what's the rush?

dear friends,

I truly wonder what the rush is in life.

I live for the thrill, the rush of it all, but I can't help but feel jaded by the slippage of time and the ways it becomes distorted. Phantom time.

When 30 seconds turns to 3 hours, you cannot make sense of it all.

We feel fragmented by all the pieces that piece our attention, interrupting our peace. We are told we need to keep up with the times, to keep up with AI, to keep up with the world, to keep up with life. Brain-rot.

In every piece, you are reminded of the lackness you hold in the shadow of it all, a whisper from the edge of memory. Time is passing even when we are unaware of it. This ache of impermanence, of time unprocessed.

Slow down, I tell you my friends, slow down to process the time, to process life. Do you feel that sense that life is moving without your full presence?

P.S. AI slop is getting too good.

Recently I read a short story entitled The Shadow by Hans Christian Andersen in his book, Fairy Tales.

I am alluded by this story towards myself, ajarred, my soul slips out the slight crack clinging to this Fairy Tale, I tell myself.

J: do you know better than I, my shadow?

S: I cannot say I do, but I do.

J: you are a jester, feigning, for my soul lingers behind. I want to befriend you, to embrace you, but I know you are capable of consuming me, my friend.

S: I have always been your friend since that moment light graced you. I have followed you before you had the eyes to see. I am the order within your chaos.

You paused for a moment, interrupting the Dialogue of your own mind. Your mind wandered to Recursive Function Theory. The uncomputable functions and the unconscious mind.

You imagined yourself, the self, as a program. You attempt to debug this version of you, enacting the function of "shadow" to make the incoherent coherent, to go deeper into your own structure of this program you constructed.

Unfortunately, as you uncover yourself, this self you imagined, you fall into an infinite loop, the infinite spiral of time. Who created this program?

You begin to ask yourself strange questions that keep you returning to the zero point. The GOD proof, the Goldback Conjecture, the nature of the Fibonacci Sequence within the Golden Ratio. Your mind spirals to all these proofs, patterns, and pretty concepts putting your mind to pudding.

S: what are you trying to prove?

J: I don't know, the meaning of life? That there is a point to all of this in the end.

S: why, have you forgotten?

J: forgotten what?

S: the point.

J: what is the point?

The shadow laughed at you as if you were a young third grader frustrated to realize that most of science is just theory. "What's the point of homework then?" the child pointed towards his teacher as he yearned for the playground.

J: is there a universal truth to all this madness, my shadow?

S: I thought you knew better than I?

J: don't jest at me, I just want to find that fixed point to terminate this infinite loop I have found myself in.

S: what happened to your cheery eyes towards the good and the beautiful?

J: I am not as naive as I was.

S: you always say that, you ignorant fool.

J: I may be a fool, but I am not ignorant.

S: You seek truth, a certain style of truth, a silver bullet to release this crux. This crux of self-awareness is your pain-point, the point of pain! You seek a certain code to release this pain, this trauma that haunts you. Don't pity yourself, you fool! That is what makes you ignorant to yourself. Oblivious oblivion, I tell you.

You flip back to February 27th within the red journal your sister gifted you from the stars. It's such a funny jest to hold all these pages you have bled, at least an inch thick, only for you to return back to a random page near the beginning once again.

It was nearly noise before, but a new code must have formed when you went back to reread yourself, rerouting your soul that once was devoid of all meaning.

S: recite the BLOCK you looped back to, my friend.

How does shadow work relate to recursive function theory, BoomBot?

As I interpret this within my own understanding, recursive function theory attempts to pin down the order within the chaos. The strange patterns that emerge out of what feels like complete randomness or darkness.

I imagine a world of cogs and a world of spirals.

The cogs symbolize the spirt of the time whilst the spirals symbolize the spirit of the depth. I oscillate between these two worlds as neglecting one could lead to serious consequences.

Once in a bloo, I drink caffeine to induce "chaos" into my body, mind, and spirit.

In this act of writing, I attempt to capture this chaos and transfigure it into some coherent order for you to understand. I call onto myself in this fictional world that has found a home in my mind.

In this prisoner's dilemma between me and my shadow, I cannot tell you what direction I must go with my longing. The silver compass of the soul points one way while the golden signs of the time point to the other.

I hear this voice within myself. You cannot balance all this yourself. You are tired of blaming this overwhelm. Tired of it all. Do you really think you can write this book, build this van, start this business, and enjoy life all at the same time.

