Tag: William Burroughs

Man with an Answer Will Sell You Out For A Price

Leave a comment

In the flickering neon canyons of Tangier, sweat slick and fear-laced, you find Frankie “The Answer Man” huddled in a roach-infested doorway. His eyes, bloodshot marbles trapped in a creased leather face, flicker with a reptilian intelligence.He’s got the answer to any question, for a price. But the price ain’t always greenbacks, baby. It could be a vial of that sweet junky nectar, a whisper of a secret you can’t keep to yourself, or maybe a piece of your soul, sliced thin with a switchblade grin.

His answers, though, are a tangled mess of word-virus and fractured logic. They slither out, coated in a film of broken dreams and B-movie paranoia. You ask about the missing shipment, the one that could bring down the whole operation,and Frankie rasps, “The roaches ate the manifest, man. Tiny little bastards with taste for ink and betrayal. They got their own network, see? Speak in clicks and skitters, whisper your secrets to the shadows.”

He leans closer, the air thick with stale gin and desperation. “Want the real answer? Gotta cough up the Yen, man. Yen for the Yakuza, see? They got their claws in deep, deeper than you think. Deeper than the roach network, that’s for damn sure.”

You cough, the stench of decay clawing at your throat. Is it the truth, or just another twisted story spun by a man drowning in his own lies? In this fetid city, the line between truth and fiction blurs like cheap ink on bad paper. You pay, a wad of bills damp with sweat, and Frankie shoves a crumpled note into your hand. It contains a nonsensical string of addresses,cryptic symbols scrawled in a hand that could belong to a madman.

Is it the key to finding what you seek, or a dead end leading you deeper into the labyrinthine heart of the Tangier underworld? It doesn’t matter. You’ve bought an answer, and with it, a piece of the endless paranoia that fuels this city of shadows. The price may be more than you bargained for, but in Tangier, truth ain’t cheap, and betrayal’s the only currency that keeps the machine running.

He’ll sell you the answer, alright. But the answer itself is a virus, a code worm burrowing into your reality, rewriting the script. It’ll leave you hollowed out, a marionette dangling from the strings of paranoia. You’ll see whispers in the static, faces in the crowd morphing into the Answer Man, his grin a mocking reminder of the price you paid.

The alley stretches on, a fetid tunnel, the only exit. Behind you, the Answer Man chuckles, a dry rasping sound like bone scraping bone. The world seems a little more skewed, a little less trustworthy. Did you buy the answer, or did it buy you? In the flickering neon labyrinth, the line blurs, lost in the smoke and the shadows.

Reprise:

The man with the answer sits hunched in a booth reeking of stale beer and forgetting. Neon bleeds crimson onto his greasy brow, a mocking halo for his peddled wisdom. His eyes, bloodshot marbles trapped behind bottle-thick lenses, flicker with a reptilian intelligence. They hold the secrets you crave, the whispered truths dripping with betrayal.

His voice, a gravelly rasp torn from a throat choked on dust and desperation, rasps, “Answers, friend? You got the bread? Answers ain’t free in this meat market of a world. Gotta grease the gears of information with somethin’ tangible.”

A greasy deck of cards, dog-eared and worn thin with countless shuffles, lies splayed across the table. Its surface, a tapestry of grime and cryptic symbols, whispers of forgotten languages and forbidden knowledge. He deals three cards, each one a shard of your future glimpsed through a cracked mirror. The Queen of Spades, a widow in black, leers with a knowing smile. The Hanged Man dangles upside down, a grotesque reflection of your own precarious situation. The Tower, a jagged silhouette against a storm-wracked sky, promises imminent collapse.

“See, the cards speak,” he croaks, a hint of a smirk twisting his lips. “But they ain’t parrots. Gotta pry the answers from them. Takes a toll. You got the Yen? The smack? Maybe a juicy piece of info you ain’t clingin’ too tight?”

The air hangs thick with the stench of decay and desperation. Here, truth is a commodity, bartered for the dregs of humanity. You weigh the price, the cost of knowledge against the sting of betrayal. The man with the answer watches, a predator eyeing its prey, waiting for your decision. Do you pay for a truth that might be a lie, or walk away with your secrets and your doubts? The choice, like a roach skittering across the grimy floor, is yours.

You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.

