Hello again, SG. Thanks for reading my rants and for being a curious online replica of that little community I was so happy to see from afar, like a field of tulips seen from 5,000 ft up. You are beautiful, all of you lot, and it is great to see you are still here and doing well, all things considered.
I learned quite a lot of things this Q2 2026.
How ppl that weren't conventional and had suffered for it only wanted a safe space where the normies wouldn't attack them all the time - in order to be conventional people themselves! They formed a beautiful, peaceful little community that went to get pizza, organized karaoke nights, watched TV, movies and football together and hugely enjoyed each other's company. I understood for the first time how they yearned for this and how much they wanted their own little piece of the happiness social bonds between humans seem to offer, and how most of what they needed was that safe space where they could do it with trust and at their own pace.
I was moved by it, frankly. I had not expected to see that in a group of ppl that had gone through abuse, attack, shunning & hatred directed at them from all angles and their simple joy in being together and at peace was great to see.
I also learned how far away I am from all that. And also why I do not not envy those who love and have friends and want to be among people, nor wish them failure; why I am not jealous and loathe jealousy; why I always felt that I was watching and hearing ppl as if seeing a film, and interacting with society and seeing all societies from outside looking in, like watching a miniature train or a computer game which I am not playing.
Why flying gives me so much peace.
Because flying is simply the most concrete expression of what I want: thousands of meters away from other humans, contact only possible through radio or machine means, with all others forced by the rules all have to obey (or die) to stay away from me at all times. Interactions on the ground reduced to simple conversations with accepted rules of courtesy and a lack of problems, in a world where the sheer difficulty of all operations forces out the idiots.
I watched that little community from far away, and reduced interactions with them to greetings and questions about commonly used items or problems related to the buildings or areas they and I used. And for the first time in my life, nobody was "offended" by my staying away, or demanded that I join them, or that I adopt any of their rules and customs.
They went their way and they were happy, many showing (and talking within my earshot) that this happiness had come after inhuman amounts of time, suffering and effort. I went my way and I was at peace, alone, on the ground, for the first time in my memory. I could go anywhere and they wouldn't follow, or send someone to follow, or report me to authorities, or interact with me in any way except the unavoidable sighting of each other at some moment of the day. I answered their greetings and questions courteously and helped voluntarily when my skills were called upon. Nothing else was demanded. Nothing else was needed.
I had finally understood my real need, and my real place. I have no place in any human society, Western, Eastern, Arab, any other. I am too different. I am too strange for them. And they do not want or need to be near me for anything except work, and that can be kept to a minimum by modern technology.
I do not want a place. I want to be alone, say hello, good bye, thank you, have a good day, have a good flight, and go back to where I don't have to interact with them. I can be at peace in the middle of a multitude of millions as long as nobody speaks to me and I don't have to speak to anybody. That's why I never got nervous in Mexico City when many of my acquaintances dreaded the city center and its seas of ppl. I don't want attention. I want to disappear and be alone. Only alone is peace at hand, and only alone the rage is stilled.
Now the challenge of building a wall strong enough to keep out the rest, the "normies" and their all-gobbling, totalitarian, intolerable system begins. The cave in Tibet my father used to joke about when I constantly rebelled against being absorbed by the system is now within my reach, made possible by COVID-19-inspired remote work, Starlink, solar energy, inline hydro, battery packs and all the contrivances of modern technology that would make a modern replication of a lifestyle I saw, of all things, in an anime: the Old Man of the Alps in Alps no Shoujo Heidi.
The old man came once a month to the town, bought supplies, and disappeared up the mountain path, and that could be a viable alternative, now that I have come to terms with what I really am. "Compassionate misanthrope", they call it, and that labeling takes away much of the normies' usual idiotic posturing; the idiocy of their lives and scarcely used brains prevents them from reacting to long words and "intellectual" sounding arguments.
Now it's a race between organizing that lifestyle and my rapidly decaying body; the hospital awaits again, this time only for a fortnight, and then... I'll have to see if there is time before something breaks that can't be repaired soon enough. 2026 had too many of those surprises already, and others have fallen this year to the same genetic defects that were caught and controlled in my case. For now.