Urban Eremite

[Dæmon]

Gamma

[Dæmon]

In the halls of misery, mass-produced copies of Matisse, Monet and Van Gogh adorn the creamy, plain, halls and I find myself entertained by the contrast. They are as out of place here as the contrived words of optimism and failed buoyancy that repeat down these institutional walls.
The smell of decay fills the nostrils with its reminder, and I can’t help but wonder how any hope can survive it for very long.
There’s discharge everywhere, the stench of inevitability, bringing back to view the very liquidity of existence and over it all, a subtle membrane just barely holding it all together, straining to plug-up the leaks.
Many stains have been covered up behind these framed landscapes; encouraging words drown out moans of pain and sorrow but they cannot silence them.
There’s a play going on here.
But don’t look too closely or else the flaking paint will ruin the illusion.

What a perfect reflection of the entirety of mankind’s modern daily experience this truly is. The streets are, no less, plastered with patches of classical beauty and, with crude marketing ploys the sampled pieces of musical greatness now participate in sonar quilts, with that flighty beat of cheerfulness and sexual energy, attacking your ears from every direction.
One must be in a state of constant tumescence: inflated egos, inflated dreams, inflated dicks and mammary glands.
Optimism and happy thoughts are chanted, like this age’s epitaph, trying to convince us all that everything is going to turn out all right, or that the road to progress rests upon this, presumably, ascending slope towards ever-higher enlightenment.
All that is needed, we are convinced, is education and a positive attitude, as if the universe can be fooled by such folly.
I’m being sold something, I know it, and I must, must, make a choice. But the choice itself is forced and fixed. It has already been made for me. All I need to do, now, is adopt it as my own and care for it as if it sprang out from my own bosom.
I gag at the sheer perversity of it all.
Here too, the smell of decay saturates the fuel infested air and I am swimming in a sea of human waste.
Everywhere I look waste.
Where has my respect gone?
Better to not see at all, if the ideals of humanitarianism are to survive.
Seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting, consciousness altogether, can only lead you to this desire to distance yourself from it all, or to be more particular with your appreciations and loyalties when dealing with it.
Some latex gloves are needed.
This is what individuation is!!!
But we are told the road to the surface goes the other way.
The road to perdition is given a new name: progress. Its downward slump is repaved into illusionary flatness where nothing but smooth-sailing lies ahead…ahead, forever onwards. Forget the past, look forward, hope, dream, and forget.
Denial is the religion of this uncivilized civilization’s childishness and I must become my brother’s keeper…only I do not decide who my brother is.
I am told.
My disdain is my rejection and my rejection becomes my remaining identity!
But this is an old story. No misanthrope can ever match the concealed loathing beneath a philanthropist’s “kind words” and “good” intentions.
The smiles bear his teeth and the strain makes his gums bleed, until he looks like the blood-sucking vampire that he truly is.
They make a mockery of it all, these liberated New Age modernists, so that it loses value; it turns into a nice little trinket, a pretty painting on cracking stained walls, a kind word full of the posturing only the truly “innocent” can appreciate.
This, too, is an old tale I’ve recited before in a dozen different venues, for hundreds of different sleeping dullards, in a million different ways.
My soap-box is creaking and I’ve lost interest in the primal returns in time and effort it offers.
How does one wake the living dead?
I just want to retreat behind my solitude now, and leave those hopes and fears behind me.
The anger will follow.

Yet…still…many times I forget and I fall prey to my, not to be forgotten, incessant desires. I open up and expose, seeking a connection, only to find the other lacks the right links to complete this bond of temporary intimacy, and the world slaps me back to my senses, as it always has.
Distinction means just that: an inability to fully attach.
Does not the human body expel the foreign element so as to remain intact?
Perhaps, I am an obsolete technology; a remnant of some bygone age.
So, a proud killjoy I have become.
Despite all of this, this farce shall be played out on my own terms or I will expose it every chance I get to terrified needy little simpletons that will grow to hate me more, because of it.
When they call me names, I rejoice at the opportunity offered, unintentionally. When they slander me and dismiss me, using their clever ways and pretend aloofness, I know they sense the truth in what I tell them.
I push-off and soar towards the unforgiving light where the air is cool and odourless and liquidity turns to air. The warm wafts of decaying flesh, from below, lift me up and settle me down.
I see with the artist’s eye and the paintings become my windows into their souls.

I am a fringe bit-player; an invisible rambler around the ambit, stopping, from time to time, to enjoy the spectacle of human recklessness.
I circle the empty centre calling myself Lucifer, diving towards it only out of curiosity, letting the momentum take me away from it, once more to where I feel most at ease.
I am a sedentary hobo, travelling upon the world’s cold tracks from the confines of my seclusion; an accidental impostor making his home where the resolute enjoy their investments, wearing the trappings of the restlessly inert; bouncing off the smooth walls of their prisons, with childlike tantrums, calling them palaces and places of spiritual awakening.
I am, but, a collector of stories and a selective salvager of unpublished experiences; an actor reciting tales around the camp-fires of migratory labourers and spreading the news to those that never learned to read the signs.
I am the keeper of the tradition; an outsider, contemplating his parasitical existence and sucking the bone dry.
I am the comic relief in the tragic play; a satyr and a harbinger of chaos and disillusionment, playing with words as one does with shiny stones.
It’s not even funny anymore.
But I still remain amused.
All of it has turned into a sad commentary on the modern age and a tragic tale that only one on the spectator seats can really laugh at.
I am not quite there yet, but I am getting there.
I rotate round and round and round, trying to gain speed and then altitude, soaring towards the cusp and there, hopefully, I might find the buoyancy of centrifugal weightlessness and the spectacular vantage point of an eagle-eyed menace.

No doubt, I must cast overboard any excess baggage, if I am to break free from the gravity that pulls upon my bones, souring my style, but with age I seem to be accumulating more than I can cast aside, and I am pulled further down.
But “baggage” is not a bad word for me. It is another term for experience, precedent, history, memory. I need luggage in my travels and no modern nitwit casting the word about like a curse will make me abandon my memorabilia.  
The past informs the mind of the incoming future and directs the will so that it does not fall into the same potholes.
No, for me excess baggage is that which I have no use for because I’ve condensed my experiences down to a few recurring patterns of predictability. I’ve simplified and generalized away the nonsensical details other use to seem more complicated and sophisticated.

All around me docile dimwits remind me of what lies below.
My conservatism lurks, like an old man’s failing health.
If I invest too much, then how much will I be able to, then, sacrifice when reality comes-a-knocking?
My need for nesting has become unbearable. I just want to settle-down, place my burden in a well ordered fashion around a warm perch and rest.
No female required. I have enough of that energy in me to suffice.
In fact, at this point, I think a woman would be more of an impediment than an aid – too much work for so little in return.
I’ve tasted it, I’ve taken it…and there’s not much there, except for a cursory promise that turns into comfortable tolerance.
I don’t really belong anywhere - never have, never will.
I always had that feeling of being a stranger, of being uncomfortable, any place I sat.
It’s because, except for recently, I’ve never actually lived in one place, or in one house, for very long.
I guess that is why I seek someone, something, to make it my own; not to belong to, to surrender to, to abandon myself to and lose my self within, but to make it my own - to have and to possess.
My isolation is my identity; the very essence of my individuality.
All who try to relieve themselves from this basic fact about existence are only trying to forego their distinctness for the relieving barrenness of surrender.
I cannot bring myself to accept the idea that multiplicity is all a cruel joke meant to test our faith and our resolve.
What an absurd wife’s tale that is, one meant for children and adults with infantile minds.
Who but an anaemic spirit would accept such self-debasement as the meaning of life?
What can be more reassuring, to anyone who comes to realize his own feebleness or who comes to sense the stress of responsibility, than to accept the idealism that proposes an identity founded in the other(ness)?
How can you be yourself and other than yourself simultaneously? This reminds me of the Christian triadic god; a bunch of horse-shit perfumed with mystical semantics.

Would these weaklings not try to avoid being exposed, as what they innately know they are, by accusing anyone that resists this trend towards delusional self-annihilation masking as selfishness, of being “evil” or of being too afraid of the sacrifice or of being “unenlightened”?
Such are the ways of man.
Hell, the very nature of consciousness can be more perfectly interpreted as a resistance, a denial, a rejection.
What, then, can this ideal of assimilation and abandonment be interpreted as, if not the desire to cease existing as an independent entity?
We’ve made pride and ego into sins. Might as well go all the way and call all resistance to assimilation and all distinction a blasphemy against God.

