I - My Theories

"All stories are true, and some of them happened."

1. Existence and Reality

I've long been victim to existential crises, the all consuming kind. It would happen for months at a time where I couldn't go more than a few hours without the perilizing fear of my own mortality. I sometimes wished I was religious to asuage this fear, for some sense of assurance. But by my third big bout I also ran into the problem of sentience, that as far as I know no religion explains why I am experiencing sentience. This is in fact some decent evidence for solopsism– why am I experiencing sentience, and only this sentience and not more.

The world is as real as it is in my mind, which is perceived by the senses. As I gathered from a youtube video, spinal catastrophism (a book) explains the power of thought to change the outside world. Your mind has an internal world constructed from what it perceives of the outside world. Then, like a physics model, it can predict the consequences of actions. It will construct a world in which you make a sandwich and you are content because you are full and another world where you don't make the sandwich and are hungry and sad, and then will take steps to mold the exterior world to the interior world, just as it molds its interior worlds to be a better predictor through continuous feedback loops.

Lately in my mind I have been living out many worlds. Many ridiculous fantasies where I spend my life in a tower or venture through the wilds. I conjure worlds which I am not a member of. Every imagining is an act of worldbuilding. All of this is to justify me saying that I am a deer, in some world. In some world that is equal in status to the empirical world perceived by my senses. I feel like a deer, I act like a deer, I put on the ears and tail and it makes my happy perhaps I can retool this more properly when I'm more sentient.

---

I've long perceived the world through an empirical lens of logic, of cause and effect, and mathematical language. I preach the religion of the axioms of statistics. Axioms are beliefs as unfounded as religion. Dig too deep into anything and you get to the fundamental question of existence. I was always drawn to math because of the deterministic nature, that there is some correct answer, even if the answer is no solution. There was an answer to every "why," down to the Z-F axioms that tell us that 1+1=2 in a convoluted, unnatural way filling up the first 100 pages of Principia Mathematica. I was always the type to ask those questions. In creating this page I rediscovered my website from back in first year of college, where I say that I wouldn't use something if I didn't know how it worked. It brought me to endeavor to read Principia Mathematica in my first year, and take notes as I thought necessary. I got maybe 20-30 pages in? It was quite gruelling. But I longed for certainty.

Since then I have abandoned such rigor. I took a miserable course in real analysis taught by a professor who did little more than echo the textbook which wasn't much clearer than Principia Mathematica. Since around then I stopped caring about proofs. I still feel its worth it to show a decent amount of proving in classes, but I'm more than happy to just take the method at its word these days.

I once said that "we live in a vibes based economy" after I got kicked out from busking at the Lucky Flea by some loser twink with a moustache because apparently busking "just wasn't the vibe of the event." I've lately been falling into more of a vibes based world view. I don't rely so much on rigor, and I take things more in their fuzzy feelings. I say I am a deer because I feel like I am, the same way I feel that I love someone and so I love them. These are my new axioms that underpin my perception of the world.

1.1 Roadkill

There's also been a fog pervading my life lately. I act less like a mathematician and more like a neural network in training. Still experimenting, not fully having figured out the rules. I try a door that I need my card for, that I've always known I need my card to unlock. I get off the bus and walk the route I walked yesterday before remembering that it does take longer than my normal route, and I found that out the prior day. I think about me trying to teach my cat to rub her head against mine (well actually she normally rubs against the corner of my glasses) in order to get a treat. She learns, but she forgets when I'm away. Even when she does remember she doesn't always do it immediately. Logic is something unnatural imposed on the animal that we all are. There is much to say of the deer in the headlights. We travel the same paths we know, that is natural, that our instincts tell us. That we are guided upon. Then man comes along and lays a boundary across the land. Often tranquil, but with the occasional projectile. And we do our best to continue on our same paths, but we are struck by the machinery engineered for brutal efficiency. And then they get upset at the stupid animal that fucked up their car.

I hope that one day we will see roadkill as a sign of the barbaric ways of the past, the way we look back on medieval torture and old social codes. That we brazenly mold the world to our symbiote, the car, with no thought to its other inhabitants. And when we do strike them, we leave them dead and decaying on the side of the road to be picked by scavengers. Noone to remember them but the passers by who catch a glimpse for only a second. That is how that creature will be known to hundreds, more than it ever was in life.

