VS3D T0 B3L13V3 1 C0VLD B3...

used to believe I could be

champion of my dreams; don't

sleep deep enough to dream now

F0LKS PR3T3ND1NG TH3Y'R3 R34DY...

folks pretending they're ready

for revolution, without

realizing traumas attached

WH3R3 D03S TH3 CH4R4CT3R 3ND...

"where does the character end

and the actual person

begin" is irrelevant

D0LL4R ST0R3 CH4R4CT3RS WH1CH...

dollar store characters which

perpetuate police state

outlaw white dude fantasies

T00 BVSY T0 TR4V3L T0...

too busy to travel to

imaginary worlds of

own internal creation

militarized nation state

predator drone media

triggering fear endorphins

Dollygdrazyllika: Part Two

[Part One is here, but it's not like it fucking matters.]

Cuervoblanco’s familial lineage was conveniently forgotten behind the mask, but the glaze of his father was obvious in his eye luster. They were never any closer than a pair of alpha males in a paranoid microscopic world could be, but one was born from the other, thus they maintained a physical respect and reverence for each other’s existence. But Cuervoblanco’s father was not long for this world, as he revved himself far harder than organic material is made to go, attempting to recreate machine-like acts of destruction, in humane form.

Cuervoblanco’s father’s name was Mah-kimah-ki, and he was a master of manipulating all small engine-powered machines into functionality, regardless of their rusted and neglected state. Mah-kimah-ki would tear them to sludgy pieces, shine and lubricate each and every part, calloused fingers like snake tongues flickering magically, ease it all back together, and that small engine would roar-whine with the fire of a cyborg tiger cub once again. But his own broken interior could not be repaired in the same ways, and Mah-kimah-ki lacked the tools to fix what had grinded to a cluster-mucked stall inside his own blood pumping heart. Though sucked from the earth’s innards with monstrously large engine-powered machines, oils was far simpler for Mah-kimah-ki to understand than his own blood, which flowed in counter-productive ways, filling his mind with negative behaviors and his penis with the fire iron of self-destruction.Thus, Mah-kimah-ki expired at an age much earlier than most human males, even alpha versions in this tiny, dilapidated corner of Dollygdrazillika, suffering from a termination officially stamped as “massive stroke” on his paperwork. (The irony of Mah-kimah-ki’s lifelong control of two- and four-stroke engines, the tiny machines that power man’s more basic outdoors work, dying from a “stroke” of his own bloodstreams was not lost on Cuervoblanco.)

There was no inheritance beyond bad genetic dispositions for Cuervoblanco to receive. Neighboring wolves had picked Mah-kimah-ki’s toolbox clean of value before Cuervoblanco ever had a chance to collect keepsakes, so all he was left with was a single grey chainsaw that he’d borrowed, and broken, and had been promised would be fixed before Mah-kimah-ki’s body gave out on his mouth’s words towards the future. Cuervoblanco’s understanding of these machines was not like his father’s, but he could tell it was not a death sentence for the chainsaw, as there was a gurgle with the attempt to come to life as he yanked the pull chain, but it never would cross over to the world of functionality. So it sat idle, a final memorial talisman of Mah-kimah-ki’s life, for Cuervoblanco to carry around.

Occasionally, as if by magic, the grey chainsaw would actually roar to life briefly, usually no longer than for a couple of minutes – just long enough to aid and abet hope – and Cuervoblanco could chop at the growing brush along the periphery of his life’s paths. These paths were far different than Mah-kimah-ki’s, untended and wild, though far less feral than what Mah-kimah-ki lived. Cuervoblanco used those brief roars of sharpened mechanical steel tooth bite to cut back what he could, the only way he figured made sense – quickly, with abandon. And usually this would choke the chainsaw mechanism back into sorry silence.

