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hey Abe was asking me if I wanted to go out for a drink or something tomorrow for my bday, and I said something like “I understand that’s traditional but my nervous system doesn’t experience that kind of thing like a treat”, and AK asked me what an Isaac nervous system might experience as a treat, and that was a few hours ago, and I think my nervous system has an answer:

text me a description of the shape I take in your world/experience/universe/whatever? like somewhat technically actually, as in: if you were making a movie of your own life and you had to get your casting director after the role of “Isaac as he exists for me in my experience of my world” to be portrayed in that movie of your own life, what details would you need to write down?

I think my nervous system might experience that as receiving a bunch of portals into friend-worlds, and I think that experience would be a treat :)

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Saw your post on IG!

Isaac as he appears in Rebecca's world:

You show up as someone who makes complicated things feel suddenly simple - not by reducing them, but by revealing the structure that was always there. Like you're fluent in a language I can only half-speak, and when we talk, you're translating back to me in real-time without ever making me feel lost.

Your presence feels like space opening. Not empty space, but room to breathe. Like you're somehow making the entire context more elastic just by being in it. Conversations with you don't follow normal arcs - they spiral, they fold back on themselves, they arrive at places I didn't know existed five minutes ago.

Time moves differently around you. Not slower or faster, just... less linear. We can pick up mid-conversation years later like no time passed, but also like everything passed.

You're someone who sees the pattern before it finishes forming and names it in a way that makes everyone else go "oh, that's what that was."

The most consistent thing about you: you're never performing. Whatever version of you shows up is the version that's actually there. No approximation.

In the movie of my life, you'd be cast as the friend who appears in scenes where something's about to shift - not causing it, but somehow present right as the kaleidoscope turns.

Reading this made this pop in my mind — it’s been over 10 years but I will never forget being stuck in an Italian airport on my way home from my year there. No phone. Broken plane. More delays. Exhausted. And this man with turquoise jewelry was on my flight and experiencing it alongside me. I don’t remember what we talked about. Or what his face looked like (just the turquoise jewelry and dark hair lol). Or even how much we interacted. But I’ll never forget feeling like it felt just like you. And that made me feel really safe. And I don’t know how to describe that — but you get it, hopefully. Love you lots 🫂🫂🫂 happy almost birthday 🥰🥰

A seasoned magician, intimately aware of the machinations of their craft, sitting in the audience.

Not for research, but because they both want to experience the magic individually and be submerged in the experience of the collective audience. Your manifestation in my lived experience finds wonder in well executed craft but remembers that there's wonder all around.

I keep a seat for you reserved next to mine in the audience. The portal is open for you to be used as it delights you.

Happy (almost) Birthday Isaac 🩵

If I were writing notes for a casting director about the shape you take in my world, here’s what I’d say:

You exist as a steady open field, like an ever growing circle…calming, spacious, and orienting. When you’re present, my nervous system totally relaxes. You create pauses both in my noisy, spiderweb of a brain and the outside moments we share.

You make possibility feel safe. You ask questions carefully. You never rush answers. You let ideas fully unfold, and also are not scared to address things as they unfold. Honestly watching you experiment with raw thoughts in real time is one of my favorite things to do when we chat 🙌🏽

In my experience of the world, you’re someone who makes complexity feel navigable and curiosity feel grounded. You don’t inflate dreams or diminish them, you help them become structurally sound. Being in conversation with you feels like stepping through a version of reality that’s wider, calmer, and more intelligently held.

Thank you for being exactly who you are, and for the particular shape of presence you bring. I'm really glad you were born 🫶🏽🤗🎉

Hey Isaac, happy birthday!

As requested... We don't know each other that well, but when your posts pop up on my feed I always take a moment to read and digest.

You have such a unique, deep, view of the world and I value that perspective. It feels like a lot of folks, me included, tend to operate on a more normal (for want of a better world) plane. Or perhaps I mean average. Reading how you see the world reminds me to take time to think without a reason. To let my brain go on its own unusual paths.

I love how you put your warmth out into the world, while respecting your own limits. That's something I aspire to.

Hope you have an awesome birthday and here's to the next year!

