A8

So as he's wailing, mind you, I'm not used to seeing a big fella like that just out-and-out sobbing, so I'm a bit taken aback by these unfolding events. And he pathetically blurts out, "I don't have anyone -- I'm alone." Normally, ya know, I think I wouldn't put up with that type of selfishness. If that were my kid saying that type of nonsense I'd slap that boy's backside with some sturdy rawhide, ya know what I'm saying. But I think when you meet these strangers, and see their pain, your gut tells ya to be nice. You want to help if ya can. So I say, "Geez, mister, it ain't all like that. You've got family, dontcha? And friends? Hell, I'll be your friend. It ain't all like ya think it is." He got real quiet for a moment. He sniffled. I thought I said something that stuck. But then he says, "You don't understand."

"What don't I understand?"

"He's an asshole, but he's right. I know he is."

"Who is. Who made you feel this way?"

"He hates me. That's what he said." And then he just slips out of my hands and sobs like a starvin' baby. I'm just about done with this crybaby, but I make one more try. "Buddy, tell me. Who's saying all this to you?".

"Samsara."

That's when I said, "Mister, I'm going into my flat now, and I'm returning with my pistol. If you're still here when I return. I shoot you dead. Sure enough, He was there when I returned, so I kept my word.

Reverend... A7

---The last Facebook status of Reverend Omura Ozu – it is suspected that he died in a house fire, but neither his body, nor that of his wife or two children were ever recovered. Their whereabouts are unknown to this day--- 

We have lived to see the days of Christ’s words fulfilled: “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents and have them put to death.” Mark 13:12 Come, Lord Jesus.

Daughter... A6

---A Letter won in auction by Jafar Pahil's estate, but stolen in transit and released online---

Mother,

I pity you, I really do. And I love you, I really do.

I pity you because you, for some reason, cannot see yet what stood before you. I envy your experience; your proximity to the things that have already come to pass in that place.

I am to be an Observer. I have chosen that side. Do not fear, do not be worried. There is redemption there.

I know that it was Williams that you believed in, and when he lost faith, so did you. But don’t you see? Just because he was the creator does not make him almighty? He was flawed and created the 6 with his own dna. Their search for liberation can also be ours. Though they were born under DESPAIR, they have worked to mine out redemption for themselves and their people. Can you not yet see the beauty?

I believe Thump is wrong. Well, he is right also, but mostly he is wrong. He was the first born, and so carries with him the most of Williams. That’s why H.P. loved him most, you see? We tend to fall in love with those who most exactly resemble our own reflection.

I am certain there is real progress being made there! Not here. Not in the hard world. We can go no further on this earth. The scholars are correct, this is evolution’s course. This is our way to ascension!

I plead with you, Oh mother, come back to us! Don’t let Williams’ fate be your own.

I swear to you, there is so much too see yet! Everyday it grows. Next month a whole new room will be opened! Can you believe it? The anticipation overwhelms me. My blood races. How erotic it all is! It’s so fulfilling, so encapsulating… it doesn’t feel the same way there --- that feeling I have on this side, that partial emptiness, an inward groaning --- it’s gone there. It vanishes! Didn’t you experience it?

I am going there now. I pray someday I’ll meet you again in that place. There are many mansions waiting for you, Mother, if only you’d care to look.

I have much hope for you yet,

Marta

Parenting... A5

FROM PAGE 1

To my son,

Because I don’t know if the truth is there or not.

Because I am not myself wise.

Because I don’t know what answer to give you.

Because I am aging rapidly.

Because I am finite.

I have worked zealously to provide for you a history of the events that began in America and spread throughout the known world. You will, sooner or later, intimately come to know of the need to choose between this earth and that one. You will have to choose between being human and being an Observer. Our people, our heritage, believe it is against God’s will to live out our breath as one of them. I want you to know, as best as can be understood, the linear sequence of events that have led us to this moment in God's time.

I have never gone in there. I have never been an Observer. One cannot be of both worlds, so I have chosen, for your sake, to stay in this realm, the realm we are born into, so that you can know how all things stand from this starting position.

