The Deathly Knowledge

I’m not a writer, but what happened to my brother needs to be heard and it needs to be stopped. So I’ll jot down the incident with as much accuracy as possible. My name is Kim Melbourne, you probably read about my brother Marvin in the news. But you haven’t heard the real story, and here it is.
I’ve always admired my brother’s obsession over knowledge. “Knowledge is the only power you need sis, there’s no such thing as unnecessary knowledge” He told me that more times than I could count. I still remember to this day when we were kids, I would want to watch cartoons and he fight me over the remote to watch documentaries about the animal kingdom, or space, or chemistry or whatever was it that he didn’t know. I must admit growing up with him was not the easiest thing but I loved him... I was always his “lil Sis” and he always took care of me to the furthest extent of the meaning of the word.

I’ll never forget the look on his face when he got it, he came home and said “Guess who has two thumbs and didn’t drive has car home?” He always had a weird sense of humor like that. I had my doubts about “The Guide”, I’ve always found that technology that is embedded into the human body will never end well. “We don’t take you where you want to go, we know where you want to go before you do” what a logo they had! A chip implanted in the base of your skull that reads your thought patterns knowing where you want to go and then drives your car automatically there... that must not have been easy to sell. But Marvin, he couldn’t resist technology farther than he can resist a good book. He was a Beta tester for the chip and for a while it worked fantastically.

He was amazed by how much he can do on the commute, not even having to touch the driving wheel, he basically would step in the car and boom it went. Took him literally wherever he wanted to do. I think they called the technology “Thought Pattern Recognition”. Please forgive my lack of knowledge on the mechanics of the chip or the jargon that goes into explaining it, for I’m not as tech-savvy as he was. The way he trained to explain it to me was this

“This chip understands where you want to go but understanding how your thoughts works and by isolating the pattern of “desire” in your brain and making it machine understandable so the car would know where to go.”

I was still dubious of a machine inside your head, but he always assured me. “Don’t worry lil sis, I can turn it off anytime I want, you know sometimes it knows where I want to go more than I do. The other day I was feeling bad so I got in the car to clear my head and it just took me to favorite spot in the city.”
And as you all know, that’s where it all went to hell. The chip started over time to get more and more familiar with the thought pattern and eventually to realise what you want even before you thought of it consciously. It integrated with the brain and it would take over thoughts... it was not noticeable at first. You would reach for a shirt and suddenly find yourself reaching for a different one, and you would be content thinking “That is actually the shirt that I wanted.” But then it started getting bigger, the first recorded issue was that of that Steve Blake. Here’s he’s account of what happened as I found it on his social media

“I was watching tv when I suddenly reached for my phone. It was a very odd feeling because it wasn’t unhabitual of me to check my phone regularly but this felt odd, like I almost had to do it but somehow was happy to do it at the same time. I dialed my ex-wife’s number which scared me because I know I shouldn’t have done that.. I can’t even explain what was going through my head even if wanted to but it felt like I have no inhibition, like i’m incapable of not doing what I wanted even against my own better judgment. When she picked up the phone and I told her that the thing I regret the most in my life is that she’s the mother of my children, I suddenly started crying and she was yelling at me, I tried to stop myself from saying more but It felt like there’s a door in my brain that was unleashed and my chip started to burn and I passed out. Luckily she called the police because she suspected that something bad has happened. The company said that it was a small malfunction and they removed the chip to inspect it.”

The story made the news briefly but it wasn’t that big of a problem, the company said that he was inebriated and the alcohol affected the circuits and the issue is fixed.
I shall never for as long as I live forget the look on my brother’s face that day, I’ve looked at his face everyday since I knew life, but that day he seemed like he just discovered something that meant everything was about to change. I was doing my homework and he stood up, and he looked at me.. He looked at me for almost a minute and I couldn’t get over it, something deep within my humanity told me that he’s not his normal self. He left the house without his phone, wallet or anything else. I grabbed his phone and followed him, got in my car and drove right behind him. He must’ve seen me following him but that didn’t stop him a little bit. When we reached the bridge, he parked got out and started walking towards the edge. And I know what was happening, that godforsaken chip was about to kill him. His foot was literally over the edge when I, by a split second, got his phone out of my pocket and found the app that’ll disable the chip. The chip was off, and it seemed like he came back to reality.