Not sure about shape, but I can definitely share which bin you occupy. It’s labeled ‘the coked up squirrels’. Somehow you guys seem to play the multidimensional ‘frog crossing the road’ game of life in slow motion. Would be insufferable if you weren’t nice.

Not sure if autism plays a role, but the only other coked up squirrel I know (used to know?), not sure but I also think she has autism. At some point she mentioned a thing about facial blindness. Of course not a smoking gun, but there’s also something about how she, and I think also you, treat the Kantian prerogative. As something literal and absolute. Other people in my experience treat it as something more organic and with fuzzy boundaries, if it makes sense. It’s only the coked up squirrels that seem to treat it literally. I guess it’s something about requiring clear boundaries at this velocity, not sure about it.

Isaac, Happy Birthday 🎈

It’s been a gift to get to spend so much time with you recently and today, in this text specifically, I get to take pause and think about how grateful I am to know you. Happy Birthday to someone whose mind moves effortlessly between the literal and the cosmic, feeling all the things along the way. You see the world with the precision of a scientist, the imagination of a creator, and the patience, resilience, and resourcefulness of a farmer. I witness you catching the nuances, twists, and quiet distortions of language and humor that are often missed. Your intelligence and sense of perception is deepened by lived wisdom. Your cleverness adds a sparkle that makes every conversation richer and more fun. I learn about life simply by knowing you and find myself often thinking “I wonder what Isaac would think of this?”. Thank you for your kindness, generosity, wisdom, humor, and the warmth you bring into the universe around you. I’m honored to share in the building of said universe(s) with you. I’m grateful for you today and always. And thankful for our continually growing friendship. I love you, my friend. Happy Birthday!

And here’s to many more adventures and quiet moments! :)

Hello beautiful friend! Happy birthday! I am utterly grateful to be on this spinning sphere with you, in this timeline of existence! Xoxo Thank you for the love, support, and care you bring to my life 💓 To me, your energy radiates a calm, sweet, and aware presence to which my energy and nervous system welcome and appreciate tremendously! I reflect on silent, staircase hang outs and giggle. I love you friend xoxo

Happy, happy birthday. I feel a sense of calm and connection every time we’re together even if we aren’t speaking and are just sharing space and I LOVE that. I see you as a poet, a visionary, a creative, and a soul in stillness and in motion. Grateful to know you and share flashes of this journey on earth together. Sending so much love to you today. 🤍

(Well today but also always)

Isaac,

Happy birthday. 🎂

You know those hugs we share? The ones that feel like two genuinely good humans recognizing each other at center - no performance, no hedging, just yes, you too?

That's what I want to honor today.

Your mind builds tools the way some people breathe. Watching you navigate complexity while staying unfailingly kind... it's not just impressive, it's instructive. You show what's possible when brilliance doesn't require hardness.

I'll always want more time than we've had together. Not because what we have isn't enough - it always is - but because being in your presence is its own kind of calibration. You help the world make sense by being exactly yourself in it.

Thank you for building spaces where good humans can find each other. Thank you for being someone I genuinely cherish knowing. Thank you for every embrace that reminds me what recognition feels like.

Here's to another year of you being gloriously, complicatedly, kindly you.

With love and the certainty of future hugs, you’re friend Nate 🫂

Happy new orbit, dear Isaac ❤️‍🔥 Thinking of you fills me with a deep exhale of delight and gratitude. I experience you as a kind, steady, playful, and powerful benevolent force in the world. The alchemy of how I experience your energy is a blend of Jiminy Cricket (from Pinnocchio) and Grandmother Willow from Pocahontas. Light on your feet, surprising, popping in and out of time and space; then also grounded, feet on the warm grass, fully content and at home in your place in the sun. Listening for nature’s rhythms to inform your next move. I love you and am beyond grateful that our souls chose to find each other and adventure while exploring the physical plane!! xx

May today, and this year, be full of significant delights

(for context, I read your instagram and ran with the birthday wish prompt 🥰)

…And then samurai. That’s what was missing from the alchemy.

Jiminy cricket, grandmother willow, sage-samurai vibes ✨

LOVE U.

Dearest Isaac,

Every film casting starts with a “breakdown” sent out to agents by casting. This breakdown is essentially used by the agents to submit actors from their office’s roster to the film project based on who they think could do the job.

