ending

it seemed incredible to me that a day without warnings or symbols should be the one of my inexorable death.

but i have seen the aleph. that is all i ever wanted.

goodbye.

15

i need to leave the labyrinth. i need to leave the labyrinth.

the paths are getting shorter now. there are fewer of them. most of them end in my death.

i was wrong. all of them end in my death.

14

i need to find it. i need to find it in the labyrinth.

0013

Thirteen.

Tomorrow is Friday the 13th. We (as a society) believe that the number 13 is unlucky. Why? There were thirteen people at the Last Supper (Jesus and twelve apostles). Thirteen turns make a hangman's noose (any less and it wouldn't snap the neck). On Friday the 13th of October, 1307, King Philip IV ordered the arrest of the Knights Templar.

Fear of the number 13 is called triskaidekaphobia. Fear of Friday the 13th is called paraskevidekatriaphobia. 

Thirteen. We were thirteen when I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to create. I wanted to write. I wrote scripts that my brother illustrated. Together, we made comics. Superhero comics. Magic in paper form. We sold them for a dollar each.

In Korea, China, Japan, and Vietnam, the number four is unlucky. Because in Mandarin (and the languages evolved from Mandarin), the number four and death sound very similar.

We sold the issues to our classmates and made a hefty sum (at the time). We bought candy bars and bubble gum cigarettes and an issue of MAD Magazine as we walked home. As we walked and found our destinies. Destiny is a fickle thing. Sometimes you can find it when you least expect, as you turn the pages of a MAD Magazine, as you chew on a bubble gum cigarette, as you run to push your brother away from being hit by a speeding car.

In Italy, the number 17 is unlucky, because in Roman numerals it is XVII. This can be rearranged to say VIXI, which means "I am alive" but is also a euphemism for "I am dead." Alive and dead at the same time. A paradox.

He wasn't looking where he was going. I was chewing on the bubble gum cigarette, while he was reading the MAD Magazine. He wasn't looking. The car (as the cliche goes) came out of nowhere. I ran and pushed him away. Before the car hit me, I saw a bright light. Later, they said it was the headlights of the car, but it wasn't: it was the Aleph. It showed me things I can no longer remember. Brain damage, the doctors said. But I knew. I'm going to find it again. I will see all things again.

Tomorrow is Friday the 13th. Do we fear the number thirteen because it is unlucky? Or is it unlucky because we fear it? Do we instill our own sense of unjustness into the number, just so we can have one thing - one number - become that which we hate, so that we do not hate ourselves for not being lucky, for being afraid?

I do not know. I do not know the truth, I only seek it.

0012

I've been absorbed with my search for the vessel. Looking for links, for connections, for places and objects that might contain a clue to lead me to a clue to lead me to the vessel. It is quite the obsession.

I did have time to read some other blogs and then I read this. Is it true? Did A kill the Slender Man? Or did they somehow just drag their dreams within the Great and Silent City? It does seem like a pipe dream.

At this point, I am reminded of a passage from Borges:

It all began with a suspicion (perhaps exaggerated) that the Gods did not know how to talk. Centuries of fell and fugitive life had atrophied the human element in them; the moon of Islam and the cross of Rome had been implacable with these outlaws. Very low foreheads, yellow teeth, stringy mulatto or Chinese moustaches and thick bestial lips showed the degeneracy of the Olympian lineage. Their clothing corresponded not to a decorous poverty but rather to the sinister luxury of the gambling houses and brothels of the Bajo. A carnation bled crimson in a lapel and the bulge of a knife was outlined beneath a close-fitting jacket. Suddenly we sensed that they were playing their last card, that they were cunning, ignorant and cruel like old beasts of prey and that, if we let ourselves be overcome by fear or piety, they would finally destroy us. 

We took out our heavy revolvers (all of a sudden there were revolvers in the dream) and exultantly killed the Gods.

0011

Urbs inanitatis.

There is a city somewhere out there, a city that is large and small, with towering skyscrapers one instant and ruins the next. It is a million cities in one. It is the Great and Silent City.

For thousands of years, people have caught mere glimpses of the Great and Silent City. They have attributed it to dreams or hallucinations, discarding the wonder that they saw. Coleridge saw it once during an opium trip and even wrote a poem for it: 

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

The poem, just like the Great and Silent City, will forever remain unfinished. The Silent City is unfinished due to its ever-changing nature. One could wander the City for years and years and never tread the same street 

twice. 

How do I know about the City? It is a knowledge gained through a meeting with a Mr. R. Kipling, who has now become an inhabitant of the City. Those who inhabit the City tend not to leave - the City does not let them. Mr. R. Kipling had an interesting view of the City, though it was perhaps tainted by the fact that his wife and son were lost within it as well.

Nonetheless, as I stated before, Jordan was poised between the Sea and the City. It appears that he has chosen the City, which I believe is a wise decision. The City is a representation of the Infinite, with its fractal streets and its non-Euclidean halls.

How does one go to the City? How does one find one of its Doors and open it? Unfortunately, the answer to that escapes my grasp.

Next: I shall tell you of where I went and then tell you of Tabularius scientiae, the Bookkeeper of Knowledge, one of the Others and another aspect of the Infinite.

0010

I'm sorry for not posting in a while. I thought I found the vessel and rushed to it, but it turned out to be for naught.

I promise, the next post I shall tell you all about the Great and Silent City.