ONE-SIDED

Saturday 01.01.2000

CNS,

Breathe deeply. Keep your eyes well ahead.

Watch the skies and be very careful what you wish for.

Stay underwater.

Get underwater and stay there.

I hate the aching mountains and the dead air.

I hate the legal minds on the bench.

Take the songs and put them in your head.

Get underwater and stay there.

The ones on the bench are waiting for five o'clock.

I have argued and argued and my feet are in the water.

I carry the sea on my teeth, in my hollowed-out molars.

At five o'clock let's leave and dip below the waves. There are caves down there full of useless things. We can build a whole empire from the useless things. And when that age ends useless old things we will be. Useless old bones, useless old shoes, twenty-three thousand leagues under the sea our useless empire will be covered in silt and there they will find our useless skulls grinning.

SKT,

Wednesday 01.07.2000

Chr',

I wonder if you've received my tapes yet, and if they haven't been warped by the cold outside (though if they have been I'm sure that can only add a level of interest for you.) I sent two tapes, in sequential order in which I'd have liked you to hear them, but the first was returned with insufficient postage and so I would have to guess you're get them and listen out of order. In considering the matter further I've decided the apparent will of Discoria must supersede any silly human designs and that, in fact, you have indeed received the tapes in correct order (which is to day, in disorder.)

At this moment I ought to be studying for a coming exam. These thoughts are too distracting however. So I'm going to try and spell it out here for you. As you know, I have no other channel. ...then maybe I can return to my studies.

Here is what I want: Communication. My goal is direct genuine Communication. Let me define Communication, since it is so ambiguous. Remember that recent letter when I quoted RAW, where he contradicts Marx and argues that society is not defined by its means of production, but rather by its means of Communication. This resonates and rattles in my cortex. Novel forms of Communication bring about novel forms of social interaction. Plain. But at present we are not Communication in synch with the present or where we need to be in the future. We are swimming in PastTime. Newtonian-Cartesian-Victorian DeadTime. You know this. We need to move to NoTime.

When I speak of Communication, of course you have foreseen, I am not talking about information coded in words. Like, Burroughs said, the word is an outmoded artifact. I don't actually think it's possible to Communicate using words, but that they are our most dire impediment to Communication. Words, as you are well aware, separate us by establishing tracks, molds, concrete con-forms which we must inhabit if we expect to interact. You know this, so I need not explain further. ("From heart to heart," you once said to me. And that's exactly it.) What we want is the sharing of direct experience. We need to slip into co-dreams, REM-scapes for direct translinguistic play-sharing. I want to take this up as my Art. It strikes me as most Beautiful.

Now you see why I became disenchanted with film. Not enough participation on the part of the viewer. What I want instead is a play in which the actors are the audience, but the stage and performance are beyond the syntax and conventions of physics. I imagine this as a kind of IdeaSex: participatory, hyperdimensional mutual orgasm in the boudoir of the Imagination... is what I imagine. But this can't be for a handful of trained mystic adepts. No, we need new forms of Communication and, accordingly, Relation. All Matter and all Mind are such Relationships. Communication > Relation > Being.

You know this. We've spoken of this on our walks. In any case, I need to keep spitting it out continually and in different forms so that blueprints and topographies begin to form in your dreams. So there you are.

Shi'

Wednesday 01.12.2000

Crom,

I woke up in a dream.

Heavy leg, with the sky too big somehow.

ok ok

i think that i know what it is and it is this:

LOVE THYSELF.

& i cant yet and i cant, but that is where it starts, im thinks.

im thinks it starts there and everything else follows. maybe.

ive yet to test my hypothesis...

i think that maybe i can go for a walk today and fall in love with the snow and the sky. almost.

i still feel really terribly sad and lonely a lot, but right now feels better than usual.

because the world is full of ideas, and no one knows, no one knows.

and i catch these ideas and take someone into a corner and open my hands just a little to let the light out and the someone goes, "awww..." and then i dont feel so bad.

frmhr2g..

Ever-T

Friday 01.21.2000

Crom,

check out www.beespoke.org/viridian99/synthetic-chemical-analysis

if you get the chance

"The sovereign remedy for commercialization is not for artists to hide from commerce... The aggressive counter-action to commodity totalitarianism is to give things away. Not other people's property -- that would be, sad to say, "piracy" -- but the products of your own imagination, your own creative effort."

did you catch the red moon? too cloudy here

Kak

Tuesday 01.25.2000

c,

yay

--remember that first rheostatics concert we went to? i remember the first time that you came to my place & you were with julie and probably sarah or someone and i didn't know you and you were standing there in my doorway and the rheostatics were playing & i think it was that weird little song "small town, where you gonna keep the big fish?" and you said it was good, and i thought HMMM...

HMMMM...

look at your hands man.

love,

the endless mule

Wednesday 04.05.2000

Prescript: I just now came across a new book at the UBC bookstore called "The Alphabet Versus the Goddess". When you next find yourself in a bookstore, check it out. Seems someone has been reading your mind, my mind, again.... Also what does the name Teilhard de Chardin mean to you? Hint: say it out loud... (as a side note: de Chardin was a Jesuit priest and French idealist philosopher who trained as a paleontologist and geologist... He also invented the Omega Point which is something like the spiritual equivalent of Vernor Vinge's Singularity... I think you would have been friends. He is you in another context.)

went to see the eagle we painted yesterday.

i went alone and i made it pour rain.

and then i got a new magik sigil.

and then i went up to the lookout and made it blow wind, and there was a wind storm until the clouds blew away, which is what i said it should do.

and then i rode my bicycle all around the world and went to stanley park, on a tip from philip k. dick.

and he was right, it really is beautiful there. and i rode around, and then i sat and recited my new magik spell as the sun went down and burst a storm cloud in two.

and i sat on the grass and then lay on my back in the grass, and chanted and sang. and i thought about you all the way.

listened to the ocean make it's sounds.

and the wind in the trees.

and the voices of the people far, far below.

i am trying to heal in so many ways.

terence mckenna passed away on april 3.

i found and took the moth-ball-elf-dust last night, and it gave me a song that i can't get out of my head.

so you have to sing it.

keep staring into the sun, even though they say you'll go blind. i had a dream...

love,

Dr.delius.

