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.

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.

0008

Life.

I have an everyday life. When I stop blogging, when I stop searching for the Aleph, I go back and I become normal. But this is not real. This is not what I really am. I am not a pencil pusher, a phone monkey, caged in a cubicle. But it pays the bills.

I get distracted at work. It's hard to pretend to be a normal person, not when I know that this normality can be stripped away in a second, that the world is so much stranger than everyone around me. How can I sit down for lunch and discuss the weather, the latest episode of The X-Factor, or whatever personal problems seem to plague my coworkers this week? Sometimes I want to stand up and start running and never stop, not until I've found the vessel and the POE and the Aleph, not until I've found Heaven itself.

But I know. I have to pay for everything. My quest isn't free. There is no such thing as a free lunch. No lucky breaks, no fairness in life.

At least I am not haunted by Him. Not by Him or the Others. I've yet to mention the Others, have I? Well, I will. I am glad that they have not interrupted my normal life -- though sometimes I wonder what would happen if the Slender Man were to walk into my office one day. What would my coworkers do then? Scream and flail about probably.

Ah well. Back to the life.

0007

The vessel.

I need to find the right vessel. The right vessel can see things that will lead to the Aleph. The right vessel can lead me to the point of entrance, the place of enlightenment, the purity of experience. The vessel leads towards the POE. "Once upon a midnight dreary..."

No, concentrate. In the Borges story it was a "small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brilliance." But it won't always look like that. Why would it? It could look like anything. You can view all of creation through it. I'll be able to sleep again once I find it.

But first I need the vessel. The vessel to the POE to the Aleph. Does this sound like obsession? It probably is. But what better thing to be obsessed about.

Obsessed about the entirety of creation. Obsessed about all things.