When we entered the library, it was filled with many works, again in several languages. It reminded me of the library I’d seen in the British Museum in London. It was Georgian in style and held a great number of books, with a loft as well that held more books. Now I doubted that Nido had read all of these books, but he probably used them for references for various things. He had many sets of books, including tomes on all the skills and things he had down below. The library was like his office, but far more comprehensive, though the material here seemed less relevant to the actual work he had done. One thing that stuck out to me was a lot of the works he apparently had written and published himself. Many of the books were leather bound and looked to be of great expense. Along the volumes that were here, were things of both a practical and abstract nature. Nido in addition to his immense amounts of other kinds of work was a prolific author, and becoming overwhelmed with curiosity about just what he might have written, I decided to go and peruse some of the shelves. There seemed to be one shelf filled with only his own writings and I looked it over and found the volumes he had written numerous and telling. The shelves were separated by theme, and along the top few shelves were what appeared to be volumes of writings Nido had kept since boyhood. Nido had started his life of ambitious overachievement almost as soon as he had learned to write it appeared.
As I opened the first volume, Nido had written a decently extensive journal. The first entries weren’t of that great of interest, it was filled with talk about school and all of the things Nido would think of or invent that day. Many of the words were misspelled and there wasn’t a great deal of depth to it, but it interesting more to see because of the habit he kept with it throughout the rest of his life. I read and learned a little bit about his parents, through a young Nido’s eyes, how they were always encouraging him to work, and how they would constantly show him new skills and crafts. His father, from what I could discern was an intellectual carpenter, and his mother was a seamstress with an admiration of art. The first volume of Nido’s journals included his first twelve years of life, and it became far easier to understand the later on he went. The next volume was until the age of fifteen, and then seventeen, and eventually he wrote and published a journal every single year up until his seventy-third year. Nido always published these on the anniversary of his birth, which was 14 July 1932. Oddly, whenever he mentioned his birthday, he always called it Bastille Day, I suspect either out of a sense of modesty, or because he thought it was funny. Not having time to read all of these journals straight away, I skimmed many of them, and looked for the years I thought would be more interesting.
I learned a little more about his life from all of this, and I was frankly glad to be able to finally find more resolution to everything. I learned that Nido had actually gone to college and studied several subjects, and nearly got his PhD in biology with a specialization in genetic engineering, but had fallen out of the academic system due to great disgust in the field, and what appeared to be academic politics he didn’t want to deal with. Nido as a young man seemed to be quite social and had a great many friends, but because of the debacle and the loss of Joy had lost everything. As far as she was concerned, apparently it just killed him to lose her the first time. It seemed that he had incurred her wrath; she hated him and would never speak to him again, and after she died suddenly and unexpectedly, Nido lost all faith in people and closed himself off to the world. In the meantime he had acquired and made a fortune with smart investments, a habit he kept up for life, with the sole purpose of funding his hobbies. Naturally, I didn’t read all of this the first day I was there, but that is what I could ascertain from these books by reading them far more thoroughly in subsequent years. He wrote every part of every day of his life it felt like, and what was interesting wasn’t so much the mundane details he would write from day to day, which I am sure would have been utterly boring by themselves, but he always made sure to write several new thoughts that he could either develop later or expand on.
Every day he wrote he seemed to improve, and by the end of his life, he wrote some of the most elegant and loquacious prose I’d ever read. I wasn’t entirely sure why one would want to keep a volume of this size here concerning the matters of one’s life, but it seemed that Nido would certainly never forget anything, and he could always refer back to his life whenever he wanted, and that I thought was a brilliant idea. Each book in this set was quite simple, and each one would have an introduction at the beginning, a sort of summary, or year in review if you like. It demonstrated to me, what Nido considered most when thinking about things, he seemed to always mention his works of one year or other, more than anything else. In the years he courted Joy, however, the emphasis was all on her, especially earlier on. It seemed to me now, that Nido must have had an obsessive mind, and that he would fixate on many diverse things, but with full attention and diligence whenever he picked one subject. The only subject he never really moved on from was Joy, my guess was that he realized he couldn’t handle his fixations with people, because they are far more difficult to control than things and thus he returned to his usual habit of concentrating on his works, difficult and complex though they may be.
