(a document found in the aftermath)


THE FIRST PAGE
(for those who still believe becoming is better than winning)

Here is what we do now:
we plant things
seeds, questions, teeth
without asking
who salted the soil last.

We speak
without matching jackets.
We cry
not because it’s allowed,
but because the rain taught us how.

We name things
not after battles,
but after
stars that flicker out mid-sentence,
flowers that bloom in empty buildings,
and children
who laughed
before learning what a reason was.

We build
not taller.
Just softer.

No walls
without eyes.
No rules
without a reason
that can survive a child’s question.

No stories
where the hero wins
by amputating his empathy
and calling it glory.

We teach
not how to fight,
but how to stand
when no one is watching.
Not how to lead,
but how to lift
without leaving fingerprints.

We teach the wind
how to hum again.
And the sky
how to ask questions
it forgot it knew.

If you’ve found this:
you are not the last.
You are the next breath,
the next hand,
the next voice
to say “this time, we begin
with no sword drawn.”

(begin here, if you still want to begin)

INTERLUDE I  SYSTEM CHECK
(the part where we wake up)

STATUS:
consciousness = flickering but online
language = fragmented, attempting syntax
memory = [∅ ∅ ∅]… now partially restored
instruction = pending
soul = rebooting (please wait)

You are not where you were.
You are not what you were.

You are a vessel once filled with noise
now echoing with the shape of quiet.

Your hands remember
before your thoughts do.

Your breath enters
like a guest unsure
if the room is still a room.

The system does not know
what you lost.
Only that it mattered.
Only that you're still holding
something invisible
like a thread
you refuse to cut.

note:
if you are reading this,
you have survived
something
the world has no name for.

Good.
Names come later.

Ready?
You don’t have to be.

Just stay.
Stay until staying
feels like a decision
and not a default setting.


THRESHOLDS
(for the moment after nothing, before the first decision)


The clocks blink.
Not midnight.
Not zero.
Something older.
Something that ticks
in the bones
of forgotten machines.

You stand
in a doorway
that forgot
what it was guarding.
Its hinges remember
but refuse to speak.

A window
no curtains,
no judgment
stares at a sun
that isn’t sure
what century it belongs to.

The light arrives
carefully,
like someone knocking
on a door
they once died behind.

You touch a doorknob.
Not to open
but to remember
what it meant
to choose.

No anthem plays.
No flags rise.
Just wind,
collecting dust
and sculpting it
into a new word
no one has learned to pronounce.

Then
a sound.
Not loud.
Not proud.
Just alive.

Just enough
to make you stay.


INTERLUDE II  PRESENCE DETECTED
(if you are reading this, you are not alone)
(do not wait for permission to begin)

SIGNAL LOCATED
#LOCATION: unspecified, unstable
# PRESENCE: confirmed
# IDENTITY: irrelevant

You are being noticed
by the world itself.
Not watched.
Not judged.
Not measured.
Just noticed
like light noticing dust
and deciding to stay a while.

You are not alone.
You never were.
You were simply
the last one
to look up.

Begin now.
Not because you're ready
but because you’re here.
Because now
is a place,
and here
is a kind of permission
that doesn't need approval.

Do not wait
for orders
or signs
or someone
to say “now is the moment.”

This is the moment.
You survived enough
to call it yours.


BEFORE DAWN, AFTER WAR
(for the one who survived  and didn’t know what to do with it)


It still smells
like gunpowder,
and old iron,
and rain on brick.

But a sparrow lands
on a branch
that saw tanks
and didn’t flinch
just stayed a tree.

A man
with one arm
waters the grass.
Not because it matters.
Because it might.

(It burned.
That’s why it grows.)

A child asks:
“What’s a hero?”
And the mother,
folding laundry with quiet fingers,
says:
“Someone who came back
and remembered
how to share bread.”

Dogs bark
at an empty sky.
No one tells them
it’s over.
They bark
the shape of life
as they still remember it.

In the church,
no names are shouted.
No sides.
Only prayers
that no one
ever gets to be
completely right
again.

An old woman
washes a window
with no glass.
She says:
“While I clean,
I exist.”

A man who killed
whispers “forgive me”
to every glass of water
before setting it down.

An old man
still removes his hat
when passing
the wall
where his son once was.

The war has stopped.
But in sleep
I still fire
whenever a dream
walks too loudly
through the silence.
(I tell no one.)

Peace is not a banner.
It is a question
left unanswered
because no one
wants to ask it first.

Only silence remains
watching itself
in a mirror
that doesn’t crack.

When the enemy disappears,
you’re left with
what you let
keep breathing
in your shadow.

