Bill Janssen

“Ask me any question–preferably one with no simple answer. Or one with no answer at all–even better. Just ask, and await no answer. Let the question take on a life of its own.”
― Ashim Shanker

“The fact is that we lack the terms to define [the Null Rhythm], and there are too many hypothetical notions upon which our assumptions are stacked that it would be silly for us to explore it. All the same, there are layers of absence between waves of static, perforations in the surface of the latent aural wall that descend to pits of ecstatic dread, eschewing the crystallized intelligence and industry of all manifestation with its own form of anti-intelligent, retro-manifestation–not the undoing upon ‘the done’ so much as the unbeing upon the ‘will have been’ (which can be stretched to include both the ‘have been’ as well as the invariable ‘to be’). The Anti-Rhythm rises from the perforations, from those pits, only to remind itself of the sheer inadequacies and of the abomination of existence, which is not to say that it confronts or beckons to all or any who exist. Rather, like a listless predator who has lost the thrill of pursuit, it observes without interest, without appetite even, this objective reality that has prevailed only in meeting the standards of its bitter contempt, for all braided within its fabric languishes in mere folly, and all therefore remains too intertwined with the scraps and muck and detritus and moreover with the flaws in this tapestry of being to intuit its desultory artifice. There is no unbeing of the ‘will have been’ aligned with a destined course. The destined destination is simply a byproduct of aim-befuddled movement.

[Excerpt from "Why Yes Always But Also Why Always Yes Never" by Ashim Shanker]”
― Ashim Shanker

“There are ribbons that ensnare, it
seems, though I cannot feel these
restraints: a tangle of shared
understandings, expectations, values,
and obligations that demarcate sentient
boundaries and frame the articulation
of essence. Yet, there is also something rather arbitrary and inadequate about
these ribbons and their juxtaposition.”
― Ashim Shanker, trenches parallax leapfrog

“The sounds of my breaths slowly begin to fade away, and I can hear again the waves in the darkness. The waves again! Reverberating through a hollow tube. Focus inward, and ignore the sound! Ignore the cause. Think not upon the cause of that cause or upon that cause’s cause’s cause. There is more than we will ever be able to explain. More than I will ever know and observe, and thus our systems are riddled with gaps.”
― Ashim Shanker, trenches parallax leapfrog