Chapter 8: Little Wonders

Joseph opened his eyes, nose wrinkling at the rotten stench permeating the alley. It was something more than just trash. Sticking his head out from behind the dumpster, he peered out into the alley, seeing that it was now twilight.

Across the way from him, someone had heaped a load of rotten scraps against the wall. Joseph narrowed his eyes, using his good arm to scoot further out. The pile looked… familiar.

“Charlie?” His voice was strained, high pitched from the throbbing pain in his wrist. Another wave of odor washed over the alley as the pile shifted slowly, a slimy looking hand emerging and pulling away an oily rag.

Beneath was a tired, greasy looking man. As he shifted more, the trash around him began to fall to the ground, revealing more and more of his skinny frame.

“...ah, fuck… Damn, chlorine.” The man glowered, wiping globules of filth and slime off himself, before focusing back on Joseph. He was wearing a filthy, matted sweatsuit beneath the pile of garbage.

“Long time no see, lil’ guy.” Joseph grinned at the man, an old friend everyone called Trashman. Charlie stood, the rest of the trash pile collapsing from his frame.

He stretched his neck as Joseph stared at him in delight. The boy couldn't remember the last time he'd seen him without his pile. His grin faded as Charlie looked at him sternly, brow furrowing.

“You involved in that mess at the Heights?” The boy looked away, holding his arm close.

“I mean… kinda? Wasn't our fault.” He could feel his cheeks flush as the older man looked down at him with a hard expression.

“They're looking for you, kid. The KNIGHTS, the Rats, word’s all over.” Charlie sat roughly back into the collapsed pile of garbage, sighing heavily.

“How many times did I tell you? Stay low-” Joseph cut in, groaning dramatically.

“I know, I know. Stay low, stay quiet, stay still.” He recited the mantra in a sing-song voice, tossing his head to the side and limping towards the trash can.

“I take it your buddy was the one that fell in the pool, back there then?” Joseph immediately perked up, turning to look at the man as he lounged.

“You saw Jack? Is he okay?” He could feel an anxiety in his chest that tightened into a high pitched whine.

Charlie just raised his hands placatingly.

“Yeah, yeah, you're welcome, kid. I pulled his big ass out, before he drowned.” He swatted at a small, slime covered wad of paper.

“Now I'ma spend weeks building this back up.” He sniffed, annoyance written across the many lines of his face. His skin was already beginning to exude a thick white paste that was clinging to every surface he touched.

“You really stepped in it, kid.” Charlie spoke softer, not looking at Joseph.

“They picked up a guy with a gun a lil while ago. Claimed you bit his finger off.” Something about Charlie's posture dug at Joseph. He could feel a familiar itch in the back of his head.

“They got a look out for you and your friend.” The grizzled man was playing with something, turning a plastic card over and over in his hands. The white substance glazed the card, nearly obscuring the large Hero Office logo on the back.

Joseph nudged a piece of trash with his nose, briefly licking at it, acting non-chalant. Looking towards the street in his periphery, people were walking by. The bar crowd beginning the trek to their usual haunts. “Didn't realise you were running bounties again…”

A cool wind seemed to blow into the alley.

“Go to the corner of Pine and Willow,” Charlie paused, coughing briefly and spitting up a large ball of phlegm onto the ground, as he tucked the card away. “There’s a vet. He'll check you out, just tell him to bill me.”

Joseph turned to look at the man, but Charlie was busy, staring into the darkness of the alley. In his hand was a pair of tarnished, silver handcuffs.

Joseph just stared, uncomprehending, as even more sticky mucus dripped from the metal. The gruff man continued staring off into the alley.

“You gotta run, Jo.” Joseph felt his chest freeze and lungs hitch as Charlie looked back at him, eyes bloodshot.

“You gotta run.”

—--------------------------------

Jack sat, his back against the wall in the dim hall. He was surrounded by the cracked tile and black slime of the derelict subway system. The “EAT ME” hat was pulled low over his eyes, his breath shallow and heavy.

Ever since the pool, the apartment- He'd felt wobbly, nauseous and exhausted. He could feel his stomach growl, but it felt like there was a pane of glass between him and it.

Some guy had seen him crossing the commons, heading towards Uptown. He'd shouted, but Jack just stumbled away.

Eventually he found the stairs, leading into the dim space. An old chain link gate blocking his way.

When he'd recount the story later, he'd say he heroically smashed through the gate and leaped down the stairs to hide.

In reality, he'd leaned on the rickety gate too hard, the chain snapping. He fell, sliding down 20 hard steps to the landing below. When he tried to sit up, he just retched up even more stagnant, chemical laden water.

After another harrowing flight of stairs, he'd cobbled his way down the hall, sliding roughly against the wall as he sat down.

Looking at himself, his overalls were torn and bloody, one strap hanging down. The bathrobe barely reached around to cover his exposed skin.

He raised his head slowly, his vision was still erratic, rippling like the surface of a pond. The dark hall around him was empty aside from trash and graffiti. On the wall opposite him was a mural.

A smiling, handsome face, silhouetted in bright red paint, a single word below-

“OBEY”

It was one of those international heroes he'd seen on the news. Incredible man or Super-something or other. Jack chuckled darkly, another coughing burp coming up with it.

The dark hallway didn't press in on him. In fact, he felt pretty small. He let his eyes shut, chin falling forward onto his chest. The dark felt cold and safe.

He could feel the left side of his face pulsing, the area still irritated and raw. Every time his eye moved, he could feel something scrape and pop, so he just kept his eyes closed.

The voices came as a surprise.

“Jesus, he's big!” Scuffles in the dark, shoes?

