He sat recalling past sins; not capable of recalling past victories.

What victories for chrissakes?

It was then he knew, he absolutely knew that his mood had taken over his thought processes.

When you realize that you cannot trust your own thoughts, your own logic and your own perspectives how in the hell can you continue?

But he also was aware that he had come to this nihilistic conclusion before.

Funny, when you are 20 it is not so easy to escape.

The most recent loss is the most real loss is the most ominous loss.

This proves it! The 20 year old will opine.

When you are three times this age you find yourself in situations that are not so new.

Well I have been through this before.

The neurons fire in patterns and as patterns develop the outside world brings events that are more easily discerned (or mis-discerned) as one ages.

Well I have not been through what I am going through at this moment before.

History might not repeat itself but there appears to be an echo at times; at least Mark Twain tells us so.

But there I go again.

Mistaking echos for past events; or past memories of events. I mean what is an event? Oh do not go there because chaos awaits.

I can fall into the abyss of nothingness with no trouble at all.

I can talk myself into anything; I can think myself into anything.

I can perceive dangers that are not there; I can experience shame when no one is around; I can succumb to ghosts of things past so easily.

He laid the intravenous needle on the table.

After reflection, he walked that needle into the kitchen and dropped it into the garbage bin after glad wrapping it. How does one exactly glad wrap death? He pondered.

So what's on?

The knock came at the door.

YEAH, JUST A SECOND!

He had not bathed but he had to at least throw on a sweat shirt in order to package his true identity.

A sweat shirt over an under shirt looked better and besides, it went somehow with his other colored sweat pants.

Yeah, he responded as he opened the door.

The gurney and the EMT's appeared; out of nowhere.

You called?

Ahhhhhhhhhhh, no. Nobody here but me and I called no one and I am still ambulatiory!

The duo looked at each other and looked at the inmate and proceeded right on down the hall!

Ronald Reagan claimed that the Russian language had no word for "freedom." (The word is "svoboda"; it's quite well attested in Russian literature.) Ronald Reagan said that intercontinental ballistic missiles (not that there are any non-ballistic missiles—a corruption of language that isn't his fault) could be recalled once launched. Ronald Reagan said that he sought a "Star Wars" defense only in order to share the technology with the tyrants of the U.S.S.R. Ronald Reagan professed to be annoyed when people called it "Star Wars," even though he had ended his speech on the subject with the lame quip, "May the force be with you."

We seem to assume things told us at some point when we were not paying attention.

He thought.

Of course, how often do we pay attention?

Hitchens would label Ronny as an idiot.

And yet how many cities or states or countries had this guy Hitchens ever ruled?

Such is the arrogance of those who stand or sit or lie on the sidelines.

At a recent town hall in Osage, Iowa, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R) responded to a question about the Labor Department’s stricter limits on child labor by claiming that they could exacerbate the child obesity epidemic by making kids less “active”:

Concern was raised about the proposed Department of Labor’s intent to greatly limit child labor on family farms.“This farm bill will greatly affect our FFA and 4-H programs,” said Grassley. “Kids won’t be able to help on farms not owned by their parents.“It’s interesting that this child labor bill goes against Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity initiative,” said Grassley. “How can kids be active if they are limited by this this law?"

He looked at his computer screen:

Several months ago, the nation’s biggest banks became embroiled in the “robo-signing” scandal, when it became clear that they had been approving thousands of foreclosures without verifying the proper documents or guaranteeing borrowers due process. The banks submitted fraudulent documents to courts and were forced to halt their foreclosures processes entirely as they sorted out what happened. “I had no idea what I was signing,” said one Bank of America employee. “We had no knowledge of whether the foreclosure could proceed or couldn’t, but regardless, we signed the documents to get these foreclosures out of the way.”

http://thinkprogress.org/

Then he opted for the couch and Law & Order.

He awoke wondering why he was not in bed.

Where the hell am I?

Things are not always as they seem.

If massive objects bend light rays as relativity claims, Mandl asked, why couldn't a relatively nearby star act as a sort of cosmic lens, magnifying the image of a more distant one? That, after all, is how an ordinary glass lens works — bending incoming beams of light to sharpen, expand or otherwise manipulate what we see. Worn down by Mandl's relentless prodding, Einstein did the calculations and concluded that yes, stars indeed could operate that way — although he added that "there is no great chance of observing this phenomenon...

The other discovery, which appears in the current edition of Nature, is more in keeping with Einstein's original concept, with individual stars rather than vast galactic clusters serving as gravitational lenses. As Einstein explained it — and as later scientists confirmed — every so often, a distant star drifts just behind a relatively nearby one, causing the faint light of the background one to be magnified. If the nearby star has a planet in tow, that much smaller body can act as a little lens of its own, making the background star brighten too, albeit less dramatically. This so-called microlensing will occur either before or after the main lensing event, depending on whether the planet leads or trails its parent star.

He heard a knock at the door or next door or a fallen painting or...

Okay, I shall peer out into the external abyss.

He arose and unlocked the door.

He stopped for a second and then thought:

What the hell?

As he opened his door to the 'real' world he noticed a box out in the hall at his threshold.

What?

He took the box to the couch after he had grabbed the smallest knife in his kitchen drawer.

No return address?

Well who am I to question gifts from the gods?

Slowly he cut open the cross of tape that covered the top of the gift.

As he finished his attempt at disclosure he slowly opened the flaps.

First the right/left flaps.

Then the up/down flaps.

As he removed the bubble wrap preventing a proper view of the treasure contained therein.

I'VE GOT IT!

Shades of Willy Loman.

DADA HE THOUGHT!

There were no questions, there was no bridge to Eden, there was nothing but that contained in the box.

The quest continues.