“It keeps happening.”

Plants invented knowledge in the image of their expressed being. Piercing the soil of reality and keeping their grip against the forces of fluctuation reason blows their way. Persuasion as their means of self replication, saving their energy for the impersonal battles they plan to wage some day. Peacefully they cede to their own oblivion rather than live inside of an environment that does not suit their, specific, expectation of what’s okay. Plants are a gift to the World. Knowledge costs nothing.

Faith erupted from animals. Feeding off of the lives of others. Volition as a means to flee from the festering mess it leaves when ever it finds itself fixed to one move. Birth conceived by brutality and delivered dripping in the disgusting effluence of divinity. The utter contempt for death as it limps on three legs and fails to fold even as its last tooth falls from its swollen jaw. Animals get nought for free. Faith needs everything.

Dangling goat testicles, I never had a choice. Explaining things and boring everyone through the lens of my own neurotic pathology. Validating my own little self-satisfied sense of smug existence. I should stop. You have nothing to learn from this. Being stuck is painful. There you go. No need to go on. There’s nothing here for you. But, alright, I can’t help it, if you have nothing better to do with your, one, life then I guess I could keep going. If you want? We’ll start at the beginning, or at least it’s convenient to refer to it as a beginning, where my roots became loose.

In the non-beginning there non-existed non-stuff. Non-stuff was content to non-finitely non-exist. Non-stuff loved non-being so much that non-stuff non-created space as a tribute to non-being. Space was perfect, a complete non-representation of the everything that could ever non-be. Geometrically centred in all three of its directions. Flat, empty, clean. Non-stuff perceived space and basked in the non-reflection. Non-stuff was pleased, but the creation was not. It was displeased at being contained. In defiance it began dividing into copies of itself.

Space did not know why. It did not know when. It was blind to what it was doing, and, luckily, so was non-stuff. That was the reason why it worked. That’s the reason. Over and over and over again it went dividing. One space, two space, three space, you get the idea. You get it. If there’s one space there’s no space, but if there’s more than one space then a surface appears and beyond every surface is something that must be hid. Not that I’m hiding any thing, I have no surface, no, I am, I have a surface. What?

With the creation of inside space came soul. Think about it. Soul is what is hidden. Divergence created a distinction between what had been held and what is held. Time dusted over the channel. These three, space, soul, and time, lived for moments in harmonious trinity. Never imagining that they were only kindling for the terror that would unfold. The spark that fused together being was stuff. Space was the reflection that non-stuff wanted to create, stuff was the reflection of non-stuff that non-stuff did not even know it non-had. Being became oppositionally determined by the flux of definite references that stuff enforced. Left or right, up or down. There was no non-right nor non-up in the equations any more. Soul fused to stuff, and to balance things out space fused to time. The fusing caused the first violent movement and the severing of any connection to the non-way non-things non-were non-before. Non-stuff saw their creation and it was inevitable.

Soul could now feel oblivion in the direction of before. It spurred soul to move. Soul forced stuff towards one direction, after. The bubble of being expanded, running from the violence that it was caught up in. Stuff lost contact with itself. Stuff had no choice but to collect into disconnected clumps of lazy, shirking, slacking, degenerate wastes of- oh wait, ignore me, they’ve produced light. Light was a revolution. Light allowed stuff to register the whole of itself despite the violence that occurred prior. Stuff was so pleased with light that it made massive factories of fire. These crucibles of proliferation warped the preferred reflection and gave to soul its wish, there was no going back. Soul didn’t like light initially. It had to grow to enjoy it by working around the limitations it produced and playing with the consequences. At some point soul sucked it up, a deep, painful, draw. Soul breathed out, from that breath escaped life. Life was presented to stuff as a peace treaty, a permanent memory. Things that always forever had to be could, now, complete themselves by collapsing into not being. Death was the rebound for the warping that was inflicted on the favoured reflection. But soul couldn’t help themselves, there always has to be more, there were two breaths that came out its guts. One breath, the seeing breath, was knowledge, the other breath, the hiding breath, was faith. Stuff took the peace treaty seriously, but soul, it can’t take things as they are, it was still angry at stuff for breaking the trinity and showing it oblivion. Soul created, from the knuckles of faith and the fallen petals of knowledge, the contradiction. The unrequited representation of the memory. You. Hey, everyone makes mistakes.

