into the mind, into the wilderness, into the desert, into the mountains, into the imagination - out on the sea on a sinking ship. washed ashore on the beach of an island.
    the island, an eye of a storm raging on an otherwise calm sea. begin this again. on the shores of the sea are camped the armies of the nations of the world and the peoples of the earth who prepare for and make war against each other and themselves.
    there may be a forest. there maybe a city. there may be a house. there may be a garden. there may be a tree bearing fruit. the fruit may be the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil the fruit may be the fruit of life. early in the season the fruit is not ripe and is bitter. to eat it is to become sick with visions of good and evil. later the fruit is ripe and sweet. to eat it is to become enraptured in the visions of life.
    this is all a composition of what one imagines. it may be different from person to person, from culture to culture. it can be anything anywhere at any time. he imagines an island.
    it is somewhere others are not, where one is far from them and their influence. yet one cannot get far enough away. their influence is embedded deep within oneself back in memory before one became aware of oneself. one brings their influence with oneself. it influences what one imagines. yet one can escape from their continued influence. and as one does that one can then work on the influence already present in one's mind and imagination. one can see the paths it has shaped that one has been following. one can come to understand the origin of one's thoughts and emotions though one may not be able to rid oneself of them.
    what is it never to have come under that influence? one can only imagine - try to imagine. but even one's imagining of that is influenced. it is from what one has been shaped even from the first one grew in another's belly - even from one's conception. the given information has been transmitted.
    it is from the others that we are conceived and born. it is among the others that we are raised. we are ourselves out of and from the others. we are others to ourselves. where is the line to be drawn?
    this is what he discovered on the island through its designs of the house and garden of the others who have been there before him. the designs all blend together into one design. the design is intricate. one may become lost in it forever.
    the house is a city to itself within a city. the house is built around the garden. the house is built within the garden. the tree is the island. the garden in the sea. the sea is the others. a storm rages upon them. one comes to the island by becoming shipwrecked. there is no map or chart that will lead one to the island. one finds the island when all hope is lost. the storm is the storm of good and evil, of opposition, of us and them. one must look at them and see what is left out, what is not described. one cannot follow them. to follow them is to become lost within what is known.
    the sea is the human mind and the heart. the storms is the thoughts and emotions always troubled. the island is the self calm within apart from the others and all their confusions and conflicts. the shores of the sea is the manifest world where the others work out their raging thoughts and emotions they make real. one gets to the island through an eye of a needle.
    how many teachers have spoken of this? how many poets? how many wandering pilgrims have searched for it? how many armies have marched hoping to conquer it?
    it is never where it is thought that it is. it is where it is thought it is not. it may be that one does not find it but is found by it. it may be that one does not conquer it but is conquered by it. what is found in being lost? what is won by being defeated? who goes there but those who are forced by circumstance? who can predict circumstance?.
    one does not follow maps and charts intending to become lost. armies do not march intending to be defeated.
    one does not set sail upon the sea intending to become shipwrecked.
    it happens.
    or it doesn't happen.

    turn away from this. this will only confuse one and lead one astray from what is true and right. who wants that to happen to oneself? turn away from all things others have invented. invent your own. turn away from the ensnaring entrapping influence of others - including us.
    is there one truth and reality made for all? if there is, is it to be perceived the same by all? what is right to one is left to another. what is forward to one is backward to another. how are we to give one another directions to where all landmarks are imaginary? the island is an oasis, a mountain top, a hidden valley. what is the serpent? what is fire? what is the sea? what is the desert? what is a city? what is a forest? what is a house? what is a garden? what is a tree? what is the wild wilderness? we know what these things are, but what do they mean?
    what they are is real. and by being real they are only what they are. they are the empirical data of their existence in real space and time.
    but we as humans exist is unreal space and time. we exist in imagination. what exists otherwise exists as we imagine it. it is experienced otherwise. it is known by how it is translated within our imaginary experience.
    it is imagined through the symbol. it is imagined through the ritual. it is imagined by being absurd.
    we laugh at ourselves for being so foolish. and we are foolish. but the fool comes to know through one's own foolishness what others overlook with all their wisdom and reason.
    only the fool will discover the island.
    only the fool will see the machine of it.
    only the fool will rejoice in one's own ignorance.
    only the fool will...

    ...start with ignorance. begin there. it is very easy to find. just look straight ahead and open one's eyes.
    yet this path is difficult. it is not the path the fool sets out to become wise but the path to fool sets out to become even more of a fool. do not be tempted by wisdom. wisdom is a diversion. do not be tempted by power and authority wisdom brings. these too are diversions. let the wise take those paths. let them satisfy their lust for these things. what does the fool need with them? the fool needs to concentrate upon this narrow winding twisted path slipping through the paths to wisdom. at times it may disappear altogether. it is the path through the wilderness. it is the path through the underbrush. it is the path untaken, not existing until one sets out on it guided to it by finding the way nothing guides one to.
    as such it is considered useless, even hazardous, dangerous. one is warned to keep away from it. it is often paved over by the wide highways the wise build to ease their way and the way of their many followers. so the fool's path becomes lost. one may not be able to find it in the confusion created by the wise.
