[My thoughts are in brackets.]

Thank You

I had written you multiple times, without ever being able to truly express what I wanted to say or ask, but each time getting closer to forming the thought. However, with the last article on the "second metaphysical dialogue", when you described those who read Evola, Campbell, etc as seekers, it finally came together.

[Check out Daniel J. Borinstien’s (misspelled that surely) The Seekers. I got it from him]

I've wanted to thank you. At first, I could only think of saying thanks for the knowledge you gave out on myth20c, and the crackpot podcasts, but knowledge can be gained from any source, and twisted for any end. Then I thought of praising you as a truth seeker, but truth is revealed only to the individual, as I came to learn.

[I don’t think of these discussions as “giving” knowledge, but trying to develop it. This writing thing for me is postmortem. If I had been successful, socially, athletically, economically, what I would really want right now is a young girl to have babies. But the dream of an intact family will forever elude me. So I dotter on, musing about the things that would set me insane if I could not write them down. It took me 30 years to be able to write a salable paragraph…and just in time. Because, although I cannot do 3rd grade math, I cannot forget things unless I write them down and they drive me crazy. So, if you are learning anything from listening to or reading me that is not about fighting, retail food, Bantu-wrangling or urban survival, it is most likely something I no longer have the ability to recall writing or saying, thankfully free of that monkey off my bad back. I have the extreme good fortune of being able to make a survival income from my own attempt to remain sane.]

I had seen you write how some people questioned you "why do you do it", "there's no money in this", etc, things I knew all too well from my own life, and how it can crush one's spirit, and since I felt I had to make it known there was some value to what you do, beyond petty material concerns. What I came to realize is, I wished to thank you for reigniting my will to strive for the truth, those articles and podcast appearances had value, without them I would have become just another soul consumed by this world, by "nothingness the black flame".

[Carlos, that paragraph above is worth all the work I put into those however many books you read. Thank you. There is more to life than not losing my mind, thanks to the kind words from you and others concerning the usefulness of what I have approached as throw-away work.]

When you used the term "seeker", that phrasing reminded me of when I first heard you on myth of the 20th century. Some years before, I had dropped out of university because it didn't feel like I was gaining true understanding, and sought it in different avenues, initially fighting and exercise. But while these pursuits began as an inner self realizing itself through action/becoming, they quickly became ends in themselves, exercises in the mundane. I'd try all sorts of things to realize this inner being, one of those being the sorts of politics discussed in myth20c, eventually burning myself out with nothing to show for it.

[It is my observation that most people who follow politics with real zeal rather than with the reptilian realization of the Merchant-Mind that politics is nothing but an exercise in The Lie intended to strip the soul from every true believer on every side of the political question, that those people are miserable. I have friends I love suffering a hell of perpetual perceived injustice—and why, because they were brain-washed in the Lie that civilization is structured for justice when it is structured to facilitate injustice—and their suffering souls are milked from the Left utter and Right utter of the Cow of the Demos by the fiendish hands of the oligarchs who own their minds.]

Life had beaten me down, whatever that inner being was I desperately clung to despite all the negations around me, I was ready to let go of it to stop the suffering such an endeavor brings. I remember listening to you talk about masculinity and Plantation America on m20c, and was intrigued immensely. By this point, a mundane life seemed inevitable, and this was the fate I was ready to accept. Then a car struck me (I had a copy of Will Durant's Story of Civilization: Book 1 in my bag, it bent it in half due to the impact) and ruined my academic pursuit for good (I had gone back to school due to pressure, dropping in and out). I could barely walk for a month, moving was painful. I felt alive again!

[I often wondered if Our Oriental Heritage could stop a .38 caliber bullet!]

By this point in my life as I said, I had tried everything in my search. At one point, the negating aspect of this civilization became so bad I found David Ickes reptilian shapeshifter theory appealing, I believe because it allowed me a way to negate the negation. Then I turned to Christianity. I also had only recently lost my virginity at this time. Listening to you describe the ancient ideal of heroism, barbarism, etc, I decided to re-read the Iliad (Along with William Durant and "The War that Killed Achilles" since I saw you mentioned both these once), and a book about Alexander the Great.

[Imagine, if a book were written about Alexander now? It would actually be titled something like Alexander the Pretty Good and How the Social Injustice Implicit in the Patriarchy that Raped Mother Earth Gave Monstrous Birth to the Lie of Greatness and Other Essays against Great Man Historical Theory by Cunnilingus Zipperhead and Rugmunch Transmogrophy ...]