Below his journals, were volumes of what looked like a comprehensive worldview he had made. When I opened the first page to the first volume, there was an introduction and I’ll present it here:
This is my life’s greatest achievement, my magnum opus and what I take the most pride in having written. To anyone who reads this, if he has a question about me, surely the answer will lie in these tomes, one has only to look. I have composed this series for nearly seventy years in one fashion or other, it is all that I have made or believe in. It is in essence, my life’s summary. I see a person as being purely a reflection of their mind in the end, and one’s mind is what will let him achieve posterity to the world at large, thus is my own work. I published these volumes on 14 July 2003, my seventy-first birthday, and will publish addendums for the rest of my short life to come, if I feel it is necessary. I bid unto you, S.W. take care of it, it is me.
This was a colossal find as you can imagine, and what was most bothersome and simply scary was that it seemed to be addressed to someone, and I think me directly. I browsed through the rest of this and the other volumes rather hastily, and told Kelly, who had busied herself with some of the other books about what I had read. She responded with a bit of surprise, she didn’t really know how to react, on one hand it was quite out of nowhere, especially since he had written it two years earlier, but on the other hand she asked who he would possibly write it for. I thought she had made a good point and told her as much, I continued to look through the volumes and found masses of Nido’s sketches, ideas and even pictures of some of the things he had designed. It reminded of a book I’d read about fifteen years earlier called Gödel, Escher, Bach, by a fellow named Douglas Hofstadter. Each page was filled with short dialogues, or poems, or even letters he had written, or had been written to him. He had a few works by other people in his book, but only a select few, considering the immensities of this volume. The title of this mass of works, quite presumptuously was titled simply ‘Life’. I suspect, Nido had no particular audience in mind when he wrote the thing except perhaps himself. I couldn’t tell how long it had taken him to throw this all together, but I would suspect that he had been dabbling with everything for perhaps the last thirty years of his life.
It was like a collection of everything he had ever done put together in eight thick volumes. It explained a great deal about everything Nido had done and why he had done many of them. There was a section on his language, which I thought Kelly may be more interested in seeing, as a linguist, but it gave explanation for why he invented it, and how it worked. In the introduction of what he calls Practical Nidish, he writes thus:
I invented Practical Nidish for several reasons, but perhaps the main reason was, I found it to be a much more practical language for taking notes shorthand. During my long career as a janitor, thoughts would often occur to me, and I would have no way to write them down and remember them in their full glory at work, so I went through the trouble of creating a system whereby I could write down what looked like meaningless scribbles at work for other people, but were in essence notes I could get a great gist of what I wanted to remember without taking too much time to do it. In my head as the language developed, I gave it a grammar for my purposes, but nothing more than that. It is based on a syllabury of eight numbers/ letters, which consequently I use for my mathematics system too. The lexicon is based mostly on the Latin vocabulary, as I have always found that language elegant and concise. A good deal of the language is simple transliteration of Latin words into their nearest phonetic equivalents of my language, and because I would often be thinking of these things while working, all of the phonemes are unvoiced fricatives, to allow for a language of whispers. Eventually, I did invent a second language based a little on this first one, but of a much more flowery and elaborate nature than practical Nidish. This second language is called Poetic Nidish, but I never finished it as far as I would have liked, and used it only to write a few poems and for songs and things. The grammar for Practical is utterly simplified and inflective, and the grammar for Poetic is a good mix between syntactic and inflected and quite elaborate. You can find more for Poetic Nidish in volume II, But here is the ever developing language of Practical Nidish.