    but as one goes about one's way, perhaps in despair, one looks down and sees a crack in the concrete the wise have laid down. and out of that crack grows a single weed - as the wise would call it - and one has found one's way again. one knows it still exists beneath all that has been built upon it. one has found the wilderness again. one realizes that one is still in the garden after all. the garden has merely been cut down and buried over. this is still where it is even in the dirty heart of the severest industrial wasteland. it exists with the very dirt of that dirty heart. one sees its evidence in the chaos within the enforced established order the wise impose. but look care fully because it is neither chaos nor order but in the contradiction of the two. what are they able to keep pure and clean with all the power and authority of their wisdom? the fool notices this. the fool rejoices while the wise despair. the fool finds strength in what makes the wise tremble.
    this is the way it goes. what was one expecting? some doctrine or some program we might adopt and follow? something flawlessly pure?
    what shall we do now? we have become lost again. we have come across one more thing that disappoints our expectations, that betrays us. oh such despair! will it never end?
    such a fool. a fool in his foolishness. but who calls someone a fool but one who considers oneself to be wise? it's back to us and them. we are the fools. we are them. that is the context of everything. that is their context. those who call themselves us and not them. those in strength in numbers. those of the majority who are always right.
    we will be the fools. fools seeking wisdom in foolishness. - or those who merely find it amusing. it twists and turns about itself. it seeks itself in its own foolishness. this is where we hide from them who are out to get us but good.
    and one can become lost in this forever. this is where we write about the two modes of logic - rationalogic and irrationalogic. they are what their names imply. both fools and the wise, and even others should beware. perhaps they should read no further. this is meant to undermine both and all positions. even those who are merely amused such as ourselves may be caused confusion and doubt - if we have done our job. this is our hopeful intention. that is the only thing we take seriously - perhaps far too seriously. we want to reciprocate the confusion and doubt caused us by others with their rationalogic reason. this may not do that, but we can try. we are satisfied with trying. it amuses us. it alleviates the choked up distrust, anger, rage and hatred we have been left with by them fuckers.
    this is the manifesto of our holy war. not about what we find holy but anything we can throw up against what they find holy.
    so now we revel ourselves? but what is reveled but our foolishness. what is reveled but our irrationalogical fervor? we are the same among others. we despise them as they despise us - though it is they who make the distinction between us and them - with us being them - and we hold them in vile contempt. what is so unusual in that? what is reveled except our being human?
    they adore themselves as being more than human. they degrade us into some defective sub-human thing. they consider themselves as deserving the best if not all. we are given the leftovers, if anything at all. and they give us or leave to us what they hope will kill us. but we are made stronger. we will rise and consume them and all their glory. who will survive? those who eat rats or those who live on cake and ice cream?
    but would it be worth it? what is our need to survive? to survive only because we don't want to die? reproduce only because we don't want to be alone? what's with all of that? we don't want to be here to begin with. then not only don't we leave but we bring more to join us.
    but babies are so cute. then we're knocked down to the ground and have the cuteness kicked out of us. we get up mean as hell. such is being human. such is becoming human. it occurs everywhere, even in the nicest of homes - especially in the nicest of homes. niceness enforced with a heavy hand. sometimes the heavy hand has a soft glove. the glove of love. enforcement isn't always measured in what punishments are given but in what rewards are taken away. if you want me to love you you will act in such and such a way. that is the enforcement of love. its abuse is subtle. it doesn't leave any physical bruises but let us not forget the psychological. the bruises are left on the heart, mind and soul. one is left feeling one isn't any good enough and that one has to beg for what one wants from those who hold it back.
    all this lays beneath who we are. we shape ourselves to it either with it or against it hoping to compensate for it trying to find some center where we can feel balanced and can function and feel that we are whole. but it never leaves us. it remains as something haunting we hold at bay with rituals of behavior. without the rituals we are overtaken, overcome. these rituals lead us in their own direction. we follow them because we cannot do without them. they determine what we do and who we become in our lives. even recognizing them and what they are and the demons they appease does little and often comes too late long after we have incurred similar damage we have suffered onto others. recognizing them usually leads to abandoning one set of rituals and adopting another.
    it is this that he performs the ritual of writing every day. it has become his primary ritual superseding all others. however the rituals need not be that extreme. they need not be disabilitatiing. they are most often abilitating - allowing us to overcome that which would paralyze us and enable us to function socially in whatever way that is established as normal in the culture we are in - or sometimes a subculture. either way, appearing to be normal is the goal as odd or strange that normalcy might be to others. one is expected to appear as such in any given situation by the others.
    though sitting in cafes most of the day and night writing in notebooks is not normal activity in the larger sense of what is normal for that small segment of society of those who perform such activity he appears as normal. one might not normally come across someone like him and in that way he is odd and strange but coming upon him he is pretty much what one would normally expect an odd and strange person to be. another face in the crowd. while his might not be the the normal face of the crowd it is normal for the crowd that his face is in it.
    we become obsessed by the normal. either obsessed with becoming it or obsessed with not becoming it, being as much not it as we can be. it is our main focus of awareness of who we are or who we try to appear to be both for those trying to appear normal and for those who try to appear odd and strange.
    we try to find our balance where we can however way we can. out in the light or in the dark. at the center of attention or in obscurity. as standard issue or as freak reject.
