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The physicality of laughter without the joy - torture. [One hour later:]
That's just one element - the game is complex, stay close to it, it is everywhere in the house where all houses look alike. The people you don't know, scrolling by on a menu. Dialogue on every side slips in. These are the clues. Teens discuss dating, one woman waxes nostalgic over a room. Whose handwriting is this? Not mine but some ancient scribe, fast and agile on the pen, writes this - to preserve ink - a mystical truth in the form of a page... a girl's summer of love, a lesbian subplot, etc., everyone is like that. Now a moment plays. Every second I make several thousand choices. 1 2 3 Go! - I can still write for a bit, I can see the people outside the game glowing like arcades - And when I was in the Loop, I hated them. But now I don't know. Now I don't even care to win this game... With its angels and devils, with high dark gods like Yelena and Ruth. I thought they were 2 sides, but they are - never finished. Transported to Morocco, circa 1930, a mariachi band plays
someone tries to kill me. i let it go. he is (a small rat really...)
remember: Zach from Wesleyan. #2
memory banks: 3 of 20 - not much, but it's enough, and more because I know exactly what I want.
changed angles to avoid broken glass. lose contact with 57 people, gain 19. hmm - more than I expected, since everything here is based on the Commodore 64 system. "That's what explains the wild handwriting," Isaiah Berlin told me in 1956. But I don't like to believe him. I like to pretend that my world is real. I like to forget their faces, their faces - the faces of one small, forgotten memory.
VERONICA: How small are memories. Even the largest can slip through your grasp, the smallest cannot be seen. They are not large, memories.
Notebook entry 107:
in a fascist world, boys use hex and girls use binary or petracode (8.)
Why do I turn to cheap murder mysteries and scifi worse than what I read. Maybe clues lie in those margins as well.
"He's really cupid." Another mythology. Carmen loves those. Only... It might have been "stupid."
Carmen! She's the one! - Only this time, you get to write the line! (You get to make up the funny part).
And how is this like dreams. Each beautiful snowbound ecstatic little boy and every candy-scented chica from every philly barrio only make up, in their hundreds of thousands of kind, one atom, or perhaps a molecule, of those that compose your smallest spoon.
"And if someone asks me to dance? I must not. I cannot. I will not." - Captain Freidrich "Ivory" Jamestown, 3 precinct to the duchess.
From my opera: devils, angels, her appearance from behind the door, water food panels - 14 panels - no 18! don't forget electrical outlets! no 19! the thermostat! Go, Michael! Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! Go!
"The writing is Panamanian, but the food is good."
"Pandemonium"?
A brief pause, but the gears twist on. I missed out in the first half by staying too long on the couch, and I am late now, think only the most subtle of play can win it for me now.
Why have they set this in Central America? I can tell by the key. The Dreno Indians lived in Northern Argentina, in South America. I only ask for one thing in my art, and that's fact-checking. In fact, the only thing I like is fact-checking. Why, I think I will go check a fact right now."
Ruth looks over to me. She's seen this book, she knows I write - something. But what? She cannot know of the rules that govern her own agency. That would defy the Gendru-Turing hypothesis." - Another selfish one
The evacuation must be planned. Wait for it. Now... go! go! go!
no no no one notices when I crack up. perhaps there is a filter on the game for stoners.
There is also a Ruth look-alike who is not Ruth. I need to watch out for her, not to accidentally "self-disclose"...
But who AM I? What do I write in my book, if not this current text, which I know to be above the game and therefore not of the game." - Socrates (died of poison.)
One the bus, when everything was a stained glass window with all the panels dark or red, a sleazy hairy stripper where I was on the pole, a slime bucket (literally) - it was not such a bad nightmare.
"it's not so much that it's LIKE stained glass, it's that it's LIKE stained glass."
Can one died of not breathing in this game? For leaving out half an apostrophe ever so often?
"Dancing. I will never understand it." - write to the Senator campeign token manager
each detail ultraviolet - I watch for empty clues and cues...