It all seemed much clearer now, what Nido was doing and what he hoped to achieve with his language, and after this short introduction, he went on to describe every part of his invented language. As I read his introduction memories of Nido at work flashed through my mind, with his small notebook that he always seemed to be focused on in the corner when I suspect he didn’t think anyone was watching, it all suddenly made sense why. The language itself looked quite simple, and he listed a very brief list of grammatical rules, followed by a phonetic and a lexical guide. It became evident that Nido knew several languages, if the books from before weren’t enough evidence, because he would make constant comparisons to other languages in his guide to Poetic Niddish in the next book. Poetic Niddish was a much more aesthetic orthography to look at than Practical Niddish had been, and it seemed to bear upwards of fifty characters. The grammar was more theoretical than realistic, and he came up in his mind with several different instances and usages of language that he could express in a very beautiful way. The vocabulary seemed to draw on several sources, and like English, seemed to have endless synonyms each full of expression and connotations that went beyond their simple denotations. Nido wrote a few examples of poems and so on he had written using this language, and even after reading the explanations I found it strange and at the same time mesmerizing. I tried to read some of it aloud to Kelly, and when I did she simply looked at me with love-filled eyes. I was impressed that Nido could create such an effect from simple meaningless, albeit pretty symbols.
After I had finished the first volume, I gave it to Kelly and she eagerly snatched it from my hands to see what kind of language this man could have invented by himself. Throughout all of the volumes, he would make theories and arguments, and it appeared it had all of the essence that was Nido in the confines of eight large volumes. Each volume contained 512 pages or 1,000 pages by Nido’s standards. How one could hope to fit his entire life’s thoughts and works, especially someone as prolific as Nido, into 4,096 pages, I wasn’t entirely sure, but then realized, I doubt anyone really can fill much more than that, and this was probably all the cream of the crop as far as he was concerned. The order of these things was not so much a reference for later use in an encyclopedic sort of way, but rather seemed to all run together with a coherent theme. Even though I only skimmed parts, the material was rather dense, and it would take me a few times with sections of text to really understand it, not because Nido wrote it inarticulately or with difficult language, but because he seemed to be so precise that every word would really count. Nido, I thus thought was a most methodical man, again of an obsessive or fixated nature. It might even be worth mentioning here that the book itself was extremely well manufactured, and I wouldn’t doubt if Nido himself printed it. It was all done on what seemed to be rather expensive and prime paper, but seeing as he called this of all things his magnum opus, my guess is he thought it would be worth any expense. The binding, was of the finest leather and it was emblazoned with fine metals like real gold embossing.
Something I was actually kind of curious about in this tome was the very first room we had entered into, and if it could explain the mural we had seen. I looked for a section on it, but that was something that if he had written about it, he didn’t make it obvious, and the reference section in the back of the volumes was not entirely helpful. My guess is, this was the one area he wanted to keep private and out of these tomes, or simply hadn’t found the proper place to really fit it in and talk about it. There were endless sections on various things, including many of the more mathematical and what appeared to be dry at first things about life, like many of Nido’s metaphysical and other axioms. He had a whole section devoted to axioms of various natures, and theories based on different kinds of what had to be taken on faith, or what he called meta-axioms. What I suppose he meant by that, is that there would be a given rule that could actually at its root be doubted for one reason or other, like the idea that other people actually exist, or that he wasn’t just some character in another person’s story, and going off of that rule would thereby construct different realities and rules for the universe and so on. Some of the axioms were outright boring and confusing to me, but overall the concept of what Nido found to be essential truth was beyond an utterly fascinating topic in all. He would move from one topic to another with an ease of eloquence I hadn’t seen in many. Some of the more poignant and interesting axial rules he came up with were as follow, and seemed rather Cartesian by my estimate.
