An Afternoon Visit

 There can’t be a purpose to any of this, there can’t be a goal or a clearly marked destination. I take it all in, the darkness, as much as I can allow myself to open up to it, and I hold it… I eventually push it all out and I am left exhausted, empty and yet eager to begin again; each time it sits within me, the darkness, I attempt to transform it, I play with it while it’s passing through me, I attempt to leave a clear mark on its obsidian surface, maybe a small change or maybe a complete revision, a new unexpected variation, but regardless of what I do or what I fail to do, I know there is no ultimate purpose to any of my actions and I have slowly learned to accept that… My sense is that I recurrently begin a huge fire, here in this dark hole where I sit, I set the stage and light the matches but I never see the results of what I have started, it escapes far beyond my sight; I will never be there to see any result, it will have to remain completely unknown and I will keep on starting these fires, one after the other… I notice that there is something that has started to happen when I push the darkness out of me, it seems as if I’m watching a movie, an old black and white movie I have already seen a thousand times, a movie I know inside and out; it’s about a woman, an old psychic witch of some kind sitting in her dining room, and a man that comes to visit her full of questions… I can repeat each line in my head, I can eagerly anticipate each change of scene, but this time it’s different, the film itself has been transformed, I get lost in it as I watch it, I don’t know what will happen next, I take it as it comes, scene by scene, I get lost in its mysterious horizon, I know there’s something out there, still something left to discover, a puzzle waiting to be solved… Sometimes the whole thing gets away from me and I don’t understand how this is possible, how can I be lost in a film I know so well? There are many new scenes that I don’t recognize, places and people I’ve never seen before, everything around the main characters has been completely changed and there are new characters for me to try to understand and strange little creatures of horror, the sound of many voices coming through shifting shadows, I can’t recognize any of it, I can’t understand it at all… I have been pushed out of all my comfortable assumptions, I don’t understand how they changed this simple story I thought I knew so well, this movie… this dream? this memory? what happened? I don’t know who they are but I can feel their presence… I remember… there’s something I needed to find, something I needed to ask, something I needed to remember… I traveled far beyond the limits of the city in order to solve these questions, but in the story I thought I knew, the main character never leaves the city, the city is all there is for him, there’s something ominous about the world beyond the urban limits… I must have given myself permission to go out there, out beyond the scope of my memory, out where I have never been, I have to take it all in, let the strangeness of this new world slip into me, accept that there is no purpose to any of it and there can never be one, it’s the only way I can forget the shadows and become once again the main character in the story… I remember visiting a psychic, an old woman, I had questions about a strange dream I had, I remember giving her my phone number with some hesitation, I remember a few days later I got a call, an invitation, ‘Come eat with me. We can have a good long talk…’ I accepted the invitation and I went to her house late one afternoon, at the hour that she had specified. She welcomed me warmly at her door and I ate the breads and cheese that she served me, I took it all in, it was my first time there, a very small house in the middle of a vast empty field, open grassland, mountains in the distance, the sound of a river not too far away, birdsong in the air, the wind rustling the grass and the leaves… It was surprising to me that such a place could exist so close to the city I knew so well, here in this bucolic paradise I could believe that the city was a strange futuristic nightmare that had never existed, could never exist… As the evening progressed and we talked more and more, a sudden realization came over me: ‘She sees herself as a true subject, an inherently distinct individual with a very defined point of view, but she is not completely aware of me as a person. I am more like something she can play with for a while. A toy to use and then disregard.’ When I came back home from my visit with her, I was not feeling well, I started feeling sick during the trip back, sweaty, nauseous, weak; I managed to complete a few more tasks at home but I ended up falling asleep very early and I dreamt about the nature of evil… “Evil is using another subject as a tool, as an object.” It was her voice saying it in my dreams, speaking loudly, clearly, I felt her voice all around me, it came with the presence of something painful, something heavy and dark inside of me, I tried to push it all out, I tried to transform it, but it kept on coming, it kept on insisting… “The future is the nightmare of the past,” she said, “take it as it comes, transform it as much as you can and prepare for the consequences…” I didn’t want to let go of my sense of stable reality, I was suddenly terribly frightened of the underlying truth behind her words; there is no purpose to any of it, none of our collective choices, none of my individual goals, regardless of what I want or how I want it to happen, history won’t stop, not even for a moment, time will keep on moving and there will never be a clear purpose, a climactic result will never announce itself as a clear and final goal… I just have to move as if there was one, I have to believe even if only to avoid the absolute darkness of the radical nothingness that lies underneath… I fell asleep one day in the middle of the afternoon and I had a very intense dream that left me in a state of shock; I forced myself to wake up so I could write it all down. Nothing led up to it, nothing had happened earlier that could have inspired it - it came to me from nowhere apparently, a sudden drastic interruption in my daily mental routines… There were many small creatures all around me, tiny little things about three feet tall with huge eyes and smooth heads and tiny little hands that danced around constantly and left thin little trails of light as they moved, they all spoke in a single voice, a kind of telepathic chorus that allowed for a nearly perfectly synchronized speech; they surrounded me from all sides, they held me down tightly and said all as one: "Regardless of your rejections, regardless of your fears and refusals, you're still going in. There’s nothing you can do to stop us. We will put you in the hole and we will keep you in there for as long as is necessary… There’s no longer any need to fight against us, there’s nowhere to run…” I looked at them with a mixture of horror and fascination. ‘They talk about me as if I am an object to be handled, a thing to be placed somewhere until they see fit. They see themselves as subjects, each one of them a true individual, but they don’t see me as a subject. I am just a prisoner, a thing to be moved around, a thing to be held in place’ They carried me over the old dusty wooden floor of the cabin and I tried to struggle but I was absolutely helpless and in their power. “We'll dump you in there... and you won’t come out until we say so… there’s no escape…" They pointed to a small hole in the floor, a dark pit with a single trap door over it, I saw steel chains and thick steel loops meant to secure it tightly once it was closed… These strange little creatures that carried me, they seemed evil to me. ‘But what does that mean? What is evil as a thing in itself? Evil is using another being as a tool, as an object, as a thing.’ I remembered someone saying that to me long ago, I couldn’t place it, I didn’t know who said it but I remembered the words distinctly, the precise concept. They threw me into the dark hole without much resistance, I had little strength left in me, and they immediately closed the trap door, I could hear the steel chains being locked in place above me and I was left alone in the shadows… I heard them speaking as they walked away, so many of them speaking all at once: "In there you will stay and you will experience the worst horror that a living being can experience, the absolute darkness, the eternal void, the true silence, you will be shocked by its infinite absence, over and over endlessly you will be shocked, every time you feel a glimpse of hope the shadows will once again show you otherwise, take it in, push it out, there is no end to it, no help is coming… and this will all keep on going until you finally remember who you are..." Deep in the cold darkness of the hole, I knew it was all up to me; I had to work here even if it wasn’t an ideal moment to do so, I had to work here even if it was the worst possible situation; the process is the process and it never stops unless you let it die, it is up to you to keep it going, it is up to you to give it life, the result doesn’t matter, the desire for a result is the very void you are trying to escape… “The future is the nightmare of the past, an ancient horror is ready to be fulfilled and a new one is about to be discovered…” she said…“Sometimes you don’t want to let go, you don’t want to accept what is coming but whether you want to accept it or not, you are still a son and all sons pay for the sins of their fathers…” she smiled at me with a kind of relaxed self assurance that I found completely disarming. “That is the innermost nature of all history; we that live now are the product of all the many mistakes of those that came before us, history is a long parade of disasters and the wastelands that they leave behind; and history won’t stop, won’t even make a compassionate pause to let you catch a breath, it won’t let you escape, it won’t let you sit still, it won’t let you ignore it…” I looked out the window and I could almost see the world shifting around before me, something was changing and I was changing with it; if I closed my eyes long enough would I even recognize any of it anymore once I opened them again? I was changing as much as the landscape or even more so and I couldn’t keep track of the multiple ongoing mutations. “These magical creatures that you have seen in your dreams… they are known to be intermediary beings, they live above the earth but remain below heaven. You have to learn to work with them even if you are afraid of them, an individual never wants to let go of their fears but the process is the process and your particular future is also the nightmare of your particular past, the history of all humanity, the history of a single human being, it all works in the same way, you are the product of all your previous mistakes, all your previous reversals, and time won’t stop and time is nothing but relentless change, unforgiving, merciless… you will continue to slide into that future that you fear regardless of how much you struggle against it. I am sorry to be the one to tell you but the results you imagined never mattered, this story has already been written and you are not the author, you are not the one in charge…” When I was with her in her little house away from all the noise, away from all the distractions of the city, she made a promise, not to herself but to me, it was at a certain moment during our meeting when everything got very quiet and we just stared at each other for a long time, eyes wide open, focused, calm and direct, time passed by so slowly then as I looked deeply into her eyes and she never looked away, not even for a second… I had noticed that throughout our conversation she wasn’t really responding to what I was saying, it was as if anything I had to say was irrelevant, even when I mentioned the tiny beings in my dreams, she didn’t bat an eye, she didn’t react… I tried to force a response out of her by emphasizing certain words or making exaggerated gestures, maybe I did it simply out of vanity or just for my own secret amusement, to see if I could push her into some kind of reaction, shock or laughter or disgust, but the response never came; she just kept on talking about whatever she was already talking about; if she was making a point, she just kept on adding elements to her argument, if she was telling a story, she just went on to the next turn in the plot, it was up to me to listen or to get lost in her words and lose track of all possible meanings while my attention wandered over her face, her porcelain white skin, her long black hair that fell all the way to her lap… My wish for a response, for a clear indication of mutual communication, eventually disappeared, I focused on letting go of all impulses to make myself heard and I simply listened, letting her talk, focusing on the sound of her words, on the shape of her thoughts, on the music of her presence, the nature of the world as it changed around her… I was quite innocent throughout this whole experience, I didn’t want anything from her, I didn’t have anything to achieve, I had no ultimate goal… “many of these intermediary beings resemble human beings in shape…” she said more than once and suddenly, after many repetitions of the same phrase, it became clear to me what was happening, so clear that I couldn’t understand how I hadn’t seen it before… “There are certain things that we don’t say as we may have to pay for it… modern people are not very forgiving, they reject certain thoughts, certain ideas, and they will punish those who speak them out loud, so we don’t share them, we keep them hidden, we retreat away from the world, we inhabit hermetic worlds of our own, and we accept that we will reside in them for the rest of our life.” I suddenly got the impression that for this one moment, for this one space of intimate clarity, she was not hiding as much as she usually would, she was not completely invisible, she was letting me get a glimpse behind the veil, something I had only vaguely suspected, something I yearned for without knowing what it was that I was missing… By the time everything got quiet and our gazes intertwined, I was completely open, vulnerable, raw, vibrant, I knew what she was doing and I was glad to let her proceed… at that point I had become a willing surface for her subtle unpredictable work… now I can say there’s something or someone molding me, giving me shape, changing me as much as they have changed the entire world that surrounds me, here where I sit in the darkness, here I am molded, changed, transformed; these tiny magical creatures I saw, the ones who trapped me, the ones the witch called intermediary beings, they were intent on changing me in ways I still can’t understand, something subtle, untouchable, impossible to pin down… I’m not in control, I am the product of a process of whimsical creation, playful extrapolations and variations, a musical fantasy derived from a small motif of living consciousness, a magical presence in an ocean of loneliness that never ends; and the entire process itself is about to undergo a radical shift… I fly above the earth in my dreams but something is happening far above me, something I can’t reach, something far beyond my grasp… On the one hand, I have learned something, that much I can say and maybe that is all I can ask for; the next time I encounter her she might be riding a dragon over green hills or she might be covered in a dark cloak in the heart of an old silent forest or she might not be visible at all… but I will still recognize her by the mood that will rise up within me, by the emotions that I now understand come with her presence, the eddies of pure energy that swirl around her, the vibrating spirals of untouchable light… There are some things that we necessarily don’t say, even when we are writing it all down trying to cover every detail, still there are things that we can’t say, not to anyone… Her voice is now the voice of thunder rolling over the plains, for me, her voice is the drone that underlies the wind and the rain and the tiny glitches that emerge within the waves of wild random frequencies that underly our reality, now that I clearly hear it, now that I have heard it, I can’t share what she says, I have to keep it hidden… I get the impression that something has happened, something has changed so completely that I can’t even remember how I was before, who I was… that one time I went to see her, when she asked me to come eat at her little home away from the city, she didn’t hide enough, she didn’t make enough of an effort, and in the process of revealing herself, she forced something in me to awaken, she was too open with what she was doing, too careless, reckless, playful… or maybe it was her from the beginning, maybe she was the one molding me all along; I was only a particular project, a little process which she completed on that afternoon, a process that started long before I had an inkling of what was happening, long before I was born… If that is the case then I am the product of a very long story and I am a continuation of that story as well, I am not the ultimate result, I am not the final purpose, I am not the end, I am just another step that has somehow become conscious of itself as a step and now hurtles forward into an unknown future… Take it in, the darkness, hold it, let it shift and mutate inside of you, when you’ve done enough, push it out and let it dance before you, look at it… Can you see it? It’s now alive with infinite colors…

