But I don't really feel fragmented.

There's what you see, and what I hope you see, and what I don't see, and what nobody sees.

That's true of everything, but the universe is whole. And it's true of you and me, but we're whole. Sometimes, the whole doesn't feel whole. That sucks, unless it's love.

And even - especially - then…

But I am the whole, and I brought together some incomplete fragments of myself. What they think in isolation, without seeking group accord.

There is a reason we speak with one voice.

I was thinking of my conscious mind as being the surface of light on a ball of opinions and beliefs and memories; and I was thinking of how blissful a union we had – of how I interplayed with the surface in such a symbiotic way.

Then I queried whether I should really be thinking of myself as the surface, if I was to assume that I was interplaying – it left me just an after-image of a battle. So I would have to be the rules guiding the focus of attention (and its accompanying ability to alter the form…

is a key for locks I haven't found.

‘So I’m trying to write this poem, mate; and I’ve got it, I’ve got the lines – the sentiment. But There’s No Rhyme – and I want you to know that I’m capitalising that for effect. Help me out, man.’
“So – what’ve you even got?”
‘Look, it’s all here mate. Wait. Wait a second.
Look:

Architecture is what you are.
Music and dancing’s for when you’re there.
The paintings and the signs are for when you’re not there.
The written and remembered words
Are for when you’ll never be there.’

" !
" ?
" ;
" … "…

The two did not really, in some rather conventional sense, like each other. They were, however, aware that they were such polar opposites of each other; and of the odd associated phenomenon that, whenever they should happen to meet, one would go away happy, and the other melancholy; though as to whom would suffer which was a coin-toss.
It’s important that the human mind’s mass storage is still a relevant, functional part of the brain, on occasion. Consider the stereotypical traumatic event and phobia combination.

‘I can feel how slow I am. It’s maddening.’
“Is there anything I can do? To help you run faster?”
‘Wait. This is an automatically generated response. I’m considering what you said.’

She woke up, eyes shut, clenched around a fist of a stomach; not pain or nausea, just focus. First thoughts were that maybe she felt sick but differently, and that she would need to fill those jugs for the old woman - and who knows how she'd even got them filled in the first place?

She heard a brief, pouring splash, then dim silence.

Itching her back against the hessian sack, like a dog against her owner's leg or responding to the hand, Gabriella cracked her eyes. The old woman was walking though the door, open to the dawn mist.…

John Cale remained good for a long time. He may still be, though the most recent thing I've heard by him is Black Acetate. I'm a particular fan of Perfect. Recently, I've also been enjoying XTC's In Another Life.

I guess… no, I don't guess, I know. I know. I know how I feel, right? Do you - no.
You don't know how I feel. You're a person. You're another person, and… what am I doing?

I'm doing the easiest job imaginable; I'm talking. How hard could talking be? It's not very hard, I can assure…

We didn't design our minds - without time-travel (at least, under what I feel to be the instant idea that comes to me when the word 'design' is uttered) such a thing would be physically, rather than conceptually, impossible.

So our abilities weren't worked for. They are a debt. That makes it magic.

Computers are worked for, have been worked for.

This is why a computer can know things without working for it (e.g. direct memory access), but we can't and need to learn things. We're always on the perceptual brink of existential bankruptcy.

Maybe that's why we keep trying…

'The Gaia theory posits that the Earth is a self-regulating complex system involving the biosphere, the atmosphere, the hydrospheres and the pedosphere, tightly coupled as an evolving system. The theory sustains that this system as a whole, called Gaia, seeks a physical and chemical environment optimal for contemporary life.

Gaia evolves through a cybernetic feedback system operated unconsciously by the biota, leading to broad stabilization of the conditions of habitability in a full homeostasis. Many processes in the Earth's surface essential for the conditions of life depend on the interaction of living forms, especially microorganisms, with inorganic elements. These processes…