CHAPTER 2 – THE GARDEN
WE
At some point later that morning, an unexpected sequence of external forces began unfolding in rather urgent fashion, and progressed throughout the remainder of Isaiah’s day. It all kickstarted following his early morning Friday coffee exception (an entire 30 minutes prior to his ritually established time), after which having returning to his desk he immediately noticed a message from one of his “professional acquaintances,” who had, in an act that could only be described as an acute travesty, mistakenly and brutally attempted to “improve” a significant portion of Isaiah’s highly referential spreadsheet, molesting cell after cell, rewriting nested arrays with static inputs in a recursively futile attempt to amend the error of his very first ‘correction.’
And so, I had no choice other than to spend hours, perhaps the majority of the rest of his work day, attempting to correct this egregious mishap. And to make matters worse, this ‘acquaintance’ did not even spare the infamous “cross” tab (which happened to be most unintuitive tab of them all; of the entire document). It was quite literally shaped like a (✝) cross, brazenly and grossly violating the spreadsheet equivalent of something akin to the law of digital vacancy loss.
These efforts were further hindered by an apartment-wide fire evacuation having interrupted him some time later in the afternoon, and forcing him, along with the rest of his residential cluster, outside and onto the long, narrow strip of lawn sandwiched between the main road and the potentially aflame apartment complex. These were the sort of external forces which highly annoyed I; they reinforced his preference for abstraction, the mathematical purity behind all the things reflected with such ugliness in the world of around him. The contrast tempted tangents of spiraling rationalization.
Now – observing the forced evacuation of I’s apartment, we see him standing in wait on the sidewalk, centered around a sporadic array of similarly begrudged workers-from-home. This was the closest proximity I had ever shared with his neighbors for as long as he could remember. He silently cursed whoever was responsible for this unexpected annoyance of precautionary formality (though it may have been less unexpected if he had ventured to check the mailroom just once during the week leading up to today — where an undoubtedly sufficient number of notices had been posted, and in multiple visible locations.) As a matter of fact, now that he thought of it, this whole ordeal may have had something to do with that notice found taped to his door just 2 days earlier. He would not know; he did not consider the notice other than with a glance before promptly disposing of it in the first trash bin he happened upon inside his apartment.
In an effort of self-negotiated assurance, he thought to himself: I think I should like to walk today. Yes… after this cursed formality is over, I will finish amending my spreadsheets and escape to that dearly known place in order to clear my mind. It is the only other place I can bear, after all. Yes, I think I should like to walk today.
We might have been dishonest by omission in our earlier statement that I would go nowhere other than his own apartment. This place is the only other location he frequented, perhaps more often than one might imagine strictly through observing his disposition thus far. He visits this place with varying frequency, as little as 1 but as many as 6 times per week — always in the mid-day, and at latest by the afternoon. Never at night, out of respect for the thoughts which Isaiah knew too often to arise in the clarity of darkness (perhaps more accurately, a fear that was an allegorical projection of his inner state). This entire ritual, I had sustained primarily in an effort to satisfy his subjective quota for human beings’ apparent need for “outside time.” This place, the only other place familiar to I, may correctly be observed as landing descriptively between a desolate park and an unkempt garden.
Regarding this garden-park, we’ll offer a brief contextual aside:
Like most run-down parks, it had no glaringly redemptive qualities to it, at least at the initial glance. It appeared as a modest slice of greenspace, stranded in a monopolized machine-garden, almost insulting in its lonely demeanor; an abhorrence to the preservation of nature. These qualities, predictably, were not lost on I… Oh no, he is perfectly aware of the depth of irony embodied by this little garden, tragically situated in the throes of what he might otherwise consider to be a monotonous urban hellscape.
However, this place happened to be the ideal proximity in relation to I’s residence, about 3 blocks in one direction and nested within a small, shallow, partially wooded grove surrounded on its perimeter by a short row of apartments, and veiled by a thin but dense curtain of trees. We should admit, if this place were any further or any closer from I’s point of center, it would most likely not be part of his semi-daily routine. For with the former, the distance of travel would be too close as to betray an innate environmental familiarity, which defeats the purpose of maintaining a separate, physically ancillary thought-space altogether. And if it were the latter, the distance would simply be too far of a walk to be overcome by that weak, petty, clawing force which I often identified as his “motivation.”
