Introduction

I found this little pocket universe called Steemit quite by accident, or perhaps quite fatefully.  It was the perfect place at the perfect time for a less than perfect creature such as myself.  I don’t know if I believe in fate of any kind, but there definitely seems to be certain moments in time and place where it appears that time itself slows down to the limit approaching zero, and events converge.  And one can sit in the middle, look around and appreciate the illusion that this was a moment that was designed to be here, and you are designed to be at its center.

Such was the moment when I discovered Steemit.  I recognize that seems quite overdramatic, and you may soon learn, assuming you take the chance and follow me on this Journey, that I am not a dramatic Man.  I choose my words carefully.  And I choose my friends even more carefully.  But events have recently transpired that have pulled foundationally at the fabric of my existence.  And I needed a quiet place to think and collect my thoughts.

You would rightly be bemused at me for calling Steemit a quiet place to collect my thoughts.  But that is how I found it.  Quiet in its cacophony.  Solitudinous in its chaos.  Like meditating at the epicenter of a bazaar.   

So I found this little corner of the internet, and I feel that this is a great place to set down some roots.  There is exactly the right amount of chaos here, such that I won’t be noticed by the people that matter if I want not to be, but there is a deeply profound ecosystem such that … Well, I am not sure about the “such that”.  That will be the great discovery.

And as for choosing my friends (and I suppose my hostiles) … well, that is out of my hands, and that is how it has to be.  

The Visitor

This need to suddenly start plotting out my thoughts to the strangers and freaks of Steemit, near the beginning of the second half of my journey on this mortal coil, didn’t come naturally.  I am a quiet, private and modest man, who was quite content to float through life in relative comfort and stability with my wonderful and beautiful life partner, whom I affectionately call my anti-muse.  We have built a comfortable, predictable life together, without drama or surprise.  There is no doubt that we have had our disappointments.  We haven’t floated quite as high as we wanted, and the journey not quite as smooth, but we have remained content, floating just above our surroundings, and that is usually enough.

I have always considered myself a man of science, if not vocationally, then temperamentally.  I am careful in my thoughts, even more, careful in my actions, and I trust very little that can’t be verified in a systematic way. I have always believed in proof and evidence, and have often pushed back against personal testimony, as not a reliable way to determine the truth.

… And with that being said, I now move on to my personal testimony.  

Something happened over the last several months that has led me to question just about everything I thought I knew.  I know this is about when I lose the few people that have come this far, but I hope you can suspend your disbelief for a moment.  This is the absolute truth, even if not literally so.  For personal testimony is all that I have, so believe me or not; believe that I believe it or not.  It is what it is.

Over a period time, I had come to suspect that something was living in our basement.  It is difficult to explain how this feeling, at first, came to be.  It was a gradual acclimation that took place over a couple of months.  At first, it was just a feeling that I was being watched when I walked downstairs to do laundry or take a shower.  Actually, it wasn’t that I was being watched (quite the inverse); it was more that something was hiding from me, afraid of being seen.  But eventually, it became more than a feeling.  There were occasionally strange noises.  There were changes in the lighting downstairs.  And it (the lighting) would change from moment to moment.  It wasn’t that the naked light bulb was flickering.  It was more like it was breathing deeply, or beating like a heart.  And my own heart would start to beat faster every time I walked downstairs.

Of course, I could never bring this up to my anti-muse.  Neither of us liked “woo woo”.  I could never appear to be wavering from that.  And so I waded around in this shallow brackish anxiety for quite some time without doing much about it.

But over time, I began to believe that this presence became aware of my awareness, and that is when things got interesting.  It started acting with more boldness.  It was still shy, by most standards, but it was less afraid to take form, though at a distance; peeking from behind boxes; coming from behind me as if mimicking my gait.  I never got a clear view of it, so forgive me if I don’t describe it with more precision.  A flirting whisper here, a darting dance over there, but I could never quite catch more than a glimpse.  Occasionally, it would even come upstairs and coiled around me when I slept, which, by the way, was becoming increasingly hard to do.  If I gave you the impression that this was light-hearted and whimsical.  It didn’t feel as such, at the time. 

