Not terribly long ago, I might have treated the following as an aphorism: pretending to know all the answers isn't as bad as pretending to know all the questions. And the latter applied to me in spectacular fashion in the days of thunder and fire, so much so that it is genuinely hard to read anything I expressed at that time. The attempts to appear intellectual and philosophical strike me as incredibly hollow; victims of an old affliction of mine, which is being stricken with the image of something and not caring particularly for anything below its surface.

I've expressed earlier the desire to somehow talk all this over with the unfortunate victims of my treatment back then. But the time seems trapped in itself, a bad dream. I suspect that trying to revisit it will not conjure up dramatic images at all, but rather end up seeming rather bland and dreary. Is that an even worse fate?