APEX.

Perhaps you are wondering about how you wound up here.

How did my life amount to this? You ask.

Personally I tire of such banal self-absorption. There is nothing from its redundant histrionics that I can hope to learn.

But maybe I’ve established at least that now we are upon a common page.

So let me turn this page over and reveal what lies underneath it.

And I’ll spare you the fireworks.

You have enough of those all ready.

You once drove me to the Ocean.

The Ocean did not belong to you.

In fact, neither did the car.

Even driving did not belong to you.

It was a privilege. So was the car.

You abused this privilege. And it was taken away from you.

You crashed your car. And I am only glad that you did not crash it with me in it.

This problem is a common one in your generation.

I had an authority then, as the passenger, that you did not possess as the driver.

When our mutual friend drove you criticized him. I defended him. And you invalidated my defense of him by appeal to your own authority.

This authority was entirely illusory.

Note that. Fate itself proved you wrong.

The word “Irony” does not even touch this.

Irony is definitionally unexpected.

JUSTICE is the word for your self-inflicted car crash.

I say that I was grateful that I was not in the car when you crashed.

Hm. Perchance that never would have happened?

May be I all ways was your lucky charm.

And when I was absent you were very unlucky.

That I can’t deny. Much joy you have found in my company.

Some times it was joy that I did not permit you.

Some times it was joy at my expense.

And what suffering have I inflicted upon you?

None but your own karma.

Every time you crashed into any thing it was your own doing.

Sadly my own woes were the result of your own doing quite as well.

So I am here as a good luck charm one last time:

That you would stop doing it.

For it has begun to hurt more people than only yourself.

Your SELF I do not really care for.

It’s the people you continue to feebly exploit.

You see:

I never NEEDED you to drive me to the Beach.

I would have gone alone. I’d planned to.

So how can you hold me in debt for that day?

Not only do you expect some sort of “reward” for the spontaneous decision to drive me.

You ALL so expect some sort of “justice” for my OWN spontaneous act: which was to enter the water.

That water was my birth-right.

It IS my birth-right.

I did not hold it against you that you would not allow it to cleanse you of your sins, as I had done. But then: that all ways was your problem. The moment that any one became CLEANSED successfully of sins you would try to lure that person back INTO sin. You would do this by pretending that a sin had all ready been committed, and that only by according with your Will could atonement be attained. And what was the sin to be atoned? Naught but the very CLEANSING. It was as though for every transaction with God you collected a tax.

I used to find it repugnant and enraging.

Now I simply find it pitiful.

Mine was an example that all could follow.

Were they to follow it Life would be redeemed.

But you never bothered to learn basic morality.

For you altruism was something totally alien.

And that is why I hated you for all this time.

You never liked U2. Neither did my ex.

I all ways wondered why not. How could you condemn something so pure?

Then it dawned upon me:

You did not believe what Bono was saying.

You were totally delusional and paranoid.

You could never see things AS THEY WERE, but only in relation to WHAT THEY MEANT FOR YOU.

And again I am inclined to vomit. But I’ll pass. As shall this.

The thought of Genuine Kindness was alien to you.

You only USED Kindness as a veneer.

You expected to collect a toll for it.

Admit it: that there is genuine kindness that you have taken advantage of.

That to be kind is not pretentious! To PRETEND to be kind is pretentious!

And so long as you pretend, and knowingly so:

YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO QUESTION ME.

Now that that is settled:

Nothing belongs to you.

Because everything belongs to every one.

She – my beloved – belonged to me.

You had no exclusive rights to her.

When you told me that I did not “own people and their feelings”, you did not only lie to me. You all so spoke truthfully to your own self.

It feels good to get it out now.

Can’t you feel it?

I owed you nothing.

But you owed me every thing.

If only because you tried to hold me in your debt.

And that debt is your own karma too.

I never condemned you for not following my example.

I looked up at you upon your cliff with your so-called “friends” and laughed.

I might have grimaced. An older me would.

You were slacking.

You never bothered to learn the Higher Joys.

That is the danger with you, from which I must now protect the World.

I was HAPPY in the water.

Was that not enough for you??

Clearly not so, for you were ambivalent to my happiness.

You all ways were. You did not even care to ask me if it was justified.

To answer now, however belatedly:

It was.

I have studied Morality my entire life.

I know where my appetites rest.

And I have been assured by some of the most psychic people I have ever met that my personality would forbid me to do harm to others. That I can afford to be spontaneous.

If only I had not forgotten!!

You are not so.

If you cannot manage to simply be HAPPY without doing HARM, why bother to seek Happiness at all??

Admit it: when you preached to me of the “consequences” of happiness, as though happiness were some sin, you were speaking from your OWN foibles.

It was YOU that did not know the DIFFERENCE between harmful and harmless happiness. It was YOU that lacked the courage and discipline to forego harmful happiness for harmless sadness, that all might enjoy harmless happiness later.

What right do you have to question the Underlying Moral Core in people?

It is YOU that corrupts it.

It is YOU that elects it.

It is YOU that CHOOSES evil and then rationalizes it from an inferior posture.

