i see great distances now, coming awake to it, slowly, after so many years, the pain, of death so imminent still, of failure, i am not, so suddenly aware, i wait, to see, all that I will, have accomplished, go to waste, never have i seen so much terror as i think i will create, never could i even have imagined such, the eyes of the world focused upon it, never so much technology--that i did imagine--wonderfully put to use to satisfy man's craving for lust and greed, but never so much spread among the nations with every nation striving to be more a part of it, like hungry childrens' arms stretching across the table for the food at the center, it could have all belonged to us, except for, the pain, starts every time i think of it, i fade away, my perspective, every time, the pain, starts up again, and reappears a moment later after perhaps years have passed, that is the way it has been, fading in and out with, the pain, to watch the spectacle before me, if i had eyes to see, i see, as if it passed, before my brain, if i had a brain to think, as if it passed, before my soul, if i had a soul to feel, as if it passed, before the spirit, all the trivial little stories of, the pain, within the world...what did i come out into the desert to see?

Driving home, spaced, cars and buildings crawling by, not caring, now, how slowly he would go, pretending that he has all the time in the world, whereas previously he would have sped along streets, weaving in and out and cutting people off, gaining every advantage, now, he distracts himself from the truth of his condition for as long as possible when possible, not fully realizing, unable to fully realize, the enormity of the problem he now has, trying to turn it into an advantage, as he always tries and always manages to do, he makes his way through early afternoon traffic, taking the long way home, thinking despite his inability to do it properly, an inability he's watched increase with age, a slow-down of his mental capacity. It will take a long time, at this rate, for him to get all the way home. But one thing he knows for sure is that he is free, although he is not so sure now that he wants to be.

There is no beginning to this story (unless it is birth, but I have no intention of writing biography), so we pick it up in the middle, and I leave it to the reader to piece it together, because that is the nature of this postmodern prose. Our hero, at this point, early on, is beginning to come apart. Two people are driving home, simultaneously, joined at the level of their meta-personality, but for the most part unknown to each other. That is, that's the way the situation is theorized; but there is often a vast gap between the theoretical and the practical, and in that gap there is significant room for the development of...well, let's just call them, for lack of a better word, psycho-spiritual concerns.

If it appears to the reader that the story is being told from the viewpoint of at least several personalities, this would not be so far from the truth, because the truth, it appears, cannot be known--not for certain. As it will occur on many different levels of and occasions in life, truth is relative. Two different monologues, occurring contiguously, one in the first person, one in the third, are not necessarily the perceptions of two separate characters; but neither are they necessarily the same person--because we never know who we really are and how we are attached to others; we only think we know, when we will be so sure of ourselves, when we will live a stable and secure life. But when we have come to a point where everything we have relied on has come into question, even if we were so sure beforehand that inevitably this condition had to come to pass, still we cannot avoid falling into the trap that life will set for us. This is the trap that our hero has fallen into: he only thinks he knows now where he is, in any given moment; but he never knows where he is, when he is somewhere else. This is the same condition we are each in every single moment of our lives; but very few of us ever experience it consciously. This is not to say that our hero experiences it consciously, but he experiences something, beyond the normal.

Entities jostle for position in life like cars displacing one another in heavy traffic. We all have this aspect of each of ourselves that is more than we are of which we may know nothing of or of which we may to varying degrees suspect. Winding through traffic like a beetle along a carapace hoping to find a way into a thing it doesn't know has any opening except that it operates on instinct, the driver, yet, has a sense that time and place, strange as they can sometimes seem to him, are stranger still this day. The heady feeling expands his mind like acid, and he thinks he knows us now, how we hover above him, and although he may feel us, slightly, he does not know, thinking he hovers above himself.

The small blue subcompact is easily followed from above, if that is the choice. But many competing interests evolve.

My stomach burns, heartburn and lower, an internal hell. I reach across the seat to get my antacid from my bag, but I can't find it. Opening up the bag so that its contents fall onto the seat and floor, I momentarily swerve, and a horn sounds, dopplering past me. The antacid is not there. I remember in a fit of lucidity, which will happen now and again, that I had taken it out of the bag when I'd awoken with heartburn in the middle of the night, having slept the wrong way for too long; and I'd set in on the headboard shelf. My back, out of place again, is grinding vertebrae against each other, dead in the middle where it can be the most irritating, where if it were just a little bit higher would feel like normal pain, and just a little bit lower would be excruciating, making it nearly impossible to drive, or even to stand up straight. Regression back toward the apeman. I begin to try to adjust my position in the seat, but I give it up and decide to put up with the pain the way it is, because if I manage, rather than to relieve it, to shift it lower, I will be in a lot of trouble.

Driving used to be such an enjoyable experience.

In addition, there is one other entity, interfering, intermittently: we all know him; he is infamous the world over. But he is, for the most part, unaware, yet tuning in at times, because he cannot prevent it, the nature of the cosmos being what it is. He is a lost soul now, who would wonder where he is, where he had gone wrong, except that he hardly has the wherewithal to wonder any more. Yet even the worst of us will rise to an occasion, from time to time, even when we have been condemned into unconsciousness, by our own evil selves, for the worst part of our sins. He, still, wants to control what it is he fitfully will see; but he is helpless, except for the occasional observation, making his perceptions vaguely known to actors who will interpret them as their own and act accordingly, maybe, if they are weak of will. He would take a pleasure in this, except that he is so seldom tuned-in, reliant on an overrseeing presence for his awareness, that his reaction is all but irrelevant.