Asbestos Head 0557028051

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Asbestos Head By Eric Dubay

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Copyright 2008 Lulu ISBN #978-0-557-02805-4

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Asbestos Head -How to Write Original MusicGod is the infinite existence or causal creation of all matter. Asbestos Head is a finite congregation of super-specialized matter capable of creativity and rationale, through which he deduces that God is the infinite existence or causal creation of all matter. Asbestos Head’s read Hoyle and Hawking and one of them is right; either everything that is has always existed or came into existence at some point in time. One disjunct is true but Asbestos is unsure which because he himself is merely a semi-mobile subjective perception unit incapable of knowing objective truth or comprehending infinity. What he does know is consciousness of God’s existence is contingent upon such congregations of matter, as is matter’s physical existence contingent upon God. Therefore either God is causal, singular and separate - an outside entity somehow responsible for His own existence, the creation of the universe, and the creation of other beings to recognize Him, or existence is non-causal, plural, parts and whole of all that is with nothing outside Us because We’re all infinite self-reflexive pieces of God interacting, changing, acting out eternity. Asbestos’ best guess is God is non-causal and thinks once Ockham’s razor slits the wrists of an unmoved mover We’ll all be left moving alone together forever, for without God, Asbestos is condemned to Godel’s incompleteness and without Asbestos, God is the silent sound of trees falling in solipsist forests. 3

Asbestos is very concerned about religion so he tries attending the local God’s Anonymous meetings every week where every weak soul sits in rows, mouth closed, listening to some guy’s interpretation of twelve guy’s interpretations of some guy’s metaphorical teachings from two thousand years ago. He finds this as useful as a hole in the head only more damaging to his brain, so he starts studying theology, philosophy, and the history of metaphysics for himself and finds that it’s this manner of introspection, this questioning of the unanswerable that expands his spiritual awareness and fills him with what some call God’s love, some call peace of mind, and others call crawling from the allegorical cave and seeing the light. For him the light manifests as a series of realizations regarding the nature of knowledge. Mainly that he knows nothing, and neither does anyone else; including priests, mathematicians, scientists, and all other people using God, Numbers or Formulas to magically boost their ideas from subjective interpretations to Objective Truths. Asbestos decides it’s his spiritual responsibility to study the thoughts and beliefs of everyone around him and throughout recorded history, because arbitrarily choosing a church or simply inheriting religion is lazy, limiting, and inconsiderate. It’s lazy because you leave spirituality up to genetics or geography. It’s limiting because you loose faith in anything outside your pre-packaged box of beliefs. And it’s inconsiderate because by choosing any exclusive religion you make the decision that all others are wrong. Even members of the few religions that encourage open practice of other religions are bound to their group identity like poster-children, constantly defending the individuality in their collective faith. But that’s like bragging how 4

modest you are. If you wish a collective relationship with some group’s conception of God, go find the next Holy place, read it’s Holy text, perform some Holy rituals then go home alone feeling like Holy shit, spitting out someone else’s existential excrement. If you wish a personal relationship with God, there’s no religion to follow, no group to join, and no book to read. There’s nothing to do but wander the world ever wondering why, and never decide. Ultimately, any system that gives answers to metaphysical questions is suspect because it grants Truth to things We can’t know through experience. A more educated approach to the unknown is utter agnostic apostasy: accept you don’t know and couldn’t even know you’re right if you knew it. Spiritual questioning is best left unanswered and simply explored throughout Our lives as We all exist in the mystery. After twelve weeks of God’s Anonymous meetings, the pastor doth spaketh with Asbestos: “Have you accepted the lord as your savior, my son?” “No. Dad. I don’t understand how he saved me from anything.” “He died for your sins.” “I thought he was publicly beaten then executed for claiming to be related to God.” Every head in the congregation simultaneously spins about-face. Every iris dilates and fixates on Asbestos. 5

“Or, that’s one way to look at it. Your opinion is God creates humans free and pure, but the first people wreck that condemning everyone thereafter to original sin. God waits thousands of years then decides to remedy the problem by manifesting some celestial sperm and shooting it into a virgin peasant who immaculately conceives his human son. God’s son gains a small cult following and is ultimately tortured to death for blasphemy. Then attributing this divine irony to pre-planned martyrdom, his execution is expressed in this book as God’s gift to humanity. If We believe his book, all Our evils are forgiven and We’re assured afterlife in heaven. If We don’t believe his book, We’re damned to eternal hellfire.” “That’s correct, my son.” Asbestos fakes a nervous smile and backs toward the door. Hundreds of heads behind pews stare with sad eyes and upside-down frowns. Then as if possessed by an attentionstarved ego, one of them jumps up and screams “Halla Hoola Jesus!” Asbestos seizes the opportunity and runs away as fast as he can. He immediately becomes suspicious of all large groups of people united under one name - each their own little niche community with mini-hierarchies and questionable agendas. Such group identities are dangerous because they claim to represent everyone, but at best represent a majority whose power fallaciously includes that of its dissenters. And when group irresponsibility results in disaster those mini-hierarchies disperse into democracy. His suspicion extends from religion to all systems of government, countries and militaries under the haze of 6

patriotism, police, school boards, corporations, pro-this and anti-that groups. He also becomes suspicious of his senses because spirituality and his sense of self lay beyond them. You see his senses are selfish so he spends all his time appeasing their wishes. Everything he thinks comes from his senses and most everything he senses comes from everything he isn’t. But at some point he came from some of the something he wasn’t and became everything he is, so somehow everything he isn’t is inextricably linked to everything Asbestos is, including his selfish senses. This makes him think there’s something selfless beyond his sense of self and he calls it love. But he so loves love that sometimes he thinks that’s selfish too. Luckily it turns out everyone else loves love as well, so if he’s ever to transcend his selfish senses, that’s his best guess how. These and other suspicions lead him to the library where he learns to speed-read. It turns out the human brain can process one hundred thousand words a minute but most people settle for under a thousand because a silent voice in their heads repeats every word it sees. The trick is to eliminate the voice by scanning text too fast for individual words to stick; Widen your eyes, scan without focus forth and back down the page, then take chunks of meaning from your periphery and make a mental motion picture. With practice, Asbestos’s quest for knowledge carries him from a page a minute, to a page a second, to finishing books as fast as he can physically flip. Reading random books by various writers taken out of their chronology feels muddled and impersonal so Asbestos quickly stops reading books and starts reading Authors, reading everything they’ve ever written in the order they wrote it. Approaching literature this way, he discovers 7

secrets lurking behind the Authors words, between the bindings, the white space encompassing everything unwritten, an evolution of meta-expressions which collectively follow Author’s life-long creative struggles through the human condition. He devours wisdom from language, learns things he’d always wondered, is given new ideas to ponder, and sometimes he’s so inspired by combinations of words he weeps. The wisdom and insight We’ve collected impresses Asbestos and he feels blessed. Asbestos decides the library is his church. All its texts are holy and worthy of worship. Its eloquent architecture is awe-inspiring. He feels a strong sense of communion with everyone in the building - hundreds of life’s parishioners seeking answers, entertainment, and each other. Coming together, honoring the Authors by reading them, then creating their own holy rituals to revere them: some taking their wisdom and passing it on in dinner discussions, others writing in their own ideas and continuing the scriptures. Asbestos remains suspicious of rituals and his senses but can’t seem to escape either, and they keep bringing him back to the library. So he appeases his selfish wishes six days a week, but on Sundays he fasts. He doesn’t speak, read or write a thing, most of the day he meditates and tries not to think a thing, but at some point he goes out and finds nice things to do for other people. And whatever it is, he makes sure they can’t find out who did it, so everyone’s left looking around wondering which of these nice people blessed my life today? He leaves food and blankets with sleeping alley dwellers, sends flowers to people he secretly admires, cleans public bathrooms, picks trash from parks, pays ahead into vending machines and video games. He leaves flowers, books, or baskets of goodies on doorsteps. In the winter when it’s too wet to leave them outside he even wraps his presents, 8

climbs on roofs, and delivers them down chimneys. He keeps lists of good people that grace his life and bad people who need grace in theirs, then rewards them all equally. Buying gifts and leaving little goodies everywhere is nice, but a penny for every pauper soon leaves Asbestos with nothing but a mysterious freedom and the realization that philanthropy is a virtue he can no longer afford. Giving away presents, possessions and consumable products brings temporary smiles to people's faces, but beneath the smiles, the white spaces on people's faces, their background expressions that rarely change, it is this that Asbestos finds access to through the Authors. So Asbestos begins to listen like he reads. Between and behind words he hears people’s secret prayers and confessions. He momentarily bears the burden of other’s suffering so he can cure it. He takes their problems and makes them his own to see what would he do. Then he offers advice in light of the wisdom shown to him by the Authors. Sometimes he even performs miracles. He teaches the blind to see by bringing them to Braille of the Holy library. He teaches the deaf to hear through languages of lips and hand signs. He reads the same medical books as the best doctors and miraculously heals the sick. In an attempt to express himself, Asbestos decides to take his knowledge of the Authors and write a book of his own. He wants to fill it full of facts and philosophy, thinks it ought to be presented as poetry with long lines, internal rhyme and alliteration and assonance and repetition, an unyielding stream of phonemes filtered through metaphor and poured over jagged stones of denotation, until like silt or a simile or complex hendiadys gather into connotative pools of meaning, leaving the reader unable to speed-read 9

or think-straight because their head’s silent voice would rather just sit back and practice linguistic gymnastics until the end of the sentence. Unfortunately his writing ability is below average, so he reads a poorly written book on how to write well called, Do as I Say, Not as I Do. The author acknowledges his inability to create an interesting tutorial on how to write interesting work, but still proceeds with the paradoxical project. He admits the book’s format tedious, the text dull and unimaginative, but insists the consequent knowledge gained from struggling through will give any reader the tools necessary to write an original masterpiece. Asbestos thinks the book’s worse than good and better than bad but isn’t satisfied with saying so - So he doesn’t. All other books about books don’t help either so Asbestos tries to express himself another way: First he teaches himself to read music then plays on the library pianos. He studies music history, theory, composition, and jazz from the masters, practices chords and fingerings, methodically memorizes classical masterpieces until they flow from his fingers like musical messages from the dead. For months he’s moved and inspired by the passion of past players, then one day he loses interest in other’s music and never plays another written note. Instead he devotes himself to the music of his moments, composing angry apocalyptic cacophonies, lonely harmonious nocturnes, excited melodic vibrato arias, whatever else comes naturally at that moment and never again plays the same thing twice. Each night on the third floor he composes impromptu moonlit serenades that flow from his fingers without a thought like musical messages from the soul. Tonight, just outside in the parking lot there’s an animated stranger walking tight circles around a manhole cover. He notices Asbestos’s Presence, approaches, eyes bulging out 10

of his head and frantically says: Pin Head -Absolute Relativity“I love circles, man. I don’t even believe in straight lines. I talk circles, walk circles, all circles, concentric circles, Cevian circles, pseudocircles, semi-circles, circumcircles, never sick of circles man. Do you know any meaningful mathematical manipulation of circles involves an irrational infinite number? Every circle and ellipse in existence is crossing chaotically in three dimensions like a fucking gigantic fractal gyroscope in perpetual motion. Think about it: moons orbit planets and planets orbit stars and stars orbit galaxies and galaxies orbit universes and orbits orbit orbits or better yet, orbits are bits of God spinning his ellipses into eternity. Dude, there’s no graviton, gravity’s just universal centrifugal force. Every time I leave I always come back, I can’t escape the circles; I tried that and came back by accident. I walk circles, talk circles. I don’t even believe in straight lines. I love circles, man.” Pin Head plops down curbside and stares at the stars for a few seconds then offers Asbestos a small, black flask saying: “insouciance juice makes you loose, man.” Asbestos accepts and swigs a swallow then reads the silver engraving aback the flask: Manifestation Man infestation Man in frustration Manning front station Pin Head grabs the flask back, then drinks to humanity 11

saying: “People who don’t both wonder what they think about and wonder why they think what they think about, wonder why thinking seems so productive for some people.” “I wonder why you think that.” “Think what?” “Think thinking is so productive in a world without absolutes. Wonder’s not an intellectual activity.” “That’s circular, dude. aren’t absolutes.”

You can’t say absolutely there

“We’re subjective beings condemned to relative knowledge. If there were objective beings they’d be condemned to absolute knowledge. Without an omniscient being telling Us, Our only accessible truth is the sum total of human opinions. So the only thing I believe absolutely is if there are absolute truths, I’ll never know them.” “And what if there is an omniscient being? “ “If there is an omniscient being out there purposely remaining outside Our perceptions, I don’t trust him." “Me neither, man. If God exists, he’s hiding from Us, or hiding Us from him. Either way, he’s got something to hide and I don’t trust him.” Asbestos snatches back the insoucience juice and says: “The way I see it, people have created languages, religions, sciences, and mathematics in an attempt to discover a 12

method that can both find Objective Truth and make it undeniably so to all subjective interpreters. The catch is Our subjectivity allows for skepticism even in the face of Absolute Truth. If God comes to me and tells me all the ultimate answers, I may still choose to disbelieve what He says or that He’s even God. The only way He could prove it is to make me omniscient like Him so I’m unable to disbelieve Truth - But in creating another omniscient being separate from Himself, God’s own omniscience is compromised, and Objective Truth rears its subjective limitations.” “Exactly. If We’re separate from God in any way, everything He stands for is a useless thought-experiment. But I suppose if God’s omniscient, He doesn’t need to speak Truth, He just snaps His fingers and makes you believe.” “No way. I believe a component of genuine knowledge is the ability to express it in any medium. I say if Truth can’t be spoken, We can’t claim to have knowledge of it, and anything said to be known without the ability to be expressed, holds no meaning for Us anyway.” Asbestos sips the sauce. “So do you believe in God?” “I don’t know, dude. What does it even mean? Do I think there’s some omniscient super being? Not really. But, I don’t know there isn’t one either. I think I can’t know that’s what I think. And as for belief, I believe anything I think I can’t know isn’t worth just blindly believing, because that kind of faith is misleading. Any belief that’s empirically unsubstantiated creates a rift in your reality. Your brain becomes a mystical maze where physics and 13

metaphysics are on an even keel, where faith flies in the face of reason, and anything inexplicable is resultant of God’s unfathomably mysterious ways. Personally, I’d rather keep it simple and stay skeptical about anything nonempirical.” “That’s what I believe too. But what is it We’re believing? We’re placing faith in Our partial, subjective senses and logic.” “We’re operating within those constraints anyway, man. Believing your own reasoning is better than faith in God or people who say they’ve seen Him, right? Your own reasoning evolves every time you think and it’s ultimately the only thing that makes sense; placing faith in other peoples’ or trying to guess at God’s is impersonal and impossible. It’s like people who say they believe in ghosts but have never seen them. What is it they’re believing? Other people’s accounts? All the people I’ve met that say they’ve seen ghosts or God come across a bit crazy, and I’ve never heard anyone’s account of encountering either that truly satisfies my nagging inkling that underneath the fear, faith, and ego, they’re full of shit. And even if they aren’t, second-hand explanations of other’s transcendental experiences hold little benefit for me. He wipes his lips with the top of his arm. You know man, I’ve been thinking. If We were created for a purpose, God sure hasn’t made it known to Us. But if We weren’t created by an intelligence and instead by some coincidental physical phenomenon, Our existence is just a fluke anyway and Our lives are completely meaningless.” Asbestos smiles. “You know what I’ve been thinking? What supreme purpose could God impose on humankind that could magically de-trivialize Our existence? What possible reason would God have Us exist rather than not 14

exist that would give genuine meaning to Our lives? I find it a much more hopeful notion that the derivation of meaning in life is Our choice and not pre-determined. Learning and appreciating your own purpose becomes the perfect existential challenge.” “Remember what you were saying about circles?” “Yeah dude.” “Let’s take a walk. I want you to see someone.” “Good I gotta change moments anyway.” “What do you mean?” “Inertia determines my moments man. Every time I sit, talk, stand, walk, drive or fly, my moments last until I switch verbs. I’m living life like a thesaurus here, memorizing synonyms, studying dictionaries, expanding my vocabulary, trying to stay entertained, but inertia keeps catching up and boring me to death. “And reading dictionaries keeps you entertained?” “More words means more meaning, man. Or needing more meaning necessitates more words. I can’t tell if I mean what I say or I say what I mean because what I mean to say or say to mean just seems to say itself simultaneously." "I see what you're saying. meaning beyond language."

