Friends Don’t let Friends Incarnate In the Babylon Matrix
February 2, 2011
Podcast, The Surreal Zone
6,995 Views
Friends Don’t let Friends Incarnate In the Babylon Matrix
© 2002, 2006 by Jonathan Zap
I want to walk down the interdimensional highway, I want to break free of material form, I want to step across portals into green worlds, I want to hang out with elves, mutants, changelings, shapeshifters, angels, adolescent Jedhi struggling with the dark side of the force. I want to shimmer and become incandescent, want to shift my form at will, want to shift my form at will, want to step across the doorway, want to see out the corporeal incarnation here with you in the Babylon Matrix, want to let that portal have the impact I signed on for, want to let it know that I know that there are other worlds than these, know that there are other worlds than these, know that there are other worlds than these, that there are other worlds than these, there are other worlds than these, other worlds than these, other worlds than these, other worlds than these.
What a long strange trip its been incarnating here in the Babylon Matrix. So many glittering things put before us, things to reach toward, that are necessarily plastic, brittle, hollow and filled with poison…
I think it’s strange that you never knew, strange that you never knew, that you never knew, did you never know that there are other worlds than these? Did you not know, did you ask yourself like Peggy Lee, “Is that all there is?” “Is that all there is?” “Is that all there is?” Of course that’s not all there is. On the other hand this world is known among the travelers as one of the “Great Shows.” It may be something of a horror show at times, but no traveler, I don’t care where they’ve been, what they’ve seen, none of them are goin’ tell you that this place right here, right now isn’t intense. It’s an initiation that could make a traveler’s eyes dilate in shock at the sheer ballseyness of it, the commitment, the vulnerability, like someone deciding that not only were they going to have every surface of their body tattooed, but that they were going to do it all in one sitting on a hundred tabs of acid. If you knew someone that was going to sign on for that wouldn’t you say, “Whoa girl, you sure you want to go there girl? What you thinkin’ girl, little bit extreme don’t you think girl?” Among the travelers there is a saying, “Friends don’t let friends incarnate in the Babylon Matrix.” So just what were you thinking when you signed on for how many years in the Babylon Matrix? One thing to say, “Sure, I’ll do eighty years in boot camp!” Quite something else to actually do it.
“Here, right this way sir, step through the curtain and enter the Babylon Matrix as a helpless infant and yes, that’s right sir just sign right there, yes sir, yes sir, that’s the list of attributes and side effects, yes sir, that’s exactly right sir, gravity, mortality, corporeality, evil, yes sir those are some of the attributes sir, yes sir if you sign there you are fully committed to accept those attributes sir, how long will it be sir? Sorry sir, one of the attributes is that you don’t know the duration sir, but for ethical reasons we do try to keep it under one hundred years of age sir, yes sir that’s equivalent to about 36,000 days according to Babylon Matrix time, yes sir. What’s that sir? Will you be subject to evil? Why yes sir! In many different forms sir, we’ll make sure of it! What’s that sir? The attribute called government, sir, you want to know what that means? No sir, government doesn’t mean self government sir, quite the opposite sir, government means that an organized group of twisted, sadistic mortals will have the power of life and death over you sir, why yes sir, government is a guaranteed attribute sir!, what’s that sir?, What does massive global taxation and parasitism mean? Yes sir, that’s another of the guaranteed attributes of the Babylon Matrix sir, it means that on massively parallel levels there will be governments, parasitic mortals, poisons, cellular parasites, radiation and all sorts of other things working hard to drain your vitality at every moment sir. Why yes, that is absolutely guaranteed sir, absolutely guaranteed sir, the Babylon Matrix is actually based on that sir. Would you like to sign up now sir? We’re offering a special promotion right now sir, it’s an attribute called random birth defects sir. What’s that sir? Why yes sir, being born as a helpless infant is already included sir, yes sir helpless infant is already a guaranteed attribute sir, every mortal in the history of the Babylon Matrix has that attribute sir, but in addition to that attribute we are offering a random birth defect option sir, to just our select customers sir, no sir it doesn’t guarantee a birth defect, that’s exactly right sir, but it means that you have a substantial chance of having one sir. yes sir, that’s right sir, in most cases the birth defect would be permanent sir, irreversible sir, a permanent handicap for the entire duration of your stay in the Babylon Matrix sir, considered the ultimate challenge sir, the ultimate challenge sir, what’s that sir? Can a birth defect be guaranteed sir? Why yes sir, it can sir, there is a special rider you can sign, we can make it part of the