October 21, 2020

The First Part:

Stolen away from the mundane passage of time, 
I was seized by a vision of the world:
Frothing dust, busying itself with itself. 

Cosmos reduced to a gray void.
Time and eternity congealed to flat slate. 

The Second Part: 

From the slate-gray void,
there formed a speck. 
A deeper void within the void. 

The speck was black.
And its name
was desire. 

The Third Part:

Desire was negative,
A selfish locus,
A lonely eddie.

...

There was a fallen sparrow on the side walk on my walk home from the gym this morning.

I think it was a sparrow.

...

I spent my late morning in Bothell, thirty minutes away from home, drinking a small latte at a cafe. I was to meet a man named Ron. I arrived over an hour early and plugged away at pre-algebra lessons online. We first met at a small gas-station-and-diner off of Highway 2 somewhere near Wilbur or Davenport when I rode the bike to Spokane a few weeks back.

I thought we were to meet for coffee. Turns out he owns an office building next to the cafe and he's frugal about his coffee. (You can't get rich and drink a latte on the daily, supposedly.)

We spoke for thirty minutes. I told him my goal: A house in the country, some land, a big vegetable garden, five motorcycles or so, chickens, 2-3 kids, etc. 

And in a long series of words, he told me about his wealth and how he would help me become wealthy. I'm not sure he used the world "wealthy." Rather, he talked about my potential success in vague terms. He says he sees potential in me; and he said something about some wells having more oil than others.

He's quite the salesman. But I'm not sold. 

He gave me a book called Success, written by the editor/publisher of Success Magazine. I skimmed through its platitudes. 

He said two things that I remember and have not been able to successfully purge from my head this late evening before I sleep: 

1. There's a war going on in this country: those who are free individuals and those who want to take that freedom away from us.

2. I never sent my kids to school. I don't believe in what they teach. My son is a successful business owner. 

Point 1: This is a naive American-conservative, or perhaps more accurately, libertarian platitude.

Point 2: If skipping college means becoming infatuated with self-help books with titles like Success, then I am glad I went to school. While I think there's a lot of bullshit in school, I am still convinced that learning the humanities in school can impart a deep sense of value that cannot be found anywhere else. Philosophy, poetry, history, literature, music—these are the deepest foundations of our culture; school is a good place to learn about these.

There are many successful self-made businessmen, but I would bed good money that the best businessmen and the majority of above average businessmen have secondary and post-secondary education. 

I don't see eye to eye with Ron.

...

My voters pamphlet sits beside my computer as I type this. I am looking at it with tired and ambivalent eyes.

...

October 15, 2020

I feel flat today. I have spent the day at the living room table with my computer, a pen, and grid paper for simple math. My brain is going extra slow. Yesterday was busy—heavy lifting at the gym, a hike, followed by a ride and an evening with a few friends that ran far too late. I woke up at 11am today; I don't remember the last time I slept in this late. Khan Academy has gone slowly today, with many trivial mistakes.

...

My vision is scabbed over with a gray film.
Streaks of red break through.

A voice says: Don't stare at the sun. 

...

Went to the barber and got a haircut on Tuesday. Had a long conversation with my barber. Covered much ground on a non-physical plane. Something was said about 3rd eyes being pried too far open.

"Dark night of the soul," he said.

"Black implies white," I said.

"I needed to hear that," he said.

It is a quote by Alan Watts that I now find meaningless and trivial, I thought to myself sitting in the barber's chair with bits of hair caught in my mask tickling my nose.

Deepest metaphors sound like nonsense to reasonable persons: alchemy is nonsense, They say. They are not wrong.

...

Forgot to mention: everything makes music. —Any of it can be beautiful, but not much of it is beautiful; this is proof that the gods are amoral and they have their favorites. 

...

Beauty is a virtue. But any virtue may be paired with vice—that is, paired with the bad. 