Sunday 04.23.2000

Dear sir,

We have received your requests and are considering them, rest assured. Our propagandists are hard at work. You will know it is time to turn the page when you hear, roaring, the cat above this sentence. There are 26 letters in the alphabet (you will find may below), but three are fakes. Your mission is to find the fake and to flush them out. Time is running out for the planet. There are five reasons. Our agents are watching you, waiting for the signal.

***

"The emperor is coming here?"

Some of the faces assumed beauty. Those faces were a call. Those faces were an intimation. We are here for the updating of the language of poetry.

***

On April 23, in the year 2000, the man calling himself the Shorter wrapped his body in bathroom tissue and paraded down the streets proclaiming: "The Queen is dead, the Queen is dead. Long live the Queen!"

When the Shorter attacked a police officer, he was arrested. It is said that, incredibly, as soon as the cuffs were snapped shut around his wrists, the subject vanished in a puff of smoke. Witnesses later claimed they smelled something akin to that which tigers emit during bouts of sleep. They said he rode down streets on his bicycle during the Spring and reminded them of a bat. (But they were all insane and were continually reminded of bats.) All of this was very mysterious.

***

To Our Valued Customer,

You asked about di-methyl-tryptamine. What can I say in a letter? To be very honest, it remains a mystery. So mysterious, so exceedingly bizarre when there, you simply cannot have any other thought but that you surely must have died --for what else could possibly be so alien, so transmuted, so extra-physical? You initiate, and by then (in waking life-time) it's nearly over. But not for yourself. By the time you let out your second breath you're struck by "awwwwwwe" --as everything around you opens up with a kind of singing vibration (not the vibration itself, it's substance, but its absence --like the notion of vibration, but felt.) But much more profoundly strange than that. There's simply no languaging it here. These words are for middling not unusual extremes. I can't stress enough how profoundly strange, other. It's not wavy walls or distorted faces. i t s a d i f f e r e n t t h i n g a l l t o g e t h e r. The totality of your perception transforms, as do you. Into what? There was an amazing noise in the back of my skull and all around me. And I just looked around the room, the space I found myself in, and it was all terrifying. Then I was surrounded by loving voices. I sang to them and watched the song take shape. It was exhilarating and beautiful.

***

Oh, given your last letter you need to know I learned that Escher spent time at a Chateaux d'Oex. And I read your recommendation, Figments of Reality, and started Order out of Chaos, by Ilya Prigogine, which is amazing. I mean, really incredible. Oh, and if he hadn't recently died I would tell you you must seek out and speak with (in German) the Bavarian Michael Andreas Helmuth Ende --student of Däubler and Rilke and Trakl. We really must get together and sit and talk about everything.

I have to tell you what I'm up to. Now. I've devoted some six months to getting this thing out of me: this writing. I'm beginning to realize that it's been in there a long time. Like, forever a long time. It's an amazing experience, to put it down on paper (well, on a computer disk) and see it take shape. It's really telling it's own story. I'm just facilitating. I've been jogging 50ish minutes each weekday. I'm thinking about bats, too.

Watch the skies,

Dr Delius

Friday 09.29.2000

Yes hello

It's been a rough time and the skies are bruised

I thought I had really done it. Actually I thought it had always been so.

I went straight to hell and stayed there. I don't know I don't know.

A hell so deep and dark and as terrible as a hell ever imagined and laid to paper.

bad bad bad

pain and hatred and anger held together by a thin membrane of hope. that is what I am.

I felt like that I awoke from a terrible terrible nightmare to find myself in hell. and, worse, that there was no hope only this torture. i was a blub ov tormented flesh in a sea of may own damned flesh and that was it. forever. and this was me because I am a horrible person. but then I kind of blacked out and returned, confused and afraid to the familiar.

i looked around and everything was broken

hell is real but you make hell you make your hell out of hate and anger. but hell is a state of mind hard to kick. i don't wish it upon anyone.

i sleep to dream but can't remember my dreams when i wake (though i have this taste in my mouth, and there's this little wildness in my eyes reflected in the morning mirror, as if i know something that isn't voiced, maybe a blue-skinned girl, maybe a contact... but i can't remember now.

fall asleep knowing that tomorrow is a new miracle, and one which we share.

there will be more to say in later days

be well

frm hr 2 go,

trv

Sunday 10.15.2000

Dear Mr. S

Due to unforeseen circumstances, the Universe has seen it fit to rocket your contact clear across the country on a bus and to deposit him in Montreal, which is a city where everything is in French and the Winters kill people and pets.

Apparently, your contact had been working on a secret document -- a manifesto in the form of diary entries and recorded dreams and words on walks under bridges. Having looked over this body of work I have had to draw the inevitable conclusion: Your trusted contact has been mad for some time. Why you did not alert us immediately is beyond comprehension -- was it not obvious to you? Or were you perhaps attempting to cover something up? Perhaps you felt sympathy. That happens. Perhaps you had plans.

In any case, it seems that the aforementioned document, the opus of your mad contact, has ended. And yet, how can such a nebulous thing have an end? It had no start. What was it all about?

Journal excerpt, October Nine:

Dear Chris, I hope all is well. And I eagerly anticipate (though I wonder how long it will be) the time when we can next speak face-to-face. Right now I am living with a friend a the following address:

4819 Rue Hutchison

Montreal, Quebec

H2V 4A3

I will not be here long but anything you send will make its way to me.

Much love,

K.T. S

Monday 10.23.2000

Mr S,

No one will believe me that I dream these dreams. The steps of the Musee d'Art are wide and grey, and the sky turns its own grey. Jets tracing white nets, for catching birds and comets, plough up the blue.

The days are beautiful and wild and nights peaceful and whisper something sacred, broken, in Old French I do not understand. We do enjoy a good glass of port, we do. Autumn chills and spreads itself up the mountain like the slowest, darkest, coldest flame. My eyes are fastened to the sky.