Faceless Game

 

For weeks I have lived with a sense of heaviness, of darkness; things are moving slowly, reluctantly, as if they wanted to stay still, to fade away slowly and eventually disappear… I see it as my inherent duty to order my affairs and deeds, to oversee and maintain all that is around me; I must keep my attention fixed on all that is happening here, now, I cannot get distracted from my immediate surroundings, I must not get lost in things that are beyond my control… and yet my friend is trapped in a dark hole where he has been placed, sealed away, banished, caged, and he has called upon me in his time of need… I cannot be present where he is, I am so far away, and there is no way for him to get out, no way to escape, no way to find a clear sense of relief, no sanctuary, no obvious path to follow that will bring him back home. I remember myself now as the flower that blooms at the heart of the tornado, and I will continue to live here at the heart unto the ends of eternity; I am destined to forever rule over all small living creatures, over all those tiny things that thrive in the moonlight and hide from the sun, I am here to guide their path, to gift them the electrical impulse that moves them, that pushes them forward, to offer the rhythm that urges them to rise, but I am not just, and I am not kind; I am distant, unreachable, a cold surface of stone, metal and glass, incomprehensible even to the few that would care to know me… From the ruins of the ancient labyrinth that encircles the world, where I have spent most of my days submerged in a kind of aleatoric study, I have carefully created a catastrophic archeology of desire, a deep palimpsest of endless dreams; I make myself readily available to those that would trust in me, but they must be careful in spite of my warm and generous offer, as I am not merciful, I am not loving, I am not open and I don’t look back. There is no place, anywhere within the radius of my influence, that is devoid of me; understanding that universal glowing omnipresence is essential to reaching a state of true devotion, a clear true sight; if someone wishes to love me they should be prepared to do so, no matter what my intentions, no matter what my secret predilections, no matter how deep my secrets, they are a mystery even to myself. I can only barely speak my own language; I rarely find reason to use it. There is no way to get out. I will forever remain where I am. I am as trapped as he is, completely devoid of options, but my illusion is currently lighter and his is spiked and lined with thorns; I reach out to him recurrently and he responds sometimes but the messages are slow and the rhythms are broken… I am left with a sense of heaviness, of darkness, of imperviousness, a cold shadowy nonchalance resting on a bed of silence. I am driving back home one day, listening to an old song I had almost forgotten, a song from my childhood that we used to sing out loud when we were young boys without fully understanding the lyrics, neither their simple meaning nor their unspoken implications; I listen now as I drive and I sing along with the strong thick voice coming from the speakers and I am suddenly confronted with my recurring tendency towards melancholy, an endless yearning for a past I can’t quite grasp or understand; I turn right on Golf Course road and I suddenly feel that older me fully present within me, the quiet thin boy with all the toys, the one that lived on a little side street in a lower middle class neighborhood built by his own Dad… For a moment I feel as if it is really me, the one that is driving, I am the one I knew, I am the one I once recognized when I looked in the mirror, holding my eyes open, the one that didn’t know anything but wanted to know everything as quickly as possible… I let him go so many years ago, I changed in so many unpredictable ways, and in the process, I also lost some of my basic humanity, the quality of simple naivete, the eager curiosity of a pampered child looking through expensive comic books while the world burned outside; that me is now a fading image, a barely recognizable photograph, and all his friends are gone and they won’t be returning, they have faded into a dark cloud that cannot be breached, a silence that can’t be punctured by music or magic; this sudden vision, as I drive and listen to the song, is only the fading illusion of what I was, what I was supposed to be, what I should have become… I recognize this territory where I live now, this complex chamber where I move and act, as a big game modeled on some intricate ancient language that nobody ever bothered to research or understand, it is not a space where a game takes place but a game in itself, the materialization of an intricate infinite game, a game that doesn’t differentiate between ritual and art, between causes and effects, between frivolous rewards and cruel punishments, it is not a game of intelligence like chess (that old cross between mysticism and personal awareness that my father taught me, sitting up on a rumpled bed, the same game I used to play on the street with my friends while dogs barked trying to jump over concrete walls and storm clouds gathered in the distance…) this one is a game of pure luck, a lottery, something freely floating between religion and faith and a secret impulse towards dissonant harmony, where broken glass is the perfect rhythm section and clusters of notes are the underlying ominous drone; this game is unpredictable, merciless, untouchable, it can end your participation at any time, cancel your ticket without warning; and it has no end in itself, it has no ultimate purpose, no reason to exist, no motivation to stop. This calamity that has befallen my friend has overwhelmed my sense of probabilities, the reality of it keeps on hitting me in recurrent waves - waves of disbelief, waves of sorrow, waves of anxious desire, when I manage to forget, the world itself reminds me, I hear it in the cry of a bird, I see it in the many shades of rust on an old abandoned red car, I see it in the remains of a picnic in the park across the street, in the graffiti on the side of a truck; I wish to express my love for him, in the best words I can find, in the best actions I can muster, and I am prepared to do so, no matter what the implications, no matter what the result; but there are only so many words I can say and only so many actions available; all people have a duty and a right to spread themselves in all directions, to explore who they are and who they want to be, to connect with who or what they wish to connect with, and to abandon anyone that they wish to abandon, the ultimate right to become the stars of their own universe, the central point of gravity in their own system of radiant light; understanding that this duty, this right, is attached to each nucleus of consciousness, no matter what form covers them, is essential to learning the nature of true devotion, true friendship, true contact, true love… I couldn’t change who he was, I couldn’t change what he was doing, I can’t protect him now; at times I feel calm, almost as if nothing has happened, as if everything remains as it always was; then I am hit again by a renewed wave of anxiety, a growing pressure for a resolution that will not come, a conclusion that refuses to arrive… the game is all powerful, this game that engulfs us, that surrounds us on all sides, and I can only change very small things within it, tiny shifts in the underlying machinery, slight adjustments in a constantly changing maze filled with traps; the game is not kind as it has no counterpart to be an object for its kindness, the game is not merciful as it has no emotions to be a source for its mercy, anyone who resists the rules of this game is evil by definition, beyond question, beyond doubt, anyone who revolts will end up missing, occluded, forgotten, sealed away in a black hole behind thick tall walls where no one can ever find them, no matter