Did Socrates ever say anything about The Bad Life? He had a lot of questions about the good life. I wonder if he ever used the phrase, "the bad life."

Good is rare—the exception.

...

I realized that cleaning shares important things in common with resting: When you rest, you repair your body, and when you clean, you repair your environment.

If you rest or clean in the right way, it can be enjoyable. Alternatively, either can be stressful: rest can be stressful suspense, and cleaning can feel harmonious and valuable (still working on learning to enjoy the latter). 

October 11, 2020: Against Voting the way They Tell You To

 I'm not convinced that I should vote for a Republican or Democratic candidate in this upcoming election. Douglas Adams captured this idea here nicely in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: 

“[Ford said] ".. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people." "Odd," said Arthur. "I thought you said it was a democracy." "I did," said Ford. "It is." "So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't the people get rid of the lizards?" "It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they voted in more or less approximates to the government they want." "You mean they actually vote for the lizards?" "Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course." "But," said Arthur, going in for the big one again, "why?" "Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in.”

South Park captured this idea again in 2004.

Now, like most people, I think there is a less-evil primary candidate.

But at this point, I do not intend to vote for that candidate.

Why? —Well, that's not too straight forward. 

First, I would like to address an obvious objection. 

Many people—people on either side of our increasingly growing political divide—will say, "If you vote 3rd party or don't vote at all, then you're responsible for the more-evil candidate to gain power, and you will be just as responsible as a wrong voter for enabling the evil actions of the most-evil-candidate. Whatever the most-evil-candidate does, you will share the blame too. It is wrong not to vote for the lesser of two evils."

Well, I disagree. 

Though, I must admit that I am disagreeing in spite of common sense. Common sense says that I have two options—pick the one that is least-evil-and-most-likely-to-win. 

But the value that I see in my least-evil-and-most-likely-to-win is insufficient. Metaphorically speaking, my candidate is a lizard. Why would I vote for a lizard?

A person on either side might say to me, "But you're just thinking about yourself. You need to look at the bigger picture: innocent people will suffer and our country will go to hell if the least-evil-and-most-likely-to-win candidate loses."

I struggled with my potential moral blame. Surely the least-evil-and-most-likely-to-win candidate will cause less suffering.

But then I realized something. I was facing a moral argument. And like most moral arguments, it is a line of reasoning that has been around for a long time. The way I see it, telling someone to vote for someone that they don't fully support because if they don't they will be morally culpable for the wrongs of the more-evil-and-most-likely-to-win candidate is a form of consequentialism. 

I am not a consequentialist. 

According to google/Oxford Languages (whatever that may be), consequentialism is the doctrine that the morality of an action is to be judged solely by its consequences.

A more thorough definition can be found at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on Consequentialism.

My argument against consequentialism is as quick as it is dirty. It is an argument from epistemology, and it goes like this: 

We may know the first and perhaps second order consequences of our actions. But it is more difficult to know the third and fourth order effects, and even more difficult to know the fifth and sixth order effects. This is because every action sends out endlessly interweaving causal chains. So, we do not—we cannot—know wrong from right based on consequence alone. 

Examples are many and frange from obvious to absurd: Give a hungry person bread and they may choke on it; cut somebody off in traffic, and you may prevent them from running over a pedestrian who is on his way to murder a future industrial tycoon who would bring about total environmental destruction.

This is not an argument for moral nihilism or ethical skepticism. I do think we can know right from wrong. But trying to intuit the consequences of our actions alone is not enough. 

And what that means to me is that it is not morally wrong to vote for a good candidate even if he or she will lose. 

But why violate common sense? Well, first off it would be nice to escape our two-party rule, and voting for independents and other parties is an attempt at going in that direction. But I have no intention of making a pragmatic argument. This is must more important than that. Listen closely:

Consider that your vote is not merely a bean in a jar that is to be weighed en mass.

Your vote is a sacred form of self expression. It is a political act. It is an exercise of power—your power. 

