What endures, endures.  The rest is just a matter of a passing lesson in practicing living, whether or not the lesson is ever learned or even acknowledged.

If you had to be one or the other... Would you rather be the first ant out of the ant hole in the morning? Or the last one in at night?  Might all depend on when and where the anteater feeds.  At all times, beware of lurking anteaters.

If I could simply be ripped out of this culture, what would be left, what might remain?  Everything.  And in addition, the empty niche I once occupied.  The question is: Could that niche be better occupied?  And:  Would my successor ask the  very same or even a better question as this? 

Love, romance, erotic fantasy, and sexual co-excitement aren’t a big factor in my life right now.  Notions of such that I might have entertained in the recent past proved illusionary—the maya of Buddhist teachings, if you seek a conceptual referent.  And thus inapprehensible to my gimlet eyes.  So I suppose I might better say that illusion isn’t a big factor in my life right now.  Love, romance, erotic fantasy, and sexual co-excitement just are.  Somewhere about.  I might run into them again someday.  Then again, maybe not.  I’m sure the world we dance upon really doesn’t give a fucking damn one way or the other.  Nor would I, if I were it.