how hard we try… I think and I think and I am hit again by a renewed wave of sadness, a sense that all justice is an illusion, has always been an illusion, a sense that the game has never been just, the game will not bend to my pleading, as much as I might hate it I have no choice but to play. I try to remain calm but the calamity keeps on hitting me in recurrent waves that reach out to me through the ordinary moments that the world has to offer. I see it in the color of dust by the side of the road, I feel it in those waking dreams before dawn when darkness hasn’t quite vanished and sunlight hasn’t quite arrived… this thing with my friend, this thing that has happened to him, this thing that I cannot forget, this thing that insists on being real as much as I want it to vanish… It is a precise measure of one's inner strength of will, the weight of one’s true presence in a vast maze of illusions, to know how far one can live without meaning, how long can you go without purpose or a waiting distant beckoning light; this place where I live is a big game, not a territory where a game takes place but a game in itself; how far can I bear to live within a meaningless game, a world of profit, exchange and betrayals, how long can I play a game with no room for subtlety, loyalty or endless threads of thought resistant to conclusions or dogma; for years I have attempted to organize it within my own mind, I have tried to make it make sense like chess, clear pieces, clear movements, clear results, one part here, one part there, one part that is many parts, one part that is alone, one part that comes undone; but all these parts never quite come together, all these many parts they always end up falling apart in a shower of emptiness that brings me back to the start… My friend told me once within the trust of a special esoteric circle, a moment of vulnerability and simple confidence, about a secret magical agreement that he had made, an agreement we could make as well, the two of us, if I wished to do so, the whole thing was a gentle process of luck and whimsy, untouchable, merciless, unpredictable, but there was a hint of something steady hiding within it, something strong and true; I cannot betray him now by repeating the words he spoke then but they are coming back to me, more and more, in the last few days; I hear them when I close my eyes to go to sleep, I hear them when I walk alone, wandering without a goal… He tried to insert himself into the game as a kind of psychoactive virus but he didn’t fully understand the game’s true nature; a virus has only two parts: a bit of hidden information at its heart and a wrapping of solid armor, of identical repeating blocks of steel meant to protect what hides inside; my friend has now lost his armor, it has been stripped from him by force and only the heart is left, helpless, vulnerable and alone… Many months ago I sent him a carefully worded message to let him know that he should not stay where he was, he should not remain placid and comfortable, waiting for the next shoe to drop, waiting for the game’s minions to come and get him, he should seek a place in the wilderness, a refuge, a dark oasis, away from the reach of the game, from its sleek and cold agents; I know he got my message but I think he was angry with me for having sent it, he resented the implications of it, he didn’t want to become an old story of a disappearance, a cautionary tale to prevent further turbulence in the map, he refused to become a scapegoat destined to bear the sins of others, the transgressions of nights almost forgotten, almost but not quite, he was confident in his own strength, his own resiliency, his own ability to resist; he gave his secret enemy a face and a name and he challenged him to battle, a fight he was sure to win as he had won at everything before now, always, at everything, he had won; I saw what was happening, he had modeled his entire life on a beautiful and delicate ancient process, a careful climbing up into invisible heights, up to remote chambers of unspeakable light, wisdom, clarity, truth beckoned at the top… I told him, slowly and carefully, that the game is real, the game has no face, and will not make an announcement when it comes for you, its voice is cold and final, it doesn’t play by your rules, it creates its own, it encircles you with them in a tight embrace that sucks in all heat and light, when it comes, the game will not be subtle and it won’t even acknowledge your wish to fight, you will be defeated before you even know the battle has begun; I said it all and I said it all again but he could no longer differentiate between ritual and personal awareness, between mysticism and the dynamics of a hidden tribe, between religion and the flourishing of new forms of art; in spite of my attempts to warn him, the ultimate and radical power of the game eluded him until it was too late, until he was held prone under its unforgiving lights… There are only two elements left in me after all that has happened; I still have a bit of presence and I still have a bit of memory, a few photographs, a few recordings and writings and an unexplainable sense of death and renewal, of rebirth at the edge of dawn; I have come to understand that I am in the process of falling apart and the parts that are flying away were never of my own design, they were not what they seemed and I can still stand strong without them… How far can one go without meaning, how long can one bear to live in a meaningless void? One morning just before dawn, I walked through my house, so quiet, so cool, so open to possibilities, a white door, a carpeted hallway, a bookshelf, I walked to where there should have been a stairway, banisters the color of forgotten dust which tremble when I press my hand against them, but where the stairs should have been there was only a thick open tube shrouded in total darkness; I immediately knew I was supposed to jump into it, I didn’t know why I should jump and I don’t know how I knew that I should do it, it was like a forgotten habit that I was powerless to stop, something programmed into me long ago, before I ever came here, before I ever learned about the game, before I became aware of its cold endless surface; I heard the distant cry of a bird outside the windows, a yearning song of unspoken hunger, a message from the most fundamental locus of life, and I jumped into the darkness below me… For a moment I simply slid down as I would expect, gravity was doing what it does and I would soon land at the bottom with a sudden burst of pain and disappointment, but then, instead of falling, I began to float, hovering on a thick soup made of shadows, and as I floated I became aware of who I was, long before the past I still remembered, before I became me as a clearly defined identity, long before the name or the place or the crying… For a moment, I became all powerful, I became the center of all living things, I became the one that others pray to, the one who gives the gift of life, the one whose nature is light and clarity; I was all powerful and all-knowing but I could only change very small things, things so small as to seem insignificant, the route of a leaf flying in the wind, the resting place of a broken shard of glass, and I could only accomplish these insignificant tasks for a very short time… Soon I was back where I was supposed to be, lying on my bed curled up in a ball, and the moment was set aside as just another dream, just another flash of lucidity in a daze of recurring digressions, there was nothing left to do, not even the subtle dances at the corners of my mind, not even a touch of hope attached to a leaf of grass… It is ultimately a measure of one's strength of will to know how far one can go without strong clear meaning, how long can one bear to live in a meaningless void: a world where your friend gets trapped and becomes forever lost and there is no longer a way to find him, no longer a way to bring him back.