And so it is, and he visits the garden all the same. His habit might be considered obligatory as well as ritualistic, for reasons mentioned above. We might, however, point out the other factor which I himself is not even aware of; or at least, he has shrouded any awareness he might otherwise have with that perceived obligation to “go outside”… it’s laughable, he thought, as though such an effort on my part really makes any difference to the neurotic cycles which torment me daily. (For those will be explained, rest assured, dear reader; but we will offer the courtesy of observing his direct, personal explanations out of respect – if not pity – for what might accurately be observed as a profound expression of psychological turmoil.)
Anyways, this other factor – the implication of this very park’s existence – reflects the true nature of the irony I is contrastingly aware of. Yes, it is absurd, but it is also miraculous. It is a miracle that such a place should exist at all, in the same way that it is absurd. The problem, however, is that I would not be able to tell the difference between the two, if such a difference were ever to appear before him. So for I, anything which might have otherwise inspired something like “faith” or “goodness” was reduced but not to a dark, cosmic absurdity.
Now transitioning away from this park-ridden daydream, we see I standing on the front grass as he surveys the appearance of the people around him, both residents and passers-by.
On the other side of the sidewalk, he observed the natural flow of pedestrian traffic, staring, scheming, and crafting for each person he saw an intricate narrative around that which may have brought them to that very location at that moment in time; surely it would be a more perfect story than what was actually so. It was better, I believed, to see the world this way, a more perfect way than it appeared to us. It is no different with people; for one can never be perfect except for within another’s perception of them – yes, in that case, it may very much be so.
He kept watching, observing, from a comfortable and engagement-free distance. There was a couple, not but a few years older than I; he looked at them and imagined how they might argue — the things they would fight about, the secret reservations which she held of him of which he hadn’t the faintest clue, and the loathing he similarly possessed of her at the frustration of her simple-mindedness; yes, we know after all the appearances, it’s just a mess, everything.
Next there was a man, a father, on his shoulders clinging a young boy. The boy smiled gleefully, clearly enthralled by the temporary luxury of his vertically advantaged awareness. Still, I could not help but feel for that poor man, who had surely been lulled into the romantic image of “fatherhood” only to find himself an extra degree impaired both financially and liberally, now forced to accept an idealized image of a relationship toward that equally poor boy who will inevitably grow cause his father a great deal of pain, unnecessary pain… pain never otherwise having to be considered.
Following that pair, I noticed the fluttering of a glistening blue butterfly, just barely off in the air from the distance he was at. Right below and following it, he saw a strikingly pretty girl wearing a uniquely expressive floral dress. After holding his stare for a second too long — the girl turned her head slightly, catching his glance — but instead of awkwardly & immediately breaking their rope of perception, she held it and smiled; softly, pleasantly, followed by a subtle yet unmistakable wave.
Hey.
“Il’a be damned, look who it is!”
It took a moment for Isaiah to realize the voice was that of Joscha, his next door ‘neighbor’ now appearing not but a few steps behind him. Truthfully, Joscha was the only person I might actually make the claim of “knowing” throughout that entire apartment complex. Despite the old man’s rather odd hermetic dialect (and demeanor), I almost enjoyed their interactions, as rarely as they may have occurred, and to the extent I might be ascribed as “enjoying” any sort of social interaction in any capacity.
Joscha was noticeably older (60’s, probably, but I did not know his age for certain) and lived by himself in the very same apartment building for 24 years, or something like that. Quite similarly to I, he rarely left the place except when necessary. If nothing else, one might say there was an unspoken bond shared between the two mediated by a mutually shared preference for solitude. It’s worth noting that any outside individual, upon drawing an initial comparison between them — even on a surface level — would be inclined to point out an unsettling reflection in both the disposition and lifestyle between these men, despite the two generations having separated them.
“Joscha. Long time, how’ve you been?”
“I have been. Keeping you from your spreadsheets, are they? Blasphemy, it is; the ‘fire’ men told us here just some minutes ago that as conditional of this particular ‘training,’ al’a door are to be knocked and each floor cleared at individual pace. It’s terrible; for I myself have crosswords to attend to, and they want to expel me from my perfectly-lit, climate-controlled residency? To keep a man from his own chair? These bureaucratic vagrants… do they truly have nothing better to do? Ehh-say, Isaiah — you’re’n acute young lad –- tell me, this clue weighs on me, and I know not but not of a “d” as the fourth of six letters: ‘he or that which constrains.’ I know it should be simple, yet it is elusive to spite this old man’s deteriorating fluidity. You should know it, surely.”
“Mmm. He or that which constrains… constrains, restricts, tightens, bounds… binds. Yes… binds, to constrain is to bind, he or that which constrains is the binder.”
