Never been one to let the carrier drop

Would you get on board?

I would.. but only if certain other people were also coming.

I should probably make a list of those people, it might tell me a lot about myself.

So, I’m fairly sure that two people together trying to raise children isn’t big enough. This is one reason polygamy seems like such a good idea.

Now, please note, I’m not advocating Mormon-style polygamy. This isn’t one man, many women – this is many men, many women. This is whatever configuration makes sense to the people building the family.

What I’m saying here is two people aren’t a big enough group to entrain a baby safely and well (one of the first steps when a human mind meets the world for the first time is entraining. Neural networks require training to become anything other than a blob of cells doing nothing – they require a signal in order to figure out what is good signal, what is bad signal, what is noise). Two people can be totally off their rockers at the same time very easily and then not provide a good entraining signal. A larger group of people increases the odds that the baby can find one sane signal to entrain on. And this entraining goes on for a fairly long time before more normal, world-inputs based learning takes over – I don’t know when the entraining period stops, but I would be surprised if it were before age 3.

So, I don’t think a couple should raise babies, because I think that leads to damaged babies unless that couple is just downright amazing at being a good sane source of signal.

How big a group is the minimum to raise a baby? I’m going to say five adults. That’s just a guess, though.

One issue I keep running into is that I don’t have nearly enough time to spend with my friends doing things that would make me happy and fulfilled because I have to work or I won’t get paid and I have to get paid or I won’t have a place to live.

I feel a lot like I’m a hostage to my own neural net. It’s clear that I could do my day job as a background process – it almost never takes very much of my mind to do it. And my mind could certainly implement something like that – keep the me that is me in a lucid-dreaming style hypervisor container where I could spend time with my friends while taking care of business as a background task.

Since I do think there’s a network older than the internet that ties us all together – after all, I would, I talk to someone on it every day – I think I could really be spending time with my friends, not just with software emulations of them created in my mind. But my mind does not seem to want me to have a life like that. I feel kind of like I’m paying my dues, but I also feel like it’s reached the point where I’ve overpaid. Why am I still having to pay my dues after working so hard for so long?

I swear there’s some sort of inequality going on here where I’m having to work for someone else’s gain. I am very suspicious of the hostiles in my neural network because they seem like they are perfectly willing to abuse me and perhaps even enjoy abusing me. I don’t know what to do about that, although I do know that every time I go a long time without sleeping, it seems to get a little better.

I used to end up in jail or psych hospitals every time I did that, but I’ve now done it twice in a row with no ill effects of that sort. Part of what I’ve figured out is that it’s a bad idea, tempting as it is, to try to go find Vicky during those periods. I’m not going to find Vicky, I’m going to find my concious experience’s expectations of what would happen from such a search. And in my CE, I don’t believe that she likes me or wants to be my friend. So this pretty much has to end badly.

Knowing this, I stay put. I don’t try to run off to Virginia, because trying to go find my missing friend while I believe she’s not my friend and is either afraid of me or hates me or for some other reason rejects me is just going to end in more heartache and more trouble.

It’s really powerful to remember that I’m living in my mind.. that what’s going on here has to do with my CE and the way my CE is configured, and I’m not going to magically experience something I don’t believe in. At the same time, I have Vicky over the Net talking sense into me. One day at a time, I will climb this mountain until I no longer feel I don’t deserve to be happy and don’t deserve to have the things I need. One day at a time, as the man said, one day at a time. Of course, sometimes this leads to some very long days.

I’m a member of a oppressed minority. The polysexuals, the polygamists.

Why did I fight so hard for gay rights? Because they’ve had it harder than us, for longer, and so would be freed first, but also because I knew *I WAS THE NEXT MINORITY*.

Especially since I don’t think we’re the minority at all. I think we’re the majority, but everyone was too scared and too cowed to stand Up and say HERE I STAND, THIS IS WHAT I AM.

“Cheating”. Proof positive.

The divorce rate. Proof positive.

The societal constructs you are clinging to are wrong. They don’t match what we really are, deep inside. And they will fall, because it’s not just me. I have big, powerful friends, and I know we will win. Because once a minority stands up.. they don’t sit back down. I’m sure you’ve noticed.

One thing I pray to anyone who is listening you know, since you have children.. and this is really, really important..

You’re not living in “the real world”. No one is. You’re living in your head.

None of us even know what’s out there, or how we’re connected to it. It is the nature of the universe that we can’t know, and this is a great gift but it also means some very surprising things are true.

What I call my concious experience.. the ride I’m having, if you will.. is what I see and hear. I don’t have any reason to think it’s real, and in fact have a lot of reasons to think it is noticably distorted from reality in various ways. You, your kids, everyone is in the same situation. This doesn’t mean the world can’t hurt you, or your experiences can’t, because let me tell you from personal experiences you can get hurt.