The choke-out comes from the rules. First, almost immediately, before consciousness is even achieved, they come from above, with the incessant self-proud beam of a sun star, except not universal at all, simply manmade here within this atmosphere. Rules, from above, beating at babby brain as it develops into domesticated humane beast well-trained in obedience matters. And the rules come so consistently that they start to reverberate and echo from around you as well – more rules from all eight directions. How to do this, how to be that, what’s the most proper way to exist in the way you’ve already been trained to exist but must exist differently because you were trained wrong and unfortunately we can’t just kill you, you useless human fuck of little value.

Those rules, from above then echoed all around, eventually fill all the psychic space, and your strong initial unblemished spirit warrior aura begins whole, but catches a dent here or a chip there, and the rules start penetrating, leaking through. Unblemished spirit warrior aura catches a hole, ricochet hollow point philosophical buck shot from one of the outside soul snipers, and then the rules start pouring in through the bullet hole in psychic armor. The rules start to fill you wholly, until the rules that beamed down from above, echoed all around, begin to emanate from within. The doubt starts coming from within the house of the self, so that you begin stifling yourself with all these arbitrary rules which limit this way or that way, confine unnecessarily, add to the domestication of the spirit warrior aura, sharpening psychic barbs one by one, helping the master controls, reaching up to the boot across throat and stroking it in appreciation.

Thus, psychic chainsaws are necessary to cut at that senseless craving for rules, to attempt to disfigure the psychic tethers that hold a man into domesticated ignorance. Mah-kimah-ki, Cuervoblanco’s father, was dirt educated enough to know he had to chop at those rules, to try and salvage what he could of original aura, but he had no knowledge of how to rehabilitate that aura back into universal samurai of the ethereal astral plain. All Mah-kimah-ki was ever able to do was fight to preserve what little was left against an enemy force he wasn’t entirely sure how powerful it truly was, whether it might not be universal itself, thus he self-medicated in calm moments not fighting it head-on. Normal man would curl up into psychic fetal position, but the self-medication allows for reckless stretching of limbs and allowance for wildbird thinking.

The problem with the self-medication during lulls in the battle against outside rules and rulers is that the ruling establishment will feign lull for you to wobble yourself, and then it strikes at your spirit warrior aura in those moments, with the hollow points which break self down, thus creating weakness. The ruling establishment is a savvy chess player, in fact created chess, so not only sees two or three moves in advance, but also knows all possible moves available to limited chessboard thinking.

In fact, Cuervoblanco’s mask was one of his first conscious decisions once he removed himself from his genetic self-medication flow chart, because he finally was sensitive to the dents in the aura’s armor, and how the incessant attacks from external device could sneak through. Plus, we live in a technologically “advanced” age where angels armed with electronic harps continuously attempt to infiltrate your solitude with siren songs of progress, so the attacks are more focused upon those tiny flecks in our psychic armor than ever before. It is a constant combination one-two punch of external civilized world attempt to dent and penetrate, dent and penetrate, dent our psyche and penetrate our internal being, dent the physical body that surrounds what is essentially us and penetrate the insides, hollowing it out to an empty shell, much like blasting open mountains and scraping all the fossilized fuels from its guts to burn neat machines around the clock and calendar boxes, leaving behind a flattened wasteland painted green and re-branded as a “reclamation project”.

So as part of his white masks design, Cuervoblanco used metallic fabrics for composition, and double-layered them sandwiching a thin sheet of metallic foil flaked with silver particles which blocks these outside attacks at internal self through that aura cloud region, specifically the fabled “third eye” hole at the front of the forehead. Thus, the mask not only conceals facial identity from others, but also works to block and protect interior true self from the outside world’s progressive advances as well.