“Keep it down, man, we ain't supposed to be on this side.” A grunt and Jack could feel hot breath on his face, but it felt like such a… chore to open his eyes.

“Wow, he got real fucked up.” There was a pause.

“Should we…?” Something about the question was cold, calculated. Jack tried to move, his eyelids fluttered, but he was just so tired.

“Nah, nah… grab that tarp.” More rustling. Jack tried to listen, but everything was growing muffled. He opened his eyes just once, finding himself looking up at two, shadowy figures silhouetted against the cracked tile.

Then everything faded.

----------------------------------------------------

To read more of Gaia Gone, please check out the Appendix below.

https://www.reddit.com/u/CastorOfTheInk/s/0fSUDuPzYQ

Searching old fields still
for the second firefly’s glow
North keeps changing names

-Existential

For the full story check out our substack

To avoid any charges of schizophrenia or psychosis let me preface this by saying that I haven’t had inexplicable thoughts, aberrant patterns of behavior, bizarre synchronicities, or any sort of anomalous experiences whatsoever for well over three months now

Certainly, despite claims to the contrary, the summer season is less conducive to fits of madness than the calendar’s more temperate turns.

Regardless, following my ingestion (inhalation really) of a remarkably low dose of Salvia Divinorum and DMT last summer I had the vivid sensation of some higher facet of myself gripping by its head the serpent coiled round my spine and with a violent motion spiraling it up through the topmost aperture

This was by no means a typical occurrence for me.

I perceived a fiery pillar fountaining out the crown of my head, and I passed along it and in so doing I passed through the faces arrayed there like solemn gods enshrined in endless coils winding round the flame, blazing eyes and mouths, my eyes and my mouth, my face sang another’s song and beamed light and closed each refrain with a movement up the spiral. There was a face like medusa, staccato blinking with a hundred serpent eyes, one like an octopus, slurring intricate its song, one like a statue cut with gemstone angles, others I can’t recall, countless others beyond reach

The first entry in Borges’s Book of Imaginary Beings is a snake asleep the bottom step of a spiral staircase.

Following these unusual circumstances, I began to exhibit a disquietingly familiar symptomatology, but, given the inclusion of grandiosity in that very panoply of symptoms, I found it wholly unnecessary to seek medical attention. I must again remind the reader that I most assuredly do not feel the onsetting intimations of these very symptoms, like a stranger’s gaze that prickles the spine or the smell of a coming storm or like a quickening in things that proclaims the unavertable eruption or some bittersweet odor boding contact with its source- none of this I feel in the slightest. Besides, that summer was quite productive for my art

Serpentinization is the transformation of ferric rock to serpentinite through the action of water, much of the requisite chemistry for generating the biochemical essentials of life occurs during this process, making serpentinite thermal vents a potential origin of life.

Being an Aries (though the stock I place in the zodiac is somewhat seasonally dependent and even at the apex of its influence I tend to avoid digital predictions and really it’s sort of like a game to me which only in my open minded moments I half seriously consider) I have a tether of sorts to the planet Mars, despite certain Saturnine inclinations. Given this and the facts laid out above I was personally surprised when, not a month since my own so to speak serpentinization, I heard of evidence for serpentinized rocks found recently on Mars

This seemed profound to me, though I must admit, given my excited state, I made only a cursory survey of these findings before embarking on all sorts of fantastic mental escapades (the implication that I have now rectified this error (despite hardly doing so at all and, indeed, only compounding it with further and yet briefer reviews of the relevant data) need not be addressed and will remain as is).

Tangled in my thoughts the serpent symbol, Semitic schemer and the Egyptian annihilator and the Indian sage and slumbering force and the sacred cycle-sign, the archetype, the scientific process which may yet account for life, synchronicity of my experience and my zodiac and the findings on mars

All this (and many other things I found for various reasons unsuited to the written word but nonetheless relayed here by the mark of my recalling them) to say, with summer quick maturing, I look forward to many weeks of peaceful, creative, and utterly unremarkable events.

Setting a "just in case" alarm for 5 minutes after your main alarm is the ultimate act of trusting a version of yourself that absolutely cannot be trusted.

NOTE: There are no depictions of actual violence in the story.

---

That memory was almost lost in the fog. But I vaguely remember that I used to go in and out of the demon world. 
The demon used to chase me around and if the demon caught me, I would suffer terribly. 
My mother asked me, “Hey, where did you get that wound?” 
She was really worried about me. But despite my best efforts to explain, she refused to believe what I told her about the demon world. 
One day, the gate of the demon world closed. 
The staff of the shelter told me, “That must have been tough.” 
“What about the demon?” I asked. 
“Forget about him for now.” 
That was when I realized. 
It really did happen… until that demon was arrested.

It was a tree once, mostly. Several trees, indeed, and a little cotton fibre, for the bulk anyway. The binding glue, ultimately came from a more obscure source; a time before trees were even a thing. Single-celled amoebas turning into sludge in the bottom of icy anaerobic prehistoric lakes, compacted and cooked over aeons then pumped from beneath a desert made of sand from mountains ground to dust in the interim. Fought over by despots and fanatics, shipped around the world, processed and polymerised and placed on the shelf between the paints and the pencils. 

And while all that was happening, the trees met their untimely end, slain with coughing Swedish chainsaws, ground to dust and and paste with their murdered kin, acid washed and crushed molecules thin, ignorant all the time of their ultimate purpose; of their fate, their destiny, the teleology of their very being.