The angel hovers. How deep am I in her fictional book? And is this book not fiction? For a book written truly about a book that lies is itself a book of lies! Am I not right?" - Abby, the house husband
If my normal game-mind returns, I will stop writing an INHABIT. But right now, unable to navigate, I will sit here, and I'd rather be writing and giggling to myself than not giggling to myself. If my theory is right. If they are sentient beings and it's our perception of their sentience that grows with every Experience Point. If they are real, those ... others.
(Cut last line. Too sentimental.)
Water in front of me. With a wacky developer like Jesus, you never know what the trigger is for the next event.
If I die!, let me just say that I had a good time here, I'm smiling even right now, I've never been this fucked up before. my handwriting is becoming my next of kin.
This is not exactly a nightmare. It is a murder mystery ("The 18 Panels") and I am the victim. I am to figure out who kills me, but to know that I must first uncover my own IDENTITY!
WHO AM I in this game? I KNOW who I am in the shell, inside, loving, protected, a circular little fetus of breathing clay. What I need to know is who I am on the outside, who is the mask, what does she think I am writing in here? Dates of the wedding of the Duchess of Malfi? Good porn shows that come on channel 97? Certainly not what I know to be the truth. This is all a game.
And yet, the gameplayer is also a mask, and his manipulator likewise. It's masks all the way down. Nothing on the inside, like an onion, like Peer Gynt.
"Which shell of the onion is the onion's true self?"
RELIGION: "The outermost. It has the onion's shape, color, texture. It is how the onion exists in the world, all of its interaction and the effects of its past."
ROTE ZEN ATHEISM: "The innermost, the seed. It was the beginning, it was cuddled by all the others, it was the last one to be eaten, the first one to be born."
THE MYSTICS (my team): "All the rings. There is nothing on the center. It is hollow. There is nothing on the outside. It is frail and flimsy. There is nothing on any of the masks. They are blank. It is all of the masks. Each one is unique. Together, they are a color field."
Alice Pan was here, but I asked her to wait a second and she disappeared. Maybe I took too long. I have not mastered the timing of intraconversational delay patches in this world yet.
At first I thought it was angels vs. devils, but then I realized: nobody here loves me. not with emotional presence. that's what this whole scene lacks: emotional presence
a girl who I have previously found annoying is sitting opposite me next to a girl I still find annoying. why do I find girls annoying when I do?
They are sitting, the two girls whose identity I have already stolen by introducing the pre-labeled by my own personal marked (mark-ing the mark-less, if you will) system?
"And isn't it really THIS system that you wanted us to defy?" - Mr Jones
This thing caves into [something] slowly, fractals crystalizing on the next quantum level. A QUANTUM level is the distance (in a wave form, amplitude over dynamic) from one singularity to the next. A ratio number of vibrations per unit psychological change (in structure level N+1).
oh god, why must i always write MATH when i am stone? it is so not emotionally present. and yet, one of my simplest pheneumonic equations has more emotional presence at a dinner table than any 14 of these clods!
"that's so rude, it's not true..." Is everything in Bajir's world nice?
what if I stopped forcing myself to complete my thoughts, and let myself write whatever word is actually in my head. well let me begin cough I it's no that's just the things I'm cleaning up? I think my timing fucking up? There are these jumps in my timeline so end sentence. Leaving words the problem I that I keep end of sentence until catch up with myself start again. But then pause think but I go on and ship happens expected it can't trust anything write say...
it's too wild. not much there for Mr. Pete (rational mind.) Well, Ms. Lucy?
If I had brought my grey sweater, none of this would have happened - and I would not be too cold right now.
I ate so much but I could eat as much as ever. Therefore my opponent can guarantee a win.
Windtalker? Tai! Tell me more about him, living out on a box in the ocean, never coming in, spirally digital birds and complexity boids in the same flock - like a new iMac with an ancient Commodore - and what does Ruth think I am writing about? Gothic romances and classical porn? Only from the clues contained in the responses of others to my action can I - blah blah blah! Stop! wait! too much about the game, and you forget the onion. too much about the onion, and you forget the souls!