“And God,
please let the deer
on the highway
get some kind of heaven.
Something with tall soft grass
and sweet reunion.
Let the moths in porch lights
go some place
with a thousand suns,
that taste like sugar
and get swallowed whole.
May the mice
in oil and glue
have forever dry, warm fur
and full bellies.
If I am killed
for simply living,
let death be kinder
than man.”
― Althea Davis

---

Man this whole writing/philosophy thing is hard. I have to like, think and shit. Damn.

2. Fiction

I believe that the fundamental purpose of fiction is to illicit emotions. This is not true for everyone, but this is it for me. The abstract thought of a scenario is easy to rationally say "damn that sucks" or "wow that would be really sweet" based on things we know, but our

3. Desire

4. Sex

Handjobs are inherently voyeuristic.

in theory everyone has the capacity to do sex good its just that if you’re normal you’re never pushed into the realm of experimentation that is the gateway to fucking awesome style

5. Personalities

People can be quantized in different types of personalities. I don't know much about the 4 letter systems, but I have some ideas. Later I will see if they align or not. I think most broadly there is a hard/soft categorization. I came up with this when I started comparing boys I like; my most recent enfatuation seemed different from the previous ones. He had a "harder personality", I put it. I suppose that would make everyone else soft.

I guess hard means abrasive, imposing. Not as a negative, though.

II - THEOREIS 2

HI guys it's been like 5 months but I am so freaking back. Welcome to more of my theories. I'm here bc after therapy I feel inspired to explain my beliefs and thoughts on desire and like everything. The estute among you may have noticed that the desire section was left unwritten. That's because I have too many thoughts about it.

6. To be human (or to be me)

I've always felt bad for pets. Fish are meant to live in ponds or rivers or oceans. Even the largest fish tanks can't compare. Sylph's Betta fish (I wonder what happened to him) lived in a glass jar for a day and a half. What torture that must have been. Baelfire (my roommates mouse) I can't imagine being much happier. He does have a wheel. I would enjoy a wheel if I could make it spin that fast. Even house cats often don't have it great. Confined to one house for nearly their whole life. Some cats get to be outdoor cats. That's pretty awesome. Same with dogs. They must follow where their owner wishes them to go if out on a walk. So little autonomy. But I suppose all of this is imposing my human ideals onto a foreign species. They may be perfectly content, who knows. I've taken up the hobby of wandering lately. To experience the world. Experience it without judgement, without the need to put it to paper, to record it for the future. There is always something new.

My dear friend Eva told me about the greatest summer of her life. She had just gotten out of a codependent relationship. She had a future at a top school for a career she was enthusiastic about. She had assuredness. She would wake up every day and eat and work out and watch youtube and play games. No responsibilities, academic or interpersonal. I would be so miserable. I don't know how she did it. I would've been miserable there. I'd have fucking died and exploded I think. I need to do things. I need drive. If I'm left without a task, any pursuit, for too long I get super sad and depressed. The only think keeping me sane this break is good food and working on my hobbies, whatever they be.

The human activity is to want. Scarlet seems perfectly satisfied with having. She gets her food and her treats and she gets her shit scooped and she gets pet and that is enough for her. As much as I feel that getting pet whenever I wanted and being admired for my elegance and beauty would sustain me indefinitely, I'd start to go crazy. To have does not satisfy me. To want does. Wanting brings a chance of something better. It is as much better as you want it to be. To have, you know exactly how much you enjoy it, and how much you don't. How much it leaves you wanting.

I am a goals oriented person, that much is plain to see. I grit my teeth thinking of what I will accomplish. If I was process oriented I would find myself having the pleasure of the result at every step of the way, not wanting for it all at the end.

7. The erotic and the pornographic

The pornographic is the having. It is all laid plain to see. Nothing concealed. To be consumed by looking. The erotic inspires want in the mind of the viewer. What they could be having. What could be behind the scrap of cloth. To be consumed by imagining. The imagination is what keeps it fun.

