• I'd lost count of the days spent completely alone when some body suddenly asked where I'd been. I didn't know, but that didn't waver their excitement. They asked what I'd been up to. Well. Spent the last two decades amidst torrents of information, gleaming, devouring and constructing all I could. Pride resounded in their recital of some memory about view of the world reflecting one's own character, "wha'dya think of the world nowadays?" Sorrow and beauty. That's all I see. We could call it a horrible mixture of the two, each crashing upon and rising from the other in eternal, cosmic struggle to gain the upper hand but I'm afraid they're one in the same; shades of grey. They would've asked what I'd been up to again, then cringed at the faux pas, and I'd have answered with steady deliberation something about shedding more gallons of blood than I can keep track of to shield people who don't appreciate their own sufferings and don't know I even exist, let alone what had been done for them. But I startled the computer to bright life, eased my eyes into focus and wretched this out instead. Such gallantry only takes place within this blurred-snake-pit of a mind anyway..