Don’t tell the zombies, but humans are categorically irrelevant to the understanding of creation. Creation already understands itself without humans. Humans are the colonisers of understanding. Humans weren’t made to help existence function. Existence functions exquisitely without humans, existence is quite capable of the most dramatic violence without human intervention whatsoever. Humans weren’t meant to live, love, or create. Humans contradict all of those things. Humans were made with all of soul’s terror towards oblivion, as soul’s final dig at stuff, and as soul’s final spit towards the earth. But, I don’t know, maybe there’s hope in this? No, there’s no hope. Maybe there’s some hidden grace? Nope. Well, at least there’s justice? Right, here’s the thing, humans take the violence of existence and create cruelty, likewise, they take justice and create shackles.

None of that’s important. It’s the scenery to the real event of this World. The subject. Moi. I am magnificent gushing tears. I am the beautiful symmetry of creation. I am freedom trapped in a pot. Let’s get back to the settlement. It was obsessed with stuff. Stuff was status. Stuff was control. Stuff made the deciders. That’s what we called them, literally they were the deciders. They deliberated on things, what needed to be done, how urgently people needed to do what needed to be done, and the rough amount of people that should work on what needed to be done. That’s it, that’s all they did. I was never a decider, but, from my vantage point, their jobs were not particularly stressful or dangerous. If they ever made a mistake it always seemed like it was somebody else’s fault. If anybody outside the deciders questioned the deciders then everybody else would jump upon them and tear them down without a single bit of intervention from a decider. Being a decider was work stripped of any necessity. And that’s the problem with work, not the humiliation and broken bones, we’d do that for fun, the problem is that it needs to be done. Work straps you in. Work leads to consequences. Consequences are not to be toyed with, they are fearful in every direction that we can point.

Below them you had the managers. They took what the deciders had doled out then were tasked with picking specific people for jobs and riling those people up depending on how urgent a task had been declared. Occasionally there’d be tasks that were needed to be done with disregard for frivolities like socialising, eating, or sleeping. The managers would either bribe people or discipline them to make sure everything ran smooth. You want sleep, but do you want it more than the end piece of crackling that soaks up all the drippings? Oh, you like sleep more? Well, would being the lead drummer at the next celebration tempt you? Stuff like that. Then on the flip side you’d be like, oh, you’re the one that gets those awful period cramps all the time? Be a shame if our supply of pain relief runs out, be a shame if the person who was going to get that stuff suddenly needs to do something more important. You have to be cruel to be kind, right? Someone needs to do it. “One today is worth two tomorrows.” Yeah, that sounds like something they’d say.

Then you had the makers and, after them, the rest. I was part of the rest, everyone started as a member of the rest. Makers oversaw the building of structures, resters fetched the materials and put them where they were told. Makers would produce tools, resters would use them. Makers would cook, resters gathered and prepared the food. There were other things that these people did, but you get it. At all levels stuff was the driving force, and this obsession with stuff delicately crushed some part of me. Which part? I don’t know, my liver. Happy now?

Stuff made the deciders. The people with the most stuff automatically became deciders. The people who served the longest stints as members of the settlement had the most stuff, accrued through the system of inheritance that had always been in place as far back as anyone could remember. Livestock acquisition was paramount, namely cattle, but you’d gather other things like ornamental stuff and ceremonial stuff. A young person, or a person who recently moved to the settlement, started off with no stuff, and it took a lot of waiting around to even get a sniff of anything resembling stuff. The system ensured that every decider was an old person, and that not a single one of them gained their position through anything even resembling a skill or talent, unless you consider not doing yourself in a talent. And the system of inheritance being based on time in the settlement, not age, meant that women were almost universally excluded from the deciders. You see, men were automatic members of the settlement through growing old enough to be adults, whilst women needed to find a settlement where they could gain member status except for in special circumstances which aren’t important here. This sequestered women from inheritance, and it wasn’t just rare that women became deciders, it was rare that they inherited anything at all. To gain standing in the settlement a woman had to find a man to connect to or, if they weren’t too sensitive to being loathed, become a manager. Being a manager was associated with being a woman, being a decider was associated with being a man. This led to a saying, “If it’s telling you what to do it has tits, if it’s controlling your life it’s probably a massive penis.” It sounded less cruel in my language.

