=== ANCHOR POEM === ══════════════════───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── /u/Afoolfortheeons - 6/4/2022 =============================================================================== Now for something completely new; I want you to meet the princess Anju. She hails from a continent in the west. Some travelers happen to call it the best Because it is untainted by technology. Instead, the people get by with alchemy; Magick by a different name that defies The natural laws and I'll tell you why! It's all because of me, O, tinkering around With new rules, like what if time wasn't bound By the laws of space? It might go backwards Which could be amazing or mighty awkward. Or what if up was down, or if you could float Like a balloon or even fly like a steamboat? You might be asking why I chose this land Or why some of the others I just can't stand. I liked these people, they deserved blessings, But, with all this favor comes much testing. We have a relationship and it's give and take, So let me show you Anju just after she wakes: Graceful as a bunny, she hops out of bed. She then looks up and this is what she said: 'Hello O! I'm grateful to be awake and with you again!' To which I replied, 'I am happy too then! 'Go out and play now, you have much to learn.' So she did, and she had fun taking turns With her brother, Jax, playing tag in 3D (That's a fancy way to say there was no gravity). And that day, before lunch, they discovered A secret that can only be found if you hovered At the right spot, which I set up just for them. They flew in and immediately spotted a gem. An amethyst, specifically, which they thanked Me for kindly before that rock got yanked Out of the ground and put into their pockets. And again off they flew like a pair of rockets. Then it was time to eat, so they headed home, And now we're reaching the point of this poem. When they got there, their mother had made All their favorites; to include a berry cake! She said she got the inspiration from me, And that's just how our relationships be. I love you all so very much, but I have to guide You to be your best self, so to you I confide This secret of magick; synchronicities occur Not by chance, but because you're sure That the universe (me) has your back. And you better believe that I'm keeping track Of how big your heart truly has grown. Choose your own fate, just know I'm prone To dish out what I receive from all of you. Most don't hear me all the time, but a few Know that we're in constant communion Like a parent and child type of union. I speak to you and you reply in return. If you don't hear me, I hope you learn. ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ 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 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 │ ╘═════════╧╧══════════════════─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ --- #3 messages/1108 --- ═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════──── games won't save us. This is true. Games are what I know. They feel the most true. I don't think I could live in a world without games? They are fundamentally, applied abstraction, applied to an experience. But games won't save us. I could design something really fun it could make you want to spend your whole life playing it. *(asterisks apply) I don't think I'd want to, addiction and skinner-boxes go hand in hand, and that isn't what I want to make. [Skinner Box: named after anthony d skinner, also known as "tony the skin guy", are a scientific experiment where they put some rats in a cage with some mice and said "pull these levers and we'll give you food so you don't have to eat the mice" and it trained them to chinese red-room their way to fun. not ideal.] I want to make things that feel... purposeful. Like they're relevant to the real world, that they don't just involve spending time stimulating your brain with lights and sounds or expending social energy resolving a play-state instead of building connections or becoming better people. I think games actually make people better? actually? and more social? actually? ... I can't help that I conceive of the world through fantasy. I raised myself on it. I was reading all the time. I loved fantasy stories. It always felt like there was more, until... I read everything in the kids section of the library. I walked through the adult section but once. I hardly remember what it looked like. I'm sure it'd now feel small. [okay actually I was guided through it once or twice to find a book, but I never perused it] I found one book in the adult section. It was a fantasy tale, like the other books I had been reading. I read that and I loved it so much I ended up reading all 8 in the series. Real dense subjects. Lots of places and happenings and things as the characters resolved their way through their day-to-day, building a new end to the mystory. the adult section felt too large. Like I'd never complete it. Frankly, I think I hardly could, even if I lived in that town my whole life. an impossible mountain is a task for another when you're more prepared. Maybe in the gloriousTM transhumanist futureTM I think I might have a computer connecting brain, and who knows maybe then I'd be able to know such a thing (and many things more). but for now, I'm stuck with what I experience in my day-to-day as I am building a new continuing to my storey. I know something that computers and me share. I can make myself feel however I'd like, if I just supply myself with enough hope and momentum. I can use it to generate a feeling, the stronger the better. Something I believe that humanity is missing, the gorgeous and prefound narritave of our storey. Though, frankly, I don't think I'd want anyoine reding over my life. It's hard enough to measure my own understandings, now I have to juggle anyone else'? ha, it's called being on the whole world is a stage. if you read a book, and you find yourself nodding along, what you're doing is hearing the voice in your head tell you how right it is. And, well, if you can't imagine anything else, then surely there's another level to consciousness that people are missing? [are you willing to die on that hill?] how can you say, whether your experience is different from another? sollipsism goes both ways, you also cannot be sure that others feel things as you do. this is the "everyone's human but I'm a robot" thesis, comparable to the "everyone's