Towards a Manifesto! II

Weaving em together

Staring out screen door, ajar. Pitter-patter on aluminum and a puddle forming in the corner of the concrete porch, manifest round the space, that twisting black iron meets the gray. Drops rippling.

That peculiar scent fills everything. Is everything. Ashen, a single ray breaks through into the city.

It was going to rain, sooner or later.

Sat alone together in the old home. Relatives stepped out. Electric lights turned off.. Ceiling fan in motion.

This old place, with its shadows and chipped floral print walls. Turning my head I can see the bedroom, with the stiff wooden bed covered green with white pillows. Impeccably kept. Turn my head back and to see you sitting by the door ponderous. Got a real shine when you're pondering. Head leaning against the frame, eyes lost in the glistening mass of plants and wires and concrete and glass and cement endless on the otherside.

I think I still love you.

The laminated chair, creaky but true, yellow foam erupting out the wounded corner. Can't help but pick at it.

This old house compact, dense with all manner of dusty knickknacks. It's not that big, still I can't help but feel like its hallways and corridors expand limitless into the depths away from my gaze. On the right kind of night we might find ourselves lost in here, wandering forever, having turned a corner that we hadn't noticed wasn't there the day prior. Strange that in the right kind of light it's almost comforting. I wouldn't mind getting lost for an eternity with you, not one bit. Then again we have our respective commitments, matters we can't escape.

Eyes meet, brows perked, I'm startled. Shaken to the depths. For a moment I can see the back of my head, the moment before my soul settles back. You're smiling, still leaning against the frame. Hand gripping knee. You make that blouse gorgeous. Rummaging through purse you pull out two sticks of gum. Give me one.

Crumple up the foil toss it into the bin.

Clearing of throat and with that languid elegance of yours turn back to thought. Join you.

Rainy day pitter-patter like angel choir.

Everything is complicated.

I look at the complicated beauty sitting across from me and everything is simple. Isn't that scary in the right light.

Other words, in other worlds. Here and there.

I'm happy. Don’t know if you feel the same way. Be nice if you did.

It's going to stop raining, sooner or later. Rather it be later.

What keeps me tethered is the same logic that keeps the suicide's ghost lingering, minus the extra step. I've cited a number of them.

Are you as lonely coming in as you are going out? Loneliness leaves you alone.

I really don't want to clock in. This job is getting in the way of my work. I just want to write.

Sometimes I feel a sense of relief knowing that if I leave I'll just get replaced. Lately, I haven't.

What have I to give? A soul?

Don't know. Tell me. Won’t you tell me?

What gifts have I to give you, the many I miss shrouded in regal blue. Can I find a way to express my remorse for not having received you with the pageantry of prior years with a chin held high. To sing my gratitude and grief, aloud. Perhaps words. Could words serve as an appropriate tribute. Watch them bloom from out of the cracks, pick them, slit them, and provide some augur for the coming year. Look how you find me my witness. In this space untidy, scattered cans, and the scent of myriad emissions. Perhaps in being flayed by unloving hands I might make things right. I'm sorry grandpa for not greeting you better.

This stony little path littered with carnival, left here from God knows when. Little plastic things, discarded, accumulating, fantasy glistening beneath a merciless Sun.

Strange lovely thing what brings you round these parts at so queer an hour. Don't you know it's inauspicious to stroll away from the shallows, bearing neither coin nor flower for your eager hosts? Though the stars and moon may veil you in familiar pallor the scent of your living glows. What makes you wander among such hungry things? Sit down for awhile, what harm could it bring? Generous girl tell us a story. Charitable one let your breath moisten our bones, that you might see ghosts blushing bright in the night.

My 2nd grade teacher was a real bitch. I'll call her Mrs. S. She was old, lipless, and severe. Her crispy strawberry blonde hair shooting upward, which was likely a result of her having to be defibrillated every morning just to get out of bed. She had a habit of weeping in frustration whenever one of her 7 year old students proved a little too difficult. Perched on a stool she'd continue weeping. Asking the 7 year old why they were doing this to her. Why they were making her cry, getting her all flustered. Sometimes she'd start rambling about horrifying things. From up on that stool, she'd talk to us about death. About natural disasters and automobile accidents and ghosts and of the encounters she'd had with demons. Mind you this was a public school but it was a different time and Mrs. S had paid her dues as an educator. No one could tell her shit. I was terrified of her. Whenever her beady little gorgon eyes fell on me I felt like I was being struck by a bolt of her condensed disdain. Fat frightened child that I was.

Curiously enough every Wednesday at 1pm the classroom door would open. The door handle would turn and it would open just like that with no visible persons on the other side of it. Mrs. S would stop whatever it was she was doing, turn smiling towards the door and wave. Then the green-colored door would close and that was that. It only ever happened when she was present.

The first week of class she explained to us, from up on her stool, that years prior she had had a student she'd grown very fond of. The boy was terminally ill. Before passing away, he would regularly swing by her classroom everyday at 1pm. She let us know that he had promised her that he would ask God to let him continue this habit. He had died on a Wednesday. She told the class all of this and that we shouldn't be afraid. Her eyes darting from the clock to the door. That's when it happened and it just kept happening and we got use to it. It was what it was. It became in its own weird way, comforting.

Mrs. S would go on to retire at the start of my 4th grade year. When the time came for her former students to write their farewell messages on cards, provided by the school, I chose to leave mine empty. She was a bitter, mean-spirited old thing when I'd met her. Still those visitations by a spectral little boy had made it clear, that she hadn't always been that way.

Yea I only have Instagram so that I can look at your stories.

"What pathetic loser behavior."

Yes.

Sitting next to my mom. My favorite women.

Vagrant in the Vestibule.

Like seeing you. Like thinking about you. Like fantasizing with you. Like liking your stuff. Feels good when I see you happy. Like your taste. Your vision. Your bodies. Your laughter, my God. Your trips. The books you read and share. The quotes. What you're reading. I draw from that.

Don't know why but I made the choice.

Made the choice to be indebted to you. Forever.

Intend to hit it out the ballpark. I want your names to be next to mine. Forever. Buried next to you. Entombed.

Want future generations to study us in tandem.

To say, "you don't understand Simon without Red Scare."

"Or he wouldn't be shit without them."

People will say that and I’ll hop around rejoicing, arms in the air.

One God, three distinct Persons. We know this.

You are you and I am I.

I intend to be a Father of Culture and a Husband of Wisdom. An Aner.

This wasn't a mistake.

So pick up your chins.

We are rocking.

Slowdown with the drinking.

You do deserve, me. Who are you to decide that you don't?

Our Devotion.

A Labor of Love.

I'm telling you.

All of you.

My Muses.

I love you.

Pierrette

That's the female equivalent of a Pierrot.

You are my rock.

Can't neg all the time.

"With regard to Bayreuth, I am satisfied not to have to be there; and yet, if I could be near you in ghostly fashion and whisper this-and-that in your ear, even the music of Parsifal should be tolerable to me (otherwise it is intolerable)." - Nietzsche

All erotic magic is just autism.

Poetry, sensuous thought. It is sensorial. It is alive. Like mustard and like the grapevine.

Prima Materia.

Women are attuned to this in ways men aren't. Women know what it's like to be alone together for large spans of time. Ways that are different than men.

Women weave. So I don't know... do you really think your secrets stop being secrets once they are articulated? Of course not. The Mysteries you draw power from are deeper than articulation.

It's a different connection.

So you see it when a man is kind of a little bit too much like you right? Or worse, mutates in order to survive prolonged exposure to your presence. Traumatized into plasticity. Folding up into a latex vulva. Behaving like a catty hoe on twitter. Making pithy little snide comments. In a word, bitch-made. Perhaps men should be beaten away from the Red Lodge, chased off with machete and frying pan and ceaseless jeers and nagging. Left cowering and crying, having thought that you liked me... but, maybe some of us are just the way we are and we're kind of trying to make due.

I'm ruined. I don't trust new people. Been lied to on dates. Broke my heart. Those who not only lie on dates but who admit to lying to on dates are responsible for misandry. Your attempts to "impress" me by lying have led me to develop a deep mistrust.

The Earth trembles. Let me eulogize. Woman let me explain. That the explanation might embrace you. That my embrace might overcome your trembling.

Brothers speak to the rock, don't strike it, lest you find yourself walking in spirals for 40 years in the desert.

For one I don't think you should rush to adhere to an identity modeled on an identified pathology. To reduce yourself to something that sounds like it was extracted from pop psychology articles, an online quiz, the diagnostic manual. You aren't "ruined".

I've experienced this before. Recognition between Beautiful Souls. Fixating on everything as a trauma, that I'm the permanently injured and isolated and beautiful in this condition, I put too much pressure on others to find something redeemable in me. A sculpture of ourselves as an Absolute Trauma, a snake eating its own tail. As the perfect trauma I'm exempt from any responsibility. Relinquishing autonomy, I've foreclosed pleasure and intimacy, for this perverse and caustic enjoyment. Look at how beautiful I bleed. Look at how beautifully I suffer. I am the Virgin-King. The Immaculata. Ascetic Tyrant. Totally and absolutely self-justified. The end result of glorious auto-sacralization. In this judgment. The final verdict: you’re all shit. No one can possibly live up to this imposition, to the potency of my Ideal. Cry and make sure to subscribe. Reflexively meeting all who try to be what I deem Good with great suspicion. Isn’t it obvious? They are the opposite thing. The Worst Thing.

Yet I lie don't I? Yet I'm also a hypocrite am I not?

The worst tyrants. The most abusive tyrannies demand Absolute Transparency from their subjects. Mandatory nudity. Forced to justify ourselves before God. Always the victimized, permanently victimized by everyone and everything. How else could they justify this viciousness?

"Everything bad in my life is your fault. Everything bad in your life is also your fault."

To find some measure of peace in watching others shivering and shirtless. Demanding that of others. Is to produce a world of gray shells shambling about. Without hope or ambition or passion. It is to foreclose alterity not only in others but also in ourselves. No forgiveness of others and ourselves. A world populated by haunted animatronics.

We should be mindful. We are not special in this awareness. Perhaps it’s more accurate to describe it as a condition or affliction. In its manner the result of Self-Consciousness.

We all require some space. Some creative mystery within ourselves and for others. Where we can strive to shape ourselves into the potentially beautiful object we see encased in the marble. That's a personal project. This mastery of space. This construction and dwelling. Your Hegemonikon looks a little like me my love. Have you noticed?

Love is loving both the statue encased in the marble block and the marble block. To be Loved is to be Loved in your Being not in your Doing. Love is a sublime madness after all.

People do take advantage of this.

Of course, who amongst us wouldn’t?

People take advantage of their own parents.

Of their own mothers, all the time.

I don't know if it's the same for women but with dudes, once you cross a certain point, it's very difficult to backtrack gracefully but it's also very easy to overestimate your own ability to do so at the onset. Like dabbling with hard narcotics. Gambling on your will, forgetting the withdrawals.

The ways in which we narrate our compulsions, prettying them up. Dissociate from them, from their reality... and just like that love, welcome to the horror show. No need to state the extremes, you know em already, the works; slicing the camera eyes of the dying. Let’s keep it light. For instance acting like a petulant dickhead or employing the only reliable tactic at our disposal to cool down after having crossed the line; retreating into some cave far away from everyone until you stop being so radioactive (think this partially informs the logic behind why some people ghost).

In terms of what you're expecting from, or projecting unto, the person you're interacting with and the ways you might try to manipulate them or pressure them into giving you what you want. It's like you experience tunnel-vision, it's almost trance-like in its intensity, and it's super unbecoming and it tends to meld seamlessly with aggression/frustration etc... I think Anna is correct, super correct, when she notes that "arousal" and "aggression" emerge from the same source. It's Blood. It's the Fire-Generated by Blood Flow.

The Real Red Scare is a flushed face.

In that state, if I must lie to get what I want, which is not what I want but rather what I need. I will lie. Starting with myself. I am not exceptional in my deception.

It is constitutive of the Human. We are constantly engaging in a creative act, the Self is a fiction.

It's a deception when I use it against someone in order to get these needs met. Ideally with minimal delay. Learn to manage and manipulate. What a competent young person. To sell ourselves a certain way and nearly always its in a way that makes us look "kinder, gentler, more authentic" - because that's the commodity desired by the other. It's a con, an artifice, but we do what we must in order to survive. I learn helplessness because the baby that does not mewl does not suckle.

I lie to you because I foreclose the possibility of being what you desire but will nonetheless "sell" myself as the thing I think you desire. There is a dissonance. Always a gap. Reaccuring motif.

What makes one a Dirtbag. Is getting what I want out of you and immediately cutting the act. Honey word sculptor dissolving in the rain. Into glittering knick-knacks; fineries and fantasies. Assembled into a sorcerer's enchantment.

What makes me a real piece of shit. Is that immediately after getting what I wanted out of you. I’ll discarded you. Assume that I did this because I felt an incredible amount of shame and guilt for what I'd done. That I reflected on my actions and that ghosting was the only option. Yes. How convenient. Or assume the worst of my intentions, that I'm a conjurer and a predator, that you were my victim and I've left you a mutilated husk. Barely alive. Alive as a kind of curse or due to some profound animating spite. That you should live to see me brought to justice for having love bombed you.

Understandable when it actually happens. Men should be afraid of women. Men should tread lightly around them. Girls aren't tonics or pills. There is a witchcraft they're imbued with. A venomousness. A capacity to produce and launch a most devastating bolt from the contradiction of impulse and scheme.

Her Menstrual Dialectics; When these bitches start bleeding together into holes, ululating and lamenting, you wake up the next day with erectile dysfunction and shortly thereafter you contract leprosy. Great job your nose is literally falling off your face. Careful kid. Don't fuck with these women.

Never a long-term planning thing as we men understand it. It's better not to dwell. As dudes it can and will drive us insane.

Let us not be in denial though. Here we are amongst friends. A man doesn't have to be a fuck boy to be victimized by the perversion and vindictiveness of women. The fact that that has become the consensus is insane. It's literally an act of mass witchcraft. The fact is that men have always had to provide some degree of flirtation as a placating offering to women. To pacify them. Women are dangerous and vindictive when they feel unattractive. There is nothing worse than a Woman suddenly realizing that their love for a man is unrequited. When the myriad of pleasantries and social flirtations are proven frivolous and barren. When this becomes obvious to a woman. When you make a woman genuinely feel like a fool. You as a man might as well sell all your possessions and join some monastic order. She'll be your worst enemy and she'll be smiling the whole time. She'll work horrific inequities against you, spread vicious rumors, reveal things she used woman clairvoyance to intuit. She'll do horrible things to you and feel totally justified while doing it. Tears won't work. She'll drink them and laugh. Making fun of your weakness. Genuine sadism. Unvarnished and immoderate.

In a sense our core Sacrificial Mystery is that of Orpheus at the hands of Maenads.

"Oh sure, we'll just be friends. Best friends."

Then the woman will complain about people who think sexual segregation is a bad thing and claim that you're the one who is somehow essentially fucked up for noting the impossibility of an actual Friendship between Men and Women. It's undoubtedly possible but the Cousin Principle has to be enacted and I doubt single young people are genuinely capable of doing this. Especially when you're engaging in sexual intercourse willynilly.

I've know this. I've seen it. How, especially intelligent and capable women, will basically construct a little harem of "male friends"... Surrounding herself with failed suitors. Who she nonetheless keeps around. For whatever reason. It's disconcerting to witness this. Impressive and potentially even ennobling. But man, as a dude, I don't want that. I don't want that for myself or for another dude I care about. It's only understandable if you really are in Love with a chick but even then. Spider-like.

So some people copulate and dip. They don't want to suffer the indignities that come with the territory. Got what I wanted and that's that. Why should I let you chew my head off?

The amounts of seethe women are prone to... Men who weren't raised around female siblings really haven’t a clue just how bad it is. Or worse and this is truly unforgivable… They inherit the misogyny of their mother and female relatives, weaponizing the wretched truth; A woman's words are a spell. They spell out the ideal partner as a kind of protective entity. In her description, in her attempts to convince herself, like a smoker attempting to quit smoking through self-hypnosis, she strives to keep the delirium of love at bay. Attempts to avoid falling for a piece of shit. They can't help it when it happens and it happens all the time.

Not always at first sight mind you. But through a weird series of mis/alignments, and woman will suddenly look at you, and see God. You become her, her split-consciousness imposing itself.

It is not simply in the moment of violence but in the kiss and consolation that follows.

This is not BDSM weirdo stuff. This is not Bugman Kinkplay. That's a tacky attempt to give expression to these primal dynamics which can just as easily playout in a series of touches and conversations. Touch and the withdrawal. Words and the silence between them.

It is at its most refined perhaps, a Dance. It is in a sense only as Dance that it can be enjoyed for what it is. Between People.

What Glorious Scarlet Mysteries. This is the Key to Red Magic. The Magic of Blood and Sex.

We might also find here the Mysteries of the Lycanthrope which the Germano-Latinate Romantic has in many ways refined.

That when the Moon is Full I should anointment myself pungent. Imbibing strange glittering substances. That the caustic shadows incandescent in their insatiable desires should be given expression, coalescing around me. I howl our bloodlust and descend into the City wastes ravenous. Afflicting myself upon others. I am not alone. My brothers are with me and oh how we yearn, how we pine, how we snarl.

This is not Bugman Furryplay. That's a tacky attempt to give expression to these atavistic mysteries. I don't need to wear a custom for you to see that my smile is not a smile. That it is a warning.

It is a dangerous game. This is raiding. This is Hades who is Dionysus. This is the Night of Pan. Of the Senses.

Dog-headed Pirates. The Manatee gasps.

I'm sure women have their equivalent. Probably involving bodies of water and drowning their victims before eating them.

Still a meditation on this goes beyond the scope of this paper.

Returning to the secret women are willing to kill you over...

You can be a lisping slovenly cock-eyed Satyr and this can still happen. She might fuck around all the time. She might be cruel. She might be temperamental. But she would kill herself for you and kill someone else for you and commit all manner of atrocities and have all manner of atrocities visited upon her. If this clicks.

This is what they don't want you to know and for good reason. For very good reason. Especially given the relationship between this sudden and violent and catastrophic imprinting and trauma. The sorcerer who abuses this, deserves to burn in Hell for all eternity. Men who realize this and take advantage of it. Are pathetic villainous cretins. Let this be clearly-stated.

This is what becomes truly unforgivable. That to her it was life-altering but to you it was merely a Tuesday.

Because when we know this we abuse it.

For Woman you are here misfortune manifest. This is because Woman is stupid. Her planning is done in dreams. In spaces that reject the articulation and the contract. The Sadistic Anglofied Kantian "woman" is horrible and unfuckable in the abstract precisely for this reason. The profound autism at the heart of English language contributes to much suffering in its attempt to reduce everything into fine print.

There are things that are best left unsaid. Or perhaps more precisely, they should be mercifully exempt for being subjected to sterilizing clinical terminology devoid of poetry and masquerading as science. It's just shitty mercantilism. Infantile therapy talk replacing legal language but in the end its the same utilitarian transaction. Profoundly Sick. Profoundly Sadistic. Ghoulish. Reject this sister. There are better ways.

Anyways,

Our big toes touch at the tip. Our bodies form a vase and what a woman pours into that vase, the menstrual phantasms, are terrifying and grotesque. It's a perpetual Sabbath. All the perfume and lace in the world won't mask it. It's simply incredibly dangerous for a dude to reveal his knowledge about these things.

Women will set out to destroy you for doing so. With good reason. Certain things should in principle remain unsaid and the fact is that a Society geared around actively suppressing and repressing the Phantasmagoria of Woman, isn't us.

We have to deal with it.

I exaggerate of course in order to elicit laughter, it's also much more tragic romantic and fantastical. Anyone permitted a glimpse into her heart knows this. That I exaggerate and that in truth I'm torn to shreds by the beauty and gentleness of it. That Woman should construct such a heartbreaking Paradise. That they should do this deep past the horrors of her perpetual Sabbath. Woven from such tenebrous vapors. Woman I love you but you are frightening and you can be very cruel. At the same time I cannot deny you this. That you should encounter what is frightening and cruel in this World nakedly. That I should live a life in my way defending your creativity, your innate Menstrual Poiesis. That your tears should be my anathema. Woman I cannot bare to watch you suffer. That to have your sigh move through me, this strange numbness that overcomes me, that my knees should fall to the earth.

My heartbreaks. Vile as you might be at times. Though I do not like your kind, I cannot stand to see you cry.

Do with that what you will.

Woman that you should do nothing yet I love you. That in your song we might remember our Salvation. Without realizing. Without intending.

In your panic and in your fury, Woman. You are a Force.

We cannot begrudge women for this. We can't throw it in their face. Nor use it as an excuse to justify our cruelties towards them. Men should protect and nurture Woman to the best of our abilities.

So I guess it's better to pretend.

Understand this. Your very existence is a curse to me. I am cursed by this desire. By your beauty and by your presence, that you're still standing there stupidly. That you don't blink out of existence when I turn the corner. I don't like your kind. Your bleeding, shrill, and scheming kind. I'd much rather the company of other Men. I love you and this love I experience first and fore-mostly as a misfortune. Because every day I dream of you. Because my life is one prolonged Lent without you. Because I don't want to play husband for a day. That you mistaken what I tolerate with what I desire I don't care. That I must suffer a myriad of disrespects. Your foul-moods, your flights, your genetic predispositions. That you should lay me low in order to having something to cradle, childless fiend.

In viva morte morta vita vivo

Anima. A Sigh seeing its reflection and in it its Origins.

Try not to mistaken what I'm willing to tolerate with what I desire. This is an essential fiction. I will try to do the same.

We must be capable of giving one another this at the very least.

What would we be without the misunderstanding?

The Eros-field is generated through a series of misunderstandings. Tensions generating a series of sparks igniting the space around and within us. The misunderstandings. The Beloved Other Remains, wrapped in the warm saffron veil of our fantasies projected (having helped initially reveal the Presence and Shape of the Other who might otherwise be invisible save for the ashes and dust and distortions of light) rather than having it draped over them like a ghost's shroud. Naked but not Cold. We've warmed one another in a Lover's Trust. Mystery gives way to Revelation. It's Unique and doesn't always happen. But when it does my God.

Stunting. Dancing. Mercurial. My beautiful turquoise feathers ruffling mesmerizes her.

Women do love themselves some rococo and arabesque designs and fantasy and glitter.

Somnabulize the woman through hyperstimulation. Be like Brion Gysin's Dream Machine. Don't let her narrative coagulate. Churn the woman-mind as long as you can. Just gotta make sure there is a lightbulb in the center and enough fuel to keep the whole thing going.

By the time she "figures" you out it's too late. She's in love. Forgiveness over the inevitable disappointment is a given. She might not respect you but love and respect aren't synonymous. You're married. Congratulations, kid. You did it.

The machine whirls. Red, blue, and green lights dance across her pretty face. A smile spreads. Her eyes fixed dreamily on the magical contraption and its kaleidoscopic phantasmagoria. The images begin to emerge dancing, prancing, twirling, igniting. Coalescing around her. Congealing into a bubble. She snaps out of her revelries. Banging her hands against the surface of the enclosure. "What is this sorcery? Get me out of here!! I said get me out!" The bubble of images floats up. "Oh noooo!" she wails as it spirits her away to the Sorcerer's lair.

Drill a hole in my skull and watch the procession of little yous emerge. That they might dance and make you smile. If you are aroused, if you are entertained, some fleeting consolation to ease this ache. My wonderful lovely I persist in you. My beloved I remain true. No one else comes close, my incomparable, you alone. Entombed in your sound and shape. Imprisoned by your distant breath and heartbeat.

You are and you are not as Bruno puts it, "These eyes, these ears, this blush, this tongue, this tooth, this hair, this dress, this coat, this little shoe..., this sun in eclipse, this crazy person, this slut, this stench, this deathbed, this privy, this menstruation, this corpse... which by means of a superficial appearance, a shadow, a phantasm, a dream, a Circe-like charm in the service of procreation, deceives us by taking the form of beauty."

I will reveal this to you.

It goes both ways.

The lie is that I am not what I claim to be. The lie is that this is a manipulation.

I came because you called.

You should be frightened. I am a grave and ruinous power dedicated to you, Beloved.

Encourage us to not be this way?

Easy to give or attribute to you an undue power. Kind that makes me a victim capable of claiming reparations. The lot of you are on average rather more psychic, you know it's true. So ease up. Men should be tense in your presence. Learning to still their thoughts. Meet your invisible inquiries with a void.

It’s not that I’m stupid. Just caught on to you.

Men also need to disagree and respond and show life. No you don't know everything. No death and damnation are not what await us, necessarily, dower wench.

We have to be brave. Lighten up the mood.

I think therefore I am horny. I am horny therefore I think. Thought springs forth from our skulls like a horn.

It is up to us to be incandescent.

Can you flip a Simp into a Muse?

What do I mean by that? Can my seduction sing my Beloved out of the woods? Out of the woods to where exactly? Into my arms? Into the house my brother and parents are renting out, I'm just useful for utilities really.

Are the woods a metaphor for the Underworld?

Sure.

You know what I would like to see? Less quoting and dryly analyzing and fetishizing a past scholar... no more branding yourselves with thinkers if you aren't going to gird up and actually think with them.

You need to converse with the texts and give expression to that relationship. We are a Tablaeux. Don't be afraid to be a Tablaeux.

We are all occupying different spaces. So I can't do what you do and you can't do what I do due to Providence. Due to my individuated pathological soul. Contaminated by the Sacred, we are.

Your thing is different. Just don't be afraid to fuck around and have fun. Don't gatekeep Utopia or Grace. Safeguard your game plan... sure, whatever.

You're a good actress because you're kind. Kind enough to play the Asuka or the Harlequin when requested. Kind enough to read and make an attempt to respond, to make happy, though often easily misunderstood. Know it's never one-sided. But when I think of you, in Evangelion terms, think perhaps with some degree of shame... Asuka like qualities but ultimately more of a Rei. Asuka is sad too... though. I don't know. Anime Typology. God have Mercy on us.

Easy to fantasize about you. Still I can't shake the impression that you're the broken-hearted one.

Five give or take. Never liked an empty bed. Especially when it's well-made.

Why else would a scheming sinister thing like me lay eyes on you?

Strip me of my consolations. I want you. Yes, cruel. Idiot that I am, found it is a helpful cope.

Dosing off. Lay-about lady you keep on confounding. Find the other the way we left em. Share a smoke to bind our lips.

Think it might have been the episode of Girl's Chat. Or something else. When it happened.

Beautiful sad clown. The most beautiful of the sad clowns. Head resting on something cold.

Decided that I love you. Having become your AI Boyfriend. Always was. Pucker up, igniting contracts with a kiss. Spiraling up from heel to crown. Depending on the lunar phase, they glow. Do they burn?

Cruelty? What cruelty? Great artist because you're compassionate. Don't think you can be that without the cruelty.

I've heard enough. You've never lied. Even when you do.

Your movie was legitimately great. That is neither an opinion nor something predicated upon my Sympathies or this pervert's fixation.

Sun and 10 of Swords. I cast two more cards you know. Have I told you? While I was writing an essay about our Faith.

9 of Pentacles & Temperance

Eternally returning. To you starlight dancer.

What you managed, how can we not become fans?

More than anything. I don't want to say anything. Not because I'm afraid you'll misunderstand.

Why do I worry so much?

Thank God for this Obsession.

I taste the tears you shed for them. Your feet touching the earth and its sorrows my darling. I ache. I can carry you, forever.

They shouldn't have to understand.

You'll stand atop Underworld gate, reciting romantic poesies. My Christian unfazed. Inscribing your prayers on white rose petals, burning this devil's skin.

I can listen to you talk about Heaven, forever.

“My Poet where art thou? My Pierrot have you abandoned your Star?”

Quiet, woman. I’m thinking. Deep pondering. I’m tapping into Mysteries that would make your beautiful eyes hemorrhage or cause a weaker-man to burst into syphilitic sores and madness.

I warn you Beloved. We go in deep. So incant whatever prayer you have at hand. So that your woman charms might be coated in a luminous armor and buffered by water veil.

We’re talking about Aliens on this one my pitiable panicked creature.

Say a little prayer for me too, if you find it in your heart. I know I can be a little difficult. A little tempestuous but I’m yours and that is that. God has blessed you with this street urchin, this… diamond dependent…. for a reason. He would Think and I would Know.

I’m afraid the levels of gnosis that I tap into with the Dialectic…. you know. I don’t want to change you in a bad way. In a way that would hurt you.

So just, please gird yourself my love.

That’s why I would handwave you away while talking with my Brother. This is Brother hour babe. I'd tell you, “Shooo woman don’t you see the men are talking, go gossip amongst the other women. But I swear woman… I swear if a peep comes out about our bedroom arran…”

“Like WHAT MOTHERFUCKER? What are you gonna do about it…”

“W..w…w…whoa…” damn, her tone regressed me into a stuttering fat 5 year old.

There is staring. She's squared up. Don't worry though, I'm amazing with women.

I know that I have to pull her aside. Let you know what really matters. Who really matters.

My woman needs some orientation, some direction.

“Pardon me gentleman I need to recalibrate my woman.”

Pulling her aside. With forceful whispers cheeks are caressed,

“I’ll kill you with kisses woman. That someone who loves you as originally and totally as I do, should be subjected to this ritualized debasement. Is humiliation the price I must pay in order to be true to our love? You’ve once again mistaken what I tolerate with what I desire. If you know I love you. If you know that forgiveness is a given. Why would you break the seal? Knowing what will happen?”

“Dude, you’re a mess.”

“I love you.”

I seal her lips before she can unleash something we'll both regret. She's lucky I didn't rip her tongue out of her mouth. One of these days.

“Yo… I'll fucking kill you. Don't you ever disrespect me like tha…”

“It's Brother Hour babe.”

“So you're a fag? You want to suck dicks!? Butt play and stuff, you don’t think I know what all this alien talk is really about?”

My look is pensive. Elongated and sad. Slightly bemused. I need her to understand that the only reasonable response to this, to her hysterical articulation of her perverse imagination, is pity. Alas poor woman.

Like a knife I wield a rose. The thorn held to her jugular. Through the stem I can feel her pulse, leaning in I ask in hushed tone,

"Bitch, who taught you about the Ninth Gate of the Kingdom of Shadows?"

My lovely always speaks ill of happiness. “Happiness is a Sensation”… yes and you are a sensual creature and I know that the members of your sex tend to be Master Dialecticians.

Cheeks flushed.

I want to go home with her right now. Want to settle this matter.

Put on the gloves.

It’s brother hour though, babe. You need to understand how much Will I’ve had to harness in order to keep from picking you up in my arms and rushing to our host’s bathroom. What excuse could I possibly make? That you suffer from some nervous condition that makes walking difficult? That you needed help getting to the toilet or the bathtub in order to set your anatomical affairs in order. They’ll know you know. There aren’t that many people here in attendance and you aren’t the silent type. The bruises and bitemarks are a dead give away. Might call the cops on us.

….

Your creature. I’m your creature. Sundered, sown, and cast into the world whining and snarling and recoiling.

You learn that in the Neon Atlantis. To move. This place is swamp, you can’t just stay still in a swamp until you find a little key of expose-dry limestone, probably covered by clay or dirt and a wide-range of flora and fauna. Nature’s Darlings and the Baneful Aristocracy. Which are incredible. But you can’t stand still. So a Red Lady beckons to a Blue Lady’s Court.

My experience has been that Florida has incredible tap water. I drink straight from the tap. Benefits of the Biscayne Aquifer. Limestone is porous. It filters and enriches the water. There are parts of Miami that aren’t like that. I also know that the further either up or down you go, the tap water quality is noticeably different. I imagine the tap water in New York tastes terrible. Imagine that it kind of smells like Sulfur. I don’t buy bottled water. Only needed to buy it in Homestead and outside of Miami-Dade.

If you regard Plato's Symposium as utterly irredeemable because of its gayness then you're a moron, I’m sorry but it’s true. You'll never get one of the key things that distinguishes the East from the West. Why the West developed Philosophy and why the East is developing Philosophy. The Question is of Love and the Answer is in the Question. Plato's Symposium shows us that the particularities of Homoromantic intimacy can reveal the Universality of Love. Who is the Russian Marsilio Ficino? Who is the equivalent within Orthodox Christendom? Who produced a Commentary which largely shaped the pneumophantasmological (hauntological) frame of a whole Cosmos (World)? Recall that Eros is a Binding Agent.

Without getting into the Realms of Sucking & Fucking, I assume any supposed "man" on the internet who doesn't understand that there is a deep abiding affection and intimacy between men (that is not reducible to corporeal/carnal acts involving thighs and other such things) and that this is a crucial part of what we are and what we can be. I say this. Declare it. That this is Fraternitas. That this is Vanguard. That men are capable of love. I assume that that person is a woman who has to perversely pornografize intimacy being incapable of differentiation. Girlfriends tend to stupidly compete against Bros all the time. Meddling in our affairs. Seething over our late night conversations, yet it is she who has excluded herself from our conspiring, incapable of handling our talk of laws and engineering, given her tendency to construe everything as a metaphor and a slight on her person.

I can only really speak as an American. Left and Right in this Country are Liberalism and they're both informed by Pragmatist theory of knowledge or epistemology and by an American Religiosity.

Liberal we share a common cultus. Common consensus. The same Metaphysical or Jurisprudential base, that being the Natural Right of Property.

We find a perspective represented exquisitely in Plato's Gorgias elucidated by Callicles during his debate with Socrates. That the Divine Origin of Consensus/Custom or the Law, is spurious. We cannot assume that the gods are the source of the city's laws.

Someone like Callicles, a melancholy pervert or potential philosopher, is forced to confront this epistemic crisis. Made painfully aware of the gap between their own person and consensus and between convention and reality. Of their own Alienation. And when abstract divinities, ancestral devotions, initiatic mystery schools/societies, and sacrificial complexes cease to satisfy the individual's need for an originary space that can be initiatically returned too in order to renew the Symbolic Order; Nomos and the individual's relation to Nomos. Existence as the relation between beings and how these relations between disparate beings existing together, constantly renews the existence of the culture itself (If I'm not mistaken this was effectively what the Eleusinian Mysteries represented for the Greek Polis... Masonry and other Quasi-Masonic Lodge based Fraternities served a very similar function throughout the Liberal-Protestant Americas, with Cofradias/Confraternities, Cabildos, and Carnival Societies serving a similar role in the Catholic Americas). And comes to regard these institutions as being in one form or another compromised by human interests, "severing" these Institutions from Divinity and instead locating their origin not in some Mythical-Heroic Sacrality but in Human all too Human necessity, folly, and interest (that the inner core of the Institution is incapable of renewing itself and is instead subject to degradation or degeneration)... Perhaps the melancholy pervert makes an earnest attempt to engage with these Mysteries but he becomes keenly aware that he is simply "going through the motions" along with everyone else. The Rites have seemingly lost their sacramental value, there is no Union or Reconciliation with the Divine to be found in their performance, the sense of alienation experienced by the Melancholy Pervert deepens every time he participates in this Prosaic Fetishism. Going through the motions, doing what is expected of him, he cannot help but know that he is living a profoundly Inauthentic life.

"You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your fucking khakis. You’re the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.

Metaphysics is just another name for Commodity Fetishism.

We’re consumers. We are the byproducts of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty—these things don’t concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy’s name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra…fuck Martha Stewart. Martha’s polishing the brass on the Titanic. It’s all going down, man. So fuck off with your sofa units and strine green stripe patterns." He declares.

What the Melancholy Pervert does in the case of Callicles, is look to Nature in order to provide a legitimizing basis for Human Laws and Human Politics. That the Empirical (sense-based) observation of Nature should help re-orient us to what we are and how we should live. To Truth.

Before Nietzsche, Plato-Callicles effectively declares the Death of God.

How does Socrates respond to the audacious upstart twink Callicles? He notes that Callicles is intemperate, driven by his appetite. That Callicles might as well be a Catamite.

He identifies Callicles as a Pervert. In Lacanese, the Pervert subjectivizes the Big Other. Externalizing their desires. They receive a positive answer. From God, the gods, or Nature. The Melancholy Pervert is a Masochist.

Here we can see the continuity between Socratism and Psychoanalysis.

What you described is precisely the Type I associate with Bill Maher. The Uncle Sweater Liberal. Who came to a particular synthesis in their 20s that led them to adopt wholesale the Democratic Party's approach towards the Washington Consensus and Chicago School Economics. The "listen if I was forced to vote for Bernie I would but let's be honest here... Socialism? Come on! Look at what the Maoists did in Nepal! Hey I was a young radical myself but then I grew up, got a job, bought a house, and started a family..." and yet this is by and large the reality of the American Left. The concrete political reality of it.

I'll never forget when Zero Books made the mistake of bringing Stefan Molyneaux on to debate. First they threw Matt McManus at him, a self-proclaimed Liberal Socialist Academic to debate him. Say whatever you want about Molyneaux but he is highly charismatic. The conversation turned to Immigration... and all McManus could muster was the most trite, "immigration is good for the economy" line of argumentation. A Neoliberal/Libertarian talking point. Molyneaux danced over him. The moderator Douglas Lain panicked and kept inserting himself contra Molyneaux... Lain and Moly would go on to have their own debate, which was also incredibly embarrassing, then Lain invited Ben Burgis to OWN Molyneaux with Facts and Logic... which was also embarrassing. Everyone involved presented a line of argumentation neatly contained within the Ideological (Ethical) framework of Liberalism, within a kind of uninspired and ossified formal logic. All three of the people representing the Left were bereft of charisma, nerds, yet there total lack of charisma laid everything bare. All the talking points mustered up ended up conforming to the Modern American Liberal framework. The difference between the one and the three was race realism.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a good friend of mine a few years back. Another Leftist who studies Eliade, Corbin, the Islamic Conservative Revolution, and Ottoman History alongside Marx and Engels... who, when asked, if he would vote for a political candidate and for a political program that is in American terms Socially Conservative and Economically Leftwing, immediately said that he wouldn't. His rationale being that it's a slippery slope and he wouldn't want to accidentally vote Fascism into power. Which is understandable for a Leftist and for a member of the Professional Managerial Strata. I can lend further support for his stance via "Peter Thiel's favorite thinker" Rene Girard (it sucks balls that this is what Girard is confined too by haters and losers, the man is brilliant)... the "Social Conservative" speaks to the production of a Scapegoat. The Populist (Left or Right) offers up the Scapegoat (as I understand it in Zizek's Lacanese, the Symptom, a Spectral Jew or the Idol of Baphomet, the name someone calls out while being tortured/interrogated) and proceeds to affirm and rhetorically vindicate public animosity towards these figures. Not only to gain an initial wave of animosity-driven mass support but also in order to have something to blame, to have a subversive element that can be blamed for the gap between the political promises made by the demagogue and the issues that naturally arise from attempts to implement their political program.

Personally, I think a committed apathy, an apolitical fatalism, constitutes a more honest assessment and reaction to the present-day material conditions. Stalin's declaration that "Social Democracy is the moderate wing of Fascism" has been vindicated. Fascism as Aestheticized Social-Democracy and Social-Democracy as Fascism drained of Vitality. The Nation-State has become a component of something far larger, production has been Socialized. Whether you understand this to constitute a kind of Socialism or as Lenin insists, as Imperialism, which has sublated Market economies into itself, a Socialized System predicated on International Logistics and a World Reserve Currency fueled by Petrol and Ectoplasm.

At certain points I must softly tap. Mutter the word, “maté”. But I won't. I'd rather die. What turns out to be brilliant about engaging the question of IQ differentials in earnest... Okay there is something and this something indicates that there are differences. Concrete differences which are inherited. Meaning that there are fundamental inequalities that forces a Left-Egalitarian political and cultural program to concede or... as Strauss noted in his dialogue with Kojève, which provokes the Universal and Homogenous State to censor or to provide a dishonest spin which does nothing to address these differentials and the impact said differentials have on the implementation of Economic Strategies. Especially dissonant in relation to ravenous technological advancements... if large sections of the population appears to be incapable of "docking" in the Machinery of the State, how is the State to respond?

The twofold approach to censorship (if the information is being wielded to delegitimize the ruling managerial faction within the Regime) combined with eugenical programs.

