A whole new cheezy flavour has landed, so the ad on the billboard tells us. From outer space, one might suppose. Gifted to us on planet Earth, from the great cheezy gods – gifted to us from the Lords of Cheeze high up in their celestial abode in the Cheezy Heavens. Immortal beings made up of pure undiluted cheeziness, looking down at us from their cheezy thrones – they are playing with us, having sport with us. They amuse themselves playing tricks on us, sending one man good luck and the other bad, and then maybe switching it around a little, mixing it up a little, sending in a multitude of wild-eyed bearded prophets to usher in the Age of Cheeze. Amidst a beating of drums and the blowing of trumpets.
I was sitting in my special place and because of this everyone knew who I was. There wasn’t anybody who did not know me – everyone knew me but at the same time they pretended not to. I had my bits and pieces with me – my accoutrements, you might say. That’s one of the prophecies of course, and you shall know him by his accoutrements, and by the special seat upon which he shall sit. Some people will argue otherwise, of course – they will say that true unimpeded spiritual attainment comes about as a result of some sort of inscrutable ‘internal process’ and that it has nothing to do with special seats and various mystical trappings of one sort or another. I would strongly disagree with the people who say this, however; I firmly believe that it’s all about the seat and the trappings. Very much so, in fact. One cannot overemphasise the importance of the seat and the special bits and pieces that go with it, I would say. That’s my opinion, at any rate.
I am, in my own imagination, a supreme genius of the very greatest stature and status, without peer, without any rival in the world of men. Or in any other world for that matter. In actual reality this doesn’t happen to be in the least bit true of course but it’s a long time since I left reality get in the way of my fantasies! That’s my characteristic incurable bravado, you see. It’s been a long time since I had any contact with reality at all, come to think of it; I wouldn’t know reality if it came right up to me in a busy street and punched me on the nose. I really wouldn’t! “What’s that?” I would ask, “what the hell just happened there?” Reality can play tricks with you like that, you see – it can mess with your head. Reality is the main thing when it comes to stuff that messes with your head – it’s one of the worst offenders in this respect, as I’m sure you would agree. It can mess you up real bad sometimes, and that’s no word of a lie.
No word of a lie, no word of a lie. We are, each and every one of us, fortunate enough to be living in the Age of Cheeze and we shouldn’t forget to be properly grateful for that. These are times like no other. There’s a whole new cheezy flavour that has just landed on the streets – that’s the rumour, at any rate. That’s what people are saying, anyway. That’s the vibe. That’s the vibe that’s out there, my friends, and a very ripe and rich vibe it is too! All those cheezy extraterrestrial astronauts from outer space, coming here to Earth to spread the word, coming here to turn us on to all that Super-Cosmic Cheeziness…
I was enjoying ethical coffee and freshly prepared food. ‘Wow this is great’, I said, to no one in particular. ‘it feels so good to be drinking all this ethical coffee and eating all this freshly prepared food.’ ‘It’s totally legendary,’ I said, full of my usual misplaced enthusiasm. ‘This is living, and no mistake…’
It’s nice to be a tool of the system, isn’t it? So nice to be a tool, so nice to be a tool. Everyone likes to be a tool, and can you blame them? Be a tool, my friend, be a tool. You know it makes sense. Tools don’t ask the reason why, do they? Indeed they don’t, to be sure they don’t. Tools do what they’re supposed to do, what they’re designed to do, what they’re bloody told to do, and that’s the beauty of it. That’s how to get things done, you see. That’s the only way to get things done.
I’m a bit of a sucker for stupid experiences, the same as us all. The same as anyone. That’s why I opted to be a human bean, after all! That’s why I opted. We all willingly opted into the human game and it’s good to remember this. It’s a bit rich for us to go around complaining about this thing and that thing, after all. Moaning from morning til night. Aren’t we responsible for it all ourselves? We’re trying to get away with just a bit too much here, in my humble opinion. We’re kind of taking the piss, when it comes down to it.
It’s all about making sure that you get the proper human experience though, isn’t it? The genuine human experience not some piece-of-shit fakery! Although to be honest more and more people are turning their attention to fake news, which I’m sure you have spotted for yourself by now. Humankind’s long and tortured love affair with fake realities has been well documented at this stage. It’s a full-scale retreat. Lots of top-notch research has been carried out. You always know exactly where you are with a fake reality, you see – a fake reality is always going to do exactly what you expected to do and there is reassurance in that. There’s powerful reassurance in that. When it’s reality you’re talking about then – as we all know – it’s a very different story. Very different indeed. With reality we can never be sure what it’s going to do next, and that kind of general unruliness can be a serious problem. Steps need to be taken, in other words. Legislation needs to be written and then passed into law. Not content with the way things are, we’ve created our own spurious lame-ass version of it and some would say this could be humankind’s greatest achievement.
