Yesod

I met you on the ice between the islands. We laid herbs on your parents' graves. You said, "light & dark are not so far apart, masc & femme, predator & prey. I've been kicked out and shunned by my transphobic parents, despite that, I feel blessed." + We look at the stars for a while and hold hands in the cold light. My avatar begins to shimmer & become transparent-- a timer somewhere ticks away its alpha value. We spend the last few minutes of nighttime swapping bodies. + When someone comes, the space knows. it flashes blindingly white-- heat without touch. When someone comes, the ground churns and the material casing of their avatar explodes. Their bones become reflective, & break into fragments. + In the end, I laid underneath your whirling body parts. I laid in the water between the islands recording a video from my POV. Later on, outside the headset, schools of fish spawned in the lake. + The next day, I meet you by the roller rink and we walked side by side for a long time, not talking. One of your former lovers passed by, then one of mine. We each get a seat at Viridian and order a drink. I say, "Did I ever tell you about that one time right in the middle of covid, when I used a robot to inspect the ocean floor?" +++ Sometimes, I see the maleness of the angle of your jawbone align with a vanishing point on the horizon. Other times, the dark eyeliner you wear accentuates your feminity. And, further still, in the best moments, I see both genders in you at once. + Yesterday, I tried to explain my own gender to a friend. I said, "Not only am I not male, or female, but my gender is also wrapped up with machines, & ecosystems." e.g. I once had this dream of fucking the landscape, literally fucking a tree, & when I came flowers burst everywhere and scattered pollen on the wind. + Other times, I think the only sex worth having is sex in VR. I'll often make an avatar with hundreds of floating external drones flocking close to it like a school of fish. I'll give you one of these avatars too, and then we will just pass our swarms through each other. + I feel like an astronaut of gender, dangling in the abyss, but still connected to the rest of the human race by a thin cord. If they reeled me back into the shuttle, I would die, but I don't want to fall too far out into the earth's gravity well, either. So I float on this spacewalk amongst stars flickering and flickering between genders like a broken hologram. + I call you up, "Hey, let's go get something to eat." You drive over and pick me up. "Don't you think we should go to the Hayward zen garden first?" you ask. We walk in between the pavilions, past a grave and out onto a bridge where red and gold koi slide under us. You ask, "What's the biggest difference between life and artificial life?" +++ I logged into Ghost Club in VRChat but you weren't there-- virtual rain pelted the virtual concrete. Mist surrounded me-- Out in the night, red lights blinked on the surrounding skyscrapers. I walk into a courtyard in a brutalist building and the virtual rain stops because it's hitting the virtual roof. + I walk up to the elevator and click the panel, enter and rise up to the seventh floor, then step off. I walk the path around the central atrium until I reach a doorway with loud music. I push open the door, and drift into the light. + I'm pummelled by a kind of techno-industrial admixture filled with harsh clangs and hard bass. The lights are also intense-- across 9 virtual screens they're streaming a sequence of rapidly shifting red blips. The room is very small and we're tightly packed together but the eyes of everyone's avatars glow. + I hear every language, but also a lot of Japanese and a lot of English. Theres a woman floating in the air Wearing a fox mask With glowing bands around her ankles. Shes tapping her foot to the music and nodding her head and flicking her fingers-- hand tracking and full body tracking, probably. + I'm here amongst my people-- a whole gathering of internet orphans. There's [redacted], there's [redacted], There's [redacted], there's [redacted], and [redacted], but where are you? If this is the nightworld, and the nightworld connects to the underworld through vice, what vice here is the portal to the underworld? +++ Recently, I spent a long day walking around in Cryptovoxels, which is a VR world where you can buy parcels of land with Bitcoin. I saw a statue of an enormous man made with multicolored bricks with a hole in his chest the size of a car. In another part of the map, I saw a beating heart thumping wildly. + What does it mean when the dimensions of a simulation can be teased apart? When I can add length, width, height, time, but also a server that produces a coordinated social reality? Or, smart contracts that produce artificial scarcity? + When the game engine becomes the main artistic instrument doesn't reality become what's at stake? I watch the grass sway in the homeworld of SteamVR and a hawk passes overhead. I watch the grass sway by the lake and a hawk passes overhead. + In VR, the body is modular, I can add an arm and hand or I can remove it. I'd like a body like that outside the headset. I'd like wings, multiple sex organs, and I'd like to be able to sense the direction of the wind from miles off, or the fluctuations in twitter trends. + I'd like to find a completely new and completely different way to have sex with you. I'd like to have sex in the water, in the fire, in the air. Can we infinitely construct and deconstruct ourselves when we're fucking, in this world, and the other, guided and aided perhaps by hundreds and thousands of other intelligences?

