Diary

I keep a diary on my computer, typically adding somewhere around two thousdand words each day. The content is similar to what’s in these notes, but even less refined. As of 2024, I’ve been doing this for a few years now, and the habit has been immensely helpful for me.

My style changes frequently. I make an effort to write non-dogmatically, that is to explore whatever comes to mind, whether or not it seems like a good idea to do so. Lately, I’ve been focusing on allowing the tension—that is, to notice whenever something about the structure of reality is confusing or unsettling, and simply remarking on the paradoxical nature of it without resorting to solutions. When I do this, I tend to write a lot of sentence fragments that don’t make any specific claims. Here’s a real excerpt from my diary:

The dream about seven levels that circle back around, that dreaming is going down one level. Down into the unconscious. The guardian of each level, terror-amusement, and the guide daimon.

 To talk to someone who is outside nature. I want to know more about reality, so I can become a prophet in here. Are all historical prophets anti-prophets, who are sent by the gods to obscure the truth so as to protect it (and to keep the chickens unaware of their eggs)? I am the chosen one. I am the dreamer. If I must become an anti-prophet, then that’s what I’ll do; the anti-prophet can read the true meaning of the prophets words, by reading their mirror images that are written on the other side of the words.

Here’s a paradox: That it seems like I must be alone here—that others are amazingly realistic (and the existence of history, planes, etc.—I don’t remember making these). I like saying “a paradox”, and then pointing a a paraodx. Like: there’s music outside. Someone else made it. But these someone elses are all me? Or…? How odd that there are multiple species of animals. It’d be much more natural if I was a giant space serpent, and I were the only thing that existed. Such a serpent probably does exist somewhere out there, and it would not understand what it’s like to be one animal among many others. It’s possible to live with a cat as a kind of roommate, even though cats don’t speak. Humans and cats are almost the same.

Writing is like dreaming while awake. There are things happening just below the consciousness all the time, even while we’re awake. By concentrating—or not even concentrating, but just opening oneself up—it’s possible to grasp these images coming up from the unconscious.