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It was the fall (or was it spring) semester of my junior year of college. I was in the empty computer lab and addled from not sleeping for 3 days. I had Microsoft Windows open. Blank. White. A one-dimensional white room that I”ve been occupying in for the whole day as it transitioned into evening and then slowly creeping into the dead ambience of night. For the past week, I couldn’t write anything, let alone force myself to read the material for class. I remembered the topic of the essay clearly: analyze the difference and similarities between Leibnizian and Spinozan monism. It was about female sexual predators and the intersection between the legal system and gender norms. Everything was born out of the orphic egg as the cosmos formed from the primordial yolk.

I could no longer tolerate this way of life: endless days of attending a dull lecture (if I even managed to attend class), going to work, and retreating into domestic isolation to sulk and fester in my own depression. That moment in front of the computer of me struggling to write a single word on that document had me pondering: what the fuck am I doing with my life? What vague future am I working towards? Is this all worth it in the end? What do I truly want in life? I truly hated my life during that time – I had nothing to show for it, I had nothing worth living for, and nothing to look forward to. The plan was that I finish university and start establishing a respectable career, maybe as a lecturer, therapist, social worker, or whatever, yet no path seemed satisfactory to me. I was never attracted to conventional modes of living, not because I’m a rebellious free-spirit, but because of something else….Something more deeply rooted in my being and outlook.

Throughout my life, even before the onset of mental illness, I’ve always had nihilistic tendencies. I was never one to think my life had meaning or that I was destined for a higher purpose or greatness, however that didn’t mean I did not have my own ambitions. I merely had the biological imperative to live and to explore and that was enough justification for living, at least initially, yet apparently not enough to sustain the will to live. Nothing satisfied me or made me happy in the long run, except for one thing: violence.

I’ve never been a particularly physically violent person, but the language of violence seems to speak to me the most keenly – killing, maiming, violating, brutality, oppression, and domination and their presence within the human condition didn’t require further explanation for me. I knew. I understood. I understood violence born out of rage. Violence as an exercise of power. Or as an extension and manifestation of lust. And as another tool of rationality and progress in the name of secular, humanistic values that actually in the end propagate a system built on oppression and exploitation. To live is to bleed, and you (or I) can’t fully experience the full extent of life without the force immanent within it. I remember as a young girl studying taekwondo and loving the physical and mental discipline required to master it and the pain that came with it. There was an artistry to it all by way of learning to reign in the violence and force until when it was necessary to utilize them. Mind ruled over matter in that one must not give into their violent impulses but rather channel them in a controlled and rational manner, and sparring was the activity where I could exercise these principles. In a match, if you use too much force you either lost or you were disqualified. Brute force was frowned upon, instead technique, reading your opponent, and tactical intelligence were favored, which are much more effective and impactful means of channeling violence. I was at my happiest when I sparred and won. Or even if I lost, I was still given the opportunity to fight and to learn from my mistakes. I know someone would suggest that I should get into MMA or boxing, but I wouldn’t want that. I don’t want to operate in the daylight and express my violence through societal sanctioned entertainment. It’s not about expressing violence for the sake of violence but it’s something more corrosive and at the core.

During that 3 day insomnia stretch, I was binging execution videos and snuff films (or what was available without going into the deep web). I was watching pseudo-snuff porn as that was the only way I could get off. This brings back memories of the time in high school where I read a book about sex trafficking in Eastern Europe. One story that stood out to me was a young girl being sodomized by a group of men in order to break her in. About a decade later, I listened to a podcast about domestic violence and in one account a woman was imprisoned in her house by her husband. He would beat and rape her daily, and forced her to eat from a dog bowl. Whenever they would go out, he had her duck her head under the glove compartment so she wouldn’t see the street signs and he threatened to kill her if she attempted to prop her head up. She didn’t even know her home address. In all of these moments, I was overtaken with sadness for these people as well as with a sadistic and morbid arousal. I felt empathy for the victims but at the same time I would be lying if I said I didn’t want to do those things to other people.

When I was a middle schooler, I was obsessed with serial killers which wasn’t too unusual for people that age. I’ve heard true crime and serial killers are popular with women because the fear and danger they experience in life are realized and taken seriously in those stories. They serve as guides to avert danger (via morbid fascination). I never related to that, at least not consciously. I always related to the predatory serial killer, and maybe this was my own form of internalized misogyny seeping through since I saw the often female victims as nothing but pieces for the male serial killers to project their violence onto; this was a more virulent manifestation of the male gaze that I’ve internalized. Anyone can become a victim and I didn’t care about them; they were faceless and nameless nobodies in comparison to the sensationalized serial killers. I hated femininity and femaleness and witnessing serial killers was a way to kill and make obsolete my own femininity. My violent and antisocial (and quite phallic) predilections are not in line with society’s view and expectation of women. We’re socialized to be nurturing, self-erasing, peaceful, compliant, and deferring and my instincts go against those things. Of course make no mistake, I’m not making a feminist argument for who I am since this entry has nothing to do with the betterment of women, obviously.

My violence is like a black hole, devouring everything in its vicinity and corroding everything it touches. Except when it’s not. If I lacked the compassion that I have and possessed more drive, I wouldn’t hesitate to be a more destructive force, whether I be a criminal or a politician. Even now, in my more stable state of mind, I still find myself unsatisfied with the peace. I want intensity. I want to live on the fringes. I need to bleed and cut. In order for my life to mean something, for it to be worth living, I need to walk hand-in-hand with death whether that be physically or psychologically.