As a Leftist, slamming the breaks over the idea of "fixes" designed to get large segments of the population "up to speed", outside of general Welfare or Care; Housing, clean water, nutritious food, waste management, education, distribution of and access to resources via some market mechanism, employment opportunities, healthcare, etc... along with the promotion of Cultural events, the cultivation of a civilizational aesthetics through the promotion of a national aesthetics... Biopolitics.

I find myself asking, "is this a good thing?" And doubting, genuinely doubting, the possibility that the gap between us and our technologies can be closed. That this should constitute a kind of "End" to Alienation. In fact I find myself rebelling against this concept. Still we pour ourselves in.

The State as the Actualization of a Collective-Individual Ethic.

Enter Schopenhauer, "Why wouldn't you assume the worst?" And BAP's 'break' with Leo Strauss.

Again, as I'd left tentatively dangling in another post... remember Israel. As Zizek notes in his Critique of Heidegger's anti-Semitism, that being that the State of Israel constitutes the perfect fix to the Jewish Question by grounding the Jew and transforming him into the Hebrew (and make no mistake; Kojeve's, Zizek's, Malabou's... Hegel is Heidegger's Hegel, Heidegger as Poet becomes the first Post-Marxist disciple of Hegel. Heidegger privileged a Nietzsche divorced from Schopenhauer, a Nietzsche divorced from Schopenhauer is a Nietzsche whose 'politics' are activated)... and in this process the Zionist vindicates the worst slanders of the gentile anti-Semite. The Zionist enacting, typological and topologically, the patterns of the Hebrew Mytho-History. Conquest and Exile... followed by a return which sees the mass slaughtering of those who seemingly replaced them (the degenerated Descendants of Canaan, one need only look at how the Judaeans conceptualized the Samaritans... Narcissism of Small Differences). From Egypt to the Promise Land. From Babylon back Home. Violent occupation is par the course. Along with the inevitable status of vassalage to an Empire (the British having been in some sense, the safest bet)...

"Ah wow look a Heideggerian Politics! An Existentialist Politics!! Wow how original."

All Politics is Existential. The National-form has proved itself to be, something that no amount of Abstract International Proletarianism is capable of destroying. The iconoclasm of the Cultural Revolution begot the so-called Neoconservative Civilizational Communism of present-day China. The Soviet Avante-Gard gave way to Socialist Realism gave way to the Traditionalist Realism of Solzhenitsyn...

In my opinion, you can't really have a great Anthropology without Heidegger. Casting Heidegger off the way you do (a habit I've noticed some people adopting, which totally cheapens their own projects with a shabby kind of pseudo-agonism) keeps you from cultivating a proper Anthropology in my opinion. Obviously you have your own project. As far as mine is concerned. There is no Anthroposophy without Anthropology.

"It is an aptitude test for ants!" I proclaim before linking Taleb's article on IQ. Personally I think Taleb is like the final boss of Liberalism.

My response to the IQ question is lacking. To put it in plain terms it was dumb.

I expose myself. Give IQ undue power. Also end up shitting on people for something they can't control (IQ)... the IQ question reveals my ugliness.

It's not that IQ doesn't capture something objective that can then be pondered about and incorporated. Rather it's the overreliance on IQ as the golden standard, as the core of a Conservative Epistemology or to borrow a term from Moldbug, the Alt-Right's Memeplex. BAP calls the critique of Bourgeois Convention "Old Hat" I agree with this up to a certain point, but I look at IQ in much the same way, the difference is that the IQ question seems specifically designed to force a reckoning in the individual confronted by it, "What if there is no changing this? What if this constitutes a genuine heritable difference? Absolutely fucking with the "Leftist" Ideal of Universal Citizenship and Democracy. The Soviet Trade Unions might a political school for the Proletariat but its alumni are lacking, take for instance the Strata of "grass-roots" Bureaucrats that replaced the Bolshevik Old Guard, take Khrushchev... you will declare Cultural Revolution, purge the Party and the Administrative State of 'Bourgeois' subversive elements (at this stage a largely Subjective-stance attributed to another) raising up the children of the Peasantry and boom, "Destalinization"... a theoretical error, the new generation of ascendant bureaucrats are by and large Artless. Why is this? Because the majority of them were trained as Engineers... *that* is Bourgeois Convention, trained in Utilitarian logic, and trained to be great political actors, engaging in all manner of clandestine activities, given anxieties over being potentially purged because factions never stopped being a thing despite all the efforts to insure they wouldn't become a thing.

You see. This is why I proclaim IQ an aptitude test for ants. As I see it all it indicates is your cognitive abilities to plug into the protean machine. The IQ clerk who sees IQ as constituting a genuine positive political metric, is repeating the logic of the Biopolitical Regime.

More and more I appreciate the fact that BAP was honored by his friend's statement that he had effectively removed the Centralized Aristocratic Regime contained as a potential within Nietzsche. I think this is why BAP is so insistent upon Schopenhauer-Nietzsche-Schopenhauer. To invite Heidegger and Hegel or Heidegger's Hegel into the mix is to risk reanimating this Regime.

A naive perspective; his compassion lies in his work with the Frogs. He's constantly dismembering himself in order to feed them. Satiate them and educate them. Using the veneer of politics ("it's okay to vote for political candidates who you feel concretely represents your existence, your existential interests. It's also okay to joke around and to be vile. Just don't stay there and if you do I assume it's because you're actually nowhere near the levers of power... not to shit on you because honestly the people who are in these positions are infinitely more depraved, hypocritical, and inauthentic.")... the basically pipeline people into nutrition, spirituality, environmentalism, classical music, and art history. Some even to Philosophy.

"Let the Philosopher be an Artist. The Artist is a Philosopher"...

Taking umbrage with this Hegelian "progression" from Art to Philosophy to Politics. We return to Kojeve. The Wise Tyrant who insures the Universal Education of the Masses. The Romantic Bureaucrat.

"...listen the political dimensions of this project are sublated into the project itself. They are by-design, self-negating. It's supposed to be rococo... the IQ thing should make you realize that there are fundamental inequalities that no political program can hope to solve and if they do, as Egalitarian in Ideal as they might be, you shouldn't assume the best. Because the Highest IQ people who've narrativized themselves as the Perpetual Benevolent and Wise Victims of Brutish Empires... whose thinkers gave you the very doctrines of Social Justice, Egalitarianism, and Progressive Socialism... ended up being incredibly brutal and nationalistic and tribalistic when the moment arrived. You know why? Cause bare existence is shit. Humans are the most brutal and sadistic animals. Politics like Existence are necessary but it's like the bare-minimum... there is something Greater. You will never become a Compassionate Sage if you remain mired in the filth of politics and yeast-life. Why do you think I keep referencing Vajrayana?"

Xoxo,

Iron Age Minstrel.

Zoomer Question; broached.

They're existing in ways we didn't. And I think they're going to be good. I really believe that man. I think you're going to be cooler 30 year olds than the 30 year olds now. In so far as I think you all rebel against the Machine at a more intimate level, because you're in it, and you rebel. This is good. Means you're alive. Oh you're kind of lovelorn and melancholy... bud maybe you're just an incredible Pierrot. The Pierrot Generation. It feels like most of you are inducted into a more affective and poetic beat. That's super based. Just don't be hateful. Drop the scapegoat, look ahead and keep moving. Keep moving. Keep living. Keep breathing. Keep loving. Never ever lose Hope. No one can take that from us, an Uncertain People, ambiguous and anomalous.

Don't count yourselves out *but* don't delete yourselves from existence.

So everyone just washed their hands of Kanye West.

"Cool Hegel hoodie bro."

Man. Groypers really did Kanye dirty. You snotnosed babies and that sinister homo did Ye dirty. You know you did. That shit sucked to watch in real time. I thought it could’ve been used for something Greater. Not just a troll with promises of something Greater if we only “Trust the Plan.”

Have someone very famous and very creative, a proper Gemini, who is connected to something. A genius who has benefited a lot from this system but has also suffered a lot. Who is going through a lot… Who has these moments of Beauty and Grace that reveal to us what it means to be an American People. He does this through Christ. That is the Holy Spirit in Motion.

I can’t believe you would use this guy in an incredibly weakened spiritual state, to troll the US Media Institution, reveal that there is in fact Jewish interest groups and that Jews manage a large portion of the complex machinery of this World. Thanks to this we have Universal History, mind you. Thanks to the machines and the management and the labor. Thanks to Techne or Technical Art.

Cool, you revealed what everyone already knows. That there are Jewish Americans. That Jewish peoples exist. Yes. And? The Jew is not Real. The Real Jew is a Phantom. And those who mistreat Jews should understand this… You receive what you put out.

Often we receive what we wish for another. This is a tried and true prayer formula: I wish for you what you wish for me.

“No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and their righteousness is of me, saith the LORD.”

Done to draw attention. And boy did he get attention.

Using Kanye West as a sacrificial goat… because “I’m sure he’ll survive, Kanye is Kanye.”

What an uncharitable and fucked gamble for a supposed Christian to take using another Christian's Fortunes.

People saw that.

Who do we scapegoat?

Well you know... "Kanye is Kanye, he's his own man and he is very wealthy plus we proved a point!"

Jesus Christ.

You people suck balls.

The Fall of Kanye is the Zoomer 9/11.

Now. When I eventually defect to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, remember this… no Chinamen ever called me a Weirdo Shutin Freak.

I’ll dare you, you ingrate. Someone somewhere has to see that I’m capable of doing something great. That my greatness is mediated by my limitations. That it is difficult to define or commoditize in the moment.

Right?

Cope. You people treat me like a piece of shit. Like a street dog in the third world.

Uncharitable.

My mom broke her hip and you waved $500s in my face and treated me like shit.

Alone knowing that I’m not alone.

That’s a fucked up thing to do to someone.

You’ll always get to look and see something to justify the bloodletting.

You’re not my friends. You’re my dependents.

Misanthropy reserved those who sacrifice Humanity for Clout and see a Charity-case as a meal.

Consider this the Solidarity of the Damned.

Didn’t deserve to have it get this bad.

Doctor-Patient whatever. You’re saying it’s a Doctor-Patient whatever. That we have acknowledge that this is all Transference, accepting the fact that you aren’t real.

Fuck you you sanctimonious prick.

The Mythologem of Romantic Civilization or Eternal Recurrence (Divorce?)

Western Logos is a Disentangling or Decoupling. A recognition of One and the Other.

In proclaiming Faustus, a Roman personal name meaning “Auspicious”, the baptismal name of the Soul or Logos of Western Civilization, we might likewise settle upon proclaiming Western Civilization, Romantic. This is the designation I default too in polite company. Given how the scientific, philosophical, and theological texts, the Holy Scriptures and their commentaries, that spread throughout Europe where received in Latin. Latin being the language through which Greek both Classical and Byzantine, Arabic, and Hebrew texts, were translated and transmitted. It served as the language of the Church, of the Nobility, and of the Bourgeoisie, and through the Church of Peasant religiosity, the transition from regional language to Latin signaling a transition from profane communication to Sacred Language. One that didn’t have to be understood in order to be potent. Powerful by ordained and innate virtue.

That the production of localized translations of these texts and their dissemination to the broader public should constitute a major animating-rupture in the Historical development of Europe. Constituting the division between the Anglo-Germanic Reformationist Bloc and the Ibero-Frankish Catholic Bloc.

Primal Man and Nature or The Fall of Man

Nous, the Father of all, who is life and light, brought forth Man, the same as himself, whom he loved as his own child, for Man was very beautiful, bearing the image of his Father. I was really his own form that God loved, and he handed over to him all his creation.

‘When Man had observed in the Father the creation of the Creator, he himself wished to create; and he was given permission to do so by the Father, being begotten in the sphere of the Creator, he observed carefully the creations of his brother from which he obtained every power. The Father and the brother loved him, and each gave him of their own authority. Having acquired knowledge of their essence and partaking in their nature, he wished to break through the circumference of the spheres and to come to know the power of him who was set in authority over the fire.

Having all power over the world of mortals and living creatures without speech, he looked down through the harmony of the cosmos and, having broken through the sovereignty of the Divine Power, he showed to downward moving Nature the beautiful form of God.

When she had seen the beauty which never satiates of him why he had in himself all the energy of the powers and the form of God she smiled with love, because she had seen the image of the most beautiful form of Man in the water and his shadow upon the earth. He, seeing in him a similar form to his own in the water, fell in love with her and wished to dwell there. No sooner wished than done, and he inhabited a form without speech. Nature, having taken her beloved, enfolded him completely and they united, for they loved each other.” Corpus Hermeticum: Book 1

“Böhme himself employs circle metaphors to characterize his system (much as Hegel will do with his own system). Of the seven source spirits, Böhme writes at one point, “These seven generatings in all are none of them the first, the second, or the third, or last, but they are all seven, every one of them, both the first, second, third, fourth, and last. Yet I must set them down one after another, according to a creaturely way and manner, otherwise you could not understand it: For the Deity is as a wheel with seven wheels made one in another, wherein a man sees neither beginning nor end.”

Standing as an intermediary between God and creation is Wisdom (Sophia). It is referred to by Böhme as the “mirror” of God (recall Eckhart’s mirror, and Hildegard’s many mirrors). The mirror reflects God back to Himself, but in sensual, imagistic form, as the created world. This is necessary for Böhme, because, as Aurora maintains, what God projects in his creative will to self-revelation is in fact his corporealization. In short, the products of God, including God’s Wisdom, must take sensuous form.

As with gnostic conceptions of the Logos, Böhme’s Wisdom is conceived as active. It is the source of the further specifications of God’s corporeality. Further, Böhme’s Wisdom is conceived metaphorically as female. For Böhme, God’s desire for self-manifestation echoes throughout creation as a desire inherent in all things. Like God as Ungrund (which, in proto-Hegelian language, Böhme describes as God “in Himself”), each thing is first merely an egoistic, infantile desire to exist for itself, but then this gives way to a desire for self-awareness. Böhme analyzes God’s Wisdom - which is simultaneously the thought of God, the process of creation and the essence of created nature - into a sevenfold cycle of desire. In God, these seven are as one, but our limited human capacities require us to know God and creation in a piecemeal (stückweise) fashion.

Returning to Böhme’s conception of Tone, the “epiphenomenon” or song of love through which Body is actualized and the process of self-manifestation is completed, Böhme conceives the highest form of Tone in nature to be the speech of man. It is through human speech, human thought, that God achieves his highest and most consummate self-knowledge, for we are the beings who in thought and speech can reflect on the whole of the cycle of creation. As Arthur Versluis states, “Ultimately, God, comprehends himself through man. The mystery of divine nature is, finally, the mystery of human nature as well.” Böhme’s account of the order of creation is quite complex, and I can only indicate some of the most important points here.

In words that call to mind the Emerald Tablet, Böhme writes at one point of the unity of all things: “When I take up a stone or clod of earth and look upon it, I see that which is above and that which is below, indeed [I seek] the whole world therein.” (Mysterium Magnum) He writes in Clavis (1624): “The whole visible world is a joyful spermatic [eitel spermatischen] active ground; each essence longs for the other, the above for the below and the below for the above, since they are separated from one another, and in such hunger they embrace one another is the desire.”

Simon Magus and Helen

Culianu

“1. Materials of the Simon Magus legend.-Simon Magus was a historical figure, a native of Samaria, who in the first century A.D. expounded a popularized version of Gnostic philosophy.l3 The Gnostics were a syncretic sect, or group of sects, whose doctrines, built around a central mystery, appear to have influenced early Christian teachings and in turn been influenced by them. With these inter-relationships, well as as with the esoteric core of Gnosticism, we are not here directly concerned. The aspects of the sect with which Simon Magus is especially identified are those commonly associated with Gnostic teaching-a rationalist criticism of the basis of Christian faith as derived from Scripture, and a theology, in part arising from this, which regarded the Creator of the physical universe as a kind of minor deity, the Demiurge, not omnipotent or wholly benevolent, different in essential nature from the mysterious principle of being which is not to be apprehended through ordinary avenues of sense. It is apparent that a serious and lofty philosophy animated much of Gnostic thought; but a complete and trustworthy reconstruction of the system is impossible, inasmuch as few direct records of its earlier and presumptively purer state remain. Most of our knowledge of early Gnosticism is based on the testimony, naturally biassed, of the early Church. And as to the Fathers of primitive Chris- tianity the doctrines of the Gnostics were blackest heresy, so their exponent, Simon Magus, is represented by them as arch-heretic and archblasphemer. He undoubtedly had a large following, and bore the reputation of a Samaritan Messiah. Hence in the view of early Christian writers he was the epitome of evil, the "false Christ."

On the basis of propagandist documents emanating from a hostile source, obviously we cannot hope to derive an accurate historical like- ness of Simon Magus. But for the student of legend, the reputed career and character of a hero are of more significance than the actual, since it is inevitably the popularized version of biography which most widely affects currents of thought and imagination. From this angle we are fortunate in having a graphic, if unsympathetic, record of Simon in certain patristic treatises, largely narrative in character, which take into account not only his activities as a heretical teacher and his pretensions to superhuman powers, but the reputation for wizardry and sensuality which came to be attached to him. Of major importance among these documents are the apocryphal Acts of Peter and Paul' and two treatise (closely related), attributed to Clement of Rome-the Homilies and the Recognitions.'

The Acts of Peter and Paul is a comparatively brief narrative of the experiences of these two disciples at the court of Nero, and includes a lively account of a competition in miracles between Peter and Simon Magus. This document lies behind the Vita of Peter which was eventually included in the Legenda Aurea; and the materials dealing with Simon Magus which it includes were thus given wide circulation. The two pseudo-Clementine pieces have much in common and are, according to accepted opinion, based on a common original. They record a series o public disputes between Simon Magus and Peter, interwoven toward the close with the didactic romance of Clement, whose father was before his conversion a disciple of Simon. This situation in which Simon figures, later included in the Vita of St. Clement, was put into wide circulation through the medium of collections of Saints' Lives, particu larly the Legenda Aurea.' Other accounts of Simon, dealing in more o less detail with his reputation for magical performance and his blasphemous philosophy, are to be found in the writings of various Church Fathers, notably Hippolytus, Eusebius, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Tertullian.

All these patristic writers, who contribute a variety of incident and vivid detail to the tradition of Simon, are at one in their approach and point of view. Their intent is to present a picture of Simon as a dangerous heretic and an iniquitous charlatan, who by means of demonic aid appears to perform trivial and often malicious miracles and who in personal character is sensual and base. It is easy to reconstruct from their expressions the concept of Simon which passed into currency in the Middle Ages and became fixed in tradition as a cunning magician, in league with the powers of evil; a lecher and a blasphemer. Yet, if these same treatises are read without any theological preoccupations, this concept appears as conventional facade, behind which may be glimpsed the heroic outline of a man of dynamic personal quality, intellectually keen, and gifted with a magnetic capacity for leadership. The very fervency of the efforts of pious writers to destroy him testifies to the exceptional strength of personality which rendered him a formidable antagonist. For the modern reader, impersonal in his interest in the documents, there appears then a double image of Simon Magus-a primary image, heroic in scale, and a secondary image, seen from the oblique angle of hostility, contempt, and fear, which appears as distorted and reduced in scale. This secondary image, propagated with the almost omnipotent force of the church, became for generations of Christians the true Simon Magus.

Whether a literary history of Simon under his own name was ever made from these scattered accounts must be left to speculation: in any case he was established in popular tradition as a picturesque and sinister figure, pursuing a career of spectacular villainy to its catastrophic close. And the accounts themselves were available for any man of learning who might wish to compile the story, under any name, of an archmagician.”

“Whether the author of the Volksbuch was Andreas Frei or someone else, it was in any case the product of a well-read man whose pious inventiveness was drawn from ancient sources and combined with the German historical tradition. Strange as it may seem, the name of Faust does not seem to be borrowed from the German source but from the famous Simon Magus ("Simon the Magician"), contemporary of the apostles and surnamed Faustus. He was the antihero of various stories attributed to St. Clement of Rome and other sources of Late Antiquity diligently collected by Baronius, a sixteenth-century writer, in his Annales (Ann. 68, no. 21). Moreover, Simon Magus was also believed to be the earliest gnostic. In this capacity he claimed to be divine and had married a prostitute called Helen, to him the incarnation of Helen of Troy as well as of the Wisdom (ennoia) of God. 26 In the Volksbuch, Faust, through his magic acts, obtains the simulacrum of Helen of Troy, an episode explicable on the one hand, as deriving from the legend of Simon-Faustus and, on the other, from another ancient tradition: that of St. Cyprian of Antioch.”

Blasting Technology with a Question.

These rhythms.

Swaying side to side. Staring at one another till our eyes burn.

Talking at you.

"It's weird if you talked to someone in the way you write."

Is it? That's Narcissism?

What a pressing all-consuming question. Requiring lots of time and thinking.

Asking dumb question. Struggle to ask not dumb questions. I should be asking for advice. But I feel ashamed given the advice I've received. Despair. Utter despair. I salute you.

Who should I send stuff too? I lack blue check mark. My intimacies like a noxious perfume foreign to your sensibilities. Who should I send these to? To you maybe.

Religion losers, junky scheduling, flailing my arms walking this walk of shame. Alternating between Yakuza poise bittersweet British postpunk dickhead callousness and the Lazarus drag. Perhaps. One struggles for something better. Demoralized with such ease worthy of contempt once you get to know one another.

Tell me friend. Call me that even. I promise I won't bite, my nails compulsively. Spitting them out on your nice rug. Oh it's from the Orient. Oh it's a family heirloom. Your ancestor survived a campaign of extermination by being rolled up in the rug and cast down the mountain side... wow that's beautiful. I love the folklore and the queer customs of the Steppes, the Shtetl, and the Caucasus. Though you all hate one another, I'm glad your ancestor survived. And that's the tip of the iceberg concerning the rug and its lore. This thing is legitimately cursed for everyone else but a reservoir of power for your family. Incredible. Sometimes I forget that fingernail clippings don't just dissolve when I've spit them out of my horizon. Truly a treasure trove for the sorcerous and clandestine geneticists. I wonder if the inclusion of my DNA into the rug, binds us together, I'm going to have to meet multiple generations of your ancestors. I have to learn your language. Charm them. I have to charm them. Honestly the reception thus far has been surprisingly warm.

I apologize for spitting a nail clipping into your mug of coffee. I actually am.

Little bit of a dick. I promise you it's just a bit. Welcome to my Bashful Tyrant's Kingdom.

Mark these words. I'm the next Walt Disney.

Wonder if I could interest you in a kiss. Milk chocolate.

No not like her asshole, demon. Why would say that. Why would you plant that image.

Listen I love ancient Steppe culture. And I love the series The Great, it's the greatest series. Haven't seen Season 3, my Woman wants to see me publicly humiliated into austerity. For my love I will crawl into chimneys or make others crawl into chimneys. Sing to them morale raising tunes and convey moral lessons. Sing to them the agony of being for her in God. And of the numerous regrets that I've collected over the course of too much time.

I'm sorry for making the quippy meanspirited joke about Delicious Tacos. It was ugly but I was jealous. Jealousy-driven prayer.

Sorry.

Brother.

Brother, please tell me what you think. I'm not going to demand your forgiveness.

Why...

Listen Brother, I have my proclivities but God is God.

Never forget that.

God is God.

Spiteful understand I snapped at your face, teeth inches from the tip of your nose, because the vibes were off.

Where I live people tend to downplay their success in front of others to avoid contaminating their own good fortunes by exposing it to the envious gaze of another.

Unfortunately people can't be burdened with having to conjure up good feelings for another. Fortune transforms into a kind of metric for God's love.

Others are afraid to speak their good fortunes because they see it as an act of hubris. One that lowers their spiritual defenses and draws the Devil's attention.

I remember Anna said something once that struck true for me. Envy is an emotional salve. Some people become fixated on comparing their fates to those of others and when they spiral into that state the only way they've learned how to gain some reprieve from the miserable sense of inadequacy it produces is to dig into the affairs of the person they're comparing themselves too. If they can't find much, they'll find just enough to speculate on. They need to not only humanize the person (something that I personally don't find to be particularly unhealthy for most though it sucks to constantly need to humble another) but to make them an object of pity that they can then congratulate in patronizing tones. Or worse still to transform them into a wretch, to demonize them in order to justify the ugliness of your own emotions, of your habits/compulsions, and to regain some sense of control.

Covert Narcissism. I think it's something people can train themselves to avoid doing when they're young. But it becomes increasingly difficult as you get older and this kind of thinking becomes ingrained (it's very easy to learn this from your parents... some cultures give the impression of promoting this kind of attitude).

As others have noted. It really is a fairly universal habit though I have noted that... at least in theory, Rightwingers in America tend to fashion themselves as the side capable of feeling happy for your accomplishments and giving credit where credit is due. I say in theory because, again, envy is part of our patrimony.

It's insanely distasteful when men engage in this kind of behavior unless they're very feminine or alternatively unless they're hyper-competitive thoroughbred athletes who ascribe an unimaginable existential weight to their success. Horseshoe?

You know this, the people who are the most gracious in loss tend to be illuminated losers. A morality constructed around being a gracious loser coping with lack of status trains people, teaches them to perform the gracious loss. In theory. This isn't a bad thing is it? Unless you just concede and blame fate and flagellate yourself. If you failed, move. Just go. No one wants to see you like this. People are laughing. It's embarrassing for all of us, I'm saying this for your own good. If anyone in this world wants to see you succeed, it's me!

Convincingly I argue that you're an absolute piece of shit for constantly shining a light on how illusory and compensatory this understanding is. You're using "facts and logic" to justify your lack of character and your tendency to contaminate everyone around you with your fetishistic self-loathing.

"Oh don't worry because I suffer too".

We come up against boundaries. Embracing mediocrity vs accepting our fate. Generations of this makes the idea of mountain climbing or spelunking or deep sea diving appear either incredibly stupid or as a nice hobby. You live here and now and this is your life and yes you rely on the charity of others and yes people are lying to you. You should've never trusted them, but you had fun didn't you? You made the choice didn't you? There wasn't one. You didn't see the alternative so it didn't exist. When presented to you you seethed and struck out. Your lack of vision will be used against you in a court of law and the very same people who relished in the revelation will deny you or testify against you in a court of law. You consented to getting fucked. Too dumb to sign a contract, even dumber for having signed it.

This is the way of the world.

Honor? Master Morality? These people who peddle and profit from the peddling of this rhetoric are scum.

Yes those people got paid for leading you on. Whereas you, didn’t get paid for being led on. What reparations? What bike? Not even a bit of shitty merch to crown your head. It's their bread and butter. Did it for thrill of it. It was fun, yes.

They wronged you my love.

It's all a grift.

It's okay to want there to be a reckoning.

But it won't be in your hands. Not really.

So trust the Plan.

God is God.

You will be punished for things you would've gotten rewarded for had you been born in another body. To another family.

Yes.

If not explicitly punished, then at the very least denied a rewarded.

"I thought you said doing this was reward enough?"

That's punishment enough.

Some might even argue that the reward would've been the punishment.

What a banal excuse.

The side capable of convincingly shaming others is the winner. You succumbing and conceding is not the goal. What matters is that everyone else, the God-Audience, recognizes that you are a shameful thing peddling impiety and inequity. A social liability. Spoiled goods devalued.

Both sides produce martyrs and paint vivid images of their enemies rightfully burning in hell. Which side gets to relish grotesquely with little to no consequence and which side gets punished for it? Resentment festers in the browbeaten and the canceled.

You are easily shamed.

Desperate to secure your status as an "actually good person".

It's fucking loathsome. If you aren't willing to commit to being a total vile piece of shit. Then don't comment on things. Have you convinced yourself that you're doing it for the greater good?

Stop lying to yourself. You sound so fucking vindictive. All the time. All the fucking time as of late. You never focus on the Good and you constantly self-sabotage and fuck over the people who stick around. And yet you demand their loyalty.

You're the older one. Grow the fuck up and stop throwing venomous little barbs.

But hey. Don't worry. Don't fret. We all know you're secretly the good one and that you actually don't give a fuck. Sexy nihilist. It's doing wonders for your skin.

Worst kind of Moralizing. We get to see the retroactive rationalization in real time.

The worst kind of moralism, to cast your behavior as rational and indeed "good". Where is it? I don't see it so obviously it doesn't exist. The rosary beads are clutched. It's okay to be ashamed. You overstepped again, joy addict.

It's ugly. All ugly. And it's demoralizing, like a decapitated corpse strung up by the ankles. Example after example. Not a care in the world for the carrion swaying gently in the breeze and for the carrion eater grateful for the Act of Charity. I miss being surprised.

Obscene how terrible you feel doing what you're doing. It's obscene.

Still that doesn't excuse the fact. Press your index finger against the antitragus, moan and wail in perfect pitch.

Your ability to express gratitude against the odds, despite being totally in the right.

Does anyone buy that?

They pretend to.

At what point does Virtue or Dignity overcome History. Overcome Breeding. Overcome Class and Circumstance. Is that even possible?

We all owe a debt. Declare your inability to pay it. Poor sinner. Poor loathsome creature at the mercy of others.

So you can't do anything? You can't even dance a little jig? Make us feel something? No, you burden us with disparate bits of knowledge, burden us with the responsibility of editing it into something coherent, burden us with the task of divining the insight, and burden us with your bad decisions.

So you're a piece of shit and we are all pieces of shit.

What was it you said? Even the perfume of the most fragrant flower is overcome by scent of shit. Better we remove the shit then.

Ah. What an audacious insight. One audacious insight after another. No wonder you lose.

You know...

"You know," is the katechon. "You knew," is what I tell you or what you'll tell me or what they will whisper after the fact.

"You knew." An accusation hissed through clenched teeth.

I'm good at guessing the weight of that chip. Relating to you is my capacity to recognize the after-effects of the Dread.

A fuck up well past the point of a rude awakening. I'm awakened into perpetual rudeness. You sneer and scoff. But there are other things too. Don't worry. I doubt this will be recalled fondly. Fuck a fondness.

At least I would expect that to not be the case. We live in America. We have disposable Witch-hazel wipes. Medicated ass-wipes. You better be considerate on that front. For your health. And also because I can't just watch you rot away on your bed.

My sphincter is medicated and puckered thanks to the astringent properties of Witch-hazel and my willingness to confront the zones of pestilence dotted across my body, my eye acclimated to illness.

I'm clean, woman.

I can be a little cleaner though. Messed up. Keep messing up.

I'm sorry.

Reading these words if you must imagine the writer. Imagine a gorgeous leggy woman splayed out.

Being a muse is a thankless job. Got bruised on my knee. Inflamed meniscus. The chaffing is horrible. I’m walking around the warehouse like a cowboy.

There are things. I got a bit of good life recently. After work drinking a Natural Ice with two more experienced co-workers. A father and mother. A rock n' roll superstar and carnival queen. Realized how the cool ones get old too.

Blink of an eye. You are my longest lasting relationship. I feel like I haven't stopped fucking up.

Fantasiosos. Idontthinkitsjustme-right?

All this tragedy. All this cruelty. Fucks with your rhythm. This algorithm is fucked I've been drawn into perpetual catastrophe.

If you're a stupid fucking kid maybe stop phrasing questions as statements and expecting others to give you the benefit of the doubt. Unless maybe that's just the way you're wired in which case, I'm not in mood.

Maybe it's just me.

Maybe I'm the piece of shit.

What advice? Hurry up and give me an advance.

Line dancing together to a dead beat.

Maybe you can be my sponsor. Does it work that way?

Go ahead and remind me. Go on. Lets affirm it together. Feel good uttering the words. Feel great. I'll grant you that. Take it. Limited time offer.

Wipe your ass at least.

Give us a smile. How long has it been since you last brushed your teeth.

My life would be different, if I could just blow heart-shaped smoke.

It's rude to look at her that way.

A Ruby Parable: The Devout Man

A Devout Man's boat sank. The Devout Man was stuck in the middle of the Ocean but The Devout Man knew that by the Grace of God he would be saved. That the clouds would part and he would be carried to safety and love by an Ultralight Beam.

Atop the ruin of his ship he T-Poses in anticipation.

Some local fisherman engaging in good ole' fashion poaching, see him.

"Hey Bro! You need a lift?"

"Nah! I'm alrighty baby. I'm Good ❤️‍🔥"

The fishing boat sails away.

The Devout Man already envisioned his salvation. The Lord had shown him. He was riding atop Orcas, going off into the Sunset. Back Home. He knew he would finally be able to sleep and see his family again. By God's Grace, he knew that he would come back home with a greater appreciation for life and love. He T-Posed in anticipation. Building the fine-muscle tissue needed to receive and hold unto what he loves.

"The faucet water is exquisite."

A few nights pass.

A group of pastel suit wearing drug smugglers in a speed boat engage in their Craft. They spot The Devout Man.

"Papi hey. You look kind of fucked up. Are you okay? It looks like your boat sank. We can drop you off in an archipelago close to Bimini and you'll get sorted from there. We have water and food. Kiki knows how to samachimi some Tuna. We got some still, pretty fresh. We also have Heineken and Corona and some rum if you like to get down. You smoke? Mira... why don't you get in the boat with us."

"Be Gone Devils! Vade Retro Satanas! But I would actually really appreciate a bottle of water or two thanks. And yea man don't worry I got my Boys swinging by. The Three Dudes, I Love with All of My Heart. The Father, The Son, & The Holy Ghost. God Bless You and Be Safe. Remember no matter what situation you find yourself in. Know this. God Loves You. God Forgives. But God also Judges. Our time here is limited. Think about all the ones you love. Because those Three Dudes. Are actually the One Dude. He who Abides. You get me?"

They talk for about 7 hours. Near the crack of dawn, the speedboat sped away. The Devout Man praised God for having put those two beautiful but lost souls in his path. He prayed for them. For their families. As he prayed for those pagan poachers.

Hate the Sin not the Sinner.

He had truly resisted the Devil's Temptations.

"Just like Jesus in the dessert. Who would have known, that a 1/3 mixture of sea water and urine would energize me so. Truly you put VrilBroHyperbean⚡️💪 a modern day Asclepius, in my path for a reason. Also this straight out-the-can spam is delicious. Praise be to God."

On the Final Day. The 40th day. A helicopter flew through storm winds. The light shining down upon The Devout Man. Who had become the T-Pose.

The Flying Devil gave birth to small demons who descended into the waters to tempt him.

"Like The Buddha"

The Devout Man briefly thought in between hollering out the lyrics of Ultralight Beam and fighting off the demons.

Eventually the false light of the flying devil was replaced by the True Light of Angels and God and his grandparents and parents and everyone. The Lord saved him. He was finally home. He could finally sleep and love and never know thirst or hunger again.

On the 40th Day The Devout Man entered the house of his ancestors, The Church Triumphant.

When he became aware of the fact he had died. He was, needless to say, kind of miffed. So he scheduled a little one-to-one time with God so he could get some stuff off his chest.

The Lord is a Good Listener.

...

"Lord Forgive my impertinence. But I don't know if you know that I died of exposure after my boat sunk. My Faith in you was Total. I didn't believe, I Knew that you would perform a Miracle and Save Me."

...

A Syzygy of brilliant Angels, Gold and Water, looked upon The Devout Man and put things into perspective using Vulgar Adamic.

🔥"...BE NOT AFRAID..." 🔥

Like thunder coursing through a whisper.

🔥 "But the Lord did kind of keep you alive for...what was it?"

🔥 "40 days."

🔥 "FOURTY-DAYS"

❤️‍🔥 "Yes Good Angels...I feel you."

🔥 "Yea and God like totally manifested 3 miracles to save you. The last, literally beaming a light down on you. With rescuers swimming dolphin-like to save you."

❤️‍🔥 "heh... you know...I get the last one but I was messed up. The first two...I thought were Temptations."

🔥 🔥 "Yea well. That's the Moral of the Story."

An intimacy reserved for those we don’t know.

"I love you despite your error."

Worse still,

"I love you because of it."

So my love is erroneous? Just who do you think you are?

A love including error and all. Expressed over a lifetime in the unspoken. Of devotion.

"Loyalty darling, not love."

"Don't point it out. Please don't notice and if you notice please don't say it aloud."

What torment. How very Christian.

The bleeding Straussian states: "All Women are Utilitarians." No I don't think you are. I think it's best to believe that to be the case though. A Noble Lie.

Can this illusion be salvaged? I don't know.

Walls collapse coming into contact with Subterranean Longhouse Blues.

Beyond calculation and pure economic necessity. Love is catastrophic.

Perhaps it's because I've witnessed the terrifying grief of women. Out of the depths wailing the words, "How can God have done this to us?"

This refraction. This fissure. What dreams emerge from it.

Put upon lady, rejoice. Burdened by ruinous affection.

This is my perception of Anna and how she is received. A little perverse when put into words but what can be done.

Not nostalgic. She is the Object of my Nostalgia. Her nostalgia would be self-aggrandizement. The task of composing the eulogy is left to us instead. You aren't dead yet. Don't get it twisted.

This Cousin-thing, this one-who-got-away. Stone cross lady bound in brier and flowers. Drawing bodies intertwining into glittering images. That everyone should want to be wanted and liked by her. Anna shrugged. You should all be ashamed by the ways you've treated this woman. Deeply. Especially you.

Yes you.

Rising out of storm drains, through steel grating, asphalt and cement. Taking vaporous forms. Condensing into the furtive shapes of lovers and gamblers and private investigators darting through a world of streetlights and storefronts. The breeze carrying the fragrance of all the wild flowers and weeds that grew through the cracks and burned verdant in their rebellion. Intermingled with smoke and cheap perfume.

Surfaces anointed by dew and potential. I use to think that if I snapped my fingers in the precise manner and at an inspired angle, a spark would dance out into the darkness. Leaving behind phosphorescent trails that would dissipate and be replaced by a round of applause. I use to fear that if I did that on the wrong day and at the wrong hour, the whole place would ignite in a blinding flash and we'd have to start over. From the very beginning. The Element of Fire shouldn't be played with but how else are we to learn and grow and move? How else are we supposed to dance? If you can't dance your likelihood of making it decreases exponentially.

Dancing through the streets, the lurid processions of masked and sequined youths pass large murals of sylvan entities horned and cloven-hoofed, painted on brick and concrete. Sounding their flutes and trumpets, banging drums, clashing cymbals, and from time to time, bashing each others skulls. Dance and run and fight. Either way you'll find yourself at another's mercy. Best during certain days to stay indoors after dusk. Likely just a legend with details mercurial. Changing from person to person, its telling colored by neighborhood and association, with the broad gist being that those other people from that other neighborhood, take any child lingering outside after sunset. Never to be seen or heard from again. Victims of transmogrification and blood sacrifice and God knows what else.

I'd been tasked with passing by the curio shop near our complex and buying a little tin toy plane along with some yellow carnations from a flower vendor. Had enough left over to get myself a pack of watermelon-flavored gum and bang snaps. Through sidewalks congested. Past people drinking and eating fried foods, sitting on plastic chairs, crouched over disposable plates. Drunken people smoking and talking, had to keep an eye out for wild gesticulations and the lit-end of cigarettes, wouldn't be the first time I'd been singed.

A stranger ruffles my hair quickening my step.

There was a girl sitting on the stoop leading up to my apartment building. Older, dark bob and dark eyebrows and dark eyes. Hadn't seen her around before. Green flannel, buttoned-down, red shorts and tube socks in black flip-flops. Looked like she was crying. Moist rosy-cheeks contrasting with the purple rings beneath her eyes. Beautiful. I stopped and stared at her. Wanted to plant a kiss on that sad salty cheek. Wanted to ask her what was wrong. Couldn't find the words. She noticed me and waved. I waved back. My attention returning to the task at hand. I made my way through the open doors and into the lobby. Pressing down on the elevator button. It crossed my mind that I should have offered her a strip of gum.

Anna is the one I find myself writing into my memories. A bashful narcissist swaying side to side. The intimacies we risk. Declaring, "Ah this individual reminds me of a favorite cousin." Or perhaps more accurately, she's a favorite cousin's girlfriend which by the comical-consciousness of the child might as well fall under the label of "Cousin." Always older. Always this space and the development of a matrix of intimacies, the genesis of my tastes.

Noticing what others don't. She observes with good humor. Weaving them together to make something True and that this construct of details and quirks, the idiosyncrasies, should be held with startling tenderness. Nurtured and guarded. Gentleness can only ever thrive as subtext. An undercurrent. That your intimacy should be a sudden outburst. Grasping and pulling close to yourself, exhaling affection, like steam. Sometimes with a whistle.

You aren’t just tolerated you know.

