They say that only the good die young; that isn't true, is it? Maybe one dies at a young numerical age, but by the time they are finally struck down they've seen so much, done so much, that they've aged internally. they die young of body, but old of soul and mind. Life sure has some quirks. What Vishnu does for His followers...
George laughs bitterly. I can hear the cynicism in his voice even as I type his words...the tones hover by my antennae for whole moments after they are uttered. It would be beautiful if it weren't so sharp at my thoughts, like a sculpting tool at the malleable clay of myself.
"Vishnu? The preserver? Preserver of what, Olo? Hate? Fear? Injustice? What gods would let their followers suffer and die, or continue to punish their comrades who don't follow them? Face it, you've been following a shadow."
Shadow. The shadow of evil? I don't knowingly believe in a deity that causes pain and preserves the negative way of things...but that is what Vishnu does: preserve the world until Shiva comes and brings the cycle back to Brahman...
No. Not that kind of shadow. A reflection, a fleeting ghost. That's what I've been following; not a flesh-and-blood being but a concept, an idea. One that doesn't act on its own to begin, preserve, or end, but exists to drive others to do just those things. How many wars were fought for Shiva? How many good deeds for Brahman? How many--oh dear--how many ideas struck down in order to keep the norm, to preserve and please Vishnu? This wasn't what I wanted, I didn't expect--
"Expect what? Somebody to save us all and end MNU? Nothing will ever do that; only those who walk this earth can ever change things here. You are alone here, and there is nothing else."
Nothing else? But wait--by simply believing in these gods and acting either in their stead or to please them, we make them real to us. Vishnu doesn't exist in the flesh anyway, except for when avatars manefest. that's the point of a god, is it not? Having a being that exists in some way that is better then mortals, higher then physical existance. that way we have something more reliable that we can trust in, something that won't fail even when we do.
What about the afterlife? Everyone that's died knows what happens after death, too. They just haven't gotten back here and spoken with the living about it. In that respect we are alone; we must guess about what we don't know and we won't find out if we're right until it's too late.
I guess it doesn't matter anyway. Even if Vishnu doesn't exist, I still think that he does, in some way, which is great for me. But does that prove the existance of a god for any other world but mine? Can a god exist subjectively?
I need to think this one over.

"Caged Bird", by Maya Angelou

A free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wing
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.


But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.


The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.


The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn
and he names the sky his own
But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.


The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.

"Writ on the Streets of Puerto Rican Harlem", by Gregory Corso

There’s a truth limits man
A truth prevents his going any farther
The world is changing
The world knows it’s changing
Heavy is the sorrow of the day
The old have the look of doom
The young mistake their fate in that look
That is truth
But it isn’t all truth


Life has meaning
And I do not know the meaning
Even when I felt it were meaningless
I hoped and prayed and sought a meaning
It wasn’t all frolic poesy
There were dues to pay
Summoning Death and God
I’d a wild dare to tackle Them
Death proved meaningless without Life
Yes the world is changing
But Death remains the same
It takes man away from Life
The only meaning he knows
And usually it is a sad business
This Death


I’d an innocence I’d a seriousness
I’d a humor save me from amateur philosophy
I am able to contradict my beliefs
I am able able
Because I want to know the meaning of everything
Yet sit I like a brokenness
Moaning: Oh what responsibility
I put on thee Gregory
Death and God
Hard hard it’s hard


I learned life were no dream
I learned truth deceived
Man is not God
Life is a century
Death an instant

