Questions Not Answers

How did usury trickle its way through human cultures into acceptance and even reverence?

Is there such an action as conspiring with one's self? Can one conspire for good works rather than against the interests of others? If people act in accordance with a mindset that holds yes, are their actions yet acts of aggression—a matter of knowing what's best for unwilling participants? Do populations of human beings need to be controlled by outside forces or not?

Why do I want to believe in an afterlife? Why is it so important to experience life in a physical body? What's the alternative and if it exists, why can't we know? Why are we never shown what we can't imagine?

How can we fight the erosion of democracy? What exactly is democracy—do we get to vote on its definition? Who decides when laws are enforced? How is hypocrisy overturned? Who will wear the title of victor in 1,000 years?

Why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near? Who is the "you?" What is the reality of "second person?" Will my answer change over these next years? Do I have these next years? Would I really want to know even if that knowledge were available?

How can the reckless implementation of "surveillance capitalism" be halted and reversed? How can technology be turned away from malevolent motivations? Will it have to run its course? What will be left?

Would I enjoy birds suddenly appearing?

Do I value my home and community life more than my own life, my existence as this being I am? Would I flee this country if things got really bad? Where could I go? Is any place on Earth untouched by a cancerous thirst for control?

Is there a dimension where the spiral slide, the vacant ice rink, the chutes and ladders of my dreams exist outside my mind? Is it more than a glimpse through a door in the median between opposing lanes of a tunnel? Is that why I tease the metaphor so often? Is that why I walk through the tunnel so often? Why does the (mostly) unseen man leave his nest of blankets at the end of that tunnel? Or—for those traveling the other way—the beginning?