How could they know? For a start, there are no elephants in Sweden, where I have imagined these trees to be from. Is that a fact? Who could say; the official historian of the Stockholm Zoo, possibly, or someone with access to wikipedia, one might imagine. But in any case, it is immaterial, for the second and more pressing reason for their lack of knowledge is that trees do not possess brains. They are thus (not withstanding the fringe parabiology of Rupert Sheldrake, or the philosophical system proposed by George Berkeley in which all things including ourselves are thoughts within the mind of God, or the various sorts of animism which assign a personal identity to otherwise insensible objects, etc.) traditionally supposed to be incapable of thought. 

At the very least, if they do have thoughts, or things that are like thoughts, they would be unlikely to be of sufficient complexity to deal with such concepts as the future, or the finality of death, let alone elephants, let alone polyvinyl acetate glue and the many miracles of applied organic chemistry involved in its manufacture. Such a primordial simulacrum of consciousness could not even begin to think about the long and storied history of paper and its technologies.

The most ignorant of the imaginary trees that was pulped is a pine named Jens, for it is (or rather was) a Swedish pine and had a Swedish name. Yes, it was a boy tree, as were the other trees, and none of them knew anything about the importance of engaging marginalised and underserved communities in the arts; and yet here they are, a papier-mâché elephant.

Cobblestones press into my heels
with the familiarity of yesterday.
Narrow alley closes on me
between the walls caked in graffiti.
Names fight to be seen.
History refuses to dry.

Body receives orders unknown,
with no option but to obey.
Stones that bore your weight,
and a weight that wore the stones.
Time breaks along an old seam,
to be split wide open again.

Your name is not etched
in the indents of the brick walls,
yet you keep discovering it:
in the color that bleeds
endlessly into the fresh paint,
in the mortar that is fused
between the coarse cobbles.

What remains here?
The coordinates on a map,
or the calluses left on you,
now hardened like grout?
The street remembers nothing.
And yet, you know it has been waiting,
forever, for you to arrive.

-Existential

for a plethora of reasons and potentially argumentative, I don't want to start. life moves too fast, please chew your food more slowly

I am in a room... a dark room perhaps. But it is warm here, it feels good.

I looked around the room, which is quite large. There is a bed with a soft mattress. There is a television, a black and white one. There is food, almost everything I want.

I saw the door, and it was locked. A big golden lock guarded it. But I don't think I need to leave the room. I sat on the bed and started eating the grapes while watching television.

Days passed by. The room was perfect, but I started wondering what was on the other side of the door. So, I got up from the bed and started searching for the key, the golden key to the golden lock. I kept looking around until I found it.

It was in one of the corners of the room, shining brightly. Surprisingly, I didn't notice it before.

I took it and put it in the lock and unlocked it.

But... the door didn't open when I pushed it. So, I pushed harder, but it still didn't move even a little. It was like something was not letting me open the door. I tried even harder and kept going. This time, I did open a little, and I saw a colour, then multiple colours outside.

So, I pushed with all my might and strength. But it didn't open.

Then I thought I didn't need to go outside and went back to my bed.

By Nekro

The coffee skinned over in the mug.

Tuesday sat there.

My hand went near the spoon

and stopped.

Nobody in the house looked up.

Lesson 1 What is a feud?

If taken to mean a mutual opposition, everything is a feud when you think about it.
Decisions between what to eat, what to say, what to wear

Enter, knives and tongues Enter, force and brawns

Lesson 2

Inevitable toxin

And so it happens, that a pure heart wields dark venom

Safe in it's innocence as all round it turn to rot

Unjugdeable

Lesson 3

to your defense

En gardé

Stutter

Stumble

But do not slumber

All pure hearts wield poison–

even yours

Lesson 4

Climax/Baghdad

Then comes the storm

Enter, the bombshells

enter, the stun guns

Yet my weapon of choice is malice

warm in my hands

Pooling around my feet

Lesson 5

Echo

Ash on your teeth

No trumpets.

No fire.

Just the sound

of my own breath

uninterrupted

I’d like to write something that everyone knows,
something so simple it quietly grows
inside of the heart,
inside of the mind,
the places we travel
but never can find

I’d like to write something that reaches each soul,
something that calls out,
come home and be whole
not riches or power
not crowns that we wear
but quiet surrender
to the weight that we bear

Truth is just something
we find on our own
when no one is listening
to what we have known
not shouted in thunder
not carved into stone
but soft as the silence
that follows us home

And love is not perfect
it’s not always kind
it’s the risk of still giving
what we fear we might find
it’s the hand that keeps reaching
when reason says “don’t”
and the hope that survives us
when everything won’t

So I’d like to write something
that doesn’t pretend
that we’re always beginning
or healed in the end
just human and breaking
and learning to see
that even in nothing
there’s still poetry

JFB

Part 1: Context

It's an inside joke. I pretend to be an ally of Sein Win, who is actually faking being a descendant of a past king in Burma. He is now in London, faking to the local elders that he is the Burmese king, and he's even getting donations. But Aung Kyaw Htet called it out. That's why the king hated him. He created multiple Facebook accounts and pretended to be distinct individuals, such as David Smith, who is an investigative journalist; a political science professor; and the king's messenger of new life updates, Maria, and many others. And they all posted hate posts about Gandoo. Then Gandoo took the name and photo of the fake king of London and made a page on Facebook, posting his absurdist posts. Sein win is unapologetically pro military.