No, my possibility is not yet finished.
This is still my time, my age, my world. The inevitable will soon reabsorb me into its continuity without me having to hasten the process or find peace in experiencing my own non-existence before the fact.
Such feminine dispositions do not belong to me, as I do not belong to them.
The female in me is subdued. I am masculine only due to this control over the female in me.
I am, still, an outsider, and proudly so. I accept the costs and the suffering as an inescapable part of what makes my conscious existence possible.
I embrace the momentary phenomenon knowing it will soon be done with and then lost within the flux; appreciating it all the more because of it.
My unconsciousness is inevitable – my consciousness has yet to be explored.
I love what I am too much to deny the price for it.
I am, for this time being, alive.

[Dæmon]

I used to think of travels when I was younger, then I did some of it and was gravely disappointed.
I used to dream of women when I was still a naïve horny romantic, then I cavorted with some of them and I was grimly disenchanted.
I used to seek my identity in others when I was still lost, then I discovered they lacked it more than I did and I was greatly dismayed.
I used to care when I was fragile and meek and full of kindness, then I saw the scowls that lurked behind the smiles and the twinkle of viciousness even in a humble gesture and I turned callous…and clever.
The experience, the act of living, has been made ineffective – a contrived, controlled product, it has now been stripped of its harshness, cleansed of its grime and softened with powders and colourful strips, taken-off recycled plastics.
I live in a culture of non-differentiation, where no sign of peculiarity is tolerated by the sublimely tolerant, and no hint of honesty is accepted by the profoundly authentic.
The experience of living has been made predictable and stress has been replaced with boredom…and boredom, in turn, relieved with manufactured stress.
You can’t escape what you are, you can only deny it or dismiss it as overcome.

In this world of technological shrinkage one can travel across the globe with a touch of a button, exchange thoughts with people from around the globe and explore historical monuments from the comfort of one’s own living room.
Is there more to it?
I’m finding it increasingly difficult to rationalize a more intimate engagement, when variation is losing its relevance and uniformity is spreading like a sheet of ice over a lake.
Except for some minor differences in climate, and in smells and sounds, can anyone honestly say that a farmer in Cambodia is living an experience significantly different from one in Idaho, or that an urbanite in Tokyo has some lifestyle that is alien to a city dweller in Moscow - or that any of it deserves the time, expenses and discomforts of travel to sample what minor differences still exist, clinging on the banks like an oil spill before the clean-up crews arrive?
I’m beginning to doubt there’s anything worth seeing under the ice. Most of it is slowly being frozen to death, leaving only floating debris in a cesspool of nothingness, to remind us of what was once alive and is now forgotten.

I remember visiting the Acropolis, some years back.
I distinctly recall the hustle and bustle of tourists scrambling up the long, stony ascent, polished into glass by numerous feet, the heat breaking out in beads on my forehead, the blazing sunlight making my eyes squint, my feet aching, being constantly thirsty and then my final reward of just looking at some stones, chiselled and arranged, behind roped-barriers, which I was not allowed to touch, as snapshots were taken by smartly dressed European necrophiliacs there to admire another illustrious cadaver.
I descended to the outlying cafes still feeling thirsty.
A year later I watched a television documentary about the Acropolis, and from the distant comforts of my own home my mind, undistracted by anything but the visuals and the narration explaining what I was looking at, was profoundly moved.
I recall this as being a far more seminal experience of this historical monument than I had when I was there in its immediate shadow. I was finally inspired and emotionally moved, as I had expected to be, whereas when I was in its immediate presence, I was wondering what the hell I was doing there, and where the damn public toilets were, trying to consider how to re-navigate the treacherous upward path downwards in sandals drenched in my own sweat

The next day I walked through a museum, for a closer look at the historical artefacts, where I was denied tactile interaction with the exhibitions, trying to figure out what I was looking at, without the benefit of a competent guide.
Can I say, with any certainty, that the same would not occur at Machu Picchu or at the Taj Mahal, if I ever decide to go there physically? Because visually and intellectually I’ve already been there, numerous times, and I believe I’ve already experienced them both, more deeply than most of the numerous tourists that visit them or a yearly basis, just to brag about being there to their friends back home, buy a few mementos that proves it and then sample the local cuisines in the comfort of four-star hotels.
I mean, what are we looking for, exactly, in these constant and expensive voyages of restricted exploration; trips that are marketed and sold as sublimely unique experiences, like any other product, to millions upon millions that can then share it with us?
Is there something more inspiring in the tactile, odoriferous immediacy of being present?
I find this hard to believe, particularly when the experience is a mental creation and merely being present does not automatically mean you were totally present.
After having met some of these well-travelled idiots I have yet to determine how the experience of being present affected them personally, if at all. They talk about what they saw, going into detail about some trivial adventures that they may have had there, but not a word about how they felt or about how they were changed by the experience.

I’ve met people who have gone and will go to spiritual places I have never been nor much care to go to, who display no penetrating insights or life-altering wisdom.
What then are these trips good for, if not merely for distraction and bullet points on social resumes?
You can place a simpleton underneath the Sistine Chapel ceiling and all he’ll have to say is: “Awesome” because he’s already been told that it is so, or comment about the pretty colours, before he purchases a souvenir and looks for a local restaurant.
Is there something exceptional or special to be found in tasting this artificial engagement with reality – stripped and cleansed so that we may better digest it - where we experience it as indifferent voyeurs, passing by with our cameras and maps, wearing our hiking boots, our khaki shorts and our two-hundred dollar sunglasses, and where locals put on their traditional uniforms and parade before us like ghosts from the past?
Do they, like us, not know that we can leave, and that we will leave? Do not, some of them, want to leave with us, being seduced by our fancy cameras and well-quaffed heads?
Is it not all for the photo-opportunity, that token we parade about as evidence of our cosmopolitan sophistication?
Would it surprise us to discover that these foreign people go back to lives, no different than our own except for some differences in symbolisms and luxurious overkill?
What are we looking truly for?
Are we seeking the exotic that is no more; a dead and gone world, that now lives, as any ideal does, in the purity of imagination?
Are we seeking the different so as to escape our own ennui, but for a moment?
Are we seeking a way out of the common to build an identity upon, and pretend that, despite the facts, we are special and unique, and interesting?
Are we seeking the authentic experience we can then share with another, and in the sharing make it more vivid?

It is in the coming and going that the illusion of hope is kept alive?
The expectation of possibilities, is what urges us to go off and then to return to the same-old crap we have grown accustomed to.
We love to brag about it.
Like Socrates, at the market, I am amazed by how many things the world contains which I have no use for and little interest in.
My desire is one of exclusion, of distancing myself from a world that seeks to absorb me in banality - a world of contentment that constantly contradicts itself with activity.
Like Odysseus I resist the Siren’s song and travel on towards my own Ithaca, knowing that mine will never be found…because it should not – disappointment lurks there even if one is to convince himself that journeys ever end.
I’m already overburdened with unnecessary and socially necessary merchandise - things I picked up along the way in my time of youthful need.
I have become a walking pocket. I take my wares out, when need be, or when I desire to, and the adolescent mind is taken by the shiny contents, not knowing that I never had to leave home to get them.

Credit cards, and health insurance cards, and social insurance cards, and a cellular phone and keys… many, many keys.
Keyes I’ve forgotten what lock they belong to.
Keys for the front door and keys for my car, and keys for my mailbox and for my locker at work and…and my keychain sounds like the chains around my ankles.
These days I need to make a count every time I go out or every time I stand up off a chair. I pad myself down trying to make sure all is accounted for and at its designated place.
But am I the holder of keys or another key in the key-chain?

[Dæmon]

I fall back…
The sound of music coming from the kitchen, the low tinkling of glassware just beneath the low rumble of my father’s voice.
I immerse myself into the past, like I did into those freshly washed bedspreads smelling of fabric-softener and my mother’s hands.
The radio is on, as it always was on those Saturday mornings, tuned into a community radio station, and a foreign culture fills the spaces; a connection slowly losing its pull on all, except my father, not yet dead, who desperately holds onto his lost childhood, there…and until the end.

Now I cling to my own.
My morning’s, these days, are accompanied with pains and silence.
But there’s comfort now, when there was an uncomfortable uncertainty back then.
My body is now wanting, when it was my spirit that once was.
Life is full of such ironies.
I’m beginning to appreciate them more.
Like the irony of finding real self-esteem through great spans of insecurity; true pride after long gaps of humbling despair; power after cold indifference has settled in and hopelessness is accepted as an indicator of freedom.
And one of the most glaring ironies is in how lonely I feel, these days, when surrounded by people.
Always more so when others are present, and rarely when I am actually on my own.
Imagine that.
There’s always that burden of being something for someone, that no amount of familiarity can totally appease.
The other always stands as a problem to be resolved, otherwise it stands for an unnecessary element that requires a justification.
In both cases I have fallen short.

