MSTed: Aleister Crowley on Atlantis-2
M Sampo
>a certain spar
CROW: The hell?
> such that the light and heat of the sun were
>completely cut off, not by opacity, but by what we call
>'interference'.
MIKE: A 15-yard penalty.
> In this way other subtle rays of the sun
>entered the 'house', these rays being supposed to be necessary
>to life. These matters were the subjects of the deepest
>controversy.
TOM: Oh, but there was no controversy over the idea of giving up speaking?
> Some held that these rays themselves were
>injurious and should be excluded. Others considered that the
>light-screens should be put in position during moonlight,
>instead of being opened at sunset, as was the custom. This,
>however, was never attempted, the great mass of the people being
>devoted to the moon.
CROW: Others held that the entire society needed a GET A MITT AND CATCH A
CLUE! Sheesh!!
MIKE: I feel your pain, Crow.
> Others wished full sunlight, the aim of
>Atlas being (they thought) to reach the sun. But this theory
>contradicted the prime axiom of attaining things through their
>opposites, and was only held by the lower classes, who were not
>initiated into this doctrine.
TOM: What's the opposite of the sun? Dirt?
>The 'houses' of Atlas were carved from the living rock by the
>action of Zro in its seventh precipitation. Enormously solid,
>the walls were lofty and smoother than glass, though the
>pavements were rough and broken almost everywhere for a reason
>which I am not permitted to disclose.
(All snicker)
MIKE: My imaginary friend told me not to.
CROW: Maybe some big Atlantean's gonna break his kneecaps or something...
> The passages were
>invariably narrow, so that two persons could never pass each
>other. When two met, it was the law to greet by joining in
>'work'
CROW (Falsetto): My, it's hot in here!
TOM (singing): Bucka-bucka-wow bucka-bucka-wow...
> and then going away together on their separate errands,
>or passing one above the other. This was done purposely, so as
>to remind every man of his duty to Atlas on every occasion on
>which he might meet a fellow-citizen.
MIKE: But mostly led to people staying home a lot.
>The Banqueting-Hall of the children was usually very large.
TOM: But, for some reason, on Tuesdays it was tiny.
> The
>furniture, which had been brought by the first colonists, and
>gradually disused by adults, never needed repair. A vast open
>doorway facing North opened on the mountainside on to the
>vineyards and orchards, the meadows and gardens,
CROW: And phosphorus mines.
> in which the
>children passed their time. Suckled by the mother for three
>months only, the child was then already able to nourish itself
>on the bread and wine, and on the flesh of the amphibious herds,
>of which there were several kinds; one a piglike animal with
>flesh resembling wild duck,
TOM: Am I tripping, Mike?
MIKE: If only we were, Tom! That would be a relief!
> another a sort of amatee tasting
>like salmon, its fat being somewhat like caviar in everything
>but texture,
CROW: And floating exactly the way bricks don't.
> and a sure specific for any of childhood's troubles.
>A third, an ancestor of our hippopotamus, was really tamed,
>and was employed by the serviles for preparing the ground for
>the corn, trampling through the fields while they were covered
>with sea-water, and thus leaving deep holes in which the seeds
>were cast. Its flesh was not unlike bear, but more delicate.
MIKE: You know, I haven't a good dish of bear in years...
>Notable, too, was the great quantity of turtle; also the giant
>oysters, the huge deep sea crabs,
TOM: ...battling Godzilla....
> a kind of octopus whose flesh
>made a nutritious and elegant soup, and innumerable shell-fish,
>added to the table. The waterways were haunted by shoals of a
>small and poisonous fish, whose bite was immediate death to
>man, a fact which altogether cut off communication between one
>island and another except by air, as the hippopotamus-animal,
>although immune to its bite, was unable to swim.
CROW: Making it nothing like a hippopotamus, then, really...
TOM: What about boats? Ever heard of them?
>Of the sleeping chambers I shall tell more particularly in the
>course of my remarks on Zro.
MIKE: We'll alert the media...
TOM: Let's get outta here....
(The rise and leave)
1.....2.....3.....4.....5......6..{clunk}
[SOL]
(Crow and Tom are at the desk)
CROW: Ya know, Tommy-boy, as insipid as this post is, there is one nice
idea in it--telepathy! These people managed to actually ELIMINATE speech
and speak directly mind to mind!