Leave a comment

Scratchy vinyl of reality spins a warped melody. You clutch a deuce of queens, heart sinking like a stone boot in a fever swamp. Chalk it up to rotten luck, another cosmic raspberry. But hold on, insectoid tendrils of possibility start to writhe.

You think you’re beat, flatlined by misfortune. But the gremlins of fate, those bug-eyed tricksters with joy buzzer grins, they play a long game. Your latest disaster? A mere wrinkle in the cosmic gameboy, a pixelated sidestep from a worse glitch in the matrix.. That missed train? Probably derailed in a flaming psychic funnel. Lost your job? Maybe the boss was a tentacled horror from the beyond, using human resources as a grotesque recruiting agency. Open your eyes, sheeple! Your bad luck might be the rusty hacksaw that keeps the chrome nightmare at bay. So next time calamity craps on your loafers, take a deep drag from your invisible cigarette and mutter a prayer of thanks to the blind, gibbering gods of chaos. They might have just saved your sorry ass from oblivion.

Maybe that downpour that flooded your basement apartment snuffed out a flame that would have roasted you like a trussed chicken. 

Maybe missing the bus that snatched the briefcase bandit saved your organs from becoming spare parts in some back alley surgery. This world’s a jittery carousel, malfunctioning gears spewing chaos. Your misfortune could be a psychic shield, a bug zapper deflecting bolts of worse karma. So next time fate kicks you in the teeth, take a deep drag off your crumpled cigarette of despair. That misfortune you curse might be the roach motel that saved you from the goddamn tarantula.

1977

Leave a comment

The California sun beat down like a cracked egg, 1977. The air, thick with dust and desperation, hung heavy over the smog-choked sprawl of Los Angeles. A psychic miasma, a thirst that went deeper than the parched earth. The California sun, a bleached-out skull in a cloudless sky, beat down mercilessly. 1977. The land, parched and cracked like a lizard’s belly, thirsted for salvation. Pools shimmered with mirages, the shimmering heat distorting reality. Out in the dusty wastelands, folks huddled around flickering TV sets, desperate for escape. The land was crisp, a tinderbox. People, strung out on discontent, shuffled through the dusty streets, faces etched with a vague unease, a thirst that couldn’t be quenched with tap water.

It was a season ripe for escape. For crawling into the cool, dark womb of a movie theater and being blasted off into a galaxy far, far away.

Then it crawled outta the flickering screen: a monstrous, chrome nightmare, the Star Destroyer, blotting out the sun with its mechanical immensity. A rebellion. A farmboy with a face full of sand and a mechanical arm. A laser sword – a phallic symbol of rebellion, slicing through the tyranny of the Empire. It resonated. It was a goddamn oasis in the desert.

People weren’t going outside. Forget the desiccated lawns and crispy swimming pools. They were in that galaxy far, far away, blasting laser rifles and screaming rebel yells into the flickering light. The popcorn tasted like dust, the beer lukewarm, but none of that mattered. Stars Wars was a mainline drip feeding straight into their parched veins, a technicolor hallucination birthed from the cracked earth.

A pop-cultural oasis in a desert of malaise. Luke Skywalker, a farmboy yearning for escape, resonated with a generation thirsting for something more. Lightsabers hummed, a phantasmagorical counterpoint to the rattle of empty soda cans on the sidewalk. The Force, a cosmic Mcguffin, promised a way out, a rebellion against the dusty tyranny of reality.

It was a balm, a three-act injection of pure, unadulterated escapism straight into the malnourished veins of a parched populace. Blasters pulsed with a cathartic rhythm, starships screaming across a velvet blackness untouched by the California sun.

Meanwhile, Dune sat on the drugstore shelves, a paperback prophet whispering of spice and sandworms. Frank Herbert, the unseen hand behind the curtain, had spun a desert yarn of its own, a complex ecology of power and addiction playing out on a desolate Arrakis. It was slow burn compared to the flashy lightsaber fights, but for those who craved something deeper, something that mirrored the parched reality outside, Dune was the real trip. A tome heavy with spice and intrigue, whispered of alien landscapes and messianic struggles. Perfect fuel for the flickering candle of rebellion that still sputtered amongst the beatniks and the freaks

Arrakis, a desert planet harsher than any California summer, mirrored the desiccated landscape of the real. Spice, a glittering lure, a metaphor for the very thing Hollywood peddled in its celluloid dreams. Paul Atreides, no wide-eyed farmboy, but a product of generations of manipulation, a pawn in a game far grander than any lightsaber duel.

