We remember a time upon which the mind did not stutter or pause, but served up every thought and memory with clarity. Those times, my dear friend, are long gone.

The mind now is like molasses on a cold day - it hurts the teeth to chew and tastes fucking awful. But in our hubris to disregard the cranial decline we gloss over what is most evident, that we are to be this way and worse not because we deserve it, but because our fate is written and sealed. What was once a gleaming memory of days gone by now fades into so much fog, where eventually not even its form nor shadow cast a visage of its passing, but for not the whirling vapour of its movement would we even know it was there. I certainly know, and it pains me to feel the emptiness it once stood in.

If I could travel back in time, I would surely torture my younger self. A hardened shell formed at an earlier age may have served for internal growth sooner for an external world of pain and spikes directs and concentrates the power within more than any other medium of soul. In such a state, could one feel trapped? Would a man born and forged in a cage know anything other than his prison, or even know this prison for what it is? I believe the understanding of freedom is beyond that of mankind, but we know it is there and, so, we never feel our own skin as the border of our dominion but merely the body moving through our cell, but certainly we feel its walls, and know we cannot break through.