Time to jump, my dude!
ah ffs
not this asshole again
Sadly, we're stuck together, like a canker in a rose. Et in Purgatorio, Ego. Trust me, my lot's much worse than yours. To be stuck at your stumbling pace, sharing in your shame, unable to abide or abort, to forgive or forget. Familiarity, my fool, doth breed contempt.
The call ends.
Can I finally jump to my death now?!
Here goes nothing.
weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
dude keeps falling down the abyss when he sees a faint glow up ahead
it gets closer...
and closer...
the hell is that even?
I try to evade it to see what happens but it just puts the dude one step back in the falling sequence.
What bottom?
(you have no idea how fitting the andhaira picture is for this spiteful inner dude)
The dude attempts to land on the light. There's a fade to black.
You?!
Now, listen:
Oh you've gotta be kidding me
an "imago" is an insect in its final, mature state; typically winged.
There is something very cool about this sequence. Very weirdo but very fantastic.
an "imago" is an idealized mental image of another person, wielding great power of the psyche. Power to *unify* the fragmented body, Lacan writes.
The word means "image", or "echo", or "phantom".
What are you talking about?
Whichever it was that you sought in the pit... the last stage of growth, the idealized person of another, or a ghost in the dark... I advise you to look *up*, not down, in your search. You can fall to your end, but not to a proper ending.
Wait! What does it all mean?
Brother, we cicadas crawl through the dark earth for six thousand days, just to fly for a few brief weeks of light, and love. You ask me what it means? I tell you, do not waste your wings! And do not spurn the manna you are given!
well, thanks for vomiting all over my shoes before leaving, asshole
The cicada spat up some kind of gooey pulp.
Obviously we can't pick it up with our bare hands.
Let us press on.
That tent looks more like some kind of swollen growth.
The one in the distance that is.
What's this here.
There's something back there behind the webs.
Alas, they are "too thick and strong" for the dude to break them apart.
You know what they say - pick any direction but definitely go left.
uh
Human skulls in another kind of shooting gallery, except without any gun. I can't reach the skulls and there's no gun to shoot them with.
Fortunately we brought our own ammunition.
Dude throws a rock, and...
wot da zog
The skulls talk one after another.
They have some runes on their foreheads that shift as the dude throws rocks at them.
Some visitor... gently rapping... tapping... nothing more.
As the runes move under the rocks, we can form a connection to the vein of energy on the left. Obviously we're supposed to connect the left conduit with the right side.
and voila
In this head... by Horror haunted... where you tremble... shamed and daunted... there is something... you have wanted.
One thing only... nothing more... waiting here... within a bottle... the promise of... surcease of sorrow... a vacant past... and no tomorrow.
But thou must!
Yyyyyyyyyes?
A drawer slides open on the right side of the stand.
There's a bottle labeled "Balm of Gilead™".
Grab it, my dude!
It's empty!
Thought you, in this place of danger... to find some friendly face... or welcome manger... some *escape* within a drawer?
There is no Balm... no calm... no Aidenn.
Gilead is gone... and so's your maiden... So keep this pain... inside your cranium... and bear its burden... evermore.
now that was just rude
at least we got the empty bottle out of it
Onward!
A familiar scene. A dude-raven even takes flight off the ?bowel? to the left of the scribe as we enter.
Or is it just the wind?
Taffin' ridiculous!
It's another raven that looks like me. Hello? It seems to be ignoring me.
The dude-raven keeps saying things, much like the one in the Carnival did, and the scribe notes it all down. This time, though, it's not an assortment of random words but a sentence. I gave up listening to it eventually because it's just a message the likes of "lololo jokes on u for waiting for this to get to the end" and I can't be bothered with that
There's a scary ?snek? on the tree.
I think I preferred the noose.
oops
ahem
Hello, ?me?, meet the real me.
You look just like me!
Two men can look the same, and yet see very differently.
No, really, are you me?
A stranger asks a blind man, "Who am I?" But how can he possibly expect an answer?
The dude did not heed the warning of Rotta.
Wait. Tell me your name!
Uh...
Yes?
I don't know.
You see?
See what?
That you are begging the question.
Why is everyone here such a smartass
Well, what's *your* name?
"The dead know nothing, they have no further reward, and even their name is forgotten."
It's not just you. Everywhere I look here, I see... us.
"Ego of egos! All is ego!"
You really don't know your name?
Well, I remember the name "Gershom." But whether it's mine, or yours, or *both* of ours, I can't quite say. What I can tell you is, "a good name is better than a fine perfume."
Listen... I was trying to get to a woman... and this thing, this *Dark* Thing... it became a crab... and I think I killed it... but somehow it sent me here... (wherever *here* is...) and I need to get back to her somehow. That much I know
and that's just what happened, your honour!
