outliers

born blank, the world becomes illuminated and reality shaped through the peeking-holes which the senses, tactile and otherwise, provide us.

your people have provided you your isolation, which is presumed to provide you a choice between poles. to live, die, succeed, fail, despair, rejoice. mystic interpretations of the forces that shudder and shift your scope, presented as common fact – refutation of which we must all consider deplorable – provide the context for which we judge and are so judged.

you, and certainly not you alone – no, we all isolated possess the power of the purchase. the free exchange of power in its various forms: fame, fortune, and knowledge. buy and sell, slash your price to match the curve of the supply and most importantly of the demand. this is the nature of the world, give and take, take and take, amounting steadily to something – then decaying into nothingness.

and recognizing the futility and incivility and barbarous nature of the world: disassociate ourselves from its implications by means of faith. hope. the literal last word upon the tongue of every man that ever has or will parish – perhaps, something else, something beyond, something more? and the killer catch – you’ll never know until you don’t know the way you ever have, without know, without thoughts inside, an empty shell that ever was though unacknowledged.

“i cannot cope with my own emptiness. i must strive for something more! a brilliant old flame of mine once again and suddenly took up my hand and i was shocked to the peak of awe! and i did not understand – i admit – but i cannot hesitate for even a moment! i simply haven’t got the time! life is too short, and this my dear friend was an experience of the otherworld, the beyond, at that moment my spirit leapt up and met god and was caressed wholly by his presence if only for a second. and so i did not understand, but i did somehow. i know it was an event that occurred once, and has occurred at irregular intervals of varying frequency seemingly somehow associated with what i refer to as the result of my existence. the directions in which i have with mixed intent guided myself, as i went acting and reacting to the situation which changed perpetually and at a rate which my own mind could not perceive.”

i know that i am. i believe sometime prior to my memory, i was not, although i have no evidence to support such a claim – because when i say “i,” i refer only to the thoughts that are. they are not inside my head, nor inside me – what evidence have i of that either? so i know only that these thoughts -are- and that whatever they are, wherever they come from the seem to have possessed a body of flesh and blood and a powerful processing unit which i have come to call a brain.

at this point the means of continuing this line of thought split into two paths. with thoughts established as simply they simply “are,” i must now venture backwards, prior to my ability to compose, in the symbols of my tongue, this very letter. backwards, before i learnt that the medium between the thoughts that are and this body of flesh and blood is presumed to be within the very body itself. therefore it is not even a medium. what evidence now do i have for the suggestion of a rift between these thoughts that are and this piece of flesh called a brain? the medium which i suggest could not be – as i am attempting to establish the state of the substance of thought and flesh as either separate or the same. however – it ought be noted that thoughts occurred before i was aware of this, and i make no great assumption in stating – if it be an entity separate from myself from which these notions originated – that thoughts occurred even in the originator of this idea prior to its formulation of the aforementioned theories of brain-workings.

and so i have only an explanation which i refer to in order to provide a context for myself to function in. but what even prior to this was there? we spoke of isolation before, and will now return to the subject. i am certain that there are thoughts, that is firmly established. descartes said “i think therefore i am.” however – his statement is based on a presupposition – that is, the presupposition of an “i.” but where does “i” come from? was it not a learnt behavior half-based on his means of interpreting the world – eyes, hands, body, mind – and half based in other shapes which he with his eyes witnesses moving about a vast and complicated setting. and so the mind makes use of the tools provided it and navigates in order to sustain consciousness. the self, established by a balance of power by means of information somehow stored (we would presume, in the brain,) and exchanged between the numerous similar bodies. the mind – consisting both of thoughts and knowledge which must be somehow acquired – provides the means to sustain the body which in turn perpetuates the mind by way of consciousness – either a symbiotic relationship between two substances, or a single, extremely complex substance simply perpetuating itself.

so it is either two or one – but i am in despair – for i know not where to start, i cannot remember starting to think. i cannot remember when i established “i,” and neither can i distinguish, taking into account the numerous presuppositions provided to me that i might function similarly to my counterparts, which is proper. and on what can i cast the blame for this? that i was brought about into an already established reality, and thus forced to conform to it in order to survive. if my understanding had been cultivated in some radically different way, i would see the world in a radically different way, certainly. how can i not despair of this fate – to have been made this way and only to loathe this way and its various consequences. i scream with dissent about the way, but these cries go unheard for one reason and one reason alone – the way self-perpetuates and will forever. the way is predetermined in that each that comes about comes about only by way of another already integrated part of the incessant flow of it. though the permutations are infinite, and the free will exist, the determinism is undeniable in a simple moment of recognition that the precepts of individuality, of exchange between shapes of various bits of value in any form, and of self-perpetuation are pushed and for good reason accepted by every new-comer – should the gift of integrating be somehow miraculously refused, then be banished from the way and its wanderers all together and become an outlier.