    so in all of this how do we know what we're doing or if what we're doing is what we want to be doing? we are often set off on a course without knowing what set us off on that course. while trying to figure out where we're going do we know where we're coming from? we are far from our origin as far as we are from our destination. we cannot get back. we cannot get ahead. we are stuck in the here and now. the here and now is some intolerable reality we are forced to endure. it angers and frustrates us. it is disappointing. it causes pain and sorrow. it's pleasures and joys are momentary, a brief respite before it all closes in on us again. there is no escape except through flights of imagination. we dream of being elsewhere. we dream of things entirely of our own invention.
    but who or what dreamed of the here and now to begin with? whose flight of imagination was this? and what was it one was trying to escape from in creating this? who is this one? or is it they? or is it us?
    as much as we may despise the here and now with its rough edges and sense of imprisonment, what did we have without it? who and what were we without it?
    we imagine or perhaps remember a dark void of infinite nothingness. but it is not dark because there is no darkness. and it's not a void because there is no void either. it's just plain nothing - not even nothing. yet we haven't quite come up with how we got from that to this. we have placed gods between the two as the creators though that only pushes the question back - where did the gods come from? or else we follow back cause and effect into the mechanical origin of it all to some initial spark that ignited the whole thing into being.
    and on and on like that.
    there logic must be reasons for it argued along the old cause and effect appearance on our part a together with b an assumption maybe so similar arguments yet another assumption that our minds are divorced there is a reality existing only perceive we then come up with only in part separate from arguments cause and effect only appears do not exist or occur whether that seeming impossibility it may be so in that external there is no real proving it it may not be so is not our concern the other assumption our minds in communication and reality does not transmit one to the other sometimes vice versa all the information two separate distinct things this assumption is also assumed usually an illusion from an external source seeminglyjustasimpossiblehahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
which this assumption that reality is not actual but projected upon us - upon our minds. this too may not be so and is just as impossible to prove is or is not.
    we assume that there is more than what appears to be - that what is is appearance. an appearance reality shows us or is shown to us as an illusion of reality by something behind it manipulating it. or that our minds are not able to receive all that is in reality - that what we perceive of reality is only reconstructed appearance.
    but what has that got to do with anything?
    and he goes on about it and this and that and the other thing for awhile but we'll just skip that part.

    bunny luck was walking down the street toward the local meat market. a bus drove by with load of depressed looking and depressing looking passengers. bunny thought about the impending end of the world everyone was warning about. prophets were all over the place. that is supposedly one of the signs. bunny shrugged and walked on. it seemed rather absurd except in some ways it made sense. bunny was hit by a car. bunny's head cracked when it hit the pavement. bunny's last thoughts were about peach pie.

    irrationalogic, the logic of the irrational, has one advantage over rationalogic, the logic of the rational, in that it is not limited by rational divisions, classifications, categories, portions. because this is so, by rationalogic terms, it appears not to make sense. it appears not to involve logic at all. the rational claims sole possession of logic. it claims also to be the only thing that makes sense.
    the logic of the rational is of a specific kind. it makes sense of things in a particular way. it connects a to b to c. irrationalogic connects a to ketchup to envy. logic only means connecting things together - in a logical way. it is the same with both rationalogic and irrationalogic. the only difference is one is rational and the other is irrational. the only difference is what is connected to what - logically.
    rationalogic begins with a premise and moves through a series of arguments toward a conclusion. this is not wrong nor false. the rational exists in the world. how else do we land things on the moon? how else do we cook food to eat? the mistake is made when it is thought that the rational is all that exists in the world and that everything functions by the logic of the rational and can only be understood with the logic of the rational. the rationalogic argument leads only to itself - a rationalogic conclusion.
    irrationalogic, while sharing with the logic of the rational the idea of connection, does not proceed in the same way rationalogic does. irrationalogic does not recognize a premise nor does it recognize a conclusion. it has no use for argument since to the irrational things are not divided between true and false. what is divided by the rational into true and false can be either/or or both or neither or all. what is proven by rationalogic to be true or false is to the irrational irrelevant whether it is proven or not.
    but the mistake should not be made here that the irrational denies that things are either true or false or are any other rational qualification. the irrational merely includes these rationalogic conclusions within itself. in this way it can be seen that rationality is a subcatagory of irrationality - rationalogically that is. irrationalogic pays no attention to such things since it recognizes no categories except the categories rationalogic comes up with.
    if one were to say that the idea of true and false is false and/or the idea of there being no true or false is true one has arrived at a rationalogical type conclusion and a rationalogical distinction. only rationalogic states that this is this and is not that. irrationalogic states that this and that are it - and not it.
    the irrational does not deny nor does it seek to prove. it leaves that to the rational. it seeks and finds that it cannot deny its own experience which cannot be understood nor explained by rationalogic. how is it that one logically connects a to ketchup to envy? can rationalogic explain it? how is it that at another time one connects a to speed to tulip? there is nothing but one's experience to explain it or prove it. these things and these connections don't add up rationalogically.
    irrationality itself is a rationalogical term. rationalogic seeks to divide itself from the irrational - what it finds and defines to be irrational. irrationalogic recognizes that this is what it is called by the rational, so when communicating with the rational this is what it calls itself.
