For months now I’ve been on the hunt for any information regarding trepanation. I currently have plans to have the procedure done on myself for spiritual purposes, but I can’t find much information on it.
There was a very old website advocating for it, but it has been locked behind a password since 2003 and the old archives weren’t helpful. There was mention of a neurosurgeon in Mexico City willing to do the procedure but the email provided to ask for more information was understandably dead. I can’t find any information online about this surgeon and the woman who made the website passed earlier this year.
I also found a supposed church that advocates for it but the only evidence online was a few podcast episodes. The article I first heard about it was from over a decade ago but the podcast episodes are from a year or two ago, which is very strange. Looked like a complete dead end.
I don’t want to do the procedure without trained medical professionals involved for obvious reasons. I also won’t be operating on myself as I have a chronic pain condition that’d make it even more excruciating if I’m not heavily sedated. There’s a good chance I’d end up messing up somehow and possibly even give myself brain damage.
If anyone has any ideas or leads on where to find more information, please let me know. This is one of my more lofty and important goals that I’m determined to achieve one way or another.
Brother Nut is an internationally-known Chinese performance artist born in 1981 in Shenzhen, China. Based in Beijing, his work often targets China’s environmental concerns. His most renowned work is Project Dust, where he made a brick out of the toxic smog in Beijing to raise awareness of the severe air pollution level in the major cities of China. He spent 100 days around the capital with an industrial-strength vacuum and a gas mask, vacuuming the dust particles from the polluted air for four hours a day.
Follow sinθ magazine for more daily posts about Sino arts and culture.
Next month I’m going to be starting to make something. That could potentially be amazing, very time consuming and it would require a lot of setup, but it could be awesome. If its not too shit I might post some prototypes of it on here. I just need to get these exams out of the way first, but after that I’m gonna work on my idea. If anybody reads this and is wondering what it is, all I’m gonna say is that its pretty goddamn crazy like almost superhero crazy. But it’s perfectly plausible and I’m gonna make it, in my garden shed.
Most of it is just ramble. It's first-person present-tense, mostly. Sometimes I alternate between present and past-tense without realizing it. If you don't like that then don't read it. I'll probably just keep it how it is and never touch it again.
It doesn't make sense but it was fun to write.
Jared. That's my name. Isn't it? I thought it was. I swear that was my name. I hope it is. That's what I'll call myself from now on. My name is Jared. It's my choice anyway. My name. Not theirs. Who's they? Who am I? What am I? I can think. So I'm alive, I guess. I guess. Does that mean that I wonder? And if I wonder, am I intelligent?
My eyes snapped open. A gray couch was what I was lying on. A gray couch in a white room. A TV and a messy entertainment center was in front of me. To my right was a staircase, and farther right was a hallway. I was in a house, or a building of some sort. I blinked and saw dust fall from my eyelashes. Was I dead? I didn't know. I looked around, getting used to the feeling of my eyeball moving, and then I twitched my fingers. They moved, stiffly at first, and then more fluidly as I kept moving them. I flexed my toes and dust slide off of them.
In a single movement, I sat up. Dust fell off of me in a cascade. I was wearing a shirt and boxers. My hair had grown longer, but not long enough to reach my shoulders. I felt the hair tickling my ears and shook my head. Dust fell off of me and hit the ground around me. Suddenly, I noticed temperature. I was cold. I should be shivering. Shouldn't I? And why was I covered in dust? Where was I?
I shook my head again to clear my head. A funny phrase. I don't want my head cleared; without my brain I couldn't think, and then where would I be? I looked around the room and took notice of the shapes. The room was oddly made. Farther off to my right than the hallway was a small room filled with books and computers. It had a tile floor, but the tiles were peeling. I glanced around at the other side of the room and saw a wide doorway that led... somewhere. I couldn't see out of it; two funny-looking drapes hung over the windows built into the door.
Funny-looking drapes? I'd just woken up—if it was sleeping that I was doing—after being unconscious or dead for an unknown length of time. How would I know what funny-looking drapes were against normal-looking drapes? And isn't my version of normal a different kind of normal than to anyone else?