Mah-kimah-ki, in moments of shine not too dulled by the self-medication regimen he underwent, would speak at length to a young Cuervoblanco about the power of internal spirit, and how it must be salvaged from the pilfering desires of this civilized world. Mah-kimah-ki had always felt himself to have the potential of a great, but he’d been strip mined too early to reach full blossom, and the inebriating pesticides he poured into his own individual biosphere only compounded that issue. But he made it clear to a young Cuervoblanco that there were cybertrons on this earth – people who philosophically had become inseminated with mechanical desires, who had twisted machine fetish dreams for humanity. Mah-kimah-ki encouraged the dualistic paradigm of mind that it was a resistor’s duty to fight cybertron mentalities, mostly through way of living, but occasionally this might manifest itself as requiring actual physical combat, which in all likelihood would put one on the wrong side of the legal decisions of the civilized world. “Do what’s right, but prepared to be wronged over it, perhaps forever,” was a catch phrase of piledriven treatise Mah-kimah-ki would speak unto a young Cuervoblanco. So it rang with meaning throughout his memory banks now as an older Cuervoblanco.

So when I write that Cuervoblanco had that “in mind” when he wore his mask in all living, breathing, showing, proving moments, it is literally on his mind, as a thin layer inside his mask, added armor against what is not of his mind attempting to become his mind, attempting to break and enter access down his spinal column to his heart, and attempting to pollute his gut intuition.

The symbolic beauty of the grey non-working mechanical saw with chain teeth is that it is a relic of the industrial age, when raw materials were forged into tools which could then metamorphose other raw materials into other items useful to industry’s glorious creation of the abstract wealth pyramids. It was a more convoluted way of recreating ancient culture pyramids through a more complicated form of slavish labor.

And these new electronic daggers attempting to pierce all skulls that we find (or don’t “find” easily) ourselves immersed within existing today are the next step in man’s well-reasoned complication of existence. They are beyond industry, thus a useless, non-working antique from industrial thinking reminds us of ultimately how useless our current amazing days are as well. What would you use a gas-powered chained saw for anyways? To cut wood? For what? Burning? Who heats with wood today? Crazy old cat witches living in deserted taiga regions? Baba yagas hiding from progress in nuclear zones mostly cohabitated by mongrel wolves? Heating by simple burning of wood chunk is so ancient, so not advanced, so primitive and regressive. We have the technology to electromagnetically beam heat into your body, so as to not waste fossilized energy on heating your environment, focusing the false fire directing to where needed, in remarkably complicated ways not necessarily more efficient at all, but convoluted enough that all inefficiencies are in blind spots, well out of way of your individual sensory experience, so that your sensory inputs can be more deeply indulged in entertaining distractions, not in sustaining and enabling simple life.

But all these ethereal stabs of cybertronic energy at our psyche are nothing more than invisible wires, or wireless transmission, with wires themselves just being machine vines, no different than a mechanical (or industrial age) recreation of the viny tethers of many plant species, or the veins through a leaf. So we move from natural to industrial to whatever this wireless chaos of scribbles unseen would be called, and it is overgrown beyond comprehension. However, since it is invisible to naked eyeballs, our senses suggest to us it is not there, thus nothing to worry about.  But it’s there, swirling around in chaotic tornadoes, energetic frenzies spiraling like psychic vultures, or worse yet predator war eagles, looking for those chinks in the aura’s armor, to flood through the breached levee of internal self’s outer-shell. Billions of Charlie Brown good grief scribbles in all directions, everywhere, endlessly as far as the properly-sensitized third eye can see.

Thus, Cuervoblanco’s inherited broken chainsaw is a reminder of the false promise of the past, and also a reminder of the unseen threats of the present, which surround, and have the potential to overwhelm, just as the previous age’s worries overwhelmed Mah-kimah-ki, forcing him into the dullard life of self-medication, the subsequent compromise of internal universe, and eventually cessation of solid existence. The inherited chainsaw is a sigil against repeating those simple mistakes in an even more complicated and convoluted field of survival.