My solution, up until now, has been alcohol.
I drink, numbing that part of my mind that is self-conscious into sluggishness, and then I break out in puns and one-liners; my spirit carelessly releasing its pent-up energies in frivolous banter and word-games, postponing the consequences for the next day’s throbbing headache.
The effect is usually short-lived, as the stupor spreads and drowsiness engulfs me like a warm bath.
In the process the other loses their original appeal, or even their relevance, and I see them, once more, as they are, stifling the urge to disclose it to them with more drink.
This only makes it worse.
Eventually I seek-out a plausible, if not transparent, excuse to disentangle myself and retreat back into my blessed silence.
Ironically, because irony is inescapable, many who have gotten used to my easy, tolerant shyness, accuse me of being too verbose, during these rare moments of release. Having grown accustomed to using me as their sounding board, enjoying me as a cheering audience to their endless pretentiousness, and being totally unaware about how ridiculous I truly think they are, suddenly find me unappealing.
Imagine that.
The world’s become so fucking boring.
All this technology, all that promise, and what is done with it, by the vast majority, but use it to placate base drives and exchange trite remarks?
Endless gossip, bragging, posturing, sexual overtones and undertones, silliness, money-making schemes, good deals, and the repetition of what is considered “fact”, as if the only thing of interest is to establish one’s place within society as either a “winner” or a “loser”.
Petty communications, grooming, passed-off as enlightening, exchanged by minds lost in their own dullness.
So much opportunity and what is done with it?
Chasing after the same old shit and then pretending individuality. Being “special” is chewing-up the same crap with a different bite.
Shit, nobody wants to be alone anymore. Nobody can be alone anymore.
So, what the fuck is being shared when all is experienced simultaneously?

I can’t blame them - their internal world is monotonous, their thoughts stifling and mere echoes of a surrounding din.
The only way they can deal with themselves, on a daily basis, is to place the other in between; a colorful paravan to cover the naked truth.
These fools cannot envision an ambition that does not result in some communal return, symbolized by money.
Everything else is a waste of time, when the other becomes the only source of identity and self-esteem.
It is worthless unless a value is communally placed on it, and it is given a price. Value defined as what is marketable to those same dullards who are trained to associate worth with brand and value with popularity.
Is that where that Buddhist idea comes from? Is that not what hedonism feeds?
I wonder.

So many compromises made, for the sake of “happy” coexistence.
Yes…but the boundaries are crumbling, the painted-on smiley-faces are slowly running down sweaty skin, creating a vision of melting monstrosities.
The mind – well some anyway - insists on distinction and on distinguishing and on being discerning.
Consciousness, when it has reached a certain level, rejects all ideas that annul it…awareness is its very nature, and it fights to keep its options open.
I?
I fall back…listening to those songs of old, and still so relevant, honest and clear…
They signal to me, and I return the gesture.

[Dæmon]

I am, somewhat, fortunate.
Living in this multicultural city, so divided between Francophones and Anglophones, with Allophones confusedly scrambling to take sides, while retaining their difference.
The general attitude of the people is one of ‘live and let live’.

Few would, on these truly multicultural streets, goad you into conversation, since nobody is entirely sure what language you are fluent in. What interactions between strangers occurs, besides the everyday socio-economically necessary ones, are characterized by a muddling through linguistic minefields, gestures and facial expressions included.
Spirituality is everywhere, but it isn’t overbearing, like in some places. It runs unnoticed, like a current, that pulls on you but does not drag you into the deeps hoping to drown you with bullshit.
The city is a cultural buffet to be enjoyed either from a distance or with careful sampling.
No gluttons allowed.
There is a distance here, between people, a certain disconnect, helped along by a climate that inhibits open displays and flamboyance.
Someone can live in the same building for years and, except for a casual hello and a polite smile, never be bothered with or by the neighbours.
Montréal is wonderful, like that.
Nowhere else have I felt this sharp distinctions between various nationalities sharing the same spaces.
The city is aglow with diversity. One week Indians parading with their multicoloured sari, during their independence day celebrations, and the next the Caribbean festival closing-off a street downtown to hold its annual bazaar.
There’s none of the melting-pot totalitarianism that turns everything into a bland replica, imitated with an exaggeration that makes it garish.
Here the lines are clear and not easily crossed. They are actual.
Language forms a natural geographic barrier of exclusion. You can visit whenever you please but you can never stay.
What a perfect place, for such as I.
I can walk the streets without being accosted with those wanting to sell me shit, or wishing to share their troubles with me or bothering me with their stupidities. It is unlikely that anyone will knock on my door wanting to have a cup of coffee or to sell me God or bore me with his or her personal concerns and compensating bluster.

Peace.
I’ve always just wanted peace.

Some have mistaken this for a form of social ineptness and/or depression, but this is not the case.
My social skills are well attuned, and if I am in the right mood I can make most anyone like me. The secret is in adjusting yourself to the other’s demeanour as smoothly as possible, and to then allow him/her the illusion of superiority and control – being an open ear makes you an instant friend, and although they may find you quiet and a bit mysterious, at first, they will not be able to shake off the positive first-impression you’ve made. Then, if you wish, you might open up a bit more, once you’ve understood what makes them tick, and tell them exactly what they want to hear.
Let them drink deeply and they will leave feeling surprisingly rejuvenated by your presence. A feeling that will be rekindled in some future re-encounter.
Suddenly…I am fatigued, as it is to be expected when being so drained.
I do suffer from this terminal social fatigue, and most recently with declining patience.
Social necessities aside my age has resulted in waning energies, and in me wanting to prevent them from being squandered needlessly, and given that my recovery time has also been augmented I have turned increasingly solitary.
But age does have its benefits.
I am now more experienced with human nature, and all its intricate forms, and also more self-aware, knowing what I truly require and what I do not, despite what others tell me.
I have become impatient with stupidity, unable to deal with it for any period of time exceeding a few minutes. This, in itself, makes ninety-percent of the human population intolerable to me, leaving that precious ten-percent to find underneath all that muck.
I do not expect others to tolerate me for long either - I often find my self correcting my behaviour when I stray – knowing full well that my decreasing ability to play that damn game of contrived social graciousness is making me into an unbearable curmudgeon, and so I do not fully understand why others think I should tolerate them, for long.
Their inability to self-correct, or to perceive one’s self through another’s eyes, is no defence against the accusation of inanity and repetitive animalistic posturing.
Innocence is not a defence. It is a state one must grow out of, or suffer the consequences.
I choose to distract myself, focusing on their movement, their subliminal messaging, their lips , as their words slip by my consciousness, unnoticed - their petty vagrancies, their conceited purity, their subtle slights tumbling off the edges of my mind, like noise.

[Dæmon]

I am recycled – I am recyclable – wasting away, while salvaging what remains in this sequence of repetitive striving.
Do I not see with your eyes, dear son?
I, as well as you, stand on the same graveyards, only mine also include my own skeletons, pushing down on broken bones and lost childhood.
Why do you imagine me not wanting to be free, like you do?
What makes you think I, too, did not dream and aspire or that I was not, once virile and full of naïve rebelliousness?
Is it to help you find an immediate villain for your hero’s quest; a palatable image for your battle against the invisible, insatiable foe?
Then, if this is so, let me be that for you, if nothing more.
I, too, long, or longed, to break free, to float above it all, and finally leave my mother’s warm womb behind, but I am not willing to blind myself to accomplish it.
I, too, did not willingly grow up, wanting to remain forever a child playing in golden fields, and I, too, was denied this privilege.
Do you think these desires too unique to be felt on a very primitive level and to be shared by those you consider not of your own kind?
These imbeciles, these simple fools, you may not fully understand yet, also feel it; only they do not realize its extent or its depth, as you will, or as I do.
You are where once I was and you will be where I now am, but let this be for now.
Let us open our eyes, if only for a minute, and share the scene.
The secret is in enjoying the present, despite what was or will be - this is more theoretical than actual, for it involves a level of self-deception and simplicity not all are capable of when it is imposed wilfully.
The secret is in enjoying it all despite it all.
Whether you forgive me or not, for my arrogant indiscretions, is irrelevant. You are here and you are now, and whatever that means, this is something only you can cope with.

I am recycled, just as you are, and what you do with this opportunity is up to you.
Now, I’m not telling you what you should do or could do, or what I want you to do, but I am asking you:
“What will you do?”
Will you waste it away?
Will you whine and bitch about what could have been?
Will you beg and plead?
Or, like a real human being, like a real man, will you do the best that you can, not offering any excuses or any hideaways as evidence of your, supposed, greatness?

I am lost, a lone wanderer in the wastelands of reality – did you know that?
Will you be the one that offers me a direction - a way home?

