Unstuck in time: A tl;dr blog and shrapnel examination thread.

[Pæs]

Listen: Signor Paesior has come unstuck in time.

He has blinked driving to work and watching the sun rise and opened his eyes at a party watching it set some five days earlier. He has forgotten self and found it again but it was not the same self. A boy sitting at his dining room table suddenly fell forward and the momentum continued into a man sitting up from bed elsewhere in timespace. He has been born and he has died many times with many faces and payed random visits to all the events in between. He has experienced countless lives as a human being and lives as other things altogether which upon returning to a human mind are garbage and gibberish.

He says.

Paes says that he first came unstuck in time in the dining room I've already mentioned. This was shortly after he ditched his education to work retail. His parents were on holiday and he had the house to himself, so he had some friends around. A buddy of his and he were waiting on a pair of girls they knew, each having a favourite they aimed to woo.

Paes was a guru.

He said.

A proper psychonaut, fluent in pseudophilosophy and profound sounding wank. This was why he didn't need school. The establishment didn't get it and the primitive brain he hadn't conquered couldn't recognise the value of all of these numbers which were being used to describe his progress as a learner. "Fuck these people," said he, "I bet they don't even know that 'we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively,' the jerks. I'm the smartest motherfucker I know."

"Ha," said he, "Ha, ha. I know the truth already because I've taken a lot of drugs."

So here was Paes, preparing to impress these girls with his mastery of the universe and give them some drugs as well, if they wanted, so he could take credit for any Meaningful Revelations they experienced and knew but couldn't capture with their words. He loaded a bong with Salvia and let his buddy take the first hit while they waited for the girls. "Now, it's got a reverse tolerance," offered Paes, the expert, "so it might not work so well the first few times but then it'll start to really fuck with you but you've already had it twice so this might be good."

And his buddy smoked the drug and went on an adventure and neither of them could stop laughing as they galumphed about looking at old things as new things and having trouble with simple things like remembering how to chew biscuits and generally being a pair of schmucks.
And everyone was having a good time.

The girls arrived and were invited in and they couldn't stay long but oh, no, no just stick around for a bit and share some of this and we'll all have a good time. "Don't worry," says Paes, our expert on these matters, "it's perfectly safe, really. It's legal" and Paes is some sort of Anarchist even though he's never wondered what that means or why he has to be one but either way it's silly that its legality is even relevant to him. "It's legal, don't worry. I'm not going to insist, though, you can do what you like but I'm going to smoke some to show you how safe it is." And he does and everything is fine.

For about fifteen seconds while he holds it in and sits there smugly, his eyes saying "I told you so" until they start to vibrate inside his head and a laugh builds up inside him but it doesn't get out before he wakes up on a beach somewhere and his wife is upset because she wants to go home but he wants to stay a little longer even though it's cold and the sun is going down.

He remembers the girls and his buddy and he's confused until he moves again and he's waiting in the subway for the train to take him home from work and he can only remember the beach but now he's moved on again and again and this goes faster and faster and he goes back to the wife from the beach for a conversation about their finances then he leaves again and he's someone else and one day he makes it back to his dining room table but he's bracing himself to leave again because he's already mourned the loss of this place and these people.

Paes has lost his shit on drugs before. He has seen blood and been convinced that he is bleeding out onto the road and seen bugs and been inside-out screaming at everything for hours that feel like forever. He has resolved in these moments of terror to never fuck with his brain by provoking it with deliberately upsetting input but afterwards he knows he always makes it back safe and that it would be silly to stick to drunken, doped up resolutions. He resolves that this is the last time he takes drugs and he apologises to the girls. They don't know why, but he regrets having suggested to them that they go where he has just been. Things are collapsing all around him, every sense is lying to him with unholy sounds and sights and sensations. He goes to bed, sheets rolling like an ocean but he dives in and holds his breath until he is sleeping at the bottom of the sea.

The next day he still can't see straight. He is Gregor Samsa, suddenly and inexplicably in world entirely alien to him but more upset by how this inconveniences him in his plans to go to work that day. Salvia should only last a few minutes. This is not doing what it says on the box.
He drives to work, refusing to swerve for anything which he doesn't usually anticipate encountering on this journey.