There is something metaphysically important about your vote. Do not just give it away. It is neither a token nor commodity. It is your will and power.

But they will tell you otherwise: They will reduce your vote and power to a mere means—the end of which you will not benefit from.

Our mass failure to understand the metaphysical significance of our vote is partially why we're here—voting between lizards.

I warn you though—the realization of your political power is as profound as it is both infuriating and lonely. 

....

It's Sunday afternoon. I could be on my Switch playing Hades or Diablo 3. Instead, I'm here sitting at my dining room table, looking out of a raindrop-dotted window, writing. I am writing for no significant audience. A few friends gratuitously and kindly read my posts.

So why am I here? 

Well, I can't think of anything better, so this will have to do. It orders my mind, gives me a sense of earned peace.

I'm writing for myself.

Moreover, I am frustrated by politics. I have not found a politician that remotely represents my views. So, what else is there to do? If I merely sit around my frustration grows. I must do something. My soul must express itself, (even if it is merely an ineffectual scream into the cluttered void of the back pages of the internet).

October 1st, 2020

There's a Tweet that goes: how are people out here with no therapy not taking any prescribed or illicit drugs just raw dogging reality — giabuchi lastrassi @jaboukie · Jan 23, 2019

 

That Tweet is truer than it is funny. It sets the tone of this month for me. Every October is like this. My experiences are raw, like going for a walk with soft, barefeet. Sensitive and liable to injury, forced to attentiveness, knowing that calluses take time to form and do not always adequately develop.

...

I was in a minor car accident today. It's not clear who is at fault. My front driver-side quarter panel is banged up pretty bad, but everything still functions as it should. 

I benefited; my pride needed pruning. And better a car accident than a motorcycle accident.

September 30, 2020

I laid awake in bed last night for a while just sitting with a feeling of disappointment in myself—wishing I was an artist. I felt deep loss and regret for something I never achieved. Impotence and desire make despair. Swallow it. Move on. Be happy that art and beauty exist elsewhere.

I don't think I will attend Saint John's College. I think I'm going to look into trades—welding, pipefitting, carpentry, or something to that effect. 

Every time I open my damn mouth everything changes.

"Men make plans; God laughs." A Yiddish proverb I read this morning in a new article. 

...

In alchemy, the soul is the philosopher's stone. It is the soul that creates value from base things. It is we who create meaning from worthlessness. 

September 28, 2020

I'm in my apartment wearing jeans and a sweater with my hood over my head and ears. It's 10:40 am. This morning was leg day. Thalo, our building manager, is just outside the window sweeping the roof of a carport, gathering the first of many piles of leaves.

...

I was in Spokane and Boise last week. It was a long way. I listened to Matthew Crawford's book Why We Drive. It sat very well with me. I think he's on the right track. 

I met an army friend in Boise. We haven't seen each other since Ft. Hood in early 2015 He said I haven't changed much, which was shocking at first. He hasn't changed much either. We've both matured. We acknowledged that much.

I rode straight home from Boise which is a long way on my bike. I hit heavy rain on I-90 as I made it into the Cascades. There were four lanes. I was way on the right lane, going 55-60 mph being passed by semi-trucks, closely watching the tires of the vehicle was in front of me for signs of deep water, straining to see through a fogged and mist-and-rain-beaded visor. I haven't hydroplaned on a motorcycle yet, and I didn't want to learn firsthand, yet.

I had to embody truth to give myself the best shot at survival: Relax and focus. Pay attention. See the whole picture at once. 

A motorcycle is a gyroscope and therefore is pretty good at keeping itself stable and upright. I needed to fight my body's tendency to become tense—loose grip, low elbows, deep breaths (slow so that I minimize fogging my helmet). If I were to hydroplane, I would relax and slowly-and-deliberately ease off the throttle—not panic. —If that's not meditation, I'm not sure what is.