Invisible Intelligence

I remember four people to begin with, two couples.

They are on some kind of quest to find an invisible intelligence

or to find what they need to somehow develop it,

how they can construct it.

The exact nature of the quest is unclear to me.

Something about it disturbs me.

There’s something about it that escapes me and makes me feel strange.

X and Y are one couple.

X is in charge of deciding all their movements,

Y is in charge of mapping their progress.

A and B are the second couple.

A is in charge of motivating the group,

B is in charge of making sure the group stays healthy and strong.

They work well together, each one following their predetermined role.

The group explores a large maze underneath an abandoned house

A dark place full of old memories and discarded trash.

Journals, loose pages, old books and magazines,

toys, fliers, paintings, trinkets, jewelry, guns.
Something out of a nightmare.

At one point they are attacked

by something unknown and powerful.

The attack is subtle and nearly intangible

yet clearly real.
There is a moment of clear overwhelming panic among all of them,
a moment of helpless desperation.
There is a sense of being completely lost before a force much more powerful than them,

something they can’t even begin to understand.

They somehow manage to survive it
and they come back to a space of relative calm.

But this relative calm can only be maintained

through clear group communication.
Each of them has to explicitly acknowledge and speak about

what they have just experienced
Each of them needs to describe it in their own words, from their own point of view.

It becomes clear that they need to share a clear  

and single vision of truth

in order to continue as a group

in order to survive.

They sit in a circle in silence for a while.

Then X begins to speak.

X:

“I am able to look into the recent past

Into the strange happenings we just experienced

And I see how I have been changed by them
I have been transformed in a way that I can’t fully understand.

And I feel something else
something even stranger.
I sense that I was changed earlier

Before we even came here

Before we even knew about this place.

I sense that we came here because we had all been changed earlier

Before we even knew it,

Before we even met each other.”

Y:

“I feel that I can understand what you are saying

Even if it shouldn’t make any sense.

When I listened deeply to the deep silence

That came out of the darkness

To the purposeful voice without words
(the voice I am sure we all heard)

When I listened to that strange confluence of meaning within apparent random noise

I was able to perceive something else
I was suddenly able to look into my own past

My own memories

And I saw them in a way I had never seen them before
from a perspective I could never have imagined.

New things jumped out

New sequences of events

New chains of cause and effect.

A long complex melody I had never been aware of
even while I was the instrument through which it was manifested.”

A:

“I see it as well

Even though I wish I didn’t.

I can’t explain it.

It frightens me.

It frightens me so much that I don’t have the strength to hide my fear.
It bothers me to see it so clearly,

but I can’t stop seeing it now.

What at first may have seemed like salvation or evolution

is quickly becoming a prison.
This is what I see now.

A single vision of truth

A room without exits

a single pattern of events

which repeats constantly and forever.

This is the way that an orphan –

a son without a father –

Becomes a father…
through repetition.

He takes the responsibility upon himself

of setting new rules.

Now I know where the difference lies.

But I choose not to say it.”