1) I exist
2) Other things exists
3) I trust my senses
4) I trust my reason
5) My reality is stable and continuous
6) Time and space exist in my perception
7) Meaning is meaningless
8) I don’t like pie
The last axiom was obviously the most profound of them all, and seeing Nido’s humor shine through even in these works, actually seemed to really lighten the tension and help me literally comprehend his work much better. He would throw in jokes in these very technical and abstract pages to really allow for better understanding and, I feel, to suggest that people ought to lighten up, life is short and to read and take such deep things too seriously would be a waste of time and seriousness. These axioms would lead to other things for him to write about too, and the topic I found perhaps the most interesting in several ways was his axial approach to morality. Now, I mentioned when I went to his study that Nido had written about morality there, and so to does he here, but he tries more than describe what morals are, to construct a set of morals totally based upon logic, or at least his own logic, and a given set of axioms and meta axioms. Nido argues, by the way, that the degree of true versus meta in the axiom sphere, is quite gradient in nature, and that the spectrum only offers one completely true axiom, that being Descartes’ ‘Cogito ergo sum’ I think therefore I am, and that the further axioms seem to deviate from that statement the less true they get in essence. Or, he expresses that the more doubt a particular statement can obtain, the less of a true axiom it is. This said, he states that the need for meta axioms is almost more than for their true counterparts. He further goes on to explain that a meta-axiom is taking a stance on a given truth and declaring it to be valid or not.
Nido further explains that all knowledge is to some extent constructed in this way, that before we truly know about something we have no biases in our brains, but when we acquire knowledge we necessarily flip a sort of mental switch to make us incline to think about something differently than we otherwise would. He says this seems self evident, but that it in effect lines all knowledge, and therefore all mental activity of anything up to a sort of binary system. He suggests however, the on/off switch mental function is too limited, and that instead of our knowledge lining up to a dichotomy of this or that and nothing else where either this or that is necessarily mutually exclusive to the other is actually an inaccurate way to think about it. He suggests in turn that rather mental activity goes along a spectrum and that dichotomies are useful and simplistic ways to understand things by many, but that their real value lies in explanation to others rather than understanding for one’s self. Concerning knowledge, Nido further goes on to explain his ‘relevance theory’, which is highly related to his ‘meaning theory’. I’ll first elaborate on ‘meaning theory’, in the most east to understand way I can. Meaning theory, Nido says is the theory where true meaning comes from nothing as is mentioned in his eight primary axioms. Nido explains meaning, therefore as coming from the meta axiom “perpetuation drives material success”. Meaning that things that live on, are what have continued existence, and that purpose derives from the continuation of unaltered existence. Nido goes on to theorize that real meaning exists for those with the hope of continuation. He doesn’t say that meaning only exists in things that perpetuate, but rather that it only can exist to perpetual ‘actors’ or things.
So, in essence, meaning can only exist to things with memories, and thereby considerations. Deeper meaning, he concludes can only exist to things that exist longer, and deepest meaning to things that exist the longest. He goes on to write that the world is wholly arbitrary, so it is our need to continue to exist that truly gives us meaning. Thus he proposes that the meaning of life is to live long enough to reproduce successfully, in essence the pure and simple meaning of life is existence itself, and everything else is just superfluous, except cheese, that mixed with existence is the true essence of the meaning of life. Nido writes that this is the meaning of life, but not the meaning of existence, which he goes on to distinguish by saying that the meaning of existence is basically what the actor chooses. He goes on to describe some of the more popular meanings people have chosen to take, whether conscientiously taking such a life, or not. The first and most basic meaning of existence people opt to take, Nido postulates is what he calls ‘continued existence’: the will to exist simply to avoid not existing. He argues that this is actually the meaning of life for almost all species except humans. He goes on to argue, that in his experience on this earth, even most people fall in this category of the meaning of existence. He does not suggest that this is better or worse than any other meaning of existence, but it is merely the most common one. The second meaning he describes is the existence for emotion, mostly done through the basic emotion of what he calls ‘pleasure’… now I write pleasure because Nido writes a section on what he feels he has reduced the essence of feeling to, and pleasure is more of a catch all term for ‘feeling good’ in any number of ways. The pursuit of emotion and feeling, is fairly instinctual, and is the main driving force for the existence of many.