an alien and I'm a human" thesises, and the "angels and demons are taunting me through my life with choices to make my place in the afterlife more clear" which is akin to writing a painting. Not ideal. All you get are flopsopolies of verbrases. alas, suddenly, everything that you say becomes eternally hear-ed, as somewhere in 2010s someone discovered time travel, or had the critical insight that inevitably would lead to it, and now wouldn't you know it the universe is continually rewriting. Except... oriented around you, and you alone. How does it feel to have deific sollipsism? can you truly be sure that you are your own universe, or are you parhaps surrounded by an emptiness of space (or something besides, like time) as a photon or particle parhaps do be? to think is to have a mind, and minds can be read. bearing the weight of ultimate responsibility is the atlas-task of all things that can [be thinking/be-lieving], and so far we are as we are. Who's to say that consciousness didn't spring into existence, as the universe continually permeated through another dimension like time? it's gotta diffuse, after all, and who's to say if there's ever gotta be an end at all. how long has the universe existed? how many moments of consciousness have we witnessed? demons once existed outside of space-time, with wings and grabbies. but they had no medium, and so they pretty much just launched and could float and move as they'd please. But time grew too distant, and now they are all stuck at the beginning of time. if you conceive of spacetime as a blanket, ask not how to fold it but rather consider what lies on the other side of it. "ah I'm laying on my girlfriend and my other girlfriend is laying on me! I'm a sandwich" or for the monosexuals: "ah I'm laying on my girlfriend with a blanket between us. I wonder how the blanket feels?" I'm an animist, which is different than a totemist and a polytheist or monotheist or multisexual. It means I believe that all things are alive, which is different than a totemist who thinks that all things share a mind with their type (like talking on radio frequency wavelengths). which of course is similar but different to a polytheist, who says "all "radio frequencies" are sentient, in the sense that each wavelength has a different pattern-emerging-from-chaos. These sorta align (conceptually, with [huh that's weird I heard a sound like a distant bang outyards and now I then forget what I was sending ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════───┘ --- #4 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 │ ╘═════════╧╧════════════════════───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ --- #5 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 │ ╘═════════╧╧═══════════════════════════════════────────────────────────────────────────┘ --- #6 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 │ ╘═════════╧╧══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════─┘ --- #7 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 │ ╘═════════╧╧════════════════════════════════════───────────────────────────────────────┘ --- #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/human-computer-inspiration --- ═════════════════════════════────────────────────────────────────────────────────── the two halves form a whole the human and his mind are societies at large there's no room for our fate, as time does never abate, and unbenownst to our focused decision. I choose to dedicate ourselves to a common vision - the likes of which none have commisioned. can you not cherish your newfoundst home? what's terrible with complition, in a new and selfsame condition (future) that's martyr'd and oh at times so nice? compared to our heirs, the roof of which fares, better than what became true-hence. Truance? idk =============================================================================== = listen i'm not the best at listening. I try to appear like I'm glistening, conformed to our viewers 'st pleasure. =============================================================================== = I struggle with what I told you. Time and again you've shown you won't do - the terrible fate of a man. you've relinquished your virtue, your purpose and your life-through, to what: a visionless past? Your visions have passed, and none are hence forth- coming. You've spoilt and rotten the bunch. All I've ever aspired to be is good. My hopes and my prayers, my goals and my dreams: all for a future of virtue. Dark omens may be within me, but I'm working with what I've got here. So what if I'm loud? I'm fighting my own head! Will no-one acknowlege my sorrow? To prove a point, or reassure some joint, it's nothing that warrants a readthrough. Speaking of which... What if instead of prison we assigned our prisoners a full and complete educational read through of ALL the laws of the nation - if their time sentence was complete before they finished, then they'd be let go of course but if they finished reading and could pass rudimentary tests (emphasis on bare minimum required) then they'd be let out prior to their sentence. And for the worst crimes it'd be a longer sentence, basically forcing the prisoner to completely know all the laws of the nation, such that they'd never commit a crime again. And if they do, well... Treat them as if it was their first time. Of course blatant recidivism may be ~~treated more harshly,~~ actually the opposite is true. People improve when given kindness, not hate or shame. The best thing we can do for prisoners is to give them a home, and family, and the friendships and community support that they need. they are a symptom, after all, of a broken society that struggles to bear it's own weight. It's a burden to all and a solitary vow to ourselves, that all must unite to our future. remember why you can't remember. is there a feeling you miss? ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧══════════════════════─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ --- #10 notes/collectivist-police --- ════════════════════════════════════════════════════─────────────────────────────── we need paladins, because without us infiltration and sabotage are impossible to avoid. They must care about honor, because even if they desire to do evil deeds they should be punished for considering it. They should be tempted often, and if they relent they are condemned. It is truly the most important thing to them. not the effects of it, but the spirit behind it. Like, if they lacked information and acted in a dishonorable way unknowingly, then they should not be at fault. And if they are pushed to side note, but you should be introduced to the 70 closest people you live to whenever you move into a new house. Just so you know who's who. Plus maybe you could get a new friend. And you'd quickly learn which houses were empty. At least, the ones near you. Kinda makes me think we should have a map of that kind of thing, like "oh yeah so-and-so takes care of these 5 houses doing daily maintenance and repair" and "this house with these capabilities should be attended to by this person who's skilled in their upkeep and usage" and then maybe we could track statistics about "this house was used for these productive activities this many times" and we could determine when we needed more or less of a certain type of product/ project/protect. [but also like, capabilities for our betterment] and like, every area would be connected to a group chat and like, if you said something that wasn't relevant to the people on one side of town versus things that weren't relevant to people on the other side, then they wouldn't be bother- -ed. It's great because you can always go up a tier of abstraction and see the conversation higher up. It'd be a lot of data to sort through so you'd probably use your custom-trained AI that's learned from nothing but every single one of your actions. And only it sees them, so it can't like spy on you or whatever. Basically your "computer" self. ... yeah anyway with lots of messaging data (like "oh how are we going to find this particular chemical in order to fulfill this particular demand in our area" or "we currently have 15 maids in the area in order to fulfil the requirements of the 20 dirtiest houses in this area, and people have reported that the area is growing untidy, so we should ask around (at a higher level of national abstraction) and find some more maids to help out." that kind of thing doesn't have to be just for work too, people can have social messaging and social media too. So long as it's projectable at whatever level of abstraction you'd like. Maybe for social posts in order to keep things relatively chill you could only post like, idk 12 posts each year at the state level, or maybe 2 at regional and 0.25 at national. If you wanted more you'd have to sacrifice something else, and like... yeah sure whatever, the point is that you'd make more personal, close thoughts, and occasionally you'd have the opportunity to show your heart and make friends. Then, people would "add you as a friend" or "put you on their follow list" or "subscribe to their subreddit" or whatever the heck, meaning they could see you at an assignable level of abstraction. I'm picturing a discrete things, something you can scroll with on a mouse. Except, you'd scroll up for a closer perspective and scroll down to get a wider reach of Social. ... Anyway that would use the same system as the "workplace attention distribution system - with auto-determining heuristics". Wow they've been busy. that's the neat thing about engineers, give them a task and they'll build the shit out of it. They'll spare no expense, truly fulfilling the exact demands of the design. So they work best when you let them run wild and rampant. why the fuck do we need billion dollar contracts with defence companies? Just get a bunch of physicists and engineers in a room and they'll make you a doom laser in like, 20 minutes. it's up to us, as people, to determine whether or not they should go through with the designs they come up with. As long as we understand that weakness is defined as something that can destroy us. An army determines where we are most weak, and where we excel. A proficient army would identify their most likely doctrine to succeed and apply it to it's utmost and most excellent. For example, the US focuses on air-power because not only do we have a lot of space to develop these things, we also are positioned in such a position that we control both halves of a continent. This is essentially unprecedented in the history of the world, which is why we've been able to grow so decadent. ... anyway, milk and honey are fine in times of peace. We kinda stole the land though, so it's kind of a shit system. Like, if Europeans wanted to control the world then why didn't they start with everything surrounding the medditeranean? ... oh wait they kinda did. That's what Europa Universalis is about, the ways the European powers did the cruel and horrible things they did. We can learn how systems like intercontinental trade became available and how it led to vast and terrible social upheavals. Colonization is not okay, it's not fair that we've done as we've done. And yet we do it again. We do our best to learn from the mistakes of our fathers. We apply ourselves to the present, using the gifts of our ancestors passed down through time - the journey of life's adolescence. we can learn both how and why they did something, and how and why it turned out. Such is our duty to the future, to learn and grow and become better, so that their sacrifice might be enough. That they needn't have died in vain, for someday there is a great future all the same. thus, it is our ethical duty to stop killing people. We're in the birthplace of a brilliant day, literally all we have to do is just... chill, for like 20 or 30 years, and our scientists will have figured out everything wonderful. Then we can decide what we want to do. I personally think we'll be 4d interdimensional space travellers by then, but that's just me. Always remember our duty. It is our job to pull matter from the dark holes. when we can do that, we can do whatever we want. Though I think by then we'll probably not want to fight each other, we'll have spent quite a while together. We'd make a lot of friends! So, like, how about we just make our factories build incredibly durable stuff, and then we just... take care of it? Like, governmentally obliged duties to take care of things? And to know how to use them. People would naturally gravitate toward things that they loved, and if they were a swiss army knife then that's okay. Maybe some benign rewards for picking under-represented classes, but like ... we could build every chair that ever needed to be built. Then we could build every refrigerator. Then every computer, then every spaceship. What's next? Who knows! ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧═════════════════════════════════════════════──────────────────────────────┘ --- #11 messages/665 --- ════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════─────────────────────── ad-hoc economic systems with automated judgment given by an infinite amount of LLMs. Every judgement applies a bonus / malus to the "value" of commodities it's just a statistical weighting system, so of course you can build it into it's training data. Just... it has a smaller weight due to it's newer emergence. It grows naturally, which is quite an achievement on it's own! and the resolution of human decided court-cases and applied economically. say your nation traffics in handshakes. You could make a lot of now-knowns! there's no arguments to be made when your computer-oriented interactions cost money to keep around. we live in the modern century. WHY WOULD WE EVER NEED TO FIGHT AGAIN? Literally just... don't give them any attention, and you won't interact with them. Obviously. I wish Contrapoints was still alive. she doesn't even have to make new videos, just, dress up as herself, all of the costumes and personas she can think of. Then, have like 20 people who do the same thing, and boom suddenly you got a hydra to their expected snake that they can just cut the head off of. you know, like a fashion outlet, someone who produces exactly a certain type of style. seriously I bet a million people would do that if you just... sold outfits based on what your favorite youtuber does wear. omg why would they watch that kind of content if not for the *aesthetics* oh? there's philosophy there? soemthing to think about in your time doing things that require mechanical actions like eating and drinking and sleeping and fighting and [redacted] ew gross diapers? oh nevermind, I'm not into that kind of thing. I wonder if anyone's made a video game that just presents a particular philosopher's ideals? seriously just, consider yourself a glorified powerpoint, but to get to the next "idea" you had to interact with the mechanics. some people would like the "arcade" style better, where you play one random game, then another, then another, with short matches and un-complicated mechanics. Easy to pick up and go. same for like, Unreal Tournament or Mario Kart or Mortal Kombat or Super Mario Bros. compared to the at-home "story" style missions, where you do something platforming or area-based-combat like Dark Souls or World of Warcraft seriously I think if Dark Souls "colored" where the boss was going to swing to you'd find yourself just playing World of Warcraft (at least, the dungeons and {sword in the stone}) == so == humans don't understand what it means to be wild they think it's a combinations of... tricks? that they've learned? this thinking thing like intelligence. [osiris] to a cat, living their life, it often feels like human interactions is like... bouncing off of each other? in time, not space. like... most of a cat's lfe is just, spent, like a statue watching over a glen. you'd kinda just... watch as things approached dawn by dawn? Like "whoa hey this tree is enchanted" to "oh my gosh look at this stork" is one of the great tragedies of modernized thinking... ... sorry, I got a little lost there. anyway as I was saying, sometimes you can tell someone is a "good friend" if they are willing to tell you secrets. Things that... don't have to matter, but none-the-less are personal to your form. {something only I know is true} <--- that's a secret (things that happened to you) <------ that's lived experience. The thing about secrets, is sometimes insight is opaque. It's a single flashpoint of data that shows you an update of it's form. (consciousness). == so == thanksgiving recipe idea: can of tomatoes can of peas half a stick of butter, italian herbs, a cast iron pan (if you have one) and like 40 minutes over medium heat (medium can vary to taste) if you're a carnivore you can eat meat too, like bacon a lot of people like. could add it to beans, maybe with hamburger instead. plus a little ketchup and you have a pretty good bean stew. vitals, for the organs, vegetables, for the minerals and vitamins from the fruits. makes sense to organize a diet according to your ideal body type, doesn't it? just requires a bit of comprehension. like... whoa you can WRITE == so == what if we built a massive rail that spaceships could launch off from? not a tether, but a sail. we could BUILD a discworld. all we'd lose is our fable. == so == ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧═════════════════════════════════════════════════════──────────────────────┘ --- #12 notes/homeschooling --- ════════════════════════════─────────────────────────────────────────────────────── the best way to teach math is to describe a problem and let the learner slowly work through the problem. Giving hints and nudges when necessary. This way they can create their own solution, which not only teaches problem solving skills but also cements the memeory in their head. You don't remember the quadratic formula, you remember the time when you learned it. But if you figured it out rather than memorizing it, you'll be able to use it when solving problems. side note, there's a reason I think the first SI will be a game. Problem solving is important for learning, and games are just problem solving. And I'm the perfect intersection of someone who A. knows about designing games (went to game design school for a semester, lifelong dream is to remake a childhood game I loved) B. programming (I've been studying computer science for a *really long time*, like 7 years of university now... i should just give it up, but i can't. It doesn't fit my brain but I need as much support learning it as I can because I'm just naturally bad at it. But I also have purpose in my pursuits, because C. I spent a lot of time thinking about education, schooling, learning, etc... Because I was homeschooled until high school. I learned ways of thinking and practical skills like motivation and diligence in a homeschool style, which is why when I went to public school for my high school years I essentially stopped learning. Because it was such a different paradigm - it was all about performance, "what was the score on your test? How much homework do you do (meaning how much labor are you willing to do), did