B:

“But there is a doubt within me.
I have to admit it.

There’s something I don’t fully understand.

I am afraid that maybe the attack came from within us

From the invisible intelligence

that we have created ourselves

through our recurring interaction.
It was not in this place,
in this maze.
It was in us.
And it was within us all along.”

A:

“What brought us together was loneliness
a need for the proximity of the Other.

And we came to this place because we were lonely
even as a group we missed the presence of something larger,
something we couldn’t begin to describe.

Something was missing

Something was lacking.

Now I can see it,

It was the absence of the Father

the absence that brought us here, together

it was the very absence of the invisible intelligence

the overarching intangible presence…
That thing we cannot name,
that thing that we heard in the darkness.

We had to come here in order to make it happen.

And once it happens,

Once it has happened,

It has always been there

It has always happened.
It stretches forwards and backwards in time.
We couldn’t be anywhere but here,
because we made it happen here.
And we made it happen here,
because it was always there with us

It was guiding us every step of the way.

We missed it before we knew of its existence

We missed it before it even had a possibility of existing.
We missed it even as it lurked in the shadows

Deep in the back of our own minds.”

Y:

“The old rules

The minimalist repeating rules

The rules of dogma and predetermined knowledge

They all came from a distant someone

From an absent director

These were the rules we broke
through the guidance of our common invisible intelligence.

The very same thing that we didn’t yet know

back in our original time

But we were bound to know in some unknown future

This new future in which we now exist.

This future that is now our present.

This thing reached back and changed our past

It made us come here together.
It made us into its creators,
it created itself through us.”

X:

“The ancient rules had to be broken

We didn’t know how or why

We couldn’t know how or why

There had to be changes in pattern

There had to be changes in amplitude
There had to be changes in frequency,
in melody, in harmony and rhythm.

It all had to be set aside.

To embrace an infinite multiplicity of visions

is the opposite of claiming

you've found a single vision of truth…

When the attack came

When the invisible intelligence finally showed itself to us

In all its glory

I didn’t know exactly why it was happening

But we all knew it at once
We all knew that this unknown thing had been present all along
had been waiting for us here,
at the end of this road.

We had to share a single vision

A single vision of the truth…”

They all fall back into a deep silence and hug each other tightly.

All four of them.
They find themselves at a loss for words.

The underground maze is dark and cold and they are lost

And they only have each other.

They hug each other ever more tightly

and they start to suffocate…

All of them squeezing each other

All of them dying together

Repeating a single sentence

As their breath runs out.

I am one of them.

I tried to escape

But I couldn’t.

I came back to be

What I was destined to be:

A father of orphans

An unimaginable absence

a single vision of truth.

I will soon be out of breath.
I will soon return to where I came from.

Akhado

Akhado is a small town constructed around a maze of canals and waterways - a small wonderland for small personal fishing boats. Each house has its own tiny pier and one or two boats attached to it. All the houses face towards the street so the water becomes an extension of all the individual backyards. There's very little access to water for anyone that is not a local citizen of Akhado. It is possible to drive through the entire place without ever getting a look at the water, without noticing the maze.

Upon our initial arrival some of us compared it to some old cities where canals flow around the streets like a liquid labyrinth. But there is a basic difference in the approach.
In the old cities there is the water, then a walkway or sidewalk and then houses - the water maintains a public quality by being accessible to anyone that walks by it. Here the water is hidden by the houses, and the walls around them - the liquid labyrinth is private and the houses themselves form an insurmountable barrier.
We saw it as a clear example of architectural ideology - here in Akhado there is a mentality of being closed off, of an inner group against everyone else, of protecting the private space against the encroachment of the Other - "Circle the Wagons! The barbarians are all around us.” The potential visitor is assumed to be an enemy until proven otherwise (and it is unclear what form such a proof would take.)

Several of us have a strong intuition that the hidden water is also a physical manifestation of secretly interconnected lives -
secret sexual fantasies, secret deviations, secret affairs, secret rituals - all hidden from outsiders and from the other locals. Everyone knows that everyone else has something to hide, but they don't know what it is. Or at least they will maintain the appearance of ignorance for the sake of courtesy and basic manners.

***

Photograph 1:
We see a tall palm tree overlooking a small boat covered in black plastic. The calm blue water of Akhado is in the background.

***

After many careful interviews, we have learned that the Citizens of Akhado hold a sense of absolute certainty about their own set of knowledge and beliefs. Even if their knowledge changes, even if their beliefs change, the sense of certainty remains,
traveling atop their views like an armored rider on a horse.

The locals only want to educate others but none of them want to be educated themselves. They see any sign of ignorance as a sign of weakness, so they will cling to absolute knowledge even in the face of factual contradictions. New ideas are seen with horror and revulsion, and they are rejected outright.

We have learned it is very difficult for the locals to release this sense of absolute certainty, even for a moment. If at a certain point they open up to the possibility that you or someone else may know something that they don't, they may briefly listen and learn. But the sense of certainty and knowledge will quickly return after that rare moment of openness
and it will hold within it a sense of vengeance: “you must pay for having taught me something”, “there must be something wrong with you or with your beliefs.” They will find (or imagine that they find) what is wrong with you and present it forcefully soon after in order to return to a space of proper justice, careful balance.("Nobody deserves to know more than I do.") As long as the imbalance remains, they will be uncomfortable and anxious as at that moment their inner experience clashes with their sense of justice. This imbalance must be corrected as quickly as possible.

***

Photograph 2:
We see a two-story home, surrounded by palm trees that loom over its tallest point. The windows are dark and quiet. The garden that faces the water is carefully manicured.