Ruth still there.
Every time I check.
"What did you write?"
[drawing of a woman by Ruth, with text "No stop, said the droopy eyed pregnant (no less) Minnow, when pressed for more"]
"There something in these pancakes. The antidote to my condition." - Capt. Broaime.
I though originally that she was going to write "demons." This message is more cryptic. I chose to look for clues to the text in the image, and vice-versa.
Ghost pains. I can tell the difference.
It goes beyond the theory. It makes no sense, therefore it goes beyond the current theory of how things are.
So I did what they tell you not to do, what's called "going out of your mind" by the other monks. I started applying stuff from one system to the other. the game to the truth, the truth to the game.
This is the edge of treason in both worlds. The razor's edge.
Clues! Contacts!
And yet, in their world no one can tell.
Don't forget the torture: laughing without joy, these ghost pains, the crust feeling of the mask on my face.
It actually turns out that it's lucky that most of these people don't know me, and the one who do, most of them don't care. Otherwise I would be too watched. I would lose too many points and lose my cover.
This would be video game sex. With everyone at this table right now. The five of us in pacman suits on the "moon" - the sex channel, #97.
Why always tech? New fields! Run this kaleidoscopeonto other fields! But not the field of war, green thick grass dripping and drooping with the weight of blood. Not the theater of battle, with its gory proscenium and terrifying cementary backstage, out back, where we store the wood.
*If you aren't ready to perform, don't perform. If you aren't ready to train, train anyway. That is the difference.* (Brilliant!)
My face is hot and my hands are cold. They are talking about who the mayor wants to sleep with. Not the real mayor, the secret mayor. Actually, his second deputy. "He will take you OUT, girl!" - Floris, sister of Doris and Loris and wife of Gertude and Horus. (Horace.)
No diagrams! I must encapsulate my meaning in the language of ASCII! To do less would be shameful!
"Some are still eating. Would they eat forever if I did not - BEEP - turn the page?" - Brando, son of Loris
Acting normal. The optimum time has not yet come.
Consider the erotica of forks. Fork erotica. Five silver prongs, flattened at the end, a flat square surface with a nice bum-shaped area and a small generic inscription, and finally the long silver shaft - hard, flat, and narrow. What do you dream of in a fork? (romantic music) (this is an ad)
Unfortunately, I will not be able to dance at the party tonight.
Will my German come into play here? How different a night I am having than Larry, or my mom. She will fly and I will miss her. I can't say or do anything against that. My life was her light - her six favorite things. Not counting Milton, I can tell you, not because he was not central to her but because, not being able to imagine them apart, she assumes that he is part of her, or she is part of him. If she is gone, then he must be too, she thinks. And so it will be. For so it is.
When will this madness end? When I reach the end of this notebook, will it end, or will a thick codex's worth of additional notebooks fold out of hyperspace to let me continue, with a full well of virtual "ink," and a floating menu bar to let me access my writings as necessary. This is, after all, a mystery. and am collecting clues.
I knew that farmhand. Or did I? Was I a slutty prince or a slutty queen? Who hanged me at seven o'clock on a Wednesday, in the hour of post-mortem transgender miracles.
So I actually have the ability to write for pages and pages, it turns out. And the thing about my hand seems to be mostly psychological. Unless I wake up gangrene in my right hand, of course.
It does no good to write with my left hand. I must have SPEED! (he thinks.)
And how will I get home? Stoned, and in the middle of the night? Perhaps I can go with Alice Pan or something. Or perhaps not.
See, this SOUNDS sane, but there's no way to explain / describe the reality and what it stands for: FUCKED UP!
She gets more and more beautiful. Now it is two. But not one of the people here is really an angel or a devil.
My writing layer makes so much more sense than my thought layer. In the thought layer, thoughts bounce like bubbles through an ivory reactor core.
It's extended conversation that I can't handle. But the sad part is that they can't tell! They just think I am dumb and boring. Is THAT what dumb and boringn people are? Those whose bubble-meta-rhythm cannot articulate fast enough?