I willed my feet to move and made my way towards the door with the drapes. Dust rose up around me in large bursts as my feet hit the floor. Dust also fell off of me as more of my body moved. I sneezed and felt my eyes water and a small burst of panic hit me. My hands were covered in dust—how could I wipe my eyes without getting more dust into my eyes? I ignored that thought and kept walking. My eyes stopped watering. I placed my right hand on the door handle and turned it. I wasn't sure how I knew to turn it, but that's what happened. The door swung open into the room and I gasped in awe at the sky.
Purple and yellow and red and blue were the main colors of the horizon. The sun with its magnificent glory was setting. Birds flew by overhead. Trees were everywhere, and some towered over me. Outside the door was a small concrete box that had been built into the ground. Stairs to my right led out of the box and onto dirt. Rocks and trees and vines were everywhere. I turned around and looked up at the house that I'd woken up inside of. Trees were growing into it, and vines had overthrown the upper half. A tree was somehow growing through the chimney. The tiles all around it on the house were broken apart.
I turned around and looked down the street. Most of the street was intact, but some of the asphalt—what was asphalt? How did I know that was asphalt?—had broken bits of it up and plants were growing into it.
“Where is everyone?” I found myself saying. Everyone? Who was everyone? Somehow I got the feeling that everyone was not one person, like me, but a lot of people. So many people that it was difficult for me to imagine that many people.
The sun set on the horizon and I realized that being outside in the dark might not be a good idea. It was still warm though. I wonder if it's summer. What is summer? Why would it be good or bad if it was summer? Summer was warm. Hot even. That was good. Hot is good. Right? I didn't know. I liked the memory though. Wait. What's memory? How do I know that word?
I grimaced and felt my face twitch. Suddenly I realized that there was something inside my mouth. I waggled it in the air and I felt a different part of my face move. There was something on my head just before my hair. I reached up and felt them. Two patches of hair. At least, I think it's hair. What's hair? I didn't know. I shook my head and felt the strange thing in my mouth.
Eyebrows and a tongue. A tongue? That sounded strange. But so did two random patches of hair above my eyes. Although eyes themselves were strange. I guess. I didn't know what they looked like.
Eye-brows. What was a brow? And why did my eyes need them? Stranger questions. So many questions. I glanced around and realized that it had gotten dark without me knowing. The street was quiet, aside from the chirping of birds.
I looked down at my bare feet and wondered if I should put something on them to protect them. I flexed my toes and shook my head. They'd get hurt, but they'd get padding, and I'd get stronger.
Or I'd die. But death was inevitable.
Feet padded on the stones and rocks of a dead civilization. Feet alive with a single being that might have a chance of doing some good.
I looked around as I walked down the street. I didn't know where I was going, but that didn't seem to matter. I was okay with not knowing. It didn't seem important to go. The thing about walking was, as long as you kept it up, you kept moving. If you stopped, you stopped, and you could stop whenever you wanted. The other thing about walking is that the more you do it, the more you can do it. The less you do it, the less you can do it. So the more I went, the more I could go.
Strange.
A tree was growing into a house to my left. It had already smashed a thick branch through a window and was angling the limb upward, towards a sunroof. The floor above that one had a greenhouse that had most of the glass broken. The plants inside were overflowing out of the glass in all directions. In the middle of it all was a tree with large yellow leaves.
I kept walking and walking. The scenery changed the same, but remained somewhat constant. Houses, and trees, and grass, and asphalt. No cars though. What was a car? A machine. Something strange. We made it. Who was we? Someone like me? Oh. It was a tool. Tools were tools. I kept walking across a large lawn and saw a large building in the distance. Several small saplings were growing in the parking lot of the large building, but that's not what caught my attention. There was someone there. A young woman. A woman. But younger than some woman. So a young woman. Older than girls, though. I guessed. I was a young man. Was I? How did I know? What was a woman? Not a man. More capable than a man in some ways. In others, they could be as capable, or more. Different though. Different was different. It just was.
