Rules

I wrote this essay in a dream. It was a perfect essay, effortless and fully formed, explaining all the secrets of the universe in words one could not help but understand. My secrets too, and they mirrored each other. One illuminating the other. I will try and capture the edges and depths of it. But know that this piece of writing is only a memory, half a reflection. All of this essay is true, and every word is a lie. But it is a story, and at least I have the bones of it.

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In the beginning. There was only The Divine. It was one, and complete in itself. All possibility, and all undefinition. But among those possibilities lay separateness, and definition, and from the one came two. Chaos birthed Order.

From the Two came Three, the places where Order and Chaos meet. Ever changing as the dawn. From three, came Four and Five and Six. Life and death and love, the longing for wholeness in a broken world. From Six came Seven, and the divine interpenetrated Order and all things changed and stayed the same. A dance of infinite with finite began, and we have been dancing ever since.

Chaos birthed Order, and Order became a bowl, Chaos contained within. From Chaos order became more in the act of defining. Order became less in it’s constraining.

It is not like that at all of course. What in this world is so simple as that? But it is a story, and stories capture the bones of things. Reflect on the outside what is inside. As above so below.

Let us, just now, for the sake of our story, define the gods as the opposite of whoever is speaking. Let us call them “Ever changing as the dawn” Let us say that to Chaos the god is Order. Let us say that to Order, the goddess is Chaos. Let us say he is neither and multiple in her manifestations. Let us say that the gods break down or build up in extremes.

And I? I would be zealot. I court the divine with the certain knowledge that one day I will go insane. Chaos will grip me and pull me into it’s maw and only chains of order will hold me here.

I forge them link by link, while the goddess laughs and laughs and laughs.

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Each link is linked to a memory. The moment when that piece of the chain was built. Memory is the thing these chains are crafted from. The substance Order ordains.

I will not cross any line held sacred without a clear and resounding yes. I will not cross those lines if I or another am in the grip of chaos, be it drunk, high, or in any other altered place of mind.

It is my Freshman year of college, and I am watching bladerunner with two dorm mates. They laugh and make crass comments about the rape scene and it’s making me sick inside. The hammer falls. A link.

I will not kill with any intention but to eat. Every death a way towards life.

A Philosophy argument with G, we’re lying under several trees in the sun. I’m trying to explain my views when it all clicks into place. All life is equal. One form of life isn’t better than any other. If something eats me then I am part of it. Still alive. If I eat something else it’s part of me, still alive.

I will not leave another, save after three months thinking of the need.

I’m in the shower, angry, and thinking of the day when everything was okay, and the two days later it wasn’t. “I am not like that,” I think. And then I know.

I will not marry save after three years with a partner, every day a yes.

My mother made a comment once about a neighbor who had a one year old before getting married “That’s the way to do it.” she joked - “prove your fertility, spend some grueling baby filled hours together, and once you know you can survive that - THEN you get married.”
Years later I’m on the bus, writing about marriage when I decide three years is the appropriate amount of time.

I am not a healer. I am a tonic. I will not endanger myself for health.

After a lot of screaming, and a lot of failed healing. I’m looking up herbalism terms on the internet when I hit tonic. Something that strengthens the immune system before wounding happens. “That’s! it!”

I will not take money for what is not mine to give.

I spent some time going from church to church, exploring what they were like. In every one they would talk about high ideals, deep things, divine things - and then with an apologetic smile they’d send the collection plates around. It felt dirty and I wanted no part in it.

I am to be a man without secrets of his own. Lying never for himself, but without hesitation for others.

I’m in love with someone I shouldn’t be. Secrets were fun. Secrets were sneaky and made me special, but this one just hurts. I decide I don’t like secrets at all. The hammer falls. Sparks fly towards the night.

It is not my responsibility to make anyone happy.

An accusation. “You are supposed to make me happy! That’s what friends are for, is to make eachother happy!” to my surprise I deny it. Surprising because I thought I believed it. “Only you are responsible for your happiness.”

I will not steal.

I wrote a whole essay about why I don’t steal. I struggled with it. Since writing “I don’t steal” I’ve only stolen once.

