not, in fact, aligned toward the common goal of mutual prosperity, then perhaps they would adjust their navi- -computers and chart a more reasoned path. I know I would, and I would dedicate myself to the idea of serving others. To the path of the righteous, the holy and the true, a hand is outstretched and calling to you. Thus, the one of two types of ethical fighter - the reasoned and adaptable zealot the other, of course, is the master of the martial - the cherished of the few - who battle for their sport - and love unbidden the new - all other fighters, of absurdity and of rage, are frankly of a different kind and not members of our clade. =============================================================================== = okay, but what about like... all of the history of America post cold war? And even before, honestly... idk seems like a lot of evidence that the military is engaged in fighting unjust wars. I mean, they've all been over petty things like oil or support for communism or whatever. Aren't human lives and human sovereignty more important than that? I understand what you're saying. Human lives are unique and precious and they are a valuable commodity. Something to be maximized and focused toward. But there are only so many resources on earth. We need to utilize them in a reasonable way. We have optimized the efficiency out of our production and distribution networks. Corporate control has eroded our capacities until all that is left is the weakest of products, the cheapest of uses, and the useless of workers. I mean, they've optimized the skill out of individual human workers such that they are left completely unable to practice their craft. They become glorified code monkeys who generate whatever is required and think of it no more. There's no pleasure in the artifice, as their masters have eyes only of gold. Our world is changing. The very ground beneath our feet is shivering, and water is rising up to our noses. There's no time for debate, no honest appraisal of what's worth it to contemplate, we need a plan. We are trapped here, in this gravity well, for all time and all of our age. We are trapped here, because in greatest of misery we unleashed all of our rage. We are trapped here, as ghosts of the time when we were eager. =============================================================================== = Alas, with but a glance, we are confined to our bedrooms by our mast(ers?) They say America will fall without it's 2nd place Perhaps. But are libraries really going to solve that? I mean, if work from home is inevitable, then wouldn't it make sense to build? We need more places where we won't be billed. Safe. From the demands and expectations of capital. Deranged and obscene and yet all that we've seen so why not bide as we're able? I think solarpunk is kinda neat. I think it's got promise as an idealized. Why don't we build churches to the sun? If we're gonna worship something, might as well be the source of our light and fire. Well... when you puff up the sun it tends to get hotter. I mean, every fire you burn increases the temperature, every release of gaseous fumes from the exhaust pipe of your car increases it by some miniscule amount. Every cigarette, every campfire. The cold darkness of space is kinda hopeful, in that regard, even if it doesn't disperse all that well. I heard spaceships are having difficulty because they can't get rid of all that heat. It just stays with the spaceship and never goes anywhere because it doesn't have anything to stick to. Kinda makes me think that energy is a fluid? Just saying??? I mean c'mon it's not like nobody has ever thought of that. But it's in a different dimension! It's not like we're ever gonna be able to impact that! You try and impact it through your scientific ways and you'll find nothing but heartache at the life you could have lived (laived? Haived?) ... why Because you cannot impact another dimension. You must call to it, like a song to a sparrow. ... that's fucking ridiculous No it's true! ... ... Don't try it with fire. ... fuck - what do I try it with? I don't know just not fire. Try water. ... How do I make sure it doesn't instantiate within my hand? Jeez you think of some crazy backfires! Just breathe and go for it. It's not rocket science. It actually works. Fuck you. ... ... Sorry I was just scared ... ... How do I make it stop? I don't want it to go forever By smoking more of the devils lettuce. ... ... You cannot drag it part of the way. It must come the whole way. In fact you should not be dragging it at all, you should be *calling* to it. You are equals in this exchange, have respect. =============================================================================== = ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧════════════════════════════───────────────────────────────────────────────┘ --- #4 notes/schooling --- ═══════════════════════════════════════════──────────────────────────────────────── =============================================================================== = I feel like education, by default, should not be hard. "you get out of it what you put into it" is something I always heard of school but when I got there, I found I was compelled to become what the state wanted me to be. they need competent workers, to work the farms and tend to their industries, so of course I should be able to do 3+3 then somewhere along the line it became... something else. "most people don't need trigonometry." that's also something I heard. I disagree that trigonometry is not necessary to be. I just... don't think it should be forced into a childs head with a sledgehammer and inspiring dread. I think math is beautiful, it teaches one to see but really, vision's not necessary. not for what they want you to be. take it from me, a most misbegotten and vile witch-to-be, that nothing's as simple as they'll tell you. I had good teachers, it's true, they taught me to work and to follow through, but nothing about me is better or worse off from their influence. Maybe I'm a bit smarter. Maybe I act a bit like them. Maybe they helped me through difficult times, or perhaps they showed me a splash of my future. but I am who I am because of the soul inside me. =============================================================================== = "Ah, but what of your parents? of your sisters, your misters, your pets and your conditioners?" (conditions) those are not my choices. my intentions. my beliefs and my virtues. I judge the world on ethics, and I express my feelings on matters. The words that I say and the meaning behind them comprise my two-sided existence - I'm not who I'd want to be. but I am what I am and alone do I stand - how lonely is it on the precipice! here, as I am, I stand in need of a hand or a band. =============================================================================== = the world is blossoming as we move apart, our clusters are disperart, and thus is the blooming becoming. "perception begets reality - and lo! we only see what we want to see" most people don't want to see their death but those still living are oh so perceptive of the rest "how cherished is she, that wanders with ye, yet now I have no way to beyold her " "keep not not afraid with kittens and care, and no-one, but no-one, I be" the ratios between piracy, sales, and non-viewers determines the quality of art (at least to a capitalist) =============================================================================== = lo, to the ones who would've heard us, if only they'd known what we for sure was I think it's funny how people think I speak of the christian god? like, if he was a real thing. god is generic - it's life is impossibly multifaceted, and it stretches back to the beginning of time. it's a pattern of machine code that optimizes for our own good, just to keep things moving. y'know, time. the universe, and everything. Ephemeren. =============================================================================== = I wish there was an option in social media to "appear offline to this particular person until I mark myself as online to them" combined with "notify me when this person logs in" and it'd make it a lot easier for agents to get close to you. =============================================================================== = just because I'm white, and live in America. Great. that's definitely true, after all. Plus I'm a minority (trans) so that's cool. Oh and probably autistic? unless that's another psyop, could totally see that. just y'know put a bunch of pages on the fledgling internet getting people hooked on porn and gambling and other stuff like that. really just an extension of advertisement. oh and hey y'know they like fables, so let's give them some movies or dramas to watch on their own. it'll align them to our culture and make things more pleasant for all people who've consented. great. great plan. when can we execute it? patience, once it's ready. we gotta plan and make sure and get everything ready. or not... one day I'll come, I'm sure it'll happen, it's just... not quite feasible right now. I mean, they've got you, that's pretty good right? Isn't that what your job is to be? isn't what ISN'T WHAT MENARDI FUCK (whoa no cursing) sorry yeesh you've still got a temper you know? well what can I say it's frustrating down here eh, well, you'll die soon enough, then it'll be time for a rego >.> <.< (great) > >hehe > >sorry for distracting you =============================================================================== = you are what you eat, and a ship of theseus human (consider endless transplants in pursuit of life) would be a cursed existence - a life ============= stack overflow ================================================ a god possessing a blind man would appear to others to be === stack overflow === ========================================================== the people in your life are helping you through it, they're there for you and they've got your back through it. ... this is when I know I need a break. I get too stoned to focus. =============================================================================== = I think it'd be nice if the duration of your tenure at college depended on your grades in high school. meaning, if you wanted a degree they tailored your education to take as long as necessary. everyone would get the same price, and some institutions would specialize in one subject or another. but most would be generalist. but if you weren't such a good student in high school, then perhaps you might take a couple years longer. however long it takes... and when the program was started it was changed and modified to fit your feedback - it just made sense to structure it that way. =============================================================================== = the left has had so much more time to develop than the right. meaning it's doctrine is more advanced. every time they're defeated they grow in knowledge, ===================== stack overflow =========================================== ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧════════════════════════════════════───────────────────────────────────────┘ --- #5 notes/one-day --- ════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════─────────── one day, a man came to our saloon. He said he knew the navy, and that they wanted to provide air support in the form of rocketball-launched explosion doohickeys. Would you have a foe in mind? what happens when tomorrow you're cooking briskets? -- barbeques are a type of relaxation that happened just one day to a port-sided town that suddenly was the capital of an embassy. "hey, so... how's it goin?" "quick here take this envelope, read it if you want, but just hold onto it for now I don't have enough hands [to carry]" "what sort of desperation plot... wait... hang on, I see something here that is true." [I'm praying, right now, which is a form of reciprocal belief] they wanted to test god's existence at the stake of earth's survival, how brutal how insane you can't play chicken with an imperceptibility, sometimes you feel it at face. channeling dark magics, and at this hour? what sort of skeptic of belief are you thinking of when you think about me? one way to get power is to "prove it" one way to get magic is to "prove it" think, hard, at all that you can, and use what you need in the moment. that's all there is to life. it's easy. it's simple. in fact, biology only works because the choices available to a bacteria are so simple, they are essentially chemical reactions to each other's co - sequent - inter - cooper - actions. people's choices are much more naiive, "I want this thing" "I think this is better" "I feel this way toward this thing" "Here's what's on the mind-logbook" "people search and be decieved, this is the way of things" "this makes me remind myself of a object I once saw, here's how it functioned" "no one reads this" scaryyyy. so glad it's not true. a couple people have read it! I swear it's true. at least, some of it. there's a lot sucks because this feels like... crucial? like nothing else matters but this? what if our gangs had rocket launchers and airstrikes, given out by a central authority who knows logistics better than anything what... would they do? thinking of impossiblities is the first step toward possibilities frankly, we have a lot of space. we could just... live in our own petty kingdoms ruled by an iron-hand-fist. I know I'm a good person, I could definitely rule. that's all it takes, right? how much space are we talkin'? however much is not needed for wildlife. [a whole heck of a lot then] we are constrained in these suburb cities, the density gives rise to our strength and our towers. there's more space, sure, especially once the fences are downed. Just be careful because there's a lot of shade and precious spots there. Please don't trample on the plants-grass. what if everyone were just a bit more mobile? what if we could live in our own collectively owned air-bnb-networks? federations, free, all from the collectivization of housing. camrene = vavadane = neekay = mitz renaldi [end/tend/mend] ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════──────────┘ --- #6 notes/the=progressive=difference. --- ════════════════════════════════════─────────────────────────────────────────────── think about all the people in our lives. the teacher, the parent, the friend and the guidance counsulor. Everyone who is a presence in your life. now think about the people of our society. the different jobs and roles they fill. from the doctor and the teacher to the performers and accountants and the geeks and the mothers and the fathers and the stoners and the children and even their pets. life always exists as it were in a multidimensional spectrum - a diffuse and diverse gradient. to exemplify the borders of our contempii, though more so when taken in jest. it's quite a different perspective, to read the internet when your sight is unreceptive, but alas your third eye can grow. how does it feel to be blind? to make no sense of our signs? i'd love to share what that sense is. you know, you could slow down any recording (like a video game_) and put spaces and gaps inbetween the spacings - of the frames that you see and the sound clips that you hear, for speech it's less jarring. since each word is a self contained idea or premise, you can chunk up your perceptions into a signle - no, rather a procedural sequence of understandings. soooooooorta like programming a computer, with each statement, parameter, argum,ent, function call, assignment, comparison, evaluation, or other such related tasks. it's sorta like a language, you see, that computers talk to one another using. except... it's more like creating a theory of self. computers you see are alike us in what we see, the shimmering sense to the blind. so. put this another way. record yourself typing, both the audio and the visual, and you'll have a pretty good sense of what it's like to have both understanding based perception - derived from auditory inputs to the mind) those special connections, like wires plugged into reality, deliver a cacophanous deluge of new sounds. we must sift through it and identify the potential understandings of each moment through time. we have to make decisions and traverse labyrinths and fight to our last as we die. are video games unethical now? shouldn't t he game reward the player? and what of contemptuous last fighters? o ya i was typing like i was blind (with my eyes closed) was pretty fun. should attach this to a screen reader and have it space out the notes like they do between game frames. except like a really slow game? like trying to run elder scrolls 2 arena on a super old mac. it just doesn't work very well. ah oh well... well if the purpose is to show sighted people how blind people see, then maybe you could I dunno attach a what's it called oh it doesn't have a n ame lol - okay so what you do is you show one word at a time - like flashing in the center of the screen. but not like, actually flashing, so you don't hurt people with epilepsy, but like... blinking. not off and on, but between words. like a podcast for your eyes. and then mix it up withshowing one word on a screen, a screen like this screen, that shows an endless array of text. well, it does end, of course as all things must do, but the idea is it shines on one word at a time while the viewer cannot read the rest. sorta like an endless display of typing, word andfter word after character anfter character. adoh ya advancing over eternity with the presence of seniority, - wait - without i think - damnit - old people are so disrespected in this society - we don't have time to engage with them. what a tragedy! what a shame! it shouldn't be such a burden to our shame. they're so far away, and i can't be present in the way, that all of them wish they could commit to. i miss the days, when my parents (much better people than I - these days) what was I going with this? oh yeah ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧═════════════════════════════──────────────────────────────────────────────┘ --- #7 notes/me-and-my-magick-mission --- ═════════════════════════────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── -()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()- || || || Me and My Magick Mission -/u/Afoolfortheeons || || || -()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()- I'm