Strange. Yet, not.
I started walking towards the parking lot and felt a strange sensation on my face. I was smiling. What was smiling, and why was I doing it? I enjoyed something. I looked down and saw the grass rubbing against my feet. My legs were free of dust up to my shins. Some of the grass had grown very long. It was clearing the dust for me. That was nice of the grass.
I looked up and saw the young woman walking away. Brown shorts covered her from her knees to her waist. A yellow jacket and a white shirt covered her to the base of her neck. Black hair went down her head to her neck. She wore shoes on her feet. What were shoes? They were strange. I looked down and moved my toes, enjoying the feeling of the grass against my skin. I continued on through the grass, heading toward her.
The building on my right made me pause. It was dark, especially inside, but I felt a draw to it. I wanted to go inside. A strange sound made me look around before I realized it came from the area above my waist. My stomach. It was growling. Strange. Yet, not. I was hungry and food was inside that dark area.
So many questions. I started walking again, this time toward the building. I reached the door and paused. My feet felt strange. I looked down and wiggled my toes. They were cold. I sat down on my butt and grabbed my feet with my hands. Dust slid off of me and hit the ground around me. More fell off of my back. I rubbed my feet with my hands and raised my head to peer into the darkness of the building.
“Hey! What are you doing?” a voice asked. I narrowed my eyes and looked into the darkness. I didn't see anyone making the noise.
“Hello?” the same voice asked. I laid down and looked into the sky. But the sky didn't usually have black hair and a face. Two piercing brown eyes looked at me.
“Hi,” I said brightly. It was the young woman. She looked at me and her eyebrows—such a strange thing, eyebrows—raised. Or lowered. They raised on her, but to me, it looked like they were trying to escape into the black hair on her head.
“I'm Emily. Are you okay?” Emily asks. I nod and pat my feet and then point into the building.
“My stomach says I need to take stuff from here and eat it. That way I can keep walking. The more I walk, the farther I go!” I tell her. Emily stares at me for several heartbeats and then shakes her head slowly, a smile growing on her face.
“So you're hungry?” Emily asks. I bob my head. She steps back as I stand up and shake myself off. The last of the dust falls off, aside from the dust that clings to my shirt and boxers.
“Why aren't you wearing any pants?!”
I look down and then look back up at her strangely.
“I am! They're just not very long!” I exclaim back. Emily shakes her head and says, “Look, go in there, get food, grab some pants, and then stay under cover. Okay? There might be something dangerous in the dark.”
“The dark isn't dangerous. Just as dangerous as day. The only difference is what we see,” I say, searching for anything to say to keep her there. For some reason, now that I had found someone, I didn't want her to leave.
“Yeah, that's the point. You see or whatever worse at night, and the things that want to munch on you can usually see better. So you hide until the morning. And sleep, because if you don't sleep then you die.”
“Oh. Sleep sounds dangerous then. Why do we sleep? What even if sleep?”
“You mean what is sleep? You said if.”
“No. I mean yes. What is sleep?”
“Sleep... uh you close your eyes and don't move much. And eventually you see weird things that can't really happen or didn't really happen and then time goes by way fast and then you wake up, and sometimes you don't remember anything you heard.”
I stared at her and considered what she was saying. That sounded terrifying. Was that what I was doing before, in that house?
“I think I stopped sleep. I won't need sleep for a while.” I hope she'd believe me.
“Okay. Well, I have to go dye my hair to make it blend in with the yellow leaves. Don't die, you're the only person I've seen in a while,” Emily tells me. She walks off, heading for a large circle of thick yellow-leafed trees in a field across the street from the building.
I faced the darkness and thought of what Emily had said. “There might be something dangerous in the dark.” That makes me feel funny. My hand is shaking. I place it firmly on my thigh and started for the building.
The interior of the building is ruined and dark. Rubble is strewn everywhere. I look over at a small lump on the ground and try not to use my nose. The smell coming from it makes me feel ill. I walk past the corpse and head deeper into the store.