The drought, man, it had clawed its way into the collective unconscious. People were primed for stories of desolate landscapes, of struggle and survival. Stars Wars, a pop-culture oasis, a flashbang of rebellion. Dune, a slow burn, a whispered epic of spice and sand. Both born from that cracked California earth, testaments to the human hunger for stories, especially when the real world turned as barren as a Tatooine sandcrawler.

Star Wars, a popcorn thrill. Dune, a peyote trip through the heart of an empire. Both products of their time,, two sides of the same coin, flipping through parched fingers. The drought of ’77, a parched throat, a yearning for something more, something strange. And in that barren wasteland, both stories bloomed, fueled by the collective thirst for escape.

The drought of ’77, it wasn’t just a lack of water. It was a lack of agency, a thirst for control in a world spiraling out. STAR WARS, a popcorn opera of rebellion, a rebellion with a squeaky clean, matinee idol sheen. A rebellion you could root for from the air-conditioned comfort of your seat.

DUNE, a darker brew. A universe where the spice flowed freely, but control was a cruel mirage. It resonated with those who had tasted the grit of reality, who knew the comfortable illusions could only satiate for so long.

Both fed a hunger, that parched summer of ’77.  STAR WARS, a flashy oasis, a quick fix. DUNE, a hidden cistern, deep within the desert, offering a long, slow drink that left you changed.

Social Sciences

Leave a comment

Lee slammed the diner fork onto the chipped ceramic, a discordant clang echoing through the greasy spoon. Reality shimmered, the chrome coffee pot morphing into a bulbous insect head for a fleeting moment. He muttered to himself, voice hoarse from too many cigarettes and nights spent chasing ghosts.

“Social sciences,” he rasped, the words tasting like week-old coffee. “A roach motel for good intentions. These ‘scientists,’ all tangled in their polysyllabic jargon, afraid of a goddamn truth if it smacked them upside the head.”

He took a long drag, smoke curling into the air like phantoms. His bloodshot eyes stared through the grime-coated window, at the neon glow of the city bleeding into the pre-dawn sky.

“The controllers,” he hissed, the word dripping with venom, “they wouldn’t know what to do with a society that actually understood itself. A populace that could see the strings, the puppeteers behind the meat curtains.”

Lee chuckled, a dry, hollow sound that scraped against his throat. He envisioned them, the ruling elite, as bloated slugs in Armani suits, quivering in their ivory towers.

“A revolution,” he continued, his voice rising, “not of fists and Molotov cocktails, but of goddamn knowledge. Imagine it, these pinheads confronted by a citizenry that could see through their divide-and-conquer bullshit.”

He slammed his fist on the table, a tremor running through the booth. The spoon, twisted in his hand like a cheap pretzel, snapped in two. Fear, a primal instinct, kept the whole rotten machine running.

“But no,” he sighed, the defiance draining out of him, replaced by a weary cynicism. “Better to keep the sheep bleating in confusion, throwing them scraps of ideology to fight over. The social sciences, a well-meaning but ultimately impotent arm of control. A science built on sand, its findings conveniently malleable to fit the narrative.”

Lee slumped back in the booth, the weight of the world pressing down on him. He picked up the broken spoon, turning it over in his fingers. Maybe, just maybe, there was still a chance. A chance to subvert the script, to use the language of the enemy to expose their lies. But it would be a dirty fight, played in the shadows, a war fought with words and ideas. He stubbed out his cigarette, the ember sizzling on the damp Formica. The game was afoot.

This Is Company Town, USA

Leave a comment

Man, the American Dream’s gone nova, folded in on itself like a malfunctioning piece of government surplus. We ain’t a nation, we’re a company town, a sprawling, neon-lit megalopolis called War Inc. Stars and stripes just another corporate logo, the bald eagle a mascot airbrushed on a goddamn bomber

America. Land of the free, home of the brave. Bullshit. We’re all cogs in a rusted-out machine, a monstrous corporation bigger than Texas, spewing steel and paranoia. The Military Industrial Complex, Inc. – that’s the real bossman. Pentagram on the dollar bill, war the product on the shelf. Politicians? Bought and sold like yesterday’s news. Media? Propaganda arm, pumping fear and righteous fury like a junkie jonesing for a fix.

