I suspect I do not exist. Do I exist? I am petried. On the one hand, I am a totally unperceivable madness that cuts up the truth with a weedwacker. On the other hand, I am afraid, all the time, of everything, especially nothing.

Nothing is a versatile thing. To not be, ad innitum, to have everything taken away ceaselessly. It is not death. Death, by contrast, cannot be nothing for in order to experience nothingness one must, deep down somewhere in one’s conceptually constructed toes, be. Death is an absence of being which, in reference to one’s existence, is not the bookends of life, but the silence into which the song of continued conscious existence might be played. It is no use asking what it sounds like; it has no pitch, timbre, color, taste, feel or smell. It cannot be detected, so one might as well assume it isn’t there. This, on the same hand, if we may remain in the aforementioned palm a second longer, this is by far worse. That is not to say I wish I were dead. Nothing lies that way. Nothing at all.

What does it mean to exist? Many believe in gods’ existences. Many believe in fairies and spirits. In their world, does a great radiant goldsh swim across the noon sky? Did humans crawl out of pockmarked tunnel mouths in the earth and grow ten sizes in the fresh surface air? Do hidden away, wary giants rescue the rare traveler when one has strayed too far from the road? Some do not require belief to move through the same rituals. Children believe in everything, incidentally. And me, do I exist? It seems I walk around doing nothing, for no reason, and yet it is carefully orchestrated, meticulously mapped in my head to minimize the pain. Despite all my eorts, nothing is brought to fruition, and there remains no proof that I exist in any more substance than the gods or giraes or dark matter. There is no perception of my existence. And isn’t that the most that anyone’s belief can oer? Do I perceive my existence? Perhaps once. But I longer believe in myself.