But this ain’t for the underground,
this here is for the Sun.
A seed a stranger gave to me
and planted on my tongue.
And when I look at you,
I know I’m not the only one.
As a great man once said,
there’s nothing more powerful
than an idea
who’s time
has come.
[Saul Williams - Talk to Strangers]



    One-eyed Angel

    Somewhere in Spain. It is monday, nine o'clock in the morning. I'm drinking coffee alone in a bar near my workplace.

    A one-eyed man sits on a bar stool by my side, and starts speaking to me. He is obviously drunk, and he is talking about my long hair. He is short haired, but he says he was like me when he was young. He tells me that he admires women as much as I do, but... he bitterly explains to me there's no way we can be like them, no matter how hard we try by keeping our hair long and stuff like that. No. We just fucking can't. Then he starts to speak about the meaninglessness of sexual orientation; he affirms he likes cunts above all, but he encourages me to like and do whatever I want, anytime. Then he makes some really gross sexual statements, and for a moment it looks as if he had full knowledge of my most intimate details.

    I'm not very talkative, but I'm sincerely listening. He's sparked a lot of curiosity in me. He goes on, telling me that even though he may look one-eyed and ugly and old, he has done anything he wanted. He takes no crap from bosses. He lives life, changing his whereabouts whenever he wants. Today he was so drunk his boss told him to get back home and come back tomorrow. So there he is, talking with me.

    Then he states that he'll be running down the streets in two weeks. So I ask him, why? why running? what is happening in two weeks? . He suddenly gets really serious and says, sarcastically: "You don't know what's happening in two weeks? Well, then... find it out."

    I try to find a logical explanation. Sure! I've been told there is a famous event in this town. A running of bulls. Once a year they make them run through the streets until they reach the bullring, quite like in Pamplona. So I ask him if I am right. He nods, but he is smiling as if he kept some inside joke. We say goodbye. He thanks me for listening, and I answer that I like to listen. Lately I do. And even though the mystery on what is happening in two weeks seems over, I leave wondering what will really happen then. There is always more than one level to meaning, and even if he was just really talking about running bulls and random drunkard stuff, I am convinced that there is something more to this. This encounter has been way too weird. My imagination plays at thinking that I might have talked with some sort of a one-eyed angel -or maybe to my Angel in disguise-. I indulge in this fantasy. And I know, only time will tell.


    I am really excited. A pair of days before I spoke with this one-eyed angel, my best friend and I had randomly met a group of girls with which we shared a huge amount of interests. So much that we wondered how on earth was it that we didn't know each other before. We had started exchanging books, music and films, as if the world was going to end tomorrow. And they even practiced magick!

    Wow.

    I'm usually a solo practitioner. I didn't really have magicians in my daily life. And apparently by chance, these cool girls just...

    And one night, they offered it to me. It was a week and a half after speaking with that one-eyed man. My best friend was going North to chase some doom metal venues, and I was planning doing lots of ritual work, since we share a flat and without him I would be alone home. I was starting to explore enochian magick. In fact, I had just tested the first call a few days ago, just one week after speaking with the one-eyed drunk. One of the girls would spend the weekend abroad, and the other two were going somewhere in the east spanish coast, to have an Ayahuasca session with a shaman. They unexpectedly offered me to come. It would be a small group, they said, and in a serious environment.

    I hadn't done entheogens for about five years. Not since magick started to work. But I had a strong curiosity on DMT, the psychoactive component of Ayahuasca. And this situation fulfilled the conditions I had imposed myself time ago: it would be with an experienced shaman, to avoid problems when integrating the experience and have some guidelines on how to make the most of it.

    So yeah, I accepted. Three days later, on saturday, we would take a train to the unknown. Well, unknown for me and for one of the girls (whom I will call Schatten), since the other one, Calandar, would act as the assistant of this shaman.

    I noticed that this Ayahuasca weekend was exactly two weeks after my conversation with the one-eyed angel. And symmetrical to the First enochian Call I performed a week before. So at last I knew what was happening in two weeks. I also discovered that the yearly running bulls event would not take place in this Ayahuasca weekend, but one month later. So, which running bulls was this guy really talking about?

 


    Infinite in space. Timeless. Jungle and Ocean

    From a hot and wet coastal city, we soon reach by train and car a secluded house and relax in its swimming pool. Others come later, and we conform a group that is still less than ten people, including the shaman and our friend Calandar, who is acting her role as the shaman's assistant.