Yes, on balance I think I would have to say that it’s great to be a tool. You get respect for that. You get plenty of respect. Respect and acceptance. People will nod their heads at you in the street, acknowledging the many sacrifices you have made. Your status as an actual genuine autonomous human being for one, and that’s rather a biggie wouldn’t you say? That’s a biggie for sure…
‘What is the primary delusion?’ people often ask me, ‘what is the actual basis for all this samsara-type business, what’s the fundamental delusion – the delusion behind all the other delusions, if you will?’ I won’t tell them anything, though. I won’t entertain them. ‘Let them find out for themselves’, says I. ‘Don’t come bothering me about it…’
The spider was tiny – barely perceptible to the naked eye – but extremely evil at the same time and it sat in the middle of a vast, all-pervasive web, a web of darkness. That was one of my visions. The web was the Human Realm, of course. It was the human conglomerate of which we are all a part, of which we are all a part. We all go to make it up. In my vision each one of us was an extension of that little spider, a protrusion of it. We are all protrusions. We work away, as best we can, serving evil in all its forms, responding to evil’s prompts, acting according to its commands. That’s how it is with us – we have betrayed ourselves (along with all that is good and clean and honest), but we persist in believing that we have accomplished something truly great, something truly monumental. We are in fact convinced that we’re heroes, which is a perversity beyond all measure. Our perversity is grotesque in the extreme and don’t let anyone tell you it isn’t.
Yes, I’ll never tell them what the primary delusion is. I’ll never give them the satisfaction! They need to get off their lazy arses and find out for themselves. They need to put on their hats and coats and get themselves out in the Real World for a change, where nothing ever works out the way you want it to, where nothing ever happens the way you think it ought to. What a pisser, huh? You couldn’t invent a more annoying and frustrating universe if you tried. What we’re looking at here is a universe where nothing ever works out for you. Nothing works out for you no matter what lengths you go to and you are going to go to some lengths, I can tell you. I can promise you that. You will go to extraordinary lengths, desperate lengths and all to no avail. You’ll end up selling your soul to the devil and that won’t do you any good either. But I suppose I have to leave that for you to find out for yourselves…
Yes, the vision lingers yet. It lingers to this day. If I squint my eyes, I can still see that awful little spider, with its tiny red eyes glowing in the shadows, waiting patiently and malignantly at the centre of its web of evil. I can still see it, there at the heart of all things, governing every aspect of our existence. I can’t help seeing it and – at the same time – I also can’t help knowing that this hateful little spider is me, was me all along. That’s the nature of the game we’re playing, you see. This is the secret they don’t want you to know. Only there is no ‘they’, of course. That’s part of the conspiracy, part of the narrative they want you to believe. There never was any ‘they’.