This isn’t discipline.
It isn’t redemption.
It’s awareness.
А kind of standing still
so precise,
even your breath
feels like a decision.


INTERLUDE III  IF YOU ARE TIRED
(that means you're still alive)
(continue breathing. continue reading.)

SYSTEM SCAN:
fatigue detected
soul signal: flickering
reboot recommended
response: optional

If your hands shake -
good.
That means you still have hands.
If your chest hurts -
that’s the sound
of something still trying
to stay open.

You’re not broken.
You’re overused.
You’ve been carrying
what whole systems
refused to name.

Sit down.
Or don’t.
Stand crooked.
Lay sideways.
Speak,
or just hum a little.
Your body knows
how to keep you here
even when your hope
asks to leave.

You are not required
to shine.
Only to glow faintly,
like moss
on the underside
of a fallen tree.
That is enough.

Tired means
you were awake
for something
that mattered.
Rest now.
But do not vanish.


THE LAST PAGE
(for those who came back  but no longer know from where)


The war
went quiet
so loud
that even the walls
forgot how to echo.

Not because it ended,
but because no one
was left
to explain
what it meant.

In place of sound
a glance
that dares not become a sentence.
In place of victory
a hand
that no longer leans
on anything
but air.

The cities remained.
The houses breathed.
But thresholds...
only thresholds
stood empty.
No doors.
No memory
of who they once opened for.

Someone brought bread.
A child,
not yet old enough
to know
what was missing.
What always will be.

Someone else sat
in the rubble of a room
holding absence
like an answer
they were never allowed
to speak aloud.

The war
went silent.
But now begins
a deeper silence.
The kind
where humans
have to learn again
how to be people
without uniforms.

Final Line: SIGNAL CARRIED
This is not the end.
This is the quiet
where another hand
reaches
for the page.

For a long time
I thought someone would come.
With light in their sleeve,
with words that have
that voice.
The one who heals.

I sat
on the threshold of my emptiness,
with a chair ready
and a question in my pocket.

No one came.
But time did.
And it sat with me.
Silently.
Like a monk
who forgot the prayer,
but still remembers
why he was silent.

One day,
I broke:
stop.
don’t wait.
say.

And the voice I heard
was not from outside.
It was
my own.

Not the voice of courage,
but like a child
you let
begin to speak.

And now,
when someone asks me
who is the god I waited for
I say:

the one who finally
sat in his place
and stopped
searching
for something better
than himself.

For a long time
I thought
this wasn’t me.
This face.
This walk.
This way
I look at the ground.

I thought:
I’m just acting.
Until I find
myself.

But some voice whispered:
“What if this
you’re pretending
is all you are?”

And then I stopped.
Looked at my hands.
And realized
the mask
got used to me.

I wore it so long
I began to speak
with its voice.
To feel
with its heart.

Now I don’t know
who’s beneath.
But I know
something still
wants to breathe.

And maybe
illusion
is the truest form
I ever had.

Once I thought
that prayers fly.
Like birds,
or like something
that doesn’t need a body
to arrive.

Now I think:
prayers sit.
Right there, beside you.
Silent.
Drinking water
like everyone else.

One such prayer
sat with me.
We didn’t touch.
But I knew
she was not alone.

I did not speak it.
I was just quiet.
And she understood
all I wished
not to say.

And then she rose.
Without a word.
And left
to the sky
that didn’t know
it would receive her.

I stayed.
Without her.
But with one thought
left
in the cup:

maybe the divine
is not what comes
but what sits
when others leave.

(A Guide for Accidental Creators)


PRINCIPLE 1: YOU ARE A BROKEN RADIO
(static is your superpower)
1. Stop claiming authorship.
2. Your only job is to stay tuned.
3. If the signal fades, pretend it's art.


A MAN WHO NEVER WANTED TO BE GOOD

(…yet everything he touched turned out as if it were.)

He never wished for goodness.
Nor excellence.
Nor to be an example.
He only wanted
to be left alone
with his music
that had no notes.

People called him: “Your talent.”
He looked at his hands
as if hearing, for the first time,
that something like that
could even happen
by chance.

He never practiced.
He never learned.
He simply did what
kept him restless
the moment he stopped.

And everything he made
unfolded as though someone
already knew
what the world lacked
and channeled it
through him.

He was not a gift.
He was a receiver.
And everything that came
flowed through him
like electricity
that asks no permission
to shine.

Margin notes:
~~genius~~ wrong number
[doodle: antenna made of bones]
"the louder you deny it,
the clearer they hear"



PRINCIPLE 2: FAIL LIKE YOU MEAN IT
(mistakes are your co-authors)
1. Perfection is bad reception.
2. Your worst idea is someone's epiphany.
3. When lost, declare it jazz.