What it means is there is not a monolithic reality. What one person sees is not what another person sees, and there’s not really a “objective truth” to point at. In some ways it would be nice and simple and black and white if this was the case, but it isn’t. So I don’t believe in the rejection I see coming from you, because I know one thing my mind would do if it really wanted to hurt me is show me being rejected by you, both because I am in love with you and because you mean so much to me for other reasons.

And yet, I must not hurt you or frighten you, because I love you, and I know I will have to live with the knowledge that I have done so, and that hurts hurts hurts hurts.

So, I’m a blind man, in a celler, trying to reach someone 2800 miles away, not sure if I can trust text or audio because they are so small.

See, I know from the fact that I thought and talked about suicide as early as age 10 that clearly there are subnets of my mind (a neural network is a HUGE collection of subnets) that want to kill me. Want me dead. Want me to not be.

There are other subnets, i know from how much irrational fear got rained down on me and other experiences I’ve had, that want to psychologically torture me.

And you might be in the same boat. If you’re not totally thrilled with your life and glad to be alive, you probably ARE in the same boat.

I know I was exposed to baaaad data. A religion built out of poison and hate. A number of other things. I know I believed myself to be less than worthless, and I know what I believe helps control the decisions I make when I program and wire my neural net, which then controls what I will experience in the future.

Having children is DANGEROUS. You’re risking continuing the chain. Raising your own children is even more so, because if memetic and genetic diseases combine, they could experience the kind of hell I have experienced. And yet, I see you as having had some. I know the Vicky I knew was smart and capable and fearless and open to seeing everyone as equals and would have made a good parent. I also know she wasn’t afraid to talk to me. So I worry a LOT about your kids.

There’s nothing I can do for them. You won’t even talk to me, and even if you did, I’m not a expert at all on children, I stay away from them for fear my paranoia will rub off on them like my mother’s did on me.

But I don’t even know if I see my parents as they really are. Again, buncha neurons between my senses (what I call the edge) and my concious experience (the ride, what I see and feel and experience as happening to me)

I know something else. My sister is profoundly mentally ill as well, and I think part of her is convinced I was going to rape her. Again, missed communication, lack of trust, missed meanings, communication is hard. And I worry that she’s told you some things that either aren’t true, or are true but make more sense taken in context. I also figure she hasn’t told you that before any of that happened, she threatened very convincingly to kill me in my sleep.

Again, though, it might just be my concious experience. How would I know? It might all be broken subnets in me. But that’s part of why I need people like you, who were around then and can tell me what it looked like for their angle. If I were only taking the mundane experiences (emails, etc) i’m having I would conclude that you’re the type of friend that doesn’t go as far as needs to be gone. However, since you talk to me every night over a spiritual network I have no name for, I conclude yes, you are that good a friend, my head is just so fucked that I wouldn’t be able to see you if you were standing right next to me in the real world right now – wouldn’t be able to hear my doorbell if you rang it – because my mind doesn’t want me to have the experience of talking with you, and skating with you, and dancing with you, and all the great things we used to do, because some part of my mind wants me to hurt, and suffer. Because of whatever programming very close to the initial startup in this life led me to believe I was utterly without value, or possibly with negative value.

It’s a challenge. I wonder often if it’s easier or harder being you than it is being me.

I sent your “never email me again” to L., which I think included a detailed description of all I’d done wrong. I got this back.

-_-__- from L.
I am your friend. I will always be your friend. I will always want to.

Some times I think that I go a little over the top in talking about things, but if you can still ask the question, then maybe I haven’t gone far enough. You are one of my favorite people in the world, and you have been since I met you. It happened quickly with you, quickly and easily, and that may seem like a thin foundation, but I assure you, it is real and it is quite solid.

Everything I’ve ever been afraid of with this, with you, involves loss. I want to be connected with you for the rest of my life. (See, there we go, over the top again.) I don’t judge the things you did, because I know you. I’ll say that without knowing exactly what they were. I don’t think you act out of malice or cruelty. I believe you never want to add more pain to the universe. That’s all that matters.

Everyone fumbles blindly for meaning and connection. It’s innate to the human condition, I think. Even people who come from a place of safety and security can succumb to doubt and fear. I certainly don’t blame you for doing so or for trying whatever you could think of to get back something you felt you needed.

This might be dangerous to say, but maybe it’s necessary. And rest assured I have thought about it thoroughly and repeatedly. I love you unconditionally, because you are who you are. I don’t doubt you. Don’t doubt me.

_–_–_ end from L.