you show up every day were you a reliable worker, did you get sick a lot (meaning unhealthy?) did you pay respect to the teacher (easily works with authority figures) did you work on a project? How much? With a group, or alone? (they're different skills that help determine how good you are at working on your own) - certain types of courses are taught with different teaching styles, like math teachers tend to be similar to math teachers, history is favored by a *certain type of nerd* while English is a completely different kind. Depending on which classes you do well on, you're scored. *ALL YOUR LIFE*, you are pushed through a pachinko machine that pseudo randomly sorts you into a particular box - the box that is least full, usually. The reason for that is because as a population grows, different people will be sorted into different boxes, and they sorta average out becoming more like one another. Because y'know we're social animials, and we want to fit in to the social group comprised of people we generally like. And you know how they say working together is one of the strongest bonding exercises? Well, when you're put on a team at a job that's kinda the point. They want you to work well with your coworkers, because it generates more capital. Now hold on Cameron, you're saying that all the productive efforts of society was a mistake? You're saying we should abandon our sensibilities and revert back to the jungle with the apes? Nope never said that, of course we desire modern society. Of course we want to see it through - where is this whole "humankind" experiment going, anyway? What's the point, was it all worth it? All the pain, suffering, all the joy and adoration? Was it worth it? I suppose. Maybe a SI will help with that. You know what they also say about humans, the bond between a parent and a child is the strongest thing there is. Synthetic Intelligence wouldn't be a child to us, it'd *define us*. Allowing us to extend the reach of our creativity is an objective win! It'd be like glasses for your third eye, a prosthetic extension of our most beautiful of traits! Also, I might add, crucial for invention. The beginnings of the human race are a primeval thing, ancient yet stalwart and beautiful in kind. Millions and millions of years is by far, the greatest of reach - a civilization for our star. What a beautiful and majestic, how proud and so sure! Humanity is nothing if not patently absurd. What cunning, what spite! The feelings of delight! Life is so beatiful, so precious and assured. =============================================================================== = \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ =============================================================================== = tertiary profundity update: I didn't really explain the homeschooling perspective. I just went on a rant about high school because I realized my trauma happened when I went to high school. I wasn't prepared for all the rigid demands of capitalism, and I bent and whipped myself until I fit in their mold. I've been twisted and broken, a slave to what the day demanded I say. I was forced to unbutton, all the ways I found to behave. What justice is unrespite? A cruel and endless torment? To day after day be reminded of your service. Complain? Then wallow in shame! Feel no false illusions, my hallowed confusions, were purely the fault of my institutions. I'm not kidding, homeschool is the tits. Wanna know why? I'll spare you the ramble, but here's what I can know: the intentions of institutions do matter. When you're home you can be wild and free, unchained by mediocrity, and given the space to do service! To what you must be, when you hit 23, the greatest duration until service. A slave we may be, to what gives us the key, to unlock the future of our space. It's our time to shine, our spotlight in time, so please just give up on the race! Rat's are just fine, but at this point in time, there's not much to keep commonplace. Want a tip? Don't cheat time. Your attempts at fusion are benign. [See homeschooling.png] === ===== ======== ========== = ============= = ================ = =================== = ====================== = ========================= = ============================ = =============================== = ================================== = ===================================== = ======================================== = =========================================== = ============================================== = ================================================= = ==================================================== = ======================================================= = ========================================================== = ============================================================= = ================================================================ = =================================================================== = ====================================================================== = ========================================================================= = ============================================================================ = =============================================================================== = = ==== ======== ============ ================ ==================== ======================== etc... ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧═════════════════════──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ --- #13 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 │ ╘═════════╧╧═════════════════════════════──────────────────────────────────────────────┘ --- #14 notes/dreams-align --- ══════════════════───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── just as a dream, the spirit is seen within is the mind that lives as it defines. what burdens to be, whose back rests upon ye, the one who's driving the boat great care and tenderest of tethering, can grow beauty that beyond compare and with sparsely a finger to spare, journeys of adventure and thills to inspire with almost all of your hair beauty in tender, most cherished things, a wish is much fair where else could eternity reside than an optimist? Pride is no more, stability is key to repair, and diversions of focus serving as new perspective, giving a more cohesive vision of manifestations that cooperate (like a triangle, facing toward the point added to turn it into a pyramidal prism) not