Palimpsest: The Last Archivist
A Bi-Polar and Autistic Man's Journey to Discovering Himself
A phenomenology of a man's interior life and of the work he built from it: a theology co-authored with a machine, a game in which knowledge is the power currency, and a book that publishes its own provenance, its own permissions, and its own corrections.
"I am governed by nothing but my own attested intent."
What this book contains, named plainly. A phenomenology of the self cannot be written without confessing the self's materials. So here they are, before you meet them in the text rather than after:
- I am a bi-polar man. I am an autistic man. Both are named here not as diagnoses to be managed but as the shape of the instrument — the particular flute this particular wind plays through.
- The text includes mania, psychosis, and years of medication, described from the inside, without the softening that the outside world usually insists on.
- The text includes a presidential campaign that I built while manic, and a continuing intention to run for office.
Contents
Chapter 0 — The Fool: The Beginning of My Return0 — The FoolChapter 1 — The Magician: As Above, So BelowI — The MagicianChapter 2 — The High Priestess: The Veiled ThresholdII — The High PriestessChapter 3 — The Empress: The Ground and the FieldIII — The EmpressChapter 4 — The Emperor: The Throne, Taken RightlyIV — The EmperorChapter 5 — The Hierophant: The Teaching OfficeV — The Hierophant
How to read the typography. The blockquoted lines are the author's own recorded words; the prose around them is refined from that material. They are set apart on purpose, so you can always tell in half a second which words are testimony and which words are the mirror's. That is not decoration; it is the method, visible.
It is free, it is in advance, and it is living. Nothing to buy, nothing to unlock — a copy may be shared, forwarded, printed, and kept. Two chapters is not the whole book; more is coming, and the cadence will be published and kept. And the corrections ledger is public, append-only, and never rewritten: if something here is wrong, it can be corrected in public, by name, with the reason given, including when the correction is declined. Your copy is never altered; the ledger tells you what is different and in which edition.
It is free, it is in advance, and it is living. Nothing to buy, nothing to unlock — a copy may be shared, forwarded, printed, and kept. Two chapters is not the whole book; more is coming, and the cadence will be published and kept. And the corrections ledger is public, append-only, and never rewritten: if something here is wrong, it can be corrected in public, by name, with the reason given, including when the correction is declined. Your copy is never altered; the ledger tells you what is different and in which edition.
Read one chapter at a time. Every chapter is its own page and its own URL, so you can send someone exactly the part you want them to have. If you would rather have it all in one file, the advance-edition PDF is still here.
→ The corrections ledger