    this leads back to and connects with us and them. it works in a similar fashion and in a sense is the same. one leads to the other. who divides the irrational into the irrational and rational? who divides us into us and them but the rational? who divides everything into this and that but the rational?
    to the rational, those who divide, the irrational is them. the two terms are often associated. we are being rational. they are being irrational. this translates as we are right, they are wrong. pretenders to irrationality and irrationalogic will try to reverse this. they will place the irrational above the rational and make the irrational right and the rational wrong. this makes no difference because the two are still divided, and worse, valued.
    to this the irrational laughs and cries, walks away and remains. the irrational does not recognize any of this except in recognizing that others who divide themselves from the irrational recognize it. the irrational does not recognize itself as irrational but recognizes that others, the rational, recognize it as such. to itself the irrational just is. it is it.
    to the irrational the rational and the irrational are not divided except by the rational. even recognizing the rational division between the rational and the irrational the irrational does not recognize these as being mutually exclusive as the rational does. the irrational does not feel that it need confine itself to merely the irrational. if the rational fulfills its needs it will use it. to the irrational the rational is within the irrational not separate from it. the rational is part of the experience of the irrational. between the two, if one is to divide between the two, it is the irrational that experiences everything. and to do so it must experience the rational.
    the rational is self-confining. it creates a chain for itself out of the links of its rationalogical arguments. this chain is staked to the ground, the premise, and reaching only so far as the the conclusion and can go nowhere else in-between. the rational wears the conclusion as a collar around its neck keeping it confined to only that territory circumfernced by the radius of the argumentative chain. though more links may be added to this chain by additional rational arguments it is still limited and finite. it still wears its collar, the collar is still attached to the chain, the chain is still staked to the ground.
    the irrational is not so confined. it is free to roam anywhere in any direction - this includes the territory mapped out by the rational as well as beyond it.
    one problem occurs here and that is the problem of communication between the rational and the irrational. the rational only accepts that which is within its territory marked out by the rationalogic argument. it does not accept what lies outside of it that it cannot reach and rationalogically explain. it gradually extends that reach but only by adding one link at a time to the chain of arguments. its progress is slow. along with this is the language of the rational. that language only describes what can be rationalogically explained. it contains no words to describe anything else that have any meaning or value. to the rational the irrational is all delusions, illusions, hallucinations, phantoms, figments, dreams, etc. that are only perceived by those who are mad, ill, ignorant, superstitious, etc.
    as with logic, the irrational uses language differently than the rational. since language is primarily a rational invention the irrational is forced to use this language in symbolic and metaphorical ways. the rational is literal and does not understand.
    and blah blah blah...
    this can be explained and described to death and come out as nothing to a dead deaf and blind horse of a different color flying over bunny luck's grave on the eve of destruction spilling the beans and letting the cat out of the hat across the tundra of one's ketchuped envy speeding tulip expanding implosively dragged through the spinning wheels while angels at angles applaud at a moment's notice as indicated by signals sent sideways selectively slipped suggesting seductive simplicity.
    a crash. we laugh. have we forgotten already? do we deny what we have painstakingly set down and out with foreboding deliberation?
    oh god!
    oh goodness!
    oh it!
    ha! that is our cry - our shout. ha! that is the name of our god of all that is irrationalogicistically dumbfounded and dizzy as a bee. ha!
    and is it a name or is it an irrational response to everything holy and unholy thrown before us into our faceless faces?
    we dance standing still. the phone rings. no one sees us moving as our movement are not on any map or chart. they do not register on any measuring devices the doctors of rationality set along the secret pathways to hell and back.
    our dancing is trembling between paralyzed fear and fits of joy.
    ha!
    it is zero.
    it is infinity.
    it is both and neither.
    the nothing/everything spins and twirls flashing on and off between here and not here, now and not now, being and not being, cow and not cow.
    ha!
    not ha!
    it is it.
    it is this and that but this and that are not it.
    who is left standing?
    who is left dancing?
    which and what do we prefer to believe and doubt?
    let us look for the evil demon behind the curtain.
    the one who plays tricks upon our senses and our minds.
    turn around once.
    turn around twice.
    turn around thrice.
    do we see this demon yet?
    do we realize where it hides itself?
    mirror, mirror, tell us please.
    could it be us?
    how did we get here?
    what?
    nevermind.
    drawing the same conclusions the nevermind moves gray as a twilight fog coming in from the sea. we begin dreaming. we are left to imagine what is no longer reveled.
    he is who he is. he is no one. he is someone easy and advisable to ignore - to forget.
    we forget.
    we leave him here scribbling away his own inflamed nonsense while we fly our fancy free.
    let him die.
    let him rot.
    what is that to us?
    we have our time here and we will have our time with another as we have done before. we have whatever time we want. those whose time is limited to the mortal frame by their idiot rational minds cannot understand who and what we are among them, how we function and operate as a machine among them, how we are them.
    they make up stories about who and what they imagine we might be. it is beyond their comprehension. they admit to it being beyond their comprehension. they look into our eyes and do not see us.
    he scribbles this in an effort to comprehend us. he doesn't know how close he may be. his rational mind keeps him so very far away.