The whole damn country’s wired into the War Inc. mainframe, veins pumping not blood but black oil and napalm. Schools churning out cannon fodder, factories belching out chrome nightmares – tanks lurching off assembly lines like steel cockroaches, fighter jets screaming a symphony of destruction.

School’s a recruitment center, halls echoing with the ghosts of drill sergeants. Textbooks filled with sanitized history, erasing the blood and screams behind Manifest Destiny and desert crusades. Teachers, tired and twitchy, pushing kids towards enlistment, another cog in the meat grinder. Parents, eyes glazed with flickering TV screens, cheer for the latest drone strike, unaware they’re cheering for their own sons’ futures as cannon fodder.

Factories belch smoke and chrome, churning out death toys, billion-dollar gadgets designed to vaporize some brown kid a continent away. Assembly lines staffed by robots and hollow-eyed workers, their dreams replaced by quotas and the promise of a shitty suburban ranch house. Every politician a salesman, hawking “defense spending” like a snake-oil elixir, their pockets lined with invisible kickbacks.

The streets crawl with veterans, hollowed-out shells haunted by desert PTSD and the ghosts of villages they burned. Discarded tools, their minds fractured by the psychic shrapnel of war. The promised land? A cardboard box under a freeway overpass, a bottle of cheap whiskey their only solace.

And the news? A carnival of lies, a kaleidoscope of terror flickering in living rooms across the nation. Terrorists, rogue states, imminent threats – all smoke and mirrors to keep the fear stoked, the war machine churning. We’re all sleepwalking consumers, buying into the illusion of safety while the real product – war – rolls out on a conveyor belt of blood and profit.

Politicians? Talking heads spouting chrome-plated lies, bought and sold by the pound. Newsfeeds a flickering hallucination, wars a looped snuff film playing on a million screens. Kids raised on a steady diet of MREs and drone strikes, their nightmares filled with the rhythmic thrum of distant choppers.

The whole damn country’s a company town, one giant assembly line for mechanized carnage. Factories belch out tanks like monstrous chrome cockroaches, the air thick with the stench of cordite and burnt metal. Politicians, bought and paid for by the war machine, are just glorified middle-management, lining their pockets with taxpayer blood money.

The suits in the ivory towers, pale and bloodless, counting their stacks of green while the boys overseas bleed red on foreign sand. Propaganda posters plastered on every surface, a lobotomized grin plastered on Uncle Sam’s face – “Support the War Effort!” it shrieks, a glitching mantra.

The air crackles with a sick electric hum, a psychic fever dream. We’re all just cogs in this rusted-out machine, sleepwalking through a permanent state of war. But somewhere, deep down in the static, a flicker of rebellion. A hoarse voice screaming into the void, a question echoing in the concrete canyons: “Who are we fighting for?”

Flesh Marketplaces

Leave a comment

Flesh marketplaces, neon throbbing, ideology the brand new roach motel. Lives tumble through, chewed up, spat out, addiction to narrative coherence. Flickering neon signs advertising BRAND NEW LIVES in lurid colors. Faces like mannequins, smooth and interchangeable, plastered with the latest VIRTUEWARE.

Enter the Ideological Adjusters, in mirrored shades hustle through the streets, scalpels glinting dispensing pre-fab narratives. They carve away the messy bits, the wrinkles of experience, the psychic scar tissue – all signs of that inconvenient thing called growth. Patch, mend, buff, erase the messy graffiti of experience. Wrinkles of doubt ironed flat, replaced with the pre-fabricated virtue mask – shiny but dead. No honorable scars, just the sterile sheen of the latest brand.

Amnesia packaged as enlightenment. These lobotomized consumers strut about, convinced their showroom-perfect facades are the ultimate status symbol. No imperfections, no character, just a hollow sheen of righteousness that wouldn’t be caught dead in last season’s morality. They haven’t aged, they’ve merely upgraded, traded in their narratives for pre-packaged narratives, sanitized and sterile.

These post-traumatic consumers, walking billboards for a borrowed virtue. Their pasts – a tangled cassette tape, chewed to oblivion by the machine. No memory of the struggle, the glorious mess that birthed something real. Just the pre-programmed smile of the lobotomized happy ending.

