Consciousness is the feel of accessing memory.

I cannot choose to ignore this feeling, of life slowly bleeding out of me. I cannot ignore the fact that life only makes sense to me when I see a smile, or feel another hand in mine.

Unable to attribute misfortune to chance, unable to accept their ultimate insignificance within the greater scheme, the people looked for monsters in their midst.

I respond well to what I read of Immanuel Kants idea that the world as we see it is absolutely a function of the way our brain works. In the modern parlance, its an evolved machine that we carry with us.

In the end, living is defined by dying. Book-ended by oblivion, we are caught in the vice of terror, squeezed to bursting by the approaching end. Fear is ever-present, waiting to be called to the surface. Change brought fear, and fear brought destruction.

I try not to be surprised. Surprise is the public face of a mind that has been closed.

Superstition is the need to view the world in terms of simple cause and effect.