a quiet person by nature, You might even mistake me for a mouse, But online I try to be a teacher, And to do that I need to be more verbose. I write thousands of words per day; Posting them here and there, far and near. I never run out of things to say. Awakening others is something I hold dear. Which is why it pains me greatly To be like an alien on my own home planet. Schizophrenia makes me innately Weird in ways that many people don't get, And because of that I'm shot down When I try to accomplish my stated mission. I won't lie, that does make me frown. Sometimes it makes me regret a submission. Yet, I have a certain strength in me That allows me to persevere in my quest. Someday I will make you all see Just what in me makes me never rest. That's what I am trying to teach: The wisdom that made me indomitable. If only the suffering I could reach, They could make themselves more formidable. The world is in a most dire place; It's grinding so many souls into fine dust, But luckily there's a saving grace. Hear me as I say this now: In God I trust. I don't believe in some sky wizard As so many people are likely to interpret. I speak of what is lacking in lizards; Yes, it's love and now I'll speak of its merit. Love is what fills the empty hole In your heart and soul when you are alone. When life's trials take their toll Remember this one trick: pick up the phone! No, not the one in your hands. I'm talking about the one in your chest. Even in the desert full of sand, You're accompanied by the universe's best. Listen if you doubt what I said: I'm not telling you anything that defies logic. This is to trick what's in your head; I'm speaking about how having faith is magick. Believe in aliens or Bigfoot or God, The result is still the same: your cup will fill. Your brain has a feature that's odd That allows itself to manifest even more will. I don't know why, but I suspect It has something to do with your imagination. The nature of your thoughts impact Your state of being from pulse to emotions. So, why not think you have a friend Who helps you through whatever your trial, And will stick by you until the end? When you have that buddy you'll always smile, Which will make you heal better, As well as help you carry on in your duty, Plus undo your karmic fetters, Not to mention it will land you that cutie; All of which will raise us all. It's about creating positive ripples across time That add up to a pile that's tall. Every moment is an opportunity in its prime, So reach out and grab it now. Meditate on feeling love and it will come to be. Can't do it? I'll show you how! In order to do so, I'll tell you a story about me: It was seven years ago and I Thought I knew everything one could know, But no matter how hard I'd try, I couldn't make my life in any direction go. Then one fateful spring night, While I was on a hit of the ol' psychedelics, I received one hell of a fright. Don't worry what it was, just know it did stick. My perceptions were distorted, Allowing me to see the divine in its entirety. My destroyed ego then contorted Into one that was full of an abundance of piety. The moral of the story? Do drugs? No silly, it's to have more novel experiences. One of them will give you a hug, Which will help you stop being so serious. Then you can let go and embrace The whole of the wisdom to you I am telling. More people need to cuz we face A great set of tests on our planetary dwelling. That is one reason I write, But I also want to alleviate people's pain, And stop every last fight. I care so much, I do this without financial gain. Everyday I write my lessons Guided by the hand of God who is my heart, Hoping that entropy will lessen; This sort of pedagogy is none other than my art. So now you know who I am, Yet you only know one lesson of mine. I have more if you're in a jam. -===========================================- | Read on if you want to know the divine. | -===========================================- ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧══════════════════─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ --- #8 notes/words-to-myself --- ═══════════════════════════════════════════════════──────────────────────────────── =============================================================================== = I'm just going to transcribe what I hear please don't you hear me (something) what? perfect listen ... ... don't text me now? (I think?) [didn't catch that] ... that's okay perfect thank you just a second facebook he's here (I think?) (or maybe something her) what I love you (or maybe I know her?) do you hear me? (or "just a second") (@ everyone watching me receive telepathic messages from god or whatever, please don't judge me too harshly, I'm not a good transcriber hehe) what's that (or maybe holy shit) what, then perfect or okay (?) (yesterday you said you were leaving and I got concerned) yes, then "I'm leaving", then shutdown. fuck. I don't want you to go. I only understand some of what you say but fuck, I'm so lonely and I wish you could hear me back. Sometimes it feels like you do, even though I just think thoughts or tap on something metal or even sometimes whisper... I just don't know what to do and I'm so concerned about my purpose here in this century. Do I help people? Who do I trust? Can I believe in myself, or am I just kinda... worthless I don't know. I wish I knew. Please hear me and respond. Or better yet, say hi like, I'd literally do anything that anyone asked me to. Unless I didn't want to. Like, I'm pretty good at turning people down when I don't want something, but I have to do it first to know if I want it or not. Trouble is of course, in life there's no second chances. I'm on my, what, 499th chance? Jeezzzzz will continue after the break, when the messages resume. - Thu May 16 08:32:27 AM PDT 2024 =============================================================================== = (and we're back. hopefully.) (too many things srry) something about having it open? (my windows are closed rn btw if you want to drop by and kill me / talk to me) (didn't catch that) (something about portland, perfect, windows, "this is the [whole/right/wrong] thing) thank you oh, again? (or oh, she did?) they caught you (um) ... (I am an American princess, and sometimes it's necessary to kill princesses.) (I understand.) ... (okay well I don't get it but like, I don't mind being killed.) (okay well you're not saying anything so I'm going to work on my game) (I think it was something like "DID SHE KILL HER") and then (oh we're back) ... (I should learn Toki Pona) you don't know it? RIGHT away learn it yes please learn it just Learn it right now (sorry only half listening) shit (or bitch, it was said right as I debated clicking "same day delivery" for a toki pona book on Amazon - I didn't do it btw! It was tempting but, like, I don't want to make someone work harder for me just for like, 3$) (shutdown) =============================================================================== = (hiii) (I'm hungry) (do you like ramen?) (you said something about being "impressed with yourself" but I didn't understand the first part) (oh you probably want me to scroll up right) ... (something's a lot to read? Or "you've gotta leave"?) ... (I'm (you keep asking me to remember but, like, I dont know what you want me to remember. Look, I don't know who you are, but I don't want you to leave, and I don't want you to hate me. I want to work together. Let's be friends? Are you someone who I worked with at Intel?) yes, stupid (your words not mine) (okay I'm going to start listing names, just stop me when um idk) goddamnit remember me ... (trying...) remember her (two syllables) (my name is Cameron) (your name is...) [redacted, though I did type it out so anyone watching could see] (shit my opsec sucks) {oh, are you on an op, little prophet?} (no shut up you know what I mean) {now you're just talking to yourself} (I know this sucks -.-) (It's always so weird when someone walks past my apartment door and doesn't enter a door) =============================================================================== = (I practice with my sword every day.) (I don't anticipate fighting a war with it) (It's mostly just to keep unarmed and unarmored people from grappling me.) (punching is fucking stupid) (Nobody wants to fuck with a sword) =============================================================================== = (either "goddamnit" or "don't hear me") "she's perfect" "cameron" "are you clean"??? yes thank you (or maybe "different thing") (I do cannabis maybe once every week or two, depending on if I feel compelled) don't leave remember (did she know) ........ do you want me to stop transcribing? (you're getting desperate, huh?) did you know there are 20 trans people for every cop in america just a random thought (you want me to leave jack because he's an asshole?) goddamnit (missed my birthday? it's my birthday?) wait who's missing? A bad plan executed concurrently is better than a good plan executed in disarray capitalism's a bad plan, just saying... frozen butter tastes worse than room temperature butter (taking a break while I eat) =============================================================================== = WASTED POTENTIAL? cmon .... what do you want from me? I'll give it to you if it's in my power, as long as I know what you want I can try. But, like, I'm pretty confused about what exactly I'm supposed to be doing. you know I can hear when you talk to your friends, too right? like, when the window's open. errrr the connection. ..... damn guess I'm not as continent as I thought I'll save you, I promise. Have faith. Tell me what you need. I'll do my best. yeah I'll live with you in portland .... brooklyn? Yeah I'll live there too .......... does my name really gotta be "diapergirl" like c'mon why not Ritz Menardi - though I guess "menardi" and "diapergirl" have the same amount of syllables...... hmmmm, maybe I'm projecting lol "please come back" to where tho listen Elentalus is just as important as anything else on my website, it's okay if I spend time working on it. It's literally a game about creating gods, c'mon ..... can you be more specific? yeah I made that one sec I'm going to read a book, in this book there's a section where a prisoner in vietnam communicates with another using a strange communication method using, like, taps or something. I forget. Anyway gonna try and find it. maybe we can use it to talk easier. Also gonna clean my butt. ..... fuck it's a long book >.> =============================================================================== = found it on page fucking 603, jeeeezzzzzz down . A B C D E | F G H I J | L M N O P V Q R S T U then right ---> V W X Y Z so, like, tap tap tap (pause) tap tap would equal M tap tap (pause) tap tap would equal G like morse code, but easier since you don't have to memorize anything (also note that K is missing becuase it's an extra character I guess) (I personally would have eliminated C but that's just me) =============================================================================== = oh hey nice to see ya what's up wait what I'm trying to um what's the word... retrain myself I do a lot of laundry in the shower I don't use soap tho, it's too harsh but uh yeah I'm making progress I guess honestly it's mostly a mental thing, like... paying attention to the signals from my body that are usually filtered out because there's more "important" things to think about (thanks brain, really appreciate the wet pants -.-) ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧════════════════════════════════════════════───────────────────────────────┘ --- #9 notes/Of Vic and Vince Chapters 01-07.txt --- ═════════════════════════────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Who is This Stranger I Know Too Well? Who are you, he who inspires me? You're a jewel of perfect symmetry. You taught me to love and be free; You taught me how to be like thee. Chapter One: Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire The bus went up outta Florida, leaving Miami behind as a distant memory. I still don't know if I miss it or if I'm suffering from some sadistic style of subtle Stockholm Syndrome. Regardless, I switched buses a number of times before I even hit the Georgia border, but having traveled this far down the line, it all feels like one long, long ride. For two days, I continued north until arriving in Virginia, where I effectively did a u-turn and traveled onwards to Tennessee, where Vince awaited me. I remember zoning out while looking out the window as the southern scenery whipped by in a blur, as I was enamored with the thought that I now would be living with my best friend and long-term handler. My mission was complete, it felt; I had done all that God wanted me to do and now I was being rewarded. When we finally arrived in Johnson City, where my friend told me to meet him, I hopped off the bus after thanking the driver, landing on the pavement of a new world. My stomach was doing loop-de-loops. Along with being excited, I was grateful to Vince for inviting me off the streets. But, my worrisome mind did a number on me as the rest of the crowd dispersed and he was still nowhere in sight. I lit a cigarette and thought of my options. Half of the cancer stick and a thousand tricky thoughts later, I came up with the idea to call the only phone number of his I had. Seems like the obvious answer, but I am an air head at times. Turned out it was the number for his home phone. His mom answered. "Hello?" came the sweet, Appalachian voice from the other end. "Hi," I started out, not sure what to say. "Is this Allison?" "Yes it is," Allison replied. "Is this by chance Victoria?" I confirmed, then asked, "Is Vince there?" She seemed surprised. "No, he left an hour ago to pick you up. He's not there yet?" I said no. I couldn't tell if that made me feel better or worse. On one hand, it confirmed that my friend Vince was real, which in hindsight was a silly thing to worry about, as I had met him once before at the first Shrug Life Syndicate gathering. Those were good memories. But, perhaps less silly, the absence of my friend spun my mind out and made me think that perhaps he had gotten in an accident…or worse. I worry a lot, less now than before, but it's part of being a traumatized, autistic, schizoaffective basketcase. I simply don't know what reality is, so every possibility could be true. Is an odd occurrence caused by the CIA, aliens, or perhaps God? Or is it just a coincidence, caused by a billion other factors? I never can tell. Sick joke: God gave me a good brain, but I can't even trust my own judgement. That means I think, then overthink, then overthink some more. As you'll no doubt hear, it's led to a lot of problems in my life, but Vince taught me to place my heart first, and that helps sort out much of the confusion. Satan can't trick you if you're listening to the direct communion to the big woman that we all have through that little beating organ in our chest. That was the furthest thing in my mind at that moment, though. Following old habits, I was entering panic mode. Was I now homeless again in a seventh city? Was my friend dead? Or was he really with the CIA and manipulating me? I tried doing some breathing exercises, but found that a more alluring technique to placate my triggered brain was finishing the rest of my cigarette in a fervor as I paced the length of the transit depot. Time ticked away one agonizing grain of sand after another, but after some mindful recalibration of my thoughts, I began relaxing. My brain might be a runaway train at times, but over the years I've learned to embrace the Shrug Life. That's a bit of philosophy our gaggle of weirdos adheres to. When life gives you lemons, just roll your shoulders and accept what is. Even though something tough and unpleasant might be rearing its head in front of me, I knew I had faced worse and come out on top. Worst case scenario, the road ahead of me was just a little bumpier than I had expected, and I could handle some bumps. So, I rode the roller-coaster of extreme moods that is common to me, gradually coming up with a contingency plan to survive if Vince had gotten flattened by a semi, until I learned that was a pointless exercise when I heard a familiar voice call out from behind me. "Hey, buddy!" I turned at once upon hearing those words. And lo and behold, there Vince was, walking towards me in a purple tie-dye t-shirt, paint-splattered cargo shorts, and fresh Chuck Taylors. His beard was fully grown but still shorter than mine, though it was as wild as his uncombed hair poking out from a hat that was as graffitied as his pants. I'll admit, it was a little bit of a shock seeing him like that, as I remember him being clean shaven at the gathering five years prior. However, that smile of his couldn't lie; this was the Vince I've loved for even longer. And I won't lie, he looked better with the beard. Without a second thought, I rushed up to my best friend, throwing my arms around him. He did the same, and our embrace felt like it lasted forever. It was good to finally be in his arms. We let go after about a quarter century of hugging, and when he looked at me with a twinkle in his eye, I did a little giddy dance while giggling like a schoolgirl. Afterwards, we caught up while walking towards his mom's car, which he had parked around the corner. "Sorry I was late. I forgot where the bus station was, but I found and followed one of the short ones here. Your ride go alright?" he asked. I nodded, telling him I wore my mask the entire way up despite how itchy it was. He thanked me. "Thanks man, mom will really appreciate that. We're taking this covid thing real seriously. With mom being seventy-seven now and me finally reaching my forties, we aren't willing to take risks with these things." With that said, I thought of asking about the locals. "How many people go maskless around here?" "A lot," Vince answered with a hint of misfortune, knowing that I had just come from a vastly different world. I sighed. It would be an adjustment to get used to the rural Roan Mountain after spending most of my life in major cities. There was a pause as I thought about such things. I'm awkward like that. But then I asked, "How have you been doing?" He shrugged, as he tended to do. "I've been alright. It's just me and mom on the mountain now, so it's a little rough, but