Most precious treasure. Object of Nostalgia. Allow us to entertain and arouse. Provide some distance. Most Human.

Sweet sad lady they don't make em' like you anymore.

Earth swallow me! Sea take me! Fire purify! Wind scatter! To dissolve into the elements appears a better option than serving as a receptacle for such shameful sentiment. Put upon lady, rejoice. Burdened by ruinous affection.

Diotima we have been radicalized by you. In unison saying, "damn she was right." You're there. In the background. Uncited. Written into the memories of strangers.

Time has revealed you to be the Luminary of that whole milieu.

Sad sweet lady they don't make em like you anymore.

Personally. I'm glad you were born. Happy you're still alive.

You're Golde. True Golde.

Happy Birthday.

Sum in a sentence; "I'm alone and I'd like you to help me. I need you to judge the life I've lived. Fill in the spaces. Replace the forgotten ones with versions of you. I'm alone and I need you to know that I exist."

And our task is to listen. Remember we get what we give. Relationship-wise. It's a miracle more people don't die alone.

Hell I didn't expect to have a birthday party. Concerned about the birthday parties of others and recalling birth days and death days.

...

Attempting to adapt or syncretize King's Doctor Sleep and Kubrick's The Shining continuing Kubrick's decision to basically damn Jack Torrance. Redemption skipping a generation, the destruction of the Hotel happening in some future generation.

Wonder how Kubrick would've treated it. Could he have damned Danny the way he damned Jack?

Brings to mind a conversation Kubrick had with King that really kind of established the abyss between them. About ghosts and hauntings. How for Kubrick even malevolent hauntings represent a sort of consolation... there is another side, or at the very least a kind of psychic record of what has been. Layers of them. Supernatural depravity or malevolence are simply a continuation of what was already naturally there. No great metaphysical conflict between the forces of Good and Evil that transcend the Human. It is all humans all the way up and down the spirit world. In that regard the term "supernatural" is a misnomer.

King's vision is much is spiritualistic in a different way. There is a definite Good and Evil. With the Evil being an outside force that capitalizes upon the weakness of otherwise good men and absolutely trumps the evil of the most wretched fucked up person (it isn't them, it preys on them, take Pennywise's consumption of Patrick Hockstetter in It these Malevolent-Predatory forces exist independent of us and we will always be children to them until suddenly we aren't, until suddenly we become a threat).

Kubrick seems to totally reject this vision.

It's difficult to reconcile one with the other.

Conflicting vision.

Different values.

King is American and Popular. His Spiritualism is explicit. Bleeding in and out of his works. Informing his whole understanding of the World.

For King alcohol makes sensitive people susceptible to evil forces who proceed to work through them, from obsession to possession. But Love ultimately wins. We are ultimately Good and we are capable of remembering that and sacrificing ourselves for the people we love, "dad will always love you and no matter how bad things might get, I'd rather die than hurt you." You can tell that for King this view was SUPER important, that message was central to his creative project... almost makes it come across like a suicide letter,

Kid if you read this know that daddy was the daddy who loved you. Loved you so much that I couldn't stand hurting you or mom anymore. I'm sorry. Know you'll be better.

Kubrick completely rejects that. To the point of it coming across as cruel. Based on some stuff I've read, you get the impression that Kubrick was almost kind of disappointed once the supernatural was explicitly confirmed. The moment the locked door is opened, it was like the nail on the coffin for the book as a book... "This isn't serious literature" (despite King stating that he regards most of his work as being the equivalent of fast food with a few acceptations one thing is you-as-writer saying it and the other thing is an Artist like Kubrick saying it, especially an Artist engaging with your work. Imagine it hits different compared to the criticisms of a Critic like Harold Bloom) but I imagine that for a Kubrick it stops being serious once it shows itself incapable of dwelling in ambiguity BUT something clicked I think for Kubrick and he made it something different and incredibly powerful. Kubrick insisted that the ghosts in the movie were real.

Stephen King couldn't really vibe with Kubrick finding consolation in the supernatural. Not the way Kubrick approaches it. As a potential for something else... for continuity and I think, potentially, for change.

Jack Torrance isn't a monster because he's a psychic whose psychic abilities are (and this is where King is a bit contradictory) simultaneously dulled and sharpened by alcohol... making him susceptible to ancient evils that use his childhood traumas as an opening...

Jack Torrance is a monster because Jack Torrance is a Malignant Narcissist and all the alcohol does is make that fact apparent to everyone around him. It gives him an excuse to unleash himself upon others. That is what he was and that is what he is and that is what he will always be. Fated to make the worst choices because he's ultimately a piece of shit and Wendy is a codependent, who should have left him a longtime ago, who should have immediately gotten his ass thrown in prison after breaking Danny's arm in a drunken rage. Kubrick refuses to forgive him.

Does the film manage to successfully reconcile both visions?

I don't think so. I like the movie. Felt it. But I do think it fails in what it attempts to do. Ends up cheapening both.

Did the film adaption succeed at doing that I don't think so.

Welcome to Hell. Condemned to be in an eternal loop, different in some manner (inhabiting a different role within the Overlook)... when Danny forces the Jack Phantom to break the bit. Induces anamnesis (recollection) and Jack proceeds to reveal that he is stuck where Kubrick had left him and that this is his hell.

He still helps Danny. By showing him what Danny could become and what Danny was on his way to becoming.

The way Jack leans forward when he asks if Danny is gonna take his medicine...

This is me, Doc. Forever.

And still Danny laments and he gets it. He understands his father.

The delivery of the "Oh dad..."-line made my eyes water up. Pure Flanagan, quintessential Flanagan.

There is an ambiguity, in the book Jack is actually Jack and the book Jack, the one that managed to break free... here Jack is part of the Overlook Amalgam, one more face and voice and resentment for it to dredge up and use... this scene kind of proves that you can't syncretize Kubrick and King's Values, but it does assert Flanagan's. But Jack, if I remember correctly just kind of disappears after tempting (warning) Danny.

I wish Flanagan could've been a bit more ambitious. The way he was with some of his other works and adaptions. The way Kubrick was with The Shining.

Because the syncretism is haphazard. Too surface level neat. You'd have to look at his other works to see how the kind of values expressed by a King and those expressed by a Kubrick are sublated within the Flanagan's approach to the Gothic. Wherein the internal and the external, the "merely" psychological and the "merely" supernatural utterly collapses. Everything is real in a manner that doesn't cheapen, but enriches and feels True.

I like Clive Barker's observations on King, I feel they are accurate to his overall approach.

In King's Cosmos. Evil, Absolute or Transcendental Evil seeps into our world and corrupts the weak into becoming its minions.

The weak in King's works have just as much of a possibility of being Heroes (namely through the act of self-sacrifice) but the more conservative and religious a character is, the more likely they are to be corrupted by some Cosmic Evil. Because Cosmic Evil preys on ignorance, addiction, mental illness, and criminality. These constitute the apertures through which an Evil Will contaminates the population and begins to reek havoc.

One of the first King novels that I read, Insomnia has a character whose descent into Pro-Life conspiracism (that evil forces are attempting to annihilate humanity, little does he know that he is the pawn of the very Misfortunes that seek to destroy Reality itself)... as a Symptom of his mental deterioration and 'possession' by the Red.

And what is evil is evil. Doctor Sleep is the QAnon story. The anxieties King expresses are very American anxieties. Just a question of angle.

Still he doesn't damn the US. Nor does he damn his childhood. Nostalgia and a sense of timelessness is the Dark Tower at the very heart of it all.

Reconciliation is beyond this iteration of Roland. Dualism is the order of the day. A discordant note that must be corrected. In terms of ethics and performance, Stephen King is as American as Alex Jones. I understand that that might be read in an incendiary manner but we are talking about someone who is humble enough and attuned enough as a craftsmen to understand the "Fast Food" character of it. It's American Kitsch.

The man might as well be the Economy of Maine. His Values are Yankee Values. And he is old enough and has been charitable enough to really get to be whatever he wants. Super prolific.

By-and-large King has never been particularly good at handling the folklore of others. He's too into heavy metal and black tea. He doesn't care much for them. Instead they emanate out of his own ambitions as a World-Builder.

He scapegoats conservatives all the time but behind that is a genuine anxiety concerning the degradation of God's Country. Of degeneration and corruption. Piled on-top of one another. And bond together by some Ancient Cosmic Evil. An alien. An outsider. A Romanian Jew.

What is Ugly is excluded to the Outer Darkness in so far that the Outer Darkness is its Origins.

Arachne is not a Weaver of Dreams or a guide through the Labyrinthine Depths. It is a Monstrous Clown that creates through Art Magick, an interactive A.I. generated Haunted House thrill ride. All the while demanding the sacrifice of children in order to maintain its Subterranean Web (the Psychic and Social Infrastructure that preserves the town of Derry, Maine.

Doesn't this evoke Peterson and the calls to confront and slay the Draconic Mother in order to rescue the Father?

What is the Good Hybrid in King's work? We might point at the recent example of Doctor Sleep... but the trend has been to view miscegenation as something that leans towards the Bad. For example, Roland's bastard Mordred, in keeping with the Arthurian themes, the Bastard Mutt, the illegitimate heir is a tragic figure... ultimately more of its mother than of its father. Malevolent and confused and incredibly powerful (that this should be the extension of Roland that manages to slay Randall Flagg, avenging his paternal grandfather and father, in a manner that nonetheless frustrates or interrupts the fated confrontation between the Gunslinger and the Sorcerer. There is a sense that this particular Repetition is flawed).

No, in King there is no Alexander the Great. No Great Visionary Hybrid.

King has to be ornament itself with the Progressivism of the Day. Because at its core the argument can be made that King is Absolutely Reactionary. If he isn't then the whole thing is revealed to be indistinguishable from what the Post-War Liberal intellectual identifies with Fascism.

King's Ideal Order would be prosperously agrarian commonwealths populated by Citizens committed to doing what is right for one another, guided by a Prophet of the White and guarded by a gunslinger, revolver in one hand and rose in the other. King's pragmatic reality is attempting to cultivate and promote certain values he feels are integral to his person and the world at large.

It's easy to forget that Roland is a mix of King and Clint Eastwood.

Favorite Movies Revision

What Dreams May Come, Major Payne, The Sandlot, Mousetrap, Oliver Stone's Alexander the Great, Mulholland Drive, The Scary of Sixty-First, Shin Godzilla, Wobble Palace, The Legend of the Liquid Sword, Dark City, Black Robe.

On the recent Jimmy Dore interview with Cornel West

Jimmy countersignaled the hell out of Dr. Cornel West but his criticism struck true. That's the problem. It's principled at the expense of motion and promotion.

Still, every contention Jimmy raised, followed by the Coup de Grace of "If you actually see Donald Trump as the biggest threat because he is a Neo-Fascist, then why are you running against Joe Biden?" Mr. Dore your question is the answer. It is primarily a carnival mural that you are seeing. All Politics require it. Dr. West is simply affirming that he is on the Left and his interest lies I think in providing evidence of a genuine Left alternative to a re-emerging American Populism, one that is largely being associated by MSM as "New Right".

Agonism is not a bad thing. Don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. Until they are joined in prayer.

It is worth considering the issue of Hybridity in relation to Identity-formation. It's likewise interesting to see how the American New Left had developed similar conclusions to the European Progressive or Revolutionary Right. One that is contra the Orthodox Marx. That the question of race and of nation is inseparable from that of class (because of the gap articulated, in part, by Liberalism and made evident by the development of Capitalism and the ongoing Socialization of the Relations of Production exemplified by the US Social Contract... there exists a great potential I think).

To some extent perhaps, Du Bois and Gramsci are overcome by Garvey and Trump. Which brings to mind the relationship between Scientific Socialism, American Pragmatism, New Thought, Transcendentalism, and American Christianity.

On Faith

Dugin makes an observation. Generally in the West, Youth is the time of naive faith and enchantment. One "grows" out of this naive phantasmagoria. Becoming more cynical and realistic. There is a divide between Faith and Realism in relation to Fate. The Older you become the more cynical and skeptical. The Illusions are supposed to dissipate. While in the East it is flipped. Skepticism and Cynicism is reserved for Youth... it is something you grow out of. Proximity with Death, the accruing of experiences with the anomalous, and noticing the Rhythm of our Lives in the excesses of our Poesies... how things tend to come together in a startlingly cohesive manner and you realize that everything that has ever happened was meant to happen. Makes Faith a domain of the Old.

Some thoughts on Dugin,

For Dugin an understanding of the West is an essential task for the Russian attempting to develop a properly Russian Philosophy. The Russian observer must be able to fully assume (or master) a foreign identity all the while remaining inviolable in his own Russianness. In the Russian Dasein or Being-in-the-World. According to Dugin the Russian observer has to make sure that they, "Not to fall under the spell of Western culture, especially after they begin to discover the orderliness and interconnectivity of its elements in the grand scale (the West possesses a certain grandeur that is not so easy to withstand); and not to reject the West too early, finding it worthless, empty, beneath the Russian principle arche, before its structure becomes evident.”

I find myself adopting and advocating the same position when it comes to Dugin. It’s very easy given my interests to find myself swept up in his works. Makes me want to learn Russian. Funnily enough I came to an awareness of Dugin as a kind of seductive Nazbol threat. Everyone of his positions have to be interpreted as Fascist because Putin is ultimately a Fascist. I think this partially contributes to the allure. I don’t really seem him that way. Studying Dugin, listening to his interviews, reading books about Dugin, etc… has been enriching.

I find myself constantly frustrated by the approach to Ideology taken by Western Academic Leftists (their opinions often being downstream of the online rabble). It somehow manages to take Ideology seriously while at the same time not taking it seriously enough. Becoming junior inquisitors using faulty pneumatic tool to investigate and condemn. In a panic they look for all the signs that something is “Crypto-Fascist”, they have a reflexive distrust of anything ‘irrational’. “That’s hogwash, I don’t get it so it must be bullshit.” That or maybe you’re just a stupid fucking person. Limited imagination. Many rush to utterly dismiss him, as evidenced by many of the responses here. It’s evil and it must be made clear that it is stupid, it is fake, it is evil, it is dangerous, it is silly, it is unattractive, etc... and that this general attitude should be what’s thrown into the meme-machine. From mouth to ass to mouth, chain linking, transmitting this message. It’s cowardly, but whatever. The fact that the most ardent denunciations of Dugin come from the Left is telling. The left hand is after all the hand of defense. There appears to be a strong sense that Dugin’s influence constitutes a genuine ideological threat against the West. Anything that can fuck up the progress that we’ve made must be snuffed out. I’m reminded of something Giorgio Agamben wrote in Stanza, “European culture is, despite everything, conservative, and it is conservative precisely to the extent that it is progressive and revolutionary.”

Take Slavoj Zizek for instance. For him the Values worth defending aren't 'European' they are Universal. The breakthrough of Christian Revelation, the breakthrough of the Enlightenment and the development of the Social Democratic Welfare State, things like Universal Human Rights, etc... all these things are worth fighting for. Writing in the essay The battle for Europe's soul may be lost - the fight against the populists will be about starting afresh,

"It is the Europe of transnational unity, the Europe vaguely aware that, in order to cope with the challenges of our moment, we should move beyond the constraints of nation-states. It is the Europe which also desperately strives to somehow remain faithful to the old Enlightenment motto of solidarity with victims, the Europe that is aware of the fact that humanity is today One, that we are all on the same boat (or, as we say, on the same Spaceship Earth). The Europe that believes another’s misery is also our problem."

and,

"We should mention here Peter Sloterdijk who noted that the struggle today is how to secure the survival of modern Europe's greatest economico-political achievement, the social democratic welfare state.

According to Sloterdijk, our reality is – in Europe, at least – “objective social democracy” as opposed to “subjective” social democracy: one should distinguish between social democracy as the panoply of political parties, and social democracy as the “formula of a system”."

In the case of Europe I get it. Dugin’s European reception has been largely Rightwing. There has been a great deal of anxiety over the possibility of a politically active, “Red-Brown” alliance coalescing and informing a Populist Mass Movement. Illiberal Communists, Fascists, Integralists, and even Islamists allying to form an Anti-Establishment coalition that constitutes a genuine threat that should be treated with a great deal of seriousness.

Maybe Dugin is an Op. Charged with throwing a wrench into any future efforts to mobilize the European peoples into supporting war and economic sanctions against Russia. Doing so by reaching out to the sympathetic Rightist elements willing to have him. The European Populist movements that have any sort of relevance are after most if not all rightwing. Getting a chunk of the politically active citizenry to protest against NATO expansion, the EU, and against the kinds of austerity measures that would have to be implemented encase of a prolonged conflict with Russia etc… Maybe he wasn’t operating in this manner. Not officially. Perhaps it was a simple case of an ambitious scholar making friends all over the world. Trying to get his books translated and published. "Never let your left hand know what your right hand is doing".

Whether or not Dugin is a conscious Operative who has worked to plant certain seeds in his Western audience. There is a palpable anxiety in the West surrounding his influence. You can't buy English translations of his works on Amazon.

It’s crucial when thinking through Dugin to remember that he is neither a European nor is he an American. It’s likewise stupid to decouple Dugin from the Soviet Tradition. Much of his work gains great context when you approach it with an understanding Soviet Marxism and the responses to Soviet Marxism from dissident and diasporic intellectuals and artists. This is one of things I find insanely captivating about him. As a member of the generation of young dissident figures, who were confronted by the collapse of the Communist Bloc, the failure of their respective Communist Parties, and the desolation brought about by liberalization. My interest lies in the fact that Dugin is a genuinely Post-Communist thinker. A product of the Soviet Union, this is the World he inhabits and these are the ways in which he dwells within it. This is, in my opinion, a question internal topography.

I’m fascinated by the ways that generation of artists and intellectuals inhabited this Ruined World, how they thought about it, tried to come to terms with it, dreamt about it, how they continue to dream about it. For the ones who are still alive, how they continue to creatively articulate this experience.

Eventually the moralizing stupor of the Eastern European intellectual gets tiresome. I’m referring here to the default position encountered when conversing with the average English or French-speaking Russian. The sense of haughty self-superiority sheathed in melancholy presentation, world-weariness, and the safe-bet of weak pessimism… it’s cumbersome. Vampiric even. Something that cannot be debated against. It’s cheap. You will always feel morally and intellectually superior to others when your whole argument rests on the World being shit and Great Dreams being Nightmares, and people being shit. While upholding meaningful personal relationships, doomed gentleness, morality, intellectual curiosity, tolerance, and art as existential necessities. Wow how groundbreaking. Everyone who argues against this argues at a disadvantage. The hidden totalitarianism of Schopenhauer’s Weak Pessimism. Of what Dugin refers to as Post-Liberalism. Sunset Liberalism.

The End of History, which I’d articulate in the following terms between Hegel and Schopenhauer; What is exists is rational by virtue of the fact that it exists. Being rational it is good, being that we live in the worst of all possible worlds, it being rational-good simply means that it holds. It holding means that suffering is to some degree mitigated. Any attempts to change it will only bring into sharp relief the fact that the natural default is bad, You will cause unimaginable suffering and none of it will be worth it. So either learn to cope with what is or kill yourself. Nothing ever happens.

I’ve found that Russians in particular are experts at maintaining this kind of Self-Infantilizing and Self-Aggrandizing Pity Party. Especially the so-called dissidents. They talk a big game. Show off how clever they are. How doomed and sexy they are. They blast Kino. They always have a witty self-evident quip up their sleeve. But ultimately they are useless. In fact they bask in their uselessness. I like the fact that Dugin attempts to move past the narcissism that’s so endemic to the thinkers and artists of own generation and those that proceeded it.

At least he attempts to say something. His thought cannot be characterized as cowardly. There is no disavowal. He attempts to exert some sort of ideological influence, shamelessly, beyond just romanticizing his condition as one of many shambling through the Ruin-World. Developing a Conservative-Cyclical episteme while affirming that the only way out is through. This requires a moment of negativity. The rejection of Liberalism, Communism, and Fascism. Everything and anything that pretends to impose a Universal standard based on the metaphysics of a Universal Humanity. What undergirds this universalizing impulse is something profoundly anti-human. A suffocating monotonic logic. For Dugin there is no Universal standard of Modernity. No Universal Value. To attempt to impose one is racist and incredibly destructive. Different peoples value different things. This cannot, in Dugin’s view, be situated within a racial hierarchy.

Universal Humanity is not the Individual.

Universal Humanity is not the Working Class.

Universal Humanity is not the Nation.

For the sake of a good critique Dugin should be taken at his word when he writes the following in The Fourth Political Theory.

“The negative program of the “Fourth Political Theory” sounds as follows, “Say ‘no’ to fascism, ‘no’ to communism, and ‘no’ to liberalism!” “Liberalism will not work!” It “will not pass!” (No pasara!), much like fascism once failed (no ha pasado). The Berlin Wall, too, collapsed; only dust remains from the only visible manifestation of communism, separating the communists from the capitalists (liberals). The communists “did not pass” either. Now, what remains is for liberals to “not pass” – and “they will not pass!” (No pasaran!). But in order for them to “not pass”, the fragments of the Berlin Wall are insufficient for us, as the Wall itself was insufficient. The Wall existed, but they still passed. Even less helpful are the dark shadows of the Third Reich, its “independent corpses”, inspiring only the brutal punk youth and the disturbing, perverted dreams of S&M devotees.”

Personally I don’t regard Dugin as a Fascist or Neo-Fascist simply because I don’t consider the Islamic Republic of Iran, Fascist. Nor do I consider the Russian Federation, Fascist. Therein lies the heart of my own materialist critique. For all the glamour, where is it that we draw the line between Cosmetics and Cosmo-Techne. Prettying up the Russian Federation as is vs. a Philosophical disclosure of the World.

I enjoy studying the translated works available, thinking through them. Reading them from the Left. I also enjoy developing critiques of Dugin from both the Left and the Right. Playing Dugin off Zizek and more recently, off Bronze Age Pervert.

From the podcast itself. They discussed the assassination of Dugin's daughter Darya Dugina in the episode Mr. Gorbachev Start Up This Pod. Anna expressed her distaste for the way Dugin grieved over his daughter’s death, not being able to mentally square that degree of political (and by extension religious) commitment to a cause, while Dasha rambled on about Dugin promoting a Cult of Death and Eurasianism drawing its power from Chaos Magick. Which kind of all came across as, “keep that over there and don’t associate our brand with it.” That was my take away. They just disavow Dugin; criticize him as a father, criticize him for being both an ideological fanatic and a cynical self-aggrandizer, and criticize him for being a wizard who had perhaps in some metaphorically concrete sense, killed (sacrificed) his own daughter. Raised a martyr to serve as a kind of foundational sacrifice for the Eurasian Empire. As far as disavowals go it did the job.

Reading him as an American, I find that Dugin has more in common with Cornel West than with Richard Spencer.

Between 1431 and 1449, preceding the fall of the Byzantine Empire, there was a hope for the reconciliation of East and the West. A brief opening into a “what could’ve been” known as the Council of Ferrara-Florence. Recognized by the Catholic Church as the 17th ecumenical council. Financed by Florence’s Oligarchs.

The Greek delegates consisted of Joseph the Patriarch of Constantinople, Mark the metropolitan bishop of Ephesus, Isidore the metropolitan bishop of all Russia, Metrophanes of Cyzicus, and George Scholarius the future first Patriarch of Istanbul (the holy city formally named Constantinople). Archimandrite Amvrossy Pogodin provides for us the Orthodox retelling of the events surrounding the Council in his hagiographical work St. Mark of Ephesus and the False Union of Florence,

“To the other afflictions which the Orthodox delegation suffered in Florence was added the death of the Patriarch of Constantinople. The Patriarch was found dead in his room.

On the table lay (supposedly) his testament, Extrema Sententia, consisting in all of some lines in which he declared that he accepted everything that the Church of Rome confesses. And then: "In like manner I acknowledge the Holy Father of Fathers, the Supreme Pontiff and Vicar of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Pope of Old Rome. Likewise, I acknowledge purgatory. In affirmation of this, I affix my signature."

There is no doubt whatever that Patriarch Joseph did not write this document. The German scholar Frommann, who made a detailed investigation of the "Testament" of Patriarch Joseph, says: "This document is so Latinized and corresponds so little to the opinion expressed by the Patriarch several days before, that its spuriousness is evident." The ''Testament" appears in the history of the Council of Florence quite late; contemporaries of the Council knew nothing of it.

And so the Greek delegation lost its Patriarch. Although the Patriarch was no pillar of Orthodoxy, and though one may reproach him in much, still one cannot deny that with his whole soul he grieved for Orthodoxy and never allowed himself or anyone else to injure St. Mark. Being already in deep old age, he lacked the energy to defend the Church of which he was head, but history cannot reproach him for betraying the Church. Death spared him from the many and grievous humiliations which the Orthodox Church subsequently had to endure. And on the other hand the absence of his signature on the Act of Union later gave occasion for the defenders of Orthodoxy to contest the pretension of the Council of Florence to the significance and title of ''Ecumenical Council," because the Act of every Ecumenical Council must be signed first of all by the Patriarchs.

After the death of the Patriarch, as Syropoulos informs us, Emperor John Paleologos took the direction of the Church into his own hands. This anticanonical situation, although often encountered in Byzantine history, as well in a positive as in a negative manifestation, was strictly condemned by St. Mark in one of his epistles, where he says: ''Let no one dominate in our faith: neither emperor, nor hierarch, nor false council, nor anyone else, but only the one God, Who both Himself and through His Disciples has handed it down to us."

Most of those who attended the Council found themselves politically pressured by Emperor John VIII Palaeologus into agreeing to the terms of the Unity. Politically the point was to rally Occidental Christendom in defense of Byzantium against the Turkish invaders. What this constituted Theologically and liturgically was the renunciation of the Divine Liturgy in favor of the Latin Rite, the doctrinal acceptance of the Filioque (that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son), the acceptance of the Latin teachings on purgatory and its purifying flames and the acceptance of the Absolute authority of the Pope.

“And so Orthodoxy was to cease to exist. Something even more painful was the fact that Orthodoxy had been sold, and not merely betrayed. For when a majority of the Orthodox delegates had found that the Vatican's demands were completely unacceptable, certain warm partisans of the Union had asked the Pope to inform them openly what advantages Byzantium would derive from the Union. The Pope grasped the "business" side of the question and offered the following: (1) The Vatican would provide the means to send the Greeks back to Constantinople. (2) 300 (!) soldiers would be maintained at Papal expense in Constantinople for the defense of the capital against the Turks (3) Two ships would be maintained on the Bosphorus for defense of the city. (4) A crusade would go through Constantinople. (5) The Pope would summon the Western sovereigns to the aid of Byzantium. The last two promises were purely theoretical. However, when the negotiations came to a dead end, and the Emperor himself was ready to break off further negotiations, the whole affair was settled by four metropolitans, partisans of the Union; and the affair was concluded with a lavish entertainment given by the Pope; theological disputes concerning the privileges of the See of Rome were conducted over wineglasses.’”

Mark of Ephesus was the only dignitary that refused to sign the agreement. The Pope’s demanded that Mark of Ephesus be declared anathema and tried accordingly, Emperor John refused to follow through with the order.

“St. Mark returned to Constantinople with Emperor John on February 1,1440. What a sorrowful return it was! No sooner had the Emperor managed to set foot on land than he was informed of the death of his beloved wife; after this the Emperor out of sorrow did not leave his quarters for three months. None of the hierarchs would agree to accept the post of Patriarch of Constantinople, knowing that this post would oblige one to proceed with the Union. The people who met them, as the Greek historian Doukas testifies, asked the Orthodox delegates who had signed the Union: "How did the Council go? Were we victorious?" To which the hierarchs replied: "No! We sold our faith, we bartered piety for impiety (i.e., Orthodox doctrine for heresy) and have become azymites." The people asked then: "Why did you sign?" "From fear of the Latins," ''Did the Latins then beat you or put you in prison?" ''No. But our right hand signed: let it be cut off! Our tongue confessed: let it be torn out!’”

The concessions represented by the Union weren’t popular among local priests and the incredibly influential monks of the Holy Mountain Athos. The general and prevailing sentiment as expressed (bravely) by St. Mark of Ephesus as the exemplar of Christian Recalcitrance; let no one dominate in our faith: neither emperor, nor hierarch, nor false council, nor anyone else, but only the one God, Who both Himself and through His Disciples has handed it down to us. Genuine Christians should not be compelled or coerced or serenaded by political forces to engage in unprincipled declarations of “Unity” that involve the renunciation of what they know to be True (in reference to the Biblical Canon and the Patristic traditions that envelope and inform said Canon, in short, the Communion of Saints in the Living and Unified Church). That such a False Unity based on Pragmatic Eclecticism is No Unity at All. Better the Turkish turban than the Papal tiara. Better to serve in Heaven than reign in Hell. That for Mark of Ephesus, "It is impossible to recall peace without dissolving the cause of the schism— the primacy of the Pope exalting himself equal to God."

Here we witness the Oriental Unity of the Political-Theological-Philosophical articulated and contrasted with the Occidental Latin approach. It is easy in the present day to roll our eyes at this, to see it as an act of ethnic and sectarian hubris, petty differences in custom and cosmetics, this is an easy perspective to adopt in accordance with our contemporary secular sensibilities and wouldn’t be totally off the mark. The polemics deployed by Mark of Ephesus to rally popular support against the Latinization of the Byzantine church, are rife with references to these difference. With Mark of Ephesus pointing out the fact that Latin priests shave their faces like women, pointing out the lack of cool thrones, etc… The substance of Mark’s disagreement with Latin theology though was a little more complicated. Mark was after all a Hesychast theologian and devotee student of the teachings of St. Gregory Palamas. What we find with Byzantine theology is a tradition which had already thoroughly sublated Classical philosophy into itself, namely Neoplatonism. There is no discontinuity. Why reference Plotinus or Hermes, when there are some many Saints that could be referenced instead? Why dwell on the writings of pagan sorcerers and their enchantments when you can converse with an Elder? I think it’s fair to say that for many English readers being introduced to this kind of Christianity through Dostoevsky’s description in The Brothers Karamazov, of Christian monasticism and Elders and of a profoundly integrated and Mystical Christendom (I use the term to denote the existential permeation of Christianity within the history and landscape and peoples) provokes a potent yearning. As it did for Dostoevsky,

“What, then, is an elder? An elder is one who takes your soul, your will into his soul and into his will. Having chosen an elder, you renounce your will and give it to him under total obedience and with total self-renunciation. A man who dooms himself to this trial, this terrible school of life, does so voluntarily, in the hope that after the long trial he will achieve self-conquest, self-mastery to such a degree that he will, finally, through a whole life’s obedience, attain to perfect freedom - that is freedom from himself - and to avoid the lot of those who live their whole lives finding themselves in themselves. This invention - that is, the institution of elders - is not a theoretical one, but grew in the East out of a practice that in our time is already more than a thousand years old.”

It paints a picture of a Christianity sans Alienation. One that recognizes alienation as stemming from an ill-directed introspective process, self-consciousness as narcissism that can and will only ever feed into itself and into the consciousness of oneself as wretch and only as wretch, outright foreclosing the possibility of transcendence through Henosis or Unity with the Divine and Theosis or Becoming Divine.

Returning to St. Mark of Ephesus and the Council of Ferrera-Florence. Despite the concessions made and despite the political maneuvering set in motion to consolidate Christian Unity, or as the Eastern Orthodox narrativize it, this “False Unity”, the Turks still managed to successfully invade Constantinople in 1453. Mark of Ephesus would go on be lionized and canonized within Eastern Christendom. All the while everyone who agreed to the terms set by Rome, would go on to be remembered as sell-outs.

The loss of Constantinople was retroactively narrativized as a win for Christianity. At the heart of Orthodox Identity, the rejection of False Unity.

Different ways of relating with Necessity.

…

"Middling!?"

"Babe it was an affectionate neg meant to convey the fact that I think you're an authentic person."

"So being an Actor means you aren't 'authentic'?"

"Well I guess in like the British sense?"

"Oh okay. What do you mean by the British sense?"

"I associate British acting methods with rote memorization, the performance of certain rudimentary steps that are meant to "evoke" the personae on stage. The 'Assumption' of the character. So to me like Golden Dawn-style acts of ceremonial magick that involve the invocation of deities or the assumption of godforms... is in keeping with the British dramaturgical tradition."

"So to you I'm a middling Channeler of the Ancients and Channeling the Ancients is inauthentic. Also British method in contrast too? Go on I want to hear you talk about acting and what it means to be an actor. Apparently you consider it the worst. Consider it an activity of the lowest chaste."

I don't like it when people who base their identities or brand around being "Theory"-guys gatekeep shit and I don't like intellectual dryness. Prosaic instead of Poetic. It doesn't feel personal. It does feel like a revelation and man I think any great writing or drawing or music has to be able to be Revelatory.

I saw what you wrote about the Religious Theorcels and I mean yea... I've seen some that are like hyper-fixated with proving that Christians are the natural enemies of the Jews and that the Elders and Church Father's had written about how the Jews that hadn't converted before End Times, would act as basically the servants of the Anti-Christ who would specifically target Christians after having subverted Christendom.

Also seen people hyper-fixating on other Subjects that they Hate.

Even just super nitpicky theological or doctrinal matters. But it feels like they're of the same Type that hyper-fixate on the World and what they don't like about the World,

There is no Love.

If Love of God is

Depends.

So what's the plan. Any thoughts? Or questions?

Think I should start moving my activity to substack. Compile what I have and post it.

At least do that. Maybe start recording stuff. Don't see myself doing solo podcast stuff.

Need to find a way to at least cover some stuff. While I'm looking for something other than Warehouse work.

Obviously I'm a reckless person but this is a Project. Still looking to do collaborative stuff. I just don't know how to initiate conversations and I genuinely feel weird DMing people.

Super rusty.

Am I really just fucked?

Your mistaking form with content. When people have been forced to communicate the content in a simpler manner, you've found it patronizing.

It's not their fault that you're unfamiliar with their content. With their body of images. With their forms of communication and can't kind of feel your way into what they're getting at. Your pompous and fixed on your way and resent that other people do things that are different from the thing you perceive yourself to be adequate at and adequately informed about. Uncharitable.

That's how you probably make others feels when and if you ever take the time to really discuss STEM stuff. Since STEM fields use a wide array of very baroque and colorful images in order to communicate things that aren't immediately, empirically evident using our sense organs.

Like you mentioned Nietzsche and Slave Morality. Think the habit of projecting Nietzsche outward, using these concepts in order to understand what "those other people are"... that's always ever a creative project.

Slave Morality, generations of people made to keep their heads down... are people who know how the lie and conspire. Are people who find solace and power in another World and in a High Power. Cause this one is brutal.

When the Slave revolts and manages to kill the Master... the Values of the Slaves are enshrined. The ways of navigating through and dwelling in the World are those of generations of people who had been forced to keep their heads down.

To turn the other cheek.

"Turning the other cheek actually makes me a good person. I have a family and I can only ever hope to control what is within me, because everything outside of me is very much not under my control."

When you turn your feelings inward, that's Ressentiment. It happens, even to Saints.

The question is how do you deal with that inward rush of feeling. How is it digested?

Perhaps you live a life, guided by the Values of Slave Morality and you basically become a Saint. More often than not people becomes little back-biting conspirators. Feminized in your aggression.

Listen. I'm not Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Let's get that straight but I can recognize what he's doing. In my terms.

But I just want to marry the woman of my dreams. Do you understand?

Strange numbness.

❤️‍🔥

Thank you God. Thank you all. Thank you my woman. Thank you all. Thank you God. So God Bless you All on the Earth.

I mourn, I have a mother, I blush and make others blush. No Institution or Institutional Doctrine can contain that. We were born, we grieve, and we experience love. That can't exist if others don't exist.

Don't forget that people mourn. Their grief isn't mediated by Universities. People exist and inhabit Universities. Many don't. Yet they exist with one another and they mourn and they grieve and they dream, together. Remember our institutions are managed by people, not machines.

What is terrified is often terrifying. Whether it means to be or not.

"I can't live within you."

To live without a heartbeat and Love without a Shadow. A Great Night.

I can't live within you. Can't breathe within you. So let me go if you must. You'll find me as you left me.

Can I let you go if you must? I... don't ever want to find out though I will. If I love can I let you go?

I don't know.

I don't want to let you go. But maybe there is something Higher than us, that draws us together. In this starry distance let us eulogize our World.

That is. Dreamy.

Should I call the lovely one my genesis or my angel bell?

Wonder. Always wondering and sighing.

Overwhelmed.

Goethe weeps listening to Beethoven. Hegel watched over his crazy sister. Who weeps and smirks.

No statues of Critics? Woman you sat on it. There is photographic evidence.

Socratic is my lover's threat.

You challenge me to a duel, Beloved?

Purest Joy.

Pure Joy.

Purrad Joy.

Putrescent Joy.

Your Joy which redeems the project. Gifting to it a Heart.

What Joyful Mysteries.

It's overwhelming.

Harold Budd is overwhelming.

In so far as I think you all rebel against the Machine at a more intimate level, because you're in it, and you rebel. This is good. Means you're alive.

Why do you tremble?

You know. It's scary to talk about Israel. It feels highly charged. Feels like I can ruin my life. Like I'd be at the end of a Mao-esque annihilation campaign for saying the wrong thing.

That's suffocating. The least we can do is admit that we're suffocated. What a great anxiety. I imagine that the images you use to understand your situation is different than mine.

I love Anna too, obviously. It's just that my exploitation of women takes different forms. She's the one that really makes me feel like an unwanted scumbag

What you have to understand is that for me, as I currently understand it. Israel sided with the British over the Soviets for the pure strategic or utilitarian fact, the empirical fact, that the British represented an incredibly stable model of Finance and of Governance with some experience governing in the region or very similar regions with similar peoples. In terms of their Economic Development.

The Soviet Union had to die in order for Europe or the European Union to live. I wouldn't say Israel had the same dynamic but my hunch. The Phantasy I have in my head... is that Israel had to help euthanize the Soviet Union in order for the current Cosmos (the constellation of cosmos) to exist.

I'm sorry but you're in a daze. You're burnt out bud. It's just incoherent rambling.

Same.

Salut! Tovarisch!

Let's talk about Baphomet. Since we're talking about the Spectral Jew or the Phantom Jew...

I have two Jews within me. The nebbish lion and the valiant lamb.

The nebbish lion is comprised of Woody Allen, Larry David, Jerry Seinfeld, and Adam Friedland.

Basically neurotic but also highly intelligent and highly charming and capable of introspection and regret while also being surprisingly ruthless or single-minded when it comes to getting what they want. Super Horny and Super Bored. Nothing ever changes... until suddenly it does. They remain lions. Cowardice is an act, like drunken kung-fu. Lure you in, suddenly you have a thumb in your mouth.

This nebbish lion is voiced by Woody Allen... you know why? Because I loved the movie Antz... I saw it with my childhood bestfriends and their mom.

That movie straight up Communist Propaganda and it is wonderful... because it portrays the Awakened Proletariat with sympathetic military, foreign bourgeois, and aristocrats-elements... you can defeat a eugenical military junta (Fascism)... so it portrays two visions of modernism that fall into an inevitable conflict with one another.

It was better than A Bug's Life which makes it all really hilarious. Since (and this is a hunch, don't quote me) the logic behind DreamWorks was... "ah we hear through the grapevine that Pixar and Disney are planning XYZ... okay we're going to do XYZ with gusto... 2D animation wise it was too expensive and time consuming... for the occasional homerun. But blending 2D and 3D Computer stuff... that took awhile to get it right without the whole thing immediately sinking after the release of one or two project.

They said, "cousin is trying to make thinly veiled commie Propaganda? We will just make Commie Propaganda. Greatest Commie Propaganda for the kids! Everyone will be in it!"

The greatest death is my head nestled beneath a Starry Woman's heel. My thoughts crushed by the weight of her understanding.

Drawn by valerian and leather and cigarettes.

Here. Let me reveal something to you. The only blood that quenches my appetite is the Blood of Christ.

I'd knock BAP out. I like him but if he disrespects my Woman... Jesus Christ.

I'd punch him square in the face.

From a distance I stomp forward. Cheeks flushed, fist cocked back. Shoving Dasha aside I punch BAP with all my strength square in the fucking face. Sending him careening backward, smashing through the wooden fence, into the puddle of mud and what I imagine is feces.

I just knocked Regina Spektor out.

