Really, must you,
Over-familiar
Dense companion,
Be there always?
The bond between us
Is chimerical surely:
Yet I cannot break it.

Must I, born for
Sacred play,
Turn base mechanic
So you may worship
Your secular bread,
With no thought
Of the value of time?

Thus far I have known your
Character only
From its pleasanter side,
But you know I know
A day will come
When you grow savage
And hurt me badly.

Totally stupid?
Would that you were:
But, no, you plague me
With tastes I was fool enough
Once to believe in.
Bah!, blockhead:
I know where you learned them.

Can I trust you even
On creaturely fact?
I suspect strongly
You hold some dogma
Or positive truth,
And feed me fictions:
I shall never prove it.

Oh, I know how you came by
A sinner’s cranium,
How between two glaciers
The master-chronometer
Of an innocent primate
Altered its tempi:
That explains nothing.

Who tinkered and why?
Why am I certain,
Whatever your faults are,
The fault is mine,
Why is loneliness not
A chemical discomfort,
Nor Being a smell?

—

My major gripe is the issue of self-reliance and being objective about yourself. I used to believe that any person with perseverance and a determination could achieve just about anything. However, now I believe you really need a guide to critique you because ultimately your own mind is going to be biased and feed you cognitive distortions all the time. For example, I used to believe that any person could meditate by themselves and gain from it but now I think that most (if not all) people need someone “professional” to guide them through meditation because otherwhise they won’t do it properly (like Lama Yeshe and other Buddhists recommend). I feel similarly about metaprogramming in your mind (like Prometheus Rising says) because it’s near impossible to be objective about yourself in your head and when you think you’re making progress you’re not going anywhere at all.

—

No man is an island, entire of itself
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main
if a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were
any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls
it tolls for thee.

-John Donne

FUCKIN BASTARDS!

Hmmm… either Michal’s conscience is a fat liar (think of the consequences…), or Michal’s fucking with us.