When I was younger I would see the hot girls on magazine covers in skimpy clothing (Also the guys. I liked the really muscular guys. Early sign). I would always try to conceal that I was enthralled when I would pass by. Later when I started consuming porn (at an all too young age) I found that the plain naked women wouldn't quite do it for me. It was girls that were almost naked that did it for me, the tight tops or tiny bikinis. I was really mostly into boobs I think because I was too young to be enthralled by the actual sex. I never connected the dots, but I also liked seeing images of the imprints of guys' dicks. It was underwhelming just seeing a penis. Like who even cares man. Again, the cover really did it for me. Years later when I actually started having sex I always had more fun with the foreplay. Whenever we got to the actual dicksucking or whatever it was just like. yeah man. We're doing a thing. Part is because I never received a ton of physical pleasure (but perhaps that is because i never prioritized my own physical pleasure (life changing head soon??)), but to me I believe it is rooted in the dissapointment of having.

III - Jane - June 8th, 2026

I was walking across the queensboro bridge towards manhattan today. My will had been destroyed by a depression blast earlier in the day when I was on the train home with my mom after a lunch with her I really enjoyed and a productive therapy session. The bed consumed me when I stopped at her home before going to the gym, and at the gym I was frustrated. Got sad when my friend sent me a sexual tshirt design that made me horny because it reminded me that I don't have anyone around to fuck. That normally doesn't make me sad but I suppose I was predisposed today. Tried a couple more climbs to no avail. Left defeated. I decided to skip out on a film screening at tribeca film fest because I was too depressed and falling apart trying not to cry as I got myself ready. The weather outside was so nice. It was too hot earlier that day, by this time it was perfect. It pulled the sorrow off the bone like stewed meat. I had to go into my mom's place to get my microphone and audio interface because the whole day the only thing that I wanted to do was record music. The suffocation returned, and when I left again it left me. I decided to walk to my dad's house, my destination. I'd never done it before despite my parents living in their current places for 8 years. I crossed the bridge, which I had done a couple times before. After passing roosevelt Island I saw manhattan's bank on the east river. There were several pretty brick high rises, likely from around the 60s. Below there were some patios/park areas with benches. I remembered the one time I hung out outside of school with this girl Jane we went there. I've been there once since, just walking and exploring the area. 6 months ago when I was on Roosevelt Island with my friend we were discussing things from school and I remembered Jane. Tried to find a trace of her presence on social media to no avail. Maybe she changed her name. She probably changed her name. She was 16 or 17. Now she's 20 or 21.

In my senior year of high school I had a first period class that I didn't want to be in and so I was able to switch to TA'ing for my cartooning teacher, Mr. Lassen. On the days that I didn't take advantage of his niceness and skip class and get to school late, which got fewer and further between as the semester wore on, I would sit and watch him give assignments, then walk around the room and give help to any students who needed, but mostly just chat with the class– It was his Junior cartooning class. I remember a few students, one I had with someone who was into phonk, and I thought they were saying funk the whole time. But really the one I remember is this girl Jane. She was the second trans woman I met at this school. The first one was the only other transfem in my year, I forget her name but she was much more conventionally feminine than I was. Really good at makeup, had long pretty nails, fit in with an archetype of popular girl. I remember back before she transitioned, she dated and broke up with my first boyfriend a month or so before I started with him. We were both fruity (w)asian boys. We had a couple classes together but we never got on too well, before or after we both came out.

Jane dressed in sweats and hoodies with cool designs. She was lithe, probably around 5'9. Blonde shoulder length hair, a somewhat prominent nose. Soft features. For some reason reminded me of some type of lizard or gecko. Many skinny white trans women, I can't say why. For the first few weeks I noticed her, wondered if she was trans. I eventually struck up conversation with her. I was nervous. From her interests, I forget what they were, I figured she was in fact trans. She also came in one day with a tracheactomy scar on her throat one day. Called it her thrussy. I did not like that. She showed me some of the music she liked. I'm not sure if she shared an earbud with me but it feels like the right kind of possibly unintentional intimacy that would affect me strongly. It was loud music. Probably modern metal, I think it was before breakcore was that big. I heard snippets about her life. How she was getting out of her parents house and homeless at the moment. Living with a friend. She opened up a new instagram account for commissions that I reposted on my story. I felt for her. She would come into class every morning with one or two monsters, which I was and still am enthusiastically against, mostly for the bit (the enthusiasm, that is).

