Every reader finds themselves. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, they would perhaps never have seen in themselves.

PROLEGOMENON:

Your answers — anyone's answers — may become for another reader just such an ātmanopticon: that optical lens-like perspective one among you composes that, without having read it, another reader may not ever have recognized that quality or trait within themselves.

A practice/sādhana: the questions invite an unguarded, thoughtful state, and at times the answer astonishes in what it describes of some interior (அகம்) — a subject, the grammatical I, a formulation of truth.

Return, after enough time and a species of amnesia, to respond again. The earlier answers belong to someone else; the one answering now is provisional too. Another self emerges where the past collides with the present, out of the memories we make and their associations. This is not a tragedy. It’s more like the weather.

The questionnaire keeps their record — so many persons in succession, bearing one name: I.

Insofar as recognition adds nothing new — points to nothing that hasn’t always been known — it is well captured by doubling the ‘I’: ‘I-I’ sees the ones already given, who you were when you answered then; who answers now; who will — as one light regarding itself.

Find who sleeps.

That is what this instrument is for.

Desire, possibility, and habitA linear slope of desire, defined as a real number over expectation, meets the possibility function f(x) — which is unbounded, diverging toward an asymptote of any possible value — at a single point, habit. The region between them, where desire exceeds possibility, is misery.ℝexpectationdesiref(x) possibilityhabitmiseryany possible value

a gate:

Here we meet @ a gate:

What follow are not polite questions. They are holes in the ice. Answer honestly and something cold touches the feet.

For voice input, use Handy — free offline speech-to-text.

Your answers are age-encrypted before storage, and so is your address. The database keeps a SHA-256 hash of it, to recognise your session, and an age-encrypted copy that only the key box which mails your finished questionnaire can open. We have no wish to see your email address. We use it for three things and nothing else: to send you your link, to deliver your answers to you as a PDF, and to remind you, some time later, to answer the questions again. Each of those goes out through Apple's mail servers. There is no tracking, no profiling, no analytics, and nothing is shared with anyone beyond that delivery.