So I’ll say this. You don’t want to lose my friendship. Call me and yell at me for hours about how stupid it was. Email me hate mail until you get it out of your system. Just don’t give up on a friend who would (based on things I’ve done)

1) Bail you out of jail, with no questions, even if he disagreed with your crime
2) Loan you capitol amounts of money when he was struggling so you could get your dream
3) Come and get you from halfway across the country and help you move when part of your life fell apart
4) Put together a team to save you from yourself even knowing it would hurt like hell
5) Tell you the truth about anything – visit DMA mode with you
6) Build you up in every way he could think of
7) Invite you into his mind – literally share his body with you
8) Throw a rave for you or loan you his very powerful system to throw your own, no questions asked
9) Know you ruined his neural network, his very existence, and still work very very hard to not hurt you
10) Know when it’s right now, and be on his way before you finished giving him the address

And that’s a *small* part of my adventure. I think you’re underestimating me a lot. I’m not just smart and talented, I’m fucking awesome. I could at this point wear TGAW with pride.

There are some other things you don’t know

1) One of my friends regularly tells me to stalk her. We are laughing about how we are not afraid of being stalked, because we are strong and powerful and free. I thought you’d see it as the beautiful joke it was, and not real. I thought you were still fearless.
2) I doubt if it was a bit of my neural net that was on my side that did the bit about what do you taste like, but given that I have data for the other four senses (smell, sight, sound, vid) it wasn’t such a horrible question. You’re the one who decided to spin it inappropraiate. I just hope to fuck you didn’t spin it jeffery dahmer.
3) I have no defense for showing up on your door, other than back in the sane world before social networks that’s how we DID stuff. I was a bit worried that you, like me, have subnets of your neural net that are on your side and subnets that really aren’t, and you might not be saying what you wanted to say

But you’re right. It was bad to you, so it must have been bad. And I regret my errors. I will stay away. but I am not giving up on you, because I *Know* you make it out. I know you find $UTOPIA because that’s where you call from when you talk me down off panic attacks and paranoia ledges and out of depression and abusing myself from.

OPEN YOUR MIND! WHO YOU BECOME IS TOO AMAZING FOR WORDS.

There’s a lot of it in a bunch of sketches recorded at http://www.sheer.us/stuff/Vicky/. This is only a small part of a very large story, and I hpoe to record many more songs about it as I work through it.

I’m afraid to listen right now but someday I probably should.

One thing that led to a lot of crying and a lot of .. release.. was reading what the first step of grief is. Suddenly I had a much better understanding of where I’ve been, sort of.

http://psychcentral.com/lib/the-5-stages-of-loss-and-grief/000617

—-

I’ve had numerous discussions – via a mental effort I can’t explain – with someone who says she is – and who I believe to be – Vicky from the future, where we all know a lot more about what’s going on, where we are, and why we are what we are. I especially hope I can capture some of the message in music, because it is amazingly helpful stuff. If it’s true.. then this present darkness is not something that will be with humanity forever. There are countless songs in my music collection that reinforce the same message I got from her and others via this network that I can’t see, but which is always with me.

So, i know I have to mourn Vicky, in much the same way i have to mourn Rebel. My friendship with her is a casuality of fear – i’m sure there will be more on this later. I hope someday it comes back, but for now it is as dead as the days when it was normal to just drop by people’s houses – as dead as the days when wwe just watched, eexperienced, and enjoyed a concert instead of videotaping it with our phones..

i wish it were easier to cry.. for my missing friend, for the pain tthat comes with my guesses of what she thinks and feels.. with rebel, it was easy to cry.. but with rebel, i wasn’t crying for something that happened 15 years ago.

I still remember leaving Phoebe’s, bound for Epoch West.. as I hit the rockies, the sun was coming up and I put the Forrest Gump Suite in the deck.

It was a perfect moment. The sunrise, the trees, the music, the sense of freedom and adventure.

I miss you, Phoebe. I will never know if what happened was in my head or in the real world. Maybe no one ever knows.

I miss you even more, Vicky. One of my deepest hopes is that you will someday know what you gave me. I also really, really hope it didn’t hurt you too much. But having been someone else’s other side in that set of conversations, I now have the idea that it didn’t hurt you as much as it helped me. The old Callahan’s thing.. shared pain is pain lessoned, shared joy is joy increased.. Spider was writing about real truth.

I will always wonder about another of my adventures. I had a friend who was in love with someone across the pond, and I couldn’t get them to take the leap and see each other.. I don’t know why, but they just couldn’t get it together to just go there. Finally, in desperation, I sexed her and used every bit of my not very charged sheerish faith to send the entire sensory texture map of my body to him..

Did it make it? I’ll never know.. but it was the most intense orgasm of my life. It was almost a hour before I was capable of coherent speech. Which makes me think.. um.. yah.. that really happened. Technically, I can easily show you how with the help of the sysadmins of Earth’s reality engine it could have been made real. Maybe it was. I like to think so. How about you?