I will never be an Observer. Your mother was never one.

After reading these proceeding pages of history, I grant you the freedom to choose as you so desire. 

 

Your loving Father,

Elijah

Social Media... A4

During her ‘silent period’ Marilynn Cash spent six months in a Danish mental health institution for the criminally insane. Her psychologist, Dr. Bosch gave her a computer on March 1^st. The computer stayed in Miss Cash’s possession for thirteen minutes. In that span of time she created an account on a social media website, and quickly wrote 28 messages.

The text has been translated from Danish into English and have been numbered for the reader’s convenience.

---------

1: To my dear daughter, Marta: stay warm.

2: Be at peace, if you can. Try not to be curious.

3: I don’t know what will happen to me now. I didn’t do it.

4: I have gone undone for so long.

5: I don’t have faith that I can be put back together again.

6: If I could see you now, if I could talk to you, I would say.

7: Never let go. The real kind. Things can still change.

8: I have no hope.

9: I have so much. Hope.

10: (unintelligible sequence of letters)

 

11: I would never lie to you.

12: (unintelligible)

13: Hope for no more progress, here or there, but especially there. 

14: We’ve come so far, but you have so much farther to go. 

15: Don’t forget about the past, but don’t look too closely at it either.

16: The answers to the secrets are too sunny.

17: Sun and light and brightness. I am scared.

18: I wished for all things. You must wish for less.

19: Help alleviate.

20: Go in, but not so far as I did.

21: And don’t help something you can’t understand. Which is everything.

 

22: The light is so bright. I am afraid. 

23: If I speak, that’s where the fear comes from.

24: Out of words comes forth creation.

25: Can you understand that?

26: (unintelligible)

27: (unintelligible)

28: (unintelligible) …Summer is coming… (unintelligible)

Audio Portion... A3

--Segment from an audio interview with Jeremy Beaman, stolen from Jafar Pahil's personal collection by an unnamed source.

Mr. Pahil had gathered thousands of hours of audio, video and photographic material for a documentary he was planning on the life of H.P. Williams. He has since abandoned the project, but zealously keeps private his collection.

Scraps... A2

Pieces recovered from Mary Elizabeth Broadener's biographical manuscripts.

...room itself, in those first few months, should have been tremendously underwhelming...

...success of the whole endeavor could not have been, at that time, based upon the product itself. After all, what was there really to see? For all the preparation one had to go through just to enter the room with the appropriate equipment, it should have been a letdown...

...maddeningly small, this supposed 'new world'...

The stimulus for the visitor could not be the room itself, but the question posed... 

Those who supposed it was a fraud, could not see answer as to why Williams acted the way he did. It was his devotion to his creation that sold the movement. They came to watch him watch the room...

...everything else seemed inconsequential...

...begged the question...

Some even, and rightfully so, wondered how Williams could even be alive...

... manner in which he ran his life was gobsmackingly dumbfounding...

Williams' relatives spoke not only of his incredible weight loss, but were quick to describe the ways in which they perceived what appeared to them to be structural changes to his form...

Before Clive died, he described his brother... 

...with hair has fallen out and his eyes have both sunk into his skull and somehow gotten bigger at the same time. It's like his body knows that his eyes are the only important piece of his physical body... everything else recedes while his eyes grow stronger, bigger, and deeper."

Some believed that it was still all a fraud, using Williams' near omnipresence in the room as evidence for their argument instead of... 

...that he was somehow controlling 'the creation' with his mind somehow. The contents of the room would then, under such a theory, not be intelligent, but be... 

...while others towed a middle road, convinced that somehow these creatures/or/creature, "as it was in the beginning", were/was possessed by Williams... believing that free-will was possible, but that Williams, fearful, mad, and jealous, was unwilling to release his creation from his grasp... argument broke down when... Williams often chose to stay with the 'Monoliths' --- as they were called then, before they became the renown 6 Fathers --- rather than Thumpthump... 

...theories inevitably broke down...

 

It became apparent to the frequent inhabiters of the room, before Williams knew it himself, that he would never get around to building more rooms. It was sheer fortune that he created in that initial framework an exit door...