TOM: Yeah, that IS cool! Hey, maybe WE could learn to do that, huh?
CROW: Well...sure! Why not? Let's give it a try. I'll go first.
(Crow thinks) CROW voice over: Hello? Hello? Testing! Testing! Is this
thing on?
TOM voice over: I hear you, Crow! This is amazing!!
CROW voice over: I hear you too! We have to try this on Mike! (They look
offstage) Oh, here he comes now--THE HELL?
TOM voice over (seeing what Crow sees): DEAR LORD!
(Mike enters--in addition to the Dr. F. moustache, his hair now look's
like Dr. F.)
MIKE (Deadpan): Oh, hi, guys. Say, you know, I think Dr. Forrester's
invisible gas thing is a dud...I'm not turning into him at all!
CROW (pleasantly): Oh, you're absolutely right, Mike! You look completely
normal!
CROW voice over: He looks like Professor Irwin Corey!
TOM (also pleasant): Crow's right, Mike. Dr. F. must have blown it--you're
your some old lovable self!
TOM voice over: I may be ill!!
MIKE: Thanks, guys. I needed a little reassurance. I guess I can stop
worrying and continue with my experiments.
CROW and TOM together: Experiments??
MIKE (matter-of-factly): Oh sure! I AM a scientist, you know. (Suddenly
leering evilly like Dr. F.) Oh, by the way, you two don't where I can get
some nice cuddly puppies to strangle, do YOU? Bwahahahahahaha!!!! (He
slithers offstage.)
CROW voice over: Tom, I gotta bad feeling about this...
(Commercial sign light goes off)
TOM voice over: And a commercial too! Yikes.
(Crow "pecks" at the commercial sign button and into spaghetti ball
bumper..and commercial)
COMMERCIAL
(end of commercial)
(And they are heading back into the theater, Mike's "Dr. F hair" can be
seen in the silhouette)
MIKE: ...but I tell you I'm feeling perfectly fine!
TOM (sighing): Mike, Mike, Mike...
>III. OF THE AIM OF THE MAGICIANS OF ATLAS: OF ZRO; AND ITS
> PROPERTIES AND USES: OF THAT WHICH COMBINED WITH IT: AND
> OF BLACK PHOSPHORUS.
TOM: Snappy title!
>It was the most ancient tradition of the Atlantean magicians
>that they were the survivors of a race inhabiting a country
>called Lemuria, of which the South Pacific archipelago may be
>the remains. These Lemurians had, they held, built up a
>civilization equal, if not superior to their own; but through a
>misunderstanding of magical law--some said the 2nd, some the
>8th, some the 23rd
MIKE: ...a distinction that means a LOT to readers...
> --had involved themselves and their land in
>ruin. Others thought that the Lemurians had succeeded in their
>magical task, and broken their temple.
CROW: But most thought they were just dopey guys makin' it all up.
> In any case, it was the
>secret Lemurian tradition that they themselves represented the
>survivals of a yet earlier race who lived on ice, and they of
>yet another who lived in fire, and they again of earlier
>colonists from Mars.
TOM: Live the good life in the off-world colonies!
> The theory, in fine, was that the aim of
>man is to attain the Sun, whence, according to one school of
>cosmology, he was exiled in the cosmic catastrophe which
>resulted in the formation of Neptune.
MIKE: Well, duh! Everybody knows that!
> His task on any given
>planet was therefore to overturn the laws of Nature on that
>planet, thus mastering it sufficiently to enable him to make the
>leap to the next planet inward. Exactly how and in what sense
>the leap was made remains obscure, even to the heirs of Atlantis.
>
CROW (Al from QL): Uh...Ziggy says there's a 90 percent probability you're
supposed to go to Venus....
>The men of Atlas could fly, it is true, and that by a method so
>simple that men will laugh outright when it is rediscovered;
TOM: Throw yourself at the ground and miss.
> but
>they needed air to support them; they could not confront the
>cold and emptiness of space. Was it in some subtler body that
>they conveyed the Palladium?
MIKE: And what of Harriet's love for Brad?
> Or, content to die, could they
>project some vehicle across so great a distance? The answer to
>such questions
CROW: ...is "Blow it out your ass."
MIKE (upset): Crow, you...(stops himself)...you know, I don't care
anymore...say whatever you want.
CROW: Really? Woo-hoo! Teatsteatsteatsteats...
