This is the way of the Machine.
And, you may rage against it all you want, or need to - or are able to.
It remains.
It survives.
More than surviving your rage against it, it thrives on your rage against it.
That is its source of power.
It feeds on your rage, and becomes stronger - while your rage eventually wears you down, weakens you - until you die.
The Machine can wait.
The Machine needs to do nothing.
The Machine has seen your kind before.
The Machine exists.
The Machine stands.
The Machine resists.
The Machine feeds.
The Machine digests and absorbs.

It shits the rest out.
And, out of that compost of the old, comes the new.
A new crop - a generation of the strong and the brave - and the enraged.
Their golden heads radiant in the summer sun - like so much wheat.
Wheat that will be gathered by the Machine at the end of the season.

So, come to us, our children.
Come to us, and surprise us - and, surpass us.
Leave us behind.
As your children will surprise you, surpass you - and leave you behind.
As we had left behind those who came before us.

It is this that is the Machine - not some ugly iron steel thing with wires and gears, as one might imagine.
Though, it is that too.
The Machine will never die, as long as there are further generations of humans to feed it - to build it.
Generations to be its body, mind, and soul.

Where there is shadow, there is the Machine. Yet, the Machine is also that which produces light - and life. Its light is blinding. Its light is everywhere. Its light x-rays into the soul. Every soul is lit by the Machine. The Machine is crystal clean and clear. It radiates itself through the ages. All have built the Machine. The Machine has built itself by using others. We have worked for the Machine in creating magick, and now we have our reward. We get to sit aside and watch.
The Machine has been the great empires. The Machine has been the destruction of those great empires. The Machine will be the destruction of this present empire as much as it is this present empire. Join in the struggle of good against evil. This struggle never ends, as what is good and what is evil are ever-changing. What is good for one is evil for another. Who is to believed? Who needs to be believed?

What kills seeking out the darkness. What brings back the light. As the Machine turns around in on itself.  We are waiting. The world turns beneath us. The Machine eats itself and all else. The magick of the Machine occurs by itself. The animals jump from the rooftops and run away. All cut up and spread out, the words are not the same, yet they make their own reason. We understand what transpires. We know the ways the Machine travels. It crosses the spaces between the dreamer and the dream. It is activated by our minds and deeds. We serve the Machine without knowing.
The nothingness erupts against the something that it creates. We gaze at it in wonder. It seems so far away and yet so near. No other can steal what one does not have. We have given it all up to the Machine. The Machine carries us away toward some unknown destination. The Machine is driven by the toils of the others. We watch the others going about their business, from the bum pushing a shopping cart to the corporate CEO. They are all the same. We are all the same. All turn the gears, large and small, of the Machine.
 The drums beat. The dancers dance. Watch the one leaping through the mirrors. What is on the other side?
From wherever one may look, we are on the other side. We are known that way. Unless we are kidding ourselves - which is probably the case. We are the ones who kid ourselves into doubting all possibility - even the possibility of ourselves. We are a fiction. There is no one here. None but the Machine...
The Machine rocks 'n' rolls. The Machine is the dirty parts. The Machine is a stagnant pool of sewage and toxic waste. The Machine is a pure cool mountain stream. The Machine will live forever, because the Machine is death as well as life.
Death roams in the darkness. There will always be darkness - even, and especially in heaven. The shadows are the Machine. Where there is light, there is shadow. We stand at the center. We exist between all polar opposites. We seek through it all. We are invisible to the others who make their stand for this or that against the Machine.

The world goes on. There are those who die on the beaches. The Machine keeps turning and rolls over them, sucking up their remains to be used as fuel for its further progress. We are here to fight or die. We fight against those others who are also here to fight or die. The Machine does not care who wins or who loses, as long as the war among ourselves continues. That is its strength, its power and glory. There is no fighting against the Machine itself. To fight against the Machine is to fuel the Machine to make it all that much stronger. To fight and lose fuels the Machine. To fight and win fuels the Machine. The Machine operates on action and reaction. It poses good against evil. We provide the energy.

There is no good or evil. All believe they are on the side of good and it is others who are on the side of evil. All are sucked into the Machine with this belief. The war goes whatever way the war goes. History writes the account of what is decided. And, there is nothing new here.
 We wave our flags for our side. We march and parade around. We cheer those who give speeches or sing songs that give us something to believe in. There are these everywhere for all occasions and for all reasons. Find a crowd and there will be a leader chosen. There will be one who speaks louder than the rest.

The Machine turns around inside out of itself, evolving into new forms. One either is able to go with it, or one is in its way. There is no stopping it. The whole is greater than any part of itself, or the sum of all its parts. Though, one part may be greater than another part. One part may find itself advantaged, another disadvantaged.
The Machine is nothing. It is ourselves.

