Sanity and Solitude

Book excerpt: The world is a mad place and the various vicissitudes of life appear to make it more so. The inherent mutability in nature can swing from the serendipitous to surreal malignity within a matter of moments. In this day and age, events can be ephemeral or appear so prolonged we are left, agonisingly, to wonder if they will ever terminate at all. To be lost in such a bewildering universe, when it feels impossible to gather oneself, to take stock of the changeability or to bear the interminable, we feel impotent, overwhelmed and wrongfully abused. Sanity and Solitude is one man's ramble through these frightful absurdities and contradictions that appear to confront us at every turn. To understand insanity one has to travel oneself to the very fringes of insanity itself for better or for worse. "We are the clouds that veil the midnight moon; How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver, Streaking the darkness radiantly!--yet soon Night closes round, and they are lost forever". (Percy Bysshe Shelley)