> probably lies in the recovery by mankind of the
>knowledge of Zro and its properties.
>Beneath the labour mills run troughs in which the sweat of the
>workers collects and drains off into an open basin without the
>mill.
M&TB: EWWWWWWWWW!
> In this basin churns with immense rapidity--through
>multiple bevel gearing--a sort of paddle with knife edges. The
>sweat is thus churned into froth,
CROW (gagging): Arg! My throat is closing!
> and gradually disappears, and
>is as continually replaced. The workers toil in shifts--eight
>hours work, four hours repose, eight hours work, four hours rest
>and recreation. The mills never cease day or night.
MIKE (narrator voice): Industry! Making a Better Atlantis!
>The basin is of polished silver and agate, and is set at an
>angle, facing two enormous spheres of crystal, encased in a sort
>of trellis made of a certain greenish metal, its optical focus
>at a point midway between the two.
TOM: Is this going to be on the final?
>The only sign of activity is that out of this focus a spark
>crackles unless the air be dry,
CROW: Why ask why? Air be dry.
> a condition difficult to secure
>in this part of the world, although fans blow air, dried over
>chloride of calcium and sulphuric acid,
MIKE: Why would you dry fans over acid?
> over the globes and
>their focus. These fans are worked by tidal power, human labour
>being appropriated solely to the one use.
TOM: ...which I am not permitted to tell you.
>In the temple of the 'house' are two globes similar to those
>upon the plains, and the mysterious force generated below is
>transferred to those above, collecting within them. Now the
>name of this substance is always Zro,
CROW: Ooooh! I LOVED that show!! (Singing) Zro! The fox so cunning a
free!!
TOM: A fop by day, mysterious supernatural substance by night!
> but in its first state the
>gesture is a twiddling of the thumbs.
MIKE: I thought they eliminated gestures!
> In its second, it is a
>rapid twittering of the fingers, and in its third state of
>distillation it is a screwing of the hands together. Within the
>spheres it sublimes suddenly in the air as a snaky powder (4) of
>silver, which immediately turns to an iridescent fluid (5) that
>is forced up, by its own need of expansion, through a fountain
>into the temple, on whose floor it lies (6) in a semi-solid
>condition.
CROW (satisfied): Wow!! That was great! Was is it good for you?
> Expert priests gather this in their hands, and
>rapidly shape it into its seventh state, when it is a knife of
>diamond, but alive. An instrument like a Mexican machete is
>used to carve rocks. The edge shears them, the back smooths
>them. The rock behaves exactly like wax, responsive to the
>lightest touch.
TOM: Engorging at the slightest caress...
MIKE: Tom!
TOM: Oh, Crow has carte blanche, but not me?
MIKE: Fine, fine. We'll just call it Mystery Science Filth 3000...
> What is not used for weapons is then gathered
>up swiftly and kneaded by women of the rank of high priestess.
>It is not known even to the high priests with what they knead
>it,
MIKE: But, let's just say they've noticed a LOT of thighmasters lying
around
the temple...
TOM & CROW: MIKE!
MIKE: Three can play at this game, my sassy metal friends...
> but in its eighth stage it is a substance solid enough to
>support great weight, but eternally heaving of its own force.
>Of this they make beds, so that the sleeping Atlantean is (as it
>were) continually massaged.
CROW: All this work, just invent Magic Fingers??
> To this they attribute the fact
>that Atlanteans sleep never more than half an hour, though they
TOM: Love, love, LOVE it!!
>do so four times daily. These beds remain active only for a few
>days, and they are then thrown into the ninth stage by being
>taken into a room where is a cauldron of great size. They are
>thrown into this and sprinkled with black phosphorus.
MIKE: ...and maybe a touch of nutmeg...
> The Zro
>then divides into two parts, one liquid, one solid. Neither of
>these has any ascertainable properties, for it is absolutely
>passive to the will of the user,
CROW: Kind of like Al Gore!
> who may taste therein his
>utmost desire, whether for food or drink. Among adults there is
>no other food or drink than this. The children are not allowed
>to taste it.
CROW: But when nobody's looking, they're injecting the stuff directly...
>The black phosphorus is always added by a high priestess, and it
>is not known in what manner she does this. The Zro that may
>remain is the subject of eternal experiments by the Magicians.