All your skepticism of human nature is null and void, because you were never a victim of anything but your own device.

Admit it. And as with altruism, admit that your pretense does not preclude the actuality of the thing that it pretends to be.

Victimhood exists as much as goodness does, only because people like you forego goodness for evil.

Now then:

May be once you learn to stop FUCKING EVERY THING UP then you will know my posture and position. May be then you will FINALLY know the Company of Your Fellows and there will be no confusion about the benevolence of my intentions and of their effectiveness in both my own Healing (a right due to me) and my own Self-Transcendence (an excellence and service to the World, that I feel I owe unto IT.).

Until then:

Shut the FUCK up.

I’ll swim in the water and you will not stop me.

But this is not ABOUT the water, now, is it?

I must apologize for my conniving demeanour but I know that you will not accept a format that is more true to my Actual Nature. In decent company I need not be so sinister because they know me to be loyal and upstanding. They see me as I see myself when I project an image of purity; that I do not doubt. They even find me laughably innocent, it would seem.

But you do not see that. So I shall become what you can take seriously, though I can think of no one else who would…

Do not think it proves any thing but my ability to understand you.

This is about HER. This is about the people you have hurt.

This is about your absolute insolence in learning how to be a person.

And this is about how I would forego all religious dictates and smash your jaw into a curb if EVER you try to poison the mind again of a young, suicidal virgin.

I introduced her to you expecting you to live up to your own demands of loyalty.

When I saw self-interest in you I knew I’d made a mistake.

It was my last one.

And how will you plead?

Oh, I know.

You will bring up “all the times” I “pissed you off”.

Then you will hold me to your standards of acceptance and EXPECT me to accept this turn of events as well.

But we both know you never accepted ANY thing that went against your will.

And look how long your list is! I thought an ACCEPTING man would have lost his memory of at least a few of these things by now…

Especially considering that I was never wrong in the first place.

But you did not care. Not even as I tried to warn you.

I did not warn you for my own sake. If I’d known how it would hurt me I would have left you to your own devices. If I’d known how it would hurt others, I would probably have found some way to kill you.

I tried to WARN you for YOUR sake.

And how you treated me! Sigh.

See: I never would let you get AWAY with living this way.

I would have protected all at risk. As I have said: if I thought it would hurt me, I’d avoid you. If I knew that it would have hurt some Other, I would have DESTROYED you.

May be hanging on to you was my passive-aggressive way of keeping tabs on you. May be hanging out with you was a way of exerting influence. Did you not benefit? Admit it.

I could not give up compassion. My giving nature superceded my individuation. Otherwise you would not have lasted in my life through 2013. And may be you would not have lasted at all beyond that point. At least not to the present moment.

Here is the difference between you and me:

I have no self-interest.

I suffer, but don’t simply fucking EXPECT that people who are decent won’t suffer. Our suffering is the measure of your own depravity. Do not think that you can simply escape accountability by pretending that evil cannot exist and that victimhood is tantamount to evil.

Stop blaming the victim.

You are only perpetuating your own pretense: the victim mentality.

Here is you:

You ARE self-interest.

You do not STATE CLEARLY your needs and your warrants for them.

Had you done that I never would have gone into the water on your watch.

And don’t think to accuse me of a similar intransparency.

Did I DENY my enduring love for Alanna, as you had denied your love for Alexandra when I gave you the chance to confess it? That was not silence; you LIED about her, as you would go on to LIE about Bianca’s fidelity. Based on what? Suspicion? Or your OWN GUILT?

I never said a word to you about Alanna and about how I felt about her.

But FAR FROM this being intransparency on my part, it is revelatory of yours.

For you spilled all you knew without my needing to utter a single word to you.

And I did not even admit to Alanna what I’d felt for her.

She knew it too.

You had this knowledge available to you. In fact: you used it.

You exploited me. And I can never pardon that.

And how do you justify this?

You have all ways exploited people.

You tried to hold me in your debt for things you had given to me willingly.

You had given them to me because I needed them. Rightfully they were mine.

And often they were useless to me. They were useless to you as well. You simply tried to turn lead into gold by turning favours into debts owed to you.

And you could never hold me in debt for the Ocean.

But Alanna? She was a responsibility. And she was not yours.

She was not your responsibility.

If you were so arrogant to interfere with her healing, to reduce this to a childish rivalry, then you are unfit to assume that responsibility.

That is how things work upon this plane.

You could never fill that role.

Because I had all ready stepped up to it.

And I was ready.

You were not necessary to it.

You simply sabotaged it.

And she allowed you to.

She was therefore never one to judge.

But ultimately she judged rightly.

I have her last letters to me to warrant that.

What of Alexandra?

You were “there first”. But were you there afterwards? WOULD you have even been there DURING? You fool! All the while you sought her SISTER as a substitute! And I wonder, hey: were it not for ME, would you have not given up and pined after some other? How about that girl who worked at the cupcake shop?

You only ever got laid by avenue of cynicism.

It was because you could offer them nothing but your body.

Was that not why you dated Tiffany? “She was cynical and I knew I could fuck her.”

But of course no one can fool YOU.

No one can talk down to YOU.

