I wanted to give expression to the Greatness but all I could do was mewl and dribble like a drunken fool and soil myself in private. For me the private world – the world of my own twisted thoughts – was now the only world there was. I was a pitiful wreck of a man lacking even the semblance of the human form. I was a ghost, an unhappy spirit, yet I was not even a spirit – I was the faulty memory of something I used to be, in happier times. Not that there ever were any happier times. That memory was now turned against me. It was being replayed forever and every time it was replayed it became faultier, less reliable. It was barely any more than static, at this stage. I lived on, as a cartoon character being run in back-to-back episodes on a TV channel nobody ever watched. Looney Tunes on the lower astrals. It was my own private personal channel.

The Greatness that I had sought to express turned against me and ripped me to shreds. I had dabbled unwisely, poor fool that I was. Day after day I ran, looking for protection from the forces that pursued me. Looking for cover, looking for respite, looking for some sort of nook or cranny within which I could hide. Fear was my middle name. It was also my middle name and my last name. It was all of me. My life had imploded and any semblance of normality was denied me. Normality was a word to torment me with, it was a sharp stick to poke me with. I was tormented, day after day, by neurotic fears – neurotic fears that had no substance to them, no more than I did. These fears were wholly unreal, yet they pursued me like demons. What have I done to deserve such a punishment, I asked, but I knew the answer to that particular question well…

There is no sense in whining like a whipped cur I told myself and yet even as I told myself this I whined all the more. No cur was ever as wretched as me. I sought to be a hero, I sought to give expression to the Greatness within me, but that Greatness had been unleashed upon me like a thunderbolt. There is nothing as terrifying as Greatness I realized. One should stay well away from it. One should leave well enough alone. I sought to be a hero yet here cowered, wetting myself in my terror, more of a maggot than a man. Demons pursued me. ‘I wondered lonely as a maggot’, I misquoted Wordsworth bitterly to myself, deriving no pleasure from my own sardonic humour. My own sardonic humour cut me like a knife. It grated on me like a cheese-grater. All I had were my thoughts to keep me company but they had all turned against me. ‘Where did I go wrong?’ I asked myself and yet I knew the answer to this particular question all too well…