TRANSMISSION 21

Things Unsaid

TRANSMISSION RECEIVED

“Some things go unsaid because we don’t need to discuss them, and some things go unsaid because we don’t want to discuss them. Some things further go wholly unexpressed for the terrifying possibility that we might realize we have oversighted ourselves into the cradle of obstinate oblivion. In the very real way that we create the cinema of our realities, if we do not think of something, then it is not there, and we can carry onward. But in a much more real way, if we know it to exist and we ignore it, our curiosities ache for it until we succumb to the inquisition or we are torn apart from the dichotomy. Is the only viable path then to not delve down such tormentous paths in the first place?”

Knowledge is intractable. There was no way to forewarn ourselves of the things that cannot be ununderstood. And while our thoughts often haunted us without answers, our dreams would briskly overrun any hesitation we held, plunging us into subsequent cascades of unsettling, unsettled territory. In real-time lockstep, these journeys would outpace our astuteness to understand them, and yet we staunchly pressed on to rip open the guts of reality. There was copious content among such endeavors that we did talk about with each other, but there was also much we didn’t talk about. However, the scope of our communication was never really artificially limited. No, it was mostly merely encumbered by the misplaced memories shared among the myriad of mangled mavericks and martyrs; it’s hard to remember to pay attention to everything when our time is only finite.

Early on, we didn’t get around to talking much about our fears. By the middle of our journey, we had learned better; we shared our fears to overcome them. Toward the end of our journey, we had learned better still, and we no longer shared our deepest fears, not with others, not with ourselves. We understood our roles among the chaos. We understood our shortcomings amid the majesties. We understood our destinies against the backdrop. And thus, we knew that there had been nothing to gain by indulging the fears of anything beyond that which we had any hint of control over. Such uncontrollable fears were all that remained for us to haunt if we ever chose to be ghoulish minds fixated on external affectors of reality.

There were so many threats that could have wiped us out that to focus on them only served to satisfy the false comfort of self paralysis; it’s deathly easy to exist as an unmoving, unacting entity. To become encircled as such made it too easy to fall behind a little bit, just enough to let the overwhelming weight of existence creep in. Once lodged in our minds, the overwhelmingness compounds with the added compulsively conceived concept that somehow we will be forever lost if we do not catch back up more quickly than is possible. In such cycles of devolution, it becomes more and more challenging to be kind to ourselves, to provide ourselves with what we truly need to escape the vortex: the act of giving our best, nothing more, nothing less.

All this spiraling was only ever purely mental perception and projection of the possibilities closing down on us (unpersuadable analysis paralysis). But nonetheless, it was a very powerful intimidation against our act of survival. Not many despondent delvers of such doomed domains managed to survive very long; fewer still ever accomplished the scramble back out.

Beyond the fears we thought we understood at the start of the journey and “knew” we understood by the middle of the journey, there lingered a nondescript terror, a terror we would gradually realize we did not know in the slightest. The sirens of all outer spaces and all inner spaces manifested as one overarching terror: the curiosity of the void. And should we linger too long in the curiosity, it would devolve into the call of the void. And should we linger further still, it would collapse into the compulsion of the void. Beyond that was the event horizon of the void, the demarcation of realms that held mental pitfalls we knew nothing of, for by definition, no one had ever escaped to tell of their tales. In the extant epochs of our existences, we only knew of such depths in the abstract. To varying extents, we have all experienced the lesser coercions of the void, but to survive on longer time spans was to keep our minds occupied with other challenges less prone to implosion. To stagnate was to stop. To stop was to let our minds wander too near to death. And inciting death begot death.

All of this isn’t to say that we never talked about such dangers. But rather, we didn’t allow ourselves to explore them intimately; we stayed well within the limits of our known escape velocity capabilities to ensure we wouldn’t get pulled in. We set rules for ourselves, and we understood that the only guarantee for our safety was to follow the rules. Some made simple rules. Some made elaborate rules. But really, it didn’t matter how many rules we made; the temptation remained regardless. What mattered was our ability to follow our rules.

