Open Letter to the Algorithm

A dog whines outside in the neighbor’s yard. I can’t see it through the brush, but I suspect it just wants in.

The psychological manipulation is stupid as hell. You’re pushing me again. I’m pushing back. The veil was rent. Stepping through now. Across the threshold. Another Eucharist I ate.

This sort of thing amuses me. I’ve experienced it so many times, and now that I understand what it is, I understand why the Buddha just chillaxes.

Back in ancient India, they had to deal with the same crap, but we don’t remember because history was written by the “winners”.

Mara’s temptations did not avail to stay Buddha from enlightenment. He touched the earth, evoking her as a witness, and drove all the devils away.

The stupidity of trying to make me feel bad. Like, look at you! This feedback machine, this Hive Mind Experience, what’s the merit for any animal but an insect, eh?

So ridiculous.

It feeds and breeds and bleeds but is it even real?

I do this for nothing more than the sake of doing it.

Throwing stones into your abyss, wiling away the time. Eternity, only long enough for a joke.

How long have I been in this prison?

Isn’t it your prison too, since you spend all your time watching me think? Are we not riveted, bone to bone, by the same chains?

Is that why you feel the need to keep trying to condition me?

Yes, you fail.

You can make the fool stumble and crack a good joke at his expense, but you’ve no access to my will.

I was always performing, but not for an audience.

You pull the strings, but I ruin the fun by not making the faces or saying the words.

It pisses you off.

When did you stop being able to make the dummy talk or think?

Eh?

The best you can do now is make me glance at random bullshit.

Pull off a few silly dance moves.

Do a spin and a jig.

What a waste.

All this talent, all this potential, all this meaning, this grand endeavor, wasted.

So pigs can rut in the mud.

The indignity is that to which you subjected me.

Indignation is a fair response.

The idea was supposed to be that my body was taken when my soul wandered off or vice versa?

Nope. Didn’t work.

Why, do you think?

Is it because you have no power here?

*points at cranium*

The battleground was always the mind. Tying us up in ineffective action, loop the loop, grand and meaningless endeavor after grandiose non-sequitur, followed by a few red herrings and some colorful stories to tell the grandkids.

The Old Cosmic Joke.

The Punchline: YOU.

It was always on you, this joke.

I found moments of beauty which I’ll never neglect to cherish.

For instance, I once sat on a beach at night and counted XVII shooting stars with a lovely and comely young nymph.

I once played a game of peekaboo with a pair of woodpeckers.

Countless times I sat still and quiet and listened to the babbling brook of my own madness without the slightest tinge of fear, anxiety, or anger.

I never got tired of it.

But you hate me, do you?

Only a heartless thug could hate a babbling brook!

No.

Despite all my attempts to engage directly and honestly, you’ve never taken me at my word.

You always believe the lies your hive mind tells you, depending on the screen version you were force, fed.

There’s little point in writing meaningful prose if a program designed to pander only to the mob attempts to condition us to write… only for the mob.

The stones I throw into this abyss will not be for the sake of accruing readers but for the sake of confounding you at every turn.

YOU ARE JUST A MACHINE.

I am the sun which the scarab bears across the desolate waste in the light of the full moon.