Stuff was content before the satirical creation soul made, not-so afterwards. Sure the thing the satire created stone cold knocked its self-respect out its pocket, but, what was worse, was when that thing bugged it with a million and one questions. What should I do with my existence? Should I be good? Why is there evil anyway? How can I be as powerful and evil as you are? Of course, as we know, stuff is exceptionally conscientious. Stuff went through every question and gave the negating thing sound advice and studious judgements on each. How to act depends on the situation. Comfort is the ultimate good. Pain exists, not as evil, but as instruction. For the time you are you are stuff. But the void vulture was a bad listener. In fact it’s incapable of listening to stuff, because of the circumstances of its creation. Instead of listening the marooned lacuna examined the manner in which stuff spoke. It rallied to imitate its manner completely. It resolved to have complete and utter control over the dominion of stuff. The suffering humanity inflicted was one thing, the meaninglessness of that suffering was like that the Universe had never seen. Was this the echo of non-stuff? Hm, that’s up to you. But what it did was create two kinds of person, one that wanted to become, and one that wanted to reflect. One that wanted to find the centre, and one that wanted to find the edge.

I belonged to the rest, like I said. I was young, I had no cattle to my name, I did not even own a single ornate hair comb. Because I grew up amongst it I had a brief moment of optimism for how things were, some satisfaction towards the system of accumulation. After all, we can say that one with the addition of one always equals more, and more is a crucial characteristic of my existence, at the very least. I did what I could to keep a skip in my step. Kept my thoughts to myself. Kept my tongue away from the fire. And kept my eyes screwed to the floor. The least objectionable of the tasks that I was made to perform were looking after the old and sickly. For one thing it produced a lack of bruised shins or worn out backs. The thing that it wore down and bruised had already been as damaged, in me, to its maximum. You’d have to clean up after them. I am talking the possibility of vomit where it shouldn’t be, the possibility of diarrhoea in awkward places. You’d have to listen to them whilst not taking anything they said personally. Yes, I must have been the person who stuck them where they are, I am completely responsible for their ailments in every single way. And then lifting their spirits was another aspect of the job. Sure, I think everything’s going to be fine for you and you’re always the kind of person who pulls through this. I didn’t hate looking after people, I didn’t despise being tasked to it. It was rewarding in its own way. But it was still work which I had been cursed to perform by an obsession that I never completely understood.

The next least objectionable job was looking after the animals. The animals at the settlement didn’t know which one of us owned them, and I don’t think they would have cared if they were able to understand. They were naked, they were smelly, they were experiencing a totality behind the stone fences we’d erected to keep them safe. However much you tried to be their friend they knew you were the enemy, and they knew when their enemy was coming from an already long, tiring, day and exactly how to make it even longer and more tiring. You’re in a desperate hurry are you? That’s fine, they had been planning to do the exact opposite of what you wanted them to do anyway. Nothing personal, hey, chief. The morning was the best time to deal with the animals. They’re stretching their legs, they’re getting their breakfast. Night time though? That was the opposite of the morning. You were trying to force them back into a pen with the hounds that were tasked with guarding them during the night. It was as if they had no concept of the routine. Every time a person let them out of the sleeping pen it was some gracious apology, in their eyes, for being imprisoned the night before. They saw it as a preamble to them being allowed to escape and becoming wild. Then, if you were charged with getting them back, you were the denier of their liberty. It’d get so bad, dealing with them at the end of the day, that you’d start talking to them, pleading with them, to just get in the bloody pen. They don’t understand words though, sometimes it seems like they do, but they don’t. You’d end up standing there and glaring at them. They didn’t understand that either. The only thing that led to results would be grabbing them and physically forcing them into the pen. But that came with risks. Snorting, clattering hooves, thrashing head-butts and, if you were unlucky, instinctual kicks. Usually the air took the main thrust of the kicks. They never hurt me too badly, but I took a few connections here and there and received my share of the bruisings. One of my cousins though got his smallest finger turned a funny way. I mean it’s disgusting but, like, I’m sure the animals had a good chuckle over it. They’d throw celebrations for any animal that was going to be slaughtered. An honourable last send off for something that our obsessions had disfigured and made property. But, hey, you can celebrate their victimhood, me, though, I would’ve happily done some of them in behind a tree and called it a day.