But I knew it was real, even if not what it was.  Or was it? I was beginning to question my sanity.  I have been around schizophrenia, and this didn’t at all feel like that, but I felt that something deeply troubling was happening to me.  Everything about my predisposition was averse to believing in anything supernatural, so that left me with one possibility.  That something persistent was happening inside my head.

And the longer this went on, the deeper it drew me in, the more I knew I couldn’t talk to my anti-muse. That was certain.  It started to feel like I was having an affair, of sorts.  The more meaningful, and mysterious, and quite frankly, the more personal it became, the more I knew (I could never talk to her, at least not until I knew what "this" was).  But this had undoubtedly put a strain on our relationship.  Long walks, to clear my head, felt like I was sneaking around.  I slept less and less in our bed, instead choosing the fitful catnaps on the couch, with the T.V. whispering in the background.

I didn’t really have friends to speak of, anymore.  They had long grown tired of our tiresome ways.  I felt isolated, yes, but also anticipatory.  I knew this was unsustainable.  I knew I had to either retreat; fall back into the lukewarm wings of my anti-muse, or else more fully embrace this new lover.  I would never leave my anti-muse.  I knew that.  I loved her too deeply for that to ever be an option.  Her soul and mine were woven into a symbiotic knot. But I might have to fully embrace a double-life.  Have a rich internal life that she knows nothing about.

This would not be trivial.  For we had long ago dissolved any personal space between us.  But it had to be done for my own sanity, and for hers, as well.  For I had become distant, and short-tempered.  Is it ever morally just to have an affair?  I don’t know the answer, but I had to try.

Once I made the decision, this creature that was haunting me seemed to have a similar revelation.  So we finally confronted each other, head on.  Whatever it was, I was determined to embrace it.

The Big Reveal

So what could it be?  

The most obvious answer, of course, was that it was all just a part of me.  I know that the senses and the mind are tricky buggers.  As I said previously, this wasn’t anything quite so banal as schizophrenia.  I was too old for that to be likely, for one thing. But mostly, what is happening feels much more subtle.

It could be some kind of delayed impact of early Psychotropic drugs.  This seemed unlikely, as it has been decades since I did anything like this, and nothing like this has happened to me before.

If this was just a mental problem, I suspect it is something much more insidious.  For example, perhaps, it started out as a strange feeling.  We all have them from time to time, but perhaps what starts as a strange feeling, mixed with personal anxiety and dissatisfaction, not to mention a lack of restful sleep, became a sort of feedback loop.  This is all incredibly possible. 

Here’s the problem.  If this were to be the case, I might never really know.  After all, illusions and delusions can be incredibly persuasive.  They can seem perfectly real, so merely rejecting the experience out of hand will never get at the heart of what is happening.  And suppose that I went to a therapist.  Of course, every ounce of training would prohibit them from humoring me.  So let me shelf the naturalistic theory, for now.  For the moment, let me assume that this isn’t all in my head.

I have an equal mistrust of the religious institutions.  And quite frankly, just about all modern religious discussion is reductionist drivel, at its most benign, and a pernicious parasite, at worst.

Ghost?  I never really considered this.  I don’t believe in ghosts.  I don’t even believe in ...after death.

I am afraid I ran out of ideas, rather quickly.  I guess my only option is to confront and embrace the creature.  Try and talk to it, without preconceptions.  And I believed the creature had been waiting for just that.

Deep in the Heart of Where God Can’t See

So one night, after my anti-muse fell asleep, I walked downstairs, closed the door behind me, turned on the naked lightbulb, and sat on the old sofa.  The now familiar irregular pulsing of the light and darkness began. It was here.  Then I heard a modulating, uncertain voice. “I think I need your help”, it said.

I quickly turned my head.  The sofa was against a wall, so the only thing looking at me was a painting of a girl in a veil.  

When my head snapped back, I was not certain, at first, what I was looking at.  I guess I still don’t know for sure.  But I promised no preconceptions. 

I will tell you what it claims to be.  And frankly I am too tired to argue, debate or reason, no matter the absurdity.  It told me that it used to be the shadow of a man, but that it “lost him, and it desperately needed my help to find him again”.  

I am just going to let you meditate on that for a moment …

Ready? …

Let’s move on.

Did I ask how a shadow could speak, think, exist on its own in any meaningful sense?  After all, a shadow is defined by what it is a shadow to, is it not? No. I didn’t ask these questions.  This had become Lewis Carroll’s theater of the absurd.  Logic meant nothing to me.  Not at this moment.