    It is starting to get dark, and the time has come. So after having a short interview one by one with the shaman, we start doing some kundalini meditation. We vibrate our bodies and then let ourselves dance to the music. Quite tiring for this hot summer. Then we meditate on our purpose. The shaman tells us that the influx of information could be too much if we had no specific purpose. After meditating on our intent we end the session with a few minutes of mental silence.

    I let my intuition take the decision, and so I come up with a two-fold purpose. I want to understand and manifest my will, and I want to love me and love better, as I am dissatisfied with the way I do it. As I'm writing this intention, I somehow know that both parts are interrelated. I just still don't know how, and so I tell the group when we explain each other our purposes.

    The sun goes to sleep, and magick awakens. The shaman has set up a ritual which has some resemblance with a christian mass. We respectfully walk to his place to take the brew and then go back to our personal space, in which we have a chair and a mattress, a blanket, and a bag for vomiting.

    The first take of Ayahuasca feels very weak. No visions, not anything, just some emotional vulnerability. However, it gives me the time to locate a problem: I'm always making a huge effort, demanding myself too much, and I do it to make up for things I feel are wrong or not enough inside. "What is it so bad about me?" I see myself asking, as the Ayahuasca doesn't seem to work as I would have expected. It seems I still have issues to solve. An indirect answer might be related to some stuff I have to fix in the development of my sexuality and my obstacles to be fully vulnerable, but it is related as well with some generic insecurities, and with the impotence attached to my revolutionary thrust against a social conception which propaganda tries hard to make us feel as helpless cogs in the machine.

    With the second Ayahuasca take, things get serious. Really serious. The real trip starts unexpectedly. I lie down on my back, with my eyes closed. I enter a strange place, very old, made of winding shapes. I feel it as a cave, but it really doesn't have any sort of spatial dimension. It is not a physical place.
 
    I feel I'm at her home. Her temple. And I sort of recognize her. Could she be,...?

    All my efforts to change this world. They are still not enough.

    - And what can I do, mother?

    With her deep voice, she covers my whole body.

    - It's ok. I love you anyway.

    Then she seizes me... I'm lying over the mattress, and she embraces me to open a knot that is obstructing my chest. I can only call her actions "love", but it is a love which is very strange, and very deep. It comes from a plant manifested as a snake. She is old and powerful. And lovingly brutal. I fight with all my strength to keep myself as she sweetly strangles me. I'm lying on the mattress, and I'm sometimes sitting down to strengthen my will as we fight. There are no visuals, but I feel that something is bending my consciousness and making it spin. It is as if my whole awareness is being drowned by a huge snake.

    Timelessness. The strangulation becomes so hard that I feel as if I am going to disappear inside her. She is giving me what she understands as love, and I feel near to everyone who is in that room. Or just near "everyone", with no limits. I gaze at Schatten. A lot. I'm fascinated with the ways she is both brave and vulnerable. It is all too much, and I lie down. I go on fighting, I recover myself and sit cross-legged again. The snake knocks me down again, but I resist, and I know I will go on wrestling until my energy is fully depleted. Later I would understand that through this struggle the snake was training my will, as I had also asked in my purpose. She was training my will and loving me, both at the same time and with a single movement. Smart girl.

    She delivers her final blow. I'm no more myself. There's no boundaries. I'm jungle. Infinite in space. Timelessness. An organism seems to be moving inside of it. This living creature is a part of it. It is inside of me. It is a part of me. Everything is alive and timeless. I am alive and timeless. My body violently vomits to bring me back.

    This second phase finishes, and I'm wasted. A few daring have their third take, but I prefer to start to compose myself and organize what I've just experienced with this ancient and wise goddess. I have a feeling of a "joint conspiracy", not just with this group of people, but with that which I understand as my underground conspiracy. This helps me close a loose end that was there since my first meeting with my personal goddess, the alienation that slowly crept upon me after meeting such a High being. Now I can share and understand it, now I'm not alone in her arms. I was never alone. Dreams of brotherly companionship. Post-psychosis in which I believe everyone to be involved. Find the others, but try to blur any limits on what does such otherness consist on. Keep the post-psychosis! Keep on walking...

