abate [uh-beyt]

So much suffering has dissipated since my withdrawal to the loft. I say my days in the loft because someone I respect immensely once warned me that poetic pursuit sounds pretentious. Oh well. Pretentiousness is everywhere. Humans are wired for it in spades. My own has become a rare pretentiousness. I consistently allow people to believe I'm duller than I am; daily declining to offer crucial insights except where I predict it might be heeded.

Embarrassment, guilt, insecurity, jealousy, sorrow, confusion, hate, rage, indignation, confusion, anticipation, disappointment, shock, suspicion, hate and rage, to name a few breeds of suffering. And lonesomeness of a pedestrian sort. All of this has diminished to some great degree or another.

What has grown in me instead in such joyfully unanticipated abundance: Freedom, peace, understanding, patience, tolerance, clarity, insight, forgiveness, empathy, love. And a lonesomeness of a different sort. I can't seem to find anyone who views both the universe and the human being in fundamentally the same light as I. Sometimes I think Neo sort of understands my perspectives in general, while sometimes I doubt that I have made enough material available to him; or that he has absorbed enough of it, or that his own perspectives allow him enough trust in them. It is not his priority to be another me. But I dearly wish that he would experience (or continue to experience) as similar a migration as possible. I wish this for everyone. It's just that I'm accustomed to thinking of him as the most likely candidate of anyone I've met.