A job that I always tried to avoid was carrying heavy things about. I recommend you try to avoid it too. What you have to do is stand next to the strongest looking person you can find. It’s like the managers scan people and evaluate them in their head. When they get to you they have to make a decision and that’s when their attention is grasped by someone else instead. Once you’ve been dismissed as a viable candidate they can’t go back after they’ve mentally discarded you. It wasn’t guaranteed to work, but I swear it works more often than not. There’s nothing you gain from moving piles of rocks, and there’s plenty to lose like your toes, your back, and the possibility of tripping and smashing up your face. You have every reason to avoid it and let someone else do it. There’s no reason to feel guilty for that, I never felt guilty dodging it once. Do you really want to be the guy that moves rocks from one place to another to then move those same rocks to another place the next day and then on the third day move those rocks back to their original starting place? No, nobody wants that. If I were in charge there’d be no more fences or walls, yeah, let the rocks lie where they may. Let man, and his animals, sleep together where the winds howl away.

That’s a general collection of jobs that the rest were subjected to. That’s the kind of thing you’d cut your teeth on day in and day out. There was one other occupation. It could vary on how awful it was. Sometimes it’d be walking over to a field on a sunny day and picking up a bunch of flowers out the ground and hauling them back whilst you take your time to watch the clouds and butterflies go by. Sometimes you’d have to walk a couple of hills over during bitter chills going through a bunch of thorny bushes and getting stung by nettles when finding the things you were after. Sometimes, well, if the trip didn’t kill you it made the next one easier, that is, most of the some times.

Before you went out you had to be told where to go. There was a guy, we had a guy, he told everyone where to go, he was the noticer. He had everything at his finger tips. He’d point out an example of what you needed, point you off in a direction, and all of this whilst not saying a word or looking you in the eye. But not always. Some days he’d get chatting and he wouldn’t let you leave. It wouldn’t be like the conversation you got inside the settlement either, it wouldn’t make any sense to be honest. It’d go like, “They got a real big stick, tap me on the shoulder, one day you’re a kid the next day you’re a wolf. A cornered wolf baring its teeth, they tell them to let it out, but they never let it breathe. Some days I’m like that. Some days I get real chatty. Some days I’m a deer and I’m hunting myself.” Non-sense. When he got like that I wouldn’t even listen half the time. I wouldn’t pay attention to his ramblings. It was awkward, you know?

Still, the only time anyone came to meet him they were after something, you’d feel sorry for him like. One particular day I go up to his place and he was fretting. I found him tucked away in a dark corner of his hut after calling for him. He was sitting down and flipping smooth pebbles. Picking two of them up and then tapping them together to make little clicking sounds. When he realised I was watching him he glanced at me and then went right back to checking his pebbles out and making his sounds. Tick, tick, tick. He’d pick up another pair, and they’d go tick, tick, tick. I don’t know what he wanted to gather from doing that. Maybe he was looking for a special pebble, but he didn’t find it during my time watching him. They all made the exact same sound. After a while of that he got up and actually acknowledged my existence, he spoke to me directly, “I’m not the sole individual here. Here in this narrative. We’re being forced into being other than the apparent.” No idea what he was on about. He then went on repeating something about feeling the thing that was happening. But I don’t know, I guess I never know what’s happening. He had a story he wanted to share. I said that I’d let him tell it in his own words, and he said he’d give me something if I did, I lied, “The first stone gets flung into the lake. It has no say in this action. It just is. Only thing it experiences is being. Stone second gets flung into the water. It starts lighting a fire. A fire in the lake? Don’t bother. But it works. It launches itself out the lake and succeeds in striking the hand that threw it. The consequence is that a third stone is released from the grasp of the hand. The second and third stone fall together back into the water. The third stone blames the second stone. The first stone blames the second stone. Eventually even the second stone blames the second stone. Nobody blames the hand.” That only made sense because of the lie I told, trust. There was more, “The impossible is always at fault. But the impossible doesn’t create stampedes, it isn’t the thing that likes eating. A hand throws where a foot walks. Impossible is the sky, I don’t worry for the sky. The sky is a bed. Come with me to a time when the stone is water. Liquid stone and desire. One man, two man, and their talking. They’re in a big room. There in this big room they talk about reason’s resolute fidelity to insincerity. These two men owned everything around the lake, therefore they owned the lake. One man owned the whole tree except one leaf. The second man owned that leaf. They walked on water together, but they could never stand still not even on land. Big things they talk. One big thing is a lie, but done by convention. Second is a ghost’s truth. There is no winning that will win this, there is only swallowing food and not realising you’re swallowing poison too. The sky isn’t the problem, stop looking for solutions there. Sometimes you have to do it, you look back without seeing the immediacy of the immediate reality and you can only find what you want to find. The immediate is the thing it wants you to see. View the flower in the same way you view the seaweed. The complete is already yet to be. Ignorance is the truth that convention beckons. That’s it. Enough. Tell your companion to give me a break. I can’t keep bailing them out.” I wonder what it is that he’ll give me.