(It would be easy to assume this story is related deeply to the author – being me, considering my own father was a small engine mechanic, but let me be perfectly clear about this… I do not wear masks. I find them uncomfortable, and life is uncomfortable enough as it is. The act of “writing” is so convoluted and unnecessarily complicated by “writers” that it becomes impossible to throw words into an eyeball stream without the brain attached by optical nerve to the seer starting to speculate and apply meanings and intentions to the words being scanned.

Each word has fluidity of meaning, though there are grammar disciplinarians who would force you to accept a word has a certain meaning, and language itself – in this English form – has very specific rules THAT MUST BE FUCKING FOLLOWED AT ALL TIMES. I have a hard time respecting this. I have a hard time respecting anything, to be honest. Each word has varied meaning, and every eyeball mind reading it attaches preconceptions and biases and their own education to the word. Compound that with all the words in every paragraph, then every story, and it becomes impossible to correctly define the intention of any “writer” doing “writing” for an audience. It’s multiverse theory, endless options.

Many “writers” encourage just such speculation though, and yes I am forced to use scare quotes for “writers” because I am afraid of their over-existence, and they unnecessarily complicate my life. I enjoy words and streaming them into machines as they blow out my brain from portions I can’t say I have solid control over, and it’s fun to see what the fuck might happen. I lack the comfort or shelter to plan these things and culture together what would be considered a great literary work. I am of dimwit and lead a dark life, so I will never be a shining light of “writing”.

There are so many comfortable with portending they are a shining light of writing, a shamanic guide complete with falsely encouraging words for those seeking not writing or being a writer but seeking the acceptance of being a successful writer, with eyeballs staring at them. So many are motivated by the want for gawking eyeballs. But these comfortable, sheltered, shineface word shaman, with their surly but intelligent but dark but I don’t fucking know little author shot, purposefully trimmed beard of white man or purposefully asexual smile of white woman. It fills me with contempt for the “writing” industry, as it is a game being played where the gamers pretend to give you tips at winning when there is no tip other than be inside already. Be there. If you are not there, the chances of you getting there are minimal.

So I inject this awkwardly to dispel this as some sort of self-manifesto where I am the character and this is about my life. My life is horrible, and not worth words, even ones with varied meaning that could be misconstrued by those looking for meaning where there is none. I am in parenthesis, not the main body.)

This civilized life builds invisible vines in eight directions by eight directions, an ever spiraling madness of vines choking our psychic breath wherever we may find a space to take it as soon as the endless vines notice. They are blank space kudzu, sneaking into every fissure of our brain when we are not paying attention in the right direction. When we notice and pay an attention in a certain focus, the blank space kudzu starts creeper stalking through every possible opening on the opposite end of the psychological spectrum. There are vines everywhere, hanging invisibly, blocking all actions in all directions. Once your vision is refined to see these vines, which would seem to be a form of enlightenment, it is very crushing for most who reach that point. Realizing you are swarmed no enveloped no buried beneath infinite unseen vines of civilized judgment, and every move tightens them, and then more creep in behind that, cobra clutching with each moment of fight.

Most people are immune to seeing them at all, suffering from herd immunity of blind deep sense. This is a sort of blessing, an “ignorance is bliss” type situation, although these vines are not a wild phenomenon but created by master minds with master plans looking to domesticate most men and women into subdued servitude to the abstractions of nothingness. These are cultivated vines, so to be ignorant to them might feel a blessing, but the individual is still subdued beyond their own control nonetheless.

Perhaps it is better to not know they are there though. Perhaps it is better to suffer the pain of being human without knowing how horrible and engineered that pain truly is. To have no knowledge of what has been built around you as prison is to have no perhaps false hope of escaping this system by building something new, or at the least burning down what is there, or at the even more least throw a couple flaming rocks at the wall to feel like you have some resistance left inside of you. To be ignorant of the prison is to be able to pretend no prison exists, without pretending, because you believe it is not there. Yet it is. No doubt, it is.