The goal of a breakdown (because you don’t have time/space to tell someone’s life story) is to use an economy of words to communicate “the situation” and what’s needed as efficiently as possible.

So if I were an agent or an actor interfacing with a breakdown for “Isaac” written by a casting director for a film, this is what I imagine it would look like:

Isaac (late 20’s-mid 30s; white, will see ethnically ambiguous) Autistic tech ceo from a small town in Wisconsin. Builder, quiet creator. Has been in an urban setting for at least a decade. Reads as shy/soft spoken, surprises with excellent public address ability. He needs a strong emotional range (elation, fixation, breakdown, zen). Rational/analytical, believable as “the scientific brain”, but also wears sandals downtown, collects tiny tea cups, and is an excellent pianist. Sentimental about little things. Fantasy fan. Curious about the malleability of reality in a calm way. He doesn’t necessarily look like he works at a computer. Deeply sexual behind closed doors. He genuinely doesn’t know what he’s going to think or say next and has worked to be at peace with that. Lead.

To be continued…

Taking things a step further in thinking from the perspective of casting…personally, since film is ultimately a visual medium, I am a fan of introducing imagery into the creative process as soon as possible. Dream/vision/story-boarding. So whether I was the writer or the casting director, certainly for the callback process, I would include an “imagery source” for the actors to draw from in crafting their performance. This is a great way I think to get people on the same page visually. In this case, I would probably have a mix of images that include pictures of you like this:

So yes, the vision board airdropped to you is what I would present as a casting person for my part in the creative process, which is to take a bunch of nebulous thematic ideas off the page a humanize them, in this case, in the form of an Isaac

In conjunction with the above breakdown of course^

[cybernetic realism aligned with nature]

Isaac Bowen

Role: Guy in van

You know in the team of a heist there is always the one that creates maps- the one who has the bird’s eye spacial recognition of what if present- where the whole is going and how it all fits.

The cosmic blueprint- that rolled out is as wide- and we swap screen and it is layers deep.

We zoom:

Issac sees the individual, the team as a whole- where they are heading- aware of pitfalls- obstacles, objectives. He holds with full trust that the activators of the larger plan will trust their intuition, move their bodies- adjust in real time to move through time and space to free, steal, advance, play with their futures in a way that aids the collective.

And while those around you are not stealing exactly, we areeeeee- in your presence- pushing back against structures that confine us to one way of being- stealing back what is ours- playing with working through what possible.

Believing that in playing the “game”- actually playing- you become willing to make new rules- we create new life.

We zoom out:

When I invited you and Abe to my birthday in France- I know that trip was layered AND also it meant so much that you were there. That table was most, (not all, some were missing) but most of my most significant path changers.

You specifically carried with you a third way- possibility with kindness and non force- you were the first non-dead author I had met that held the world like a prism in a way that made me feel less alone.

I feel seen by you- I feel kindred. I feel grateful.

I feel your awareness and care for me without control.

You move pieces simply through being who you are, creating a world you believe in- and that magnetism removes obstacle and barriers in my practical life, in my thinking, on a cellular level. I have so needed you.

Thank you for being a friend- I am so glad you are here.

CHARACTER BREAKDOWN

Project: Ian's Life (Feature) Role: ISAAC Type: Supporting Lead

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CHARACTER DESCRIPTION:

ISAAC moves through the world with the grace of a floating elf - present but unimposing, observing rather than participating unless directly engaged. When he enters a room, the atmosphere remains undisturbed; this is intentional. He prefers to witness experiences rather than shape them.

Possesses knowledge beyond measure, yet uniquely capable of translating complex concepts into accessible language - a rare gift among the exceptionally intelligent. Where others cannot simplify, Isaac bridges effortlessly.

ESSENTIAL QUALITIES:

• Warm and inviting presence

• Childlike wonder for all things

• Cutely oblivious to social conventions

• Safe precision when engaged

• Pure kindness as default mode

PHYSICAL/ENERGETIC PRESENCE: Texture of prairie grass blowing in wind - responsive to whatever and whomever comes into contact, moving with rather than against.

ENGAGEMENT STYLE: Observational by preference. When stepping into direct engagement: warmth, safe precision, pure kindness. Never forceful. Never extractive.