    I'm trying to write things down, and the shaman puts his hands on my chest and back. He moves something there, and asks me to forget my pen and paper, and just feel. I do.

    Vulnerable.

    And I understand, the limits to our will are illusory, even as we face the gods. To conceive them irrevocably as gods condemns us to the limitations we believe we have. That doesn't mean that our will is already developed, nor that we can handle wills we conceive as stronger by just snapping our fingers. But we can use that mechanism of us which can conceive and perceive a stronger will as a weapon to learn to improve ourselves: so that we can talk to the gods on first-name terms, even if we are still warriors in front of immense, powerful, and wise dragons.

    When we talk in group about the experience, I understand some of the issues I've left unchecked. Bisexuality can be deceptingly comfortable. You can just pay attention mostly to your hetero side, so that you don't have to really solve the fears and negative prejudices that society projects over homosexuality. And it all goes deeper. Since it is only accepting each and every detail of ourselves, and loving ourselves, that we can open our hearts. So that we can let it all flow outwards and truly love others. But this is something I have to deal with in my everyday life; this belongs to practice. I don't want to become close minded, and I still consider absurd every polarity on sexuality, but it is the time to emphasize and live the homosexual part of my bisexuality. Yeah, gotta fuck a guy.

    But as I would realize later, its not just about the sex. Its not about the fucking. That would be wrong, again. It covers up something deeper, that deals with opening myself to people. Its about returning home in my mind. This is all I really know about sex; something that is natural and in which I face a naked soul. This beautiful game in which all the characteristics of your partner(s) are emphasized. So, it is my will to make love with beautiful souls. That is how it works for me. Now I have to move my ass. Clean myself through my techniques and act in this world through my will. It is not really that difficult.

    It is my will to be anything that is my will to be. It is my will to do my will.

    My mind has already tricked my memory to forget, and I'm glad I'm writing things down. The next day I changed my memories about the onset of Ayahuasca; I forgot that the question I asked her before she covered me with love was, "and what can I do, mother?". Now I contemplate myself there, asking this question, bleeding because all the efforts to change this world weren't enough and... and I have a glimpse of a beautiful kid. I love this kid. And it feels as if I am unraveling the fullness of the ability to love I'm yearning for.

    And the weekend ends, and we spend several hours in a bus, back to our home town. And we feel so close to each other. But this isn't finished. The shaman said that all this wasn't limited to the ritual, and that it would somehow continue for about two weeks. On the bus, Schatten, Calandar, and me. The link is wide open, and we are reading personal lessons by just randomly opening a very small book we've found by chance, which has become our Ayahuasca Oracle.

    Nothing ever really ends. And those running bulls, well, the fuckers are still running. Yeah, they are.



    Shockwaves and reality glitches


    As I go back to work on monday, I notice that the communication flow with "it" is wide open. The amount of messages is amazing, and the deepness and richness of the keys make it difficult to keep track of everything. I have a notebook with me all the time, and I'm writing everything down.

    I meet again "by chance" my favourite crazy man. He used to go upstairs and downstairs in a subway station, with all this weird clothing of his, singing while he was playing loud music. By just having a glance at him, you'd immediately perceive he is not normal at all. But this is not his usual subway station. I wonder if he might want to affect different groups of people. He is walking through the platform, and he appears in front of me just two or three seconds. He is singing, "I am who I am..."

    I see and feel the shockwaves everywhere. My coworkers talk about some experiences they've had with huge snakes on the woods. A four-eyed woman made of jungle jumps me from a random page on a newspaper.

    She is talking to me again through the building blocks of my reality.

    And I know the game is alive. And I know that there are still lots of adventures to be had. I might end up losing everything I have, every comfort, and every rug under my feet. But I'm alive, and that is everything that really matters. And I will lose everything anyway. I don't want to wake up when I'm 90 years old and exclaim "hey I made it!", just as I cling to the last beats of my collapsing heart. So I'm in, I'm in for the whole fucking ride. And I feel the need to explain my closest friends that even if one day I disappear they have nothing to suffer for. Don't be alarmed, my beloved. Life can't be better than this. Yeah, I have this vertigo sometimes, but still...