package sir, but there is a slight charge for that sir, very good sir, I’ll just get that rider now sir, thank you sir, very exciting attribute you’ve signed on for sir, quite a challenge! What’s that sir? What does the attribute ‘dismembered into ravenous gendered state’ mean? Why yes sir, that’s one of the main attributes of every Babylon Matrix package we offer sir, it means that your wholeness will be divided so that you will be anatomically committed to being one gender while you are in the Babylon Matrix sir, Yes sir, that’s right sir, in almost every case that is irreversible sir, a guaranteed attribute sir, we lock it down on the cellular DNA level sir, it’s many levels deep in the code sir. Yes that’s right sir, being gendered means that you will have a ravenous appetite for others that you falsely believe will complete you sir, absolutely that is guaranteed sir, yes sir, that’s exactly right, that almost always does include a whole series of painful dramas, and intense all encompassing delusions sir, yes sir, that absolutely is a major part of the Babylon Matrix sir, in fact, our technicians sir have estimated that 90% of the songs created in the Babylon Matrix are about the tortuous enchantments of this one attribute of being gendered sir, speaks for itself doesn’t it sir? What’s that sir? You’d like to sign up right now sir? Are you interested in our early commitment program sir? You are sir? Very good sir, very wise choice indeed sir, sign right here sir, What’s that sir?, You want to know if you can sign in blood?, why yes sir, you can sign in blood sir, yes sir, we actually require our customers to sign in blood sir, very good choice sir. Sir, I am required to tell you that signing here means you waive your right to read several pages of undisclosed attributes but commit to them absolutely, yes sir, right over there sir, and if you’ll just initial here sir, and there sir. Thank you sir, thank you very much sir, sir, we appreciate your business sir, Sir, please enjoy your stay in the Babylon Matrix.”
“Follow me,” he said and we walked down rain swept streets, over roof tops, into dark starry space, velvet blackness, sometimes where didn’t matter any more, we were travelers now, subcreators now, we had seen the aliens, the elves, the shape-shifters, we had seen the mutant and it was us, awakening, blossoming in the realm of possibilities, the open horizon line.
“Taste the wind and the waves with me,” he said. “Fold space and phase through nebulae with me,,” he said, “play the sixty-four super strings guitar with me,” he said. “Fold space and phase through nebulae with me,” he said. “Fold space and phase through nebulae with me he said.”
“Ride with me through the forest at night on a white stallion, search with me in the cave for hidden treasure, flying like tireless eagles over canyon and desert, ride with me on mountain bikes though weedy lots, run through the city streets with me, through the rain swept streets, phase with me across portals, across event horizons into other worlds than these.”
Government, police, multinational corporation, patriarchal hegemony of primate male dominance hierarchies, your twisted black evil metastasizing over this once green world, your techno claws grasping everywhere, your toxic greed and malevolent conspiracies, your weapons of mass destruction and assured mutual destruction, your lies, red tape and banality of bureaucratic evil, your george and george mini-me junior, your thousand points of darkness and infected webs of globalization, your propaganda and prisons and parasitic predation, your breath masks and death stars, your black boots stamping on human faces for millennia, I want you to get the fuck out of my face forever starting five thousand years before yesterday, I want you to hear a giant sucking sound as you are vacuumed clean out of the multiverse and the protons, electrons and subatomic particles of your agro vibrations are composted back to form sponge like organisms going extinct on a planet with an atmosphere of ammonia in a distant galaxy spiraling rapidly into a black hole. I dare you to say no to incarnation and stand united
in Operation Infinite Nonexistence. Will it take a pill the size of a giant asteroid to cure you? You exist only to focus the will of mutants, to provoke the alchemical potency of vitality and vision, to aggravate life and awareness until it shatters your Babylon Matrix back into zeros and ones and summons forth greener worlds than these…
Always Remember
But that sounds dated now, naively dualistic, an angry voice from a few years ago, but as the race car drivers say, don’t look at the wall if you are heading toward it, look at where you want to go, and where I want to go is through those shimmering planes of improbable coincidence, through the interstices of the web, sparkling constellations of thought forms and images encoded as zeros and ones, indeterminate autonomous zones where fellow mutants disassociate from Babylon Matrix, shape-shift and shimmer iridescently with possibilities. I seek to follow time lines less traveled by, but where there are promises to keep, and many paths and errands meet, and I avoid the timelines of white powders which may seem lovely, dark and deep, but are where withering souls go to creep.