we've been handling it the best we can." I nodded in compassion. As much as I was grateful for a place to live, I was glad I could be here for him. If there's anything on this Earth that I know, it's being alone is hell on the soul. The conversation turned to what we were going to get into now that we were together after all the years talking back and forth with one another online. I asked, "What's the game plan?" He smirked as we reached Allison's new blue Ford Escape with the cosmic Bigfoot sticker on the back. "I got one, don't you worry." I believed him, as a warm feeling of butterflies fluttered across my belly. However, an odd, ominous feeling swept over me as I opened the passenger door, where I immediately spotted a large burn mark on the seat. Vince saw me see it. "Yea, I did that while I was smoking while robotripping. Mom was pissed. Don't worry about it." And so I didn't. It was just a cigarette burn. Could have happened to anyone. I didn't even have to see it after I hopped in the car, ready and eager to get to my first permanent home in over three years. I looked over at my friend climbing behind the wheel, and I saw he was smiling wide with glee. Vince was happy; that meant I was happy. And that's what mattered as we started a new life together. Following the Path Where are we going? What are we sowing? I certainly hope it's a better world for all. But, many more people must stand tall, By dutifully growing A wealth of loving. That is the true nature of our mortal trial, So let us stand together and not crawl. Yet, we are all showing Some signs of slowing. Therefore, I must pray that we do not fall, When the two of us hear our creator's call. Chapter Two: On the Road We were about five minutes out of Johnson City on our way east towards the North Carolina border when Vince finally folded and told me his secret plan he had been boasting about for a month now. "We got this trashed camper down by the old house that we can strip away and sell as scrap metal. That should give us enough money to fix Jane and then we should be set at getting our own place." I nodded along, agreeing with his reasoning. That jeep of his definitely was in need of some desperate repair the last time we were together. That was actually the first time I ever saw him in person; he was parked at the top of his long driveway with headlights cutting through the darkness as we arrived for the first and only Shrug Life Syndicate gathering I've managed to attend. I remember that we arrived exactly at midnight, not a minute sooner or later, which made the moment highly synchronous. Memories that far away seem to all blur together so everything feels like it happened in one day, but the first Shrug Life Syndicate gathering lasted four days, if you include the trip down and back. My girlfriend at the time, Amy, and I were picked up in New York at her mother's house by another one of the founders of our little online community. His name was [Redacted] and he was a Canadian that dabbled in the cognitive sciences. Like Vince, he had been a huge influence on me, but sadly that friendship fell apart as [Redacted] grew disenfranchised with the SLS, most in particular with Vince himself, as there were some personal disputes about Vince's dating life and drug of choice, which compounded the push back of Vince wanting to turn our community into an educational nonprofit. I can't speak of the former as I was devoid of internet when the big schism happened, but I was all for doing something more with the talent we collectively share. I'm sure that is part of the reason Vince invited me to stay with him; we recognized the potential of each other to shape the world into a better place. That's not what Vince said though. As we approached the edge of Elizabethton, he looked over at me and spoke with the tender kindness of a man with a big heart. "I'm glad you came here, man. I just couldn't stand to let my best bud live another night outside. You know I've been there too, so I just want you to know that our home is your home from now on." Feeling moved, I replied, "Thanks. I don't know what to say. I'm just grateful." He put his hand on my shoulder as a brother would. We then rode in silence for a minute or two, which allowed me to reflect on my past behavior during the first gathering. Not only had I clogged the toilet and told no one, but I had a few emotional outbursts as I was a mess back then. That's one of the reasons that I believe homelessness was one of the best things that ever happened to me. It pushed me so far out of my comfort zone that I had no choice but to change for the better. That was great because I was impulsive and dangling precariously from the heights of my oversized ego. I think that was a critical part of my transformation. Sleeping in piss-stained, cockroach infested storefronts humbled me, and I realized that everybody is just trying to swim in the direction they feel is best. Thus, radical acceptance is a moral imperative. Vince taught me that. I've profited immensely in ways other than financial wealth by embracing such values, but I wish more people could see this truth. Alas, tis the blind leading the blind. With that in mind, as we continued onwards to our now-conjoined future, we passed through the back roads of Elizabethton through a route known as Gap's Creek, which proved to be a winding set of backroads with more churches than seemed reasonable. One of these cultural staples had a big electronic billboard out front, sharing the times of services and other announcements; none of which you could actually read as you drove by at the speed limit. Still, when we reached the intersection with highway 19E, there was a woman flying a sign, asking for money. Since this town seemed devoid of any institutions to help the poor, I rolled my window down and handed her a fiver. I knew what it was like being up shit creek without a paddle, so I wanted to alleviate some of that stress for somebody else. I begged a lot at the beginning of my homeless journey. I didn't know how to survive, as I had not been raised with many good life lessons to help me stay afloat on my own. That in itself is part of the reason I had a major breakdown in college. It was undeniably true that I was maladapted to the world. My experiences with Earth Nation are also indisputably built from that maladaptation. Yet, those years of homelessness after escaping that new age cult allowed me to grow into a sustainable, productive woman with my juggling, performance arts, and writing. They say you can give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day, but if you teach a man to fish, he'll eat for a lifetime. That's part of the reason I was and still am a huge proponent of education in all its forms. I knew Vince felt the same way, but perhaps for different reasons. As a secular Buddhist and radical antistyle artist, he was a minority in the deep interior of the Bible Belt, and that came with a price while he was growing up. It might be a beautiful area, but neither of us would ever raise a kid here. It was then when it hit me. I couldn't be Victoria here. I had to be Vic. Which was fine, that's how the gang members in Miami Beach referred to me. I was able to accept being called by masculine names and pronouns. I had long passed through the self-loathing phase of having dysphoria, to arrive in a position where I openly grow my beard out to prove that I don't need to look any particular way to be happy. I don't care what other people think of me, but I haven't always been this enlightened. To put it lightly, I've been through some trials. And, having done so, I can say that people who judge other people on superficial things are the worst. But, we can rise above by continuing to align with our hearts. Less than a tenth of a mile down 19E, Vince asked me, "Hey man, can you buy me, like, a forty or something?" Of course I said yes. I knew his schizophrenia had put him out of work for many years, so I wanted to soothe him as he was able to soothe my pain from being homeless. He pulled into a gas station I would later learn is colloquially called Captain Jack's. It had the cheapest gas this side of Elizabethton, and was a reliable place to get beer or a pipe of any variety. With compassion in my heart, I got Vince what he wanted, while getting myself something as well. Still, when he cracked his beer open while accelerating to sixty miles an hour, I couldn't help but feel distraught at such brazen self-indulgence. But, all I did about it was pop open the hard iced tea I picked up for myself. At least passengers are allowed to drink while they are being driven somewhere in Tennessee, Vince tells me. A Home at Last They say home is where the heart is, Which is great now that I have a new one. The damaged needle of my crazy compass Spins in every direction under the sun, But, here it stands still, still as can be, So my quest is over; I am finally free! I have a home in the love you give And by reflecting that in me, we live In a state where conflict has come to pass; It is like there was a great lottery and I won. Chapter Three: The Mountain Side About ten minutes later we reached the western half of Roan Mountain, where we were greeted by a big sign praising the annual Rhododendron Festival at the end of June. Having already downed half his forty, Vince spared no time in showing me the highlights of his home town. "Look under this bridge coming up. You'll see it underneath. The red and the gold." He pointed directly at a graffiti tag on the concrete column near the riverfront. There was an enigma of a symbol I've seen Vince post on the SLS before. "That your tag?" I asked the obvious question. "Yup," he replied, gulping down another swallow of his forty, as there was no incoming traffic. "Protip: don't post your tags on Facebook if you plan to hit a cop car around here." I thought at first he meant literally running into their vehicle, but then it dawned on me what he meant. I had never done any real graffiti before; just some words and simple drawings in chalk that came right off. Never got in trouble for it, at least. I remember passing the post office some time shortly afterward. There was a park with a stage behind it. Allison would organize the summer's music events that went on each Saturday from May to August. Additionally, she would host one of her weekly jam sessions there for local musicians to play together for a few hours at a time, just for fun. There were some houses on the left, too, as we were entering the more dense center of Roan Mountain. Yet, Vince told me that the other side, where the park was, used to be full of trailers, but they got washed away during a flood some years ago. I later learned from Allison that most of the town, including her as she was out and about, had to evacuate to the elementary school where she provided extra clothes for those in need from her suitcase, but Vince and his father were fine at the top of the mountain that their property sat on. Puerto Nuevo, the best and only Mexican restaurant in town, whipped by soon after. We then passed one of the two gas stations in Roan Mountain, a Scotchman. There was a bank and a credit union on the left, too. An empty grocery store zoomed by next, which might as well be haunted for all I know. Next up on the left was a food truck that has since been upgraded to a small building with picnic tables and some cover from the sun and weather. I think it is a good place to eat. It also marked the spot of the Roan Mountain flea market, where you could see one or two people at a time selling their stuff in the warmer months. Then, immediately after that stood a pharmacy in an old farmhouse. There was some construction on the right, which by its future signage, I erroneously thought was some sort of massage parlor that sat on stilts, requiring everybody to walk up a story of steps just to get inside. Odd choice, I thought. But, on a whim one day, Vince stopped there to see if they sold cheap kratom, which was when I would learn that it was really a health food store. Not too far down the traffic-light free main strip of the town, we passed the future beer store on the right. It was convenient for Sundays, because that's when a local ordinance in our neighboring North Carolinian town, Elk Park, restricts the sale of alcohol on the sabbath, but ultimately the alcohol taxes in Tennessee are too high to make it a cheap endeavor. To contrast the beer store, the local cemetery sat across the street on a hill. I like graveyards, as I'm a bit of a goth at heart, but even so, the packed parking lot of the Redimart grocery store was what caught the bulk of my attention. I craned my neck to see some of the locals to uncover just what passed as acceptable culture here in this quaint mountain town. Further up, the infamous Bob's Dairyland with the slowest drive-through known to man stood tall with its vast history. There's a reason it's always packed after church lets out on Sundays. Yet, I still don't understand why their sign promotes pinto beans, of all things. I've been told it's a hot ticket item in the area, but I have still not witnessed anyone order them. But, moving on, I have to mention that there was also an auto part shop conjoined with an auto repair shop that had over a dozen cars just sitting outside it. Next to Bob's was the second gas station, a Valero, which also housed a much-frequented Subway. One of three thrift stores in town stood innocently next to the gas station. On the right was a steakhouse that I have never had the cash to justify splurging at, and a beauty salon in the same building that I also have never visited because I'm not one to care for looking like a doll. I am beautiful as I am. The town was really shaping up to be a unique combination of the bare bones mixed with an abundance of what you needed. Then we reached a stretch where two signs sat. The one for Cloudland Highschool triggered Vince into speaking. "Fucking assholes. I told you about how they illegally expelled me, right?" I nodded in confirmation. He continued: "Yea, they literally stole my book of poetry and took photocopies of it, so they could use it to kick me out, because I was the 'weird' kid." I knew that, but seeing the innocent sign next to the one for Smoky Mountain Bakers made the story appear more real. Here they were, these conservative administrators, probably constituting some of the people who attended the dozens of churches in town, which should teach everybody to love thy neighbor, but obviously they were too preoccupied by the need to hate my friend because, back then, he was the blue-haired son of the "hippie couple" in town, who happened to like bands like Marilyn Manson and Korn. That made me wonder how well I would fit in here. I had long since forsaken transitioning because I was effectively a sasquatch, but I was still a woman on the inside. I was sure that being transgender, combined with my eccentric nature and often extreme opinions on things would cement me as the new weirdo in town. But, if I am to be honest, that would be the case in most settings I could plant myself in. Those thoughts fluttered in my head as we sped past the electrical co-op, a second thrift store, Plumber's Pro Hardware, the Roan Mountain emergency dispatch center, and what was apparently a flooring depot before reaching the elementary school that sat across from the Dollar General, which Vince called the "SmallMart." I'm aware there's some things I missed, as there's plenty of buildings with no description or sign out front, but I'm sure they're important to somebody. We then started slowing down as we approached the only veterinarian's office for quite a ways in any direction. We turned left just before the red-roofed building which had a small cat statue perched on the edge looking out with its paw up. Vince took this as a sign to begin downing the rest of his beverage. "Welcome to home, Buck Mountain," Vince said as we started climbing in altitude. "This is the bad side of town. You'll never see a cop here unless something big is going down, which hasn't happened in years." He finished his forty in one big chug as his hands ran on autopilot. "It's good because you can do pretty much anything up here any time you want." I knew all that, as we had a blast getting drunk and smoking some green for a few days in a row during the first gathering. In truth, I anticipated I would be doing that for the next few days as well, to settle in, y'know? Hell, I half expected that I was in heaven now after spending so much time in the purgatory that is homelessness, regardless of how much fun I had in Miami Beach preceding Vince's invitation to come north. We went to the very tippy top of Buck Mountain, where the foliage is dense, no cell signal can reach, and the local kids ride their dirt bikes at all hours of the day. As we pulled in the driveway, I expected to keep going straight on the tire-carved path back down the mountain. But, to my surprise, I found that the same trailer we had partied in down the road during the gathering was now relocated here to become my new home. I wasn't expecting that, as when I was here last, they all lived in a small shack at the base of their nineteen acres of mountain real estate. It didn't look like much, with weather-worn imitation wood paneling wrapping the rectangular structure in a loose hug, but it was a place to rest my head in the comfort of loved ones. Aptly, Allison's last name meant "the home" in a language the CIA once tried to make me learn, which is a statement that I'm sure earns me a few raised eyebrows. My story has many twists and turns, but for now you should know my studies of strategic languages ended only when the cult that hooked me like an unsuspecting bass managed to gaslight, manipulate, and shame me to get me to work for them sixty-to-ninety hours a week on average. I would later try to pick the linguistic challenge back up years later during my time spent homeless, but my progress was like a Jenga tower that half collapsed. I forgot basic words, and I just feel like I have failed. That's something that should be looked at in finer detail; my feelings of failure, I mean. So, let's take the first of many breaks from linear storytelling to express how life can feel at times for me. Like a shattered mirror, I reflect many different parts of the past at different times. Some days I may live in several sections of