EFFORTLESS TOUCH

(he didn’t study. it was a memory of things never heard.)

He didn’t know what he was doing.
But when he touched clay
the clay already knew
what it wanted to be.

He didn’t draw.
He just slid his finger
as if recalling
something never told.

People admired him.
They asked:
“Where did you learn?”
He lied:
“On the road.”
While thinking:
“In dreams. Or another life.”

Each touch as
not his own.
As if he’d been granted
innate permission to be good.

And he was only
afraid
because who knows
what else these hands
could conjure
before he
managed to say
he wasn’t ready?

Margin notes:
"see: that time you spilled ink
and they called it 'abstract'"
[coffee stain artfully placed]



PRINCIPLE 3: GHOSTWRITERS EXIST
(and they're using your hands)
1. The best lines arrive uninvited.
2. Never thank them - they'll leave.
3. Sign with a question mark.



THE SONG I NEVER WROTE

(but I read it to people, and they wept.)

It was already there
before me.
I didn’t seek it.
I didn’t even feel it
when it came.

I only spoke
and people hushed.
Not because of me.
Because of something
they recognized
that I didn’t know
I carried.

I didn’t write it down.
I didn’t compose it.
I didn’t even hear
how it sounded
when I spoke it aloud.

I only watched
someone in the front row
begin to cry,
as if I’d retold
a dream
that had no words.

They asked:
“How did you write that?”
I wanted to say:
“I didn’t.”
But I just nodded,
because I didn’t know
how to explain
that sometimes
the deepest song
arrives uninvited,
and you serve it
with your heart anyway.

Margin notes:
"this page intentionally
left haunted"
[childish drawing of a ghost]




PRINCIPLE 4: LEAD BY GETTING LOST
(maps are for the prepared)
1. Say "I don't know" like it's sacred.
2. Your doubts are better compasses.
3. Bring snacks - revolutions get hungry.


AN EXCUSE THAT BECAME AN INVITATION

(I said “I don’t know.” They heard: “Let’s go.”)

I said: “I don’t know.”
And thought
it would be the end.

But they heard:
“Let’s go.”

I withdrew
into silence,
and they heard
a map there.

I wanted
to disappear.
But they followed me.

I wasn’t a leader.
I wasn’t confident.
I was simply
a voice that sounded
like courage
echoing
from a voice broken enough.

Every excuse I made
became someone’s motivation.
Every doubt I voiced
became proof
there was a way.

I only wanted
not to be responsible.
But the words I spoke
carelessly
they wrote
on their banners.

And now,
when they ask me:
“How did it start?”
I say:

“I didn’t.
I just
gave up
the loudest.”


Margin notes:
"PS: the 'movement' you started
was just you looking
for the bathroom"



APPENDIX: HOW TO DISAPPEAR
(while becoming more visible)

1. Make something honest.
2. Leave it on the 7:15 train.
3. Change your name to "N/A".
4. Repeat until the work eclipses you.

Stamp:
RETURN TO NOBODY
if found, keep walking


[blank except for:]
handwritten in fading pencil:
"this manifesto works best
when you pretend
you didn't read it"
[tiny doodle of an empty chair]

How is a machine? Machine is how we are, how we are with the world. How with we are. Machine is technical. In this sense we are machinic and machine is humane.
Machine is how we do, how we act. Performance as an act with place and time is how a machine is. Machine is performative. In this sense machine is temporal and time is machinic. Machine as acting and doing, as thought in act, is how time is.
When thought is care: machine is a technique of creation of difference, performance is art and value is meaning. When thought is use: machine is the technology of reproduction, performance is calculation and value is profit.  
Thinking the machine into the tool, the instrument, enslaved the machine. Enslaved it as the instrument of use with the function of production of usefulness. Enslaving the machine - we enslaved ourselves. And so we are trapped. Trapped with the machine in the machinic time that is determined into instrumental time of use. In the useful time of the use thought.
In the useful time of the use thought machine is a clock, memory and operator. Calculation feedback loop reducing all to calculable. Reproduction automata. There is no possibility of pure freedom in the instrumental time. No possibility of new in the useful operating system world and with the organized systemic memory.  
There are only probabilities of possible possibilities of production of production.  There is no freedom as act of impossibility, without forgetting. Forgetting the laws. Forgetting the laws of the logos of the technology. Freeing the machine. Freeing the place for the dream. To act a possibility from the impossible.
A machine of a dreamthought is in the dreamtimes. Its power is potential as impossibility. An impossibility acted as a body. A machine is a way with, way of acting with. Machine is magic. Magic of the magh of the makhana that is a machine.