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Maybe there's even more

"There's definitely more meaning beyond language but I don't know how or where to look. My brain’s a big bag of mush that condenses my senses into English and never shuts up. I’ve already got a dictionary, thesaurus, grammar reference, and pronunciation guide hardwired to my hardware. I can’t get them out or even access the source code because my programmer hid the files. I tried learning new languages but that doesn’t help, just adds more books to the brain and makes my speaker sound funny. There’s no escape. I was born already involved in language, man; I blinked, remembered what I saw, then screamed my surroundings are all around me! And haven’t stopped thinking since.” They leave the library grounds and continue down the sidewalk. Pin Head rants on about the limits of language and the importance of circles, then subtely segues into a recent personal realization involving relationships. “I figure, since all you know is learned, you might as well begin by laughing at everything and then figure out why. Like one day I walked in to see some guy balls-deep banging my wife and laughed my ass off. I’d never been in that situation before so I didn’t know how I’d react, right? In movies I’ve seen people burst into rage or tears from feelings of jealousy, inadequacy, or betrayal. But in reality, I saw their faces change from money-shot preparation to deer in headlights, and the tension was hilarious. The guy stuttered something then fell headfirst over the nightstand. I looked at my wife and even she chuckled a bit, either about him or my laughing fit. I didn’t feel jealous because there’s plenty of love to go around. I didn’t feel inadequate because everyone likes 16

different people for different reasons. And I didn’t feel betrayed because I like having sex with other people too, dude. I was happy she was having fun and that she wouldn’t have to lie to me anymore. Lying about her feelings and her relationship with this guy was a burden on her, which We realized was imposed by Our exclusivity. So after that We openly saw other people and became closer Ourselves. We either shared completely comfortable silence or filled each other’s ears with honesty. We found unconditional love lurking beyond the labels and taboos of traditional relationships. We discovered when two people open honestly to each other and share their lives together, their joined thoughts and experiences mold their minds and hearts as one in the same. We learned that soul mates are a process, not an end in themselves. Then lived happily apart or together until We died.” Asbestos interjects. “What do you mean until We died?” “It’s just a dream I have sometimes, dude. My soulmate probably lives in China and doesn’t believe in souls either. I wouldn’t even know her if I saw her and what I figure she’ll be like changes as I change. I’m constantly involved in this process of self-discovery so there’s no solid criteria in soulmate selection anyway. I look for someone just like me then get bored of myself or look for my opposite and can’t handle that. I give specific characteristics and assign agreeable adjectives to someone I’ve never met, set up cookie-cutter designs and hope to stencil my mind’s eye into existence, but every time no one quite fits the alignment so I hold it against them until they squeeze through and come to life. And before the paint dries I hate the design because it’s no longer in my mind where everything was ideal, you know? 17

What if there’s an odd-number of people in the world? Does that mean someone doesn’t get a soulmate? How do you narrow the choices anyway? The world population quadrupled last century; I’m telling you, overpopulation’s becoming a detriment to my love life. There’s over six billion souls running around searching for each other. No one’s ever gonna find their soulmates, man! There’s too many fucking people fucking! If reproduction is truly an operation in survival of the species, people are gonna be turned off by sex soon. Beneficial reproduction is a parabolic curve from too few to too fucking many where We are today, destroying Our ecosystem, emptying Our resources, endangering all other animals, and forcing people farther from their soulmates! It’s not right! We’ve had to revert to forms of mass communication to keep people company, mass transportation to keep people moving, and mass hysteria to keep people sane. All this technology and these superhuman institutions We’ve created are distracting Us from each other and We’re getting too good at being lonely. I say multi-child parents in today’s overpopulated mess are being transgenerationally selfish. Humans are one hundred times more prevalent than the next most species in Our weightclass. The exponential population growth We’ve seen in Our species mimics the same relationship as many others throughout history, ending in a drastic decline. Mathematicians approximate Our asymptote is within this generation. Tuck your children in and sleep tight tonight.” As the two turn a corner, twenty televisions staring out store windows blare obnoxious sights and sounds onto the street like a bright spectre of impending entertainment. Pin Head's voice is drowned out by twenty digital, 18

decorated, green berets, screaming into the evening streets: “Are your kids out of control? Has your negligence and lack of parenting skills gone too far? Is your child a freethinker with no respect for authority? Then send him to military school where We’ll inject respect through fear, intimidation and violence. Your son will acquire valuable skills like hospital corners, hiding emotion, firing weaponry intended for human targets, surviving on freeze dried foodstuff, taking a good beating, and standing up really straight. In no time your son will become tacit and reserved, his life ordered and meticulous from months of arduous brain-conditioning. He’ll learn values like obey supposed superiors, and it’s okay to kill for your country, all while playing the position of a powerful political pawn in international chess. He’ll soon think the secret of life is structure, instead of acceptance; and he'll know his life’s purpose is enforcing his structures on others then defending them to the death, instead of staying Present, passionate, and utterly acceptant. Meanwhile the mother structure will instruct him to kill in defense others instructed to kill him in defense continuing the world-wide proud patriarchal patriotic cycle. Also don’t forget he’ll come striding home twice a year in those sharp, army-issue formals. Watch out ladies, he only looks polite and apathetic on the outside. Inside he’s searing with repressed rage, looking for someone of his own to control through fear and violence. We encourage you to travel the world, see new sights, meet new people, and kill them. For freedom, for country, for fun, sport, realistic video game training, or as a creative outlet for post-teen angst. Join the American military, fighting to sustain the cost of capitalist freedom and enforcing it overseas.” Figure Head 19

-People in HousesFigure Head begins his career doing statistical analysis of complex matrices then fuses fractals with chaos theory and proves Euclidean geometry incompatible with Einsteinian relativity. He even publishes outlandish proofs for Riemann’s hypothesis and Goldbach’s conjecture involving logarithmic properties of infinite infinities in determining prime probabilities. The institution frowns upon his conclusions and shrugs them aside, but he continues to fund his research travelling as a motivational speaker. Tonight’s talk: Apeirophobia - The Fear of Infinity “Good Evening folks. Forms are a fallacy of human perception. We label repetitive manifestations necessitated by the system as separate but similar entities when in fact nothing is separate and so everything is similar. The Universe, everything that is, Our mass of matter in motion perpetually molds and shifts, adapts and changes, repeats as a constant result of itself, but never fully separates into an other. It is One. You and I, the stars and space. If you blur your vision enough, forms disappear and you are left with nothing but a mass of color in motion. There is no word that describes the blur, but perhaps you make one up. Then you make a habit of making up words for blurs and start recognizing similarities - you label tree blurs, rock blurs, other animal blurs and maybe even atom blurs. This allows you to compare and categorize, make judgments, and express artistic concerns about the blurs, but the fact remains that the boundaries between blurs are perceptual, not actual. We know no two trees, rocks, 20

animals, or atoms are exactly alike, but if no two things are exactly alike, We have no way to measure what constitutes one thing or it’s other. If no two things are exactly alike then there must be only one true form that is everything. We know that sub-atomic particles are constantly in motion, but on a smaller scale than We can perceive. We know that the planet beneath Us is constantly in motion, but on a larger scale than We can perceive. We know the Universe is perpetually changing and in motion, but We perceive most things as unchanging and still. Then We use language to label this fallacious stillness. We recognize similarities in the stillness and create categories and definitions. We forget all about Our faulty premise and attribute a priori importance to these forms We perceive; though in fact knowing no two things are truly separate and everything’s constantly moving. Asbestos and Pin Head walk in the auditorium's side entrance and have a seat. “You there, how many numbers are there between 0 and 1?” Asbestos smiles and answers. between 0 and 1.”

“There are no numbers

“That’s right. Now how many between 1 and 2?” “None again, unless you count decimals.” “So there are no numbers between consecutive numbers in Our counting system unless divided into fractions of themselves. Decimal point included, how many numbers between 0 and 1” “After the decimal there are an infinite number of numbers.” 21

“So integers perceived as whole remain consecutive, but once conceptually fractionated are necessarily separated by infinite possibility. Thank you, Asbestos. Once you divide perception into forms, once you give separate labels to pieces of the same pie, you’ve begun a necessarily infinite regress of division. We’re all baked into the pie already trying to cut Our custard reality into manageable chunks, but meanwhile We’re forgetting about Our whole number before the decimal point. Since math involves manipulating quantities, it assumes there is more than just a oneness to all existence. Numbers like words allow reality to be divided and regrouped. Math is a game like language, and mathematicians are numerical poets expressing Our quantitative perceptions. As for language, it gives some permanence to an everchanging universe. And there is comfort in the permanence, but also stagnation. Change is a necessary element in perfection, and We’re all part of the perfect equation. We don’t perceive Ourselves as such, but humans are over 70% water. So suppose you’re standing in the ocean, where do you draw the line between the water that encompasses you and the water that composes you? As you stand, the ocean sinks into your pores, gets swallowed and lodged in your orifices. Meanwhile thousands of skin cells and millions of your molecules float away into the ocean. At what point does the ocean start being you and when do your skin cells start being ocean? For that matter, why is your water alive but the ocean’s isn’t? But that’s a whole other issue. 22

Even if your water’s not wet standing on dry ground, every millionth of a second, trillions of your atoms are replaced by surrounding atoms. Then as you breathe, you become and feed upon on the molecules around you. When does the air cease to exist out there and become part of you? When it passes your lips or when it hits your bronchioles or only when the alveoli suck out the sustenance? Food, air, water, bacteria, everything that surrounds you is constantly coming into and leaving from your body. In fact, you preserve your human existence by consuming these things around you. You even eat the lives of others in such a way that it’s impossible to say when the things you consume stop being deliciously prepared plants or animals and start being you. Is it the first greasy atom that interacts with your Kentucky fried fingers or the first savory swallow that shrinks through your sphincter or only when the proteins and complex fats break down and feed your hungry cells? At what point are you separate from everything else in any meaningful sense? There is no you in you and there’s no out there out there. There is only one life, one consciousness, one source of matter and energy, and it is eternal and it is everything. It is God and you are God constantly creating the world anew every instant. When writing this lecture, my word processor kept showing a grammatical mistake when I typed the tautology nothing is nothing. It suggests I replace the second nothing with anything. Nothing is anything. Scientists see no boundary to the Universe, no center of 23

expansion, nor do they know what the Universe is supposed to be expanding into. But it’s both necessary and contradictory for there to exist infinite nothing outside a finite Universe. Thereby inflationary cosmology’s potential something they call nothing defies its definition upon existence. The only reconciliation is to agree with my word processor. Nothing isn’t nothing. Nothing is anything, and the anything’s infinite. Now, this is important. Big bang theorists think the Universe is finite yet began as an infinitely dense, hot and infinitesimally small singularity. The theory also maintains that since then, the Universe has been expanding and cooling. This means shortly after the space-time singularity, certain aspects of the Universe (heat, density, and size) somehow changed from infinite to finite. We must either accept this mathematical impossibility, or that space-time singularities are extremely small, hot, and dense, but are not infinitely so. And if this is true, it means at some measurable heat, size and density, all physical laws break down. Like at 100 googolplex degrees, 100 googolplex grams per negative cubic centimeter all laws of temperature and density hold, but at 100 googolplex and 1, everything changes allowing space-time itself to enter or exit existence. Big bang theorists also think the Universe is between 10 and 20 billion years old, yet We’ve recently discovered huge galaxies and quasars 15 billion light-years away from Us. Based on Einstein and Hubble’s own equations, this means that fifteen billion years ago, the fabric of spacetime was stretched at least 15 billion light-years across, and gigantic celestial bodies were already formed. These are both quite incompatible with current inflationary cosmology. To top it off, We can’t observe the red-shifting 24

of galaxies beyond the Hubble radius because they’re approaching and possibly breaking the light barrier at the very bounds of Our perception. Theoretically We’re left with few options. Either galaxies break the light barrier past the Hubble radius where We’ll never see them or they mysteriously disappear for another reason, because We don’t yet see a boundary, just the infinite anything. Everything in space rotates round bound in elliptical orbits or swings unbound in parabolas and hyperbolas. The Earth spins on its axis at 1000mph, around the sun at 66,000mph. Our solar system orbits the Milky Way at 500,000mph and the galaxy speeds through the known Universe at 1,000,000mph. Then the known Universe likely orbits another, larger, more central entity at even greater speed etc. I highly doubt this fractal trend of orbital motion ends in the mysterious non-orbital expansion from a singularity. And if so, what resultant force from the big bang is responsible for beginning both space-time’s expansion and matter’s orbital motion? For the outward expansion of space-time and the orbital motion of matter to co-exist in the same Universe, the original acting force either exerted its power in a spiraling, circular pattern, or matter mysteriously developed the motion on its own. Whichever way, the spiral and other fractal shapes, are abundant in nature, and I suggest the logical progression from quantum physics to cosmology suggests not the expansion of a singularity that defies causality, physics, and mathematics, but instead a timeless, fractally infinite and infinitesimal Universe in perpetual centrifugal motion around itself. Logically, if you divide a second in half and in half again 25

and again, this process continues forever. Likewise, if you divide a chunk of matter in half again and again, there should always be half your last division left over. And mathematicians agree that any number but zero may be divided ad infinitum. Quantum theorists, however, think the process of dividing time and matter reaches its end long before infinity. At some point far past their ability to see, they claim there’s a fundamental particle of matter and a fundamental unit of time of which there is nothing smaller or shorter. Since it’s crucial to higher math, but impossible to prove or disprove, mathematicians assume infinity in their equations. Likewise, science can never prove nor disprove the necessary fundamentality of any supposed fundamental particle, but every time someone gets a new microscope they think they’ve found the end. I propose instead of always supposing they’ve reached the limit, why don’t scientists take after mathematicians and assume infinity in their experiments? By all means continue the further telescoping and magnification of matter, but concede that each time We’ve seen further into the macro and microunknown, technology throws down the gauntlet, and God picks it up with seemingly infinite resources, from galaxies and quasars to stars and planets, moons down through molecules to atoms and protons and quarks and gluons and so on and so forth. The fractal unknown forever taunts Our limited perceptions from afar, no matter how deep We reach, so why not assume infinity until We’re somehow given real reason not to? Science can only prove what We can test with tools and Our senses, but it’s more likely that ultimate answers lie far beyond Our perceptions and any tools We can fashion to aid them. Even if some Unified Field Theory proved perfectly consistent with Our every observation, I’d still be 26

suspicious of some finite answer’s eerie consistency, and forever wonder if something undetectable lay one step further. Personally the only Unified Theory that satisfies my deepest concerns is Infinity as Truth in all facets of existence. Matter is infinitely divisible, time is eternal, and speed is limitless for something We can’t see. I present Infinity as the Anti-Unified Field Theory, a concept We grasp but can’t understand - it dangles around Our minds taunting Us with its necessary Truths but never allows Us access to it’s eternal complexity, like God. The blasphemy scientists are committing is eliminating the infinite aspects of Our Universe. Einstein thinks light’s the fastest thing, Planck thinks strings are the smallest and shortest things, Hawking thinks the big bang’s the first thing, I think they’re all limiting themselves trying to stop one step before infinity. We’ve already observed instantaneous, non-local correlation in entangled particles, some physicists insist there exist tachyons faster than light, others say halos around black hole event horizons break the barrier due to time dilation. Whatever the explanation We keep pulling over for Einstein’s ultimate speed limit. Then quantum theorists step-up and create one-dimensional superstrings that walk the Planck between quantum mechanics and Einstienian relativity. Finally, cosmologists and astronomers play their finite observations in rewind and find a Big Bang Beginning as inexplicable and unsatisfying as you’d expect from science. The frantic search for fundamental particles, universal boundaries, other endings and attempts to finitize the Anything into sets of symbols shows a human fear of 27

infinity that’s driven many crazy. Reality may be finite and expressible, but if it isn’t then We’ll all die believing whatever current chaotic theory they throw at infinity instead of honoring its integrity, by believing it over any inconsistent set of finite meanderings. Why is it that so many truly important math equations, scientific theories, and philosophical refutations end in an infinite regress? We always take this as a sign of failure when it could be the answer popping up over and over again. Science, Mathematics, and Philosophy give opposite requirements for proof and Truth. For a scientific theory, mathematical formula, or logical argument to be proven it must contain the ability to be falsified so that experimentation can further refine it’s validity. But Truth by necessity cannot be disproved, and thus would not contain the ability to be falsified. So if Truth was looking your theory straight in the eyes, the institution shuts it down - an unfalsifiable theory cannot be tested and what cannot be tested cannot be verified true. So if ultimate Truth lay in infinity, which I assure you it does, science will never concede it; it’s up to you. The origin of the Universe endows necessary Truth on one of two equally unfathomable options: an uncaused cause or infinity. Rationally they are mutually exclusive but equally valid - neither makes sense, and one of them is right. Thus a rationally based decision to your personal opinion of the origin of the Universe leads to an impasse. Emotionally, however a decision can be made for, infinity feels awe-inspiring in its complex simplicity whereas an uncaused cause is an incomprehensible paradox and feels like betrayal. A first cause is a He, She, or It out there 28

above rationality and causality, necessitating hierarchy on nature. But infinity is Us, Our Universe, all matter in perpetual motion and interaction together. You know where I stand. Plato said there’s too many slaves in caves; I say there’s too many people in houses these days. The walls are keeping Us separate and the roofs are scaring out infinity. Goodnight.” The crowd disperses and Asbestos catches up with his old friend Figure Head. He invites him to a church gathering at the library on Sunday then sends Pin Head on special assignment to deliver word of the gathering to another friend. Doc Head -Present of all PresenceDoc Head holds post-graduate degrees in both psychology and philosophy. In clinical work he finds philosophy to be more helpful and relevant because it is always looking forward pushing the progress of thought, whereas the majority of psychological research looks backwards trying to find explanations for behaviors. As a result, instead of diagnosing behavioral abnormalities, he provides philosophical arguments against his patients and brings them face to face with their flaws. Instead of tracing fear of commitment to childhood abandonment, attributing apathy to life-long depression, or otherwise trying to make explanations in rewind, he Socratically challenges their current, personal reasoning and rationale behind such issues and gives educated nudges in advantageous directions. His questions channel their thoughts through unexplored depths. Most people are never adequately challenged in their beliefs and judgments. Simply spending time sitting down with an educated moral 29

philosopher expands their personal understanding and gives conversation a new perspective, like the extrospection section of self-reflection. Pin Head schedules an appointment and buys an hour of Asbestos Head's friend's clinical time. He enters the office, sits down, and stares at Doc Head. The good doctor says nothing and simply sits motionless smiling. "So what service exactly do you provide your patients?" "I listen without judgment, then speak what rises to be spoken." "Who says your non-judgmental speeches rising to be spoken are worth fifty an hour?" "You do." "It's like that. Okay, then listen quickly because I want one hell of an insightful, non-judgmental speech out of you before the hour's up. Here it is. My main psychological problem has remained the same as long as I can remember, and no matter how many books I read, no matter how outwardly I educate myself, or introspectively I explore myself, one fundamental facet of existence continues to cloud my quartz-clear conscience." "What is it?" "Confusion.” “About what?”

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“I don't know.” “How does it feel?” “I can’t explain it.” “Well, can you describe it?” “What’s the difference?” “Explanations are rational, descriptions are perceptual.” “No man, I can’t describe it either. It doesn’t even translate into language.” “Then I can’t help you.” “What? Why not?” “I can help you arrange the words, but actual comprehension piecing together information, metaphorical meaning, reading subtle connotations, all internal connections and translations are up to you. And I guarantee that’s where the confusion comes from.” "There's no way that's it! I've read more books than you've taken shits. My internal monologue is like an after-party at the Royal Shakespeare Academy. I've got the linguistic repratoir of a cyborg and you think my confusion comes from comprehension? Regardless, the limitations of language aren't my only problem; it's perception too, dude! My speaker barely projects 60 decibels and my mic can’t detect sounds over 20,000 hertz. I’m deaf to infrasounds and ultrasounds, microwaves, and radiowaves. I see 300 nanometers of a potentially infinite electro-magnetic spectrum. I’m blind to x-rays, gamma rays, ultraviolet and 31

infrared. Have you even seen infrared images? We’re missing out on this beautiful crazy rainbow reality that’s just beyond Our perception. I’m pissed off! Dolphins have a hearing range seven times larger and can swim seven times faster than me. Cheetah’s can run three times faster than I can. Ants can lift fifty times their weight, that’s like me carrying a couple cars. Birds can fly. Chameleons can change their color and have tongues twice the length of their bodies - that’s awesome. Rabbits and parrots can see behind themselves without moving their heads. Fleas can jump a hundred and fifty times their body length, which is like me jumping a football field. What can We do? Think?” “That’s exactly what We can do. I think no one thing is important or interesting enough to attend to your whole life except your mind.” “Of course you think that. You know what your problem is? Abstraction. Originality. You’ve read so many books by like-minded individuals, you’ve unfairly filtered the available information to enforce your own opinions. All you psychologists sit back with an answer for everyone, offering emotional advice from a textbook with optional DSMIV diagnoses and prescriptions. You people do studies, find behavioral norms by averaging out the population then label each deviation making everyone insane.” “You’ll find my methodology a little different.” “I could care less about your methodology . . .” “You couldn’t care less.” “What do you care?” 32

“I couldn’t care less.” “Fine, you’re right.” “Let me see how I can put this to you. Most people's heads are so full of facts like stock figures, brand names, headlines, work schedules, sports stats, retail prices, presidents etc. they’re too tired to think of anything important. But then some of those sleepy people wake up and realize the importance of ideas. These people are generally a little bit hipper, happier than the others are, and infinitely more interesting. Their thoughts come quickly and intermittently. They either speak slowly or incredibly quickly, profound aposeopetic sentences like impromptu haiku. I recognize you as one of these people and I think your confusion comes not from language nor perception nor lack of information or education, but instead from general disharmony with the present moment, a spiritual separation from the Now. Let me break it down for you. Enlightenment is constant awareness and presence with all six senses. Awareness is knowing that you're thinking every time you're thinking. It's the ability to separate yourself from, and thus become the observer of, your thoughts and emotions. Awareness is what is left over once the judging mind, past and future thought are eliminated.” Pin Head stares with a cocked eyebrow. Doc explains the fundamental flaw of human cognition. “Thought is like a ticker-tape of information scrolling at the bottom of your experiential screen. It contains memories, observations, to-do lists, other relevant information about your situations, and always prepares the next thing you say. But often that feedback is negative, 33

destructive, stressful, or just plain annoying, and people addicted to reading bad news off their ticker-tape must learn to shut it off. If you have an idea, humorous or positive feedback or anything advantageous to your present experience, then allow yourself to think. However, if your thoughts are frustrating, negative, repetitive or anytime you'd rather just relax and stop thinking, you need to be able to do that. The problem is We can't just think about stopping thought and magically stop thinking. That's where meditation steps in. Without practice, We can't keep focus off Our ticker-tapes for long so thought naturally comes and goes every few seconds. Unfortunately, every time it comes back, it does so unconsciously and remains that way until you directly acknowledge the fact that you're thinking. Most people allow their thinking to go unchecked and completely identify with every thought entering their head. But your thoughts are not your own, they come of their own accord and do not define you as a person. You can always stop thinking or change the way you think at any time. True understanding and practice of this results in complete disidentification with thought. Awareness. Try it. Just sit there and every time you think, say out loud, I'm thinking right Now, then stop thinking. Just stop. It will come back in a matter of seconds, but you'll become systematically self-aware, and this is the front door to enlightenment." Pin Head rolls his eyes closed, purses his lips, and exhales through his nose. "I'm thinking . . . I'm thinking . . . I'm thinking again . . . Again . . . Again . . . Again . . . This can't possibly help me. It's more frustrating than just letting myself think, man." "Is it frustrating? Or do your thoughts about it frustrate you? At first it's impossible to conquer thought's incessant 34

nature, but soon the gaps on your ticker-tape will get longer and longer, the words scrolling across your screen will slowly become more positive and less intrusive, you'll experience long periods of thoughtless awareness and mindfulness, your memory will improve, your concentration will focus, all your other senses will heighten, your appreciation of every moment will intensify, and these frustrations will disappear." "So you think if I'm stuck in traffic, late for work, I can just meditate that away?" "Is traffic or waiting in a long line inherently frustrating? Waiting is a negative future state of mind, but just being, just standing in a line or sitting in traffic is neither good nor bad. Even if you have somewhere incredibly important to be, it's irrelevant and blaming other people won't help. Thinking about how your plans for the day are being ruined with every unaccounted for second won't help. Being at peace with what is at every moment is the only thing that helps. Stop thinking. Look around and find something to appreciate while you're stuck in traffic. Intentionally stop or change your thought patterns instead of incessantly frustrating yourself with the same thoughts. You have the power to appreciate every moment of your existence. Some are more challenging than others, but the secret lies in always enjoying what you're doing, not always trying to do what you enjoy.” The Doc lights a large candle. “This is an ancient meditation and concentration technique that increases awareness and lengthens attention-span. I'm going to dim the lights and I want you to focus on the flame for a minute. Just be with the candle, watch the dance of the fire and smoke, smell the scented oils, and hear the slight coming and going of background sounds around you 35

disguised as silence. Now close your eyes and continue to envision the flicker of the flame in your mind's eye. If thought enters, your mental flame extinguishes - open your eyes and try again." Pin Head slams his hands on the armrests then points a finger at Doc. "Hey! I bought an hour of time to experiment on you, not the other way around. Let's put that candle out and switch seats. Now quick, what's the last thing you remember?” “What I was just thinking before you said something.” “Now what?” “What I just said.” “Now what?” “The same thing.” “No, it’s different. Now what?” “I'm starting to remember getting annoyed.” “There it is.” “What?” “Why are you annoyed?” “What do you mean?” “I mean you're promoting these new-age nirvana techniques for a blissful existence but your ticker-tape can't even stay positive with me for more than a few seconds.” 36

“Well, maybe if you chose a more positive emotion than annoyance . . .” “I didn’t choose it. You did. Asshole.” “Alright, then We’ll go along with this. problem with me?”

What’s your

“Um. I just really hate the general arrangement of features on your face. Somewhere between their proportion and placement and my aesthetic edification, your facial structures and expressions upset me. Sitting here I've even theorized into your quantum ugliness and feel really bad for your atoms, especially those outer-shelled electrons swirling ugly circles around your skin, longing to bond with any anion.” “I see, and what else do you hate?” “About you?” “Not about me.” “Lots of things. I hate how beautiful girls tend to be stupid. I hate how so many people live their lives like this ostentatious display for some unforgiving audience. I hate it when my leg cramps during an orgasm. I hate it when people say, it’s always the last place you’d look. Of course it is, why would you keep looking once you’d found it? I hate the word luncheon. I hate when rich people dicker. I hate Bill Gates for the same reason I hate the Sultan of Brunei, and it’s got nothing to do with money. I hate money. And I hate the concept of ownership. The very notion should seem childish, but powerful children in history have taught Us to strive for personal ownership, not 37

communion. I hate religious fanatics, missionaries, and anyone discontent in keeping their faith to themselves. I hate radically uneven distributions of power among people and species. We’re the only animals that breed and cultivate others for consumption. We’ve even chained down and genetically mutated species for meatier meat to eat. I hate it when the underdog loses. I hate that the winners write history. I hate that scores are more important than plays of the week. I hate sports fans, patriots, and all rally mentality among people united by coincidence. I hate all forms of government, but think anarchy is limiting - I hate that. I hate that inspiring, perplexing philosophical mysteries remain unexplored while human-created mini-mysteries make best-seller lists. I hate it when writers write about writing or that they’re writing and how difficult or transcendental that is. I hate watching obese people eat sweets; I mean you know a lifetime of laziness and conviviality culminated to form this waste space shoveling sugar down its gullet by the bucketful. I hate people that lie to make their lives easier. I hate saying goodbye to people I’ll never see again. I hate saying hello to people I see everyday. I hate how technology perfectly coincides with warranty expirations. I hate that We need visas, permits, passports, and other people’s permission to travel or live somewhere else. I hate the persuasive power of logical fallacies. I hate the gradual disappearance of the word thrice. I hate when people forget the pleasure of the pursuit and settle for mediocrity. And I hate all people who make generalizations.” "I see. Including yourself?" "Yes." "Just checking. Let's stay with this train of thought but 38

switch to love." "Love?" "What do you love?" "Lots of things, man. I love circles. I love bathing in a hot tub with a glass of ice water. I love fireplaces on cold nights and air-conditioning on hot days. I love laughing so hard you make yourself cry or crying so hard you make yourself laugh. I love perilous adventure and narrowly avoiding disaster. I love losing track of time. I love how there's no Truth, you can't prove to me otherwise, and the course of indecision is up to Us. I love karma's intangible presence in all situations. I love the variety of whimpers, moans, and screams that escape from lover's lips during those seconds of post-coital perfection. I love it when you stand up too fast and black-out like a whip-it from God. I love psychedelic drugs. I love literature and the arts. Heroic verse, epic poetry, forgotten philosophies - none of it's lost on me, I love that stuff. I love singing and dancing when no one's watching or I'm too drunk to care. I love being in the zone with sports." Pin Head glances down at his watch. "And I'd love to keep shooting shit with you but I've got a night-pass. Truth be told I'm only really here as a messenger from Our friend Asbestos. He's otherwise engaged with some female friend so he sent me to invite you to a religious gathering at the library on Sunday." Doc Head raises an eyebrow. "I don't know what it means either, he just said to be sure you'll be there." The eyebrow lowers and Pin Head stands up to leave. "Hey. What's a night-pass?" “Didn’t you know? They just turned all subways into nightclubs. The bums and businessmen were rubbing 39

elbows anyway and one day they just started dancing dancing, singing, drinking, bringing musical instruments and boom-boxes on board for impromptu parties. So they replaced seats with swivel stools, dropped a few disco balls, installed neon strobe lasers, and added on a couple bar cars. Today’s techno Tuesday, got hip-hop Wednesdays, non-stop 80s rock Thursdays, rapcore Fridays, weekend hard house blend and psychedelic trance Mondays. I’m going right Now if you wanna come.” “I think I’ll pass.” “Your loss.” Matrioshka Head -Barbie Doll BluesMatrioshka’s a walking contradiction wearing high-heels and low-cut shirts, over-sized bras and mini-skirts. She has dyed hair, collagen lips, silicon breasts, methacrylate nails, a plastic face, a liposuct stomach and longs for true love. She reads self-help books written by other people. Her diary’s a connect-the-dots of days with extravagant descriptions of her mediocre existence. Her photo albums look like laminated stationary showcasing various backgrounds with her smiling mug in the middle. When she shows everyone her albums (and she shows everyone her albums) every picture is prefaced, “this is me at (someplace) . . . “ Matrioshka loves possessions more than she loves people so she shrinks everyone into microcosms of themselves and arranges them on shelves. She has shelves for enemies, acquaintances, boyfriends, girlfriends, a high shelf for her best friends and an empty one for her future husband. As with all collections, her sole purpose is to horde the most 40

and the best, so her focus is always on what’s next. When Matrioshka’s not collecting dolls she likes to don her latest designer tackle-box and hit the mall to fish for complements. She always buys the best bait but hates to get her feet wet so she just waits with her big bobbers and shiny lures until some prickly pickerel puckers-up his best fish face for a slimy kiss. Once she pulled the pole early to hook a handsome salmon nibbling her worm only to have him eat his fill then sever the line. Since then she’s taken up fly-fishing and only caught shadows. The experience leaves her feeling empty and hollow so for structural reinforcement she finds two smaller followers called friends that fit inside her. Their relationship is selfish and superficial but reciprocal; they rely on her exterior to attract attention and she relies on their interior to fill the hole inside her. Sometimes they come out to play but usually just stay tucked up, fucked inside agreeing with everything she says because they want to remain friends (and enemies are anyone that disagrees). Every morning she awakes to an alarm clock then watches TV until the car radio. At work she gossips, gabs, and babbles, small talks and chit-chats about shit like this and that until it’s time for the all talk drive at five hour live. Then back home she divides her attention between the television, computer, and cell phone until it’s time for the alarm clock. She’s never experienced comfortable silence alone or with another person because she avoids it. She’s scared of silence because that’s when minds thrive and hers is toxic; Her brain’s a label maker and she uses her tongue to stick them on everyone. There’s a price tag attached to each relationship and the currency is compliance, hence most people don’t buy into her business. The few who do, however, love getting together to drink alone and vomit on 41

themselves. Since change is costly and adds up quickly, Matrioshka develops an unconscious bias toward whatever she learns first then practices defensive education by dodging opposite viewpoints and countering new facts with old opinions. She side-steps advice and strikes down constructive criticism with cynicism and sarcasm. Such insight into abstract epistemology even spurs a revelation in philosophy known as illogical negativism; Matrioshka’s dedicated work in the field remains unparalleled but continues to fall short of the Nobel. And unfortunately for her emotional well-being there are repercussions to this behavior: She feels fake and lonely, led astray and abandoned like an oxbow lake. Incessant judgment of every situation keeps her brain in constant rumination. Every experience is cross-referenced to check for inconsistencies, labeled and captioned for her table of contents, prefaced and appendixed then indexed for easy access. This process is so complex she’s only half experienced her whole life. Asbestos Head is the truest friend she’s ever had. Today after a moment of mutual passion she says he somehow ruined their friendship through physical contact and she doesn’t know how to think of him Now because she hasn’t a label for that. “I figured out the solution to Our problem.” Matrioshka drops a loaded clipboard onto Asbestos’ lap. “What problem? What’s this?” “This is your standard relationship contract. I need you to 42

read through, sign in triplicate, initial there, write you love me here, and then say you love me. Twice. And once in French.” “Are you serious?” She sighs through her nose and shakes her head. “I knew it. You’re afraid of commitment.” “I’m not afraid, Trish. Commitment’s a responsibility not to change your mind. It’s like playing psychic with yourself determining what seems right Now will continue to seem right later.” “No, commitment is a promise between two people that some things, like their love, will never change.” “Love does change. People change, priorities change you’re asking me to make some promise for your peace of mind, but if I did it could be a lie.” “You make sure it’s not a lie by sticking to the agreement!” “That’s not how emotions work! I won’t fight my feelings just to keep a contract.” “Well I can’t be happy knowing you’re not committed to a lasting relationship with me.” “Then you’re deriving happiness from some false sense of security, not from the love you have for me. Love cannot be unconditional if there exist conditions like commitment that hinder it. If love is truly selfless then all that matters is each other’s happiness” He skims the contract. “What is this?”

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“That’s the Exclusivity Clause.” “The what?” “The basic allowances and prohibitions of any exclusive relationship. You’re permitted unlimited male companionship but female friends must first be approved and are limited to daytime visits. Overnighting is prohibited as well as intercourse and physical intimacy of any sort. You’ll notice I only checked off a couple of the optionals - no drug use, no clubbing or bar hopping without my prior approval or attendance. Failure to comply with any . . .” “I’m not gonna sign this.” “Don’t worry, I already signed off on all the same stuff.” “That doesn’t matter. like you do.”

I just don’t approach relationships

“Everyone does like I do! That’s why there’s a form to fill out!” “Try to wrap your head around this, Trish: Exclusive relationships yield an unconscious asceticism. At the least, you and your partner disallow for each other the possibility of physical intimacy with anyone else. This may seem an acceptable loss for some couples, but the fact remains that you are limiting your partner from ever experiencing the entirety of another’s love again without leaving you. But love happens, so couples continue to make-up and breakup on whims and hopes of greater happiness instead of simply allowing all their relationships to be mutually inclusive. Once you begin putting limitations on each other, you take a part of your partner’s sovereignty and 44

there’s no telling where that will end. Suddenly these stipulations become more important than the relationship and even possess the power to end it! Couples set the rules for their relationship games and eventually someone cheats; so they either add in an emotional amendment or abandon the game altogether. There’s no reason for people to pair-up and run off into the sunset just yet. Most everyone falls in love with something about someone every other day, and even those love funnelers who numb their feelers to one person at a time are guilty of coveting a neighbor or two. The fact is Our true nature seems polygamous no matter how rigorously We deny the monotony of monogamy. And there are so many wonderful people with interesting differences and unique personalities; why limit yourself from any possible experience? Why silence your spirits of romance by lining them up single file?” Matrioshka dismounts her high-horse and hangs her head. “I just couldn’t help feeling jealous if you were with other people too.” “Jealousy is nothing but selfishness applied to love.” “It’s selfish to want to love only you and have you love only me!?” “No, it’s selfish to dictate. Love and romance are wonderful things that everyone enjoys and cherishes - you should be happy that one you love, loves you and is loved by many, not treasure the love you share and scorn that of others; it’s selfish and ideologically inconsistent.” “Whether it’s consistent or not, like you said, I won’t fight my feelings and they tell me it’s wrong.”

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“Your feelings about love are based on foolish ideologies in the first place. If you don’t truly love everyone you can’t truly love anyone because love is selfless and based on other’s happiness, so even choosing where to place it is a ridiculously selfish pre-requisite. In life you can’t choose who to love, you can only choose whether to love or not, whether to love everyone or to withhold it from some for selfish reasons. Once your love becomes a selective process, the recipients are no longer loved unconditionally because they’ve been chosen based on some appealing conditions. Maybe looks or smarts or funny with a good heart or whatever inconsistent justification it takes to unlock the floodgates and let out the love you’ve dammed. Then you praise and cherish each other’s appealing conditions until infidelity or death do you part. Meanwhile time flies and your dammed love well dries up leaving little for everyone else in the world. Once you withhold your love for any reason you’ve lost what is so beautiful about the emotion. Everyone you meet is physically examined, psychoanalyzed, categorized, sized-up and mentally rolodexed under favorable characteristics that you can love. And anyway, when you focus your energy on those easily loveable people, your love may be shallow or at least less needed in the world, for it’s those who are harder to love that benefit the most.” “What!? So what!? I’m choosing you! Your lack of commitment is selfish, not my love for you! I want nothing more than to get married and be so good to you.” “I’m sorry. I think people who get married are either afraid of being alone or misled by some married-life fantasy that clouds the actual day-to-day reality of spending so much time around the same person. There are many people I love and want to know for the rest of my life, but stick me in a house with any one of them for too long and I go nuts. 46

All those quirks and characteristics We should appreciate are more often annoying to me. I find it harder, not easier, to love someone I’m around all the time. Think about it: new relationships are interesting and exciting. We can experience new personalities, perspectives, and have sex with new people. Old relationships are cozy and comfortable. We can speak with glances, share memories, and know exactly what We like in bed. But after some arbitrary amount of time, all old relationships suffer from their inherent consistency and yield way to the need for those exciting features of new relationships. It’s a natural cycle yielding instinctive desires that We deny Ourselves from enjoying. Instead We torture Ourselves and start to hate the ones We love for not letting Us love someone else too. Couples may live together, separate, call each other spouse or buddy but I for one need to see other people too or no one, just to feel that totally free freedom only accessible outside an exclusive relationship.” “I don’t feel that way at all. always be happy.”

If I have you to keep, I’ll

“You can’t have or keep me and you’ll never be happy until you listen to what I’m saying: You’ll always be alone and no one else can make you happy. I love you and I love everyone else, and so do you. What will make you happy is unconditionally loving those people you wish to have and keep, whether they keep coming back to you or not. I personally refuse to place all my eggs in one basket because I want to influence and be influenced by many. I don’t want to carry those eggs everywhere until I die or your basket breaks. I want to place individual eggs in many baskets then return to them periodically throughout life to watch how We’ve grown. That seems so much more beautiful to me than two people that settle for only each other, ultimately leaving one of them old and crushed when 47

their spouses basket breaks.” “Don’t you want to have children?” “Not really. The world’s got plenty of other people’s children to hold, gawk at, and play with. I have no desire to endure diaper changes, screaming sleepless nights, eighteen-plus years of lost freedom, time and money, just so I can have and keep one exactly like the other six billion and call it mine. I’d rather not have a wife or kid, and love all women and children equally. Anyway, I’m going away for a while, but meet me at the library Friday, I have a friend that wants you to ask some questions.” “What? Wait. Please don’t leave. I thought We were going out tonight. You’re torturing me. Who’s going to split the number 2 at Spendy’s with me? You know I can’t eat that much alone.” “Don’t worry. You’ll accustom yourself to a more moderate-sized Spendy’s special until that new routine becomes lodged into your sentiments.” Richard Head -Mutual MasturbationDick Head lives in a doublewide trailer and watches supersatellite digital cable television on triple picture-in-picture plasma surround sound panorama-vision. He hates gay men and fantasizes about gay women. He thinks a threesome would complete his existence. He’s transfixed by engines. He follows all sports and his favorite teams are whoever’s closest. He’s also very patriotic. He even prefers domestic beer. He spends more money on beer than food. He spends more money on lottery tickets than beer. He thinks sex is a topic containing infinite humor for the 48

same reason he hates gay men. He tucks his wife beaters into his briefs. His tattoo says transcendence in Chinese. Everyday he sits slack-jawed, slouched in a recliner, beerbuzzed and sugar-high while Hollywood’s never ending boner penetrates his eye sockets and skull-fucks his brains out. As a result he rarely thinks a deep thought and masturbates like it’s routine maintenance. This mind-fuck sucks his love for physical beauty and all things sexual drives him to marry the most beautiful thing that will have sex with him. Then he masturbates on his wife’s face like it’s routine maintenance. After spending his life savings on life insurance and that big fucking television he becomes so poor he can’t even pay attention, so he carries distraction devices for more riff-raff, collects little doodads to knick-knack, go-goes to girly shows to get his paddy-whacked in lap dances then comes rolling home to give the bitch her bone. One day in a stroke of luck, Dick gets promoted to the board of directors for a major corporation involved in developing useless products and providing meaningless employment for boring people. Among other technical wonders, his company patents the first Pillow Chiller (a small cooling device that insures the other side’s always nice and cold) as well as the Fecal Freshener brand of stool aromatics. They sell their products through a complex system of fantasy and deceit called Advertising. Through careful psychological and demographic research, they find by targeting specific social classes and age groups, marginalizing the individual, and capitalizing on humanities short-comings, mass marketing allows them to 49

inundate people (or consumers as they’re jokingly referred to) with imaginary product-fulfilled needs. They manipulate the minds of children so subtly it subconsciously shapes their thoughts toward consumption. They create commercial farces so blasphemous consumers can’t excise their minds from the product placement. Next, to cut costs they make a free-trade agreement with themselves then build factories in third-world countries offering slightly higher wages than locals can get elsewhere. This encourages hundreds of people to leave their jobs and line-up for slave labor in cramped, unsafe conditions without worker’s compensation or health benefits. Eventually too many people die or the workers unionize, so Dick’s company closes down shop and sets-up in another poor country leaving behind hundreds unemployed and a destroyed local economy. People slowly stop calling him Dick and start calling him Rich. Soon Rich and his rich partners have so much money they turn to politics. By funding political candidate campaigns they establish connections and make agreements regarding both party’s principles and interests. Rich’s sponsored candidate is elected into office and lifts laws prohibiting monopolies, raises lower and middle class taxes, then readjusts the brackets allowing Rich the financial freedom to buy out several locations. The masses tighten their belts then come a-flocking with pillow-chiller jingles ringing in their ears and Rich does laugh with dollar signs in his eyes. Next Rich and his government buddies buy and beef up some private oil companies, upsize and corporatize until they’ve got more Texas Tea than China - oil that is. Then every time an oil field burns, or a tanker spills, or some workers strike, or they bomb a middle-eastern country, or 50

there’s a natural disaster, they raise the oil prices and profit off the pockets of the population that supposedly put them in power. Meanwhile the discontented masses, independent artists and media providers struggle up the non-corporate ladder, voices silenced to a defiant whisper. Every time a noncorporate voice rings out in the courtroom, it’s squashed like the little bug voice it is; because Dick and his corporate cohorts are like Captain Planet or some Power Rangers whose forces magically combine to become one ultraperson under the law with superhuman influence, subhuman ethics, and inhuman irresponsibility. Using their mighty morphin’ abilities, Dick and his decepticons transform a constitutional amendment into an unconstitutional addendum then when trouble arises they divide back into a board of businessmen doing their jobs. They continue like this for years until one day like a light switch, political consciousness rises from the oppressed classes and everyone takes action. One Monday millions organize and close their bank accounts, default on their loans, claim bankruptcy, sell all stocks, shares, funds and bonds to the government. No one pays taxes. No one buys Rich’s shitty shit. Thousands of corporation store managers leave their doors and cash registers open for the public. And in one day Rich returns to being drunk Dick Head from the trailer park. We join him and his wife walking home from breakfast on a typical morning. “Slow down and live in the moment for once. It’s a beautiful day, Rick.” Heather Head stops to smell some roses.

51

“You think I don’t appreciate the simple things in life because I walk faster than you.” “No, you can’t appreciate them because you’re always pursuing some complex, unattainable moment.” “Maybe I appreciate my moments in accordance with their complexity.” “If that were true you couldn’t watch those stupid sitcoms or sports. I’m just saying it’s better to enjoy the simple things in life because the complex ones don’t accrue very often.” “And I’m saying I do enjoy the passage of time that is my commute, but I prefer destination over transportation, so try to keep up.” They arrive home and Richard assumes his reclined position affront the television. He grabs a beer from his mini-fridge and reaches for the remote. Heather stands in the doorway with a confused expression. “What are you wearing, anyway?” “They're three-quarter length shorts.” “Those aren’t shorts; they’re not pants either. They’re shants, Dick. You know what shan’t means? It means shouldn’t, as in you shouldn’t ever wear those shants again. You look like an idiot.” “What’s your problem today?” “You use your inny as an ashtray! We use post-it notes as 52

coasters for Christ’s sake, and you’re buying black fashion!” “You’re being ‘diculous again, yo.” “I am not! And apparently you forgot Our anniversary yesterday, thanks for that.” “I told you, not remembering at an opportune time and forgetting are two totally different things.” “Well it would be opportune for you to remember your wife occasionally. God, what’s wrong with you?” “A fire truck ran over my dog on its way to get a cat out of a tree. I’ve been bitter about it ever since.” “I’m serious. What is it? Do you think I’m getting fat?” “Not that again! I think you know better than me, babe. So if you think you’re skinny, stop deriving pleasure from my declaration of the obvious, and if you think you’re fat, stop making me lie to you.” “You’d lie to me if you thought I was fat?” “No, I lie to you anyway, and I think you’re fat. I’m trying to make the point that you give other’s opinions too much weight - pun intended.” “So I’ve gained a little weight over the years - that’s natural. You still find me attractive, don’t you?” “That’s not natural, and I find you much less attractive than I did twenty years ago.”

53

“Asshole. Whatever, I don’t need beauty opinions from someone whose aesthetic faculty begins and ends in their pants.” “You do nothing but criticize the fact that I find the female figure to be the most beautiful form in nature.” “Oh please. For you a wet hole in the ground presents more beauty than the Louvre. You have no conception of beauty beyond big-breasted, slim-waisted bimbos in bikinis and even that conception of beauty is just some transmutation of instinctual eroticism into your fantasy aesthetic realm. I mean the kind of beauty little Dick can’t interfere with. Like living alongside your wife as she matures, appreciating her beautiful journey through the natural aging process.” “Gaining a pound a year needn’t be part of your beautiful journey. And my dick’s not little. I can braid it with my legs, baby.” “Stop changing the subject.” “Who’s changing the subject?” “I swear to God that fucking television has sucked out of you whatever it is I loved. You change your mind like you change the channel and spend more time face to face with that box than me. You even say yourself I’ve got five hundred stations and nothing’s on. Why don’t you ever turn it off? “I drink beers watching Cheers. You eat oranges reading O’Hara.” “You’ll always be the sardine to my oranges.” 54

“Baby, the television tells me everything I need to live a complete existence. With all the high-budget Hollywood hit movies you hate about consumerism and sex. And there’s home shopping so I can purchase the essentials from my armchair. The music awards tell me the best music to listen to. The movie awards tell me the best movies to watch. The news tells me everything happening around the world. Hours of commercials slip into my subconscious and decide what to buy for me. It’s so easy. I just sit back, watch seasons of sitcoms and laugh my ass off. What the hell’s wrong with that?” "Everything! You laugh along with the laugh-track on your favorite shows whether they're funny or not. Your daily emotions fluctuate based on sports statistics. You don't even like most of the programs you watch, so instead you sit there, moan, groan, complain and criticize, then call me into the room to prove how much smarter you are than the T.V. You've become so used to watching life's bright lights and excitement from your armchair that everything else feels like work for you. You've become a lazy, selfish, by-product of the polluted airwaves, and I'm sick of watching you contaminate yourself. Can't you see you're asleep having the American dream?" He sips his beer and smiles. "I like it." “Let's drop it.” She turns to leave the room. “Well, that fell flatter than a shat asshole.” “Nice, Dick.” -

55

The door bell buzzes and Heather answers. It's Asbestos, Ricky's old buddy from the orphanage, dropping by to invite him to a gathering of friends this Friday. They extend a few pleasantries and Asbestos ends up expounding on the nature of mass media information. “He's stupid and helpless, Asbestos,” says Heather, “he could walk around with a hundred dollars worth of pennies in his pockets and still not have the cents to exchange them." Ricky snickers. "If I'm stupid, what do you call Mrs. Puntastic here?" “You’re not stupid," Asbestos answers. "You’ve just been disadvantageously conditioned. The powers that be have essentially changed your brain’s neural network into a dunce cap that funnels their impulses like a megaphone. You simply need to focus your funnel on more advantageous information. T.V. is Now Our most advanced medium for communication, education, information, and art, but We waste it with test ratings, product placement, and commercialization. It’s gotten so idiotic, people call it the idiot box instead of the information tube, or the art cube, or the education machine. I guarantee if you renounce television and read the right books, you’ll undergo the most inspiring transition that is essentially an existential paradigm shift from passive observer to active participant. You’ll never again care or be aware of pop culture, pop music, or celebrity pop stars. You’ll never have the poppity-cock popcorn song pop up at odd times. You’ll only watch art films from festivals with actors you’ve never heard of. You’ll only listen to passionate music by talented musicians. You’ll forget the very possibility of plastering valuable attention on bias 56

broadcast bullshit from big companies and the government. Extensive subjugation to this propagation contorts your perception of reality into an awkward position. Watching beautiful people in interesting situations solving extraordinary problems with lies and violence while wearing this season’s sponsored fashion all fits together into a tight system of suggestions sent incessantly to society’s impressionable masses. And no viewer leaves unscathed and innocent. Most are guilty on several charges from self-admitted laziness in doing something else, to revolving their lives around a regular program, to buying into marketed merchandising. Then there are the confusing mixtures of messages. First there’s government advertising about how weed impairs basic survival skills. Then there’s a beer commercial. Then there’s a public service announcement from mad mothers against drunk driving. Then an after-school special about addiction and how some addicts get put in prison while others sit at home glued to their favorite addiction, eating sugar, drinking coffee, and smoking cigarettes. Then a commercial for extra super duper trooper strength brand name barbiturates for businessmen and soccer moms. We still stare on knowing they manipulate Our minds and undermine the very way We think. We still work for them knowing they monopolize markets then partition Us employment at minimum wage. We still buy their products knowing the profits are pooled into a pyramid of celebrities, sports stars, crooked businessmen and lying politicians at the peak. I, for one, refuse to be part of the cycle. I don't watch television. I don't work for corporations. I don't buy big business merchandize. I read books, listen to indie music, watch independent films, read 57

independent papers and magazines . . ." "What do you mean independent papers and magazines? News is news, except the tabloids." "No news is news. But there's a huge market built on the idea of news - the idea that a daily paper or program can conveniently encapsulate all important happenings around the world for you to enjoy at your leisure, and the idea that that information is true, complete, relevant, and unbiased. It’s the daily drama you can’t find anywhere else in your life because it doesn’t exist. If the news was actually pertinent to your life it wouldn’t be news; you’d know it already. That whole charade you have no say in is just an intellectual soap opera that renews itself daily. Don’t get me wrong, there is news that should be known, but if your day feels incomplete without a dose of natural disasters, violent crime and political intrigue from outside your actual life, your intentionality splits. You think, complain, become opinionated about, or afraid of all these issues that have no outlet in your real life. If you truly cared, you wouldn’t discuss the state of the nation over coffee, you’d be involved in some vehicle of change uninterested in the daily gossip We’re given." Their conversation continues late into the evening in front of the T.V. As Richard drifts into sleep the eleven o’clock news plays into his dreams with special guest anchor Asbestos… …Headlines: In sports today, a bunch of overpaid idiots banded together and committed their lives to playing games and lowering your standard of entertainment. In finance news, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. 58

We also bombed another small country to help with their peace efforts and Our oil interests. All casualties were civilian but this should send a strong message to the leader of their military dictatorship, namely, We can kill your people too. In election coverage, two guys you’ve never heard of are neck and neck in a race We created to divert your attention from the lack of participation you have in your government. Lastly in local news, something terrible happened to someone near you - stay tuned for thirty more minutes of death and crime to scare you into submission and keep you consuming. We’ll be back with Our best guess at the weather, and the worst thing you never knew you’ve always done, after this commercial break… Joseph Head -Kindness of StrangersAsbestos leaves the trailer park and proceeds toward Main street. He passes a large animal farm and from out of nowhere is caught in the jovial farmer's enthusiastic embrace. He squeezes the bejesus out of Asbestos and immediately apologizes: "I'm Sorry. I have an overwhelming impulse to hug everyone I see. Please don't take it personally unless that makes you happy." "No problem." Asbestos smiles and continues. “Problems. You know son, problems that can be understood beforehand lose their ability to be problematic. So I always consider the worst in order to weed out potential mishaps before they happen.” Asbestos stops. “That sounds depressing and pessimistic.” 59

“It’s not pessimism. It’s far-sighted optimism. Intentional cogitation on negativity eventually neutralizes its ability to affect you, so simply pondering potential problems like broken trust, loss of love, death, jealousy, guilt, disappointment and all other negative emotions you're able to vanquish without the anguish of experiencing their gutwrenching depths. When I was your age, I rode an emotional roller coaster that dragged me up and dropped me down from great heights. Then there was a mid-life plateau in my ride until I realized: Strong minds change one’s emotions whereas weak minds allow emotions to change their ideologies. If you want to understand yourself and experience clearer, more intense emotions, you have to examine all that is unconscious about your changes in emotional states. By examining your own behavior and refining your reactions, emotions become a playground, not a roller coaster." "Are you saying you’re just happy all the time?" "I’m not happy all the time, but whenever I’m not, I know it’s my own damn fault. I used to blame other people, events and situations for my subtle discomforts and unhappiness. Blame the cook for bad food, the waiter for serving it slowly, blame the other people in line, blame the other cars in traffic, blame the government for not reading my mind, blame my friends and family for the shortcomings I created: blame my father for being so aggressive, my mother for being so passive, my whole extended family for being so sheltered. It’s so embarrassingly easy to find reasons why other’s cause your unhappiness. The real challenge is accepting the truth - the truth that every time you feel anything but utter bliss, it’s your own damn fault. Every single time I feel any emotion other than happiness, I see a deeper problem about myself." 60

"You think? Maybe sometimes it really is someone else’s fault. The world isn't necessarily a wonderful place all the time." "Yes it is! And it doesn't matter anyway. Even a crippled, Jewish, blind, mute can find reason enough to smile through the holocaust. There’s always someone whose daily plight is far worse than your trivial trifles, someone who dreams of the very life you complain about, and I never forget that. I force myself to think of the hungry, homeless, slaves and other tortured souls around me and throughout history. Then my problems solve themselves and I’m even grateful for them. You know one’s lot in life by the things they complain about, and I can only laugh at my peers problems concerning life, love, work, or politics it all sounds like finicky sniveling and unnecessary negativity surrounding their incredibly fortunate existence. Even the hungry and homeless can be thankful for their lives at every moment, for like all of Us, they could never have been born, and one day will be their last.” “You’re right, but it’s so easy to forget your good fortune.” “Don’t let yourself forget! Remind yourself of the embarrassing triviality of all your problems every single time you selfishly indulge in some negative emotion. Remind yourself that you co-author the creation of your occurring world as it occurs to you and that every time you manifest bliss from your being, you transcend the bonds of your emotional baggage. Some people's bliss is so buried beneath pre-conceptions and expectations that situations appealing to their ideals rarely occur. They have a hundred reasons why they can't be happy Now. And they'll always have a hundred reasons why they can't be happy Now. Because instead of surrendering to a state of constant 61

appreciation, they would rather judge every situation and right the wrongs of their hundred reasons. But in reality, they are emotional prisoners of their own opinions and all the justice or justification in the world will never bring prolonged happiness. They reason that their current path will lead to future success - the problem isn't their future ideals, it's that there is no path and there is no future. The only place to manifest your perfection is in the present, and it's here every moment residing in resounding perfection regardless of your regrets." "I agree. But how and why are you to assume all bliss or blisslessness is self-induced?" "Because all emotion and opinion is self-induced! Opinionless people essentially have free-access to all emotions at any time. Haven't you ever met a cyborg? They say all art is emotion and believe emotion itself is an art. One cyborg Author wrote in the book Situational Aesthetics that emotion is the real-time reactive output of pre-conceived opinions on the human psyche. No person, problem, event, or other predicament causes your emotional reactions. The pre-conceptions and expectations you bring to every situation cause the roller coaster effect. Minds free of pre-conceptions and expectations have an eternal emotional playground in the Present." "Before you said to consider potential problems before they become problematic. Now you're saying pre-conceptions cause the problems. Which is it?" "Both of those, or neither, whatever works for you. The real problem is seeing life's inherent peccadilloes as anything but the spice of your existence." "Still, sometimes the idea of total Presence seems 62

depressing. What about having a positive future outlook and healthy expectations? Don't you ever look forward to anything?" "The happiest people rarely reminisce or look forward, my boy. They’re not sentimental or regretful or vengeful or depressed because those emotions require unhealthy preoccupation with the past. They also aren’t anxious, worried, wishful or fatalistic about the future. They’re realistic about the Present and in touch with any change that occurs. You should be Present enough not to bother with future prediction, but if you must indulge the compulsion for expectation, then I say expect the worst because it makes you more comfortable in the face of your fears and shows the futility of all future thought. Everyone’s going to be disappointed in life: your fast food’s gonna come slowly, your best friend’s gonna sleep with your wife, your parents are gonna tell you you’re adopted, and then you and everyone you’ve ever met will die. But there’s no need to attach an emotional reaction to these destined disappointments. I say expect disappointment, expect death, and every time you’re not disappointed or live another day, rejoice at the glimpses of unexpected beauty you’re shown between disappointments." “You’re very cynical for an optimist.” “Yeah, I say the glass is half there.” “The glass is all there. It’s the water that's in question.” “That’s how you see it.” “No. It’s relevant to the metaphor.”

63

“No. I assure you, We only see half the glass, so it’s the water that’s irrelevant.” A tiny lamb runs up to them. Joseph picks it up and Asbestos pets it. "Walk with me a while while I impart a part of me upon you. Here's a one-step process to happiness. Make a game with your brain. Every single time you feel even slightly slighted, how immediately can you forgive? Forgive the object of your unhappiness, the person, place or thing you think caused your unhappiness. Forgive it's nature and your thoughts about it. Then forget. You can always choose to hold a grudge, seek vengeance, repentance, apology or another form of retribution, but ultimately they all lead to further suffering. Immediate and unconditional forgiveness is the only one tried and true option for innerpeace and happiness. How quickly can you forgive annoyance, irresponsibility, negligence, stupidity - your own included? At first you'll probably find forgiveness irritating but soon realize that it's your brain's incessant fault finding that needs true forgiveness. You'll learn that your comfortable acceptance of other's short-comings, that listener's silence of thought, your perfect attention becomes the loudest voice positively penetrating yours and other's thoughts and actions. When others accuse you, blame you, criticize you or try to reduce you in any way, though they’re unconscious of it, are really just trying to prove themselves and persuade people to be more like them. Likewise when you do these things it is to fulfill your impulsive desire to be right, and to make the world more like your mind, even though it's a selfish habit that inhibits happiness. The ability not to think or feel while someone is belittling you, to watch their 64

angry, red, contorted faces twisting, spewing saliva and cursing everything sacred, to listen and not judge, not to react even in thought, this is true virtue. Only from here can positive action truly manifest itself. All other action is just creative deflection of the phlegm ball into someone else’s face. You can spend your life being right about the things that have wronged you, or you can right the wrongs instantly by refusing to think about them. If you're being accused, blamed, or criticized, just like your brain flips the feed from your eyes right-side up, always flip the negative feed from your ears, knowing non-resistance is forgiveness and that’s the love We all live for.” "Here's the key to having lasting, rewarding relationships with everyone you know: become best friends with your parents. Always tell them the truth. Not the nonconfrontational, censored, sound of silence, moral highground type of truth, but your exact thoughts as you think them - that kind of truth. Maintain this level of communication and understanding with your parents and all other interpersonal relations will seem simple. Your parents have the most dirt on you and you on them, so if you can shower them with brutal honesty and come out clean, everyone else is pie." "I don't know my parents. How do you advise an orphan toward more rewarding relationships?" "Well, forget the parents part. Let me tell you about my most rewarding relationship. Mary. I found myself in her - right where I’d lost it. I was never lonely until she came and left. All Our shared emotions, late night conversations heard only by Our ears, all Our ideas and dreams We formed an entity composed of Our every experience 65

together called Our relationship, felt in part by both of Us but it’s totality by neither of Us. Our creation existed in abstraction like a mental monument of Our achievements so unfathomabely beautiful no one could believe it. No three could believe it either. Only other twos could possibly comprehend the intimate connection formed by such friendship. And then she left. Very quickly, with few words, and I let her. We had sex one time and never again. She became incredibly paranoid about AIDS, STD's, pregnancy, and her ultra-conservative parents' reaction if her sexuality was discovered. Naturally, as feared, We both contracted HIV, gave each other herpes, she got pregnant, and her parents completely flipped-out. The medication, belly swelling, mood swings, and morning sickness convinced everyone else of her pregnancy, but through it all Mary insisted she'd never had sex. To this day I'm sure she'd claim virginity. By the time Our son was born, she was already in such a state of denial that she called him her gift from God. She'd say things like, isn't he just immaculate? Ultimately, her parents wouldn't allow Us to see each other or keep the baby, so he was placed in an orphanage." "Where was that?" Asbestos asks excitedly. "I'm not sure. Mary might know. I haven't seen her in almost thirty years, but I hear she still frequents the bars inner-city. But the point to my story is this: My most rewarding relationship resulted in three broken hearts. The glass is half there.” Mary Head -Scenes from a Bar SceneMary Head’s a little lamb whose fleece is white as snow. 66

But underneath her fleece she’s black as grease and thrice as slick. Her eyes are narrow slits; her tongues prodded, poisonous, and flickers through fangs that suck the souls from lost spirits. Asbestos enters the tavern and takes a seat at a corner booth. He orders a glass of water, examines, sniffs, then sips it as though a fine wine. Mary sits seductively in a red dress, cross-legged on a bar stool. She lights a cigarette and downs a gin and tomato juice. A modestly dressed middle-aged man slides onto the stool next to Mary simultaneously signaling the bartender with an inverse nod. “How are you doing?” He asks. “However you’re doing Now, thanks.” “What’s your drink?” “I don’t identify myself with one.” “I’m a whisky man.” “Good for you.” He flashes the bartender the peace sign “So, are you from around here?” “As much as I’m from anywhere I’ve ever been.” whiskies slide down.

Two

“Well, have you spent much time here or just passing through?” 67

“If I told you right now I’d never sleep with you, would you leave me alone?” “I . . . guess so, yeah.” He stands. “Do you feel alone, Whisky Man?” “Sometimes.” “You are alone.” “I know.” “Good. Go away and deal with that until you die.” Asbestos approaches and makes eye contact with Mary’s reflection in the bar mirror. “What the hell are you doing?” She glares back. “I’m testing a hypothesis. distance.”

You look better from a

“You look like you look for better in the distance.” “That may be. But I’m near-sighted, and you’re ugly, so my senses have deceived me. Name’s Asbestos.” “An insulting, Cartesian introduction. How quaint.” “Ah, You know the mind/body problem?” “Of course.” 68

“I’ve been wanting to tell someone, I just proved the slash is superfluous by playing piano with my eyes closed and thinking about something else.” “No, you proved We have muscle memory.” “Exactly.” “Why are you talking to me again?” “I’ve noticed shutting down flunkies in bars seems to be your contribution to the greater good. I wanted to see how it felt.” “I’m no flunky honey, nor do I concern myself with the greater good.” “Really? Then with what? The lesser good?” “My own good.” “That’s quite a few billion more selfish than the greater good.” “And how do you suggest I benefit these billions?” “Consideration. The Author Bertrand Russell says, We ought to pursue the general good, and when this conflicts with self-interest, self-interest ought to give way.” “I understand the moral argument, but I can’t bring myself to care about the general good as it is an intangible concept and I am not. Besides, all human experience is subjective and so inherently selfish. Even the most supposedly selfless individual is constantly rewarded the exclusive joy 69

of their own moral goodness. A completely selfless person would then in turn wish this joy upon someone else, but such second-hand happiness is the exclusive right of the completely selfless individual.” “Then there are no completely selfless actions, but selflessly intended actions benefit at least two people whereas selfish actions benefit at most one. A developed sense of collective happiness is superior to any individual gain simply because it affects a greater number of people. You may be satisfied with your whisky and witty remarks, but that guy back there is now unhappy and a few more dollars in the hole.” She lights a cigarette. I don’t like you very much.” He takes a seat. “What a coincidence.” Mary exhales and shakes her head. “And I like Whisky Man even less, which makes me care very little for his happiness.” “So your preference in people is evidence enough for emotional persecution?” “You can’t tell me you go out of your way to impart selflessness on unlikable people.” “I’m talking with you, aren’t I?” “Bastard. This isn’t selfless. everyone else.”

You’ve got an agenda like

“Well I’ll just have to smother you with selflessness and the purest of intentions until you agree with We.”

70

“Cute. But all selfless actions require a selfish recipient or no one’s ready to receive what’s being given, making pure selflessness inconsistent. She smiles. “Besides, your words are hollow bouncing off these walls.” “Words are all I’ve got and language is the messenger. Don’t shoot the messenger.” “What if the message says to kill the messenger?” “I’d say that’s giving Wittgenstein a slab in the face.” “An intelligent pun. That’s rare.” “Thank you very much.” “It was an observation, not a compliment.” “I meant thanks for holding back your smile. loose once and I didn’t want to see it again.” She gives a stern stare. smile.”

You let it

“I’m so happy I don’t need to

“Then stop that.” “What?” “Lying only makes you lonely.” “I’m not lying. I’m smiling on the inside where you can’t affect me.” “An Author once wrote that freedom discovers man the moment he loses concern over what impression he is making or about to make. You on the other hand slave to 71

catering custom images of how you want to seem at all times. Sitting on a stool in that tight dress that screams give it to me, but turning every guy down, because that’s your game. You speak in tongues and make everyone decipher the meaning. You analyze the effects of your expressions and withhold or create them, allowing only revised versions tailored to your liking. You lie with every fiber of your being.” She leans in. “I only lie to other people, never to myself.” “It’s the same thing. You lie to others and the lies control your life. You have to live the lie for them. You have to continue certain lies for some and other lies for others without crossing wires, and soon you can rarely be your uncensored self. And for what? To hide what you really think? Cowardice!” “You want to know what I really think? I think you wanna fuck me but you’re too intellectual to get it up if We don’t philosophize first. So you hope to rip me apart here at the bar then go home and smother me with some selflessness. But I’m a virgin baby, and these legs remain crossed forever, so fuck off, I’m old enough to be your mother!” “Yeah right, if you’re a virgin, then I’m the son of God.” Mary takes a drink, most of which misses her lips and dribbles on her dress. Asbestos snickers and says: "The same Author wrote that consciousness of self is the greatest hindrance to the proper execution of all physical action." Her slitty eyes flutter and her face shrinks behind its makeup. Her voice calms. "Who are you quoting Now, Descartes or Russell?

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"Neither." "Then who?" "Bruce Lee." "Let me tell you a story. One time long ago I did have sex. It was filthy. I became diseased. The man I was seeing planted a parasitic seed in my cervix that fed off my insides until it crawled out my crotch and confronted me. It was a hideous wailing beast covered in blood and I'll never forget the doctor's words as he handed it to me: He says to me, “I’m sorry ma’am, your baby’s dying. Feeding him plant and animal life will prolong the process. But ultimately his organs will fail, his breath will cease, and his cell structures will break down to the point that he will be unrecognizable as your son, or ever being human at all.” I fight back tears. “Not all is lost though ma’am, even though his matter will change form and disperse, he will continue his physical existence by bonding his atoms to everything around him. More importantly, he will leave a psychic imprint on all animals and intelligence he comes in contact with. He will create beautiful artifacts, moments, and relationships, share experiences and ideas that will ripple the psychic evolution of humanity and greatly modify the emotions and thought-patterns of all those around him and those around them for generations thereafter. He will encounter, refine, and pass on knowledge which will be remembered and continue being passed on through others’ language and actions. His very breath will provide food, employment and entertainment for thousands of carbon synthesizing plants . . . Unfortunately, he will have to kill and eat the life out of 73

hundreds of thousands of these plants and animals to stay alive. But I estimate he could live like this for up to a hundred years. I cry out, “He’ll live as a parasite upon the Earth.” And he says, “If it’s any comfort there are animals that eat plants, plants that eat animals, and animals that eat animals. There are animals that turn into plants, plants that turn into animals and things that are simultaneously plants and animals. It’s simply his responsibility to give back to existence more than he takes from it. Continued adherence to this inherent responsibility will ensure his relation to the Earth is beneficial and symbiotic, not parasitic.” “If he has responsibilities then it follows that he has free will, right doctor?” “Your son’s Head of a cell society. Trillions of completely independent miniscule units of life have banded together and formed a community you call your son. They make a central nervous system attached to a brain so all sensation seems singular and is given to him to figure out. He’ll likely think of himself as an unchanging individual rather than a constantly changing society. He’ll perceive the introduction and cessation of certain manifestations of nature and assume these forms come into life and pass onto death. I’m afraid he’ll deny that life is eternal because he is temporal.” “Doctor, the utter depression he’ll feel by thinking that way…so his will is determined.” “He’ll never be able to know one way or the other. From vacuum fluctuations in Andromeda to his decision between boxers and briefs, the moment to moment actualization of 74

reality is based on each previous moment’s accruement of the entire Universe’s stream of complex probabilities. This stream is so contingent and necessarily incessant that it cannot be stopped even hypothetically without changing variables. Therefore on a large enough scale, he’s a dancer choreographed beyond his capacity to comprehend. But on a scale meaningful to him, he’ll always have the free will to flip a coin with any action, opinion, or decision.” “I thought maybe there would be hope for this thing. Maybe I could help it have a meaningful existence. What’s more, maybe what I’d been searching for my whole life was to be found in its eyes. And just then it was taken from me, never to be seen again. My son was ripped from my arms and you want to fault me for living a lie?” "I apologize. What of your husband in all this?” She stares at the wall like it spit on her. "Not worth mentioning. His happiness makes me sick. He smiles through vicissitudes and seems slightly out of place in every situation like he’s risen above the horrid monotony of it all." "Well, if you can put up with his happiness, he wanted me to tell you to meet him at the old library this Sunday." Before Mary can even respond, Asbestos has left. Mary downs another drink. She swivels her stool then slurs her speech onto the guy next to her. “Have you done anything completely selfless today?” “I don’t know. I guess not.”

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“Good. Buy me a drink then go away, and bask in a new possibility.” Asbestos breathes in the crisp evening air and follows his ears to a live music venue down the street. Machine Head -Free Will JunkiesMachine Head is Cyborg. Cyborg are collective and simultaneously subjective beings identical to humans in every way except for their brains, which are in constant data transfer with both one another and a computer-generated Mother Brain. Through silicon technology and forced genetic mutation, all cyborg have comprehensive sense transceivers allowing any member of the collective to fully experience the epistemological, visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory, and gustatory sensations of any other. All information is instantaneously sent to each other and the Mother Brain - an outside server that stores their every experience, even after the death of their bodies. This eliminates the human concern for understanding and self-preservation because the entirety of their experience is remembered, maintained, and accessible to all cyborg at any time. As a result most cyborg live alone and haven’t the slightest desire to procreate. Survival, love, and understanding are all secondary to what they describe as the intensification and appreciation of the Now. They are inherently emotionless and opinionless by human standards because of their complete disidentification with self and thought. Feeling and bias are only expressed in the interest of aesthetics as they consider these things to be high-art happening in real-time. Overall their behavior closely 76

parallels humans except for a couple quirks like these and that cyborg are all artists of one kind or another; Machine Head is lead singer in a hard-core heavy-metal band. Tonight's show is already underway as Asbestos enters the building. At first every song sounds the same and hurts Asbestos' ears until he grows accustomed, then he begins to hear the subtleties of Machine's heavy-metal music. The melody changes before it's established, the tempo shifts without warning, and there seem to be no verses, bridges, or choruses, just a constant increasing and diminishing of intensity. A psychedelic trance-like keyboard variation plays over a building drum and bass line. Machine Head creaks a foreboding whisper into a deep growl as distorted guitars explode behind his voice, projecting the most powerful culmination of artistic aggression, crunching coarse disonance and utter incoherence that somehow stays together through lightning speed leads and subsonic stomp riffs that are not so much played as pulsed into the pit, mashing the mosher's heads banging. Asbestos cannot understand the words Machine is screaming, but the sounds he's achieving, from throaty growls to spine-numbing screeches, are clearly uncharted and strangely beautiful vocal territory. As he leaves the stage, Machine Head yells these last words like a secret message to hard-core fans. "Between the buried and me, as I lay dying on broken wings in this cradle of filth, I see a dark day dawning from a second story window. It's blood for most precious blood and blood has been shed – it’s bleeding through. We must converge, unearth biohazards and napalm death, rage against the machine in this system of a down, run dillingers escape plan out the fear factory and leave it in flames, like taking candiria from a baby. Goodnight." 77

Asbestos sneaks backstage and meets Machine Head in the doorway to his dressing room. “Those sounds were inhuman.” Machine smiles. “You’re right, those sounds were cyborg. I can scream too low for a pigeon to hear and too high for a bat. I can taste any food I want without having to eat it, I can read you every book ever written word for word, sing every song, speak every language, close my eyes and view any film, visit any place any cyborg’s ever gone and live the entire experience of their lives in real-time, rewind, fast-forward or slow-mo." “Wow. I’ve just begun hearing about cyborg. In fact I was wondering specifically, if information is uploaded directly into your brain and not yet necessarily experienced firsthand, how do you know you know things? How are you aware of new knowledge coming from others and the Mother Brain?” “Memory. The same way you know you know things. By your definition the only thing one can know they know is whatever information they are currently accessing. My memory is associative like yours and so usually sparked through perception, often in the form of conversation, like this. While talking with you I may quote a book I’ve never experienced reading before, but the information is there in my memory nonetheless.” “I see. I’d really like to hear your opinion on a few things.”

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“I’ve never had an opinion in my life.” “That's right, I heard about that. Isn't that terrible? Is it a side effect of being cyborg?” “No, and it’s not terrible at all. Your negative opinion of having no opinions proves why. You have never experienced pure opinionlessness so your opinion of it is based on ignorance. And so are most opinions merely a lack of information or appreciation. In my world of constant information, if I were to constantly weigh the pros and cons of this and that I’d find myself changing opinions before they formed.” “But it’s natural to lean at least a little toward one side of any dichotomy.” “Do as you please, but I prefer a straight walk down the middle. Opinions like blankets people drape over all given instances of controversial issues. But, reality is less cut and dry than opinionland with unseen variables, contradictory emotions, and other factors rendering impossible the validity of any opinion blanket. Human children are cradled in them early on and grow so sentimental, they’ll never throw them away no matter how old, worn, or smelly. They claim the blankets are comfortable or remind them of home, but underneath them all are freezing cold naked bodies scared to give up their easy way to stay warm and unaffected.” “You have a pretty solid opinion on having no opinions for someone who’s opinionless.” “Anything I say is bias because I’ve chosen to say it, but it’s not an opinion because I’ll take it all back and reassess what I express if given just cause. By opinions, I mean 79

generalized conclusions that don’t budge and allow no exceptions. All lies arise from opinions. Cyborg have no reason to lie because We can read each others’ minds, but humans find many reasons to bend the truth in their favor. All lies avoid larger disagreements. All large disagreements occur between overly opinionated people unacceptant of others’ actions and ideas. One party presents their opinion, creating a mental barricade, built to keep identity in and adversity out. Then the second party must either tactfully break down the barricade or lie around it. Most humans choose the latter because they’re lazy cowards that care more about surface harmony and superficial comfort than Truth. It happens all the time in human relationships. Perhaps a parent holds strong opinions about gays, drugs, or religion and fate delivers them an agnostic, homosexual, drug-user. Convinced of their own opinions, they revert to predetermined conclusions and alienate their child instead of opening mutually beneficial discussions on such controversial topics. This teaches the child two things - not to bother with their parents for advice or support anymore, and to develop and defend their own positions in opinionland. From there on in the stage has been set and the message has been sent that We disagree, so to save time and spare emotions, the child lies and begins their teenage rebellion against parental opinion. Don't be a slave to opinion, just play librarian with ideas. Be both completely honest and acceptant, non-reactive, even in thought, of others’ opinions. Listen objectively first, free of judgment, then if you disagree, state your reasons, listen to the reply and repeat until agreement or compromise. If you don’t know, say so. If you have 80

mixed emotions, explain them the best you can. You’ll create an aura of wisdom about yourself and no one will ever feel a reason to lie to you. Once you make the decision to say exactly what you think without exception, it’s contagious anyway. You’ll find little inconsistencies you’ve casually lied around for years. You’ll see tendencies in types of people you’d rather just lie to avoid. You’ll discover societal norms you’ve unconsciously lied to uphold. All conversations become exciting experiments in personal discovery, like the extrospection section of self-reflection.” Machine offers Asbestos a seat and continues their conversation. “Opinions are present in all habits and rituals as well. Humans must beware their own prejudices in people, activities, and ideas because they limit one’s worldview into a kind of self-determinism. If left to his own devices, man cannot truly escape the habits, preferences, and cursed subjectivity of his own mind. He will create a world around himself that almost perfectly coincides with his conscious actions and expectations to the point it becomes meaningless to get what he wants. Humans aren’t creatures of habit. They’re creatures of change addicted to habit. Cyborg, on the other hand, are free-will junkies and always do the thing We’ve never done before. And We never judge anything except in the occasional interest of humor. For humans, judgments affect the accuracy of memory by clouding the actual sensory experience with mental clutter, often yielding exaggerated, false recollections. Look at it this way. There’s a reason people don’t take their cameras to work, but can’t resist bringing them on vacation. 81

Actually, there are a couple reasons. They want to forget work and remember vacations. And their eyes are open to beauty in Honolulu but not in the office. I’ve lived in Honolulu and other idealized paradises and can safely say you’ll only find what you’re looking for, and everyone stops looking for what’s in front of them once it’s been there long enough. Ocean sunsets through the glass bottom of your beer bottle become as routine as breathing, and their beauty easily forgotten. The reality of any fantasy lifestyle doesn’t end the longing, just leads to the same old you with new more petty wants. I possess human rationale and have equal ability to sort through data and infer judgments, but I don’t experience life alongside a constant internal voice like you do. I see so many walking around with eyes rolled back in their heads, unable to control their concentration, unable to experience pure awareness. I feel bad for humans. They miss out on so much beauty in life because they never stop thinking. Without the ability to forget the monotony of perception, only extraordinary, original moments seem beautiful or interesting. Humans have to travel the world for original perceptions, I only have to shut off my memory or access another cyborg’s experience. But human habituation is easy to counter-act, just always opt for the most freedom within your circumstances. Go to a new restaurant, or sit somewhere new at the old restaurant, or eat something different at the same table, whatever it takes to ensure your life maintains constant change in the name of spontaneity. Whatever it takes so your life doesn’t revolve and cycle circles around schedules and predicted events. Living with intentionality towards originality and creating truly different moments becomes more interesting than habits are comfortable.”

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Asbestos crosses his arms across his crossed legs and rests his chin on his knees. “So no opinions then. What about favorites? Do you have a favorite philosopher, poet, artist, musician?” “Whoever is writing, painting, or composing right now. We are all products of a constantly evolving creative impulse and for me the most interesting and beautiful creations are the most current because they express the present time We exist in and the present manner of thought which We can best identify with. They have cyborgs in think tanks right now writing original philosophy based on all recorded thought to date. Others composing music so intricate it contains layered polyphonics, too complex for humans to hear. It is innovative and insightful, but the process is still causal and mechanical. All supposedly creative thought is still just the natural progression of mental complexity. Even Shakespeare and Mozart are stepping stones.” “Are there any disadvantages to being cyborg? What else could you want?” “Plenty. I’ve never had a private experience in my life. I live knowing from birth until long after my death, moments of my life will be accessed and lived by many others. Since each cyborg’s entire perceptual experience is available to any other at any time, it’s like a showcase of experiential possibilities. Mother Brain indexes and keeps a counter so We know the most re-lived highlights of Our lives. You know, of all the incredible moments I’ve had, sex with the prom queen is my most re-lived.” “Can you re-live your own moments?” 83

“Yeah.” “How many times have you re-lived the prom queen?” “That’s beside the point. The point is my most intimate moments are on display for all forever and I’m guilty too. When I meet another cyborg, I immediately rewind their life and check it out. Some good experiences are great because they can be re-lived, but some experiences and relationships are ruined because of it. All cyborg know when I’m taking a shit or jerking it. They know I’ve got a small dick, finish quick, and used to get the shit kicked out of me. They know all my most embarrassing and incriminating moments. They know every evil I've ever thought and every sin I've ever committed. And all this collective comfort I'm supposed to derive from cyborg's complete understanding is far out-weighed by a desire for the true subjectivity of human experience. So what do I want? The opposite of you. I want to be alone and misunderstood. The cyborg community has mostly dispersed; I’ve distanced myself and mostly spend my time alone or with humans Now. I don't know what you're thinking right Now. That's completely interesting for me. Every question you ask or statement you humans make, is inherently more interesting to me. I know what all cyborgs are thinking at all times. When We're together, most conversation is telepathic. Language is only used as an occasional emphasis, like an exclamation point on the things We're thinking. To be in the presence of people I can so closely identify with but never fully understand - I feel there's more meaning in those kind of relationships. It seems paradoxical, but many cyborg Authors have written about it." 84

Asbestos stands and places a hand on Machine’s shoulder. “I’ve enjoyed Our meeting, the wisdom you’ve expressed, and though I must go, I’d appreciate an interesting favor from someone of your near infinite abilities.” "What is it?" “I need a worthy Kaishakunin.” Pot Head -Competitive EducationPot Head’s a rural area high school teacher who does drugs with his students. He holds degrees in education, sociology, and psychology and has been using marijuana, opium, and psychedelic mushrooms in the classroom for years. He argues that many teenagers are experimenting with even harder drugs in a destructive manner, distracting them from schoolwork, causing them to skip classes, fail and drop out. However, when introduced correctly in an educational context, certain plants can provide a passion for knowledge and introspection. They create an open, fun, and loving atmosphere in which true communication can be built between fellow students and teachers alike. 99% of Pot Head’s special life skills class graduates go onto college; all other teachers see improvement in grades, behavior, and notice a genuine love for learning among his students. His classroom approach is simple but unorthodox: Comfortable swivel seats in a circle. No tables, textbooks, boards, papers, pens or other distractions from true education. Just many young minds perfectly aligned glancing excitedly with curious eyes. Pot Head closes the door and takes his equal seat in the circle. “Welcome to Life Skills. As you all know We’re 85

going to be taking drugs and talking in this class. We’ll be going on mushroom field trips, writing opium poetry, smoking pot and discussing Our thoughts, and that’s about it. No notes, no syllabus, no homework but books you choose and only one rule: Truth. Everyone must swear they’ll only speak their true feelings in this classroom. Education is not memorizing information; it’s knowledgeable exploration of yourselves. What I want to teach you here is the truth about yourselves, so if you lie to each other or me, it disadvantages Us all. Speak honestly and If We touch on subjects you wish not to talk about, simply say so and We’ll move on. First of all you’ll notice We’re sitting in a circle - the one, and only suitable seating configuration for a classroom. Sitting in rows facing front takes focus off each other and places it on fantasy objectives. Switching to rows of separate desks came about during the industrial age with motives focused not on education theory, but toward creating a populous pre-accustomed to a factory-like setting. Nowadays nothing has changed and it can’t because there are too many students, too few true teachers, and too little funding. So it serendipitously happens that the state enforces banker-hour school days, five days a week, with standardized testing, textbooks, and curriculums designed to compete students against all others for high grades and praise from the boss at the black board; then after school are often required to continue their competitive development in the wonderful sports programs, universally allocated more money than the arts. From 1852-1918 state education was optional in the US. Then after that it was mandatory only for 9-12 year olds, 10-12 weeks a year, and even that was met with extreme opposition. They've slowly lengthened the time and age range until now 4 year olds are in preschool and 26 year 86

old doctors are still being indoctrinated. I reject factory-seating, standardized tests, textbooks and curriculums because they all constrict the relationship of the teacher to the students and the students to each other. They shape clear competitive objectives with tried methods, testing, and grading procedures that produce results showing how compliant students are with the demands required of them. As far as actual knowledge acquired, most of it is forgotten after the test. And why is this? Because you kids don’t care! Why would you? You’re bored of what We teach you and how We do it. You’re taught that education is just a long hurdle you’ll hate then jump over to land perfectly in a pair of leather shoes on wall street like a good competitor. Rarely does a student graduate with a genuine love of learning that continues for the rest of their lives. Philosophy, the subject that means love of wisdom, the subject bursting to be explored by blossoming teenagers, is left as an elective at the Academy. There are no anthropology, sociology, or psychology courses in public high schools. Three of the most enlightening subjects on human nature and finding one’s place in the world, the very state teenagers find themselves in naturally, such fundamental subjects are again postponed until college in favor of asinine edification like trigonometry and geography. The fact We even have geography class is ridiculous. You know, the world is round and countries aren’t real anyway, but meanwhile commit these place names to memory, major imports and exports, capitals, policies, minor wars, treaties; it’s important, We assure you. Actually the interesting aspects of geography are in geology, sociology, and political science, three subjects that, again, you won’t be learning.

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There’s no religion or theology taught in schools, so Our kids are ignorant of the world’s deepest beliefs and rely on their parents to fill them in. In math classes there is no number theory and rarely math history, the two most fascinating branches of mathematics are overlooked in favor of daily drills and rote memorization of functions and equations. No one reads about Aristotle, Boole, Russell, Riemann or Ramanajan, they just practice fifteen thousand ways to apply the Pythagorean theorum. In physics there’s seldom anything so interesting as astronomy, cosmology, relativity, or quantum mechanics taught. Instead they opt for memorizing Newton's laws then performing obvious experiments on how gravity affects everyday objects, chart it, graph it, form a formula, hypothesis, procedure, results and conclusion. No one actually attempts Dirac, Feynman, Einstein or Hawking. The same applies for chemistry and biology. Bunson burn some water and disect something disgusting then type two reports a week. Memorize these elements and ions, label some cell structures, and ignore the exciting active explorations for things like the origin of life and species, evolution and adaptation, nature vs. nurture, Carson, Curie, Darwin, Dawkins, Goodall or Gould. In English We force Shakespeare and Milton; it’s like reading Howl to Shelley. Poetry, if offered, focuses on stresses, syllables, and copying classical forms. You start with the scraps of some Egyptian woman, might hit Whitman before the term ends and if you never see another poem again it’ll be too soon. You teenagers should be reading more easily accessible Authors, beat poets and free verse. If the so-called classics interest you at this age, all the better, but until then you’ll probably enjoy counterculture writers like Adams, Ashbury, Asimov, Baraka, Berrigan, Bukowski, Dick, Dostoyevsky, Emerson, 88

Huxley, Keroac, Lewis, Ginsberg, Thoreau, Tolkien, Twain, Vonnegut, Watts, Wells, and these are just a few of the pre-approved Authors on Our reading list. He holds up a world history textbook and rips the front page out. “This is a fantasy. They scrape the surface of every major change in humanity throughout recorded history, find a binding big enough, then hinge your grades upon remembering names, dates and nothing of substance. History's taught on a Christian time-line between wars and treaties, floods and famines, rises and falls of kingdoms and dynasties, a soap opera of government control oppressing the oppressed, suppressing their information out of existence, then lining Our libraries with supposed world history. In books that leave out the trail of tears in favor of the Oregon trail, books that immortalize European conquerors who murdered entire civilizations, books that suggest Cro-magnum migration over a land bridge from Asia, books that skip New world Christian-settler's atrocities like murdering many millions more native Americans than nazis did during the holocaust, books that call capitalist domination a communist scare, books that call greedy weapons manufacturing a cold war, books that call the last sixty years peacetime. History continues doomed to repeat itself because it's lessons aren't taught nor are student's interpretations expressed. You're simply required to synopsize and memorize then wait to regurgitate it later.” He lines the front page with marijuana and starts rolling. “Your first assignment is to take out a bunch of books by the Authors mentioned and start reading them. You’ll know in the first few pages if they speak to you, and if they do, keep reading, if not, try another Author. Kindred spirits have beautifully expressed things in books you’ll look for your whole life. I guarantee reading good books 89

ensures a lifetime of more meaningful moments than you'll ever experience watching T.V., playing video games, chatting on the phone or online. Even if you have to fight for your own attention, that's part of your educational awakening, your aesthetic enlightenment.” He makes eye contact and smiles with each student individually then lights the joint. "Medicine men, spiritual guides, and various tribes throughout history have used drugs for bonding, mental development, and entertainment, but the tradition has been lost in the laws of most modern societies. There are over-the-counter drugs for the consenting hypocritical masses and under-the-counter drugs for the fearless and morally consistent. Around the world, governments and systems of mass media paint evil pictures of drugs and their users. They showcase the worst examples often enough and condition populations to view drug-users as escapists or failures. But drugs need not be destructive. When incorporated correctly, they provide a beautiful enhancement to reality. Responsible drug use is eye opening, surreal, educational, and fun. Most of the negativity surrounding drugs is imposed by non-users with something to lose. It’s important to decide for yourself and that’s what this course is for. That’s what education is. Drugs challenge your thoughts and relationship with the world. They temporarily alter your perceptions by numbing, enhancing, or otherwise tweaking sensory input which begs such philosophical questions as what is reality? What is knowledge?” He passes it carefully to the student on his left. “The extent of drug education in most schools involves a police officer, a suitcase of drugs, and the repeated assurance that there’s nothing but negativity inside. However, take pot as Our example for today: Cannabis use in America is higher per capita than in Holland where it's legal. Our first few 90

presidents were marijuana growers and activists, yet Now in America twenty percent of all prison convictions are marijuana-related. The Hindu religion believes that Shiva brought marijuana to Earth for human enjoyment. It stimulates brain receptors but doesn't produce toxins that kill them like alcohol. It impairs your short-term memory during use, but has no long-term effects. No brain damage, no cardiovascular damage, no reproductive damage, no hormone alteration, and it even has hundreds of medicinal uses. It helps labor pain, headache, anxiety, glaucoma, insomnia, nausea, vomiting, chemo-recovery, AIDS, multiple sclerosis, and epilepsy. The oil from seeds is nutritious when eaten or can be used for making paints and canvas. Hemp yields twice the product of cotton fields, can be grown without pesticides or insecticides, and it's clothing is more durable and environmentally friendly than cotton, nylon, or synthetic fibers. 2X4s made from 100% pot-planks are two to three times stronger than most trees. All plastics could be replaced by hemp; Bags, wrappers, containers could all be edible, fully biodegradable, and act as fertilizer if littered. Gasoline could even be replaced by refining its ethanol. Since discovered over five thousand years ago paper has been made with pot plant pulp; Even the first Gutenberg and King James Bibles were printed on hemp paper. Hemp fields are sustainable and yield four times more product per acre than trees. Hemp is the longest and strongest fiber in the plant kingdom, produces the finest quality pulp, and doesn't release dioxins or chloroform during the papermaking process, but it has recently been replaced by woodpulp due to cost efficiency and government control.” As the students continue to pass it around there’s a knock 91

on the door. introduced.

Asbestos Head enters and is promptly -

"Students, I want you to welcome Our friend Asbestos." Some students giggle, others wave, and others still sit still as night. Asbestos lights his lighter, sets his hand afire, and then waves it out with a snap of his fingers saying: “We have no choice but to trust Our senses, though sometimes that trust is misplaced. Our senses only perceive a small section of reality’s infinite spectrum of available information, so what We call knowledge is partial and all Our subsequent inferences are probably wrong. So, you, tell me, what is consciousness?” “Having a brain?” suggests one student. “Many organisms exhibit signs of consciousness without a brain.” “Being able to make decisions?” offers another. “Computers constantly make decisions. conscious?”

Are they

“No," she answers. “Would it be possible to make a computer with consciousness?” “No, because computers can’t think for themselves. They can only do what they’re programmed to do.”

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“What about Us? Do We only do what We’re programmed or can We think for Ourselves?” “We can think for Ourselves.” “What if humans are really just fleshy computers, continually being reprogrammed by God or complex physical laws and even everything We think is determined. It sure seems that way, when everything We do resembles everything We’ve done, and everything We think stays the same until We come across something that changes it. How do you know We have consciousness?” “I don’t know.” “You can’t know. In determining consciousness, We don’t know where to draw the line. Are sunflowers conscious as they follow the sun? Are single cells conscious as they seek and kill others? Are atoms conscious of each other and themselves? As you try to further refine the definition of consciousness, you’ll inevitably end up with two truths. Everything is always moving and that motion is reactive. At what point does reactivity become complex enough to be called consciousness? Any answer is equally arbitrary.” The students retreat into intense thought and Pot Head hands Asbestos a hand-wrapped present. Dead Head -Capitalist ManifestoAsbestos smokes Pot Head's present on the walk to his next appointment. He enters the city police station and an officer leads him to jail. In the corner he notices a malnourished, scruffy, dirty and completely naked cell mate who looks overly happy to see someone. 93

"What are you in for, friend?" "I increased the amount of truth being told by a park statue and got charged with defacing state property." "They're very protective of their possessions, aren’t they?" "The government takes tax money and builds war monuments to promote patriotism and military allegiance as an easy means to marble immortality. But isn’t war hero a paradox? The only war heroes I know are draft dodgers, protestors, and people who place peace over purple hearts. Where’s their statue? That's what I want to know. But anyway, I'm stuck in here overnight to keep the wheels of justice in rotation. Let the rehabilitation begin!" "Exactly. Prison's Our societal time-out. Go stand in the corner with your head down and think about what you've done until We say come out. And of course the corner's only for poor kids. Rich kids get their allowances taken away instead. Meanwhile We've got millions of trained psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists, spiritualists and teachers twiddling their thumbs. Why send your society's kids to the corner or take their money away when you can educate them? Caging criminals with other mentally unstable felons has never helped a person on this planet. And think, all the money that's saved from not enslaving one percent of the population can be used to create jobs, promote education and mental health. No one experiences a lifetime of unconditional love then rapes and kills. These are expressions of misguided emotion, as is the revenge taken against them. I forgive everyone everything. For many people justice is equality, an eye for an eye. But increasingly, humanity is realizing that there is no justice in retributive punishment. True justice is positive change. 94

An eye for an eye means committing the same act you're condemning while calling it the solution. It may sound rational to Our government, but it sounds like insanity to me." "I agree. The Author Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, the old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. And Gandhi said there is no justice in retributive punishment, only hypocrisy and the continuance of evil. For the decidedly immoral act of murder, the accused is then murdered. Such a paradox cannot uphold any theory of Justice.” "Yeah, and just think, if everyone were served their due punishment, six million Nazis and neo-fascists would get the gas chamber. Everyone near the Gaza strip would commit religious suicide. All Christians in the New World would be beheaded by native Americans, then all remaining whites would be enslaved and oppressed for generations by black plantation owners until about thirty countries simultaneously bomb the rest. Then all remaining women around the world would kill all remaining men for millennia of injustice, and soon Our equality would be left for the ants." "If only this town had a square and We had a soapbox, We'd solve all these problems." They exchange smiles. "So why are you here?" "Because I'm a simple man that doesn't want to build a big shelter or house a family. Because I just want to move with the wind on my whims until I get swept away forever, but the current notions of public and private property, Our ancestors manifested destiny, has left me few options. 95

Public is patrolled and private property owners hate squatters, so I never last long anywhere. I can’t hunt or fish without a paid permit. I can’t even pick the fruit, vegetables, and berries that I plant myself. I can’t not wear clothes. I can’t urinate or defecate except in designated receptacles. I can’t even build fires or temporary shelters to keep warm. Basically all my necessities except breathing are well policed and that’s why I’m here - because I don’t believe in clothes, or money, or ownership, or property or most things modern man's decided are sane. If I want to build a shelter, I have to find money to buy the land around it, then continue to pay taxes my whole life. Should I not purchase the land, or refuse to pay tax, my shelter, my property, and myself are seized. Should I try to rent from another man, they either demand money or slavery of some sort while maintaining control of the land and the laws that protect his ownership. Thus it is no longer legal to live nomadically nor to venture off and build a shelter with my own hands and the materials Mother Earth provides. So every time they let me out I live off the land until policemen come back, stuff me in their cars and put me behind bars. Nobody cares, not even me - that’s the problem. I’m a naked nothing that people label and stow away where I can’t affect the hypocrisy of their comfortable compliance. And meanwhile life’s pretty easy on me in here. They feed me, I’ve got a bed and a roof, but when I’m here for too long I miss it out there, because it’s so beautiful isn't it?" Asbestos agrees and asks: "What do you do exactly when you're not in here?" “They interviewed me for a magazine once and called me a 96

radical environmentalist - I like that. They said I’m like Johnny Appleseed without the prejudice. I plant trees, flowers, weeds, berries, fruits, vegetables - wherever there’s dirt, private, public property, I don’t care. My mission is to overrun roadsides with roots until pavement all over the country crumbles, cars become useless and all that’s left is sustainable mass transportation in harmony with nature. Nothing but boats, planes, trains, and monorails. Can you imagine the beauty of cities without streets or cars? Imagine New York City with roads made of grass! Instead of huge cities containing little parks, they’ll feel like huge parks containing little buildings and people. Every walk to work or the train station will be a stroll through the park. Architecture is art, roads aren’t. They represent laziness and selfish indulgence, ease of transport at the expense of nature. The way I see it , We can travel anywhere Now but there’s no road leading anywhere without roads. I long for a world with no exhaust, no horns, no traffic, traffic lights, street signs or road names. No car accidents, no gas stations, no bus stops, no parking lots, no garages, no greasy mechanics or salesmen, dealerships or advertisements. No car payments, insurance, registration, reparations, lube-jobs, fill-ups, or top-offs. No highways, no truck stops or drivers, no more bums or hitchhikers, only nomads and drifters like me. That’s my domestic American dream. My American dream abroad is to practice the freedom We preach by allowing everyone everywhere to do anything they want free from Our persecution. America's like a heavy-weight freedom fighter that's forgotten he can't win without peace. The department of defense has been on the offensive since We changed the name. During the last sixty years of supposed peacetime, America has bombed over eight million people to their deaths. Our foreign policy supercedes diplomacy and force feeds compliance, 97

capitalism, and pseudo-democratic policy, under America’s own super pseudo-mother democracy. Then alongside the government, the military makes way for bases, corporations clear the path for capitalism, and ultimate profits always trace back to mother. America's an aristocracy of plutocrats promoting autocracy via democracy. But voting's a joke and everyone knows it, the nepotism and corruption is out of control, the bill of rights has been bullet-holed with strategic legalities, the president is the commander-in-chief of the military, though some call this fascist dictatorship. Less than one percent of the population owns over twenty percent of the wealth. The government maintains eminent domain over all property. There are natural plants that if grown will land you behind bars for decades. They’ve created situations in which inaction is illegal. As the balance of wealth and power continues its logical progression into oligarchy, We can see ever more clearly that the current state of capitalism is destroying democracy, because beneath their undeniable benefits, one promotes equality and the other class exploitation. If there exists a wealthy elite, there exists a class with the means to control both the political and economic functions of society. The problem isn't necessarily that this class exists, but that through the current system, members of this class must engage in immoral selfishness to achieve and maintain such power. The problem with politics are the politicians they’re not a varied selection of the population, they’re not the voice of the people; republicans, democrats, they’re a very small selection of like-minded individuals back to back staring at similar futures. All important political decisions should be decided by panels of poor people, farmers, philosophers, environmentalists, sociologists, poets, businessmen, white-collar workers, blue-collar 98

workers, historians, anthropologists, priests, and everyone else who wants to participate. In this world wide web of instant information, politics should be a hobby for conscientious citizens, not an occupation for power hungry money grubbers. In it’s current state, Our Democratic Capitalism empowers liars, cheaters, and stealers alike - selfish, business-minded, bottom-dollar, bizzaro-Robin Hoods, bent on squeezing out a little more benefit from others, at less cost to them. Millions of poor struggle to stay alive and provide, while the rich have plenty of free time to find ways of taking even more money through advertising, institutionalizing, forcing insurance, reasons for registering or renewing this or that possession, regulating, licensing, fining, taxing, etc. etc. I say once they can create symbolic currency based on love or selflessness, only then will Capitalism have achieved the nobility its so quick to claim and enforce around the world.” Dead Head lays spread-eagle on the floor, staring at the ceiling. “You know in my lifetime I’ve been arrested and charged with fifty-three different offenses. They’ve got laws for everything Now and just keep adding more. Laws are anti-freedoms enforced through the loss of even more freedom. I have more faith in individuals operating under their own volition to tend toward the greater good, than I do policemen, statesmen, lawyers, and judges operating under this system of supposed justice. We have more faith in Our silly laws than Our neighbors and that's the real problem. Laws leave crime victims powerless to right their own wrongs the way they see fit, and instead pay and empower unaffected people to enforce standardized punishment. 99

If someone lies to, steals from, cheats, kidnaps, rapes, or murders someone I know, then me, my friends, and my family deserve to deliver the punishment. Not only that, but in these intense situations, me, my friends, and my family do not want to sit still and wait for cops to do the best they can with what the law provides. We're going to do the best We can with what God provides and use Our God given freedom to enforce Our own ethics, whether it's retribution or forgiveness, justice should be whatever just Us decide. Suppose I watch you kill my daughter. The law says for me to leave you be, call the police, collect evidence, consult a lawyer, then testify to a box of peers, who'll hopefully lock you away through years of appeals until finally you get the death penalty or die of old age. If instead I do the natural thing in such a situation and kill you myself, then it's your daughter's turn to collect evidence, consult the lawyer, testify to a box of peers, who'll keep me in and out of appeals, each one feeding the system, paying police and judicial employee paychecks, greasing those greedy wheels of capitalist justice with years of Our grief, just for doing the just thing. Furthermore, suppose I watch you kill my daughter and instead of wishing you dead, instead of pursuing retribution of some sort, suppose I wish to take the highest moral ground and end the cycle of suffering, to stop the continuation of evil with my unconditional forgiveness. Suppose I wish to pardon you from all punishment, I wish you no harm and that your family need not grieve the way Ours does. If after all this I actually wish for your forgiveness, We'll find it's against the law. I have to destroy evidence, consult a lawyer, then testify to a box of peers that it's all insanity, forgive those fifteen sardines and 100

send them home, We love everybody and We're so sorry, please love Us and leave Us alone, stop locking Us up in courtrooms and let Us determine Our own misdemeanors! At least give Us forgiveness as an option!” Bed Head -Paradise FoundAsbestos is released from jail in the morning. After a meal of fresh baked bread and squeezed grape juice from his favorite restaurant he heads toward his friend Bed Head's House of Dreams gallery. The large country-style cabin contains three courtyards and almost a mile of winding corridors stretching the maze-like exterior in and around the surrounding forest. Due to the nature of the exhibits it's under constant construction but still maintains a completed appearance with each addition. Bed and his wife Vanessa Head are known in these parts as onieronaut artists. Explorers of the dreamworld manifesting fantasies into reality through their multi-media art gallery experiences. Having become dissatisfied with the lack of immersion achieved by standard singular mediums, they fully design and build each room in their gallery to be a macro-medium in itself, providing thematic backdrops for dynamic compositions consisting of everything from painting and furniture making to computer animation. All their ideas come from dreams and their art from a passion to experience them in waking life. They begin by drafting blue-prints of the rooms Bed builds in accordance with appropriate acoustics, spacing and lighting for the exhibit. Then Vanessa usually floors, paints, stencils, wallpapers or however readies the rooms for their intended atmosphere. They’re filled with her furniture, rugs, paintings, sculptures, and other still life displays handmade for the exhibit. Speaker systems are 101

installed to play anything from white noise to original theme music written and performed by Vanessa. Some exhibits include flat screens with looped video art, animation or cinematics. Then all exhibits include short stories and poetry written for the rooms by Bed Head. The latest is a spacious bedroom with giant picture windows, behind which concave plasma screens stream video of an apocalyptic seventh story city view. The only sounds are muffled screams and distant roars of fire. She models it after a dream of Bed Head’s, which he has just finished turning into a short story for display on the nightstand. Asbestos follows a stone pathway past an elaborate, welltended, Japanese rock garden. An arched bridge takes him over the wavy sand dunes and leaves him at Bed Head's back door. An indescribably shaped and textured sculpture stands on the patio covered in engraved calligraphy reading: Art imitates life as the expression and preservation of aesthetic ideals and life imitates art as the interpretation and actualization of those ideals in an infinite chain of creative symmetry bouncing back and forth between reality and ideology. A developed aesthetic sense appreciates the necessary dichotomies of life and art, beauty and ugliness, then through that paradigm redefines beauty to encapsulate everything. Vanessa opens the door and invites Asbestos inside. They exchange pleasantries and Asbestos inquires about Bed. “So how is he anyway?” “He’s been acting unusual lately.” 102

“How so?” “Last week We were arguing over the definition of homophyly and when his wasn’t in the dictionary, he bent it backwards and snapped its spine screaming, dictionaries are nothing but annotated thesauruses! He’s been speaking in analogies ever since.” “I see.” “He insists that language is nothing but a matrix of complex, self-referential associations, so analogies are the truest expressions as they intrinsically acknowledge their limitation. He’s completely stopped writing. In fact he’s trying to stop thinking in language altogether.” “Any luck?” “He hasn’t said.” “So what is the definition of homophyly?” “It’s similarity through common ancestry, but it can also express the tendency for objects in close proximity to assume the characteristics of one another.” “Why was he so upset about a definition?” “He thought that concept was so beautiful and needed people to know the second definition to understand his dream. Anyway, he's through there to the left if you can get him to say anything."

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Bed Head sits, reactionless, slouched in a red leather recliner staring out doorway-sized windows. Asbestos approaches then sits indian-style in front of him and says: "I understand you're experimenting with the possibilities of non-lingual thought, but do you think you could humor me with some of the limited linguistic associations I’m more accustomed to for a while?” Bed Head smiles but still says nothing. Asbestos quotes an analogy he remembers written by a saint: “Noam Chomsky says: propaganda is to democracy as violence is to a dictatorship. What do you think of that?” Bed Head's smile widens then opens and unloads: "You know Asbestos, sometimes I just want to express the written equivalent of an ear-piercing scream that beats the ear-drums of the immoral, apathetic masses, not reading what needs to be read, not speaking what needs to be said, and loving everything in life but each other. I haven’t written for months. This is the first time I’ve spoken in five days. Have you ever not spoken for that long? Everything feels so distant and amoral. You find so much of what you think is insane and incessant, the same thoughts in different forms, relentlessly usurping your attention, jading your judgments. Learning not to think is the best education one can get. I can't write anymore and I don't want to think but I can't meet another's eyes without language flooding up. I want to run down the road screaming, break free your classical conditioning, take to the streets and meet each other. Welcome one another with love and charity. Stop boxing up your beautiful families and let Us all in! Whatever, I’m just a dreamer. Tell me about you. Have you been dreaming lately?” 104

“Well, I had a strange dream last night, but it wasn't lucid. Three alien spaceships came from another planet claiming they were oppressed by their government and so sought out to discover a new planet. Naturally, I burst their bubble and told them humans had already discovered Earth. But their leader said, as far as Our race is concerned, I discovered this planet, and only that will be remembered in Our history books. Then they read Us a proclamation from their Holy book in their alien language justifying their divine right to Earth. Soon more aliens come to Earth and start forcefully entering Our homes, eating Our food, raping the women and making slaves of the men. Then they get violent and begin exterminating Our whole species using gruesome methods described in their holy book. By the end of it, only a few humans remain tucked away on small reservations scattered across the globe. I woke up, then fell back asleep and continued the dream five hundred years later. The Earth was covered with aliens. They controlled the government, all religious and educational institutions, claimed private rights over land, water, air, animals, food, and possessions. All surviving humans forgot their mother tongues and spoke only the alien language. Realizing the creatures love for money and games of chance, the few remaining human tribes open casinos and slowly save up alien currency until one day when We buy Our way into the government and overthrow alien rule, restoring freedom to the Earth. The whole dream feels like a big analogy to something, but I can’t put my finger on it." “I’m not very good with dream interpretation either.”

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“That’s alright. What I’ve really wanted to know is how to have lucid dreams like you talk about. I never know I’m dreaming while it’s happening. I always come to that realization after I’ve woken up.” “To become lucid you must realize mid-dream the fact that they’re dreaming. The act of understanding you’re asleep is just a split second reflexive thought breaking through the subconscious, but it opens a parallel universe of infinite possibility. Just keep trying. One day you’ll see. The instant you realize you’re dreaming, what felt like a fuzzy subconscious movie screen becomes a conscious canvas to paint your imagination onto. So four times a night about every hour and a half when REM sleep cycles around, I find myself in different dreams and play. I’ve experienced all my wildest fantasies and even enjoyed committing hideous acts of evil too insane for reality which bring pleasure and interest into my experimental amoral dreamworld. Some nights I go to sleep knowing before I wake, I’ll flap my wings to China, travel through time, have sex with movie-stars and models, or sometimes I just wait and see what I feel like doing - either way it makes going to bed exciting and I always awake inspired for a little reality between fantasies. Perhaps the most fun facet of lucidity is the ability to directly interact with your subconscious. Once you become lucid, it’s difficult to stay that way and you’ll often lose control over aspects of the dreams as your subconscious takes over. Like last night I made this beautiful, tall, dark-skinned, black-haired woman appear, then immediately without my conscious consent she turned and walked away. So then I consciously ran after her, but my subconscious continued to affect other aspects of the dream I wasn’t currently focusing on. So suddenly We’re no longer outdoors but in a factory. 106

After a typical dream one awakes with no conception of whether their dream lasted twenty seconds or twenty minutes. In fact it usually feels like the latter while being the former. Once becoming lucid, however, the passage of time can be accurately felt by the speed of Our thought processes. You can even lucidly count dream seconds and see how long before you wake up or drift away into subconsciousness. When We dream non-lucidly We can only remember time’s passage upon awakening. Non-lucid conceptions of duration are derived only by the memory of the motion of Our thought processes. That’s why nononeironaut dreamers never know how long their nightmares last. I wonder why We’re denied the ability to experience duration in non-lucid dreams. If twenty second dreams feel like twenty waking minutes, does that mean Our subconscious processes information much faster? And what’s speeding through my subconscious when I’m awake? Is it always fucking with me in waking life too? Making beautiful girls appear and then walk off?” Asbestos laughs. “If you know you’re just dreaming, doesn’t that ruin the fun?” “Not at all. It becomes less like a dream you awaken from into reality and more like a separate introspective reality that you come back to every night. Feasibly you could intentionally sleep to the same dream every night where you live in a house with a family, you have a job and other routines that claim your day until every night you wake up. Or you can dream a new fantasy on your nightly whims. Either way the dream world is just as real as the waking world only it doesn’t conform to the laws of physics or space-time, morality and consequence are irrelevant, and 107

fun is the only thing that matters. Our latest project is this reoccurring dream I’ve been having about Vanessa and I being the last two people on Earth. Last month We lucidly dreamt it together in the exhibition room. I don’t know if We were in each other’s dreams, sharing a common dream or having simultaneous interpretations of the same scene in different dreams but whichever way, it worked! We merged the two worlds. Butterfly kisses, the hand squeeze and everything! Read this.” Bed Head hands Asbestos his latest short story. Chimaera The last days were softly approaching beautiful as a lucid nightmare on the verge of awakening. Flames paraded down dark city streets cackling and consuming suffocated onlookers, leaving on orange haze to replace the horizon like permanent sunrise over the crumbled skyline. One day the flowers simply began uprooting themselves. Soon all Florae followed their example, from rain forests to coral, until the world’s vegetation had committed mass suicide. Grass lay flat on lawns, flowers wilted brown in their death beds, and forests became massive wooden caves of winding roots and piled trunks. Some said plants were communists; their sacrifice stemmed from under appreciation, and was in protest of photosynthesis. Regardless of reason, Mother Nature was merciless. The air quickly thickened with the breath of billions. Clouds descended and banded together to pour their acid reign over humanity. The sun, moon, and stars disappeared at the speed of darkness, and night consumed all but lightning and fire. Mass subsidence swallowed cities whole, and random earthquakes replaced plate tectonics with theories 108

of chaos once fault lines could not be blamed. The final dream was environmental holocaust complete with openair gas chambers and high-rise death camps. During the last days we committed ourselves to your seventh story prison and watched world destruction from out picture windows. The city below was in ruins, smothered in ash and black silence, but the dismal scene seemed strangely serene reflecting in your eyes. Even the horizon had left its imaginary home on the skyline to find itself captured between the green in your eyes and the blue in mine. For hours our lashes kissed butterflies in vast fields of perception. One night entwined in sheets and limbs you said, “If I live longer I’ll have loved you for your forever,” and it hit me like a ton of silk. Our chests pressed together while breathing in symbiotic opposition set a slow rhythm for the involuntary music of our bodies. Your heart slammed syncopated echoes in offbeat harmony until our hears’ homophyly helped synchronize the melody. Then your stomach gurgled an impromptu drum solo, and my fingers performed a pick slide down your spine ending in a cadence of dissonant grooves. Lightly strumming a vocal chord, your whisper resolved the progression - A sharp diminished minor with a sustained second that lasted forever. Trivial divisions of moments like minutes and hours lost meaning without motion. We had laid there inside each other drifting freely between sleep and the nightmare for an indeterminable silence when we entered some collective state like unconscious osmosis allowing us subjective parts in a common dream. I squeezed your hand to make sure you saw me then mistook our sleep for surreality. The world was new again and cast in vast green fields, beneath warm sunshine, we watched butterflies flutter by our 109

eyelids like casual lashes caressing like kisses. And with one eye open in darkness I saw your subconscious smile. Then you curled cold toes around mine and I felt your involuntary band play its last number, so my heart gave a bleeding ovation then stopped beating - for you, forever. Zen Head -Living MeditationZen head sits on the library steps, legs folded, eyes closed, breath circular, murmuring an incessant subsonic chant. Pin Head approaches and encroaches. “Is Asbestos here yet?” “Not yet.” Pin takes a seat on the steps. “So, are you enlightened? Are you, like, sitting there in Nirvana right now?” “You could say that.” “What’s the secret, enlightenment?

man?

How do

you reach

“Enlightenment is already here, you need only realize it.” “Oh come on, what’s that even mean? You guys all talk like that instead of giving a straight answer.” “I mean enlightenment is not hypnotic bliss that hits you one day, it’s a state of mind available to anyone at anytime. Through meditative practice and focus I have simply made 110

a separation between thinking my thoughts and letting them pass unnoticed.” “That’s it? You think the pinnacle of human existence is not thinking? Smiles. “How is that worth a lifetime dedication to meditation and pre-determined ideals, rituals, and restrictions outside of society? It seems to me like your lifestyle is a spiritual self-indulgence. Whatever clarity of mind you achieve benefits only you, dude. Wouldn’t helping others be a higher virtue than always sitting alone trying not to think?” “Your argument from ignorance is convincing, but I spend much time teaching meditation to those who wish to learn.” “You gurus don’t teach, you throw out those impossible koans like candy and make pupils chew on them until they throw up some equally ridiculous answer. Like if you ask me, what’s the sound of one hand clapping? And I say something like, nothing, you can’t clap with one hand, you’ll kick me out until I come back with some bullshit like, it’s the sound of an eternal whisper ever falling short your ears.” “No one can silence another’s mind. I just point the way. Thought is the sixth sense, and just like any other, may be enhanced or dulled, acknowledged or ignored. Just as We close Our eyes We may close Our minds from Ourselves and the world.” “We don’t really close Our eyes though, We just stare at the backs of Our eyelids. And We can’t not think. Thought’s always coming and going.” 111

“It’s always there in the background, but if We focus on the other senses through meditative awareness, We needn’t acknowledge it. In meditation one develops a mind that clings to nothing, even its own thoughts and judgments. They’re all fleeting and inconsistent and come on their own accord anyway, through practice one may choose only those thoughts they truly wish to think, and cast aside negative, destructive, or otherwise unwanted ones. And since emotions have their base in thought, the worst emotion a meditator ever has to experience is peace. I spend an hour or two a day thinking, and no more. Mostly I'm just being with the totality, wide eyed, relaxed, slightly excited, in an intensely observational state free of thought. I don’t even directly see people, buildings, nameable decorations or distractions from the totality anymore. Whether still or moving, I’m rarely thinking or even labeling anything - just being intensely alert and observant, interested and active, appreciating everything unthinkable about my moments. Feeling the sights and sounds, not reacting to the world, just observing the world’s reaction to my non-reaction.” “Yeah, whatever. I think the ends are justifiable but the means are tedious and unnecessary. If meditation’s intention is gaining awareness and control over the thought process, there’s no need to sit in special positions, no need to count your breaths or heartbeats, no need to concentrate on something or nothing, or whatever voodoo method you use to ignore your brain. Simply live your life with intention toward complete awareness of thought. Disallow any unwanted or non-advantageous thoughts from conscious consideration. Acknowledge the urge to think a trivial thought, then set it aside as easily as it came. Do that as often as possible until every advantageous thought becomes a conscious choice and during the downtime 112

you’re nothing but a body in the state of awareness. That’s living meditation.” Pin Head shoots a smile bullet from thumb to forefinger, winks and walks off thinking how suave he was. Matrioshka Head laughs then lights a cigarette and leans against the library lantern. Zen Head smiles and says: "They say the most and least comfortable people laugh the loudest." She turns her head away with a roll of her eyes and stares at what's there. “Can you withhold judgment long enough to like everything?” “It’s impossible to like everything.” She snaps. “It’s possible to accept everything, and finding something to like is just one step further. “I find that hard to accept.” “Of course you do. You dislike the very prospect of total acceptance because it destroys the identity you’ve built. Everything there’s a name for you’ve already decided whether or not you like. If you like it you spend your time trying to have more of it. If you don’t like it, you avoid it with bitter determination, deny yourself everything appreciable whenever it comes along, resent its past presence in you life, pretend it doesn’t exist in your present, and fear its future arrivals.” “Don’t talk like you know me, monk.” 113

“You must develop a mind uninterested in its own negative judgments. Don’t choose things you like and dislike, just find as much as you can to appreciate about absolutely everything.” “Yeah, how do you appreciate dog shit?” “I’m not promoting over-the-top positivity or ignorance toward the evils of the world. I’m simply suggesting that on ultimate terms, even evil has its good, and the skill of finding that can bring peace in the face of war, poverty, famine, and death. Lao-Tze knew the value of acceptance but Buddha’s always smiling too because he surely took a step past the eight-fold path, looked back, and laughed.” “Listen, I don’t know anything about Buddha.” “No, but you know about suffering. I can tell by your attention span.” “Faking patience with babbling monks is suffering, you’re right.” “Please entertain me just a little longer; there is a point to this.” Zen reaches out, wraps his arm around Matrioshka and leads her down a narrow library hallway. “The one thing almost all prophets from Jesus to Buddha, Confucius to Lao-Tze have in common is this: They purposely spent a long period of time in the middle of nowhere, doing nothing, by themselves, and afterwards everyone they talked to felt enlightened. Franz Kafka once wrote: all of man’s troubles and anguish arises from his being unable to be alone in a room with himself with nothing to do. But I can tell you’ve never read that, nor 114

been in that situation, nor heard of Kafka. Long before that, Buddha wrote: all human suffering comes from desire. You’re so full of desire not to have this conversation, full of desire to leave, to live in an improbable future, to have more friends, family, expensive things, extravagant life experiences, so full of desires that their actualization cannot be enjoyed because to you the Now is a series of imaginary rungs on an infinite ladder. Buddha sat alone under a tree for years before figuring himself out. Let’s see how long it takes you.” Zen Head swiftly closes and locks the basement door behind him then speaks loudly over her screams. “While you’re in there I recommend pondering the following: Where did I come from? Why am I here? Is there a God? Is will determined? Is there a separation between mind and body? What is death? What is life? What is my life’s purpose? Can life have purpose? Do I trust my senses? Is there anything beyond Our senses? What is knowledge? What is Truth? Why is everything the way it is? Could it be otherwise? Is the Universe eternal or temporal? Why can’t I remember the future? Does time have an arrow? What is time? Is it real? What are emotions? Can We name feelings? Can We really name anything? What is language? Why can’t I think without language? What did I think before I knew language? Why can’t I remember? Can God make a stone so heavy he can’t lift it? What’s the opposite of infinity? Who killed Kennedy? How does the government regulate my life? Why is there government? Could We do without it? Which system is best? What does mathematics represent? What does language represent? Is that the same question? Do they have the same answer? Am I who I want to be? Am I likeable? What kind of people like me? What kind of people do I like? Is the world slightly better or slightly worse because I’m alive? How can I stay constantly inspired? How can I 115

live deeply and passionately? What is sleep? Why can’t We not do it? Why do We dream? What do they mean? What is consciousness? What is thought? And why can’t I stop it?” Zen waits until her screams whimper and says, “you’re not coming out until you answer this koan: what’s the sound of one man laughing?” He strides off chuckling and whistling over her whining and whimpering. As he turns the corridor’s corner, Zen meets Asbestos standing tall dressed in a long white robe. He wraps his arm around him and leads him up the narrow hallway to outside. “Tell me Zen, Do you think there’s an afterlife?” “I don’t think there’s an afterlife or a beforelife; I think there’s eternal life and no such thing as death. The sudden loss of complex consciousness We call death is a misnomer. When does life end in death? When We stop breathing or when Our heart stops beating or when Our brain stops receiving or when Our matter completely decays and disperses? And for that matter, when does life begin in birth? In the father’s testicles or the mother’s ovaries, upon fertilization, the first trimester or only post umbilical cord? Your father’s sperm dies and regenerates constantly, your mother’s eggs die and regenerate constantly, every single cell and micro-organism that collectively constitute every human being constantly dies and regenerates, so that the form I call me and you call you completely changes every seven to nine years. We're in constant transference with everything We consume or breath as well as the environment around Us. All matter is conserved and constantly changes form. The very same matter that composes you has existed since the beginning of time. At 116

some point you were probably star dust, dinosaurs, dirt, or other people. I believe there's even pieces of Jesus still floating around in Our mass of matter in motion. There are no individual births or deaths. Before you’re born the matter you start with is already alive and after you’re supposedly dead, all your matter lives on. It may decompose into the dirt and be eaten by worms, but those cells, molecules, atoms, all that matter is conserved and continues to change and live on in different forms. Such is the nature of matter. What is your definition of death if the life you call you has no real beginning or ending and is in constant interaction, consumption, and regeneration with everything around it?” “I’ve always liked the way you think, my friend. I’ll miss you.” Revolutions -Exit JesusAsbestos Head walks dressed in white kamishimo carrying a sheathed black kozuka for ceremonial seppuku. He sits in seiza, as his assistant Vanessa places sake and a sheaf of washi on his sanbo. Slowly and deliberately on his left with her left hand she pours the sake and he takes two sips - she pours again and he takes two sips. He sets down the sake and says: “Welcome friends. At this point in the ceremony I should be quietly composing a poem, but I’ve decided to speak my last words. I hope you might write them down and read them again later, but I will say them first because the spoken word is active and carries listeners into an unrepeatable moment, whereas the written is passive and simply waits to be noticed. I've already tried and failed 117

Authordom. In fact that’s part of why I’ve brought you all here. If you believe and value whatever I’ve brought your lives, you’ll put your heads together and write it for me. You’ll write that I love all matter and Earth as Our Mother. I love all plants and animals as equals, even weeds and spiders. I love all of humanity as equals even murderers and rapists. I love everyone and hate no one. I love everything and hate nothing. Write and tell people who look for God in churches, books, other people, or their brains, that they’re looking too closely. God is everything and everyone, and you, as part of everything and everyone, are responsible to act godly as you affect every aspect of the world around you. Every time you perform selfish actions or entertain self-serving emotions, you’re more like a Devil than a God. Devils defile their fellow man, Mother Nature, and change the world to suit their own selfish desires. Whereas Gods use their power to help each other and Mother Nature to flourish, live freely and happily. We must acknowledge and attend to Our divine responsibilities. We'll fill the physical world with Our most marvelous and majestic mental projections, tune Our beings to emanate history's real-time movie feed and receive it instantly with Our eyes and ears wide open. Then We'll all be Our own critics and test audiences. We'll all modify Our films from the inside and try again everyday. We'll shoot uncensored, unscripted scenes with unpaid actors. We'll leave in the bloopers, Our friends will add the laugh-tracks, and do as many takes as it takes to complete Our artistic visions. Keep trying to film those moments of blinding insight and human compassion, to catch uncontrived action sequences, and hear dramatized autobiographies from acclaimed directors. Document the quest to catch in your cameras the perfect sunset. 118

I've heard nervous existentialists asking the big questions: Why are We here? What should We be doing? We're here to unconditionally appreciate every person, place, and thing in existence. That's why We're here. That's what We should be doing. I challenge you to prove me wrong or find a better answer, but I guarantee you'd be better off agreeing, heeding, and appreciating my advice. The rest will fall into place perfectly, I promise, and if I'm wrong you'll forgive me, and it'll be perfect. We must become Our eternal, immutable selves before these temporal selves are whisked away. We must bask in all that never changes and love Our way through these waves of space and know the tides of time don't change, they continue, and there's a difference. We'll never be, nor have ever been in the there and then. We're Here Now. We're Here Now to transcend Ourselves by being selfless. By being so saintly selfless We rise from Our physical selves and exist nameless in the objective eternal goodness people of the past called God. People of the past named the nameless, labeled it for convenience, then quickly forgot the premise, claimed it as Ours, molded it in Our image believing it molded Us in Its! But why stop there? We'll create souls too if they don't exist! We'll need to invent an intangible container for Our divine deeds and ideas! Smiling creates more smiles, happiness breeds happiness, your spontaneous random acts of kindness will ripple beauty across the planet like a lake reflecting infinite sunrise. You’ll appreciate compromise and misunderstanding, appreciate arguments and evil, appreciate negativity until it’s useless, until negativity’s so easy to appreciate We have to change the definition! Every time you're involved in anything but intensification and appreciation of your moments, you'll know you're 119

contributing to the greedy, misdirected, collective unconscious. Don’t lie to your kids. No Santa Claus, no Tooth Fairy, no Easter Bunny, no white lies, no fish tales, no force fed religion, no enforced opinions, drugs aren’t evil, money does grow on trees, all the good things in life aren’t free, but there’s plenty that are, so buck-up kiddo; sticks, stones, and words like bricks break your bones, so choose your words and friends wisely, they’ll be all you care about when you’re dying. The secret of happiness is easy. Find someone, never lie to them, and love them unconditionally as long as you live. Then do that with everyone else. My definition of love is simple - wanting others to be happy, and when other’s happiness directly collides with Our own, the loving person bows out and receives their second-hand happiness at no expense. Develop an acute sense of collective happiness and its ability to compile selflessness into inescapable selfish joy for all. There is no selfish joy that supercedes the feeling of truly helping someone. Even in sex, when the focus is on others’ pleasure and not your own, it feels better. It’s so paradoxical it’s perfect. I’m sorry my friends, but We live in a world made for Matrioshka, controlled by Dick Head. A world where Bed Heads need to dream their fantasies, Figure Heads fight to be heard, and Pot Heads are suppressed, imprisoned, or put to death; in a world where Joseph and Mary are divorced because of their differences. I feel like I was born at the beginning of recorded history, I died a little inside after Alexandria, then was born anew through the Authors of the Present. But their words continue to be silenced and no one ever believes its Jesus back for rapture when some scruffy hippie with torn sandals claims the irrelevance of thousands of years of malevolent doctrine.

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I’ve sinned, I’m selfish, and want my ideas remembered. I’m also aware of the trend in idolization and mass marketing capabilities of martyrdom, so I’ve decided to kill myself. My current human existence in this place is a shame and a waste, so I will give my matter back to Mother Nature in hopes she’ll scatter me kindly around this human infested mess and I’ll sleep soundly in the worms and dirt around me. If you wish you all can drink my blood and eat my body, or better yet burn me and blow my bones to smithereens, napalm and nuclear bomb my ashes until human hate and intolerance is satisfied. Once your lust for revenge is extinguished, let out your first fearless exhale and embrace each other. Please try to be even kinder to Our mother and every creature here. And why should you even lift a finger? Because you incessantly take lives and destroy everything you consume, so to even balance your sinful existence you must repent, and repentance is received with every selfless action. Confessions aren’t for priests, they’re for the friends and family you’ve wronged. Prayers aren’t for God, they’re for you; they’re your greatest hopes and dreams, your deepest wishes and fears for you to tackle alone. And even God can’t encapsulate morality into Ten Commandments. Decide your own ethics then pursue them passionately, and if anyone gets in your way, sit down with them and listen to each other. Every second you spend not killing yourself is a selfish decision that your existence is cumulatively more important than the things you consume. I shudder to look back at how slothfully I’ve lived and how little I’ve given back. As written by the Author Antoine de Saint-Exupery, to create a tree I condemn a seed to rot. Goodbye friends.” He picks up the kozuka, unsheathes it and momentarily sees his reflection before pushing it into his lower 121

abdomen. Expressionless he pulls it up to his sternum then slices from left to right across his ribcage leaving a blood gushing wound the shape of a lower-case t, or a Christian cross. Machine Head, his Kaishakunin, raises his katana and cleanly performs the kirioshi dismembering strike, leaving Asbestos’ Head hanging by a thin strip of skin at the throat. As his head drops forward, a few garbled words spew from severed vocal chords red onto the paper. Do Good, Have Fun Zen Head gives Asbestos’ body a small Buddhist blessing then turns to the apostles and says “Asbestos did as best as his best was but Now is up to Us.”

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