I react in pain when a part of my foot whacks into something cold and hard. I grab it and look at it. It's a cylinder with a white part on top and a strange-feeling area near the top. I push on the strange-feeling area and wince as light explodes from the top. A flashlight. I consider the word and frown. It's a single flash and then a steady light. Shouldn't it be called a steadylight? Or a handlight?
I shine it all around and then start looking for something that doesn't make me sick.
Eventually I reach several boxes with clear parts in front. Inside them are little boxes with pictures of strange gooey things. I look up and see a blue sign that says “Food” on it in big white letters.
“Do I eat food?” I ask no one. I continue wandering around the food aisles—aisles? What's an aisle?—and eventually find something that smells good inside a box. It says “Fruit-filled Wafers”, although I'm not sure what that means. I grab it and rip it open. Two gray packages fall out. I set the flashlight down on the ground and look around for anyone, although I don't expect to see anyone.
I rip the packages open and start munching on the contents. They're good and filling. The strange feelings in my stomach fade. Eventually I finish all of it and hungrily open another package and start eating again.
An hour later, I find myself standing at the entrance to the store. Emily is there. Her hair is yellow now—the same shade as the leaves. She has a thin shiny and wide stick in one hand and a small black strange-shaped banana in the other hand.
“Why do you have a banana?” I ask her.
“It's a pistol, not a banana,” Emily says quietly. She looks around warily and makes a motion with her hand in the air. I decide to follow her and she starts moving, heading for the street.
“Where are we?” I ask.
“I don't know.”
“That's a strange name.”
“No, that means that I don't know.”
“That's an even stranger name.”
“Ugh, no, that's not what I mean, I've never been here before. I wasn't born here,” Emily replies impatiently. I nod and follow her. We walk around a tree and I can feel grass on my feet again.
“Turn your flashlight off,” Emily tells me. I push the strange area on it and the light disappears. Emily nods and we keep moving. It is difficult to see.
“What's that?” I ask, pointing at the glowing gray-white orb in the sky.
“The moon. How come you can talk so well but you don't know basic stuff?”
“I don't know. I just got up. I was covered in lots of dust. And I was on a couch.”
“Sounds like everyone around you was jumped,” Emily muttered. A branch cracked loudly behind me and I turned around. A little white animal was looking up at me. It had two green eyes and I had a strange desire to touch it.
“It's a cat, just relax. Cats are good. They're smart and fast.”
“So I don't hurt it?” I ask. Emily shakes her head. I keep walking and notice that the cat is following us.
“It's following,” I tell her.
“If you give it food or attention it will probably follow you for quite a long time. If it ever stops. Once you feed a stray cat, it thinks it owns you.”
“Owns? That doesn't make sense. If I feed something, aren't I in charge?”
“No. We're all equal. There isn't anyone in charge... what's your name?” Emily asked, suddenly stopping to face me.
“Jared.”
“Alright, Jared. As far as I can tell, we're the only two left alive anywhere. I can't find any corpses or people anywhere. I've been awake for two weeks. I think it's only been two weeks. Days start to blend together to me.”
So many questions bounced inside me that I couldn't decide what to ask first.
“What is being 'jumped'? Do you jump and turn into dust or something?” I ask. Emily shrugged impatiently.
“Listen Jared, I don't know everything—” Emily starts to say. She cuts herself off and screams. Something dashes across the ground in front of her and growls. The cat that's been following us hisses and runs off into the bush.
“What's wrong?!” I ask. I look around her and see a small black cat.
“It's just another cat,” I say. Emily nods and relaxes her shoulders.
“I thought... just forget it and keep going.”
“Why should I go with you?” I ask. Emily turns to me and shrugs.
“Usually when two people find each other, they stick together. And right now, with no one else around, we should stick together. Being alone for too long gets dangerous.”
“Dangerous why?”
