For a long while I assumed nothing was changing inside my brain. There was a point when I even considered that maybe I was getting progressively dumber. But I know now, as much as I can know anything I reckon, that rather than build on anything preexisting I have dismantled the old. It has gone from me, most of it, and only a little of it remains. What I have held onto I think is good, and will take it with me into the future. The new things I have erected are serene and humble. That’s what I think anyway. There is darkness too but it is manageable and for the most part helpful. It keeps me honest. When a mood swings sharply toward self-destruction I can take it apart and make it nothing for a time. When it returns I will dispel it once again. And on and on till I die I’m sure.

At night, alone, I address the phantom that governs the great machine, first saying, “Why? why? why?” Then: “You can trust me with the secret! I will tell no one.”

If some unseen agency revealed to me a grain of what is really happening, if there be anything on the other end of the thing, then I would keep it to myself if told to do so. I would not run to the press. I would tuck it away. And if I could tell two or three other souls then I know who they would be.

I don’t make it my purpose to believe in things I cannot prove are real, but I also don’t block out the possibility. There are definitely curious things we do not know about and maybe never will. That’s fine. I have opened myself to whatever may come. It can pass over me or pass right through me. I am certain of my heartbeat and little else—and even then I wonder! What an air-thin miracle it is to find four walls surrounding me in the morning and the same face I’ve always known looking back at me as I brush my teeth. As far as I know this is it till it ain’t. Thank God no one has returned from the dead. It is not the finality which is interesting to me but the mystery. It is maybe the only mystery left.

The plan is to play the game! I will die playing it. Hooray!