Every night I’ve been going on these really long walks, sometimes 10 miles or more, all the while inside my brain I keep obsessively combing through this dark catalogue of the times I went absolutely insane and made some catastrophic decisions that derailed and almost completely destroyed my life permanently. To say these events are the result of a “lapse of judgment” is a severe understatement. It almost makes me sick . . . I don’t recognize myself inside of these memories. Who is this guy? Maybe this a universal human experience. I mean it’s got to happen to everyone at least once. Point is, I’m gonna be more careful. I must remember so that I don’t end up alone and amnesic in those unfriendly places again, cuz god knows it would be my own damn fault. Though now, from this new vantage point, seated sultanically among the moons of Saturn, all my various sadnesses and failures have hardcoded themselves unto me . . . have deepened my understanding of myself, and so on, which I reckon has got to count for something. I’ll tell you this: step one in protecting yourself from the world, and protecting the world from you, is to just leave it all the hell alone. Get a library card and some free weights and just stay home, man. You feeling nutzo? Hide until the fever breaks. It’s like the fella said: Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee; as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. Amen.