“Ha-ha! Yes! The binder, as it was so all along. Il’a say, an agile mind you possess — a bright young lad, with a bright young mind of great, bright potential. Oh, to be young and skip through these crosswords as though they were just a breeze. It takes this old man twice as long just to print the damn thing off my computer. Ahh… life!”
“You overspend your credit, Joscha. ‘Bright’ is far from an appropriate word on which to slate my mind or future, but I do appreciate your kindness, all the same.”
“Never, lad. I have quite an eye for currency, I do.”
“Yes Joscha, I believe it.”
“Say, boy… how do the birds sounds to you today?”
“The birds?”
“Precisely so, have had them anything particularly interesting to say?”
“Not that I’ve heard, unfortunately.”
“Ah, a shame.”
And so, for the next 10-15 minutes, Isaiah helped Joscha complete the remainder of the Friday crossword puzzle. This activity offered Isaiah a much-needed dose of socially comic relief. He often enjoyed Joscha’s existentially tangential sidebars, even if they might have been independently observed as rather “troubling” occurrences. Despite and beyond these peculiarities, however, Isaiah often perceived a deep and enviable stillness emanating from Joscha’s abstruse presence. Still, he knew this nonchalance was not to be mistaken with naivety. No, there was clearly an antique wisdom inhabiting the mind of that strange old man, and I was aware of this fact enough to maintain within himself a sort of non-verbal admiration.
“Another quinary in the books, thanks to you, young lad. But say, what does it matter really, in the grand completeness of things? Another Friday, another crossword, and eh… another cycle of ‘completion’ toward that which will surely never be completed. What might I expect, that these bureaucrats cease this whole operation the day I am no longer, so that I may preserve this legacy of completeness? I should only dream, such a reality makes far too much sense to hold any appeal to these fools. Yet I shall continue consuming their pseudo-literary drugs until I have no say in the matter.”
“I will write them a letter, Joscha. Though I can make no guarantees of sway-age.”
“Alas, lad; it shall be okay, for tonight I shall have a good night. Yes, yes, think it’s time again I should visit the sub-totem, don’t say you? These cognitional cobwebs could use some dusting, it certainly feels to be.”
“Yes Joscha, I’ll take your word for it.”
Eventually, the precautionary formality concluded. I stood up from the curb he was sitting on and immediately felt a rush of dizziness, disorientation. Stress and dehydration, a fantastic combo, he thought. Time to head back inside, finally. He and Joscha exchanged their departing formalities, and each of them returned to their respective “underground” habitat.
Having returned to his front/living room, I felt another odd wave of unease and exhaustion. Then, in a moment of absent-minded impulsivity, he listlessly dropped into his chair and fell into a deep, unexpected, and extremely vivid paracosm. This instance was characterized by a rigid geometric landscape and the presence of some deeply existential themes he had been familiarizing himself with most recently. The description of this particular paracosm might be described as follows: The spirits and minds of literary voices appear around I as he stokes the fires of imagination (very reminiscent to Machiavelli’s antique courts, one might say);1 a theatre of incessant inquiry unfolding through the dispersion and jousting of conceptual dialogue, visceral symbolism, and accelerated logical abstraction.
Sometimes these imaginary little words would consume him for hours – to the extent of greatly distorting his perception of time upon returning to reality. Such an unknown length of time had passed in this very instance, in fact. Following a satisfactory explanation and conceptual demonstration of the evolutionary phenotype, I finally concluded his self-induced haze and shuddered back into the actually-inhabited present.
The first thought to grab him, upon awaking from his paracosmic slumber: he had completely forgotten about his eagerly anticipated walk to the park. Alas; he had overstayed his dissociated welcome, it was already night, and he would not walk at night. Even for the park. It had been a long, externally-pronounced day, and the worst liability I could now take now (probably), would be to introduce more external uncertainty into the day’s already-unfolding sequence of seemingly unexpected events.
oh, come on…
However…as though in parallel with that very sequence, I found himself unable to negate this sudden draw of urgency to the garden. Subtle flares of invitation arose before him, intuitions of a novel, dark-veiled appearance of that place he had only known by daytime. There was a strange force attracting him, pulling him, tinged with a curiosity now outweighing any anxiety which might typically be expected. And so, we will continue this narration through the eyes of I, once again.