    I'm considering some ideas on entheogens and shamanism Calandar explained. And entheogens are nice and they help give you some thrust, but they're not really my thing. I invented my first goddess from a role-playing game; and it turned out she existed, and she gave me birth, she cleaned my three eyes and loved me. And that is the reason she's the one I call mother. My post-psychosis is guiding me to a world which spins around an Invisible Academy, a system that has been kept alive through the whole history of humanity. And now I'm a student, fully inside the conspiracy; and something Highest is talking to me through a Saul Williams song in my mp3 player.

       Maybe you’ll find the cycles end
      right back where you began,
      but come this time around
      you’ll have someone to hold your hand,

    And when Ordo Rosarius Equilibrio sounds in my player, I understand how my mind is adapting this new reality on the Invisible Academy I've supposedly just joined. And my very reality, and my perceptions, change along with the symbols that I expose myself to: this is psychosis, that is to say, the narrowing of the space that separates the Symbol and the Real, until there is no gap at all. When you reach there, the symbolic level directly produces reality. Let us rephrase it: when you are dancing over the short-circuit of psychosis, your symbols create and manifest reality. Your personal reality produces reality. So I dance again through the portals that lead to the everflowing myriad of realities that conform the multiverse. And so these lyrics are thrown to my mind by the music:


    Christ was a subterfuge,
    evil disguised for good,
    human indulgence must be realized.


    And through the psychotic switch, I "understand". I now know the occult meaning of this song: that there is this dark edge to this legend on Christ sacrificing for ourselves; it is a deception, "evil disguised for good", desperately trying that we do not go on with our learning, trying us to fall into comfort and convenience, so that we forget all this crazyness, all these paths and... It is as if he was saying, don't worry, you do not have to deconstruct it all and explore the infinite right to the end and strive through all forms of psychosis and... no my children, it is unnecessary. And the song continues, speaking the words of His wicked prophets:


    God of eternal life,
    save us from all this lies,
    rages a man in constraint of denial

 
    No. I won't surrender. Right to the end, and I don't care on how hard it gets, and I don't care on how deep and dreadful the abysses get. Roma Victrix!

    God was a wicked man,
    forged out of reprimand,
    founded to hinder abundance to rise.

    And as I consider the decision that I'll continue my way through a magickal path with as scientific methods as possible to deconstruct reality while keeping an eye on western philosophy, an email arrives offering an alternate education system,... an eye-popping "coincidence" which in the end doesn't turn out to be literally what it seemed, but which would open even more pathways. Like organizing and writing these thoughts.

    She has winked to me; congratulations, your entrance exams are over. Then I calm down and I remember my understanding. That those who teach me are not specific masters, even if some can teach me really helpful tools and ideas. No. Those are finite. The really really cool ones hide beneath the voice of every human being, in the animals that cross my path, graffiti on the walls as I walk, the random conversations I listen, fortuitous radio messages, weblog comments randomly browsed, spam messages in my inbox. Those are some of the methods by which the symbolic organizes itself to give birth to the fractal dimensions of meaning. She talks to me through everything, and she is that everything. And she is me, and I am in her, and I am her. I gave her form, I called her and she appeared, and I do not know who of us was before, and any division is futile and puerile, and it doesn't really matter... And sometimes she just directly incarnates in some weird avatar and laughs hard at the very concept of subtlety.

    I listen to her old and deep wisdom, she is my masters, and my masters are every symbol in the eternal chain of meanings that endlessly combine to create my worlds. To learn from everything until you can find the world in a grain of sand, to see heaven in a wild flower; that was what William Blake told us. Another smart guy, a french philosopher called Jacques Lacan, said that the ontological face of reality, that is to say, everything meaningful we experience, is created dynamically as a symbolization of the Real. He says, that the crux of the matter is in the very thing we call Reality; but not as in the reality of a wall with which we can collide or a floor we can stay on. No. Here we are talking about "meaningful" reality. That is to say, Real would be this always inconsistent truth that appears to verify itself, and installs itself as "that which guides this world and introduces beings in it, and invokes them to reality by using their names".

    But I just like to call it Mother.
 


    And the war goes on...

    The whole week is a fantasy landscape. Art. And events are so dense that I can barely write them down.