"Oh, fuck," says he, "I've done it properly now, haven't I? I'm seriously broken. I would go to the hospital if only I weren't running late for work already." And he's afraid because he can no longer trust his senses to accurately report reality to him and maybe this is forever because it is certainly going on a lot longer than he is comfortable with but it wears off over the course of the day.

Which is when he starts to remember the details of the 'lives' he 'experienced' that didn't make sense to him and still do not. He spends the day throwing up and doubting things until other people react to them and the rain reliably strikes their faces and slips quietly for the ground as he expects it to. And he spends the day thinking of Lovecraft and thinking that he can relate to the inability to describe a horror except by waxing poetic about its evasion of description and how the real horror Lovecraft has to show us is not the ancient creatures or the cultists or the offensive geometries but what they reveal about the restrictions on our perception and knowledge. And he is concerned that his failure to understand the world he lives in might cause him to hurt a friend who seems an enemy or other related misperceptions which might irrevocably alter his world for the worse.

Two weeks later, forgetting the promise he made to himself and desperate to prove it was 'just a bad trip' he takes the drug again and has another terrible reevaluation of his relationship with time and space.

And for a while Paes is a solipsist, but he grows up and he gets better. And everyone is having a good time.

[Eater of Clowns]

Great piece, Paes!  I don't normally give a shit about drug reactions, because so often they're like reading about someone's dreams.  "But it seemed so real," etc.  This one really lays the hooks in, though.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

That was really, really beautifully written. Very insightful.

[Pæs]

Great piece, Paes!  I don't normally give a shit about drug reactions, because so often they're like reading about someone's dreams.  "But it seemed so real," etc.  This one really lays the hooks in, though.

Thanks! Yeah, I generally hate drug stories and avoid sharing them too, but I was hoping I'd avoided the "man, I saw Gooooood" tone with this.

[Hoser McRhizzy]

"Oh, fuck," says he, "I've done it properly now, haven't I? I'm seriously broken. I would go to the hospital if only I weren't running late for work already." And he's afraid because he can no longer trust his senses to accurately report reality to him and maybe this is forever because it is certainly going on a lot longer than he is comfortable with but it wears off over the course of the day.

Which is when he starts to remember the details of the 'lives' he 'experienced' that didn't make sense to him and still do not.

I know this feeling. 

to the lot.  Thanks for posting. 

You're a kickass writer, btw.  Yes, you avoided the psychobabble-GAWDIZA-DRUG-WEB-talk.   

ditto what nigel said.

[Cain]

Just wanted to say, this is, IMO, the best thing posted on this forum all week, possibly all month.

[Pæs]

Thanks guys!

[Pæs]

A series of formative mistakes that are not yet understood.

Mistakes were made. This is certain. The fog of memory makes recall of events difficult to trust, causes harder still to identify. I cannot say whether Paes was too slow to answer, too quick to condemn, too proud, too cruel, too late.

The story starts, as do many stories told by young men, with meeting a girl.

"I'm like a sister to you... right?"

No, but that was later.

She was nothing special. Modestly attractive, perhaps. If she matched a "type" Paes likes, it cannot be determined whether the preference or she is the elder. She was tough, too. Sometimes discouragingly so, but Paes was convinced he was allowed a glimpse of her emotional availablity. Though, he was convinced of a good many things which didn't survive any determined scrutiny. He would say that while she didn't take his breath away, she was a practical companion. She came along at the right time. This is likely understating her effect on him, in an attempt to soften the blow of his later loss. They got along and it seemed to him that they supported each other when it counted.

"What a time for us to finally get our act together, huh? After all this time, we come to this."

I'm making a mess of the chronology again.

They met shortly after Paes moved to Northland, through a guy who was (somewhat tentatively) an acquaintance of his and (somewhat more than) a friend of hers. The guy didn't understand Paes, found some novelty in him, underestimated him. At that time, perhaps Paesior commanded some respect on a level this guy wasn't familiar with and he wanted to share it.

She and Paes shared an understanding of the world and where they differed, they soon compromised, informed each other's worldviews. It was mysticism, superficial and bound to their egos. It was haughty dismissal of models they didn't understand, but they shared it, which is what mattered. They shared an ambiguous morality and hypocrisy. A deluded perception of their righteousness. So they became fast friends. Nobody but them believed the love to be platonic.

