Is he talking about bones again?? Oh my god shut the fuck up!
A surrealist short fiction piece of 1.9k words.
I am writing an essay for college pontificating over the prevalence of bones (metaphorical and literal) in every aspect of human1 existence and it will blow the world away. I told my friends about it and they stared at me as I rattled off about it. I think they’re tired but that’s fine. Some of them simply skimmed the footnotes of the essay. The first footnote was not linked to any part of the actual essay so they’re confused but that’s also fine because they’re only human (I am not), and SURE they’re confused and perhaps a bit worried but they’re also entertained. I’m great. I’m wonderful. I’m great. A little bit of ‘eccentricity’ (read: I have unlocked this knowledge yet no one gets it yet they SHOULD because they already KNOW all this!) is expected, especially in my essays.
So! So? So look at my essay!
“3D models require armature inside them so you can make different parts of the mesh pose, maybe animate them even. You have to rig the mesh to the armature by assigning certain vertices to certain bones, at varying strengths.
“There are skeletons and muscles inside of me. They are responsible for moving the parts of my body which are apparently in my possession, but are they really? Do they not belong to God? Do they not belong to the not-God-but-whatever-rules-us-all?2 Do they not belong to the world as a whole?
“There are multiple skeletons inside each of us. The baby skeleton from when we were born? That stays. Carve open your stomach like I did3, and then you will slowly but surely be able to work your way down to the depths of the earth. The galaxy. Something & nothing. You will dive deep and though you may be afraid of the gore that comes with it, you will realise. You will realise. What you realise, we’ll get to it in a bit in just a bit. But before you continue the essay, I recommend you carve yourself.”
I did publish that part in the essay, but then later I realised you don’t need to carve yourself for it. Just read on. Just exist. Existing is knowing. That’s all you require to understand. You may not understand how you understand but you understand. Because I said so.
The essay continues: “Flesh may seem very important to you. Not to me, though. It is simply a corporal prison. But just because it is not important, it does not mean I am not afraid of it. I AM afraid of the flesh. I am TERRIFIED. LIVING CREATURES. I am terrified of living creatures and their fragility and their strength. It is not only the bones. I can handle the bones. But THE FLESH?!?! THE FLESH IS TOO SOFT AND TOO VULNERABLE. YOU MAY THINK YOUr skin is thick and rough because you don’t moisturize or because you have quills all over your body. BUT IT IS STILL FLESH. It is still so vulnerable. So easy to destroy. So easy to damage, because you know the great cosmic hand? It picked me up once and I came out of the experience RENEWED and so I rejoiced once the haze of it all was over… and you know what? Had I not had the form that I have right now, I would have perished! If YOU got picked up by the cosmic hand YOU would perish too. Because you are flesh and you are blood.
“The skeleton would survive though. Did you know, the cosmic hand really truly respects the bones? All bones. The cosmic hand is bones. It’s just that there are so, so many bones. Densely packed it is with bones in such a way that the bones seem like flesh like rocks like sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me because I cannot be hurt because I have transcended harm.”
My eardrums (one of the friends reading the essay) looks at me, and asks, “What the fuck? This almost makes me miss the time you were ranting about wide hip bones. And soft facial structure. And you beat me up to cope with it.4 Weren’t you yelling about the estrogenized bone prison before? Just, what are you doing?”
“Well, I grew up. I transcended the concept of bone structure being suffering. Or of it being restricted to such simple things as ‘suffering’. Emotional suffering, such a petty little thing to worry about! Bone structure is NOT just ‘one thing’, of it being defined by something as trifling as chemistry and biology. I will break my bones and remake them and in fact, in fact I do not need to do that because it already happened, because you know what I am? I am melted. Melted into the fabric of space and time.”
“As am I, I presume?”
“Yes, because you are my eardrums.”
“And I am you.”
“And I am my eardrums.”
“And those who read are you as we are all melded together into one big glob that is the entire universe.”
“Yes. There is more about the bones in the essay, though.”
“Okay. I am interested in reading more about the bones.”
So my eardrums read on.
“And do note, LIVING CREATURES includes me too. One of the skulls inside me is the present-day skull5, and it is so very soft. So very round. I used to detest this roundness for it clashed with ??? something, it clashed with something indeed. However, I have realised: The skull will become rounder (for I am carving it to become rounder), and I shall embrace this. The skull will become rounder and it will become a sphere. It will go from merely becoming physical matter in the shape of a sphere, to becoming the concept of a sphere i.e. a collection of points equidistant from a centre. It will become the abstract geometrical concept of the sphere rather than a mere skull, it will become the bones of itself.
“A skeleton of the shape of the skull. An approximation of a so-called ‘real’ skull (but believe me, this new creation is the real reality), it is the rough concept of the full thing. It is the abstraction of a skull. An abstraction of a head. Abstraction of the concept == skeleton of the concept. You get my point? You get my point yet??”
