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Copyright 2014. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.

. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles in reviews. For more information contact Brittany Cota at 196 Stockholm St Apt #1L, Brooklyn, NY 11237. Please contact me: heres my number, 3153967890 If I had a publisher it would say something along the lines of ____ books may be published at (address). If I had a publisher there would be more written here. Shout out to the School of Visual Arts for having free printing in the library.

To sing you must first open your mouth. You must have a pair of lungs, and a little knowledge of music. It is not necessary to have an accordion, or a guitar. The essential thing is to want to sing. This then is a song. I am singing. -Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

everything written is neither true nor false.

table of contents part i disclaimers, introduction to deletion, emotional bullshit part ii important revelations and shit part iii unfinished, a transition period part iv suicide files part v the absence & presence of mania part vi me: my brain is the same as your brain probably, you: probably not part vii part viii epilogue part ix an epilogue to an epilogue

There was the painfully obvious silhouette of a forty-ounce bottle of Budweiser against a slithering black plastic bag resting on the stair next to my leg. It was just past ten pm, the end of February and I found myself sitting on a stoop chosen at random on 13th and B, mostly sober, drinking and smoking cigarettes by myself. I decided it was too early in the night, too early in my life for that matter, to look like a washed up degenerate alcoholic. So I headed home. And somehow, in the comfort of my apartment in Brooklyn, alone and slightly less sober, with that same forty, freed of its plastic constraint, resting on my living room table in front of me, this makes me less of a washed up degenerate alcoholic. I dont understand how that works, exactly. I lit a cigarette, I flipped through my social media, could you imagine if this entire novel were about my day-to-day life? I mean, Im doing four or five different things at this very moment. Im texting a boy about the skirt he just bought for himself at a thrift store (Im either going crazy or liberating myself I still dont know.), Im uploading a song to tumblr, (by the favorite band of said skirt-buying boy; Ill claim that there is no connection between the two but everything is connected. Everything everyone does on the internet is connected, motivated by some kind of inherent desire to put the parts of us we dont necessarily express willingly on display) Im scribbling nonsense into my notebook, drinking beer, and Im pretending everything Im writing right now has no significance whatsoever. I wish, for you, that I lived in a different time. So I could write some kind of romanticized piece that would make your heart slowly crack and eventually shatter into thousands of tiny beautiful fragments. But its 2013, and I hate the internet just as much if not more than you, probably more, but an honest story cannot exist without it. And Im sick and tired of the internet being this giant elephant in the literary room. Im sick and tired of a whole lot of things.

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST. WHAT I REALLY WANT TO DO is rip open my chest, carefully dissect my heart, and put each individual piece on display from beginning to end and hope to fucking god youll read it, and possibly understand.

But that just wont happen. It would turn into a catalogue of my life, of every little nuance and every feeling, every thought from childhood up until now. What kind of a story is that? Thats a catalogue for a therapist, or a psychiatrist, a pharmacologist. Not anything for a novel. And this will be a novel, eventually.

Things to know: I am wildly dishonest, I am wildly honest. Sometimes I say so much that the meaning disappears entirely, Sometimes I say just the right amount, and sometimes I say nothing at all. Everything I say is the truth. Every lie is the truth. Believe everything I write in here. Because this, this is my truth. I will go on a tangent about this later. But right now, Im out of alcohol.

What Im really trying to say here is, why cant you understand how easy it is to oscillate between feeling fine and feeling as though youre going to throw yourself off a bridge when youre inebriated? Or actually, when youre sober for that matter?

I was introduced to this website recently, its called translationparty. It takes whatever you write in English, and translates it to Japanese, then translates it back to English, and goes back and forth until finally it reaches equilibrium whatever that means. After fucking around with it for a while, writing in either nonsense or my deepest darkest secrets (all of which are neither deep, nor dark, nor secrets) (just as the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor roman, nor empire), I finally typed in, this is finding meaning in that which is meaningless. And do you know what that little fucker of a computer program spat back at me? As if it had known this all along: There is no meaning. Maybe technology really does have it all figured out, you know?

I must interrupt your regularly scheduled programming for an important service announcement: This next paragraph right here is a side note about religion. If you are not religious or if you are religious but not uncomfortable with anything I have said thus far, feel free to skip over this. Or read it, do whatever the fuck you want, I wrote it and thus I am expecting you to read it. As a child of the internet age, where anything you say can be attacked, I of course, feel the need to include some kind of disclaimer about EVERYTHING. This disclaimer was written after the following paragraph was written, just for reference. The following paragraph is also unedited. (aka, this is a disclaimer, for a disclaimer. Perhaps no work is pure once its been edited. Through editing and inserting ideas prior to the ideas Ive already written, Im essentially manipulating you, arent I? Literature is a fucking crazy thing and I can manipulate you, the reader, as much as I want) ANYWAYS THE DISCLAIMER OF ALL DISCLAIMERS. RELIGION, MORE SPECIFICALLY, CHRISTIANITY. HERE. THIS IS HOW I FEEL ABOUT IT. (as a side note, my go-to terms of expressing extreme emotion include but are not limited to: GOD, god damn, jesus, jesus christ, jesus fucking christ, god damnit, god fucking damnit; and just about any other variation your little imagination can fathom. If you are religious, (THIS IS A TANGENT) why the hell are you reading this right now? Im just kidding. Really, that was a joke. Stop getting so offended jesus fucking christ. Anyways, if you do consider yourself a Christian, substitute the jesus christ and god for something more pleasant. Like, for example okay I dont fucking know, Im not that clever. Just fucking come up with something, man. I dont intend to offend you or your belief in any way shape or form. I was brought up Catholic (see, relate to me, love me do not be offended by me I am just like you you see!) and by the time I was old enough to think somewhat critically I realized that this undying devotion for religion truly wasnt me. Then in high school I took European History, and that just destroyed what remnants were left. However, I dont want to impose my own views on you. I think at its most basic, bare-boned state, Christianity is actually an incredibly beautiful, peaceful religion. But all the nuances that come with it make me pretty damn uncomfortable. And this is my book, so I can say shit like this, and you cant do anything about it.)