Their friendship could be seen to have indirectly ended her relationship with he who introduced them, who gave Paes a choice, be on "his side" of the break-up or face the threat of serious violence.

They were inseparable for years, then left the city and went different ways, then both returned.

Lo, did many things come to pass.

They stuck to the fiction of a friendship with few enough mistakes that disbelief was easily suspended.

Once, at a party they attended, there was a boy she fancied. Opportunity separated Paes and she from the group and she asked him whether he thought of her as a sister. Did he? Fuck no. She sounded hopeful. The silly fool, he didn't think to question which response she was hoping for. Or he didn't dare.

Yes, he told her. Like a sister.

She thought about it for a while before agreeing.
He let her walk off with this other boy and told himself that somehow he had done the right thing.

___

Now I blink and it's some time later, we're at another party, she, he and I... and it seems I'll tell you the story without the narrator getting in the way.

Hi, I'm Paes, the protagonist.

So there's this girl and the boy she fancies, both on a variety of uppers and downers.
He, supposed to be a sober sitter, isn't taking care of her.

I decide then that I hate him (if, for jealousy, I did not already).

I stop having a good time to mind her for the night. Her relationship with lucidity tonight is complicated.
She says "I love you". I wish something something kiss me. Something something sorry.
I smile, let her talk, seem to listen, babysit. It breaks my heart.

They don't work out.

She's no good at relationships. Her family taught her not to trust, that she had to be harder.
They taught her a lot of things she'll never know she learned and she'll keep running into.

Now we live together, she and I, and another, and we start to slip up in our dedication to the friendship myth.

Or this is how I understand it.

She spends some time in my room, watching movies we don't pay attention to the end of. We meet in the hallway and spend a little time together before we carry on as we were. I don't sleep with her. I say and believe that it's because inebriation brings the opportunity, and I'm not comfortable with that. I've listened to enough lamentations of morning-after regrets to be careful here. Still, drink only accounts for the one time and I cannot explain the others.

I'm experimenting with radical honesty. This is another in a series of somewhat misguided manifestations of my later more focused relationship with truth-seeking. I fear then that my interest in it is a mechanism to force myself to discuss our situation with her. I still haven't dismissed this explanation.

I bring "us" up, but I don't commit to it. "I could potentially, maybe having feelings for you, which I am willing to explore instead of immediately rejecting the idea as has been our previous strategy. What are your feelings?" Or similar. Weak. Difficult to convey the intentional rejection of courtship rituals and games.

Indicative, perhaps, of unattractive social awkwardness. I am capable of Machiavellianism but never comfortable with it.
Never satisfied with anyone I can manipulate.

She needs some time to think it over. I know she won't know how to raise the topic once she's made up her mind, so every now and then I make gentle reference to it. I don't think I am being unreasonable or too insistent and she doesn't give any signs that this is the case. I am cautious not to make her uncomfortable. Some days we discuss the possibility openly. She remarks that it's funny how long it's taken us to get to here.

I later think this was a funny thing to say, considering her sudden rejection of the idea, which happened as follows:
"Okay," I say, after one of these discussions comes back to swallow its tail, "most simply, could you see me as more than a friend?"

No.

Well, that's that. Only... I don't think she's being honest with me.

I don't think she's being honest with herself.

I know her mind better than she does.

I recognise how silly this idea is, how obvious a defence of my feelings and convince myself that I'm careful to fully explore the possibility of my being in error before concluding that she is lying.

I have plenty of motivation to delude myself, but I become confident that this isn't the case.

Related: She's always had a problem with the concept of my masculinity. I've often felt like she can't quite decide whether I'm her safe gay friend or a potential partner. I think maybe I pushed too hard for a decision on this long-avoided matter of confusion and scared her into making the safer choice.

I don't think that she honestly doesn't want me.

The friendship continues. She tells me that she has been struggling with nihilism. I am suddenly aware of how severely it cripples her. I want to mind her again, smile, let her talk, seem to listen, babysit. Incidentally, this desire to offer philisophical support is a detectable theme in my life, related to protection, dominance and intellectual superiority. I want to coach her out of a place that I've been and left, but there's no communicating with her.

