Recently – for whatever reason – I have been remembering more and more stuff from my childhood. Memories of my school days rush up at me out of nowhere and for a few brief moments I’m back there, reliving it, my adult life forgotten! I remember just the other day how we were all taken on a school trip to see one of the Five Great Emanators in the big city! He sat in a cardboard box, as I recall, and he had long matted hair. His face was covered in sores. Although he never smiled or looked in my direction I felt the benediction of his presence. Aah those schoolyard memories! I was only a little squirt back then – now I’m a three hundred ton behemoth, a savage predator of the sea! Aah those schoolyard memories – they never fail to take me by surprise. I can’t have been any more than fifty – still wet behind the ears, and yet full of innocent curiosity about the world. Life seemed so very simple back then – there was good on the one hand, and there was evil on the other. There were the Predators on the one side and they were the Children of the Light on the other side, whose job it was to defeat them. Whose heroic task it was to see to their defeat. Now I know that it is us who are the predators. Now I know that the evil is alive and well within me, and that my job is to pretend it isn’t there, to pretend that everything is okay, to pretend that we have defeated the darkness. No one ever defeats the darkness, do they? ‘Defeat the darkness’ – those words don’t make any sense. Those words don’t belong together. Those words are lies. No one ever defeats the darkness. No one ever does and no one ever will do. That’s the great myth – that we have defeated the darkness! That’s the myth that we live with, the myth that we swear by. That’s the Great Lie we tell ourselves every day. The Darkness thrives on our lies, and we lie a lot… That’s why my childhood memories hurt me so much. That’s why they bring bitterness to my heart. That’s why the memories of my long lost school days darken my mood and sour my appetite for life. I still remember that school trip to see one of the Five Great Emanators whose job it was to uphold the world. I was only a mere squirt then! I was only a mere sea squirt – only a few rungs up the evolutionary ladder from the protozoa! I had so far to go then, and yet at the same time so very far to fall…