(a page skipped, hours pass)

And that painful moment when you find yourself ordering a burger on the internet after having woken up at two pm, with no recollection of maybe the last hour or two before you fell asleep.

Hey, assholes. Stop romanticizing alcohol, alright? I see your tweets, Im about to go drown in this bottle of wine after today. Ugh. Life. Are you? Do you know how it feels to actually drown in a bottle of wine? Drown and drown until that wine drowns your motor skills as well? Do you know how it feels to black out every single time you drink? How it feels to have entire sections of your life blotted out by alcohol? Do you realize that when I read your tweets about drowning in a bottle of wine, or the fact that youre putting whiskey in your coffee mug, jokingly calling yourself an alcoholic, the alcoholic in me decides that if you, a normal person in my age group, are also drinking that its perfectly fine for me to go buy myself a bottle of Wild Turkey at one in the afternoon and throw some in my Dr. Pepper? Im not tweeting about these things because they scare the fucking hell out of me. Alcohol is something my whole body itches for, just like it itches for nicotine constantly. Your romanticizing alcoholism gives the alcoholic in me the perfect excuse to go get myself a drink. The fact that Im drinking straight whiskey from a mug like its fucking coffee, completely alone, in the middle of the day, is now not something horrifying, but instead something cool to post onto the internet.

You know that feeling, where your stomach is sinking slowly but you dont want this feeling to be real, so you just ignore it? Never mind. There are so many loose ends that I should tie up but instead I think I will drink more and try not to think. that feeling, where does a feeling have a location? is a feeling a location? If it is, can I buy a one-way ticket to the location of Love and Happiness?

(another page skipped, come up with your own reason)

Okay everyone, time to get serious for a moment. A while back, I was writing a paper on Dada, and its effects on the concept of a counterculture. Whilst doing research and reading about Dada, which can be annoyingly defined as an artistic and literary movement reflecting a widespread nihilistic protest against militarism after WWI. I got reading some more, and this specific line stuck with me: Theatrical performances and manifestos were often designed to shock or bewilder, with the aim of startling the public into a reconsideration of accepted aesthetic values. (this information was taken from some dude on the upenn website. I would include a legitimate works cited but hey, fuck you. call yr lawyers, sue me all you want. Ive always wanted to spend some time in jail). Anyways, I couldnt get that single line out of my head. I dwelt on it for days, and pieces of a seemingly elusive puzzle started to come together. Think about it for a moment. Im an art student, (I hate art), but if you know anything, anything at all about the art movements of the twentieth century, I think Dada actually created a formula that catalyzed every single one of them: Take the existing art/political/societal movements, turn them upside down, make a full 180, and create something new. Dada actually created a formula for novelty that was employed through every other art movement throughout the twentieth century. Dada is a formula. And the problem we have now is that this formula is convoluting rather than perpetuating novelty. Its been used over and over and over again, and has created so many inbred ideas and the entire world has essentially become a cesspool of mechanical, formulaic novelty. Hence why we feel like everything has been done before. Because the entire world as well as the entire art world is full of lazy fucks who cant seem to get outside this formula. Im not saying I have anything even resembling the answers to all these issues. If I had the answers Id be out there screaming them at everyone. You see, Im just so frustrated with how mechanical, how drone-like society and by effect, art has become. Things being created today may impress me aesthetically, or intrigue me with a concept, but the thing is,

I want to be shocked.

I do not want to see beautiful things. I do not want to see intriguing conceptual intellectual garbage. I want novelty. I want to be shocked. I want to get angry. I want to be offended and I most definitely want everyone around me to be offended. I want something cataclysmic. Something unfathomable. Not a complete 180, like the Dadaists, but a different measure of degree altogether. I want these artists to see the ground they are treading and recognize that the more they walk over that path the deeper the trench they are digging for themselves, and the more you tread, the more difficult that trench will be to get out of. Everyone, dont you understand that you are digging your own fucking graves? Hop off your path for a moment. What do you see? Are you in a giant empty field with multiple paths treaded? Some deeper than others? Going on for as far as the eye can see? When I tell you to do something other than tread that same path over and over again, what is your first instinct? Find some untouched grass to tread over? Wrong, motherfuckers! How do you think all those other paths got there in the first place? Maybe youre thinking to do something with the space above or below you. Like digging yourself into the earth as far as you can go, or floating to the air and forging your own path through the wind currents. Thats a little better, but youre still not thinking. What no one is realizing is: YOU DONT NEED A PATH. The proper course of action would be to accumulate as much TNT as possible, and desecrate that entire field, the space above, the space below. Everything. Destroy it all. Destroy and destroy until theres nothing left. Make something unrecognizable. Not a simple calamity, but instead something weve never seen before. A world where carbon is not the base element for life, a world indescribable through metaphor. Do whatever the hell you want. Stand still, dissolve your entire physical being to exist as something else. You do not need to forge your own path as an artist because you never needed a fucking path in the first place. These paths are a thing of the past, a twentieth century notion. I want an age of things Ive not even thought of yet. I want an age of something further than simple destruction. Destruction is another twentieth century notion. Maybe deletion. Thats a twenty-first century word. Destruction implies wreckage. Deletion is pristine, horrifying, clean and enigmatic all at the same time. Delete your past, delete the past, delete your surroundings, delete yourself, or dont whatever. Delete something or delete everything. Deletion, deletion, dele|

(this is the first page skipped for entirely unnecessary reasons)

(I want to consume a book of blank pages)

I want to find myself a small crook in the neck of the universe to fold myself into and rest.

When one looks up the definition of the word weird, it results in these three forms: Adjective: Suggesting something supernatural; uncanny. Noun: A persons destiny. Verb: Induce a sense of disbelief or alienation in someone.