They took what was most precious – precious beyond words – and they ruined it, they turned it into a mockery of itself, an unholy mockery of what – in better days – it once had been. Then, having done this, they compelled us to worship it. They kept us ignorant so that we knew no better, and thus we were content – to some extent at least – to spend our lives adoring the Great Monstrosity or, at the very least, pretending to adore and worship the Great Monstrosity so that if anyone happened to be checking up on us they wouldn’t know the difference. That’s what it’s come to, you see. We have sunk so very low, we have degenerated so far that our only source of joy is to abuse and degrade others. We have gone right over into the infrared region of the degradation spectrum, the region that is so extraordinarily degraded that most people don’t even believe it to be possible. They would deny it in a court of law. That’s how bad it’s got, you see. That’s where we’re at. They took what was precious beyond words and they disneyfied it. They told us to put all our trust in Mickey Mouse. They told us that Mickey was the man, the one and only true and worthy saviour of humankind. We have become so frighteningly perverse that the only way we can have a good day is by seeing someone else have a bad one! That’s the only way we can get any happiness – by enjoying someone else’s bad luck, by taking pleasure in someone else’s misery. It’s got so that the only thing that can bring a smile to our face is the discomfiture of our fellows! They took what was good, and wholesome, and turned it into a poisoned chalice. They turned the bountiful fields and meadows into a breeding ground for plagues, a source of horrors and evils beyond our power to imagine. A channel has been opened to Lower Realms, a channel that can never be shut, and out of that Channel pours a vast and stinking river of corruption. You know this as well as I do, of course. You know it very well indeed – were you not there, the same as I was? You can testify to the truth these things. You have seen it with your very own eyes. They have taken possession of the Holy Source and turned it into an evil smelling sewer. This they have done, and none can deny it. How can they deny it? They did it right before our very eyes, after all. They have been so emboldened by their successes that they no longer seek to hide what they’re doing. They are the Sewer Men, they are the Violators. They are the chattering servants of a Great Uncleanliness. They are the Doom Bringers. They are the Harbingers of Wretchedness, the Instigators of Decay…
‘Go to your happy place’, the super-slick group facilitator told us in his saccharine voice, ‘go to your wonderful happy happy place and think all your very best happy thoughts to make yourselves as happy as possible…’ We all hurried to obey, scurried to obey, looking for the happy place that is in us. That really special super-happy place that feels so good. We didn’t need telling twice you see – we absolutely didn’t need telling twice! We were all mad keen to withdraw to our happy place inside of us and pull up the drawbridge. Maybe we won’t ever come out again, even! Maybe we won’t. Maybe we’ll decide that we’ve had enough of life in the ‘non-happy place’ and we’re going to give up on it entirely. Maybe we’re fed up to the back teeth with all the outrageous crap we’re having to endure, day in and day out, in the rotten old non-happy place.
You can hardly blame us for that, of course. No one could blame us for that. Enough is enough, after all. There’s a limit to how much crap a person is willing to take, wouldn’t you agree? Any self-respecting person can only take so much, and then it’s a case of ‘Well the hell with you buddy, I’m off to my super special safe space, I’m off to my special happy place that only I can go to, the super special place that only I know about…’ ‘The hell with this’, they’re going to say, ‘I’m just not going to hang out here anymore with the rest of you losers. No Sir I’m not.’
And could you blame us? All things considered, could you bloody blame us? We are fed up with all the crap, you see. We’re fed up to the back teeth in fact. We’ve absolutely had enough. ‘Can everyone please go to their safe space’, the voice on the loudspeaker system tells us. The voice is calm but insistent. ‘Please remain in your safe space until the emergency is passed.’ it tells us. Only then emergency never really did pass, did it? The emergency never really did pass and we’re still there to this very day, aren’t we? Still here after all this time. We’re still here and we’re none the wiser as to what exactly is going on. Wiser we most definitely are not…
The chicken, the whole chicken, and nothing but the chicken – isn’t that what they say? No half measures here my friend, none of that damnable faint heartedness here! Start as you mean to go on, I always say, and if it all goes sideways on you then so be it. I wasn’t born to be smart, or wise, or funny, or helpful in any way – I was born to be fate’s tool, fate’s instrument. That’s all I am at the end of the day, and when fate is done with me it will toss me aside like a thing that doesn’t matter anymore. You know the sort of thing. It will toss me aside without a second thought. Fate doesn’t generally bother very much with second thoughts as far as I can tell. Second thoughts aren’t exactly fate’s style, you might say. There’s simply no room for regrets in this imperfect world of ours – you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, after all.
I have suffered from something of an identity crisis all my life. I’ve had it as long as I can remember, really. When I was a kid I’d read some kind of dumb comic book about Moose Boy or whoever it was that was popular back then, and then – in my own imagination – I’d actually BE Moose Boy. Or I’d read a comic strip about Protozoa Man and for weeks after I’d BE Protozoa Man, capable of assuming any shape, capable of reproducing asexually by binary fission, and – most thrilling of all – capable of engulfing his enemies and absorbing them into his own primitive but all-powerful unicellular body.
Then when I moved out of this phase I’d engross myself daily in reading those crummy little pulp Sci Fi paperbacks that there used to be so many of. I would devour them, spending all my time reading about galactic heroes like Johnny Neutron the intrepid Space Ranger. Embarrassing really, I know, but in my own head I would BE Johnny Neutron, travelling the cosmos in his FTL spaceship with his trusty crew of mutants.
Normal enough for a lonely, socially-dysfunctional, highly introverted kid with too much imagination and not enough friends, I hear you say, but even then I took it too far. Even then I was deeply abnormal.