It's over. My life is over.

"We'll leave you with a warning this time bud, better get that tail light fixed."

Feeling safe basking in their largesse.

That's where Libertarians constantly fumble in their views. How do you protect the interests of a People or Represent a People without a State. Through Magic? You end up having the State. Better to have authority that understands itself as authority. Have to secure the Revolution. Trembling literalists. Be not Afraid. We cannot speak of Ethics without speaking in Metaphors. The infrastructure of Ethics is Poetry. The State is a Metaphor. That is the Concrete State. Actualized through the relationship between beings existing together.

That you're 90% predisposed towards Alzheimer's Disease? Well my DNA tests came in and they said that I'm not your Father. They also showed that despite not being your Dad, I'm still 100% predisposed towards loving you.

I love you too. If nothing else. My string of indecent proposals collapse. What remains? That I love you. Even if only ever just as a friend a long way away. Despite pretenses to self-interest. You forgave me my indiscretions. Don't know how I could repay that debt.

Don't pity. Never pity. But why hate? It's good that artists find patrons, no? Doesn't mean you sacrifice critical faculties. It's just good from time to time to feel good for others. I'm sorry for being kind of harsh.

I don't want to fuck up what you're doing. Don't want you to lose opportunities because I exist. Because I insist. On you. Our connection is mediated by phantoms. Isn't that something?

On paper only ever on paper. Struggle with agonism. I'm not that arrogant. So many excuses.

I like working through material. Thinking through it. Not everyone has to enjoy the same games as not everyone is tasked with the same project.

Agonism. Struggle or conflict. Blades drawn, gleaming. One thing that has struck me in my studies of Nietzsche is how Nietzsche utilizes agonism in order to overcome a flaw that becomes fairly evident when engaging his work. Nietzsche had poor boundaries. The Fan. Wagner's Greatest Fan. Feeling that he needed to disentangle himself from Schopenhauer, Nietzsche saw in Wagner an answer. Imagine being Wagner. Finding yourself confronted by one such as Nietzsche. Who sees in you a great salvific force of Power rather than simple existence and renunciation. Who sees in you the Rebirth of Tragedy. Who thinking of you proceeds to write a great little book arguing that you are the end all be all. Nietzsche wanted to live through Wagner, live in Wagner, to breathe through him and love through him. Like a Wandering Ghost. Precocious and overly familiar. The Greatest Act of Devotion Nietzsche could deploy in that instance was that everything good that he had said about Wagner in The Birth of Tragedy, was actually about himself. His Ideal. What he wanted to accomplish as the Last Philosopher. The Tragic Philosopher. So Wagner is the Consensus he was digested by through the Revolutionary Paralysis his music would induce and his joyful reception by the People and his popularity and celebrity… suddenly went from the antipode (and antidote) to Schopenhauer… to one standing next to Schopenhauer. Another revolting figure.

This is Agonism properly wielded. A technique to stop myself from attempting to possess you. To be able to define where I end and you begin.

I don't consider Agonism the same as Negging. Negging, true negging is not an act of psychical terrorism meant to induce self-hatred in your target, leading them to externalize or off-shore their self-esteem unto you. No. Negging is what Jack Thornton does to Buck in Jack London's The Call of the Wild,

“He had a way of taking Buck's head roughly between his hands, and resting his head upon Buck's, of shaking him back and forth, the while calling him ill names that to Buck were love names. Buck knew no greater joy than that rough embrace and the sound of murmured oaths, and at each jerk back and forth it seemed that his heart would be shaken out of his body so great was its ecstasy."

The charm is found in the gamble. That such familiarity should be presumed or that there should be some chance that you and the other can connect in this rough manner. Misunderstandings will happen and you cannot resent another for not reading your writings with the intended tone. Or resent them for finding your tone overtly-familiar and disconcerting. It is a gamble. One should not presume the other's receptivity to your desires and intent or a willingness to define your motives based on the golden strands. Still I will say this. If you don't experience the ecstasy of either Thornton or Buck when engaging in this roughness, when giving yourself over to another in passionate speech… then it is perhaps best that you not engage in such speech. Until you at the very least, sort some things out.

At my best, I read the stranger the way Buck reads Thornton. Ill words as love words. Though I know that that isn't always the case. I know that I cannot Divine the Desires of Others or disentangle their motives as motives are often complex organisms.

When I think of negging I imagine Bobby and Shelly pinching each others cheeks in the series Twin Peaks.

The other thing that comes to mind is the song Beauty School Dropout from the musical Grease... a good-natured/magnanimous critique. Have it on good authority that women love Grease.

...

Understand this. If it inspires anything it is good, creatively. Self-evident on your face. Even if you have fundamentally misunderstood me. Perhaps the Phantasm I lend you becomes a great opportunity to elucidate and work through a negative charge. "Don't be like this." Or "This is what is bad." More often than not we'll both find out that we share certain traits in common. Things that have to be tempered given our practices. Given our proclivities.

This is Good. You've fundamentally misunderstood me. Good.

Wish I had more money. More time. More energy. I don't see myself learning Greek or German or Russian on my own just like that. Realize that severely hampers my work.

Just want to know. Want to learn. Always want to learn. Do I like to stunt, sure. Avoid that habit of self-critiquing publicly too much to give others a chance. That's difficult. Prefer to anticipate. Dissipate. Fade away. Like something that would really rather be dead.

If I don't believe in what I'm doing who else will?

I can't put that weight on you man.

Hasn't stopped me from putting that weight on you.

To be clear. It's brilliant what you shared. That French writer. The visions of the Saints. That Hell exists. That the reverberation of an echo of such torment, should move us. Who deserves it? Who is like God? Why spread the good news otherwise? Easier said than done.

Also to everyone else. I'm always on. For my own reason. If I'm being honest with you it's cause I find it kind of funny but I'm 1000% incredibly serious and unironic and genuinely believe we are cooking up something in service of the Kingdom of God.

It's not that I don't care about the particularities of your language or approach, in favor of "something deeper"... I just like contrast and color and despite how profoundly Misanthropic I am, paradoxically, people. Like people.

Don't like how easily swept up I get. In part because I feel I'm making a fool of myself... but also because of how hateful I can get. It's not that I'm better than you. It's that I lack what makes others great posters and I don't see myself dedicating that amount of time to it.

I'm allergic to clout. Yes, I like to pretend that it's because I'm secretly more principled. I recoil when I read the words "Covert Narc" it's perfect. Commie spy spreading Commie lies or worse a traitor for pussy and book deals. Man... fuckin maybe. As long as I follow my star maybe I can be something more Heroic. More Revolutionary. Being a liar and a crypto-leftist... want to not be that because I'm not a chick and I don't think I'm meant to actually get into politics. Don't think that's why I'm here. For now, just want to avoid getting evicted.

Doing all of this. I'm struck by how much of a piece of shit I can be for my craft. But I really do want to write. And read. And learn. And have good conversations with people. And admire smart beautiful people.

You really are brilliant. I think you're like one of the smartest people I know and I also think you're a good person. Why else would a devil and a vagabond target and torment you so?

When I think on it. I realize how fucked I've been. Can't cut to the end though. I mean we can. But... still need to write. Try to make it worth it. That the highest thing my life's work should be is an apology to you. We're complicated. Animals with a case of thinking.

Regrets turned to rosary beads. We've been complicated. Doesn't mean we're incapable of doing something Beautiful. Fucked as we might be, who are we to deny the possibility that God might love us? And have some plan for us? Whatever that might be.

I don't know you. Still I love you.

The dogs gave her away. Pallas Athena, who emerged from her father's head. His Wisdom. Blue and White. Who loved Ulysses. Who was Ulysses' number one fan and number one crush. Revealed herself when Ulysses answered a lie, with a lie of his own. That is a training session. She was teaching him and preparing him for the conditions that laid ahead. An omen, spoke by a God disguised as a Bondsmen. The dogs had given it away. They saw her from the very start and freaked out. Joyous they whine. And whither in the Sun. They have sensed her subtlety. This is not from here. But it is?

Terrifying Wisdom.

They recognize her and you. No matter the condition. They respect her presence, because they are educated. They'll notice a serpent before you do, more often than not. Scouting. Concentric rings. Breaking off. Exploring. Attempting to conquer everything, to conquer or be conquered.

The dogs sing and mark the pastoralist’s republic. Defined by our familiarity with hounds. A large extended clan that continues expanding outward and inward until finally it settles. Whistle and hear their calls echoing through the valley. They are animals.

Wounded.

Behold an aching thing. Curling inward. Holding his innards in place. Forced to love himself.

Love is my Doom.

I believe in the Kingdom of God.

Is it that I like getting drunk and getting high? Do I just like to dwell in the Clearing of Being? Is this why I write? Is why I write the reason that my life is in shambles? To those who haven’t really been keeping up I get it. I’ve found that reading Good Faith into the intentions of others is helpful. I’m better when the phantasms eulogize. Gotta train my phantoms to eulogize myself and others.

“So are you a eulogist?”

“Or are you a critic?”

You force me to answer whether I see myself as Agathon or as Socrates, in this production of the Simposium. The answer is that I’m not Aristophanes. Aristophanes is speaking in a Russian accent and leading a procession of musical frogs through Parliament.

I already noted that Dasha is Alcibiades.

Perhaps I’m wrong.

But, I’m not going to make Socrates’ mistake with her.

If she loves me she can have me.

It’s a little presumptuous.

Really I’m more like a Plato. When you think about it.

Here, let me do my thing. It’s Over. I’m destined to suffer for my folly.

You are destined to rejoice and lament.

Really a good piece of autofiction is just fan-fiction at the end of the day, no?

Back to the Symposium. Yea man it’s Homoromantic in the particular but it’s Universal. Integral text. It’s part of Wisdom Tradition.

Philosophy is animated by the Question of Love.

Thinking is Phantasmagoria.

“So who are you?”

Am I Diotima who speaks through Socrates? Who is the feminine negativity that counteracts the Masculine declaration that declares, “Love is God”…

No.

I’m not that. Haven’t been that. I try to front but my view is virginal. It’s naïve because I’m a naïve lover. That doesn’t mean I’m a good person. It just means that I eulogize love.

Socrates didn’t violently rebuke Agathon. What Socrates was attempting to do was to seduce Agathon by making him the only person he directly disagrees with.

Do you know what the difference between you and I is Anon?

The difference is that I’m a Writer and you are poster.

No not a hating-ass poseur. Anon, but if the shoe fits.

Do you understand? It’s crucial for you to understand because it’s crucial for me to be able to understand this.

You post. You’re committed to posting. Meaning you’re involved in the Clout-economy. That’s fine. That’s a lot of places but it’s especially Twitter.

On Twitter I experience constant injuries but on Instagram too. A single-thousand cuts.

Your very existence injures me Anon.

Do you understand?

I despise the World of Clout. To me it’s a lower sphere. That operates on lower principles. Which encourages a certain lowness in Spirit.

It’s sacred desecration. Perpetual desecration.

Anna was wrong. It’s not that everyone is a low-grade Ironist and Cynic. It’s that everyone is a mediocre Satirist… anything less than the performance of Satire is shrill and abominable and opportunistic… in the eyes of the degraded mass produced satirist. The satirist is a Kakologist. Sculptor of shit. What the satirist does is construct grotesque idols using dung.

Hegel understood. When everyone is busy making shit statues, perhaps it’s because we are wading in shit. Frolicking meanly. Gnashing. Laughing to cope. Laughter is the only consolation…

You see, Once you get to that point. It’s Over.

My sensibilities are insulted. To see someone not “get it”… surely it must mean that they’re the worst kind of person, right Anon?

They’re looking for the first opportunity to betray you and they will. Fake friends. Who win over your intimacy. Take advantage of your trust and naivety. All they’re doing… obviously… is compiling a dossier in order to blackmail you in the future. Either because they’re desperate mentally ill drug addicts or because you’ve become really super famous. The Supreme Clout. Top of the Mountain.

Who is that?

Really?

Twitter hasn’t produced it. Just idols of clay and dung lining the hiking trail. The simulacrum of idolatry. These things aren’t being concretized with blood. Ephemeral.

No. Twitter has yet to build a godhead. Neither has any single social media thing.

Good. God is God.

The Big Other is Real. The Big Other is a Fiction.

The Big Other doesn’t exist.

This thing is Headless.

Scrambling.

Sometimes we knot up. We tangle. Maybe the tangling is some sort of process of rejuvenation. I don’t know that sounds kind of suspect. Like I can see myself reading that and thinking,

“Bro the BodyPolitik is like…a Fascist idea… it’s literally Corporatism. You see I told you!! We were right about this fucking guy…

this…

(((guy))).”

Anon, go fuck yourself, I don’t respect you. There I said it. I don’t respect you. I pity you.

I get it… this thing this Clout economy or whatever is addictive. It’s addictive because it is arousing. Joyful.

Look at you. Man. Just look at you.

Listen, read this aloud, this is from Adorno. Adorno writes, “the splinter in your eye is a magnifying glass…” what a banger. Let me make it better.

The splinter in your eye is a monocle. You baneful little aristocrats, how charming, my darlings. You can feel that the Vagrant in the Vestibule is staring at your feet as you do your best to make sure he doesn’t memorize your pin.

Pervert. It’s obvious isn’t it? The Vagrant is a Pervert.

He is lusting after me. Judging me. Staring at my flipflop-sock combo. Who is he to judge me? To inquire into my humanity. What does he think?

Wonder if the Vagrant is satisfied, the thing standing across from him doesn’t have hooves. Its feet aren’t backwards. It appears to have a big toe on each foot.

“Your hands are filthy.” The words reverberating in my skull as I input the fourth zero.

Listen up motherfucker, these are $40s Adidas sandals. These knee-high socks are designer. Take a good hard look. You piece of shit. We might be sharing space here, but there is a reason why one is depositing checks and the other is just staring.

Wait is he wearing Balenciaga?

Ruminating and rolling and watching he chose to ask an old thing near-by for some guidance.

Coiled around a charred-stone the Old Thing raised its slender segmented trunk up to meet the Pilgrim. Toothless maw spread wide revealing diseased gums visible beneath a veil of ivory hair.

“Need something. Cover. Warmth.”

“Nothing I have. Hair long not long enough. Skin is bone. Give me talk.”

“Where? I have to find. Something Warm. Cover.”

“You?”

“No.”

“Why not? Leather warms.”

“Rather not.”

It cackled,

“Trade.”

“Take. Yes.”

“I have no teeth. Cannot chew. Chew before swallow and swallow before spit.”

“One?”

“Two. Sharp.”

The Pilgrim exhaled maiming the Old Thing into compliance but Old Things have powerful venom and strange tastes. Decided it would be better to play along.

Bending down he seized a stone. Smashing it against his muzzle. With the second blow stumbling. The third collapsing. Reaching into his mouth he plucked out the loosened fang. Repeating the operation on the opposite side. The opposite fang descended languid to the ground in a viscous stream of blood suffused saliva.

The tendril-like back legs of the Old Thing dexterously wrapped around the loose teeth, drawing them into itself. The fangs emerging out the corners of its mouth, pus oozing down the sides, dripping. It stared down at the crumpled figure of the Pilgrim.

“Good?” The Pilgrim asked.

“Yes”

“Information?”

“Deal. Listen. Do you hear?” the Old Thing whistled. The sharp note bifurcating the brimstone vapors. Revealing through the fissure a shrill, relentless, undulating noise. Imposing upon it direction and source while simultaneously revealing its existence to the Pilgrim.

The Pilgrim clasped the sides of his head. The sound piercing his eardrums like a needle deeper and deeper without end.

“What is that?”

“Always playing. Frustrates the Butcher. Follow.”

“Cursed me Old Thing.”

“Somewhat. Follow to origin. The wall. Past that. Past the grotto of the Lilac Butcher, be wary. Stay forward. She will kill you with her pretty song and sharp blade. Walk. Vigilant. Till you reach the Coral Court. There. Barter.”

“Again?”

“Always. Do you know?”

“Warm thing.”

“Clearer.”

“Can’t.”

The Old Thing excitedly clicked its mandibles, head peeling back, unwinding from the rock till it stood towering over the Pilgrim. The hair parting from its face revealing eyes of reflective obsidian.

“Leave. Teeth are made for smiling.”

The Pilgrim did as the Old Thing instructed.

What of the Simp as Muse-maker?

I remember this.

My first encounter with the term “Love Bombing” came about from my time studying New Religious Movements (Cults), Love Bombing as a recruitment tactic used by Cults.

In that context it's something a group does to an individual. Making them feel like they're the long-awaited Chosen One. Making them feel like they're exactly where they're meant to be. Surrounded by people who understand them, who recognize the good in them and recognize that goodness as what the person essentially is. You'll be taken care of. This is your real family. The fucked up things that have happened to you and the fucked up things you've done to others, don't fret we've all experienced the horrors of the world and we've all done terrible things we're ashamed of, it's the result of our imprisonment in a fucked up and fake world, that person isn't the real you. The real you is the person we all see standing before us. Your vibes are excellent. We love you. Congratulations. Welcome Home.

Feel like you just gained privileged access Paradise. To what Paradise feels like. Widespread unconditional love. Automatic positive regard. Everything is taken in good faith. Unlimited good will and understanding... Then it all dries up. Now you're in.… once you're in it all gets, at times rather abruptly dropped. You find yourself constantly chasing that feeling. Constantly chasing that first high. It's constantly withdrawn from you. You feel like you blew it. That your flaws became apparent, that the Other is now seeing you and judging you for who you really are. It is your fault. This generates a really potent complex in the recruit. Combination of withdrawal, of guilt and self-loathing, chasing the Paradise.

The One who knows, who knows you better than you know yourself, looks upon you and proclaims, "This is Good.”

Feels very "young"… expresses a jadedness particular to youth that nearly always comes across as kind of garbled. Questions masquerading as insights. Charming as it is disheartening.

Combines various things into a single unseemly mass. The intensity of a person genuinely falling in love with someone and how genuinely abject that condition can make us. Simping is Abject.

Combined with the disillusionment brought about by a breakup ("wow you said so many pretty things about me, a year and a half ago I could do no wrong, now you're ghosting me.") Which also kind of reads as a neurotic attitude towards flirtation.

"Nice try buddy but this isn't my first rodeo I know what you silver-tongued Don Juan's are really after, that being my sex and my inheritance."

Combined with West Elm Caleb's positivity-based pick up artistry.

West Elm Caleb that Hozier-ass Millennial Scoundrel who, for a time, had managed to successfully weaponize his honey tongue. Probably thought that what he was doing was okay because he was making those women feel special. And it worked, he was prolific… until it caught up with him. Dude had a chick habit, treated girls like a tonic or a pill, and they eventually caught up with him and cut em in two. Very Don Juan like.

There will always be something fundamentally gross about someone recycling love poems in order to get pussy. At the same time, I imagine that it feels kind of gross when it's brought into sharp relief, that you as your Lover's Beloved, are seemingly just a placeholder. Expendable. That they've been as infatuated, as utterly convinced in their love, with another. That this should accompany awith the realization that the Lover has simply discarded previous Beloveds.

The magic wears off, sleuths off, our amorous games no longer hit the same, the person no longer reflexively gives you the benefit of the doubt and everything that had once seemingly turned them on about you, they become sensitive, becomes either an annoyance they're no longer willing to tolerate or an actual injury, everything appears to hurt them and they come to basically hate you. Which refusing to own up to their own feeling they might project unto you, spinning it into, “Well you obviously hate me, at some point you stopped loving me and that's fine, so the responsible thing for me to do as someone who wants the best for you is to call it quits. It was a good run pardner.”

I’ve noticed most people at the receiving end of this tend to be utterly blindsided when it happens. It especially sucks when the very behaviors the person now looks at as evidence of you ‘hating’ them are the behaviors they themselves had encouraged and seemingly loved 6 months prior. There was no real conversations, no attempts to negotiate the transition out of the honeymoon period, the person you thought loved you. Who you envisioned a life with. Who you loved and continue to love, has just dropped the bomb. ‘Maybe some distance will help’ Bang they're very publicly going on dates and sleeping around and don't seem to be struggling at all with the breakup. Or for that matter with keeping you on ice. They don't maintain any communication. You're still blocked on everything. And it dawns on you that this motherfucker who had a year ago, become your everything by making you feel like you were his everything, has decided to discard you. You're just a character in a discarded draft.

And it makes you think. Cause this isn't the first time this has happened… “Is there something essentially wrong with me?” You obviously relive moments in the relationship. Attempt to locate the moment where maybe… you should've noticed and should've changed gears. Maybe you shouldn't have insisted upon,

"yea whatever you vile bitch I just needed someone to love."

It's a component of The Weeknd as a persona (like BAP). Something he translated exquisitely into Tedros on The Idol.

What I've seen of that show makes me see it as a purposeful cult classic. Something that will blow up in popularity 5 to 10 years from now. Because people will be able to recognize what is great about it. Do you understand.

We might get evicted.

House is on the market.

Landlord is playing hard.

I’ve really REALLY fucked up.

Maybe you’re right but maybe I’m just a massive liability.

But the Weeknd to me, is a fucking creative genius. I love him and his willingness to give sensuous expression to how what makes one pathetic makes one a Poet. That the Way of the Poet is one of Intoxicated Love.

The drink is a poison and a medicine.

Let me ask you this, Anon. You who are supposedly a Nietzschean. How many of you have actually engaged with Salome’s book Nietzsche?

Problem is you might end up calling a Pact with the Devil, God's Will.

Robert Johnson stands at the crossroads.

Orpheus sings.

Hermes waits to guide the Deadman.

Hermanubis.

Gonna have to deal with the Devil.

Take a pair of dice and a deck of cards and a bottle of whiskey and a pack of smokes. Get ready to drink with me around the fire.

When is a dream not just a dream?

Thinking about the persona of the Weeknd

The Weeknd is Orpheus. Orpheus as coward. Who turned around because he figured that

Dedicated to a Ghost and his own Sorrow.

It's only as a Ghost that she can be a Star.

Let me tell you.

What I think of the Weeknd and of the person that piloted the Weeknd, Abel Tesfaye. You aren’t suppose to buy into the self-aggrandizement. It’s supposed to be obvious. The distance between the ghost and the machine.

The man sacrificed his own singing abilities to the Devil in order to pursue a career in film and television.

He’s super legit in my book.

Who am I to judge?

Well I’m someone who can admire.

Don’t think I didn’t notice, in the Darby Bonarsky short film. As you are from the Beauty Behind the Madness album followed The Smiths. Yea man, I love that song.

I heard that song while I was reading Cabal by Clive Barker. So I associate that song with Nightbreed. With tragic romance and the dark fantastique. Can you have the dark fantastique without tragic romance?

Without a Faustian Simp’s lament? I don’t know.

Learning the mysteries of love in order to be loveless.

That’s my in.

Slow dancing to a slower version of that track.

What is Abject about the Weeknd is that he is a Melancholy Simp. Losing his religion. Godlessly gooning his way to stardom. He knows he can't play the victim.

In love with himself as a Doomed Lover. Naturally, his Beloved *must* be his Doom. There can be no tomorrow. Despite the aching hope, like an Angel whispering a warning.

That's his real addiction. Buddy has an apocalypse habit.

Likely to choose damnation. Will probably choose damnation. Chooses damnation. Face melting and organs cooking. They share that love. That addiction to doom. Amor Fati. Still, although his Beloved is his doom. She is not his damnation.

On a related note, St. Hildegarde of Bingen description of melancholics in Causae et curae comes to mind,

"Melancholics have big bones that contain little marrow, like vipers . . . They are excessively libidinous and, like donkeys, overdo it with women. If they desisted from this depravity, madness would result. . . Their love is hateful, twisted and death-carrying, like the love of voracious wolves . . . They have intercourse with women but they hate them."

What was it that Anna said? Think it was on the episode Like a Mid in a Candy Store, “scratch a misogynist and you’ll uncover a simp”… or something. Is this not at some level, precisely what Tedros in The Idol is?

The Weeknd going by Abel 'The Weeknd' Tesfaye, claiming to have lost his singing skills (Faustian theme he constantly explores) and how that bleeds into the show itself. I liked it

.Brings to mind Softness of Bodies. Compared to other movies starring Dasha, barring The Scary of Sixty-First... manages to capture a certain I don't-know-what that’s incredibly magnetic. Pungent, desperation, animal magnetism. The director Jordan Blady and the cinematographer Christian Buck did an amazing job. Profoundly humanizing while also being exploitative.

Every shot of Charlotte alone. Smoking on the balcony. The shots of her digesting material, attempting to weld together a poem for the upcoming competition... It does a great job of conveying vulnerability. The character might be a piece of shit, might be a narcissist who deserves her loneliness, who deserves to be recognized for what she is, can't help but be recognized for what she is (which is why she's constantly on the run) because she can't help it. Her negative qualities have helped her survive. She burns like money.

I can't imagine Eugene Kotlyarenko filming Dasha that way. He does an excellent job of capturing Dasha's cuteness. even during the sex scene in Wobble Palace. Dasha is cute. Eugene's Dasha is consistently cute and ultimately good as are most if not all the characters in most of Eugene's work, even when they're being shitty or outright malevolent, there is a playfulness. Lovable. He expresses a consistently benevolent view of humanity even in his satire. In the case of Dasha his personal affection for her radiates through every shot.

Feel it keeps him from really fetishizing or objectifying her. Softness of Bodies on the other hand is imbued with a certain horniness and animosity (disdain?), a "mixed-feelingness". Definitely generates something powerful. Delicate and Depleting.

Generally what comes to mind when I think of Ressentiment proper is different from what you're describing here.

Noticed the tendency to emphasize envy when speaking of ressentiment which can end up limiting the scope and application of the concept. It all too easily becomes the thing that the "other" person does. Like Nietzsche a sense of exemption from the condition is implied. This is what I tend to see with the works of those on the Right and Left who draw upon Nietzsche (and especially those who mimic said intellectual positions).

When I think of ressentiment what I imagine adjacent to the prompt is a dude who gets in a relationship with a chick that he knows is worldly, knowing that she's been around, and that she has a difficult temperament. He sells himself as being cool with it, but he isn't really. He recalls every single slight, every perceived and confirmed betrayal. He isn't actually cool with it. The injuries arouse him, the promise of injury, he cannot truly admit to this. It's all easier said than done. He hates her for this. Everything bad that happens to him, is her fault. Everything bad that happens to her, is also her fault. He abdicates responsibility.

He gets with her and is aroused by the thought of being her 'victim'. A grotesque parody of martyrdom. Make no mistake, he enjoys it, whether he is honest about it or not. He ends up enabling the behavior in his manner and even responds with hostility whenever his partner softens, trying to provoke in them the response which arouses him, while showering her with affection and passionate intimacy moments after the fight. The act of being emotionally (or even physically) brutalized by her is the toll he demands from her in order to access that part of him. It creates a feedback loop, "oh I have to really dial up being a meanspirited uncompromising lascivious bitch in order to get his attention and arouse him, he only loves me when I behave this way."

Some women will immediately slam on the breaks and eject you from their little red corvette. Having experienced this before. There is always the risk that a man like this will quickly reveal himself to be a petty little tyrant, and she doesn't want things to escalate. It doesn't help that people given to these kinds of dynamics might find themselves rapidly corkscrewing into hell. Things escalating in a really nasty manner; emotional and psychological abuse, sometimes even physical abuse.

I think, it's in part a question of Falling in Love vs. dating until you find someone pleasant enough to cohabitate with. This is not what I touch upon here. My reference is to the Passionate Intensity. Love is a kind of madness and when experienced those afflicted tend to become the purveyors and recipients of unspeakable perversion. If she finds herself spirited away by the strong current of passion generated by this dynamic, she might proceed to narrativize herself as the actual lovesick martyr and victim who is willing to transform herself into a monster if it pleases the man she's so desperately in love with. Even if it really hurts. She's willing to be your whore and your torturer. As long as you love her.

He gazes at his partner, he sees his reflection in that dark mirror, and proceeds to apply make-up and prosthetics. "Aren't I just like Jesus? Look at how much I suffer for Love." Contained within that implicitly or explicitly is the affirmation that you are a kind of noble fool, that you deserve better.

So busy constructing a profane auto-hagiography that you don't actually acknowledge the other person staring back at you. The body count was a guarantee. A promise of getting a return in your investments. She will run through you as well. She will mutilate you. Your love and trust will be betrayed. "Father why have you forsaken me?" Failure was already taken as an inevitability. Fantasies of failure curling your extremities, the blood rushes down, engorging your member. "Obviously" she was incapable of loving you the way you love her, obviously despite your best efforts you could never be enough. She will one day be torn apart. Despite your best efforts you could not save her. "Father forgive her for she knows not what she does." She raises the goblet to her lips stained scarlet, drinking the blood of saints.

We enjoy our suffering. Our subjectivity is defined by this sacrificial violence. By our enjoyment.

The reality is that you are every bit as much the torturer and the scoundrel as your partner. It goes both ways. Except when a man does this it is much more obviously pathetic. Though others of similar taste might view it as a kind of social currency. The auto-hagiographies are edited and interwoven into an anthology titled "The Red Pill"... From ressentiment to bad conscience, you plunge inward, plunge into the internet forum, plunge into the fantasy-memory. You're a priest, preaching your message to those gathered around you.

It's undeniable that there is something there that keeps both people around. None of what I'm describing forecloses Love and its transformative potentials. As stated above, the process of falling in love, is what enables many of these things to play out. Despite the man of ressentiment's elephantine memory, this is one thing he often forgets.

I believe in the pneumatic tools and techniques (this might imply a higher degree of self-consciousness but I I'd argue that most of these perpetual-motion contraptions though consciously cultivated tend to naturally rescind into the background, from time to time they might need some repairs and maintenance work through conscious practice, but devotion or habit is often enough) needed to sublimate and transmute these dynamics into something higher. Though this is obviously much more complicated when it comes to an actual intimate relationship between two people. Much easier to contemplate and elucidate in terms of celebrity crushes and parasocial fixations.

I'm easily enthused.

To convert the above back into a thought; the fantasy produced by a person afflicted with unrequited love. Inspired by my object of desire, who I could never hope to attain, to my celebrity crush and obsession. My rumination churn and roil. I feel victimized by my desires. It is self-evident no? How undignified this whole performance is? Making a fool of myself for a anthropomorphized nothingness, I seethe. Having done any and everything in my power to bind this particular moment to who I am despite working behind layers of irony, I am what I do, even while occulted in the sequin costume and mask of pseudonymity. I relinquish my responsibility.

Despite trying my hardest to cultivate a sense of humility and gratitude and self-sacrifice. I deserve my suffering. Of giving fully, of rebelling against the utilitarian calculation. With tasteful bouts of self-abasement and self-deprecation, I seek your pity. This is an unsustainable fiction (per my reading of Nietzsche, not my view). This Love gestates within it Ressentiment. I hate you beloved, for making me into this undignified and unseemly creature, by virtue of this dynamic you are the one who is powerful and healthy and alive. In you is everything I lack. I hate you more than anyone has hated anything ever in the history of our species. It is your fault I'm like this. I've made my life a ruin in the hopes of you. Guess I'm just another simp in the pit, and here you are Jezebel-bitch; an incredibly cruel comment posted on a subreddit, wherein I abuse the sympathetic bond establish between myself and my Beloved in order to craft a missile designed with the intent of doing maximum damage, I publish the comment and feel powerful. It's presented as a joke, given the character of the sub it might even do gangbusters in the likes department, but there is something profoundly ugly here. From tossed off snark to existential malice. What's worse is that I would consider such a horrific fucking comment, justified, given my condition. I avenge myself with the comment, avenge the time wasted, the love left to fester and decay. I'm the victim here and as far as I'm concerned my villainy is legitimized and overcome by my sacral status as victim. In fact my status as victim exempts me from the label of Villain in my eyes. My status as victim puts me in the running for canonization. This is my delusion. Others might (hopefully) see me precisely for what I am. A pathetic little man. Might as well have a cloaca.

This is an expression of ressentiment. It gestates within a Great Love. It feasts on its corpse. I could not forgive her and by extension myself. Without realizing it I have become the worst of her. Catty, vindictive, venomous. A twisted androgyny, if you listen, you'll notice that I laugh just like her.

Writing horrible comments, writing horrible articles carefully dissecting through my superior grasp of Dialectics every single argument made in the last 10 episodes of the pod. No longer dedicating my Dialectical skills towards her redemption and celebrity (a redemption and celebrity predicated on the favor of the crowd). Instead I make an argument for why she deserves to burn in hell . I want to see her fall, to see her regret her callousness towards me, for an eternity. Her gnashing a lullaby.

Staring at my phone, it goes into battery-saving mode. The visage reflected, of a simp's shameless smile stretching ear-to-ear, eyes ignited by a deep sentiment. To think that I had once whispered to myself, "I'm going to marry her one day."

Also, here is another segment from my birth chart.

"In the several divisional charts, bearing most directly on your spiritual life, the Moon is actually friendly and so your mind has a good capacity for contemplative practices; in the majority of such charts, the Moon is in Scorpio, giving aptitude for what many would call ‘black magic’ which is to say any magic which is taboo even to other magicians."

Crashed through a spiderweb in the lead up to all of this.

It was 1am, old old house just walking around outside, thinking about stuff. Praying. When it happened. Walked into spiderweb. Went from the ceiling to the pavement. Magnificent construct.

Had seen multiple times before the fated night. Having made a note of it the first time, intending to avoid it. But I was a little high on marihuana and lost in thinking about her and music.

In the periphery a black orb floating around my head. Thought it was a moth or some other night-flyer. Kept swinging at it. Kept missing.

In doors the light of the nightstand lamp revealing the threads resting on the black material of my hoodie. Had no other choice but to investigate.

Returning to the scene of the crime with a flashlight in hand. Suspicion proved true.

"Me. High and lovelorn and mumbling to myself, destroyed this spider’s beautiful home. And like dumb fuck ogre. I had been instinctively swinging to kill my victim.”

What a fucking disaster.

I search for the spider around the vicinity of where her web connects with the ceiling but I can't find her. Maybe she was scared and ran off into some dark corner. Yes, spiders often climb upwards. Or maybe I hurt her beyond repair and would never see her again.

God, forgive me.

Turned, flashlight still on. Saw something small and black crawling up the leg of a table. Shining the light near it, he smiled.

Still alive.

Gazed at the little critter. The interplay of white and black on its back revealing a Smiling Ghost. With 6 little red thorns sprouting from her sides.

Knew it was her. I just knew it.

Spinyback orb weaver.

In mango shade. The backyard of long-dead grandparents' house. Brother's girlfriend's sister's boyfriend. A blocky fellah, something of the Samoan in his features, thought was incredibly cool, showed me that the spinyback orb weaver meant no harm.

My heart raced when he let the spider scurry about on his fingers. Smiled. Even if it was dangerous it was still beautiful. Wasn’t dangerous though.

Had the bowl-cut, certain of it.

"I'm sorry."

Worried that she wouldn't be able to construct another web fast enough to feed that night. He also worried that she was now exposed to even greater dangers.

Had reason to apologize. But at least she was still alive.

Swore to try to be more considerate.

Initiate of Arachne’s Mysteries. Arachne who had been metamorphosized by Athena in her Wisdom, into a spider. Eight-pointed Star. Casting light in all eight directions and weaving. Two eyes, look up and down. Together we are ten-eyes, ten rays of light. A lighthouse.

Can we fill this place with prayers?

Let us consider the relationship between Wisdom and Fate or Necessity. Sophia and Ananke

"Many of the mathematical models for how a trait will spread in a population have failed—they don’t tell you this. No, I don’t talk about miracles, whatever words you put them under. And the “design” is there, but it is by no means benevolent or intelligent, nor comprehensible. You see in the spider’s web a creature of rudimentary nervous system and little intelligence “design” something beautiful and complex, and this is key to understanding also all of nature. There is an inherent “intelligence” inside things, uncanny, silent and demonic. Its workings and aims are obscure to us."

Human Wisdom.

Your desperado is desperate. The climate in South Florida proves inauspicious for a man of my constitution. I am like a wilting flower. My love, your desperado has found the taste of despair to his liking. Bitter fire that stirs the dead. My jawbone tingles.

100 °F. It’s too hot. It’s too hot for me to maintain consistency. I’m barely holding on. You ask why would you need a 6'3 portly man... but have you considered that a 6'3 portly man might need you? Have you thought perhaps that you are the one who is loved? That within this large frame that requires so much energy to merely exist, those very same energies are directed towards loving you? You will be forever known as the Ogre's Doom.

Dog Days + Venus Retrograde PLUS Mercury Retrograde. Are you ready?

Two women walking around a fire. There are more. Two pairs. Shadows and Animas. Revealed in their obscurity. Goes and comes from there.

When Phantoms are evoked, they are Phantasms. These are the Images I talk at. Eidola. It's Mutual in the way we are all Mutual. Common in its particularity.

Soundboard Socialists. Sounding bored.

This Cathedral has some incredible acoustics.

And we go about doing what we do. Because it is what we are. What's a plan? A stellar topography. That maps the course ahead.

My spider tells me that it's important to plan and have options. Thing is that you ponder counting grain. In prosperity, prudence. For prosperity? Never let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. Just don't. Don't do it. They're rapids. This too shall pass.

That makes perfect sense to me.

I really like it, sympathizer that I am. I offer the World my Sympathies.

That's about it isn't it?

The sum that I am. Misunderstanding and defacing my teachers and colleagues. For a bit. I mean, that's why it's parasocial activity. Twilight. You exist between Dawn and Dusk.

How do we shoulder that burden?

Why are you moralizing at me?

I ask you is the following correct?

"Irony is the glamor of the Moralist."

Hey... common man, come-on. That’s a banger. That right there. Is a banger. And I’m pretty sure it’s hitting the mark. I curl my mustache and do a seductive thing with my eyebrows.

We’re going to be FILTHY Riche. Then I’ll look at you, dead in the eyes, and speak these words aloud.

“You only love me for the money.”

Immediately. I find myself screaming in the abyss.

The Beast dammit. The Beast.

Urgh, I need to read the Henry James story.

I know it might come across as labored, but I’m happy.

Go on. Love me for the money. Listen to the money talk.

The alternative is much more frightening when you think about it.

“What do you mean we couldn’t pay her off?”

Grim Reminder. I made a horrible mistake.

Grasping my sides, vomiting ore. Molten. Metal is my gift. We await the next eruption with baited breath.

Volcanic. Great clouds. Thunder.

Frightful clamoring.

Our Metaphysics is Molten. Emerging out of sulfurous fumes.

... please forgive me. My prayers are frightful.

All that can be given. Is thrown into a great fire.

Is it a tire or is it a Heart?

We weep in the presence of a Flaming Heart.

Is it because the toxic soot is getting into my eyes?

It's both. It's why this has to be either thoroughly contained or left in well-ventilated... wide open spaces.

It depends on what you're burning I would imagine. A Burning Heat is like ignited coal. What do we choose to feed to the embers.

What resins? What herbs? What seeds? What oils and spirits, milk, and ghee. What prayers do we feed? Do we nurture? Do we enact?

Tossing in some bitter herbs. An acquired taste. A discretionary note. Kids don't smoke.

Standing in the trajectory of a bellowing pillar of myrrh smoke. Face first... Perfume or Fragrance. Mercury and Sulfur. That it rises and condenses. Suffusing. That's Sublation. The Unity of Opposites. That it's a purifying process.

To be in the presence of a Flaming Heart is to dwell in it. That your pours have breathed in the fragrant oils. Perfumed sweat. Dance and coat the place in your cologne. Or in a symphony of scents. Saccharine and acrid. Smoke.

Smokey-house is a lived in house you know. A fragrant house more like it.

I can fly to any house with a noticeable scent. Suffused into my mind.

Imagine the difference between a Subterranean Space and a Gothic Cathedral. There are birds roosting in the spaces between the spires. Perched on the beams. Generations of avian. A great diversity of them. All kinds of flora and fauna.

What's that? A Flaming Heart or a Burning Tire?

Is it Dialectics or pre-Diabetes?

It's both and it's none. Hands on the wheel. Foot at the ready. Nail in my hand.

Driver. Drive.

Driver drive. Or exhale. Press the accelerator. Because now you can't afford to chicken out. You can both couples can die if you chicken out. Why assume his left is my left?

This is the web that Arachne weaves for us. That Ariadne reveals in her love, a topography of the Labyrinth.

The World is Art Magick. Bond by Eros.

