Prelude: Virgil (Cantos IV-VI)

I for thy profit pond'ring now devise,
That thou mayst follow me, and I thy guide
Will lead thee hence through an eternal space,
Where thou shalt hear despairing shrieks, and see
Spirits of old tormented, who invoke
A second death.

Canto IV

"Don't for heaven's sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense."

Wittgenstein, Culture and Value

This poor fool approaches

A tall, gangling walker

Headphones on and always

Be-boppin'

Always the king

Wherever he goes

A strange master

Within an uncertain domain

There is a sharp taut gap

Between his kingly poise

And the plainness of his dress

His each step is certain but no

What motivates him so?

Older than I

Yet nigh ageless

Far enough removed

As to strike me eerie

Is his future so too my own?

Are my present and his just the same?

Do I regard him as threat or foe?

In him, do I regard only my self?

Or is he the strangest other?

I cannot say.

But that he walks 

And as a king talks 

Through this, our realm 

Kingless, and frayed.

Canto V

"Man has an invincible inclination to allow himself to be deceived and is, as it were, enchanted with happiness when the rhapsodist tells him epic fables as if they were true, or when the actor in the theater acts more royally than any real king."

Nietzsche, On Truth and Lie in a Nonmoral Sense

We all try to make sense out of our lives. We imagine we're part of a story, constructing elaborate personal narratives in which we play the protagonist. Stories are comforts. Sometimes they get confusing and chaotic, but regardless, there is a resolution. We have to believe that no matter what is happening or has happened, there will be a resolution, a denouement, a finalizing meaning that settles once and for all the significance of our lives. But it's still a fiction - as most comforts are.

Though fictional, our stories are not without their use. A noble lie may motivate us toward greatness, or even the betterment of others. Untruth shall not be anathema to us. Beholding untruth, we need not necessarily deter from our path. For sometimes, deception is both necessary and useful.

Canto VI

"Each of the sentences I write is trying to say the whole thing, i.e. the same thing over and over again; it is as though they were all simply views of one object seen from different angles."
Wittgenstein, Culture and Value

The structure of this work was created out of necessity as a method for enveloping many of my disparate writings under a single heading. There is, in my mind, a coherence of each with every other part. Whether that holds for the reader shall be determined by the openness with which she encounters the text, and how creative her ability to bridge the silences between each note.

The works I have read and admire greatest are largely constructed according to a centralizing rigorous structure. Total in their presentation, they attest to the presence of a single dominate and guiding intellect. The exceptions are Nietzsche and Kierkegaard.

In the works of Nietzsche, there is an implicit development from section to section, each building on the last. Such works can only be written from beginning to end, lest what is left out and between the lines lose coherence and disintegrate. What unites each arc of segments is not necessarily a unity of theme but of mood. Broken of its chronology and rearranged, the unity of the collective shatters, the personality perverted and rendered artificial.

With the latter, well, Kierkegaard's style is too inspired to be emulated with sincerity. There is only a small amount of my writings that echo his style. The problem they face is just the same as that which Kierkegaard himself faced - to put it bluntly, they are just too poorly written.

The way this work has come to be developed is very strange. The linear progression from times past to times present has been abandoned, rendered impossible by the lack of organization in my notes. In each section, I am writing from the whole of my past, from long ago to just now. In every section, all my history is relived. I have worked and reworked the same thoughts and writings over and again, just as I have worked upon myself, forth and wide, without regard for time.

Parts of this work are very much stream of consciousness. Such a hyper-subjective style is uncommon for a work aspiring to the heights of absolute knowledge. However, since the stream of my thoughts have focused centrally upon the essence of communication, the work they have produced is intensively concerned with its own sense and ability to make sense. The work and its motivating thoughts have become impossibly tangled. First they delve within deeper and deeper, breaking then from themselves and leaping above to the highest point, concerning themselves ultimately with the possibility for a state-zero understanding.

I have not tried very hard to mask the unnatural nature of this work. As it is fragmentary, it should appear incomplete. Emergent from a broken life and mind, it should not seek to hide its origins nor the process of its becoming. Like an impressionist painting, it does not try to hide how it was made. The paint strokes are plain to sight, dimensional, and heaped upon the canvas. Nevertheless, the whole ought to stand together with its own internal sense of harmony.

Once the whole is read, I implore the reader to survey the lot with an eye seeking an implicit progression. What are the essential points, and whither do they lead? From the wake of what breaths are they borne? Toward which later moments do they trend?

Everything, absolutely everything I have written stands apart with its own little thesis, sometimes contributing to a larger picture, sometimes standing on its own. Each section is a breath: its own beginning, its own infinite stand-still, its own completion. And like a breath, forgotten immediately but for the strange resonance it leaves as it quietly beckons one on toward the next breath.