So I’ve been thinking I should really get into heroin. Think about it: the most intense pleasure a human can ever experience. It’s actually rather depressing to think about. No matter whatever else one does, it could never bring as much pleasure – and pure, real, honest, sensual, unambiguous pleasure at that – as a hit of heroin. Sure, maybe you’ve had sex with the most highly trained and talented prostitutes in the world; okay, maybe you’ve piloted an advanced jet beyond the reaches of the earth’s atmosphere and into the nascent fringes of space; why not? maybe you’ve held your newborn son for the first time – but have you ever tried heroin? Nothing can compare. How could anything compare with every pleasure receptor in your brain orgasming at once?

I was telling all this to ------ a while ago and she started crying and begging me not to get into heroin, and made me promise that I wouldn’t.

But, see, I know that she only reacted that way because she loves me, and love is such a selfish thing. It’s not so much that she’s concerned for my welfare, but that she’s worried that if I were removed from her life that it would make her sad. And that’s lame. She just can’t find happiness in the fact that I could experience as much pleasure as is humanly possible, far more so than is ever attainable in humdrum day-to-day existence. The most difficult thing to procure in pursuit of one’s dreams is never the money nor the time, but the support of one’s loved ones. Sure, maybe I’ll pay a little for it, but wouldn’t *the most intense pleasure a human being can experience* be worth a little discomfort and pain? And besides, I don’t think that for a person like myself it is such a big sacrifice, since personally I’ve never been real big on showering and neurotically compulsive bowel control anyway. And could any human pain be less bearable than the crushing pain of daily mundanity?

To be anchored to no one thing in particular must then make you relevant to all, aye? So you do not define (confine?) yourself by years, geography, knowledge, wealth, prestige -- but you have only been able to do so now that you have more than enough of each, enough so that you can now decide how much or little is important. But where were you before you had control of assets sufficient to free you from their associated ambitions and influences?--were you as certain of the core of yourself then? And, the more important corollary: where will you be when you face the total loss of your confidence-endowing wealth and power, such as when death approaches--will your identity still be as firm within yourself? Can you say for certain whether the bolsters of your identity originate mainly from within yourself, or do they support you from the outside world from which you so wish to distinguish yourself?

If only time would heal, as it is reputed to do. But even as the years pass by, the wounded flesh still hangs in ragged strips from my bones, and my heart still refuses to beat.

To the sea, to the highway, to the wild, to the world, to life. I couldn’t say for what other reason I could have been on this train, on this night...