Company and Solitude 113 



here I am. The fal of the entity's presence 

 is incontrovertible, and what does it mean ? 

 I do not know. I do not care. No reason 

 for existence ever became apparent, but in 

 time the I within me comes to the fore and 

 overshadows all other fa&s, and, concerned 

 with it, I struggle to keep my footing on a 

 slippery earth, and, doing so, the thought 

 continually wells up, What of this earth 

 about me ? Its multiplicity of details is be- 

 wildering, ofttimes exasperating, and my own 

 Ego has learned to shun the complex and 

 seek the simple, to avoid the formal and clasp 

 hands with the true. There is nothing pe- 

 culiar in this, but the same end is sought by 

 different routes or methods. Nobody really 

 likes the shams of this world, and yet how 

 much ground is planted in the undesirable 

 crop ! How came such things into exist- 

 ence ? The ever-growing complexity of the 

 problem of human life has much to do with 

 it, I suppose ; perhaps all to do with it. 

 The wandering away from a wholesome to a 

 feverish condition of affairs, from the near- 

 ness of nature to proximity with the unnatu- 

 ral, has led to distortion, if not of body, of 

 mind, and the asymmetrical growth resulted 