Have you ever suddenly felt the weight of all the years you have left to live, left to endure, just driving you into the ground? The force of gravity gets so slightly stronger, and it feels a little like drowning, but Ive never drowned so what would I know? I think life is a scary, precarious thing. How dare anyone dive into it without contemplation? I feel as though I am constantly in this bizarre state of flux, and I cant seem to identify with most of my memories. I dont know where the me of thirteen went. My memory of the years fifteen through seventeen is just as if not more faded than my memory of childhood. Where have I gone? Why do I feel as though these fragments of memory belong to someone other than myself? I feel it is almost inevitable that I will one day watch those I love drift from me like smoke. Nothing is permanent. All of you will leave me, sooner or later.

(two pages skipped

to indicate the passage of time) and maybe because there was too much negative energy on the previous pages and how the fuck am I supposed to write while the void is hanging over fresh words like some kind of empty, pristine, faceless entity? (this page is also known as an intermission, an end to part i, and the beginning of part ii. go get yrself some candy or something. shit is about to get serious)

(part ii)

(I love you like I hate myself)

Consume me like a tidal wave eat my heart and suck my blood or dont whatever. I love you like I hate myself and I love you like the blood rushing through your veins I love you like a tidal wave. Consume me. Heres my heart: dig in. Only masochists eat spicy food or fall in love but I have always considered myself a sadist and mild wings make me retch. We human beings are public domain but my emails are no longer my own I love you like a kitten drowned in milk. I love you like I hate myself and I love you like an opiate, like the lack of oxygen on the ocean floor. I love you like a tidal wave, heres my heart eat until you retch it back up. Our hearts are muscle, nothing more. I wont break your heart because I cant. I just need your blood, you know? Heres my heart you can eat mine if I can eat yours. I love you like I hate myself and maybe that is vulgar but I wont break your heart because I cant. I love you like I hate myself. I love you like an itch I cant scratch. Consume me, consume me. I need you like smoke in my lungs. I need you like nicotine in my brain. Your chameleon love isnt strong enough. Consume me like a tidal wave. Eat my heart or suck my blood do whatever you want. I love you like I hate myself. I love you like I hate myself.

(and you love me like you hate yourself)

consume me, consume me, consume me

(only masochists fall in love)

If we as human beings are not public domain but my emails are no longer my own, do I belong to myself anymore?

When Im really drunk, close to the point of blacking out, the entire world exists though this filter. Its like being underwater. Youre underwater and the only thing that matters is the present moment and the thought of worrying about the future or what happens Next is just too cumbersome, and youre laying down and your body is heavy and warm and yes, maybe you are lying in a pool of your own vomit but it doesnt matter, you feel lovely and what happens Next doesnt matter. What happened before doesnt matter, what happens After is irrelevant. Nothing Matters and you are warm and you dont have to think about other things. You dont have to think about anything. You exist and that is the beginning and end of it. when other people impose their beliefs on you it is exhausting. (hint: everyone is always imposing their beliefs on you and that is why you feel so tired and empty at the end of the day) (second hint: you are imposing your beliefs on everyone else too, and I dont want to impose my beliefs on you so be gentle and take everything I say as neither true nor false. I want you to feel lovely by the end of the day and not tired or sad)

I of

am

currently my own

living dead

in flaking

vat skin

want to come over and wallow in our filth together


that is all I really want from everyone I want to celebrate your filth and mine every thought is and is not a poem and everything I say is neither true nor false and when I have thoughts that are probably important, I can feel them directly beneath my forehead, right on the hairline pushing at my skull like theyre just dying to claw themselves out of my head. the only reason I write is that these thoughts wont stop threatening to crack open my skull and run the world rabid like the animals in jumanji, I guess. so whether youre reading this or not, (think fast: you are) I am actually doing you a public service by writing. I am saving the world. (insane wonder woman/batman hybrid with a pen, less powers and whiskey in the place of kryptonite) plot twist: Im only writing because Im selfish and do not want my skull cracked open by the little insidious cunts. the world destroyed would be the most beautiful poem of all. everything is pretty funny when you think about it. I do not believe anything I write and neither should you.

(a few pages about fear, a few pages about deleting fear) (a few pages about, a few pages about deleting)

Its weird when you realize you reject something because you fear it and you fear it because you dont understand it. Realizing you are ignorant is a scary thing. What else am I rejecting out of fear and ignorance? Its weird I dont know what it is, if you know please share your knowledge with me. Even if you dont know, share your knowledge with me. I need to know things. Weird Adjective: Suggesting something supernatural; uncanny. Noun: A persons destiny. Verb: Induce a sense of disbelief or alienation in someone. Its it is, (unknown) It induces a sense of alienation in you when you realize you reject something because you fear it and you fear it because you dont understand it. I think were all just afraid of our own inadequacies. You are not inadequate; you dont have to understand everything right away. You just have to be willing to understand. Fear is something that can be changed. I think fighting fear is just as bad as embracing fear. Fighting things is a kind of violence right? Even if youre fighting something bad, youre fighting all the same and maybe thats why revolutions never work because in the end the rebelling party always becomes just as bad as what they were rebelling against in the first place and maybe thats because they were fighting fire with fire and thats just dirty and never works, man. So maybe instead of fighting fear we could just delete it? I think theres a reason I love the word delete so much but I havent figured out that reason yet. Remember, kids. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering and suffering leads to to the dark side. So if you are angry, figure out what you fear. And if you hate something, figure out what made you angry. And if you are suffering, fold yourself into an origami swan and unfold yourself this is a mimicry of the process of the disentanglement of suffering. Maybe I should take my own advice.

This is bad advice that you should not follow under any circumstances (but needs to be included): Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hatred leads to power. Power leads to victory. Let your anger flow through you. Your hate will make you strong. True power is only achieved through testing the limits of ones anger, passing through unscathed. Rage channeled through anger is unstoppable. The dark side of the Force offers unimaginable power. The dark side is stronger than the light. The weak deserve their fate. tenets of Sith philosophy I think maybe Im writing to try to make sense of the world around me.