Looking back to those childhood days I have no consistent memory of being anyone. Don’t tell me that’s normal. If someone asks me about my childhood I just go blank. I don’t know what to say. I can’t remember who I actually was back then because I had been so busy imagining that I was someone else. Somebody more interesting.
When I became a teenager things only got more confusing for me. I stopped reading comics and crappy pulp Sci Fi and moved on to Philip K Dick. This allowed me to go around feeling that I was not human at all but only some sort of highly advanced android programmed to think that it was human and which had been provided with memory implants taken from somebody else. I need hardly say that this did little to improve things.
As time went on I found myself less and less able to function in a social setting – or any other kind of setting, for that matter. I couldn’t relate to people. I couldn’t fit in, no matter how in tried. I was the perennial outsider – always looking in from the outside. I grew peculiar in my ways. I developed odd mannerisms, mannerisms that tended to attract the attention of passers by as I walked down the street, with consequences that were not very pleasant. I was being noticed in a bad way, a way that could easily get me beaten up,
I was not in a good place, at this point in my life. I abused drugs. I remember keeping a stack of low-grade Moroccan ‘slate’ hashish (along with the obligatory soap-bar) which I would periodically bring out when I was feeling low and subject to the vilest insults. I would say some very bad things indeed to that poor Moroccan slate hash for being so crap – I am mortified when I remember it. I got arrested eventually – the neighbours overheard me shouting and screaming and they called the police. Community social workers got involved and I had to go to a treatment centre.
That was a very dark time in my life and I am grateful to have come out of it. These days I still socially isolate but I have found some kind of peace in myself. Life has taught me the lesson that it’s okay to be a freak. That it’s OK not to fit in. It’s all OK. We live in a very spacious universe. A very ‘allowing’ universe, if I may put it like that. People may not be very allowing but the universe is.
I got into blogging for a while, ranting about society and writing perverse, self-mocking stories, but that didn’t work out.
Now I spend all my time on Facebook, making lots of new friends for myself. Friends who I know I will never have to meet.
My mouth is a swirling maw of darkness, my eyes blank portals into a world of horror and despair. My eyes blank portals, my eyes blank portals. No wait, I’ve said that already… I did say that already, didn’t I? Time for me to say something new at this stage, isn’t it? Time for me to break some new ground for a change. Time for me to get out of the stinking rotten old rut that I’m in. That loathsome filthy old rut…
Reality was struggling to fix itself, repair itself, but failing. Failing big time. The damage had been far too great and that was that. There was nothing any of us could do any of us other than watch on in dismay. Nothing for us to do but watch on helplessly in a state of numb, unbelieving shock. The passive witnesses of a horror beyond the imagination. Reality itself was crumbling away, inexorably degrading into lower and lower forms of itself before our very eyes. It was degrading in real time, before our very eyes, into what I can only describe some kind of abomination. What was once trustworthy and true was now revealed as being the very opposite of this.
My mind had been made all shiny and new. ‘Shiny and new, shiny and new,’ I sang out cheerfully, ‘everything has been made shining and new’. I kept on singing my song over and over, but then – before I knew it – I realised that my mind wasn’t shiny and new anymore. It had become tarnished and dull. All of a sudden I realised to my horror that the whole world had turned cheap and sleazy and – what’s more – I knew it was me that had done it. I knew it that it was my fault. I had sinned. I had brought a fearsome entropy debt upon my head and that’s bad news. That’s the worst news possible…
I had done the bad thing and so now everything was ruined forever. I wished I hadn’t done it but I had and there was no turning back. I shouldn’t have done it but I absolutely had – I had done the bad thing and now I had to face the consequences. That’s heavy shit, I don’t mind telling you. The heaviest. I call this ‘having the knowledge of one’s own evil nature’. It’s always necessary to face the appalling evil of one’s own nature – it is so very necessary in fact – but that doesn’t mean that we’re in any hurry to do so! Anything but that, isn’t that right? Anything else but not that. Instead, to help us avoid the truth, we created a little thing we like to call society. Society is great and all that of course but that doesn’t change the fact. It doesn’t alter the fact of our basic nature. Nothing alters that fact.
I was a Hero of the Conventional World. I had done all the right things in life – I had been to all the right schools, studied at all the right universities, met all the right sort of people and all that kind of stuff. It didn’t do me any good in the end though. Obviously it didn’t do me any good in the end! The future was here already, just waiting for me, and I just wasn’t ready for it. I wasn’t prepared for it, you see. I had no idea. I didn’t have what it takes – I was a sham, a fake person. I crumbled away immediately, I lost my mojo. I collapsed into a cloud of dust.