Send postcards and centipede legs and rich spices to:

4662 Rue St Denis

Atp. 1

H2J 2L4

ok!

Tre

Wednesday 11.08.2000

CS,

Anything new to report from the places you dream? And your travels? You must keep me updated.

You must be happy. It isn't right that you should have to be sad here. Quit your job. Move to Iceland. Build castles out of volcanic sands and flame lichens. Make your dreams. Make them come true. This world is so full of wonders. And it's all there for us to see.

I live in a big room with a stove and a fridge and a borrowed bed. My neighbours are" Patrice, the 26 year old actor who comes from La Banlieue and who owns a puppy named Malenke; Robert, the 57 year old homosexual plumber/handyman who always has dirty fingers and drinks beer in the morning and teaches me to swear in French and is writing an autobiography and believes in "Le Quebec libre"; a row of sad tomato plants who look out on the alley and wait for winter; a battalion of fruit flies. One whole wall is a big window and I like to lie on my bed and watch the cars go by. One night I saw a shooting star. I like it here. Doing what I wish is such an alien thing.

Thank you for the photos. I will have them analyzed as soon as they bring our agent back from the dead. Apparently my contact is planning on skipping the country and heading to Indonesia. He is unaware that our people have already arranged to intervene with his vaccinations, embedding a tracking device below the dermis. Candidly, I remain skeptical of the technology or its ability to trigger psychic abilities within the subject via electromagnetic brain stimulation. They say it is done. I question their methods and speculations to date; though further updates are forthcoming.

Yours in confidence,

Keep watching the sky,

Biiliam Harm

Sunday 12.03.2000

So: December one I received your letter. I am so excited for you. You leave on William Burroughs Day. Ominous/prescient cosmic sigil, surely that is.

"Morning, like an open wound." (CNS) ...thanks for the Pi. How did the pizza work out? I too love yeast. It is a goddamn pleasure. A slow, goddamn pleasure and delight.

We really must take a trip at the end of August. Is that possible? To the W.C.T.? By then I'll have my gear for the S. America and would give me an opportunity to test it all out. We plan to climb through Brazil to Peru, then to Ecuador.

Remember the secret oasis? Remember that day? (Merri's mom remembers you and sees you and wonders if you remember her.) Remember the cosmic giggle, how the sky and the clouds and the rain all synched up with you, for no less than six hours? Remember the blood sacrifices, your own, to suburbia? Remember "everything is attached to a hand"? Remember "all the world is a serious game, where your mind and your soul are tokens, your body the board."? Remember the two men on the boat? Remember the coyote? Remember the mouse speared by the heron's beak? Remember the downed Russian satellite and how that monk arrived and sat for a week, how you could have joined him, gone off to Tibet, but chose instead to stay behind? We made a whole world that day.

I must tell you, I've been writing like a fucking madman. No distractions. Just me in my apartment with the street below, the sink, the glow. I would send you samples but I have no printer.

Thursday 12.21.2000

Dear C,

I am committed to these letters. Please find me in letters. I am nearly omnipotently yours.

I've made a decision today, so I am writing to tell you about it. Thinking about school has been getting me down lately, mostly because I don't want to waste my time there. --but I have this unconditional grant, coupled with a hard time deciding what I want to "do". The question I've been asking myself these past weeks is: what form of academic specialization will allow me to effectively explore the ideas that interest me, as well as provide me with a forum where I can express my own synthesis? ...I've been thinking about these desperate times. What paper can be awarded that will legitimate my search? I'm still planning to attend UVic. People tell me there are good profs, better forests, and a mighty sea.

My landlord just came in a gave me a beer ---

...you've gotta work for the change. The change in yourself and the whole wild world. Christ! Still looking and learning and being so so surprised by what I find. Still dreaming and of course writing the dreams down. Still believing in the Universe and it's (mis)direction. Still want to tell you about everything! Dear sirs, I am willing to put everything on the line to prove myself wrong. What does it mean? And what will it mean?

What indeed

Er-evor

Thursday 12.28.2000

C:

Take the money. And sure you could live off it for a bit but you could also use it to go to Indonesia.

Received your package. Love the "Pharm Animals" grafik plus the "carmageddon" ticket was brilliant. That's exactly the kind of subversion that interests me. I think if I was a car user + found that under my wiper it would definitely at least make me pause + consider (if only for the half a minute it would take to realize it was some kinda prank... but that's all you need: to get them to crack open the window and let some fresh air in). Disguising the information as official bullshit is genius because it forces people to pay attention to it, bypassing the filter. What other documents could you use? Phone bills? Bank statements? Real estate signs?

Wait!

Have you been doing this for some time? Have you used other media?

Wait! Don't tell me.

Don't tell anyone. Ever.

Poetic terrorism is what this is.

This is the use of art to achieve social/political/ecological/historical ends.

I encourage you 100% in this direction. Don't forget to sign everything "William J. Harmless."

I think you are already the next David Suzuki but you just don't know it yet. You've got a mind for detail, a passion for nature + for sustainability. I'm always blown away by the data you send. I mean, you obviously care, and we need more voices screaming... lots more... every voice. Well, you know that.

I've been trying to remember all day an idea that you told me once: we were at the lake, ov course > (in fact, I remember exactly where: just coming out of the goose field w/ the migrating picnic tables, beside that huge fucking tree by the gravel path that goes along the fence where you drew the fnord) > you had the idea of a "missing" sign. With something on it. What? Titled something like "missing humanity". That was the gist of it, but there was much more. If you recall you must tell me.

PS - How's your new place? Why the move?

Travistar

Wednesday 01.03.2001

Mr,

Received a letter today. Loved the photo of the Shriners. With your photos alone you should be granted a degree (at least a honorary one) in mycology.

Thanks for your gracious offer of shelter. I hadn't really given it much consideration, but I guess I will need a place to stay when I land. If it is all well and good I would be very grateful if you'll allow me to crash chez vous until I find a place.