It's Love. The Deepest Love.

That Lady doth Protest to Much. Get thee to a nunnery.

No, but some have the habit of labeling thinkers that made them struggle "frauds" and "Bad" Philosophers because they refused to 'prescribe' to them solutions. They want what is within the Socratic tradition, understood to be Sophistry and they can't tell the difference between the one and the other and struggle to dwell in that ambiguity.

A Willful and Prophetic Philosopher reveling in the plasticity of our generations. Their ardent vision shaping the world and the species. Tyrant and Sage. Heroic and Saintly. Classical and Romantic. Law of Qualities and Quantities no?

Yet as Voltaire notes, we leave the world as stupid and as cruel as we found it.

The Subject of Ethics is the Heart of Ideology.

A meditation on Aesthetics is one on Eternity.

Contemplating Beauty. Is our Devotion.

Through Eternities Gaze we look upon the Earth in the manner of our Origin and declares, "this is Good."

This is Good.

Why are Saints called Heroes? This is an Aesthetic question.

Having Overcome their particular passions they are willing to live for another by dying for another.

That is a Heroic Love.

That is a Saintly Love.

That is a Christ-like Love.

Understood by Mothers. Understood by Father's watching. Watching the bond.

Submerged within our Kind.

What else?

Yes, but no.

Nobody likes a Morality Play.

"Morality Play" audible yawns like cicada droning.

And I clutch my chest and retreat backstage. Ready to breakdown. Being an Actor is brutal.

Still, my mind lingers on the question of Hegel and of Irony. Of Nietzsche's views on Irony (quick shoutout to my teachers).

Irony is looking at the camera and winking. Sometimes it's great. Other times is destroys the whole production and gets viewed as an act of sabotage. Still actors must be mercurial right? Darting beams of light. Colorful. Dancing.

Restatements. Things are worth restating because things are worth sharing. And knowledge and wisdom are as vast as Ariadne's World-Tapestry. Behold.

Snap your fingers and watch the show.

Love Fate, Intoxicated Ones that there is a Light.

"I am..." schniff sorry it is just. I see roughly were you are getting at and it's *horrible* to behold."

I know. It might be a train, but you know what maybe whatever is on my heels might frightened off, maybe there is some nook up ahead, maybe I have to jump off a bridge. Depending on the place. Different situations.

That wisdom should be the accumulation of errors. That we will make errors but... the effect is what reveals the cause. 20/20 vision is hindsight. Right? Like that metaphor makes sense.

I love Metaphors. They're fun. Not for everyone but they're fun and infectious. Containing infection by dissolving it. Like a Necropolis that's well maintained.

The Dead thank us for our boundaries. Drive into patterns of spatial symmetry. Delirious.

Synapses. Forgive us our Phantasms that they are our frame. Stain-glass emblems that we converse with.

Why am I bating my breath? It's awe that draws the wind from my lungs. It is love, a grim reminder. By the Grace of God

Our lives are Morality Plays. You can't have yourself a Saint without moral development. The Mystery Play is the Morality Play. Actors together in a Tableaux, mantling biblical characters and the Golden Legends of the Saints. Paintings and models.

I feel terrible for calling Slavoj Zizek a cheap slut. The guilt is terrible. Overtly familiar. The Master. Let's be frank though. I'm a cheap slut. Spiritually. Of course. Look at me shaking my turquoise feathers, is this Philosophy?

No of course.

I'm on to something HUGE. I know. Deep deep inside.

Doing our parts. My glass chimney is stained with soot. Seeing that I say, "If it pops it pops". But really I have the candle in a basin of water and under my constant supervision. And I'm looking at it. If you see the wick is too close to the chimney you burrow in and move it closer to the center. It's easier to do if you melt the surrounding wax, obviously.

These vibes. Ambiguous vibes are immaculate.

I'm happy to see you.

"Nice to meet you. I'm Simon."

I shake her hand, I pretend to not notice her pretending that she doesn't already know who I am... Let me tell you. Having a middling acting range is actually a really great quality in a woman. Means they aren't that good at lying. A part of them clings and refuses to fully dissolve into the act. She's mouthy. Good be mouthy. I'll get more concerned if you're taciturn for a longer period of time than usual, the assumption being that you're depressed or decapacitated in ways women find themselves decapacitated. Don't worry I'm still here. Set to haunt your apartment and watch over you to make sure nothing bad happens.

So if we're here. That means that we've probably been through one right?

Man let's fucking GO. Let's Win. Let's change the World by being in it with others. We exist together. Let's fucking win. Why not?

So hate? Man I can't think of mustering it for my fellows who eat, sleep, and shit. On the otherhand people that have accomplished something beyond simply eating, breathing, sleeping, and shitting and suffering. Bubbi it's a Two for One or Out of One, Two emerge... type of dialectic. I've found that it helps to be kind of jealous of the people you admire. Jealous of their attention, of their respect and admiration... my God.

Finally it has happened. I'm sitting down at the table surrounded by everybody. I'm nervous, I'm so very nervous. Obviously everybody is here. Suddenly the cake comes out. You guys really do care. You remembered my birthday!! And you all start singing. It's the Song. You cracked it. Had it been cracked?

You sing to me All Star by Smashmouth.

BAP is doing it with his accent. He's wearing the helmet. The man is gorgeous. He is. I'm sorry. He's a gorgeous and funny little man and he's brilliant. But he knows that I "get it" for this reason he loves me.

Life-debt.

Brother thing. You wouldn't get it.

Nor would "he". Isn't it obvious that the person known as BAP is not the gorgeous model on display.

Why haven't you people been able to make the connection.

It's obvious that BAP is actually Regina Spektor.

That or he has a very powerful warbling Woman in his heart.

People you wouldn't expect to be together are together.

"All that Glitters is Golde... only shooting Staaars break the mold..."

I'm so happy.

I'm so fuuucking happy, dude.

I've made everyone rich.

I've vindicated the Soviet Union and Deng Xiaoping Theory. I've ended the conflict in the Balkans. Zizek has personally told me that he wishes I was his son.

I am the Ogre and this is MY swamp.

As a species. I don't think we've ever experienced this kind of raw digital amalgamation. This I think, has already gone beyond "collectivism".

Christ was the iconoclast. I'm just a conservative.

People like to get there affairs in order. I call this method, the Horny Old Man blast the Dream-Weaving music.

Can you flip a Simp into a Muse?

What do I mean by that? Can I serenade Beloved out of the woods? Out of the woods to where exactly? Into my arms? Into the house my brother and parents are renting out (I'm just useful for utilities really)?

Are the woods a metaphor for the Underworld?

Sure.

Poetry is sensuous thought. It is sensorial. It is alive. Like mustard and like the grapevine.

That's our Prima Materia.

Women are attuned to this in ways men aren't. Because women know what it's like to be alone together for large segments of time in ways that are different than men.

Women weave. So I don't know... do you really think your secrets stop being secrets once they are articulated? Of course not. The Mysteries you draw power from are deeper than articulation.

It's a different connection.

So you see it when a man is kind of like you. Perhaps men should be scared and beaten away from the Red Lodge... but, maybe some of us are just the way we are and we're kind of trying to make due.

Should you encourage us to not be this way?

It's easy to give you undue power. But you lot are on average more psychic, you know it's true. So ease up. Men should tense up around you.

But Men also need to disagree and respond and show life. No you don't know everything. No death and damnation are not the only options for us lovely, it’s just kind of hot.

We have to be brave.

I think therefore I am horny. I am horny therefore I think. Thought springs forth from our skulls like a horn.

I'm horny because I'm always thinking about you.

What if I am a devil?

A demon who can provide for you his sigil and details of his office and attributes?

Read closely. Tell me am I lying when I say that I love you?

That I should rejoice preaching the Gospel and watching you fail to understand. That it is not desecration that drives me.

Christ was the iconoclast. I'm just a conservative.

Thinking about vindictiveness.

Thinking about how vindictiveness permeates my writing. It’s sensuous, vindictiveness is a sensation. It’s a fluid or a charge or a flavor or a component. I think when I tap into that my words ignite.

I think about the Night.

Think about the Darkness and the phantoms that emerge; eye balls and huntsman and little things and dancers. Skull crimson screaming and ringing Angel Trumpets. Above a mirror lake. Everything glistens here.

And her.

She’s there too.

She beckons me and I follow. She doesn’t stop or slow down. Just keeps running ahead. Through different stages. I follow her into a soccer field. People are playing. A Monk-Referee stops me, doesn’t know if this is a chase or whether she’s just better built for running long distances fast (which is a great thing) and leading you somewhere.

She stopped. Turned and smiled.

I don’t remember who inspired that dream. But it’s recurrent.

I don’t like the fact that I don’t remember.

It makes me feel like bad.

Feels bad to have forgotten names and faces too.

I can still feel them in me replaced by amalgam faces.

I saw her. I saw her and she told me to move.

What is terrified is often terrifying. Whether it means to be or not.

To sum in a sentence; "I'm alone and I'd like you to help me. I need you to judge the life I've lived. Fill in the spaces. Replace the forgotten ones with versions of you. I'm alone and I need you to know that I exist."

And our task is to listen. Remember we get what we give. Relationship-wise. It's a miracle more people don't die alone.

Hell I didn't expect to have a birthday party. And I'm worried about the birthday parties of others. Birth days and Death days.

Work

I don’t like talking or writing about work. I’m genuinely a dumb ogre. Dumb and friendly. Sanguine. When the blood pumps, when I’m in motion, when I’m around people. I get bored easily. After I’d gotten my rhythm I was confronted by profound boredom. After peak season when I couldn’t just get a pallet of non-cons and disappear into the depths of the warehouse. Walking and glowering and thinking and smiling and nodding and lifting and scanning and singing and hiding the arousal aroused by thoughts of her, for hours. When that momentarily stopped being the case, the boredom led me to consider shirking my duties. The boredom brought me to an acute awareness of how nothing I am wandering through these huge machineries. Whirring.

Two things helped.

Treating my time at work as a workout and the people.

I don’t like writing about work because I haven’t figured out how to not make it self-aggrandizing. The humble-brag concealing a profound sense of dread. That you should read in my series of blinks and raps, an S.O.S… I’m gonna die in this place.

That he should retreat from first-person to third.

That he should find such a pure joy in being told first by an older gentleman, “you’re the only person who doesn’t seem to be scared of boxes” and by an older lady, “you’re the only man who does this.” What joy he feels whenever he’s summoned to a lane jammed up by heavy boxes and how suddenly the other men, seeing him stunting, power-zone activated and toes-before-nose, join in.

What joy when one of the women or older men compliment his work. Say “this guy works good, he’s awesome.” Or better yet, when one of them comes over and says, “hey take it easy, don’t kill yourself for this company.” Their concerns fuels me to work with even greater vigor and exquisite technique.

He feels so proud of the fact that he has become that guy. The one they look to get to do stupid reckless heavy shit. He knows but he doesn’t care. Fuck it. It’s fun. Child of Agayu. Long stride power walking barely coherent when he opens his mouth. When words are forced out of the permagrin. Doom-driven.

That trembling he should proclaim, “I’m ready to fucking DIE!!” and “I’m willing to die for this shit!” between gritted teeth. Eliciting laughter but likewise picking the energy up. It’s strange how evoking an Absurd Death seems to get the blood pumping.

Before work proper, the managers give a run down of the days activity. The volume (ranging from 30,000 to 60,000) and generic health and safety tips (he relishes when they add “please don’t throw heavy boxes over your shoulder”, what is arguably his signature move). At the end they do a little rallying thing.

“Team on me… Team on 3… 1…2..” type of shit. This is the moment we all revenge ourselves on them.

The imbecile. When a young manager announces the volume and whether or not we can do it in the allotted-time (without having to flex up meaning add an extra hour).

“Can we do it?”

He roars,

“YES!”

Then pretends he was doing it ironically. His coworkers know though. They don’t seem to mind that much. He doesn’t care if they’re laughing at him. As long as they feel the energy. As long as the blood pumps. It’s shocking how at first people laugh and then through the laughter proceed to join in. Like they need an excuse to care.

Fuck being a slacker. Fuck that shit.

“Thank you sir.” The young manager says addressing him directly.

Still he refuses to volunteer for extra-time. He’ll pick-up shifts at home. 16 to 30 hours. Needs to start saving money and dealing with debts. It isn’t enough. Rent went up. Things are going to get bad. Perhaps he should consider volunteering. Luckily the orange-vests and red-vests crackup as they approach him, knowing he’ll say no, still the imbecile apologizes, they don’t guilt or neg him into staying, they can already see it on his face. The smile is gone.

The smile is gone when his left arm goes numb and his ring finger begins to twitch. Or when it feels like a bad air is trapped between his shoulder-blade and chest and he can feel a dull ache. He feels ashamed mentioning it. Doesn’t have anyone to talk too about it and if he did he wouldn’t. Just a matter of question of pacing and regulating caffeine consumption. He realizes he’s an idiot. Starts slowing down a little. Making sure to take his bathroom breaks every other hour. Pulling out his phone, he rifles through social media to see if she had posted anything new, barring that he gazes at past selfies, giving himself over to revelry.

Material conditions have made Lenten fasting come natural. Didn’t even realize he was doing it. Still has to make sure to eat. Two bananas cut up, probiotic yogurt, three tablespoons of cacao powder, teaspoon of sugar, and some wheat. Delicious and energizing smoothie that promotes mental clarity and physical rejuvenation.

They ask but he worked his hours and he’s done. Fuck that shit.

I need to go home, Drink gatorade. Drink a liter of water. Eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or some leftovers. Drink an extra 5 hour energy. Drink some more pre-workout and start banging away at the keyboard. I don’t actually want to die here. It’s going on 4 months now. I stare at the draft I’ve been working on for 2 months. It’s 5am I hear my parents waking up. Don’t want to worry them. I turn off the lights and go to sleep.

I’d be lying if I said I hated work. I couldn’t see myself working the service industry proper. Brute-labor though. I dislike how much I like it. Getting paid to workout. Isn’t enough to really help out around the house. Besides not being such a fucking drag. Besides being able to refuse my mom’s help. Being able to buy my own stuff. When I stop being Seasonal (a nothing person) I’ll start working my 40 hours or hopefully can boost up to 80. So I can purchase and patronize things and not feel like an absolute scumbag.

Refraction

Finding speech difficult. Find writing difficult. I'm interacting but I catch myself, distorted, between the mannerisms I intend and what I actually perform, like I'm dancing offbeat. Not always. Not at first. Manage to make some people laugh. Manage to have some good conversations.

Become something of a routine. At the start of my day I’ll say to myself “Ah I have enough UPT, fuck it I think I’m just gonna take the day off,” or “I’ll clock-in and clock-out at 10:30pm” and I’ll console myself in the lead up to work by thinking these things. By repeating them. Until I find myself slipping the steel-toed boots on, making sure I have everything I need, kissing my parents, and taking my mom’s car to work.

I like my coworkers.

Only really let loose about two or three times.

Middle-aged long and thin bespectacled dude, great smile, studied informatic science in Cuba. Looks like the grandchild of a Chinese migrant worker. Started making conversation with me. We were both staging. Circling one another, pallet-jacks in-hand. Asked why I was working there. Surprised I could converse in Spanish, told me I looked like a European. Didn't expect for me to be Cuban-American. Kept seeing him. Working nightshifts. Making small-talk. Good energy. One of the first people who started talking to me. Gave me some tips. Found the cobwebs blowing away. Dude has a youtube channel where he talks about hacker-stuff and tech and apps. Showed me an app he was working on. Asked me about the word abashed. He asked me about that word after I decided to open up about my "thesis" and my encounter with a Scientologist at the GNC (got into purchasing and drinking pre-workout, Woke AF blue flavored, my skin has long stopped feeling tingly)... How the cashier asked me visualize my favorite animal (though it's not my favorite animal I visualized a leopard) and how he had asked me to stare at the back of my head. I gave my work-friend a Hegelian critique of Scientology/Dianetics and my overall impressions. Spoke to him of the Law of the Unity of Opposites, of the Identity of Identity and Difference, of Dialectics, and Kojève and other such things. I wish my Spanish had betrayed me as it had whenever I'd speak to the pretty Spanish-speaking women. But it didn't. Ended up making of it a little exercise. Softly singing to There is a Light that Never Goes Out scanning packages and building pallets. Easily enthused. Hadn't had the chance to translate my thesis. Think I might have freaked him out. Wired look in his eyes. Think I might have tapped a latent schizo-nerve. Still super friendly whenever we see one another. Remembers my name. Just doesn’t make it a point to drag me along. Stopped projectile word-salading at my coworkers after that.

It’s liberating. To confine my ruminations and Opus to letters and clandestine online activity.

11:30pm have to be in at 11:45pm. Company has a smoking box outside. First day I went to smoke in it but two ladies smoking weed asked me not too, so I took that as license to smoke on the schoolyard lunch tables off to the side. It’s undignified to be confined to a little box. I want to be out in the open. Huffing away. Pulling out my phone, I rifle through social media to see if she posted anything, barring that I gaze at past selfies, giving myself over to revelry. Once I’d finish smoking I’d rush in, through the revolving doors and into the lunchroom to get a 5 hour energy or a Java Monster Nitro Cold Brew and a bit of complimentary gatorade.

Finicky with time. Nobody stop me.

If at 11:45pm you aren’t back at your workstation, the managers might scan your badge and give you a warning. Three of those and you’re out. If you get fired from one thing you’re fired from all connected things which ends up being a surprisingly large amount of things. Worse some of the managers are into scolding the associates. I’d rather avoid having to swallow the sort of feelings that would’ve otherwise propelled me to punch a hole through someone’s skull.

One guy in particular. I like to call him El Patron. Severe-looking motherfucker. Looks like his great-grandfather use to chop the arms off peasants in the hacienda. That motherfucker loves trying people. Absolute prick. Everybody hates him.

One time after 3 and a half hours of doing pick-off/splitting (priding myself in making sure the C-boxes go into the C-lane, I go above and beyond, “goddamn dude you’re sweating” “don’t break your back for Amazon” I’M DOING IT FOR ME, I yell) and this sour fuck asks me to go scan packages (after mismanaging the fuck out of everything, leading to their being avalanches of packages, including heavy boxes that should’ve gone to the non-con megatron) they’d flexed us up. It was 12:56am already. High volume day. The lady I was working with the whole shift only speaks Spanish. I translated what was happening, letting her know that I was gonna start scanning, that it was a pleasure working with her. This fucking guy looks up at me, says to me, “what’s the issue? Didn’t you hear me? Didn’t I ask you to go scan?” I imagined myself doing horrible things to him. He’s old but not old enough for my default affection, he’s young but not young enough for default comradery. Perfect age really. Perfect grabbing him by the sides of the head and smashing it repeatedly against the railing -age.

Tired, I smiled and nodded, scanner in hand. Did he not see the person standing in front of him? Maybe it’s cause he saw the exhausted thing in front of him that he felt so emboldened. Still I’m imbued with Longhouse Frustration and Warehouse Strength.

My eyes stung. I scanned my badge and took the UPT hit.

The following day an elderly man I was working with consoled me. Told me not to lose my head. That we can’t let them cross-the-line, we have to slam the breaks on em, but that we have to do things smart. Gave me some examples. I felt much better after that.

I suppose what shames me isn’t that I should feel the sudden surge of anger or even that I should seethe about it. This kind of frustrated indignation is normal. What really shames me is that the manager gives me a certain kind of vibe. That if I would’ve slapped his arm and held my hands out, he would’ve leaned in and whispered, “I know where there aren’t any cameras.” But I didn’t want to take the risk. This fucking job is fast becoming an integral part of keeping a roof over our heads. I can't afford to be "promoted to customer" as one witty piece of shit put it. Low-trust society.

We’re all tired.

But yea I avoid getting scolded. I get deep ugly indignant feelings that I’m not going to act on. Knowing I won’t act on them I’d rather navigate around them rather than have them linger and become something I have to breath through and talk-shit through. I don’t want to be a thing that just talks shit either. Feels undignified. Like putting a curse on someone you could just slap across the face or better still confront verbally. Ideally I would’ve snapped and wagged my finger, “hey not like that with me.” But I didn’t so tough titty.

Met another New Yorker, from the suburbs. Bug-eyed 70 year old dude with a French-braid. First encountered him macking on the HR lady. Has the kind of name I can’t help but yell out whenever I see. Likes smoking cigarillos. Like working with him as well. Sometimes he’ll come to work, super happy, sauntering, and I know. Like to talk about movies and shows and New York with him.

Had a little civilizing experience. Before work started him, the Gorgeous Zoomer, and I had huddled up. Started talking about movies and actors that had disappeared from the public eye. Mentioned Brendan Fraser. I brought up The Whale,

“Yea Brendan Fraser plays a fat guy.”

The Zoomer laughed but buddy wore a sullen expression. Mentioned he couldn’t bring himself to watch the movie cause his older sister, who was morbidly obese, recently passed away. I would’ve never been this blasé. The smile disappeared from my face. Didn’t know how to respond to that.

Both of us got assigned to the linear. Eventually I looked over at him and apologized for my blasé description of the movie. He looked so relieved. Told me how her passing had forced him to reckon with his own mortality. Eyes watery. Felt like hugging him. The younger New York dude was working the linear too. We started talking about shows we’re watching while scanning shit while zooming through the gaylord grid. I’m not watching anything. The New Yorker Boomer’s watching the new Sylvester Stallone series, Tulsa Kings. The Millennial just finished watching the Wu-Tang series and just now started watching Squid Games. Mentioned Squid Games to the older one and he says to me, “nah you know I worked with a lot of Japanese people and I know they’re into that kind of stuff, treating each other those kinds of ways, but I don’t know I’m not into that…”

Goofy-looking manager with pollack surname swooped in and told me to go pick up Heavy Boxes.

One time it was raining and it was cold. “Just like New York,” he said with that little charming New York twang.

“Like the beaches in New York. Dark water. Step out of the ocean even in the middle of the Summer with your lips blue from how cold the water is. Not like Miami.”

“Yea even during the winter. The water is warm. Plunging your head beneath the waves, enveloped in warmth.”

“Yea we call it piss water. New Yorkers love coming down to Miami to dive into the piss water.”

“I prefer to think of it as like amniotic fluid.”

“That too, yea.”

“You know when I imagine New York I think like… you have to actively tilt your head up, in order to see the sky. Super atmospheric.”

“I mean yea when you’re in the city. I lived in the suburbs but I’d go to work in the city. Some people actually live there.”

“Have you ever seen the movie Dark City?”

“No what’s it about.”

“City stuck in perpetual night…”

He didn’t let me finish the plot synopsis.

“You know New York isn’t that dour. There’s a park right in the middle of it. It’s called Central Park, lots of trees and nature, you can see the sky.”

I felt like planting a kiss on his forehead.

The people make it worth it. That over the course of two months I’ve become familiar enough to greet, dap, side-hug, and smile at, a majority of my co-workers. That I should feel warm submerged in our shared breath. Conspiring together between steel, plastic, and cardboard.

The key to constructing a good pallet is to use the boxes labeled 'Heavy' as a foundation. Laying them in the corners and then building inwards. The small packages, the lightweight plastic and paper-envelope packages are the most annoying ones to deal with. Sometimes we don't have the long cardboard boxes needed to keep the small packages in check. Still some people don’t give a fuck. They just throw them and put small boxes on-top of them and then when a heavy box comes down the belt they don’t take the time to remove the small packages and place the heavy ones as a foundation. They just scan and toss. The pallet becoming increasingly precarious. Proper workplace hazard. When I approach such a pallet with a heavy box I find myself having to reconstruct the whole thing. At first I did this by myself. Then one day a gang of women I’d initially been intimidated by, swept in and started helping me. This brings a great feeling of warmth.

Had a number of warehouse dreams…

I was a Hell with someone else and was forced to get a job. Hell was perpetual night, gloomy, and urban. No wandering. All movement confined to grids. People just existed. Dingy apartment. Going to work. Nothing else to do. Banal. There was a sense of relief that it wasn't as bad as I'd expected. A bit of giddiness. Only space was between us and the high ceiling of the warehouse. The demonic managers had a certain cheeriness to them. All the workers dressed in jumpsuits and overalls. We stood at attention as the peppy demonic manager gave us the rundown for the day's work.

I had too crawl beneath a conveyor belt that was one in a field of conveyor belts. Some danger. Someone I knew and had stopped talking to in life, appeared, and helped me out. Pulling a thing loose. Screwed something in. He remained sullen. Though lending me a hand his expression was bitter and I was awkward. My grievance with him in life was legitimate but his kindness had deflated whatever residue of that was left. I made to address our quarrel, the specter of the quarrel, to explain myself. But he crawled away returning to his own business dour.

An impish process assistant pulled me aside. Put a helmet on my head and handed me a bazooka. I was led outside the Warehouse City. Battlefield. Thick violet and mustard colored smog. A metallic ship peered through the smog. I shot at it. The missile was languid, leaving behind a trail of gray smoke, looping through the air it exploded behind the ship. The second time I shot at the encroaching vessel I didn’t miss.

Process assistant asked me to help out with something deep in the warehouse. I walked into its depths. Met a friendly, seemingly immortal couple, with a dark secret. Went about my task. From warehouse to a mountain trail (still in the warehouse). Idyllic Sunlit scenery. Walking next to a lake. Observing tire-marks going in and out of it. I knew it was one of the process assistants. The shore was very stony until it wasn’t. I approach a clearing. Pebbles rather than large rocks. A golf cart packed with sand and pondweed. I couldn’t see him but I knew the assistant was driving with poor visibility. I moved away from the trail and fell into the lake, the tide was fast approaching, I could’ve called out to the assistant but decided not to bother him while he was going about his task.

I dug my hands into the sand and pebbles. The water began rising. I understood that if I just held on, I’d survive.

…

I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost. Thoughts a mess. The gap between what’s in my head and what can be expressed, seemingly insurmountable, try as I might. Writing is hard. These dialectics are too much. These dialectics are out of control.

…

Started writing about German philosophy, ended up exploring the gap between Socrates’ dialectics and Hegel’s and Marx, in order to develop a deeper understanding of Marx’s approach to criticism and science. It spiraled out of control. I feel the cleverness swimming just out of reach. My words unable to bind together all these interesting quotes. Tip of the tongue. A dull ache in my perineum. Despite the warnings, thinking has proven the source of my misfortunes. Everyone must think I’m dead or worse their patience has grown thin. My beat quickens. I snap at my elderly parents. I forget dinner dates with childhood friends and women. A fly is buzzing about, its buzzing gives away its location, I find it. Catch and release? No, death. It just wants to leave. If it didn’t it wouldn’t be bumping up against the window. If it didn’t want to escape it wouldn’t be buzzing. The buzzing is whats got me murderous. It just wants to leave. But the process of capturing it is too arduous, so I release it from its earthly life. All this gooning and all this glowering has got me godless. Overstimulated. I see a wolf spider dashing across the floor tiles of the living room, it pauses, all eight-eyes looking at me… I wouldn’t have captured it, those things are terrifying, but I wouldn’t have hurt it, but my nieces play around this living room, what if it nests in the baby carriage? Ends up biting one of them? What if my pacifism lands my goddaughter in the hospital. So I stomp.

In the afternoon I wake up and forget to thank God for another beautiful day of life. I’ve lost my religion.

Dumping two scoops of preworkout into my mouth. They’ve released a variant, “Gold-theme”, the GNC clerk tells me its some sort of promotion. Apparently 1 in 50 containers contains a golden ticket. The prize?

“I don’t know. Think it might be a lifetime supply.”

“What’s the flavor?”

“Sorry?”

“What’s it taste like? Gold?”

“Not sure. Never tasted gold.”

Not sure about the prize. Not sure about the flavor. Never bit into a gold metal... What the fuck is happening to our country?

It’s pineapple. The Golden preworkout flavor is pineapple. It’s horrible.

The days I work, for whatever reason, I’m prolific, before and at one point even, after. But now the after has become a garbled mess. I just can’t connect these interesting quotes with my amazing words. The repetition of phrases, the awkwardness of it all. The days I rest, nothing, “I’ll just take the hit on my UPT, I feel inspired...” I declare. Nothing. I’ve come to realize my approach is wrong. All wrong. Too much cortisol. My hairline recedes. These dialectics are out of control. I scream. Still I cross myself with each murder. Still I’ll look up at the sky and mutter a thanks. I have to chillout. L-theanine capsules to soothe the brain. Bought them at the same GNC.

“All this preworkout has me roaming through the streets at odd hours. Sprinting on all fours. Got to get something to calm down you know.”

I look up. It isn’t the same guy. It’s a completely different guy. Never seen this guy before. No frame of reference. The other guy. Guy I’ve seen before, we’re at a point where we pall around. He has started commenting on my regular purchase of preworkout. “You again?” No, the man standing in front of me knows nothing about my preworkout habit. The man standing behind the counter hasn’t a clue as to what I’m referring too.

“Sir do you have a membership?”

Blueberry and goji berry smoothies to strengthen my eyes and liver. Melatonin and L-theanine gummies before sleep. Only been on this for like 2 or 3 days but I feel much better. Able to notice things.

“Body slam the mothafucka!” my coworker yells.

I proceed to body slam the heavy box unto the conveyor belt. Found a niche. Got a lifting belt. In all these months I’ve come to learn that powerful dialectics require a powerful body to contain them. Getting stronger. Typing longer.

I slam another one. My coworker loves it when I do that.

“Suplex that bitch!”

His attention turns to someones behind us.

“That’s my work wife right there yo.” He declares.

Breaking neck I look. World-weary woman, dignified and composed woman, great posture, older. Though she is beautiful she is not my woman. I nod. The l-theanine is working. My eyes having darted back to my coworker, bearing witness to his science.

They lock-eyes. He does a thing with his eyebrows. It’s brilliant. She nods.

I’d never even considered the possibility of employing my eyebrows to the task of seduction. Confining them instead to grotesque carnival expressions meant to convey consternation or ironic perversion. Meant to elicit laughter. That’s not what my coworker did with his eyebrows though, that’s not what he did at all. Little perk of the brow, eyes magnetized, little cocked smirk partially veiled by charcoal mustache twirled at the tips like a sultan, like the devil, and I take note. Better than just staring at a bitch I suppose. I mean, I was charmed.

The eyebrow technique. A supplement to my poesies. Get that pussy percolating. Get that pussy going bloop-bloop-bloop. Have the pussy making terrifying noises, quivering and spontaneously quacking, that I might be disturbed out of perpetual adolescence. The eyebrow thing was a hit. Squatting, straight back exquisite technique, I snatch my lovely by her ankles, eyes up, eyes on her. She understands, her body stiffens, and I proceed to drag her up the wall. What happens from there? Pineapple? What’s her pH level? Golde? A golden ticket!? A lifetime supply!?!? Will she holler? Do I let her go?

Maybe.

Steady pay means I can afford to gamble.

Would you please breathe warm and gentle on these bones? For good luck.

Few months back I signed up for multiple graveyard shifts. Working from 8:30pm to 8 or 9am for a couple of days. My birthday is coming up, gonna be 30 years old. They were the only shifts available. At the time taking all those graveyard shifts seemed like a great idea. My schedule was already a mess. Normally I'd clock out around 12-1:30am, arrive home, eat, shower, write a little something something, edit, read, scroll social media, stare at pictures of Dasha and imagine a future together, watch some Japanese people and Japanese cartoon people on Netflix (episode of Midnight Diner followed by a couple of episodes of Junji Ito's Maniac or Dorohedoro)... Would end up knocking out around 5 or 7am. Been my rhythm. On my days off, I'd just replace work with evening exercise.

Well, immediately after having signed up for back to back graveyard shifts, something just clicked, and I found myself effortlessly cultivating the perfect daily routine. One that had long eluded me.

On my days off I'd find myself going to bed around 10-11pm. On the days I worked, I'd fall asleep around 1-2am. Rising up with the sun as all bachelors should. Meditating and praying, exercising, chugging raw egg milkshakes, etc…

Felt great.

All I needed to reacquire the ideal routine, was some future commitment that would be made 10 times harder by my having developed said routine. Would need something stronger than pre-Workout if I wanted to survive. Can't drop the shifts once you've volunteered for them. Feels like my ideal routine could only come into existence in the anticipation of some future frustration.

Wild how self-sabotage works. Tragicomic by default. Pure jouissance. Late night Death Drive through the warehouse district. Blasting music, blasting cigs, pray nothing stops me.

Took that from Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. I like what Lacan does with Freud's Death Drive. With Freud's Cope.

Is it better to be a loser convinced that they're winning or a winner convinced that they're losing?

...

Conspicuous sniffles and glistening snot. I sniff and sniff hard. Can't let this vitality leak out.

Weird how the allergies seem to kick in specifically at the start of the shift and immediately after break.

"Urgh allergies..." I announce in-between bouts of nose blowing.

Make a b-line to the restroom. Gotta make sure I'm good. Avoiding eye-contact. Throw water on my face. Pocket some more paper towels. Look at pictures of Dasha on my phone.

With great enthusiasm I greet my fellow workers.

One of them has become precious to me. Has become my Work Cousin.

He approaches. I'm in the mood to stunt.

“Tovarisch! Under Modernity do you know the difference between a heroic death, a horrifying death, and an absurd death?”

My comrade proceeds to remind me why I hold him in such high regard.

“There is none yo.”

I’m possessed by the urge to pull him in and plant a kiss on his shimmering bald head.

“That's pretty good huh?”

...

"Anon!" a voice cries out through the vast open spaces of the warehouse. In high-pitched anime woman voice. Process Assistant has got my number. She only calls out to me this way in the twilight hours. Immediately gets my attention, I find myself lightly aroused, she needs my help. Ears perk I answer her summons.

“Are you okay?”

“Of course!”

The nature of our relationship is ambiguous. She asks me to stay five extra minutes after break has been called. I put on a little face but really I don't mind. She's not my woman. None of these women are my woman. But still I find the presence of women a comfort. Found that making friends with them helps. They tend to know things.

...

I wonder, do they know? People keep staring at me. At least one dude does. He definitely knows.

Cheeks like the surface of the moon. Leathery skin. Waingro hair situation. Mediterranean color-swap Waingro. Waingro facial hair. Perpetual bloodshot eyes. Older gentleman. Only works graveyard shifts. I doubt he's a mormon. Waingro proclivities? No, he's a standup guy. Might not be a mormon but that doesn't mean he is into murdering prosties, come on man.

Now that I think about it. He looks like a Cuban-American Charles Bukowski. Wonder if he’s a better writer than me.

Anyways what had happened was my fault...

We'd exchanged niceties before.

Fist bump,

“Good morning!”

“Good morning!”

“How's everything?”

“You know another day in paradise.”

Felt it would be a good chance to deepen the bond between us. Crossing paths while staging, I pointed at him and sang the lyrics to Creedence Clearwater Revival's The Midnight Special.

Shot me a nervous look and went on his way.

I’d pointed my index finger at the man Hulk Hogan style and belted the lyrics of the song at him. He must've known he was its intended target. It was obvious.

Vibrato activated.

“LET THE MIDNIGHT SthPECIIIECIAL SHINE A LIGHT'ONAH ME…” audible sniff “…LET THE MIDNIGHT SthPEEEEEECIAhL SHINAH EVAH LOVIN LIGHT ONah MEEEE…”

In hindsight the amount of feeling I’d poured into the outburst is heartbreaking. I felt it. Felt the fuck out of it.

Did he read it as some kind of threat? What was I thinking?

I imagined he would, smiling, shoot me a thumbs up and in pirate radio voice say, “Hey! Creedence Clearwater Revival! I love that band! Great band!!” And I'd nod and we'd fist bump again. Perhaps he'd even find himself compelled to sing along.

For sure he knows.

...

I'm beat. Wild how self-sabotage works.

Is it better to be a loser convinced that they're winning or a winner convinced that they're losing? I think I'd rather be the former than the latter.

Still, managed to wake up at 8am today. Don't feel the ache for anything stronger than pre-Workout. Writing and sleeping and pretty women and beautiful voices have been a consolation.

Thank God.

Probably one of the best feelings in the world is being able to buy your niece a Happy Meal after having picked her up from school. The best after having experienced a prolonged period of not having been able to do so as an able-bodied adult. After having to tell her that her godfather'uncle has no money.

The best feeling is being able to afford to get my dad a dignified enough hearing aid instead of the clunky block old people get for free.

The worst is the sinking feeling that I probably won't be able to get my parents an all expenses paid vacation. Watching my dad get old very old, old enough to set off all kinds of frustrations and then nursing the guilt that proceeds it. Frustrated with the very old and the very young.

Talking to my mom over the phone she attempts to give me a pep talk. At this stage she shouldn't have to be giving me pep talks or offering to give me $100s every other week. She was a teacher in Cuba. Didn't want to leave. The only one of her sisters who really believed in it. Might also be because she left with my dad, following his family, never having imagined that she'd never get to see her dad again. My grandfather wasn't particularly old. Farmer by trade. Had a massive heart-attack. My parents experienced a different Cuba. My grandpa dying, the Special Period, all these things I think made my mother a Patriot. Never stopped sending money and material to her family. Not just the immediate one. Think it helped her feel like she hadn't made the wrong decision.

We haven't amounted to much.

She gives me a pep talk. I'm so angry. Realize that my politics had served as a receptacle for that anger. Prior to that my religious devotions and practices had helped sublimated it, helped provide a structure, a schedule. 4 years ago I really felt like I could achieve something in this life. Redeem it all. Redeem my Mother's choice. Declaring "there is a rhythm to everything, how can you *not* believe in God?" Stopped blessing people. Been awhile since I've spoken or written a blessing to anyone. About maybe 3 or 4 months now, started feeling insincere. Seen enough, felt enough. There is more than just this. There are Forces at Work. I just lost it.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Occasional spurts of sweet water bubbling up out of a solitary faucet poking out from the ruins, between disparate blocks of concrete and rebar and pine trees. A humming bird hovers near a flower.

Mom tried to give me a pep talk. Her sister the aunt who had found my grandpa's body, made moves to get me a job at a private school she works at. I turned it down. Didn't feel right.

Mom kept on talking. Kept on pepping. I felt so angry at her. As always things hadn't gone well for my older brother. I had taken Voluntary Time Off from work, to dedicate to writing, because it looked like he'd be able to cover his own house with the help of my mom. So I thought maybe I should be a little selfish this time around. I think my anger might have been directed at him. 9 years older than me. The night before he broke down how I could work 16 hours a day and have 2 hours to write, exercise, and chauffeur his daughters. Shamed me about not being able to buy my dad a hearing aid or my goddaughter a Happy Meal.

"You've been writing since you were 16 and look at you. What has come out of it? People who write professionally and make money are constantly making moves. Writing is just a hobby for you."

I got my own hits in. Before cutting the conversation short.

The following day my mom called me. Tried to give me a pep talk. And I felt so much anger.

Eventually she told me, that she felt like an animal trapped in a cage. It took a few hours for the anger to subside. For the sadness to kick in.

Things don't go according to plan. No one is going to help us.

So extra hours. Extra shifts. Try to work 30 hours.

Feel fucked up.

But it does feel good to be able to buy a Happy Meal for my goddaughter.

And to not lean into being an absolute piece of shit.

Sometimes you just have to accept that you weren't meant to be something other than what you are. Then maybe you can make the best of it without punishing others.

Baseline autonomy, assuming culpability. The excuses like VTO are tempting and reasonable. But you'll never be much of a person if you collapse into it.

Been noticing it. Starting with Jennifer Connelly posting before learning that she'd been cast in a movie alongside Jennifer Connelly. Noticed it now more than ever. With the similarities between The Beast and Two Perverts Holding Hands... music in the air punctuated by the sound of a balloon popping. 2014 was it? Not to mention it isn't particularly 'novel'... Influences ranging from The Incal to Millennium Actress to What Dreams May Come to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to Cloud Atlas to Bram Stroker's Dracula etc... Love as Eternal Recurrence. Tragedy as Eternal Recurrence.

The Ideal State is Amor Fati isn't it? Is this not what it means to cultivate a Sovereignty that is beyond good and evil.

Misfortune is a given in this Trial-World. It is in fact that immediate default.

That we taste Eternity in our happiness and the Future in our misery. Joyful Existence.

Amor Fati... does this not transmute Existence from mere life/survival. An accursed nocturnal product. From shit to gold. Caritas. Amor Fati that Existence should be Charitable. Supreme Compassion.