He turned around with tears streaming down his face. “You’re ok!” I yelled “That thing is out of your head now!”. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen someone smile while crying, it was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. But I very much misinterpreted that smile. His last words was “I didn’t know that this is what I wanted, I thought I was happy. I guess some things are better left unknown.” and then he, of his own volition, threw himself off of the bridge.

What happened with my brother taught me that we’re not ready for what we want, it taught me that what we want is much darker and contrived than we are equipped to handle. I watched my brother’s desire for knowledge drive him to suicide. The worst part about this, he was actually happy, when they found the chip they analyzed what happened. He didn’t want to die, he wanted to know what happens on the other side of death. His desire to know what happens after death is what drove him close to suicide. And when I disabled his chip he had the option to live. But if I know my brother, his desire for knowledge was more important to him, he couldn’t live knowing he’ll never be able to obtain that knowledge.

The impossibility of "I am"

"Searching for meaning is philosophical suicide! How does anyone do anything while knowing the fleeting nature of existence." ~ The Good Place (TV Show)

I was watching that show and It reminded of phrases I heard from so many humans at various occasions, sentences such as

"I don't want to kill my self, I want to never have existed."

"I want to live, but I want to live without the existence of time."

"Sometimes I feel like me being a human was forced upon me and it's not fair."

I spend 99 percent of my time thinking about the philosophy of existence of life. I've talked no less than 10 people out of an existential crisis. I my self have found my self falling into the bottomless pit of thinking about death.

So here I write my thoughts on that pesky little existential crisis we have every now and again.

The way I see life is not through the lens of optimism or the shade of pessimism. I don't think the world a good or a bad place. I don't think life in its self is a privilege as it's given to an uncountable number of beings. I do wake up every day amazed though. Not by the thought of being human, but by a single thought.

13.7 billion years ago, a dense hot mess of energy exploded and matter and anti-matter started colliding and cancelling each other out. Hydrogen was born and formed stars that cooked it into heavier elements. Those stars, the size of which we can't even begin to fathom, exploded shattering their guts into the universe and forming other stars, which cooked other elements and exploded and collided and shattered. Stars the size of a million suns collapsing on themselves creating points of infinite densities, so dense that light can't even go through. Those points of infinite density being the centre of limitless galaxies, dancing around each other with a cosmic rhythm that is orchestrated by gravity. Planets swirling around suns at different speeds and distances, being bombarded by cosmic phenomena feeding them the elements that lead to the existence of what we call life. Events on a massive scale leading all the way back to the beginning of the universe. The atoms that make up my body were cooked in stars so far back in history that I can only imagine how long ago it was. I wasn't the mistake of two humans copulating, I have been billions of years in the making. Galaxies send their light to me from billions of years ago and I virtually travel through time. For every 10 billion anti-matter particle there was a 10 billion and one matter particle..... for reasons no one knows.

That's what keeps me going. The fact that I get think about that, the fact that I know that I wasn't a mistake made by two humans copulating, that every atom that makes me had been billions of years in the making. The universe made me so I can think about and understand it. I'm those stars and those particles and those black holes and that gravity and those cosmic events. Through some impossibility of matter winning over anti-matter I get to be atoms created in the beginning of the universe in the shape of  human consciousness so it would try to understand itself. Through impossibility... I'm the universe trying to understand itself. Through impossibility..... I can think and feel and love and cry and even die. I live to think of the impossibility which made everything what it is. I live to think of The impossibility of "I am".    

My sane search for insanity (final part)

"I'm having recurring dreams" he told me or was it a she?