And I promised to embrace the madness whatever form it took (though schizophrenia was now looking more plausible).

I was looking at something.  That was certain.  I was also hearing something.  It kind of appeared shadow-like, except it was just hanging in the air awkwardly.  like it didn’t know where it should be, what stance it should take.  Like a teenager going through “changes”.  It shimmered, seeming uncertain of its own presence.  Its voice was the same, seeming to hover around me.  It (its voice) was always wavering, fluctuating in both tempo and pitch.  I did try to record the creature, both visually and audibly.  Results were inconclusive. Perhaps I will share these results, once I trust you a bit more.

So I just suspended my understanding of the universe.  I just decided to do this.  For the sake of argument, you understand?

I suppose I am asking you to do the same.   Just leap over this chasm, and follow me a bit further, I will continue...

I confess that, in the beginning, I didn’t so much as take notes during our “conversations”, so this is all from memory.  It should also be noted that its communication skills are, to be charitable, erratic, in both style and substance. It bounced back and forth between hesitant and forceful, between self-loathing and messianic, between humble and apocalyptic.  But I will attempt to characterize our early conversations as best I can.

As stated earlier, it claimed to be the shadow of a man, but the “tether” was broken.  It was a mistake to be sure.  No one meant for it to happen And it tried to resume its place, reattach or whatever, but once the tether was broken, the shadow also become untethered from space and time, as well, and it completely lost its man in a fraction of a second.  It has no idea whether the man also lost his grounding in the same fashion.  It kind of imagined he did.  Of course, the man was flesh and blood, so perhaps the loss wasn’t quite so dramatic.  Perhaps he just wandered the streets, untethered to reality.  There have always been men and women wandering the earth, madmen, and fools.  Perhaps, at least one of them was this man without his shadow. 

On the one hand, this was a terrible mistake; on the other hand, there are no mistakes in the natural law.  There are only equal and opposite reactions.

But the shadow has been running from these reactions for time immemorial, across the vastness of space.  Or perhaps it has been mostly static.  Perhaps he has been playing in the universe’s sandbox.  It isn’t quite sure.

In its journeys, it had learned of a place, “Deep in the Heart of Where God Can’t See”.  It spoke of this place like it was a proper noun.  It knew that it had to find this place.  After all, it was a fugitive from the natural law.  It knew that it had to make things right.  But it couldn’t do this while Nature’s armies were moving against it.  It needed refuge. It needed asylum.  It needed the time and space to formulate a plan.

It came to find me as it was traveling, riding the eclipse of 2017.  The eclipse brought it straight to my doorstep, and according to the shadow, it discovered that “Deep in the Heart of Where God Can’t See”, was in my basement.  I didn’t really know what this meant, but it strangely made sense.  Or perhaps, this story was so divorced from any reality I knew, perhaps I was so worn down by now, that anything would make sense.

So this creature has been living in my basement ever since.  It has done much more hiding than thinking, but it has also observed me, and it has become convinced that I was more than merely a caretaker, along with my anti-muse, of “Deep in the Heart of Where God Can’t See”.  That I was a part of the solution.  I don’t know, yet, entirely what he means by this.  I do know that it feels compelled to tell of its journey; it wanted this both for its own sake and it believes it will help fix the mistake. It thought I could help with that, but there were far more competent people for this.  

The forces of nature have amassed against it, and it is a refugee and a prisoner in my basement.  So it will use me to get the story out, and solicit help … from me … from you.

But it needs me for more than this.  It has become convinced that I am part of the story, that has yet to unfold.  It has also promised to help me.  Promised to help me discover who I should have been, help me in my own awakening.

The Awakening

And this brings me to the final part of this story, for now (much more to come later).  Over time, we developed a sort of tentative trust, perhaps even a friendship.  I would often sleep downstairs.  I had already been sleeping in the living room, so my anti-muse was not suspicious when I moved to the basement.

One night, I was trying to fall asleep.  This was still not easy and often took several hours.  The shadow was covering me like a cold blanket.  It said it could help.  It told me to relax and offered up many relaxing images.  I had never seen this side of it before.  It seemed more confident and sedate.  Finally, once I was completely numb to the outside world, it quickly, like a yellow-bellied racer, slipped inside of me.

