A notion of character, not so much discredited as simply forgotten, once held that people only came into themselves partway through their lives. They woke up, were they lucky enough to have consciousness, in the act of doing something they already knew how to do: feeding themselves with currants. Walking the dog. Knotting up a broken bootlace. Singing antiphonally in the choir. Suddenly: This is I, I am the girl singing this alto line off-key, I am the boy loping after the dog, and I can see myself doing it as, presumably, the dog cannot see itself. How peculiar! I lift on my toes at the end of the dock, to dive into the lake because I am hot, and while isolated like a specimen in the glassy slide of summer, the notions of hot and lake and I converge into a consciousness of consciousness__n an instant, in between launch and landing, even before I cannonball into the lake, shattering both my reflection and my old notion of myself.

If it's to be, it's up to me.to which I add;If not now...then when?

You answer to none but the whim of your own black heart.

Twill be the end of us all when it comes...The moon will devour the sun...The sea will rise in a great wave and drown the world...The Realms will fall...Evil will crawl across the land.

[Religion is] a fantasy [and is] completely empty of any explanatory content. It is also evil.

Only the wicked understand the ways of the wicked, my dear. ~Madame Zelda to Roller Deb