What is contentment in this age, at my age? I think of some children—free and joyful, for whom the resources of the known world, however limited and mundane, are at their command. They don't know yet that society conspires to take away the sources of their inspiration and creativity. As I age, I realise that all I have in the world are my feelings: undeniably mine, unmortgaged, free on tap. I think it is the same for everyone, even billionaires. So often those feelings are despair and rage, at fate, at the distant, inchoate memory of that golden age. And too often, those feelings are buried, and over their grave people have arranged ramshackle monuments they call ‘facts’, ‘common sense’, ‘reality’. This is the way the world and humanity work, so deal with it. Live with it. Revere these shibboleths. But remember that underland: there are deep caves, and dark rooms stained with arcane symbols, and shrines heaving with offerings to obscure, still-persevering gods. Old bones rattle. The underland is unstable: potential upswells and quakes, for what is repressed does not lie still forever, and yearns for its excavation and release.

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