When I came home I poured water out of my boots. My hiking boots were water-proof at some point. But they aren't anymore. Caitlin came downstairs to help me unload my bags and locked us out because she forgot to bring the keys. I had to ride up another 15 minutes, one way, to The Barking Dog, to borrow Dani's keys. I love riding, but by then I was past the point of diminishing returns.

...

Thinking about meditation, I am becoming suspicious of mindfulness meditation. I can hear the words as if they were coming from the mouth of a horny college senior frat guy: do not worry; it is what it is; let it happen; it's only passing waves. 

...

I've spent a good portion of this morning wishing I could be productive. But I lack a definition of success and therefore cannot achieve productivity.

Actually, I think I told my therapist that I think success for me would be owning five motorcycles, owning my own house and working for myself. That's a shallow definition. But it's a starting point. 

I am fully aware that I am making no progress. I don't even know where to begin. 

...

The word rest has becoming more meaningful. I'm reading Practical Programming for Strength Training. They offered some very general advice: when the body undergoes stress, it adapts to the stress and supersedes it; this is called supercompensation. When we adapt to a stressor, if it doesn't kill us, and we have enough rest and food, we can survive even greater stress.

I wonder how broadly I can apply this idea to my life. How many situations can I approach like this?

...

Adaptation transforms an organism. Adaptations are not always good. 

...

I've had difficulty resting this weekend. The past two nights I have woken up several times a night, panting, as if startled. 

The night I came home from my ride I couldn't fall asleep because I kept seeing the road in front of me. —I'm not the quickest at adapting.

...

I wonder what would happen if benevolent aliens came to Earth and gave us technology that would rid us of scarcity. I would like to think that most CEOs would be miserable. 

Much of human life is overcoming material scarcity.

September 22, 2020: Motorcycle Voice Transcription 1

I'm just south of Kerry Park right now putting on my gloves, hopping on the bike, putting the kickstand back as I straighten out the front wheel and sit up on the bike—and not precisely in that order. 

To my 11 o'clock there's people, and a dog.

[Engine starts]

There's 23.6 miles on the odometer.

The dog is crossing into my headlights, and he's got a reflective collar. He's shaggy.

[Motorcycle shifts into first and revs into first gear]

I'm making my way down the street. Making a left. A man crosses my bath and hobbles along, as if rushed by me. But he has plenty of space. 

I'm going down hill, somewhat uncomfortably. These hills are steep. But I'm engine braking and feathering the front break and then coming to a complete stop using the rear brake—despite knowing that the rear brake doesn't do much as you near the end of a stop. That is, unless you have a passenger, and there is a disproportionate amount of weight on the rear wheel. 

These streets are rough and bumpy. 

I have a small faux leather bag on my front forks that, when the forks have sufficiently compressed, the bag bumps into the headlight. 

I am at a four-way-intersection, two-way-stop, narrating this. My right blinker is on. I make a right onto a well-lit road—Olympic Place.

[Engine steadily revs]

Behind me, not even a block away, there was a protest—well, not even sure if I can call it a protest. There was maybe fifty people outside a local representative's apartment. —Protesting. 

This is different than the last protest—less heated, less chanting, less people. This time they only brought bikes, no cars. 

(Cars came later in the night while I was gone.)

[Sighs]

Last time they came through, I was scared. I was spooked. I ran down, got my bike, which was ten meters from the route, undid the lock as quickly as I could—which is still pretty slow—and I got the fuck out of there. I rode north through the Queen Anne Suburbs, winding through historic road, ending up just south of Fremont. 

—And I was scared. I was spooked. I was thinking, my god they might tip over my bike. Which that was a little bit of an irrational fear. But it's not like I had anything else going on that evening. ...I was spooked.

Out there, I saw a dragon, marching its way down the street. —Dragons don't march. But they were marching, making a serpentine trail through a quiet neighborhood. Angry young people, calling for revolution, chanting slogans—woke, awake but mindless. 

