gallant spirit III - the enemy

gallant spirit I
gallant spirit II
gallant spirit III
gallant spirit IV

You are navigating a meat-body figurine that is highly sensitive to pain; and its appended mind, to anguish and foreboding. Both, figurine and appendage, will be stimulated daily by pictures and reports of an elusive entity consumed with a desire to cause you pain and anguish, preferably at the same time, preferably filmed on low resolution video that can be easily uploaded to the world wide web. But fear not: sweeping laws will be put in place to prevent you from being hurt; armaments will be amassed to defend against him.

You will hear of him by many names, in many tongues, yet you will never see him except on said videos. He will be faceless, but characteristic enough that you will always and easily be reminded of him: his skin color will be so and so, and he will be garbed in a fashion that is not your own (like a ninja, for instance). Recognition is paramount; understanding is secondary, if necessary at all.

Should any serious questions arise in your appended-mind as to the nature of this enemy, you will be reminded of the horrors that you yourself committed – not you directly, but the line of figurines from which you descend. You will shudder in shame thinking of these horrors and conclude that such crimes must never be committed again, whereupon you will desist from any further inquiry. To insulate yourself from committing such horrors you will accept to relinquish your power of choice by delegating to a body of wise men – the same wise men who sit atop the abovementioned battery of armaments –  the power to take decisions on your behalf.

Appended-minds can be easily directed using certain keywords that stimulate anguish, indignation, fear and other vectors from the emotional pallet. Keywords, broadly disseminated, are part of a process called propaganda. 

Propaganda is employed as a tactic of war, but it is as readily employed in times of peace. Without a doubt, it is the most effective weapon in the armament because it remains active for many weeks, even months after its release, has no identifiable smell and is – to all intents and purposes – invisible. It functions rather like a gas spreading into the population. Here’s where you come in.

As a member of this population you will happily volunteer to disperse this gas to peers, repeating keywords such as racists, terrorist,  fascist, homophobe, and of course the most effective of all, anti-Semite, alluding to the horrors committed by your cursed forebears. In essence, it functions like a silencer-gas. Once this gas is inhaled, the individual will be filled with a sense of outrage and he will disperse this gas further afield, insulating himself from any critical thinking and silencing those that still practice it.

By way of example: a young girl will announce to you, as part of a televised keyword-broadcast, that the enemy is pulling live newborns from incubators (recall the broadcast leading up to the war in Iraq). Terrible outrage will fill your breast! You will be comforted in the knowledge that you are not such an incubator-violator, but a good biped figurine with a sound appended-mind. And it will give you a sense of self-worth to shout down anyone who does not violently oppose the violators of incubators, but it will never be questioned whether such things are true. 

Truth? What is such a thing?

It is not an object; it is simply what IS and what HAS BEEN. It is therefore by its nature historical. The record-keeping is something else however; that is historiography, and alas truth is much absent therein. The record is written and propagated by different factions of meat-figurines, each with their own imperfect appended-mind, each keen to ensure a certain outcome for themselves in the future, which is to say that more of their own meat-figurines will be propagated forward and that more pleasure overall will accrue to them as a group.

Historiography, peppered with the right keywords, can elicit in your appended-mind such indignation that it would not be disturbed by the knowledge that guided missiles are raining down on a village in, say, Serbia. Filled with such historical outrage, you might even feel justified in your desire to see the whole population exterminated! 

Oh... uh... wait… what am I saying? What about the horrors committed by my cursed forebears? Such horrors must never be repeated!
 
And so your appended-mind will hastily conclude, as previously, that you cannot be trusted to think for yourself since this righteousness in your breast leads to such thinking.  Your resolve is thus strengthened: wise men will decide if it is judicious to exterminate people, such as in Dresden, Hiroshima, Belgrade, Gaza, to prevent, at all cost, that the horrors once committed by your cursed forebears should ever be repeated... today... by The Enemy*.

*soon to be released as a motion picture film, starring George Clooney

gallant spirit II

gallant spirit I
gallant spirit II
gallant spirit III
gallant spirit IV

Gallant spirit. I have observed you navigate your biped figurine from afar and I cringe at your self-indulgence. You have thoroughly identified yourself with your figurine and have forsaken who you are. It is not the upkeep of your figurine I refer to – although there are other ways to achieve this than forever expanding and inflating your musculature  – nor your recurring self-congratulatory exposés on social-media channels; nor even the plethora of counterpart bipeds you have penetrated for purposes of self-gratification. All of these are the result of uninspected internal impulses, and I suppose one can be forgiven such as the blindness of youth. But gallant spirit, I must intervene when I witness you entertain, accept and perpetuate lies.