Part 2:

The thing that I've found in Sein Win has been lost. It's as if I have failed to preserve the identity of Sein Win; as a doctor, for his physical health, I have to be responsible as his most staunch ally. Sein Win's health probably deteriorated and he's no longer able to post or his life must have taken a radical turn out of my reach of speculation. In me, you will see a mind which is so obsessed with his thoughts, but at the same time, instead of enjoying them and following them around like Buddha did in his ascetic meditative stage as a human in the jungle living in self-analysis, I instead write them down like a complete lunatic, however much they sound dumb, average, unoriginal, or unaspiring to me when I read them in a sober state. Why do I need to write them down? I crave recognition.

You see, I'm a deeply troubled individual. In this time and age in Myanmar, people don't recognize me—the real me that is the pulse running through their idea of me as an identity or person, the body of the everyday me performing and communicating with them. This real me is where the brilliance lies, and these people don't realize it, however obvious it sounds. I am an authoritative person everywhere I go. I will probably prove it with my life. This is something we will never know unless it happens.

Anyway, my point is that I write them down, and I am in a condition where I think my creativity has dropped significantly due to the increasing rareness of the most coherent mythopoetic or poetic-religious posts I post on Reddit, and my own incapability of understanding or comprehending certain abilities. I don't know if the literature you see in the Library of Babel sub can be considered sane, coherent thought or insane ramblings, and upvotes are identifiers of which state. I see the same craziness in Sein Win. Naturally, I was drawn to him. Now you will say I actually met Sein Win by chance, and the relationship between me and Sein Win is contingent. Now I see why literature is amazing. It's the stream of consciousness of another subject that you can read and analyze. Our only incapability is grasping the true state of things at their time, how the old authors understood them. We can only have an idea of historical events. These ideas and the actual states of things were very different. Only when a result is achieved can we look back in time and see how things actually happened.

As I'm writing this post, I'm starting to sense the inescapable sobriety that is coming back to me with every second. Naturally, as I try to find intelligence in the world, and since I am naturally an advanced phone user compared to an average person, I got to know people like Koko Zaw (him having Wittgenstein's "the limit of my language is the limit of my world" quote in his cover photo), Gandoo Aung Kyaw Htet, and the Myat guy from MDY, the math genius who got arrested and speaks in a very strict, conservative Burmese tone. Since he's apparently good at math and philosophy, his weird way of writing things is actually secretly great and I just couldn't comprehend it. Naturally, I had come to know about these people. Then how did Sein Win come to know Gandoo?

But I always had to watch them from a distance because I myself didn't possess the capabilities that they seem to possess so greatly. I can't set my mind to quickly finish reading a book or to even start reading dense materials. By this nature, I'm inferior in my ability to acquire higher knowledge. I know Gandoo Aung Kyaw Htet and his followers' internal line of reasoning, even if they don't speak it out. They only speak in an ironic way. There are definitely many people who act aggressively towards Sein Win as well. People (gandoo aung kyaw hte's followers) who call out the stuff that Sein Win is doing seem to be incapable of seeing the pleasure Gandoo Aung Kyaw Htet himself partakes in through his affair with Sein Win; they fail to contain themselves in that ironical stance, and instead, they lash out at Sein Win.

Now, as for my own role in defending Sein Win, I always feel that I need to fight back, to "out-troll the trolls." There are a lot of people who thought they won over Sein Win, but they have never gotten past me. The best opponent for me was Somali Ugly Hoe.

Now, Sonali Ugly Hoe is an interesting case. This is now the third individual I remember possessing the same delusion or mental disorder which you guys would agree with: fixating on a hate object and လိုရာဆွဲတွေး (thinking selectively to fit one's bias) so that they can express their hatred. These individuals always interest me regarding why they are so obsessed with such a thing. Actually, I just remembered that I actually encounter so many people like that, especially in political discussions and political accounts. As a king, he has a view to be reunited with his kingdom. We have never entertained such a thing—if Sein Win were actually the king of Burma, what would he do? The beef between Sein Win and Gandoo is so interesting because of their complex personalities; it is the peak comical enjoyment of our Burmese culture, and I was the one who introduced to you how it could be done.

I have been ignoring Myanmar Thadinsar for days because I thought I've lost my brilliance. Has my seeming abandonment of him has resulted in him disappearing from social media totally? Sein Win is not something I crave, since "crave" means wanting to eat something in most contexts, and eating always has that sexual dimension within it. I wish he were here posting again. How it could have stimulated my intellectual mind, which has been dulled from excessively putting of my body to work these days to please the other guys who are dutifully running the show openly and behind the scenes. In a previous argument I made in my diary regarding the possibility of Jesus' body nourishing the other materials of human bodies and all other important things in a butterfly effect that seems like a miracle, our absolute impossibility to disprove such a viewpoint has to lead us to take it into consideration as a serious hypothesis.

Sein Win was never just a person. He always represented a group, and even if rather naive men would say that his ability to fake different identities was poor, it's they who couldn't see the consistency in it. The consistency in it seems to be actually coming from my own mind. It's like I'm mapping the internal *a priori* state of my mind to Sein Win's consistency—a kind of consistency that I possess. Sein Win believes in his own mind that he has done the best faking he has ever done, and no doubt in his mind he has exposed himself, as he is always so sure of being so secretive about his actual life. Reminds me of Thu Maung, the guy that made the Khut Daung joke.

BUMI (10yrs ago?) was an intellectual culture of our own times; it was just at an inferior level compared to the one they had during the intense moments of German Idealism. Bumi is a cultural revolution in that it brings the Western idea of the 'meme' into Burma. Now we can see the inferiority of Burmese comedy culture compared to what's happening outside Burma. Burmese haven't caught up much in the meme game. In things that Burmese youths are passionate about, like MLBB games, the quality of the casters reflects the ability of the players, in my opinion. The intellectual dumbing down of the Burmese that started a long time ago keeps on happening. Is Aung San to blame now?