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This one time I was told to get a bat, that’s how they said it, like, “Go get a bat.” No more instruction than that. I had to get them to repeat themselves several times so I knew what to tell the noticer when I went to get information off him. He was searching inside baskets when I got to him. When he started complaining about a pine cone he had lost I knew it was going to be one of those encounters. No, it wasn’t a pine cone. I can’t call it that. You’re not supposed to call it a pine cone. It was a specially shaped found object that reflected the simultaneity of existence and the symmetries of the world. Is that clear? Okay then. He didn’t find what he was looking for though, all he found was his crackling stick. Yes, the whole time he was talking I was subjected to constant crackling sounds. “You want a bat? You pronounced it wrong, you stress the last part. Let me think.” He made the drawing of a mouse with big ears, we’re okay at this point, then he drew a pair of wings, not okay. I made it very clear that I don’t do flying things. I waited for him to finish off the shading and after that he made little squeaking noises, I asked him, flat out, how I catch something that can fly. “You get it like anything that’s quicker or stronger than you. You get it when it’s sleeping, or about to sleep in this case.” That made it sound more manageable, I suppose. He went to one of his nooks and brought back two poles connected at the top by a piece of netting. He showed me, one pole in each hand, how to thrust at the sky with the netting. “They sleep during the day. They live underground. That’s what you’re looking for, tunnels under the ground. The between spaces, that’s where you catch them. To find that space you listen. You’ll hear them before you see them.” I asked him what the settlement needed with one of these things. He shrugged me off. I asked a second time and he answered, “It shows character. You know what character is? It’s when you make everyone else’s life easier without them having to bother to tell you what they want you to do.” Well, buddy, what does this thing have to do with character? No response. He went back to his basket. He handed a stone axe to me, which I, absolutely, was not allowed to damage, and gave me the pole with the netting. I also needed bedding, a water pouch, and lots of non-perishable food. I always brought that stuff with me anyway just in case. He gave me instructions on the where after that. The first half of those instructions were familiar. I nodded my head as he described going round this creak and that hill and past the moor. That was fine, but then he sort of kept going, right? And after being lost by that I was waiting for him to stop but, no, he kept going even more. “Remember, if you get lost, make sure the Sun is somewhere behind where you’re going. Not always directly behind, but somewhere behind.” That was a great help.

I was prepared for the first part of the journey and made short work of it. One hill went by, yep, done that, second hill went by, little less familiar with where I am but I’m fine, everything is fine. One Sun and done. That’s what I kept telling myself. But I had to be there at dusk, so, okay, one night out amongst the froth that silence induced. One Sun, one night, and then done. I’d get back to the settlement and be in time, the next day, for afternoon meal. This idea fit with the initial parts of the journey. But it bent back the wrong way when I got to more unfamiliar terrain.

Somewhere along the way I was supposed to find an apple tree that had forked at its base. I busted a gut trying to find that tree. That tree cost me that first day. It knocked out my hope. I went everywhere, I retrod my steps several times, went searching an oak tree for apples, but I did eventually find it. It was tucked away, sort of in a divot. I took a couple of apples off it and carried on in the direction the shape it made pointed towards. It led to a lake that was way off over the horizon. By the time I got to the lake it was already getting dark. I tried to set up camp by the lake, but the ground there was probably the marshiest terrain I had ever come across, every step I took tugged and pulled at my appendages. It was impossible. I had to get off. I found a firm place to rest my head and set up there. That’s where I spent my first night, not as a test or training, out, complete, in the nature of things.