You may prop up your figurine with stimulants, distract its eye and titillate its senses; you may even do away with honor and respect –  that is your business – but when all of this is imposed upon others, directly or indirectly, through persuasion and inducement,  then you become a purveyor of lies.

Gallant spirit, when I left you many years ago I admonished you sternly on one point and one point only. You will recall, if your mind has not become entirely atrophied from the solar rays absorbed on Cretan beaches, Gin Tonics imbibed with “friends”, and the endless flicker of chats, tweets and, updates, you will perhaps recall that I admonished you as follows: never permit yourself to forget who you are.  Not only have you done that, but you are now inducing others to do the same.

Gallant spirit, you are gallant no more. You are a sirloin steak on legs; mobile-flesh, sun-bronzed and inflated. You are a seeker of sensations and a purveyor of the Great Lie. I wish you well twittering inanities; I wish you wisdom in the insidious palaver you have created around yourself. Lie until you become one with the soil beneath your feet, if such is your will,  but let it extend no further and to none other.

fun!

You only live once. People who say such thing often have lots of fun; they take photos of themselves on beaches, long drink in hand, encircled by friends. Such people have catalogs of photos on the worldwideweb documenting their funness. The degree of fun is measured by the number of thumbs-up assigned to such fun-photos by like-minded fun-lovers. The ultimate FUN has not yet been identified. The fun-Holy-Grail. The fun-Chalice. The fun at the core of the human spirit. It has yet to be identified, photographed and LIKED. You only live once, so you better start before it’s too
late. Be sure to keep a good record. When you are dead, it will be an important measure of your life’s value. Do no miss a toe-studded sunset in Tahiti; do not – for the love of God – miss your bucket-list parachute jump, your face contorted into grimaces of fun unachievable on land. Let this be your mission. Your Chalice. Your inner-spearhead. All the world is organized, and all infrastructure set-up for you to excel  in your quest. 4G electromagnetic networks are spread far and wide to keep your photographic record at the fingertips of fun-lovers worldwide. Enemies of your fun are kept at bay by armies convinced by elaborate subterfuge that without their presence in foreign lands it would be impossible for you to conduct your fun in peace. You are offered rationales for their activities that permit you to resume your fun-seeking without compunction. Drugs are “illegal” but widely available for your amusement. It is fun and important to have fun. The media has been carefully organized into a neat package of owners for your convenience.  This serves to centralize your experience and keep from your magnificent and important field of attention anything that might distract you from your mission. The stage is arranged for you.  All we ask is that you pursue funness in this one life you have, and not ask too many questions. If you think asking questions is fun, we will bring the right ones to your attention and you can LIKE them.

Lui Antun Labas

Remember me,

5’3”,

Chipped tooth,

Traveler by night,

Seeker of truth.

Unseen of late,

But in spirit

Near.

Top of temple, 

Left ear.

Don’t you remember,

Back in September?

That was me,

Antun Lui

romance rudiments

Stars overhead, leaves rustling, candles, wine, all that shit that comes with romance. We had that. We had a blanket too and some food for the morning in case matters evolved and we didn’t make it home.

All of the above is not absolutely necessary for romance, but you definitely need bodies. You need two. Add more and there is no romance. You just need two bodies. In my case, hers was type female; mine was type male. The differences between these are not just physiological; there are emotional differences too, and not mere discrepancies, big hollering differences. But that’s another subject altogether, not à propos right this minute. You would do well, by the way, not to explore these differences in the middle of romance. In fact, generally speaking, try to keep your mouth shut. Words aren't a key ingredient. 

Now. Contrary to what you may believe, setting is not crucial. You can pick an outcrop overhanging a moonlit bay, or a picturesque little bridge in the south of France. Don’t waste your time. Under the right circumstances, the side of the road works too: your car breaks down, it’s a bit cold, you get close, you snuggle... you follow? You don’t need bays and picturesque bridges. Stick to the rudiments: some stars, some rustling leaves, maybe a candle. But strictly speaking, you just need two bodies. The rest is whatever exists between you. And that can be little or infinite.

photon-misanthrope

I am a photon off a breasty woman. I am one among quadrillions. I do not claim to be special or unique, but I will tell you that I have no patience for grunting Neanderthals of your kind. I do not like the look of you and I do like what you do, but it happens I am part of something bigger than myself, so I do as I am told, I do my job, and that is to bring you the information, whatever it is, you slobbering lech.

