"The illusion is the lesson itself."

What a strange thing to write. I thought I knew exactly what I pretended to when writing what I wrote. Yet, to write about what I wrote in lieu of writing about what I would have written in it's stead, fairly exudes Befuddlement!

I like pretending as much or more than the next person. Pretending stuff is just the way I dream it 'should' be... just for the hell of it... and it appears soothing to my soul. It seemed to have taken a long time to realize that the soothing I did for my soul's sake placed an unwitting price on my head. I made the deal ignoring the fleeting peripheral awareness that I was not really willing to pay the price embedded within my treasured ignorance. Soon, I would learn more about learning, and the price exacted from learning that learning is a sham.

In the past, I endeavored to pretend that what I had been taught to think was real, when it really wasn't, no matter the price. Like many kids I was deadly serious about learning whatever it took to get me on my own, and often, my people did not support what I thought was real. Still don't. No blame.

Both of my parents were school teachers. It didn't take forever to learn that learning was a sham. Learning reeks of political indoctrination, unwittingly or no, that told me culturally the politically expedient way to conduct my personal affairs, in order to live in peace and good will. Follow the party line. Render unto Jesus. And you'll get a gold watch and a respectable headstone.

This boilerplate hysteronics is served up sereptitiously with a perpetual occult price to pay to please it's greedy pundits. I pompously pretended all this rhetorical folderol was true for a mere pat on my head and the stars and stripes up my butt, All during this time I am pretending to some exotic bookish wisdom while selling my soul at the price of slave labor.

I never openly confronted the unconscious mourning of the loss of my innocence until it nearly crushed me behind my mask of pretentions. How could I have knowned? I only saw my mask in the mirror on the wall.

Pretending eventually pounded me senseless. I would later ignore my pretentions as the price I paid for learning how to get laid. Now that I'm old and staid, my memories of those escapades exists as an old friend's way of showing me how the game is played. Hopefully to watch enraptured while muttering "How could I have been so courageous... and survived so long?"

Time to go play my flute. I play a lot of nursery rhyme songs these days. Rewriting my life includes rearranging the music. Just variation on theme. I have no elaborate scheme to whack away the sands of time any faster than comes by the seat of my pants.