She told me about her characters, too. She had a world that really enthralled me, and I could see her in the functioning of this world. I remember little of it. There were some sort of mercenaries. There were forcefields. The different protagonists had weapons with intricate and cool abilities. There was hardship and suffering in the world. That's all I can recall. She showed me some drawings too. Most of the kids in my class had a certain inate ability to create apealing and professional art before they even came to this school. I did not. If I remember correctly, she did not as well. Her drawings were a little ragged around the edges. I believe this has something to do with a disconnect between the hand and the brain, at least that's what does it for me. I lack the fine control to draw exactly what I wish. I can not reproduce a face for the life of me. It was a relief to see someone who was still better at drawing than me, but not that much. We would chat every now and then; I like to think that we bonded.

She started to skip class more often. She was only in some days to begin with, but she would get longer and longer streaks of absences sometimes. I always hoped she was there. I would skip some days as well. I'd ask Mr. Lassen or the classmates if they've seen her and it would normally be a no. But sometimes I saw her in the lunch period following mine when I would skip Lassen's senior class, of which I was a member. I think I had a crush on her. In the way you have a crush on the first person you see that you can really relate to, truly understand. This happens very often with trans women at RIT. I have a whole spiel about this.

I saw her leaving the school building one day. I don't know if I did it but it feels right to say that I rushed to catch up with her. We struck up a converstaion. I followed her around, asked what she was doing. She was going to go somewhere and chill, it seemed like something she did often. I don't remember what we talked about but we had much to say. She took me around a strange way and down a street with a dead end (very rare in manhattan). It ended in some stairs down. There were some women with a dog or a baby walking nearby us. We went down to an area with benches and kept chatting. She offered me a smoke, I think it was from a vape and I declined. I didn't want to do drugs then, I hadn't tried any. Now I wish I did. Drugs have an immense social power, the same casual intimacy as sharing earbuds. Maybe if I smoked with her it could have been something we would do. We would have gotten to know each other more.

She eventually left. I explored the area a little more before I left, I think. It was either that day or another time. There was a bridge over the highway that I crossed and it led to a walkway/park on the other side, but it only went so far. Now it's different. I think this was already in the period where I was seeing less of her. That was the only time we hung out outside of school. I want to say the last time we talked. As the semester wore to an end I skipped first period more and more. My energy was going into learning piano for my first musical ever, then practicing with a student band for a set at prom and graduation. I came back to do piano after I graduated for some more musicals. One time I asked about Jane. Somebody that knew her said she left the school. That was the last I thought of her til thanksgiving break senior year when I was on Roosevelt island.

I could see the park from the bridge. The building that we were next to. A piece of my life before my eyes. No longer as it was, but still bringing with it a memory. This city is filled with it. It's so much. Soon everywhere will be filled with it. It already is. More and more and more and I can't escape the past. Not that it's always something I want to escape.

She was the first person with an identity I could relate to. There were plenty of transmascs at our school. An abundance really. But there were only 3 other transfems in the whole high school that I knew of excluding myself at the time I graduated. I would find more in the younger generations when I was in drama club. That made me happy. I realized that she had an impact on me but I never did anything about it. In isolation, you find community in anyone. There's probably 10 or 20 trans girls similar to her in my college, similar interests. But still she was special to me. I hope she's doing well. I hope she's still making art. I hope she's alive. I would love to see her again one day. I want to see what became of her. I want her to see what became of me. I want to reconnect. As with most people, I imagine it would only be interesting for a little bit, then I would see that she's like just about everyone else, someone I'd be able to hold a conversation with but nothing not someone that I feel a strong connection to, that tugging string that brings me back to them. Not like a lover. But a close friend. I can't imagine we'd have that. We probably live such different lives. I bet she has some shitty roommates in some brooklyn apartment and half a dozen shitty exes, and maybe a couple good ones as well. Good chance she's left the city all together. Maybe had some online friend that she was able to move in with. But all I can do is imagine now.

IV - City Girl - June 15th, 2026

Note: This year I've been keeping a journal almost daily. Normally I'll write about what happened that day and how it made me feel, but what I find most rewarding is when I reflect on things in general, processing my thoughts by putting them into language. It's the same thing you do in therapy. I almost always come to new realizations. Firstmost is the act of putting it to paper, later retrieval is only a fortunate consequence. All this to say I'm going to start putting some of my more longwinded stuff on this site. Partially because it's easier to type, but also because I find it valuable to have a compendium of it all. This page started as a place to therapize my views on the world so that I can have a clearer concept of them, and I will not be abandoning it. There will just be more touches of reflection on my daily life added. I'll still be doing my normal processing in my journals, but it's just more efficient to type out the longer thoughts than handwriting them, and I feel it fits the theme.

