World…meet Valis.
This is a digital rendering of my dog Valis on his first trip to the beach…before he understood the ocean, before he learned the rhythm of waves or the strange economy of sand crabs. There’s something about this moment I keep returning to.
He isn’t just there.
He’s encountering.
Which is different. You can tell.
I spend a lot of time thinking about the difference between those two states…being somewhere versus actually encountering it. Most people seem to move through the world like it’s already been decided. Pre-labeled. Pre-explained. Filed away before it finishes happening.
I don’t seem to have that option.
I’m a skeptic, which sounds clean until you realize it mostly means you don’t really get to relax into anything…not your perceptions, not your memories, not even your own conclusions. Everything gets audited. Constantly. A kind of internal quality control system that doesn’t turn off. Epistemic hygiene, if you want to make it sound respectable. Less respectably, it’s like living with a very quiet fact-checker that doesn’t quite trust you.
Add pattern recognition to that…enough to notice when something shifts before it announces itself…and reality starts to feel less stable than people imply it is. Not broken. Not fake.
Just…updating.
Quietly, across states…or all at once if you’re not paying attention.
I’ve spent years noticing that. Tracking it, sometimes. Watching how perception assembles itself in real time…how something can feel completely true in one state and dissolve in another without anything external changing.
It’s not dramatic when it happens.
It’s subtle.
Like the world rendering, but not quite finished.
Edges that don’t fully hold. Meanings that feel slightly provisional. The sense that what you’re seeing is real, but the interpretation layer underneath it is still shifting.
Most of the time, nothing is wrong.
But it isn’t fully stable either.
That’s the space I seem to live in.
This is what happens when self-awareness doesn’t take a vacation, and your idea of a life doesn’t follow a single narrative; a series of environments you have to adapt to. I’ve had a wide range of experiences…different environments, same patterns. People reveal themselves quickly under the right conditions.
Most of the things I’ve done didn’t feel like learning.
They felt like recognition.
Patterns resolving themselves.
Which sounds useful until you realize recognition isn’t the same thing as truth. And knowing that doesn’t stop your brain from doing it.
That’s where Valis comes in.
I named him after VALIS, Philip K. Dick’s “Vast Active Living Intelligence System.” I was on about my 12th read, and had the book with me when I met this precious creature. I originally wanted to name him Kimchee…because his dad’s name was Musubi. He would not respond to it…so I tried Valis.
At the time, it felt like an idea I liked. Something abstract. Philosophical.
Now it feels more like a reference point.
Because when I look at him…especially in moments like this…he feels like the only stable thing in the frame.
Everything else can shift. Context, meaning, interpretation, internal state.
But him?
He isn’t constructing anything.
He isn’t stabilizing what he sees into a model he can hold onto.
He’s just…perceiving.
Directly. Through sensory input that doesn’t need to become a story.
And in a strange way, that makes him feel more real than the environment around him.
Not because the world isn’t real.
But because it’s still being assembled.
There’s something about that…about watching a stable observer inside an unstable representation—that feels uncomfortably familiar.
Not in a dramatic way.
Just in the quiet recognition of:
“something is happening…and I’m watching it happen.”
That’s where this writing begins.
I write about consciousness, systems, and what happens when your models of reality…biological or artificial…quietly, across states, or suddenly change on you.
Neurophenomenology, AI, autism, mental health, science, philosophy…all of it is just different ways of trying to stay oriented while things update in the background.
To notice when meaning is being projected.
To notice when something is actually there.
To stay skeptical without becoming closed…and open without losing structure.
Valis doesn’t do any of that.
He doesn’t need to.
He just watches. Listens. Smells. Encounters.
And that might be the closest thing I have to a reference point.
Consider this a collection of well-documented side effects.