Nido argues that people don’t understand why they feel a certain way or other, and that the emotions themselves are quite axial in function, but more to that later. The pursuit of pleasure is perhaps the most single rewarding of the meanings of existence one can hope to achieve and to some extent; emotion drives all other meanings of existence in real life. This is to mean that lofty Raison d’etres’ although they can often be noble and theoretically quite appealing to hear about, are often impracticable in day to day life. The drive for something like pleasure pays off in the short term, and there is no further consideration beyond it; people rarely, if ever ask what the true meaning of pleasure is, and so it can rest in its own right. The next reason for existence is what Nido calls the ‘Charity Man’. In fact Nido calls all of his reasons for existence by titles like this one, such as ‘Idontwannadie Man’ and ‘Pleasure Man’ further demonstrating his sense of humor. Charity Man, Nido says, feels his purpose in life is to exist to make existence in general better for those people and things around him. He doesn’t give much of a definitive explanation about what exactly would drive all of these people, but he suggests a few things. The first is, he suggests that Charity Man wants to improve everything at once so as to make his surroundings better. Next, he suggests that maybe Charity Man likes being revered and so does what he can to help others. Another suggestion is that Charity Man simply can not tolerate suffering or guilt around him well, so tries to devote himself to bettering the cause of others. He finally suggests that Charity Man may think that he himself is not worth as much as a lone individual as the group as a whole, and thus this loss of self worth or bigger community-at-large worth reflects in Charity Man’s reason to exist. Nido offers a few examples of Charity Man in people like Jesus Christ and Mahatma Gandhi, oddly he seems to talk about Charity Man with a small deal of disdain.
Another reason for existence Nido describes is what he calls ‘Odinic Man’ or ‘Explorer Man’. This, he goes on to say is the person who wants all possible knowledge and experience before death. He goes on to write that Explorer Man, is the person who tries everything he can to see and understand it. Explorer Man will often use his knowledge for personal benefit or for advice to others and is perhaps one of the loftier reasons to exist, but it is very limited as well, simply because of the sheer immensity of the world and experience. Nido argues, that like the Norse god Odin, the consistent pursuit of knowledge can be isolating and painful. Nido suggests that Experience Man is the best reason to exist before the age of 35, and afterwards it is highly prudent to change it.
Another reason to exist, Nido offers is what he calls ‘God Man’ or ‘Pleasedontsendmetohell Man’. God Man in essence has given power of attorney for ‘purpose of existence’ over to an unknown or unseen being to choose for him what his reason to exist is. God Man, Nido proffers, takes his meaning from a set of rules that others have written and uses them instead of thinking things out for himself. Despite Nido’s seemingly critical tone to God Man, he in fact admits envy at the ability to simply turn off reason and not to worry about things of that nature. Nido suggests that reason can be one of life’s greatest pleasures, but to God Man, he has the luxury, if he so chooses to use his reason elsewhere, and put behind him the idea of existence. Nido suggests too, that God Man doesn’t simply have to believe in God, it is just the most common subject to believe in, but it can exist in any doctrine or idea created by other people or God Man’s case, beings. God Man could also take political doctrines like Nazism, communism, and even democracy and egalitarianism to the extreme to dictate what his particular meaning of life is.
The final reason to exist that Nido talks about is Artist Man or less flatteringly Work Man. Artist Man is a person whose reason for existence is to create as much as possible and a person who sees the majority of his worth in his own creation. Nido states that he is easily the epitome of Artist Man, and that he feels that the function of the human brain to create is the noblest endeavor. Nido realizes he is biased, since he himself fits this category, but he says that he figures the most outstanding and unique thing about intelligence is the creation and work that can be done with it. He suggests further more, that it is our creations, whether it be our biological progenies (children) or our works that really have the highest likelihood of living on. He says the greatest downside for creation man is to have one’s creation misused or misunderstood by others who would in essence perpetuate, and thus give ultimate meaning to one’s works. He goes on to say that creation man can suffer heavy disappointment if his expectations are too high, and that so many times, Nido himself had failed, that he simply wanted to revert into Pleasure or Idontwannadie Man’s state.