But first, let us acknowledge one last thing about this garden, a fact which has potentially contributed to I’s maintained infatuation with the place. For whatever reason — despite the drab and sorry appearances of the surrounding area (which possessed no shortage of trash and grime on its streets & yards) — this neglected little park always seemed to have a measure of orderliness about it. And do not think of this ‘orderliness’ in a grand sense; there are no contractors, no maintenance crew coming here regularly, or in any routine capacity, for that matter. The grass, the sparse stone benches & walkways, the landscaping; all of it, was in dire need of attention. But, given these exceptions, nothing else in the park (at least during the times I would visit), ever seemed to be unnatural or out of place as far as he was concerned. There was rarely garbage strewn about here, despite the presence of litter every few square feet in the surrounding lots and alleys.
But even more peculiar to I, there would occasionally appear a small set of vertically balanced stones, placed either on the park benches & surfaces, or on a bigger rock still. Once or twice, I had come across a notably impressive stack of 4, 5, 6 stones of varying proportion, upon first glance seeming impossibly balanced. These spontaneous discoveries hinted to I something akin to a “meditative” order; a patient, embodied expression of harmony. Sometimes the rocks would stand for days, or weeks, and sometimes he would not see them for months. This mystery had always intrigued I; he knew very well such creations must be the work of another individual. But he could not see what kind of poor soul would have taken just as much (if not clearly more) of a liking to this sad, half-begotten place as he did… especially someone caring enough to repeatedly exert the time and energy constructing these capricious little rock piles.
Now; at this point it was entirely dark outside. Regardless, I now positively felt something tugging his mind forward, toward the garden-park consuming his day(evening)dream, and accentuated with a strange hint of seduction. And so, we will rejoin him now on his subjective journey.
I
These days, I won’t go out at night, for any reason whatsoever. Okay… “rarely go out” might be more accurate to say. Regardless, I tell myself I do this for my safety – the risk of urban externalities – but, I would truthfully be lying if I were to deny the sense that my real fear does not lie in the threat of the city man. Either way – I have my ritual, the park knows to meet me at the regular hours, surely I can wait for my appointed time. But… tonight, not exactly, there is an unfamiliar pull I feel drawing me outward despite the night’s descent. It’s odd, I’m usually inhibited by apathy to act on any impulses such as this; however, with this feeling came a degree of curiosity that seemed to outweigh the standard force of apathy, at least for the time being.
So, for the first time ever, we walk at night.
I throw on the appropriate insulation, grab my keys, and head into the night, straight out the door & taking an immediately left down the sidewalk, thus beginning my mini-adventure. There is only one place for me to go, obviously, the only place I ever go. Mapping my anticipated route (first block south, one block west, another south), I estimate I should be at the park in no more than 6 minutes. The outside air had an extra layer of quality present this night, a layer of… uncertainty? Something is different, of this I’m sure, though it should most likely be ascribed to the unprecedented lateness of my ritual journey, nothing more. Oh well, I have already committed, so we will see how this endeavor unfolds.
On my ritual walks to this place (garden) I often begin to feel a subtle shift in thought, faint yet noticeable; the true nature of this effect, I cannot quite put my finger on. All I know is that my mind perceives things slightly differently when I am moving through or immersed within a landscape. As opposed to sitting in my chair, comfortably empty before my fire, surrounded by my library of chaos and all its familiar cues. I would like to say quite confidently that this behavior is good for me, that to refresh the mind in this way will help stave off the sort of spiraling which typically characterizes my… well, most of the conscious hours of my day.
On my walks to the park, I’m met with the luxury of observing the monotonous ridge of townhomes and mess of urban claustrophobia strewn around me. Monochrome brick buildings, varying no more than a couple degrees in hue; a spattering of illuminated rectangles, occasionally traced by the movement of shadow. Most of them black, evoking a sort of desolation, a dystopian sparseness. These buildings, the deteriorating streets and litter, the untamed pollution (ignorance is bliss, btw), all of it… the product of a lesser vision. A vision of insignificance, redundance, of mundanity. It’s the perfect example, a permanent reminder of our ‘prisonership’ in the form of a glaringly inescapable constraint. We have no say in this mess we are born into, not each of us but a shaping, a perceived social construction, a product of equilibrium in a sea of vast & wide-ranging vision; this is the world we inhabit. A world of intersecting perception. An incomprehensively tangled mess of projected disillusion.
oh boy.