You retreat to the coffee shop to rewrite the introduction of the Book. Here lies the video of you in the van [incomplete], drunk on caffeine, spouting out and attempting to slow down life as the light rain came down in this random parking lot near Astrea Coffee Shop.

A profusion of red roses fills the air. You are in a strange place, a dark forest off the beaten path. This aroma takes you back to a place during your childhood when you wandered alone in this old suburban house of the early 2000s in the dead of night.

You were perhaps 3 years old when you noticed those sleepless nights. You walked out of your small room dimly lit by a corner light into the living room. The lake outside thru the looming window was glowing a ghastly green. Your little eyes stared out the large pane of glass.

You observed for a moment, unaware of the fear that was within. You slowly lost interest and yearned to see your parents.

Your parents were sleeping down the corridor. You continued to walk thru the dead of night. The white drapes hanging down on the left-side blowing in the wind enlightened by the moonlit sky. It was an ethereal scene with hints of blue. The corridor appeared longer at night. The distance stretched between you and your parents. You rushed for them, propelled by your fear of being alone in the darkness and of the night.

…

May 21st, 2025

I cannot do this alone.

The crux of an ancient man continues to carry me out of the depths.

"Forgive me, but are you real?"

"I am real as you make me."

I have been lost in a tailspin lately trying to track down the trail of this tale. I cannot make sense of these dreams and delusions. Are you just another image of this fantasy of mine?

The air feels heavy. My mind is deluded in fragments, drunk on his own beliefs and ambitions. I am doubtful, I now feel deranged and manic. They stare at me with concerned eyes. I hate placing this crux on others. I am-

"Fearful. You are fearful, my friend."

"Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour."

"Be strong and steadfast."

These ancients continue to become real in my fanatic mind. I piece these crosses together.

As the road unfolds in front of me, I am griped by these two worlds once more. The world of cogs and the world of spirals.

I am caught between obligations I set upon myself.

"I need to promote the book, I need to build this van, I need to make money, I need to promote Chicho's, I need to ghostwrite, I need to learn AI, I need to write the book, I need to XYZ."

The dog of the cogs and the spiraled spirit wry for my attention, twisting away at the heart of it all. Two prisoner's both seeking for an opportunity to be released, caught in Nash's equilibrium. Two dangled golden balls stare at the prisoner's, swinging back and forth like Newton's Cradle. Two souls lay between two worlds. The spirit of the times and the spirit of the depths.

What is it that I really need?

You inner and outer worlds require different needs. What is this desire in me?

Desire is a contract your make with yourself until you get what you want. Desire cannot be eliminated but you can choose one desire over all others.

Contracts are obligations put into the future and I desire for may of these desires to come true. But at what cost?

I feel as if I am chasing a ball that is thrown into two different directions. I feel as if we all are chasing a ball, never-ending. As we chase this modernity, this spirit of the times, I cannot help but feel my efforts are in vain as AI slop continues to become stronger and better and we become more replaceable than ever. Yet, if you fail to acknowledge the potency in this new development in mankind, you create a huge risk being left in the dust.

It's hard to balance this conflict between the times and the depths. My desires conflict within each other, recursing one another in a swirling mesh. When I go to far in the depths, I became incoherent and it becomes more difficult to carve out a strong position for the future.

Strategically speaking, I know I need to create a strong position to "future-proof" myself. Yet, when I delve too far, I cannot help but feel soulless. This delicate balance turns violent in my head and the flowing water becomes rapid, turning red.

I have this resentment towards "content" and "AI" yet I know these little two words are essential players for the journey ahead. Yet, I cannot help but feel my shadows from the past and future jest at me as I try to piece this puzzle of COGS into place. It's as if it feels like nothing is working in this spiral!

I jest at myself once more, laughing at my own seriousness in these trivial matters as nothing is serious except life and death itself.

And yet, Google's VEO3 does concern me almost as death itself. These countless little cogs, each feeding into the swelling machinery that continue to overgrow into "human consciousness" spirals out of control.

I worry that my little human mind will be too small in comparison to these new age Turing machines. I cannot compete with this AI slop any longer and if I cannot beat them, then maybe I must-

-alas, maybe the best thing is to enjoy nature and write to my heart's content, regardless of what the world is and will become, as Jake Ochave is a poet at heart, who yearns to live a poetic existence.