News Flash: My sister called the other day to tell me that a friend of hers (a very well-known ethnobotanist working at the university -- I have a weird feeling you told me about her before, maybe J. knows something) is seeking funding for an exciting project and needs a research assistant, and that my sister recommended me to her. Who knows if the funding will come through, but the idea alone has me dancing.

In your letter you said "journalism is basically what we do anyhow." Well, my thoughts exactly! A journalism degree. We'll see what we'll see.

I've been re-reading Archaic Revival and Food of the Gods. You know I think this stuff is the key to unlocking the 21st century and casting off the 20th. But you know my experience since about 1998 has almost entirely been typified by fear, anxiety, despair. Eventually, in late 1999 I had to walk away and dismiss everything. Then dimethyltryptamine happened and I was able to see that my psychology and life situation, so inextricably involved, were the source of the negative turn. Which only makes sense.

Wednesday 01.17.2001

Chr,

I hope you get this before you leave. Meant to write sooner. Got a job working in a factory making pre-cooked souvlaki brochettes. Mostly I cut meat all the day with bitter Albanians. I wake at 4:45 to get there for the start of shift. They work us overtime every day. Of course it's wretched but I can't complain. It does give me time to think.

Thanks for the tape! had to buy new batteries for my walkman but that was worth it!

I am making money and all is well and I'm actually pretty happy. things get me down but I turn around quickly because there is always the sky (the one above and the one I keep in my head). I think what you said about detoxification is really good. We just need to keep growing and walking and helping one another along the way.

I'm so happy you're going. (Think of all the money I'll save on postage!)

Montreal is bitterly, bitterly cold and the trucks moan into the night. Birds sleep as the snow darkens, renews, darkens again.

Remember where you came from and wander in search of the Gods (demi and otherwise.) Time will take you and time will bring you back. So trust everything to time but make a secret nest in your heart for the wild things you see and sense-- put them there and make them timeless, and then you'll wander there forever.

Saturday 02.17.2001

Crom,

Soon you will be a little older. Meanwhile, in the dark I am attempting to build an equation for endlessness. Last night it came together in a dream, and then upon wakening I promptly forgot it all. Of course.

...at any rate there is 1/4 that is mine. This will allow for five to six explorations into deepest Amazonia. But first a passport I need. Assuming I make it through the chrysanthemum I'll be sure to tell the self-transforming machine-elves "Hello" from you.

As ever and as I shall remain in perpetuity,

Here to go,

Trevor Smith

Saturday 03.03.2001

Sir -- I have an enormous volume of work to do between now and the 18th, so I don't know if I'll really be able to send you anything more until after then.

I know exactly what "the death book" is. And you should too. It's in my bedside drawer. It's the annotations to the Suburban Book of the Dead. (Which isn't a book at all, in the usual sense.) So what else do the muses reveal?

To your other question: I can't remember. I can't remember any of it, none at all.

To your other question: The dream on the 26th, and now I quote from the dream journal, "was about a giant cat with smiling eyes mewing terrifyingly and scratching at the roof. I cowered in the bedroom with strangers and was painfully sick. Nearly delirious, I tear at my nervous system. I am scattered and everywhere."

To your final question: I support and encourage you in your research. I also recommend that you check out a book called 'The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind', by Julian Jaynes.

Keep yourself healthy,

From here to go,

Retriever

Sunday 03.04.2001

Dear Mr. C:

Well, you must be back by now -- I hope to hear all about it. Me I've been sewing bottom and threading days into something that's been shaping up to look like a life -- a life to laugh and cry and feel as real and real can feel, oh as real and real! I am very certain that I'll be crash landing on the edge of the world very soon, and I'll see you there. It's all a matter of bus tickets and the long stripped roads and starry nights in the middle of nowhere. All a matter of time. We live longer if we look for the details. So look for the details and find some forever there. I will watch the sky and the lights and every tree in the road, every spot: all of the infinitude etched in detail! Surely you can find it.

How many nights (now very distant) have you pulled me through? And how many times have I sat on the edge of that mystery and paused, turning back saying "I can't -- not now. After all, what would Chris think? I can't go without explaining it all to him! And, of course, there's much to explain..." That means more than anything else can. The world is a mystery, yes; and it can be terrifying, yes. But it's also our mystery and our terror. To catalogue the mysteries with names and the mysteries without names. The is wonder -- don't be surprised. It's in the details. It's in the subway, in the factory where I work, in the shopping malls, underneath bridges, in the grey snow on the sidewalk, in hands and eyes.

My rocketship lands in Vancouver on July 12. Then? Maybe I'll stay there for a week before coming out. Are we going on an adventure into the deep green womb (enviro- psycho- detox)? This would indeed be a good way to go before things roll over into a whole new direction. If this is going to happen then I truly cannot wait. It's the kind of thing I think about when I'm doing anything else. Let me know. And is it still cool for me to stay with you in Aug? I may be able to stay with Mel.

Anyway. None of the finger-sized winter people on St Denis are looking up today. They all seem distracted by glowing windows and rows upon rows.

Time is what we have. This time we have. We have much to talk about in the coming months.

RA

Thursday 03.22.2001 [translated and abbreviated]

Where the Wild Things Are

Saturday, January 13 -- There is the world and there is time, and time will find us out. Then take us out and put us under the very ancient sky. There is a very secret place where time will come to call. A very warm and special and secret and sacred place where time would take us out. Where time would come and give us little views that we thought we'd never see again. And there will be a weird, sacred reflection. A private multiplication. This is what I see sometimes and that is why I look. I already know what it is because it's the thing that I see that I always get close to. When I see it I want to move towards it. But the point is that you can't get it. You can only get there and find you already knew it, which comes with the act of arriving. You know what I'm talking about? Why do you think these things are memories? They are not the way it was. And they have always been with you. They are not memories of the way it was but visions of what is here about here. They are what you are, what you think you haven't yet become. You need this to move through the impression they leave in time, then having traversed the path you remember, you are reminded of them. I know what time is. Time is memory. Time is the memory in matter. And I am a thing caught in memory. All of the things which matter has dreamt are really one thing stretched into shapes. We are continuous, as are all things. All things are a pattern -- a trace in a process. Memory is drawing the awareness of that trace to a close. That is what is meant by death: memory drawing to a close.

