You might be thinking, well, I know you wrote many books that might be considered both tedious and pretentious, books that didn’t make sense, books that were absurdist, etc. And it’s true, I did. But they weren’t necessarily high brow. They were absurdist. Some people are into that kind of thing—and, if you’re not, don’t read that—read this. I’d written a little something for everyone, or at least I’ve tried to, and by that I mean that I can’t shake being me, so, if you don’t like me, or you’re bothered by an ambiguous sexuality, or an array of existential and philosophical topics, then you probably won’t like my work. But if you do like me, and you have, on occasion, asked some big questions, then I think you would like my work—you just might not like all of it. You might only like one particular period, for example, or even just one, or two, particular books. But I didn’t consider my work to be high brow—i figured, you could study it on a collegiate level, but you didn’t need to. You could go into it as if you were stoned, or, simply, because you could identify with me and my thoughts, my life.
Well, I could already tell I was going to exceed my two cups of coffee limit, as I had one teaspoon of instant coffee before I shaved, and I had another after breakfast—cereal with half a banana, blueberries, and orange juice—as i sat down to write this. Food, in the past, had not always been a part of my zen mornings, but it seemed that a little food was a good idea—to put the brakes on unconsciously using coffee to suppress my appetite, and, also, my parents might’ve strongly disagreed with me if I quit eating breakfast. Also, due to the three or four pounds I’d gained, that I hadn’t managed to lose over the past week, even though I’d quit eating between breakfast and dinner, lunch was out of the question, so I figured something, in the morning, was not a bad idea. I had to get back down to around 167 before I started having snacks, or lunch, during the day. Given my lack of progress, it seemed that going back to not eating during the day might become, again, a part of my routine.
As it turns out, it seems that getting off AI was an important part of recovering my measured morning time. AI was still so difficult to deal with that I simply couldn’t justify spending as much time with it as I had been, even if it was the only way, for me, to learn about math and physics. All of that simply had to take a back seat, at least, that is, until I actually started writing about something more specific, as opposed to allowing myself to go down a rabbit hole of questions—even if I wanted to understand everything. I could never understand everything, and I needed to discontinue the rabbit hole behavior, and put a stop to all the time that bad AI wasted, as I posed questions that it could not answer directly, or in a satisfactory way. As it introduced things that had nothing to do with my questions, and answered my questions in a way that required me to ask a rabbit hole of questions just to understand the primary answer it gave. No matter how much i wanted to know what a futuristic AI might be able to answer in a direct and efficient way, I didn’t have a futuristic AI, and it was more important to devote myself to my faith, as opposed to relying on science, to be happy in this life, since faith, for me, is at least equally as important as science, and science, a lot of which was bad in and of itself, and in need of some genius to cut through the bullshit with something of a new theory, a theory that worked, that, like relativity, could be proved to be true, was taking up too much of my time.
So I’d spotted Anna on social media and listened to her voice again for about a minute to get back on track—and yes, the voice i was projecting was more a combination of my voice, a deeper voice, and her voice, than the voice I was actually hearing. So I’d adjusted, as best I could. That made me wonder—how off are the voices of the dead people I sometimes project? When was the last time I listened to my voice? How off was my voice? But part of telepathic communications was combining the voice you remember with the voice that you cannot help but imagine; so, it seemed, well, maybe the voices I projected were a little influenced by the actual voices of the people I’m communicating with. Nevertheless, when it came to my Ursula, she could have many voices, and it seemed, anyhow, that I should be as objective as possible when it came to projecting Anna’s voice. I wasn’t going to constantly listen to it on social media. But, I figured, especially since this was Ursula, I couldn’t help but modify Anna’s voice no matter how objective I tried to be, so, I figured, it was best to try and be as objective as possible, without constantly listening to her voice, because the subjective part was automatic, and might depend, as I said, on more than one person.
Well, the biggest help to my zen morning was getting back to my clock—although the hotter shower, the sauna, the coffee, and a slightly smaller breakfast seemed to help. It seemed that putting off the Dr. Pepper soda pop was a good idea, as it got me a little high, and allowed my thoughts, as such, to roam a little more than they otherwise would. Getting me a little high was helpful when trying to block out the inevitable tension that built throughout the day, so that I could continue to focus, pushing through it, but the concentration that came with coffee seemed to help me control myself more, delaying, and in some ways preventing, the build up of tension in the first place. I was aware, however, that when the coffee wore off, there could be a return to anxiety, and that the anxiety, because of the coffee, especially if you drank too much of it, could prove counterproductive, so, it seemed, the tension might be delayed, but some of it, in part, was put off, rather than squashed in the bud, and so some tension, as long as I wasn’t entirely myself, was unavoidable.
With the help of the coffee I was even—not as much as I did when I was living in Utah, but a little—trying to coordinate, and, in some small way, even time, my movements, such that changes, in some way, landed on the beat. I was at least trying to be aware of the beat, the structure, and work with it, as opposed to allowing myself to get ahead of myself, and allow tension to build, a product of a frantic, anxious, internal narrator that always seemed to be in a hurry. Slowing everything down, or, at least, directing everything in a methodical, organized way, and working with the beat, seemed to be what zen, for me, was all about. Now, Anna’s voice, even with the refresher, remained a kind of combination, at best a kind of superposition, of her voice and my voice—I could kind of hear her voice in the distance, whereas my voice lived in the foreground, so nothing was ideal, unless this is actually how it’s supposed to be, and the superposition is what makes the call possible. But, again, I wanted to recreate her voice as much as possible, and minimize my own as much as possible, as it seemed to me that the only way to really secure the channel was to do that—to try as hard as possible not to use my voice, without fretting, however, the inevitability of it.
It was a quarter to eleven and I was on my fourth cup of coffee—this would be my last cup—so i was having a cup every forty-five minutes or so, which, as long as I stopped at eleven and switched to Dr. Pepper until one, seemed acceptable, or, that is, the four teaspoons, heaping, albeit, of instance coffee I was having, in a morning, seemed acceptable, although more than that might’ve been inviting too much anxiety in once the coffee started to wear off. That meant that I’d increased my caffein intake overall, but I’d cut my Dr. Pepper in take from four or five cans to two cans, which saved me a little money, and pleased me. The big question, right now, was how I was going to feel once the coffee, and the caffeine in general, started to wear off. I needed to find a happy balance between using the caffeine to stop the tension at the source, by living within the beat, and slowing things down, and dealing with the tension, or whatever anxiety remained, after the caffeine high abated, in a peaceful, constructive way. Alcohol was out of the question—so, mainly, i had to rely on the idea that the tension I stopped at the source would outweigh the tension that mounted as I was doing that—once I transitioned from my hyperalert, caffeinated state, to my general, perhaps naturally more relaxed state, minus, that is, the tension that built, or would’ve built, up to that point.