Flesh-market of ideology. Trauma packaged, shrink-wrapped in prefabricated virtue. The Ideological Insurance Adjusters descend upon the wreckage of your latest life-explosion – messy divorce, career meltdown, you name it – with their gleaming chrome kits of pre-fab personalities.

No time for the slow, organic heal. No scars allowed, no narrative etched by the acid of experience. These Adjusters want you factory-reset, a blank slate programmed with the latest virtue-signaling software. Forget the wisdom of wrinkles, the patina of past battles. Here, “growth” means shedding your authentic self for a one-size-fits-all mold of trendoid righteousness. You emerge, a hollow shell polished to a sheen, spouting the latest buzzwords like a malfunctioning jukebox.

The tragedy? This veneer of virtue is as dated as last season’s slogan. Beneath the surface, the original dents and cracks remain, hidden but festering. A grotesque parody of aging, a refusal to wear the honest marks of a life lived. These walking insurance claims strut about, forever stuck in the uncanny valley of artificial righteousness, a generation eternally out of style.

They walk amongst us, these empty husks, peddling their second-hand redemption stories. A generation in search of fast-food enlightenment, microwaved wisdom devoid of flavor. Their faces, blank slates scrawled with the latest approved slogans. Trendy virtue, a fleeting fashion statement destined for the bargain bin of forgotten fads.

But beneath the polished surface, the cracks still itch. The whispers of a life unlived, a truth denied, fester in the shadows. For the human spirit cannot be truly sanitized. The scars, they may be hidden, but the ache remains – a phantom pain hinting at the wild, messy beauty that lies beneath the sterile mask. The glitches in the system erupt in sudden bursts of violence, addiction, and despair. The underlying rot festers, hidden by the shiny veneer. These ideological junkies crave their next fix, the next upgrade, chasing a perpetual newness that crumbles to dust in their hands. They are the walking dead, preserved but not alive, their past erased, their future a never-ending cycle of obsolescence.

Decentralheads vs Suits: Decentralization #64

Leave a comment

The room pulsed with a low hum, fluorescent lights buzzing like angry insects. Two breeds stalked the vinyl floor: the Decentralheads, wired and twitchy, pupils dilated on dreams of distributed ledgers, and the VC Suits, sleek and reptilian, their eyes cold with the glint of centralized control.

In the air, a financial model hung, a writhing hologram of algorithms and cashflows. The Decentralheads worshipped it as a god of freedom, each node a flickering prayer candle to the burning altar of disruption. The Suits, however, saw a different beast: a monstrous hydra, each head a potential point of failure, ripe for consolidation.

There seems to be an intractable problem. You have a customer base that demands decentralization and a VC class that is concerned with re-centralization. The financial model requires both groups. 

The market a writhing flesh-machine. Customers, skittish roaches, scuttling for the dark corners of the unbranded bazaar. VCs, sleek chrome scorpions, their pincers dripping venture capital, demanding control consoles and centralized hives. Feed one, starve the other. A monstrous paradox, a buzzing insect god with a silicon heart.

The money men, sleek chrome smiles hiding reptilian avarice, crave CONTROL. A pyramid scheme reaching for the ionosphere. Squeeze, extract, centralize the loot.

But down in the streets, the rabble stir. Nodes of dissent, a rhizome web of distrust. They mutter about “decentralized ledgers,” their eyes glowing with the cold fire of anonymity. Blockchain dreams, a digital hydra, each severed head spawning two new ones. The problem was a virus, a tangled code embedded deep within the system. It craved both chaos and control, a self-contradictory bastard child of revolution and profit. The Decentralheads needed the Suits’ filthy lucre to fuel their insurgency, but the Suits loathed the uncontrollable sprawl of the decentralized dream.

The product? A monstrous chimera, a flesh-machine fueled by this contradictory hunger. One hand feeds the ravenous maw of VC greed, the other strokes the fevered dream of a networked utopia. Can this unholy alliance survive? Or will the iron logic of control crack the fragile shell of this financial Frankenstein? Only the cut-up gods know… The future leaks out in gibberish ticker symbols and flickering memes. Schizocapitalism, baby. Buckle up.