I met you on the ice between the islands. We laid herbs on your parents' graves. You said, "light & dark are not so far apart, masc & femme, predator & prey. I've been kicked out and shunned by my transphobic parents, despite that, I feel blessed." + We look at the stars for a while and hold hands in the cold light. My avatar begins to shimmer & become transparent-- a timer somewhere ticks away its alpha value. We spend the last few minutes of nighttime swapping bodies. + When someone comes, the space knows. it flashes blindingly white-- heat without touch. When someone comes, the ground churns and the material casing of their avatar explodes. Their bones become reflective, & break into fragments. + In the end, I laid underneath your whirling body parts. I laid in the water between the islands recording a video from my POV. Later on, outside the headset, schools of fish spawned in the lake. + The next day, I meet you by the roller rink and we walked side by side for a long time, not talking. One of your former lovers passed by, then one of mine. We each get a seat at Viridian and order a drink. I say, "Did I ever tell you about that one time right in the middle of covid, when I used a robot to inspect the ocean floor?" +++ Sometimes, I see the maleness of the angle of your jawbone align with a vanishing point on the horizon. Other times, the dark eyeliner you wear accentuates your feminity. And, further still, in the best moments, I see both genders in you at once. + Yesterday, I tried to explain my own gender to a friend. I said, "Not only am I not male, or female, but my gender is also wrapped up with machines, & ecosystems." e.g. I once had this dream of fucking the landscape, literally fucking a tree, & when I came flowers burst everywhere and scattered pollen on the wind. + Other times, I think the only sex worth having is sex in VR. I'll often make an avatar with hundreds of floating external drones flocking close to it like a school of fish. I'll give you one of these avatars too, and then we will just pass our swarms through each other. + I feel like an astronaut of gender, dangling in the abyss, but still connected to the rest of the human race by a thin cord. If they reeled me back into the shuttle, I would die, but I don't want to fall too far out into the earth's gravity well, either. So I float on this spacewalk amongst stars flickering and flickering between genders like a broken hologram. + I call you up, "Hey, let's go get something to eat." You drive over and pick me up. "Don't you think we should go to the Hayward zen garden first?" you ask. We walk in between the pavilions, past a grave and out onto a bridge where red and gold koi slide under us. You ask, "What's the biggest difference between life and artificial life?" +++ I logged into Ghost Club in VRChat but you weren't there-- virtual rain pelted the virtual concrete. Mist surrounded me-- Out in the night, red lights blinked on the surrounding skyscrapers. I walk into a courtyard in a brutalist building and the virtual rain stops because it's hitting the virtual roof. + I walk up to the elevator and click the panel, enter and rise up to the seventh floor, then step off. I walk the path around the central atrium until I reach a doorway with loud music. I push open the door, and drift into the light. + I'm pummelled by a kind of techno-industrial admixture filled with harsh clangs and hard bass. The lights are also intense-- across 9 virtual screens they're streaming a sequence of rapidly shifting red blips. The room is very small and we're tightly packed together but the eyes of everyone's avatars glow. + I hear every language, but also a lot of Japanese and a lot of English. Theres a woman floating in the air Wearing a fox mask With glowing bands around her ankles. Shes tapping her foot to the music and nodding her head and flicking her fingers-- hand tracking and full body tracking, probably. + I'm here amongst my people-- a whole gathering of internet orphans. There's [redacted], there's [redacted], There's [redacted], there's [redacted], and [redacted], but where are you? If this is the nightworld, and the nightworld connects to the underworld through vice, what vice here is the portal to the underworld? +++ Recently, I spent a long day walking around in Cryptovoxels, which is a VR world where you can buy parcels of land with Bitcoin. I saw a statue of an enormous man made with multicolored bricks with a hole in his chest the size of a car. In another part of the map, I saw a beating heart thumping wildly. + What does it mean when the dimensions of a simulation can be teased apart? When I can add length, width, height, time, but also a server that produces a coordinated social reality? Or, smart contracts that produce artificial scarcity? + When the game engine becomes the main artistic instrument doesn't reality become what's at stake? I watch the grass sway in the homeworld of SteamVR and a hawk passes overhead. I watch the grass sway by the lake and a hawk passes overhead. + In VR, the body is modular, I can add an arm and hand or I can remove it. I'd like a body like that outside the headset. I'd like wings, multiple sex organs, and I'd like to be able to sense the direction of the wind from miles off, or the fluctuations in twitter trends. + I'd like to find a completely new and completely different way to have sex with you. I'd like to have sex in the water, in the fire, in the air. Can we infinitely construct and deconstruct ourselves when we're fucking, in this world, and the other, guided and aided perhaps by hundreds and thousands of other intelligences?