We get to play it being genuine human beings though even though we’re not. We’re slaves of the external authority. We get to act as if we’re real honest-to-goodness people with actual genuine integrity when – really – we’re extensions of the vile machine. That’s how it is in the modern world, isn’t it? That’s what life is like in the modern world whether you care to admit it or not. The machine says we can get to play at being free and autonomous and all of that sort of thing just so long as we keep on obeying orders. Just so long as we don’t break the rules.
The future is here and it’s not nice. No – it’s definitely not nice, not nice at all. I was spewing out the most hideous Satanic nonsense as fast as ever I could, and yet it still wasn’t enough. Nothing is ever enough. Nothing is ever enough. And there’s nothing any of us can do to make things right. You knew there wouldn’t be, of course. You knew that all along. You knew there wouldn’t be anything we could do and you were right.
I was on my best behaviour, in case God Himself was watching. The Big Man Himself. You never know, after all, do you? You just never know. I was doing all the good things, saying all the good things, thinking all the good things, as you do. As you do. Behaving like a decent human being and all that sort of craic. You know yourself.
God Himself.God Himself could be watching and so you wouldn’t want to be caught out, would you? You wouldn’t want to be caught out being a complete and utter bastard – that wouldn’t do at all, obviously! Absolutely not. No Sir… You want to create a GOOD impression, you see. It’s always important to create a good impression – if it’s someone who counts, that is. Some people count more than others, as you know, so that’s something to take into consideration. Some people don’t count at all. It may not seem particularly politically correct of me to say this but that’s just the way things are. I’m only being a realist here so please don’t blame me. Don’t condemn me. I’m giving you some good advice here, I really am…
I’m afraid of the hostile featureless masses. So very afraid. They’re bound to turn on me, I said – they always do. They can’t wait to turn on me. It happens every time, doesn’t it? It’s almost a cliché. The same old story, a nightmare we just can’t seem to wake up from. Well – a nightmare that I can’t wake up from at least. Not ever. Because the last time I checked it was all happening in my own head. The entire universe that is. Happening in my head. That’s the way it was the last checked time I checked, at any rate. Maybe things have changed now, I don’t know.
If I had one piece of advice for you it would be this – Fear the hostile featureless masses. Fear them well. You probably won’t though. You almost certainly won’t. The chances are you’ll become one of them, of course. Isn’t that what people usually do when they get scared? Blend with the hostile featureless masses? Blend good and proper so that you would never know that they were there? Merge would be a better word now that I come to think about it. Merging with those hostile featureless masses – becoming just another angry face in the crowd. Becoming just another tool.
I’m just a person like any other – not particularly angry and not particularly sad. Just a bit angry, just a bit sad. Angry sometimes, sad at others, just like anyone else. I could be you, you see – I could very easily be you. Or anyone else for that matter. Nothing special about me at all. Absolutely not. I’m just one of the lads, really. The point being of course that no one is going to pick on me this way. How is anyone going to know to do that? It’s the perfect solution, clearly. It’s the perfect strategy and that’s why we all do it. We are smart that way, you see. We’re smart in thatway, if not in any other…
When we extend the self, what exactly are we extending? That’s the question I’d like to put to you. When we promote the self what indeed are we promoting? When we are being brutally compelled to be what we aren’t (and what nobody can be) what kind of stupid lame-ass thing is this? What kind of a thing, what brand or species of a thing? We have to ask the question, you see.
When we extend the self, when we extend the jolly old self. It’s bloody great to extend the jolly old self, isn’t it? Doesn’t that just feel so wonderfully good? It feels good and at the same time it feels so bad. If the truth were told, it’s a horror beyond all limits. If the truth were known, if the truth were known. ‘Punish the evildoer…’ I cry out in a strangled shriek of toxic frustration and incoherent rage. ‘Punish the filthy dirty evildoer!’ But the evildoer is myself and the more I punish him the more powerful he becomes. He will destroy the world.
