>From: x9999bna@MAPLE.CIRCA.UFL.EDU (Drifter...)
Subject: Stream of consciousness
Date: 4 May 91 15:39:54 GMT

If you don't like this, don't read it...
But how will you know, unless you DO?
A minor inconveniance to most to skip over...
To some... a bit of entertainment.
To a rare few... something that might speak...


    You know, despite what some might think, I'm not a sexually oriented person.
    Nor am I exactly a loving or caring person. Not to say I don't care about
people, cause I do care about my friends, my family etc... But I find myself
facing fits of rage sometims are nameless individuals (or groups) that have
screwed with my life or hurt me, such as the guys shouting "hey Freak!" out
of their car when they pass me on my bicycle, or the kids at my school when I
was young who'd tell me they weren't laughing with me, but laughing AT me...
    I can imagine, or maybe it's visualizing, how I would treat and care for
a woman I loved. But I can never tell if these thoughts are accurate, in how
She would react. I've never been in love at all, not even slightly. Never had
anyone show "true love" for me. Just friends, and of course the love of
relatives (never the father). Sometimes I think I'm on the outside of humanity
looking in... But then my perspective shifts and I realize, hey, they're all
pretty clueless too... they just have more experience...

    It can be worrisome. I wonder sometimes about how little it could have
taken to have driven me to change into something else. One of Them, Those that
walk among us but aren't quite human... taking lives for their enjoyment, or
because no one seems real. Do we make them? When we are cruel and callous to
those that our different, are we chipping out little bits of their humanity
and putting in nothing but hate and destruction and death?

    So, you ask, what does this have to do with sex? Well nothing really... I
don't find myself incrediblly driven to engage in it... If I find a Love, it
would be very precious for me to pleasure her. But in itself, it just isn't
that incredible. It's just physical pleasure... my mind craves more than that.
And not the stimulation of drugs or alcohol (my friends call me a straightedge
and plot to get me drunk) but something else... A change of the mind, or the
brain. Modification of the body to suit the shape of the mind... Cause like
Bill said, it's just meat. Your flesh and bone and muscle and organs... you
just live in them. Just in part of it...

    Why do I write? Because it's fun, and because I've not found any other
way to let out my creativity. I can't draw meaningfully (don't ask me to do
a street map), or write music (play instruments? I can whistle...), or really
do much at all... except write. Annoying, when your brain can visualize things
that put you on a plane with Spielberg, Lucas, etc... But then, most people I
think can do that. But only a few manage to express it for the EYES.
    We're a visual race, what we see is our most important thing. We can't
imagine being blind... We're scared of the blind, we don't quite treat them
like they are humans. Ten million years of mammalistic fear over the Different
Ones. But the blind can think, and imagine, and they can VISUALIZE. Because it
isn't sight... it just isn't.
    Or maybe I'm wrong.
    But writing... it... well it's fun, like I said. And an outlet. Some
friends have told me I should get published... That would be great, but I
think about the effort it would take, and wonder if it would be worth it. I
can sure as hell use the money... But that isn't why I'm writing. and much of
what I want to write isn't something you market commercially.
    Maybe I need to find the underground... The net is a wonderful alternative
though. Maybe it is part of the underground. Perhaps the net will be the new
form of literature in the future... writing realities, not just stories.
Fragments, insights, our own angst (heh) and of course fantasies...
    Why did I write sexual stories? Intellectual masturbation? Probably.
Excitement? Yes. Fulfillment? Not yet... But I *do* enjoy it. I think about
ideas, or come up with them, and just like playing with them in my head. Some-
times I think writing them down will be pleasurable than the thoughts of what
to write.

    BrainBlock.

    The worse thing is sitting around at home, wondering what my life is. I
know I'm not going to be A Success, but then I'm not a suit-oriented person.
Is that important? I feel distanced from friends more succesful than me. I
feel inadequate when I can't get a simple job. I wonder what basic skills I
lack or what fears are nesting inside. Self-analysis isn't fun, never mind
David Brin and his fiction.
    Roles. Identity. That's the key. Find your role in society and you'll
be content. So the theory goes...
    What if you think your role is to change society? And you don't have the
tools to do it? Hitler's charisma could sure come in handy...
    Frankly, so would bio-engineering. It's frustrating to see something so
close but you know it'll never benefit you in your lifetime. Not the way
you want it.

    And of course, there's that death thing. I'm amused that so many rush
and scramble to assure themselves the greatest possible health, the longest
life... As if to say "Hey look, I'm going to be immortal!"
    And they all die.
    You spend twenty years jogging, exercising, watching your weight, keeping
a strict diet... and you die of a heart attack jogging down the street. Or
your hit by a car and lose your legs, your arms...
    I know many don't believe it, but I do; Death is the end.
    But it doesn't scare me. Not that it's the end... Of course I'll keep
myself alive as much as possible. I don't like *PAIN*, I don't WANT to die
(most of the time), and there's that instinct, the drive for survival,
encoded in every cell.
    My mind isn't afraid to cease to exist. It's just not something I concern
myself with. I don't DENY death, like oh-so many do with their religions or
reincarnation or afterlives... Even some of the athiests don't like to talk
about death.
    Pectoral implants? My god... it's starting sooner than I thought...
    It's not just death though. I wonder how I'd react to major changes to
my body. Loosing sight or hearing, a limb... A disease or disorder. I study
the freaks, and I study the handicapped. I don't ask many questions because I
don't want to offend or upset any of them, but they don't know... the next
generation or so, being crippled or blind or deaf, it just isn't going to be
the same... they'll be able to see in a way we can't, to walk without muscle
or bone, or even a whole spinal cord...
    I really want to be part of that. But I feel inadequate and undirected.
Arrow flies, knowing not its mark. How can I contribute? I try and foster the
idea of cyberspace, I try and find others who can benefitt from what I have
to say, or even my mindset...
    There aren't many. so maybe I'm wrong...
    Five billion to one?
    Why not... I've got nothing to lose.


Ah, look at all the lonely people
Ah, look at all the lonely people

Eleanor Rigby
Picks up the rice in a church where a wedding has been
Lives in a dream
Waits at the window
Wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door
Who is it for?

*Chorus*:
  All the lonely people
  Where do they all come from?
  All the lonely people
  Where do they all belong?

Father MacKensie
Writing the words to a sermon that no one will hear
No one comes near
Look at him working
Darning his socks in the night when there's nobody there
What does he care?

*Chorus*

Eleanor Rigby
Died in the church and was buried along with her name
Nobody came
Father MacKensie
Wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave
No one was saved

*Chorus*


I never really listened to them... But still it speaks.



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  |                       Drifter... Homo Postmortemus                       |
  | ObLyric: The wind kissed him goodbye... and then he died. --Judas Priest |
  | ObQuote: "Claire's eyebrows tried to migrate to the back of her neck."   |
  | ObWeird: "Areoffsthereareandaretherechipschipsthereare!!" "Say what?!!"  |
  | Internet: x9999bna%oak.decnet@pine.circa.ufl  or  7%arms.uucp@ufl.edu    |
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