So ends the relationship. Am I resigned to her failure and unwilling to watch as I tell myself or am I disappointed and shunning her in arrogance?
It's hard to find the truth when I'm chasing the past.

Some time later, I am (in some sense) involved with a girl she has a history with. There is a story here, but suffice to say that there is a strange dynamic to this little Northland counterculture, which ensures that these two girls often find themselves competing for the same guy. Sometimes they share him. Sometimes they both ignore him and get involved with each other. Neither of them knows what they want.

This other girl is present when she who is the focus of the story is asked what happened to create the distance which now exists between she and I.
This story is reframed as my that of my unrequited love and brutal rejection, retold for ridicule. The other girl is told that my interest in her is an attempt to create jealousy. I am uncertain whether her part in it is omitted for self-defence, malice or whether she genuinely doesn't feel as if she was responsible for it. I cannot accept my understanding of the situation being so misguided as to allow the last of these and in my upset I become too self-involved to consider the first, so I react as if she has attacked me.


I deem the relationship irreparable and scorn her attempts at making amends.

A thousand mistakes brought me here and everyone one of them is a chance to evolve, but they're slippery and I am conflicted in my will to address them, doubtful of my ability to know the truth of happenings so buried in time and, I fear, doomed to make many of them another time or two before I learn better.

[Pæs]

Feels like that update is a whole bunch of whining.

I didn't want to use Vonnegut's voice again, as I did in the first, but I don't think I really replaced it with anything.
Regardless, there's a bunch of LiveJournal blaaahging if you feel like a read.

Offer some insight if you like, but keep in mind that most of the facts are totally fucked beyond recognition by my retelling them.

[President Television]

I didn't find it whiny.

It reminds me of something that's going on in my life, except that it isn't actually going on because I was prudent and decided to nip it in the bud by severing all connections. Better to have never loved than to be rejected at every turn, was my logic.

See, now that's whining. You've got nothing on me.

[Pæs]

I didn't find it whiny.

That's good, then.

ETA: I suppose the problem I have with it is that the other piece was not a typical drug piece because it was put together in a more interesting way, while this reads, to me, like a typical blog post.

It reminds me of something that's going on in my life, except that it isn't actually going on because I was prudent and decided to nip it in the bud by severing all connections. Better to have never loved than to be rejected at every turn, was my logic.

Yeah, and then it turns out that that was TERRIBLE logic.

[President Television]

I didn't find it whiny.

That's good, then.

ETA: I suppose the problem I have with it is that the other piece was not a typical drug piece because it was put together in a more interesting way, while this reads, to me, like a typical blog post.

Can't say if that's the case or not. I generally tend not to follow blogs, and the posts I have read cover such fascinating subjects as long-dreaded trips to the Olive Garden, funded by embezzled spirit-portrait donations.

It reminds me of something that's going on in my life, except that it isn't actually going on because I was prudent and decided to nip it in the bud by severing all connections. Better to have never loved than to be rejected at every turn, was my logic.

Yeah, and then it turns out that that was TERRIBLE logic.

But of course. And I was completely aware of it, naturally.
I followed through with it regardless because it is in my nature to do so.

[Pæs]

I'm going to call my dissatisfaction with this piece "being uncomfortable with discussing love life" (though I don't think that's the right term for what this was) and "still being too involved in working through what happened."

I don't like the idea of being hung up on someone, so I'm trying to make it more about figuring out how I work.

Unfortunately, the relationship with this girl lasted during most of my discovery of Discordianism, the "Chapel Perilous", or whatever, that I touch on in the first post and was ongoing as I decided to examine my BIP, so she keeps coming up in my writing on that time.

[Triple Zero]

Ok I think I'll give it a read then!

[Placid Dingo]

A blog is just a medium, not a genre. I used to be mad on blogging in my teens and there was always an excitement in watching a new person show up and develop their own style.
If HST wa around now, he'd be blogging the fuck out of everything, and it wouldn't devalue his talent.
Your subject matter would be at home on Livejournal but it doesn't make it any less well made. That said I totally understand the uncomfortableness with sharing intimate details.