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The universe is collapsing. The love child of infinity and time has become the basterd of yet another failed marriage, unbalanced and withered, troublesome and empty.

At eighteen years old, I decided to try to ease the burden of this kind of apocalyptic, paraplegic cowboy wisdom and take to the streets in search of redemption. There was word of an oasis whispered on the fermented grape vine that gave me hope, tales told by toothless creatures of a bright town that had not yet been severed from its sisters of hope and divine substance. So I headed down on the A303 hoping to drench my *John Majoresc* universe in the kaleidoscopic colors of Brighton rock. Unwashed hair and linen shirt blew romantically in the salt soaked wind as I approached the chic, expensive Sussex countryside. My mind felt pulled toward infinity by the wild horses of providence. The thud of their hooves beating on the tarmac sent serotonin pounding through my nervous system, enhanced only by the wisdom of Marks (Howard, not Karl) chattering away on Radio 2. On arrival I promptly approached the nearest *head* shop, brought a converted fire engine from the buy and sell section in the window and parked it slap bang in the middle of the town. Wheels and a home all in one. Every man called Sam should own one.

It did not take me long to settle in and meet some interesting characters. Bill 'Bongo' Burns; a prot*g* talented artist whose worked showed the suffering and hunger, living off aristocratic parents whilst trying to *make it big*, Little Jane; a four foot nothing anti capitalist singer-songwriter who was in the process of accumulating massive financial wealth selling hallucinogenic drugs to manic depressives, and more of the same contradictive perversions of the human form. "Without contraries is no progression,* said Blake, so perhaps, I thought, this is a sign of a community truly alive. Hope and dope. I immersed myself in the social scene, became a being of value, a face everybody knew and liked, I began to feel fulfilled. There was poetry reading every afternoon in dusty underground bars and at dusk, the Cowely Club filled with anarchist whores and virgins, vegan plotters talking in hushed voices, drunken lovers shouting public obscenities at each other. The whole place seem to be pulled and swayed by the tide of the majestic ocean, the atmosphere was both enthralling and intoxicating to my hungry and depraved mind.

The town itself was charming and magical. The Lanes sweated life onto the nobly cobbled pavements whilst coffee shops, organic delis and colorful patrons lined the sidewalks. You felt somebody yet nobody among the freaks and the flowers of the cut and fold freedom fighters. The sound of acoustic guitars seamed to float through the oak trees in the national park, mixing with the sweet smell of jazz cigarettes before groping your senses. Sun washed brown healthy spines. I was Ernest Hemmingway every time I scribbled nonsense in my tattered notebook, glancing up only to catch glimpses of the peacocks flaunting their trending feathers, Miss Sixty jeans and pastel head bands. *Brighton*, I remember jotting *Is the Rampant Rabbit of dwellings. The vibe here is so intense that life feels like one constant earth shattering orgasm, its juice thick and sweet like honey.* Typical drivel that so feels good at the time whilst high in the moment. It was how I had always dreamt San Fran to be in the sixties, rich and velvety with new age culture, but sharp like a wire whip ready to cut through the ugly, sleeping world into the fundamental forms of beauty and progression.

I had reached Nirvana I felt, but this was soon to be proven as the fool's paradise. There is a crack in everything so they say, it is where the light gets in mumble the poets. Well in regards to the former, I can confirm. However, when the crack formed, instead of light, molasses poured from the splitting of the illusion, drenching my soul yet again in sticky darkness. The contradictions I had dressed in lamb's attire ached and throbbed like a stubbed toe until the truth bit into my sinew with its sharp wolf teeth. There was no romance in this rock; it was just a colorful version of the dissolute corridor I left behind. The difference between my archaic and neo-hell was a matter purely of cosmetics. An ugly woman redeems some sense of her non-existent beauty by resigning herself to the fact she is ugly. On the other hand, an advanced state of revulsion is vomited upon humanity when the beast coats herself in three inches of flaky paste trying to hide her deformed bone structure. Unless, of coarse you are a walking erection intoxicated with cheap liquor. And that, with hindsight and shabby metaphor is exactly what I was, dressed in linen and deliriously drowned in my own dopamine.

Brighton was beginning to reveal its self a brothel for illusionary dreamers, a dirty syringe full of numbing self-importance. My subconscious was working over time to blot the dark truth out of my waking life. At first when you get there and unpack you feel like you have struck gold, a soul rich like Christmas cake with Peruvian icing. Then the nightmares creep in.

Skeletons cloaked in velvet and joules dance round bright, rich fires of useless thought, swaying to sweet empty songs, clasping cracked porcelain doves. Blurred visions of rusty vintage cars in miles and miles of endless traffic, dead babies rot in grey booster seats. Trying to escape, finding another fucking fence*.

I knew that the wall would collapse at some point and reality would dawn, the future smelt of bi polar fucked head disorder.

****************.

The diamond bullet penetrated my fragile skull one evening without warning. Nobody noticed the small pinprick as it entered my forehead with a silent hiss. I remained upright becoming increasingly aware of the pretentious drivel dibbling out of my mouth onto the crowded room. The damp wall behind me coldly witnessed my precious neurological palace of sand pour out of the exit wound like drunken diarrhea. I felt not only the dissolution I had once felt but also a new, darker sensation entirely. I realized it was not just the world that was fucked and ignorant but my judgment also. The clown of cynicism was being mocked and laughed at by the very subject he felt he was above and smarter than. I had been fooled, there is nothing more depraving for a man's soul than that. A cosmological kick in the balls. I did not waste any time, as my grandiose illusions of liberty and substance crumbled around me like the twin towers of prosperity and freedom, I ran like a rapid dog on fire until I could run no more.

Today that moment still haunts me. I felt in a macro-moment the loss of that dangling carrot giving me the will to stumble through each day, allowed me to fantasize about a world that still harbored a beating heart.

Adam cocked it all up. The soul of the world has cut itself loose to start a new life and it ain't going to pay maintenance. God is dead, reborn into another cosmos or no cosmos at all. I could travel the world looking for that divine magik in every nook and cranny, field and town. Perhaps he has learnt his lessons; do not play with time, do not masturbate and don't become self obsessed enough to try to catch your reflection in every gleaming surface that manifests. Invest but don't take risks, listen to Alan Sugar. This is the Big Crunch, they Dying Room of the heavenly master that the conned and disillusioned have sacrificed their sensual pleasure for, in hoping to redeem eternal reward. A ghost town full of decaying tumble weeds. Elvis has left the building.