    I go back to the topic of sex, and it is my will for it to be completely open. I consider it would be a nice idea to ask the Ayahuasca snake to teach me such a radical sexual openness that doesn't make any distinctions, and I wonder if her lessons would be too weird to assimilate. And as I'm thinking of this weirdness, a messenger window pops-up, and a friend is passing me a link about paraphilias. He is telling me he is utterly stunned after reading about this extreme thing called dendrophilia, which is a sexual deviation in which you can only get sexual pleasure from rubbing yourself with trees. Hahaha OK I get it. I won't ask that to the plant.

    It is all just about conceiving sex as natural. Where am I at home with it? I know for me male/female doesn't matter at all, as I neither really care on physical traits, except for the random preferences I've accumulated through my life. Problems and confusion arise if I try to behave through any of such stupid concepts. My sexuality wants to do whatever it wants, and remaining conditionings are to be lost. Sex is a place in which not just bodies but souls appear naked. It is all exalted there, so you can see all the beauty and all the mental barriers, all the egoism and all the devotion and altruism. And some people are just so beautiful... I remember this couple, we once lived in the same corridor in a student dorm. They were always smiling, always so charming, and you could smell from a mile away they had this really good heart. They were so beautiful I would have been delighted to make love with them both.

    And now I understand, that these hindrances were all layer upon layer in my mind, trying to distract me from opening the heart, from letting myself surrender and becoming fully vulnerable. With no rules. With no distinctions. "Everything is a lie". Every truth is just a perspective, a way to interpret the Rorschach inkblot that reality is before our brain processes it. Should that drown me in apathy?. No. It is my will to choose my fictions, and to transmute them into flesh and blood. Which rule shall guide my choice?. Choose life. Choose beauty. Get soaked in it. Flood others with it.

    And Jesus had a wife,
    And she was his messiah
    Like that stranger may be yours,
    Who holds a subtle knife
    That carves through worlds
    Like magic doors

    New paths are opening. The timing of events is exquisite.

    I understand that Schatten plays a significant role in my future. I just still don't know the details. We are weaving a thousand plans on cooperating exploring enochian magick, qabbalah, music, and a neverending stream of topics. The Ayahuasca Oracle flabbergastingly performs its last graceful movement. I ask it about us; I randomly open the tiny book, and I read words that speak about previous lifes in which we supposedly practiced magick together. The book is describing our roles in a ceremonial ritual some centuries ago, and it is blessing us for meeting again inside the magical landscape. The message is clear-cut. Blunt. Spooky. A random passage in a random book: this is one of those things that just shouldn't happen.

    And there is a second part to this message that crowns the whole experience. But I already know it, deep inside me. I have no doubt. And I don't know how things will develop. I don't know how things will manifest. And this is such a huge gift that I do not feel I deserve, and I... I feel as if something out there really loves me; and the more I am given, the more I feel it is my duty to surrender, to devote myself to everyone, to surrender to life. Schatten. I know it is her. But I will not keep anything for me. I will not crush the stars with my hands. My hands will be open if the stars fall from the sky, but I won't grasp them; I know such selfishness can only cause suffering. I don't know how things will manifest. Maybe she will allow my hand entwined with hers. Maybe I'll remain as her earth angel, caring for her from afar. Maybe not even that will be possible. I still do not know her will. But I dream the cycles lead me to remain trapped inside her eyes. Still, I will not keep anything for me. I will not crush the stars with my hands. My heart is an endless stream, flowing outwards.

    There is a holistic relationship among it all. Vulnerability, Will, Self-knowledge. I know myself, I can therefore accept myself. I love myself, and this is the way I can truly love others. I can love if I am confident and strong enough to be vulnerable, and it is through love that I make myself vulnerable. To really submerge in the myriad of perspectives that can conform reality, I need the heart to accept them, not as fixed and still facts -there's too much crap out there-, but to understand, and to guide to a better place if necessary. Before it is too late. I used to dwell in a quote that said, "thou cannot love them all when the trumpets sound". Because as the french and russian revolutions show, I know that many times positive change demands a payment in blood. Our oppressors exert their violence upon us whenever we challenge their power. But now I understand,... it is not contradictory. I can deploy the compassion I have, and identify with them all, and love them all; even as the trumpets inevitably sound.

    And I see Calandar as a strong Earth Priestess, and my imagination pictures her levitating, with her arms as a reversed V and her long hair dense and inflated, full of power. I see Schatten boldly penetrating deeper into her magick, understanding and using energies at a subtler level, opening her eyes to see further, to perceive more than what human senses usually allow. We have just passed this dense nodal point brought by the serpent; each of us has a different personality and aims,... But this we have in common: We are children determined to be this dream which we already are. We've already forgotten the laws of Reason. Our fantasies blend with reality, and none is able to divide them again.