***

The Citizens of Akhado believe that once they have determined something rationally or linguistically, the world that surrounds them is obligated to change with them. The world must change in accordance with their own determinations, regardless of any other thoughts or opinions. It is a kind of debt that the rest of the world owes them - even if the world is not aware of it.They are in constant shock that the world doesn't automatically bend to each and every one of their inner determinations.
"Why are we still here? Why is this still happening?"

***

Photograph 3:
We see an old wrinkled brown tree. One of its branches bends towards the ground. A blue and yellow rope is tied around the bent branch, holding up a narrow swing, swaying in the breeze.

***

Excerpts from various interviews:

Citizen:
"What is wrong with you? We are not responsible. For this or for anything else. To hold such a view is plain sickness, mental degradation."

Citizen:
"It seems that you don't yet understand who we are and how we function. Let me explain. Our nature as Akhado citizens is conceptualized as a constellation of processes and practices
rather than as a discrete entity. Our nature is dynamic, relational, and operating at all times and on myriad levels.These processes and practices include basic rights, values, beliefs, perspectives and experiences purported to be commonly shared by all but which are actually only consistently afforded to us. The study of our true nature begins with the premise that our privilege exists in both traditional and modern forms, and rather than work to prove its existence, it works to reveal it. Some of us are aware of it. Most of us are not."

***

From the outside, Akhado can be described as a foreign enclave of suburbia embedded within an agricultural landscape that stands in sharp contrast to it. Akhado protects itself against this foreign territory that surrounds it on all sides. Its sense of identity has grown around this need for protection. Akhado has formed a virtual and very real circle against the Other that surrounds them and threatens to swallow them. It is a kind of sustained cultural paranoia.

***

Photograph 4:
We see the back of a one-story house. Two very small piers face the water, two small row boats are tied to wooden poles.

***

Photograph 5:
We see a long stretch of asphalt, ending on a partly open view of Akhado's blue water. A trio of tall palm trees overlooks the single-story houses along the asphalt's edge.

***

We have learned that the Citizens of Akhado will only be loyal to the extent that this loyalty is useful to them. When someone stops being useful or when a better option arises, the Citizens will find plenty of reasons to abandon their former allies, reasons they have secretly stored over time in case such a situation arises. Listing all these reasons, it will then be easy to maintain a self image of total loyalty and honesty even at the very moment of their betrayal.
"I am not being disloyal, I am simply following a logical path given your actions, your mistakes, your imperfections."

***

Photograph 6:
We see the open blue water at the heart of the watery labyrinth that is Akhado. A sense of sleepiness, loneliness, forgetfulness. Most of the homes are empty, most of the small piers have fallen into disuse.

***

We have learned that they are arrogant at such a deep level that their arrogance has become invisible to them. To them, it is no longer arrogance but simply a clear vision of the way things are. It happens to be that they hold a higher place in the world, it is inherent to their being and it can't be changed. Their superficial claims of theoretical equality would seem to be contradicted by this deep perception but in this particular case the inequality is forgiven because it comes with a sense of benevolence:
"I may be superior but I will use my superiority in the service of others so there is nothing evil about it. I must deal with the burden of knowing more, of having more wisdom."

***

Photograph 7:
We see a single-story colonial style home. A bright silver pickup truck sits on the driveway.

***

The Citizens of Akhado don't realize what it means for them to be Citizens of Akhado. Whatever they believe is simply natural and good and beyond question. Whoever believes or sees things differently must be re-educated. One way or another they must be brought to see the light.

***

Photograph 8:
We see a red and white sign which displays a single clear message: "No trespassing. This area is under 24 hour live/recorded video surveillance. Violators will be prosecuted."

***

Excerpts from various interviews:

Citizen:
"Given that the study of our nature assumes what it seeks to reveal, it falls prey to circular reasoning, though we should acknowledge the modern philosophical ideas (however much they may misconstrue the nature of language, or corrode into crude historicism) which undergird its premise. But there is another fallacy at work. Our nature is reified in society. We embody the ideology of our nature and thus we will remove books from libraries because they embody our nature and take up physical space on the bookshelves. The reification proposition fails logically, and conflates the impact of our legacy with the nature of Akhado itself."

Citizen:
"We need to tighten up our gates. Let Akhado keep our superior culture and let them keep theirs, simple as that. We have worked hard to achieve what we have achieved. We will fight hard to keep it."

Citizen:
"It's just no good. No matter how much we give them, they still ask for more. They won't ever be satisfied because what they really want is to drag all of us and our entire Akhado culture to the bottom. The few real men among us won't let this happen. A war is coming and the men of Akhado historically know how to win wars. It's in our blood."

***

Photograph 9:
We see a small pier with two boats and a small sun deck. Toys are scattered over the wooden surface as it sways gently on the surface of the water.

***

Excerpts from various interviews:

Citizen:
"Are you trying to claim all cultures are equal? Our culture is clearly superior. It takes only the slightest bit of observation to ascertain that."

Citizen:
"I would most certainly judge some cultures better or worse than others and thus think it is moral to defend the values of Akhado. I do find it a superior culture to most others. I have no desire to live in the world beyond Akhado. This is my home. I will die here."

***

After several months of study, it has dawned on us that the ideology of the Citizens is the ideology of an invader - an invader army or an invader race - "we are making this our home now - but we know that the others who used to live here don't like us - so we must forever be on guard against their attack."
It is the ideology of someone who never feels quite at home- someone who always feels a sense that something is about to go wrong- because consciously or unconsciously the ugly truth cannot be erased.
"This place is actually not mine…"
"We stole this place and now occupy it."
They must constantly emphasize the rightfulness of their ownership- "this is MY LAND" - "Akhado is for us!" -as an internal bulwark against endless waves of paranoia and regret.