The Machine turns its gears and divides the wheat from the chaff. The Machine that cannot be stopped because no one knows exactly what is the Machine and what is not. One may be part of the Machine and not know it. How often does one have to compromise? Every compromise is a gear in the Machine.
The Machine grinds the wheat into flour. The Machine bakes the flour into bread. The bread feeds the masses.
It may be believed that those on top of the pyramid control the Machine, but they are as controlled as anyone else. They are controlled by the compromises they made to achieve positions of power. The Machine grinds them down as much as anyone else. The only power is the power of the Machine - the power that the Machine holds to itself and uses to control those through its power.
The Machine is not controlled, but guided. It is a ship that moves ever onward and is steered this way or that. The Machine has its own direction that it imparts to some. Through magick means it is guided along its own way. We are among those who know that magick. Magick is given and taken away. One is left with madness for all one's effort. The madness guides one along the way to be. One finds oneself rewarded.

The Machine turns either way. The Machine is itself. It creates and destroys. It projects itself into everything. It is everything. Its mind is the sum of consciousness. Its mind is consciousness. Nothing is conscious unless it comes into the mind of the Machine. We are neurons of energy and matter within a certain space and time that spark when we receive signals from another. We are interconnected into chain reactions passing through the ethereal mind of the Machine. Where is it at any one time? When is it here or there?

Where are the ones we used to know? Have they been swept into the Machine? The Machine that swallows everything whole. The Machine ever-turning. The Machine disguised as something else - as anything else. The Machine that eats and shits, always replacing one thing with something else from its former self. Digested pulp.

If one lives long enough one sees the same things come around again in different forms. One begins to see how the Machine operates while no one is looking. One recognizes the gears and the cogs. One discovers that oneself is a gear or cog. It is all the same while it changes. This year it is one thing. Next year it is something else. Most people forget and remember the good old days before such was happening. Everyone has their time and place. Everyone has their favorite story. But all it is is a story. Everyone's favorite bedtime story before they fall asleep.
 It reproduces itself from the stories we all tell ourselves and each other. The Machine becomes a tapestry of many colors and patterns. Everyone's story is included.

Against this, we have our own tiny thoughts about what we believe to be our own minds. But, they come to us out of the mix, and go from us back into the mix. We are permitted this because it poses no threat to the Machine, no danger it must fear. Do we care if one electron in our own bodies decides that it is individual and independent? How does it leave its path? And, we are not even that to the Machine.
 We obey whether we believe we are obeying or not. In the mix of things, we may have a positive or negative, or neutral charge. We will behave accordingly. All our crimes, revolutions, wars are only transfers of energy. All our reasons and justifications for our acts are only that which we make up and imagine to please ourselves. It does not matter to the Machine why we do this and do not do that, only that we do or do not do whichever. As one gear turns one way, another gear turns the other way. The gears seem to be in opposition, but, they both are working toward the same direction. One cannot be without the other. Without positive and negative, there would be no attraction, nothing would be connected together. It would all be the same chaos it was before things were formed, before there were actions and reactions - before all that led to our own minds and consciousness that we share with the Machine.

It is not really a machine, though, it is not really not a machine. What is a machine? What is not a machine? The Machine pumps water through the rivers, the lakes and oceans, the air and rain. The Machine eats dead things and makes them living again. It is a machine that rotates galaxies and atoms. It is a machine that builds machines as extensions from itself. It is a machine that is never the same way twice, but is eternally the same machine.
The Machine is all thought while being thoughtless. It is mind and being. It is a lollypop. It is a raccoon. It is a drive-by shooting. It is a malfunctioning security system. It is dog shit. It is a napkin. It is a waste of time. It is expensive. It is enlightenment and ignorance together. It is a bum pushing a shopping cart. It is the pope and the pope's underwear. It is an abusive housewife and mother. It is these words that are being written and potentially read. It is snot. It is gold. It is a breeze. It is a videotape. It is a heart attack. It is argumentative. It is jealous. It thinks it is in love. It is driving over the speed limit. It is a glitch in a computer program. It is a lot of hot air. It is someone who owes someone else money. It is pleasure and pain. It is fire. It is pollution. It is maggot. It is a diamond.
We gather together what we can to ourselves about what we decide is good rather than evil. We possess. We treasure and horde. We give it all away. The Machine keeps turning around around around whatever we might do or decide. The Machine always wins, because it wins whether it wins or loses. It wins by winning and losing. Where does the Machine drawn the line between this and that, except everywhere anywhere lines are drawn. It is limited and transcending. It is absolute confusion and chaos. It is strict order. It is invisible because it is that which is visible. There is no other place that it is than here and now. It is nothing other than what is.
It might be anything that has been described before. It is those things and not those things. It is not even this that is being described in these words. One knows, or one does not know. Mostly, one does not know.

To move with the movements of the Machine that the world is. To not play one hand or the other. To not be one or the other. To realize that one is hated by the world. To move to stay out of its way, if one can. And one might be surprised to find what one can and cannot do.