I can't actually remember actually being there to cast my vote when the decision was made that I should ultimately, blindly tumble from the viscous womb of a human being into this world. I don't recall a memo, nor having ever been being consulted. Had I been privy of available options and (preferably) allowed to leisurely peruse a full-color, briefly descriptive brochure of available life forms into which I would briefly inhabit a space, such as what one does when one considers booking a motel room; or had I been presented a complimentary travel guide listing various topological metrics, e.g., climate, altitude, longitude, length of day, cosmological frames of reference, etc.; socio-political determinants and features of a plethora of destinations, I might have preferred to become, for example, a charming, red and yellow colored Warbler (Sylviidae (sometimes considered a subfamily, Sylviinae, of the family Muscicapidae), Parulidae, and Peucedramidae families of the order Passeriformes). with an extensive repertoire of lovely songs to sing amid fragrant Azaleas (aka., Rhododendron Simsii Planchin) in remote mountainous regions of China.

As it so happened I became a human being instead, and as confirmation of a lifelong suspicion that some gross error was made in the current configuration of my particular molecular structure, I might legitimately protest, and simply refer to statements made by eyewitnesses of my birth:

Her: "Your father and I never intended to have a child. You were an accident. We certainly won 't be having another."

Him (possibly): "You know, if only your mother had stood up faster you'd have trickled down the inside of her thigh and saved yourself a world of suffering. "

In spite of these happy sentiments, I have more or less successfully surmounted an initial state of incongruence vis a vis the fundamentals of gravitational force, and have somehow managed to endure personal developmental processes among the various metals, stones, noise and smoke of an predominately urban locality emerging within the geopolitical parameters of a spatio-temporal coordinate commonly designated the United States of America where, I have observed, Azaleas are as scarce as accidents are abundant.

Since emerging into this world, developing a moderate degree of cognitive capacity, and (more-or-less) successfully navigating the several hazards and impediments encountered upon the multi-dimensional terrains of human existence, I have come to a few admittedly tenuous, if not downright contradictory conclusions, to wit:

1.) I frequently wish things were other than they are.

2.) Nothing ever seems to be what it is.

3.) Most everyone I have ever encountered has no clear idea just what the Hell is going on here.

4.) I have unwittingly developed a deep-seated aversion, bordering on revulsion, to the very concepts of eggplants, squirrels, religion, and anything that bleeds for five days without dying.

5.) Ideas have a tendency to arrive antecedently to the formulation of mind, thereby rendering it virtually impossible to ever claim an original thought.

6.) Many members of my species are so ineffably obtuse that I am sometimes thrown headlong into fits of existential despair.

7.) Curiously enough, in the face of the above-mentioned circumstances, I still have an intractable disposition to wish.

8.) I retain a curious desire to walk to Honolulu from here.

9.) Given that some "God " actually exists, s/he has successfully avoided responsibility altogether having sufficiently insulated his/herself by an impenetrable haze of deceit, fraud and artificial bureaucracy.

10.) Were ever I granted one wish, I would wish for the complete eradication of the wish to wish.

This much I think I know:

Though details are sketchy at best and though I must rely upon sources who are either suspiciously reticent, dead, on the phone, inside a TV set, or otherwise indisposed, or who appear to take perverse delight in the dissemination of misinformation, I am nevertheless persuaded that I had, in fact, a beginning. This of course hazards a dubious hypothesis. The search for demonstrative evidence by which to support aforementioned claim has been sometimes obfuscated by the appraisals of family members and friends who have since queried whether I might have been “cursed from birth to a lifetime of stacking a pyramid of bowling balls."

In any case I think I can boldly affirm, in the face of any recrimination whatsoever, that life is either a veritable whirlpool of delusion, or (as it appears to the more implacable intellect) a serial sequence of disillusionment demarcating the time-line of one's past as, as it were, a formidable collection of fallen icons and trash heaps of discarded ideals strewn about upon the landscape of the past like so many broken insects. Like the moss covered ruins of a Grecian acropolis.

My personal accomplishments up to now may be fairly summarized, by analogy, to the antics of a minimally-skilled circus dog perpetually chasing its tail in circles for the amusement of an audience who have either fallen asleep with their mouths open, or who sit complacently paring their toenails while awaiting intermission.

Intermission

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