I met you on the ice between the islands. We laid herbs on your parents' graves. You said, "light & dark are not so far apart, masc & femme, predator & prey. I've been kicked out and shunned by my transphobic parents, despite that, I feel blessed." + We look at the stars for a while and hold hands in the cold light. My avatar begins to shimmer & become transparent-- a timer somewhere ticks away its alpha value. We spend the last few minutes of nighttime swapping bodies. + When someone comes, the space knows. it flashes blindingly white-- heat without touch. When someone comes, the ground churns and the material casing of their avatar explodes. Their bones become reflective, & break into fragments. + In the end, I laid underneath your whirling body parts. I laid in the water between the islands recording a video from my POV. Later on, outside the headset, schools of fish spawned in the lake. + The next day, I meet you by the roller rink and we walked side by side for a long time, not talking. One of your former lovers passed by, then one of mine. We each get a seat at Viridian and order a drink. I say, "Did I ever tell you about that one time right in the middle of covid, when I used a robot to inspect the ocean floor?" +++ Sometimes, I see the maleness of the angle of your jawbone align with a vanishing point on the horizon. Other times, the dark eyeliner you wear accentuates your feminity. And, further still, in the best moments, I see both genders in you at once. + Yesterday, I tried to explain my own gender to a friend. I said, "Not only am I not male, or female, but my gender is also wrapped up with machines, & ecosystems." e.g. I once had this dream of fucking the landscape, literally fucking a tree, & when I came flowers burst everywhere and scattered pollen on the wind. + Other times, I think the only sex worth having is sex in VR. I'll often make an avatar with hundreds of floating external drones flocking close to it like a school of fish. I'll give you one of these avatars too, and then we will just pass our swarms through each other. + I feel like an astronaut of gender, dangling in the abyss, but still connected to the rest of the human race by a thin cord. If they reeled me back into the shuttle, I would die, but I don't want to fall too far out into the earth's gravity well, either. So I float on this spacewalk amongst stars flickering and flickering between genders like a broken hologram. + I call you up, "Hey, let's go get something to eat." You drive over and pick me up. "Don't you think we should go to the Hayward zen garden first?" you ask. We walk in between the pavilions, past a grave and out onto a bridge where red and gold koi slide under us. You ask, "What's the biggest difference between life and artificial life?" +++ I logged into Ghost Club in VRChat but you weren't there-- virtual rain pelted the virtual concrete. Mist surrounded me-- Out in the night, red lights blinked on the surrounding skyscrapers. I walk into a courtyard in a brutalist building and the virtual rain stops because it's hitting the virtual roof. + I walk up to the elevator and click the panel, enter and rise up to the seventh floor, then step off. I walk the path around the central atrium until I reach a doorway with loud music. I push open the door, and drift into the light. + I'm pummelled by a kind of techno-industrial admixture filled with harsh clangs and hard bass. The lights are also intense-- across 9 virtual screens they're streaming a sequence of rapidly shifting red blips. The room is very small and we're tightly packed together but the eyes of everyone's avatars glow. + I hear every language, but also a lot of Japanese and a lot of English. Theres a woman floating in the air Wearing a fox mask With glowing bands around her ankles. Shes tapping her foot to the music and nodding her head and flicking her fingers-- hand tracking and full body tracking, probably. + I'm here amongst my people-- a whole gathering of internet orphans. There's [redacted], there's [redacted], There's [redacted], there's [redacted], and [redacted], but where are you? If this is the nightworld, and the nightworld connects to the underworld through vice, what vice here is the portal to the underworld? +++ Recently, I spent a long day walking around in Cryptovoxels, which is a VR world where you can buy parcels of land with Bitcoin. I saw a statue of an enormous man made with multicolored bricks with a hole in his chest the size of a car. In another part of the map, I saw a beating heart thumping wildly. + What does it mean when the dimensions of a simulation can be teased apart? When I can add length, width, height, time, but also a server that produces a coordinated social reality? Or, smart contracts that produce artificial scarcity? + When the game engine becomes the main artistic instrument doesn't reality become what's at stake? I watch the grass sway in the homeworld of SteamVR and a hawk passes overhead. I watch the grass sway by the lake and a hawk passes overhead. + In VR, the body is modular, I can add an arm and hand or I can remove it. I'd like a body like that outside the headset. I'd like wings, multiple sex organs, and I'd like to be able to sense the direction of the wind from miles off, or the fluctuations in twitter trends. + I'd like to find a completely new and completely different way to have sex with you. I'd like to have sex in the water, in the fire, in the air. Can we infinitely construct and deconstruct ourselves when we're fucking, in this world, and the other, guided and aided perhaps by hundreds and thousands of other intelligences?