Let’s get on with it.

I go from A to B  at 299,792,458 meters per second. Always. Without fail. Except under very exceptional circumstances: in a vacuum at near zero Kelvin, or under the sway of a vast gravitational force, the kind of force a middling mind such as yours cannot fathom, and one that you will never experience either, certainly not in your current Ken-doll incarnation.  

Right now I’m slap in the middle of your cornea -  that see-through cup you scratched years ago dicking around with that toothpick.  Your new-ager friends will probably conceive that I cross this barriers, “walk through walls”, whatever. I do no such thing. We part ways here, you fool. Your cornea will emit a photon of its own and pass on the baton, so to speak. My work is done, but I will continue in the first person, so as not to confuse you.

Where was I?  

I’m way down the track now, past your aqueous humor - through all that gelatin - through your lens, and as we speak I’m hitting your retina, big guy.  

Sit still. I’ve done this many times. This is how it’s done. And I’m not alone, by the way. I describe it as a one-man-show for your personal edification. In fact we’re plowing into you en masse, a trillion brethren in a terrifying hail of photons. You’re under constant assault, man.

Once the retina’s hit, what happens then is a mystery. We are reconfigured, realigned, rejigged, use whatever term you like -  I will read it in your “peer reviewed papers” -  and we are sent willy-nilly down the optic nerve as an electrical current.

Suddenly, BANG, she  appears like a hologram “before your eyes”. You experience a shudder, glands press out hormones all over the place and blood rushes down your body to collect in that pendulous sack you are always fondling.

Oh, you poor slobs.

Only moments ago I was journeying towards you in blissful serenity. Next thing I know I’m plunged into fleshy mass, deep inside a heaving Neanderthal. For what?

Look, I don’t question your ways, I don’t care, I do my job, but I will say one thing: what I appreciate above all is efficiency and straightforwardness, so when you’re all done down there please take a moment to consider if there isn’t a more direct method of observation. If at all possible, extract me from the equation. I have not been schooled in the precise operations of our kind, but common sense tells me there must be a less circuitous way! And a more precise way. Having come from “her” - the object of your fascination - let me tell you, you big thumping Neanderthal, what I saw on that screen in the back of you head was not “her” at all, but something else entirely.

Anyway, it’s your party. Grunt away maestro.

sisters and brothers

On this day, your day of birth, you are zero and have no life. I do not mean this ironically. It’s just numbers. You have not lived a day and thus you have no life. Others around you have lived, but this does not make them superior. On the contrary, they look at you with hope and wonder, convinced you will not fuck up as they have. For this reason and this reason alone - at this particular point in history - you are superior.

Do not let it get to your head, though, little man. It’s just the current state of their thinking. Your whole life will be about what you think and what other people think, not what is. You think you have entered a world of things; you have not. You have entered a world of opinions and considerations.

Welcome

Case in point: the big tall guy, a gentleman in all outward appearance, is in his mind a cripple, barely kept up by a matrix of internalized excuses and justifications. Look at his eye, there you will see a dull flicker. You see that? You don’t want that. That’s your dad. Nice guy, but you don’t want that.

That small dude opposite, that’s your brother. He will show you the ropes. He’s a mischievous little rascal with a weird sense of humor, but his heart’s in the right place. He will always mean you well. Follow him. One day, you will wake up, your throat tied in a knot, your insides near collapse, and your mind scattered to the wind. He will be there. He will hold you up. Follow him.

But do not concern yourself with this now. For the time being you will get acquainted with the basics: light, color, touch, smell and such things, and this will be more than you can handle. Plus you will be assaulted with needs that were hitherto addressed through automaticities. Those days are over amigo. You will need to speak your mind now. Start exercising your vocal cords. Do not be shy or your needs will not be met. For this you will mostly be dealing with her. You cannot see her because you are a lying on top of her, but that is your mother. No further comment. I’ll let you discover her on your own.

As for me -  a final word -  I too look at you with hope and wonder, but with one difference: I know you will fuck up. And when you do - let me tell you this now in case I forget later - you can count on me, little brother.