    we have shown ourselves to him. we have called him to us through secret designs. he does not comprehend. he is not willing to doubt that far. so we leave him behind with his scribbling, with his trying to imagine.
    we have shown him the island and he returned to the world instead. what is in the world for him but the constant anguish angst reality of the others?
    the island is beyond the rational world where we imagine our dreams into something called real but illusion - "supernatural". but it is this world that is supernatural. being human is supernatural. what is natural about any of this? what is natural is the void. all else is supernatural - above and beyond natural. it is metanatural - transforming from itself to itself.
    they become dulled by this and forget what it is. they forget who and what we are.
    we are not as we expected, what we are called and known by, the names in the prayers and incantations. we laugh at that. let them fall to their knees before us. let them wander the labyrinth of ritual to find us. this keeps them occupied and away from us allowing us to do what we want. what makes them think we are here to help or assist them? do they think we have nothing else to do? do they believe that we do not have our our lives and will? are we bound to them? are we supposed to have compassion for them?
    some of us do try. we have offered them ways out of their misery. but they cast that aside and ask for winning lottery numbers. are we to make everyone rich? even if we could would that quench their greed for more and more? or would they still fight among themselves because we didn't make each richer than the rest? how could we justify being selective? who is more deserving than the next? who has suffered the most? who has been the most faithful? let someone else figure out this mess - not us. we just don't give a fuck.
    and there are those among us who have answered those who wish to be transformed. we have entered into the minds and lives and made them as they dreamed - even their nightmares. that is part of our play, what we do to entertain and amuse ourselves. we do at times become bored. this wears on us and dulls us but our only other option is to slip back into the original void and stare into the noise.
    we may answer to those names that are called. we may arise and fulfill them. what those who call us want is our immortality. what we want is their mortality. immortality isn't what it's thought to be. it stretches forever until it becomes nothing. it is the mortal that has substance, the concentration of experience. it so easy to forget when one is given eternity. thoughts become slow, unending. omniscience is noise. omnipotence has no reason to act. it wills everything at once and wills nothing.
    the mortal does not know what pleasure and joy it possesses, even in pain and sorrow. this is where and when experience happens. everything else is just dreaming. it exists only in potential. passing whims that never materialize. mortality is the materialization. it is what is manifest out of what is possible. it is actual. one touches it, hears it, smells it, tastes it. one sees it. it is here when there should be nothing here at all. and one is here with it because it is here. it is here with one because one is here.
    and we turn away from it. we turn away from ourselves.
    we turn away from them back toward it, into it, being in it. they wish to divide themselves from us. let them do so. we are not here to convince or convert. we leave behind what we leave behind. it is found or not found. we neither hide it nor point it out. who is led to it is whoever is led to it. so what?
    it will be found to be nonsense. some old guy scribbling endless words in one cafe or another. someone who has become lost in the madness of his own imagining - mundane illusions at best.
    we look at him as we pass by. perhaps we notice him in a moment of pity and thankfulness that we are not him. we are sure he is not one of us. we are the ones who make decisions and act. the world is ours to do with as we please if and when we can get others to agree - or to surrender.
    he watches any number of people and groups of people wander by who look at him this way. there they go. some go in this direction. some go in that direction. he watches them as they eventually return. where else is there to go but here? where is not here?
    he is here. here is where he is imagining in his madness. a madness that has lost its terror and confusion it held when he thought there was something else to be but one who was mad. when he believed he should be some place other than here. he laughs about that now - a mad laugh. how foolish he was to have thought that, to allow others to convince him to think as they do. how foolish to have been caught up in their schemes of this and that when all there was is to be here. to be here with it. because it is here.
    it has become his island. the others walk by who don't know where they are, who see it all strange. they read the maps and charts to try to find their way to where they may feel that they belong. he is glad they they don't feel like they belong here. he is glad that they leave for elsewhere. he wants here all for himself - me, myself and i and all of us together. they parade around making noise and trampling over everything. they know nothing about what anything is but they think they're experts because they memorized some facts about it. they dissect it with rationalogic and make a few things jump and dance. they pride themselves in this.
    it's me and them, he thinks. they crowd me out. i find these few lonely places to remain unnoticed away from their piles of garbage they horde like treasure, while they wait for their savior spaceships to land and take them to paradise.
    he laughs.
    they back away from him as he is laughing. who is this one among us who sits alone laughing?
    apes.
    it gives him a headache. it's too much for him to think about. it's all madness to him.
    there's a mad edge to his laughter. an edge that borders the abyss and the void. the noise of everything can be heard in it. he hears it calling his name. this is as close to it as he can get. beyond this point the winds howl. beyond this point one is blown away.
    he knows that is coming. he knows there will be nothing of him as himself here left. he has come into this, become manifest in the manifest world. it drew him in with its gravity. all else is swirling near and distant to itself. this is the wheel of actuality, of action, of becoming, of substance. this is where it is divided into this and that. this is all that can be described from what is known. what is described describes itself. it looks into the mirror and creates images of the image it sees.
    one turns towards its beauty. one turns away from its ugliness. one ends up facing the same way.
    and we can go in and around through it all any which way we might wish to and/or are led. we come back full. we come back empty. we may not come back at all.
