This will mark the first occasion that I have written text directly into this document, inserted my thoughts at the tail end of what has becomes a 700+ page silky beast of deathly desires, and so marks a turning point in this project, which I may not have been completely convinced was in fact a work in itself, as well as in my orientation towards my future activities. I will give myself these next two days to read through this tome, to make edits, clean it up, imagine what it might be like for another human to lay their eyes upon the words, try to anticipate their empathy and sensitivities, how they might see their mind working through my units, either by projection or direct implication. What is it that we recognize in our own voice? It always sounds different in recordings, entering back in to consciousness through the ears and bypassing the direct reverberations of the jaw bones and skull rooms. I wonder who will see themselves in this work, if they might see themselves as I have seen them, or if it will be more sides of me in turn, and infinite regress of my own facets shimmering through a crystalline interference pattern of voices and analytical gaze.

A journey took place, one which I may still be recovering from. We got out of town, escaped into the wide open world of possibilities, but never found the wild place. Lots of open highways, savory sun light, giant tumbleweeds and juicy succulents, color drenched rock faces and cool silver dew cave walls, but always there were people, evidence of hands that came before, artifacts of the human branding all the surfaces, making the whole world feel manufactured, forming all of the scenery into photographic backdrops, rendering all the natural scenes into low resolution projections of a ghostly apparition of some long dead original beauty. I feel this way every time I go out there, out looking for nature, out to the wild, coming up to the threshold that might lead beyond that which I can see and can securely know only to realize that I'm not prepared to tread there, that there's nowhere to park and we didn't pack the right bag and we simply do not have the time to venture off in that direction for who knows how long just to see if we can catch a glimpse of something which feels unfamiliar, just to see if we can get lost. Not that I'm not up for that, but it requires planning, or so it seems, if I expect to return, to go and see it and also be able to come back without enduring unnecessary discomforts - this is why I plan, to avoid excessive displeasure. The question remains, what is to be done with that information, the experience of wilding, to venture and see - what exactly? - only to go back to the save brick cave and return to the same toxic employment. No, that's not really the question, so much as a larger looming issue: how do I stay out there? How do I not come back? Is it a matter of conviction, of determinism? What would allow me - within or without - to make such a decision, to go without turning back, and is it a metaphor or a physical path to be carved out of the undifferentiated ground?

So there's that issue of the wild, of the opening of wide open space, the recalculation of subjective scale, generally what people seem to refer to as "grounding" or "being grounded," but before that condensation there was a more radical evaporation, a burning off of some built up pressures, a release that didn't come clean and simple but felt like it was ripped off, forcefully removed, like reopening a room to douse it with alcohol to kill infection festering beneath the second skin. ___ had been struggling with herself, seemingly more with her words and expression towards me than the genesis of thoughts and feelings welling up inside her, building up pressure against an invisible impediment, cracking fissure in a glass dam of her own making, and we had been swimming in it for some time. In her defense, I was also swimming in some boiling pools, stewing in my own pots while also trying not to get scalded as I dip in and out of hers, and as expected a lot of that pressure was released in the car during our trip. I anticipated it, tried to address it, pointed to its future occurrence (weeks before departing) and tried to speculate upon the struggle, thinking we could get a head start on the unraveling while still at home with space to breath on our own, but it wasn't until we poured all of our ingredients into one pot and sealed on the lid, committed to spending many days and hundreds of miles stirring the sludge, that all of the aromas of discontent began to swell to the surface. I went out there, on the road, thinking I would be recording the whole thing - to contribute to this text, no doubt - that I would bare witness to a great unfurling above and beyond but including and rooted within my own being-in-relation to my intimately entwined other, but when the time was upon me, the words were being exchanged, the reality of the experience was far too messy, too cumbersome to account for while also being immersed in, dedicated to with the necessary sensitivity. Recording as that moment - during those long difficult moments - would have been grossly inappropriate to the present as well as produced a disgusting burden upon the future, which has now become present yet again, and could not be justified. Unfortunately this means I am without a document of the events that transpired during those two weeks of roaming the deserts, but I also realize that this fact - being without record - was significant in itself. This journey was not a project, but a relationship, a recalibration of self without so much pragmatic scrutiny, and so I will leave it out there, beyond where I care to step, a place better left to fade into the shadows of memory.

I've returned, to the urban cave and this alienated life, but I've brought some morsels with me and feel sustained, for now. I will attend to this text, two days to read through it, and I wonder how I will respond to this tumultuous past. I sense that I now know where this is all going so that I can calmly lay it down, begin work on other avenues of thought and feeling, even other forms of writing which may be amended on the end of this one but will certainly be of a different flavor or texture. What comes now is the music and the movement and the stagecraft. What comes first is the completion of the fifth section of the Prologue, and the binding of this text into a physical object, and the initiation of graphic diagrams which attempt to make sense of the relation between these two ways of working. Yes, of course I will keep writing, but perhaps I can now say that I know what that amounts to, where to put those words, can delineate between what I know and where I want to continue exploring. What comes now is the proper opera, a piece of theatrical philosophy (or philosophical theater) which is played out everyday, a practice of extreme attention, compassionate self-scrutiny, conscientious model building, and a rigorous research-based practice oriented towards articulating the thesis of my PhD. What happens next is radical speculation into the abyss, from the known, of and/or for (in tribute to and in service of) the great unknowable beyond, which really is just a matter of scale, a manner of scaling, a process of returning to ones proper scale while immersed in the impossible expanse of everything and nothing circulating all around the center which is here, which is me, at least for now... until I come across some new information which allows me to locate it somewhere else.