I'm a city girl. I only donned that label recently. I didn't really think of it. Everyone's a city girl where I was raised. I'm accustomed to many fortunes. Sheltered from the necessity of knowing how to drive that pervades the rest of the country. Good food. Walkability. A broader variety of people. I can always walk to a convenience store open 24 hours. I first started to feel it when I went to college. My first year roommate would drive us out to eat. How strange a feeling. And the food was just. Okay. Cheaper though.

I think I first started getting called city girl by an illustration student friend of mine. He had to reillustrate City Mouse, Country Mouse for a school assignment. He was also raised in a small city, walking distance from downtown, but he was much more the outdoorsy type. Went to a wilderness camp as a kid. He had a solid knowledge base of the outside world (phrasing note for later) and knew how to live in it. We'd go on walks and he'd tell me what you could and couldn't eat. Identify different plants and birds. It enthralled me. To him, I was the city mouse, on a brave journey out of my comfort zone to see what else is out there. The title really took hold when I began to hang out with a friend of his he met counceling for the nature camp he grew up at. Our first few meetings we'd often go out to a nearby park. I had been there 3 times before. Taken there on first dates by two different people, and once deceived into going to a bird sanctuary thinking we were going to get food by my band members. A park in the outer suburbs is not a park in the city. I go back to New York [City] and the buildings rarely recede behind the tree line. Central park is one big room. Everything is designed for human accomodation in sleek stone and cement, steel, and occasionally the classic NYC wooden park benches. There are playgrounds, there are water fountains, there are concession stands. A city park is a carefully curated environment for relaxation and walking about for humans. The park we went to was expansive, dirt trails I would have been lost on if not for my guides. The hills are not ground down nor cut through, there are no walkways and tunnels, though on occasion there are bridges. We would go in winter when there was a snow cover, where stories are laid out plain in the snow, and I am finally given the chance to walk side by side with deer and squirrels. This is where we would meet. This friend was much more rural in upbringing. I recently went to her house and they have a septic tank. She told her friends about me as the city girl she'd take out on walks to the woods. Since then I have taken the label upon myself. I am out of place here. I am still yet to learn how to drive, though I have finally started. I have gone camping exactly once in my life. I do not know how to start a fire. I never took a schoolbus from and to home. I am constantly learning and having new experiences.

We don't have roadkill in New York City. I saw a pigeon that was run over by a car no more than twice, nothing else. Roadkill is so common here. We scar the land and expect the animals to yield to us. No stewardship, only brutal efficiency. In the car. You know what. fuck it. Theory time. hold on gimme a sec.

8. Cars [evolutionary autobiology]

Cars are a living species in a mutually beneficial symbiosis with humanity. There are often 1-1 relationships between people and cars, with some exceptions. Sometimes a human will slut themself out and own multiple cars at once. Sometimes a car will be promiscuously shared with trusted companions of the human owner. The car requires the human to direct it, and the human requires the car to reach its survival needs (food, shelter, etc.). Cars in America have cleverly placed themselves in an inextricable position by working with humans to create "car-dependent infrastructure", which will necessitate the survival of the car super-organism as long as the human super-organism persists in relative homeostasis. Other nations have led campaigns to cruelly subjugate cars, in favor of separating the two species. However, the general free ground vehicle automotive class has proved near impossible to eradicate. Evolutionary principles still hold though.

Human assistance has led to the rise of the ideal environment, "thunderpaths" on which "monsters" [cars] can thrive when they get the zoomies. The proliferation of these thunderpaths, developed based on the human superorganism's reliance on cars, has led cars to become one of the apex predators in North America. There are some animals such as moose that a car cannot easily prey upon, but none lie above them on the food chain. Furthermore, this explosion at evolutionarily unheard of rates has led to a take over of all habitats by this species, with little time for the existing flora and fauna to adapt and adjust their bodies and behaviors.

Side note: Though I'm yet to get there, I find it important to note that although cars are an element of the suburb, proven of minimal use in suitably designed cities, they remain a sign of human presence and domination over the environment that the "city" in city girl has come to represent for me.