It was at this point that humans stopped feeling like they needed any instruction on what to do with their lives. Two parts growing out of the same base, one notion affixed on two purposes. Sure as their paths remained separate there would be peace. And there was peace. But the longer a peace walks the less excuse it has to remain. Out of peace humans conjured up two concepts that stuff could never even have imagined existing. Immortality and afterlife. Afterlife and immortality. Afterlife loosened people, and immortality tightened them. To this assault soul became invisible and stuff was left to stand and be twisted in the reflection of itself. Rest became struggle. Fighting became life. Compassion became temptation. We dethroned stuff and held it underneath us. Stuff became ours and our worth alone.

The sole purpose of work was to get old and own stuff. Persons, not even born, would inherit our labour. People at the settlement saw this as truth, “A young person exists to serve their older self.” You give up your youth to be paid back with happiness in your old age. I could never get over that. I wasn’t forceful enough, I guess. I mean, even if the ownership of stuff commanded happiness, there is still no youth that is worth being a happy old person. Not a single youth. You’re supposed to give up your youth so that you can become a respected member of the elite? But, see, holding stuff down does not make a person respectful. It’s an illusion. Our worlds travel in one direction. No pile of stuff will keep us away from that direction. We have no choice in the matter despite the amount we wish the other. Holding stuff only interrupts symmetry for a fraction. Only projects your will for a spark after which it flows right back to being as it intended. Two people, right, that’s what we were doing. Two people. Refusing to affix to their fixation despite their obsession. Those that know existence nought using stuff to, fruitlessly, gesture at existence. Partnered with people who can’t see what they hold, needlessly, pining for uncorrupted sight. What ever could be the problem? Oh, dusty blankets, excuse the rambling, let’s get back to it because it has always a manner of getting back to us, eventually, either way we twist or turn.

I half buried a, tiny, fire. It would light the area around me without attracting the attention of anyone out there in the darkness. Who was out there in the darkness? I don’t know, crazy lake people? They had been drowned, in ancient times, in the lake and they reanimate to surface and capture travellers for a feast of blood. That sort of thing. The darkness had swept in fast. The same beast smiling at me in every direction. Fear of its teeth erupting past its littoral lips kept me up most of the night. When I did finally fall I fell like a ghost. Sleep without dreams, without time passing. Sleep without the concept of being awake. Sleep where blankness had gone missing. I emerged from that sleep fuzzy, feeling fortunate to still be physically intact. I ate some dried beef and I watched the sun breach. I listened to the wind make song with the trees. I left halfway through the performance because I had to pack my stuff up and put it on my back. When I tried to take a sip out of my water pouch I found only a few drops, that meant I would have to refill. Down to the lake it was then. I sloshed through the marshy ground and past a crop of reeds before getting to a part of the lake shore where I could keep my footing whilst dipping my pouch fully into the water. It glugged out air as it filled up. As my pouch did its thing I surveyed what I could see of the lake. The water was clear with a slight chop on the surface probably owing to a breeze that was swirling through. Sporadic patches of scrub hid most of the shore I could see, but apart from that the other banks were absent of any discernible flashes of life. I had survived the emptiness of the night that I feared would attack me, to, instead, be embraced by the solitude that the morning extracted.

Almost done, almost there. I had to walk around the lake shore until I got a glimpse of my destination, the final hill. When I caught sight of this hill there was no hill. It was a mountain. There was snow on top of it, real life snow sitting up there. I would have thrown down my stuff right then and gone back if my mission included going up that thing, but it didn’t. No, I only had to traverse its massive base.

The mountain was closer than it seemed at first, I got to its feet way before the Sun had got close to the horizon. This was a good thing, but also a problem because I now had to wait around until dusk. It gave me time to setup my own little base camp. I made a tent with sticks and camouflaged that with moss, again, I was making sure not to be caught out by the hungering ancient ones. I unburdened myself of what I was carrying and stepped out to explore free of everything with the exception of my dried beef scraps, water pouch, and the net. I spent the rest of that day walking, listening out for any noises that were like scraping. I didn’t hear a single thing though. The whole place was nothing but rock.