Nido then discusses how everything being spectral rather than dichotic these reasons to exist are not mutually exclusive and that they simply reflect why someone may choose to exist, or rather for what purpose they generally choose to exist. He goes on to say that all of these probably exist to various levels in different people and that they will consistently change throughout one’s lifetime. He doesn’t really ever state that one of these is better than the other, or that no one is better than another in reality, only in the way he describes it based on his own bias. He says that these are just the reasons he can think of, and this list is by no means comprehensive, but it is all of the most prominent reasons he can think of. He suggests that even though these reasons for existence are fine and good of themselves, they are all ultimately worthless in the end, and that the whys and wherefores can ever only go so far before we revert back ultimately to meaninglessness. It is in the search for when the meaningless becomes meaningful that Nido suggests that memory and thought truly come to play an important part. He even goes so far to ask the question what would happen if people simply disregarded the rule of perpetuation, that all meaning would be lost and things would simply blink in and out of existence, as they do in much of the universe already, simply never to affect or be of value to anyone or anything else, saving for unknown and barely felt physical effects, most notably gravitation.
Looking further into the book, I found Nido’s thesis on emotion, and not surprisingly it was actually quite tied to all of this. Nido goes on to explain that emotion and feeling are what really drive most people to truly live. He goes on to suggest that emotions and feelings seem to be end all reasons to do just about anything, but these emotions exist for other reasons that people consider only on the most intellectual and therefore removed and abstract level. This all he explains doesn’t always really make it into the real intuitive sense of what one is accomplishing by emoting with the possible exception of some fears and worry. He goes on to claim that some fear makes a person really know that he is alive, and the reason why is because it makes one alert to the fact that without action he may not be soon, thus the proper reactions need to be made to save one’s own perpetuation. Other emotions come into existence and one is simply glad or stimulated to feel them, so gives it less thought than perhaps one should. Nido makes no criticism of people who do this, since everyone does, and to actually consider what is truly being accomplished might in fact take away from the real experience of everything, but Nido explains that it might be good on some occasions to truly understand why one feels about certain things as he does, and that this would put the balance more often in the hands of reason and logic where, he feels that mental activity in a human’s mind should be focused.
Nido breaks the experience of human emotions into a few simplified categories “with minor specification and variations to distinguish them further.” He explains that he oversimplifies them for the sake of convenience and it is only one level of distinction among many, but that simplifying them as much as he does, suits his purposes better. The categories he breaks feelings down into are pleasure, fear, and discontent. He goes on further to say that there are perhaps others that he didn’t mention, but these are the most useful for what he calls more survival based emotions. At the base of everything, he are living to perpetuate ourselves and emotion like pleasure lets us know we are surviving better and should continue what we are doing to survive in that way, at least on an instinctual level. Fear, Nido postulates as I had mentioned earlier, is the upset or understanding that something is going contrary to good survival conditions and that one should change his behavior or protect himself in order to sustain his own life. Sometimes, this doesn’t always work, but it is supposed to prevent people and animals from doing stupid things that could endanger their wellbeing. Discontent is basically the opposite of pleasure and can include things as diverse as pain to sorrow to anger and everything in between. It is the basic state that people feel when things are bad and helps to drive change for unfavorable perpetuation conditions. This all said, Nido goes on in some other chapters to really elaborate much more on his emotion theory, but I include this first section here to demonstrate the tie between emotion and perpetuation. Nido himself never fully claims to rise above this, but merely to recognize how these things are interlinked with his true life’s purpose.