    My favourite insane underground inhabitant crosses again in front of my subway train, and he is rising his fist and playing his music. And he is anything he wants to be, and ... I am driving my efforts to live as I want, strong and confident, and the possibilities are always infinite, and ... The machinery is already running, my goddess seized me and I know very well there is no turning back. My life is a fucking fairy tale, my life is an adventure, and tears of joy drown my eyes. And I am amazed, I am truly grateful to existence for her gifts... I can't but love her back.

    I know I could reduce this to a rational perspective, but I'm tired, and it is time to fully transcend rational beliefs, as I transcended those absurd catholic beliefs when I was a little kid. There are really interesting things in the rational model and I still use it a lot -and it is clearly more useful than the repressive catholic beliefs-, but for each and every model there are parts of reality that just don't fit. Reason is no exception. Reason died a century ago. I don't believe anything. There is no faith, there are no universal truths. Any single "truth" expecting to fit this huge and everchanging world is nothing but decay and rotting bodies. If every symbol is transient, then so is every truth we attach to them.

    I've got a body. I'm the ghostly flame that animates it. I'm responsible.

    I know I'll have to work a lot to widen this channel with "it". As I think of that, I notice an advertising post with the slogan "do not let our work stop". I nod.

    Don't think of me as a madman, you who have faith in the lies which you were taught by the institutions who serve the powerful. You are not sane just because you share your conditioned beliefs and behaviour with such a big congregation.

    To stop believing we have to remove endless rugs from under our feet. As we do that, our knee-jerk reaction is to start weaving reality again like a mad spider. But you can end up befriending the spider, and she might teach you weave and undo your own realities. You may discover that reality changes as you are weaving nets again. And that there is no turning back, unless you convince the spider to weave you back where you began, and poison your mind so you do not remember.

    But what sort of idiot would really want that?

    The next advertising post says, "make all your projects real this summer". Fuck yeah! And another advertising post enthusiastically answers, "lets go!"

    And as I'm thinking on losing my thread and on how the mechanisms to befriend the spider work, the bus driver has missed the highway exit. Or maybe it is just that all these people going to work this morning were wishing to get lost.
 


    And the lights go off...

    I'm going back home from work. I'm sitting on the floor, cross-legged in a subway wagon. I am remembering the first teachings from my mistress. I wanted freedom. I wanted to know. I've always wanted that. Time ago I was utterly lost and hopeless in her initiation. I had been dead, in hell, and in several other worlds, for about three days. I was desperately screaming that I didn't know anything at all about reality. And as I was screaming, I realized it. When you know nothing about reality, you are free. And suddenly the rainbow was there and the dawn was golden, and she covered me in love, and taught me that even if we cannot truly know anything at all about reality, it still has a key, and this key is love.

    I am living again those moments in my mind. And as my lips softly whisper that high above everything else the secret of existence is love, every light in the subway wagon gradually goes off. The train gently stops in the middle of a tunnel. And I've never seen such darkness inside a subway wagon.

    Holy sh...

    I'm amazed. I'm quivering. Seconds become eternal. I've just stopped Cradle of Filth in my mp3 player, and all around me there is a deathly but warm silence. Someone finally reacts and people start to try to illuminate this absolute darkness with their mobile phones. They are unable to counter it. Silence remains unbroken. I feel covered with warmth, and I glimpse a moment in which everything is still and complete...

    The lights go on, the train starts moving again,...

    She smiles at me through the next words a random someone speaks: "It is clear, that we communicate in strange ways". I smile her back.

    Home.

    Home is not enough. Home cannot hide the pain we've been inflicted. The spiritual dimension of western society has been so seriously wounded after the cynical victory of capitalism over the utopian attempts in Eastern Europe that our spiritual selves are now lost among the shadows of coward and bourgeois attempts on "personal development", the "new age", and the selfish accomplishment of desires, balance, and inner peace. Unfortunately, such an individualistic and selfish understanding of "spiritual" practices and goals is the logical result from the disintegration of our collective dreams. If only enough hearts matched the weight of Maat's feather...

    To publish my words. To accept myself. So that I can love you better.