I will not be lazy.

The Inka had three cornerstones of their moral compass. “Don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t be lazy” Worried about school, I remember my mother teaching me that. I realize those three cover all crimes most reasonable people would commit. It occurs to me that if I am to succeed, I cannot be lazy.

I will grieve at endings, not force companionship against my better judgement.

After A, I make G promise that we won’t be friends after we break up. We joke about burning one another’s stuff. I know it’s the right thing to do.

Don’t swear. Don’t yell. Don’t make others uncomfortable by your presence

I’m nine, and I’m watching my best friend Andrean talking with my mother outside the arthouse. I see how much she enjoys him. How much she likes him. I resolve to be like him.

Be kind. Be helpful. Don’t hurt, save where hurting the kindest thing to do.

Kailey, is talking about boy problems, about trying to be kind. I tell her what’s truy kind in the situation. A clean, clear, no. Then I tell her my troubles and she tells me the kindest thing. I realize how hard it is to see kindness in your own life. I resolve to step back whenever I think I’m being kind.

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I was not kind with my first girlfriend. J was everything I might have wanted, but I needed to move on. She lived half the world away and I craved flesh. I left her and let her think it was her fault.

A little crazed by the power to destroy a heart, I bought a chain at the bead store and asked them to fasten it around my neck, next to the one I’d gotten a year before, to “bind my power until I’m ready to use it.”

That old chain wasn’t tight enough though. I wanted one that cut off a little circulation. One that hurt, and constantly reminded me not to hurt anyone else. The bead store owner refused. Said she wouldn’t put anything on permanently.

A week later I went back hoping someone else would - but she’d warned her husband against me, and he was ready. He told me he’d put it on a clasp for me and I agreed, promising myself I wouldn’t take it off. A week after that, fasting in the high country, I took it off and threw it in the fire. It hurt.

It was then that I realized rules must be absolute, because if there’s an escape clause chaos will find it, and my fevered mind will throw all rules to the fire. Breaking a rule once should not unhinge it, yet it often does. Life, my father tells me, begins with hard rules and ends in nebulous greyscales.

I haven’t found that true so far. My life began with chaos, infinite possibility, and from that I have built some semblance of order. Chaos does not destroy my rules, it hardens them.

The chain will only grow with each encounter.

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I have different chains. Sets that set me squarely against some facet of insanity I fear. Up as a poster by my bed right now I have:

Make your bed every morning.
Up before 12:00 - bed before 2:00
Shower and shave every morning
Eat before computer - don’t eat breakfast at the computer.
If you’re stuck in a loop go outside
No computer after 12:00
Sword practice at least every other day.

They’re small rules - not life altering ones - yet they alter my life more than many larger. These are the chains that bind me to sanity. Unhelping when chaos takes me, yet a step away when it comes close.

Another set - Three states of mind.

1) I am sane. I can make all decisions - from what I will do in an hour, to what I will do in ten years.

2) I am middling sane. I have gotten six to eight hours of sleep, or perhaps I haven’t eaten, or maybe I’m in some other slightly off or altered state. I am permitted to make short term decisions with a range of three days, no more. I am not permitted to seek out interactions that could take finesse. I am not permitted to talk unless I must.

3) I am not sane. I have gotten less than six hours. I am high. I am ridden by some spirit not myself. I am in some extreme state. I am permitted to make decisions up to midnight. At midnight I must sleep. I am not allowed to seek out anyone. If I can avoid talking I should.

It is of course easiest to keep my rules in 1 and 2 - but having them present has saved me more than once looking back. Other times it has lessened the impact. 

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I have a geise. I cannot pick up dropped coins. Ages ago my sensei dropped some coins and I crouched to pick them up. “Don’t” he said. And I don’t.

It has no purpose really. I like to think happily of some poor person finding my dropped quarters, having enough money to get something to eat, but I don’t pick up the ones I drop in the house either. It has no real purpose.

Except it does. I can be possessed by a demon, broken of mind, and uncontrolled of body. I can be ridden by chaos herself - and if I drop a coin I won’t pick it up.

And that is order.