****URGENT****
From: The Institute of Archeological Research <Leetho Zouich>
To: The Institute of Historical Research <John Vega>
Date: 10/5/2282
Time: 12:00 hours
Dear John,
Another discovery from our groundbreaking excavations! A manuscript found this morning relates to your research; the fall of the Civilized Empire. And, just to make things interesting, I am writing you in the same way they did back then.
I read your most recent and well-praised article. I agree with your theory; "an over identification with language; hence symbols," destroyed them. The information below, accordingly, shows very primitive thought patterns. However, it also manages a tiny spec of truth. It is very interesting and somehow funny. I believe it will help you prove your case.
The scraps seem to be a part of what I believed was called a dairy (Was it not you that discovered that term and explained the bizarre object?). You will receive the physical sample tomorrow. Our tests indicate its date around 2002 - very close to the beginning of the fall indeed. The attachment is a copy of the manuscript. I am sure you will understand its significance much more than I.
Cheers,
Your Friend: Leetho Zuich
<ATTACHMENT>: EXCAVATION #$%RGWE$%
#$TEWT@#$
123
6/6/2090
Dear diary,
The only true knowledge about myself is the knowledge that who I am, I can’t remember. In other words, what I am right now is not I but the only part of me I did not forget.
I am, in effect, a building on illusionary pillars, a ghost with no previous life. I am unreal but very real, yet truly unreal because I am keenly aware of my unreality. In fact, my unreality is the only thing I can truly be a 100% sure about since everything else I know about myself comes from what I remember (which is fake). The real me is lost in my memories, it got trampled and forgotten in my self-construction – in the person that I became. The real me is only what I don’t know about me… try that for a living.
You may ask, why do I care? What does it matter? After all, everything that I call “unreal” is my life since around six or so. I am a made man of 35, with an ex-wife and a small kid. But then again, I am a man of 35 and questions like “who am I?” are the stuff midlife crisis are made off. Then you see now, I really have no choice. This bug has been bothering me for a long time and it is about time I kill it. I have to find out what happened to me and who I am. Either that or… No, I will not pay for a shrink. My wife had one and all it did was screw me up.
6/12/2090
Dear Diary
… A few days ago, Tom, my shrink, asked me to try meditation and dwell deep into my past before my “transformation”. We, Tom and I, refer to the transformations as the period of change from my authentic self to my current falsehood. He also recommended that I inquire my relatives about my behavior before that period.
After consistently nagging my family with millions of questions and having to swallow all the crap I got from my bar mates for talking too much about my newfound spirituality, I came up with a compelling theory.
You see, I barely talked as a kid. If asked something like “Is it cold outside?” I would mumble my answer with the less details possible in what my mother called an impolite “yeah”. You may wonder, what if I was asked, “How is the whether outside?” According to my relatives, I did not answer to “how” questions. I did not act this way out of stupidity or non-comprehension. I was quiet because there were never enough words to describe what I perceived. I did not see the world through words and I did not see why to encapsulate it to communicate it to someone else. Why would you do that, why get stuck in the tip of the iceberg.
My lack of communication was fine with me but as I got older too much complaining and pressure from my parents and relatives forced me to express myself unwillingly. It was from then on that the inaccurate replaced the real.
Sadly, the more I talked, the more I identified and build myself around what I said. For example, when I thought back to the previous day, I remembered the image I described to others rather than the all-encompassing now mysterious way I used to perceive.
And then gradually before I knew it, my memory became what I had put together with words – words, which I always knew were inapplicable to explain the world! I am now a construction of unsatisfactory and un-truthful explanations and descriptions. I am a fake.
6/17/2090
Dear Diary
….The only person who understands me is my kid, and Joe (a homeless drunk). I have told my kid my story many times. I take him to the bar and over a pine of beer I tell him to be very careful with language. I tell him not to write and to speak as little as possible. I want his essence to remain pure and intact so he does not have these problems later in life. Joe agrees with me.
I can’t go back to whom I was when I did not use this incomplete system of expression and perception. Reality must have been amazing back then. No boundaries at all. No references to anything, similarities, or differences. Everything unimaginable.
I wish I had never started this cycle.
… I sit on the peer talking to myself and building my reality once more with these damn symbols. I watch the sunset from here almost every afternoon. It is from this place that I have had the most success at stopping the voice in my head - the one that keeps building my illusion. Tom thinks I am going nuts. He asked me to consider spending more time under supervision. I just hope my kid does not develop an inner voice of his own.
<END OF MESSAGE>
From: The Institute of Historical Research <John Vega>
To: The Institute of Archeological Research <Leetho Zouich>
Date: 10/5/2282
Time: 21:00 hours Dear Leetho
Thank you for the quick delivery. The information on the document assured my theory. As I intuited, civilized man identified so strongly with their symbols, hence mind, that they forgot about everything else. How they communicated still strikes me to this very day! It was so limited, it is hard to believe.
My friend, the scraps you sent me reveal the beginning of the end. This man realized his adaptation and his lost. He was ahead of his time and closer to us. Soon many more realized what he realized and the population declined sharply. This was what I have coined "The Great Depression," because they all got really depressed. During this time, fertility rates dropped to a low .04. In some areas north of the equator, where it all began, it even reached zero. This lasted close to two hundred years.
Good luck with the rest of your excavations. And please, I know you are trying to be clever, but let this be the last time we communicate using this ancient mode – it’s painful.
