Fred’s Cozy Little Nook

I sit on top of a vast ocean of knowledge.

Awaiting quietly for the place where the signs come in

O’er the twisty splash of the oceans.

I limp from day to day wishing it was all over

The searing agonizing beam of light

Tearing at my very being

Exposing my heart to the universal Ash of Ages

Lie I in the heat of stars

Cold Fusion to Hot Fission

Ideas swirl about my head to Infinity…

Awake on the peak of time

Strewn out across all space

Unknown to the rest of the Human Race

A pulse beat away from Infinity….

I look with sadness across a sea of Infinity, an endless ocean of ideas, dreams, knowledge, thoughts to tame the raging beast within. I await for a calm notion to profound me; a new spark to burn me; a clear vision to Infinity. Shall it come today or tomorrow I cannot tell and do not know, for it knows its own time in the space that is me.

Where I stand, do I dare to dream?

Silver tendrils enshroud me in complicated ways

Carrying pulses that become me

Knowing the way of the world torn asunder

Silvery pulses enclose the Finger to Forever.

Can a single mathematical expression encompass all that we are? Conventional wisdom says ‘no’, but I beg to differ. I have seen it all — I have peered into the Face of Infinity and witnessed the very equation of Life, the answer to the Universe, and a description for Everything. Whereupon the joke and humor of past times the Answer lies seriously before me. As I look upon the Answer, I am filled at once with intense delight and abject horror. The knowing of a thing is joy; the implication of a thing is foreboding.

As I stand on the threshold of Infinity, I note a rhyme…

Violence is in collusion with Peace, Order is in collusion with Chaos, Life is in collusion with Death. All remains inseparable; all remains deeply intertwined. I can only know a part of it; the knowing of the other part is pure terror and anguish at what must be and what is; intolerable pain and anguish and twisted fears and contortions of the future lines of Humanity to its eventual self-induced destruction.

I cry a billion cries of a trillion souls splayed to the deep oceanic depths of blood so red the photons refuse to bounce; I awalk the shore with my toes stained with blood and my nose filled with the rot of a trillion lost dreams. I cry and weep for the whole of Humanity as I do for the entirety of the Universe; all is lost upon the winds coaxed by the Seas of Change.

I smell my own feet caught in the Hole of Nothingness;

I remain helpless as a dead sacrifice at the top of the peak

I remain lifeless amidst the Infinite Knowledge just beyond my reach

I remain frozen within the fusion of a ton of gravity-crushed dust

I remain thoughtless amidst a wealth of dreams.

I climb out of my hole only to note I just entered it’s bottom; caught in space folding back upon itself endlessly watching my own infinite echoes to nowhere. I tether on the brink of pure unadulterated madness as I seek the geodesic that leads out of this black hole of oblivion of our future dreams and strongly-held beliefs and promises; all is lost to the winds of time and the progress of the end.

And so I take the shovel

And I dig a real hole to the real grave that awaits me

They tell me in a pollyanish way that I should never give up hope, but what is hope but an emotion? I see the encroachment of the Fire Endless and I am supposed to rely on hope to deliver me from the Flames that burns and nips my toes? Smoky toes to the bone.

I lower myself in my self-dug hole and lie myself to rest

It was a good life, fun thinking about the end of the endless stream. It was nice knowing my friends who dared to peer out at Infinity with me; how fortunate for them they could not see the horrors I see, and to experience the reality I experience, and to see the end I see. They are shielded by their ignorance and a delusion of life that will carry them well to their graves.

And so I rest my weary head and close my eyes once more for the last time in the face of Infinity.

I move forward with an idea so simple and yet so profound it could rock the universe itself.

You see, I think I understand — finally — what makes emergence tick. The answer is right in front of our faces and we miss it completely, and we miss it in exactly the same way gravitation was missed before Newton. It’s a very deep symmetry that exists on all scales of the universe and in nearly every possible system. It is there at once hiding from us and also making our world work.

Am I being deliberately evasive? Yes. Because I could be wrong, I want to rigorously check it out first before announcing it to the world. In time, all will know.

All I am saying about it now is that it has to do with the violation of ying-yang.

This morning, I awoke a New Man.