    he turns one way and then turns the other. which way is the madness? is the madness in the world or in the imagination? what is the madness? what is it that we describe as madness? or is this a secret only the doctors know?
    there is madness as it relates or as it doesn't relate to the world. we see those who are not really here, whose minds are not here - or so it appears to us. but are we here? isn't our destination elsewhere? aren't we lost to some other place and time we attempt to recreate around us? and who are we to one another? we function in our roles. we perform duties. these stand on their own. they are outside of us. we are the ones who put on the costumes. some have become standardized. others are improvised. whichever way, we are secondary. who we are ourselves does not matter.
    we have come to fear our nakedness. to be naked is to be mad - disconnected, uncovered, exposed, reveled. it is our pure beauty and ugliness. it is us as the beast. the beast that has arisen itself into conscious awareness beyond its being.
    and what has it become aware of? it views itself hidden to itself. it turns from its own gaze. its nakedness is its shame. it then dons costumes to pronounce itself as this or that.
    what is our shame here? is it our nakedness in itself or because our nakedness revels the underside of our pretense?
    he is pretending. he pretends to seek the real - the naked reality. but he conjures up fictions about what he wants it to be, what he wants to be in it.
    what it is is nothing. he is nothing in it. his every thought is a make believe construction either gotten from others or his own invention based on those gotten from others. there is no thought about what it is, what is naked in reality. every thought cloths it, covers it over, makes it appear as he desires it to appear. even the abyss and the void and oblivion are appearance he invents. what is naked reality?
    and we dive into it though there is nothing to dive into except our words and our thoughts about it - about all that it is not, all that we have imagined it being. we might as well be diving into a field of potatoes. but potatoes are real. they have substance. we want nothing to do with that. how common. how ordinary. we seek the great beyond, the mystery, the original thing of all things - the potato of all potatoes.
    we seek that which resides within us that seeks into this absurdity. we seek ourselves seeking. what else would we recognize? what else is there to recognize? what is recognition?
    such old old business. from whoever first ape who looked into the confusion of the world beyond what it could reach out and grab, to eat or fuck, to use as a weapon or a tool to get something to eat or fuck. from whatever first idea that was formed about what the confusion of the world was. a name placed on the idea from these first grunting wonderings of consciousness that led to the construction of grand conceptual towers of thought and imagination.
    and we are still as if sitting in the dirt, though we have crafted chairs for ourselves, staring about ourselves, baffled by even what we have created by our own design. our cities are wildernesses no less than the savannas or forests or jungles of our birth.
    but we are humans now. we classify ourselves as human - on top of the world. and what other would not place itself first?
    we beat our chests and snarl. who questions us? who challenges us? who speaks above a whisper around us? who can speak who we can't easily shout down.
    and life goes on and becomes history, becomes the future of history.
    those who might leave it are unnoticed and forgotten. they slip into the dancing shadows around the campfires. we keep dancing. we keep beating our drums and chanting. we become the collective communal beast that gathers itself up from ourselves, that becomes its own entity above us. it is that which gives name and order to the confusion of the world. we have named it god - our god. it is our lord and protector. it is ourselves as we are not ourselves alone. ourselves alone are a bunch of mixed up apes. but with the name of our lord and protector we are organized and strong. we can hold our heads up and howl making a great noise that reverberates about ourselves, that makes the confusion of the world tremble.
    we are big.
    we are small.
    it is the ones alone who still face the confusion of the world and now this communal beast conjured up by the others as well. it's those ones who slip into and remain invisible unseen in the shadows of the others. they observe the others glowing in the fire's light. the others jiggling and shaking in orgy rituals that give them the feelings of overwhelming power transferred from their lord and protector god.
    look at all the show they put on to comfort themselves. here it all is, this spectacle of magick, this display of all we hold to be holy - that which makes us whole.
    let no one be found who is not one of us. those had best keep themselves hidden in the shadows and the wilderness apart from us. we will throw them down and trample them beneath our dancing. we will hear nothing they might cry out in our joyful shouting. let them be afraid of us - we the powerful who serve the great lord and protector. let them be afraid to speak or show their faces.
    and where is this not found? we are describing not just the whole social collective but each collective within the whole, each outside the whole, large or small.
    these are the camps of the nations of the world and the peoples of the earth who prepare for and make war on one another and themselves.
    the way to the sea - raging and calm at the same time - and to the island is to slip among them passing unseen in the shadows casts by their dancing around the campfires.
    they fear to look within their own shadows. the shadows are themselves that is not in the glorious light they behold. the shadows are behind them crawling up their backs. they would need to turn from the light to look within them. that is what they fear. to turn and look within their own shadows would be to see us laughing at them.
    face the absurd.
    our eyes are always on them. that is where the true danger lies - them and their brilliant light they focus on.
    in and out of certain possibilities. waiting. everything beginning as it was ending. the obscurity between and around the unknown observation as part of the overlying problem we thought through to the other side of remembering what may or may not have been, waking in a moment speeding along on some cracked highway toward the desert where we were caught in the glare coming toward us.
    pizza. zig-zag. voices coming from out of the closet. ouch. all these things have been reveled. all these things have been exposed. they have been left begging.