Today, Caitlin sent me a picture when I was still making my way home from the gym. There were people gathered outside of a house nearby. I figured it was another protest—and it was. I messaged an acquaintance who lives in that building. And he confirmed that there was a local representative in the building. And that they were trying to speak with the representative. 

I was annoyed. I made my way home. Put my stuff upstairs. And I walked down. I walked through the back entrance. I walked around the building to the front and not more than twenty meters they were there. I walked around the group. I made a quick survey of who was there. Mostly young people. A few black people. 

[Wind and engine noises]

I went back upstairs. Mariah was there speaking with Caitlin. She left. I took a shower. I put on pajamas. 

[Engine idling]

I went down. And there was a line of bicycles. they were just starting to back up. I approached the line of bicycles what exactly they were trying to do. Naturally, more articulate people stepped up (from the small crowd) and started talking. 

[Engine engages 1st gear]

I heard just about everything I expected to hear. They wanted to talk to the local representative. They finally dragged him down to his level, and they spoke with him. And um—they spoke with him. And they said, "We weren't able to speak with him under other conditions." 

And it's like, if he's not willing—. I said, "I'm here. I live in this neighborhood." I pointed to the building that they were infront of; rather, the building that was behind them. And it's like, "This is government subsidized housing. There's a lot of people of color here. This a pretty woke neighborhood. I thikn what you're doing here is counterproductive."

And they said, "No we spoke with Andrew"—something. I don't know his last name. (Andrew Lewis) And they said, "Well, we got you down here." 

And I told them, "I feel alienated from your movement because of this."

And one of the half dozen or so people said, "oh we're so sorryyy you feel alienated." 

Obviously they don't. They do not care what I feel. Which I don't expect them to. They're a fuckin group of people; —a group of people generally doesn't care. And I'm not a black person, so obviously they don't care. I'm just another white person to them, anyway. 

[Engine and starts from first gear, revs high. I say, merging issues in response to the high revs.]

There wasn't much of a conversation. I don't think they were really talking to the representative. Like, if he's not talking to them under normal conditions like town halls, etc. etc. —I mean they're challenging his authority. It's a power move. It's not communication. 

[Engine idiling]

I am now at Dick's. The question is do I want to get food, or do I want to keep going? 

I'm going to keep going. I'll get Dick's on the way back. 

So, um...

[Engine revs]

So there's this one girl in particular, a young black girl—well, mixed race. And shew was antagonizing. Young. [20ish] Adolescent. She had adolescent frustration. And she was surrounded by people enabling her, enabling the means by which she is channeling her frustration. And she made some at hominims (at me). She said, "Get out of here with your flip flops." And she kept talking about my flip flops. And I mean, I was wearing them because I was at home. I was ready to go to sleep. 

[Engine idling, visor opens]

I'm not sure what else there is to say other than, I walked away. I remember saying something like...—I don't remember when I said this, if this was the first time I left or the second: I hope you continue to develop. And as I walked away they said, "Black Lives Matter. Black Lives Matter. Black Lives matter." They wanted me to say Black Lives Matter. It was a power move. —You're with us or you're against us. 

Do black lives matter? Yes. 

Do all lives matter? Yes.

Do I understand the meaning of the phrase—rather—do I understand the meaning of the slogan Black Lives Matter. That's a yes: It is a slogan Colin Kaepernick came up with. Or at least I know it from him. Because black people keep getting shot by the police because there are some fucking serious problems with the police force. I know that. And the entire fucking (Western) world was protesting that for a minute. So I feel like most people know what that means. Or there's just such a political and ideological divide that people don't understand each other at all anymore.

[High wind]

(Unintelligible because of wind) ...this is the final straw for me. BLM is fucking meaningless. It's a fucking slogan that people chant to see which party someone is in. It has nothing to do with black lives anymore. It's just a little fucking political game. It's a little social game. It's not about saving lives. There's a lot of heat and not a lot of light. 