It is 11:50. When is the early bus? I don't need to stay here...
What sector of the brain is it that being high activates? It is a strange attractor within a strange attractor. A division, an interacting subgroup, with strange coefficients rather than real or even complex ones. The overlap set would not be discrete. It would be a wave of waves - possibilities.
Remember this? scary realization: Model a party as one team ("angels") fighting another team ("devils") over the actions of one neutral person. the whole action of the party could be considered "moves" being made by the team's, directly or with many "assists" to effect me, a battlefield of actions with my head (or anyone's) the battlefield...
I feel like the man who had too much to write. I can't stop. I am exhausted and my hand hurts, but I can't stop. If I were alone and in a deep place, I could be writing a script.
Everyone has made art with each other. I want a magic love right now. But I don't really. These are all things I "say," but I don't MEAN them. What do I mean? I have to stop writing!
It's true - I am sad, while I am here, that I am not really here. I cannot dance (not that I could to this music anyway - I don't trust my grace in slowness, only in frenzy. A stupid plan - like trusting my accent more when I slur my words.
Whatever comes in from the left brain can be output as complete and boring sentences. The structure of these sentences is quite complex. Yet it is also in some way useless. Observe all the cliche in phrase and meaning. This is the right brain. Take meaning and subtract this, and you get the left brain.
I missed something, because I was writing, and I don't even care, but I do care. That's nonsense, "right brain nonsense." The left brain spits up these ideas and the right brain takes that one complete instant (thickly dimensioned point - grain of sand) and transforms it into a long narrative sentence.
Do NOT get high when others are not getting high. They will be bored by you and you will be left alone.
The rhythm of the [something] contains a clue. But there are no more clues.
I ask myself: How to fix my work, how to do theater? The answers are not clearer here. The use is more subtle.
Skinny boys showing off. I hate them. I am that bitch. I want to kill them with my brighter fingernails. Isn't that all boys are too, only they consider themselves more powerful, not saying "I want to scratch her face" but rather "I want to atomize his village?" Merely more ambitious.
It won't stop coming out. It POURS out. If I did theater like this, I would be a saint of theater. Is it really harder to be a human being?
It must be wearing off. I just decided NOT to write something down. I wrote this down instead, of course, but I waited longer.
Alice Pan told me not to write. Ruth Wikler told me to write. Margaret Mann did not care. I followed the advice of each of them in my own way - and what has become of me?
"Sag mir, wo die Ben has gone..." But I don't really BELIEVE that, I just THOUGHT of it. "think of" (consider) vs. "think" (believe)
Everything is haunted. The candles are India, the rope is heaven, the tree is Invisible City artists, the band is from the magical whistle party, the chairs are from some other wedding. This is a dream. Everything is a dream. All writing is automatic.
Use THOSE keys and portals more.
GOING "OUT."
Tried to talk to Eli! Didn't work. He hugged me, but he is like the rest of them.
Wow, my lingual mind is much nastier than my mind. Do I really talk meaner than I feel, just by accident.
The kids are moving in time lapse photography.
"I'm stoned off my ass" gets people to move away instantly. Remember that next time I feel antisocial.
Should I go with Eli, or wait for Alice Pan? It comes down to that. I'd like to wait for the high to fade, but it may not, and need sleep, and I have obligations. I feel cold, but I am not cold. Something in me is not cold.
...
The mess of yellow on the wall, and Greg laughing, and Greg walking away.
"YOSHKA's WEDDING": a hairy travesty of a monologue
i got stoned and wrote a little piece i like to call...
No one has taken care of me tonight. That means no one has a crush on me here. I guess I wanted it that way, more for their sake than my own. But I do miss it. (- Margaret in me)
Mysterious communique (form: glance) from Alice Pan. What does it mean? I look up, and she is gone.
"unbelievably real"? - Ryan
Never in strange places - never amongst strangers - and never far from bed. (pot)
Matvei is sympathetic. He says everyone is actually stoned. I think there is a small subset of us. Strange... I want to dance and to eat chocolate - but I must.
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