Cuervoblanco cannot avoid seeing the vines. Dollygdrazyllika as form of government is enforced vine, though there is no –ism yet added to historical books that encompasses that mode of human control properly. Dollygdrazyllika is an –ism not yet exposed as existing, an elaborate system of militaristically cultured vines that cling to every living being, to pull them into the psychic industry of organic matter control, to train organic matter to behave as inorganic resources. And though it might seem the increase of abstract profits would be the motivating reason behind such an unacknowledged –ism, it is more just a case of demented individuals at the top of the pyramid enjoying their view from the top of the cultural totem, in fact being aroused in ways that combine the creative spark of sexuality with the bloody finality of violence. Cuervoblanco is very much not one of those types, not born from their position, and being aware they exist, seeing their vines clearer than most, he can do nothing in life but oppose what seems obvious.

Dollygdrazyllika: Part One

It’s nearly impossible to not be conscious of audience when putting words together, since language by organic design is a means of communicating to others. And yet by letting ourselves get polluted by salivations for the fruits of word actions, we impose limitations on our reach, not necessarily in relation to human audience, but more in terms of what our language is reaching for. There is a vast wasted land we ignore when we become too attuned to audience.

That term “wasteland” is commonly enough used within language that it conjures up images of a post-explored world, completely to point of pillage and rape utilized by men, with the carbon-colored dilapidated hulks of abandoned civilization scarring the landscape. But the wasted land I speak of here is an internal wasted land, as vast and expansive as the space above, best exemplified by a clear night sky, with seemingly endless stars stretched out further than our monkey existence has come close to even guessing exists. That same space – unexplored even partially, and full of potentially everything, every Thing, and all of It – sits inside each human, and maybe each animal, and perhaps plants and even on the molecular level. Who is to say? Not me, because I’m only a man, writing humane words, attempting to ignore audience, though being these are humane words, obviously they are strictly for humans being.

Being human is not naturally a complicated procedure, though it is highly complex. The complexity of life is best exemplified in man through the corpus callosum connecting the right and left hemispheres of his walnut brain. A poorly developed corpus callosum, creating a bridge between the two sides of human existence, leaves a human being extreme and unbalanced, and unable to handle complex tasks or mind meanders. A thickly developed corpus callosum, bridging the two hemispheres, gives a more balanced and complex sensory processing organ, and enables complexity of existence. It is said that scientists studying Einstein’s brain found a deeply developed corpus callosum, which supports the theory I just now threw out at you, but also is dependent upon the findings of research scientists, so perhaps questionable information. All too often, they are polluted by their desired audience.

Man, meaning us humans being, tends to break things apart, literally, but also philosophically. We are less attuned to understand the overall complexity of life – the Big Picture, so to speak – than we are at splitting hairs into parts to analyze DNA and put together puzzle pieces we think will one day give us the Big Picture, when in actuality it destroys the Big Picture into fractured shards and spiritual fragments that lose their natural complexity. In other words, man complicates shit immensely, by breaking it apart, making it harder to be a simple human being, much less a complex one.

So that is the wasted land I speak of, that potential of richly explored vast space lying dormant within. Very much like the factory carcasses and fire-stained smokestacks we envision when we think “wasteland” is our existence as women and men walking around, upright, unused, exploited, wasted, scars upon the landscape. That is what it means to be humans being.

External is always reflection of internal, always the complicated senses complicating a complex but simple world. (We are trained to think of “complex” and “complicated” as synonymous, while “simple” is an oppositional word, but simple and complex are on the same dynamic plain whereas complications are an entirely different lower level of existence, which breaks all things – It – into parts, for interchange and exchange and rearrange. Complexity cannot be broken into parts, because it is simply whole.) So many of us immersed sadly into the external world as a reality can see all too clearly how the internal wasteland is reflected in our external structures. From the fire-breathing riverside factory to the simple white pine pallet, the madness and haphazard conditions of our humane geometry is somewhat obvious, if you are able to deny the dopamine triggers dwelling too heavily in the sensory experience causes.