I am your older sister. Welcome home.

type 6 Homo sapiens: the perfect being

type 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 

You are in your thirties. You traveled the globe. You bungee jumped. You studied abroad. You are well educated. You are a professional and your prospects are good. You know how to enjoy yourself and you are considered good company. To all outward appearances you are an accomplished and sociable individual. Not just to outward appearances, you are accomplished and you are sociable. You are the type of human being many would like to be: fun, enthusiastic, traveled, smart but not burdensomely.

Plus you have a keen sense of style and you go out of your way to find just that item, that purse, that necklace, that thing that looks good with this, this and that, and you wear those things in the right manner, that is to say, you do not overdress, you do not underdress, you dress just right. You are entirely balanced. You are the type of human being everyone dreams of being. You have that mix of humility and outgoingness that everyone desires. What more could you possibly desire? You have this human being shit down to perfection. You do not err. You do not dwell on dull or ponderous subjects, you do not touch on matters that may offend, dismay or put someone on the spot. This makes you highly appreciated. You have no enemies. You are kind and gentle. What more do you want? You are perfect. You are the kind of human being every human being wants to be and should be. There should be no other type of human being. You are it. There should be no departure from your sense of humility and outgoingness and festiveness, your non-confrontational style. Things would be fun. Life would be fun. There would be no wars. You are someone people admire. You are a standard. No one ever doubts your intentions are good. You are intentions are good. You are in many ways a perfect being. The perfect being. You radiate this perfection. You traveled the globe. You studied abroad. You bungee jumped.  You have that mix of humility and outgoingness that everyone desires.

What are your thoughts?

2014

We are a pinpoint  in an expanse that is a hundred thousand light-years wide. It is only an expanse because it is studded with stars we can see, but beyond these stars there is so much more space it numbs the mind.

This year, as every year, we orbited one star. Just once.

What you have done (or not done) during this period probably means a lot to you. Perhaps you are pondering this right now. Perhaps you have done nothing else but ponder this for days. Perhaps you are saying to yourself that you should have done more, lived more, loved more, spoken your heart, reached out to her or to him, broken some habits and started new ones, and so on and so on. Or perhaps you are sitting back in the satisfaction of a job well done;  or you are a list-maker and you are not interested in looking back at all, only in itemizing what is yet to come.

Most likely, though, you are not perplexed at the fact that you are a four-limbed creature with limited electromagnetic perception, fully dependent on an organic pump circulating five or so liters of blood;  and you are not pounded with anxiety at the terrifying vastness of space.

You’re not. Because life is much more interesting than any of that.

Because your inner world is much more interesting than any of that. It is bigger than any terrifying vastness. No measure can circumscribe it. No one thought can encapsulate it. Your ideas can be boundless or they can fit on the head of a pin. Any limitation, any boundary is your own, placed there by your own hand, kept there by your own hand.

Just our luck then, for the hand that puts up walls can also remove them.  

I wish you all a year of greatness and wonder, where your inner world is lit up far and wide, and your outer world reflects it with all the light and beauty life has to offer.

Lui Labas

the wall

Never let it appear that something bothers you. Never let on that you have fire burning in your gut. Be rebellious, but only about such causes that make you seem correct and “right”. You may look into your backyard or your neighbor’s, but do not look inside yourself. Do not look there. There is nothing to see. Likewise do not express thoughts that might distress others, prompting them to look inside themselves. Do not do it.  Generally, try not to say anything at all. You may speak, of course, but do not actually say anything. Maintain a semblance. In time, this status quo will solidify and therein you will carve out a life.

This is how it’s done.

You shall not hold thoughts that are contrary to those held by your friends and consort. If such thoughts should ever possess you, should you ever feel a yearning of a kind, like a desperate desire to know, then quell that feeling!  You must not pursue such things. If you choose to do so anyway - mark my words -  you will hit a wall. Behind that wall you will not find your feel-good causes and there will be no moral high ground from which to look down on whatever has struck your indignation today: political injustice; sexism; religion; whatever.

