man, the secret tragedy of my life is that i just can’t get past asking myself why i exist and why i’m ever doing anything at all. you know? i’ll just be walking around and i’ll think, “why do i have to be here? can i just go home now?” we all know the question doesn’t matter since the answer cannot be known. it could be anything, and many people are able come up with an answer for themselves, or at least ignore it. i guess i’m just no good at answering the question to myself. listen: i get my kicks. there’s a lot of stuff i love and would miss if it were gone. it hurts me all the time to think about that. i reckon i just wish i felt more of an attachment to being alive. even on good days, it’s just not enough for me that the thing is good in and of itself without any further explanation. why can’t i just enjoy it as a series of events? i almost get to that point of accepting the thing for what it is: a temporary dream that can sometimes be made better or worse. but then i spiral away from the simplicity of that thought, and i almost feel nauseous. it just IS. and it could all just as well be otherwise. that anything in my life exists feels like a total fluke. i don’t know where most of it came from. in a way it’s a sort of circus to me and i’m lost in it. i am glad to have met so many good people and to have had a strange life. that right there is the head and tail of it. and then what? that’s what i can’t get past and probably never will. i wonder is all, i really do, and it only seems to make it worse. like the fella said:

Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward we could for ever reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and strange than any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, then there were promise in the voyage. But in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of, or in tormented chase of the demon phantom that, some time or other, swims before all human hearts; while chasing such over this round globe, they either lead us on in barren mazes or midway leave us whelmed.

i’m obsessed with that great mystery. i so want to see behind the veil. but i have a dark suspicion that maybe this is it.

what can i do? i suppose i will mind my own business, and contribute as little pain and suffering to the world as humanly possible—and, as often as possible, ease the pain and suffering of others. otherwise all you can really do is endure it and make terms with it. i wish there were some other way, because i love so much of it, and still it just feels like shadows in the fog to me.