–––––––– end{theory} ––––––––

Roadkill is a culture shock to me. It is everywhere up here. My friend hit a rabbit when she was driving us somewhere when she was late. Not just in roads too; I see plenty of dead birds around, likely from smashing into windows, and today I even saw a half of a crab lying in the middle of the pathway between my apartment and the leasing office. I'm not sure if the rock pigeons have wisened up, or the city just has a more thorough janitorial staff. But the crab is evidence of life around us; that it's not just us. That other creatures have just as much sway over the world as we do. City or suburb, we shelter ourselves. I saw a dead deer for the first time today. We passed it when my friend was driving us to band practice today. I hoped it was still there by the time I got back. The smell was the first thing I noticed after I was politely let out of the car a little ways down the street after spotting it was still there. I had never smelled death. I suppose it didn't really smell like death to me because i didn't know what death smelled like, it just smelled bad. "putrid" always made it sound sour, concave, repulsive. This was dull and discouraging. There were flies around it eyes not fully decomposed, but not fully round, it must have been dead for a day or two I think. I don't really know remember how it works. It was collapsed on the ground, a few red spots on it hind quarters and elsewhere. One of its legs seemed at an odd angle but there was no intense mangling. It lay on its side, not crumpled. Not a violent death, just fell over. It was on the side of the road. I wonder if somebody dragged it there. It had little nubs of antlers growing in. I would reckon not a full grown buck. I want to say older than a yearling? Not sure. I'm a city girl. It looked as if its tail was stripped off or something, but I wouldn't dare touch it. In the murder mystery kids anime Detective Conan that my roommate and his girlfriend watched, rigor mortis is a common plot point, and dead bodies are readily touched with no hesitation. They probably don't smell, but still. It's strange. It made me think of a husk. A vacancy. It's strange to think that something was once alive, and it has now disappeared, but it leaves behind what it wore. People always talk about returning to the dirt, or when the flies take them, or giving back to the earth. I understand a little bit more.

9. Deer

That was the closest I have ever gotten to a deer. My feet within a foot of his. Previously it was 30 or so feet away. I was sitting in the snow trying to make friends with a deer near my home. I didn't walk far off the path, I didn't want to scare it. I wanted them to get closer to me, but they didn't. They were just loooking. I bet they were very disconcerted. Probably a little upset. They didnt' humpf and stomp their hooves though. I was having a terrible day. Absolute gloom and dejection. All my friends had left for winter break. I don't know where I was walking back from, what I could have been doing. The semester was all over. I didn't want to spent the entire break at home because it would hurt. But all my friends at the time had left and I was the last one remaining. That deer was all I had to cling on to. It helped me, drastically.

Another time, earlier, the illustrator was driving me home. We were in no particular hurry. He understands that I am a deer because he is very much an animal himself, a coyote. He legitimizes my deerness in a way I feel with nobody else. It is fascinating, empowering. In being seen and recognized I feel more myself than ever. There were 4 or 5 deer laying in a field that night. He stopped the car and let me get out. I sat with them for a bit, took a few paces towards them, and sat down again. They started hmpfing and stamping at me. They eventually all left. I went back to the car and cried.

I was finally beginning to identify with the deer in me on a spiritual level, not just in superficial similarities. I wanted them to see the deer that I was. I could see that they saw me as not a real deer. I'll never be a real deer. I never felt that rejection from women in my transition because I never put myself in any space that was a cis woman space. Part out of fear of making them uncomfortable, part lack of interest, and part fear of rejection.

–––––––– end{theory} ––––––––

I am a city girl. I am discovering new things every day. I am enthralled by creatures going about their lives when I go out on a walk. Oftentimes a walk will save me from a depressive day, in no small part from seeing the world is so much larger than humans; my human world can become so small at times. I was raised in an area that shelters us from nature. The truth of everything manmade is that it was made with intention. It is very rare to come across anything in nature made with intention. It is instead always the local minima of an optimization function. No design, just efficiency. The same of my wife, utility and telephone poles. But that is a discussion for another day. I was raised in a city, a world where everything may have not been made for me, but everything was made for us. We pull nature to our will in heavily curated gardens that take a thousand man army to keep in check. I saw the world as by default human. By default run by conscious thought. I must think and I must do and I must be something and I must work and must cause change because that is the world we live in. That mindset still pervades me. I get in my head when I don't do. Even when I have been doing, I still feel the oppression of my mind sometimes. I'll realize I haven't gone outside yet that day and I will as soon as I can. It instantly refreshes me. In this monotone suburban housing complex in a fake colonial style, full of parking spaces separating buildings in wide gulfs, I see the nature. I never not hear birdsong in the day. And I see that there is more outside. And it saves me from myself and pulls me back into this world full of not joy, not sorrow, not frustration, maybe fear, but just existence. Being. Nothing more on top of that. No need to be anything.