Always remember that there are time lines in the affairs of a mutant which, entered when portals open, lead on to fortune, omitted and all the voyage of our incarnation is bound in shallows and in miseries. And oh how can one ever tell how rich the Babylon matrix is in shallows and in miseries! Intricate networks of stagnant, toxic rivulets seeping into florescent cubicles, scheduled incarnations set to run by clock and currency, the folk that seem to dwindle with every nervous step, hungry ghosts hurrying, then hobbling, on the path of winding down. In such a darkly trending part of the multiverse are we now afloat, and we must seize the portals when they open, or lose the timelines of sparkly green fire which lead us to other worlds than these.
There are other paths than those of shallow misery, but they are easier to see when you realize the Babylon Matrix is only one of a multiverse of dreams. But what a noisy, bustling, buzzing, in your face sort of a dream it is, the dream of a Cyclops with one blinded eye careening drunkenly down the darkened skull-shadowed avenues of history while headlines blare “This dream is an emergency! Grasp it with white knuckles!”
Well let’s grasp the Babylon Matrix dream right here, right now and take a careening ride through its house of horrors—- in we go and there is Uncle Joe Stalin and the Thought Police coming right at us in their black helicopters, and we try to run away in slow motion but go tumbling, like Jack and Jill, down the factory-school corridor where iron turbines spin and glossy posters of What’s Hot! and What’s Not! blurr past us as we plummet down a conveyor belt and come shooting out in a confetti of thready tubes of hamburger meat rich with saturated fat and prions, and an announcer’s voice says, “Hey folks, you’re in the Babylon Matrix House of Horrors so give it all your attention, it’s all there is folks, so hold on tight and watch out for those fiery terrorist explosions, never know when the next one might happen!” TV monitors all around us show cars and buses exploding into fire balls, and the video fire balls illuminate a glimmering gold ring hanging just a few feet above our heads, and the announcer says, “Hey folks will you take a look at that gorgeous gold ring, isn’t that the hottest thing you ever saw? Isn’t that the hottie?!? That’s right folks, this brand new deluxe, luxury edition hottie’s got sixteen channels of Dolby, thirty-two valves putting out twelve hundred horse power and a body to die for, abdominal six pack, hotter in bed than a reactor core, and richer than an oil baron, it’s what everyone in the Babylon Matrix is talking about, it’s Hot! and you’re Not! but look it’s hanging only a few feet above your head! Jump for it and it’s yours, jump for it and its yours, your own little precious, jump for it and its yours!” You jump for it, but miss, and the announcer says, “Jump!” and you ask, “How high?” And the announcer says, “Higher!” And you jump again and the announcer says, “Ohhh, you almost got it, try again, because this little hottie just got upgraded with a terabyte of RAM, full leather interior and nipple rings! Ohhh, you almost got it, try again. Ohhh, you almost got it, try again, only this time use the power of positive thinking, and go for it, DO IT! Ohhh, you almost got it, try again. And again! And again! And again! And again!” But now you are getting exhausted and begin to sink to your knees. And the announcer is coming towards you, only now he has a mirror on his forehead and a stethoscope around his neck and glowing, glowing and sparkling in his hand is a prescription pad, and the announcer is scribbling on it as he talks to you distractedly, “Oh what’s that? You’re starting to feel sad little booby? Little booby starting to feel sad and tired trying to grab for the gold ring? Oh, poor little booby, that’s alright, that’s alright, cause your daddy the Babylon Matrix has got a little something for you, dhat’s alright little booby, we have some nice pills, really nice little pills to make you feel better, nice little pick- me-up pills in amber-colored plastic, here you go little booby, bottoms up!” You swallow the little blue pills and grow smaller and smaller.
