California problems...

I'm not a huge fan of brain chatter, but it is a defining characteristic of my mental process. Consciousness, for me, is generally an uncontrolled atom smasher where words, images, emotions, and ideas collide, fragment, and re-combine to form new models, enthusiasms, and horrors for navigating and comprehending the external world.

As you silence the mind and get in touch with the cosmos, a psychic state I have tasted many times, you aren't left with much to do besides smile like an idiot or scream like a howler monkey. Seriously, that vacuum is so... blah. And what's worse is that that's really what most of the universe is, an empty existential vessel for nothing.

 So you see Mr. Bukowski, we actually are constantly at risk of being eaten up by nothing. These trivialities - my brain chatter, someone's trivialities, another's terror, another's death - are where the love we all seek has to manifest, at least until we all forget about being the life of the party and embrace a collective cosmic catatonia.