You were not there for The Beginning. You will not be there for The End… Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative…

— Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs

I crashlanded onto this planet earth with no manual other than what my parents and brothers told me to be true. Then you get other kids' perspectives, television messages, and those inked on the insides of books and outsides of cereal boxes.

Initially I accepted axioms/postulates given to me by seemingly reputable/familiar sources. Jesus is the OnlySonOfGod™ whose crucifixion rendered sins forgivable and he resurrected before ascending into the Heavens, where he'll be until he returns for the FinalJudgement™ at the end of the world. Another story: Satan (a.k.a. Luci[ph]er) was once God's most prized angel until pride made him think he was more terrific than God, thus leading to an attempted coup d'état. For some reason that earned him the right to rule the Damned™.

Asking lots questions will crack up most any axiom/postulate/narrative like these. And when you read a lot of books, you start being able to poke holes and chisel away the solidity of almost any axiom. Thus, flat-worlders, GlobalWarmingDenial, HollowEarthTheory, and whatnot. Just refuse to accept the axioms that they present. Nevermind all the unquestioned axioms you hold over there.

I feel very uncertain about a lot in life. I have much doubt that there is a "right" way to live and wonder if I'm simply falling into the path of least resistance. One that is generally accepted to be moral: that of raising children with loving intention and support, supporting the wife, building the home, developing capital and wealth for financial security, to get rid of debt, pay for kids' current and future educational expenses. Being home all the time. Reading too many books and developing writing skills (for what purpose?).

“The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.

The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man's mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others.”

~~~ Cormac McCarthy in Blood Meridian