psyche

When I look back at this, I want to truly understand who I was. Even if the nihilist in me is dead and I am ready to start the end of my life (that is to say, be happy), I want to remember who I am. I don’t want to end up being someone with Farhan’s memories and body and life but a different set of algorithms - no! I want to stay the same. Not some evolved Farhan, better-suited to integrating with a society that I have rejected (well, a society that rejected me).

I am tired all the time. The classical music they play at Hammersmith Station in the morning (to make us docile?) is … it becomes insipid. Society has reached a level of abstraction I simply cannot tolerate. I don’t work! My brain doesn’t go well.

I have to somehow justify my own state. There’s no way to make everyone understand who I am. I have to trust that I can keep everything I have ever seen or known alive simply by remembering. Even if no-one else understands or remembers, I must, right? That’s enough, isn’t it?

Isn’t it?

What is The Node? It’s something to do with suburban gloom and computers… it has some anti-consumerist leaning… urgh. I have to know. I’ve got quite close to discovering through SEL and The Matrix. By that I mean their extended universes. The Lain anime, game and book together remind me of it, as do the The Matrix (first film), Animatrix and Matrix Comics. I have to somehow find out just who I am! It’s not something I’ve forgotten. I don’t think I ever knew what The Node was or is or whatever but I still feel like I did. I also feel like I will never know.

I don’t want to be dismissed as a quirk or an anomaly. There’s something going on here!

When I watch the Lain intro now, it’s no longer the interesting chords or funny animation that I’m concerned with. I see media convergence, reality and perception being truly accepted as separate etc. but I also see a girl with a funny hairclip, a child playing video games… I see something that is somehow connected to something. Basically. What is it? Why have I reacted so badly? Is my subconscious artificially giving me a purpose by filling in gaps with non-existent facts to promote the idea that I somehow have some reason to exist?

Am I finally breaking down, trying desperately to justify my own existence? Who am I? Who is Lain? What is The Matrix? What’s The Node?

Pax