The city to me is humanity's nature to fold in on itself and create for us and then to create to create. To keep going and going until we run off of momentum and forget where we are [in a spiral of ants]. An alternate universe where their is meaning and purpose and that purpose is to further humanity. It's often projected as growth; Younger I imagined that as time progressed, we would become increasingly urbanized. [I should do a future theory on urban environments and interior spaces]. Cities would stretch along coasts, increasing density, bringing the luxuries I was so fortunate to have. My world was going to be the world. I have since foresaken the city. It is not on my path forwards. I hope to go camping again one day.

V - Half of everything, maybe less - June 25, 2026

10. Skybox

I think the sky holds importance. In a locally flat environment, there is ground in the direction of gravity and the sky in the direction of the normal force. Each takes up exactly half of the sphere. The horizon is the delineation. The horizon line is often used to place and ground things in art. A simple horizontal line adds a full implication of background into your composition. Vanishing points lie along the horizon in two point perspective. Things recede to the horizon. The horizon represents the point at infinity. The sky serves a similar role I think. In the daytime its smooth nature puts it beyond placeability in space; it is the furthestmost layer. When clouds are present it is often readable as an intermittent plane that extends out (to the horizon), but the sky remains. It can be read as "above", but it can also be read as "around". A sphere centered at the viewer. Placing you in the most important place.

At night, sky gives us a glimpse of the void. There is the blackness in which nothing lies to the naked eye, where no light has been able to be sent or scattered. I don't want to go on about the cosmos, that's been done a lot better than I could by a lot of people. But I did go properly stargazing for the first time. It was in a rural part of New England far away from any city or road lights, in a friend's grandmother's back yard. I was able to see airplanes/sattelites. I didn't know you could do that! That's crazy. Now I finally understand why they said "can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars". I also saw the second shooting star of my life. It was special. I got so excited, and my friend looked at me like a dog getting excited over the simplest thing. My first night on campus during orientation week there was an astronomy club set up with a telescope. Many planets were out that night. I saw saturn and its rings. I'll never forget it. I don't think it's until you can see it with your own eyes that you can comprehend that the planets exist. Early when I was calling my friend tonight he said that video calling me made me real in his mind again. Object permanance is taken for granted.

The first time I saw a shooting star I was taking a long walk on my own. I was walking home across campus and decided to take the path through the woods. I try to take it whenever I'm wearing good enough shoes. It's the woods near the freshman dorms. I went out there in my first year a lot. I ran into somebody filming a found footage style video for their software engineering final, then continued on my way. I crossed the road that bounds those woods, then across into the path to the solar fields. I only started coming out there in my fourth year of college. Except for one time that a friend took me to the aviary at night in the summer before my third year. We howled like wolves out there in the dark. I sung to myself along the walk there. I thought of Alveric in The King of Elfland's Daughter journeying due North for 10 years. What must he do to entertain himself. What must he do to keep faith. I sang of him. Singing has lost its ritual status in favor of becoming a high art. That makes me sad. The story of actually seeing the shooting star I keep to myself, it's rather personal, but I was sitting by the same aviary while watching the wind blowing the trees. Black figures against the polution of the night sky.

Returning to the idea of horizon, I've heard from all my friends from New Hampshire/Vermont, as well as a teacher from Vermont, that they all think it's Wrong when they can't see the mountains around them. It freaks them out. Whenever I bring it up they think I'm making fun of them but I take it seriously. I don't have an experience to compare it to but I get it I think. The shape of the horizon is different. It's too flat. It's not right. You lose any sense of direction. When my sort of partner sort of situationship at the time was in Montana working on a geological survey she had to navigate without GPS, with just a compass and a topographic map. She had a topographic map jacket also, unrelated. It was banger.