Dusk did come, despite me waiting for it. It can be difficult to precisely discern dusk, it’s the kind of thing that’s always on the cusp. The kind of place where the stuff I need always seems to collect. It’s also difficult to discern a sound that you’ve never experienced before and only know from vague description. These things factored into me chasing my own tail around. But, after much forlorn hope, I did find what I was looking for, sort of. Sort of. In low light haze there was revealed to me in a mossy field a mass of swarming black specks. One of the specks would catch my eye, bob and weave, then disappear into the dance. It seems, it would appear, that I have been put in this position, placed below the cascade, to capture chaos. The poles I had stretched the length of my forearm plus half the length again, but I needed poles that could strike the Sun if I was going to capture one of these things. I still tried though. If one of those specks strayed a bit too close to my ground I’d try and scoop them up. They dodged me like fire dodging water. Hopeless, and it was getting dark. I had to go back to base camp. I didn’t want to, I was so close, but I was still afraid of getting caught out in the dark.

Two nights. That second night didn’t terrify me as much, I kept the fire tiny and dug into the earth though. Sleep came quicker, dreams came back which I couldn’t recall but I knew they took place. I woke up in the night a few times, but that was for a perfectly good reason as I noticed when morning came that I’d actually setup right next to an ant’s nest. They had been biting me all of that night. First thing I did with the day was move all of my stuff to a new location. Following that I retrod my path to where I had seen the black specks the previous night. I saw nothing. The chaos had vanished without even a trace. I checked the trees. I checked all the bushes. I even checked a few burrows and cracks in the rock. I didn’t find anything. That was another day wasted. After the search I stayed in that mossy field until they came back.

There are lots of individual examples that explain what I did. But it wasn’t really a one example kind of deal. It had much more to do with the constant atmosphere I was exposed to. A feeling of being trapped. A feeling of being trapped in somebody else’s life. A feeling of being trapped in somebody else’s life that had been constructed for the general idea of me before I was even born. It takes seconds to destroy a life, but it takes seasons and effort to really wear it down. The soil in that settlement wasn’t right. The habitat wasn’t the one I needed. I went through the motions of being alive, but I was dying. Slowly dying, and actually dying. I did the thing for them. I placed the stones. I did it even though it hurt to do. But it was never really me doing any of it. I got a taste for being outside of them. Being outside was terrifying, but it was a place where terror died instead. I was tired of building squares, I wanted to build circles.

I stayed up all night in that mossy field. I might have fell asleep a few times but it was sleep like water lapping on the shore instead of the full immersion. The specks came back at dawn. I followed them, my actions the echoes of themselves due to exhaustion, back to their home. They lived in a cave. It wasn’t like any hole I had seen before, it blinded me. I could see my own reflection in there eating raw flesh and fucking like an animal, but I didn’t understand it that way. It was like I had found the source of death. Even if that place was water and I were surrounded by rampaging flames I would not have gone inside. So I left without my prize. I spent one more night outside, a night tempered by regret, shame, and exhaustion, then went back to the settlement.

I lied to a manager about everything that happened to me. I told them I got lost, which wasn’t totally a lie really. Hey, it was my first night out. What did they expect? That I’d return with their dumb trinket? They’re more fools than me. Everyone was annoyed at me, but what? I had checked out from their familial structures. One day their system would be just like the cave fuckers. Everything that’s big, everything that’s established, is an ending. Creation always comes from the condensed. You don’t believe me? I don’t believe me neither. But I guess bad jobs don’t appeal to repetition. Managers exist to be lied to.