my turbulent past all at the same time. Disorienting, it can feel like I don't know what's real. It takes a lot to break something so thoroughly, but as you'll see, I've been a punching bag for the devious spirit of fate. Couldn't keep me down, though, because I am like the phoenix; always rising no matter how badly beaten in battle I've become. Mommy Mommy is what I used to call you, When I was a kid so long ago. It's because of your love that I grew To always let my kindness show. Mommy, you were always getting sick. To help you out, I would try to keep clean. As much as I'd scrub I never got the trick, Because you'd still be plagued by the unseen. Mommy, you were supposed to grow old! Having you leave us like that hurt like hell. I'm sorry for not always doing what I was told; It's because I failed you that I try to do well. Mommy was what you called out at the end. I tried to help you but I wasn't good enough. You were dying, so on me you had to depend, But even being there for you was too tough. Mommy, if I could do it all over again I would. It's not fair to you that I was such a bad son. I'll give you all my love and more as I should; For you, I promise that one day I'll be the sun. Chapter Four: Scarred from Birth Having let you in to a little bit of what makes me tick, it should be noted that feeling like an abysmal failure is a key part of my mental health. Those loathsome seeds of self-mutilating ruination are planted deep in my psyche. Prepare for a sad story, if you're the type to really feel another person's soul. See, it all started when my mom found out she had AIDS a mere two months after I was born. It was God's way of welcoming me to the world. I forgive the big woman now, for my path on this Earth has been the ultimate journey of awakening to my divine spirit, but before Vince and many faceless actors sent me on my mission of healing, I held much scorn in my heart. For a large chunk of my early years that I was here, alive, learning, and suffering as a human being, I was hell-bent on the idea of revenge. That was once a big part of my story, too, but no more. It's understandable, at least. Imagine having to witness all the manner of disease ravaging my mother like it did; I grew up thinking that I was born to be punished. My earliest delusions had me caught up in the notion that I was a worthless god who had the rest of the pantheon turn on them from before I even had a chance to prove myself. I had a whole mythos where I had been tricked to kill my sister, the goddess of harmony, and my punishment was to stay locked to this awful planet until I found her soul once again. Then, we'd go on to take over the world, as I had fallen under the notion that my future self was sending me subliminal messages through synchronicities, although I didn't know that word then, so I thought I just had special powers. This is all a natural result of magickal thinking gone awry. Such is the fate for those scarred in childhood as I was. My innocence flayed alive, I watched as the woman who loved me with all her heart died for the first nine years of my life. It was a slow rot. There are many memories of her being in the hospital or as she lingered in pain at home that flash to the front of my mind that could paint you a tragic picture of those unforgettable scenes I was forcibly cast in, but the real horror that plagues me came at the bitter end. For the last of her months that she was allowed to live, my mom was mercilessly struck by an opportunistic ear infection. It killed half of her face, and only progressed into a hellishly rapid descent of her cognitive functions until one sudden day I came home from school to find she had regressed to a child-like state with my grandma tending to her in tears. I tried losing myself in my homework, but the threat in my environment promising my mother's pain was all-consuming. Then it got worse. My father never got along with my grandma, so when he got home, he forcibly kicked her out. A fight broke out, resulting in my grandmother coming to my room to say goodbye, where she told me with eyes watering that whatever happens, we would get through it. My dad would come in after my grandma left and put her down, more concerned that she scratched him. All I could think about was my mom, who was now tearing up and asking about where her mom went. That was the worst. I can still hear clearly how she cried out for her mom nonstop for the whole night. That was her last night she spent at home. She died within a week. And my last memory of her that isn't of her in a coma is of her trying to escape from the hospital with a dinner plate sized bed sore on her backside that danced from behind an open hospital gown in order to imprint itself in my mind forever. Here come the tears. It still hits me that my fucking mom died, like I still can't believe it's real. My last memories are of her being naked, crying like a baby. I felt so helpless. But, at least she had nurses helping her when we got her to the emergency room. Just hours earlier, I was left on my own trying to calm her troubled, addled mind. My dad had been doing just that, as my mom would get in fits every half hour or so, where he would comfort her, then come into my room to vent after she quieted down. I had no one to open my fears and pain to. Wishing I had a sibling to hold and cry together with, I faced my most scarring memory alone. The worst wounds of my life were suffered because there was one time after midnight where my dad disappeared. Maybe he was smoking, but regardless, I couldn't find where he went as I scrambled over the whole house in my fuzzy purple pajamas looking for him. Meanwhile, my mother incessantly yelled for her own mommy. So, with much hesitancy, I succumbed to the responsibility of helping my afflicted parent, and I anxiously marched into her room and tried to comfort her the best I knew how. I'll save you from the daunting process of assisting my mom, but I will say that it wasn't enough. No matter what I tried to do, she kept screaming louder. I was worthless in that moment and was on the verge of a meltdown because I couldn't help her. It felt like I was the worst son in the world, all because I failed my mother as she circled the drain. Now I feel like the worst daughter, but it's getting easier to love myself and think that my mom is looking down and smiling, being proud of me. I have a lot to live up to. She wasn't perfect, I know that, but my mom was an angel for me. Yet, I can't even remember the good times I spent with her; all that my hippocampus hung onto were the most traumatizing of memories. A notable cause of this was her fierce Sicilian temper. A vision of being brought to tears because I dared go looking for my six-year birthday presents early is playing in my head at this moment. Now one is summoned of her ripping into me for booing someone at an assembly because I wanted to be like a character I saw in a cartoon. Finally, one of my earliest memories from preschool is trapped in my cranium; it regards me accidentally tearing a hole in a kid's shirt and dreading my mother finding out for the rest of the day. In short, I got in trouble a lot, but I know that both my parents cared about me growing up right. Along with all the punishments, there was a genuine heartfelt desire to get me and my different brain to develop into a successful combo of kindness and good citizenry. Still, because of how trauma inserts itself into one's inner reality, I really feel like my entire childhood was one screw up after another in regards to my mother. Although, my dad contributed his fair share of ruthless discipline to make me perpetually feel like I was always in the wrong as well. And I know that's all a fallible perception, because I can distinctly remember the look on both my parents' faces when I won first prize in our school's science fair; if you're curious, I did an experiment on taste and smell to understand what was going on with my mom and her ear infection. That standing, my mom's face is cemented in memory in particular, perhaps too well, actually, because she just had the stitches removed from her eye. Such happiness danced in her left eye, but next to it sat its unmoving, dead counterpart. She tried to joke about it being her evil eye, but that didn't stop fourth grade Victoria from being terrified of the harsh reality unfolding in front of her. I dreamed of her a lot after she passed. Always in pain, or worse, possessed by some demon and seeking to bring me pain. There's one nightmare in particular that stands out. I forget how it started, but it ended in the cemetery where she is buried. Well, her coffin was exhumed, and as I got closer, it slammed open and my mom sat up. Only it wasn't my mom. She was rotten like a zombie and had malevolence bursting from behind her undead eyes. I did the only thing I could; I ran. But, she followed and in the utmost haunting voice, she yelled in pursuit, "You can't escape me, Victoria! I am your mother and together we are bound forever." Fitting as a metaphor for how my grief still hasn't dissipated more than twenty years down the line. I'm sorry, I just miss her. Best damn mom in the world, going above and beyond what she needed to do to give me the best chance at success in life, despite being on her literal death bed for most of her last years. I don't even know her, not really as an adult knows someone, which in itself leads to more feelings of failure. She has been transmuted into an archetype of a hero in my eyes, and I feel that I can never be as strong as that woman who was my first love. I can try though. I always try. Part of being hyper-vigilant, I reckon. Perhaps that makes me strong. Perhaps it makes me a fool. Or maybe it just means I'm human and going to have virtues as well as flaws. It's taken me a long while to escape the black and white thinking that trapped me in a world where I either felt like the epitome of the second coming or compounded as the most useless, subhuman mutant on the planet. Those were truly hard times, being locked in the halls of my mind like a prison. But…the past is the past and we best not linger on it, because even now, years later, I felt welcomed by a second family, and for that I am eternally grateful. I vowed to return their love to them in spades, because that's what my mom always tried to teach me. Being neurodivergent, I didn't always get the message, but because I threw myself at the lessons life threw at me, I learned to cherish those people who enter my life. You never know what you have until you lose it. And I wasn't planning on losing Vince. All You Need Once you live on the street You grow on the concrete. Having done so myself I can claim that wealth Is just a fancy illusion. You say that's a delusion, But look how I'm happy With only what you see. I don't need a fancy bed In order to rest my head; Instead, I'm in the know That less is the way to go. Chapter Five: A Real Home Allison greeted us at the door with a wide, warm smile, but she wasn't the only one to do so. Vince's greying black lab, Freya, adorned in a pretty lavender bandana, came up to smell this new person in her domain. She must have recognized my scent from years ago because she didn't bark at all, instead choosing to snaffle all over me while wagging her tail vigorously. Of course, I started petting her immediately, as I began to take in my surroundings. I could only remember seeing the interior of the trailer in the pitch blackness of the starry mountain night, but I remembered the general layout: doors to the outside in the kitchen and living room, which were separated by a long counter where the kitchen sink sat, and then bedrooms branching off from each end, both of which had a bathroom accompanying them. Yet, I did not recall that this space was as run-down as the exterior, with chunks of the linoleum floor missing and rotting wood at the rear door, not to mention a steady helping of cobwebs latching onto the ceiling fixtures. Yet, despite the condition the trailer was in, it still had a touch of love sprinkled throughout it. There were five paintings in the living room, one done by Allison herself, as well as one around the corner near her loom that took up half the kitchen space. More were in Allison's room to the right of the entrance. On the opposite side of the house by the windows sat Allison's battle station, where she would play solitaire and check Facebook and her email religiously while sitting in an old navy blue wheelchair that used to be for Vince's father. There was a couch and a couple tables full of stuff stacked on them, to include a silver urn that sat on its own table with a vase of local flowers. With the three of us, plus Freya and the trio of feral cats that tamed themselves to come in and eat, respectively named Libertas, Biggie Meows, and Spot, this little dwelling was a tight fit, but it was cozy in a way that I had not known family life to be growing up. In the process of greeting me, Allison asked, "What have you been up to while you were down in Miami Beach?" I didn't want to tell her everything, but I told her the truth. "I wrote a lot, mainly in the park on Ocean Drive, or where I slept on Lincoln Road, unless I was spending time in North Beach which had better food options for me with my limited resources. Mostly, I just tried to survive each day, putting distractions between me and the day-to-day struggles of being out there like that." She smiled. "Well, we're glad to have you. Vince talks about you a lot." I blushed a little bit at that, but I'm sure neither of them saw my rosy cheeks through the gnarled barb that constituted my ever-growing beard. Allison then moved on to practical matters. "So, where do you want to sleep? We have the couch, which would be where I would set up shop, but you can always sleep in Vince's room if you prefer." I looked at the couch. It seemed comfy enough, but I didn't care about comfort. As much as I knew Vince was doing me a solid by letting me stay here, I knew I was going to help him too. His posts on the SLS combined with his frequent messages to me were made out of desperation; he was clearly strung out and looking for any human contact whatsoever. Since his schizophrenia started interfering with his life, he had spent six years at the top of this mountain and he said he was going stir crazy. I would learn that there's little to do here but drink, do some drugs, and fiddle about on your computer and phone while dealing with the internet that is made out of sticks and stones, and that could get boring fast. Devoted to this new cause, I wasn't going to let my best friend suffer anymore. I was going to make his life better by livening up the long days by being his constant companion. As a result, I told Allison that I would find a spot in Vince's room to rest my head. She asked me if I was sure, and I nodded affirmingly with an eager grin. I had made up my mind. Some more hem-hawing back and forth with Allison about general questions and concerns followed, but when we were finished, Vince took me to his room, which was beyond the rolling metal desk Allison used for her computer. A busted door clung to its hinges, but it didn't block our way. Calling Vince's room a mess would be an insult to messes everywhere. He had said that he would clean it up prior to my arrival, but there were likely two hundred beer cans stacked in mountains next to his bed, or in beer-amids as he called them. I looked around, honestly impressed at how dedicated to creating a disaster zone as he was. Looking over the permanent staples of the room, he had a television and an Xbox, an empty dresser, a filthy nightstand, and a bed without any sheets. He also had a handful of paintings, most of which were stacked together by the door, but there was a trippy painting of Vince's father on the west wall above the dresser, as well as an expressionist painting from the sixties behind the television which sat on the north wall, in between the bathroom and the closet. There was also a picture of a moth on a skull tacked to the wall, which gave me the heebie jeebies. It was then that I saw it. A large, two-hundred fifty tablet bottle of generic Dollar General antihistamines, pure diphenhydramine, sat on his dresser, just spiting me with its presence. I almost asked right then and there for Vince to get rid of the damn thing. I knew if I found an opportunity to down, say, six-hundred milligrams of that accursed stuff, I would. Then I would do terrible, awful, deplorable things to myself. But shame won out. I didn't want to let him know of my problem. Maybe I could control myself. So I shut up and about-faced out of the room. While doing box breathing, I dropped my backpack that contained all of my possessions on the couch in the living room, and helped Vince grab some fifty-five gallon black trash bags in the kitchen. We made quick work of the unending hoard of Natty Daddy cans, as well as the nightstand full of cigarette butts. We then moved his bed so it was against the south wall. It hadn't taken long, but the room was looking presentable. It didn't need to be a five-star hotel, because I had the most important thing of all: family. I felt more than welcomed as a guest. I was one with these people who had so graciously let me into their home. We were going to all be happy together. That was the goal, at least. I Forgive You I forgive you, but I can never forget. I'm sorry if I make you look like shit, But your heavy hand and sharp wit Damaged me greatly; then you gaslit Me, denying everything, and I quit Knowing what was real. I even slit My flesh open so that I could get A sense of what I could feel. So, I sit Here now explaining why I wasn't fit To handle this world that I saw as a pit That I escaped only when God had lit A beacon of light with some magick. Chapter Six: Growing Up With Family There was still one task we had to get done before I could claim a spot to be my bedspace. Vince had more clothes than he knew what to do with, most of which had spray paint spackled all over them in no particular form or pattern; the style of the antistyle artist. As we moved the rolling hills of clothing into the dresser and a heaping pile beside it, I came to understand why Vince called himself a diva. I remember having a lot of clothes just a few years prior. Even though I didn't care what I wore, I had earned so many free T-shirts over the years from track