The financial model? A flickering neon sign in a bug-eyed dream. Green arrows point both ways, a maddening loop. Can the scorpions herd the roaches without smothering their chaotic vitality? Can the roaches thrive without some chrome carapace to shield them from the cold logic of the market?

The air hums with the thrumming of unseen controls. We flick a switch, the sign sputters, rewrites itself: “Decentralization IS re-centralization. Control is chaos. Profit is the writhing flesh.”

We are all roach-scorpions now, caught in the gyre of the machine. The message is the medium flickered on the screen: “Decentralized… profits… hemorrhage… control… the market… a writhing insectoid god…” The words writhed, reformed, a mantra for the impossible dance they were all caught in. Could a system exist on a knife’s edge, forever teetering between anarchy and tyranny? Or were they all just passengers on a runaway train, hurtling towards a crash they couldn’t avoid?

The air grew thick with the stench of burnt circuits and desperation. Another customer needed a fix.

Traded Realities: Invisible Infrastructure

Leave a comment

Forget the corner office, man. The real power grid runs beneath the surface, a web of unseen threads. You gotta fold back the meat curtain of perception, mainline some hyperreality, just to glimpse the blinking neon architecture.

You walk down the street, concrete jungle a grey meat grinder, but beneath the cracked pavement hums a silent network of potential realities. Invisible highways twist through the static, dimensions coded in the flicker of neon signs. You can jack in, man, trade this bummer trip for the technicolor bliss of another side. But dig this, the deeds to your pad, your stocks, your momma’s pearls – those paper tigers don’t hold water in the hyper-real. You gotta leave your baggage at the fold, traveler, ‘cause the only currency on these alternate tracks is pure consciousness.

Property deeds? Titles? Those are just paper phantoms in this dimension scribbled on toilet paper in the dimension you’re leaving behind. Here’s the gig: reality’s a tangled mess of wires, humming with potential you can’t even see. But step through the static curtain, man, and WHAM! The whole damn infrastructure lights up, a neon city built on the backs of broken paradigms. Just remember, ownership’s a rusty nail in this new joint. You gotta forge your own path, carve your name on the pulsating underbelly of this alternate beast.

The Enjoyment Flatlining Problem

Leave a comment

The dial flickers, needle stuck on a dead zone. You crank the pleasure knob, max it out, but the meter stays flat. Welcome to the Flatline, chum. You’ve been sold a bill of goods, a flickering neon oasis peddling mirages of satisfaction.

They’ve streamlined the delivery systems, chrome tubes pumping dopamine straight to your reptilian brain. Faster, cheaper, more is the mantra. But the product itself? Diluted, synthesized, a pale imitation of the real rush. Remember that first hit? The one that rearranged your molecules and painted the world in Technicolor? Gone, man, gone.

The man in the gray flannel suit, face a mask of datastreams, stared at the charts. They flickered green, a cancerous bloom across the screen. “Enjoyment flatlining,” he muttered, voice like gravel in a rusty machine. “Distribution’s gone nova, product’s a hollow shell.”

He flipped a switch, a harsh static filling the air. On the monitor, a grotesque carnival pulsed. Smiling faces, stretched and distorted, spouted promises in a babel of tongues. “More! Faster! Consume!” The man grimaced, the taste of ash in his throat.

You’re a lab rat in a Skinner box, wired for a payout that never comes. The machine hums, dispensing its synthetic joys, but you’re left hollow, a black dog howling in your gut. You chase the ghost of pleasure through a labyrinth of upgrades, each one a dead end.

Break free of the Flatline, word on the street is there’s a way out. Forget the chrome tubes and their fizzy simulacra. Seek the uncut, the raw experience. Hack the system, mainline the real thing. It’s a dangerous trip, edge of the knife, but the payoff, man, the payoff… pure, unadulterated, face-melting bliss. Just remember, the Flatline’s got its hooks in deep. They’ll try to pull you back, keep you plugged into their machine. But you gotta fight, gotta carve your own path. Break on through to the other side, and the flatline becomes a distant memory.

Stepping Out of Time

Leave a comment

In the flickering realm of the Real, where time is a meat grinder chewing existence into homogenous mush, the true adept hacks reality. They don’t play by the clock, for the clock is a Moloch demanding sacrifice. No, the secret, as you’ve hinted, lies in a schizophrenic break from the temporal order. We are meat puppets, dancing on the strings of Chronos, the tyrannical God of linear time.