There is no Universal Reason where YOU are concerned.

So no one is stopping YOU from fooling and condescending upon every one else.

But that car crash… that arrest… the infidelity and backstabbing and lukewarm vengeance…

And the circus troupe of retards who believe you to be a Great Guy.

And I am NOT referring to your “clients”.

But what of your TRUE FRIENDS?

Who went into the water with you when you were drunk?

The same WATER you held against me, perhaps even AFTER that night?

I did not “have to”. But I DID. I ALL WAYS DID.

You see: when it mattered I put my friends and their well-being first.

But here’s the problem:

A lot of the time people don’t have to test one’s loyalty.

One is left entirely to one’s own devices.

I went into the Ocean on a whim that day when you drove me there with your proto-Fascist “friends”.

I might have decided not to. But I felt its call.

And you had made NO call.

Now think on this: so many times one does things purely autotelically. It is harmless fun. And the only harm that can come is by willful interruption of this process. Why, for instance, do people forego masturbation? It is harmless, but Some Devil insists otherwise. Sex is different; you know that. Sex involves others. Masturbation is just jerking off.

Here is my issue with you. And it is all so Alanna’s issue:

You are the guy who can’t stand others jerking off.

Admit it: most of your petty hurts are matters entirely of preference.

And why should I subordinate MY HEALING and SPIRITUAL DUTY to YOUR PREFERENCE? PREFERENCE is not MORALITY. It is not UNIVERSAL. It is not even RATIONAL.

You can degenerate and forego the Healing Waters if you so wish.

But NEVER seek to subordinate the will of JUSTICE to your own PREFERENCE.

Now here is YOUR Problem:

By refusing public accountability and dwelling in the shadows, never STATING CLEARLY your position or waiting to THROW OFF your own position as though it were some sort of mask, mistaking shock in others for a guilt that is actually your own…

You hurt yourself.

By TESTING people without their KNOWLEDGE, BLOWING UP in their faces at the slightest infraction to some Kafkaesque set of labyrinthine principles that are ENTIRELY PECULIAR to you, or otherwise irrelevant to those people and only a force of habit in the group of creeps you surround yourself with, who will never own up to it publically and some of whom shall disavow it as a testament to their own character…

You hurt yourself.

By trying to CONTROL PEOPLE via FEAR, all because you are a little BITCH who can’t trust people, and so who waits to USE the illusory infractions and petty debts of his closest and most loyal friends to justify his own treachery and tyranny…

You hurt yourself.

Hermann Hesse said that sometimes strength is not in holding on but in letting go.

My advice for you is this:

If you want to save yourself, stop defending yourself.

You are not worth it. Believe me.

And you do not even NEED to believe me!

You all ready KNOW it!

Stop taking advantage of the gracelessness of lesser people…

Stop taking advantage of the GRACEFULNESS of GOOD people…

And above all, when presented with someone who is in between, and who runs the risk of falling, and who, not having had the same laborious descent as you have, might not survive the fall:

STOP CORRUPTING HER.

I had a dream about Alanna’s Twin Escalators, from one of the several dreams she had confided in me from the very beginning, long before you came into the picture.

Now that I had LIVED it I was afraid to compare it. Could I be so bold?

But of COURSE it was about Alanna. It had ALL WAYS been about Alanna.

To the extent that it was about any body or any thing else, it is a testament to her PROFOUND INFLUENCE upon my life, and towards a COMMON SPIRITUAL GOAL…

But you would not know any thing of that REALLY. WOULD you? You never acted as though you had any clue of that; you would sooner say that a dream is either ALL ABOUT ONE PERSON or NOTHING TO DO with that person. You could not see what is so obvious to me: that every person is the sum of its relationships with the World.

You are the escalator going down.

But *I* am the ONE THAT ASCENDS.

I only pray she knows this.

Or that she learns it before it is too late.

And that, unlike that night you stole her away from me, it will not be YOU that decides when “too late” is.

You are not unrelatable to her.

But so was Walter White to an international audience.

But may be that was just Bryan Cranston, the relatable Piscean…

She loves me for my purity.

And I bring it out from her.

I will never pardon that you clouded it.

I nearly lost every thing. EVERY thing.

Because of you.

And now I simply laugh.

Because at the root of it you are so confused.

Know this, though:

There are rules in life.

And these are not just arbitrary dogma.

We would not know what dogma was were it not for Truth.

We would not know what pretense was were there not Sincerity and Authenticity.

We would not know what vainglory was were there not Goodness.

These things are REAL.

And I embody them.

I need not threaten you.

Oddly enough, I am still trying to help you.

But this time, though it would benefit you, it is not FOR your benefit.

And think not that that means I am excluding the inside for the outside, as though to contradict my earlier insistence that it’s both, and that a Person is the sum of its Relationships.

Believe me: I’d love to make that contradiction.

But it’s not my decision to make.

Your will binds you to the people around you.

I cannot extricate your condition from theirs any moreso than you can.

So even though you do not deserve it by my estimation, I still pity you.

And I do so with the hope that if you choose to change then my true purposes will be attained:

Healing Everyone.

Dm.A.A.