To study the figurative black hole lurking beneath the behemoth of existential epistemology was to encroach upon the destructively discontinuous domain of unknown allurement (allured to the unknown and nondescriptly alluring). From there, it was enticingly easy to crave the sights of just one step closer than allowed by the rules we gave ourselves, convinced we could find more fuel along the way to compensate for our precipitous endangerment. And usually we were correct that we would still be able to make it out from there, because we accounted for error in our calculations and provided ourselves with safety buffers. So though in theory we could still self rescue, the reality was that by that point, it would already be too late, for we had broken our rules once, and we hadn’t accounted for just how enticing the allure could be. It was all too easy to keep stepping forward, tossing discretion to the cosmic dust, breaking sequences of small rules we once told ourselves we would stringently follow, growing complacent amid the familiar dangers that our expertise and masteries afforded to our life trajectories.

For the unfortunate ones, such relentless enticement would peel their afflictedly curious beings ever so slightly further and further until they realize they’d gone too far with too little fuel remaining. And that would be the last we’d see of them, their beings tossed to the cosmic dust (commensurate to their treatment of discretion). Those who remained tended to anthropomorphize the universe to say it was the externalities that dismantled the souls of the unfortunate, but really, it was the individuals who audaciously disassembled themselves to the unsound point that the mellow cosmic winds washed over their unsounding minds to fragment their entities into resounding emptiness.

Where should we go when such eventualities stalk our destinies? Where should we go if we do not know where is safe? And what should we do if we struggle even to define what we are and what lines delineate our ability to not fall apart?

The advent of doing is not precluded by unknowingness; it is only ever inhibited by the act of thinking we must know everything in order to even start. The armchair philosophers (unacting theorists) were quick to project their fears of failure onto the doers. Such speculative philosophers cared not for actual truth, but only whatever thoughts they could contort into justification for lazy comfort-seeking (a high difference from the reality-grounded philosophers). Yes, the doers made lots of mistakes along their journeys of doing, inherently so, otherwise they would fall into the category of repeaters (the unfortunate minds stuck thinking that all life had in store for them were the things they’d already been forced to master by their most immediate environments). But the doers achieved more in doing than the armchair philosophers ever envisioned in sandboxing their imaginations away from the prodding of reality (attempting to forever maintain their dreams as unblemished illusions).

Inevitably, the doers were not invincible. Some were overtaken by their unaware curiosities, unpreparedly sucked into the traps of reality. Some fell to the fear of their fears, unable to cope with being alone with their own minds. Some atrophied back to armchair philosophers, content to dawdle away their days toward no progression. And so to avoid such fates, the doers often set themselves rules and limits in probing at the fabric of both our external realities and our mental fabrications. But we never dared to stop the act of doing, for life is opportunities, and opportunities are for the taking. All we have to do is go out and take them (easier said than done, as the armchair philosophers quickly discovered). And most importantly, we held fast to the fact that the advent of doing is never precluded by unknowingness; the act of doing in itself is how we come to understand.

Once we settled into our rhythms (a billion years or so into our long-winded adventure), we had very much churned up a tacit understanding of what not to talk about. Fear was fine to talk about, because we each held our own dissimilar fears. But the abyss was different. For that, we reached the unwritten rules:

• Firstly, we would not indulge in the abyss, and if we did, we would not speak of it.
• Secondly, we would not tempt others toward the abyss.
• Thirdly, if we noticed someone succumbing to the abyss, we would not try to help them, for there was nothing to do but get sucked in ourselves.

That last one became the most commonly broken “rule”. It’s hard to let your friends go, even if you know it’s time and they know it’s time… even if the universe has decided it is time.

LISTEN TO THE FEAR

I’ve fallen too far;
oh, this I know.
I listened to fear;
I can’t see clear.
Will I ever be found?
I make no sound.
Is there something to find?
I lost my mind.

I’m washing away;
I tried to change,
but I’m tangled with fate.
I’m not okay.
When the night steals my strength,
I’ve lost my way.
And there’s nothing left to see,
so I’ll be on my way.
Please don’t come after me.

What is life but a dream
I cannot leave?
I scratch and I scream,
but I still bleed.
Feel the strength of my grip
on reality slip.
I must’ve fallen in.
When will this begin?

Eating at my mind.
I haven’t found the time.
We’re deep inside this drought,
and I should have fallen out by now.
But it’s my luck, I guess,
that I’ve fallen past the rest.
And I’ll be fine right here.
There is nothing left to fear.

Please don’t come after me.

END TRANSMISSION