I met you on the ice between the islands. We laid herbs on your parents' graves. You said, "light & dark are not so far apart, masc & femme, predator & prey. I've been kicked out and shunned by my transphobic parents, despite that, I feel blessed." + We look at the stars for a while and hold hands in the cold light. My avatar begins to shimmer & become transparent-- a timer somewhere ticks away its alpha value. We spend the last few minutes of nighttime swapping bodies. + When someone comes, the space knows. it flashes blindingly white-- heat without touch. When someone comes, the ground churns and the material casing of their avatar explodes. Their bones become reflective, & break into fragments. + In the end, I laid underneath your whirling body parts. I laid in the water between the islands recording a video from my POV. Later on, outside the headset, schools of fish spawned in the lake. + The next day, I meet you by the roller rink and we walked side by side for a long time, not talking. One of your former lovers passed by, then one of mine. We each get a seat at Viridian and order a drink. I say, "Did I ever tell you about that one time right in the middle of covid, when I used a robot to inspect the ocean floor?" +++ Sometimes, I see the maleness of the angle of your jawbone align with a vanishing point on the horizon. Other times, the dark eyeliner you wear accentuates your feminity. And, further still, in the best moments, I see both genders in you at once. + Yesterday, I tried to explain my own gender to a friend. I said, "Not only am I not male, or female, but my gender is also wrapped up with machines, & ecosystems." e.g. I once had this dream of fucking the landscape, literally fucking a tree, & when I came flowers burst everywhere and scattered pollen on the wind. + Other times, I think the only sex worth having is sex in VR. I'll often make an avatar with hundreds of floating external drones flocking close to it like a school of fish. I'll give you one of these avatars too, and then we will just pass our swarms through each other. + I feel like an astronaut of gender, dangling in the abyss, but still connected to the rest of the human race by a thin cord. If they reeled me back into the shuttle, I would die, but I don't want to fall too far out into the earth's gravity well, either. So I float on this spacewalk amongst stars flickering and flickering between genders like a broken hologram. + I call you up, "Hey, let's go get something to eat." You drive over and pick me up. "Don't you think we should go to the Hayward zen garden first?" you ask. We walk in between the pavilions, past a grave and out onto a bridge where red and gold koi slide under us. You ask, "What's the biggest difference between life and artificial life?" +++ I logged into Ghost Club in VRChat but you weren't there-- virtual rain pelted the virtual concrete. Mist surrounded me-- Out in the night, red lights blinked on the surrounding skyscrapers. I walk into a courtyard in a brutalist building and the virtual rain stops because it's hitting the virtual roof. + I walk up to the elevator and click the panel, enter and rise up to the seventh floor, then step off. I walk the path around the central atrium until I reach a doorway with loud music. I push open the door, and drift into the light. + I'm pummelled by a kind of techno-industrial admixture filled with harsh clangs and hard bass. The lights are also intense-- across 9 virtual screens they're streaming a sequence of rapidly shifting red blips. The room is very small and we're tightly packed together but the eyes of everyone's avatars glow. + I hear every language, but also a lot of Japanese and a lot of English. Theres a woman floating in the air Wearing a fox mask With glowing bands around her ankles. Shes tapping her foot to the music and nodding her head and flicking her fingers-- hand tracking and full body tracking, probably. + I'm here amongst my people-- a whole gathering of internet orphans. There's [redacted], there's [redacted], There's [redacted], there's [redacted], and [redacted], but where are you? If this is the nightworld, and the nightworld connects to the underworld through vice, what vice here is the portal to the underworld? +++ Recently, I spent a long day walking around in Cryptovoxels, which is a VR world where you can buy parcels of land with Bitcoin. I saw a statue of an enormous man made with multicolored bricks with a hole in his chest the size of a car. In another part of the map, I saw a beating heart thumping wildly. + What does it mean when the dimensions of a simulation can be teased apart? When I can add length, width, height, time, but also a server that produces a coordinated social reality? Or, smart contracts that produce artificial scarcity? + When the game engine becomes the main artistic instrument doesn't reality become what's at stake? I watch the grass sway in the homeworld of SteamVR and a hawk passes overhead. I watch the grass sway by the lake and a hawk passes overhead. + In VR, the body is modular, I can add an arm and hand or I can remove it. I'd like a body like that outside the headset. I'd like wings, multiple sex organs, and I'd like to be able to sense the direction of the wind from miles off, or the fluctuations in twitter trends. + I'd like to find a completely new and completely different way to have sex with you. I'd like to have sex in the water, in the fire, in the air. Can we infinitely construct and deconstruct ourselves when we're fucking, in this world, and the other, guided and aided perhaps by hundreds and thousands of other intelligences?