Napping, gathering up and preparing to wrap and mail gifts picked up over the past year– 'oh, that looks like something for so-and-so'. Nap attack of high magnitude, accompanied by spouse, followed by dinner and reading. Sleep cycle still off, else I'd be asleep now. Too tired to do anything useful, like go to a friend's party (sigh) or get things done, but still Not Sleepy Enough to Sleep.
When the days start getting longer, I think I'll be sleeping at night again. I wake up sleepy, have a day, get pulled into a nap vortex around 4 or 5 pm with a feeling like a morning class in the sun at college, or an opalescent weight pulling down the anchor chain of sleep, deep down into swirling places where I could just wake up for a moment and attend to my other, less-conscious lives.
Friends and success are beckoning, but so much goes wrong in the world that sometimes it seems like abandonment to simply enjoy life for a while. I could quote Zhuangzhi at myself, but I already know more about normalization, on both sides of the coin, than perhaps I might wish or think wholesome. The rain falls on the roof, and I can hear it as friendly. I don't let myself relax until I look up which 100-year flood plat marks my house. Still not time to relax. Not that far, at least.
Yet some days, like reading seed catalogs, I realize that this is indeed the fabulous golden city, and wish we would all, like Randolph Carter, awake from the brink of annihilation and know it for the first time.
Even consciousness is probably an emergent phenomenon. What good would it do to live 'forever'? Applying a linear solution to a timeline that started before you, and ends after you, and has limited focus, doesn't 'solve for' the universe. Even if there are multiple lifetimes with continuity (conscious or not), trying to experience the universe via timeslice is simply like taking the area of a cylinder with calculus. It's a useful approximation, but no more than that. If I had the math for how they calculate what percentage of a hologram can be seen from on any given piece of a shattered hologram, that might be a start. But the point is the hologram, not what percentage can be seen.
Seeds as nanotech, (yes, yes, Stephenson got there first), lichen in space, terraforming, spreading our vast roadshow across an even vaster area.
“'…What's the answer?'
The bartender robot hurled its mixing glass across the room with a resounding crash. In the amazed silence that followed, Dagenham grunted: Damn! My radiation disrupted your dolls again, Presteign.'
'The answer is yes,' the robot said, quite distinctly.
'What?' Foyle asked, taken aback.
'The answer to your question is yes.'
'Thank you', Foyle said.
'My pleasure, sir,' the robot responded. 'A man is a member of society first, and an individual second. You must go along with society, whether it chooses destruction or not.'
'Completely haywire,' Dagenham said impatiently. Switch if off, Presteign.'
'Wait,' Foyle commanded. He looked at the beaming grin engraved in the steel robot face. 'But society can be so stupid. So confused. You've witnessed this conference.'
'Yes, sir, but you must teach, not dictate. You must teach society.'
'To space-jaunte? Why? To reach out to the stars and galaxies? What for?' ”
'Because you're alive, sir. You might as well ask: Why is life? don't ask about it. Live it.'
'Quite mad,' Dagenham muttered.
'But fascinating,' Y'ang-Yeovil murmured.
'There's got to be more to life than just living,' Foyle said to the robot.
'Then find it for yourself, sir. Don't ask the world to stop moving because you have doubts.'
'Why can't we all move forward together?'
'Because you're all so different. You're not lemmings. Some must lead, and hope that the rest will follow.'
'Who leads?'
'The men who must . . . driven men, compelled men.'
'Freak men.'
'You're all freaks, sir. But you always have been freaks. Life is a freak. That's its hope and glory.'
'Thank you very much.'
'My pleasure, sir.'
'You've saved the day.'
'Always a lovely day somewhere, sir,' the robot beamed. Then it fizzed, jangled, and collapsed. ”
—Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination
We needn't play croquet.
In some lucid moment
we will conjure a patio
and laugh,
side by side,
watching the beasts cavort.
They assure us,
the feeling is mutual.
— “In the Country of the Sane, the Dreamer is King”
— Strata 12/22/95
Relentless Inquiry 
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