A bit of sleep.

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Four or six hours, I can't be sure.  Enough, for now, in my condition.  All that I can get in any case.  Perhaps a nap, later in the morning, in an attempt to keep the sun in my day.  You have no idea of the complexity of the game I play, the foes I fight, or just how successful, in many ways, I am.  I don't give proper credit myself, even knowing, usually.  On this day, at this time, I am pleased.  I am not in a coma-like state.  Given the condition I am really in, that is impressive.  I've 'slept' for months, even a year, in this condition.  This is a new high for an old low.

Something reverberates in the timbers of my mind.  Warnings.  Dark is coming.  I keep harping, and I keep being ignored.  As the sun, to moon worshipers, perhaps, it isn't that my warnings are unheeded, merely unwanted.  Perhaps the here and now, for some, is already too much of a burden.  I tell you, you are living in grand times.  You will remember these days joyfully, if you yet, and while you yet, draw breath.  Cherish these last embers of a moment when all men were, or could be, kings... and more.  It won't heal the wounds from stuffing a cup of raw rice into your face as your daily sustenance while being harried and threatened and killed.  But it will... offer moments of release, knowing that there once was, and perhaps could be again, grand days.

I have warned.  I am not sure it matters.  Too many have chosen what I have warned against.  My kin.  Looks are deceiving.  Many have been deceived.  The choice was simple, the matter clear, but if a man chooses not to see the snake in the grass for the fruit, he shall bear it's seeds.  And, so, perhaps, there was no other way.  And, just maybe, that seed has come to it's own fruition, for now or eternity is not for me to say, know.  Either way, it will seem the same to many.

I must seem a monster.  I will not lie, I am one.  A thing of a terrible nature.  A bit born, a bit made, but all the same.  I lived the life, for a time.  I broke from everything, and when all else was broken away from, I broke from myself.  A sanitary, civil, knowledgeable, kindly, madman is the one you best avoid.  They can see out from the darkness you cannot see into.  A time for all things, and so I had my time of sin.

It is simply that, with some Help, and time, I made a different choice.  All can.  Few will.  Some do, in little ways.  The sheep may be saved, but weakly.  The wolves are what they are.  The choice wasn't easy.  And, unlike in movies, there is no going back.  Not yetnow.  In the time of graces, after grace has been accepted, and granted, all things will be clean.  For now, the fruit and the price for a bill I didn't know was due until it was past due.  While one may be my father, he could never be my Creator.  Choices.

Dark things, dark times, hard choices.  Dying while I live, living while I die?  Matters little, I've had much worse.  I don't think you can understand.  And, personally, I hope you never do.  And yet, I am telling you, make way for the presage to the coming of the Lord.  But the way is hard and there is something much more precious than your lives at stake.  Choose wisely.

Perhaps it is merely that, as I lay dying, I see my own darkness reflected in the world.  An illusion.  As my body reeks of death and decay, it is all I can perceive.  It may be an illusion for a tired man.  I have seen doomsayers before.  Most are... simply lost, and have nothing else.  I suppose, to answer the question, one could ask if that is my condition.  I suppose it depends upon perspective.  However, that right there just answered one of my own larger doubts.  Never you worry, little doggy.  Just get along.

Ah, and... good morning!