At one point, Nido writes about how he sees himself, this to me was something I was very interested in, because personally until before I entered his house, I saw him in an extremely different manner. Nido starts by describing himself from the most superficial level, from physical appearance all the way inward to what he calls the character of his very soul. Nido writes thus:
The concept of one’s self is perhaps the most difficult image in some ways to really conjure, while also being the most familiar subject to anyone who takes the time to actually try to understand and appreciate this, which I would guess nearly anyone who has lived more than four years has probably tried to do. I have been wondering about this concept ever since I can recall, and wondered what is it that makes me a different and unique individual? The pure and simple answer to this question seems extremely obvious to me, but somehow unsatisfying in the entirety of its argument, the real answer is I am made of a certain group of molecules and therefore atoms that no one or nothing else is. That is truly what makes me individual and unlike anyone else. After my death, however, those atoms and molecules will presumably separate and become parts of other entities and things. While this is a little bothersome on a personal level, it is the natural way of matter at large and nothing lasts forever. I often wonder if this is all that is really unique to me, or is there something more? I find the answer of my self concept is that I am more of an entity that is based in my thoughts and inner workings than anything else. On the exterior, I am fairly similar to about six or so billion other people in this world, and on the interior I still share many of those similarities, but there is an individual mind that while like many others is my own, to do with as I will. My mind, is essentially what I feel really sets me apart from anyone else, and it is the work done by the combination of my mind and body that will really give me posterity in one form or other for the future.
Do I need to live on into the future, either by my genetics or my works or something? Not especially. Would I like to have some way of being remembered past my death? A little. Basically, I feel that truly the best way for one’s mind and form to really carry on without him is through his works, and so it is I work constantly, mostly on half-baked schemes that never come to fruition, but sometimes, they do. This is all part of a larger picture whereon I’ll try to describe as much as I can, but I don’t think it’s ever really possible to fully describe one’s self for anyone. To start, I am a physical person, of average shape and size and I have what I would describe as a homely face with white hair. I am in decent condition for my age, and I feel that my physical qualities are not really outstanding in any particular way. As a person, I would describe my personality as bruised and non social, due more to choice than actual fear or pathology. I would say I am a hardworking and restless person with a mind that always needs to be focused on one thing or other, and furthermore, when I am not somehow focused or otherwise occupied, I fall into a deep depression. This is, I feel a very lucky trait to possess, because otherwise I would find myself in constant idle uselessness. Although I never make anything that I would deem useful to anyone else, I do occupy my time with many worthwhile things in the long run. It is this creation and consistent work that make the pursuits of my mind so worthwhile. I feel slightly guilty for not really contributing much to society, besides my custodial efforts, but in some ways, I feel like each man’s private occupation is not liable to anyone else anyway.
Should someone ever happen to come and read this entry, someone beside me, I want it known that I have always had a deep love and respect for my fellow men, but I simply could not deal with them on a daily basis, besides my own extremely limited way. I find myself to be a bundle of contradictions; I love and fear other people very much. I yearn to create, but I constantly try to create things that will help me to work less. I aspire to be noble, but find the only way I can truly achieve nobility in my own way is by not interacting with others. There are a million other contradictions that are simply of less interest to write, but I find that these contradictions must certainly exist in others as well. One thing that I find interesting about myself is that I have such high standards for my behaviors and works, but never expect the same from others, particularly in the way of mistakes made. I have made unfathomable mistakes in my life, and I am only sad that I couldn’t do anything to fix the mistakes I have made of the past. I only find repentance exists for me in the way of working hard to create, and maybe to make tributes, but tributes I doubt anyone will ever see. Do I want others to see my works at some point? I really don’t know, in some ways yes, but in others I simply don’t see the point to it all. It all leads to the question of if it is worth it to live by the ideas and understandings that one’s life is only worth the value that others see in it. I feel that is inescapable, and even those assessments are barely worth little more than one’s own…
Nido continued on like this for some time, and it seemed more like a confession than anything else really, but I figured it was all good therapy at least for him to write, and it just seemed so personal, so humanizing for him to write something like this. He continued this essay for some time, and it started to go and judge the moral character he felt his life had taken, which wasn’t really favorable or not in one way or other, but it was interesting and made me start to wonder even about myself and how I saw my own life.