You feel like a thing that remembers. But don't you see that you know it all? When you dip into dreams your memory loses hold and gets shuffled loose. This is why your dreams refer as much to yesterday as they do to tomorrow. Of course dreams are less concerned with event as with emotion...

Dreams are the geometry of emotion. But emotion is a kind of sensation. Most sensation is located in flesh, and that is how we place ourselves in the world. Emotion takes us out of the world a little, because it is pure sensation. If you can cut off the world, if you can lose the flesh locality, then you will find yourself a thing of pure sensation. That thing is what you are and it's what we all are. It's what the world is and we are all in the world.

You can get outside of memory just a little -- I know a way. There are ways -- all dangerous to your flesh -- for time is real and you are a fish in time. But don't let the habit of time deceive you -- your real memory is past/future. The head and foot are points connected by sensation; as the past and future are points in time united by the same. And, remember, time is the memory in matter. Space then is the rotation of dreams.

Saturday, January 20 -- Then space is a rotation of dreams. But how big is this space? I think it is bigger -- what we experience is a kind of reflection, like a passageway. There is infinity in the cosmos because the cosmos is infinitely fascinated by itself. And each moment is a kind of beautiful mystery to the cosmos. It goes and goes and, arriving, finds itself there. I am a thing in the world and the world experiences itself through me. Through eyes, myriad, the world sees itself. And through eyes it confronts its mystery: itself. But it can hardly look to uncover its own secrets. No, it must look away. If it really wants to see itself it must see and look into eyes. In the awe in eyes it can spot the first sign of recognition dawning. Think about your self in space and time. You see the world a certain way, and you know the world can be dissected. You know that the world goes in and gets smaller and smaller. (You asked how far can it go. It answered, "Plank.") And of course the world it goes out too. There also the connections are plain. The relationships represent different kinds. There, a meeting of eyes becomes something like a bridge. It is a place where inside and outside become interchangeable.

We sit on the surface of disorder. And we are nodes of a contrary trend, a creativity in matter. Matter itself has its way, but it is a chrysalis. Within, minds form within and consolidate. And when mind opens into space it gives us an escape. When fully formed our body we be not flesh-matter but the dreams of our species; those we have been building since the start. It is our tale, which we share at the moment of metamorphosis, that is our initiation: the relation of this story to the heart of the world. This is when we emerge outside of memory and unbounded to matter. But beyond that who can say?

Tuesday, January 23 -- But what am I? The body speaks to itself. The body is a world apart that speaks to itself. And the body also speaks to the larger world and listens too. The first chemical bodies were unified and elevated by apprehension. This is the knowing of the body. This simultaneous body becomes a body apart. It separates itself from the world through self-communication. It then knows that it is. All things that are so networked are bodies and selves. The body draws the world in by speaking to the world and listening. The sphere of simultaneous apprehension grows outward. The limits of the body are the limits of its apprehension. These limits change and flow.

Friday, January 26 -- Where do you let off? There is a corner of the sky that goes up forever. That is where you'll stay for a while. There is also a field and a factory. You will go and stay as long as you need.

Death comes as a recognition. Death is always here. We are nets of memory in forever. And the world is connected by those we transact and traverse. our minds are sensitive to the passage of time. Time is a movement, and minds are organs specialized to detect such movement, the force of time; in the same way sharks are attuned to magnetic fields. Forever is a state of mind. Something has slipped out of forever and this time has dreamt the world into being. And time is curled up within us all. Or you might say that everyone has little bits of themselves sticking, protruding out into forever. And you can step out of time and into eternity. Since it is extra-temporal it doesn't take any time at all to get there. It's here.

The world could only be so beautiful. That's what drew us out and in. And that awe and wonder is the thing we follow. It is the thing we seek and the thing precipitating the search. The fly seeks rotting flesh because the world is full of it. We are drawn to wonder, so it should not surprise us that the world is just full of it. In this way our central purpose is wonder. This awe is the emotional body we can use to travel outside of time. There are others.

Tuesday, January 30 -- Not that we would want to remain outside of time. (Not at this place in the universe.) There is a precious moment when the dreamer recognizes she is dreaming. These precious moments exist in waking life too. Perhaps this is the forever that is the secret moment in time, the eternal moment we call death. And what you perceive is what you are: a fish out of time.

Feb 4 -- I speak of the body outside of time. You wander in this strange wilderness composed of memories and imagination. You can lose yourself in a dream, a full world occupied by all the people you might wish to meet. And still there comes a time, in no time, when the dream ends, and all the world and all its people turn out to be just you, dreaming. So you feel lost in the world? Do you feel the world in you? Whatever we lose, this is eternity. Now. The world is far stranger and we feel like strangers because we have lost ourselves. They destroy that which is sacred and then wonder about all the sadness we feel. Every look, every shape, every meaning-less connection is sacred.

Feb 10 -- The heart is a miracle and that miracle has natural cause, like time. Memory is how we locate ourselves in time, and sensation is how we locate ourselves in space. Each of us builds the world very slowly, memory by memory, sensation by sensation: nets of memory in forever. Each of us had to learn the sky: you don't remember the time, but the sky was once a surprise to you. Then the sky became what it is and how you know it to be. That blue changed your eyes forever and you now know it, wherever you go. So everything we know is put in its place: we infer the world. What are these things with names? They are the stones in space and time we stand our consciousness upon. It is the view we have. And then what are we? We are the push and the pull. We are the shivering of a beast, embryonic, caught outside of time. We are the reflection of something complete (that which exists in completion.) One day we will cease being amazed, shocked, and instead be struck by the already-knowing.

Sunday 04.01.2001

Sir,

The astonishing thing about it is that I came back.