Maybe the trick to Changing The World is to simplify things, to reduce, reduce, delete, delete gently though, incredibly gently and to be gentle to everyone, and maybe if everyone were gentle and kind the world would make a lot more sense (I think Someone already came up with this philosophy but maybe I am wrong). I feel like the thoughts in my head before theyre put into words or before they even come out of my head are the only truths in the entire world sometimes. I think language is a barrier, or a filter, and a lot of truth is lost by putting thought through that filter. So a lot of the time I feel as though I am being dishonest because words can be so limiting, like they strip my mind of the actual truth in things. So maybe I have a thought or a concept, and then I verbalize it and only 70% of it can be verbalized correctly. But maybe that other 30% that I cant articulate is the real truth, and now that that thought has been tainted by verbalization it bounces around in my head and is transformed/disfigured by the non-truth I spoke aloud. Does any of this make sense? So essentially, that thirty percent is lost, but not entirely. The echo of it remains and is filed in the back of my mind in a dusty cardboard box with all the other things the logical side of my mind deems irrelevant. Which at that point I suppose it is irrelevant, because it has been crippled by the non-truth that I allowed to be verbalized. Maybe its not a dusty cardboard box; maybe its an insane asylum in my mind, where the logical side locks up all the disfigured crippled remnants of truth that have been desecrated by articulation. But the thing is, I believe that I will get all of these truths out of there eventually. Scrape em out with a pen and a bottle of whiskey. (insane wonder woman/batman hybrid with a pen, less powers and whiskey in the place of kryptonite) I dont know if I am suffering, I dont know if I need to fold myself into an origami swan and unfold myself. I think Im folded up enough. I am just a collection of so many strings all tangled into each other. I am what your mother used to call the rats nest in your hair, as she tried to gently brush it out but it just hurt too much so you started screaming and she would get angry that you were screaming and probably brush it ever so slightly less gently which would hurt even more and you couldnt understand why she couldnt just leave it alone and let your hair be knotted and tangled (or was that just my mother and I?) I dont believe anything I say and neither should you. Things are scary when they start to get permanent. When they start to solidify. Everything written is neither false, nor true; and by effect everything is both false and true. And guess what? Thats okay. Thats okay, everything is okay.

Remember how this book started with a lot of anger? A lot of hate? A lot of frustrations and JESUS FUCKING CHRISTS? I think that still exists inside me but maybe Im starting to untangle it a little bit. I dont think I truly hate the internet. Maybe I just didnt want to take the time to understand it, and thus I started fearing it, and anger started blossoming from every pore in my body because I am frustrated with myself, my generation: abstract, undirected frustration and that frustration has been taken out on the internet. I think all of that happened, maybe, and from there I started hating the internet. I dont think I hate it anymore, and I think Im slowly starting to untangle and eventually delete some of my fear. But am I suffering? Everything written is neither true nor false, so despite how wise Master Yoda might be that sequence of events might not perfectly apply to everything, you know?

(SECOND INTERMISSION WELCOME TO PART III MOTHERFUCKERS)

q&a a question if we can make a piece and call it untitled can I just make a title and say unwritten? or a title of a photograph, like Proof of the Seventh Dimension 2013 and then call it untaken? (a parenthetical poem about a professional con artist falling in love) (unwritten) an answer yes, yes I can

I grew up thinking there was something special to me because I was an only child and I was always so very, very, very Loved and Cared for by my mother and father Special like the reincarnation of Christ, possibly, or the Dalai Lama, or maybe I would save the world or find the cure for cancer or any number of successes found on those thumb sized cardboard LIFE cards. But when it occurred to me that I am nothing more than a spoiled white girl, I said Fuck You to my parents and tried to cut their love and care out of my life in order to make myself normal. But in the end, what came of this was the realization that sometimes, its okay to be loved.

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. -Carl Jung, my MAN

The world is fucked. We all know this. Or at least we have some ominous sense of how fucked it is or how fucked it has become, or something. We look to the past like it was an easier time a time before the internet, a time before technology. Technology created things like the atomic bomb, nuclear weaponry, warfare etc, etc, etc, right? That is true, but what were not thinking about is the fact that human beings created these things and perhaps i am too ambitious but i think the entirety of human nature is something palpable that can be changed. I need to go on about a thousand more tangents about deletion before i can get you to understand this point, I think. I am not an intellectual. I am a nineteen-year-old idiot. I can write to you simply because I do not believe in intellectual garbage. Let me try to explain to you what I see. We as human beings are caught in a web, of sorts. A web of the past, a web of limitation a web of believing that history repeats itself. All of these things exist within us mentally. We have been conditioned by those around us to believe that we exist within some kind of structure. In reality there is no structure. Everything around you is being perceived through a mental filter and the beauty of that is that you can delete that filter, if you really want to. Were in the midst of an era where were starting to break down our morals and question why they exist in the first place. We are breaking down a structure, and freefalling. But I think thats better than existing in an era where our morals are predetermined, you know? and I think a lot of people are scared because they can intuitively feel that we are, in fact, freefalling and assume that we as a society are going to hit solid ground eventually. But why cant we just delete the ground and exist as a perpetual free fall? Doesnt that sound wonderful? A life of perpetual falling with no end in sight, and by effect a deletion of space and time to exist in a single glitch, falling perpetually, possibly falling up, or down, side to side, whatever the fuck you want. No ground, no end to the fall. When I explained this theory to my friend she said I was describing existing perpetually in the fourth dimension I dont entirely know if that is what I meant by that. Delete delete delete dele Maybe I am an extension of what i perceive Maybe you are an extension of what you perceive too THERES SOMETHING TO THIS BUT I CANT ARTICULATE IT YET

THIS SECTION IS UNFINISHED AND UNEDITED AND MIGHT POSSIBLY MAKE ME SEEM INCREDIBLY IGNORANT, BECAUSE I AM. MY IRISES ARE BLOATED AND MY PUPILS IGNORANT. THIS SECTION MAY NEVER BE FINISHED.