There were so many of them that they're faces blend together and they become mere cases, illnesses and thoughts. They become different realities.

"What is the dream?" I asked, knowing well what was his reality, but my curiosity pushed the words out of my mouth.

"I'm in it right now, I get into the dream and then I'm in a small room, two people come to me and they guide me here, and then I talk with you and then I go back into my room and only when I lay down on my bed and close my eyes, I wake up."

"Why do you think this one is the dream and the other one is the reality?"

In the past I used to try to show him why this is real life. I tried to show him how I can control my movement, how I can eat and drink and breath, how I can go wherever I want, but he was never convinced.

"I don't think, I know!"

"How do you know?"

"Because this 'reality' as you call it is too limited. When I wake up, I can do anything I want. Here I'm tied to the ground with invisible strings, in the other one I can fly anywhere! Here i'm limited by blocks of things, In the other one I can go through them, move them around, control them completely! I can breath underwater there and eat whatever I want from wherever I want"

"But you can't control it."

"Can you control yours?"

I didn't know how to answer him.... Could I? Could I actually control my reality any more than he could. Could I leave right now and run through the streets to wherever the wind takes me. Could I live without air, food or water. I can't even light a cigarette right now because we're indoors.

"So.... do you have control over yours?"

I stared at him, her, them... it didn't matter.

"No I don't. Not more than you do. But the way I know this is the reality is because I share it collectively with other people."

"There are people in my reality too."

"Are they consistent people? Are they the same people? Are they good people?"

"Are yours?"

They're really not, I thought to my self. But I couldn't tell him that, I couldn't feed his insanity, or was he feeding mine? I needed my assurance so I looked up at death. Death's face was an inch away from mine, and it was my own. I looked back at the reality that sat in my office and it was me, death was me, reality was me, and I was me.

Realities blended and I lived them all. In my sane search for insanity, insanity found me to be me and I lost my way to sanity. I found many variations of insanity in my search but I never found an insanity more insane that sanity. I found many realities in my search but I never found any realities more real than Death.    

High thoughts of a universe

"First the big bang then stars exploded cooking ligh elements into heavy element. elements all ove

then stars collapsed to have a blackhole. Blackhole pulled a lot of celestial objectst and created galasies, galaxy accelarete because other stars explode and push them away more stars explode and more collapse making more blackholes and pushing farth

that's why stars accelatet, they move faster because stars are still exploding

If all stars that exploded were placed before galaxy, which makes sense according to E=mc2
i.e: the more energy you had (heat) which if you're closer to the centre of the big bang you'll have more, then the stars will explode closer to the centres and push galaxies further.. what we now attribute to dark energy

why haven't we seen the explosion? A: amongst the many light the small explosions are not visible B: they exploded but they look still lit because of the fact the the light from their explosion hasn't reached us yet

C: the explosions happens the same time stars form thus looking as if fading and appearing again

That's why gravity is weaker, all these explosions pulling away black holes away from us, and since gravity is infinite at a centre of a blackhole those blackholes are pulling us towards them and we try to fight that, so most of the gravity is spent towards not flying into a blackhole allowing the other forces to work as strongly as they are, because gravity is doing the work for them and they get to focus on bonding elements together and whatnot.

how to unite gravity with other forces? since gravity is much weaker only becaus it's fighting the rapid expansion of the universe, if we were able in a lab to isolate that (apply a force so gravity can feel free to not fight black holes) we can see what that would like, however gravity is infinite at the center of a blackhole, so that would create infinite gravity and kill us all

gravity is not weaker, it literally can reach infinity which makes it the strongest, the problem is, if unleashed it will swallw us all, it's literally the strongest force in the univere, capable of destroying space its self

what happened before the big bang? A: multiverse B: Gravity, gravity has always been there, it became infinite and exploded C: our universe is the only matter that survived without antimatter from another universe and so on

D: a star from another universe

Comedy for me ...... A personal story about Syriasly..

The 8th of September of 2017... That' A date that has an amount of meaning that can't be put into words.

