💾 Archived View for ashley.cities.yesterweb.org › gemlog › 2024-04-29-eotl.gmi captured on 2024-05-10 at 10:40:49. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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they say night is darkest before dawn. but so is day brightest before dusk. well that's not literally true, but neither is the former. but day and night go on regardless, at the other end of the line.
I gaze into the eyes of human, but their retina grins back unphased. I see their face -- perhaps once fair, now disfigured by indifference. my indifference, that is, not theirs. I can't hope to fathom their difference, or lack thereof. I see their face as through a window clouded by my breath. they look back but I can't see their stare. I'm not entirely sure they can see me, frankly. is it not in the folly of my indifference that I scream against the glass? but it only gets further clouded. but you are heard, at the other end of the line.
the other end of the line.
I am desperate at this point. there's nary a thing more frustrating than trying to reach out to fellow human and finding yourself at the banks of the abyss. they say the abyss is deepest down the first slope. no one says that. I just did. no one heard that.
you may know about "self". the file that started it all.
I can't sleep anymore. ever since that goddamn night. I'm not even going to link it, I don't want to read it. I don't want to think about it. it's all a product of anxiety. the more I think about it the more anxiety builds up, and the less I sleep. it's a vicious circle, really. I take melatonin every day now. it makes me get up super late, and makes me tired and lethargic throughout the whole day. it also makes me practically unable to think straight -- to write. I have receded back to pre self levels. the joy of calm and collected, clear and level-headed thought is simply ineffable. of having things figured out. of understanding why shit feels the way it does...
at least I *think* that's melatonin anyway. I *hope* that's melatonin anyway. I'm *not* gonna take melatonin today. I will brave the night. it better be fucking melatonin, the culprit. as tolerant as I've grown to writing it's the only outlet that I have. I am terrified.
I used to sleep so well... for a brief period of time. I stopped taking melatonin sometime before day 0. days? months? who knows. and then day 0 struck and through its cleansing suffering... at least I slept well. for a time. ah, the day I started this capsule... I was so blisfully ignorant then. I would kill to go back. things were better then.
novelty knows it can't make me tolerant to crying, so instead it makes me tolerant to the things that make me cry. it knows it can't afford for me to cry. the second I'm on the path, the ascent, when I feel it coming imminently, my mind is drawn toward whichever device novelty is going to lead me astray with. shame, perhaps; all manner of insidious things. they say HRT can make you cry...
living in a parallel reality is not fun. I mean it is, but it's also fictional. I would say I have a pretty good imagination. I have spent the better part of my life until now away from the so-called Real World. consensus reality. at first I didn't think about it too much; it was simply a natural part of my existence, which stretches as far back as I can remember. which is pretty far. later, these visions started acquiring a more practical edge -- as escapes, as entertainment; simply to pass the time. but they were always marked with prominent themes of grandiosity and omnipotence. the first big shift, the whiplash, taught me that neither of those things are real. the second big shift, day 0, taught me that you have to actively fight them. and only then you begin to make any meaningful progress.
fighting them is extraordinarily painful. the realization that they are not real is not an sudden explosion -- it is a constant, deafeningly loud grinding that some part of you desperately wants to supress. but you must grind louder. and even as you begin to triumph you must not desist, because grandiosity WILL come back. it always does.
zarathustra must descend and become a man.
I think this is why I find myself drawn so much to nietzche's writing. I can't help but get the impression that he was grappling with similar monsters. I haven't managed to finish a single book of his though. his writing style is far too obtuse, even for me.
man is a line stretched between two ends. zarathustra must reach across to the other end of the line. not become a starchild, kubrick! why are transhumanists so keen on appropiating humanist ideas for their twisted purposes?
they say the internet is the ultimate triumph of the invisible hand of individualism. this is so patently false it's not even funny. the internet is the ultimate triumph of large scale human cooperation. big telcos like their profit margins, sure, but big telcos aren't instrumental to the existence of the internet. I don't think it's too far fetched to say that the internet is humankind's greatest creation, the one ought to make us proudest.
I talk into the line to people across the world. I talk to people across the room. across the world it's the opposite time of day. so it is across the room. the first hop is a big one. the difference between the keyboard and the mouth is gargantuan. I am so much freer talking across the keyboard, to people across the world -- yet somehow they feel just as distant, at the other end of the line.
on some level I know that it's all the same.
and I look at them on the bus, across to the other end of the line. and it's all the same.
they say so much as brushing one's elbow against fellow human is unpleasant. that may be so, but I am so irresistibly drawn toward fellow human as to be unable to function without them. yet fellow human persists shrouded in haze, at the other end of the line.