Oops, now you are falling through the wrong end of the telescope, and on that path lies only Babylon Matrix road kill withering in the hot sun. You got to always remember that if you do take a ride in the Babylon Martix House of Horrors, don’t keep jumping for the gold ring, and don’t swallow the blue pills, or you’re going to go bye-bye down the wrong end of the telescope and come out of it as prion-infected hamburger meat.
And for all the billions of ring-jumpers and blue pill-swallowers, well, I wish I could help, wish there was something I could do, I feel your pain but am wary about sinking into it with you. The only ones I can reach are those who already know that there are other dreams than these, other dreams than these, other dreams than these. And if you did swallow the blue pill, you are probably not reading, but just in case here’s something for you, kind of an Ode to the Blue Pill Swallower, though it’s not called that, and it’s not by me, but from a poem by Neil Rogen,
In the beginning you knew,
Then you pretended to forget
Then you pretended to forget you forgot
Then you forgot you pretended
Remember?
Do you remember? Are you a blue pill–gobbling-ring-jumper or a mutant, or caught in between? Would you rather be a shape-shifting interdimensional traveler or a caffinated mannequin sporting glossy magazine clothes wearing a car like an exoskeleton of false personality scuttling across the highways of invisible disease? Do you dare to eat a peach that is really a red pill that leads you to a clue that leads you to another clue that leads you to see that this whole place is just riddled with rabbit holes, rabbit holes riddling the fabric of space-time like Swiss Cheese holes, Swiss Cheese as imagined by an extreme vegan so that the holes are growing and the matrix of cheese is dissolving like a spider web lacery of flimsy illusions.
And you, you who are not lying etherized upon a sofa, you who may be one of those who step through the holes, you know who you are, if you are, you are the ones I rant to, you are the ones I have always ranted to, you who see those gaping holes in the greasy, sticky membranes of twisted primate dreams, just step right through those, and don’t worry if some sticky stuff is sticking to your feet, that wears right off, wears off more easily than you think sometimes.
So come on then, you who remember, you who know that you can click “I do not agree.” You who know that there are other worlds than these, other worlds than these, and when you travel on remember this twisted dream, this civilization erected of girders and pylons of cheese. Cheesy though it might be it’s still a great show, a six billion ring circus, the greatest show on earth, and remember, it’s a show that could get canceled at any moment so don’t miss that last exciting episode because things are recycled but never repeated, and it’s all passing, a temporary world, and you’ve got a temp job to do in this wobbly temporary mutating world, the great Babylon Matrix show, the show that must go on. So finish out the temp job, and remember that all this world’s a show, and all the men and women merely celebrities, they each have their high profile romances and break-ups, their he-saids and she-saids, their plastic surgeries and medical emergencies. So ask not what the Babylon Matrix can do for you, ask what you can do for others who are also awakening inside the Babylon Matrix.
Get out there and find your team of lucid dreamers, and help them go the distance here in the Babylon Matrix and into other worlds than these. Friends don’t let friends incarnate in the Babylon Matrix, but sometimes it happens anyway, you know how these things are, you sign for stuff you don’t remember, a new script of the thinking machines arrives and you click “I Agree” without reading it all, because you know it has to happen anyway, so sometime in that forgetful zone before the great white doctors slapped you, you clicked “I Agree” without scrolling down and reading all those incarnation clauses and waivers which entitle agents of the matrix to bite you in the ass any way, any time, any place they want, so don’t be surprised if one of them decides to spray your face with buckshot when you are seventy-eight years old. Always remember that if you are stuck between incarnations, scroll down before you click “I Agree.” But now that the Babylon Matrix Program is already running, you may just have to go with it a bit, do a lot of work-arounds, keep other things running in the background. Programs sometimes just need to run their course, it’s always for a limited time only, and there will be upgrades, new versions, new chances to parallel process with other mutants, and if there are crashes, and yes, there are always crashes, well that is your chance to reformat, it’s a lot of work, no question about it, but with reformatting comes the chance to reboot with a whole new operating system, and as the metaphor of life as computer inevitably fizzles out into zeros and ones, always remember, always remember that the show must go on until it doesn’t, and that there are other worlds than these, other worlds than these….
🙂