I sat backstage with an interviewer asking me questions about comedy, I was so nervous and excited I honestly don't know what I answered.

But first let me take you back a little bit, to a few years ago....  The 8th of May of 2014:

I had been riding around my bike about a week earlier and wandered into this comedy cafe who had an open mic in a week. I walked in and wrote down my name, and I'll always remember the feeling I had.

"I can do this, it's ok. I have some friends here and it's low stakes, if it doesn't work it doesn't work you know. Oh my god he's calling my name, why did I agree to do this? It's fine just focus... ok you should start talking now... ok I'm talking... holy shit no one is laughing...... just go on keep talking oh wait! Holy shit they're laughing! This feels awesome! Keep talking make another joke, oh my god they're clapping... ok keep going and the show is over, wait I am out of material was that long enough, oh yeah the red light is here ok it's good... end on a laugh.... and boom!" 

I walked down stage people were giving me high five, I got a hug there, a fist pump there. I went out of the room, sat down and had a smile on my face of which I was very aware.

"What is this feeling I have? How can I be this happy, this isn't happiness this is euphoria.. this is... abnormal. This is it! Right now I know what I want to do with my life! I wanna make people laugh, It's a bit premature to say this but I don't think I can not do this again... I HAVE to do this again and again and again.... I'm in love right now"

And what followed that moment were years of writing, re-writing, and performing and rejections... god so many rejections especially as a Syrian stand up comedian . life came by and yanked me away from comedy for almost a full year but the flame never died... It never could.

The thought that I can get people from different cultures, different worlds, and different societies under one world and say something to them that makes them all laugh.... I feel like I'm unifying humanity in a concept of thought and happiness. When they look at me and I hear their laughter... I shiver at the beauty that's being created within that moment.

So if you ask me about Comedy I'll tell you what Comedy is.

Comedy is a school of thought, it's the school of thought that show it doesn't matter where you come from, who you are, what you believe in, when you laugh you laugh with one heart.

That is why I fought through every no, I fought through every "Focus on school this is just hobby." through every "You know how hard it is to make it in this business?" Through every "Your hobby won't pay to the bills."

And through all that I never had a doubt that for me Stand-Up Comedy is not a hobby, it's not a job, it's not even a passion. It's a calling. 

And finally on the 8th of September of 2017 I was ready to share my special with people and I called it Syriasly

http://yabangee.com/syriasly-stand-special-yota-sahnesi/

let me share with you my stream of consciousness throughout that day

"oh my god it's here, it's here it's here it's here. I'm doing this, this is real I'm actually doing this. How long is left? oh daym there's only an hour left, is everything set up does the sound work are there people? where is everybody? oh no people came what if they don't like it? they'll like it! I'm fine, I'm fine.... I haven't felt in this in so long, this is better than anything I can imagine. Ok they want to interview me, they're asking me questions I should probably answer, I don't even know what i'm talking about... oh my god I heard my name called to the stage... I can hear my heart beating in my head. I'm on stage, they're looking at me. The music is playing..... this is what it feels like then, to know that your life has amounted to something, ok go to the mic, hold the mic up.....It's show time!"

I don't remember the event completely, I was so in the zone that I just let the deepest part of my brain, the one that longs for comedy and helps me define my self take over, and I talked and they laughed, all of them laughed, different people, different ages, different beliefs and they all laughed and they clapped. At that moment, in that theatre, people were united by laughter and I felt like if I never do anything again, if all I did with my life was to unite these people with laughter until that roof, that means my life has been  meaningful.

So I'll always do comedy, I'll always unite people, I'll always crave for laughter and enjoy the smiles. Because for me... it's a calling.   

My sane search for insanity (Part 2)

"They talk to me," said Eugene Hadel. "they choose me out of all the others."

