Vishnu symbolizes preservation and the unending flow of things, or rather, of processes. Thus, he sits comfortably between Brahma the Creator and Shiva the Destroyer, according to the Puranas, written roughly 1,700 years ago. Vishnu also enjoys descending into the human world too much, donning different flesh costumes depending on the situation, in order to extinguish evil and chaos and restore balance to the hearts and brains of mankind. These flesh costumes are called avataras and are ten in number, starting from Matsya the Fish and ending, supposedly, with Kalki, the divine perfect human being, protector of mankind during the Age of Darkness called Kali Yuga.

From fish to almost-God, mankind sweats and toils to fit into the mold of Time, unable to accept the existence of a Total Nothing. And why should we? Why should we bend over and spread our ass-cheeks to this supposed Total Nothing, inviting nihilism into territory where previously only feces dwelled before? Beats me, dear reader.

I'm on the fence, really. My heart hopes for an afterlife, or, at least, a chance to return as part of a greater whole. Let me help the soil grow as a tiny fragment of leftover energy, released from my material bonds. But my brain demands that I realize how outlandishly stupid this claim is, and that nothing awaits after death except Nothing: the same Nothing that gave birth to our faculties, and thus to our spirit-free existence.

Well.

This is why I choose, in my late thirties, to have a brain of the heart and a heart of the brain, dear reader. So that I can rein in my lust for the possibility of the death of inexistence, and at the same time seduce my turbo-nihilist tendencies with the lust of that very same possibility. This whole theatre of the absurd demands that one learn to walk between the Aristotelian bullshit of logic's so-called "yes or no" pseudo-commandment.

How about "maybe", motherfucker?

"Maybe." What a wonderful wor(l)d. A world of Maybe.

Vishnu doesn't deal in maybes, though. Vishnu is yes or no, black or white. More importantly, Vishnu is also Narasimha, his fourth avatara and an invaluable Grand Idea that has accompanied my magical, artistic, and everyday quests for more than a decade now.

Man, I love Narasimha like I love Ararita.

In a way, Narasimha is the male pillar to Ararita's female one, and this helps keep things in perspective. Every bum like myself who has experimented with chaos magic and patchwork invocations without possessing any real talent for either can attest to the truth of the following claim: you have to adopt a maybe-mentality when dealing with concepts that the general consensus dismisses as irrational garbage, yet whose life-altering spark of vitality and intellect becomes increasingly difficult to deny the more one works with them.

It's not about faith in god or gods. Faith is the cesspool of stupidity, since it eradicates the maybes as well. It's also not strictly about self-tripping, even though that's always a possibility one cannot easily discard. Mostly, it's about self-programming oneself to open the door and greet Love.

Love is the eradicator of Nonexistence.

At least until you die. Then? Who knows. Until then?

Welcome, my Love. Welcome, my Love.

Ah, I'm rambling again, dear reader. I ask for your forgiveness, though, since I rarely write anymore. This text started as a tribute to Narasimha and the tremendous role he played in the evolution of my magical worldview. Now the hash-and-beer combo is beginning to take its toll on my writing skills, which are already somewhat win-it-or-fuck-it in their whims. I start throwing around terms that have meaning only within my own solipsistic self-indulgence.

But at the same time, we as a species are already jacking off to AI-generated pornography, thus coming full circle in Baudrillard's simulacra theory. We are no longer lusting after flesh, nor even after images of flesh. We are lusting after images generated from images of desire itself. Or rather, we no longer consume substitutes for desire; we consume desire generated from substitutes.

So why is it so irrational to accept that, deep within our private imagination-space, certain thoughtforms can be recognized and communicated with? That through constant repetition of acts of will, these thoughtforms linger and acquire a kind of life of their own?

Beats me.

That's that, then, dear reader. 

Until next time:

om ksraun narasimhaya namaha

and have a fucking good night.

It's Saturday night, baby, so how about a cheap koan fix straight from the Deluge Nations? 

If you, like me, find yourself drifting closer and closer each passing year to what I call the "William Blake sphere of influence", the artist-visionary's modus operandi, if not modus vivendi, that is, if you're attracted to the sort of brilliance that gives birth to cosmogenies as real as a lover's kiss or a toothache, then you may safely retitle this essay:

Something like "Proverbs of Hell".

Or, if you prefer:

The Proverbs of the Deluge Nations.

"What is a deluge nation, motherfucker?" you protest, rightly so. "I cannot keep up with this shit. Words are meant to portray, not dissolve." Yeah, well, tough luck, dear reader. I don the mantle of the Fool when I'm full of wunderbar, and tonight I am positively convulsing with the stuff. Man, what a life! What a glorious Saturday night!

So, without further ado:

THE PROVERBS OF THE DELUGE NATIONS

1)A boulder does what a boulder must. Yet even a boulder cannot act if the surface reflects nothing.

2)A dead man once asked a living man, "What is the meaning of life?" The living man screamed in terror and died on the spot. The dead man stared in angry disbelief, for he was certain that the man had merely avoided the question.

3)A sphinx asks, a man answers, a woman generates, a child forms.

4)Throw me in coals, dip me in the river, let me dry in tempest and then bury me under a great white rock: still I'll resume my duties and pray for convenient solutions to my death.

5)My heart of hearts, my brain of brains, my heart within the brain and my brain within the heart: to suppress them is sin.

6)If Titans bred like locusts, earth would be a little garden. Yet locusts should never be as enormous as a Titan.

7)An old woman traverses a dead wasteland every morning in order to water her lilies. One day she arrived only to find them eaten by a goat. She slashed the goat's neck and skinned its hide. She then wore the hide and proceeded to eat the remaining lilies herself.

8)Some believe that the end is near; some believe that the near is ending.

9)No matter the motion, the lines obey.

10)You cannot have a newborn's smile without a corpse's stillness. You cannot praise the living and ignore the dead. You cannot sing a hymn to the sun without paying respects to the entrails.

11)Shed your skin for this world.

As for the Deluge Nations: we are all full of little people, inhabitants of our own vast inner landscapes. Some of them eventually drown, yet drowning does not silence them.

I suppose this is where I'll leave you for tonight, dear reader.

Until next time: be fruitful and full of demons. Be barren and proud of it too.