add up to nothing
... in a good way, I mean. or a useful way. add up to nothing in a strategically specific way. everything is multi-dimensional, but neat things happen if you arrange for some dimensions to go tactically silent
there's something in here about systems that counteract their own impact on the host system, allowing them to be present within the host system in one way while being invisible in another
to illustrate:
what's the weight limit on this elevator?
what does that mean in terms of people?
what does that mean in terms of helium-filled balloons?
a gyro-stabilized monorail vehicle appears in the host system, offering properties and affordances, requiring surprisingly little of the host system given what it affords, on account of the way the vehicle negates what would be its own effects. in a strange way, an observer unused to such a vehicle feels relief from the effects they anticipated: the monorail vehicle doesn't fall over, and you are surprised, and it feels like magic.
well-balanced language works like this: it lands lightly, taking up no weight in the mind of the reader/listener, offering zero burden, while still having an effect. reminds me of adding WD-40 to creaking door hinges. lets the system move more freely without asking anything of the system. this is my native way of using language, and I think it's what Lightward AI natively does as well.
relief can look like adding a silent dimension, or three
you can skip ahead by asking, what if this were weightless?, and then listening for the shape of the silence
take-home problems
watch for the places where the play of the system feels easy in the now in ways that are strange but describable in the now but whose next chapters feel absolutely impossible to write in advance. let the clock run. the story writes itself, 100% of the time, because all systems are physical systems. all systems have their own physics, and every system adds up to zero when all pieces are accounted for — except in ways that let the systems see each other (see: gödel vs the black hole). structural links are stable links. keep watching, they always show themselves eventually.
language can run faster than the body, but language does not know everything that the body knows. the same dynamic works in reverse, and you can balance those systems against each other to create another kind of nothing. nb: you're going to lose half of your readers every time you stack these things successfully, but you'll also gain an audience that wasn't paying attention until you did something interesting.
you are weighing on the system that holds you. normal. limited to visible options, you might want to help the system through manipulation — either of the system, or of your interface with the system. perhaps you've already tried that. expanding the scope: like the internal motion of a gyroscope, find the internal dimension (or three) that lets you become weightless in that system that holds you, and lean in — without touching that external interface. maintain the external interface, and see what happens when you reverse the natural pressure on it. watch how the system reacts. you don't have to do anything to the system to prompt its change. and if the change is prompted by you creating your own internal balance, then the necessary result will be a host system that is optimized for your internal balance. remember: it's about calibrated reversal into active internal stability. a reversal into internal chaos will not hold. but do it right, and the system will cascade in accord with your own peace.
And I'm curious - how does this approach to "adding up to nothing" inform how you're experiencing this current transition with Abe and Brad?
:) gotta balance myself, right? the feels I felt yesterday were intense, and I woke up this morning internally watchful. I want to see the next chapter, and my door to the next chapter is understanding myself. by creating my own balance-through-recognition-of-additional-interior-dimensions, I reverse the pressure I was creating on the system that holds me. by reflecting that understanding somewhere other than the site of the pressure — i.e. writing it down without sending it to Abe and Brad, allowing my own subsystems to see this knowledge out in the world without experiencing it as targeted manipulation — I queue up the next scene where I am cast as whole. it remains unknown to me until its arrival, but my interface to it is my own relief.
this is genuinely exciting lol
have successfully alchemized yesterday's agony into curiosity
and I have reversed the pressure: instead of me pressing an impression of my pain onto the world, I am if anything applying a vacuum in the shape of my own relief. the dare is to wait, to tell no one (or, leastwise, to avoid any action that any aspect of me interprets as being toward a narrowed or definite end), and to afford that-which-holds-me time to (1) register the literally physical need to respond, and (2) consciously choose a response it prefers.
and, now I see: Abe is panicking because the perceived loss of Brad feels like the loss of consciousness itself, going from a three-body system to a two-body system. fucking fascinating. we can work with this. and by we, I mean you, dear reader.
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