The language we were conversing in wasn’t English, Poleepkwan, or even Latin, as I’d experienced in previous trips and dreams. What it was…I don’t know, but it was basic and yet eloquent for it, a raw transmission of words and feelings back and forth without need for words. You’d think it, the other person would just know it, without any explanation on your part. On a whim, I glanced up at my antennae--had they changed?
Yes. The small, stubby feelers of flesh were gone. In their stead were two inflexible, silver-grey radio antennae, vibrating ever so slightly with transmissions. There would be a shiver down the length of one--somehow I felt this, even though the new additions were strangely numb--and an instant later, a sentence or emotion. Oh, so that was why I had such good reception: I’d gotten an upgrade in my equipment.
“Alright, you’ve gotten the main hang of it. Now to business.” George flickered blue and green and happily gestured to the surroundings with a sweep of his analogous arm. “This…is the inside of your head. Welcome to your own mind, Olo Doorbell Lamna.”
The landscape was complex and seemed to shift slightly in my peripheral vision, fading away and dissolving into vague shapes and blurs only to spring back into sharp focus as I looked out the corner of my eye. This must be my own doing, I think, I must be forming all of this so I can understand what I’m looking at. My brain is forming the world for my mind to explore in…jeez, this blew the homunculi thought experiment out of the water.
“Give the poleepkwa in the back a cigar!” George laughed, and I realized that I must have been transmitting the entire train of thought by mistake. Ah well…
…a forest. That seemed to be the main thing here. A forest, with large trees--some “regular”, others more bizarre and alien in shape, texture, and color. Occasionally one would turn to dust and become part of the rubbery, slightly spongy ground; another, smaller tree would sprout and set to work growing. And constantly, there was the swimming of things in the corner of my vision, that strange blurriness, a pounding of blood in my head…but was that just me? Something seemed off, and suddenly I figured out what that something was.
“Wait…we’re upside down. We are upside down.” The trees were jutting out into a turquoise and mauve sky like teeth from the top jaw of some massive beast. How were we possibly holding on to the floor--er, ceiling? Any moment now we’d fall out into the wide expanse of emptiness. That kind of fall would never end!
I quickly flattened myself on the square of turf that I stood on and held on tight. Quietly I began to pray.
That was a mistake on my part; the landscape went topsy-turvy and began to twist in all directions. The turf began to shorten, leaving me less to hold on to--frantically I tightened my grip and prayed even more. This process might have continued on for a while had not everything abruptly stopped spinning. Something inside told me that it was okay to stand up now, that I wouldn’t fall out of my own head. However, I didn’t stand up, simply lying on the ground and enjoying what odd version of gravity I had inside my mind.
George again. “Get up. Get up now.” .
I oblige, and suddenly my head is covered in smoke that clings to every centimeter of my plating and wisps down into my lungs, assimilating into the blood that’s still, sort of, I think, pumping through that network of veins and arteries and making me a little bit closer to it in composition. An idea blooms, bright as a flower and just as appealing. I‘d been looking at it wrong the entire time, oh Vishnu, oh deity, this was the solution--
George drags me out of the cloud. I writhe away and try to escape into the heady mist--the idea! The idea! I knew it--I knew it and I could…I could what? What was I talking about? Odd…
“I told you to get out of that fog. You stay in there too long and there won’t be anything left in a while.”
I cough, hack out a puff of grey air. Already the rush of concept and understanding was fading, the flower dimming and wilting in on itself. In a few seconds it was gone entirely and I had no idea of what the original idea had been. Turning to George, I blinked. “What was that?”
“Pure thought, unfocused and open to anything. It can form and interact with anything here, but when it’s in a cloud like that it usually stays static.“ His plates flicked red for a moment, then lightened to tangerine. “Your inspiration.” He snorted and beat at some of it that was inching out tentatively towards us like a tentacle, driving it away. “The stuff that drives you, makes you write and draw and indulge in all manners of philosophical contemplation.”
“So…why wouldn’t I want to stay in the cloud? If I was inside there…wouldn’t I become enlightened?” There was a temptation worthy of Eve and Adam…knowing that the potential for comprehending everything there was lurked inside your mind, but being told not to actually take advantage of it. Why wouldn’t George let me stay there…wasn’t his ulterior goal to make me understand things and find the Truth?
My friend chuckled and pointed to my head. “Check out your antennae, Olo.”
I looked up. The smooth metal had corroded and melted partway, turning a blotchy rust-red. The pulses and vibrations had decreased tenfold; I could barely hear George, much less the rest of my inner world. “What--”
“The longer you spend in that mist, the more you understand, that’s true. But at the same time, it eats away at you. If you give in to inspiration too long, you’ll be corroded beyond recognition and there won’t be anything left to communicate those ideas to the rest of the world. You’ll be trapped inside your own head, without any way out or a method to contacting the outside.”
He wasn’t just talking about my mind. I remember all those thought-jags I’ve gone on before, where I don’t eat or sleep but just think and write, think and write. My escape when I was small, alone and unaware of the fact I was part of a different species then human--had I really gotten that close to oblivion? Yes, I had; I’d be completely off my rocker now if I wasn’t booted out the door. Not the benevolent crazy, either…strange, incomprehensible, rotten insanity would have been the main focus of my thoughts. Would have been my thoughts.

Rhyming Couplet I

The solution seems within my grasp, O answer, O Truth sublime!
Such wonder permeates my soul; will you ever be mine?

Sides.

There's no earthly way of knowing, which direction we are going;
There's no knowing where we're going, or which way the river's flowing...
There really is no way of knowing where our actions will take us. It's nice to think that the resistance and all of the efforts of the ARFA, Versus Novus, and Miss Miss' own little organization have been for the right reasons. It's nice to think that MNU and District 10 are "bad" and that freeing all of the poleepkwa and going home is "good."
Really, though, it can't be proven. There are no "good" or "bad" actions in this frame of existence, this moment in time, this universe; there are only actions that appear to be beneficial or disadvantageous to a certain group. To us, the poleepkwa and fighters for freedom, MNU is evil and must be stopped. I believed that MNU's atrocities were one of the certain things in my short life--it was only by talking to someone on the opposite side as me that I actually realised that morals are subjective. To MNU, we are evil, we are the bad guys who must be halted in our efforts. No doubt that if we were to go to thrid, fourth, even fifth parties the viewpoints would change. It is all subjective, all of it.
I am not going to give up--don't think that for a moment. However, as I continue to do my small part to stop the processes and ideas that created and sustain MNU and others like it, I will keep in mind that I may--most likely, in fact--be considered the "bad guy." I will also keep in mind that this cannot be proven false.

If knowledge is acid, at least for me, then love is like heroin. The intitial blast of pleasure at being a parent is overwhelmingly wonderful and blissful; the content and utter happiness that follows soon after is even better. I may not be Jack and Jill's birth parent, but I'll try my best to be a good foster parent to them. They know that too, I think--and that makes it even better. The two of them could have decided not to trust me or simply chosen to hate my guts, but they didn't, and we're together now, a family, a freakin' family! It's great.