Things seem at times unreal to me. I know this is a sort of hangover from my old madness, relating something to my past drug usage. The things that I handle, even the people I deal with — they seem as if they are not really all that solid, as if they are merely a veneer put upon the void. What might seem odd in this is that since I cannot escape my own existence, I myself feel quite real. Even odder, I sense somewhere that God is even realer than me. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust: except that is not just the measure of man, but all things: even the telephone poles, even the buildings, the streets: from dust you came, and to dust you shall return. Now, it is not always like that, of course; mostly, I go about my business in a regular way, not doubting the metaphysical existence of the pieces of paper I write on, but there are these moments... it is as if I'm peering past the grand illusion, and there is nothing really there.
I do not, though, really hold to the idea that it is really an illusion, all of what we may see. If I am touching on any sort of existential truth, if my feelings are based in any way in some grain of that which is, it might be merely that sort of vision into the dimension of time. Things are ephemeral, having a beginning and an end, or some such thing. All to say, I do not think much that I am touching on truth when I have these visions of mine; it is just another thing that I deal with in the winding courses of my mind. Strange the visions that I have had, and I cannot base any sort of rational discourse upon such wild foundations. I report to you that the visions change but never go away, that they become a sort of philosophical bent, but there was never anything of the deeply real that they seemed to possess. What is real I have always known, though I have forgotten at times; I always come back here, to myself.