YOU ARE AN UNWILLING MUSE AND I AM AN UNWILLING WRITER. WORDS ARE ALL I KNOW. I AM BLIND. I AM A BLIND MAN BECAUSE MY EYES WERE CLAWED OUT OF THEIR SOCKETS BY THE VOID UPON EXITING THE WOMB. I AM WRITING GARBAGE. I AM WRITING NOTHINGNESS. I AM WRITING A BOOK WHERE THE VOID IS THE ANTAGONIST. I AM NOT THE VOID. I SAW THE VOID, THE VOID TOOK MY SIGHT AND I AM USING WORDS TO SEEK REVENGE. THE VOID IS IMPORTANT, EQUAL IN STRENGTH TO THE SUM OF EVERYTHING,

BECAUSE IT IS, IN FACT, NOTHING. I DO NOT FEAR YOU, VOID. I DELETE MY FEAR OF YOU. I DELETE MY FEAR OF YOU AND THEREFORE I AM PREPARED TO UNDERSTAND YOU. I AM PREPARED TO REACH MY SOUL BLINDLY INTO YOU AND RETRIEVE MY STOLEN SIGHT. I DELETE MY FEAR OF YOU. I DELETE MY FEAR. I DELETE. I SOLIDIFY MY HEART AGAINST YOU, VOID. YOU CANNOT CONSUME ME BECAUSE I HAVE DELETED MY FEAR OF YOU. I HAVE DELETED MYSELF, I HAVE DELETED MY PAST. I WILL SING TO THE FUTURE AND I WILL TAKE MY EYES BACK FROM YOU.

(pages

upon pages

skipped

to indicate the passing

of a lot of time,

the numbness of the mind,

my brain on alcohol

and my brain on nothingness)

(part iv suicide files)

(has since been deleted)

(part v the absence and presence of mania)

there are oceans inside each of your pores and my pores are filled with dirt

I WANT TO BE HAPPY I SCREAM TO THE UNIVERSE

I WANT TO BE HAPPY AND IT IS SO FUCKING UNBELIEVABLY BEAUTIFUL

well have sex and i wont feel anything because its 2013 and does anyone feel anything anymore?

found in my documents folder under the title this isnt poetry (searched my brain found no recollection of writing this)

(page skipped)

(text messages arentt poetry, you fucking idiot)

Everything and everyone you love is just a combination of atoms and you yourself are just a combination of atoms and that is either really scary or really comforting If youve never watched the music video for jump by van halen you should and you will laugh a lot, hopefully Marquis de sade was one awesome/crazy dude. Think about it this way: youre going to be 21 soon, and marquis de sade spent 32 years of his life in insane asylums. He lived to be 74. I think about that a lot. Thirty two whole years I wish every time I rolled my eyes some kind of tectonic movement happened I rolled my eyes a lot last night and I kept imagining brooklyn washing over into queens I keep writing all of these notes in my phone when Im half asleep. I want to sing poetry to you in a voice that can only be compared to a mouthful of marbles, I want your skin to be the first thing I can ever remember touching. I want to take what I understand and turn it upside down Steve roggenbuck is really influencing my writing/my whole life lately. If yr ever sad spending a solid hour or two watching videos on his youtube channel is a really great way to reverse that I am listening to Fillmore jive on repeat and very confused as to why Im not sleeping I singlehandedly stopped a train by running onto the tracks last night. It wasnt going to hit me but it definitely saw me I have things to say but they cant be put into words I miss you and I hope you are eating something delicious right now or listening to really good music or smoking cigarettes but smoking in the happy way, if that makes sense

I dont know. I dont know. I DONT FUCKING KNOW, OKAY?

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST. TIME IS THE STRANGEST THING I HAVE EVER ENCOUNTERED. AND THE GRACE WITH WHICH NEARLY ALL OF HUMANITY ACCEPTS IT ABSOLUTELY ASTOUNDS ME.

Here, read these things. I write things sometimes. But before that let me just ramble on for a while that Im afraid Im spending so much time writing and reading and doing things like this but its never going to amount to anything. Im never going to amount to anything. I dont want to make you sad, oh my god Im sorry, Im so sorry. I dont mean to write such sad things all the time. Im so sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry, Im so sorry. I am so sorry, I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. Im so sorry. I am so sorry, I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. Im so sorry. I am so sorry, I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. Im so sorry. I am so sorry, I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. Im so sorry. I am so sorry, I am so sorry. Im so sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im so, so, so, so, so, so sorry. Im sorry, Im sorry, Im sorry, Im sorry, Im sorry. Im sorry Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so, so, so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. Im so sorry. I am so sorry, I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. Im so sorry. I am so sorry, I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. Im so sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im so, so, so, so, so, so sorry. Im sorry, Im sorry, Im sorry, Im sorry, Im sorry. Im sorry Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so, so, so sorry. Im so sorry. I am so sorry, I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. Im so sorry. I am so sorry, I am so sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. I am so sorry, I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. Im so sorry. I am so sorry, I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. Im so sorry. I am so sorry, I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. Im so sorry. I am so sorry, Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im so, so, so, so, so, so sorry. Im sorry, Im sorry, Im sorry, Im sorry, Im sorry. Im sorry Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. SORRY. IM SO SORRY. I mean it. Im not asking for forgiveness Im just asking for understanding Im sorry. Im so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so, so, so sorry. Im so sorry. Im sorry, Im so sorry. I dont mean to write such sad things all the time. Im so sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry, Im so sorry. I am so sorry, I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. Im so sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im so, so, so, so, so, so sorry. Im sorry, Im sorry, Im sorry, Im sorry, Im sorry. Im sorry Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so, so, so sorry. Im so sorry. Im sorry, Im so sorry. I dont mean to write such sad things all the time. Im so sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry, Im so sorry. Sorry, sorrow, I am so sorry, I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. Im so sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im so, so, so, so, so, so sorry. Im sorry, Im sorry, Im sorry, Im sorry, Im sorry. Im sorry Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im so sorry. IM SORRY, IM SORRY, IM SORRY, IM SORRY. IM SORRY, IM SO SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY IS NOT A WORD ANYMORE. NOW I FEEL NO MORE REMORSE. THIS IS FOR ME. THIS IS FOR YOU. THIS IS FOR ALL OF US AND I WILL CONTINUE TO APOLOGIZE BUT RIGHT NOW I DONT UNDERSTAND THE WORD SORRY BECAUSE I HAVE WRITTEN IT OUT APPROXIMATELY TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY TIMES. TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY SORRYS AND I DONT KNOW WHAT IT MEANS ANYMORE.