Another section that Nido wrote was about reflection over works and the point of history. Nido writes essentially that at first history seems irrelevant or at best only entertaining to some. He writes that as a young man he never knew why so many people read or studied history, and he also writes that he never quite understood why people did things like keep journals and so on. He never quite knew or understood how much time was appropriate for reminiscence, and on that note what precisely it was meant to accomplish. He does not deny very much enjoying history and the like himself and even at that age would eagerly study a good deal of it, and reminisce constantly, but he claims too, although he often engaged in it, he never knew why. Then he went on to write that having kept a journal nearly every day of his life, he would sometimes go back and try to read what he wrote to better remember things, and that is when is struck him, that he went back to remember things that could often serve to help him in the future as well as the past. Nido would read sections of his journal and remember ideas he had written about, but hadn’t executed, and thus could better do things of that nature. Plus he writes that after one’s death, without the hopeful reminiscing of others, one’s life is forgotten and thus worthless to the conscious mind. So, he adds, how much time is appropriate for remembering others or even oneself? He says ultimately it is a hard question to answer, but he goes on to suggest that the more time one devotes to such memories the more one can grow and learn, and create the deeper meaning he mentioned earlier. It is thus memory that we will ultimately dwell, especially in the end of our own lives, but even in the lives of others. It is remembrance that keeps us alive in the most significant ways.
Nido further adds that his remembering and cherishing his beloved Joy, was perhaps the only great service he could offer to her, especially since her death, but even since their break up. He says that perhaps his greatest regret in life is he was sure no one would remember him like that, certainly not in the same way, and that it actually pained him to think that his life was such an isolated event in the end, and that he only hopes that maybe he can lure someone to come and witness what are his accomplishments, and perhaps even this book, simply to know his thoughts and his mind. He goes on to claim that though he was only a spectator in this way, it was quite clear to him that in life it is other people, most notably the people one is closest to, that really matter more than anything else at all. Other consciousnesses are by far the most important thing for what we should strive to impress and honor. He adds that having one’s name in the history books or even being remembered a hundred years hence is really not necessary, but being remembered by someone who meant a lot to you is really what it all comes down to. He says he realizes the irony of his making this claim of all people, but that though others are really what matter, he felt it was too painful to deal with, and thus had no interest, it only bothered him when he would think about it in that way. He goes on to write the meaning of being a hermit.
Voluntary isolation, Nido claims, at least for him, is appealing for a variety of reasons, and although he believes and understands that others are what makes one’s life special and in many ways worth living, it is also bothersome to work, and leads to the greatest pains as well. Nido says that in his life, he was constantly brewing with ideas and had the greatest desire to simply see them realized, and so it was that he cast off people, especially after incurring Joy’s hatred. He found the life of a hermit to be particularly appealing immediately after her death and swirled into a downward spiral of gloom and isolation, but realized that the very isolation he detested at that time was actually his way to salvation and painlessness in the end. It was work and thought that truly gave Nido happiness and meaning in the end and thus that is what he took, believing creation to be the best alternative to the speculations and, he negatively adds, judgment by other people. Being a hermit, although a sometimes sad and lonely existence is one of grave thought and beauty in other ways, and allows one to truly appreciate things in a unique and clearer way than one always surrounded by other people, who has his thoughts and mind misshaped in several ways. The comforts of social stability are absolute if others aren’t in it, to shake things up. Nido points out the contradictory nature of what he writes, but he writes thus is the mind of humanity at large. Thus he goes on to write that the true essence of being, is really that no matter who one is, his life will be a diverse and unique experience in almost all regards, no one can escape this diversity of experience and thoughts if he live sufficiently long.
After I finished reading this section, I figured it was probably time to move on and after finding some more of his works, or what he deemed worthy to keep in his library, I asked Kelly what she thought about Practical Nidish, and she told me she found it quite curious that a man could perform such a feat as make up a new language that in most ways was so alien to his own, and furthermore to remember and use it for precisely the reason he created it. She said that in many ways it made sense, that finding the necessity in it would make one learn it better. She explained a little bit more of the technical parts of the language to me, based on what Nido had written, and made a rough guide to some of it, so that if we encountered the language elsewhere in the house, she could understand what we came across, plus she could hopefully understand the signs and things we had seen before. With that, I asked her if she had had her fill of the library, which she affirmed, so we went out a door that led to the grounds outside, which had been obscured by the house before, and we hadn’t really seen it when we had arrived, but they looked rather fascinating in and of themselves.