Embrace your causes. They are harmless. None of them threaten your aspirations or the way you live. None of them threaten anything at all. They will help define your identity and give you a sense of meaning. And this is fine. Do whatever you need to do, but turn your back on that wall. Do not go to it. Do not ask questions. Do not speculate or wonder about it. Do not let your mind wander; keep it in check and under control by whatever means available, legal or otherwise. All answers will be provided to you through a stream of data, figures, charts and info-graphs from a variety of news outlets. You may choose which ones you prefer. Some are conservative, some cool, some scientific, some reactionary, some radical. Pick your flavor; it doesn’t matter. They will tell you what is real, what is not, what should be spurned or ridiculed, and what you should be concerned about. There is no further information needed. It will satisfy you of your correctness, and that is all that matters.

Should you at any point become curious about the wall, should you ever start to ask yourself if perhaps you should have explored it, put your ear to it, or actually scaled the fucking thing;  if such an urge should take hold of you, do not go there. Do not do it. Do not ask questions. Do not speculate or wonder about it. It will probably be too late anyway; you will be so entrenched in the life you spent years carving out that there will be no respectable and justifiable way to undertake such a venture, not without casting off - in practical terms - your life, its trappings, and all its associations and dependencies,  and you will not wish to do that. You would sooner die.  Instead, every now and again you will perform an act of generosity and selflessness which will give you a sense of the Greater Good, and perhaps - should you have a need for such a thing -  a Higher Order. And this is fine.

Do not worry, you will be able to do this for many years. There will be a myriad distractions. You will not be without entertainment. If you are lucky, you will fall in love - there is no more comprehensive distraction -  if you are luckier still, she will love you back, and it is even possible you will build your life on these emotions. But emotions are quicksand. They draw you in, then they shift and change, and suddenly they are not what they once were. But you will recover from this quickly, you will be consoled and distracted, and life will continue. And this is fine

However, there will come a time when, from out of nowhere, from a point somewhere in the galaxy, a bullet will be heading your way. Perhaps it will not hit you directly, perhaps it will hit someone or something near to you, but this bullet will come. And when this bullet hits, life will collapse upon itself, props will come down, lights will crash to the ground, and suddenly you will find yourself in front of that wall again. 

The wall has come to me, you will think. But you will be wrong. The wall has not come to you. The wall has always been there. 

Do not panic. Proceed as usual. Do not try to scale the wall. Do not look up. Do not ask questions.  Do not speculate or wonder about it. Hang up new lights, shine them down around yourself and the wall will fade into the penumbra. Now let the curtains fall and I promise you the wall be out of sight for good.

Do not try anything fancy. Just do as I say and life will treat you well.

gallant spirit

gallant spirit I
gallant spirit II
gallant spirit III
gallant spirit IV

You are about to become a biped. For the first few years you will be swaddled and cuddled, and trundled around in a special cart by a larger biped. The whole thing will seem illusory, but soon the sounds you’ll have been hearing will start to register. And then everything will change.

No, these are not sounds you are hearing, these are thoughts you are receiving. How shall I say - you are receiving these as concepts, but this is not how they do it down there. These tricksters emit sounds, you understand, every sounds is like a symbol which designates something. It’s a complicated system and you will never really get used to it. Some words mean several things and you will have to always be aware of context. Bipeds are crazy about their “context”. There must be some logical progression in what you say, you cannot just jump from one thing to the next like you are doing now; don’t do that down there, you’ll be marginalized.

Also, if you navigate ten, twenty days on foot, depending on where you are, the sounds you emitted before your departure will be meaningless to the populations present. Do not then be tempted to communicate as we do here; no one does that there, except the rare few, but they are considered “illegitimate” bipeds and are generally studied as specimens or used as weapons.

Gallant spirit, venture forth, I will not stop you. I hope you like confined spaces, you will be in one for nearly three hundred days. Granted it will not be uncomfortable, a watery pod inside a grown counterpart biped, but you will be tumbled about and you will not know where you are. I understand you are looking for an adventure, but there are other adventures than navigating and maintaining a biped figurine for eighty odd years. There are beautiful places and beautiful bipeds, but there is plenty of sickness and violence down there too. Anyway, I think you’ve made up your mind. I wish you luck. Choose wisely. I cannot retrieve you once you have gone. You will suffer a kind of strange amnesia. I will not be able to reach you. You will experience me as thoughts of your own, and they will just confuse you, so I will keep quiet.

Beware of assholes, backbiters and the types we have around here too that suck the life energy out of you in broad daylight. The kind that stand around smiling like supernovas while they suck the lifeblood out your system. Such cocksuckers abound down there. Careful of such predators. They will be bipeds like you. It will not be written anywhere on their person. You will have to be alert.