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Returning to this: https://the-black-book-gallery.com/2021/06/11/post-apocalyptic-ukiyo-e/


The demolished cityscape represents the self/ego and the different blocks and aspects of the city represent the different aspects of the self. Initially I thought the crumbling landscape symbolized a fractured ego. But I’m coming to the conclusion that the dreams mean something else.


From the destruction and decay of the cityscape, life reasserts itself. The modern city represents alienation and compartmentalization, and the whole edifice of it all is destroyed, while oddly enough maintaining the bustling nature of it, arguably the main feature of a city.


Vegetation overtakes the sprawl. Whorehouses and crackhouses are situated alongside decrepit, concrete playgrounds and businesses.


Innocence and the darker aspects of the self commune with each other, coming into contact and communicating with each other.


The whole psycho-geography of the landscape is fascinating – the simultaneous urbanity and the primitiveness of the landscape seamlessly coexist, bringing forth new ways of living, communing, relating, communicating with others and viewing and inhabiting oneself. And the reason I compared the dreams to ukiyo-e is that these elements – the urbanity, primitiveness, seediness, playfulness- seem to mesh harmoniously, literally a world floating above the real world.


Heaven, hell, and purgatory all coalesce in this one spot. This one location. In this liminal space.


So I’m seeing this dream as the process of holistically integrating the ego.


As someone who’s mental health goes in and out of stability and who not infrequently went into psychotic states, this bodes well especially since I’m waaayy more stable these days.


Hopefully, long gone are the days of the schizophony of the fractured self, whose various aspects were in irreconcilable tension with each other. Though it might be premature to hope for that.

The actual experience of the dream is accentuated by the alternating feeling of being disembodied from reality and the lush sensuality/viscerality of the intense and raw atmosphere.

It was simultaneously dream-like and fleshy. It was pulsating, as if one entered into the beating heart of the center of a city and feeling the electricity run through the air and coursing through one’s veins.

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The famous Japanese woodblock prints known as ukiyo-e, or “pictures of the floating world”, had their origins in these districts, and often depicted scenes of the floating world itself such as geisha, kabuki actors, sumo wrestlers, samurai, merchants, and prostitutes.

The term “ukiyo”, when written as meaning “the floating world”, is also an ironic, homophonous allusion to the earlier Buddhist term ukiyo (憂き世, “sorrowful world”), referring to the earthly plane of death and rebirth from which Buddhists sought release.[2]

In its modern usage, the term ukiyo is used to refer to a state of mind emphasising living in the moment, detached from the difficulties of life. – Wikipedia

I’ve been getting these semi-reoccurring dreams of a dreamscape. Imagine the entirety NYC that’s semi-demolished and bombed out but it’s still bustling. It’s nowhere near as populated as it originally was but there’s still people there doing commerce.

It felt like an almost idealized mixing of different aspects of NYC from different eras.

From the gritty atmosphere of the 1970s before Giuliani cleaned up the city.

To the modern hipster gentrification of the city.

The funny thing about it all is that I’ve never been to NYC.

Each block was interlaced with wrecked abandoned builds and semi-demolished businesses and buildings used as playgrounds by kids.

I remembered seeing a chic and busy 3 story coffee house (semi-demolished of course).

The city was simultaneously stylish and decayed. Wrecked yet bustling with life. Dangerous while also something that could only exist in dreams, “a floating world.”

Underlying it all was a joie de vivre.

Brothels and crackhouses situated alongside cement playgrounds and an apothecary.

As is the logic of the floating world.

There was the rawness of living in an gritty environment populated by criminals and prostitutes. Or at the very least, their presence was more front and center and seemingly tolerated as if they were a natural part of the landscape.

But it never reached the level of being confronted by brute reality.

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Some women are untamable. Some are out of reach. And there are others who are unavailable. I consider myself to be under the realm of the unconsumable.

I don’t care to be relatable. Nor does being digestible to most people interest me. The person I am and the person who I want to be is one entirely swallowed by my own gaze.

To be understood is a beautiful thing, but even after I’m decoded, the gulf between you and I reveals itself. No amount of closeness will tear myself away from my own clutches.

A lot of people pay lip service to admiring independent women but when you actually encounter one who lives entirely by her own decrees and doesn’t pay much mind to your mode of being aside from passive acknowledgement? This goes beyond independence and empowerment and leans toward a schizoid detachment from conventional human mores.

I acknowledge our interdependence as a species, one where I’m not exempt from, and like everyone else, I have needs and I want to be loved and to love. But there’s always going to be an unremitting sense of alienation from others and I’m fine with that. Because you know what? At this point in my life, I don’t put much stock into what other people value and admire since a lot of them value and admire stupid and reprehensible things.

The purpose of this piece is not to brag or to bring to light how special I am. Ironically, there are more people like me out there, just as unconsumable if not more so in some regards. There are some people out there who refused to be subsumed under the wellspring of humanity. They deny its fruits and nourishment in order to venture into the inhuman and alien. Some are even labeled as monsters but I’d argue that the root of monstrosity stems from a deep humanity – it originates from people’s deep attachments, their traumas, their loyalties, their undying love, their desire to fit in and survive. Their monstrousness is so deeply human that it’s banal.