I sincerely hope that you still exist, in a form I recognize. (You must call me next week at 286-**** area code 514) I keep having dreams about getting letters from you. How were your travels? The Rafflesia arnoldii, that parasitic beast, is so beautiful and pungent it fills my apartment with the smell of rotting meat and my eyes with deeply sentimental tears.

All is well and the streets are salted. What more can a man want? People are just waking up here. I can hear groans of the people and of the house. Water in pipes. Dishes and birds and dogs and horns. All of it is magnificently uncoordinated and there's a whole planet of this? An entire history? ...but enough! You must send me something or I'll never believe you made it back. Send me some shred, some token of continuity, a photograph, a finger, anything at all. What now?

As for me: still working at the factory. Looks like I won't be studying snow monkeys in Japan. Such is life. But maybe I'm better off. The plan for the moment is to quit my job, hop a Greyhound to Fredericton to visit Sara then our to Toronto to see Merri, then another four days across Canada.

Saturday 04.14.2001

So you watch and wait. Finally one of them seems to regain its spirits. The astronaut sits up w/ legs dangling in the sea. It glows and vibrates and gives of a strange, palpable energy. You are drawn to the astronaut. The astronaut imitates your gestures as you eat little sea fish, and you find yourself dangling your legs in the sea, quite without thinking about it. You have a disorienting feeling as though you're fucking yourself. All the other astronauts have begun to decay. And the people of Earth have lost every story. Or the stories exist, but only no longer apply. They are maladaptive. Our storytelling faculty, I think, is a reasonable consequence of the perceptual apparati. Each human narrative is an attempt to frame experience -- to build a coherent model. Which, of course, is why the great majority of human narratives are maladaptive. The reality they project is basically incomplete or fallacious. In this way these narratives are no different from a damaged, malfunctioning organ. So what we need is an adaptive myth, which is to say a myth that changes in response to new understandings and situations. We need a myth that's open-minded and will advance the project of life. What can inform our understanding while incorporating and structuring that understanding. Well, we call that myth science. Science is the universal adaptive myth -- surely the lingua franca of all intelligent life in the universe. The human project and the project of life can only be aligned with science. Forget the ground and forget the old gods. Leave the planet Earth and be guided by observation, curiosity, and experiment.

So here I am here on the edge of the world, and where besides? A fenced-in yard -- a low city -- and terminal. All of these unclear places, half buried where memory can't get at them. Half buried, where the morning can't get at them. These mornings never really get anywhere -- they move in the same circles and I guess I haven't put in much of an effort. What can I do? All the people with all their time have me in a compromised position. All the people and time have me in a corner, and I am afraid. Where do we go from here? Perhaps a whole new category of direction will open up. I'm only here because I want to make sense of everything. And here is lost. How many here? How far and how fast? The lights go out in the suburban machines which have come to this world. They tore it all down -- he remembers dying. All of these wonderful things are meant to compress time. Build tools for time compression, making time less and less -- the whole time. Is this something terrible or something holy? Maybe both. Maybe I shouldn't worry about it. Why did they let Max rule them? Every Friday night the people form in knots on this cold and spacious planet. This is more vital than we know. Come on out. Make it what you do. You don;t understand it at all. I want to be in that bursting city. I want to be back there. Julia says he wants to build something. I want to build something set to fall and get out just before. Not faulty planning -- plan the fault. Make decay a condition of building. People of Earth, tie your little knots because it is Friday night. Keep together because it is better to let the world end that way. The world will go up behind your backs + feeling as though we could have done more. We all saw it coming and maybe we could have made more sense in the meantime. On the other hand, maybe having a good time or any old kind of time is more important. Maybe time is really the thing and all that. So maybe we're all fishes here. We need our space, and we need our time. We just need the space to move around and the time to make it happen. We don't need to stop and think, our project is clear: what is life and why? Everything follows that. I'm not looking for coherence only a sensible direction to swim. You can't forget we live in a lifeboat kind of world. Act accordingly. Don't stop and think -- there are more important things to do. Please don't read this. every second is a room to escape. Act accordingly. The first band is starting up. So long on the edge of the world. Something tells me I;ll be in the neighbourhood again. Something tells me we've got a long go of things. Project: 100 songs of Montreal. Yes, far away but you can't actually escape. Which isn't to say you shouldn't try. you just try. Just to see. Just to see everything and fall apart and in the morning pick up and carry on. Where are these places? I must have dreamt them, but they're a part of me. Some real place where you can look out over it all. What do all of these places have in common: a sense of calm, a sense that you could rest here or even stay. Some calls are inevitable. Try not to get rid of this, to keep it, but don't show it to anyone. Have it there to remember. Please keep all of this in mind. I've a great fear you will build something in thin air. But you've got a long way to go. Where will you go next? Just move, to see how far you can go. How fast and how far? How many roads and how fast? Keep this, because now it is all you have. You own damn fault. Miss those very distant streets. Miss that little dizzy feeling, as though the whole world were caving in and you knew it. How far and how fast while the sky still holds? Just go -- that's the rule. Just keep walking until you find something you can't walk away from. How many roads? How far? How fast?

Saturday 05.05.2001

Yes,

In response, something I haven't mentioned...

(by the way, since "the order is why the bugs build" I've realized that thoughts & ideas, no matter how under-developed or difficult to convey, or unfounded and illogical, MUST BE EXPRESSED. Don't disregard the dreams. Had I not written you that letter, "the order is why the bugs build" would not exist, or at the very least would have been shelved as another nonsensical utterance from nowhere)

...is that rhythm is always an incredibly important factor.

Yes, as you said, you can think yourself to death, but so can you think yourself to LIFE!

Thursday 05.10.2001

Dear Sir,

(See inside envelope)

The sky is falling, the sky is falling. Long live the sky!

I am reminded of the ouroboros, the serpent/dragon devouring its own tail.

The sky devours the earth, sir. Children devour the sky. Sky above children.

I am a fish. You are one too. In the big sea.

Yours,

William H.