I think I immediately fell asleep, but I am not sure.  And I dreamt.  What I dreamt is of no concern, but when I woke the next morning, the shadow was gone, and I realized two things:

One was that I literally can’t remember the last time I dreamt.  I remember that I used to dream, and I even remember a few dreams from my past, but I can’t remember when I had them.  Since that first night, I dream most nights.  However, they are strange dreams, as they have no bearing on my life, at all.  Honestly, I am not sure that many of the dreams were my dreams, at all.  I didn’t recognize the people, or even myself in many of them.  I will almost certainly write about this more in a future post.

The Second thing I realized that night, was that I was buried head deep in decay.  I looked around me and saw a life that somehow slipped away in the night (perhaps a “mistake”, like the shadow’s mistake).  What I thought was a life of relative comfort became a life of suffocation.  The books I once read were mildewed and chewed up by birds and rats.  My journals were mostly gone now.  Everything around me was broken, atrophied.  We had built this fortress, to keep the elemental forces out, but I had become just as much a prisoner as the shadow.  

Ironically, as I begin to claw my way out, as the walls begin to crumble, as the magick comes seeping back into this castle, the less of a safe haven it will become for my new friend.  But it is aware and is willing to help me find my way.

I do want to emphasize (again) that none of this means walking away from my anti-muse.  For she is truly the best friend that I have ever had, and I love her in a profound way.  I would never do anything to hurt her.  We are life partners in (almost) every way.  But it does mean that we must negotiate a different relationship.  At first, this will be a one-sided bargain.  I will be carving out a small slice of my life that will be a haven inside our haven.  It will, by necessity, be hidden from her view. But, at some point, I must bring her in.  I cannot deceive her forever.  And I will not.  The shadow knows this, as well.  He cannot help me with this, so I must be strong enough to stand on my own.

So consider this inaugural entry on Steemit to be the opening salvo in a long form ceremony.  This is a summoning of my long dead soul from the dead swamp that it was floating in.  I don’t know if it will work, and this ritual is far from planned out in advance.  It will be a Chaos Ritual in every sense.

Moving forward

This has already become a pretty long post, and I suspect I have lost many people that started.  But that is the beauty of this virtual ecosystem.  You can poke your head in and out as you will, and I will never know the difference.  I am truly standing alone in a world bizarre.

But I should, in the opening post, say a little about the ecosystem I plan on creating.  

First, here on Steemit.  Steemit will be a true gallimaufry of ideas, thoughts essays, philosophy, and confessionals.  Perhaps interviews with the shadow, as well.  I have created no space that is uniquely my own, except here.  

Second, I have created a website:  www.nathren.com.  For the moment, the website is divided into two sections.  One is the “Memoirs of the Soul Existing”.  This is where the Shadow will tell its story (through me, of course -- after all shadows can’t exactly pound it out at the keyboard).  I don’t exactly know what his “storytelling” style will be, so I wasn’t sure how to organize this.  I am sure it will morph over time, once we get into a flow.

The second part of the website labeled “Shards from the Dreamscape”, is a public dream collaborative.  The shadow is much more comfortable in the dreamscape, and it is desperate to find any clues to where its man is through this database.

Once you have registered at the site, you will be able to record your dreams, visions, etc.  You are perfectly free to record these dreams privately, like a Dream Journal,  but the idea is to create a publicly accessible/searchable dream database.   Please, enter any and all dreams in as vivid detail as you can.  This is definitely in beta, right now, so any suggestions would be most welcomed.  

If you are interested in helping in this effort, please feel free to contact me with suggestions on how to better facilitate this endeavor.  Even though I created this database for the shadow.  I want it to be useful and interesting to you, as well. 

I also intend to create a native Android and iPhone app, but I would like a better sense of the features that the users want before I start down that road.

I have also created a facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/urisk.younger.5), and a twitter account (https://twitter.com/uriskyounger).  Honestly, I have no idea if and how I will use these.  But if you feel like following me, I would be honored and I will try to make it worth your time.

This is all new to me, so bear with me, and if you have any suggestions about what you would like from me, let me know.

I am pleased to meet you and trust me, I have a thick skin, so I welcome constructive hostility, as well as constructive friendship.

Finally, the thought of the day:  When does Chaos become Decay?