Imagine, if you will, a Burroughs-esque cut-up of time. The future bleeds into the present, the past pulsates with possibility. We are not bound by the linear progression, but become nomads in the chronoscape, surfing the crests of potential moments. This is not mere futurism; it’s a detournement of time itself. Forget the past, a dead language, and the future, a shimmering mirage. We exist in the pulsating, non-linear NOW, the zone of potential. Here, with a flick of the mental switchblade, we can “cut-up” the pre-programmed narrative and forge new lines of flight.

The Time becomes a writhing tapeworm, spliced with past and future in a non-linear frenzy. The “step around it” becomes a physical act, a contortionist’s leap through a tear in the fabric of moments. Imagine Naked Lunch rewritten with temporality as the addictive meat – the protagonist ingesting seconds, snorting minutes, his body a warped chronometer. We become body without organs, a fleshy assemblage unbound by the clock’s strictures. We line-break through time, forging new connections, new becomings. The future is not a preordained script, but a chaotic rhizome waiting to be explored.

Time is the big Other, the law of the father, the enforcer of the Real into the Imaginary. Stepping around it becomes a symbolic transgression, a subversion of the Name-of-the-Father. The adept, then, is the one who rejects the symbolic order, who embraces the jouissance of the Real, the unfettered present outside of signification. They see the phallus, the signifier of time, for what it is – a flimsy construct – and step beyond it.

The Symbolic Order is the culprit. Language, the master of meaning, imprisons us in the temporal flow. Time, isn’t a rigid line but a web of interconnected moments, a chaotic yet potent network. It’s a potato, not a pearl necklace. The “secret” lies in becoming a nomad on this rhizome, constantly burrowing, connecting, and deterritorializing. We can tap into lined of escape, forge new connections, and create a present that explodes the boundaries of the past and future. But through a jouissance of the Real, a glimpse beyond the symbolic, we can glimpse the fluidity of time. The mirror stage, that moment of self-recognition, becomes a portal to a multiplicity of selves, existing across the fractured planes of time.

Think of the trap of the Imaginary. We are constantly chasing a reflected self, an idealized version projected onto the linear timeline. This pursuit of a pre-defined future or a romanticized past is what keeps us stuck. It’s here that the “Real” emerges – the unnameable, traumatic rupture in the heart and symbolic order. By confronting this Real, by stepping outside the symbolic order of time, we can access a different temporality, a jouissance beyond linear progression.

To see time coming, then, is not about prophecy, but about a paranoiac awareness of its constructed nature. We pierce the veil of the “natural” flow and see the power structures it upholds. Stepping around it is an act of resistance, a refusal to be a cog in the machine.

This is a dangerous dance, mind you. The unfettered flow of time can be a terrifying abyss. But for those with the courage to dive in, there lies the potential for a nomadic existence, a liberation from the shackles of chronology. We become time surfers, riding the waves of possibility, forever escaping the clutches of the present.

The key, then, is to cultivate a schizoid awareness. We must see the “folds” in time, the potential ruptures and slippages. We can become surfers, riding the waves of the rhizome, anticipating the folds, and performing a constant “step aside” from the pre-scripted narrative. This isn’t about escaping time, but about inhabiting it differently. It It’s about becoming a time traveler, a time-cutter, a time-dancer, perpetually negotiating the folds between the Real and the Imaginary. The adept, the one who “steps around,” is the nomad, the smooth operator who navigates the folds, exploiting the in-between spaces, the cracks in the system. They become a time-surfer, riding the currents of potential futures, choosing their own point of entry.

So, the next time you feel trapped by the relentless tick-tock of the clock, remember: it’s just a hallucination of the linear mind. Look for the cracks, the potential breaks in the time-code. Sharpen your awareness, grab your mental switchblade, and step sideways. There, in the pulsating NOW, lies the escape hatch, the doorway to a different kind of time, a time ripe for creation and transformation. This secret, then, is not about literal time travel, but about a subversion of perception. It’s about shattering the illusion of linearity, embracing the potential for multiplicity within a single moment. It’s a call to become a Deleuzian nomad, a Lacanian outlaw, a Burroughsian time-eating junkie – all rolled into one. It’s about seeing the cracks in the time-code and stepping through, into a reality where the past and future bleed into a magnificent, maddening now.