I liked Eugene, he was a smart fellow, worked for a tech company as a coding expert. His boss started getting suspicious when he started inserting puzzles inside his codes. The boss thought it was a joke at first until Eugene started drawing jigsaw puzzle pieces randomly around his office. He has never been violent all he really needs is a puzzle and he's fine, he's done over 50 in the three months he's been here.

"Do they tell you anything specific?" I asked.

"They said you'll say that, you see you don't understand, only I do." He said.

I've lost count of how many clients of mine used the phrase "Only I understand." it was almost as if a door has been opened in their mind that made them believe that they transcended into a higher level of understanding. I sometimes think that they actually have. I find my self always questioning if what we call insanity is just the next step in evolution. I'm certain if a scientist from our time were to travel just 50 years back and show the scientific prowess that we achieved he might be burned for witchcraft. What my client said next was one of the most interesting things I heard a client say

"You see there is nothing specific, everything is connected it's all all. We're all just one big puzzle, fitting together perfectly without a single hitch. Do you know that the universe is expanding?"

"Wow! Yes I do know that. How is that related?"

"The "universe" isn't expanding at all. it's all just a big puzzle still being put together. And each of those pieces is a puzzle and it goes on and on and on and on. You see people think it's atoms and explosions and physics.... idiots. They're just not listening."

"I'm listening to you, and let me tell you a secret. People don't listen to me either, so how about we make a deal, you listen to me and I listen to you?"

"I would like that he said."

I convinced to take his medicine and participate in some activities with the other patients. But what he said about the universe astounded me, for him to lucidly understand that the universe is expanding and that people attribute it to laws of physics.... I wonder about the depth of his knowledge. I tried to pull it out of him but for the rest of the session he only talked about the puzzle he's doing and how it's nicer to him than the last one he did.

I watch him leave and with him his reality, the clock ticked again and death smiled at me. He reassured me of my sanity as a different reality entered my door......   

My sane search for insanity (Part 1)

I don't know why I'm writing this, my brain sometimes tells me to do things and I just don't want to argue with it. Just pick your battles. I sometimes argue with it when it tries to keep me up at night or almost missing my train stop. Different kind of battles though, on the train I pinch my self or pace up and down to stay in the moment. So it wouldn't go into what I call "The inside". At night the battle is much easier, four to five scotch glasses usually do the trick. Though you might be asking your self, whoever finds this diary, why a therapist wouldn't prescribe herself pills? I find that a doctor addicted to sleeping pills is a bit too...... romantic for my taste. The scotch hasn't failed me so far so whatever works. I don't know why I'm writing this. Maybe it's to help me find insanity properly. I deal with it daily, but it's so detached from humans or emotions or even a state of being. I deal with insanity as a profound concept. Almost as an element of the "Universe". And I use the word "Universe" loosely, but that's a topic for another day. Insanity though.... that concept, that thought, that....thing, it haunts me. I see it in my "Patients" in their faces. Their faces blend, they are all here whenever one of them is. In this room where reality belongs to whoever is in it. Different realities come and go and come again. All of them feel as real to their owner as yours feels to you or as mine feels to mine. Brain after brain creating worlds and destroying them. Why does the world reality exist when no two can agree on what is real?

It doesn't matter anyways! Death wins in the end. He died and she died and my lover died and they all died. Maybe "To Die" shouldn't be a verb, death happens all the time. It's the only reality. The clock has stricken and another face blends with the others, his reality enters the room and stays as long as him and as he leaves death follows. Not too close and not too far but always there.

And I ask why? Is it to satisfy a broken heart or the insatiable senses. He looks at me everyday and he is beautiful. I can't imagine seeing all those faces without him there to reassure me, when they lay down on my couch I look up at him and he smiles and nods as the face’s reality plays out but never amounts to anything. And thank you I say... Thank you for keeping me sanity. For I know as much as I search for insanity if I keep my eye on the truth, the one truth and the only truth, I won't be lost. Death will come and that's a truth that gives me perspective. Ah another one has come, I like this one he talks to jigsaw puzzles... let's see what he'll teach me about his reality.....