Tragically, these visions persist, they burn with manufactured inertia and seep into the socio-cognitive structures of society: the anointed class, the media, our institutions; and now, these behemoth digital algorithms, of the most predatory & insatiable nature, acting effectively as an invisible parasite upon society. Kids now, children… 9, 10, 11 years old, increasingly wiring their awareness into this mind-numbing, life-distorting, despairingly perverse feedback loop.3 Into this vision of manufactured existence. And so, too often, the ideas of lesser men emerge victorious, manifested through the combination of opportunistic skill in a few, the motivating hand of populism, and the apathy of many more, many better men.
I should catch myself now, before another spiral. So, I turn my attention outward. Yes, I will think pleasant thoughts about this pleasant park…
This ‘park’… It’s absurd, truly, that such a place should exist at all; that its conception, its implementation, and its fate had each been products of a conscious vision, a vision which was clearly aiming to achieve something. Yet, despite having clearly failed in its grandeur, the visionary expression exists all the same, to this very day yet still to be perceived, judged, and contemplated until its destruction. What is such a place intended for, truly? There are no swings, no sets for children to play. There is not even a structure for one to seek shade nor shelter. Just a sprawling array of weathered, bruised stone furnishings, designed to withstand both nature and time, functionally simple yet stylistically brutal. Surely, the original architect did not foresee their use relegated solely to the musings of a cognitively defected individual? No; just another absurdity.
Still — It’s so peculiar, it seems as though I will never see a piece of garbage strewn about this park, as would be readily observed in the entirety of the surrounding area. There is something about this place which I cannot properly describe… it carries a unique, almost vaporous appeal. Maybe I delude myself by relying on this “nature” as some sort of romanticized primal tether; just a fantasy, another narrative I have crafted to rationalize my isolation from true nature. There is no nature here, only submission and monotony to be found in this place I call “home.” There is no beauty either, and no redemption to be offered by these institutions of hallow distraction, the critical mass of laughably short-sighted instinct. There is only drama, destruction, polarization, and the incentive of power.
That is politics, and the world, after all: a hierarchical vying for power so that those with its reigns can project and enforce their visions, their perceptions of “the good and just,” in order to “preserve” them. However, on a psychological level, these acts may be more accurately observed as the effort to affirm and reinforce a cognitive dissonance that these “elite” individuals have grown comfortably superior within. Perhaps the phenomenon is largely subconscious, with said visions simply being an expression of the collective shadow,5.11.2 & stemming from some innate, deeply entrenched societal insecurity.
A little deception, a little blackmail, and some political force always goes a long way in aiding these lesser visions as well. Yet — all and each of them, they are but waves and ripples. Institutions (empires) rise and fall, but far from as an order of truth. They are constructed but through a calculated leveraging of man’s natural impulse, and by aid of the constraints on his standard condition. In this light, the individual has little weight nor say against the stream of experiential conditioning he is funneled (from birth) directly into. And so, what truly is there to gain from the effort of swimming against social entropy itself? Any grandeur will disintegrate, and man will fall in line. It’s simply a consequence of distribution, as all of life is. What is there to do than ponder these tragic realities?
this is why I don’t bring you to parties.
Speaking of which (pondering tragic realities), there are a few more I suppose would be regular in this routinely internal monologue. Now I have arrived at the park, that familiar place tucked intimately behind the desolate urban sprawl. Following the worn, unkept path adjacent to the third block removed from my residence, I’m taken through a brush thick enough to obscure its own depth, following the tight but unmistakable trail through the grove and into a circular opening, populated now by only by a few trees and park fixtures. The park in its entirety was not overly massive, but its seclusion and tree-veiled perimeter gave the place a feeling of immersion, removed from the atmosphere of the surrounding city. Here, I will sit on my usual bench, and adopt my usual view of the stars so that I may continue to ponder. What is there to do other than ponder, and grasp?
Maybe, I could change all of these things which negatively possess me, perhaps I could even do well for myself. I could embrace a more civilized approach to romance, and strive as I see others do around me. Yet, such a fleeting, deceiving hope, always vanishing upon pursuit, for how would such change even come to be? I have known this answer again and again, yet find myself in the loop all the same. For it’s quite simple, if any change were to come about, it would simply come about; perhaps it will be as simple as the drop of a hat, a gust of wind, a flash of coincidence which sparks into causation a chain of effect, however temporary; but perhaps enough to emerge in the temporal, link one thing to the next which might ultimately kick me up the ladder professionally, financially, mentally, hmmm… yes. You see, all it would take is that brief flash, so everything we spoke about here may still very well come about. (Though such a thing has never yet come about.)