Of course, without having the ability to know his creator, Thumpthump was free to imagine his own philosophy of the door...

...mp's own desperate search led his imagination to be the true inspirer of worlds. The history is as much contingent on him and his work as it ever was on Williams himself.

Something of a Start... A1

For the past two months or so, a new tide of thought has continued to flush itself through my thought life: fiction:: not just any fiction::: fantasy. The strange aspect of the incessantly ungulating notion has been made greater in my mind by the sense that it is important.

Never in my life have I particularly been taken by the fantasy genre. Sure, I enjoy Lord of the Rings as much as the next guy, but I never understood Star Wars obsessions or felt like anything of the like warranted itself as anything more than mere escapism.

Something has changed. I'm not exactly sure why, or what prompted the change. But I can't seem to shake it.

Perhaps it is the notion of 'the road to awe'. What both atheists and many-a Christian appears to lack in this modern age, is a sense of awe. Sure, any of us can stare up at the cosmos and get a sense of how enormous the universe is, but that all tends to get happily compartmentalized in some pseudo-philosophical/sociological/neo-FreudianNeitzcheian moshpit reserved only for quick conversational comebacks when something vaguely profound is needed to fill a gape in the conversational space-time continuum.  It never quite hits home.

 Good fiction (and more severely so, good fantasy) causes the viewer to suspend-disbelief. Me, my atheist buddies, my buddhist gerbil, and the toothless dog from down the street can all simultaneously agree that for the sake of our entertainment, Hobits exist, eat way too many meals, tend to be self-absorbed little creatures (with the exception of the Samwise and Elijah Woods), can be saved from evil volcanic mountains of doom by giant eagles, and can impress old talking trees with their poetic calls to war. BUT bring up faith in God amidst an atheistic ear, and suddenly you've got to disprove the existence of a flying spaghetti monster before you can deal with the Good Lord Himself. Fiction evens the playing field.

Granted, that which falls into the 'Christian Genre' of fiction tends to be more the family friendly, Hallmarkish, mildly-propagandic faire. I'm not really interested in fiction as a vehicle to present Biblical morality. I'm interested in fiction's ability to expand our minds.

And I don't want to go it alone.

I've written in this blog before about the works of both Charles Williams and H.P. Lovecraft. Both dealt with men encountering awe-ful experiences. For Lovecraft, such missions unanimously ended in peril, for he saw the great mysteries of the universe as a "deadly light". For Williams, that mission came to a point as a "terrible good". Although fantasy evens the playing field, in that everyone happily suspends suspicion and skepticism along the way, it still ends in a revelation of one's worldview.

What I'd love to create is a place that moves from the very mundane, the very ordinary, and moves towards a place of ever expanding awe. In some respects, I think this could be done without any 'magical' elements. Looking down the barrel of our computer age alone could suffice. But in order for it to work it would need to grow in such a way (organic-like) that it would breed a society of canon creators.

Part of the problem with the comic book world in my humble opinion, is that the canon for these guys is pretty much nonexistent. The story-lines go against each other. Different writers compete for different versions of Batman, rather than add to a singular story structure. Lord of the Rings is beautiful in that Tolkien's canon is set --- but the problem is it remains closed forever as well. Tolkien was the alpha and omega of Middle Earth.

I've written 3 or 4 'opening chapter/thoughts' to various story ideas that could potentially be the start of a greater mythos. Today I was doodling around with a monologue, and decided to tape myself reading it under really bad lighting conditions! It isn't much on the entertaining side, but it was helping get the feel for a character idea.

Buddhism's first supposition is that life is suffering. What if there was a place you could go to get the anti-virus to that disease? Just like smallpox and measles, the cure for suffering is to be given the dose, the right quantity of it, so that your own anti-bodies could fight it off for good?

Postscript: because I'm slightly embarrassed to post such a low-res video, here's the link to my other ongoing, non-fictional youtube series I've been working on --- more entertaining, less sadnessing, much, much more caffeinated: http://www.youtube.com/user/thecaffeinatedkick#p/u/4/pbBHGt7YdBA