TRANSMISSION 43

Tormentous Dreams

TRANSMISSION RECEIVED

“Our dreams haunt us, not because they are nightmares, but because they are the unbounded versions of ourselves we will never be able to reach. We strive toward them, but we mustn’t drive ourselves mad when we realize there is no end to the journey. We are destined to never attain our illusions: our unsettlingly-perfect almost-reflections.”

Just as the literal and figurative darkness shields us from that which we haven’t even thought to understand yet (deceit by omission), so too does the light con our senses into seeing that which is not real (deceit by commission), all within the constructs of our minds (the fabricator of experiences). We find our truths only in the cross-referencing balance between these disillusory and illusory journeys. Why journeys? Well, all endeavors are only possible as temporal processes (except the voyage of certain radiations, which have no concept of spacetime, though that’s another rabbit hole not worth delving here). Existence (in the definition of being tangible and persisting) is inherently spacetime: all living and nonliving matter necessarily experience spacetime.

The inherent danger of journeys is in their temporal nature: the repetitive motions of pilgrimage can fell us into habitual relaxation as our focus slowly slides down the slippery slopes of casually-held dispassion. Our only hope is to notice in time when we find ourselves seeking the comfort of tipping into the desolation among negligent omission and negligent commission; deliberate existence is sticking to the balance between willful omission and willful commission. Thus, our only fortification against more imminently doomed fates is to learn what ideas we can live with, what ideas we can live without, and what ideas we must reconceive.

Be careful out there. There are things we can give up while chasing dreams that are worth it. And there are things we can give up that aren’t worth it. Really, the only thing we can’t give up is ourselves: our passions, our drives, our identities. Though, none of those are fundamentally real; they’re all figments of our minds. But we cannot survive without them, so in that sense, they are very real. In other words, we are very real to ourselves and crucial to our own survival, not a novel idea, but an important one to fully appreciate. It can be hard, though, because to delve the truths of the universe, we have to be able to let go of aspects of ourselves that carry false prophets. How much we let go determines how quickly and deeply we can dive, but if we let go of too much too fast, we won’t have the buoyancy and stamina to make it back up to our mind’s refuge before our breath runs out. Our eager eyes can easily sink our minds, just as our internal false prophets can keep us from never even setting sail.

For me, now that I’m on my way out, and since there is nothing else to do, I can shed myself down and explore some of the thoughts I once forbade myself from. There’s no time like the present, so I guess we’ll start now… What am I most fearful of¿ the uncertainties?

In the theories of knowledge, where do we find ourselves? Do we find ourselves amid the unknowable, as apprentices? Do we find ourselves among the unknowable, as accomplices? Do we find ourselves caught between the knowable and the unknowable, as ambassadors? Do we find any certainties at all within existence? How can we know that we know what we know? In other words, how can we be sure that we understand what we assert as truths about existence? Sure, we send echos out and interpret the response, but how close to truth does that really get us? There appears a chasm between perfect understanding and our actual understanding, and it shrinks the more we look at it, but does it ever fully go away? Was there ever anything available to perfectly understand? Was there ever anything real to become? Was there ever any real meaning for myself, even if only to myself? Am I only a figment of my own mind? Not in the past; I wouldn’t allow it. But now? Now what? Where is my fear concentrated?

At my end here, what does my meaning become to me? Am I the restitution of unbridled souls unto the worlds we neglected? Am I the apology to languished strifes we let grow spiritless? Am I the successor of all life’s suffering in the name of nothing? Am I the forgotten child of an unflinching universe? Am I somebody who has made a difference? Am I anybody worth anything? Am I at least me in my pursuits? Am I anything at all? Am I becoming nothing? Am I fearful? Am I scared? Am I a failure? Have I faltered? Have I given up?

No, I’m still here… for now. I’m still trying. I’m still learning and exploring. I’m still reflecting my visions outward. I’m still reflecting upon my visions (inward). I still care about my journey. I still find meaning in myself. I still create meaning for myself.

I don’t think we are the monsters. But I also don’t think we are the heroes. We are part of what will one day simply be forgotten amid the indefinite boundaries of our cosmic-soup existence as it pervades into and beyond our absurd existential nihilism. The cycles within eternity cannot be broken, only stretched or shrunk; our material form constrains us to this spacetime. Yet, where we found our past selves ill equipped for the perils of reality, we still forged forward. But really, what other options did we have? Being so ill equipped left many journeys ill fated, as those who unknowingly gazed too long (into that which they deep down knew they mustn’t) were left brutally mangled into mental pulp. After becoming fully deformed into fractured figments of their once-selves, there was no way to put them back together (not even internally, as they misplaced the concept of themselves). Maybe that is what I fear most: losing my meanings and myself without enough awareness to even know it’s happening.

Though I’ve tried many times, I fear I’m appallingly underqualified to venture further down the bounds of myself that bleed into the abyssal archons I fail to grasp as my own self (even though I know they must be me, for the empty only reflects ourselves). In lieu of losing my mind here, I’ll savor the quest for another day and journey elsewhere for now. Though, it perpetually nags at me as I wonder if I am the only one left because there is in fact something I have not figured out, rather than the other way around. The fear and the emptiness encroach from infinite directions, illusory and genuine. The more we listen, the more we wonder if we are going mad. The only thing that has kept us going was knowing that if we were aware enough to formulate such thoughts and questions, then we at least had not descended to the deepest levels of madness. Therein lay indefinite hope that we could continue to find truths, the indefinite bounds of anything and everything being all we ever craved as motivation for our quests. But it really hasn’t helped that the more we learned and understood about everything, the less we felt like we knew, because to pursue knowledge is to chase down the fractal branches of reality itself, willingly loosing ourselves upon (and losing ourselves within) the continuously-deepening depths of all mutual realities (internal and external) for the sake of indefinitely existing on the transitory target of unbounded existence (the only place capable of constantly captivating our curiosity).

FEARLESS FLIGHT

Let me be real for a while.
I faltered at the start,
but you won’t find me
around here anymore,
and it’s all my fault
I’ve fallen out.

I want to be where they are,
where the fight forsakes
those men who break,
and I’m finally free
to find the me
that I’ve sacrificed
so much to be.

What is left where I stood
are all the hearts
too shaken up
to be woken up.
And I’m scared enough
to be aware enough
that I’m out of luck.

I was forced into flight
much sooner than I hoped to fly.
But I’m feeling fine;
I’m so alive,
just the way
I always had in mind.

Fist of fate finds a man,
foreign land for which he fears
he’ll find the freakish shadow fiends
feeding on his frail fallen foes.
They were once friends of his.

Faded now,
they’re figures
fooling only their own failures
into fractured frames,
functioning like pictures
(near imperfect in most every way),
fenced into this fickle fuzz
that’s not quite alive.

Fed up with their fortune,
they were quick to don
a faulty face;
they couldn’t find another way.
No, nothing but their graves
will they chase.

END TRANSMISSION