(a single page skipped for breathing room)

deep

breaths

deep

breaths inhale exhale inhale

exhale

on april twenty eighth two thousand thirteen i realized while waiting for the train that i dont think i want to die today always while waiting for the train back home to brooklyn, i never listen, i never stand away from the platform edge i stand as close as i can, and nine times out of ten i am imagining what that giant hurdling metal box on wheels would feel like if it took my body along with it as it approached the station. and typically what happens is I experience a vague sense of guilt for wanting to die and then I start thinking of all of you fuckers who would hate me for splaying my lifeless body across the tracks, and i take a step back. but today i toed the edge, and i thought not of you, but of me, and the world that i so desperately despise and equally want to change and my mind started racing, I started trying to remember the world life in as many languages as I could: vida, la vie, jinsei, vita, and I couldnt remember how to say it in Korean because the only Korean phrase I can ever remember is saranghae and I started thinking of those i love and those I would miss, miraculously, not the other way around. I crawled out of my head and realized my heart was beating abnormally fast not out of could i actually do it this time? but instead out of an instinct for survival, my sympathetic nervous system pushed adrenaline through my veins and I took a whole bunch of steps back. I suppose saying that i dont want to die isnt right, it wasnt a sense of not wanting to die but instead, wanting to live

Fucking hell, I guess I really should stop talking about myself and my god damn feelings. Its getting sickening and repetitive and nothing good is coming from it, probably. Unless you consider horrid bukowski style poetry without the profundity good, in which case, I really dont know what to tell you. Alright. So, lets then talk about the three flies buzzing around my room, and the time of day: four nineteen in the morning, and I guess the world is still spinning at the same rate it was three hours ago, but maybe to one of these flies it feels slower, or possibly faster. What the fuck is the lifespan of a fly? The fly doesnt notice the earth, the fly doesnt get too existentially confused to sleep, if the fly even sleeps at all. Should we talk about you now? Think fast, I have questions and I need answers. Do you ever forget how to live? Or how to exist? Imagine a few things for me: in a wave of existential confusion you leave your house forgetting where you are going, or where you are supposed to go, or what you meant to do, possibly even who you are. What then? Now, this: in a wave of existential confusion you slather an odd shade of pink lipstick over the back of your hand instead of your lips, and note that it smells like whiskey and cola and you find yourself wishing you had a drink. The fly lands in your hair at four twenty five in the morning and you shake it off. Now we discuss the fly again. In a wave of existential confusion the fly clings to a wall without movement for one hundred and twenty straight hours it drops dead to the floor with an inaudible thud and the earth continues to move at the same rate it had one hundred and twenty hours prior. Plot twist: the fly wasnt even confused in the first place. It just got tired of living in such an obscenely peculiar world. It was just curious about the afterlife. It came to the realization that everything dies, and didnt know what to do with that realization besides cling to a wall for one hundred and twenty straight hours.

I hope youre still reading, darling. I hope youre happy. Yes, you. All of you. Ive said this before but it bears repeating, I want you to feel lovely by the end of the day and not tired or sad. Theres a lot of shit, theres a lot of shit. Theres so much shit. What the fuck does anyone want in life besides happiness? If you want anything else youre fucking crazy. If youre happy dont take that happiness for granted. Learn how to love the happiness and hold it in your heart and water it and watch it grow. As it grows make it something sustainable. Make your happiness an ecosystem for others to coexist in. Maybe one day Ill be able to crawl into your ecosystem and learn how to grow an ecosystem of my own.

part vi me: my brain is the same as your brain, probably you: probably not

I wonder when people will start watching their words around me because I have this tendency to write down bits of conversations and paste them in here. Im sorry for appropriating all of you. I dont really have many friends. How many writers lose friends via being honest or using another person as a muse or fuck is anyone UNCOMFORTABLE with what Im writing in here? BECAUSE IM FUCKING UNCOMFORTABLE.

So hello, welcome to part six, this section is solely for publishing tiny segments of conversation said by others. Some said by me. Most of this is via the notes section on my iphone. Im not telling you who said what or even which ones were said by me. (youll soon find out that I go back on my word here) I envision my salad as a cosmos jail is government sponsored hell drinking is really different when you move to a different place and now I will sleep, feeling somehow satisfied with a life I cannot take credit for were the bleacher creatures I feel like fucking jay-z today I wanna hear myself loud and clear (ok this one was said by blake schwarzenbach of jawbreaker this needs to be included) The world is expanding and exploding and its April fifteenth and its three in the morning and who am I to not make any judgments???? I heard myself in another language (important to mention that this was not said by me, because it was a piece in a poem by a classmate) Effexor headaches you smell like chai and thats probably supposed to be romantic but it really just makes me nauseous depression is like having a life allergy yeah that sounds about right, depression is also my favorite black flag song jerking off the sky with a giant penis of hate lets get lost in the world right now subliminal messaging is weird and creepy I live in so many realities I think the only thing thats perfect is unborn babies because all they know is love and care and comfort and as soon as we are born, its such a traumatic experience, it flaws us. nothing living can be perfect