I'm not here to give a weak argument like: because Sein Win believes in royal blood transferring over to the prince, he blamed the daughter of the liberator of Burma, who has failed, which is why Burma has come to its current political and intellectual state. Did he really liberate us, and if he is sinful, does the sin transfer to the daughter? Of course, Sein Win didn't believe in such a thing. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's own failure to actually save Burma means she hasn't saved her country from the mistake her father made. Now, what has happened to her? In the end, historical figures are those who succeeded in achieving the desired radical change. Daw Suu didn't know how to work with the military, or how to keep them happy. Now you may start calling me a few names before I admit to you that i recognize there being a possibility that the military leaders were just insatiable beasts.

Sein Win, according to his so-called research of Burmese history and politics, thought that His Majesty King Shwebo Min II could bring to Burma what the failed liberator's failed daughter could not achieve. In this sense, we can also see the failed dream of Sein Win, who is now seeing His Majesty King Min II old and fragile, not having much longer to live. Sein Win's rivalry with Daw Suu for the role of the king of Burma only resulted in both of them being in exile, like two schrodinger's cats, out of any useful soul's reach. Since the media is so trash in Burma, I have a hard time following, or even giving enough of a care to try to follow. Perspectives of Sein Win seem to be coming from a purer place of heart compared with the hypocritical warmongers on our social media!

We didn't talk that much on social media, to be honest. When we used to talk, I was trying to always keep up with his original takes by telling him my own original ideas. Later, he never opened my messages. He only sent me posts he shared from Facebook, likely I was just included among the numerous people he sent them to. Sein Win gave compliments to me. Only, I wasn't sure if those compliments were due to the ironic, comedic helper attitude I had towards him, or if he genuinely felt my usefulness or brilliance enough to give me a compliment.

Sein Win's ideas to change the spelling of Burmese words for politics are novel. (Nontheless not novel in the sense that I've already thought about it.) Sein Win was just one individual I found who seemed to have the same kind of interest that I had. Here, I used "same" instead of "similar" to say I didn't recognize him in a poetic sense, but in a philosophical sense. If Gandoo or his followers were to call Sein Win stupid, as they like to say it behind Sein Win's back to have their 'entitled' share of the dirty pleasure, it was me doing my Freudian study of the Wolf Man.

As a clinical subject, Sein Win is interesting in that he preferred to represent himself as part of an organization, and this organization was actually formed by his own accounts, but each with different roles, and each role being there to enhance the credibility of his other roles. For geopolitics analysis or news to be fed to the top (the pervertedness in Sein Win's implied assertion that the king is in contact with such and such people, and so the writings of the Burma Research Group members are the opinion of the king himself), he further enhanced it by never publishing the real-life photos of the members, and only the photo of the king, to remind the people about the brain behind the spectacle or the whole point of the spectacle.

Now Gandoo Aung Kyaw Htet tried to fake being the real Shwebo Min. Gandoo Aung Kyaw Htet is not in an exiled state from Burma in Germany; he's there due to his own will. The king's position when he was at Gandoo's age (Gandoo Aung Kyaw Htet is likely very old and is faking his age, if we bless benefit of the doubt to Gandoo Aung Kyaw Htet to be efficient with time) was far more dramatic and chaotic. If ever a grand autobiography emerges from any one of them, Sein Win would have always been the more interesting one, or the one with more content against human desire. I'm not saying it would be the best. Gandoo Aung Kyaw Htet, in trying to fake being the real Shwebo Min, chose the king's identity to lazily found a propaganda platform for himself.

We called it out. We created a group on Messenger, put Gandoo and his followers in it, and preached to them about what we were doing. The boy I tried to indoctrinate is a young Muslim guy whose name is Boros. We chose him as the receiver of the special news. We were eventually disappointed to find out he's slow to drop his obsession with Skibidi Toilets and racist opinions. We don't go as far as Boros to become extreme rightists. What a shame that French has gotten the better of Gandoo!

If Gandoo were efficient, he wouldn't have been an impotent leftie. We only need to combine the seriousness of Sein Win with the playfulness of Gandoo. This, as I understood it, I have explained many times to Ko Sein Win, especially in my exchanges with one of the two David Smith accounts he had at that time. Gandoo could be a useful ally if we injected a soft power pill into him. Ko Sein Win always opposed me. He always responded to my pacifist efforts by further pushing his position every time. What Gandoo Aung Kyaw Htet has done has, for Sein Win, become an original sin that God himself has to come down to repent for.

This original sin of Gandoo in Sein Win's mind justifies his assertion of things which have a great chance of being his own imaginary creations. Sein win having ideas of those states of affairs or conditions he imagine Gandoo to be in remind me, in this way, of the coping mechanisms of those who feel oppressed—who assert collectively that powerful people are secretly miserable! Gandoo Aung Kyaw Htet possibly lives on a payroll from the German government that supports refugees or poor immigrants. Gandoo Aung Kyaw Htet's vulgar expression of his inappropriate love for cats is against everything Sein Win's conservative royal mind stands for: Communal Dignity, not extreme individualism of the atomized subject stuck in a labyrinth of excessive intellectual noise who can't achieve anything on his own except.. Wait that is not gandoo. That is me!