Your Friend;
John Vega
<END OF MESSAGE>
From: The Institute of Archeological Research <Leetho Zouich>
To: The Institute of Historical Research <John Vega>
Date: 10/5/2282
Time: 12:00 hours
Dear John,
Another discovery from our groundbreaking excavations! A manuscript found this morning relates to your research; the fall of the Civilized Empire. And, just to make things interesting, I am writing you in the same way they did back then.
I read your most recent and well-praised article. I agree with your theory; "an over identification with language; hence symbols," destroyed them. The information below, accordingly, shows very primitive thought patterns. However, it also manages a tiny spec of truth. It is very interesting and somehow funny. I believe it will help you prove your case.
The scraps seem to be a part of what I believed was called a dairy (Was it not you that discovered that term and explained the bizarre object?). You will receive the physical sample tomorrow. Our tests indicate its date around 2002 - very close to the beginning of the fall indeed. The attachment is a copy of the manuscript. I am sure you will understand its significance much more than I.
Cheers,
Your Friend: Leetho Zuich
<ATTACHMENT>: EXCAVATION #$%RGWE$%
#$TEWT@#$
123
6/6/2090
Dear diary,
The only true knowledge about myself is the knowledge that who I am, I can’t remember. In other words, what I am right now is not I but the only part of me I did not forget.
I am, in effect, a building on illusionary pillars, a ghost with no previous life. I am unreal but very real, yet truly unreal because I am keenly aware of my unreality. In fact, my unreality is the only thing I can truly be a 100% sure about since everything else I know about myself comes from what I remember (which is fake). The real me is lost in my memories, it got trampled and forgotten in my self-construction – in the person that I became. The real me is only what I don’t know about me… try that for a living.
You may ask, why do I care? What does it matter? After all, everything that I call “unreal” is my life since around six or so. I am a made man of 35, with an ex-wife and a small kid. But then again, I am a man of 35 and questions like “who am I?” are the stuff midlife crisis are made off. Then you see now, I really have no choice. This bug has been bothering me for a long time and it is about time I kill it. I have to find out what happened to me and who I am. Either that or… No, I will not pay for a shrink. My wife had one and all it did was screw me up.
6/12/2090
Dear Diary
… A few days ago, Tom, my shrink, asked me to try meditation and dwell deep into my past before my “transformation”. We, Tom and I, refer to the transformations as the period of change from my authentic self to my current falsehood. He also recommended that I inquire my relatives about my behavior before that period.
After consistently nagging my family with millions of questions and having to swallow all the crap I got from my bar mates for talking too much about my newfound spirituality, I came up with a compelling theory.
You see, I barely talked as a kid. If asked something like “Is it cold outside?” I would mumble my answer with the less details possible in what my mother called an impolite “yeah”. You may wonder, what if I was asked, “How is the whether outside?” According to my relatives, I did not answer to “how” questions. I did not act this way out of stupidity or non-comprehension. I was quiet because there were never enough words to describe what I perceived. I did not see the world through words and I did not see why to encapsulate it to communicate it to someone else. Why would you do that, why get stuck in the tip of the iceberg.
My lack of communication was fine with me but as I got older too much complaining and pressure from my parents and relatives forced me to express myself unwillingly. It was from then on that the inaccurate replaced the real.
Sadly, the more I talked, the more I identified and build myself around what I said. For example, when I thought back to the previous day, I remembered the image I described to others rather than the all-encompassing now mysterious way I used to perceive.
And then gradually before I knew it, my memory became what I had put together with words – words, which I always knew were inapplicable to explain the world! I am now a construction of unsatisfactory and un-truthful explanations and descriptions. I am a fake.
6/17/2090
Dear Diary
….The only person who understands me is my kid, and Joe (a homeless drunk). I have told my kid my story many times. I take him to the bar and over a pine of beer I tell him to be very careful with language. I tell him not to write and to speak as little as possible. I want his essence to remain pure and intact so he does not have these problems later in life. Joe agrees with me.
I can’t go back to whom I was when I did not use this incomplete system of expression and perception. Reality must have been amazing back then. No boundaries at all. No references to anything, similarities, or differences. Everything unimaginable.
I wish I had never started this cycle.
… I sit on the peer talking to myself and building my reality once more with these damn symbols. I watch the sunset from here almost every afternoon. It is from this place that I have had the most success at stopping the voice in my head - the one that keeps building my illusion. Tom thinks I am going nuts. He asked me to consider spending more time under supervision. I just hope my kid does not develop an inner voice of his own.
<END OF MESSAGE>
From: The Institute of Historical Research <John Vega>
To: The Institute of Archeological Research <Leetho Zouich>
Date: 10/5/2282
Time: 21:00 hours Dear Leetho
Thank you for the quick delivery. The information on the document assured my theory. As I intuited, civilized man identified so strongly with their symbols, hence mind, that they forgot about everything else. How they communicated still strikes me to this very day! It was so limited, it is hard to believe.
My friend, the scraps you sent me reveal the beginning of the end. This man realized his adaptation and his lost. He was ahead of his time and closer to us. Soon many more realized what he realized and the population declined sharply. This was what I have coined "The Great Depression," because they all got really depressed. During this time, fertility rates dropped to a low .04. In some areas north of the equator, where it all began, it even reached zero. This lasted close to two hundred years.
Good luck with the rest of your excavations. And please, I know you are trying to be clever, but let this be the last time we communicate using this ancient mode – it’s painful.
Your Friend;
John Vega
<END OF MESSAGE>