This world we inhabit – externally speaking – becomes a dreary one as it is the sensory reflection of a collective wasted state. We indulge in touch, and then use those hands of the addict to “create” useful tools which further reinforce the complication fallacy that all things – It – is nothing more than parts to be piecemealed together in a limited variety of combinations. We indulge in sight of moving electronic images which further reinforce the complication fallacy by manufacturing “realistic” portrayals of pretend events necessitating complicated robot programs to “create”. The robot programs, built upon the philosophical spirituality of believing in complication fallacy, become an external extension of what we think it is to create. We indulge in listening to sounds to where we take the complicated sounds we make using the robot programs, and allow earbuds to blossom these manufactured sounds directly into our heavenly dome, blocking out the true complex sounds layered infinitely into the background or existence. Essentially, we are damming the simple complexity of all life with our own manufactured complications, all while doubling down on the complication fallacy, and proclaiming this new order of the world as Progress.

“You can’t fight progress,” a wise old curmudgeon of the darkest heart and harsh prejudiced brain once told me. I still consider him wise because despite his closed mind quick to condemn so many swaths of our shared society space, he had somehow navigated existing for many decades, thus had seen many various forks in the life path, and these travels always give our heart valid “sense” even if our closed mind is not open to exhibiting these lessons in our words. And he was right, because to fight the external Progress man claims to build, would be to attach one’s self to that external unnecessary complication, to grab through war the fallacy. One can’t disprove fallacy by beating at it with anger and hatred. Fallacy is just fallacy, and the nature of life is complex enough for one without complicating it into endless pieces, and then demanding that all the other pieces not considered self also agree completely, or at least partially, or at least tolerantly. Tolerating fallacy acknowledges it exists to an extent, so by fighting the wasted land, you get further buried into the wasted land.

Thus, as the external wasted land reflection of collective internal gluts becomes too much to bear, for some souls the personal goal for progress is to beautify the external waste with whatever sensory color they can find to best replicate whatever beautification efforts are going on internally. Not all make those internal efforts, or feel that umbilical tie to creator spirit, a possession of spirit to splash “beauty” by any means necessary upon the waste.

Within the wasted land systems, and ruled by the complication fallacy, are orders called Civilization, ruled by those who benefit the most from the complication fallacy. With these pyramid-shaped schematics of civilized life, the ordered beneficiaries more often than not are ordained with the accepted (meaning commonly taught through cultural education) appearances of “beauty”. Thus, those born outside that benefit, or crushed deeper down on the pyramid structure, have to struggle to create an alternate beauty. A harsh side-effect of the internal/external complication is that just as external reflects internal, we falsely theorize that internal reflects external. So this creates large swaths of humans being who become heavily conflicted with feelings of self-loathing, self-ugly, weighed down by pyramid scheme’s educational enforcement of fallacy, so that we lose our part in the basic and simple beautiful complexity of existence. We feel like we are shit, quite literally within the metaphor of civilization.

If blessed with perseverance of raw spirit, these crushed types will begin to flourish the industrial detritus they are condemned to live amidst with splashes of the internal beauty that somehow still blossoms inside of themselves. But make no mistake – this is no chance “somehow” so much as it’s affirmation of the beautiful complexity of life, that even the ugliest industrial part or piece of the complication fallacy, when properly aligned with universal creator spirit, becomes beautiful, in direct contradiction to the accepted and educated fallacy. In fact – actual fact – this becomes a contra-indication to narrative of the pyramid structure, and simply by being simple and naturally beautiful, these aberrations to the fallacy are actual acts of rebellion. The layered beauty to this type of rebellion, however, is that the rebellious force does not become at war with the pyramid civilization and the fallacies it considers truth. The force is not working counter to the fallacy, fighting it and thus becoming further enmeshed within it, so much as it is simply returning to natural complex intertwining of all – ugly and beauty, together in one, as one.