Even so however, I cannot refrain from doing so. I cannot refrain from punishing the evildoer. It’s like picking a scab. Picking a scab doesn’t make the scab go away (as we all know only too well) – it only makes the scab come back all the bigger and all the uglier. It comes back to taunt us; it comes back to tempt us all over again. ‘Pick me baby, pick me,’ it says. ‘You know you want to…’ Winking an eye at you, putting you in a quandary (only not really). There never really was any doubt in the first place – it was all a foregone conclusion and that’s the way it always is in the Deterministic Universe. All the freedom has been drained away from you and you’re condemned to a life of pointless repetition, coming out with the same lame-ass bullshit time and time again. Making out that is the first time you said it. Making out that it is the first time anyone said it. You’re just another spambot.
‘I can withstand anything apart from temptation’, isn’t that what your man said? Yes indeed, yes indeed. Never a truer word. Do you know that thing where you’re doing the bad thing and you think ‘Oh no. I’m doing a bad thing, I better stop it’, but you don’t stop. You don’t stop do you? You don’t stop because you love it too much. I’m sure you know the type of thing that I’m talking about, just like I’m sure you’re not going to own up to it! Never going to own up to it. We’re all such terrible liars when it comes down to it. We know no shame. We’re all such vile despicable liars.
We’re all such horrible appalling liars and that’s simply because we’re afraid. We’re basically shitting it, not to put too fine a point on it. Fear is controlling us. Fear is the Main Man – fear of the bad thing happening because we know that when this happens it’s guaranteed to be bad. It could be quite bad, might be quite bad. Possibly quite bad. It’s the Fear that puts the lies into our mouths, you see – we can’t lie fastenough, we can’t get those filthy dirty old lies out of our mouths quicklyenough. By God we can’t. Sometimes we even burst out with a great big fat corker of a lie (rehearsed to death at this stage, rehearsed so many times that it’s worn to a frazzle) before anyone has even asked us anything. The tribunal hasn’t even started yet! ‘It wasn’t me’, you cry out in a wild voice, ‘I wasn’t there, I never did it…’
‘What’s life like in the Equilibrium Realm?’ you ask, keen to find out, keen to find out all about the secrets of Samsara. ‘What’s the big deal with samsaric existence? Why do folks like it so much?’ I admire your perspicacity, of course; I am always a great admirer of perspicacity. Most folks – as you know yourself – only want to enjoy the illusions that samsaric existence is so very full of – we don’t want to go into it you see, we don’t want to know anything about it because that would entirely defeat the purpose of the exercise. There’d be no point in that, as everyone knows. There’s no payoff in learning about the trick that’s being played on us. That would just make us miserable and jaded. There is on the other hand a reward for successfully falling for the trick, being taken in by it. There’s always a reward for being a dummy in this life of ours, as I’m sure you’re aware.
‘But what are the secrets of Samsara?’ you still want to know. You’re all ears, you’re practically falling off the edge of your chair. You’re agog with anticipation (as they always say). That would be telling however, and we can’t have that. You’ll just have to get in the queue with everyone else; you’ll just have to wait your turn. But what are the secrets you want to know. What are they. Those deeply evocative and mysterious secrets. The whole thing such a tease, isn’t it? You would love to know but no one will tell you – they all want to keep this secret to themselves of course. The last thing they’re going to do is blab about it to some stranger. No one owes a stranger anything after all…
I was brought up to never trust a stranger. I was reared that way you see, I was reared to be distrustful to strangers and to treat them bad on this account. To rip them off when you get a chance, to always put them wrong if there’s a way to do this. We call it ‘the Code’ back where I come from. One always has to adhere to the code, does one not? There is honour in always adhering to the code. That’s how you earn respect for yourself. That’s how you learn to respect and honour yourself. By upholding the Code…
When I was born people thought that I would grow up to be a genius, and that I would achieve many things, many great things. You may laugh, but that’s what people thought. There had been various omens and stuff like that. Portents, and the like. Strange signs had been seen. That turned out not to be true of course but I can’t take the blame for that. The portents were wrong, the signs were misleading, and that’s just about all I have to say on the matter. If you’re expecting me to be this to be feeling bad about myself on this account then I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed.
I have adjusted to life in the Equilibrium Realm – I’ve made my peace with it. I’ve made my peace with the fact that this is where I’m going to end my days. And – do you know what? – it’s not so bad. It’s not so bad at all. I’ve actually grown to rather like it, can you believe that? It’s a funny thing – the person I once was would have been utterly disgusted, appalled in fact, that I could have come to this. That I could have ended up like this. And yet the person I am now – the person I have become – doesn’t care at all!