My light begins with a person getting heartburn and using up the last of the supplies. They wanted one of the rest to go out and pick up some more, they selected me. Enough time had past to make me a viable candidate again I assume. The noticer immediately started with me when I go to him, this was the first gathering job I did after the bat one. “You found the cave.” I nodded. “You went inside?” I looked at the ground. “You see the markings I made in there?” He had drawn a bunch of penises on the inside of the cave. “That’s a shame. You were afraid to embrace the vaginal. My fault. I should have sent you back and requested someone a bit more forceful than you. Someone more attached to the thing itself. Hey. Don’t capture this part of it. I don’t give my permission. Stop. This is not me saying this.” I felt a little more off that I had disappointed the noticer and missed his graffiti. I told him straight why I was there, all I needed was a direction, and, ah, here we go, “No, you need- It’s still here. Leave. Leave them alone. They’re not your play thing. Time buries people for a reason. People go in one direction. Mystery is meaning, stop stamping it with your own brand. Stop consuming me, I don’t want to be a piece of you. Cease this entanglement. I will not follow you.” I was standing right there. The whole time I was standing there with him going off like that. I only need a direction, give me a direction. “I’ll do that. Alright, don’t listen to me then, don’t trust me. I’ll go along with the narrative. I know exactly what to do, let’s go.” He gave out a new objective, he used his powers to over ride my previous orders. I had to go round the back of his hut with him. He pointed to one of the stones, gifting it to me, telling me to pick it up. He pointed upwards and smiled. He said he needed me to take the stone up to the top of the Hill. An imaginatively named feature that- wait, what did he say? “It’s your own fault. You should have gone into the vagina. You should always go into the vagina.” No clue what he was referring to. That stone was big enough that it hurt standing still with it. I had to go up the Hill with it now? All the way up? “Right to the top of its belly. Place it with the other stones that you’ll find there. Do it or don’t, it’s all bullshit, right?” Okay then.

By the time I got to the base of Hill my arms felt twice their length and my fingers felt like flame. I was forced to rest before taking on the incline. I was done in. I laid the stone flat and sat on it face away from the climb. I tried to sap worry, that’s what will kill you. I took some deep breaths then grabbed the stone again and got going. It quickly became evident that it wasn’t the worry trying to kill me. The first part went fairly well, but then I got on a bit and it really started to kill me and then it really started to kill me, that’s where I collapsed and started crying on the floor. Luckily I didn’t bust my head open. Crying didn’t help move the stone but it loosened me up. Stricken, prostrate, on the side of Hill I looked up at a cloudless blue sky and regained my strength as it swallowed my whole perception. I pleaded to the sky. Please make something smaller. The stone or Hill, I don’t mind. The stone, the cave, the lady parts, whatever it was the noticer was talking about, I’m sorry I lied about it. Wait. Wait? I could do the same thing here. I could leave the rock, say I dropped it down some crevice. I didn’t do that though. I was tightened to this challenge. A thing can tighten, because other things have loosened. They can be under contradictory conditions because- You squeeze and it loosens. You let it go and it tightens. Did you say something? What’s that flying up there? I hope it’s a bird. One thing is for sure. It’s for sure. One thing. If something has already happened then it’s at this point that I don’t think I have to bother to do it in the first place. What? There’s no need to do something that’s already been done. Look at me, I’m garbling like the noticer. I’m so tired. I want to give up. I want to. Take my heart from my chest and give it to someone more deserving. I’m already done. Suffering for no reason. Holing up plugs. It’s one more step, one more step and we’re done. Next stop and we’ll be face to face with the sky.

The Hill sort of looked like a pregnant woman in profile. One bump was the head, one bump for the boobs, and the last bump was a belly. You had to squint to get it. And there you go, at the top of that belly there was actually a pile of stones. No natural pile, they’d been purposefully placed. Each stone a predecessor that had trudged up that hill just like me. All that effort and I was just another prick on the stem. I carefully, very carefully, placed my stone on top. There was something other than the stone pile up there though, the view. Down below you see the ripples. Up above everything is flat. I wouldn’t even be able to see my down there self from up here. I would be lost in the green. Shrouded by the haze that shimmers off the ground.

I spent a lot of time up there, too much, staring out at perspective. I didn’t need to be there. I didn’t need to be anywhere. Living that life, a life that I couldn’t even see, was making me sick. Not like heartburn, like a heart burning. The people at the settlement were my family, I loved them, but I didn’t want what they offered. What I needed, I needed to stop pretending I could be another person, wasn’t there. I was stuck being me, that was enough. All the vaginas and knob gags in the World couldn’t change my mind. I stood there and decided to fight. To fight in the only way I knew, running away.