Monday 05.23.2001

Dearest Sir,

I found a hole in my dream, through which I gained entry to _______________. The folk residing in _______________ were not particularly unkind, but then it can't be said that they were exactly hospitable toward me. They treated me as one would treat a man who is unknowingly involved in something much larger than himself, and who may be, as they say, "in over his head". In any case, I have enclosed some mementos from that place, and monetary notes handed to me by a kind _______________ian, one of the few I actually met. The _______________ian handed me them with the words "Regard yourself in frontally sir, for it is downright uncivil to let ones mind and heart spill over in such a fashion!" Imagine that.

Bill

Wednesday 06.12.2002

Mr S,

So here I am bedridden

In Lençóis (a municipality in the state of Bahia, population 11,000)

After a spell of something, something that brings death in the jungle.

I think of you often

You know, I really value the days and evenings I spent w/ you guys in Victoria

It's fucked and I'm sorry I haven't communicated these last months

No excuse at all

Brazil is something else

Boy how

But I still can't figure out why I'm here

LARIAM

Holy moley

No shit

So we've been to Rio, Juiz de Fora, Cabo Frio, Arraial d'Ajuda, Salvadore, and so many places in between. We're going up the coast all the way to Belem before flying back into the Amazon. Manaus, I think, there at confluence of the Negro and Solimões. Gritty urbanity in the jungle, formerly known as Barra do Rio Negro, and the capital of Amazonas. Maybe then a river boat south and eventually cross into Peru.

Being sick is the pits.

Never again!

What's the situation in Australia? I still cannot believe you are there. I do wonder what things are like for you.

I haven't really told you about Brazil. It will all have to wait

Wait until we meet again.

Friday 02.21.2003

Favourable Genuineness

The flames of Canberra, a mocking flock. The local sensation of pain, a temporary swollen anxiety. Another year under weather and threat, under colour and, how we measure our activities against forever and decay. They talk about edges and wonder about that. Because, where could it let off?

Green, yellow, others. Sparks shoot out over frozen lake; a mad little jackal on our blue savanna. The sparks were sacrificed, how the rain came at last, how your fingers went cold and dark, how a heart took her out. How we climbed and sat, came down and walked, struggled through patches of mud and fern, through dirt with our thoughts in outer space. Outer space, at last.

The dim, the howl, the morning fog. The clipping sound of bird beaks, like static or rain, a haze all around. How we looked up and the branches were set just so, a challenge, a lesson, like scars.

The woods and the spinning, the empty measure of drunkenness I wedged in the crotch of a tree. The trees overhead, my friend in tall grass. Nesting there you told me to write.

Now spaces between but weird rootedness. The suburban rows, the lights come on. Sounds of cooking row upon row. And neighbourhood armies comb tall grass and wood for hidden small bodies or traces like shoes. Or radio sprinkles, I hid in a thicket, the black thing, the kindness, the only way out. Adventures suspending, adventures between.

We came out alive and with dirt on our faces.

And where are we now, where am you put? I remember Mt this and Mt that. On the edge. And how we were lead to believe. How we led one another and found ourselves believing. And what else could we do? Picking wild fungus. The darkened and carpeted hallways, in big houses, in big safe neighbourhoods. The way that things end are suddenly precious.

Sincerely,

T***** S******

#210, 609 Gore Ave

Vancouver British Columbia

V6A2Z8

Tuesday 05.13.2003

Well sir,

I am in Montreal. Dont even ask.

Opportunities come a knockin, you know how it is.

The keyboards are weird here. I am in an internet cafe. I forget my new mailing address, unfortunately, but I will send it your way soon. I am drinking coffee because you get free internet time if you drink coffee. I am drinking a soy latte. What the hell.

Nope, not working. Mostly just getting drunk on the porch and pretending to cope.

Things are rough out here, my friend. Its been raining nonstop. I think the weather is coming out of my head. Motherfuck. Thats all I have to say right now. I will communicate more later.

Love,

Thursday 07.31.2003

Man,

Stay away from them's anterbiotics! They'll wither your immuno-resolve.

If I were you, I'd go to the pharmacy and get Valium. You can buy it OTC in those places--

Who couldn't use some Valium? I'm all a-buzz, uptight, anxious. Just need to CHILL OUT. Broke and afloat. That's what I am.

I've been surprisingly healthy these past months. No sickness, no pain.

Oh, I get short of breath climbing the front steps, but that has more to do with my generally sedentary lifestyle and constant drinking. I need to get active. I should run up the mountain.

So where are you now? And for how long? Don't come back to Canada--what is there here? You're one of the few people I know who I think could really take off and make it out there among the whales and lynxes and scorpion-spiders. I do fully expect to visit you one day in some desert where you've built a house out of tin cans and monkey glands and your beard is seven feet long. Do you have a beard? You should. How long and how far?

Beardless as ever,

Tre'

Tuesday 08.19.2003

Volk ess: T' is doing well enough. He has the house to himself. He is leaving Montreal. He apologizes for his lack. Lack. He apologizes for lack. On the 23rd, I move to Toronto. I will be living with my grandmother. I plan to spend long days at the ROM, longer nights at the bar, and mornings wishing with all my heart that it wasn't so. The house is brick and large, with a sunroom, a birdbath in the yard, and ghosts. It is far from downtown Toronto, out in what used to be called North York. I am exhausted. Squirrels. A nice, tree-lined street, and a big park. I will be meeting my mother and sister in Toronto on Saturday, as they will be visiting until the 27th. If any of you would like to visit, please know you are welcome. Letters will be very much welcome. I am broke. A large stray cat. The new address: 718 Mobourne Ave Toronto, Ontario M5N 1M2 Canada OK Over and Out Trevo

Wednesday 09.10.2003

Chrrr,

I forgot that you have a block set on your e-mail. I've been sending you messages, but you probably haven't been getting them. I have a new addresses: f*******@h******.com --I'm slowly trying to get rid of this one.

I guess you might not know that I am in Toronto right now. I'm in the Film and Video program at York. Ha ha ha. No but seriously.

You know, I think I learn something completely startling about nature every day. Have you ever visited www.edge.org? I'm guessing you know all about it (maybe you're the one who told me about it). I watched the entire six hour Stephen Hawking's Universe PBS special, twice, this summer. Lee Smolin is in it --I like that guy an awful lot. And I like Stephen Hawking too. He looks cuddly.

