Assume $1,000 is 1 mm, $1 million is 1 m, $1 billion is 1 km, $8.849 billion the height of Everest and $100 billion, of course, a clear 100 km into the sky. Unfathomable and redundant excess.

Yet wasting time and energy on small distinctions at the bottom of the pile, instead of recognizing that we're all, almost all, in a precarious state, wondering where the next day's / week's / month's / year's income will come from and whether we'll ever visit Florence.

Meanwhile, inside, a feeling of joy.

Let me tell you about this friend of mine who's dead, while you and I are still alive.

Feeling good (nice and empty), then the memory of how I let my parents down intrudes, then my children and partner, first and last of all myself.

The shame and grief that only end with death.

I can never discount the possibility that I'm mentally disabled in various important ways, or ways that are important for life as it's lived today, or - more specifically - for the life I've chosen to accept.

I probably shouldn't be here.

After happiness (or at least contentment) I wake up and feel lost again, wholly within myself, in full awareness of the material reality of my situation, the lack of bonds and fellow feeling, the precarious status of the roof above my head, the knowledge that people much younger - men and women, not boys and girls - have done and are doing things I envy, even as they remain outside my inclinations and abilities, as distant and implausible as the moon.

The horror, once again, of a naturally limited life and my own loss, waste and decay.

The shame at my biography.

Easy enough now to look back and do the basic math, to see that we met when barely young and spent these years together, enough to need both hands and one foot to count, and to look ahead, see the number inside my head and instinctively know the calculation must be wrong. We will be old soon, and then elderly.

I pull out an index card and write the numbers down, add and subtract the old fashioned way, like a child half the age of my jacket, the date and place of purchase having been written inside, by myself (of course) on a trip to Japan that was planned around the cherry blossom season. I remember the picnic under the trees, the walk up to and through a castle, and my excitement at finding this item, the only thing that remains from that trip, back when such things were still possible.

Good denim, cut like a sports jacket, exactly my size and fit. I knew then it would age well and was worth the high price for the use I'd get out of it, the emotions and experiences I would have in it. And here it still is, half a world and a quarter of a life away, looking good, aging well, the pockets a little worn and stretched, the fabric faded, but a living thing turned to the warmth and movement of my body, a part of me and my history that will live on, however briefly, after I am dead.

More so than anything else.

 What matters most is how I feel.

Writing this to prove to myself that it happened, that I sat on the terrace on damp and cloudy day, mist covering anything and everything 200 m ahead, but then eventually lifting as the road from here runs to a bright and sunny coast an hour or so away. That I sat on the terrace with the more clownish of the two cats and we both simply were, me with a cup of peppermint tea and my breathing, she with her paws on the wet ground.

Elsewhere, far down that road and beyond, the rich and powerful did their thing, tried to achieve something of this peace after their explosive orgasms and boundless explorations of joy, others felt class anxiety at the dizzying, unimaginable gulf between themselves and the real lords and ladies, and kicked down all the harder, still more struggled to afford a dignified life and peace of mind at any price.

Meanwhile, hidden from the world, the more clownish of the two cats and I did nothing, almost nothing, and achieved everything that needed to be done.

I was repressed, by myself and the systems in which I was enmeshed, and so my main aim as a young and youngish man, teens to 30s, was to escape, a process that required a number of deaths on my part, the shedding of skin, the zombie-self stuttering and shuddering on three continents, until I emerged self-made from broken parts and molded by experience, the world having moved on without any great need for my services.

I'd squandered my limited promise on getting ready for a stupid party that was already over, and turned to face new challenges I was wholly ill-prepared for.

On days like these the world moves as it should and it all seems easy: stay healthy, stay solvent, stay curious, stay active.

Pain, misery, emptiness, and loss seem impossible now, as if drugged, but I'm doing this on fresh ginger, lemon balm and chamomile, stretching when I can and looking at the trees in the distance, feeling my breath as the body takes control.

If only it could last.

"Why am I not doing that?" I think - about so many things - when the truth is I'm busy, always have been, playing a game of my own devising, one that tries to make sense of myself while feeling alive and complete in each moment, an approach that demands as much emptiness as fullness, if not more.

And in truth, or true enough, or at least a momentarily plausible lie that holds up well to little scrutiny, things could never have been different.

I am what I am. A man made in pain, always seeking refuge or escape.

The realization that I'm just floating here, just barely, buffeted by the waves and currents of increasingly terrible and terrifying events, with fabled creatures of the deep moving ever upward.

I look around and see only darkness.