FIFTEENTH POST

July 21, 2026

I wrote this one on the train back to New York, full of yearning. There's a good heap of narratively self-romanticizing happening. I’m listening to music from my youth. Something about that nightmare knocked loose some Oldness in me. This report is all over the place. I didn’t take my meds on a weekday. It happens.

I woke up to a beautiful sight: the church across the street was blowing thousands of bubbles into the air. It was whimsical. I love bubbles, I love silly little things like this. I love churches. They’re beautiful, most of the time. They can be weird, they can be totally ugly on the outside, but something about wide open spaces really gets me. More on that in a second.

I think churches played a huge role in society, and while I don’t align with them on a religious level, I do think they served as an important Schelling point for otherwise drifting folks to come together. We don’t have a lot of those spaces left (wow, so novel, writing about the lack of third spaces) but I do think the erosion of these kinds of places of worship and belonging is probably a net negative to the psyche.

Now more than ever, people need something larger than themselves. To latch on to? To cling to? They need to hold it closely, dearly, tightly.

We need things to believe in, we need stories, we need mythologies, we need characters that are larger than life. We need protagonists and main characters. People like to make fun of them (often fairly), but without them what would we have?

This is similar to how I feel about Artists and their role in society. If they aren’t allowed to be insane, who is? Businessmen?

To go back to the open spaces thing: I am fascinated architecturally by negative space, by spaces that leave room for Absence. Unsuprisingly I’m a fan of the liminal. The in-between. I’m moved by my own sense of awe conjured in certain containers. It’s incredible that we can manipulate and curate environments to elicit feelings; even more than that, we can engineer reactions in humans due to their built environments.

I've been ruminating on Axel Vervoordt's philosophy. His main idea is that by focusing on vast proportions and natural light, you can feel a spark of divinity. There are cathedrals everywhere, for those with eyes to see.

Vervoordt’s designs draw heavily from mountain temples and ancient eastern monasteries, where a lack of distraction fosters closeness to God. Kanye West’s house was designed such that the proportions are the decoration.

This can be true of almost anywhere, if only you have the courage to look. I love applying this lens in train stations, in places that are meant to demarcate ferrying you from one place to another. I imagine the entrance to the Underworld is much like this, as is the very banks of the river Styx. I imagine all sorts of bridges and branches and petals of paper and metal, twisting and arcing. I am forever fascinated by impossibility in topology.

After I have written the above, it will surprise you that behemoth structures freak me out. Very tall windmills elicit a strange feeling in my belly that isn’t too far removed from fear. It’s not some perversion of a fear of heights. I’m not afraid of heights. I’m not afraid of many things.

In fact, I am afraid of two things: spiders and human error.

The second one deserves more explanation than the first. When I am somewhere where I must trust that things have been done correctly, rules have been followed, and maintenance has been performed to spec, I am often scared. I felt this most acutely on a cable car up Sugarloaf in Rio… it isn’t so much that the height scared me, it’s trusting that the mechanics have properly serviced the cables, that the suspension has been tested accurately, and that no one cut corners while designing it. My only salve for that ride (while spectacular) was the idea that if a cable car full of Americans fell to their death in Brazil, it would be an international incident.

Not that it was much comfort. They can put that on my headstone, I guess.

Spiders just give me a gut reaction. It’s something somatic, something deep down that unsettles me. The creepypastas about this have always struck me as maybe something close to true — that is, the idea that there’s some Creature of the Past that spiders and other associated bugs remind us of, and it’s something encoded deep within our blood. Some sort of primal, ancient fears.

To switch gears entirely: I saw many beautiful, interesting things today. The bubbles were a good omen. We went to the Mall, and I saw all sorts of inspiring technology: Edison’s lightbulb, a bit of ENIAC, high ceilings with arching and intricately patterned inlays, sparkling in the sun.

We saw gold Buddhas, Ted Kaczynski’s handcuffs, a postcard with moon dust on it (the astronaut stamped it in space), a piece of mail from the Hindenburg, and a paper with headlines from the day after Black Monday. It was mind-bending, and renewed my faith in both America and American desire to prosper.

On the train home, I took a call about a spectacular idea that troubled me. Not because of the novelty of the idea, but because my eyes are opened to some hard to swallow truths. The idea is wonderful. Huge. Paradigm shifting. The problem is… I am concerned the Founder does not have the Juice. He doesn’t seem the type to be inspired by Greatness. He doesn’t seem to have the level of conviction I would desire out of someone who could change the world.

We’re (I’m being narcissistic, but I don’t fucking care, it’s my blog) a unique people, determined to the point of hard-headedness. We’re insane, but you have to be if you want to do anything great.

Visiting a Haunted Place of Great Men was good for me. I am heading home feeling renewed, if not a little disjointed and sort of shaken out of my lately more-defined Body.

Speaking of disjointed… an update to the Group Chat Extended Universe: the chat where I stuck everyone else in a blender has congealed a little more. I tried to steer it a little, tried to enact Cybernetics, but it turns out I’m a baby in that field (and in most. I am such a confident novice at Life!)

While I think my criticism was well-received, the end state is not something I could have accounted for. Most of the “Interesting” new people, or I guess “Powerful” or “higher class” people have not spoken. Though I do think it’s curious who has hung around. Participation has dwindled in quality, though liquidity remains deep at most hours.

What has been interesting though, is the new little connections and side-chats that are blossoming around it. There’s something curious about the way these ecosystems work. I haven’t figured out the metaphor for it yet. It turns out that too many beautiful women in a chat makes others scared, but if you scare the beautiful women, you end up with chudchat.

I think this chat has avoided that fate so far, but it’s not clear it’ll survive this next phase of life. I think of these chats less like venues and more like creatures these days. I think chat liquidity is a correct theory, a good lens to use, but it’s not necessarily the best description. These things seem to move like wild animals, transporting meaning across the globe instantaneously, but much more like a swarm of flies (or if I’m being nice, starlings) than a clean “reflexivity” behavior.

A friend (confidant? Underling? That’s horrible, I don’t mean it like that) told me some slightly startling information that I don’t know how to digest just yet. I am clumsy with backchanneling, clumsy with understanding, and burnt by guessing. Burnt harder by projection, and desiring plain language. I think (No, I know) I resent being projected Upon and then left to pick up the pieces myself, but I do really desire reconciliation with most people. There are only a few people I’ve deleted that I actually meant to, and don’t want to disturb the bones of.

What do you think, reader. Shall I kick a hornet’s nest? Shall I startle a wild animal?

Is silence cruelty or relief?