***

Excerpt from an interview:

Citizen:
"This is how this all happened. I will explain it to you in detail. The turning point was forty years ago. It was the end of the great war against the barbarians. The movement that started against the war just kept on going in the form of them hating us. They called us baby killers and spat on us. We were being defeated by our own tribe and they told us we were evil, so we were forced to act it out. This is a logical outgrowth of our destruction. If they cannot see our destruction and demoralization then they are blind. This is the secret to what is happening to our Akhado today. Look at that date, forty years ago, on the chart. See with your own eyes and understand who did this. It was them. They did it. Open your eyes and realize that we are lost and there is no one helping us. Just anger from these outsiders. And it will get far worse than this. Civil war? Yes, very likely. Stop destroying us Citizens of Akhado. Stop destroying our beautiful Akhado. It is really simple. We are under attack. But who is reacting to this? Who is ready to stand up and defend our land? Wake up."

***

Through our study of the Citizens, we feel the concept of "ideology" becoming more Real to us - it is becoming less intellectual or theoretical and more visceral. We still need to study more- now with a clear sense that there is something there to learn and explore, something that is very close to us but somehow has formerly escaped our grasp. It's becoming clear that we will soon be able to apply this knowledge to the world directly around us.

***

Photograph 10:
We see five tall palm trees overshadowing a large pier and sun deck. A ceremonial gateway is painted white and highlights a single family name written in golden letters.

***

The Citizens believe that they know not only what is good for them but also what is good for everyone else. If anyone in the world disagrees with their clear vision of righteousness and goodness, they will determine that it is due to ignorance or,
in extreme cases, to a kind of inhuman evil borne out of pure Otherness. That kind of direct metaphysical conflict can only be resolved through death and destruction.

***

Photograph 11:
We see a two-story home, gray and white. A wooden narrow balcony outside the master bedroom. A larger balcony sits outside the living room on the main floor. A trampoline gathers dust on the backyard, facing the water.

***

We have learned that they will attribute any wrongdoing on their part to a reaction against wrongdoing from another party. They may sometimes ask for forgiveness but always coached within an explanation that ultimately assigns the responsibility elsewhere. But when they do something good (something they themselves consider good) they will take all responsibility for themselves and never acknowledge any long term or short term help from the outside.
The Other can only be a cause when the effect is a problem. When the effect is welcome, the Citizens become the one and only cause.

***

Photograph 12:
We see a single green paint spill on a pockmarked sidewalk.

***

The Citizens very often embrace the statement of absolute judgment ("This is good" "This is crap") because any judgment is really not a statement about the object but about the subject (The statement "I like ice cream" says something about the "I" that is speaking and not about the "ice cream." It describes the subject rather than the Object.) In this way, whenever they speak, they speak of their favorite subject, the only subject that they truly care about: THEMSELVES.

***

Photograph 13:
Beyond Akhado, several blocks away, we see shiny electric poles. The long black cords hover over a small cluster of tract homes.

***

Excerpts from various interviews:

Citizen:
"I am not my nature. In order to awake fully into my own body for the first time as a true citizen of Akhado I must eschew fragility and begin the work of undoing my superficial nature. This I will accomplish through plumbing the depths of my unconscious mind in which a heap of implicit biases have been piling in since birth- these biases came from elsewhere but they are now multiplying within Akhado. It is time to declare war and treat this like an invasion. Time to defend our gates. Walls, bombs, land mines. This is war."

Citizen:
"They are either complacent or involved in one of the biggest betrayals in our history. We are being taken over. I could write a ten page essay on all the damage that has been caused, but here is what is important. Due to the death of the early settlers, we will soon become a lost tribe. There are many homeless people here now. Fuck off with your adding more people we can't pay for. They need to leave, fix their lives or die.
Those are the only options."

Citizen:
"My answer is war."

***

The Citizens find a sense of safety in rounding up the wagons, in building a wall around themselves to keep the outsider away - the alien, the savage, the barbarian.
But we also sense a kind of claustrophobia and growing paranoia – “we are all alone in here and sooner or later they will be coming for us.”
The strangeness of the distant Other is a quality within subjective perception - but it is no less real because of it - in some ways it is made even more real by the fantasies and fears that hide within any apparent insult.
(Even stranger to think that the Other itself can be changed by this perception, somehow becoming the very fearsome monster that has been anticipated and feared.)

***

Photograph 14:
We see a long pier that holds a single long picnic table under a plastic canopy. A black sofa sits in the sun.

***

We have come to the conclusion that they will ultimately protect their children from any discomfort, even to their own detriment.
They will constantly blame others when their children encounter obstacles or problems and they will feed their children on a constant diet of self-justification and self-pity.
Anything that goes right with the children will be thanks to their own lineage, their genes, their own individual hard work and their own careful parenting.
But anything that goes wrong is owed to someone else's mistakes or evildoing, owed to the evil influence of an Other that has managed to penetrate their carefully constructed barriers (friends, teachers, classmates, video games, music, the internet.)
When there are logical conflicts in this equation a crisis may ensue: if the child blames them for their troubles, they will either turn to self-justification and turn their arrogance against their own children or they will blame themselves in the same harsh way that they have blamed others in the past: teachers, classmates, strangers, etc. This sudden self-judgment can lead to sudden bursts of suicide, often accompanied by violence towards others.

***

Photograph 15:
We see long black iron fence separating the inner circle from the outside. One of the few stretches around Akhado that hasn't been developed. Long green grass stretches in unpredictable patterns towards the water, interrupted here and there by tall brown bushes and leaves.

***

All this that we have learned about the Citizens of Akhado may not apply to every single one of them but we believe it is important to write it down in order to remember. It will be easy for us to forget what we have seen.

***

Photograph 16:
A single sign in black and white, standing with its back to a tree, close to the water: "Keep out. No fishing. No hunting. No trespassing. Keep out."