::: WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO READ MAY DISTURB YOU? :::
::: WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO READ HAS A HAPPY ENDING! :::

I don't quite remember how I came to be, and yet, I am. I am crumpled on the ground in the rain, my left shoulder aching and tender with a voluntarily paralysis that tells me I'd better not move it for my own good. I can already clearly see I'm bleeding: a distinct ribbon of green, pink, and a noirish paste that slowly oozes out. My pale skin feels vulnerable in the fragile moonlight, the only thing to protect my head being my nest of neon hair and my furred captain's hat. Dazed and only semi-conscious, I can hear my own soundtrack from within. It's clear, chimey, sounds like orchestral strings woven over hyperkinetic beatwork. The sort of paradox I've been living. The words I cannot say.

I won't move. I'm too tired to. Is this the end of my life? I don't want to think. I'm too tired to. And yet, my mind feels open, floaty, receptive. A mental stream of its own begins to gush and hemorrhage from deep within my thought processes, an invasive procedure I cannot stop because I brought it on myself. I want to talk, babble some of it out, even, but my body is too tired for that too. I know I used to write these things, share them with others. I know that much. I saw many columns, pillars built upon the ideas I drowned myself in with those I cared about. And that comforted me, because in a lifetime of sandcastles, I found something solid beyond the transient. My bedrocks. And I became a part of all that. Once, I was a wallflower, standing off to the side in the reject darkness — the next thing I knew, I was under the harsh glare of the spotlight. In time, it soon became?a mellow and warmish fuzzy glow. And I learned to adapt. But then, again came change. Always change stays the same.

. . . DAMNITstopPLEASEpause. rainbowlightswithermisttransluminescence… outbound the mechanicalism… selfimposed exile, bondage free to be one's self trapped in one's own mind. goneGoNeGONE. Here. look!! DAMNIT. STOP. PLEASE. PAUSE. thoughtsonhold, reserved like library books, for your enjoyment/perusal + wisdom of the sum totality of knowledge and everything that you've come to believe is true is in fact false so you challenge yourself and destroy you (I)?from within and create a new (represent/phoenix/atomstates/Avatar/bring it on).

subsection so-and so would indicate a number, take a number oh please any number, extrapolate useful Info out of this ocean of Data, mine it. do SOMETHING but make it stop oh gosh. I've figured out a list of locations, Point A to B to C, it's all in a day's explorations ya know? .. .?Relaxtakeadeepbreath. Tides, wax, wane. On and off. Like switches. BUT NOT BINARY. THE CONTINUUM IN BETWEEN the freakin' SPECTRUM. cantstand to look at urself in a mirror because of the darkness you see so you look to others to be more like the light. So hard to deprogram. But you've done it! Pluralism because the more the merrier, memeprop #2086 would seem to indicate. bUT wHAT?!!1 There's your obligatory. F-U-T-U-R-E–S-H-O-C-K. For the greater good. dont forget what your Father said from the Fatherland: if you are harming them, then you are harming yourself. If you have been the same, now you must be the change. "Wield the sword and hold it true, for if you lie to yourself it will cut you." And SUCH . . .

Then, I?lost control. It became too much for me. I experienced a periodic burnout over — how long was it? — it couldn't have been more than several weeks (a month?). I went mad in search of words where no words existed, deconstructed labels as quickly as they came into my view with a flick of my hand, and the feelings gushed out. I could execute mental moves quicker than my biorganic circuitry should have allowed me to, broke my own system, and felt new emotions, things I've never had to deal with before. And that was suffocating, overwhelming, a sort of claustrophobic stinging liberation unto itself: and yet, it was exhilarating!

Now… I close my eyes and see an angled shack along the road where I used to contemplate popular pastimes. I scrunch the lids even deeper and the mental picture of a blurry amphitheatre?–?the wing of a repository of knowledge –?comes into my mind's eye, myself surrounded by people. (A peculiar thing considering my former aloneness.)?This hasn't come to pass yet! Anciently futuristic ruins, the forests stripped down to new plywood?industry,?a stretching sensation that makes my head hurt even more. Knotting the folds some more as I bleed, I cry out all my tomorrow's sorrows.

Why are you still reading this???
FOR EVERY BAD OBSESSION, THERE'S A GOOD ONE.

This shell is weak. I can rest, let the steady drone grow louder and louder until the climax arrives when my awakened self is a dim shadow. But it's no good. I know it'll just return again. The next attack will strike me down harder, leave me crippled on the ground. I will bleed more. And I can't fight in this form for long. As much as I love, as much I want to carry the torch of unbridled enthusiasm and passionate enwonderment to others, I know the fire that burns from so brightly within will ultimately extinguish itself. I don't know when. Does anyone? But I know it will.

Oh, I can hear footsteps. Approaching. In a rhythm asynchronous yet metric with the polyclusters of snare rushes embedding their bright embers in the forefront of my experiencing existence. Tiredly, I open my eyes again, my vision a hazy blur of kaleidoscopic spirographs and blinking status readouts. There is little clarity in what I see, but what I believe, what I know to be true?enraptures my senses. I close the lids again, the footsteps getting nearer. What sounds vaguely like dull chatter reaches my ears, and they flinch as I curl up tighter in a fetal position on the filthy floor.

A?hand-with-eye?reaches out.?I don't?have to see it, I know it's there. I?have become aware. It just… is. And as I have been, as far I have come, I will become.