For more about the author: http://www.duke.edu/~spj1/Exhaustion... I slowly freefall to my bed, merging mind and body with the mattress, not the springs. I am dead weight, synthesized materials and ancient harvested cotton. Gravity pulls my unprotesting body towards the center of the earth... My brain is in a jar somewhere, suspended in mind-dulling preservatives... Is it really worth living a long life *instead* of an interesting one? Life is a question, make the effort to answer it... The Riverbed of our Thoughts... The way we think can be related to the way a river runs- shallow, constant, normal everyday stuff most of the time, but then new, exciting, thrilling thoughts at a waterfall, plunging down into deep depths of contemplative thought. But after a while even this flows back into the same straight, dull path of routine, with the occasional twist or turn obscuring the view of the future- and our vision of other turbulent and "waterfall" times... Standing in the aisle of the Duke bus, one hand grasping a vertical metal pole, an anchor to the floor, the wheels, the road, the ground beneath it- the earth; A spinning bit of dirt revolving about a spark of fire in a miasma of worlds, inhabited by beings who define intelligence as themselves, and limit themselves by definitions. -The driver breaks fast- My mind is jerked back into its home in this domain of seemingly solid, but nonexistent, truth. The soda I was holding splashes to the ridged floor, travelling in nutra sweet rivers past people distracted by the appearance of reality. Small commercial ice cubes scatter, rattling like bones in an unearthed casket- the skeleton disturbed as I was, and angry to be called back to our simple view of the world...