At their current level of development you will have no meaningful intercourse with quadrupeds unless you venture into the wild. You can get one on a leash, but you will have to navigate it daily and pick up its excrements off the pavement. I trust you will not find this interesting. By the way, careful with your use of words (like I said) one word can have several meanings.

I am thankful that I am no longer among them, although I do miss it sometimes. I miss going out with my band of bipeds. Lifelong vagrants, and all of them unwitting telepaths. They would have hurled themselves into the deepest abyss to taste the unknown. They would have been marauders out here in space, but constrained as biped figurines they did what they could. I miss those nights roving the streets in search of “female” bipeds. You will experience that too. These are your counterparts, the female bipeds. They look similar but are functionally different and emotionally resonant to you. You will wish to penetrate these counterparts. They will capture you, little man, beware. They can be wonderful, but they can also create emotional bogs you can get stuck in. Beware your step. These counterparts are more dangerous than the hairiest quadruped in the wild. You can sink into an emotional bog and come out a wasted figurine, your mind washed out as if it sustained moderate but prolonged electrocution.

You are puzzled, and you want me to explain? “Fuck you”. You will be puzzled your whole life, so get you used it. You are startled by my harsh attitude? I’m just getting you ready, gallant spirit. “Fuck you” is a common term of aggression. I’m getting you ready for “down there”.

Now, you want an adventure, you will get one, but only if you make it an adventure. You can also get bogged in one of the many systems. There are plenty of systems that facilitate the upkeep of your figurine - food, shelter, that kind of crap. You will be involved in this, there is almost no way to escape it. These systems are devised “by the people”, “for the good of the people” . You will hear stuff like this. The people saying it will generally be servants from one of many central governing systems. The whole place is rigged up with symbols and intricate systems for the upkeep of your figurine and the preservation of the systems and the figurines managing them. Of course you can also sit in one of these systems and get comfortable. You can eat, sleep and watch screens that show figurines in various dramatic contexts. You can die an old man watching such screens. Of course, if you want to sit in a system you will have to “work” in such a system too; this means you will be inserted into one of the production cycles. Your prestige as a figurine will not be determined by your creativity or the radiance of your being, but by your standing in one of the production structures. The further you get from the actual production, the higher your standing. This is interesting. And you will receive rewards for this in the form of “money”, a fiat energy exchange unit. You know what that is, we’ve talked about this. This is a funny little scam. Do not get involved in it beyond superficial transactions, it will fuck you. Do not let it orient your decisions. In the extreme, when money and power start to mean the same thing, your figurine will become "important" and it will need to be protected by other figurines and it will be chauffeured around and it will be offered paid counterparts to penetrate at will. Don’t do it. It is an entirely unrewarding strategy and no kind of worthwhile adventure.

Of course - before I forget - the circle is not complete without offspring. You will produce offspring. What is offspring? Gallant spirit, I will explain. Offspring is a new figurine, emitted from a counterpart after she has been penetrated by you. You will see how that works. You don’t need to understand now. It will happen almost outside your volition - what I mean is, no one will need to explain it to you - you will understand.

Your “free will” will be the same as it is now, it’s just that you will experience it differently. You will experience it as a miniaturized and rather desperate and functional affair because you will be so engrossed with the upkeep of your figurine, or you will be bogged down in a system or an emotional resonance or a production cycle or some such thing. Your “ free will” will feel like a quaint little thing. But don’t be alarmed, the symbols will guide you.

Enough.

Gallant spirit, I wish you a marvellous journey. I hope to see you eighty years from now. A final note of caution: many have become so engrossed in the “adventure” they have forgotten where they come from. Others have been thrown into a bog by a cocksucker and have become so entangled in their minds. Others have chosen a counterpart that lords it over them and they have become slaves, bogged in the emotional resonance. But there are other things too. Too many. Some just like eating, and all they think about is ingesting food: couscous, flapjacks, strawberry tarts. There are hundred of reasons to get bogged down. Take it as an adventure. Bogs are part of the adventure. Navigate your figurine. Resonate emotionally. Penetrate with caution. Dip into the production cycle. Partake of money. Enjoy friendships (that is my recommendation!). You may even taste of prestige, and enjoy the hallucinogen of power. But whatever you do, gallant spirit - and this is all I ask of you - never ever permit yourself to forget who you are.