The eardrums fray a bit, bleed a bit.
“ABSTRACT, I WILL ABSTRACT MYSELF OUT OF EXISTENCE and this will be transcendence! It already is! The cosmic hand agrees with me. It agrees with me because it is me. You agree with me because you are the cosmic hand. Everyone is everyone. All is all. AND ABSTRACTION == BONES.
“My point is: Enlightenment. Beneath the tree the Buddha became a skeleton. No he didn’t. But he was bones. But he was metaphorically bones. Or rather, he is. He is an abstract concept because no one alive knew him personally, ever. And he is the abstract concept of some wise man. To me, he is bones.”
“Blood blood blood”, from the eardrums, “Blood.”
“My bones were always generally insufficient. Inadequate. They came out of the womb broken & smashed yet perfectly functional. There was no reason for any grief or pain in those bones and yet there was grief & pain present nonetheless. Yet it was ALL illusionary!! All moh-maya hiding the TRUTH. The truth of no pain, of no grief, of infinite pain, of infinite grief, of those concepts (and many others) unfolding in infinite shapes. Yet zero shapes. Yet n/0 shapes. Because when we get down to the bones of it all, all is everything is nothing and you know why that makes no sense to you? Because it cannot. Because you have not ‘reduced’ (read: enhanced/gained freedom/ascended to godhood but greater) yourself to the bones. You have not seen what I have. But you also have, for I am you and you are me and the blood of the eardrums may stain the essay, but you must understand. The plain human brain cannot comprehend.
“Let it go into your bones. It’s all about the bones. It’s all about the pelvis and the skull and the ribcage and NONE of that, just bones in the abstract. You need to ABSTRACT yourself in order to understand all this. Abstract yourself. Absorb it in your bones. Absorb bones in your bones. Abstract. Become a mere abstract concept and nothing more (as it will make you greater than anything else, why else do you think I have been going on about ascension?).”
Just one last line. The eardrums are wilting but they are the only one of my friends which have read the essay to its conclusion.
“Yes. Join me in abstracting yourself.”
It ascends humanity. Bones ascend humanity, I’m sure of it, because it’s all about structure but also fragility but also conditions which determine fragility vs strength and also the conditions which determine what FRAGILITY IS DEFINED AS as well as strength. Bones ascend humanity. Bones are humanity and they are also something more. However, you are human. This is very sad. Because I have ascended humanity and so I do understand why bones are superhuman & transcend, but you couldn’t possibly comprehend it. I pity you, dear reader. I pity you.
Rulership does not exist because if you look down, there are dead people. They are the ones holding up the world. You may not see them but I ascended by pondering my own haddi aur mujhe sab dikhta hai, jo dikhna nahi chahiye woh bhi dikhta hai. Duniya par dhyan rakho toh sab kuch dikh sakta hai. Lekin jo duniya mei zaruri hai (‘zaruri’ kuch nahi hai, ‘zaruri’ sab kuch hai), woh dikh nahi sakta. Lekin woh dikh sakta hai. Drishti kuch nahi hai, drishti sab kuch hai, drishti kuch nahi drishti sab kuch drishti kuch nahi drishti sab kuch drishti kuch nahi drishti sab kuch… meri ek dost thi, Drishti uska naam, woh mere se lekin bhaag gayi. Accha hua uske liye. Uski zindagi mei yeh sab kya maayne rakhta hai? Kuch nahi, kuch nahi, ‘drishti’ bas ‘drishti’ hai, woh meri dost hai aur woh kuch bhi nahi aur sab kuch bhi hai.
THE PROCESS OF OPENING UP ONE’S STOMACH: Whisper. Knives. Scalpels. Pens. Keyboards. Sing to it. Marry. Befriend. Loathe. Hate. Love. Resent. Do those actions, and you will open up your CORE. The core of your being. It is not only your being though, of course. It is a being which is all’s as it is melded together. In one big pile. Which is the world. The universe. Your stomach is already open to SOMEONE out there.
I am very kind to my eardrums. They helped me on my journey, back when I thought frequencies & waves were behind it all.
I no longer believe frequencies are holy, as I may have argued in my previous essays (and I apologize to fellow theologians of sound for this indiscretion). The bones are beneath it all. Even light, even sounds, even music.
It’s going to die someday. It’s going to rot someday. It already is. Rotting, that is. One time I died but then I came back and that’s why. I deserve this. I do not deserve this. I deserve better. ‘Deserving’ is a false concept. I simply am. My skull simply is. And it is rotting. It will die. Death is an old friend though, since I met it the one time I died and came back and it liked my skull so much it kissed it and then the saliva infected my whole skeleton and so I’m fine, and death loves me, and we are good friends. So I’ll be fine and my skull will be fine. Though it rots. It all rots. Death loves me.