This is not a complicated process for a person, but it is hard, not as in having a lot of parts necessitating more difficult-to-procure robot programs, but hard as in the act takes strength. And though, being all our humans being, every person has the potential for that strength. But the pyramid crushes downward hard, and the education of our minds attunes us to external senses not internal census, and this all unnecessarily complicates our strength, which again – is simple though complex. Each of us has the strength of the universe within us, at the nuclear power level.

Many times, the chance vagaries of life put packs of us nomadic, socially-inclined humans being into small localities confined by geopolitical magic or actual physical jutting rocks or inconvenient waterways. These become our psychological notion of “home”. Usually, these areas will be defined within accepted power structures in place (current masters of the pyramid schematic) by commonly shared visual representations, historically silken flags of some sort. The practice of utilizing these visual displays as representation of collective self is generally enforced through educational programs offered “freely” by pyramid power structure masters; thus the notion of “home” becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts, and all the various localities all somehow are able to think “we are the best”.

A negative consequence of this effect is when multiple localities with differing psychological representations of self butt up against each other, the conflicting “we are the best” notions often initiate a “we are better than them” conflict. A further consequence of these conflicts is that within each separate tribe, so to speak, minority contrarian thought streams will feel solidarity with outsider groups, and thus be regarded as a threat from within by the pyramid power system. So the pyramid works tirelessly to instill strong sense of self-identification with the master pyramid schematic, all while weeding out dissent, as well as protecting the individual power scheme against threats from neighboring power schemes.

For the purposes of this story being created through language, the particular locality conjured up is known “officially” as Dolyggdrazyllika. It exists without a historically-known (in your “world” as reader, coming from your own self-experience pyramid power structure form of control) flag, and the visual image its inhabitants self-identify to represent “home” is a bird stencil.

Oddly enough, not the shape of the paint left behind, but the stencil itself is regarded as the identifier of Dolyggdrazyllika, so that citizens of this land do not publicly paint the image on buildings or linens or elder trees or stone slabs, but instead cut a stencil and spray paint the image on wood slabs, over and over, to give the stencil itself a layered appearance, according to position in life usually, and then burn the wood in ceremonial fires every thousand days during a holiday called Idol. (More on Idol practices later, should it come up again during the course of this word wander, but the name of the holiday was born from the raw notion of a wholly day – day to be whole – off an acronym for Intercultural Day Of Letgo, known briefly in your world as International Day Of Lounge.)

Higher-ups in the pyramid used gold and silver colors for their stencil layering, as is common amongst most humans being and their power structures, as humans worship shine as a signifier of power. For the support networks just below the tips of the pyramid, often darker earth tones were used – blacks and browns and deep greens, much like the camouflage of modern earth soldiers. The further down the pyramid you got, the more outlandishly bright the stencil coloring, to give dull oppressed lives splashes of hope.

The central character and potential hero/antihero of this story is Cuervoblanco. In many ways, Cuervoblanco seems like myself, but there’s a lot about him I don’t know yet. I would expect that you as reader are expecting me to be the omniscient narrator, who comes into this mutual agreement of writing/reading knowing everything that’s going to happen, having mapped it out in a creation process. Unfortunately, that’s not what this is. I’m no creative. Dollygdrazyllika is an actual world with an actual resident named Cuervoblanco, and actual events are ongoing. For whatever reason, this world has crossed realms with visions which seems to be emanating within my physical existence somehow, but with all the strange human technology related to transmission of stuffs, and with human technology always chasing universal technology (that word feels clunky in relation to the universe though), I would imagine – no pun intended – that the universe is more than able to transmit these visions into my physical being with little control to resist or accept it on my part. In other words, my free will in this mutual agreement of writing/reading is somewhat limited.

My relation to all this is more of a reporter, sharing what details I can uncover through words, although none of it is exactly covered up in the first place, so much as I don’t know about it. Thus, this is an ongoing investigation I am reporting on, and the story may at times lack the strictly chronological narrative standard “stories” you are used to in the conventional writer/reader unspoken agreement. I can’t promise that seamlessness, as the universe doesn’t really give us that, does it?

From what I’ve gathered though, there are points of empathy on my part for Cuervoblanco’s existence. And then on the other hand, I live on the earth we consider real, where Dollygdrazyllika doesn’t technically exist. So I can only be but so empathetic.

It is difficult to share stories as they unfold because I, in telling, and you, in reading, place so much of ourselves into what is being told. We desperately want to be part of the story, to relate, and the loose definition of each word compounded infinitely by all those loose definitions added together into sentences and paragraphs attempting to recreate the existence of Cuervoblanco simultaneously enables us to do just that while complicating telling the actual story as it actually in actual fact happened.

This, of course, doesn’t even take into consideration our real earthly way of believing these types of stories aren’t actually happening, but created, so that the creator can own the world. I can’t own this story of Cuervoblanco and his happenings and struggles in Dollygdrazyllika; I am simply sharing as much as he allows sharing with me. This is his story, and to be honest, I’m not sure how much I am betraying his trust by even relaying these things to you, the reader. Were he to catch wind of this happening, he might be pissed, and cut me off entirely, ending forever the visions being transmitted by the universe into what is considered my physical being.

Nonetheless, Cuervoblanco is the main character as he’s the one relaying the story. The first thing you notice about Cuervoblanco is his face hidden behind a white mask, which he always wears, and plans to die in. This is because of his own immense shame felt internally. The face is what we are most often visually identified as by others, and it also masks the part of the body where brain is concealed, which is where we are educated to believe our sense of self is most deeply shaped. Thus, when psychically hobbled (sometimes even crippled) by internal doubts and struggles against chemical tides of depression, the face – which we also identify as self, through mirrors and photographs and selfies – becomes the representation of our own horrible shame. This is certainly the situation Cuervoblanco is born into the middle of, and from an early age, he took to wearing the all-over mask to conceal anyone else from regarding his face as what was him, for fear of them also seeing the loathing and persistent questioning coming up with poor answers.

To what end? Would he realize happiness and unmask, to reveal his face to the world? If not, and he truly was these awful things his psyche conjured as self-identity, wouldn’t the external world, which is somewhat superficially motivated in Dollygdrazyllika, much like our real earth, just regard his white mask as what Cuervoblanco was, and see that as the horrible, wretched thing associated with his name? What was he truly accomplishing by wearing the mask?

I can’t say, and if he knows, he’s not told me. But the mask was always a part of what he appeared to be. He was careful to have at least three, so that a clean one was available to change into at all times. The first time as a child he was stuck with his lone mask, muddied by normal childhood existence, it filled him with just a touch more self-loathing and doubt, as if his face’s perceived failures was leaking through the mask, sullying even that. So he got a second white mask.

It should be noted he sleeps, eats, baths, exists entirely in this mask, so having the second made sense for those moments when he needed to change it out for a fresh one, to launder the dirty one. But who among us launders all their garments in a timely and perfect manner, even those of us required by our tormented psyche to always wear a white mask? So Cuervoblanco kept a third mask, in case more than one hit the laundry basket for too long. And he’s made it clear to me that he actually possesses four of these masks, with the fourth one never worn, and saved for burial, so that no matter what happens in life, even in those last moments of physical existence, no matter how tortured and bloody, he’ll have a fresh, crisp, pure white mask to be laid out nicely for death.

(The question occurred to me, though, who would change his mask in that moment, and be the one to see his “real” face, if that hidden mass of organic molecules will even be considered his real face after a lifetime of residing behind a white mask. I didn’t dare ask him though, because a struggling man sharing his story with you doesn’t need you questioning the wisdom of his decisions towards getting right again.)