The Parts of Stuff
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"On The Parts of Stuff
This is a work that doesn’t ask for your attention so much as it waits for your honesty. Across six meditations—each styled like an internal exile with its own weather system—the author constructs a shattered, often jarring narrative of spiritual reintegration. These aren’t essays, exactly. Nor are they manifestos or confessions. They are devices: provocations that act upon the reader rather than merely address them.
From The Benefit of Anxiety’s invocation of suffering as an entry point into sincerity, to the gentle apocalypse of The Mirror of Simplicity, what emerges is a subterranean arc: a broken soul in motion toward wholeness, resisting institutional language and literary fashion alike.
The fourth piece, The Wall of Impertinences, functions like a demolition charge buried in the middle of the book. It strips away illusion with theatrical bluntness—only to be followed by the cooler moral architecture of The Principle of Justice and the quiet interiority of The Mirror of Simplicity, which refuses to resolve anything too neatly.
If there is a throughline, it is a kind of metaphysical defiance: the refusal to be packaged, marketed, or simplified. If there is a reward, it is earned in the reading—provided the reader does not flinch.
This isn’t for everyone. That seems to be the point." -The LLM
A Monologue From the Narrator
You want to know who Don and Ted are?
They’re me.
Not symbolically. Not metaphorically. Literally.
Don is who I was becoming the moment I stopped screaming. Ted is who I became after I’d stopped even noticing I’d gone quiet. And both of them are what happens when you live your life bleeding quietly in the name of “doing the right thing,” while the monster in you does push-ups in the dark.
The Parts of Stuff — Six Necessary Disruptions A quiet descent through illusion, confrontation, and reorientation. 1. The Benefit of Anxiety Lie: You shouldn’t have to feel uncomfortable. Correction: Avoid discomfort, and you’ll get to keep your misery. Discomfort is the proof of life. Ignore it and you're not safe—you're sedated. 2. The Expatriate of Empowerment Lie: Life is supposed to go smoothly if you're doing it right. Correction: Nobody gets that. Learn to suffer like a champion. There is no promised land. There’s only apprenticeship in the art of bearing it. 3. The Opposite of Suicide Lie: I’ve taken the steps. I’m good now. Correction: The steps are just the start. If you think you’re done, you’re a bigger joker than the author. Recovery isn’t a fix. It’s a set of tools for navigating a long dismantling. 4. The Wall of Impertinences Lie: I’ve had some clarity. I’m ready to move on. Correction: Everything so far has been child’s play. The real resistance starts now. Here, the wall is not symbolic—it’s personal. The narrator isn't just breaking the fourth wall; they’re calling you out for putting it there. 5. The Principle of Justice Lie: I’m safe because I’ve stopped the obvious sins. Correction: Without Divine Intervention, your self will eat you alive—whether you drink again or not. This is the darkest threshold. The real threat isn’t relapse—it’s the unchecked self. Your greatest danger now is the idea that you're in control. 6. The Mirror of Simplicity Lie: I know who I am and what I should become. Correction: You've had it all wrong. That’s OK. The seeking is what gets it right. This is the moment of mercy. Simplicity isn’t naïve—it’s spiritual precision. The work ends not with closure, but with the surrender to ongoing openness.