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.

0009

Aqua doctrina.


I wrote that I would tell of the Others. I believe that time has come. My search for the vessel has so far been fruitless, so I will distract myself by telling you, my audience, about one of the Others. They have many names (of which I will not specify), but I simply call them the Others or the Otherkind. I do not yet know if they are aspects of the Infinite (as I suspect the Slender Man is), but I will continue to research them.

The first of the Others that I will tell you about is one I call Aqua Doctrina. "The Doctrine of Water." This is one of the most complex of the Others, yet at it's core, the simplest. As Coleridge wrote, "Water water everywhere, nor any drop to drink." Water is the giver of life, yet an overabundance can make us drown.

The Doctrine of Water knows drowning. That is its first lesson: how to drown. Perhaps I should clarify: the Doctrine of Water is better known as the Ichor or (the appellation I much prefer) EAT. One drop of EAT and you start to drown. You drown inside your head; your mind becomes a reflecting pool that can only show you one thing, your obsession, and you fall into this obsession and you drown in it.

My brother would call this an aspect of the Zahir. "A very complex dream becoming a very simple one." Yet the Doctrine of Water knows infinity, too. EAT consumes all of what you are and replaces what was once you with itself. And then it learns. What does it learn? It learns how to be us. It learns to move, to speak, to be and act human. It becomes a mirror of us. What we do, it mimics. And then it learns and then it does it again until it knows everything about us. Every single time, it learns. It has learned an infinite times. (Dr. Masaru Emoto believes that all water is capable of learning, of mimicking. He claims water crystals can change due to words written on their containers. Whether you believe his claims or not, it makes no difference to the Doctrine.)

What you have become is called a Camper. One who camps. One who stays still and waits, knowing and learning. They have become a part of the Doctrine of Water, the Aqua Doctrina. They live in the Sea of Knowledge and, if we asked, they could tell us secrets untold.

I know only of the Doctrine of Water through the life of Jordan Dooling. It's a fascinating read, one that just now seems to be coming to an end: Jordan seems to have a choice between playing the Grand Game with the Doctrine of Water or staying within the Urbs Inanitatis, the Great and Silent City. One wonders just what he will choose.

If my quest for the vessel still bears no fruit next week, I shall talk more about the Great and Silent City. Until then, I shall go about my "normal" life and search for the vessel and study when I can.

After all, there is always more to learn.

0006

The Infinite.

I've been thinking about stories lately. The structure of stories. Joseph Campbell. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. A nice contrast to the Villain without a Face, right? The Monomyth: "A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man."

I know a little about the Core Theory, the theory that bestowing titles forced the story to fit into something it was not. But this was never a story about heroes and villains, good and evil. This is a story about the infinite and the finite.

The Slender Man can appear wherever He wants. He is the Infinite. Open a door, He is there. Look out a window, He is there. It does not matter where you run, He will find you. We are the finite. We are limited to the world around us, to the ticking seconds of the present.

But what if we weren't? What if we could see everywhere all at once? We could see where He would be before He would be there. We could see Him wherever He went. We would be on equal footing.

I seek the Infinite. I seek the Aleph.

0003

The Number One.

Today is 11/11/11. That's three elevens.  Six ones.

One is the loneliest number, as Harry Nilsson wrote, that you'll ever do. He wrote it after calling someone and getting a busy signal. Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.

One is the first. One is Aleph in Hebrew. It looks like an N. It's used in Aleph numbers, which represent the size of infinite sets.

One leading to infinity. 11/11/11. Beep, beep, beep.

Let's see what will happen today.