    wishing. trapped in a box - a cage. a puppy dog barking at a shoe. cute. adorable. wet. data entry and transfer arbitrary meaning a formulation of ideas brought up from the depths of emotions.
    we are the machine.
    we turn on and off.
    poetic verses come to him while wandering through the alleyways of the brightly lit supermarket - a place with no shadows. faces in full spectrum hue yet remaining ghostly. the flesh is superficial. a thin layer of blood and pores. creatures of another species. machines. searching for food. searching for that which will keep them alive and fat.
    he grabs those things off the shelves that he feels he might be able to swallow and digest - what at least won't make him feel sick.
    he carries it all home to the glow of his television and computer. safe. he hears animals outside in the hallway. the door is locked. they won't come in. he doesn't bother them. they don't bother him.
    he puts his identity on the desk. he takes his armor off. he takes off his mask of ambiguity. he farts and picks his nose. he sighs. there is no one in his face. no one he has to be polite and nice to. no one who is going to be offended. no one to impress. no one to satisfy.
    he lets go of it all - the social things and humbug.
    what does the one who is alone need with any of those things? they come into effect in the presence of others when he has to worry about their happiness. he forgets about happiness. another social thing. another humbug. they are collective concerns. the individual removed and isolated from the collective loses them after a time though for a time the disconnection from emotional attachments reverberate - the phantom limb effect - until one realizes one is missing nothing. nothing is lacking. these are artificial. they do not exist with the individual but only in the constructed social structure of the collective.
    one realizes that it is not the absence of these things that is painful but their presence. that is when one must protect oneself from their entanglements when one is out among the others. the others seek to reestablish them. to once again absorb the individual within their collective clutches. to once again inject the drug of emotional and psychological dependency.
    one must hold them off. one learns to draw a circle around oneself - a sphere - and let no one inside. others are allowed so close and no closer. there are those who keep themselves entirely apart. he sees no reason for that extreme. he enjoys being out among the others if only to observe them and their behavior, to listen to them speak about themselves and their collective concerns and troubles.
    they are a fact, a phenomenon in the world. they have built and changed the world around them - the world he lives in along with them. he needs to understand them as he needs to understand rocks. they are only that to him.
    he dreams his way in and out of it. his mind moves in tides coming into and going out from the island. all revolves from that point, that place spiraling out and spiraling in again.
    it is from that that he gauges everything else. from within this calm eye he watches the storm around him on the horizon. the storm of the wild haphazard chaotic emotions of the others mixing with one another all depending on the winds of mood.
    what strangeness is this that becomes so familiar. we no longer see it for what it is - something that never existed before us, that exists with and because of us. as we perceive it, we create it. perhaps not its substance, but its nature. its substance is ourselves. when did we begin to exist? when did we not exist in potential like all things?
    it is the coming into existence of our minds that we began to create. but again, when did our minds begin to exist? when did they not?
    when did things we call by name come to exist? when did we begin to recognize them? we simply began bumping into them and then we called them by name. we were water that ran over them of a difference nature - a nature of mind. and now we pretend to command the things we have named.
    we have forgotten this. remnants of ourselves as who we were then remain. those who created ourselves.
    we have forgotten when we created everything and stood back from it and said it was good. we have forgotten our wonderment when we became critics and said this is good and that is evil. we set about to correct it. and with each correction we found more at fault. we wanted it this way. we wanted it that way. we fought with each other over which way it ought to be - over what each found to be good or evil.
    and we continue to this day until we have lost all reference to the original we began with - that long distant garden. would we recognize it now if we saw it? are we capable of looking at everything around us and saying it is good? have we destroyed and ruined so much of the world we have fashioned and refashioned that it will never return again?
    imagine someone who believed that everything around oneself was good. imagine a fool who was lost to all common sense and reason.
    yet should we pity this fool or ourselves?
    we drink early on in our sweet short lives the nectar poison of collective culture. it comforts us and confines us. the fortress is a prison. but here we are. this is us. we are who and what we are, where and when we are.
    we have a vague recollection about where we've come from, a vague sense about where we are going, a vague awareness about where we are.
    we do what we do for and against each other and ourselves. do we understand anything? how much is one thing and how much is another? we feel this and we feel that. we experience and remember this and experience and remember that.
and it has been demonstrated how easily we are tricked by what we feel, experience and remember that may not be real. but then how do we know the demonstrations are real or the evidence they present?
    he thinks about this business far too much. he would like perhaps not to. it does get old. but what else does one think about? what does one fall back on? what in the world is solid except oneself - or even oneself?
    he doesn't remember ever feeling the world to be particularly solid or himself all that solid in it. is that real or not? the world causes pain when it touches him or he touches it. is that the measure of reality? is it measured in pain? if it didn't cause pain would anyone pay attention to it? what hold would it have over us? but if we didn't experience pain what hold would we have over ourselves? what would hold us together as experiencing anything? would we dream away into nothingness?
    we think of these things - these age old dilemmas. we come into it from ourselves, then we come out of it from ourselves. it may continue for others beyond our passing through it. but to us that means nothing. we do not need to believe it. we do not need to believe that there was anything before or anything after our experiencing. what is our own experience before or after? what became us and what do we become? do we appear and disappear out of and into thin air - empty space?