there is more to be added here but, it will be added later, im sorry, the version youre reading is from january 8 2014 - this page right here will be the last thing to be added in more recent editions

thats all for part six what the fuck are you still doing here? get out

part vii I am feeling the overwhelming need to leave this section blank but I cant come up with a legitimate reason for doing so. Im having an emotional moment involving nothing more than a lot of post rock playing very loud in my ears and human beings around me in a coffee shop in manhattan and it is eleven forty eight at night and I suppose this shouldnt be taken too seriously and everything is neither true nor false and I have an awful feeling and Im afraid I dont have a soul or a moral compass sometimes. Ive come a long way since the beginning of this book and my heart feels different now. Its neither heavier nor lighter but I guess its changed in color. Or its possible that its changed in color. Im really not sure. I guess my brain is a little more rotten now, from all the alcohol in my system. My therapist told me she wont continue seeing me unless I go to AA, regularly. I dont know if Ive gotten better at all. I still think about death a lot. Im thinking about a lot of horrible things and my stomach feels like its melting into my bowels. I need to stop. I need to stop. I wont stop. Fuck it. I will. This caf closes in three minutes. I have to. Okay. Okay. Suddenly my brain feels like its breaking down. I took the train home to Brooklyn and waited for maybe twenty minutes in union square and I felt like I was absorbing everyone around me and absorbing everyone I love, everyone Im thinking about and it got/it is so overwhelming and the thing is, I feel malleable sometimes and your thoughts and your feelings get into my brain my perception of your thoughts and feelings yes, that. What Im trying to say is I saw a stranger on the street on the walk home and I was thinking about you and him and well there were two of them, one stopped to tie his shoe, I think, we made eye contact and something hit me but I cant necessarily describe it. The other I didnt make eye contact with, he passed me eating fried chicken. He seemed happy, or content at least. This first stranger seemed tired, and I felt his exhaustion or what I perceived to be his exhaustion and I took it into me. I thought about you, you, you, you, you. I think about you. I thought about intrusion and secrets and started to fear that my moral compass was permanently broken and perhaps I really dont know how to treat people correctly because Im in my head so often and you would think my absorbing all of your emotions collectively would make me unbearably empathetic, which in certain respects it does but for the most part I just resented this stranger for putting his exhaustion on me when Im already tired enough. So many pages, so many pages, so many pages of nothingness. But not nothingness. This book is here, this is me, this is not me at all. This is in so many different words, you. I dont even know whom I am referring to when I say you anymore. I usually solve problems by letting them devour me Kafka, you and I most likely wouldnt get along very well but I would probably love you from a very short distance, I would never

speak to you but I would watch you and fall in love with you and I would never let a conversation or eye contact spoil that love. I wouldnt be able to make you happy and you wouldnt be able to make me happy but I would love you just the same.

part viii epilogue, endnote (the beginning of an end) Its October. Eight months since the first words were written in this book. There is only one thing left to be written here, and that is my task for you. Thousands of words have been taken out of this book, because in these eight months Ive come to this one, single conclusion: You need to take something from me. This is urgent. Perceive the following with a level of unprecedented urgency: Chaos, is the most important thing in life. Change, being a second only to chaos. Deletion, being the third. Our minds exist within a structure. A societal structure that must be lifted and morphed into something more feasible: a structure where progress is not something to be feared, a structure where we sing to the future and denounce the past in its entirety. It starts with Chaos. Chaos within a structure. The more chaotic and extreme things become, the more apparent the structure will become in your mind, because only through contrast with its opposite can one perceive what a thing truly is. Begin to observe the chaos around you, and realize that this chaos is in itself not chaotic enough. Cultivate chaos. Breathe it in and let it infiltrate your core. Change your surroundings, not physically, but instead by allowing chaos to become a filter through which you will begin to observe your own surroundings. The structure exists, chaos is its opposite; chaos can exist within a structure. However, structure cannot exist within chaos. Recognize the structure and then realize it has morphed, its always morphing. You do not exist as your own individual entity. Take the time to understand this to its utmost level, this is the longest, most difficult part of the process. If you think you have it figured out, you most likely dont. Destroy your own structure, recognizing that it is not, and it has never been your structure. It is instead something you were born into and thus have cultivated it through your experiences and interactions with the society around you. Society is an overpowering force, something not necessarily malign (the more you begin to understand chaos in itself, the more youll understand that everything is neither malign nor benign. Instead that everything simply is). The lines between good and evil in life, in human life, in what youre seeing around you, are so muddled that the concepts of good and evil are beginning to become outdated.

This next paragraph is directed very specifically to those in my own generation (youll soon see why this disclaimer is necessary): To explain this further, think of the amount of time you spend on the internet. There are countless publications (The New York Times being the first to pop into my head, things in this vein) where a person born of an earlier generation writes something vaguely referencing the impending doom facing everyone in our own generation, due to our childhood/adolescent development in the digital age. Saying these things does nothing whatsoever except impede progress by making us feel guilty for having electronics, developed by those in the same generation prophesying this impending doom, thrown in our faces. We feel guilty, we begin to feel that perhaps our now inescapable bond with the internet is something to be feared rather than something to be embraced and taken advantage of for the sake of creating a better world for everyone. Thus, we become hesitant. We become ensnared in a web of progress-obstructing guilt. (A SIDE NOTE, PETITION TO DESTROY THE GRAMMATICALLY CORRECT MANNER OF CAPITALIZING THE I IN INTERNET. THIS IS STUPID. WHY. I DONT UNDERSTAND. FUCK THE LITTLE GREEN GRAMMAR LINE) Back to the point, we dont even know the definition of good and evil anymore. Perhaps we never knew the definition in the first place. What one person considers good and what another considers good can be two entirely different things. The entire world is unbearably, cripplingly subjective. Here is the first phrase to take from this book, which of course by now youve read already: EVERYTHING WRITTEN IS NEITHER TRUE NOR FALSE. This of course includes what Im writing here as well. To break everything down so far: CULTIVATE CHAOS RECOGNIZE THE STRUCTURE RECOGNIZE THAT YOU CAN BECOME YOUR OWN INDIVIDUAL ENTITY RECOGNIZE THAT YOU ARE NOT CURRENTY YOUR OWN INDIVIDUAL ENTITY STRUCTURE CANNOT EXIST WITHIN CHAOS THE WORLD IS SUBJECTIVE THERE IS NO ABSOLUTE TRUTH EVERYTHING WRITTEN IS NEITHER TRUE NOR FALSE

