I was attempting to be a little bit more philosophical in my life. Not too much, just a little. Just an exploratory little movement in that general direction, you could say. Nice and gentle – nothing too drastic. ‘Who am I and what am I doing here?’ I ask myself. ‘Who am I and what am I doing here?’ Good questions of course, very good questions. And no easy answers there, that’s for sure. No indeed. These are very good questions and there’s no doubt about that, but my mind very easily gets bored with the type of questions that can’t be answered straightaway and so it starts wandering off down various byroads, looking for more trivial matters to brood upon, looking for easy diversion. That’s the way with most us, I’d say! This is the process that takes place; we might even go so far as to say that this is that process that inevitably takes place. Inevitable is not too strong a word to use here. What basically happens is that we start thinking about other things, about stupid enough things, not really the philosophical type of things at all. We engage in dumb old thoughts of the kind with which we are all deeply familiar. We just kind of slip into it; we slip into it with the ease that is born of long practice. Before you even know what’s happening you’re obsessing over bullshit, ruminating over meaningless trivia, and all that kind of thing. It’s the stuff of everyday life basically – it’s no more and no less than that. No more and no less. Thoughts about this and thoughts about that. Worrying about things without even knowing what it is that we’re worrying about. It’s a worry all the same though, it’s a worry all the same. It could even be a very bad worry. It could be a demon of the first water. ‘Concern yourselves not with the dead routines of this unhappy world,’ the prophet said, ‘concern yourselves not with the dead routines of this unhappy world lest these dead and heinously stultifying routines devour you alive and make jackasses of you.’ Thus the prophet spoke, thus he admonished us. That was a long time ago now of course. That was another age, another age. We don’t really know much about other ages though do we? We only know about this age, this age of dead routines, this sorrowful age of dying and decaying souls. Thus spoke the prophet, thus spoke the prophet. ‘And what prophet was that exactly?’ you ask, showing yourself up as being a bit of a smart-ass, ‘do you happen to know his name, by any chance?’ You’re mocking me of course. You’re trying to get a cheap laugh. Playing it for laughs, playing it for laughs. You’re looking for that delicious moment of transient ego-glory when you get to feel that you’re smart. But that’s just fine by me, my friend. Go for it – knock yourself out, knock yourself out.