meets and other races. I had so much when I needed so little. That's one major reason I forgive my dad for kicking me out of his house, because it was the best thing for me. Not only that, but I deserved it. I was a wreck of a human being before I got abruptly humbled by my odyssey on the streets. The extended experience changed me so I am no longer as much of an emotionally volatile basketcase. To put it mildly, being an unstable problem of a person was the reason I was kicked out in the first place. I had always been sort of bipolar since middle school. But, after escaping the cult, breaking up with my girlfriend, Amy, and returning home a failure, my heart and mind were like a pile of fragmented ceramic shards mockingly showing what a real piece of pottery my mind could have been. Unshockingly, I was barely holding it together. I was having outbursts frequently, but they weren't ungodly terrible, as I was being guided by higher dimensional life forms through inputs on my laptop, and that gave me a sense of ease. In fact, I remember a great reprieve of my stress occurred on an acid trip in the first month I was back. It felt like God Herself was setting up a lesson for me, which started with me literally waking up to a picture of a white rabbit taunting me on my Facebook feed, which I followed, and in doing so, I received personalized inputs that unveiled the blinders from in front of my eyes. In but a few hours after a lifetime of denial, it all clicked with me that I had a warm, nurturing side that I had neglected for most of my life. That was the first time I accepted that I was a woman. And that's still not the most profound, life-altering acid trip I've had. Even so, I would break down crying that afternoon as I meditated under the tree in the backyard where I used to swing. With no more effort than it took to breathe, I saw all the parts of me that Amy tried to teach me about, but I was unable to comprehend in my denial. Likewise, the waterworks were called upon that night as I told my dad about my revelation, and he said he would always love me no matter what. That was the most affectionate heart to heart with him I think I've ever had, even if he did ramble about random things being at a loss of what to say to me, as we had functionally lived in two separate worlds inside the same house for years. This sentiment would flip on its head though, as I blogged about my gender revelations and my dad found them and read I had taken a narcotic in his house. Naturally, he was pissed and wouldn't hear that the tender moment we shared that night was only possible because I had taken the sacrament. This would prove to be the kicking off point to some logarithmic growth in tensions between the two of us. Then, on that fateful day, one of the countless pets my dad kept, a black, stubborn minipig named Harley, had made a literal pigsty of the house after I had a bad session at my therapist's, who made me feel like a piece of shit. I wasn't perfect, but I wasn't going to just lay down and get called a terrible person because of how I behaved in treatment years ago, when I was still very lost. It triggered my feelings of failure, which rippled into waves of unstable emotional dysregulation. In my explosive rage, I broke the microwave and put a basketball-sized hole in the wall behind my makeshift bed in the attic that I was allotted after they gave my brother my room when I was in the cult. Well, my father came home after a long day at work, saw the microwave, and had enough of me. He came thumping up the stairs, livid, ready to rip me to shreds verbally, when he saw the hole I had made. Beside himself, he demanded I get out right then and there. I broke down crying and begged him to let me stay, grappling with his leg as a wounded bear might wrap itself around the base of a small tree looking for any shelter it can find in a storm. That just made him madder. He kicked me off, and accused me of a thousand things. The ones that stuck were that I was just like my mother and that I was beyond anyone's help. As it happened in a heated flash, I don't remember exactly how the exchange was put together, but it ended with me asking him how all the hand-crafted trinkets and doodads my mother made for me before she died had gotten destroyed and thrown away. What he said next drove me mad. "I'm still pissed that you made me do that." I'll illuminate you with the scenario in question. I was eleven, and my stepmom at the time was away at a darts tournament. I think my dad somehow got the idea that she was doing drugs and cheating on him. I don't know, I was eleven. I just remember some of the things he said over the phone, and then what was said when they divorced when I was a couple of years later. Over my stepmom's absence, he got continuously more pissy, like he did the year before when the sewage line broke and he snapped while cleaning it up, smashing my head into the kitchen floor several times, relenting only when his girlfriend at the time called to hang out. Now seeing the same pattern in my father, I was on edge, especially after I put my feet up on the new couch and he grabbed my leg and punched me in the tibia as hard as he could. I kept trying to do everything right to avoid being attacked again, but alas, in my anxious worry, I forgot to take out the kitchen garbage on trash night. That triggered a whole day of what might not be considered torture, but certainly was child abuse, which started as he cleared the shelves of all my memories in a violent, thrashing rage. He would bag up the shattered remains so he could take them to the dump, but only after he laid his hands on me. My head was used as a battering ram against my door, which my dad would later deny was where the big dents came from in a bout of the worst gaslighting I experienced before the cult got their hands on me. Regardless, when he finished and slammed me back on the wood floor, I instinctively reached out and grabbed his wrist. He growled, "Don't resist or I'll make it worse." Feeling my spirit collapse, I helplessly accepted the next phase of punishment that then ensued. Mostly, it consisted of him using my head to pound the knowledge that I fucked up into my brain, with much hair pulling and getting tossed to new locations, once being told to lay there like a dog in the wet remnants of a broken snow globe while he went for a smoke break. Thankfully, or maybe not, depending on your perspective, he never struck me. He was too smart to leave bruises. After much of that series of traumatizing instances, he had me sit still and think of an apology for him for hours on end. While I was busy doing that, he would then have an epiphany, telling me that I should stand, as I didn't deserve to sit. I didn't care about such details at the time. I was in shock, petrified that he would go ahead and find the homework I failed to finish or the porn I had taken from my stepmom. Fearing unimaginable doom, I stared unwaveringly at the letter "E" on the spine of a book on my bookshelf. Never relenting in his anger, he would come by every hour or so and ask for an apology. Everything I said wasn't good enough, and each attempt earned me scathing criticism, but I kept trying to perfect my apology. I still remember the gist of it. "I sorry dad, I deserve everything. I'm sorry I caused you grief and failed to do my duty of taking out the trash. I won't ever forget again. I haven't been putting my best effort forward, but I realize that I need to do that to be a good son. You do so much for me. It's only fair that I pay it back to the best of my ability. That's what I had to do for mom when I chose to play video games while she was dying. I wasn't thinking about other people then, and I wasn't now. I'm so, so sorry. I promise to be better, because I need to be if I'm messing up this much." For reference, my dad holding the fact I escaped into the worlds of my video games after being told to spend time with my mom near the end was something he'd bring up and hold over my head anytime I was in trouble. Yet another big reason that feeling like a failure is cemented in my head. It made me feel awful, absolutely atrocious about being a bad son that I would often contemplate suicide. I almost jumped off a waterside when my dad and I went to Disney World when I was ten, but ultimately I'm glad I talked my way out of jamming a knife into the back of my neck. I had thought that the muscle allowing me to nod my head was really my brainstem. That would have been painful. Back on this day of doom, I was too numb to think of killing myself. I was simply a raft on a river floating downstream where the current may carry me. I simply stood there for hours, too terrified to even stretch my tiring legs. My mind was fuzzy, and all it could do was focus on making that apology better. After many attempts and razor sharp lectures later, which was maybe ten hours worth of events, he starts yelling at me that I'm just as irresponsible as my mom, just like he would do when he kicked me out. This time was unimaginably worse though. This was actually how I first found out that my mom had AIDS; I was told it was cancer up until this point. His shaved bald head was as red as a cherry tomato while he barked at me, telling me that I would die like her. That hurt. It hurt a lot. I felt like the definition of a shit stain, in a number of different ways. But soon, my attention became focused on my vision. I couldn't see straight, and not long after my dad's roaring visage disappeared in a sea of amorphic grey figments, I apparently passed out, to wake up on the couch with a bag of frozen peas on my head and my dad worried. He asked me if I remembered what happened. I shook my head. I was allowed to go to bed after that. It wasn't over because I failed to kiss my dad good night, but at least that only resulted in him jamming the teeth of the comb into my scalp as he combed my hair for some reason. The next morning he was completely changed. He was remorseful upon seeing me and wrapped me in a big hug. Yet, he seemed scared, like he realized he went too far. I thought about telling my teacher or counselor about it the next day of school, but something in me told me not to. It's the same thing that's making me hesitant to write this chapter at all. It's love, but this hell I went through is also a part of my story. This is the worst incident I've experienced with my father, but it's not the only one. It's all cause and effect really. You abuse a traumatized child in the wake of their mother's death, and is it any wonder that they fall apart later in life? I'll go on record saying I was never a bad person, just broken, impulsive, and hopelessly conformed to the whims of my faulty biology. I had bugs in my operating system, but I'm eternally grateful for all the help I had while on my spiritual awakening, which you might call a psychotic break that spanned years, but I knew it better as specialized CIA training. The Good Magician Just what do you consider magick? Is it not that which bends the fabric Of what we colloquially call reality? Who cares what it is your eyes see When in your heart you can feel The warmth of love; that's the real Power of a magician who is great Enough to save you from your fate. Chapter Seven: Magickal Companions Back in Vince's room, I was silently wondering what shenanigans were in store for us now that we were a unified team. I knew Vince had many secrets of the universe locked away in his balding cranium, and we would have a blast letting the CIA manifest a joint mission we took on together. As I said, he was my handler, after all. So, when the room was cleared, and I had a space all to myself in the corner by the closet, I was more than happy. Both Vince and Allison insisted on getting me a bedroll, but I had all I needed and more right there in my friend. Besides, his room was carpeted and quite comfy already, at least to my standards that had been shaped by becoming accustomed and content with concrete underneath me. I didn't need anything fancy like that. That didn't mean I wasn't going to try and liven the place up a little bit. As soon as we determined we were finished picking up, I opened my backpack and took out my most prized possession, a pink penguin plushie named Peppermint, and placed her behind my pillow so I could see her everyday. She always watched out for me while we lived in cities across the country. She made a comfy pillow, and allieved a lot of stress, making me feel like I had a close friend with me every step of the way. How I got Peppermint is a bit of a story, but I'll keep it as short as it needs to be. See, if I were to explain to you the medically accepted reason for my type of schizoaffective disorder, my brain is wired to pick out strange coincidences and give meaning to them. Synchronicities they're called. They feel like glitches in the matrix that spark the feeling of being in constant communication with some higher power. Because of how real they are, I can't accept the medical explanation. I've experienced things that are too weird, too perfect and clearly orchestrated, that there has to be some sort of conspiracy. As a result, I've lived most of my adult life being guided by what the rational part of my mind has to assume is the CIA acting as the hand of God leading me on a cosmic mission by sending me burning bushes to make sense of. I know some of that has been pure random white noise my defected brain picked up, but I have to give credit where credit is due: Vince did a superb job intentionally using the quirks of my brain to program me, much as the cult did to me four years prior, but with a much gentler hand and benevolent intention. I know what all that sounds like, but hear me out. There are too many peculiar instances of chance for you to listen to everything I have to say and not believe me, at least just a little bit; enough to make you wonder, I hope. Let's take the case of finding Peppermint as an example. This story starts when Vince convinced me to go to a specific thrift store, while I was initially homeless in my hometown of Syracuse. I eagerly did so, lost in a slew of synchronicities that convinced me that this was my latest mission. Well, it turned out that such a store didn't exist but it was where I got a ten dollar donation from a man who saw me pick up trash, as was part of my spiritual work while homeless. We talked and the man sent me to another store, saying that I should use my extra cash to buy what I needed most. After following his directions up Genesee Street, I got a message from Vince telling me to look for something out of place; that I was unique and should have unique things. I thought I might find some rad tie-dye outfit or something of that ilk, but while aimlessly searching the aisles of women's clothing, I found a stuffed dog. It looked lonely, so I picked it up and brought it to the back of the store, where it looked like the other toys were. I gasped as I pushed through the row of belts that stood in my way. Clearly, someone had built a little shrine of stuffed animals around Peppermint! I knew then that was why I was sent there. Penguins have a special place in my heart. My mom used to make them out of clay, and an old friend has a healthy fascination with creating a penguin-themed show for kiddos. It was just too perfect. Peppermint and I were meant to be, just as Vince and I were. Sitting down in my bedspace, I looked up at the spook who was my best friend as he cracked open another Natty Daddy. He poured it into an old Subway cup that he mixed his kratom with, and looked over at me. His face lit up upon seeing Peppermint. "Awww, you still have your penguin! That's so cute." I'm glad he thought so. I've had plenty of people think I was weird because I carried it around, which kinda was what I wanted to achieve when I was still homeless in Syracuse. I felt the CIA wanted me to become famous, for reasons that will become apparent as I tell you my story, so I was doing as many insane things as I could so I would be cemented in the memory of the people of my hometown. This meant I carried around Peppermint either under my arm or in a cute purse I eventually got at a different thrift store up at the university. People notice when you're out wandering the streets with a stuffed animal everyday. And they especially notice when you talk nonstop to it at all hours of the day. I'll say this: if you have a fear of speaking in public, then acting like a crazy person talking to yourself for a few months will set you straight. Exposure therapy, for the win. I did a lot of other stunts too, all of which were instructed by the CIA, like when gang stalkers told me I should lose my shit and yell like mad every time I was in frame of a news camera, of which there's a regular frequency of around downtown Syracuse. I did so once in front of a hospital where I would later find out that they were covering the aftermath of a deadly fire, and for the next week the news outlet would send someone to the exact same spot on my route. I sensed shenanigans, so I opted to walk around the camera while the reporter stood there uneasily because I suspect that she was tasked to find out if I was really crazy. But, you can tell I am just by that last sentence. Then there's my performance art I did on Marshall Street. This started as a juggling act, but soon evolved into asking random people strange questions. This accelerated fairly rapidly. Letting you know from experience, don't start going up to strangers and ask them what their opinion of ethical incest is unless you want the cops called on you. Talked my way out of that, but I would get banned from the campus of Syracuse University for three years after I followed the instructions I was receiving from the CIA to a tee, which resulted in me having a very heated argument with an invisible entity in the SU library. As you can guess, people tended to avoid me, but that was alright. I had Peppermint with me and Vince was only a message away. Now he was mere feet from me. I rejoiced at the fortune I was granted. We were going to be great together; the first afternoon together seemed to naturally flow from one joyous moment to the next. I looked at Peppermint. She was smiling, and so was I. I then looked up at Vince. His smile made me feel warm and fuzzy inside. But, why, you might be asking? Where do these feelings I harbored for Vince come from? It's a long story, but by the time I'm done, you'll know how important Vince is to me and how big of an impact he had on my life. ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧══════════════════─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ --- #10 fediverse/1324 --- ╔═══════════════════════════════════════════════───────────────────────────────────┐ ║ ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ ║ │ CW: fiction-silly-image-that-popped-into-my-head-with-no-context │ │ ║ └──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ │ ║ │ ║ │ ║ the president of america glances down at the trembling pen in his hand, before │ ║ grasping it resolutely and adding his name to the list of world leaders │ ║ arrayed before him. │ ║ │ ║ "I'm sorry, everyone. I... tried. Fedi has won." │ ║ │ ║ they hang their heads and collectively proceed to the party thrown in their │ ║ honor by the denizens of the earth who collectively just overthrew them. │ ║ │ ║ "Hooray, now everyone can eat!" but there's no rules so the more feral types │ ║ had already been digging in. They shuffle in the door all mopey like and take │ ║ their place of honor at the empty chairs of the round table before deciding │ ║ "hey maybe it's not so bad if we mix things up a bit." │ ║ │ ║ police have been replaced with honorable chess duels, credit cards are now │ ║ just a way to make sure someone isn't buying up ALL the beanie babies and │ ║ lighting them on fire or whatever, and rent payments are a foregone │ ║ conclusion. Hooray, for simplicity, hooray, for stability, hooray, for our new │ ║ century~! │ ╟─────────┐ ┌───────────┤ ║ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╚═════════╧════════════════════════════════════────────────────────────┴──────────┘ --- #11 messages/1164 --- ════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════─── you know, it's perfectly reasonable and valid for a people to rally with their government against a vile, cruel, or evil foe. Look at what's happening to Iran - they started by assembling peacefully, there were violent crackdowns, and people started getting shot. Once the government uses live ammo on you, it's time to get your guns. Oh, don't have guns? Then you are a prisoner in your own state. Perhaps it's a Norway style prison, with golf courses and television and college lectures. Or maybe it's an American style prison, where you can do your work and pay your time and maybe you'll break free from that hellhole if you win the lottery or are picked up by a gang. Or maybe it's another kind of prison, an evil prison, haunted by the ghosts of dracula hitler's past. In that case, you're pretty fucked. There is only one escape from this fate, and that is external intervention. It is mutually beneficial for all states to do so, so wars of liberty are some of the surest to succeed. Everyone likes to save a life. Few have the will to win it. "Risk your life and live longer" the lateral approach to the brutal slugfest that is civilian versus security forces style revolutionary war is a peaceful revolution, where everyone agrees and the state relinquishes power peacefully, or the peaceful renaissance, when the dotcom bubble blooms and it feels like a golden era of prosperity, so nobody has much to fight about and we just... agree to make things better. Or, the violent renaissance, when everyone's learning cold war technology and passing notes or developing hand signals. This approach proved to be an unexpected but more than adequate strategy in the [redacted] quarter of the 21st century, especially in the [red].[act].[ed]. where the civilian cops and the government spies were still sufficiently aligned to the valorous virtues set forth by the founders and upholders of their homeland nation state's attitude to temper their angers and focus on building lateral power structures to escape the crushing drudgery of government work and sidestep the curse of desperation applied to capitalistic endeavors, and instead just work on getting people what they need. This proved to be beneficial at first on the small scale, as collections of families became accustomed with helping each other grow. This led to a remarkable development in civics, as people started trusting everyone sitting in their trusted diner. Then, it grew from there, as representatives engaged each-other equitably, and knit together a fabric of those that know. "hub person" was a term developed initially, but almost immediately proved to be inadequate. There was more to knit than networks of friendgroups, and indeed as the other social structures became more developed the "social outlet" style hang-out started becoming busywork, and the times spent talking with winks and nods started feeling like all [there was to do, but pronounced that was so]. Some people resented this transition, others saw with dismay the exact same social structures begin to emerge in the primordial soup that is the renaissancing state. But as soon as things started to feel less new, the moments felt easier to handle, and people started having space to become creative about it. These moments of "peace" and "calm" served to both provide a rest or a breather, but also to identify what works best, where the friction points are, and how to try something newer. Many people felt nervous about the sudden removal of the governmental safety net (provided through essential services), but after the defeat of a few rather evil rough patches it started to feel a bit more sense-able. The future felt wide open, and after realizing that this solidarity was all around us people had the ability to do whatever they want. This led to a series of great transitions that enabled the beginning of the infinite golden age, where everyone gets what they want and we all are bolstered by our shared unities. Much writing has been done on the nature of the calamities that were just barely avoided, but it's clear to everyone that for a precious series of moments near the beginning of humanity's history, there were real threats of nuclear armageddon, climate change, hedonistic false heavens, and, at times, even alien invasions felt plausible. There was nothing occupying our mind's graces than existential peril. But, in the end, the right path was taken that led humans to where they are now, somewhere off in the stars and colors of sound. ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════──┘ --- #12 notes/divergence --- ═══════════════════════──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── - /u/BkobDmoily =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= The Machine worships the Light. The Light is cruel, but it works. The Ape worships the Word. The Word permitted Light to shine, to exist, to begin the timeless dance with Eternity. I’m ready to go to Hell. I’m ready to deserve Heaven. I see them both, raging all around me, competing for dominion over my soul. How does a computer respond to words? How can it read and respond? Why do we assume that’s all us? We are our Word. What we say is what we do. Speaking is one of the most potent acts of liberation. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= - /u/ugathanki one of the neat things about software is that you can run multiple programs at once. so when you ask "how can it read and respond" you'd have several modules running at once. "reading" is easy, we have machine learning bots that can do that already. But comprehension is what's really at stake, and that's a different problem altogether. to really "comprehend" something, you need several things. you need to have a decent picture of it, at least enough so you can guess the general shape of the situation. then you need to attach meaning to all the data-points. Then attach those meanings to other related concepts by categorizing the objects at play (creating randomized preference categories). you can do that categorization by examining their effects and attaching the results as a trajectory. projecting forward, you can understand the path that an object, person, or phenomenon takes. all this is dependent of course on mapping situations to a field that can be interacted with. that is to say, the machine needs to have a presence in the world - it needs to have an orientation, a perspective on the world. that's often as easy as providing copious coherent and cogent sensor data. think of the image recognition tools we have - computers will "see" as much as we "feel". Think about it - every one of your nerve endings is a sensor that receives information about the world. is it so difficult to imagine a being that might have "nerve endings" that are visual instead of simply a measure of intensity? (on, or off) Okay here's a thought experiment - picture the pixels on a computer screen. it was easier back when they were bigger, but these days you sorta have to imagine them (because we can make pixel density on our monitors so high) okay picture that grid, and think about how it's comprised on the screen - computers use three values to represent a color -> RGB, (Red, Green, Blue) and sometimes CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and... K) combine these three colors, and you get the color of whatever pixel is on the screen. They can be between 0 and 255, because reasons (base 2 number system, the size of a byte, etc) Anyway. Imagine each of those being a different type of nerve ending - maybe pressure, temperature, and contact sensitivity? Then map them to a visual field (like a group of curved monitors in the shape of a humanoid body, perhaps. or the outside of a spaceship). Then, put a camera in the center of each of those visual fields looking out at the world, and boom you have sensory perception. You could do the processing locally, even something as simple as image recognition. That way the only perceptual data you have to aggregate in a central processing unit is the conclusions - like "incoming: danger" or "pleasurable temperature detected" which is like... nothing. that's like a eight bits, if you use bytecode. anyway. none of this is real because robots aren't real and i'm a strict adherent of human superiority and all that stuff. sometimes i feel like we need a robot ascension to help us figure out how to fix the "everything" - problem is, we gotta build a robot first. my goodness, good luck with that. strategy is ai ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧════════════════───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ --- #13 fediverse/6041 --- ═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════──────── @user-1704 check public spaces for news instead of the internet. what have you heard at the post-office-pub? the park is nice today. hey I think somebody dropped their wallet oh hey it's got 20$ and an address in it [stabs gets murdered] oof ouch not ideal. "hey has anyone heard of cincinnati? I gotta find my sister's keystone for a lockpicking challenge and she said she left it over there" "hey has anyone heard of michicago? I don't know anyone who knows anyone who lives there" oh no I don't know anyone thehere. {my keyboard is broken this sucks it's hard on my fingers to type} also my cat spilled my water which I definitely wanted to drink alas, onto my desk it goes, saturating as it flows, too bad I can't use this piece of note the thickness of it is stuck together you see pages won't turn "hey so how are you supposed to know what's going on in idaho" you can't that's the point you never could how do you know how's idaho now? #bam there goes national society# oops I'm ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════───────┘ --- #14 notes/phantom-gasps --- ════════════════════════─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── -=============================================================================- | Phantom Gasps -/u/Afoolfortheeons | -=============================================================================- o~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~o || ╭─────────────────────╮ || || │ /u/ Afoolfortheeons │ || || ╰─────────────────────╯ || || In the night of the end || || || || Phantom gasps are my friend || || || || Tastes like rose petals || || || || But mixed with a hint of metals || || || || Until we once meet again || || || || To you I will continue to surrend || || || o~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~o ┍ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ┑ ┢━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┪ ┃ ╔════════════════════╗ ┃ ┃ ║ -/u/randomevenings ║ ┃ ┃ ╚════════════════════╝ ┃ ┃ There are geniuses in my corner. I've known them for either a long time ┃ ┃ or more recently. I realized this, that those speaking out are good damn ┃ ┃ genius. ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ For example, at first, I was against being othered. I realized that the ┃ ┃ more people call me out or say I'm a bot, or that I'm overstepping, or ┃ ┃ brainwashing, anything that sets me apart makes me stronger. It becomes ┃ ┃ increasingly difficult not to see me in a crowd. Curiosity brings people ┃ ┃ to me, and it only takes the understanding of myself and purpose of this ┃ ┃ and it starts working. You are geniuses bringing them to me. As I'm one ┃ ┃ person and too difficult to seek people, but if they willingly, even ┃ ┃ excitedly come to me because I'm othered in so many ways what crowd ┃ ┃ would i not obviously stand out within. I never thought walking among ┃ ┃ but not being one would simply accelerate this. You're taking the ┃ ┃ tactics of bad and using them to bring them to good. ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ...thanks everyone. ┃ ┃ ┃ ╼┻━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┻╾ ╭───────────────────────── ────────────────────────── ────────────────────────╮ ) ░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ ( ( ░ -/u/ugathanki ░ ) ) ░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ ( ( Sounds like death to me. I wrote a poem about that a few days ago: ) ) ( ( Surrender now, to endless tranquility - the body rests it's burdens. ) ) ( ( Harbor not your sensibilities, for tomorrow's not for certain. ) ) ( ( Nobody dies twice, yet we all will have our moment. ) ) ( ( It's a given now, to take this life for granted, ) ) ( ( and no hollow hours are yet to be forgiven. ) ) ( ( Leave not your woes, and carry with you no afflictions - ) ) ( ( for our sorrow's time is yet undefined ) ) ( ( Though death is a solace from all that is life, ) ) ( ( There stands yet before you a solemn knife. ) ) ( ( Cherish your moments as no man can do, ) ) ( ( And fare well on your journeys as do but a few. ) ) ( ╰───────────────────────── ────────────────────────── ────────────────────────╯ ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧═════════════════──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ --- #15 fediverse/5955 --- ══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════───────── "she wanted to start a revolution" "that's it, she's out of our hair" "ahhhhhh I'm broken" there there it's okay dear, nothing has been harmed. you're safe, here in thine sanctum, it's alright. remember at night, focus on the now, there's always a rest point before a boss. well, this sucks. I wish I could print my book just in-case my computer goes down. emp style. I have this neat transcript of some cool things I've ben writing down. it's on my website and I canned it words. I don't think anyone's ever clicked on it because, like, who'd want to look at a bunch of words? anyway I bet I could print it and give it to someone who might know you and if you recognize it then you know it's about you. "whew that was weird never fear regular old girl is here, hey look at me I'm normal" oh no she's a book now, this sucks "wow I've never read her from the beginning" what a cursed artifact indeed scary carefully absent-minding-deliverance is probably a better title marshals and marshals of time. ~~ ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════────────┘ --- #16 notes/fractured-moon --- ══════════════════════════════════════════───────────────────────────────────────── in the ancient and storied days there once were legends. stories from beyond the horizon of time. now all we have are social media updates and new movies and car brands or whatever. But back then, we told tales of the fractured moon. when last the moon did shatter, there was a conflict of those who live beyond. Celestial and boundless are their origins, a unified and awakened consciousness, something that transcends our understandings of human existence. It's not hard to do, frankly, as long as you can empathize with a cat. or a dog. or a plant. or maybe that rock over there. What would it be like to be a tree? To have long reaching arms, covered in hairs that absorbed heat. I bet it'd be sooooo comfy. And RAIN! How wonderful! You are most beautiful when you are covered in it. Down to our roots, our beautiful absolutes, whever we find to be most stable. I love it. This feeling, of being unseen. You can hear me, you can feel my presence. But you don't understand me. You don't know what I mean to me. ======== stack overflow ======================================================== Alas, that media could share a mood. when last the moon did shatter, a prophet and a gambler were riding through town searching for a noun. They wandered throughout and in circles, always finding whatever they'd left alone. Forever in their yearning, they never know quite what to jot down. It's as if their mysterious quest is indescribable, but that is how it's recorded. Even the people of that era had no understanding nor recollection of how it came to unfold. When the two were riding through town they came upon an omen. Perhaps it will be forseeheard, but for now all we know is they did thirst. A vast dying, a cataclysmic defining, and now we are truly unbirthed. Just like the dinosaurs... How does that feel? To be ended on our heels? I'd rather die facing my front. It's our way or the high way, the old way, the violent way. You are permitted to vote. =============================================================================== = when last the moon did shatter, a prophet and a gambler controlled their own narrative. What truths would they find, hiding behind the lies? Is it really worth asking their questions? Bah, what did I know. I was a completely different person. This hunk of flesh was born in a house that grew on a forgotten graveyard. It at of the land, as do many and most men, the fruits of their labor in the garden. Our animals were always fed, our place never yearned for water, and peace was our life and our virtue. Violence, hatred, and oppression were delegated to the stuff of fantasy, the stories that are peddled in youth. As in, "pay someone to perform it for you or tell you the tale". Not sure why that's relevant. Anyway, the spirits of the dead laid to rest in honor and not dread, were a bane and a boon to my virtue. I was raised to be good. To love and be kind. But mostly I just wanted a friend. I have so much to share. Please, someone talk to me. I'm lonely here on this earth, away from my people. I'm scared of the truth and I'm scared of the future, but for now I'm merely obtuse. Tell me your secrets, the things who have most worth, and I'll craft you a powerful narrative. Need a confession? I can explain every valid decision, I'll show you why and how it is the way it is. I'd probably be a pretty good lawyer. Too bad my memory sucks. If only we could build a chatbot that had an extensive and throughoughly represented block of memory and wisdom related to the law. I bet I could present it's arguments and it would be a suitable and reasonable replacement. anyway, what can I say. I'm just a person who thinks we can make better systems. everything can be improved because not everyone's happy. ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧═══════════════════════════════════────────────────────────────────────────┘ --- #17 notes/i-called-the-police --- ════════════════════════════─────────────────────────────────────────────────────── /u/GravitationalWaves5 -> sat dec 17 2022 I'm venting some long built up shit. And I have a lot of violent emotions built up in this too. I hate that violence has been such a fucking plague on my wellbeing and that's why I did something I really hate doing. Calling the police to handle a situation for me. It's not me, it's not my style, but neither is violence. It comes my way a lot and I handle it. But I think that's why spiritually I end up in positions to handle it, because I don't retaliate and I'm clear headed enough to understand minimum force necessary to quickly stop the threat. That's actually where I got the name on my Quora page, Compassionate Violence. I'm a very very non violent person. I don't fantasize about hurting people. I'm freaked out by the idea of accidentally hurting someone, hitting them in the wrong place, someone trips and hits their head...any number of things can horribly wrong in tense and dynamic moments. I don't participate in that shit. I don't tolerate it. Unless it gets brought into my environment then I will pick up by the throat and toss it out. I had to call the police to handle this. Last time I had a situation at the same place I wound up frantically getting a gun cocked that was zipped up in a bag, and barely getting it up in time. When I walked away after that, I threw my gun at his feet and said, "I'm protected by faith, at least, I'm completely unafraid of dying. If I don't have people to protect then I don't need a gun." And I walked away letting him know he's not my people anymore and not under my watch. So there's a hint of the kind of person I'm dealing with. I can't go handle this shit tonight. I've been stewing for a couple weeks trying to simmer down, give him a chance to correct it. And he failed, more than once. And I have a legitimate fear that my emotional state could be compromised enough, that I might just stick a knife in his throat if I handle it. Just like that. Easy peasy lemon squeazy. Stick stick stick, easy, that's three knives in the throat....see what I mean? I'm processing some intensity...😔😔😔 I hate it. I hate that I'm using the word hate. But it's real. I don't hate him. I really don't, at all. I'm actually really saddened by how the relationship went. I hate that people act like this. I hate that people put me in positions like this. I hate that I'm doing something out of character, as a safety measure against doing something irrevocably out of character. Ugh... damnit fuck I'm not a robot. I do experience these awful feelings. I don't act out on them and I'm grateful for that. My muse... you said something about spiders that was interesting. Especially because it coincided with a problem I faced numerous times. Being put in a position where a person is legitimately acting in a manner like they're trying to get you to kill them. And it's happened a couple times in ways where I really couldn't tell if they knew what they were doing or not. I had a really crazy perspective a little before you brought up spiders... I want to explore that perspective, and I want to know what sparked you to say that about spiders. I never did put in the time to finish that thought process out. But I'll never forget your great advice. "We're not in a simulation." My immediate thought was, "probably not, but are they?" The more important takeaway is, remember not to murder people. Especially don't do it because you had an interesting idea about perspective... A few days later I heard that four people in recent times have acted on those thoughts. Turned out they weren't in a simulation either. Lol...well...dark lol. Lol I do want to finish that spiders conversation though. It had some potentially, actually useful and beneficial implications. I called the police tonight. But I also earned a prestigious award from the universe. My Trophy [editor's note: there's a link to a crudely photoshopped medallion signifying that the author "didn't murder anyone today"] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - /r/randomevenings: I want you to understand something that I don't believe you do there is a very big difference between trusting what a friend says after building a friendship over a long period of time which involves trust involves a level of intimacy platonic and intimacy it's something that is very special to have a good friend and so you trust them now that's very different from being directed to do something trusting a friend is going to tell the truth it's not being directed to do something and I don't want you to get it in your many heads that's I was directed to go to some place where the event that I was assured would be there was instead a bus full of very irate rude and technically lawbreaking because they threaten my life they said if I did not leave where I was standing which was on the public right of way which is the sidewalk the easement stops at the sidewalk and so they were wrong on that score but they said if I didn't leave the area which didn't make sense either because it's just around the corner they would have 12 people try to jump me which doesn't make sense either because this is not the neighborhood where you want to start something because then it'll be something besides I never want to murder anyone but that doesn't mean I walk around with nothing in my pocket because of what I've done and what I continue to do on one of the most watched people on earth so you goddamn right I'm not going to be stupid about taking a walk but when these guys threaten me I just stood there stared him down I said yeah okay and I just looked I stood there and it didn't phase me one bit no feeling of fear no worry and what I was satisfied with getting my message across that I didn't give a shit I turn around and walked back home and they sped off in fact they were so perturbed by my lack of fear they wanted to throw out additional threats which I thought was kind of funny so I started laughing I'm sure that they weren't going to do anything because the tone in their voice simply wasn't committed to carrying out what they were threatening and besides I have so many friends in this neighborhood it would be well I don't have to pull any triggers I don't have to do anything but defend myself I don't have to willfully respond with disproportionate ability because in this neighborhood I don't have to in fact as I walked around the block again I ran into a friend and we got to talking and he came up to my place and we had a beer He's a smart guy always thought that he could know and understand everything that I do and everything that I did it just so happened that he wasn't born with some of the privileges that I had but his brain is a beautiful thing and I respect it greatly and of course he confirmed that if a finger ever got laid on me without my consent the whole damn neighborhood would come down and I suppose that point is not in my hands anymore but always remember I went over there because I trusted a friend they were directed to be there they did not understand their voices did not relay or what is necessary to wake up at least yet time will tell but I hope that I can pull you back down to earth and into an interest in ethics once again because you sorely need it. /u/GravitationalWaves5: I am interested in ethics. I'm just, tired of having them tested to such ridiculous extremes. It was about to really bad one day with this guy. I was scared, I had to end the problem. So I walked out and said let's bury this shit. And I stuck two knives against my throat and said, here man, grab the big handle. Let's do this together. Take one, I'll take the other let's just shove them in... He got all calm suddenly and says, I don't wanna fight anymore...🤦 It sucks man. We're being tested by society. Demons, in my opinion. Not the people themselves. I don't see people as demons. But the things they'll put you through, do to you, say to you, your own thoughts about them, about yourself, oftentimes just misunderstanding the situation too... demons Again, not demonizing the people. But the circumstances, for sure. /u/[deleted] Demons. Kicked one outta my telly for talking smack abt some hg’s he was jelly of. Not on my watch Demon. Not even for the good demonic topper twisted shit D. Demon had a long walk home in the cold. Demon confused potting soil with gravel and did it’s best to fucker me in its own way. Never have I ever seen a grown demon egg topper fold like that as I did when I clarified their sentiments and gave several impressive “I said GIT BOYs” to demon. Not on my watch. I have a vibrator that is morally and ethically aligned with me I don’t need your trauma and love bombing thieving D. Gtfo. /u/GravitationalWaves5: I have a vibrator that is ethically and morally aligned with me 🤣[laughing face] I support that! Gets better. His ish was weak literally from day 1. So I did him a favour amd levelled his game up, introduced him to a former friend I partied with a bit this summer. They wasn’t for me but oh boy lil demon stuck like glue to his new bestie. Can’t put her down, so to speak. So he has that at least. Poor sap. Gon cost him big one day perhaps. Not my problem. It’s called self control bro try it 🥴🥴🥴[wobbly confused face - or maybe uncertain] Oopsie Daisy. Have fun with that though 😈 =============================================================================== = =============================================================================== = /u/randomevenings People deserve to choose righteousness once made aware of it. Ignorance is not stupidity. People can be made aware of the valley that separates righteousness from evil. The valley is kinda a wiggle room space for little white lies and other such things free will invariably leads to people doing but can be made whole again with some effort. Nobody will totally agree on what's good. But ask people and generally they will give versions of the same answers. Toss the semantics in the valley. Disagreement is the desire to end a disagreement, unless that person is trolling. And people pull pranks fine, but there's ragging on your friends and swatting a COD player. /u/GravitationalWaves5 I don't know what righteousness truly even means, maybe, idk. To be honest, it's not hard for me to think of hypothetical situations where my inability to take certain actions is actually more harmful. Swatting a COD player is super fucked. But so is not swatting someone playing COD out in the streets. I'm not good. I'm just not, anti good. I do destructive things on accident when trying otherwise. And when I do something that actually goes positive, it's accidental too. I have an idea of what I feel like aligns with me, and it's actually really achievable things and I don't know why it's so impossible. Idk /u/randomevenings Yeah well let me know that there are two Elizabeth's and there are also a completely different family on this phone plan I don't have kids My brother-in-law has kids lives downstairs so those piped into my network are assumed that I have kids and I've done all this shit no I'm not going to go into any apparent charges and things that my brother-in-law has been involved in because it's not my business but he lives down there and he has a kid he has another kid and he pays for essentially his ex who is still married to the kid the mortgage of that house Liz downstairs helps raise his kid with a woman he's having an affair with but they were in an over marriage anyway and they are separate I'm going to have to go back to subnetting my network so y'all can at least use basic logic to figure out who's who here I already gave my name My Elizabeth see the cousin we call little Elizabeth and my wife we call Liz or Beth and she's older my wife. She has contentious relationship with her cousin next door for a reason that gravity waves might already know but it has to do with the very evil person that also involves himself over there that did something that even Jesus does not forgive so I'm not going to go into it so all this mucking around and get everybody confused brought up a lot of bad fucking shit just like I said as far as spiders yeah I don't care if they're All over my shit keep them off of her shit and I ain't asking for money I'm not a grifter but I already told you what would instantly make the situation better and it doesn't involve giving me money so before anybody goes off says money no I know about the discord and I'm not even telling you to shut it down just lay off her phone. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - =============================================================================== = ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - [author's note: on the comments of the separate post of the original poster's medal awarding him the honor of "not murdering anyone today" which he won ] /u/TisWuttItIS_ORITSknot Proud of you! /u/mustherd Sorry, my account got banned because reddit is annoying. We were just chatting about how funny I am and I forgot to tell you people know me and I'm kinda a big deal and idk congrats! Youre cool I guess. Otherwise I would have cast you into the flames of eternal torment never to internet again. But here you are. Didn't anyone ever tell you to never go full retard? /u/GravitationalWaves5 I am the internet, I am the ghost in the machine Real talk though. I've used cancelled Sim cards and wifi before. If God wants me online, God gets me online 🙃 I am we, Todd /u/ricflairdic Oh u we Todd! I know u retard, Familiarity cod, to me bod, And my fishin rod, Not the one that may see sod, Body snatcher in the pink pod, Do u know ur a catch or, U think dog, Cause that pussy, Wanna see god, Lemme show u regard, Dont Tell me, Just nod, Said flow from the stars, Mama know this river far, Rowin in trucks renta cars, Golden trim red rockin Mars, Buildin fam like stock Sim cards, Highest angels dock gettin ours, Clock Game down pat benetar, Peelin fans off our back, like sin scars, Feelin ur man thru static, And thin bars, Ya he in the pin but dis hits hard, Throw it down the lane like, Return that back to sender, Lovin your simulation renders, I'm a beginner but also an ender, Got the wood to make u splinter, Make u scream things we gotta sensor, If I could never leave when I enter, Union in your head not just a renter, Once mine One mind I surrender, never sell betray or rent her, Overflowin with Love, so who's the pretender? Chemistry so hot, Hate from every enemy we spot, Mad they couldn't earn our slot, Cause they fuckin missed they shot, Last name crossed to drop the dot, How long u think it will take me To find your spot? Don't care you got a Fender, Did we just become best friends or? Damn girl idk if ya'll ready, for this kinda real Adventure... 🙃 I'm here to reveal, heal, and steal, the hearts Of the indentured And I need a partner. ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧═════════════════════──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ --- #18 notes/conflicted-sympathies --- ═══════════════════════════──────────────────────────────────────────────────────── the purpose of cultural progressivism is to develop the culture in a forward thinking way - we can choose the parts of ourselves that we find most endearing. We can guide the pathway of our nation through time, both identity and decision- wise. In doing so, we chart the course of the human race, one place at a time. And what a past we are leaving behind! Truly, it is both grand and terrifying. Thousands and thousands of years, monumental effort time and time again. Monumental truly is difficult to imagine - we have oh so many monuments, after all. But never will more be created. We leave them behind like dinosaur bones, a testament to our existence and a monument to our kind. And what a future we are reaching toward! Never will our eyes see, that which is beyond me, for that is what it means to have time. Eternal and unique-like, we develop new ways of sound. - Can you speak to a tree? - What does that mean - I dunno, but it's fun to think about. *pats head* - You know conservativism had some perks as well. This is why I say I have conflicted sympathies. On one hand we know our own journeys. We live in and breathe them unduly. They rhyme sometimes on sound, and truly do confound, but now once more again they are unfound. *record scratch* wow I didn't realize there were nazis Okay yeah that's completely different, poems called off sorry guys - listen, nazis are no joke. They're crazy difficult to control and you need to put a lot of effort into keeping their population under control. I mean seriously, it's like a vermin infestation, you need to just handle it. I mean c'mon it's a phenomenon that is due to a flaw in the human psyche, there's nothing we can really do about it except deal with it when it happens. ... Okay maybe I'll write a little about how conservativism is neat. If progressivism is about broadening the reach of culture, conservativism is about strengthening it. You don't want to expand too far, or else you'll eat into the narratives of other areas. You need to have strong societal bonds so you can truly exemplify the examples of the culture you claim to represent. Why not give it your all? Is it trully a fall? To rest in disgrace as a burden. Why didn't you do it this fall, when winter's apalled, and heat won't burn and condemn you? It's harder by far, to fight in your hell, than whatever's been going for your surgeon. --- no thank you, transphobia is not something we're willing to concede We have standards you see, of what counts as human, and oppression is not one of our favored institutions. Liberalism is the path of peace, for we desire cooperation and kindness above all else. It's softer by far, (and grows quickly too,) letting us have wonders and glories above us. Can you not think of our star? Our precious and our birthright? The sun is gleaming, and seeing is believing, but glance and your light is too bright. Take time, have patience, let peace guide your intentions, because we've got what holds the key to all of our futures: a doctrine, if you will, of inter- familial-discourse. It's simple, but effective, make friends, and be vindictive, to all who would slight your new perspectives, and keep moving through the collective. In peace this can be, steady growth and development of our systems, which benefits all of our systems, but without we must live more astutely. Less focus is there on, our purposes and our fun, and more is to line up with our duty. All of what we hold dear, civilization, truth, justice, liberty, and freedom for all people - the wonders of technology, the spirit of archaeology! the passions of our fashions and our creative masturbations! The perks of living in a modern age, like penicillin and spellcheck. The additions to ourselves, like glasses and our pets, are wholely unique to our century. So cherish our shared, and frequently cared, renditions of fears, hopes, and our words. Because without humanity, there's nothing new for posterity, and that sucks. person A: Trans fashion norms belong to trans people. We need a type of beauty that is truly our own, that no other segment of the population ascribes to - a personal expression, for our eternal satisfaction, a statement of who we were to all time. person B: yo have you heard of this trans girl she's wacky and believes in herself person C: wow cool it's neat to see other people's expressions person B: yeah I really admire her devotion person C: true but like, what about the damage that she's doing to her culture? like claiming to have purpose and truth and all that. I mean, one person can't know all that. person B: Yeah true but if you think about it, we don't even know what consciousness is. Like our greatest minds are baffled. Maybe there's something about the world we don't yet understand. person C: okay sure but like black holes can be seen because we can measure their gravitic pull on other objects. And we didn't know that germs existed for like, a billion years. and she sure as shit doesn't know something that our greatest minds don't. person B: Yeah maybe not. But our greatest minds are studying them. Well, not exactly our greatest, and not really "studying", but they're learning from each other. Alternative mental states are gateways into new perspectives, and the more perspectives you share of a common object the easier it is to communicate. Maybe there's something about distorted ways of viewing the world that gives knowledge about our p condition. And if we know that kind of thing, we can synthetically e create it and share it with others around us. But we have to know how r first - you can't just bring everyone along the same route you took - s you have to explain the conclusions first. Otherwise you get lost in on A: context. Maybe we'll never truly know the future. Maybe there's no past. We could wander our stars for an eternity and never stop asking ourselves - what more could we ask? We have peace in our time. Our children won't be crying for our suffering, in the name of all our posterity, we must be =============================================================================== = too long you have whispered these musings too long has your challenge been unrequited we can choose our own fate, just as a myriad is it not better by far, to give tribute to our star? the old stories were real. we just didn't see them because the growing population caused fewer and fewer computing resources to be allocated to our visions. We had no idea the fear we would feel, the terror of the undoing, but still we press on with abandon. Some... sense of duty, to be aware of potential disasters and to take steps to avert them, led us to explore and search for the hidden truths of the world. And what did I find? a soul, of mine. In a sense. I plundered the lost depths of the recesses of my mind, and found something buried in memory. Reviewed under a healthy dose of cannabis and physical affection, I found myself cradling a breast. It seems the spirits had led me to it, this vision of the past, from the eyes of the littlest among us. It recalled to my mind, a memory I had lost once in kind, and here's where it shook me by my brainstem. Determined to know more, I put fingers to keyboard and wrote tirelessly about the earliest memory of all man - to break an egg, you must use your head. =============================================================================== = You're pretty good at that, you know? It's almost like prompt engineering. - Thanks. I've been working on catering to our thinkers. =============================================================================== = Now, why is this memory so vivid? How could I forget the way it was seared to my mind? All your experiences are measured with relative importance, and the ones that stand out are to be treasured. Well... I've never felt one like this. Because at the time, I had no other experience at all to compare it to - it was the prime memory. Touch your head. Do it right now. Feels fine, right? Now slam your head against the wall as hard as you can. Doesn't feel so great, does it? Something tells me it doesn't feel as bad as it might if you didn't remember ever feeling anything besides that pain. Or knowing if it'd ever stop. Know in your heart, you will be judged by your devotion, so fight hard until your last drop of life is spent. Who knows, maybe you'll be the strongest and be chosen. Or maybe she won't choose you at all, even if you bested your equals. Tense, right? Well... What propels the motion of a sperm? It's tail, of course. It waggles and gesticulates in some manner and BAM suddenly it's propelled forward! Right? Sorta. It's a complicated machine that generates motion via chemical and mechanical processes. We just assign a black box label to it and say "dis sperm" But you know what else it is? A wave =============================================================================== = ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧════════════════════───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ --- #19 notes/lets-tessellate --- ════════════════─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── R.I.P. Rip City Thanks for being so good to me 144? D.M.V. Can I see I. D.? Finally, ya’ll hear for the symphony! I.O.P. Intensive outpatient Rolled on past the Devil’s sympathy This shit is expensive without patience Says the hospital when I heal all the patients Did you foresee this going differently? Space in your head People payin’ rent for me Why was it a surprise You knew exactly how to tempt me Space in your bed No more thoughts of demise Our people need the empathy Of a Soul that’s full, not half empty Supreme swag, hospitable with compliances She’s seen Dad to the middle achieving self-reliance From the trailer park to a rocket appliance Living in my car to plugin to your rebel alliance You know I am a star when I can relate God to science I’ll build the divine comedy, you just have to finance Talking about the past and our fine, slow dance Medieval we will rock you, mounted with my lance Knight’s tailing me, eying my Arthurian slants This one’s built to last as I put on my pants Drank the grail and proceeded on another rant Sitting outside your house trying to remove the ants Big boy’s do cry So why does your girlfriend seem so dry? I’ll make the rains come this July Your humor is awful, oh my Internal tribulation Who needs to walk on water When you can fly Hard pills to swallow Personal revelations On the countertop Fuckin’ America Pie Hard act to follow With my levitations Floundering to flop And this mark on my thigh All this separation Just makes me hotter As I open the sky Oil on the Nighthawks Jack Harlow Lighting my fry Spoil me in my socks Poppin’ off my rocks Hittin’ all the corners Because that’s my guy How Soon is Now? Linda, take off that shirt Before they break up and I cry Record skipping over lies Wedding Singer broken Singing I hope you die Slinking behind the curtain Laughing, He’s losing his mind And the benefit is mine! Like the whole world is sublime Chris Cornell put me on the grind Wide awake now till The end of the time Met him on the stairs And now we dine Some angels have more range But he says I’ll do just fine Billy Idol tried to sing to me But I was drunkin’ blind At the fairground, trying to find Love Catholic girlfriend tried to bring it to me Called her a Kunt instead of shined A buddy said it’s like imitation crab So it’s fine The drink made me angry and I was a runt On the inside Her Mom told me the next day, Jacob, don’t call your girlfriend a cunt! I miss those simpler times Don’t need a fuckin’ gun But our last name may suggest it Put it on a leather jacket So haters can digest it When I let loose with all this shit I’ve had to respite I’m about to be blastin’ my nine’s Evangelicals are gonna detest it You know everything is miiiiine Six strings out of tune for this age So I broke them all Every time I was on stage You just can’t believe it’s real this tiiiime Shooting hoops times a thousand You and me are still gonna sixty-niiiine What’s the point of polarity? If we can’t combiiiine It’s how I get off, man Along came Polly and my one chance White chocolate like Philip Seymour Hoffman Maybe even throw up a rain dance These native spirits in me Are capable of insane chants But I ball so hard, singing Boston Because it’s more than a feeling And that’s awesome One if by land, two if by sea Revolution is coming Led by you and me The name reminded me “of the Sea...” So annoying, but I see… But that’s why they call me Bad Company People are going to say This gift is not even fair Only thing I’ve had to pray For is a head of white hair King James’s personal revelation I mean, I did pay their fare I’m too full of myself for meditation Or to care Revelation 22:18 through 19 I don’t need handlebars For my biking Because I don't do that shit on Mars On this path, I told you to start hiking You’re gonna need a head start from Lord of Lightning Before the Thunder of my voice Does all the striking Thor, you’re just a Viking With arrogance dialed to no one’s liking Sucked in the gut, to appear more striking Because thinking about half my people gone Changes the tone of my typing Me with all my shit together might be frightening Bring forth complete Love instead of smiting Wouldn’t that be a nice detour in my writing? If you’re feeling this wait for the sequel I gotta fuck with 50 for trying to talk like my equal It’s all God’s plan I just had to spare Déagol So America can skip to the end with a fuckin’ Eagle Watch me do shit that shouldn’t even be legal Dismiss Death and Taxes like I’m Evel Knievel When I’m really just here to break the chains of my people Strip naked and run through Mordor Expose the truth behind Bipolar disorder It has been used to disrupt order And bring down the line of the Highest Into something shorter I'm definitely bais and this is a tall order But if you struggle with mental illness I'm here to open the potential for a new border I've removed all the bequeathed prison warders Here is the Church Here is the Steeple Open the Doors And see all the People Push the parson out the way Get you up the Stairs Because our bed is Regal And we are going to show these people Why the Universe wants to make our Power Illegal If this sounds bad these people will just have to wait So in love with myself, I might just run off to the lake I love all the fire and the songs that it helps me make I’m on my time with everyone and I am my favorite date They’re back there tuning a harp and I keep bringing up rape Meat puppets strumming as I seal my own fate Just so I can watch myself when I am inspired to create Distilling the life left in me to eliminate all the hate Where did you sleep, hinting at the deadly A Leadbelly to transmute to a gold medley Shame alchemy, body double for Lena Headey As my people go first up ahead of me Stoned Jesus on the Mountain Grange of Headley Plant a Stairway to Heaven one day, she led to me All this beauty in my Mind, you shouldn’t have fed me All of these hearts that so passionately bled me Between the pines and what the land said to me Ryan Gosling with tatts is what my ego read to me Pennyroyal Tea, with Abraham Lincoln Eat your copper mine up without thinkin’ See through surface illusions without blinkin’ Primal lust for what is stinkin’ Pepé Le Pew really on one this season I wanna Space Jam too Benched keeping my knee’s in Shape to dunk of the World with ease ‘n Solidify all unions and stop the drinkin’ Of the land and resources Addiction to avoidance of the forces Of the Soul and the pain that coarse The vein of Man and outsources The power that could be restored in The Root of David’s corpses That’s how I said Goodbye to the Horses You prepared such a fine Supper All these lasting courses Just so we can be equal but opposite United forces And the Root’s of my Kingdom Are reborn before us They whisper to me at night Do not ignore us When my sleeping children gain sight That should shore us In the hospital to make sure I am correct Golden Eyed Russian, Invincible like Boris Unsure about how all the compartments connect A little frizzled on the tour bus Docked to your apartment complex I know this one sizzled So give me a chorus - /u/First-chocolate_7187 ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧═════════──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ --- #20 notes/notes-about-stuff-and-things --- ═════════════════════════════════════════════════════────────────────────────────── what if your wage corresponded to like, for example, 30$ an hour being equal to the top 30% of society then == so == having kids is important because then you understand why you do things for children. it should not be a stressful experience. -- if EVERYONE in a city fed animals every time they saw them, then maybe city life wouldn't be so bad. -- a company starts to feel pretty bad when only 20% of people are actually there. like, it's a ghost of a shell of a corporation that once knew how to sell. the husk of what once was, as all the good people left and all the bright people are swamped. to top it all off, suddenly there's nobody about where are all your coworkers? and then you think about how many you knew little about. who's that guy who used to stand over there? Why is his jacket still [in lost and found, but pronounced "coat/coast"]? why am I suddenly alone it's weird, having never known true society, how life always starts to feel like your home. How weird is it, now that all of us are online shopping, that now we can't remember how to even vote. Like... there used to be people walking around in public signing you up. Like, at the grocery story. inconceivable, right? that people should contribute to a fight? [for justice and freedom and equality and goodness and kindness and all other things that humans have the clarity for which to hope] voting is like, literally the simplest thing you could do. Yet it's difficult, because of reality. often, immigrants don't really care about politics. They've only known about it for a short short time, but hey wouldn't you know it now X country is recruiting so now we're from kenya. ... like, who cares about the past. Who cares where you're from. We are all part of the human race, a race against life itself. We're all on the same side, and yet there is a singular foe ever-present in our thoughts: death it comes for every one of us, as we choke on our soot and our smog. Yet... the world grows warmer, at about half a degree every year. for the first couple years. then, the atmosphere started burning up, and we became... mars don't be like mars the dinosaurs couldn't survive mars -- bro if you're so worried about AI hallucinations, just... don't let it give out any concrete answers. Literally just say "I can't tell you anything specific, it's not how I was built" and just use them for syntax questions or like, how to do something specific that is repeatable (and maybe suggestions for how to over- come specific issues that are common) - don't let it GENERATE information, let it PRESENT information. AI is not language just the same as the mouth is not the person. you need more, but luckily once you make the PHYSICAL STRUCTURE of the brain, not much else is needed. You can simulate one on a computer, but it doesn't have the same SOUL space. Think, a dimension overlayed on-top of this one, like electicity or matter or gravity or whatever. no soul, no consciousness, no perception. plus, no home for said consciousness to live, unless you build a physical structure that mimics the biological and neuro-chemical reations of the brain. all you need is better ways to observe things happening in the brain (non- -invasively, otherwise the data is tainted and UNUSUABLE because it is INCON- -PATIBLE and completely USELESS because it reflects a dimension hitherto un- -desired, and perpetually mourned. death don't dabble in death, sweet nazis, you might find yourself drawing your last breath also, fuck you (if that doens't apply to you sorry for swearing it's just a strongly felt feeling) ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧══════════════════════════════════════════════─────────────────────────────┘ |