Now, we move onto change. Change everything, destroy everything, recognize that destruction is a much different concept than deletion deletion comes last. Change and destruction go hand in hand. However, keep in mind that destruction is, as I mentioned before, a twentieth century notion. This is the twenty-first century, motherfuckers. Destruction is not something to stop at but rather a means to an end. Destruction is necessary to break down the structure. You cant delete the structure until youve destroyed and broken down as much of it as you can. Read, read and observe as much as possible all different mindsets, things you agree with, everything you dont agree with. Things you dont understand. Dont try to understand, just read it. Read it and accept it for what it is. Understanding will come later with this acceptance. Then destroy what you know. Forget everything. You wont really forget, but you will force yourself to disregard everything youve just read in order to create your own structure and opinions on what youve observed. Recognize that you are slowly becoming your own person. You are separating yourself from the machine. Remember this: EVERYTHING BECOMES A PART OF THE MACHINE EVENTUALLY. This is why change is so important. The more you change, the more change, the more chaos, the less susceptible you are to becoming a part of the machine. Become malleable. Become a ghost in the machine instead of a cog. Separating yourself from the machine is the only way to fuck it up as much as possible. Accept the future as not just the inevitable, but also something beautiful. Fall in love with the future. Its the only thing we have. Looking towards the past will only result in regression and depression. Technology is inevitable. Do not act as a luddite in any way that is not absolutely necessary. Its essential to understand that these days, theres something in the air. Something that has been building up for the past few decades. We are so heavily connected to technology, to the internet, to our screens and our iPhones and yet we have picked up this looming sense of doom that all of these things are bad. That were heading down a path of utter misfortune. Perhaps we are, but I would go so far as to say that if in 2013 we truly are heading down a path that is going to end in catastrophe, we have always been on this path, since the beginning of time and human beings are just becoming self aware enough to realize it. There was no such thing as the good old days and we all know golden ages truly werent that golden. By not embracing the future, by having this push pull relationship of dependency, we are holding ourselves back. The real enemy here is the world of the corporation. Its the backbone of societys structure. The difference between the corporate world and the real world, (or the matrix and the real

world as a reference please google: hidden wiki the matrix) is that the corporate world has embraced technology, created technology, integrated technology into our lives with no sense of remorse. Corporate embrace of technology shifts the blame (or rather, this sense of impending doom) to technology to distract us from the real issues at hand. And finally, to deletion. Ive mentioned deletion so many times throughout this book. Its a difficult concept to grasp, I think. Its something that you need to focus on and think about and work with every moment of every day until youre doing it subconsciously. Im struggling with this myself. But I know its possible. Deletion is where you delete the structure altogether. Through chaos, through change, youve recognized and broken down the structure. Its through deletion that you take hold of the structure and build a structure of your own. Deletion is where you recognize that the things that have been done are miniscule compared to the unbelievable amount of things that have not been done. That the amount of things that exist is miniscule compared to the amount of things that do not exist. I wish I could tell you more than what I have already told you about deletion. Simply recognizing that the idea of deletion is something possible is almost enough. Its enough to engrain it into your subconscious and let it take root and work its own form of magic. This is why I spoke of Chaos and Change initially. Each of these set the stage for Deletion. Deletion is something that you have to come to understand on your own. Remember this: you dont need a path. You dont need a path. You dont need a path. You dont need anything society tells you that you need. You can determine for yourself what you need. (Stupid interjection obviously Im not fucking talking about basic necessities for human life). In the end, what Im concerned with is that we can change everything if we really want to. Through deletion. Through chaos, through change. Through singing to the future as something we do not have to fear. Through denouncing the laws of gravity and simply believing that we truly can exist in a perpetual free-fall. No end in sight, any distance we wish. If we can recognize the structure, separate ourselves from the machine and then delete the structure altogether we can become something so much more than what these invisible shackles tell us we can become. The world is malleable. You are malleable. Human nature is malleable.

I cant believe Im writing this right now, but this might be the end of part viii. DO YOU UNDERSTAND? DO YOU UNDERSTAND? DO YOU UNDERSTAND? please refer to the following section for a breakdown, a reinforcement (or rather, if you were too lazy to read this section, please refer to part ix)

part ix: a full breakdown of an epilogue (an epilogue to the epilogue)

cultivate chaos recognize the structure recognize that you can become your own individual entity recognize that you are not currently your own individual entity chaos can exist within a structure, yet structure cannot exist within chaos everything becomes a part of the machine eventually the world is subjective there is no absolute truth consumption, anti-consumption as a means of chaos corporate embrace of technology shifts the blame to technology to distract from the real issues at hand do not fear the future, do not act as a luddite in any way that is not absolutely necessary everything written is neither true nor false the ultimate goal is widespread enlightenment, chaos, change and deletion are only a means deconstruct reality until you can control it

I guess thats it. Im constantly being reminded that a writer, an artist, a creator, knows when to walk away. When not to overdo it. Perhaps this has been overdone far too many times. Remember, this book is in so many words, you. Remember to be gentle to yourself, and remember that everything written is neither true nor false. Remember that I am always here for you. Remember that everything is okay. Everything will be okay. Its all okay. Its okay. Its okay.

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