You see, I came to a rather simple realization. For all of those individuals who have tried to make me stumble throughout my life, it was not really due to a fault of my own, but theirs. You see, I simply exist, and as I exist, I seek to be great. I want to explore the universe of knowledge and understanding. I wish to accomplish many things. And indeed I have. As a kid, I educated myself in mathematics and science at a college level, even before reaching high school. While in high school, I kicked off my career as a software engineer without even knowing.

And here, after 30 years or so, I stand with many more notable accomplishments under my belt. And I’ve only just begun. I have my sights set on things far greater than anything I’ve accomplished to date.

In a real sense, I have been a giant among fools. Not that I exalt myself as being “superior”, but at the same time I must recognize that I am qualitatively different from your average bear.

So when others come to beat me down, it is not really due to a fault of my own, but to a fault of theirs. Far too long I have taken the blame for the fault of others. Far too long have I tried to find the flaw within me as an explanation for why others attack me. For too many years have I pointed the finger at myself rather than looking with the eyes of wisdom to recognize that it is not I that is the problem.

You see, we live in a world, a society, that is very good at foisting blame and guilt and shame on the individual. And sometimes the individual is at fault, but not always, you see.

As a giant, I sometimes make the fools tremble without knowing. Perhaps they are afraid of being crushed underfoot. Perhaps they are jealous they are not giants themselves. Perhaps their minds overflow with hatred.

Should I really care why a fool is a fool? It is incumbent upon me to diagnose their woes? Should not a fool take responsibility for her own self and solve her own problems?

If you are wondering why I use “her” instead of “his/her” or some other epicene phraseology, there is a good reason for that, but I’ll get to that later.

Where does my own responsibilities lie? Good question. Simple answer. My responsibilities lie in recognizing the fool for what she is, and for handling any damage the fool has caused, and for ensuring that I don’t become a fool myself.

That is to say, I can’t allow the farm to be lost because fools exist. Fools exist for sure, and fools will always be with us. Like the dust in the air, like the dirt in the sea, like the falling leaves, fools will always be. But the farm, the farm must be guarded at all costs. The farm must not be allowed to slip away to oblivion, to be raided, to be destroyed by pests, to grow with weeds due to despair. No. The farm must be guarded at all costs.

Let me explain my allegorical language above.

“The Farm” represents the body of my life’s accomplishments and the future “crop” they will yield. It is simple enough. The farm represents my life’s work and what great rewards that it may reap in the future.

The activity of fools always threaten that farm. Either directly thorough avarice, or indirectly through attrition. I must stand against the activity of fools, stand firm, stand guard. For my greatness lies in the farm. If I loose the farm, I have lost everything.

Lo, and I look upon the waters that extend to the horizon. The sunrise from the line shimmering the sky in intense hues of gold and blue amidst the cirrus clouds, assent to the apex to give warmth and light to the world. The gulls fly, the sand squeaks, the trees rustle in the oceanic morning breeze blowing in from afar, from thermals borne out of the rays of the sun.

For I am the sun to rise, to offer the world something terribly great and wonderful, that it might give life and enrich many. Including the fools that seek to make me stumble. They shall now flee in terror not due to me, but due to their own shortcomings. For, as I bear no responsibility for their attacks against me, neither shall I bear any responsibility for their own self-induced undoing. Like the leaves that fall to the earth and turn brown and crumble, so shall be the fools that would dare to cross paths with giants!

And now for why I use “her” and “she” when referring to fools.

You see, most of the fools in my life, in one capacity or another, who have crossed my path in their attempts to make me stumble, all tended to be female. This is simply an observation, not a plea for misogyny. I do not know why. Surely, there are equal numbers of fools in both sexes, but for some reason the ones who have tried to trip me up have been largely female. I have no explanation; only observations. Even when the fool is male, usually there was a female fool in the works that initiated the trouble. And oh yes, there are some males involved as well. Oh yes.

Can I stop a fool from being a fool? I don’t think so. But I can and will stand firm against a fool and prevent her from ripping everything away and from turning the farm into a desert.

I’m not feeling particulaly well right now, because I made a major snafu that may have cost me the future. It’s one of those minor things that snowballs into major consequences. But I will learn from this consequence and do better in the future.

Oh, and now I know how it feels to be abjectly stupid. Oh, how the great Fred has fallen.