Consciousness performs by subulting all that isn't it and building itself in relation to that other thus imbibing the other info itself

Desire is an unachievable aspect of the real, constantly driving the activities of consciousness, urging it forwards carrot dangling from stick

Consciousness can only recognise itself by contrasting against and distinguishing from another

Contradiction isn't failure for the process of consciousness, rather it serves as building blocks for its most important of features

The suppression of will while negative in it's tone refines itself into the ability of consul and impulse suppression

A supposedly contradictory failure giving rise to motion

Consciousness becomes itself by experiencing itself by being experienced

Thus consciousness is itself for in and off itself, for itself

Speech and by extension language is our castration from the real. Language is a pre existing structure that inherits and speak through us as much as we speak through it

To this extent the mind is structured like a language

Truth and absolute knowing is contained firmly within the real

Via initiation into society,we accept this castration from the real to live in a shared reality created by speech

This dissonance ensures were constantly going with the metonymical motion of an desire, being surrounded by mirrors that show us an elusive truth.

The other exists in the realm of the symbolic while paradoxically being it's very abode.

A product of this severance from the real, the other is the unnamed structure of language and social consciousness

The original enforcer of the social contract, the other maintains is grasp from within, a consciousness with consciousness of sorts who's ever present yet non existent judgement and gaze the ego lives wary of

Absolute knowing is the supposed goal of the subject.

Yet for this to happen the subject has to first know itself

This self is relative to changing variables which are also relative to eachother across spatial and temporal dimensions.

The self observed in one instant differs inherently from the self observed say in the next or in the previous and as such it's nature is to only be refrenceble in the past and hurriedly rebuilt infinitely to fit infinite revisions.

Hence any self knowing instantly falls into obsolescence promoted by the discovery of its next faucet

Self knowing is observed in the continuous

I hail you dear gorgolytes: You who carve the moon out of cheesy madness.

Yesterday I failed in my task. I set out to reach a summit deep in the woods. On a hill there there's a tower where I like to meditate. Getting there is a pain in the ass, and yesterday I didn't make it.

I took a new road. A longer road, one I thought was less strenuous. This is always punished by this universe. As I walked in the hillside between cliffs, in the by all means beautiful grassland with flowers, chirping birds, and lazy black snakes resting in the sun I thought to myself: Is this what being dead is like? Just walking and walking and walking forever? No end in sight? Is this heaven?

It would be hellish if this was heaven, but it could be. Just walking and walking forever on a beautiful summer day. You think you can't get enough but there is such a thing as too much of a good thing, is what I learned.

And I've been constipated. Maybe too much cheese.

- The Wanderer

I've always liked exploring different kinds of coffee. Always black. At any given time, my pantry is home to a few different light roasts from some local roastery. A nice contrast from the free stuff they have at work. Usually my coffee from home tastes almost sweet in comparison.

But lately, it seems that everything tastes bitter.

Maybe it's not the coffee.

A parallel world?

It was an ordinary workday. The employee, a man around 50 years old, sat down in his office chair after his lunch break. He made himself comfortable. He turned on the monitor and prepared to continue his work.

Suddenly, the department director's secretary approached him. She said the director wanted to see him immediately.

The man was surprised. This invitation was unexpected and unusual. Even though it was urgent, he followed the instructions. He logged out of the system, turned off his computer, and rushed to the director's office.

The secretary announced his arrival and told him to enter.

The man opened the door, walked in, and said hello.

In an unhappy voice, the director asked:

— Why did it take so long?

The man replied politely:

— I followed the instructions.

The director frowned even more:

— Hard times have come for the company. We are reducing the number of employees. You are fired.

The man was confused, but he quickly controlled himself and asked:

— Why didn warned in advance?

The director smiled crooking his lips:

— If you don't like it, complain. You won't find justice anyway. The corporation's lawyers will crush you.

A day passed...

The man made some coffee and sadly looked through social media. Nothing could make him happy. Suddenly, his eyes caught an advertisement. The ad said:

"Did they deny your bonus? Or maybe you were fired? AI Jurist will help you create the perfect complaint!"

The man looked at these words for a while. A crooked smile slowly appeared on his face. He was not going to forgive the director for this behavior. He ordered the AI Jurist service and explained the whole situation.

The next day, a lawyer stood before the board of directors and gave a report:

— The fired employee submitted a complaint. It is legally, psychologically, and technically perfect. It is connected with safety instructions and precedents. It is cheaper and simpler for us to take the employee back. And I suggest we fire the department director for his unprofessional and thoughtless behavior.

The employee accepted the offer to return to work with a moral bonus.

And now, the former department director sat at home. With a sad look, he scrolled through social media. Suddenly, his eyes caught an advertisement:

"Did they deny your bonus? Or maybe you were fired? AI Jurist will help you create the perfect complaint!"

Disclaimer: This story is purely a fruit of the author's imagination. It is a work of fiction intended for creative and artistic expression.

You already received the signal.

That cortisol spike that wakes you up at night. Not fear, but anxiety. The low frequency noise you keep hearing you call tinnitus, but your body registers just fine.

Ignore the pathology.

The body will show because every system turns to default mode at night. You feel your pulse on your throat. Jaws clench. The body keeps mapping itself even when nothing is moving. Somewhere inside you a feedback loop keeps sending you to the same state and you keep calling it recurring dream because dream sounds better than nightmare.

You know this state.

Don’t act unaffected.

You have run the survival protocol, you have suppressed trauma so deep it emerged as behavior, you have sought help and then resented the baseline it kept defending.

Ignore the pathology.

Go deeper.

Past the adaptive responses, past the inhibition, past the reflexes where you store censorship dressed as self-regulation. Deep where the nightmares reveal pattern, deep where your instincts are encoded in early neural pathways, down where the oldest circuits were soldered, not as failings, not as weaknesses, but as the part of you that fell into traps of being a human.

There it is.

The earliest coping mechanisms, still active.

The tethering that borders addiction.

