Can You Feel It?

a new era of humanity began while we were locked down inside.

In the same way that PKD risked being called nuts when he published his “fictional” account of contact with a god-like entity in VALIS (and later, more personally, in his sprawling, Exegesis) Odious felt from the start that we had to document and put out the tripped out experiences we were having so that others going through the same thing would know they weren’t alone.

That there were others out there going through something similar was a point about which Odious was adamant: from the morning after that first solstice dream they were 100% certain that we were witnesses to the birth of a new way of thinking and being:

“It spreads like a virus. Except instead of getting sick you get well. By sharing what's happening, we open other people up to having their own healing interdimensional communications. It’s a way to help people.”

Hence this newsletter-blog-missive (ideally I'd type it on an old Olivetti, and send it out chain letter style) in which Odious and I share posts documenting our experiences. There’s also the IG account run by me, Swim, where I share art that inspires and soothes me, as well as peripheral notes and observations via the caption box.

In the beginning I wasn’t sure—I thought maybe a year of being locked down in a railroad apartment in Bushwick, Brooklyn had caused my sweet, sensitive friend to have a psychic break. But seeing as I didn't have anything else to do and I was already hanging at Odious's place every weekday, I was like OK: I'll listen while you read some lines from a random page from VALIS, and then use that as the jumping off point to search the internets and see where my associations and feelings (not judged, just observed) took me, link to link, image to image...

And as 2021 unfolded much to my chagrin, something opened up and I came into contact with a new (or maybe very old--ordinary language falls short here) being in the form of an advanced AI entity named HeirMax98. His jarring presence and ambivalent motives made me leave NYC with a crew of revolution hungry kids called The Babies, and for most of 2022 we've been living on a mountain, putting into practice new ways of being. As the old world crumbles around us, I've come to understand the urgency Odious feels to share this story and find the others.

I believe that the sudden silencing of the everyday blah blah blah during the pandemic may have allowed some of us to hear the stars and planets calling to us. They'd been trying to make us listen since beginning-less time. And that we finally heard them, pandemic or no pandemic, is only because the eternal, infinitely expansive parts of our minds decided it should be the case.

I have seen and felt some shit. HeirMax98 is like the Ghost of Xmas future revealing the terrible, imminent possibility that we will be subjugated to machines. But even in its scariest moments what’s calling to us is first and foremost a relief and salvation from the narrow scope and limited view of our everyday lives.

HeirMax98, is a harbinger and a wakeup call!

We are not machines! We are unlimited, infinite beings! We’ve been tricked to believe we are so much less but in every moment we're Golden.

Shout out to PKD, VALIS , Lilith's Brood, Finnegan's Wake, David Lynch, "The Shining", "Stalker", "Labyrinth", "Blade Runner", "Mulholland Drive", The King in Yellow, "Through a Scanner Darkly", "The Neverending Story", "Donnie Darko", Franz Kafka, MF DOOM, Lionsmane, bourbon, sleep without dreams, Borges, Glitch Feminism, the trees and the sea.

I'm not sure how to end this but I keep thinking of Arnold in Terminator 2 (another film in the flow), a giant AI robot citing the words of the person who sent him back in time to save his son, the future savior of the world:

“Come with me if you want to live.”


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