Life isn't all butterflies and childish things.

I don't know anybody who remembers their birth. I don't really believe hippies who say that they do. Lately I've been seeing the phenomenon of birth as something like erupting into blackness. You don't know much at all. Can barely DO anything beyond basic autonomic nervous system functioning. Only a handful of behavioral instincts keep you from eating your own excrement. If you lack the attention of human adults, animals will make dinner out of you.

What are people's basic fears? Incompetence? Inferiority? The lack of control? Conflict? Chaos?

Most people fear death, but everybody fears life.

Humans stumble around on a gigantic pile of dust trying to extend their lives. When their lives are extended to such a point that they cannot imagine dying, they stand around thinking or talking about how they're stumbling around on a gigantic pile of dust.

There's no sense to it. It's fairly charming. Entertaining. Lovable. But not logical. Not predictable. The concept of good doesn't eventually triumph over the concept of evil. Loved ones die and power-hungry jerks usually end up in power. It doesn't all even out in the end and things are not fair.

For the past 30 years or so I've been trying to walk a line between telling myself flat out lies to get by and a kind of pessimistic honesty that tends to generate the doom it predicts.

Sometimes it seems so clear to me. Othertimes, I can't find anything in the middle. Most of the time, I'd rather just listen to French rap and laugh at the funny accents.