[Dæmon]

A curse or a blessing? To be misunderstood or to be considered weird and abnormal in one’s own time?
One can’t hazard a guess without seeming arrogant or delusional and, somewhat, self-absorbed.
I just know that I’ve never experienced the feeling that I truly belonged somewhere, anywhere, unless I was secluded from this somewhere - detached and indifferent to it.
Whenever I’ve tried to engage this world of man I have been struck by a sense of alienation, of complete differentiation, of utter isolation, and it is then, and only then, when I’ve ever felt the full brunt of loneliness.
Much of what makes the world turn once left me perplexed, confounded by something mysterious. This something, now having been uncovered as what it is, leaves me unmoved, if not completely disgusted.
It’s been this early wonderment, now reduced to embers buried under layers of soot, that has put me in this place of critical intruder; a circumspect tourist in a foreign land, walking on what others consider hot coals, and feeling nothing at all.
At first, when I was still inexperienced, I thought of this position as a product of my own failings. I was hard on myself, and never allowed an opportunity to pass me by where I could abandon myself to self-pity or batter myself into the ground.
Then I slowly became intimately acquainted with many of the things I could not connect with, I witnessed the soft-underbellies, and found myself no less flabbergasted at the amounts of time and energy many around me allotted towards the pursuit of things and experiences that left me disinterested, or not interested in equal measure.
At first I thought the fault was with me, that I was missing something, that some elements of the experience were not being appreciated by me.
After repetitive attempts and indirect observations, I realized that I was not missing a thing. The fault wasn’t with me, it was with them, and with what overstated gusto they plunged into things, expecting far more than was necessary or even deserved.
A hungry man imagines the food to be far more tasty than it actually is, and it is only after he is almost full that he realizes that it may have been a bit undercooked or missing some salt.

It’s always been this way: The imagination over-emphasizing what is needed, until it is no longer is needed, and then finding it less than expected.
It’s because the need is insatiable; an existential absence that no thing or experience can fulfil – providing only a temporary distraction from the awareness of it.
The solution isn’t more and more, but less and less – a slow weaning process where this hunger is made more bearable with increasing habituation with it. You can never fill that void, you can only shrink it, by somewhat detaching yourself from it.
This is not an advocacy for absolute detachment, as many religions preach, because this too is an unfulfilled need that only wants to inebriate the mind into unconscious numbness.
The need doesn’t just disappear when you are numb, no more than the damage is healed by being anaesthetized – you can’t run from reality or close your eyes and ears, humming a mantra, to make it go away.
The only way to deal with reality is to face it, change yourself in relation to it, and so make it more tolerable by making yourself stronger, thicker, steadier.
No mysticism applies, and no ambiguity needs to be retained.
Humanity is no longer much of a mystery to me.
My earlier insecurities have introduced me to the idea that this reaction, my reaction, might be a reaction to a world I may feel inadequate towards but I find this inapplicable in my case, even if others may apply it as they will.

Take sex, for instance.
Even as a teenager I could not fully rationalize many of the exaggerated behaviours and perspectives on it, despite the fact that I could relate to the immediate desires and the pull that underscored its force.
My ignorance, at first, made my creativity unfurl, offering my thoughts fodder to build sand-castles with.
Later, and after a few sexual experiences, I was dismayed by how the reality of intercourse failed to live-up to my naïve expectations, returning me to my authentic confusion as to what all the fuss was truly about.
Subsequently, and after much reading and introspection, my increasing understanding of what was really going on, only decreased my willingness to reach the extremes, others so readily did and do, to indulge in a natural behavior I found base and a bit funny, even if pleasurable.
I would no more attach significance to the pleasure of eating a well-cooked meal than I would to penetrating a well-shaped female, yet the connection of this primal act to basic feelings and instinctive identification, still moves me to some unwarranted activities, such as these writings.
Come to think of it, all my sexual experiences have been with females that instigated the contact, as I was never one to run after girls, displaying myself or trying to make myself as more than I am to gain their favours.
It just never mattered to me that much.
The relationship of libido with power and desire with need are unmistakable and they undoubtedly explain the female mystique or the overall power females have over male behaviour.
It is a relationship I now comprehend and a force I’ve deflected into other activities, still being interested in its manifestation in human behaviour around me.
My sexual force has been redirected towards other creative avenues, and they find the same level of satisfaction there, as other find in seducing a pretty young girl or in the subsequent orgasm.
I too seed these words, hoping a few will find fertile grounds and I am gripped with the same sense of release when I expunge my thoughts from them.
My interest in sex is now more mental than physical.
I recall a few times when I spent hours at a club just watching the dancers, flirting and swaying suggestively, in an interplay of symbolisms guided by an unconscious drive. Instead of wanting to be amongst them I was satisfied with observing and analysing, like a biologist would any species.
I began to realize, then, that I felt more comfortable on this side, looking into these primal instinctive displays, being totally fulfilled by the observations and the insights this offered me. This insight was reinforced after I spent one evening watching a girl – a girl I was dating at the time - being pursued on the dance floor by a male interloper and being completely mesmerized by the sight.
No jealousy enveloped me with rage, no possessiveness gripped by heart…only sheer intellectual interest.

At some point I considered myself a scopophiliac, but this does not completely explain it, even if some elements of voyeurism participate in the experience. This because I also exhibited similar tendencies when as a prepubescent boy I was enthralled with merely watching ants go about their daily chores and spent hours on end, in the blaring Mediterranean sunlight studying animals and bugs of all kinds.
I was enthralled by nature, and the simpler behaviours and social interactions of my family’s chickens, or those tiny ants that sparked my budding curiosity, soon began to inform me about the more intricate subtler behaviours and social interactions of my own species, in ways I could never have imagined at the time.
Now, I also possess the added input of watching my own offspring display this same insatiable curiosity that can only be explained as an innate quality.

I am now obsessed with watching human behaviour, being satisfied to sit by a busy street corner, for hours, and observe the passers-by, as I once did those ants.
These days I find myself being attracted to the more bizarre or aberrant human behaviours – the out of the ordinary attracts me.
Serial killers, sexual deviants, grotesque by-products of human intervention upon natural processes, now occupy my thoughts.
Even during the few normal social interactions that I have these days I cannot help but to probe for deeper insights into the participants psychologies, often tempting them into exposure with my own intervening, and hopefully unnoticed, manipulations.
It is a practice which I have found holds social risks, as to delve into the other’s psyche beneath all the pretence and the cultural crap he has buried it under, may have some unwanted personal costs.
It is a kind of intellectual rape, this intrusion into personal spaces.
Not all appreciate being exposed, and though this exposure may not be overt they sometimes sense it, on an organic level, as an affront they cannot rationalize.
To penetrate into the other’s being is far more threatening than it is to penetrate their corporeal being, as in the latter case the very core of their identity and sense of self is left untouched, if bruised, whereas in the former it is totally uncovered, often-times exposing nothing more than barren landscape, full of primal drives, and hungry for substance.

[Dæmon]

I think that I have been more unfortunately fortunate than I would like to admit, and my chance at greatness has been quelled by an easy disposition and a few chance encounters, if it hasn’t been drowned in post-modernity.
Unfortunately so, because without pain and suffering no progress can begin.
And although I have suffered more than most around this sheltering western world, I have, nevertheless, been spared from the inspiring ravages of my very own Salome, as my own age, and my own path through it, has offered me a disposition not easily enthralled by the wears of a clever and seductive female and a sense of humor unable to take itself too seriously.

No, I could never have been rejected in that callous manner that some of my own kind have, for I am neither overly sombre, to turn away the flighty girlish nincompoop, nor inexperienced enough with the feminine side, enjoying the sexual revolution’s gifts, to fall so hard for an idol.
My early participation proved to be sufficient in sheltering me from the emotional devastations of uncontrolled libido – having also been blessed by a controllable amount of it - and although my loss has often been great, my modest gains have compensated and I have learned to make do.
I cannot deny turning away a delicate cherub that had a surprisingly cunning tongue of steel and a heavy hand to match it, for the comfortable ease of a sheep, but, in so doing, I have also spared my self from the inevitable heartache and subsequent shattered dreams – both rejoicing and lamenting the absence of that pain.
I am a fatalist, and my mind is dedicated to recognizing and coping with my potential future, as it is decided by more than just my will. This, in itself, is a humble stance, even if it may be presented with an arrogant twist and a furrowed brow.
I have not surrendered. I only know that I am fighting a lost war, trying to find pleasure in the battle and not expecting anything else.
My compromises have been strategic, I believe, and my sacrifices sparse and foreseen. Probabilities dominate my horizons, my eyes unwavering from my desire for self-sustenance.
This is the only thing that matters – to hold on for just one more day.
But compromises are not to be avoided, and that many pretend that they have made none, or that the few that they do acknowledge were minor, only shows the breadth and the depth of what they try to hide.
Yes, I’ve made compromises and I shall continue to do so, based on a carefully examined cost/benefit analysis.
One of my greatest sacrifices has been my urban existence and although I favor long hikes on mountainous slopes, my mind cleared by crisp forest breezes and my sight inspired by the beauty of unblemished nature, I make do with walks through city parks, the sparkling play of street-lights on the grass, the rippling wind over the waters of an artificial lake, and the invigorating sensations of a slow drizzle.