I identified with Achilles, viewing this whole civilization as my Agamemnon, and decided to go on a quest to fuck as many women as possible to honor my hero, since I already won my honor by fighting. Well I succeeded, at one point 5 in one week. An aspect of myself that had always remained hidden within me finally awakened, largely thanks to your views on women, which were always a mystery to me.

[Your Trojan Whorse was partially inspired by The Iliad, which I was reading at the same time as I was fielding the first in a series of “how do I get laid” questions, and decided that I cared more about Achilles not being ruined by his slave girls than I cared about some Trojan banging a serving wench behind the doomed walls of our drug-hazed Ilium.]

However, this too became a pursuit in a physical indulgence that had outlived its purpose. At this point, I remember praying to a Goddess figure, that I was one of the last men around who was able to satisfy the poor miserable women of this earth (at this point I was coming to view sex as literally fucking feminine aspects of the universe, which was fully fleshed out when I later read Joseph Campbell), if only she would guide and protect me.

In writing this, I now remember what I was doing. Reading the Greek classics, as listed in the Loeb series. This activity seemed to have outlived its usefulness as well, the truth could not be contained in these books, it has to be accessible without them I thought (all that can be has already been). Then I read Evola's Ride the Tiger. It put all the lessons I had learned the last couple years into words, and affirmed this thing I had clung on to all that time. I had seen you mention Joseph Campbell as giving one of the greatest gifts to humanity, and saw the book "The hero of a thousand faces" coincidentally on sale as I finished Evola. Campbell finally put all this into perspective for me.

[I Rate Campbell’s book Transformations of Myth Through Time as his best effort, it being a transcript of a lecture he gave. The Power of Myth is his most accessible. Hero with a Thousand Faces was basically his thesis.]

So thank you Mr.LaFond, without your commitment to seeking the truth within that unifies all things, I would have simply gave up and taking the path trodden by most miserable men of this world. It gave me hope after my accident, and with that hope came courage, to seek once again no matter the consequence. Beyond the myth of the 20th century, you helped guide me to the myth of all centuries, the negation of the soul within us that has been a tool of soulless materialistic man.

P.S. I bought some books to show some appreciation as well, and have read the preface of the "When you're food" you sent. It seems I made the wrong inquiry beginning with the Iliad, it's obvious I should have started with the Odyssey, since that's the hellscape you lived in. It's clear to me why the scene with Priam and Achilles is the main take away of the poem. "I've become no man and all men", is what I took away, the Odyssey is the world of masks we will live in post honorless society, the one it seems you did your seeking in. I once had hope in my [home town redacted], but I realize it too will go the fate of Ilium, and those who cling to it suffer the fates of Hector, Achilles and Priam, the world of Odysseus awaits the survivors. I hope to follow this line of spiritual/metaphysical inquiry up when I’m done reading "When You’re Food", I have some notes written down, to end the inquiry where it began in The Iliad, and begin a new one into the Odyssey.

This is simply a thank you. I hope it sparks some hope within the same way your courage in the face of the black flame inspired hope in me.

Sincerely,

Carlos from a diverse and tolerant [city redacted]

[Carlos, I am honored so much by this I need to share it. When You’re Food was my Hero with a Thousand Faces, my Odyssey. At the very end of Transformations of Myth Through Time, Campbell relates what I recall as an Arуan myth about the world of masks that is material civilization. Recall that Odysseus is Achilles retooled to survive in the post-honorable world and that his name means Grieved-chief and that he visits Achilles in the Underworld. Now we live in an overt world of the mask and this horror may very well help up preserve against the machine even as if grows more tentacles of negation.]

[I was luckily so alienated throughout my entire life, largely due to my own personality flaws, that I was never burdened with a desire to fix the world. It was obvious to me that the world existed to devour the possibility of me—and I just noted due to sloppy typing that devour and devout are only a letter apart, perhaps there is a word origin link (editor help, please).

[Once a man can accept that the world of the “human” collective—which is in reality a vile subhuman herd—hates him, then he may seek with internal honor and external dignity.]

[Carlos, may the soul-eating machine called Civilization, and its mind-melting iteration called Modernity, slake its obscene thirst elsewhere and otherwise as you thrive.]