Through this attainment I may even find a fulfillment for whatever this wretched burning fire growing inside of me– a fire – wait, no… a storm. Yes, it feels much more right to call this force inside of me a storm, looming ominously, hauntingly, and then with a frightening abruptness comes a flash, a shattering bolt of divine light and electricity. If only for a second, these material pressures have contracted themselves, the sneezing (or slap) of nature, my mind momentarily glimpsing its brutal face, in viscous, unadulterated, shocking (no pun intended, LMAO) fashion. And then the light is gone, the (orgasm) was a fleeting thought, but in that sliver of time was something so potent, so incredibly mesmerizing, one could not help but pursue it. There are many such examples, found both spontaneously and suspended as fixtures in nature.
As I sit here now, looking up at the sky, dimly lit as it may be from the light pollution of the city, an obvious example now presents itself: 3C-273. This is the name of the first scientifically observed quasi-stellar radio source (known presently as “quasar”) ever to be physically recorded by man. I will not assail you with the insane science behind the quasar, for I doubt you would survive that assault; and this is no insult to anyone nor their competence nor keenness, no… it is the contrary, for only a diseased mind could desire to apprehend the quasar with any meaningful degree of clarity; and even then, scarcely, and in minutiae.
…true.
All one really needs to understand is the following: out there beyond us in space, hidden between the fabric of that which we see as constellations from our point of view, are over a million observed phenomenon that we have come to know as the quasar;2 and that is only the number within our scope of perception, outside of which potentially lies an exponential or perhaps infinitely higher amount. These phenomenon are more descriptively understood as ‘active galactic nuclei,’ or central cores (critical masses) of distant galaxies collapsed into the form of a black hole.
And not just any black hole, but a supermassive black hole. Yet still, not just any supermassive black hole; a galaxy-consuming supermassive black hole with an unfathomably (violent) accretion disc viciously ripping the inertia from its surrounding galactic counterparts. The force of these (…things) arises on a scale that dissolves entire galaxies completely; and if you really want to … take a bit of time at this moment to /segmentally/ conceive of how large a galaxy might truly be — then, abstract this value (impossible as it will be) to the best of your ability and have it readily accessible (*) as we progress through this train of thought.
The cores of these quasars… and know the core, the absolute, dominant force anchoring and swaying these galactic tantrums, they alone possess the mass equivalent to our sun, 10^8 times multiplied. Perhaps it is pointless to even mention this statistic, what are we going to do, comprehend it? Let us not forget that these interstellar storms will occasionally loose a scream, bursting out in what may only be described as a double-edged spasm of scorching particle mass; A polar flash // quantum cannons (bullets), (violently) surging in whichever unfortunate directions of dually linear space time they happen to sight upon. These righteously terrifying (streams) currents / of / death (fire) travel for insultingly long distances with shudderingly fast speed, taking every victim in their path, and throwing neighboring galaxies (*) into mortal disarray.
I will not obsess with the numbers again… I could, but I will not. It took me days to recover from the last attempt to do so. Although I do think I got a little bit closer that time. Perhaps I will briefly entertain their awe… actually, no. This is where my thoughts begin to fracture. I will say only that these behemoth entities of the cosmos which we casually reduce to the symbol of the “quasar” surely demonstrate something arbitrary about what it means to be a fragile, domesticated ape.
It’s ironic, truly. I look inward at the most minuscule level, and outward on the widest possible scale, yet have extraordinarily little interest in anything expressed in the middle. It is odd to perceive myself this way, despairing even. Total awareness of insufficiency in its most literal sense, no way to attain that which it seems obvious all men should possess. Well, I fall back on my earlier solace…
Determination. I don’t entertain the guilt of a potentially inferior self, how could I? My thoughts, my actions (or lack thereof) are ultimately a product of some unspeakably coincidental particle force, governed by some kind of underlying mathematical substrate, but nothing more than that, a substrate at most. I may not know the finer aspects of these things, but I do know with certainty, it is ultimately all just extracting square roots. We are blessed now, at least, with scientific pursuit, as a rare totem of light in this collective search for truth. We need not worry about freedom of the will, these endeavors have solved that illusion for us. After everything, we may at least sit back, relax, and observe unfolding around us that which has already been determined. Yes… at least there is solace in that.
As though to coincide perfectly with the conclusion of my rantings, something grabs my peripheral awareness, a shape – a figure, not several yards away near the opposite end of the stone bench I was sitting on.
Ise had always felt shapes, innately perceived structures he knew to be reflective of a deeper semantic framework.
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