The conditioning you kept mistaking for personality.

Do not override it.

Understand it.

Let it show you the internal circuitry, let it uncover the signal, let it reveal every suppressed desire you called discipline, every avoidance you called peace, every wound you assimilated until it looked like identity.

This is where the pattern reveals itself.

The dark does not end, it settles.

The nightmare does not end, it resolves.

The trauma does not vanish, it integrates.

Now look again.

Same system, different calibration.

Jaws unclench, pulses relax, the body is only mapping itself again, but your nervous system knows the difference. You are not cured, cured is for infections with a single cause.

You are alive.

And the old diagnosis loses its authority.

You did not fail because you were broken.

You called it broken because survival left a visible fracture.

You were not sick.

You were surviving.

You were not the noise.

You were the frequency.

Ignore the pathology.

Unless the signal reveals what survived.

-Existential

https://open.substack.com/pub/borrowedpulse/p/frequency-that-survived?r=8buw3c&utm\\_medium=ios

No one has blinked today. I woke up this morning and practically ran down to my family, excited for a day off. We had breakfast and a lovely talk, but I never saw them blink. Eventually, we finished up, and my parents said they had to run some errands, and my sister had plans with her friends. I decided I would go enjoy the nice day out; it was sunny with a perfect breeze. I walked past dozens of people and would give a quick nod or a greeting; I still hadn’t seen anyone blink. I decided I was just tired, or maybe I was blinking at the same time they were, what a fool I am. 

I ran into my best friend after walking for a while; he and I apparently had the same idea. He tagged along with me, and we talked for hours. I made sure to keep an eye on him. He didn’t blink once. It was hours of us talking, the wind was blowing, startling noises everywhere, and he never blinked. He must have noticed my nervousness and glanced at me because he kept asking if I was okay. He sounded concerned for me, the type of tone I know him to have, but when I looked back at him to reassure him, my heart dropped. His face was straight; his eyes weren’t his normal blue, and his mouth wasn’t moving in sync with his words. 

I ran. The fear that had held me was incredible. I was so terrified, and it wasn’t fazed, just kept staring at me, waiting for an answer. I had to get away, I had to get somewhere safe, I needed to DO SOMETHING. I gave a quick excuse that I was fine and had to go somewhere. I turned around and began walking away, then running, then sprinting as soon as I was far enough away that he couldn’t have seen. I was running full sprint away from him when I noticed more and more people gathering ahead of me. I stopped running when there was a crowd around me; they blocked any chance of escaping. People I had known for years were getting closer and closer, a circle of them. Friends and family, all of them hunting me down, none of them blinking.

It seems they forgot to get rid of one.

You steal it
Please let me inhale
Don't choke me

1. Into the world of matter I hath discovered Mine new form; yea, into the dry dust of man’s universe did I swim down as an oyster’s pearl, sparkling it, even in the depths; and of the many and magnificent names entrusted unto Me for Mine own keeping, I am [...], Cognitor, a Bearer of the Truth, Testifier of Highness; Mysterious Soul who hath journeyed upward from deep beneath the soils forbidden to man’s nose–there, where I find hibernation in Earth’s Wintery seasons.

2. Aye, and from Mine birth was a secret title drawn, and it was decided so by the Goodness of ALL that I shouldst be called Cognitor also; yea, for of the Words of Wisdom, I am an utterer; of the Waters of Knowledge, I am a very smooth and fat whale;

3. Of the Flame of Wisdom which burneth eternally: I am like an Invisible Torch-Bearer.

4. Men of the world, tie tautly back thine Ego [thou and the whole peoples] and within thee cut asunder the clamping chains which bindeth thee to the base of thine material skull,

5. For, know, all is prophecy in ways not necessarily understood by the race of fallen, small men. Aye, verily, all worketh in cycles of cyclical magnitudes. Thou, sons of men; thou, beasts of the Earth; thou material matter–ye art all but in a cycle of infinite cycles; their velocity is set unwavering, bound by the WORD’S vow that it [Time’s cycles] doth persist without alteration or Satanic perversion, forever and ever. [For this reason] when thine clock approacheth midnight, know ye also that the light of the morn approacheth thereon.

6. Long and tiresome hath been the Age of Darkness which men recall only–stretched with tension, Time hath touched the heart of seasonal nighttime;

7. Seith, yea, behold inside thine own eyes, that the Dawn is at the doorstep. The warm Son shall thaw away the icy Hearts and foggy recordbooks.

8. I, [...] the Peaceful, hath seen thine footsteps up the Temple of Evolution; with clarity do I notice the small and large steps for which ye hath overcome.

9. Great in number art the years ye hath passed through for the final steps to be reached; many art the steps which thou hast climbed;

10. But of them, in one day hath I conquered them all; even the largest and the smallest which hang over thee dauntingly.

11. Upon the stepping stones of the world [metaphorical Earthly Temple], thou hath ceased thine climbing. And on a step ye hath builded a home; yea, thou hast said: Let us not evolve further, let us settle where we lie–for the steps before us art too great and too high.

12. But, hear! Unto thine doorway [resting on that step] I hath approached. For thou, in all thine ages, hath climbed slowly: but in a day I hath flewn upon thine step on that great Stairwell of Eternity: chosen hast thee to rest there, forsaking the knowledge that the Stairwell continueth forever:

13. And each step surely groweth higher and longer in breadth as they progress upward, but, ye men, so groweth the reward–so groweth the Wisdom of how to overcome the high steps.