>It is generally thought by the greatest of them that an error
>was committed in bringing it to a ninth stage of division into
>two, and many openly deplored the discovery of black phosphorus.
>All however strive in harmony to produce a tenth stage that
>shall surpass the virtues of the ninth.
TOM: Marshmallow peeps!
> Theoretically it is
>possible to reach an eleventh stage wherein the Zro takes human
>form, and lives!
MIKE: It's alive!!!!!
> Opinion is divided as to whether this was not
>actually done by a certain magician at the time of the passing
>of Atlas. In any case, I beg the reader to remember that I have
>only described one seventh of the virtues of Zro,
ALL: THANK YOU!!!
> and I have
>even omitted this, that in its ninth stage it is not only food
>and drink, but universal medicine, if properly understood. For
>Zro is also a vision and a voice!
CROW (Carol Channing): and a lovely pants suit!
>
>Now the muscles of the people of Atlas are the muscles of
>giants, and yet they do one thing only. And this thing is
MIKE: Mumbletypeg.
>combined by the wisdom of the magicians, so that it is at the
>same time work, exercise, sport, game, pleasure, and all else
>that may fulfill life.
>This work never ceases. It has these parts:
>
>1. Working at Zro, i.e. bringing it from the first stage to
> the ninth.
TOM (Harry Carey): Bottom of the seventh stage of Zro, nobody
on...beautiful day at Wrigley Field...
>2. Working with Zro, i.e. for one's own particular purpose.
CROW: Such as a life-size Vendala doll!
>3. Working for Zro.
>
MIKE (singing in falsetto): She works hard for Zro...so hard...
>This is the common and most honourable task, the Zro eaten and
>drunken being worked into a quintessence of higher power, though
>identical in property with the common Zro. This new Zro (Atlas
>Zro) goes through the same stages as the common Zro of the
>serviles. But it is the result of free and joyful labour, and
>so serves the magicians in their experiments, and the Governor
TOM: And JJ? Please?
>of all for his sustenance.
TOM: Oh.
> None by the way is ever wasted. For
>example, a tunnel was drilled completely through the earth and
>filled with Zro, and it is said that by this tunnel the
>Atlanteans escaped.
MIKE: Hmmm...maybe WE could try that...
>This working, whether with or for Zro, requires two persons at
>least at any one time and place. Great heat is generated in the
>working,
CROW (Barry White): Oh, baby, work with me....
> and the bodies of the workers are therefore sprinkled
>heavily with the black phosphorus, which is incombustible.
TOM: And a little sawdust underneath...
> This
>black phosphorus, poisonous to the servile race, becomes
>innocuous to anyone who has been in any way impregnated with Zro.
>This itself, in its first stage, is as dangerous as electricity
>of high voltage.
MIKE: Or listening to Sam Donaldson talk for too long...
>The reverence attached to Zro is unbounded. At one time it was
>hymned as the father of the gods, and till the end all children
>were thought to be "begotten of Zro", though everyone might know
>who was the father.
TOM: Insert Wilt Chamberlain joke here.
> All such conception was however held
>indignity. Its official name was 'the old experiment'. It was
>carried on simply because the new methods of continuing the race
>were not perfected.
CROW: The stork had not been invented yet!
> Childbirth was therefore in one way
>accident; although a duty, everyone shrank from it. For though
>no pain or discomfort attached to the process, it was a sort of
>second-best achievement from which proud women turned
>contemptuously. This was in part the reason why the father's
>name was never mentioned.
MIKE: Planned Parenthood, Atlantis Division
>On several occasions in the history of Atlas the Zro 'failed'.
>Although not changed in appearance, its properties were lost or
>diminished.
TOM: Maybe the gods just learned to HOLD their zro!
> In such a case young men and maidens in great
>numbers were captured on the plains, brought into Atlas, and
>offered in sacrifice to the Gods.
CROW: Oh, that's their answer for everything!
> Their blood was mingled with
>Zro in its third stage, and the latter recovered its potency.
MIKE: Whew! That was close! Lucky we always have these innocent victims to
murder when a problem arises, huh?
>Their flesh was eaten by the high priests and priestesses in
>penance for the unknown wrong.
TOM: Translation: just for fun.
> It was subject to other and
>terrible scourges, being the most sensitive as well as the
>strongest thing on Earth. On one occasion it had to be treated
>with a fox-like perfume prepared by the chief magician; on
>another it was subjected to streams of moonlight from parabolic
>mirrors.
