It seems to me that things are much, much stranger than we can think. Since we have nothing to work with except our experience of this life (as far as I can tell) we cannot know what life is. In that sense, we know no more about what life is than what death is, since we have nothing to compare it with. We feel that our experiences matter, that they cohere, but there is no independent touchstone against which to judge them. Perhaps we will look back on this existence as a hard prelude to something so far above wonderful that we cannot imagine it. We will think how pathetically unaware we were. Or perhaps we will be angels who long -- as in Wings of Desire -- for the lack of knowing what will happen next, the drunken desire for sunrises. Perhaps we are musical instruments being blown by strange gods, and our joys and sufferings are merely moments in their orchestrations. Perhaps time is a vast being, and we are its changing moods, and death is a mood that will pass like sadness. We have no idea, only gossip.

yours, Peter T.