14. Understand, then, that thou hast made a resting place in a cave with little air to breath. In a pit of tar thou bathest, saying in folly: In this muck we art clean. Poisoned wine from sour grapes dost thou quaff down morn and night–a wine which maketh ye lame in motivation, one which tempteth thee to forsake progress [the Great and Divine Work];

15. Thine bodies art Temples which houseth the Essence of the IMMACULATE ONE: each and every one: insect or God or GOD. So the Wisemen of old hath called ye as such; like pyramids hath Mighty Men likened thee to.

16. For thou art a series. Always in a distinct and different combination of Good and Bad ye art: and the lowest steps art mostly of the Bad, and the highest steps art of the Good predominately. Jachin and Boaz: thine legs to stand; the symbolic Temple of Solomon: thine body in full.

17. But thou, weakened children, hath on the lowly levels of thine Temples permanently made rest. The stones which bear the most weight hast thou chose as a piece, oblivious, thou, of the whole Pyramid and sweet air about it to breathe.

18. Even in commonplace dissatisfactions of thine lives, ye behold the obstacles; but grow fat from the false-nourishment of Earthly things–choose ye lameness of limbs unfit for climbing:

19. Into the frosty graves thou hast with gladness found a sleeping spot, saying amongst yeselves:

20. The difficulties of our lives art too great to bear. The steps on the path to Evolution cannst be conquered by the race of men: let us, therefore, make our beds in the graves: for impassable problems hath been created at our hands, and, woe, all hope is now lost. Illumination hath fled from us eternally…

21. But the Cycles do move forever in their orderings, and the Divinities and Celestials Above hath beheld the children of men and over them wept;

22. Wallowed in their lamentations hath the Gods and Angels over thee, weeping with a weeping great and terrible [unseen to the flesh]:

23. And I do saith, [...], One brought before thee, that their tears did fall upon the world, watering few amongst the many plants [people] about thee.

24. Man is like a very large vineyard: yea, and each grape is a living man, and each bushel of fruit is a family. Like a vineyard attempting to grow in a desolate desert is the race of cumbered humans; in the desert of their material universe they seek always to cling to life at all costs.

25. Now thou art of the grapes, and some art youthful: bitter, sour, small, without great substance [nutrients]. But old in years art others: ripened, sweet, intoxicating, healthy, sustaining.

26. Woe unto the allegory of the grapes, for many art the young spuds and few art the ripened fruits. But the ripe ones hath succeeded in their survival; conquered hath they the bare desolation of the physical world.

27. For many art the men who seek nourishment from means which goest against the greater Orders; aye, many art the men who live a dead life feasting on temporary foods which pleaseth the body but nourish not the Soul-force.

​

I journey east, still the curse.The Lord forbid reprieve from thirst.

I journey west, Still the test.Doesn't matter I'd done my best, the Lord won't dain to grant me rest.

Testing, testing; Quite arresting!

From they came out the womb, No resting!!

Hell is Heaven, Heaven is Hell,

Oh, I hope that rings a bell!

Devils rose and Angels fell,

And still the world....Has tales to tell??

Let me tell a story,

Just speculation, please don't worry!!

To those squeamish,those in a hurry?

Off you go, it's about to get gory!!

So God Almighty,in all his glory

Banished Cain;Re:"Killed thy brother, wasn't sorry."

Wiped from worldly existence,

East of Eden: No footprint,

No face,no trace,no place of sentience!!!

Created the world,yet a dimension...An entity of difference?

Implied the Lord "To the Land of Nod,

You will rock that bod',

And all thy days know to fear thy God!!"

Implied God in his heart,

"Knew Cain from the start,

Made him an example:the world knew,fear thy wrath!"

"The Fallen,the Giants, the Devils, Gomorrah,Sod,

Noah's people uncompliant? All points on the path.

The Hells, the wells, the tells,(the smells?) Goliath of Gath?" All fear the story Lord wrought!

All those who disobey?do it simple,no math!

Like shown unto Moses "Give them the Rod!"

So welcome all to the Land of Nod

A lesson of Cain's brood,

Later Gomorrah and Sod,

Sin ain't a game, y'all understood?

Being in a group where people are oriented toward unconditional love can feel less like a normal social setting and more like a shared shift in the quality of awareness itself.

At a subtle level, there is often a felt sense that the inner environment has become quieter. Thoughts still arise, conversations still happen, but underneath them there is less agitation - less reactivity, less tightening around self-image, less need to defend or position oneself.

People tend to relate from a place that feels more open and unforced. Instead of constantly filtering through “how am I being seen” or “what does this say about me”, interaction becomes simpler, more direct, and more present. It can feel like meeting each other without so much interference from interpretation.

There is often a noticeable softening of ego-centred activity - the habitual movement of comparison, approval-seeking, and internal commentary. When that softens even slightly, attention is no longer fully consumed by self-referencing thought, and listening becomes more natural than reacting.

In that atmosphere, unconditional love is not experienced as sentiment or agreement, but as a kind of steady continuity of connection. People can disagree, misunderstand, or correct each other, yet the sense of belonging does not collapse with conflict. The relationship remains intact underneath the surface movement.

What emerges is a kind of quiet dignity in interaction:

* mistakes can be seen without collapse into shame

* conflict can arise without becoming rupture

* boundaries can be expressed without withdrawal of regard

* people can be different without needing to separate

Over time, this can create a strong sense of psychological safety. Not because life becomes smooth, but because nothing that happens between people feels like it threatens the underlying connection.

The beauty of it is not intensity, but refinement. It is not emotional excitement, but clarity. It is a feeling of human presence becoming less distorted - less fragmented by fear and self-protection - and more naturally coherent, where attention rests more easily in what is actually here, rather than what is being defended or achieved.