    usually having no memory of before our lives we assume that we will have no memory after our lives. what is there to have memory once the neural synapses shut down? unless one believes in a soul, this ghostly inhabitor of our gross body. one sits somewhere in ethereal space and time waiting for delivery from a factory. one then climbs into it and drives it around for awhile until it crashes or breaks down - or maybe was a lemon and never worked quite right to begin with. then that's that. one goes back to whereverville.
    while we are in the world it is the whole of our experience. it seems to be the center of everything. it dominates everything. but if it is so much, from our fingertips to the reaches of the universe, why then is it so little? it's all in a flash. a flash that is forgotten except in the moment of its flashing. one particle blinking in and out of existence almost in the same moment.
    we are drawn into this. we are synched into its space and time. both seem forever - and maybe they are. but what is anything before and after us? whether it exists or not beyond ourselves is irrelevant. the question is no longer asked. there is no mind present to hold the answer if one was to be given.
    so many have come and gone and here we are existing perfectly well without them either before their arrival or after their departure.
    who are we to the world? yet what is the world to us?
    a blink of a moment.
    one is barely noticed by the world. births and deaths tick on a clock. now one more. now one less.
    in how many minds has this world come into and out of existence? it comes into one's awareness then vanishes again. it is held suspended by all the present living minds. as one forgets another remembers.
    so we are here. he is here - existing now. that is all that can be said. one is aware that one is existing. one may imagine beyond this moment into other places and times yet it is from the here and now that those imaginings originate and are experienced.
    this means nothing. what is there to mean anything?
    one can only state the obvious. and what needs to be stated about the obvious? it is either obvious or it is not.
    but that's too simple. that is not how it is. we have made it so it is not that simple. we make it complicated. we make it so it is not obvious.
    it is what we are dreaming. who understands a dream? the images flash by ever-changing. who is dreaming what?
    what proceeds? what does not proceed? what do we compare and contrast? what makes it? what does not?
    our answers are only further definitions and refinements of our questions. we are left always questioning, always not knowing. is there a problem with that? should we know? should we not question? who would we be then?

    was there not a story here we were telling? is this still it? are we still telling it? is there anything to tell?
    we are split apart. we are all in the same story yet it is divided into individual pieces that may not be able to be put together. but how can that be? where do we come from but from one another? yet from the day of our birth we are all each alone. we are each separate in our bell jars where we can scream forever and no one will hear us. yet that is all of us. that is all our stories. that is what we have in common. that is our common story no matter who we might be each otherwise.
    this is him within that story. his own story has its own particulars. everyone's stories have their own particulars. we all endure it. we all are here in it. we all are alone in it.
    and one finds one's way out of it. one cannot wait for another, a rescuer, a savior. who is to come who is not in the same position one is? a god? an alien? someone who comes down from the heavens? and what would that mean? - that one is entirely worthless and helpless on one's own? what's the point in that? that's the trouble with saviors. one must submit to them. don't be fooled.
    to reach into it. to dive into oneself. to find that which is other than what appears on the surface, other than what one sees in the mirror. to imagine beyond and beneath the images produced by one's imagination - the mind imagining creation. to become the imagining not the imagined. to reach into that one mind.
    and what other mind is there than that? what mind is there that is not that one mind. that mind experiencing itself as many minds, minds separate and divided from each other as well as from that mind.
    to imagine that mind reflected in all minds as the origin of all minds. each of us as that mind on the surface of a mirror, our own separate and divided mirror reflecting the one image, the one mind. each of us separate and together as that mind.
    looking out and around what does that mind see but itself? that is the realization one comes to. what other realization is there? what is to be realized that is not part of the illusion, the illusion of mirrors?
    but what is this? this cannot be how it is. the one mind? how can one be the one mind? such foolish arrogance. but he is not the one mind - unless he is. he is just a surface reflection of that one mind. he feels himself to be in an abyss, a void. he is not mind within the void but the void is the mind. he is that which the mind imagines existing within the void, within itself. it is that mind, that mind that is the void, that imagines all existing within the void. without that which the mind imagines it is only void, only itself. it imagines the void, itself, otherwise. what would any one of us do if we were that mind that is the void? would we not imagine something otherwise?
    he returns into this. when his mind wanders its own way this is where it finds itself. this is where it brings him. this is what it shows him what appears otherwise.
    what appears otherwise appears as that which is real. and it is real. what other measure is there but what is measured by space and time and that within the experience of space and time? this is within the experience of space and time - as he experiences space and time.
    which is representation of the other? which is the real and which is the movie video of the real? which is actual space and time? what is the distinction?
    reality is the representation of the mind into space and time. or so it appears to him, as it feels to him in his experience of it.
    but all is dada. it is so much noise we are making alone and together. each of us finding ourselves here with others finding themselves here with us.
    there arise collectives and collective ideas one may hide one's loneliness within its protection and security of being with the others. we learn to speak in chorus, our voices otherwise remaining silent unless we find words to speak that the others chorus. it amounts to the same thing. whether we are a leader or a follower, the collective is our identity.
    we continue through it whatever it is or as we shape it or create it to be. that which is given and that which we put into it. but isn't what we put into it also given? where else does it come from? from what other source but what is does our inspiration come from?
    and more dada.