My slopes are concrete, woodland creatures replaced by metropolitan caricatures, a few pigeons and squirrels sharing my adjustment to these human environments, natural vistas giving way to a coming future.
Those old evaporating surroundings are being pushed beyond my reach and are gradually becoming fanciful images on post-cards…and so I made do with what was available to me, as any creature would.
I have a plan and no clever bohemian Ree, playing with the mind of my vicious muse, can prevent me from having my disciple.
I first take care of business before I allow myself to incompletely give-in to any romanticized potentials. I am too grown-up for that fairy-tale.

Jean-Paul’s buffoonery about freedom may have originally attracted me but it no longer baits me with its unrealistic promises. One’s choices are always dictated by the circumstances and if freedom can be defined as a decision forced upon you, then here as well it falls under the pressures of an undeniable past.
Was he truly interested in universal liberty or was it his own image and accessibility he sought to preserve? The outcome decides the matter.
Martin’s concessions are closer to my truth, even though I do not totally relate to his level of impropriety nor would I be capable of his Black Forest provincial ingratitude. Despite his refined intellect, he displayed a social crassness and cowardice his detractors now use to degrade his life.
But one thing is for sure, he made do. He adjusted and adapted to what circumstances threw his way, and his little stint with the Nazis was founded on the same intellectual acuteness as his phenomenology was. Perhaps his only fault was in betting on the wrong side.
But perhaps I may being more harsh with him than he merits. Maybe, I too, affected by the histrionic reinterpretations of events and of reality, and still driven by a masculine competitiveness, fail to take into consideration more subtle things to explain his total indifference towards those that, supposedly, were kind to him.

Were they kind, for one, or is this a retelling of the story to slander his now defeated image?
Was the relationship with his Jewish benefactor Edmund totally amicable, knowing the natural abrasions all interpersonal interactions produce, particularly between males?
Would such a mind, trapped in such an unimpressive form be moved to feel association with its inferiors and would he feel he owed them anything?
God knows it did with Jean-Paul, although I can’t help thinking that it was all a ruse, this short and ugly man used to make himself seductive – his own will to freedom using resources like any creator must.
Even Martin’s liaison with Hannah smacks of a cunning mind that totally overpowered those that mistook his pretence for their ideal.
It is a common mistake, as weakness cannot help but be mysteriously drawn to power – what is absent in us is attractive to us – and so Jean-Paul enjoyed his little play amongst the Parisian intellectual circles, seeding all those that came in contact with him with both mind and body so as to enjoy the fruits of his labours at a later date.
Was he not pro-creating?
All the while Simone stood at his side, looking down on him, when it was he that towered over her.
The obvious connections between husbandry and philosophy are unavoidable.

I’m fated to remain without a match.
So be it.
It is to be expected given the circumstances.
I am prone to turn hissing and snarling at the slightest hint of corruption, digging in my hind legs against anything that insults my sensibilities - and my sensibilities have certainly been sharpened to a fine edge, after decades of cuts and bruises.
My towers are set, their parapets growing higher by the day, and my defences have been honed to a deadly point, turning away anyone who dares try to dismantle them, sometimes with “good-intentions”…attempting to open me up to their affectations, with that casual glint of sincerity, I can now recognize at a glance.
Better this solitude than to cast myself on barbed wired fences, offering my flesh as the bridge between the real and the surreal, calling barnacles pearls and taking on the role of the innocent hero fighting for something he calls “right”, when he is but an ignorant victim of the world’s indifference.

The truth is in the telling, and it is I who is doing the telling now.
The uncomfortable truth is that we are all thrown into this existence, naked and lost, destined to live and die on our own, desperate for some release: a distraction, a warm garment to wear so that our core is not taken over by the shakes.
Some of us dig down deep, finding the warm dirt soothing under our skin; piling up earth into grand fortresses and staking our claim on that tiny piece of reality behind it.
There’s a fine line between death and being buried alive, but it is a line worth walking and I’m walking it…fine.

This is my piece of the world, my small kingdom.
It’s size belies its value, and its profundity has been carefully hidden in catacombs, snaking underneath its surfaces like blood vessels.
I am afraid…and fear is what keeps me safe.
Shall I feel embarrassed, because this culture teaches me to drop the vestiges of my individuality as a manner of assimilating me in its pretexts? Shall I feel ashamed because my hatred has as much power, with me, as my affections, in a culture dominated by this cult of superficial love?
I retain myself with my fears and hatreds. They distinguish me.

Fear is never overcome, no matter what the biggest cowards of all may well claim. It is an inexorable part of the living condition and an effective tool at that.
Fear can only be thwarted from developing fully, so that the mind remains open to any charlatan’s vile needs.
Stunted spirits can do no more than confuse sheltering with power and ignorance for bravery, but they are quickly unmasked at the slightest hint of any real suffering.
Thing is that the real culprit is existence itself.
There’s no way around this. Drowning our senses in style and chemical bravado will not protect us from the beast that lurks.
It lies there waiting to be confronted, and you can never hide from it under a blanket of warm delusion.

Undoubtedly I have pushed many away with my uncompromising judgements and my unforgiving spirit – defensive measures that burn the bridges behind a tactical retreat into isolation, once the fiend has been identified and the tumour has been located.
But, it is I who is labelled the illness, as I stand in opposition to the common myths and those stories told to these retarded adults, to keep them impressionable and docile.
I have so much to lose, a kingdom I’ve built up over the years. When others lower their draw-bridges and lay down their swords, hoping that they will be treated with leniency, I pull up my sleeves daring anyone to come and get it.
The beast may be tamed with words and shiny interlocking rings, but it is not killed.
Only the weary, hoping against hope that it only takes a wish, would fall for one of the game’s many strategies of domination.

[Dæmon]

17th Letter
*

If there is a benefit to being a hermit, and living a life of solitude and relative remoteness, it is that you can construct an order, a routine which is in agreement with your own, particular, metabolism; it is, that in the absence of surprises and unpredictable distractions, the mind is freed to contemplate, and to simply be in direct contact with world outside manmade regimentation and time schedules.
My circumstances are in direct correlation with my essence, and this immerses me in contentment.
Every choice I made, and will make, is guided, it would seem, by an internal motive, of which I am not entirely cognizant of, until after-the-fact.
I have become used to trusting it, and letting myself go to its verdict.
My past has already set me on a path I adapt to with ease, and only struggle to resist the powers that force me to go off, into necessary compromises.
As if some external invisible potency is in control, directing me, bringing me closer to an understanding of the religious sentiment, and fatalism. But I have no ability to settle upon such simple luxuries.
My spirit prevents surrender.
I covet control.  
A restless mind picks-up and goes off into unchartered areas, leaving behind the comforts of domesticated living.
I opt to do away with the superfluous, the temporarily essential, so as to return to my original path; harsh as it might be, it is full of profound rewards.  
If I have been a casual observer, the “excluded”, it has been a blessing in disguise.
It took me a while to recognize it, and then more time to accept it.
Objectivity sharpens to a perfect cutting edge on hard whetstone lubricated by the fluctuating tides.
My benefit is, for the common mind a curse: an unbearable cost some would call “evil”.
A perspective I can empathize with, having experienced this need in all men, when in my early years, yet to come to terms with my condition yet to understand it, I felt cursed by the gods; resented by those who appeared to be of my kind, but were anything but; underestimated, by those who confused kindness for weakness, and decency for a defeat.
I came to know the quality of their judgments, well, admonishing myself for ever having taken them seriously
And when they saw a part of me, it was through rage, and then they knew, those few.
Since then my senses have been ground down to a fine point, stabbing into the heart of the matter; a razor edge, slicing through pretences, and those words often thrown about.
Soft residue, chiseled away, with every encounter, falling on the wayside, I’ve been made hard.
Hot passions of eros and thymos solidifying into stone, shifting upon the hidden lava below.
I do not dive into my depths, I let it rise up to greet the sun, and as I climb up towards an unseen summit, new tectonic forces push me upwards, over the clouds when the light is brightest.
I love cloud cover, because I am a sun of my own, blazing, in the shadows lighting the way; making the dim notice, if I expose them to it.    
Being excluded, dismissed, by those I no longer recognize as my own, has become an honour, and if I self-deprecate in their presence, it is a taunt they cannot fully comprehend, buried, as they are, in their baseness.
To wit, I call myself “gamma”, in relation to their sexual alpha/omega hierarchies; a “third wheel”, to their dual, quadruple auto-mobile frenzied activities; I follow not because they lead, but to see them tumble and fall, blind in the darkness of their brains the smallest stone is a boulder, for them.  
Have I not been a reliable, consistent source of support and joy, for them; a shoulder for them to cry upon?
Have I not ridden in the back, stayed in the corners, in their shadows observing and awaiting their call?
Have they not come to me for advice, for guidance, for insight, for understanding, for a clever distracting jibe?
Generous I’ve been, in these times of lost frontiers.
One must do what one must do, and no more.
When surrounded by a single species, such as is my lot, it is wise to study and learn to behave, like them, as if I were of them; my empathy their sympathy, my contempt their hatred.
I cover my scent with their feces and urine, and walk among them, taking advantage of what they have to offer.
I take care not to let them see my eyes.
I feel no shame in my tactics, for even this emotion has been milled out of me.
Emotions I reserve for my own, when and if I find them.
These others shall only have my reasoning – cold and severe; they shall only have my wit – biting and cynical.
They shall have no more of me than this.  