[Engine idling]

I'm still going to do my best to respect people who do the whole Black Lives Matter thing. 

[Engine revs]

—Because there are good people who mean well. unfortunately that phrase "good people who mean well" is universal to a fault—well, no that's not... There are good people who say BLM and think about what it means. And I'm sure they (only) use it in appropriate places. I think the main thing is that BLM is (generally) bullshit and kind-of-fucking-meaningless. 

And they killed it. And by they I mean—that's it—they, all of them, all of us. It just got overused. That's just the lifetime of that sort of thing. These things come and go like animals in a forest. That's what it is as far as I am concerned. 

So, I try walking away—frustrated.

[Engine idling then revving]

Frustrated. 

An angry young black woman insults me as I am walking away. —That's personal. That's personal. That's personal. 

(Sighs)

And so I said, and I felt my voice shaking and my tongue getting in the way, and I said, in anger and fear, tempered by sadness and suffering, "Do you want to make this personal?" And I turned around and made a beeline for her, saying, "Do you want to make this personal?"

A black man—not particularly athletic, somewhere between 220 and 250 pounds,—stepped forward with great energy. I stopped advancing. I stood there. We stood there somewhere on Olympic Place. I looked at him, sizing him up. Sizing the fight.

One beer and the right insult and, hell, all that would have been fair fucking game. He was not particularly scary.

He said, "yeah, I'll make it personal. I'll make it personal right here." He brought a lot of energy

[Engine idling, visor opens]

I have been wanting to fight.

[engine idling, sighs]

I have been wanting to fight. 

[Engine revs, wind]

It's dark out. I'm on Aurora. Someone had their fucking lights out. I tried waving like a madman at them, flashing my high beams at them trying to get them to turn on their fucking headlights. They did not get the message. —There's a metaphor.

So, yeah but uh. 

[Engine idling]

I think if it was just the fight, I think it would have been fun. —Nothing ideological. Not business. Just violence. That's what it would have been. Fuckin' good old fashioned violence.

I'm on Aurora and N 192nd street. It is unremarkable. The air is cold—and suddenly smells like smores, and it's gone. Yeah.

Out of some strange habit I often try to go from fifth gear to an imaginary sixth gear. —I only have five gears.

[Engine idling, then revving.]

Anyway, fighting him would have been for the wrong reasons. I would have fought him because an adolescent black woman wanted to start a fight, one that she could not finish. That man might have done her a disservice. 

Anyway, it was immaturity on her part. So...

[Engine idling then reving.]

Violence feels good.

Sometimes violence is necessary.

As far as the species is concerned, violence itself might be good. 

Somewhere Plato says, "Not even Achilles could have fought to men at the same time." 

There were a lot more than two men. 

Maybe I could have been any one of their asses. Maybe even a few pairs of asses. There were some small people there too. But it wouldn't have done much good for me. 

What did WWII do for the human race?

I'm on Aurora and 212th. I wonder how high these numbers go. 

I hope this is a phase. I hope these people grow past this.

They asked me what I am doing. I didn't have a satisfying answer for them. I said that I am voting and educating myself. What else is there to do?

I said, "I might be having no effect. But you're having a negative effect."

I do actually think we're doomed. Revolution is not the answer. Revolution ain't the answer. That ain't it chief. These people out there are very good with slogans, but they aren't good with guns. 

[Engine idling]

Yeah—[engine revs]

Now, I'm at 196th St SW. Looks like the numbers start going down now. There's a Sherry's. It's like Denny's but somehow not Denny's, which is IHOP but somehow not IHOP. 

[Engine calmly revving as wind blows. Engine idles and revs again.]

I think that there's a good chance that uh these people and the movement they represent will not really amount to very much. Granted it's not something that you can prove or disprove.