CROW (laughing): Oh, I remember THAT time. We can laugh about it now...
>The most serious crisis was some two thousand years before the
>destruction of Atlas. One of the serviles, riding his
>'hippopotamus' to the ploughing, fell off and was instantly
>bitten by the poisonous fish previously described.
MIKE (as servile, sad): My son is dead.
> Through an
>accident of boyhood he had, however, for a reason too obscure to
>describe here, no such vulnerable spot as suited the Zhee-Zhou.
TOM (as son): I'm not dead!
MIKE (as servile): Eh, my son is mortally wounded!
>He survived and went to work, as it chanced, the next day.
TOM (as son): I'm getting better!
CROW: More Python, Tom....
TOM: Well, Mike helped!
MIKE: Just followin' YOUR lead, mamma-jamma.
> The
>Zro was poisoned; a third of Atlas died within the hour;
CROW: Good. (Mike and Tom laugh)
TOM: Yeah, I bet the serviles were REALLY broken up...
> the
>plants on the affected island had to be destroyed, and all its
>people.
MIKE: We had to destroy the island in order to save it!
> It was only repopulated some three hundred and eighty
>years later, and then for particular reasons of magical economy
>impossible to dwell upon in this account.
CROW: Magical economy...Oh, like Reaganomics?
>Marriage was compulsory on all those whose passion had been so
>exclusive and enduring as to produce two children. Further
>intercourse between the pair was barred. The Magicians thought
>it was inimical to variation for a woman to have more than one
>child (a fortiori two) by the same father;
TOM: And, besides, THEY wanted a shot at her...
> and the custom
>further prevented those stupid sporadic outbursts of burnt-out
>lust which make so many modern marriages intolerable.
CROW: Oh, my.
MIKE: Ouch!
TOM: Oooh, SOMEbody has issues!
>Closely connected with marriage, the close of the reproductive
>life, is that of death,
CROW: Ba-bing! And I wanna tell ya, folks....
> the close of the little that remains.
>Death hardly threatened the Atlantean; he would decide to "go
>and see", as the old phrase ran, and take an overdose of a
>particular preparation of black phosphorus mixed with a very
>little Zro in the ninth stage, which ensured a painless death.
TOM: Or he could just take a walking tour of one of the village of the
serviles...they'd have him strung up within hours!
>That none ever returned was taken as proof of the supreme
>attractiveness of death.
CROW: That they bought that load of horsehockey was taken as proof of the
stupidity of the Atlanteans.
>The ghoulish and necromantic practices with which Atlanteans
>have been unjustly reproached never occurred. A little
>vampirism, perhaps,
MIKE (British): But no cannibalism...and when I say no cannibalism, I do
mean,
of course, that there was a little bit...
CROW: What is with you guys and Python today?
TOM: So, the human sacrifices don't come under the heading of "ghoulish
and
necromantic practices"?
> in the early days before the perfecting of
>Zro; but no Atlantean was ever so stupid or so ignorant as to
>confuse death with life.
CROW: They were stupid and ignorant in OTHER ways!
>Beside this voluntary death only one danger existed.
MIKE: Rollerblading.
> As the use
>of Zro guaranteed life and health and youth--a centenarian high
>priest was no better than a kitten!
TOM (baby talk): Awwww! What could be better than a widdo kitten...
> --so did its abuse spell
>instant corruption of those qualities. As mentioned above, now
>and then the Zro itself was at fault, and caused epidemics; but
>from time to time there were deaths in a particularly loathsome
>form caused by what they called
CROW: Afternoon talk shows.
> 'misunderstanding' the Zro.
>Such mistakes were particularly common in the early days of its
>discovery, and before its use had become well nigh a worship.
>The first symptom was a crack in the skin of the temple, or
>sometimes of the bridge of the nose, more rarely of an eyelid or
>cheek. Within a few minutes this crack became one open sore, of
>horrid foetor,
MIKE: A vocabulary word! Where's that dictionary...?
> and within twenty-four hours, the patient was
>completely rotted away, bone and marrow. A circumstance of
>singular atrocity was that death never occurred until the spinal
>column collapsed. No treatment could be found even to prolong
>the agony by an hour. This being recognised, sufferers were
>thrown from the cliffs at the first sign of the malady. In this
>way too were all other corpses disposed. It was the most
>honourable death possible, for becoming 'bread from heaven' for
>the serviles,
(CROW, TOM and MIKE react in renewed disgust and dismay)
CROW: Can this post get any MORE disgusting?