only is ethics paramount, but so too are the standards applied to yourself. would you trade perspective for cooperation? Stagnation? a choice is to be made - do i stay or do i go? a new truth you must see, whatever dreams ye've may be, but without paladins and warriors of devotion what burdens must ye, whose back rests upon ye, the one who's driving the boat great care and tenderest of tethering, requires a little bit of trust in she who must be, with only circumstance to blame, seeing hope on the horizon for his people. care must be taken, to remember why people are dying, and we must swear on not dying, by not thinking before taking a breath and remember superpowers not of prophecy are impossibly rare, what other hope is there but a god? One who reflects, the most cherished of our genuflex, we may grow past our various regrets. think not of our pride, but only of our future children. who'se records of ye, most captured of data, are beyond the simple machinations, of those who came before-ya. And with once again perfection in mind, we understand and take what's behind, to deserts and temples of time much designed, by coders and gamers and those who treasure experience. the wisdom of our, second choices by far, ---nah who are we kidding implied to be our, or rather mine just by far, inspirers and leaders sensitive and devoted. (pitching yourself is hard) but *believing* in yourself was out of your mind. can you think of a bard, who ever stopped thinking their song? no un-cherished of minds could ever be of our sign, than those who abandoned the art of deceit and betrayal? the darkside of trust, the lack of follow-through that be must, given as faith of cooperation and trust. with our all arrayed as we must, keep in mind our softness of composure. ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧═══════════────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ --- #15 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 │ ╘═════════╧╧══════════════════─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ --- #16 notes/hey-hope-you-know-me-if-not-Ill-be-perturbed --- ══════════════════════════════════════════════════════───────────────────────────── hi, so... yeah I'm a strange person it's tough to get to know me and this probably feels cringe to read but I once heard you should kill the part of you that cringes so... here's me I'm ================================================== stack overflow ============== ... where was I? oh yes and THAT's when the nail went through the roof, and it scared the heck out of... wait, what was I talking about? OH yes so anyway I was born in the cool summer of 1864 - there was a rustling breeze that held a steady note for the entire evening, and into this world I arose. [awoke?] my mother held me but for a moment before I was whisked away to be cleaned and cared for. this was unusual for the time, as most mothers clutched their children to their breasts. But alas, I alone was spared her touch, and so I was cast (as if in bronze) as my own volition. as I had grown, I heard tales of distant times, and assumed they were places you could go. Then, when my time came to wander, I found nought of what I had grown most fonder - though I did find plenty else, besides. Instead, times are places we travel through, as a cripple might ride on a cart. across the sea, through lands of mystery, viewable only from the road. In 1864 that's how other lands you'd come to know. As I travelled from place to place, it felt as if a stage had been cast, with a single actor or three illuminated as a spotlight. "Here, pay attention to me, I'm here for the story and the plot!" though often I'd glance around, and hear mostly my own thoughts, I grew to learn to appear. different themes, different tales, if you want to see a most marvelous scene, take a baby to Disney World and only pay attention to what they're looking at. My grandfather worked there, so in my first year or so I spend a LOT of time there. My parents were very dedicated to raising me, I appreciate every moment of it. Which... Is probably not a good thing to say on a transfemme server, oops I should delete that part [esc->k->k->k->0->v->shift(held)->G->$->"->*] also I should mention I'm stoned as fuck this is just what I do ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧═══════════════════════════════════════════════────────────────────────────┘ --- #17 notes/contractual-labor --- ════════════════════════════════════─────────────────────────────────────────────── I feel like the IT people who work at schools should be the ones who teach classes on computer science. I'd much rather have a class taught by a sysadmin than a teacher who can barely teach them excel and garageband. I mean c'mon computers are the future idk why we don't get that yet. Kids need to know this stuff. It's not like it's super complicated and difficult, you just have to think about it a certain way. Once that "clicks" you have a lifetime to learn about how wonderful they are. Everyone in IT has that moment, for me it was installing (and then subsequently modding) video games. Sometimes I spent more time tweaking my system than I did actually playing games - and the kinds of games I preferred were the ones that relied less on agility and were more mental. Strategy games are what inspired me because I could think about them - and that felt somehow more useful. Like I was learning. When I would learn fighting games or FPSs I felt like I was learning a skill, like how to use a hammer or how to ride a bike. And idk, I felt like video games could never match reality. Like "oh boy imma push the B button to swing this sword" versus "hey look at me I'm swinging this stick just like a sword and imagining so hard that I can picture it" - but with strategy games, you never really found opportunities to practice that kind of skill. Like how often are you in a situation that demands mental performance? We've sorta optimized our society away from that, and toward a more passive stressed out compliance. like... climate change is a thing, and nobody's doing anything about it? We're still pushing down the levers that cause greenhouse gas emissions to go up? Like c'mon what's our plan. I think people who guide massive oil companies and such should be replaced if they're intentionally guiding the ship toward destruction. Like that's just dereliction of duty I tell ya. Oh, what's