"The dead, who have already died, are happier than the living, who are still alive."
But... isn't death different here?
You ask, but I can't possibly answer. "For in the realm of the dead, there is neither knowledge nor wisdom."
Even if you can't tell me about death, at least tell me how to get *back* to her.
"There is a time to search, and a time to give up."
What if I'm not ready to give up?
"Pity anyone who falls, and has no one to help them."
I don't want your pity! I want a way back to her!
"The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises." Even a fool knows that if he wants to go back the way he came, he just needs to retrace his steps.
Why are you just sitting here, letting that snek-thing drip venom on you?
When I could see, I saw a tree with a snek, and thought it the Tree of Knowledge. So I sat and hoped to learn. Now, I'm blind, and have nowhere else to go.
Is there anything I can do to help with the snek?
Once, I think, there was a Woman, who caught the snek's venom in a bowl as it fell, and spared me some suffering. Now I wonder if she was just a dream, or whether she became the tree, or was the tree all along.
*Have* you learned anything, sitting here?
Yes. I learned that "in much wisdom, there is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow."
What happened to your eyes? Did you feed them to that snek thing?
No. I looked the wrong way for wisdom, and the bitter poison I saw left me blind. But, in time, I learned that while "the wise have eyes in their heads, and the fool walks in darkness, the same fate overtakes them both."
So what *is* the fate of blind fools and wise men?
"Chasing after the wind."
I've got a feeling I'm going to need a work order.
prescient dude
Peeking ahead? Or have you guessed that "what has been done will be done again"? Well... if a fool wants to break free of a glass house, he only needs to throw a stone.
Do you have any meat? Or bread?
No. "The fool folds his hands together and eats his own flesh."
There used to be a tree here, and an old man. What happened?
yes, because there's no tree and old man here anymore
"The wheel is broken at the well, and days have lengthened like a shadow."
No, really, where are we? And what happened to the carnival?
I applaud the dude for still thinking that someone is actually going to
help him and provide some real answers.
"Do not say, 'why were the old days better than these?' For it is not wise to ask such questions."
What are those quotes you keep spouting?
The assembled wisdom of worthless toil.
Why can't you just speak for yourself?
Because "fools multiply words," while a man worn by wisdom knows "there is nothing new under the sun."
Goodbye.
"Remember the days of darkness, for there will be many."
yeah thanks
And the moment you've all been waiting for!
Good for the goose, good for the... whatever that is.
"Tooth"? Hmm.
I wonder how many of these I'll collect before this is over with.
The work never ends!
You can't fool me into writing vulgarity.
"Finger", eh?
Yeah, obviously the G is borked.
It's illegible.
Let the "G" be miswritten, alas, allele, alleluia!
You might think that we should use the empty bottle to get some of the snek's venom. And you would be right! But it is not yet the right time.
Because we need the bugvomit first.
So we can drop it here.
Can you work with that?
Oh, yes. Only black bile defies my craft. *This* is what's left from intellect gnawing at the roots of wisdom. From it would come something... incisive. You need only bring me a tool, and give your order.
Here, hold this.
Will this do?
thx lah
There is Tooth, fit for one who would bite deeply.
Now we can return for the poison.
not this again
But has it ever helped you? Were you ever able to cut loose from misery? To strike a blow against your demons? Never. Dull, dull, dull.
the call ends
We can take care of this web now along the way too.
It looks a little like me. Or maybe I should say, it looks like a little me. A *lot* like a little me.
The niche is full of these. Damn.
I'll just give him a little poke.
SQUEAL LIKE A PIG
But now for the task at hand.
A moment later, and the bottle's full. The poison keeps overflowing on the dude-scribe below again. Too bad.
Might as well take the bottle again with us then
Piss off already!
A poor martyr caught in the coils of circumstance? It should be *her* beneath the snek. Succumbing to the drip, drip, drip of a death you cannot stop. "Nein-Eve" indeed. But you'd rather paint yourself a victim to blunt the pain of failure. The truth is sharper than a serpent's tooth, isn't it?
the call ends
if you may remember the words of wisdom (and our very own prior experience), the "fool eats his own flesh"
and so...
Here we go again...
For another bloodbath!
Poof! There goes the feral dude.
He definitely didn't look happy.
A booth and a sign.
There's a note stuck inside: "The world is a masquerade. Faces, costumes, voices - all pretend. We all wish to appear as we are not, we deceive ourselves, and in the end, we do not even recognize ourselves."
All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits, and their entrances, and one dong in his time plays many parts.
The sign reads: "The sleep of reason produces monsters."
Oi, I already referenced that in the previous update.
With the way finally clear, we can continue our explorations of this dead land. But this will have to wait for the next time.
Also, by my calculashuns, we should be roughly 3 updates away from the end.