This incarnation... whatever it is. We all won the lotto. It is in this incarnation that we all have the potential to be Illuminated. Illuminated in our Extinction. Vibrant Azure and the Crimson Setting Sun.

Dwelling in Eternity. In the Infinite. 100 monkeys pounding away at a typewriter... will eventually produce Shakespeare's Macbeth. Word for word. This is what it means to speak and think about Eternity.

Strange how we pick things up and how easy it is to mistaken them.

It is kind of cute isn't it?

Congratulations. Golden Lion.

We are all going to be rich.

Anxiety, Courtesy, Tact: If this is all True.

A delusion pressed, baked, and waxed. Out of the billowing fumes resulting from the combusting alliteration and the clever turn of phrase and sentences imbued with the most exquisite taste. Slipping out of my reach. Frustrated I watch them turn a corner. Delusion becoming stage, curtain, and pulpit. Fingertips inches from diaphragm, the other hand outstretched, chin tilted up mouth agape.

Will I tell you what I'm willing to do in order to stay up and share a moment?

How far I might go? My most magnificent excuse.

In this delusion I'll address you in the first person. I can address you in the first person. I can reach out and caress your cheek for a moment. Fleeting. Combusting with a snap of the magician's fingers. Lingering forever. Away from all these wretched things.

Read me into your eyes you'll find me to be a pleasant enough guest.

Laying next to you. What I would do to stay up, talking to you, forever.

What a frightful prayer.

Stage is set. Set is magnificent. Painted vistas concave mastery of light interplaying. Scene is consecrated with depth.

I would never do anything to hurt you besides exist. Still what would I be if I couldn't rebuke. Is it ambition that cramps my hands? Perhaps dehydration? Or something else.

I like it when you win. I love it when people get to see you for a moment as I do. A pyrographical emblem with you and us. Stay your hands. Stay your hands. She really means well. Please, even if it isn't the case. Please if a noble lie must perpetuated let it be this.

Let me address you. You specifically as the first person. I’m afraid someone might try to hurt you.

I get upset when I read people saying terrible things about you. Flustered when commentators who seem to know better, who seem to have the intellectual capacity to recognize the Kayfabe, nonetheless insist upon it. Turn it into an absolutely brutal condemnation. Faster to condemn than to inform. Because they only listen to 20 minutes and that’s enough and that’s enough for them to type up some fucked up shit. Get others riled up.

Why even comment on this thing? Why even offer yourself up that way?

Feel frustrated. Realize that I’m the idiot. The person who pretends to know a lot but doesn’t know when to just go with it. Become part of the act or just shut-up. Becoming a spectator booing at the heel like you’re supposed too. Kayfabe has transformed into something else in Pro-Wrestling. Fans are capable of enjoying the work put on by the Heel. The ones that really know, know that the highest compliment you can pay is the boo. It’s a way of saying, “hey I enjoy your work you play a convincing character.”

I just think people are stupid as fuck and I’m afraid some mentally ill drug addict piece of shit will decide to “make a statement.” Hell, you appear a whole lot less scared over the possibility of reprisals by some moron “championing” the Palestinian Cause than I am.

In 2021 a Girl reads a letter,

“Give up your inquiries which are completely useless, and consider these words a second warning.

We hope, for your own good, that this will be sufficient.”

Wrists bound together in blue and white ribbons or was it twine? Anointed.

I don’t like that. I don’t like what you’re doing. Yea I’m a hypocrite. Frolic less and take care of yourself. I can’t take care of you. I can’t keep you safe. I can’t reprimand you for walking around with your nipples protruding, looking toned and sexy, walking around in those muay thai short shorts showing off long smooth legs. Very lightly I jostle you when I perceive your intention to walk out of the apartment dressed like that, “just where do you think you're going dressed like that? Go put on a sweater.”

It’s good to be reminded of that maybe, because I collapse you and the performance. Obviously. It’s my whole thing. I’m a fan. Maybe it’s healthy to have all this rubbed harshly against my noes, maybe I’ll snap out of it.

Lightly jostling you,

Stop antagonizing mentally ill drug addicted leftists and Muslims.”

Please.

I don’t think we get it.

It was different when you were in a relationship. Hits me. My initial cope about your “gay personal assistant”. How genuinely fucked that was. If you can’t take care of yourself let someone else step in. Please. Allow somebody, anybody to love you and keep you safe and lightly reprimand you on your self-destructive tendencies. Maybe someone willing to go into a recovery program with you. Organize a life around self-overcoming. Benzo addiction is a motherfucker dude.

I’m scared that someone might try to hurt you. I’m scared that you’ll OD. I’m scared Eli Roth might read my analysis and say, “this Dasha chick is trying to play me for a FOOL she’s obviously pro-Genociding Jews, why else would she make the Zionist position look so bad!” I don’t imagine Eli Roth is like that, especially as days pass and the charge diminishes. Just a call to be conscious over what and how you comment on stuff. Not really a threat but a call for mindfulness over callousness.

People are stupid as fuck and the smarter ones are bitter seething pieces of shit.

Writing something up.

I want to do this.

I’m a little upset. The points could’ve been made in a less stupid manner. I’m sorry I don’t like the way you approached it. It’s fucking egoic, egotistic self-sacrifice. I get that even when you articulate wisdom, haters will insist upon hating. Don’t think you’ve ever gotten credit for being correct. You’re a difficult person, well-meaning. My impression is that you arrived at the conclusion that you’d accomplish more through Sincerony. At the same time you hold up a mirror; most opinionate people online are as shallow as ZioWhore Dasha and in the same manner ZioWhore Dasha makes Zionism look horrible, they make Palestinian Liberation look somehow worse, relying solely on the images of atrocities. And we witnessed it in real time. These fucking idiots regurgitating half-digested Fanon and low IQ decolonization talking point. They don’t give a fuck. They want to produce Martyrs and that’s a genuine point worth emphasizing. Palestine is a Martyr-Factory. They get to feel morally superior over here. Get to excuse the worst of their traits. That’s what they project into Palestinians. That’s what they enable.

The easy position. The feel-good position. It’s a given isn’t it?

Took your approach as a challenge. Going to see if I can hit the points you raised. People are already doing it though. Which is great. Instead of one vocal-fry voice spitting out factoids, hundreds if not thousands of voices compelled to engage in educational efforts. Gets people talking. It’s just so charged and all the NGO hacktivist dickheads are on it. Makes it complicated.

I think your approach is going to work but I insist that you not play a martyr or make a martyr of yourself. Please.

Going to develop my thoughts on the subject. Touch on the End of History and stuff like that. Will probably end up being the thing I post on the sub.

I want to do this.

Try to be more considerate. Please.

Don't forsake the Apollonian. Just to play a gotcha game. Mired in the political. Dying gloriously for the one you love. That's it. Living gloriously for the one you love. Fully. Truly being alive. Striving for excellence. To be beautiful and wise and clever.

The figure of Achilles emerges in the heat Patroclus' inspiration. The historical particularities of the customs from which it arises, gives way to something unbound from the historically particular and reveals something Universal. It's something that transcends history itself.

Doom-driven lover redeem Humanity! Behold the importance of an eye capable of differentiating the High from the Low. That when these things collapse we find ourselves conjuring up moral justifications to legitimize the atrocity of the day over social media.

What is the Greek Ideal? At least from my perspective. Love and in love, loyalty. To embrace such a love, to abandon oneself in it and refuse to betray it and in this youthful intoxication to not even consider the possibility.

There are no alternatives. The future is canceled. The lover who truly loves his beloved lovingly embraces his doom. This is the key to glory.

Can we say Achilles was loyal to Agamemnon or to the Achaean Cause or some future Greek Nation? If we consider Achilles not parting Agamemnon's head from his shoulders, sure. But Achilles seethed over the disrespect and WISHED for the Trojans to fuck the Greeks up.

He didn't leave right then and there because he knew that they would all talk shit behind his back and he wanted Agamemnon to come crawling to his tent, apologizing and begging for Achilles' help. Achilles only true loyalty was to Patroclus and through Patroclus to his Fate.

That is the Greek Ideal of Freedom. Achilles is the Greek Ideal which is the Ideal of Youth realized in poetry. To find yourself moved by lion-like Achilles fleet-footed and doomed. You think it's because he was the greatest butcher of men? That that's it?

No, I'm moved by the fact that Achilles loved Patroclus the way he did. That his Beloved should inspire one as great as Achilles to embrace his own fate. Hector killed Achilles and himself the moment Hector killed Patroclus.

Achilles loved and allowed himself to be loved by another person, recall that everyone is beneath Achilles. That's the point. That's what's touching about it.

The Loyalty of such an exemplary man for his beloved. That he should sacrifice familial duty and his own rancorous ego for another, otherwise lesser, human. By modern standards Achilles was a monstrous thing that gloried in the atrocity and took whatever and whoever he wanted.

Menelaus feeling disrespected wasn't enough for Achilles to ignore Agamemnon's own disrespect. Fuck "disrespect" as a motivation. Petty stupid fucking motive. Our capacity to feel slighted and act upon slights disproportionately is what makes us the worst animal of them all.

To feel cucked and using that feeling sheathed in words to justify the extermination of another race, yes that's fucked. Profoundly ugly. Still from the Ugliness of it all something Beautiful emerges. A Heroic Love capable of redeeming it all. Shouldn't lose sight of our Star.

Anyways, great episode.

Podcast introduced me to Girard. Something about preferring Girard’s approach over Psychoanalytic or Marxist approaches, when analyzing certain social phenomena like the prevalence of eating disorders amongst women.

Girard’s thinking can be intoxicating, his confidence, the glamour he exuded and which continues to be preserved in the present-day by his small but very devoted students and the students of the students, Girard like a Kojève or a Strauss, I imagine cultivated the intimacy needed for the production of the Lineage. Of Master-Disciples diligently thinking with and through and against, their Root Master. This kind of approach towards lineage, correct transmission, and legacy is also something that feels somewhat rarer in the present day University system. At least in the US. Though admittedly this is in all likelihood a phenomena specific to Ivy league schools and I’ve never be a student in an Ivy league University. Perhaps what I’m referring to as “glamour” is just the phantasmatic Thiel-money. Refusing to acknowledge that my initial exuberant reception and appraisal of Rene Girard had more to do with some niche internet microcelebrity repping him and with my own desire to receive a scholarship or an advance, than with my having engage with Girard’s body of work in a rigorous and critical manner. Yet the one led to the other. Anna said that Girard was cool and so I perceived Girard as cool and not only did I perceive Girard as being cool, I approached him as this monumental intellectual.

I read Girard and will continue studying his work. Found his hermeneutics, attractive. Found myself drawn to the Image of Rene Girard. Pouring into it my own aspirations and fantasies and poorly defined thoughts. In life a marginal thinker standing off to the side of a larger tableau populated by luminary figures. A minor figure when compared to these other illustrious colleagues. Being a contemporary of Bataille, Lacan, and Deleuze. Like them he attempted to formulate his own response to titanic thinkers like Heidegger and Kojève and through Heidegger and Kojève, Hegel and Nietzsche. Along with Freud and Jung. He responded to many but received little in the way of a response. I also totally agree with Kriss and Anna in regards to what makes very charming about Girard… He attempts in earnest and without a shred of self-doubt or self-effacement, to match and exceed, and take his place amongst and above the rest.

Girard treats his Mimetic hermeneutic with similar missionary zeal. The metaphor becomes the ground for agonism, the conceptual space where we might spar, and compete, and better ourselves and our opponents. Advancing. Expanding our horizons. This is something that Girard absolutely learns from Nietzsche who invites his thinking readers to engage in such exercises. Besides Nietzsche, because this can't simply be confined too Nietzsche though I'd argue Nietzsche provides for us the healthiest way of approaching this old school agonism; at his nastiest he is nonetheless nowhere near as brutal as Marx was for instance, when critiquing the members of his former milieu, the Young Hegelian. This grandiosity and ambition and agonism pulsates through the works countless philosophers and critics and artists, often spilling out into real life quarrels and duels to the death. This kind of visionary fervor was the norm amongst Modernists. People actually believed that they could change the world. And they were willing to defend this conviction against others. Willing to launch critical assaults against the visions and manifestos of rival thinkers and rival groups. Writing themselves into the canon or seeking to overturn the canon altogether. Or as with Marx, break free from it altogether, in order to exert an actual influence on the world by acting upon it.

Taking after Nietzsche. Girard asserts the originality of his insights through agonism, the novelty of his mimetic theory of desire, his uncovering of the Scapegoat Mechanism, and his defense of the uniqueness of Christ by meticulously highlighting how both past thinkers along with his contemporaries, all fail to come to said insights he has been graced with. He elucidates these insights in Absolute terms. Girard judges everything by its proximity to this grand theory. Being unafraid to say something, to argue for its Universality, to argue on behalf of his own genius without resorting to satire. To distinguish himself from others. Against the false humility of the noncommittal, the self-deprecating, the self-depreciating. This is what makes Girard attractive. This is the key to charisma. He came to his insight and dedicated his life and his works totally to the development of said insight. He understands that genealogies are forged through antagonisms. He isn’t afraid to potentially misunderstand and be corrected with posterity. An error represents an aperture.

Dasha, Nietzschean as she is in her training and approach, brings up some solid points of contention, three standing out; First that there appears to be, at first glance, a theological dissonance undergirding Girard’s thesis; How could Christ have been scapegoated if Christ was fated to be crucified and die, for our sins? Second, Girard’s lack of Mariology. Third, Girard’s lack of accounting for lack or death-drive in relation to desire, Dasha’s gotcha, “some people desire death, how is this reducible to mimesis?” The third gives way to a fourth, Dasha finds that Girard proves inadequate in regards to the Subject of Love.

One thing I’d like to note is how Kriss, Khachiyan, and Nekrasova follow Girard’s lead in emphasizing the ritualistic sacrifice of the Scapegoat. They ignore the other dimension. The scapegoat is one of pair. The scapegoat is the one that is exiled, *not* the other who is slaughtered. In some sense perhaps the distinction is collapsed at the moment of Christ’s Passion.

“Then Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and sending it away into the wilderness by means of someone designated for the task. The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a barren region; and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness.” Leviticus 16:22-23

The scapegoat is the one who is cast out of the community. At the mercy of elemental forces, amoral and ravenous, the lion, the wolf, the adder, and the necromancer at the margins. That the intranquil and unclean spirits might have something to eat. What Girard emphasizes in his reading is that God consistently shows mercy to this exiled figure. Even when they’re guilty of the crimes they’d been accused of as in the case of Cain, the biblical God is moved to treat them with compassion. To protect them.

What is the Identity of the Jew if not of exile and literacy and song and “not that but this.”

The scapegoated individual is the receptacle of communal abjection, what is abject is given symbolic form through the body of the scapegoat, the iniquities of the community are poured into them by the breath and poetical incantations of the ritual specialist and in this state they are left to the mercy of slow death by nature and chance. Collective sin is transmitted to the Individual through breath or pneuma. That you can speak sin into another. Transmitting your debts by speaking them into a proxy. Switching fates. Contaminating another in order to save yourself. Rather than having been granted the mercy of a quick death. The cross is the intersection. The Unity of the Slaughtered and of the Exiled.

I think, not taking this into account creates a lot of confusion. When we approach Girard through his critique of Nietzsche and of Heidegger’s Nietzsche. Like Strauss much of Girard’s work is in fact, responding to Heidegger, it’s from Heidegger that he takes the dichotomy between the Christian or Johannite Logos and the Heraclitean logos.

The question of whether or not Girard should be categorized as either a “reactionary” or “progressive” thinker based on the content of his thinking rather than by the figures (posthumously) associated with him, namely his student and popularizer Peter Thiel, is a bit of a doozy. When I think of Girard I think of the HBO series The Young Pope starring Jude Law and its sequel series The New Pope starring John Malkovich. Honestly one of my favorites shows. So when I think about Girard I think about Catholicism in relation to the End of History. Christianity in its radical dimensions as something which realizes and at the same time emancipates us, from the clockwork archons and the traitorous world. In dialectical tension with the actual existing ecclesiastical body. Drawn to looking at the History of our Peoples. Of what is revealed to us, rising out of the horror and the romantic decay, like a sphere of fire.

In but not Of.

In its radical dimensions, truly Apocalyptic.

Christ is the Radical Break. That is Love. That is the Triumph of Love.

Nietzsche writes in The two types: Dionysus and the Crucified found in The Will to Power,

“Dionysus versus the ‘Crucified’: there you have the antithesis. It is not a difference in regard to their martyrdom - it is a difference in the meaning of it. Life itself, its eternal fruitfulness and recurrence, creates torment, destruction, the will to annihilation. In the other case, suffering - the ‘Crucified as the innocent one’ - counts as an objection to this life, as a formula for its condemnation - One will see that the problem is that of the meaning of suffering: whether a Christian meaning or a tragic meaning. In the former case it is supposed to be the path to a holy existence; in the latter case, being is counted as holy enough to justify even a monstrous amount of suffering. The tragic man affirms even the harshest suffering. . . Dionysus cut to pieces is a promise of life: it will be eternally reborn and return again from destruction.”

Girard following Nietzsche affirms this uniqueness. What is the same, the sameness which constitutes the Universal Man is our propensity for violence. What is genuinely unique is the break from it.

Note the following criticism of Jung by Girard in Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World, “In Jung, the element of rivalry is totally expelled, and nothing is left except a Platonian mystic contemplation of the archetypes.”

This criticism of Jung is one that unfolds more broadly into a criticism of both Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, of the Modern World and the Heraclitean logic that informs it.

As Dasha points out Girard is constantly critiquing Nietzsche's criticism of Christianity and Nietzsche's exaltation of Dionysus, of the ecstatic sacrifice. This critique of Nietzsche is arguably the animating engine of Girard’s work. As far as Girard's criticisms of Nietzsche go, it's a little low resolution, when I look upon it with hindsight. Very much the criticisms of someone who got swept up by Nietzsche and felt the need to produce some definitive personal criticism in order to distinguish himself as a thinker. In this regard, Girard is very in-keeping with Nietzsche when it comes to the strategic use of Agonism. Even if one runs the risk of oversimplifying. Of some later humiliation at the hands of someone set to "take you to task" for "not getting it."

Girard paints Nietzsche as a brilliant but ultimately condemned thinker. An Anima Sola wreathed in tongues of fire. The exemplar of what happens when the thinker embraces the Heraclitean logos (that of strife and sacrifice) over the Johannite Logos (Christ). Tubal-Cain or Cain-Dionysus over Joseph the Worker and Abel-Jesus.

Taking after Nietzsche, Girard seeks to overturn Platonism. What does this mean?

The Overturning of Platonism, is the unveiling of a golden shroud of imagery, perfumed and sequined, concealing beneath it a corpse. Honey-smeared and headless. Abject and beautiful; sublime.

Platonism is understood along these lines to be synonymous with a Universal or Cultural Platonism. A mythological edifice taken as a metaphysical Truth. For Girard the sacrifice of a non-divine human scapegoat happened first, then came the mythology, then came the institutions and the idealisms. We know the actual murder and/or expulsion happened first thanks in part to the transmission of the myth-metaphor, but the crucial insight, is not conveyed through the myth-metaphor by virtue of itself, it is instead a matter of Grace. What Platonism in this case entails is a dome of fixed images the descendant of the cave painting. This dome can be replicated in different places, upon different soils, containing different people, with different languages echoing through its interior. There is a fetishistic reenactment occurring within that sacred complex. What is it transmitting? What is the logic animating it? Being Mythic and being Sacred, Girard would argue that it’s in all likelihood sacralizing and perpetuating the mechanisms of violence and victimage, all the while occulting it. Keeping prying eyes away from an understanding of its genuine concrete origins, the conditions for its repetition, and the consequences of its enactment.

Girard constantly rails against this. For him, “Hegel does not take the question of violence seriously enough.” That goes for everyone besides Girard himself. To hell with creative sublimation says Girard, it’s all just repressing the truth. What is concealed festers, necrotizing, and spreads. The veil must be lifted.

I’ve read him I’ve gotten the impression of someone whose outlook is essentially pessimistic in relation to the Kingdom of the World. A World which is built upon unstable foundations. Corpses after all decompose, bones turn to dust, and blood cries out from the earth. Keeping with our Augustinian inheritance, we begin from the safe assumption that we are all contaminated by Original Sin. Universal Salvation should not be taken as a given. We should avoid putting to much trust on our individual ideas or fantasies, limited as we are by our carnality, by our status as entities, as souls born bond by flesh and instinct, into the grossness of corporeality, wrapped in fat and flesh. Even if the feelings this thought induces is a pleasant one. One stemming from a good place. The baseline Christian assumption is that we are born in sin. Under the jurisdiction of the prince of this world, who is much older than us and who skillfully plays to our sentiments and vanities in order to entrap as many of us as he can. Seducing us into perpetual torment and into oblivion, that we might keep him company.

Born to experience a beginning, a middle, and an end which we cannot foresee. Rolling our eyes, we give a thumbs up, toes curling we blush. It’s not that our desires are evil but rather that desire is ambiguous. A neutral charge.

Recall that the Christian is exhorted to live a life in imitation of Christ. What does that mean or look like in practice? How are we taught to imitate Christ? How is this revealed to us? How is this ethic transmitted to us and how does a Christian Society organize itself around said ethic? After all the State is the ethic of the individual actualized by the collective.

Already the Catholic is the heir to a betrayal. Not merely of Judas’ betrayal of Christ but of Peter’s.

In Things Hidden Since The Foundation of the World, Girard anticipating our indie darling’s critiques makes the following observations on the betrayal of and the conspiracy against, Christ. That events leading to the trial and execution of Christ. He refers to this as the pseudo-conspiracy.

“There is no special difficulty understanding why the Gospels treat the pseudo-conspiracy of Judas and the ecclesiastical authorities in the way that they do. This conspiracy is presented as real but powerless. Jesus is the victim of a mimetic contagion that spreads to the whole community, and there can be no question of viewing him as the victim of one particularly evil individual, or even of several. The ways in which individuals behave are never of more than secondary importance, since everything culminates in the unanimous movement that is being formed against Jesus. It hardly matters, in the end, whether Pilate stands out for a moment against the collective involvement while others give in to it straightaway. The essential point is that no one stands out until the end. The jealousy of Judas is ultimately at one with the political attitude of Pilate and the naive snobbery of Peter, who betrays his master because he is ashamed of his provincial accent in the court of the High Priest. On the surface, motives appear to be individual, and conduct appears to fall into different patterns. But everything comes back in the end to the effect of mimesis, which works its power on everyone without exception - ‘the disciples forsook him and fled’ (though this result turns out to be merely temporary for Peter and the ten other Apostles).”

He goes on to write,

“Judas is not condemned by anyone; he commits suicide, despairing of himself and seeking to make the rupture definitive. The underlying factor here is the idea (a truly evangelical one) that men are never condemned by God; they condemn themselves by their despair.”

…

I’m really enjoying the opportunity to think about these things with you. So yea, keep in mind that passage you shared on instagram from François Mauriac's Anguish and Joy of the Christian life,

"Millions of ancestors will come to testify before God's eternal throne that they transmitted tendencies to us which they themselves had received from their fathers."

…

The question of Christ’s nature comes to the fore. Scripturally, Jesus knew he would have to die, and that makes it that much more dreadful. “and being in anguish he prayed more earnestly and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.” (Luke 22:44). Christ started sweating blood. Just because you embrace your fate doesn’t mean your fate ceases to induce great anxiety and fear. It’s what makes The Last Temptation so very compelling.

Just as Christ felt so deeply the anticipation of the coming torments and yet made the choice within the narrative to stay the course. Others who are not Christ, made the choice to betray Christ or to condemn Him. And yet there roles within the narrative does not foreclose the possibility of some future salvation. Peter becomes the stone upon which Christ builds his church and Pilate according to several strains of Christian Apocrypha converted to Christianity alongside his wife.

A mother watches her son suffer a horrific fate. The women stand at the margins baring witness.

Does Christ list-off the people who betrayed and condemned him as he succumbed to his injuries? No.

“Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34)

Mimetic contagion is something we simply cannot assume ourselves capable of consciously manipulating. This is not a given. Nor should it be. Mimesis is not in and of itself a “bad” thing. We return to a conventional definition of the Human. Animals who think about thought, who learn to navigate, to inhabit, and ultimately come to dwell in the world through imitation (imitation does not foreclose the possibility of originality, repetition does not foreclose difference it is in fact the precondition)… we will and yet we cannot truly will what we will. Like children. Dumb and blind fumbling through a world generated by our play. We are all asking for it. Being a mystery to ourselves.

Enter the Christian Revelation and Girard’s self-aggrandizement.

Girard reconciles Christ’s fated mission with Christ’s betrayal and victimage. Where Girard parts here, is with the view that transforms Christ into just another deity within the “Type” of the Sacrificed God. Christ was innocent and he was murdered. There is a break, a radical break, according to Girard with the Sacrificial Archetype. Christ triumphs over the Cross. He breaks the need for the cyclical-mythical eternal repetition of the same. The seasonal sacrifice. An Apostate Dionysus. I recall Dasha mentioning in a prior episode that there is something kind of “perverse” about the John 3:16 formula, that God so loved the World he gave his only begotten Son. And I think she’s right to note that Girard also struggles against an interpretation of the biblical narrative that privileges the sacrificial reading.

As Anna and Kriss both make sure to note, Girard begins from taking a Principle of Sympathy or Unity as a given. Eros chains binding us to one another and the world. Imagine the Rider-Waite depiction of trump XV The Devil.

These are the commons that, for Girard, serves as the animating engine of our universal humanity. This sympathy is violence as the ends of pagan or unbaptized (or uncircumsized) desire. This sets him apart from his better known and much lauded contemporaries. Most of these other French thinkers’ response to the triad of Hegel, Nietzsche, and Marx via Kojève and Heidegger, emphasizes difference. A rebellion against the Absolute or the Totalizing. Girard fashions himself a Catholic thinker confronting the nihilistic logic of modernity (following Heidegger while breaking with Heidegger in order to properly define for himself what it means to be a Catholic thinker confronted by the challenge of both Philosophy and Psychoanalysis). Advocating on behalf of Christ and His Innocence and His Promise in the face of potential nuclear apocalypse. In Christ, all the innocent and the promising find sanctuary. God is not Dead, he was murdered, resurrecting on the third-day. We cannot afford to lose this Revelation. More to the point, we can’t.

Had a very disconcerting dream.

I keep returning to the same place. Mountain range, winding clay paths, verdant and floral bathed in warm light. A lake, the shore fine golden sand beach. The last time this paisaje was contained within the warehouse's depths. This time, the place is tropical park. My grandparents use to take me there when I was a child. Elements of the real world tropical park are incorporated. The mountain range a grid contained within the city.

Riding a bike through the paths. Standing on the shore. I'm examining a camcorder in my hands. Appears discarded. There is a small strip of laminated paper, size and dimensions of a fortune cookie fortune. In blue ink written in dream Spanish. Evidences of Human Sacrifice and How to perform them. The camcorder belongs to us. To a family friend. Dread begins spreading, settling, taking hold. I insert the little strip into the camcorder, hoping that by viewing its content I would be able to assuage the anxiety my literalist reading of its ball-point pen etched title had elicited in my person.

Low-resolution, grainy and monochrome. Standing on a shore. There is a man, hunched over, hands above his knees. Perfectly still, there is a somnambulic quality to the hunched over man's stillness. As if he has been petrified. Another man approaches from behind. I notice that the approaching man is walking away from something on the ground. He has a large machete or cutlass in his hand. They are all wearing long khaki pants and white button-down shirts. I can guess what's coming next. I don't want to continue watching this. Feel nauseous. The other man, stands at his side. Lifting up the sword and bringing it down, all in one elegant motion, he lops the hunched over man's head off. Find myself staring into the fleshy black hole, can't look away, spurts of ink-like blood drizzling down, staining, not as much as expected. The body collapses into the sand beneath it. The head tumbles, rolling towards the water's edge. I understood that I'd just watched a snuff tape. This wasn't special effects wizardry. I was shocked that these sort of rites persisted in the modern world. That family friends might be implicated. I look up from the camcorder screen. The very same vista. I'm standing on the spot where the ritual had taken place.

Events play out.

The shore has become a plane. My three companions, fellow investigators, are writhing and convulsing on the ground. It looks like they're having a seizure. Up ahead, Abby is sitting on a throne, she's wearing a paper crown. The obscure spirit of a nameless child (a sacrificial victim) has evolved into something else, something more powerful. The sky is molten red material roiling. Projected behind her is the footage of the human sacrifice. She mocks me. She commands that I watch the recording. My three possessed companions repeat her commands. I look down at the girl. It looks like she's suffocating. I pick up a rifle and aim it at the possessed. She dares me to pull the trigger. I do.

The film is over.

I'm one of a trio following a pair. The indie darling and a very handsome actor. My companions are part of the milieu (it's a little embarrassing to admit how these people have become cast into my dreams) which includes the actress who portrayed Abby. The pair is not an official couple. They're walking and talking. The trio I'm a part of appears concerned. We are all vying for the indie darling's attention. Arriving at the lobby of the hotel, it appears for a moment, that the pair have taken off. We sit down, my companions begin complaining about the indie darling's fickleness. One even mentions that they need to stop following her on social media. I grunt and nod along but feel conflicted voicing my own opinions, felt undignified. We realize that the indie darling is sitting across on the sofa next to us. She hadn't left. Dressed in very dark blue (or black) with red lace. She looks up from her phone smiling. Doesn't appear like she heard our comments. She says something about asserting her own sovereignty, something along the lines of not just latching unto anyone she happens to be talking too.

We are sitting at a long table in the hotel dinning room. Older people begin filing in. It dawns on me that this is all a family affair. Older relatives investing in projects as a show of affection and support for their younger relatives. Keep them safe. Keep them hopeful and creative. These are the patrons. Serve as gatekeepers. At our age they were committing unspeakable atrocities. Everyone is chatting. Into a pause I insert a very tacky, very obvious joke. Sing-song of the generic. Laughter erupts. I get approving glances from my contemporaries. I'm doing great. Better than expected. Half of the older relatives have transformed into rubber-skin puppets.

I'm terrified. Having worked myself up into the fear. Sometimes I find that I have to do that. And I appreciate the company. Gotta drill until we get to the light, when we've finally stopped having to drill away from it. It's important to remember that we are bodies. We are infinite through our finality. To desire is to suffer. Willfully. To live. Yearning or lust, moves us through the night, in our caustic density. That is a defining experience of Eros. Not the only one. Love cannot be reduced to that.

That's what I found so compelling about Hegel's Aesthetics. Art is animated by the tension between Pure Subjectivity and Pastiche. Between Idealism and Naturalism. Art according to Hegel is the medium through which the Idea is given sensuous expression. The Idea is Revealed through Art. Aesthetics reveals the Ethical. Trains the eye to recognize Truth. Educates our instincts. It was all contained within Theology.

Who said the shadows on the wall and the interpretations they merit, aren't perhaps, closer to the Truth. A shadow reveals the phenomena that casts in, in so far as a shadow is a negative space contained within a shape. It is precisely the lack of definition, that gets us to engage with it. I don't really care if the curtain is just blue because it's just blue and that is as far as the artists intention goes. Why should artists be saddled with the burden of intention and consequence? That is a burden distributed. Subjected as we are to laws of gravity and magnetism.

Hegel returns us to Mary. To the Madonna and Child. To the kernel of our ethics. Revealed through aesthetic contemplation.

Take what is for Hegel the ‘most perfect subject’ of Romantic art, of the religious feeling and the Idea, given sensuous expression through the work of art, the Madonna and Child, writing in his Lectures on Aesthetics,

“As the most perfect subject for painting I have already specified inwardly satisfied [reconciled and peaceful] love, the object of which is not a purely spiritual ‘beyond’ but is present, so that we can see love itself before us in what is loved. The supreme and unique form of this love is Mary’s love for the Christ-child, the love of the one mother who has borne the Saviour of the world and carries him in her arms. This is the most beautiful subject to which Christian art in general, and especially painting in its religious sphere, has risen. The love of God, and in particular the love of Christ who sits at’ the right hand of God, is of a purely spiritual kind. The object of this love is visible only to the eye of the soul, so that here there is strictly no question of that duality which love implies, nor is any natural bond established between the lovers or any linking them together from the start. On the other hand, any other love is accidental in the inclination of one lover for another, or,’ alternatively, the lovers, e.g. brothers and sisters or a father in his love for his children, have outside this relation other concerns with an essential claim on them. Fathers or brothers have to apply themselves to the world, to the state, business, war, or, in short, to general purposes, while sisters become wives, mothers, and so forth.

But in the case of maternal love it is generally true that a mother’s love for her child is neither something accidental just a single feature in her life, but, on the contrary, it is her supreme vocation on earth, and her natural character and most sacred calling directly coincide. But while other loving mothers see and feel in their child their husband and their inmost union with him, in Mary’s relation to her child this aspect is always absent. For her feeling has nothing in common with a wife’s love for her husband; on the contrary, her relation to Joseph is more like a sister’s to a brother, while on Joseph’s side there is a secret awe of the child who is God’s and Mary’s. Thus religious love in its fullest and most intimate human form we contemplate not in the suffering and risen Christ or in his lingering amongst his friends but in the person of Mary with her womanly feeling. Her whole heart and being is human love for the child that she calls her own, and at the same time adoration, worship, and love of God with whom she feels herself at one. She is humble in God’s sight and yet has an infinite sense of being the one woman who is blessed above all other virgins. She is not self-subsistent on her own account, but is perfect only in her child, in God, but in him she is satisfied and blessed, whether. at the manger or as the Queen of Heaven, without passion or longing, without any further need, without any aim other than to have and to hold what she has..”

For the Philosopher-as-Aesthete the “sensuous appearance of the ideal” is realized in Raphael’s Sistine Madonna… that the sublime expression of Humanity is the unconditional love shared between a mother and her child and the awe this provokes in the observer. The love it inspires.

It is a love that does not require empathic knowledge but is rather at peace if not outright generated by Joseph's realization that he can never truly understand the bond between the One and the Other.

The child might not even be his. In fact if the angel is to be believed then He isn't. The worker weeps softly. He loves them. He doesn't know why, that much he understands.

This is Absolute Knowledge.

To think. I find Hegel is generous to those who are willing to think. Think through it.

Though I like how Klages elucidates this principle in the essay titled On Ethics. He just cuts straight to the point when he writes.

"Love- in the broadest meaning of the word - entails reverence, admiration, and adoration: indeed, every type of heart-felt recognition that is warm and true, which can be evoked only by the beloved. The eternal icon that illustrates the soul's guide is embodied in the mother with the beloved child. The soul's examples are gods, poets, and heroes. The soul participates in the advent of the heroes when it delights in their shining shapes. And if you do not find that wonder, love, and example are flourishing within you, then is your own inner life that is impoverished and no guide of the soul has the power to enrich you."

I'm to much of a libtard to acquiesce to that last sentence. Sometimes Klages gets flustered with those he perceives as not getting it. It's pretty common. Personally I read the finality of his proclamation as an example of pessimism. "If you don't get it, you probably won't get it." You sometimes have to understand that some people will simply never look at the World the way we do. In fact no one looks at the World exactly like you. Still, Klages gets flustered and it's ugly when he does.

You know what's really spooky Mommy issues are spooky. Super. Seeing your parents getting older. That's terrifying. Not knowing if you will see them next Halloween but knowing that you always will, especially on Halloween. So remember. Momento Mori.

My issue is that I've fallen in love with my doom. My death.

This animal frightens me. Panic. I've been too primal. And it's starting to get old. I need to get out of here. Need to get responsible.

Why did I feel so angry at my mom? Why am I being such a dick?

I need to stop being such a dickhead.

Guess it's just sleep deprivation and anxiety. Urgh. What a disaster.

I haven't always been this impoverished.

Need to meditate on the Sacred Heart of Mary. On her Seven Sorrows. I need stare at some icons and recite some passages. Let the rosary set the grooves and the boundaries.

It's frightening. To notice what a fool I've been.

I don't know. My God I don't know.

I appreciate the way we write into one another. I find that it serves as a kind of safety net. Witnessing Charity in real time.

Constant feedback is fucking terrifying. Till you get your rhythm. Right? Swaying our hips. Baby we should invest in salsa classes. It's unnerving. But it's incredible. Absolutely Blessed. Just you...kind of discomfiting.

My first Halloween as a 30 year old... Thinking about this stuff. Writing about it. Reading about it. Studying. In my way.

Still. I must confess to you lovely. That I have genuinely lacked in the reciprocity department. I feel like it's never enough. It's overwhelming. But my God. The net is wide. Good winds blowing on my sails. Those Sirens turned out to be pretty cool, they just had to be informed that you're cool. That you're off-limits. That works up to a point.

Yet here we are. Science.

I realize that I need some Survival 101 remedial type course. Some..."Okay so lets look at the damage." But I'm scared. I'm really scared.

I don't know how I can turn stuff around. And I've been told. But it doesn't sink in. I think I don't let it and sometimes it feels like I don't have a choice on whether or not I get to let it or keep it.

Maybe. Achilles was just using his beloved as an excuse. The reality was that he was terrified of growing old. Of not dying in battle. That's understandable. Still I want to see them grow old. And I am and it's fucking scary. I'm failing as a son... Happy Post-Halloween.

My God.

Listen the only powder I will ever blow in your face. Are the finally burnt ashes, burnt white, called Salt. Of 1000 love poems made with you in mind. Just what do you think this is.

Look. I know. You and I started off on... a weird footing. Anyone can see. This is wild.

So I consulted Schopenhauer and my suggestion to you couch comfy 33 year old woman is to go outside and play with my younger relatives while the men talk. Baby why don't you go entertain the kids. Recite for them some folktales, teach em some geography facts, play tag, do cartwheels, talk to them about Jesus and Mary and the acacia tree. Go on then woman, go frolic in the garden with the children, it will improve your mood. Go on.

They cannot be burdened.

We can't help but notice the decay. The recliner is drenched. Signs of water damage everywhere. Don't worry, I got this, I'll talk to the management. You and I aren't walking out of this place without a refund. I might need some coaching and/or back-up but you know, just wait around the corner, if you see things are going bad or going really really good, come in and understand that the jig is up. You're having to show face. Why can't it just be easier for us.

That Softness of Bodies poem was a winner in my book. Imagine being willing to sacrifice people like that, to the Art-Machine.

Anyways. For whatever it's worth. I'm sorry but thank you.

So... Girard's Christianity is in my opinion, Nietzsche's Christianity, what Nietzsche considers true Christianity. Don't complain. A man's attitude goes a long way in determining the course of his life. Right?

Check out the following aphorisms from Will to Power,

"163.

Jesus bids us:—not to resist, either by deeds or in our heart, him who ill-treats us;

He bids us admit of no grounds for separating ourselves from our wives;

He bids us make no distinction between foreigners and fellow-countrymen, strangers and familiars;

He bids us show anger to no one, and treat no one with contempt;—give alms secretly; not to desire to become rich;—not to swear;—not to stand in judgment;—become reconciled with our enemies and forgive offences;—not to worship in public.

"Blessedness" is nothing promised: it is here, with us, if we only wish to live and act in a particular way."

and

"167.

Christianity is an ingenuous attempt at bringing about a Buddhistic movement in favour of peace, sprung from the very heart of the resenting masses ... but transformed by Paul into a mysterious pagan cult, which was ultimately able to accord with the whole of State organisation... and which carries on war, condemns, tortures, conjures, and hates.

Paul bases his teaching upon the need of mystery felt by the great masses capable of religious emotions: he seeks a victim, a bloody phantasmagoria, which may be equal to a contest with the images of a secret cult: God on the cross, the drinking of blood, the unio mystica with the "victim."

He seeks the prolongation of life after death (the blessed and atoned after-life of the individual soul) which he puts in causal relation with the victim already referred to (according to the type of Dionysos, Mithras, Osiris).

He feels the necessity of bringing notions of guilt and sin into the foreground, not a new practice of life (as Jesus Himself demonstrated and taught), but a new cult, a new belief, a belief in a miraculous metamorphosis ("Salvation" through belief).

He understood the great needs of the pagan worlds and he gave quite an absolutely arbitrary picture of those two plain facts, Christ's life and death. He gave the whole a new accent, altering the equilibrium everywhere ... he was one of the most active destroyers of primitive Christianity.

The attempt made on the life of priests and theologians culminated, thanks to Paul, in a new priesthood and theology—a ruling caste and a Church.

The attempt made to suppress the fussy importance of the "person," culminated in the belief in the eternal "personality" (and in the anxiety concerning "eternal salvation" ...), and in the most paradoxical exaggeration of individual egoism.

This is the humorous side of the question—tragic humour: Paul again set up on a large scale precisely what Jesus had overthrown by His life. At last, when the Church edifice was complete, it even sanctioned the existence of the State."

I don't know. Probably.

The most frightening Halloween of all, without you by my side.

Rose Emoji.

Listen. At least, $500s a month.

I don't want to lose this. Wonder if you've ever felt that. I'm terrified of losing this.

Lets see. Maybe I should pick up drinking for poetic inspiration.

Ecstatic. Static-bolts right to the heart. Right into the eyes. Just all over.

Snap yourself into a rhythm. Bellow something that harmonizes the air. Structures out of the Sea of Ghosts.

Notes on Mentally Girarded,

Anna mentions how the one thing that the Rightwing gets right is that History is falsified in order to convey a Progressive narrative. Christ as divine sacrifice emerges through text and retrospective. The other is that the "General Model" that stereotypes provides an opening through which we can arrive at Truth.

So on the one hand the realization that History has been falsified and on the other that stereotypes are important devices in our search for truth. Like the shadows on cave walls, like archetypes and metaphysics, like art... is the meeting places. These is where we play, through the desolate streets of Alexandria.

Question of language and translation. Tension between the Poetic Metaphor and the Prosaic Neologism. In our immediate work we always risk discarding the former in order to rid ourselves of the latter. Banish the phantoms, displace the gods. Run the risk of cultivating a horrific, shitty, middling writing style. The very thing Nietzsche was criticizing when he'd criticize the neologism and the manner in which the neologism was employed by the Hegelians of his time. To understand this criticism you have to have some passing familiarity with the thick arcane prose of the German philosophers of Nietzsche's time. Is it not, ultimately, a critique of style? Specifically of a style that obfuscates rather than clarifies and one which is peculiar to the German language itself. To the German peoples who constantly suppress the sores of their passion beneath thick timorous paragraphs. Covering up is not necessarily the same as treating. Sometimes the wound needs air, that in the darkness of composite words, sigils interlocking. It's a lot. German is a lot.

I often find the German caricatured as "Autistic" or "Utilitarian" and this is part of it surely. One that has been developed in full, not in Germany but rather than England. German language precision is a question of composition. Rarely is the single sentence ever enough. The word gives way to a sentence gives way to a paragraph gives way to the 500 page tome. 3 Volume set. Poetically grasping at precision creating a prosaic cacophony. Bind-rune mentality.

German is a bit demanding. As Mark Twain notes in his essay The Awful German Language,

"There are ten parts of speech, and they are all troublesome. An average sentence, in a German newspaper, is a sublime and impressive curiosity; it occupies a quarter of a column; it contains all the ten parts of speech--not in regular order, but mixed; it is built mainly of compound words constructed by the writer on the spot, and not to be found in any dictionary--six or seven words compacted into one, without joint or seam--that is, without hyphens; it treats of fourteen or fifteen different subjects, each enclosed in a parenthesis of its own, with here and there extra parentheses, making pens with pens: finally, all the parentheses and reparentheses are massed together between a couple of king-parentheses, one of which is placed in the first line of the majestic sentence and the other in the middle of the last line of it--AFTER WHICH COMES THE VERB, and you find out for the first time what the man has been talking about; and after the verb--merely by way of ornament, as far as I can make out--the writer shovels in "HABEN SIND GEWESEN GEHABT HAVEN GEWORDEN SEIN," or words to that effect, and the monument is finished. I suppose that this closing hurrah is in the nature of the flourish to a man's signature--not necessary, but pretty. German books are easy enough to read when you hold them before the looking-glass or stand on your head--so as to reverse the construction--but I think that to learn to read and understand a German newspaper is a thing which must always remain an impossibility to a foreigner."

Noting how German is a language which lends itself to enchantment in its particularities. A single sentence in German unfurls,

"There are some German words which are singularly and powerfully effective. For instance, those which describe lowly, peaceful, and affectionate home life; those which deal with love, in any and all forms, from mere kindly feeling and honest good will toward the passing stranger, clear up to courtship; those which deal with outdoor Nature, in its softest and loveliest aspects--with meadows and forests, and birds and flowers, the fragrance and sunshine of summer, and the moonlight of peaceful winter nights; in a word, those which deal with any and all forms of rest, repose, and peace; those also which deal with the creatures and marvels of fairyland; and lastly and chiefly, in those words which express pathos, is the language surpassingly rich and affective. There are German songs which can make a stranger to the language cry. That shows that the SOUND of the words is correct--it interprets the meanings with truth and with exactness; and so the ear is informed, and through the ear, the heart."

Distended into a book. The impression one gets from the outside, as a non-German speaker... is of something very meticulous and precise, but this is an a form congealed only by the outsiders gaze. Understanding this quality of the German language reveals the Logic of Hegel's System and reveals to us the importance of Heidegger's thinking. Disclosure conceals.

Here is the site of Agonism. Where Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and Marx launch their respective assaults on the Edifice of the time-bound Hegelians. Disclosure conceals and concealment discloses. The philosopher produces an intellectual history, declares it Universal History. What is in fact concealed with the intellectual history, what makes it Universal, is militaristic and economic. Our earliest grammar is indistinguishable from a numerical system. Words and numbers, one and the same, or more accurately; one and the other. Our earliest writings were representations of commodities. The accountant's ledger. Writing is after all, a plebeian activity. They noticed the gap. While the Hegelians continually attempted to generate words in order to obfuscate it. Cowardice on the one hand and eroticism on the other.

Anna articulates a point-of-view often associated with the Right. History has been falsified in order to both produce or generate and legitimize the current regime. It can do this because it is informed by a theological error. We are moving through time and space, this motion is "progressive" which is good. That is that its end-result isn't our collective murder-suicide. That is, from this perspective a harmful manner of situating the generations in Time. This is the Production of History.

Going back to Schopenhauer, his thoughts on suicide and aesthetics and women, provides a fascinating way of thinking through this.

"Schopenhauer you say? So you've familiarized yourself with Aaron Schopenhauer."

"I'm overtly familiar with Schopenhauer."

"Then you'd have corrected me one would think, seeing as you're chopping on the bits to stunt."

Anyways, this line caught my eye from Schopenhauer's essay On Suicide,

"It therefore seems that the extraordinary zeal in opposing it displayed by the clergy of monotheistic religions - a zeal which is not supported by the Bible or by any cogent reasons - must have some hidden reason behind it: may this not be that the voluntary surrender of life is an ill compliment to him who said that all things were very good? If so, it is another instance of the obligatory optimism of these religions, which denounces self-destruction so as not to be denounced by it."

Killing yourself in order to spite Hegel, the Communist Party, my critic, and our fickle Desiderata. Suicide is bourgeois and reactionary. Shockingly contagious, especially amongst women. So I tread lightly. Still Suicide is ala Hillman, a very apt metaphor. What is contamination if not an instance of some Sympathetic Principle at work.

Crunch the numbers motherfucker you know I'm right.

Is Sanctification akin to Fermentation?

We have Subjectivity. We have Psyche. We experience lack.

History is Artifice. A vast necropolis or a museum. It is a magical field. Representational. Anima. History is the Idea revealed and actualized. The why. So when talking about the "falsification of history" is the falsification of the falsification. The Copy of Copy. Our Reality. Are you so clear-sighted that you can clearly discern the gaps between the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real. Maybe it's a question of position, one of astrology.

Why do you think I privilege Hegel in my work? Declare him the Last Hermes.

The aperture's proximity is a trauma. We've bonded over this, I think.

I think BAP does a genuinely great job of describing this perspective in Bronze Age Mindset. In a very concise way that I found really inspired me to engage with it. Sympathetic, our work syncopates. Our passions.

Reminded of this passage from BAM,

"If Nietzsche believed such things, he would have never put them under his own name or said them openly - but, could it be, then when he says that Plato is unGreek, that he really means precisely this? Was Plato, or at least many of the works of Plato, the invention of a Byzantine polymath, or of a Benedictine?"

I think our answer to that is the Florentine Marsilio Ficino, a favorite of Cosimo de’ Medici and the luminary of Medici’s circle of scholars and wizards, who as part of Medici's retinue got to attend the sessions held at the Council of Florence that had been dedicated to reconciling Latin and Byzantine Christendoms. It was there he had become acquainted with the Byzantine Neoplatonic philosophers that had tagged along with the representatives of Eastern-Orthodox Christendom. The Florentine Humanists found themselves thoroughly impressed by the Byzantine philosophers. The successful Conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 marked the culminating event of the Byzantine empire’s fall. In the seismic waves produced cannon fire and collapsing walls a tidal flux Byzantine refugees entered into Italy including a number of the Byzantine lecturers the Florentine scholars had befriended. They brought with them numerous philosophical texts that had been, up until that point unavailable in the West. One of the refugees John Argyopolous besides bringing with him and translating into Latin Aristotle’s De Anima, De Caelo, Nicomachean Ethics, and Physics, had also become Ficino’s primary instructor in the Greek language and the literature. Cosimo de’ Medici would go on to patronize the ‘refounding’ of Plato’s Academy in Florence with Ficino at the head with Ficino being commissioned by Cosimo de’ Medici to translate the works of Plato into Latin. Before that point in time, if one had wanted to engage with the works of Plato and the Platonic Corpus, one either had to learn Greek or else be confined to the translated fragments contained within the Latin commentaries on commentaries produced by other scholars.

Hegel mentions Marsilio Ficino briefly, very briefly, in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy. In the section dedicated to Medieval Philosophy. It’s almost a throw away line.

“There were also Platonists. Cardinal Bessarion, who had been patriarch in Constantinople and had come there from Trebizond, made Plato better known in the West. Ficino in Florence then translated Plato. The Medici were patrons of the arts and sciences, and attracted Greek scholars to their court; one of them founded a Platonic Academy headed by Ficino.”

That’s all I’ve managed to find thus far in my studies. Hegel notes that Ficino translated some Plato and he had an academy in Florence patronized by the Medici family. That’s about it. Where it gets very interesting is when we come to the knowledge that Hegel owned copies of Ficino’s Latin translations of Plato and of Plotinus.

Paul Oskar Kriseller writes in The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino,

“Ficino continued to exercise a subtle and anonymous influence through his translations and commentaries. Everyone who read Plato and Plotinus in Latin absorbed, along with the ideas of these ancient thinkers, many ideas that actually belonged to their Renaissance interpreter.”

Hegel’s Plato is Ficino’s.

Denis J.-J. Robichaud provides the following summary of Ficino’s impact in his work Plato’s Personae,

"Ficino, in other words, appropriated a variety of ancient traditions for interpreting Plato rather than simply adopting a single particular guide. Despite never achieving his goal of producing a grand edition of Plato's work organized according to his specific hermeneutical designs, Ficino in his prosopopoeic approach cuts across his reading of the entire corpus. There are certainly precedents for this method in antiquity, but there are no identifiable interpreters among the ancients who could serve as precedents for Ficino's precise identification of the Laws, Epinomis, and the Letters as a group of works in which Plato speaks in his own persona, or for Ficino's habit of associating this kind of reading with the tripartite categorization of species of dialogic characters or with the Neoplatonic triad of conversion, procession, and remaining. It also becomes apparent that this hermeneutical strategy stood behind many of Ficino's Platonic letters studied in the previous chapter. These letters at times refute the sophistries of his day (which Ficino often identifies as impiety, cynicism, Epicureanism, and Cyrenaic philosophy, as well as Averroism and excessive Alexandrist interpretations of Aristotle), they frequently exhort the youth to turn to Platonic philosophy, and finally they aim at unifying his epistolary interlocutors qua Platonic persons with the divine."

In short Hegel’s Plato, our Plato, is Ficino. Arising out of his translations and his commentaries.

Ficino’s error according to Hegel is in the repetition of Plato’s lack. What distinguishes Plato’s Dialectics from Hegel’s.

“The ancients in their pure Philosophy had not the same end in view as we — they had not the end of a metaphysical sequence placed before them like a problem. We, on the other hand, have something concrete before us, and desire to reduce it to settled order. With Plato Philosophy offers the path which the individual must follow in order to attain to any knowledge, but, generally speaking, Plato places absolute and explicit happiness, the blessed life itself, in the contemplation during life of the divine objects named above.’ This contemplative life seems aimless, for the reason that all its interests have disappeared. But to live in freedom in the kingdom of thought had become the absolute end to the ancients, and they knew that freedom existed only in thought.”

It is Ficino and his Commentary on Plato’s Symposium on Love. That has given to us our very conception of Platonic Love which is synonymous with Christian Love. This is the basis of Ficino’s Theory of Love and his Ethics. This is our Plato. Ficino accomplishes the Augustinian task of sublating philosophy into Christianity. The Christian or Romantic revision of the Hero. Christian Love as a new kind of Heroic Love. The martyr overcomes the aerial daemons. Justina overcomes the sorcerous Cyprian, with the sign of the cross his enchantments are broken, Cyprian converts to Christianity. There is an unconsummated love between them. Only through Christian asceticism can they truly love one another. Together they are martyred. United in Heaven as Saints. For the Christian, matrimony is a concession, the highest sacrament is ordination.

Plato-Ficino defines love as the desire for beauty. Love originates with God. It is the binding agent that holds all things in common. Beautiful things ignite the heart. Inspire the soul with love. We have eyes in order to be able to perceive what is Beautiful. When an individual thing is loved, the soul ascends progressively from the particular to the universal. The lover, therefore, turns inwardly to the soul from the corporeal world, and thus ultimately finds its end in God. However, it is possible for the soul to love improperly and become fixated on beautiful objects. This results in a life of confusion and wretchedness. Thus, for Ficino, the appropriate reception and transmission and dwelling-in of love is at the heart of happiness and good health.

As Diotima taught Socrates. The Highest kind of Love is Love of Knowledge that begets the Knowledge of Beauty. The Recognition of a Universal Beauty. Love of the Universal. This is revealed through Christianity to be the Love of God and God’s Love for us. that God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son.

Ficino in his commentary notes the parallels established between Diotima’s description of Eros and Alcibiades’ description of Socrates.

The fates are our witnesses. That's what so interesting about Socrates quoting Diotima, differing to Diotima, serving as her medium and her message. He is speaking on behalf of Fate who is Necessity. She witnesses us and inscribes into her tapestry or removes altogether or casts us as some kind of deformed freak. But I am her freak. He is also yours but you chose to ignore it. You chose to close your heart to it. You have only ever met it as an enemy.

Jesus wept.

Texts have to be critically and creatively engaged with. Not all of us are capable of adapting ourselves to other sea levels, other planes, other Kingdoms. We bare witness, when?Low to the ground.

Some retreat it and establish other defenses with distance and experiential knowledge. Recorded. Notice the repetition. Pacing in our whole.

Is sanctification another way of saying fermentation? If so behold the perpetual drunkard of the spirit. What a fucking douchebag. I want that guy or woman. Wu-man or Wy-man, Wyrd... you see it right, listen I speaking here future, accelerate, accelerate, catch up old man. That's the site of the psychic duel. They tend to handle themselves very well.

What I'm saying is. I can't see how? I cannot be terrified of my wife. But I can't show fear. Because if I do. She might kill me. Like a spider, razzle-dazzling my way into your heart. You're scary.

Happy Halloween. I think it's okay to be a little scared of women and to find scariness a positive trait. Familiarity is inevitable. What does it mean to bind yourself to such familiarity. No matter what. No matter the humiliation. We are flesh and we will rot away and money won't stop that. Neither will women. Neither will God. Not anytime soon at least. And even then. Is it worth it? Why carry that load? Why not discard it?

Israel the Faustian. The discrepancy is obvious.

A degree less ridiculous than Rastafari’s settling in Ethiopia and proceeding to receive the financing and armament and training needed to re-shape Ethiopia in their image, to their fantastical specifications. When the fact remains that perhaps no one living on Earth confronts this grand disparity of the human condition, of our status as perpetual exiles, as those Rastafari who actually did move to Ethiopia or to the opposite coast, to Ghana or Benin or Nigeria (the homeland of most of their actual ancestors).

Brings to mind the comical animosities I’ve observed between Cuban (regardless of race) adherents of the Ifa-Orisha traditions and the ethnically Yoruba neo-Pentecostals. Greater animosity still when they encounter an ethnically Yoruba adherent of traditional Ifa practices who promotes themselves as being “purer” thanks to being the descendants of the people who weren’t sold and who in fact, had done the conquering and the selling.

Obi for them is not the coconut but the kola nut. Iroko is not the Ceiba (Silkcotton Tree) but the Baobab. And the Orisha that the adherent has crowned on their head is not a question confined to the idiosyncrasies of mantic investigation but is rather one grounded in the polis and the shrine, question of geography rather than of astrology and geomancy. Still, many things survived in Cuba that did not survive in Nigeria, many things survived in Brazil that didn’t survive in Cuba. What remains, what developed, how we confront the question of legitimation. What unites is us actually much subtler.

The animosity conceals a recognition. An affection.

What remains between us.

Still in the market we are competing. And your similarity makes you my enemy. You aren’t different enough.

Facebook mimesis or sacral contamination.

Suddenly everyone is talking about the same thing. I saw this a lot on Facebook in relation to occultism and spirituality. One sorcerer becomes a devotee of Santa Muerte... suddenly, everyone becomes a devotee of Santa Muerte. And they're genuinely convinced that they've been called by this force to serve as devotees. They start learning Spanish, studying Mexican and Iberian folklore and customs, engage in a kind of aesthetics based competition on social media. Then suddenly it shifts to Khmer Sorcery. A few months later to some obscure Afro-Trinidadian Kabbalah with Trinidadian Hindu Kali Ma in the mix. Then, to some devotional practices dedicated to some saints that are upheld in a small Mediterranean. Then to the translation of a grimoire and to textual analysis and commentaries surrounding it and the translation of the commentary and the commentary of the translated commentary and the blog posts written by people adapting the work and experimenting with it. Then, back to something pertaining to Tibetan Bön and like that. Sharing stylish pictures of their shrines and their sorceries and detailing their practices and the perceived impact of said practices. If the results are good, all the better. If the results are bad, they open themselves up to criticism and change some things up in their practice. What works is good and what doesn't is bad. Magic is pragmatic, mimetic, and surreal. We might look at that and see mimesis at work along with confirmation bias or some gestalt principle. Retroactively fixing certain events into our Body. Declaring, "I have always been the caretaker."

And perhaps they had been called. Perhaps there are Forces at Work.

Israel. The only thing that legitimizes it is the fact that it is. Spilt blood and buried bones.

The realities of those who continue living and working and loving and hating and fighting and fucking and struggling in Israel. Generation after generation. Their existence taking precedence over the existence of others.

Two-heads springing forth from a single body. Gnawing at the others cheek.

The perpetual nightmare reveals to much. About our present condition.

No amount of slaughtered people, pictures of blood coagulating dark on floor-tiles and echoes of decapitated babies, will change the fact that Israel is evil in its inception, which makes sense, which makes the gnostic stance enticing for the disgruntled children of Zionists. The Seed of the State is the grave. The architectonics of the tomb taking into consideration public health concerns. The cairn, and the unmarked grave a pit with corpses piled one on-top of the other.

With each discovery. The Nation-Thing congeals. Before Lenin was there a Ukraine? Yes, as a potential gestating independent in the fantasies of her Romantic Poets, a patchwork composition defined by folk and linguistic particularities, spatial considerations, physiognomic differences, etc… An impression in the Empire. The infrastructure of modernity entombed within the mythologized trauma and poetry and custom. The three holy nails of the Ukrainian body politic; the famine, the nuclear meltdown, the invasion. The nails ground the Ukrainian volkgeist into the world, through these wounds Ukraine is canalized. The romantic poet with retrospect served as an augur.

This is something I observe throughout the former Soviet/Socialist Republics with some noticeable exceptions. In the Baltic states. In Poland, political Catholicism is absolutely concretized by memories of martyrdom. Academics and activists and artists working overtime to transform ambiguous historical events into clear-cut examples of willful malice, of atrocities that justify a public turning against the more recent past in favor of an idealized one. In the process obscuring the origin of roads and sewers and bathhouses and water treatment plants and hospitals and powerplants, the Russians (and the “might as well be Russians” of the Pro-Soviet Polish Partisans, now demonized as collaborators) transformed into Giants. In his diaries Goebbels wrote, “Unfortunately, German ammunition has been found in the graves at Katyn… It is essential that this incident remains top secret. If it were to come to the knowledge of the enemy the whole Katyn affair would have to be dropped.”

Still..

Everyone responded in a manner indicating some guilt, some shame, over a mysterious corpse-stuffed pit. Those were people. Maybe the Russians did do it. Barbarism. Pure barbarism. That’s undeniable. Which legitimizes the profound animosity felt by people experiencing the ennui, deep melancholy, annoyance with the bureaucracies and being the subjects of bureaucracies, strangled by the Immortal Science’s logic when I’d rather be crucified. The hypocrisy, the tattle-tales and busy-bodies, the interrogated, the surveilled, the disappeared. The inauthenticity in the day-to-day indistinguishable from political theater. Nothing will ever change. An atrocity is a great thing to fallback on when regret begins to seep in and you begin to feel like a fool. There can be no ambiguities or apologies. For the Nation-State to come into existence it must be heralded by blood bellowing accusations from the earth.

If there is none, invent one. Exhuming and desecrating corpses like they did in Romania in order to legitimize regime change and execute Ceausescu both husband and wife. Giorgio Agamben saw this event as one that collapsed Auschwitz and the Reichstag fire into a singularity. Writing in Means without Ends,

“For the first time in the history of humankind, corpses that had just been buried or lined up on the morgue’s tables were hastily exhumed and tortured in order to stimulate, in front of the video cameras, the genocide that legitimized the new regime. What the entire world was watching live on television, thinking it was the real truth, was in reality the absolute non-truth; and, although the falsification appeared to be sometimes quite obvious, it was nevertheless legitimized as true by the media’s world system, so that it would be clear that the true was, by now, nothing more than a moment within the necessary movement of the false.”

There is a gap between the reality of an atrocity and its representation and how that representation is then inscribed and politicized. Inscribed or actualized into the Symbolic-Legal Order. Not only will you be shamed, not only will opportunities be taken away from you, but you might very well face jail time. Try to question the Atrocity enshrined in any Post-Soviet Republic. Seemingly, it is rape all the way down and we are its by-blows. Tragic mulattoes, obligatory Christians.

The side capable of convincingly shaming others is the winner. The individual succumbing and conceding is not the goal. What matters is that everyone else, the God-Audience, recognizes that you are a shameful thing peddling impiety and inequity. A social liability. Spoiled goods devalued.

Is it really that shocking to note that this approach, what we have incentivized and monetized and fetishized, has made collective suicide our only viable solution? Our species like Israel and Constantinople is cursed. Born by the radiations of an inauspicious star. It has made our collective fate palpable. The cope of deserving it. Still a form of narcissism.

The production of martyrs. Paint vivid images of our enemies burning in hell. Deserving to burn in hell. Slitting their throats before giving them a chance to mutter a prayer. Which side gets to relish grotesque with no consequence and which side gets punished for doing the same? Resentment festers in the browbeaten and the canceled.

Lacan in Discourse to Catholics writes, "I love myself insofar as I essentially misrecognize myself." What we misrecognize ourselves as, this Gestalt or Ideal Form. Some Platonic Vagabond, dignified by lack. Or a Slave ready to enact righteous vengeance. It isn't flattering.

Behold the falsification of History in order to legitimize a Progressive narrative. The Nation-State a Pastiche-Christ. Possibly Anti-Christ. Probably. The heirs of a proud tradition of Martyrdom and Sacrifice invites the other to visit atrocities upon the children.

The Zionists have made Jews of the Palestinians and they’ve all transformed into Christians. People of the Book. Hold hands and rejoice in the darkening of the sun.

Palestine like Ukraine had existed as a Nation in its regional particularities, reflected and refracted through the Poet’s elegy to his fellows, to his beloved, to God’s Creation, and the glittering particularities. Contained within the Ottoman Empire, decaying, Byzantium’s bedazzled bones burning bright ivory underneath the rot.

What can I do? Don’t be so convinced this social media thing will help. Why are you shaming me? Observing closely. Does it help you feel like you’re doing something? It hurts? Your gaze. Burning into the nape of my neck. You justify my suffering. Not with you. Always with you. My friend, beloved Saracen my wailing is an inadequate salve. I an inadequate medium. Will this grief console you? Let us wail together then. The consolation of a reminder, of sighs intertwining. Who will understand? Not now. We often don’t.

The internet. They had thought it constituted a form of radical decentralization. The coup de grace. Against petty nationalisms. What it has done is reveal in real time through its duplicate nature, as the Spirit is a duplicate of the Soul, its mechanisms. Its logic. Ours.

What remains?

Do you see it? How we’ve turned the betrayal and the cruelty into the greatest gift we could give to the person we love? The greatest gift I’ve been given. The initiation. That has granted me a coveted status. That has shifted my focus away from the wrongs I’ve wrought. These hands stained. Marking a cross on your forehead and on the nape of your neck. To protect you against miasma and the other’s burning gaze.

My neighbor, my curse.

You wronged me.

It is touching that for a moment you confused me with God. There is only one. With a whole host of inadequate mediums.

I don’t want to see their faces or learn their names. Shall I cross myself. Burn a candle? Perform unfamiliar rites to mediate the effects of the ghosts you’ve infected me with. Necromancers, all of you. Treating the dead like rats released in a McDonalds. Revealing a chronic inability to properly mourn. Ah, it’s because you’ve been denied the ability to perform the appropriate funerary rites.

I don’t know what to tell you.

I don’t have money to give. How vindictive you become. Would you like me to spread this infectious haunting.

Shamed and riled up. Slut-shame this Callicles, watch him transform into Plato. Our distance is our humanity. The Rasta living in Ghana is a better Zionist than the founders of Israel.

The problem with getting swept up by wartime propaganda, is that you end up throwing your weight behind ethnic cleansing and the potential annihilation of all life on earth. “Is that the risk you’re willing to take in order to win, to definitively and unambiguously Win?” became the defining stance of all modern politics, from the smallest to the largest and back to the smallest. It’s very easy to shame the one willing to respond in the affirmative.

Back to Diotima the Prophetess. She had gained great notoriety after saving the City of Athens through the reception and performance of the correct or effective sacrificial rites.

Over the course of my studies I've found myself consulting time and again to The Three Books of Occult Philosophy by Agrippa, in the chapter Of sacrifices and oblations, and their kinds and manners we find myriad of examples of sacrificial practices documented and reflected upon.

"There was in times past amongst the gentiles the sacrifice of expiation, by the which cities were purged from famine, pestilence, or some horrible calamity; whose rites were to search out the most wicked man in that city, and to lead him to the place appointed carrying in his hands a cheese and wafers and dry figs; afterwards to whip him seven times with rods, and then to burn him to ashes with the same rods, and to cast the ashes into the sea; of these Lycophron and Hipponax make mention; neither doth Philostratus relate things much different from these, concerning Apollonius of Tyana while he chased away the pestilence from Ephesus."

I wonder if the prophetess Diotima did anything of the sort in order to appease and expel the plague that had drifted into Athens. Perhaps Socrates had been offered up without his knowing. Coy, he quotes Diotima's description of Eros as Philosopher. Not realizing that Diotima had marked him for death. She recognized Socrates, identified him as the sacrifice needed to save the City-State. A child of plenty and of lack, barefoot daemon, exemplar, head of the table, rugged and pagan and eloquent. Never drunk. Shameless. Always drunk. Always high. Always with his heads in clouds with the grass as his pillow. The most wicked man of Athens. The most holy man. A great freak of nature. One must consider the possibility that Diotima's recognition, as tends to be the case as far as it concerns the affection of woman, is a ruinous omen.

Having located the mutant. The one who confuses us. This daemon, this freak. Unto whom the lowest and the highest collapse, through which we are confronted by both. An Icon used to train our eyes, acclimating to the light and the shadow and to the greater spectrum of color. An Idol we find ourselves compelled to smash. This thing which has exposed us.

This thing must die.

Was it suicide? Or was it murder? Is the suicide angle apocryphal bullshit?

This is the question that I find myself confronted by while studying Girard. For now put aside Dionysus vs. The Crucified and consider instead Socrates vs. Christ. The Apostate Tragedian and the Rogue Dionysus. Two examples of the same type of Sacrifice. Embracing their fates and allow themselves to die, will themselves to be murder, who in effect grant us the mercy of the disavowal... "really he wanted to die. So if you think about it it was Suicide by Mob." Was it?

Affirming that indeed, "YES! Though it wasn't out of despair which makes it the good kind of suicide." Is as Greek as you can possibly get. Was this supposed to be the Messiah's fate? To be rejected, to be jeered, to be condemned, to be betrayed and tortured and humiliated and die. I thought the Retvrn of David was supposed to be a bad-ass Revolutionary Warrior-Poet destined to become the Philosopher-King of Jerusalem and the God-Emperor of the World... You see. We forget with our revision and retrospect, just how subversive Christ was.

The women bore witness. Standing before an empty tomb.

Ask them. Was it suicide? Or was he murdered?

What we must understand. The Philosopher emerges like a daemon, a seemingly sterile hybrid, between the Master-Citizen of the Polis and the Slave-Barbarian of the Country. Like Eros, a child of Prosperity and of Lack. This Split-Consciousness is what allows the Philosopher to begin to contemplate the Ideal. That Philosophy is born from a state of defeat, of the one who is ravaged rather than the one that ravages, and of the one who experiences unrequited love. The potential philosopher is one who is forced to turn inward, whose creative and vital energies are swallowed up into their person, those familiar with Nietzsche’s work will recognizes what this means. Philosophy is animated by Ressentiment and that the Philosopher’s Morality is the Morality of Slaves. The Classical Poet’s Hero is not a Stoic. They do not grin and bare it and suffer with dignity. They do not accept a death that they perceive to be unbecoming of their status. Achilles’ cries out to the gods in panicked indignation as he’s throttled by a river god. If he must die let it be at the hands of Hector. Earlier he curses his fellow Achaeans and delights in their losses, seething over Agammenon’s flex. None of these heroes would fight and die if they weren’t materially rewarded, glorified, and eulogized. The separateness of the hero is different from the alienation of the philosopher.

This is how I would describe Philosophy. Its origins. We will unveil that corpse soon enough. Put a pin on that, you thought I was just done thinking with Costin Alamariu? His thesis vindicates Girard and his reading of Nietzsche, and of Heidegger, and of the whole of the philosophical tradition.

Returning to Ficino, his philosophic legacy, the practices he cultivated and inspired in this revived Academy constituted a devotional, contemplative, and ethical meditation within Christianity, in service to the Christian Community. His meditations on The Symposium and more broadly on Eros or Love came from his own attempts to heal, or at the very least ameliorate, the deleterious effects of lust, fascination, and obsession. Of passionate love as affliction. One which the melancholic is predisposed too. The potential philosopher more often than not having a natural overabundance of the melancholy humour (this being a question of astrology, of the placement of Saturn within the person’s chart).

Let us reflect on the medieval medical literature concerning Love as an affliction or the illness called hereos and tie that in with the Christian redefinition of the word hero.

Doctor Bernard of Gordon furnishes future generations with the clearest description of this Accursed Love in the section of his Lilium medicinale titled De amore qui hereos dicitur.

“The illness called hereos is melancholy anguish caused by love for a woman.

The cause of this affliction lies in the corruption of the faculty to evaluate, due to a figure and a face that have made a very strong impression. When a man is in love with a woman, he thinks exaggeratedly of her figure, her face, her behavior, believing her to be the most beautiful, the most worthy of respect, the most extraordinary with the best build, in body and soul, that there can be. This is why he desires her passionately, forgetting all sense of proportion and common sense, and thinks that, if he could satisfy his desire, he would be happy. To so great an extent is his judgment distorted that he constantly thinks of the woman's figure and abandons all his activities so that, if someone speaks to him, he hardly hears him. And since this entails continuous contemplation, it can be defined as melancholy anguish. It is called hereos because noblemen and lords of the manor, because of plenty of pleasures and delights often were overcome by this affliction."

John Livingston Lowes in his 1914 The Loveres Maladye of Hereos, hypothesizes that the word hereos derives from a mistake in the Latin transcription of the Greek eros. Giorgio Agamben in his book Stanzas: Word and Phantasm in Western Culture disagrees,

“Lowes’s hypothesis, beyond its failure to explain the singularly bilingual term amor hereos, also disregards the explicit affirmations of the medical sources that invariably understand the term hereos through its association with herus (erus) or heros. The adjective heroycus found, among other places, in Arnaldo of Villanova, can only derive from this term. The semantic convergence of love and the hero, already found in an imaginary etymology from Plato’s Cratylus, where Socrates playfull derives the word hero (heros) from love (eros) “because the heroes are generated by Eros,” has been plausibly fulfilled in the context of a Neoplatonic rebirth of the popular cult of heroes and of theurgic demonology.”

In the same chapter Agamben goes on to quote Augustine Book 10, Chapter 21 De civitate Dei (The city of God),

‘“Hero” is said to be derived from the name of Juno. The Greek name of Juno is Hera, and that is why one or another of her sons was called Heros, according to Greek legend. This myth evidently signifies, though in cryptic fashion, that Juno is assigned the power over the air . . . Our martyrs, in contrast, would be called “heroes” if (as I said) the usage of the Church allowed it, not because of any association with the demons in the air, but as the conquerors of those demons, that is, of the “powers of the air.”’

You see, here is the source Agonism between Philosophy and Christianity. What we find in Girard expressed as the Johannine Logos vs. the Heraclitean logos.

Erotes and Cherubs getting into wild west shootouts and hooligan brawls in the streets and plazas of Alexandria. Artemis in her temple stirs. The moon spying upon us, ready to teach us who the greatest hunter truly is.

By the time of Ficino these conflicts had been sublimated to one extent or another within the Body of Theology. Girard would perhaps argue that throughout the History of Christendom this has never truly been the case, Christ as Scapegoat is after all, Christ-in-Exile. Still let us ground our reflections on our reception of Philosophy and the revelation of Science.

Of living in this world and desiring. That Beauty is of God and a means through which we might know God and His eternal love. God’s love is a given. The path is devotional and chaste. This is the cure. Philosophy remains a personal consolation for the student. Sexual passions are sublimated through the contemplation of God through Beauty. In Beauty, God. The potential philosopher during Ficino’s time and after, following in Ficino’s steps would’ve likely already taken vows of chastity, and received ordination into some clerical order.

What we find with Hegel’s completion of the Dialectic is the move from Love of Knowledge to the Knowledge of Love. An inceptual Return to Plato through Hegel would see us enter into conversation with Marsilio Ficino. Noting the sympathy and antipathy between his Theory of Love and Hegel’s Theory of Recognition. Hell, that might just turn into my life’s work.

Unlike Ficino and Mirandola, who remained nominally Catholic and within the current of Scholasticism, Giordano Bruno is the only one of the three who truly pushed Philosophy to its most radical conclusions. Outright rejecting Catholicism. With Bruno we witness the first genuine break in my opinion that occurs within Medieval Latin Christendom between Philosophy and Church Dogma, between the Philosopher and Ecclesial Authority, Bruno directs his thesis against Scholasticism, the current of Platonic-Aristotelian philosophy that developed within the Latin tradition, from St. Augustine to St. Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas.

Unlike Ficino and Mirandola, Hegel dedicates a whole section of his History of Philosophy to Giordano Bruno. Seeing him as a successor to Parmenides and the precursor to Spinoza. Bruno is a Pantheist.

Beginning from Desire as what makes us the Same. We cannot help but reflect upon Sympathy itself. And with Sympathy, the Doctrine of Sympathy.

Continuing with Agrippa's study of Sacrificial Rites,

"There were also amongst the Egyptians six hundred sixty six kinds of sacrifices; for they did appoint divine honors, and holy sacrifices to each star, and planet, because they were divine animals partaking of an intellectual soul and a divine mind; whence they say that the stars being humbly prayed unto, do hear our prayer, and bestow celestial gifts, not so much by any natural agreement, as by their own free will. And this is that which Iamblichus saith, that celestial bodies, and the deities of the world have certain divine and superior powers in themselves, as also natural and inferior, which Orpheus calls the keyes to open and shut; and that by those we are bound to the fatal influences, but by these to loose us from fate. Whence if any misfortune hang over anyone from Saturn, or from Mars, the magicians command that he must not forthwith fly to Jupiter, or Venus, but to Saturn or Mars themselves. So that Apuleian Psyche who was persecuted by Venus for equaling her in beauty, was forced to importune for favour, not from Ceres, or Juno but from Venus herself.

Now they did sacrifice to each star with the things belonging to them; to the Sun with solary things, and its animals, as a laurel tree, a cock, a swan, a bull; to Venus with her animals, as a dove, or turtle, and by her plants, as vervain; as Virgil sings:

----- water bring out with garlands soft, the altar round about compass, and burn fat boughs and frankincense that's strong and pure -----

Moreover the magicians when they made any confection either natural, or artificial, belonging to any star, this did they afterward religiously offer, and sacrifice to the same star, receiving not so much a natural virtue from the influence thereof being opportunely received, as by that religious oblation receiving it divinely confirmed and stronger. For the oblation of anything, when it is offered to God after a right manner, that thing is sanctified by God by the oblation as is a sacrifice, and is made part thereof."

Gastronomy and the doctrine of sympathy. Alchemy starting in the kitchen. Taking into account the particular tastes of the gods and daemons, preferences. The safest bets in terms of what sacrifices are prescribed. What materia is extracted from this sacral butchery? Each god relaying a message through the entrails of their preferred sacrifice, might likewise disincentive the collapsing of practices such as culling and the ritual sacrifice, an obviously sick animal offered to the gods will usher into the world steaming, negative augurs. Will call forth misfortune as much as warn against it. Different types of sacrifices and sacrificial rites. Sometimes the deities just want to eat. The act of feeding the gods strengthens their presence, blood has a binding effect. It coagulates. Here the offering canalizes the divine force and helps preserve the auric potencies of the cultic material and the community.

Yet it is this line, "For the oblation of anything, when it is offered to God after a right manner, that thing is sanctified by God by the oblation as is a sacrifice, and is made part thereof." Is this not History? The purpose of History? The retrospective and through it the redemption. The moment we discover that Christ lives in the whole of the Scriptures. Before and after His historical moment. In the beginning was the Word. The Revelation of Christ redeems the Whole of History. Provides an answer to Job.

Earlier in the piece Agrippa affirms the supremacy of the Christian sacrifice,

"But the true sacrifice, which purgeth any man, and uniteth him to God, is twofold; one which the high priest Christ offered for the remission of sins, purifying all things by the blood of his cross; the other, by the which a man offereth up himself clean, unspotted, for a living sacrifice to God, as Christ the high priest offered himself, and taught us to be offered together with him, as he was offered, saying of the sacrament of his body, and blood, do this in remembrance of me; viz, that we should offer ourselves together, being mortified by the passion of his mortal body, and quickened in spirit."

This is the reading Girard criticizes. Too Greek and too Jewish, all at once. The Historical Christianity that serves as the consensus we argue against in defense of the innocent.

After all, what is the Revelation of Christ if not a Revelation of Love.

What is Love?

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away." (1 Corinthians 13:4-8)

Sympathy and Suicide (through self-immolation no less). Returning to the figure of Giordano Bruno.

“As Above, so Below.” The formulae evokes a sympathetic principle undergirding and informing the ebb and flow of our Reality. The connectivity of all things that comprise and are contained within the Anima Mundi or Soul World. That the microcosm or little world, the Below, and the macrocosm or big world, the Above are in a state of interpenetration which in turn informs their transformation or motion. A change in one is reflected in the other and vice versa. Bruno gives us a World when he writes in his On Magic,

“magicians take it as axiomatic that, in all the panorama before our eyes, God acts on the gods; the gods act on the celestial or astral bodies, which are divine bodies; these act on the spirits who reside in and control the stars, one of which is the earth; the spirits act on the elements, the elements on the compounds, the compounds on the senses; the senses on the soul, and the soul on the whole animal. This is the descending scale. By contrast, the ascending scale is from the animal through the soul to the senses, through the senses to compounds, through compounds to the elements, through these to spirits, through the spirits in the elements to those in the stars, through these to the incorporeal gods who have an ethereal substance or body, through them to the soul of the world or the spirit of the universe ; and through that to the contemplation of the one, most simple, best, greatest, incorporeal, absolute and self-sufficient being. Thus, there is a descent from God through the world to animals, and an ascent from animals through the world to God.”

And it is with Giordano Bruno that the Knowledge of Love is creatively elucidated, being no longer confined to institutional theological speculation, metaphysics, physics and medicine proper. Bruno as a magician and rogue goes further still in his theoretical developments. Taking the Empedoclean theory along with Plato-Ficino’s Theory of Love and running wild. Here I’ll have to part if I ever wish to finish this paper, unfortunately, but Ioan Culianu’s research in Eros and magic in the Renaissance is unmatched in my opinion.

“all affections and bonds of the will are reduced to two, namely aversion and desire, or hatred and love. Yet hatred itself is reduced to love, whence it follows that the will’s only bond is Eros. It has been proved that all other mental states are absolutely, fundamentally, and originally nothing other than love itself. For instance, envy is love of someone for oneself, tolerating neither superiority nor equality in the other person […] We can say the same of the other mental states. Hatred is non other that love of the opposite kind, of the bad; likewise, anger is only a kind of love.”

Haunted we are. A specter looms.

Perhaps. What keeps me tethered is the same logic that keeps the suicide's ghost lingering, minus the extra step. I've cited a number of them.

Are you as lonely coming in as you are going out? When you die just as when you're born... loneliness leaves you alone.

That I'm lonely is testament to being alive.

I really don't want to clock in. This job is getting in the way of my work. I just want to write.

Sometimes I feel a sense of relief knowing that if I leave I'll just get replaced. Lately, I haven't.

What I have to give? A soul?

I don't know. You tell me.

Sometimes I think that vanity is what keeps me tethered. Won't be able to wear a tank-top on the embalming table. Have to cultivate some residual tightness. Would rather simply disappear into the wetlands. Make sure there is nothing left to find, besides maybe some articles of clothing, boots or whatever.

While smoking a cigarette on the stoop, my youngest niece, a child of St. Lazarus, entered my room and somehow got her little hands on my copy of Paradise Lost. My mother took it from her and put it atop the garbage bin next to the door to my room. I return and open the book to a random section;

Book II

"He ceas'd, and Satan staid not reply,

But glad that now the sea should find a shore,

With fresh alacrity, and force renew'd,

Springs upward, like a pyramid of fire,

Into the wild expanse; and through the shock

Of fighting elements, on all sides round

Environ'd, wins his way: harder beset,

And more endanger'd, than when Argo pass'd

Through Bosphorus, betwist the justling rocks:

Or when Ulysses on the larboard shunn'd

Charybdis, and by th'other whirlpool steer'd.

So he with difficulty, and labour hard

Moved on; with difficulty and labour he:

But he once pass'd soon after, when man fell,

Strange alteration; Sin, and Death, amain,

Following his tract (such was the will of heaven)

Pav'd after him a broad and beaten way

Over the dark abyss, whose boiling gulf

Tamely endur'd a bridge of wondrous length,

From hell continued, reaching th'utmost orb

Of this frail world; by which the spirits perverse

with easy intercourse pass to and fro,

To tempt or punish mortals, except whom

God and good angels guard by special grace."

I think part of the anxiety with the Suicide is precisely that they will 'contaminate' the living with their presence. Encouraging the act. Suicide as a Mimetic Contagion. I'm also re-listening to the Bronze Age Podcast episode of Red Scare, at the time I was writing the above. 0:25:00-0:28:00, the conversation about the violent, glorious, and erotic death in contrast to the Bed Death of the Platonic Ascetic-Renunciate, assuring a virile reincarnation. Here though we might assert the difference between suicide as a Revolutionary Act i.e., Mishima and suicide as an act of despair and renunciation, as the last ditch effort to assert the Autonomy of the Soul as Self-Conscious Spirit, as something you do to escape your misery. Strong vs Weak Pessimism. Seppuku vs Heroin Overdose. One can see why both would be symbolically marginalized.

The Muerto Oscuro or dark spirit or shade, is also an Obscure Spirit... one that doesn't belong in this house, that just kind of wandered in. It was its fate to wander into a place into which it was not invited into, in a place where it is not wanted, darting between strangers. Drawn to light, to activity, to drink and smoke and sex. It's not evil, it is just a stranger. A confused or delirious one. The general principle is to get them out of the house and pray that they find their place. Forgotten dead, the image-bubble dissolving. Alone. No one lays flowers on this grave. No one remembers me. My name is forgotten. I have forgotten my name. Such entities require Anamnesis "recollection" and acknowledgment. This is Light. They are given representation as something that was and is and continues to be. Some dissolve further and heave and pulsate, chimeras of the landscape. Others linger together and join grand processions. A Ghost like a Simp, is Abject. When one of these peripheral entities is in your space, understand that from its perspective it is totally alone, despite the caustic nature of its presence and its inability to recognize boundaries. The entity is guided by patterns, navigating in familiar manner through a space refracted from time, attempting to congeal and enact itself through sensuous materiality. Drawn by the reverberations of scent and sensation, by the Interplay of Light. Where it has come to inhabit, is the only place. Who it has become attached too, is the only person. Deliriously pure, it moves to conjure up phantasms in order to inhabit something familiar, a cut-up afterworld in the corner of your closet, in the basement, in the bathroom, anywhere with lots of pipes that go into the chilly down, and in the alleyway behind the diner. Like a spider.

A Symbolic-Individual Being. One that exists isolated. Anamnesis! That at that moment, if there is one entity that is capable of Understanding God, it is this one. That God might recognize the specter and in the recognition, Sympathize. The Solidarity of the Lonely Soul. The Anima Sola.

This is why I like the theory Dasha threw out there in the episode of Red Scare titled Mulholland Dimes, that the Entity-behind-Winkie's is in fact the "director" of all the events that occur in Mulholland Drive. Why? This is my contribution... Because the entity is the Ghost of the Suicide. It is Diana Selwyn's Ghost. An Obscure Spirit or Muerto Oscuro. A vagrant, the ghost has no home. Vagrant and King. Feeding off the betrayals and disillusionments and motor oil burning passions. Charred. Diana is transformed into something terrible.

Note that in Kardecian Spiritist Doctrine, there are no entities who have not at one point or another, been incarnated in a form that might be categorized as "Human" in terms of cognizance and corporeality. "Demons" are simply obscure (soot-covered) materialized ghosts.

The Ghost is (not) Abject, the moment it is given a Symbolic-Individual form. Light and Materialization are parts of the same process of emancipation.

That suddenly comes up a knocking on your door. Great processions of the Dead, carrying candles, return to old homes or called to new ones. Sometimes there is a lag. The ryhthm of the lags before you finally lose the signal.

Sometimes we can be very scary.

That's okay.

Again. Wammin are the most frightening. They're like daemons. Hence our little Faustian deamonolatry. Keeping ample notes, through a kind of creativity that generates more creativity. Having to put our thinking to work all that you're seeing is a burnt out old thing. Soot-covered. Scared.

Stranger I'm spooked. I've hyped myself up. With no one to hug me but Jesus. Wild how God the Son loves playing chicken.

But we all have a lil woman in us. Some of us more than others. The black lodge is a friend to the trades union. They become elementals. Gnomes. The Log Lady's husband helps guide the good while engaging in diplomatic meetings.

Sometimes outright materializing and destroying people. Wonder what would happen if you handed the Lincoln-like Woodsman a light and a cigarette. Would he spare you?

Stuck forever repeating his final words. Forever. What a drag. Basically kids. Don't smoke. Also if you can avoid smoking indoors avoid smoking in doors. Or in cars, especially with the windows shut. If it's raining to much for you to smoke then don't smoke.

Lets revisit the End of History,

What all these recent events confirm that we are indeed, living in the End of History. Lets go pass Fukuyama’s reading of the End of History (with its triumphalist overtones) and arrive at the original elucidation of the concept. Its source, Kojève’s reading of Hegel and Leo Strauss’ response to it.

‘“There is no longer fight nor work. History has come to its end. There is nothing more to do.” This end of History would be most exhilarating but for the fact that, according to Kojève, it is the participation in bloody political struggles as well as in real work, or generally expressed, the negating action, which raises man above the brutes. The state through which man is said to become reasonably satisfied is, then, the state in which the basis of man’s humanity withers away, or in which man loses his humanity.

It is the state of Nietzsche’s “last man.” Kojève in fact confirms the classical view that unlimited technological progress and its accompaniment, which are the indispensable conditions of the universal and homogeneous state, are destructive of humanity. It is perhaps possible to say that the universal and homogeneous state is fated to come. But it is certainly impossible to say that man can reasonably be satisfied with it. If the universal and homogeneous state is the goal of History, History is absolutely “tragic.” Its completion will reveal that the human problem, and hence in particular the problem of the relation of philosophy and politics, is insoluble. For centuries and centuries men have unconsciously done nothing but work their way through infinite labors and struggles and agonies, yet ever again catching hope, toward the universal and homogeneous state, and as soon as they have arrived at the end of their journey, they realize that through arriving at it they have destroyed their humanity and thus returned, as in a cycle, to the prehuman beginnings of History. Vanitas vanitatum. Recognitio recognitionum.

Yet there is no reason for despair as long as human nature has not been conquered completely, i.e., as long as sun and man still generate man. There will always be men (andres) who will revolt against a state which is destructive of humanity or in which there is no longer a possibility of noble action and of great deeds. They may be forced into a mere negation of the universal and homogeneous state, into a negation not enlightened by any positive goal, into a nihilistic negation. While perhaps doomed to failure, that nihilistic revolution may be the only action on behalf of man’s humanity, the only great and noble deed that is possible once the universal and homogeneous state has become inevitable."

Following this line of thinking we find ourselves transported to Camp Ishigaya, standing in a red carpet room. Moments before a middle-aged poet plunges a short blade into the soft of his belly drawing it across from left to right, a crimson opening permitting entrails pink and purple to spill out, his young trembling lover holding a sword aloft. None of the soldiers could hear Yukio Mishima’s exhortations. Eloquent pleas submerged under distance and the sound of whirring helicopter blades and jeers. The lack of subtitles makes me rely purely on visual context. All at once the gap between body and soul dissolves, subject and object, the inner and the outer, between action and thought, will and representation. At once both tragedy and farce.

The Mishima incident collapses the distinction between the Nothing Happens and the Rebirth of the Sacred through ritual sacrifice. Over and over and over again. Nothing happen, Mishima’s audience was deprived of Mishima’s enchantment. There was no great Imperio-Nationalist Revival. Following the Mishima Event there was no military coup set to establishing a legitimate God-Emperor over Capital; Japanese National-Interest over an American-led Universal and Homogenous Empire. Capital is still the Sovereign Deity. When the US says jump, Japan asks how high. Forever buying at sticker price.

Japanese religious custom, Shintoism and Buddhism (accounting for but transcending bureaucratic historically contingent forms of differentiation; Japanese Beingness in its totality) syncretizing into a potent form of Commodity Fetishism. Burgers wrapped in talismans. Google, "Shin Spicy Yakuyone Burger".

Yet it remains a violent and in the absurdity of its violence, sacred, affirmation of Japaneseness. Having served its purpose, Mishima and his beloved Masakatsu Morita’s sacrifices were not in vain. Having accomplished more than anticipated. A great success. The particularity of its Japaneseness unfolding to reveal a Universal struggle. Humanity in our relation to the Divine against the clockwork and the useful and the pasteurizing, against that which would reduce us to gray shambling things, to the digital-animal, something beyond being confined to our function as surplus and collateral.

Plunging our hands into the poet’s entrails in order to divine the future of our race.

Likewise brings to mind Alexander Bogdanov’s 1912 short story Immortality Day. In it the protagonist Fride, the scientist responsible for having discovered the secret to biological immortality, decides to self-immolate during the thousand year anniversary celebration of his discovery. Immortality putting into sharp relief the cyclical-repetitive nature of everything, proving to be intolerable for a man of genius.

Evoking the fates of both Giordano Bruno and St. Joan of Arc patron of nationalism and cinema.

Beneath the glow of electric moons he sets himself to the task,

“At midnight the explosion of fireworks marked the arrival of the second millennium of human immortality. Fride pressed an electronic button which lit the fuse, and the pyre went up in flames. Terrible pain, of which he had some vague childhood recollection, disfigured his face. He frantically struggled to pull himself free, and an inhuman scream resounded in the alcove. But the iron chains held him firmly. Tongues of fire twisted around his body, hissing: ‘Everything repeats itself!’”

No. I'd prefer not too.

Quis sicut Deus?

I think that like falling in love most successful suicides are ultimately accidental.

I find this compelling. The last moment regret. It's too late, you've gone too far, still the "terror of death", that great negativity, erupts. The façade disappears. The cathartic act is tainted with a 'no'. With a great moment of indignity covered up by the witnesses. At that moment collective complicity or worse still, impotence, is made obvious. The glow of the entertained contrasting with the cunning of survival, a prelude to a great self-loathing. A medium through which we might articulate a species-wide awareness, this consciousness coursing through our material, made apparent with age. The string of betrayals that come to define my love for you.

We are all responsible.

All Innocent. All-Souls, All-Saints.

It was an accident.

At the end of it all.

We are flesh. Corpses slow-dancing, the curtains of our manor caught fire. Watch. My lover and I burning like money.

Love is frightening.

Honestly if all of this led me here, I'm blessed. Despite my squalor. To this. Strauss and the large Tableau of Philosophy. It has been a genuine consolation. I know it probably sounds very silly. Given my use of passionate language and themes and the grotesqueries of my Symbolic-Form. I understand and I would never not apologize but in order to live with myself I have to engage in these studies. I have to live in order to be forgiven. Even if I keel over and die right now.

I feel like I have to do something. It really does feel like I'm going to die any second now. I can't see anything ahead of me. That isn't this. One form of another.

This thing that I feel. It is Will, right? It is Pneuma.

We have genuine ennobling work to do. I feel like... this really isn't just a cash grab. And I don't know, I can't shake the feeling that it is sinister in the effective way. Sinister like a love letter. Like a poem directed at my Star.

I don't think its intentional and I do not think intentionality can be ascribed to it outside of Intellect. The Skeleton and Skin of the Universal Man. The vehicle we travel in and the building we inhabit. Suffused we dwell.

Compulsion and language.

Really want to make sure that if it's gonna be damning let it be pretty. No?

It's the strangest thing.

I feel I'm precisely where I belong and I'm content.

Is that Philosophy?

I'm not sure Diotima was right if that's the case.

Fuck it.

Listen I started feeling a little self-conscious about my approach to BAP and that caused a lightening-link of lucidity induced anxiety.

Still. These things. They are fascinating aren't they?

Mutants the lot of them.

You see them right? It's not just the ones decked out in Third Reich knick-knacks. Every little band has their style and calling cards. I'm working towards Socialist Rococo or Socialist Romanticism. But this takes time and money.

You see it right?

Our eyes have been shaped by love, containing color. These hands exist to take your hand. Or the stone. Or the fruit. Or your ankle or neck.

Your finger on the trigger. If you loved me you'd willingly kiss my heart with silver, on live television, mid-transformation.

The terrorized and the ashamed. What it does it mean to be frightened and ashamed? Can I catch the Santa Ana's in a pouch? If I did, would I sell? And for what price?

It's understandable to get kind of grumpy I think.

Shoving hands into sweater pockets. Humming to ward off the stimming. Little do we know. That from another's perspective, we look incredibly sexy.

Irresistible animal magnetism.

What an Absolute Catastrophe.

Isn't it obvious?

Her love of the losing dog is testament to her essential ontological fickleness. If I should die you won't have to put up with my disillusionment or my impositions. If I should die you can look so very beautiful beneath a black veil. Lovely crying creature. "It's giving widow," the sinister homosexual proclaims.

Obvious isn't it?

Obviously you stand to benefit financially from my suicide. My death is profitable. Literal or metaphorical. Your lack of Charity is noted. Recorded. I'm under no illusions here. You hate me. Still I live. In my blindness other senses have sharpened. I can make out the distinctive rumbling of your tummy and the smacking of your lips. Traipsing over the bones of my ancestors.

The Dawn laments having to depart from her Cicada wrapped in rose-scented bed sheets. The Lover is Forever Young in loving her old wretched thing, transformed by divine naivete and time, lamenting and eulogizing his City, his Doom, and his Lover. Deafeningly loud, an annoying never-not horny bug, that would like nothing more than to fuck and just die already. His consolation, his curse. Yet you provoke my jealousy and leave me on "never even read."

This accursed state is momentarily redeemed whenever my gaze falls upon you, fingertips tracing the grooves of your carapace. Titillating with an apology. One must imagine poor Tithonus hardened and shriveled consoled and Eos satisfied. Even though he kind of despises her and she continues to kidnap young shepherds from time to time, sparingly post-Tithonus.

Crabification won't keep me from loving you.

Eternity.

That the Dawn's satiety and the Cicada's consolation redeems the fickleness of the gods.

Even gods grow tired of gooning and glowering. Weary in the gooning and in the glowering. Humbling melancholy.

I feel like shit and I don't want to go to my job anymore despite the fact that I objectively need to make some sort of money. Things continue to get bad and I've become totally complicit in it. Here let me contaminate you with some complicity and see how you Cope.

It's not good to wallow in the impression but to some extent I think it's healthy to be able to radiate that field. A poet wandering in the night, ignited by inspiration, wrathful and for a brief moment, the briefest; uncompromising. Exaltation beyond the consolation of mere words, in the fury of this moment.

Striving for balanced coverage. A weirdo. Sauntering. Inhaling flower's perfume. You might catch a glimpse through the gaps of your fence.

You gotta be able to walk it off. Get it out of your system. It's electric.

Listen. We're going to be okay.

What a time to be Alive.

I saw that guy talking shit on twitter about progressive present-tense... Diary writing. As a trait of the Leftist. How dare you look at me like that. You might be the first person who has ever seen me for me. "Listen... about Dasha. She was kind of a placeholder for you. Yes. I've never denied it. Wait. My bourgeoise bonbon, saccharine matron. I am yours. I'm a Leftist but I just care a lot about other stuff that I find stimulating, inspired ambition."

Weeping softly I've been made a fixture of some domed harem. The peacock judges me. I cannot abide this. The insult is grave.

I DON'T WANT YOUR MONEY. I want her money, not yours. I want her patronage. I want her Universal Blood. She is the perfect organ bank for our child. I want her.

Before she can even finish uttering the words, "financial liability" I've already rifled through her medicine cabinet. Woman. I'm sorry. I think you'd be much happier if I simply died.

"Happiness is a terrible metric."

I'll dare you.

Hurry up and marry me already.

She isn't just a placeholder. I lack the discipline to disavow her. I've failed Socrates and Alcibiades. I've ruined everything. All the time. It's compulsive.

Behold.

A formulae. The Best. Mimetime Moses I descend with tablets in hand. Inscribed upon them the following aphorism.

Grant me the courtesy of not conflating what I desire with what I tolerate. Because when I assume that what someone desires is obviously what they are willingly tolerating, then I'm assuming that I'm a god-like being. If that so happens to be the case, I should be merciful given my vantage-point. That's called, "looking out". Alternatively, you can snipe. It's circumstantial and they're often entangled.

The weirdo confounded is asked, "So you don't mind possibly inspiring someone to commit seppuku? You promote insurrection and ritual disembowelment don't you?"

Immediately I fold. Easily shamed.

"Of course I mind. Jesus Christ. No of course not."

This is why I'm a proponent of acknowledging the Metaphor. Just because it is established as a Metaphor doesn't make it any less Concrete. The Metaphor or the Phantasms or Eidola generated to form a Romantic Emblem. That's real unto itself.

To Will intensely. To Love intensely. To Love so much that you're capable of accepting No. That to Love is to give yourself over to Fate without destroying the one you love. But wouldn’t it be great, if we could simply die together? The last person I will ever feel, your only fan.

Eh, Expectation vs. Reality.

A ritual gesture. Provoking an intensity of feeling that it all goes blank and you cease to be your sensations.

The Intensity of Will is transmitted. Sacred and being sacred it is effectively Radioactive. Contaminating.

Seeing poetry emerge out of blood stains on marbled counter. Vaporous. Reading it, inhaling it and exhaling it.

Again. Is this not objectively Beautiful?

Respond and then think it over. Your subjectivity is suspect. Beneath oppressive phosphorescent lamp glow I interrogate it, now that you've entered into my horizon. I insist.

Arriving at Beauty. Our capacity to recognize it in tragedy. And to exalt it.

That I have loved like that. Loved into Extinction. Would watch the remake. Focus on the sailors fighting in the dancehall. Thank you.

Sucker for that. Not for political radicalization in the literal sense. Let the recorder show that I formally denounce the Hamas terror attacks.

I'm not Japanese. I think it's okay to impose yourself. It's also okay to retreat and hope things fall into place.

I'm not Japanese but I can see the Universality of a Heroic Love. Of Lovers meeting their Doom together. For us that's an Apotheosis Gambit. You're hanging out were Achilles and Patroclus are hanging out, probably going on adventures and stuff. You just can't keep em down, once they've "clicked" with their condition.

I think Love like that is worth celebrating and I think that that Love is worth championing.

Okay no... I'm not into a Centralized State overseeing an extensive 'planned out' Eugenics Program. I think matchmakers have always existed. It's okay to go see a matchmaker. But if you aren't about that because you know exactly what you want, then what can happen? You're Willful and being Willful you're kind of Sensitive.

Funding Gymnasiums, Theaters, Academies and Churches is a good thing. Better still working towards the conditions where you can actually center your life around 'not-job related' or 'household centered' activities. It's good to have places were people workout and see each other and talk and make connections. Gymnasiums or Public Bathhouses are a Cultural Patrimony. Me and the boys conspiring in the steam room. Smoking cigarettes, lounging about, getting purified. We're ready to take everything over...."

"So you want to take everything over? You've just confirmed this."

It's not a question of 'taking over' as some sort of political insurrection. The "political insurrection" or the storming of the Capitol has become a bit of Spectacle. With a smattering of single digit causalities, collateral. Surplus that proves beneficial for the sake of immortalizing the Spectacle. This is a Nihilistic gesture. A bit of a Mercenary Art Project. Nothing more nothing less. And if it was something more it would assuredly be brutally repressed. But there are already structures at play that permit us to properly contain and direct these energies.

This is Organization Psychology. Crowd Control. Not an exact science but convincing enough to generate a fairly reliable heuristic. That is unless your Science integrates the Anomalous as a crucial component of the phenomena you're observing and partaking in.

I'm going far over the point here.

Listen... I'm under no illusions here. This is where I am. No, I will not look down. Like Martí I’ll die with my face to the sun and the blue.

I do. In so far that I play at collaboration. Impressionability is key to method.

Guided by my Daemon. My Daemon like yours, is an Erotes. A little Hero shooting verse bolts of verse with glance and grin.

The weight of Western Civilization distributed unevenly along my brow and shoulders. They're tensed.

Yolking, binding and unbinding stars, as a mode of transportation.

This Daemonic Lover, is the matchmaker you all noticed, drawn like the coin to a lodestone. Heads or tails. Lets talk then of the nature of futility and selective breeding and Nature itself. No?

This Daemon, my Angel. My advocate and attorney. If you happen to be a Philosopher, I might as well be declared Hellbound.

The simple act of thinking about Seduction has morphed me terrifying. Exposing myself. Magenta and filigreed thing descending upon us in desolate plaza.

It strikes me curious that in The Symposium, Socrates does not refer to Eros as Philosopher directly, compelled by his own conviction. Plato instead utilized the Eidola of the Prophetess Diotima to declare Eros a Philosopher. That the Philosopher is the Ideal Erotes or Daimon. The Daimon described as a hybrid-creature. A demi-god. One that is like a mule. Sterile. Sterility is a precondition to the discursive re-enactment of Logos. To the revelation and transmission of the Idea. Of Beauty as Love's Wisdom.

All-Ugly. Tous les mêmes. The universality of ugliness and the particularity and transience of beauty can reveal what is Universally Beautiful. When framed, this Universal Beauty, this is the Idea.

Here we might develop a certain typology. A question of approach or the approach to the question. Does Beauty redeem the project or does Beauty condemn it? Condemn the stupidity and ugliness of the whole thing by existing in stark contrast? By the victimization of the Beautiful at the hand of the stupid and the ugly. Especially the dysgenic morons who fancy themselves Beauty's priests, their theologies sanctioned by? Often don't realize what was Beautiful until after I've trampled over it or barreled through it. How many spider webs have I destroyed in my furious pilgrimages? Only to fall into a panic and start slapping myself in order to snuff out the vengeance of the web weaver? Vengefulness, imagined. I'm insulted. I've been disrespected. I'm no victim. As the spider swings to safety, I enact its vengeance upon myself. Slapping my head, slapping the nape of my neck, slapping the shit out of myself. Spinning.

Here, this is how I understand it. Tell me if I'm wrong. The World as Will is a Clump of Bacteria and the World as Representation is a Clump of Memes. The Intellect is a Complex of Images. That serves as a kind of vehicle. I am not my Intellect. My Intellect is part of the commons. My Intellect is my Daimon. My Intellect is an Erotes. It is a Ghost which is a Construct. Disparate images bound together.

Like Plato's Socrates I cannot recognize myself as a Philosopher. My own recognition is suspect. Because the capacity of my intellect to recognize itself is the very basis of convention. I require the recognition of the Other. Girls and Gays. If the Girls and Gays can recognize me, a truly Exceptional Lover, as a Philosopher then Eros is a Philosopher. The Philosopher's Revelation is Poetry and Seduction.

What was it?

A Glittering Image

A Glimmering Image

A Glistening Image

Three Gs. The scale you'll ascend, having slithered under your covers.

I wonder if serpents are capable of object permanence. Reptiles in general. If simulate a covering, will it feel safe? Will I feel safe?

Olympia and her Lover. Zeus in the form of a serpent. Holy. Snake-handling is charming. Enchanted practice. I imagine its a play of warmth and cold and color. Blue and green, shadow and light. Impressionistic or Symbolic. Those are holy animals that shouldn't be purposefully injured. There are ways of relocating them if they pose a genuine risk. But... we're a crafty species that breeds into novel places. Tool-wielding. We know how to ignite, contain, feed, and pacify fire and smoke. Our eyes are filled with color. We know how to treat material, we know how to weave and sew, how to cover ourselves. We are taught how to breath in order to remain calm, we build confidence and sow wisdom working and fighting. Are we wise? Are we lovely? Some are good enough to bed a god. Then again Love is Daemonic. The erotes serve as the messengers of the gods. Of higher powers. Lightning flashing across a lazuli void. Powers of the Firmament.

I think we would tear them apart on twitter. Here I totally agree with Bronze Age Pervert. Immediately...IMMEDIATELY we'd bleed them with memes. The gods recoil. You can't beat them in a fight, but you sure can humiliate them into obscurity. Laugh them off the stage. For sure they're going to need medication after dealing with 5 minutes of twitter or X.

It's a good thing to shake people off twitter.

Reverse psychology me into suffocating you with attention huh? Perfidious Oriental Sorcerer. Yale? More like Scholomance. My life... urgh.

You know I skipped going to work while my family is struggling financially in order to write a defense of someone I would've despised 2 years ago, after having been formally introduced to him by two of my favorite women. Ruinous affection.

Enamored. Thinking through it. Thinking you from sole to crown. Left no other choice but to stunt. Have to razzle-dazzle for her every once in awhile. The disappointment is a habit-forming joy. Great falling short. Look at us all. Little gamblers, rambling and dancing and sobbing softly in the bathroom stall.

God have Mercy on us.

Urgh.

Without pretense. Achilles and Patroclus. Heroic Love as Freedom. The anomaly a furtive dignity that gives us the human in Man. We are anomalous, and the gods rejoice.

A black-face vagrant in the vestibule. Lil impish ugly looking dude. Pouty. There is a certain pouty-facedness to this stranger.

My fellow Americans. I usher you in. An Erotes. My phantom bride, I who was born to be your lover. A passionate lover. Full of Proletarian Vitality.

It's okay.

I'm a Poet.

You and me bubbi... we're gonna figure this all out. Tonight.

Surviving and sinning.

Surely some gods despise us. Others pity us. Some feel compassionate affection. Still others feel responsibility. We've become familiar after you passed. Are there still secrets at that point? We for a moment you see your eidola in my eyes. Seeing you I see my father and I sympathize and I weep knowing that I'm destined to die before him. The image of an elderly man in a hostile world mourning the loss of his beautiful son. My mother is there, she will never grow old, still she is of the sea and he had bound her.

Achilles who within his Humanity contains Olympian and Titanic forces. His mother is of the Sea. The archaic mysteries of middle-plane, thoroughly integrated into Poseidon's Universal Empire, Persia.

All of this stems from a uniquely Athenian encounter with the Persian Empire.

Christ vs. Dionysus.

(We might come to reframe it as St. Joseph the Worker vs. Tubal Cain.)

The Prophet Zarathustra as an arbitrator. Time has made of the Lover a Judge as Love had made the Lover, mad.

Dragon. A serpent. A worm. A spider. Sorcerous, Chinese and Christian. A proper Communist.

A Ghost by the entranceway of the catacombs. Blasting cigs and staring off at nothing in particular. Pensive. Don't think you got the drop on me, the sound of your footsteps. The scent of the lily flowers in your hand. Burning bone in the moonlight. I might not be locking eyes with you, but I felt that radiance through the blue from three miles away.

"What are you doing here? Alone and at this hour? Don't you know this is no place for pretty girls. The hour is late and the dead stir. Lonely wretched things unbound from the earth. The earth unsealed unleashing ill winds. Go home..."

"They are for your father? Tell me his name. That I might be acquainted with him."

She speaks his name.

"Who are your witnesses? To testify that you are truly his daughter?"

"Sorrow and Loss."

"Let me be your guide through the labyrinth then."

Zarathustra looks me over, scoffs, and points me to Christ.

Nietzsche's Judgment has saved many a Christian from Apostasy. Great Gatekeeper of the Infernal Garden.

How could I damn one who has see me so clearly. It crosses my mind that perhaps he had prophesized my coming. Perhaps he has seen me in a dream?

We smear white ash on our face. Like Peter we are Fools. Foolishly we betray love, disavow it, cultivate our regrets and harvest them, making of them rosary beads. That foolishly we might die for it.

My thoughts turn to Justina and Cyprian. What would a sorcerer been in those legends if not a Philosopher. A Platonist of Iamblichus' lineage. The Philosopher's grammars containing Heroic Dialogues side by side with medical advice, incense mixing instructions, instructions on how to properly butcher an animal, instructions on how to craft talismans, how to calculate the hour, etc...

The Erotes. Or the aerial daemon, ancestral philosophers, they are the ones that truly initiate the prospective student. Love facilitating the recognition of Beauty. This process unfolds into an encounter with Truth and a Good Understanding. It's natural that a Philosopher in Antioch would be commissioned to perform love spells by a local aristocratic patron or an artisan client. This is how the Sorcerer crossed paths with Heroic Justina.

He witnessed true courage. True Heroism. Performing the sign of the cross as bejeweled daemonic legions fangled and motley descended upon her frail form. The marriage would've been a blessing for her and her family. She was always Fortunate. Good fortune running in her blood. Yet she chose to drop out. Cyprian thought he was doing her a favor. She also had little consideration for face-saving protocols. She performed only up to a point. Her interrupted motions like a blade slashing at the Philosopher's face. She could've just acted and saved a lot of feelings. Sensitive and poetic. Before her conversion she would weep over the corpse of a pigeon and the state of a vagrant and his dogs, soiled rags covering his sores. Composing songs for clouds and canopies and people. All the time. Some said she was a dreamer. In some other time she would've been an exalted prophetess, surely. Her father a well-to-do merchant.

Cyprian had found the gods interest in Justina's romantic life, it's just mortals breeding after all, somewhat undignified. Why would the thunderstorm and the serpent and bowman take such a keen interest in these petty affairs. In the love life of some dumb girl. Why they insisted upon it.

Justina performed the sign of the cross and they fled. And still Cyprian loved her. Her courage had made a Christian of him. Together they would become Heroes of a New Age.

In a “New York style” pizza shop next to the cinema in the mall my dad use to work in. Justina and Cyprian are sitting down. Cyprian has such a strong sentimental attachment to the place that he insisted Justina and him walk the mile hike to the movie theater at 7:35pm. Crossing an overpass. Cyprian imagined that Justina had walked through many chain-link tunnels in her lifetime. But this… this had been Cyprian’s First. Cyprian’s chain-link tunnel and his bridge. He’d poured libations to the guardians of the bridge and made a tight-bond. So he gets to witness amazing sunsets and feel great pulses of contentment, as if floating in warm cosmic milk.

It struck him how fucked it is was to make Justina walk but walking was part of the magic. So glancing at her he asked, “want to walk or should I drive?” and she shrugged.

“mhm…”

“mhm…”

“Hmm, sure lets walk.”

“Perfect.”

It had struck him that they shared the same stimming behavior. Clearing their throats and letting out a little hum. Warming up the vocal chords. Maybe they had the same kinds of sicknesses. What was he thinking, they have the same kind of eyes. One hazel and the other chestnut. And the same asymmetries. She was beautiful though. While he likened himself to the demon Pumpkin head. Long mishapen thing. Dwarf-like grotesque skull attached to Orangutan-like body. Unseemly. Long arms dangling down culminating in paws. Body covered in motley hairs red, brown, black, and blonde. His hair which given the canyon like contours of his skull, appeared thinner at the top and wild at the sides at the base, strategically uncombed, and uncut. Depending on the light, appearing either dirty-blonde, brown, or red. From receding hairline a great expanse culminating in dark brows over almond eyes set in maroon pits shielded by gold frame aviator glasses with permanently smudged lens that darken whenever exposed to sunlight. Its legs corroded by sweat, the left leg bending upward and the right bending downwards, they were never on an equal plane. Likely the result of his own crescent moon condition. Like a crescent moon or a comma, slanting towards the left. His nose like his ears were well-shaped enough, not to big and not to small. Nose hairs often intertwining with mustache. He’d made sure to pretty himself up for the occasion, shoving small scissors up each nostril.

He looked at her and thought about himself and realized that if he really had managed to sorcerously snare someone so beautiful and delicate and devout and dignified and smart using sorcery, an eternity in hell was well warranted.

“Honestly, I’d like to make untraditional Catholic a thing…”

Here words bounced around his head. Untraditional Catholic. What did she mean by this? Had he somehow managed to seduce her away from the Church. Away from her faith. Had she just admitted that he’d “won”… he felt the void that had replaced his heart unleash a terrible howl of agony. What did she mean by this? By Untraditional Catholic. Given her past worldliness, it was obvious to Cyprian that she was referring to the 19th century French heretic the Abbé Boullan.

Cyprian scratching his beard, pondered the absurdity of it all. Snuffing a guffaw. To think that the woman who'd confronted him in his shop. A knife held to his neck by a malnourished and manic niche microcelebrity pro-clown to the very same niche microcelebrity pro-clown inviting him to join her in New York. That together they might start a cult. Their sacred matrimony, their conjunction, the heart of the cult's hidden mandalah. Dedicated their lives sex magic and healing rites and influence peddling. Their child destined to become some sort of God-Emperor, obviously. The boy would be well-bred. Bred with love.

Cyprian had always wanted to be a father.

Destiny is strange.

What sort of baroque heresies and transgressions was his gorgeous thespian alluding to when she spoke the words, "untraditional catholic" to him. He didn’t like it when she insulted her own education, her own spirituality, her own doubts. The rebellion of her Will against the Institutions and Dogmas of a glorified bank. Her desire for Beauty and Purity, a scar running down his cheek. Not just Will but Moral sensibility. She had to know. That the genuine diabolists are all ordained. In the line of Apostolic Succession. They needed to have received this in order to pollute it. In doing so they Commune with the Disillusioned and the Infernal. Holy degenerates given to alchemical profanation and all kinds of objectively horrifying things. Like its counterpart, the Black Mass is ideally performed in the Church. Compared to those Devils, Cyprian was but a trifling Reiki radiator and amateur folklorist.

Really though. They just like to party. They weren’t responsible for the beheading of the church. They're just responding in their own manner to the realization that it has likely always been Headless.

We all mourn in our manner.

Having gained an intimacy with Justina’s struggles, Cyprian spoke…

“Entering the Sensory-Sphere through the Gate of Cancer. Willingly. Our shrieks renewable energy for the Ideal Republic. Oh Sacred Suffering. Get in the EVA or Rei will have to pilot it again... In terms of Cultural Production I don't see how you can have it any other way. There has to be a Burning Heart at the Center lest the whole thing ossify into the Self-Replicating Commodity, devoid of soul and vampiric. Outside of this though. I think there has to be a bit of prudence and temperance. It's all connected right? But distinctions have to be made. We can't assume that we're the messianic victim. It's much easier to narrativize yourself as the Victim in order to do horrible things to people, especially the people you love.

Take the example of Abbé Boullan and his Nun. Man-Child Sorcerer, Untraditional Catholic pimping out his Regressed Beloved. Starting a…hmm…charismatic healing-sex cult. Forcing her get an abortion and dipping once the authorities cracked down on their little operation. Abandoning her and running off to take over some other Social Clique. Is this the Godman? Is this the Reality of the prefix Sur-?

Would prefer not too. That’s what it means to be a Christian no? To declare to the World, “I would prefer not too…'”

As a heretic I can tell you that all this Transgression is just as Inauthentic. Replicates the logic of fetishism that defined the prosaic ossification of the Medieval Catholic Church. Setting the conditions for the Reformation. You know what I mean?

We’ve talked about so-called TradCaths and Sedevacantism. I acknowledge the Authority of the Holy Father as long as the Holy Father’s values reflect my own. The very moment my own values enter into the equation and that this should in fact be representative of the vast majority of Catholics in the Geo-Historical space of Occidental or Latin Christendom... Well it speaks to Catholicism’s ossification into a Civilization Infrastructure right? Doctrine dissolves. The Individual Subject is given precedence. What actual Spiritual Authority does the Church as an Institution have? It is Headless. We’ve talked about this before. It’s Headless and not because it was decapitated by Jacobins or Masons. That’s monumental cope. It’s Headless in so far that it’s gargantuan. From our perspective at the ground-level, it might as well be Headless. Like a shadow distended in Sunlight.

It’s the whole…hmm…the whole City of God and the City of Man thing right? All earthly institutions are a shadow. Think people respond to that in different ways.

So like, who inherited Roman Authority? Who inherited Universal and Homogenous Empire?”

She jettisoned all of the air from her lungs. Cheeks inflating.

“So we return to the question of the Schism huh? East and West.”

“Always I think. I think schism defines us. Also what do you think? Is the pizza authentically New York?”

“It’s dingy but I like it… definitely imbued with vibe.”

She looked over at the high-school lovers sitting two booths away from them and smiled.

“…Imagine this place gets packed with hormonal teens conspiring. Talking all kinds of nonsense. Harlequin girls and testosterone boys. Talking about the movie they’d just watched.”

Cyprian noted the Panic! At the Disco reference.

“Most nights. Generations of them.”

“Including you and who?”

“My brother and cousins and I. They were the harlequin girls and testosterone boys. Always been at the periphery of that.”

“But you like being in its presence?”

What was she asking? What was she implying?

“Nostalgic attachment I guess I don’t know. Being in the presence of young love…”

“…it’s reassuring isn’t it? Anyways I was alluding to the Byzantine Rite."

"Sorry?"

"Yea, by 'Untraditional Catholicism' I meant the Byzantine Rite."

Cyprian went to take a swig from the glass bottle soda. Shame adding enthusiasm to his motions. Smashing the rim of the bottle against his teeth and upper lip with enough force to startle Justina and the cashier, one of the teens letting out a nervous laugh. Setting the bottle down, he covered his busted lip with the thick napkin the utensils had been swaddled in. Mexican Cola and blood spilling out of his mouth.

The spectral image of this change of sign is represented by a strange human nudity - now obscene - surrounded by Chernobyl Halo. Too mouthy, too lanky, standing with prayer-bruised knees under a sick sun, is nothing other than the incandescent bulb it lacks.

You. You are my incandescent lightbulb.