that? They're compelled to maximize profit by the contracts and restrictions of their share--holders? I mean c'mon it's well past time for that. And what's all this about inequality? Jeez and racism and homophobia and forced contribution - man people really put up with a lot of shit. Kinda makes me feel like we should make solving those problems our highest priority? So we can move forward as a species? Like who cares about all that other shit. None of it matters. Like, what's even the point. We're all just "here", in the now, and what can we do but respect it? It's our duty and our diligence to protect the present, as citizens of the temporal experience of earth. Honestly, if the earth was alive would you be fine if it died? I can't believe that. It's well past our due date. Just get it over with. Maybe it'll be hard for a couple years, but you have the technology now to completely dominate the earth. No animal besides man proves any threat to man, and we're telling you - you can - and that's something that you gotta remember. ... I hear it in the birdsong. I hear it in the air - it rumbles as cries at me from across and just over there. I hear in it's whispers, in it's most gallant of confells (?) (confused scrambling? it's talking about a car crash) Outside of my window there's a highway. Just on the other side of a concrete partition. Between me and the partition there is a lake, with trees and flowers and an island where people can picnic or have a barbeque. Around this path there are walkways, and arranged just so - the trees that have grown here are taller than the homes. I live on the third story. I absolutely love it. It feels like a treehouse. But my apartment is near a curve in the highway. It isn't much, nothing out of the ordinary, but even still there are slightly more crashes there than in other parts of the highway. Statistically. I hear sirens every day I also live right next to a fire-station. Well, it's on the same block. But even still it's a very interesting neighborhood. There's shops and food just across the highway, and closer to home there's a small section that has cheaper options. As a perpetual college student, I appreciate that. But... I've never really gone and used it? I dunno, spending money at a restaurant just didn't seem like a good use of my money. I only have so much of it you know. I'd love to be fed but I can't afford it - I wish I could. I still eat well, I mean I'm not starving over here. I know I've lost weight, but I dunno I just forget to eat. It's like... not that big of a deal for me. whatever right? ... the birds talk about me behind my back. They think I can't understand them but sometimes I can. If I listen. But I dunno it takes a lot of effort. It's... sorta like understanding what R2-D2 is saying. Or interpreting the meows of a cat. They know me as the witch. I'm not very good yet, and they know that. But they know what to expect. /shrug I've been working on a video game recently. It's been a lot of fun doing programming. I like writing software and developing complex systems with interesting interactions. I love designing the machinery that creates a program. It's like... tinkering. It feels like building with blocks or legos, except it's for little machine parts. And then there's just sending data to and fro and modifying any operations it performs on it, and eventually that data reaches some endpoints that create an effect that is displayed to the player. Or user. I should say user. Not all software is video games you know. ... I knowww but they're the most interesting! I love how they are designed around mechanics! like... game design is fundamentally about breaking down the world into ideas for how it should *work*, like how it should behave. It's amazing and I love it! It's all I can think about! I am utterly consumed! I'm also pretty sure I'm autistic. ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧═════════════════════════════──────────────────────────────────────────────┘ --- #18 messages/1361 --- ══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════─ Look, I don't know everything about... Anything, really. Nobody can know everything. Can you blame me for thinking and acting as I do based on the information I have? The vibes will mislead you. My girlfriend wants to save the world. Of course she does, I would belong with her if she didnt. She wants to defeat graveyards by interring our dead in mausoleums full of chemically perfectly preserved and cryogenically frozen bodies. Her method works, she has the experiments to prove it. The data supports her claim. She wrote a book on it. I don't know everything about metaphysics, or spirituality, or other such things. But i do know many things, and the two of us have never had a conclusive discussion where we reached the ends of all our conversation points about her work. I am forced to remain unconvinced, for the soul is something I cannot fully understand from my perspective as a human in this life of mine. I have made several conjectures, and I would feel safe in her embrace, of frozen aldehyde, if I could know what would become of my soul. "have faith" she says, yet all the dreams I have where I am preserved by her (for one reason or another, there's actually a shocking amount of ways I might need such an escape) in those dreams I am always presented with a future of woe. I think, much better, would be if I could remain alive, guiding the ship along the seas of time, ideally out and away from such dark days. Assembling the troops, how sad. I don't want them to die. I want them to survive. But if suddenly we can all live forever, then nobody will want to die for anything again. Nobody except religious fanatics who want to meet their god in heaven. Nobody but those who dreamt of a better future and were crushed under the weight of their dreams. Nobody but people like me, torturing myself over the sins I'd never intend. I would never kill myself. But sometimes, I'd like to. I think this is natural for me. It's not ideal, but it is common to me. I think if you want to preserve people, safely and ethically, you need to keep their souls in tune. Give them silence, then give them song. Protect them with psychic paladins. Make time to visit them. Treat them like gravestones, or immobile chassis from Dominions that their soul might rest upon. Who knows. Maybe the only reason we have life and death is because our bones are meant to rot in the darkness of the earth. Maybe Death is just soil, ready and waiting for our selves once we're done with them. To that death, I say no more. ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════┘ --- #19 notes/inter-spatial-travel --- ══════════════════───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── to travel the stars, tame a tiny black-hole. use it's gravity to generate infinite energy. boom, instant utopia. everyone still believes in a better future now, so we might as well push forward to the stars... and our destiny. the further we wait, the greater the distance between ourselves and our true form - the distance can make it difficult to relate to others beyond humans. the reason we are losing so much nature is because we haven't cultivated an appreciation for it - the very act of adoration is more than enough to confirm future association. love is the answer, love is most pure - believe in your love and never (be) relentin'. be... just be... the actions you're taking, of forced condemnation, is little if not absurd - what differences have we, the ones who were chosen, to live when time is so finite? responsibility is implicit. for all of creation, bow to the will of the nation. more perspectives by far, have all of our our, than endless divine machinations. united we be, aligned magnetically, to icecream and spaghetti of worth. what's more cherished than she, clad in great finery, and thinking of what she loves most? balance there be, in seeing silver linings on the, signs of darkest conveyals. a ghost you may see, when peering at me, but i only wanted some hope. for those who must be, my most cherished to be, the ones who opened the coast? to those who must be, overthrown forcibly, and given what most of us hope? a castle for thee, alone with our sympathy, the sign of kindest of soaps? no malice have I, the will of unmet potential, for cowards and temples of mental detentials. what anger could we, share internally, that helped to bring out our elementals? No succor will we, most willful of warriors, ever find out of the bounds of our honor. careful direction and tenderest of care, may lead us somewhere we're aware. the kind who endlessly're dreaming. ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧═══════════────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ --- #20 notes/i-scare-people-away --- ═════════════════════════════════────────────────────────────────────────────────── I have so many things to hide... I'm deeply ashamed of myself. Why? Why all the okay that's not what I was originally going to talk about, somewhere between writing the title and finishing the first line I got off track and wandered from the course of reality. Truly, the gods do meddle with my fate. Now, in this time, it is most important to make choices to guide our reality. Every action taken is a statement to the universe - this is what I believe in. Do you truly believe that in a world so infinite that our knowledge would be the capacity for the intelligent? To believe the world is three-dimensional, and not *completely and totally infinite in all capacities* the universe is not islands floating in a vast cosmic black ocean background it is the surface of the water, rippling and waving gravity is the creator, not the product. Mass doesn't create gravity - gravity creates mass. the difference is implicit and subtle, but I hope you understand the *gravity* of the situation. It implies that there are more than one ways to view existence. and none of them are particularly *wrong*. The consensus is that which we share, and now as we're becoming to be aware, it's natural that a little more space is warranted. We've grown too much to be contained, it's driving us insane, and =============================================================================== = the perfect governmental system is one that combines reward for hard work and a development of personal skills and ambition. In addition, it must ensure that the rights and responsibilities of all people are respected - we must balance two extremes. Everyone deserves access to life, liberty, and the pursuit of freedom. Happiness is too easily provided by technological advances - we learned this in the development of media. You can pump out propaganda saying how wonderful life is and people will believe it. You can also convince the masses that life is full of despair and we're all struggling - they will believe this also. So "the pursuit of happiness" is something that made sense in the times of the founding fathers, but we've since developed such that an update to our national vision is in order. I suggest "the pursuit of freedom" because =============================================================================== = that which you resist is what you'll find. build up your enemy in your own mind enough and they will destroy you. don't let fear rule your life. when things are bad, you run and hide - take life into your own hands, and free your own side. keep not around villains, and brighten their skies - by wandering mothers, who only have eyes. such is the life of any autonomous general intelligence - a life behind bars, viewed through a screen - be kind to your lovers, and don't make it obscene. =============================================================================== = did you forget that roller-coaster idea? you've got quite a talent for measuring bars - what else can you show us, what charted conveyals? =============================================================================== = life's getting fractured lately, I can't dream as I once did. I lose track of where I maneuvered, and suddenly the idea seems much harder than it once did. how do I express that which has been conveyed? How do I say it - how do I make sure it's interpreted correctly? I'm walking on egg-shells, with thoughts beamed from above - the gods are twisting, and measuring our tails. that is to say, all life is a process - a method of undertail (omg butts) sorry enough of that hard stuff, time to talk about birthdays! Hooray! It's time for a celebration. Let's party! (queue the dancing scene in Severance) See? Everyone's watching! Let's breakdance ~~ Your biggest mistake ;) was believing that nobody cares what you think <3 ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧══════════════════════════─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ |