August 2023 - skippable
Past
August 1, 2023
Strange thought to write down:
4 eras of time. Time is organized into a cycle of 4 eras, each lasting ~30 years. Or rather, an active period, generative period, followed by a time of living in the shadow of that period. This is natural & irregardless of political maneuvering and planning.
Thinking about how the 60s were magical – One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest mentions this in the intro; I also got it from reading about A LeVey in Sex Magicians.
Today we dissect that age & pull out “drugs” or “sexual revolution” or some image. But the spirit of it must have been beyond any of those things – everything, when living, is fused into the spirit of the age.
MM
+/- is also in time. 60S were a high + time. 2020S (60 years later) are a high – time (this is what was missing from my map idea).
At first I thought the 90s stood opposite the 60s – but no – they're perpendicular. How can they stand opposite if now is the opposite, energetically.
So, 4 eras of ~30 years each.
60s – high +: manifestation, but passive, “ride the wave”
90s – denouement? Falling apart, decline, high openness
2020s – high – , low point, null. Makes sense – 2020
2050s – opposite 90s – I predict highly fascistic tendencies
120 year cycle of time. Now, how does this map to human life?
Jesus was 33 – 1/3 life. Ideal modern human life, under this system, is 99 years, and on your 100th birthday you die [9/6/24 this was the old system of perfection – now there will be new rules, new technologies; I'm not sure how or what they are, but we will be mapped to new “nature”]
Time gods, who created this 120 yr 4-era cycle. Time gods are men [aliens?], men who constructed our simulacra, our egregore.
it makes sense that Jan 1, 2020 was the world silence. The nadir. Before the great roar starts again.
Decade of activity, then 20 years following are influenced by it, live in the shadow of it.
4 gongs – north, south, east, west.
(everything we know has been invented, including cardinal directions)
one can be born in an era, or on the start/ledge of an era.
One can (by this invented system of human life, made by the invisible hand) live through 3 time eras, and just see a 4th begin. This is a karmic cycle that makes every life (and death) partial.
I feel lucky to have been born when I was. Right around 1990, or on the Last day of Dead/Souls/Saints/Halloween before 1990.
that means my prime adulthood is in the nadir (2020-2050)
each era has its own advantages/drawbacks:
60s – high +, crest of wave, fun, the height/pinnacle, most “magical”, like a show for those alive in it – but, actually, the least creatively powerful – no room for you to build society
90s – alt, falling apart, feminine, deconstruction, decadence, openness. More creative power given to people; things seem good but are falling. Decline of Rome.
2020s – death, emptiness, nothing, hard times – but the chance to build from zero
2050s – gong of strong authority, fascism, stability, but the strong rule
2080 – when you hit the top, it also breaks open like an egg (your civilization) from the pressure of what's inside it, and all the spirits are released.
= magic. Samsara. They trapped Jesus.
~
I'm moving on from N, at least in my feelings. I would have moved on long ago if he didn't keep up a conversation with me. At first, after we parted, I was hesitant to get in touch and we didn't talk for a week. Then I got his letter and messaged him something. We talked online for a bit, and then he answered some question through text. I guess because he wasn't online for a while. Then that became texting with some regularity, though he usually takes days to respond.
It's admittedly weird that I'm sending him messages online and via text.
I know N the person (the little of himself he shows to me) and should just leave "N" as his space to himself.
I should admit, accept, that I'm just dumb, not an expert on anything.
I'm either too intellectual or not smart enough. Maybe he's arrogant like they all are. But I am, too. I think I'm better than the people at the warehouse.
I have to get out of there and make something of myself. Independence is the only way for me. I get fed up with jobs faster and faster.
Reading the New Testament has helped and will help me to do work in this world. Focus on the Kingdom of God – and worldly things, needs, will be satiated.
I am a sinner, it's not my job to be holy – it's my job to live.
I cannot stay on that upper plane where N lives. Maybe he's a first level person; his mind is filled with so much specific information that's real but “useless”.
I am filled with emotion.
~
Today at work I read much of Luke. The dumbness of my mind so gets in the way. But I felt faith in my body, and I understood Gurdjieff's saying that conscious faith is freedom. Coming to God, to this study, to this path – has been the salvation of my real life, of my life in real-time.
My cross to bear is to be me and be in the real world, the human world.
This happens when the Word comes alive around you. When you see the parables of Jesus playing out in front of you, around you, in people, and are able to understand them, or to understand through them, in many ways.
The Bible is full of contradictions, koans, and in spirit it is, I realized, revolutionary. More liberating than any sexual revolution or psychedelics. (People often have psychedelic experiences and aren't ready to describe what they've seen, thus are mislead).
I can't think about N seeing me as only a friend. Too intellectual and unsexual.
The Bible comes alive to me once I imbibe the words.
When you're in the word, the letter, following the letter – I noticed – you become narrow, lifeless, gray, small, bound. Following every letter, I constrict myself, turn gray and narrow, become a shadow of myself – and what for? For fear, for punishment. But that lacks faith. Faith is the most beautiful – because it is freedom. You cannot literally follow every letter of the Bible because on its surface level reading (at least the KJV) it is contradictory enough that doing so would drive you mad; the more you follow the letter, the more constricted you become, to the point that I wondered whether this was the point.
But there are many parables of sinners, of the faithless, illustrating Jesus' principles. The prodigal son parable, among others (and the fact that it was the parable contradicting the Orthodox doctrine of moral austerity), triggered a switch flip in me, a switch to feeling – to my each moment becoming animated....
You must be brave enough, in your faith, to live richly, deliciously, to go in and befriend sinners and the low, to care for them, to show your true morality and wise judgment among them [9/7/24 you are them] (Jesus did so because he was the living word, thus God [12/12/24 no because he redeemed all]). Brave enough to stray, knowing you are not let go of, that God is with you, that the further you go, even, the stronger your faith.
It's Yan's credo: take every step as it takes itself. Except, now, it's more, to feel the living story through my every step. I can step anywhere, in faith. God holds me, and his word becomes life, not word.
Broke from the constraints of the written word, threw it away, and it became life, it became all around me, a play unfolding all around me. The word made flesh.
August 2, 2023
I think I need to make the teahouse. Woke up today with this resolve.
I have to walk my path, and watch others get romantic love and be the coquette - “to whom much is given, much is expected.” I have will.
I'm well-liked; I should use this. No, I must use this, for life. Life is not for asceticism, of which I've had – and he's in – enough. And I keep thinking about it, daydreaming about it. I must trust. People love to be part of a mission – they need it, seek it. Especially today. It is correct that we are rebuilding a nation, and cannot think as much as I have been of fulfilling visions of romantic life. My tress account represents well my emotional life – who can join me there? I won't stop. I won't expect. I couldn't stop it if I tried.
Everything I see in others is myself.
Others are a mystery.
Ideal teahouse layout:
2 story house w/ basement
porch
yard w/ firepit
first floor tearoom
BYOB
open late night
basement converted to teahouse
stage w/ persian rug
place for just me/apartment/privacy, w/ kitchen and locking door
upstairs room with dorm beds. Ideally free/donation-based lodging, or cheap
young people hired to work there/manage, who can take up the torch. I eventually still own it but am free to pursue other things.
~
This energy feels so bad, I must pretend as though he doesn't exist. I feel bound to him in a bad way. I should have been mean, I should have cut him off violently, swiftly, abruptly. I had! I said goodbye. And he said, keep the line open. Why??? It feels so rotten, like we hate each other and stand back to back. He is like a stain on my mind I can't rub off. I need to just not think of him for one day!
~
I don't regret cutting off – or – , emotionally, but I should have done the same for N. He's so fickle and inconstant of heart. But it's just clear, what it is. He doesn't exist for me. Let him go on in his world. Separate worlds, separate clans, will make New America. Cracks in the earth are necessary.
Heart is so sad today. I can feel it really is time to move on, that he won't come back. I've deleted our conversations.
Past (must finish)
I bought a geode that I thought we could crack and let Ay and Ai each have one half, but we haven't done that yet. On the overlook through the windows saw a hawk flying gracefully below, a hummingbird near the flowers by the window.
N never said anything explicitly, which is my biggest gripe with him. Whether as a friend, potential lover, or a nobody, I am always left to guess his thoughts and feelings. This is his decision, to conduct things this way. It just hurts that I like him and he decides I'm not worthy of being privy.
I knew it was coming to an end and N wasn't so enthusiastic anymore, just wanted to get home now. These are separate things, for a man especially: choosing a spouse, and hanging out on a trip. How did I assume? I still hurt about it. But I have been the source of equal or more pain. Were they any less than I? No. Not at all. Only now do I see E's humanity – he really loved me. And to my heart? He wasn't present, after the fantasy around him faded. And couldn't N meet the same fate, eventually? He is so valuable to me because he hasn't given himself to me (perhaps?). How can I be mad? I'm not. How can I even be hurt? It illustrates how fair life is, and how much bigger and more complex the world is than our fantasies of it, for it.
I had wanted us to go through the Appalachians for a few days. We sort of achieved this.
We talked a bit about the sign, about God; N said most people don't know what God is – a man in the sky. I know this is not what God is, but only sometimes do I feel like I comprehend it at all. I think for most people, God is certain people – the people who made this world, the invisible hand, that they can't perceive. Those who write AI, for instance. Rather, for most, certain people (the true elites) are their God.
(If I'm honest it was kind of awkward with him at times; I didn't know how to be with him, or he didn't know how to be with me. It hurts so much, because we'd been having this long text exchange over the past few weeks now, and he made a bunch of comments, and asked a question, and I answered, or replied with a bunch of comments, and this was like 5 days ago, or six? I deleted our conversation so I don't know. Did I say something wrong or offensive? To my mind it can only mean one thing – he's found another, or made a final decision, or both. He said he'd do so many things he never followed up on. He said he wasn't done replying to my letter – but still there's been no response. He said let me know what you think about the changes he made and I did – I wrote a long email. But that was a month ago, and no response. It is over, unequivocally, irrevocably. There was a very clear moment, anyway, long before this, that should have been the end, that should have said to me it's finito).
We drove a while down dark, narrow roads looking for the spot I'd found online. It was a public campground, and we parked in the big lot by the boat ramp into the lake. Only a little bit creepy. But I succeeded.
We lay facing each other in the front seats, and for some reason I told him about my sex octopus dream from college. It must have weirded him out. “Neutralize it for me,” I said, for some reason. “I will destroy it,” he said, looking at me. This was the most romantic moment. This heroism is a lot for me... I can't make myself a vulnerable little girl, I don't know how. I just don't understand what I need to do for men, who I need to be. I'm starved without a reply, going crazy. I want him to reply so I can ignore it. I, too, am a victim of these same ruling dynamics, just as men need to be the hero and I don't know how to be a damsel in distress. My distress is chaotic and scary and repulsive..... ….
We stopped at a lookout. There were plaques of several significant personalities: N Fox Jr., Harry Monroe Cavdill. I found a road on the map that followed a creek and we drove along it through Kentucky, seeing real Appalachia, what I had wanted to show. I think he was glad to see it and wouldn't have otherwise, taking only highways. It was so set up that a bridge crossed the creek from the road to every home; every home had its own little bridge, along the river. En route to the era near the KY/WV/VA border, we stopped in “a full town, like 12 blocks, tucked away under a mountain somewhere in the Appalachian roads.” According to the map there were many such towns tucked away in the mountain folds in this area. A different kind of life here, with more of an orientation around nature. Here we ate at a place with excellent memorabilia: a topographical map, newspaper articles documenting a local battle over curfew, aerial photographs of the coal mines, some dated stamps and advertisements for a 5¢lunch.
Before we crossed into western VA, I predicted that the infrastructure quality would drop significantly. The land looked raped, all for the sake of the NoVa wealth (Alexandria, Arlington). The roads were in horrible shape and increasingly precarious to drive along in the twilight. The houses were, many of them, in late stage ruin porn, collapsing in. Abandoned coal mines.
It's probably true that I'm not smart enough for N; that peg game – I got it to three pieces left; N, on his first try, a master of logic, got it to two left.
We booked it to my house. I asked if he wanted to see it and he said sure and it seemed like a genuine desire/curiosity.... We drove through WV and passed large mountain gaps, then came in from Western MD and passed by Cumberland, which N said looked nice.
Did I know then that N had decided against me?
We went to my house, which, to my awful surprise and embarrassment, smelled of days' rotten fish because, for some reason, my refrigerator had lost power, or its outlet did.
(I can feel knives cutting my soul; he's probably with someone else. I will bear it. But knives have been cutting my soul up for two days. It's such a time. I will bear it like I bear happiness. My mind is free. My body is fine. Underneath, my soul is crying, screaming, like it's being tortured and nobody can hear.).
I did what I could about the smell, which wasn't much and would last still a few more weeks until completely cleared. I offered N, who looked exhausted, to take a nap on my bed, where the smell hadn't reached, but he flatly declined to sleep in my bed and napped on the couch while I took a shower (when he also apparently took the chance to snoop around the rest of my apartment (not that he had to: I was of the mind already that what's mine is his. How did I get there?).
(I'm in so much pain, because I'm almost done, but the hardest part remains).
I don't remember what we had for dinner, if anything.
Then, it was late, and we put on a movie on the thumb drive. Neither of us was watching. It was very awkward. N must have been anticipating that it could turn into something amorous. Why didn't he just say he wanted to go to sleep? That would have solved everything, if he could have said anything. But he literally, physically, could not.
I decided to make a move. It's somewhat blurry to me now, but I leaned against him to cuddle and asked if this was okay. He sort of tightly said yes, I think? He didn't say no. But he froze up. I had no idea what to feel, how to read it, what was happening. I just wanted us to be together, for him to put his arms around me.
One night when we went into a liquor store, we were talking about people resembling animals, I mentioned that people have described me as a teddy bear, which I resented, and he disagreed with, but compared himself to a bear. I said no. He said, “Wait til I pull my claws out,” in a near-deadpan, and it turned me on so much because I could feel, behind it, his latent power, that he was keeping from me. And he shut it down so effectively.
I leaned over while he looked ahead at the screen and kissed him on the cheek. No response, just stiffness and stillness. Confused, I started to try and make sense of it out loud. I said,
“I really like you.”
“I like you too,” he mumbled, still looking ahead.
“Do you?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
Then... what's going on?
I can't explain myself. Or, I don't know how to explain myself.
“We're really similar,” I said. “Maybe too similar...”
He responded with a very loaded, “Yeah.”
I stood up off the couch, very confused. I don't think I knew what to do with myself or where to be.
He said, “I think I should go,” which was like a hammer dropping in my stomach. It was late, past 12, maybe almost 1, and I was going to drive him to the station the next day.
He said, “I think I need to be alone.”
“Why did you do all this!?” I burst out with. Why did he go on a weeks-long trip with me, knowing I liked him, only to keep it platonic and reject me. I know I had very large expectations, and this was my own fault. On top of that, I was used to “normie” men and typical dating rituals, while he had a Christian and internet-bred incel morality. It was such a painful clash, and is an unresolvable one. I know I have sent daggers through the hearts of men as human as I, and now I feel a dagger in my own heart.
He didn't do anything wrong (my dad had to reassure me later. He paid for everything, he was respectful and did not take advantage of my feelings to get pleasure, which would have been a much, much worse outcome for all involved. Furthermore, he brought me back to having standards, which I now feel properly ashamed for not having. Aj, a supposed Christian, had no problem with cheating the system and getting something from me, and I feel so ashamed for being so suggestible. I'm not anymore. I haven't been, since this. I'm over someone like S, too, who speaks disrespectfully to me and thinks his egotism is the right path to personal victory.
He insisted on leaving, and I insisted he stay on the couch, please, and I'd drive him in the morning. I went to my room and tried to sleep, but could not.
I went for a walk, accidentally slamming the front door behind me in my emotional state. From that point on, several uncanny coincidences occurred. I walked talking aloud to myself. Up to near the fields where the cafe is, or maybe before. I don't remember when I turned back; when I'd calmed down enough and talked to myself enough, calmed myself enough to maybe go to sleep.
On the way back, right as I passed my mailbox, I looked down the alley into the parking lot and saw N there with his bag, apparently trying to find the main road. He looked at me and in a panic turned around and headed the opposite way, behind my house. I chased after him, went around to the road on the other side of the house, and called out to him.
He stopped then, and I came up to him with a look and a gesture like “what the fuck!”. But it was clear, what the fuck. I felt defeated.
“At least get your things from my car,” I said in an appropriately defeated and nonviolent voice, and unlocked it. He went in and got them.
Then... how our conversation started is hazy to me. I was a little drunk. (The moment he turned away, by the way, is the one I consider to be the death knell of any true chance for us. Cosmically. Cosmic gong. Universe says no.). He repeated that he likes me but has to be alone right now. I'm sure I said I don't understand, and I know he said, “ I don't know how to explain myself.”
I was accusatory, a bit, very emotional, and said something along the lines of what were you doing all this time, talking to me every day, texting me?
“I was just looking...” he mumbled sort of indistinctly. And he didn't find with me, I understood. Before, or after this, probably after, I gave a speech while we were hugging. I don't remember how we started hugging. I think he first apologized. I said, in it, “I love you, N,” and then he pressed me very tightly into him and buried his face against my head, I could feel (was I too short for him?), and I said, “You're the only person whose mind I trust, other than my dad's.” I said I've had boyfriends before, but I didn't feel like I could build or establish something with them, but here I thought there was a chance. I said I wasn't trying to convince him but what I said was how I felt, and I think I said I wished him the best, he's one of my favorite people, I don't remember what else, but I concluded it, more calmly and soberly, with, “...because, like I said, I love you.”
It doesn't matter. None of this can ever change anything. Love cannot change who you fundamentally are. It cannot turn a warrior into a non-sleeper, nor make a non-magical person magical, nor give you 15 more IQ points.
“I don't think I can be who you want me to be,” he said before we were hugging.
“Who do you think I want you to be?” I said, nonplussed. But he was probably just saying that to make the rejection palatable.
I must have said something along the lines of, why not me? Or, what's wrong with me? Or, more accurately, if you like me, then why not?
“I do like you,” he said.
And, around this time, “I am lonely, but I need to be alone right now.” And him being lonely, the way he said it with such honesty and vulnerability, I feel for him, too; and we are both lonely... so why?
There was only one thing I regretted saying, at the very end, as we stood by my car, which was, “I hope you find what you're looking for.”
Then I said, “Goodbye, N,” and turned around, and went home. And to me that was goodbye. Had there been a discrepancy of just a few seconds, I'd've walked in to find him gone, no note. But this was a good resolution, an ending on good terms.
I didn't fall asleep til around 3 or 4, and, to my surprise, got a text from N the next day that he'd left his something in my car and could be come get it?
So I met him by my house and motioned him to my car, where I had collected all his things, and he apologized, and said thanks for being patient with some of his weird behavior. And I asked if he needed a ride to the bus station. “If you wouldn't mind.”
As we had some time before his bus I asked if he wanted to see the waterfront like we'd talked about, or to just get to the bus station, and he said he was down to see it.
So I drove us through midtown first. And downtown, and it was like we were right back in the world of the trip again, taking up the habits and patterns and rhythm we'd found in it. I'm the road trip, I realized, and he joins, and then it becomes this world. But I have it always in me, and need another to see. We went to a bookstore (“meme supreme”) and laughed at the books. I was the less diplomatic about it of us in public. Then I took him to my spot on the steps and talked about the sailing club, and Michael D and the weird troll lady who joined me, him, and B one night.
Then I drove him to the station while he navigated. Then, he hugged me very tightly for a long time and said, “Thank you” and “Goodbye... for now” and “let me know how the move goes.”
“Oh, that won't be for a while,” I said.
“I know, I mean... keep the line open.”
“Line is open,” I mumbled. And then he left. He texted me when he got home (I'd asked him to), I said thanks for letting me know and goodnight, and then we didn't speak for a week.
~
I've finally done my due diligence with it. I was going to put it away, behind me (I can now), and forget him.
...But I've gotten it wrong again. N doesn't want to be disturbed or cracked open. Or does he? I've found another way to deny. Another glimmer of false hope. But I could try. I could try to peer into his mind, like a sledgehammer, and not take rejection personally, or every little sign as rejection, for that's so much pressure. I do want to know him. I want to be privy to his inner world.
No...I can feel... I will not hear from him again. I cannot fixate on this pain I wake up with, because pain is all around. What a stupid time. I need to solve my problem with work, first, and find a normal job, if that's still even possible for me. I need to be grounded.
August 10, 2023
Finally back in the present. My 33rd year almost over.
Developing distance from my inner world, my emotions' truth, and the emotions of others: it's their burden. Exclusivity of my attention onto my missions.
I've been coming to myself more, to a purer state, I hope. It is my duty to observe and record, but not to interpret. Not to say “this means that”, because it is too convincing to myself, and too constricting.
I thought N hated me (and maybe he does deep down) because he hadn't answered in 7 days, so I texted him last night. “Did I say something offensive?” Very quickly he responded with
No
I'm sorry
for not responding
I've been preoccupied and it slipped my mind
and then he had to go pretty soon after that to wake up early.
I don't know how to take it. My mind goes to another girl, all manner of things – but I let him go. His impact on me has been great. Tempted to say maybe it's done but that would be modeling and interpretation, not a real management and holding of my emotions. The key is holding your emotions in your heart, I think: that prevents them from being wasted in daydreams.
Michael Hoffman is an entry point in the kind of thinking I got access to through N. He is yet on a different level, or maybe simply knows how to hide it (48 laws of power). One thing I noticed about him was, his perceptions of people seemed very sharp and caricatured. He did impressions of people in a very careful, pointed, specific way. His perception is very sharp; there is very little haze about it. This, I need. He might not have felt sufficiently free around me to be as theatrical as he really is.
No certainty is certain. Yet my thoughts are so convincing to myself. Receiving a reply from him at least quelled the feeling I'd had yesterday, where in all the most negative possibilities jump to my mind as realities. I don't need to think about it, to know what's in his heart. I cannot hold onto him. But I neither can try to fill the void with another, as I have always done before.
I've been having also sharper perceptions of people lately.
Saturday I forced myself to the out to[ ] to volunteer, then went to their party. Awkwardness coped with by imagining I was a lone agent here and it didn't matter. I'm just curious (I was), and looking at the water and thinking, knowing, sailing is a finished era in my life – it will never come back to me – as I stood on the balcony, knowing no one, observing white men fishing on the edge of the harbor; the grasses and plants poking out from difficult corners, when I zoomed in on the bit of fence before my eye and reduced my whole visual view to that.
But it was all the same, eventually. I caught up with L and spent a while talking to her outside. J then came up to us to ask her something and his speech was very precise but very nervous. He was nervous by me! One moment as he spoke I looked up at him and our eyes met directly for a clear moment, his wide, round, brown innocent eyes looking right at me through his glasses. J is a perfect person, a saint. Earnest and naive and in his right place.
I stand amid possibilities. I see one with him.
But even J is small under the overarching umbrella of the mind of N, in my world. N is the level above. The invisible man (perhaps because he's just invisible to me. What kind of woman does he want? A femme fatale, a classic Hollywood star? I can't think of it).
Explainable by the 7th level in Quenta's system: I am perceiving the levels of possibility, walking among them – being sensitive to this has made life difficult, has made me go here and there, high on “visions”.
There was a man at work who came up to me while I was reading the back of the 48 laws of power (because the Gurdjieff system says there are 48 laws on earth), who told me that Robert Greene has like 9 such books, including the laws of seduction, and how does he know all this information.
He wore a very large cross that looked like it had been fashioned from smelted washers – was large, flat, heavy, with a hand-etched inscription carved into it that I asked about: “For God so loved the world, he gave for it his only son John 3:16.
The first Bible verse I ever memorized.”
My interactions have been different since carrying the Bible around at least at work, it's attracted many people. It's a dividing line, like covid was.
Another lady, Connie, started talking to me on Saturday, middle aged, tiny and thin, very, very emotional and unreserved, just total exteriority and nothing kept or maintained inside, no reserve. We bonded over loving our fathers. Twice in the course of conversation tears started to well in her eyes and the second time I hugged her.
Her father had 3 rules:
keep your mouth shut
… I forget the other two. I think the third was don't be stupid with your money.
There was another lady who was kind to me, whose name I forget (Bonnie? Brenda?), and a German immigrant lady who also seems very nice. The people who are fit and healthy and take care of themselves are salt of the earth types, genuinely the best kind of Americans, and people. Many others are infirm or deformed (though still kind, still – often, actually, especially when men – of sound or even fine mind, smarter/more of savants than I). Many are just Hindus. I think Christians come to look kinder and more developed, throughout their lives, and that's why the black people there seem higher, more advanced in soul, than the Indians, who do all seem unclean to me, a product of the social system they perpetuate.
As usual, several things have come together into a synthesis, which is a new answer, the sought answer. The answer is always, at least in my world, in the synthesis of various seemingly disparate themes currently in play around you. Seemingly disparate, and parts, because you are yet blind to what they swim in, to the scene.
What were those parts? First, what I saw in N. The dark shadow lover, the quiet place. I even told him, the night he left to go to the motel in York and I told him I love him, that “you made all the noise go quiet for me.”
He did. There's him, N, and there's this shadow figure I was drawn to by "N", who had his own voice, who overlaid perfectly atop him.
Lately I have felt, with his absence, plunged back into the screaming ocean of want, desire noise, drowning under this chaos.
Another part: also related to N, but not to his mind: rather, to the question of how to be in romance. In truth I don't know how he really is, but what he had projected to me is that he is a different kind of man than I had encountered and compared him to. I've been thinking a lot, reading the Bible, rethinking my attitude toward relationships and why I haven't had one that's lasted (my uneducated, excited, impatient, and shallow heart – I've been wanting my heart to slow down and think more). Part of it has been accepting that I might not get it. Another part, resisting, noticing, the urge to move on quickly to some new guy – but I can't. Nobody hooks. And it's all the same.
Is N a virgin, dreaming of his virgin bride? Entertaining this gave me new perspective on coming back to myself from middle school (the last time I was truly relaxed). It's been over a year. Almost 13 months, since I've had sex, the longest I've been celibate since age 26. I think it's very good to do – it's slowed me, calmed me, allowed me to remove myself, again, from the chaotic, screaming ocean of want and urge. Being removed from the mating game, I see it all around me... reading the Bible, also, has exposed the paradigm of modernity that has ruled me. It is under this paradigm that I (and those I've met, save for N, who's been in solitude) have conducted relationships and experienced heartbreak. A little, I've started to revisit the pattern of my heartbreaks – the things I tell myself within them, the conclusions I have drawn: because it simply isn't normal for the cycle I've identified within my life to happen this many times. The self-abandonment cycle. The star, and then the darkness, and emptiness. And my groundlessness. It's the things I've been telling myself. I have realized the tyranny of the words in my mind over my life. I speak this paradigm into being. And where does it come from? That's a question N would answer more specifically.
I've decided on him, gripped him, hooked into him – I can't simply “move on” from this tomorrow. I don't know what the future holds, but what I do know is that only so many things can happen in one human life – only so many loves, only so many real connections – it's the millennial facade, surface-level buffet of life that has allowed specifically my generation (those really coming up in 2007) to dream of all lives, of infinite possibilities (the world right now is radically different from what it was in 2018; even comprehensible is the world of 2012). this facade, this way, that of course echoes in my mind but is out of touch with present reality, is exposed to me. In its place... emptiness? Another way must appear (hence, the Christian revival; the art hoes my age +7 -5 years reading the Bible after exploring liberalism; egirls going from being hoes to being virginal and chaste, hating sex (myself included)).
But I would die for it, I would remain lonely, alone, for it. People used to die for their faith. People used to sacrifice their lives; well, now we will relearn. Some of us.
This removal from the fray, and this identification, circumspection, of the liberal paradigm in its fullness, has lately (along with just coming off my period) made me see, feel, the utter pointlessness of most relationships, of the ridiculousness of people, everyone, around me constantly breaking up, of them forming and breaking relationships. Just stay together! Be together! Unite! Die for one another! Give your lives to one another. But we're scared to take the risk. Especially men are who are most resistant and likely to be reserved about getting into a relationship [9/7/24 I don't really think so... they just know it when they see it]. It's the opposite of the sexual revolution of the 60s, of free love, of Osho's proclamation that all married couples should divorce.
So I'm removed from it. I stand apart from it.
Yesterday, K put up and anonymous question service to do tarot readings, as she usually does. This is what she said to my request for a general reading: page of swords clarified by 4 of cups. You're at a crossroads and feeling restless but aren't sure which way to move because you are disconnected from your true desires. Cards advise taking time to reflect, get back in touch with yourself and who you want to be.
How do I get in touch with myself? What self? I have no self but through a man.
I need to not be a girl online. This will remove any pressure from my interactions, if I come to the internet not as a nubile, available woman but as a genderless, sexless account. It will allow me to interact as a pure being of mind, as well as close the door on online romance (not unlike looking for love at work). No, all my romance, the essence of my womanhood (if such exists still), my personal life – are IRL only. And not necessarily connected to my online persona. In short, I separated my real self from my online self, rather than projecting her (by changing my photo to a window and changing ali to a).
Many project, though. They create a female or male persona that allows them to interact sexually, to embody and project some kind of sexuality into the minds of others. I no longer do this. No libido. Mind only. I am not searching for love online. Too much of a burden.
And so I came to the synthesis, that, as this candlelit window, I am a respite from the chaos of the world, for others. Going deeper into myself, I found N there, or rather, the shadow lover I encountered through "N". He was a reflection of who I wanted to be, who I was always going to be, who I was going toward: a safe harbor, a peace of mind, a calm space, a refuge from chaos, that I inhabit in my sexless ways. He was a ghost in the darkness that I went toward. I found the Interloper in me, the way of clarity of mind. I found him in me today.
I'm happy I found this, reached this, before my 33rd year was up.
Nothing changed but everything has changed.
August 14, 2023
Today at work – well, there are some seeming real ones (really I'm just on the lookout for the strange, unusual, special, magical. When I'm there I really hate myself and eat myself alive, plunged into simply the worst thoughts, a hell of them. But get out and all changes. Turn on new music – suddenly I'm cool, fun, and young again. (I can't be anything to anyone other than a reflection of them – sometimes that reflection contains parts they do not see, do not recognize as their own – T, for instance, has become much more artistic. To Z, who said, “I'm a limited person,” I would say, “I''m a limited person, too.”) Daydreams are so vivid, so powerful. I daydream a whole new life, full of characters and possibilities, based on real people. Now it's the Russians/Russian speakers.
Maybe I just confused him. Who can see me? I have a spiritual breadth that only comes to life through a man, and only for a moment. But nothing seems to form permanently, no path.
Today at work a thin, red-headed guy with slightly deformed legs – one is longer than the other and turned inward, so his walk is weird – came up to me and said, “You carry around a Bible? Which version is it?”
I showed him the spine, which said King James Version.
He told me he's read 18 different versions of the Bible, in 8 different languages (Hebrew, Greek, Latin), and that the KJV is the most accurate English language version.
I asked about reading it in Greek; he said he liked to read it in Latin.
There's my lamentation and angst, and then there's the kind of mind that reads the Bible 18 times in 8 languages. I believe everything everyone tells me.
But when I listened to him talking to Bi, the middle aged woman with black hair, shaped like many “degenerated” American women (wide middle, no waist, narrow hips and no ass), who'd trained me, he sounded very angry, talked to her incessantly, wore an NRA backpack, mentioned his girlfriend.
Bi is a very kind and gentle soul. She's one of the few people who reads the backs of books or flips through them.
This job has made me hate Indians and dark-skinned Asians (but mostly Indians). Blacks are fine – they're well-worn Americans by now, especially if Christian. Hispanics are alright. White Americans are salt-of-the-Earth people, but sadly very degenerated genetically and in education. Russians are alright.
August 17, 2023
I should film myself and watch it. Watching clips I took from the past I see how monstrous and cold I look from the side. I was just like a cold hurricane focused on my projects, speaking in my flat affect.
I am very creative – I don't say that what I create is good or lasting, but that the creative impulse is prime in me. I am truly marching to the beat of my own drum. I look at the one photo of N I have and “see” that he's wrong for me. I had thought to leave him alone but when I see myself I see that I am cold and hard to approach and that I need to learn how to reach out.
If I fell for a character, "N", and he (N) presented himself to me that way (he didn't – I'm overthinking). It may just be a simple case of he didn't like me that much, but my mind cannot comprehend this.
It began with my sense of humor slowly returning to me yesterday.
Downloaded Hinge again and had a revelation: I can no longer bear hate in my heart, and my hate is always toward myself.
Maybe N was put off because of what I was attracted to. How could I be attracted to "N", this mean, death-obsessed, hateful, character – and why would I like N, a strange, suspicious, obsessive, awkward...
I think he just forgot about me. So I can be free and do what I want – I can build a stone edifice, I can move to Mars if that's where it's good for me. All my prophecies for him weren't heard by him. He won't even hear the song he inspired. It's a very depressing song. My exorcism.
From being on the apps, I realized my error in self-loathing. I can only say that my eyes were opened to see it plainly, to no longer be enamored with my depressive personality – that to be a true woman I must be proud of what I've done with my life and not feel like a failure. I've given my life to writing – I've already done it.
But I see more of a conceptualization of the situation now: my album/songs in the making are from that period of being in the inner, the nowhere, the “last hurrah before it's all gone”. They're relics from yet another lost world. The covid world, what allowed us to come together and see certain things we otherwise wouldn't have. Now, that is all gone and there is a land grab. Now, we're out of the nowhere and in the physical. (MM). The moment is over. Towns like mine are drying in old mentalities. Many (most) do not see what's happening, but some have their finger on the moment. Many young people, to be frank. I also see how N could have been unsure of me.
He didn't really see the ghost – he was just the vehicle for it. And what's my mission? I must complete all my work – music, writing. This second album is far more concentrated, but maybe less naive, than the first. It is like a set of spells, lyrics/poems set to repeating melodies to create a healing trance. It is of this era of m life; RNB was of the early covid era, 2020.
It is time to leave here and get started on something that will be a long-term plan. I am likely too strange to be married. I must just do my mission. Once I have adequate independence that will be easier. Adequate independence in the world that's shaping up. We will be under a new order (socially) very soon. The old generation will die. There will be fewer families, less sex. There will also be more young home owners/homesteaders, I hope. I hope to be one. It is almost a new country.
"N" is a bitter, tortured incel – and I didn't see this. I looked through it. His fire, not his anger, called out to me. His mental sanctuary and solitude and quiet. But that may have been the ghost – N spoke his words to me. But he is bitter, his heart and mind hard? No... He liked a tweet recently about no longer liking weirdos, only normal people now. Maybe I had a good effect on him. Maybe we were like colliding stars (as always happens to me). Maybe I had no effect....
Maybe I'm failing to appreciate that N could handle me – could take in all of mine, and come out unscathed.
Now to preserve my energy – this hit with N was the greatest gift. I must be one ringing note for a while. I'm afraid of my energy dispersing.
August 20, 2023
Copingly, every night. His image remains burning in my mind.
Every night, day, I strike upon another cope (and every morning wake up sick. Nevertheless, this is a creative period).
His image of a tall hidden shadow man, an investigator of a strange world who is there but doesn't belong there, and can't escape from there. He's forever in limbo.
I need to simply live in this aesthetic world, explore it.
There's a girl in there based on Q: nice, chatty, friendly, also investigative, in a flowery dress. When I explore them, she is more a friend. The investigator is aloof, inclined to turn women down, a man trying to be of God, yet who can't find escape from, or but temporary relief, from this strange world, in the church. There he glimpses something higher, but he is not even sure he believes it. He tries to touch it through music. Q is a friend who makes his days better, but mostly he is solitary and likes to read and be alone, listen to the rain from his hotel room.
There is another woman, based on me, as of yesterday. I get so frustrated by the “realization” that N just didn't find me sexually attractive (truly I don't know what's going on with him, if he's depressed, brooding, and isolated, or just doesn't like me. I'm expecting to get another letter from him soon that is a goodbye note, as he has stopped talking to me). I have been so muted, so out of touch with my womanly nature; I cannot be a flirt, coquette, wily, feminine, but what I can be is mysterious and strange.
I feel I must embody this, or can embody this – this noir character who has now appeared in this aesthetic world that has been unlocked and congealed for me since N (since he left my world, really).
I can only meet my love in unreality. I can only find love in there, not on Earth.
I'll find you again in unreality – if I can get there
And I can only get there through being this character.
And I can only be this character by addressing, plunging into, the most painful issue for me: my sexuality, femininity... no, my self-confidence and showmanship... no, my shame and embarrassment. My shyness. Searing knives upon it.
Even N said in his email, a while ago, “hope you won't be shy.”
And I wasn't. And then it seemed he changed his mind about wanting to hear from me. It feels like he doesn't.
The woman in the world is this: so seemingly perfect, he is suspicious of her. She just appears – from where? Who? She has glasses, wavy hair, a delicate face, clad in a long black dress and an alluring sex appeal (that is, isn't afraid to have sex appeal openly), and falls in love with him, is perfect for him – but so perfect, he pushes her away. She brings with her an entire new dimension to this strange world: espionage. Hidden people, a hidden retinue. His paranoia spikes in her presence as he can't understand it, can't understand that there is no spy ring, no meaningful signs and symbols (which he begins to see), that she just loves him and follows him for this reason, and her image, too, becomes burned in his mind. But the signs and symbols become real, the coincidences too many (she had something named after him? Or has things, objects, that are eerily similar to a part of him. He visits her house once, and she tries to put a move on him, but he, denizen of his symbol world, runs... goes back to his hotel... is visited by a knock, but it's a different woman).
The only way for me is to consistently put intense, aggressive, strange things out into the world without embarrassment. To commit to this, the creative live, to call myself an artist even though, I, really, am nothing. I have just gone far down this road.
You never know what turns come next.
The solution is to concentrate... isolate.
The little explored nexus of espionage and Christianity (… and the occult). He's even said his favorite movie was The Name of the Rose.
August 21, 2023
It's hard not to weave beauty into everything, to try and connect everything, every scene, in which I find myself.
I must keep my focus on the internal aesthetic within, because that is a living story about nothing, a doorway to the secret world, to the seekers of truth.
To this end, I do need to make my own place, I think.
I could apply to work at sea...
I have become N. I have become N's apparition. I know he has always given so little of his time, such a little sliver of a view into his inner life. I love the torture of this, of knowing the ghost I'm left with. It feels like a single ringing note. I feel I'm back where I was when Mt stopped talking to me (we haven't stopped talking, he just talks to me sparingly and I keep wondering is there's another girl, or girls, but I can't give energy to this; I need him, his presence, to keep this beautiful fantasy going, of my ghost lover. However, I can only be in it so long before I get used to the depression. Maybe that has already happened. Maybe I have chained myself to this pain. I am so patient, have been so patient. I feel like I haven't been myself – or, haven't been light, cheerful, happy... free... since I met him. It's like he took me like a vortex, and gave nothing back.
It's winter already in me, but I feel okay. I feel myself in a world of visions that's clearer than it was before. I see cavernous arches and colors, aesthetics that try to clash, stories that play out on their own; I listen in.
I'm afraid to be in love with someone specific; I have suppressed this urge even in middle school. But I love his name, his face and hair, the way I did before, I open myself up to it and slow down to it. Love is a slowing down to ultimate stopping so that you can be in the full richness of the flowered moment, let it flower.
I see now... an aesthetic has been given to me, that I have access to: this noir aesthetic, this sea, marine aesthetic, and they must come together. This aesthetic world must live inside me.
Slowing down inwardly is what I have so needed, not rushing away from the pain, to find a new lover.... No, let the story unfold so that I'm not talking about it, around it, in intellectualizations, but living its details. Words are insufficient. There is snow falling through a dark window. He is the hottest man I have ever encountered. He is perfect to me. If he taps into this lover behind the screen. If I tap into mine. Only then. Not through concepts and rationalizations; they are the walls of my mental palace. I need to paint this winter forever. Ever note I hear is another scene. This is the slowly accrued and slowly realized sharpening, clarifying effect of celibacy – must be at least 1 year.).
A couple days ago I saw a posting for a marine biologist job based out of --; it's going offshore, spending nights on the ocean for periods. I applied yesterday, knowing, somehow – there's nothing else that seems appealing or like a way forward for me. Yet....
I have an interview now. Maybe I could be happier there than I am in MD. It does feel like time to move to a new region. N is nearer, obviously, though I feel he could really end up anywhere and comically will leave just as I come in.
August 25, 2023
Maybe a boat is the only place I can be, or one of the only places I can be.
The world made for normies – the suburbs, the last stop of the light rail – has gotten much more plastic and automated, and its quality decreased, very rapidly and recently. The buffet is closed by 5pm, self-scan checkout machines put in and the screen is frozen on one of them. The clothes at Marshall's just 100ft away have deteriorated to Shein quality (or worse), are totally synthetic, flimsy, shapeless, untailored, unstylish. I forgot how plastic it is. Coming here after work (to look for turtlenecks), it's a separate world.
I come here and my worldview bred in isolation, in town, is shattered; the possibilities of what I could do. It's even harder to break out of this cage; in town at least the cage is clear.
And the luxury to sit and write music? A distant dream. There is only the meat grinder all around – dying towns, plastic suburbs, or the locus of implosion of urban centers, out from which the grime and blackness spreads, resulting in ever-cheapening plastic utilities on the fringes.
N sits in his apartment. I walk through the world as if the sea is in me or as if I'm on it. We are both very strange, very out of this world. “Trying to avoid becoming a weird kook as much as possible lol.” Must be why he avoids me....
I'm seeing magic everywhere. Thought of a bear by the blueberries and a big shaggy black-bear-like dog walks up – a newfoundland named Finbar – walked by a short woman with a black jacket and hair in my same style of middle length and bangs, but blonde.
I don't want to be like her, walking a giant dog in the suburbs – but perhaps I do. Because she was like me I went out and talked to her, and she was very chatty, and I met Finbar, who lay down, and we talked for a while. I would have such a dog in the future.
My heart tells me I should move, that it would be good, would feel good, to be near him, to be in his physical orbit. This is the kind of feeling and thought that breeds in isolation, gets shattered upon entering the bounds of the normal, plastic world, when I see myself walking in it.
The border between this and rural/small town world is where all the most expensive products lie.
Maybe I made him more normal? Less of an internet weirdo? I don't know what effect I had, if any. In the subjects of his truth there is also much entertainment.
My doubts about taking the job stem from not wanting to lose my inner world, the nothing world, the aesthetic world that brews in isolation... the nowhere. And the shadow man within it. Conversely, the schedule would be optimal....
What would I do with unlimited time and money? Write, simply, everything I wanted to right now, which is much. Make a movie, or paint the scenes, or make it a screenplay. I thought, maybe having some other remote job I'm absent from, and which doesn't afford real life, which I can therefore channel into the nothing life, is the better path. It's hard to remain nothing and no one. Now I am almost sure I am the second type. At the least, I know well this nothing place and nothing state. Like Peter Venkman from Ghostbusters – best example of a decoder I have seen. Ray and Egon are nonsleepers, almost ghosts in the world themselves.
August 23, 2023
Lost another job – overslept. No point going in after that. Act of God? What happened to my alarm? I forgot to reset it to the needed time
I can't let each little thing shake my confidence like this. Must remember what matters, what I can do and offer.
I feel like I'm just moving in the blind, in a dream I'll never wake up from – indeed this is the case, my dad said yesterday.
His greatest gift to me – that nobody else will ever give me – is validation. Through him I feel heard and grounded and real.
There is no stability otherwise, no man who will stabilize me.
Now I feel crazy about the job, which I just applied to to move close to N, even though he could be anywhere. If I do take it, I won't tell him, not unless he reaches out to me. I haven't decided on it yet; it felt like the solution, momentarily, but there is no cure for being me, no waking up from the dream, no final symphony or revelation; there is only adding elements into your world, removing elements from them. Reality painting.
I don't get this validation living here. And it's true that I moved there consciously thinking that I needed to be nowhere, even relishing being nowhere, for a break. A place where nobody knows me and I can just be... nowhere, suspended, and working remotely.
I suspect that even out on the sea I will still be introverted and on my own. It is a way for me to survive in the world, if no man and no family and no inheritance: it's a trade, sort of.
Our inner worlds are parted (mine and N's). How painful, how it worked out: why haven't I been able to let him go? I wanted so much from him, hoped for so much from him. The ghost – or something – spoke through him to me so clearly, never so clearly before. And when I chased after Js, that was the wrong degree. And when I moved overseas, that was too difficult to work out – but if I had persisted long enough, I probably would have. Would it have been worth it? But this feels okay. This job just appeared when I was looking, in the place I desperately wanted to be, and they interviewed me right away and scheduled another, and will probably offer it to me. It just seems right.
Oh it feels like knives, to still feel him in my inner world, to still be inspired, to still be within it, with it – the vision, the aesthetics – clear in my mind. A gift, to be able to do something, to be led to a place, the right place, where I can integrate, and then for him to leave, for the ghost to leave, as he always does.
Life is like the wheel of fortune card right now – spinning and spinning.
Opportunities everywhere as compensation for my being rejected yet again.
I explore them. I'm in control. I can stymie them or invite them.
Some people just affect you more.
I'll never see him again.
That's how it really happens, my dad said, when I mentioned that something or someone speaks through a person to speak to me in a way nothing else can, a way that hits the bottommost note, the deepest
To make anything, something else must be sacrificed.
The world manifest contains all (manifest).
A man does not contain all, he limits the all by his specificity, which is also the source of the unmanifest in him.
~
Simone Weil: “Always do what will cost you the most.”
Or the least?
What will cost you the most – in the context of true currency I can think this is true. I will read her.
The importance of specificity – the more specific you are, the more alone. There is no resolution to your story, only its amplification by your attention to, immersion into, it.
I've had two dates this weekend. The first, a man named – it doesn't matter. I met them, they're ambitious, I am even more ambitious. All I know is I must stick to my love, do my work, and I may never find earthly happiness in the form of love or marriage. I should shatter the glass-bound dream, the vision.
I still love all of the men I have loved – their spirit doesn't change. It' a difficult path, but I've been set aside from the human world. The guy I met today was a conservative, budding real estate developer whom I hope he will, eventually, restore some buildings to their former glory.... It's hard to say what is a worthy investment of one's time right now. Land, surely. Making a record.
How does one know that restoring the city isn't a waste of time? Enough people, enough money, have to agree to want to keep the East Coast as old – as true America – as it is.
It's my curse to love strange, inhuman men. To be aside. Not part of it.
When I got the second interview for the job (and started to believe I all but had the job) I felt relief – finally a resolution to work that satisfies me, that affords free time, that I don't have to think too much about. I can just be there, in my own cathedral, on the sea (dangerously), make my living, have spans of free time for other things. Physical gruel is the thing I'd rather deal with – cold, discomfort, the elements.... I even like them. Need them to stay healthy.
Maybe this isn't about me and my desires and fantasies. Maybe they (he) needs my love. Somebody has to love him – it's me. Not that I think no one can ever love him – he is smart and beautiful and has a kind heart under the hatred and gloom. He makes me an artist, forces me to bring it out of myself, blood from a stone, when I'd otherwise relax and garden and stop the journey. Maybe someday I will....
August 27, 2023
I have a big decision to make soon – whether to take the job and relocate. I pulled the Moon card, clarified by 6 of wands reversed. The page of pentacles reversed clarified by Judgment. Then hanged man clarified by page of cups.
Moon – use intuition to look through illusions, not everything is what it seems about a situation. It would feel really bad to move up there for N, like I did for A, when instead I should embrace my weirdness and peculiarity. What I really want to do is make movies, unrealistic as this is. And music. And write.
It just couldn't be clearer that he doesn't want to talk to me. So it won't matter. I feel better about who I am already, about being a weird woman sitting with her notebooks, writing. Love is no object but the light that envelops everything.
I have to take it slow. It's a time of indecision for me, or a time of exploration.
It's freeing, not considering him. I'll go up there and see how it feels. Divine timing is so funny – just when I get the opportunity, the pull goes away. I could end up there, he could be gone. In this way, the call of the sea feels like a snare. A call to my death, maybe. To desperation, to misery.
I will not be bound to the notion – I will decide carefully, will take time to decide if it's right for me. Time to settle into something stable that isn't nowhere.
I can do whatever I want without embarrassment. Neither am I drawn to people who like or admire me – that isn't my soul, or heart. That's them wanting to be cool, or talented. It's also, further, a sign to just do my work.
I will see more of the country, I think. Maybe a better path will call along the way, will present itself. I don't think I could live in Appalachia.
It seems like a time to explore the options – new options, specifically. … It does seem that, finally, I am open to this. I should be thankful for the work of the invisible....
I am not ungrateful to N, quite the opposite. But the energy exchange, dynamic is really what this is about. As well as fear of losing, that must be cast off.
Who am I? I cannot find myself anywhere, in anyone. I must take my place in the vibe scheme – somewhere in the middle, not too this or that, not like anyone. Not comparable to anyone.
He is just, in my mind, a lot smarter than me, and moves in the invisible. Or someone or something does. But I will begin on a path of research very soon. So as not to be without knowledge. Nothing ends, only changes. Spiritually, mentally, I am already out of here.
So many places are a snare – this town, the sea.... That which must feed on human souls. And there is so much of it. Sometimes I think these symbols we use to represent forces and gods exist outside of time; for instance, the Book of Revelation is always happening, is a process, not internally, but which can be reached by going internally.
The door to without is within. The “evil” door.
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