It has been a long hard hike up to the height of self-awareness.
The climb up, was also a dive down into depths too dark to fathom.
I almost drowned a few times, the absence of air pushing me to let go and float up to the surface.
But, that inner spirit pushed me further into the abyss – internal mass adjusting my buoyancy to gravity.
A “late bloomer” they called me, for I arrived in the twilight to attain what for the average was on the peak of noon.
I acquired new terms for myself, some of them vague and unflattering to escape their suspicions, their noisy noses, and flicking forked tongues.
To the “gamma” and “third wheel” metaphors, I added “out of phase man” – the one “at the right place on the wrong time, or at the wrong place on the right time”.
A slight, but decisive, temporal misalignment, keeping me detached from the median metabolism of this particular species, which I learned to identify and to separate into a multitude of digestive types; time/space distortion caused by a discrepancy between different degrees of dimensional presence: energy’s speed evading possibilities of interaction, when compared with the “slower” material dimensional share, enduring more possibilities in its passage through existence; they’ve called this “extrovert/introvert” when it applies to psychological attitude, I call it essence. Lightness of reduced dimensions compared to the heaviness of increased dimensions making all the difference – levels of dimensions determining activity of mind/body.              
Tension between my dainty mind experiencing the turmoil of capricious energy, and my own lumbering physicality, always late on the scene, producing heat in my nervous system.
I learned to cool-off with long periods of sequestration.
Relieved by their absence, and my willful detachment from their incessant chaos; their boisterous “buzz”.
The more time I spent among them, the more they wanted me to participate, and my fatigue and stress grew, driving me towards the chilling breezes of isolation.
But, as their numbers grow I find it difficult to escape their multitudes. Increasingly I am put in as position where I must engage them, and do so on their level.  
I am, as I always was, mistaken for something else, when I wear the masks they provide for me, and I adjust myself, digging into my experiences, to play the parts well.
They like me when I adopt their caricatures, and imitate their shallow presence with a talent I did not know I possessed in my youth.
I have grown accustomed to their superficial praises, and deflect their attempts to approach, knowing they would then see that it was all a performance I cannot maintain for long; knowing that if they see what I truly am, they would recoil in horror, and then return with hatred to avenge themselves for having been duped.  

Applying the power of “no”, the benefit of rejection, is not difficult, I must admit.
It comes out of me with ease. A sacred word creating a noetic boundary between me and other – a word, a symbol, of my appearance in world; an extension of skin beyond the membrane containing flesh and blood.
Uncovering what I am made the command an expression of my discrimination, my taste, my unyielding choice.
I will be more than this, more than them, or I shall die trying.    

Yours truly, spinning round-n-round,
Wanderer

[Dæmon]

To be an urbanite, by nurture, and a recluse, by nature, is what makes my position a precarious one in this world.
I want to be, simultaneously, at the forefront but also in the background of current trends and worldly activities; I seek, all at once, the peaceful gaze within the tumultuous movement, where I can reside untouched and yet, still, involved.
I am a voracious indifferent voyeur, both curious and undaunted; a spoiled western brat and a rugged free-spirited loner.
I am both addicted to the comforts and options a modern metropolitan setting provides me with and still defiant towards the compromises this imposes upon me, as a man seeking his own destiny and resisting all attempts to diminish his possibilities.

I am a tightrope walker always off-balance but still not falling.

Youthful restlessness, spurred on by the myth of greener pastures, is now a part of my more socially ambitious past. It has given way to this sense of mellowed contentment and a, sometimes, surprising ease at being sated by the simpler often overlooked things.
Maybe I’m just lucky that way, or maybe I’ve merely lowered my expectations and settled upon what I truly need, rather than what I’ve told I should need.
My condition has forced upon me a sense of restiveness, wanting to organize the world around me into small pockets of quietude and peaceful rejection against a world in habitual chaos.
My little post-modern vantage point suffices for me, these days.
I was never much for extravagance and material displays, to begin with.
Even as a very young boy I was low-key and never overly demanding or troublesome; traits that seem to have followed me into adulthood and ones which I have managed, despite myself, to pass on to my own son.  

Most of the time I, honestly, cannot comprehend what the damn fuss is all about.
What for others causes excitement and consternation, often resulting in an exuberant and tumultuous shrillness of embellished activity, leaves me wondering how I can hope to relate to such creatures on that level; or if I really wish to do so.
Even this, my most recent real estate acquisition, is only made necessary by economic conditions and my desire to seclude myself from a world that bores me, to no end, and, often-times, annoys me with its “much ado about nothing” boisterousness.

Within this, admittedly, clichéd post-modern condo-lifestyle, I now construct a personal sanctuary where my mind can, hopefully, enjoy its temporary stay within some degree of tranquil self-development.
I never really needed much more than that, come to think of it, despite being told by pop-culture and peer-pressures that I should…or else all is a waste. Luckily that crap never really had much of an effect upon me, as it seemingly did on others, and as the years go by it loses that seductive edge that once did entice me with a promise. Sexual urgencies were the only thing that lent it, once, a certain weight of severity; a severity that quickly spoiled, smelling of desperation.
Now, I know what I want, now more than ever.
I will make this small space my private little abbey of controlled hedonism and life’s tragicomedy can hopefully find an indifferent litheness in me, and pass on by like a river flowing over lump of hardened sand.
Let it be called a mausoleum by those who still foster dreams of greatness lingering around some corner.  

The walls within this modest alcove I now decorate with recollections, each with its own personal significance. Various knick-knacks litter its surfaces like leftovers after a full meal, and I sit engorged in the midst of it all, wanting to share the scraps with a hungry other, but not really wanting to be so vain.
I dream of, eventually, filling it all up with so many select artefacts that the eye must always settle upon a piece of me, indulging my narcissism and purging it from my system.
I want to cram it with nostalgia, until my past occupies its dimensions, no less than my presence still does, and time is lost in a bemused swirl of recollections.
I want to make it a gift I can then, eventually, give away, perhaps to those who will not value it as such and who might cast it away as another piece of garbage; I need to unload it, come what may.
There will be few hidden stories here, as long as I live. Every aspect of my history and every experience that shaped me will be represented with a token of remembrance, displayed as openly as my audacity will allow.
From here I can sit back and quietly watch, at a distance, as the world passes before me, loud and frivolous, fast and furious…full but empty.
Humanity’s hollow promises have ceased to seduce me. Now, I only enjoy the spectacle of civilization, pushing against its self, behind screens that make up my own, self-imposed, boundaries.
I feel well here. I feel at ease. I feel calm and clear. I feel safe and sound.  
It’s as if what small part of me still yearns for social contact has shrunk to the point where little excursions, into the human clamour, and fleeting moments of partial intimacy, suffice to feed my negligible animal requirements. Experience and insight has purged those requirements from my system and their old allure now makes me smirk.