TOM (British): Well, Crow, you can try it, and if you don't like it
you can dig a grave a throw up into it!
CROW: That's it, Servo! I'm enrolling you in Python Riff Anonymous.
TOM: I'll be good...
> they were again worked up into Zro itself, a
>transmutation which in their view would be well worth all the
>"resurrections of the body" and "immortalities of the soul" of
>the theoretical, dogmatic, hearsay religions. So much then
>concerning Zro, and the matters immediately connected with it.
MIKE: We're sorry we asked.
>IV. OF THE SO CALLED MAGIC OF THE ATLANTEANS.
>
>Magic in Atlas was a 'Science of Sciences'. It was the final
>integration of all knowledge. In method its theory was
>differentiation, and in theory its method was integration.
TOM: Mike, I know we're not supposed to have guns in the theater...
MIKE: Tom, there is an exception to every rule....
> For
>example, the fifth of the great philosophers indicated
>"Everything is Zro" to the Keeper of the Speech at the annual
>sacrifice.
TOM (Minnesotan): Oh, they do a lovely job at the annual sacrifice dinner
CROW (same): Oh, ya, and the speech is always so interesting!
> This in spite of the fact that in that very year two
>new forms of Zro had been discovered by that same philosopher.
>It was the third of the galaxy who announced "The ultimate
>analysis of sensation is pain; that of thought, madness; that of
>super-consciousness (a state of trance induced by Zro and valued
>above all things) annihilation."
>
MIKE: And was quietly put into a home....
>His successor had retorted that in this was implicit a postulate
>that pain, madness and annihilation were undesirable. The third
>admitted that he had so meant his phrase, but destroying the
>postulate, still stuck to it. All this was the foundation of
>much magical theory, and on these purely psychological
>researches was based the whole magical practice.
TOM: Just where do Siegfried and Roy come into all this?
> 'There is no
>God' was a commonplace. It only implied that the mind was wrong
>to try to conceive within it what was by definition without it.
>To set limits to anything whatever seemed to them the greatest
>of crimes, the exact opposite of the true path to the Sun.
MIKE: Ah! Libertarians!
>The practical side of magic was for the most part a mere
>utilization of known forces, such as are employed by modern
>science.
CROW: She blinded me with science!
> But the resources of Atlas were as great, and the
>advantages incomparably greater. The whole archipelago was a
>laboratory. There was no question of the 'cost of research';
>every man was devoted to it. Every man thought only of the main
>problem 'How to reach Venus' and its sub-issues. Further, the
>main laws of magic had always been found to govern and include
>chemical and physical laws.
TOM: I see...they understood chemical and physical laws...and the goal was
to
get to Venus...apparently there was no Atlantean Verner Von Braun...
CROW: Hey, whadaya know! Their experiments ARE about shooting people into
space!
>In the early days of colonization Zro was only known in its
>crude state; it was the genius of a single man that obtained the
>third state in its purity.
CROW: That man was...Harvey Korman.
> From this state to the seventh it
>moved almost of itself, very much as radium does. The genius,
>having sufficient in this seventh state, made a sword, and
>completed in three days the subjugation of the servile races.
MIKE: And the good life began!~
>It was a stroke of fortune, this quickness, for on the fourth
>day the Zro began to disintegrate. The magicians then began to
>seek a means of making this state permanent. But in this they
>failed, so that knives had always to be replaced twice weekly;
>but in the course of their failures they discovered the
>infinitely more valuable eighth and ninth stages of Zro.
TOM: Along with silly putty and "Scatagories."
>Tradition has preserved a hint of their efforts in Alchemy with
>its problems of the fixation of the Universal Mercury, the
>secret of perpetual motion, and 'potable gold--the Universal
>Medicine'. It has been theoretically determined towards the end
>of the tenth state, that Zro should be a solid, but whether this
>was confirmed is beyond my knowledge.
CROW: Well, what the hell good are you then?
To be continued...
Sampo
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I've undergone a complex personal evolution wherein painful confusion has
given way to what I like to think of as some degree of wisdom, culminating
in my current Zarathustrian sense of self. Is that it?
=======================================================