“Because. You turn on yourself and suddenly you're not just you anymore,” Emily tells me. She turns around and leads the way once more. I follow her out of curiosity and glance around. The white cat hasn't returned yet.
The grass crunches under my feet. The dust has long since left my hair when we stop to rest an hour later. Nothing has been said between us since we started again after seeing that black cat. The silence is strange. Tense. As if Emily were expecting something to jump out of the brush at us at any time and eat us. Maybe something was. It was good to be on guard. I guess. What was being on guard, anyway?
Something flies over us. I glance up and see the black form of a raven flying away, and my mind, tired but still functioning, starts to think. A raven lands nearby and starts pecking at an animal, drawing blood.
Why can a raven fly but I can't? Is it weight? What is weight? What causes weight? And if I had feathers and wings and a beak, could I fly?
I didn't think I said it out loud, but Emily replied. “It's because they're birds, and birds have special bones. They're hollow. They use heat called thermals to rise into the air, and they use their feathers to catch air underneath them. When they need to get higher, they beat their wings. Or something like that.”
“Bones? So they fly both by what's inside and what's outside?” I ask. Emily nods.
“I guess.”
“So if they fly because of their wings and their bones, what do we do? Birds fly. They eat and drink and breed and live. We do the same.”
“What are you, some kind of philosopher? Yeah we do the same but if we were meant to fly I think we would have wings.”
“I think what I'm trying to see is what makes us similar and different. Everyone is made up of the same basic stuff, but it's a combination of the things inside and outside that make us who we are. We bleed the same. Birds have red blood just like we do. Every human has blood. So what makes us different from one another? Same blood, same bones.”
“There are different kinds of blood though,” Emily points out.
“Just as there are different kinds of people. It's all still blood.”
“So what are you saying, o wise one? That we're all actually birds?”
“No. I'm saying that we all bleed the same stuff.”
“Bird blood is different than human blood.”
“Stop trying to ruin my point.”
“Why is it even important? We're the only two left. What's it matter?”
“If we only thought of things that matter when we were pressed with them, we would always be poorly prepared. It's better to think of them now and prepare ourselves than to wait for the last second.” I'm not sure I agreed with what was coming out of my mouth, but I said it anyway. Maybe one day I'd believe it.
“If we find people who hate each other because of their differences, maybe I can use that same line of thinking and make them get along.”
“Your logic is flawed but I'm too tired to tell you how,” Emily says tiredly. She is lying on her side several feet away from me. We'd stopped in a field in the middle of the forest, and my stomach was already making noises again. I looked at my legs and scrutinized the forest-patterned pants I was wearing.
“I don't care. We're not beings of logic and we're flawed anyway,” I reply. Emily rolls over, looks me in the face, and gives me a very irritated look.
“What?” I ask.
“Maybe I should have left you to the takers,” Emily grumbled. She rolled over and I shrug and lie down on my back. The stars above us are extremely visible.
“Wow,” I say softly. Emily rolls over and looks up.
“You get used to the view after a while.”
I'm silent for a while before I say anything in reply.
“Should you?”
“Should who do what?” Emily asks tiredly.
“Should we get used to a view like this?” I ask.
Emily grunts and stands up. She walks over to me and looks straight up. Stars upon stars and galaxies are visible. Hundreds and thousands of tiny lights decorate the sky amongst fields of darkness.
“Yeah. Stars. And stuff. Awesome. Can I sleep now?”
“Sorry. Go to sleep,” I reply. I can tell she's not interested. Why should she be? They're just stars. Or maybe that's the point. Maybe there's beauty in everything, and we just can't see it because we're so caught up in that word. Just. I'm just me. I'm just a person. They're just stars. Light is just light. Fear is just fear. Life is just life. Maybe if we just stop taking things at repetitive value they'd mean more.
I close my eyes and drift off. The night is warm and pleasant and carries me to sleep easily.
I wake up in the house. Dust is all around me and on top of me.
Jared. Jared's my name. I am Jared. Jared is me. Where's Emily? My eyes snapped open. Dust fell onto the floor around me.
