There are dreams I fear to dream, visions I fear to see. I have imagined there are darknesses deeper than black, inkier than the thickest night, and I wonder at times if my heart has been contaminated by them, that foul humors have been mixed into my soul. It is irrational, I know, but the mind has ways of sneaking into its logic bits of perverse contrivances. This is what madness has left behind: a haunting that every once in a while moans of unnatural shadow, of twisted longing. And somewhere, too, is the opposite light. Somewhere in me there is the capacity for a saintliness I could not reasonably expect from a one such as myself. That I have touched the sun and lived.... In the middle of the two I walk, aware of the extremes of holy and evil that both try and draw me to them. It is not to balance, but to know strength in my self, to go forward though I know that it would be safer merely to crouch and hang on — to fight the unreal as I keep on. I dream past the fear, and know I gave my best.
