Happy 23rd birthday to… me.

[姚霁恒]

Aloha,

Today turned out to be just another day, nothing special: nearly empty laboratory, hum of the motorway, and an icy glimpse that reminded of myself back by one length since some time in this summer. I am finally convinced that I should dare to start over, because I am not, have never been, and probably never will be where I would like to be.

The paradise has been lost.

It seems to be self-comfort to see the ‘longest days’ disposed on this or that as a tacit farewall, just as the written one. It is at least promising that I spot more and more obsessions of my own as meaningless. No, I am not parroting freedom and autonomy — rather, you just cannot plant only wall-nuts and no peashooter. Contemporaries are showing their bodies under the spotlight not for social chains are somehow profitable; rather, they are re-creating freedom from so-called futility.

I have lost five years because I mistaken the goal. Haphazard creations in this field have been prevalent long until LLMs wiped the way we think. Those projects are obscure equivalents of viral lolcats. Outstanding peers, I presume, must have forsaw this before the advent of LLMs. Pretending to be susceptible, they unveiled the truth — ‘on the path’ is itself a thing, more genuine than four- or five-letter magic books.

The rest for me is to adapt, or ‘metamorphosis’, in gaudy speech. Forget the lexica. Forget the hieroglyphs. Forget the magic books. Pick up an eyeliner pencil, as a child have imagined to happen naturally. Be meticulous and assiduous facing research code as everyone else.

Shadow of lattices shifting between corners in the pale wall. No cake, no messages, only frigid breeze. Let me blow out an imaginary candle, and keep the lab lights on longer. Gone was the paradise, the dustless desk supporting my hands is real. The motorway still hums, and for the first time in a while, I walk with it, not against it.

Matling

4 Brumaire CCXXXIII