When the entire interactive terrain is occupied by snake charmers — when everything and everyone is a salesman fronting as a healer — there is only one way out of the four cornered fugue: commandeer their strategies, deconstruct the box, and recreate your own force field with all the tools now in your arsenal. You can’t fall for the psyop if you’re psyoping yourself.

Week 12:

VIEWING ASSIGNMENT: CLAIRE DENIS’ BEAU TRAVAIL

*Spoiler Alert: This is the ending to the film…but, well, screw it, just watch. You’ll still want to see the whole thing after.

Put on your uniform. Look to your left, then look to your right: smell the stale bliss of similitude, inhale the horizon of half-reflections. Notice how wearing the same oversized and unflattering fatigues as your neighbor alleviates a pressure you never knew existed. Observe the painlessness of homogeneity, the vigor of a collective mind. Isn't it curious that solitary organisms tend to become one when grouped together?

The ground is dusty, salt-crusted. Bend down and rest your ear on the dirt. Listen to the thrum of footsteps, the interconnectedness of things moving in unison. The sound you hear is undifferentiated oneness, the sound of predetermination freeing you from the weight of choice. Collapse and surrender yourself to utilitarian comforts.

Week 13:

READING ASSIGNMENT: ALEJANDRO ZAMBRA’S MULTIPLE CHOICE

Every problem has a solution and every solution has more than one application. What seems obvious may be chicanery, but if you stultify your synapses to the point of submission, you will begin to understand the benign efficacy of trickery, the benevolence of universal programming.

Master the language of mental-engineering. Pay careful attention to the patterns that connect Point A to Point B. Look between the lines, measure the distance between letters, teach yourself to detect latent signals, and realize once and for all that reading between the lines is a useless calculus, intended only to weed out the obstinate from the docile. Thinking is hard. Obedience is easy.

Week 14:

READING ASSIGNMENT: ALDOUS HUXLEY’S ISLAND

The seller turns to the buyer and asks, “What will satisfy you?”

The buyer responds, “Happiness is sacrifice. The more people sacrifice, the happier they are.”

As you held your ear to the soil, a single blade of grass forced its way to the surface. You inspect its sharpness and its conviction for life resonates. You wonder how many other blades of grass are struggling to thrust themselves through the arid crust. Perhaps hundreds, maybe thousands. It’s hard to say, given that you’re in a desert and rain rarely settles here. But you feel an undying need to help, to do something. If only you could extract each and every one without compromising their vegetative dignity.

The buyer turns to the seller and asks, “Are all dystopias the penumbras of utopias or are all utopias the penumbras of dystopias?”

The seller answers, “Death for some is life for many.”

Week 15:

READING ASSIGNMENT: ITALO CALVINO’S COSMICOMICS

Parallel, though at times perpendicular, to the line that connects Point A to Point B, also known as Plane C, there is Plane D, a parabolic continuum with vertices that neither reflect nor intersect with the principal plane. Think of Plane D as infinite. Think of Plane D as adhering to all universal laws and none of them simultaneously. Think of Plane D as the impetus under the blade of grass, as the immeasurable space between atoms conjoined to create crust, as the trajectory of life from birth to rest. Think of Plane D as Qfwfq.

Week 16:

VIEWING ASSIGNMENT: WIM WENDERS’S PINA

Shun modesty and liberate yourself from the confines of consistency. Prance across the planetary terrain with deliberate spontaneity. Scream silently. Skip past the spot marked with a X and devilishly draw so many X’s that the original loses its singularity. Welcome the churning gyre of sand, destined to destroy your idealistic dust sketches. Lose interest in how individual molecules move, become infatuated with what moves them.