(As I type this the following day, they are marching outside again at 1:28pm)

I'm making a left at 176th, just because.

I made an illegal u-turn, so that's fun.

I have yet to see a prostitute on the side of the road. I can only imagine approaching one on a prostitute and saying, sorry I can't let you on without a helmet, that's illegal, maybe next time.

I'm passing the Sherry's again. 

I think it's important to confront these things. I mean, I also feel like I don't have that much of a choice. My spirit won't let me rest; there's a dragon outside. Maybe I'm dramatic. But some part of me thinks there's a dragon outside. 

I passed a police officer. I am going the speed limit. But that own't stop me from experiencing mild and fleeting panic for a brief moment of self awareness, a self illuminating spotlight of consciousness that is the experience of being alerted to the possibility of being found out. 

I wonder if that man, the one who stepped forward to fight, I wonder if he's been to jail. I have no idea.

But I bet most of those people haven't been to jail. 

I've been to jail. 

[Engine idles]

It was a rough weekend. 

It was worse than the psych ward, even though it was shorter. When I went to jail, my soul was still... [engine revs] recovering from the psych ward. 

I met some bad people. 

[Engine idles]

I mean, who am I to judge a man's soul?  But I sure as fuck wouldn't call them good people, though there may have been good people among them.

Yup.

[Engine revs]

224th street SW and Aurora. West Coast Auto Works, used cars, vans trucks. 76 Gas Station. Cash, Regular Gas: 2.74, plus 10 cents for credit. 

[Engine idles]

This bike takes premium. I wonder what that's running. 

228th: Miller Rent-All. [Engine revs] I wonder if they have prostitutes. No. Only heavy machinery. And chainsaws.

The individual is always the exception. But the law of averages is a force to be reckoned with. It is not fate, but my god, it is close to it.

I am unremarkable. You are probably unremarkable, especially if you're reading this. I mean this, objectively...statistically... 

[Wind]

I'm not set up to do anything great—whatever that means. I'm beginning to realize the extent of this. Much of the past two years, especially the past year, has been a realization of my irrelevance to the world. (Unintelligible)

The smell of smores is back. Nice dry logs. Fragrant. —not quite smores, it's a beautiful smell of wood.

I don't even know where I was...

[Egnine idles]

The past year...

[Engine revs hard]

The past year...

[Wind]

I don't know why I ever thought differently. I've always hoped for something more. For purpose. For a unified narrative. For something for it to all make sense—a final moment of achievement, a label, something to say this is it. But that ain't' it, chief. This ain't it, chief. 

I get the sense that the universe—the real big universe— is all possible worlds.

[Engine idles and then revs]

Then, in relation to all possible worlds, our absolute size because meaningless. —At least it does for me. 

It's like comparing yourself to infinity. 

[Engine idles]

It just doesn't make sense. 

North 152nd Street and Aurora: McDonald's, a bus stop, a pot shop, a Korean Calamari place. —A Korean Calamari Place—with an open sign. I don't image they will be open, but my god I will find out. I don't know if this u-turn is legal...

[Engine revs]

Oh, it's by Tandy Leather. That's where I get my leather. Haha. 

Is this it? Nope. [Engine revs] Next block.

I missed the exit. Time to make another u-turn.

Maybe it's a prostitution front. I don't think Caitlin will be happy if I take a prostitute home. I definitely can't afford a hotel and a prostitute. Damn. Maybe next time.

[Engine revs momentarily]

Hae-Nam Kalbi & Calamari, open quite late on a Monday, let's see what this is about.

"Is it open?"

"I think they're open till ten."

"Okay thank you."

I guess that's it—

....

There was no space for reason. There was only power. 

You must grab the beast by the head. 

There is no reason, only will. 

Approach and behold the magnificent terror of the crowd.

...

I do not matter to them.

A voice—no—my voice says, "Get the fuck out of my neighborhood."

I have no reason to say it. I do not need a reason to say it.