Do you know about these weird "Toynbee tiles" that keep popping up all over the place Do a google search for Toynbee tiles. Very strange.

ok ok ok ok

Monday 09.15.2003

Cr,

Reading is such a funny thing.

Sometimes I'll be soaking in the bath, reading a book, and suddenly it'll just hit me (I have this problem where I start to have other trains of thought going on while I'm reading--I won't even notice that I'm doing it sometimes, and then I'll stop and realize that I have no idea what the past five pages have said), I'll suddenly realize just what it is that I'm doing--which is to say, running my eyes over shaped dry ink on pages of paper and, in so doing, gaining access to a huge amount of information laid down in the past by some author somewhere--and I'll get the weirdest feeling. Like, what IS this? What exactly am I engaged in doing? And isn't this strange? And my brain will sort of try to break it down, what's going on, but it's still totally strange. What a strange thing to have happen, to have books and people reading books. To have written words and then to arrange those words so that you can kind of create these, I don't know, these imprints of particular moments which can then be experienced in a sort of second-hand way by others. And this is a major human activity--you know, witness the library. But it's so bizarre. I'm doing this thing right now. And you're doing your part of it, I guess, uh, right now.

Bizarre.

Or, sohuld I sya, bzirare.

Over and out

Sunday 10.05.2003

By the way:

I suppose you're aware that Quentin Tarantino has a new film out called Kill Bill. Recall our tapes? Recall "Kill Bill Harmeless"? Right. When was that, '97?

Well, I've spent almost a year writing this story called "Kill Bill Harmless" about a guy who notices elements of his own experience showing up in popular culture (essentially describing my previous experience with The Matrix and Waking Life)... Recall the dream I drew you, of the mirror swallowing my finger and hand and arm? The idea is partly based on my own experience, partly based on the experience of the "Horselover Fat" character in Philip K. Dick's novel VALIS. In VALIS, the characters discover a movie that seems to speak directly to them, albeit in coded form. The first time I read the book, I felt like I was being spoken to by the book in the same way that the characters in the book are spoken to by the film. In Kill Bill, I was planning on referencing Philp K. Dick and VALIS by incorporating a dead science-fiction writer named Orson V. Leer who wrote a novel called The Matrix... Oh, it's all very confused. Obviously. Which is partly why I can't write it.

Anyhow... I STILL think I'd like to make the story. I'd STILL like to call it Kill Bill Harmless. And I guess I'd better go watch Kill Bill, just to see if there are anything there.

Blah!

Sunday 12.14.2003

My Christopher,

Listening to the Lo-Fi tapes -- all the classics: "Satan Lives," "The Frosted Flakes Boy," cut-ups, crack-ups, ruptures, explosions, the Backwords... all of it. "Cut it up my friend, cut it up." These sounds are important. And important document. There's you just now: "We live because we die." I've been looking over our correspondences. How many letters over how many years? I've found many many many. Some old photos too. Here's one of me drawing on the wall we muraled. Alice. Excerpts from dream poems. Hieroglyph beaver. A stage. "Staring at the Kill Bill Harmless." ...It's been a long mad time and we're not through yet. I miss the ocean. The flawlessness.

I haven't heard from you (but the mail seems to take not less than 3 Hindu Yugas these days) but I'm getting giddy and restless. I value whatever this friendship has been, this thing we've shared ever since that strange and random phone conversation catalyzed by a mutual acquaintance. (Remember? You couldn't be sure I existed...) You know this, but it never hurts to say. We've had some fucking brilliant times. Your letters are so refreshing. I've never before re-read them. You can really trace something here. The madness, the creativity, the learnings, some kind of scattered trajectory. You are the only person who's ever been willing to really play. Fully. Can we just find new fields to sit in and not do anything until night and the coyotes and owls on the lake force us home?

Well, if all goes to plan I'll be calling you up to go play at the ocean. My plans have a tendency to change, and do so suddenly. You know.

Well, I hope this letter finds you in some semblance of sanity.

Yes, goodnight

P.S. -- There's a cat above this sentence!

ok!

T.

aka Harvey the Bunny

aka Will I Harmless

aka Kiyo Smith

aka Dr Delius

aka The sad Worm

aka Mika Transform

aka Machine_Ape

aka H-2-G

Monday 12.15.2003

Christopher,

I just read over the letter I wrote you yesterday. I didn't seal it and send it, obviously. It wasn't the letter. It wasn't the letter I meant to write. Meant. This is the letter I meant to write.

Dear Christopher, I've been reading over your old letters. I think you need to change the world. And not just me. It's all wrong. You know and I know we, humans, are not meant to wash dishes and sell books. Not meant to sit in little plastic chairs and watch fucking spin-cycles. It's their monstrous machine, it's their poisonous greed, it's their foul market. They built this grey world, let them sit on their shallow rotting petro-thrones, not bestowed by gods or great-grandmothers. I don't know how but we gotta change this. You can't let them take the sky. We can imagine this better world. We've dared as much. You must be the adaptive innovation that makes it all obsolete. That or the you I know will be erased. You can be the bifurcation, if only you believe in yourself. Don't get caught in despair. But don't get caught in awe either, as you're wont to do. Don't turn inward and get snuffed out. This is how the darkness grows. Let only Holy death snuff you out, if it DARE.

We need more of your posters! More flyers! More hexes! More hoaxes! More pranks! I know how much you care, how much you believe. I know the rising ocean and the mayhem and murder has you close to caving in. But you mustn't. And you mustn't let me.

Here, right here, is a chunk of the sky. I carved it out for you . See how blue? Keep that blue in your eyes. Carry it, the secret blue. There you will arm yourself with knowledge. There you will redefine what it is to be human. You will flip the world, stop it, and spin it anew. They won't even know it. They won't see it coming. Only when we are all long gone.

We are all gone,

Much love,

Trevor

#compassion #communication #culture #ridiculousness