I’ve become obsessively discerning as I’ve aged; my tastes more cultivated and my tolerances less yielding to the other’s taunts.
I do not waste my time as thoughtlessly as I once did, and my patience strains against my self-discipline, wanting to unleash its wrath and cleanse this fine earth from all that insults my aesthetics.
Towards this end, and this end only, I’ve acquired all the essential technological tools that can aid me in fulfilling my few wants; I’ve made my space comfortable, efficient and pleasant enough, not only for me but for any visitor that may happen to enter it – by invitation only.
I can now frivolously indulge my senses, having reached an age of chilled humours and decreasing expectations, letting simple pleasures take me, without the fear of becoming overly addicted to them and without that old concern of being overly distracted by some shrill advertisement.
My hedonism has acquired an edge.
Culinary delights, spirited concoctions and any refined self-indulgent contrivance will be sampled but not allowed to settle into debauchery.
This, I claim, as my place, where I shall endeavour to return to my earlier focus upon mental and physical expansion; my asceticism not as an end, but as a way towards…forever towards.
I’ve already given up much in my short pursuit for modernistic normality. I’ve made compromises I never thought I would and for reasons I had hoped would never come.
It’s about time that I return to my natural inclinations before the world corrupts me too much with its faked cheerfulness and manufactured inspirations.
The pithy sojourning through the bourgeois landscapes was my small sacrifice, my expression of appreciation towards my kin, a small surrender to posterity – my gratitude.
But it has now left me with a bitter taste in my mouth, fatigue on my bones and a harsher conviction, reinforced by first-hand experiences, turning into deeper cynicism.
My resolve has been armoured against what few doubts remained and I am blessed with a more profound knowledge of what I am, why I am so and what I truly want to remain content.

I wish to be cleansed of all that is alien to me. I wish to differentiate. I wish to estrange. I wish to push back and oppose.
I will make of this a pilgrimage back towards my own self, as all sacred journeys should be.
No far-off exotic Mecca required; I’ve travelled enough to know that a trip is enjoyed mostly in expectation or in the purifying waters of selective remembrance, where all is decontaminated with the haze of distance.
No comrades are necessary, although some may be tolerated for a while and as long as they prove themselves useful.
Life, unavoidably, is a solitary affair and its end a private matter.
Not many diversions required.
When on my death-bed, who will truly be there with me?
The others, if there be others…mere spectators in a private battle.

Until then my only regular companion will be music, bouncing within these confines like a movie soundtrack, reflecting my daily moods and accentuating my ongoing observations.
An aesthetic curmudgeon, with a quick wit and a cutting tongue, I have become. My bad-temper will be my bug-repellent and my guile and fabricated geniality will be my cruel bait.
I will turn even more intolerant and, perhaps, intolerable, to most. Too much have I squandered, already, because of my less stringent relaxed leniency and my surrender to desire and childish idealism.
I’ve been considerate and compassionate and far too many have taken advantage of that reluctant kindliness. Gentleness and generosity are often mistaken for frailty, by those that cannot exhibit either if it is not buried in secret motives and desperate vengefulness. The thick consider all sensitivity a thin-skin brought about by decay, because it is, for them, the only sign of their won reality.

I’ve turned a blind eye and swallowed my tongue far more than I should have, and for no reason at all, besides social convention.
Who now will enjoy my good graces and considerate silences?
Who will be worthy of my knowing and, for this reason, delicate trust?
Preferably none if I have to deal with what I find disappointing and far too intrusive.
But a few might come along displaying a nature I find familiar.
A few already have.
Only time will tell.

No need for such hopes now, there is work to be done.

The citadel is already being built, its ramparts growing thicker and higher by the moment. They represent the essence of what modernism has made into a socially undesirable necessity; one it has then labelled “ill” to counteract it.
Just as economic prudence is denigrated as an undesirable parsimony that goes against the ideal of productivity, calling it a disease or a dysfunction rooted in a natural vulnerability, so too are all natural ideas, that resist the norm, denigrated.
This world favours the gullible naïve simpleton, and celebrates the garrulously jabbering nincompoop.

But I will not be thwarted.
Only here can I hope to preserve some sense of my own decency.
My “sickness” is my health.

[Dæmon]

Gamma {γαμα} = third letter in the Greek alphabet.
Three {τρια} + Epsilon {επσιλον} =

The letter twists, combining the two parts at its base, towards the past, the earthly (nature), and then expands upwards, towards the divine, that which is above the opened symbol for eternity =

Three/Epsilon turned inward form the numerical symbol eight, which is the letter theta in the Greek alphabet =

Symbol for eight and theta identical.
Theta = Theos {θεος} – 3+5 = 8
Theos encloses existence by inverting the open tria/epsilon – containing possibility with a symbolic singular probability = certainty, making it the symbol of “positive” nihilism = that which inverts and contains possibility.
“Negative” Nihilism breaks the symbol to pieces, denying all probability – infinite possibility, the negation of all order(ing) including the order implied by the representative symbol.
All is meaningless outside the emotion/feeling, the sensation of organic living.
Detachment of noumenon from phenomenon is complete.
Pragmatic application of thinking (abstracting) is valuable, without understanding the environment this application is contained within. Organism encased in the pleasure/pain principle of the moment, as this is determined and defined by an environment that directs the organism towards and away from goals, as these become available to it, emerging out of the dynamics of the environments own principles, its patterns.
Symbol acquires value within the particular circumstances of the environment – conditioning.
Its importance describes the relationship between observer (subjective) and observed (objective) which, in our age is also subjectively determined (social engineering). Whether this determination is based on a conscious motive (conspiracy), or the natural outcrop of multiple subjective minds interacting, which would also include conspiratorial manipulations, is important and part of sociological explorations of psychosomatic forces, but in the present we are focused on the psychological, organic, representation of the symbol gamma, beginning from its metaphysical roots and then proceeding towards its physical (mind/body) manifestations = personae/character.
We can admit to the symbol’s humanistic relevance with no cosmic significance other than in how it reflects the particular organisms, in this case human, relationship with its own interpretations of world – the relationship of mind/body or subjective/objective, corresponding to the reactivity of the neurological system, including the brain.
The previous commentary might seem trite, from an objective perspective, but become weighty when we consider them from the psychological perspective, or from the subjective standpoint.  
Like all human symbols what is expressed is an esoteric reaction to an exoteric condition – the internal externalized as form (art).

From a biological perspective, relating to organic needs, the letter represents a disposition towards nature, establishing self (ego) in relation to other.
It has been used in reference to the alpha/omega sexual dynamic, the master/slave relationship, as this has evolved within social organisms using heterosexuality as a method of replication – preservation of parts of self, sacrificing parts of self.  
A synoptic outline is given in the chart below.

The categories described are not as clear-cut in real-life application.
There is crossover, degrees, and temporal ebbing and waning shuffling the dispositions in real-time but, as with all human categories, it offers an symbolic outline of a potential, expressed in real-time circumstances as character exposing personality, of specific individuals interacting with one another in a fluid reality.  

[Dæmon]

I am legion.
I am one and no-one.
In me resides a multiplicity rotating around a forming mass, a growing singularity, made more distinct, graver with every spin.
I am a solar system, burning life into cold gaseous formations, imploding into planetary satellites.
I am many and I am none.
They always mistake me for their own reflections when, like a glass, I project back to them their energy. An image made clearer when I remain dark in the background.
Many like me, enjoying my company, confusing their own image with my reflective surface – the difference of their own reflection mistaken for my essence.
Right is left, and left is right, in an image.
They want to be my friend, an intimate, when, for me, the experience is explorative, one I must endure and remain hidden.
There is no paranoia, all is inherently selfish, setting up a give & take, a cost/benefit balance.
I, simply, sit back evaluating the circumstances, adjusting myself accordingly.

When I choose to, I remain inconspicuous, invisible, unnoticed, but when I permit the internal sun to shine through the glass, breaking the dark background required for reflection, nobody can ignore me.
The attention is rarely positive, or welcomed, particularly after a prolonged period of the other enjoying my reflective surfaces and the cold darkness behind them.
In the rare times that it is positive it is often draining.
Empty husks wanting to drink me dry and be personally fulfilled.
My energies abound, but, on principle alone, I recede back behind the mirror wanting to preserve myself before the sucking agitation of emotion-vampires demanding my passions, giving nothing in return; lunar to my solar.
A sun rest upon lunar surfaces.  

Dead center, in the middle of the biological hierarchy; in the eye of the storm is where I sit.
Alpha/Beta on the upper end, and below Delta/Omega, each one perceiving me from their point-of-view: right<>left, up<>down. .
To the alpha, my essence is clouded by the intervening beta, and for the omega it is the delta standing in the way.
When in a passive state only the ones closest notice me: Betas and Deltas, each one mistaking me for the other.
From the peripheral distances of alpha/omega I am a vague representation of all which is above or below them – on the far right, or far left, depending on the particular dynamics I can be interpreted by them as anyone in the hierarchy from alpha to omega, the middle ground, the gamma, fading into the non-participating center space.  

Humour is where I disappear.
I fade into assaulting, sparring, self-deprecating cynicism, gauging my success by the spasmodic release of stress.
Joke after pun implants pieces of the puzzle.
I use it like an echo detection method, exploring the hidden through the externalized reverberations.

