I feel as if I have been here forever, that I have always looked out from behind these eyes. And I don't think I can comprehend that all of this will go on when my life ends — or even that I will one day die, and be no longer of this world. The Taoists believe that eternity has a name: "Now": that is how I feel, that I am at every moment experiencing infinity.... I think I must qualify all this in that I am not speaking through the filter of madness, but just a philosophical perspective that fancies me, that may seem strange to you. William Blake understood this perspective: "If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite." Time is a strange thing, indeed, as if sometimes eternity comes and goes, and there be some moments that never end.
I dunno. Maybe it is a little mad, after all, this conceiving. But I know that I will always be that little mad, however well I become. Threads of schizophrenia still run through my thinking; every now and then, I have sudden and bizarre notions. But look at things this way: there is no past, and there is no future, and there never have been or will be: all we have is this thing called, "Now", and in the present tense only do we ever live. If there is an afterlife, I think we are tasting it right now: the flavor we call "Infinity". I don't know what you think of this taste, but to me, it is a sweet one, worthy of experience, worth the words we write.