Triggering passions in them, to see their spirit, they consider me passionate.
Emotions are my tools; my laser light piercing but not perceived.
Empathy is my artistry. I slither into the mind through crevices, through retinal systolic/diastolic rates.
The full spectrum is never at play - the glass acting as both reflective and filtering - sometimes the reds, sometimes the blues.
Methodically I nudge their internal forces outwards, building upon what has already been exposed.

I trigger emotional reactions and allow their passions to wash over my glass wall, cleansing it of any previous residue, allowing their reflections to come forth vividly.
I feed-back their emotions, adopting them as my own, and they drink them up like thirsty nomads lost in the deserts of modernity. But the drinking does not quench their thirst because it is of their own making – their sweat returned to them, some lost to evaporation, they become dehydrated, desperate.  
Positive reinforcement, like training a pet.  
In time they come sniffing at my fingers, licking my face, demanding a treat, a drop, my spit.

I become purposefully careless when my efforts have proven ineffective. I allow myself the luxury to show.
Overestimating other is part of the process. I rarely underestimate, having placed myself at the bottom as part of my bottom<>up process.
I place other on a pedestal and slowly, bit by bit, cut him down to size, feeling the resistance as the point where his pure essence begins.
This is part of the risk, the cost.
Working my way through the fabrications, I chisel away the extraneous leaving behind clean marble, often discovering that it remains unformed – raw; no more to the other than his character, his performance, his social image – nothing deeper of any merit, nothing interesting, or complex… nothing hiding under the act but an unrefined stone: hard and ugly.
Other is, most of the time, just as shallow as he or she appears to be.  His complexity no more than shame in relation to the common ideal – hiding failure to abide by popular conventions.
Modern “rebels” are distinctly so.
Personality, stifled early on, or lacking the genetic foundations, the raw material, to be cultivated beyond the character’s boundaries, the social role, dæmon is not to be found within dullards – the growing majority in other words.
“Devil is in the details”, and there is no secret facet to be found.  
But, I must make sure cleverness does not exploit my vanity.
Shamelessly I offer a glimpse, a short burst of my essence, and wait for the reaction.
In this way I have exposed myself piece by pieces, scattered across the myriads of eyes: a kaleidoscope like a jigsaw puzzle.
Each holds a part of me and none the entirety.
I am self-contradicting, to them. A liar, perhaps.
Some of them have concluded that I am schizophrenic.
It almost never reaches that point. The many still think of me as another “nice guy”, funny, interesting, at times, but no more than that.

Cost of Revelation
Accusing other, or the ideal, of not living up to their expectations is how the average convert an error in judgment, on their part, into another’s vice.
They unload the weakness upon other preserving their fragile ego from judging itself harshly.
My culpability, in this game of mirrors, can be found in my imitation of their ideals which they wholeheartedly buy into, submitting to their own desires.
They love, or they hate, their own archetypes reflected back and then find the real me contrary to it.

[Dæmon]

I lost interest in their ideals when I found them wanting.
Hyperbole constructing a caricature, a character, and an event so sublime, so magical, in their minds, that, at first, I was convinced it was my failings that prevented me from experiencing what they so vividly described as a sensation incomparable, indescribable, divine.
In time I realized that their descriptions were an expression of their perspective, in relation to the objective; an expression of need before an expected satiation.
What was absent in them, they projected, and inevitably found, even if momentarily, in the other who then proceeded to gradually taint the projection with his own presence, with his reality.

Pleasure lost its appeal when I saw it as a symptom of need being satisfied, weakness being gratified, reality being numbed away, existence momentarily forgotten.
I found perspective.
Then my motive became one of reducing weakness and need, and the potential for pleasure.
I learned to enjoy without being taken over by it.  

Being immune to the hormonal paroxysms of my, in theory, own kind, I could not justify the obsession, nor the extremes I would watch them go to attain pleasure, or social status.
I suspected my confusion might be a form of sour-grapes, or that having never experienced what they passionately worshiped I was missing out on something.
Then, I had a taste of it, and I had an epiphany.
I began to comprehend the power of suggestion, and of hormones.
There’s nothing magical, or mystical, in any of it, except in the minds of the participants, intoxicated with a natural concoction, their own bodies produce, soon to dissipate, returning them to their normal state, wondering what happened.
A subjective intoxication to deal with the indifferent objective.
As a gamma I found nothing to strive for in the experience of pleasure itself. If there was nothing to it than that, then I could live without the ego boost it offered.
Having experienced it, and measured it against the cost, I concluded that it was another natural way of making the organism do what it would never if it were of clear mind.
Doubts persisted until I began to understand the effects of gambling, of narcotics, and how the dullest experience, for me, was for my peers rich in meaning, and of immeasurable value.
That is when I realized that I was surrounded by insanity.

A naturally produced state of madness.
History is the recalling of rational and irrational actions, rationalized after-the-fact, when the outcome is known.
Historians try to make it seem as if the outcome was inevitable.  

[Dæmon]

I am no leader, and I don't want to be one.
How a mind could feel proud of dominating lesser minds ought to be explored.
Its only benefit, to me, is that it offers control over self, through others.
I could not care less for controlling others, and if I find some entertainment in it it quickly becomes repetitive and boring.

How degrading to find pride within such a decrepit species as man; to find self-esteem via others of such baseness.
How long can the "high" last?
For me, not more than a minute.
Then in their deferring, and submitting, I feel embarrassment for them, and I can no longer look them in the eyes.
I look away.
I look inside, wondering what makes me want to shame others by deferring to them.

Being “nice” for the beta, delta, omegas, is a way of compensating for his unattractiveness, though for the omega it is more of a useless undertaking he avoids.
For the gamma it is a genuine lack of interest, reasoned as a social necessity that does not cost him much, except the effort required to pretend. Such individuals can be civil to the opposite sex, because there is no sexual tension, and no bitterness.
This is usually misconstrued as confidence, or alpha status façade.    

Alpha = accumulated investments offering a return of ease.
For the alpha his past/nature, displayed as appearance/presence, suffices to produce an effect with minimal personal effort.
This may produce mental atrophy, as the lack of stress inhibits the cultivation of potential.
Nowhere to go but down.
The easiness of his demeanour a product of the easiness of his access to what for the average requires effort.

Beta = sub-optimal past/nature demanding effort to compensate.
Closeness to the top, and a desire to attain it, makes of the beta proactive, or sexually, passionate, willing to put that extra effort so as to compensate for any inherited deficiencies.
Upwardly mobile, motivated to ascend up the social, status, ladder, or to cultivate his inherited potential to the fullest.
In many ways this type is the Modern idea(l).
Drive and potential find in this type a perfect example of the socially and psychologically well-adjusted.
Not overly arrogant, and narcissistic, he must maintain outward humility as part of his mobility – humility that dissipates into extreme forms of arrogance if and when the goal is attained.
The costs, suffering, experienced in the ascent spilling out as bitter vengeance over those he overcame, and surpassed.  

Gamma = unable and/or unwilling.
Lack of ambitions correlating to the sociological (memetic) and biological (genetic) norms.
Cost/Benefit analysis inhibits behavioural extremes, making this type reluctant and procrastinating, only spurred on by mortality to make concessions.
Understanding human nature, sometimes being gifted with extraordinary empathy, this type cannot surrender to the moment, the presence of otherness.
Always ahead of the actor, or outside the circumstances, (s)he struggles to maintain interest.
Heightened objectivity exposes him/her to the negative in what for the common mind is positive, and the positive in what, for the common mind is negative.
Detachment form herd dynamics and social hierarchies.

Delta = products of sheltering, the type remains in a perpetual state of adolescence.
Unable to relate to social ideals, he can take nothing seriously.
His/Her indifference, unlike that of the gamma, is a product of ignorance, or obtuseness.
This type simply cannot perceive and does not comprehend what all the fuss is about.
There is a childlike appeal to him/her; a refreshing naiveté.
His lack of awareness makes him oblivious to all subtext, and contexts beyond the obvious.
Lacking passion he cannot motivate himself to strive for what the majority obsess over.  

Omega = delta with awareness.
This type perceives his own ineptness before the required performances, and is willing to test himself/herself, always falling short.
The opposite of the alpha, he has inherited a huge deficiency that would require levels of compensation he cannot provide.
His performances are awkward, and the harder he tries the more disgraceful they become.
Using pity is his only hope; making himself a carpet to step over, his only play.  
If not, this type disappears into the background, coming to terms with his condition, or building a level of externalized self-hatted that may explode in a final bid for attention and relevance.

From delta to omega there is a gradation of exponential degradation, spanning the entire remaining alphabet, symbolizing decay.
The first four types remain socially viable, but the omega is the final stage of the genetic and memetic outcast - the ultimate free-radical.      

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