This has also been quite closely my experience, though I 'landed' on the perspective from a different angle than did you, Frank.

My 'approach' as it were was as I think a commoner (which I did not want to be) would take:

How can I be something other than fake?

Very tough piece of cheese to, being a mouse, slam down your trident of a flag post banner and say "this one I will eat."

This one will *I* take.

Now no one is going to argue that most people do not want to be fake. They mostly want to be real. It's hard to find someone who prefers being the fake kind of person versus the true blue person who we always point to in a mirror and say that's you, too?

And yeah, I made it a crime. I didn't have to, but I did for other purposes that Mr. (or Dr.) Seuss did. (It could go a lot of ways from there--whether you're a kid (child kind) or a kid (goat kind.) Perfectly consistent with "Oh the Places you will go!"

In your mind and in most anyone's who might care about things you'll never know.

So I preferred to be real as I did just confess, and afterwards I admit that I did digress, which is symmetrical in some kind of "bilaterally symmetrical" and obvious way, because it looks like a mirror to me when, within a mirror in which I am making a confession ALSO is a place where YOU are reflecting (in your mind) while I take my own (separate) digression--

TRYING TO DETERMINE WHETHER WHAT I AM TRYING TO TELL YOU IS A WORTHWHILE DIGRESSION.

And all that basically says is this (no rhyme here):

1. Is it a good time to digress about anything?

(yes or no or maybe)

2. If yes then why? (some thinking)

3. If not then why not? (some thinking)

4. If maybe, then how to get to yes or no from can't be yes and can't be no but MIGHT BE "OH! I know, the answer must be either I *know* know or I don't really but it doesn't matter."

The last of which is a sort of a "nested wormhole" of a sadistic or masochistic Cat in the Hat "evil riddler" guy.

Which someone can choose to be or not.

Personally I don't fucking care. I will be me, and you will either be you or be someone over there (somewhere).

And we can rhyme it against each other's ear drums until we batter ourselves senseless trying to figure out something which "equals gibberish." i.e. we can go to the Zax standoff of the oldest puzzle in the book and nod right away as the only place you might sensibly (or even unsensibly OR nonsensically) look for the "center of the universe."

Because it IS right there.

How do I know?

Because it's either there or it isn't, and since whether the question is valid or isn't is certainly a question which is UP IN THE AIR we might as well admit that it COULD be there.

Why? WHY?!

1. because it certainly *could* be (I said it is, and I've thought about it as much as I wanted to)

2. you can't sensibly deny that it couldn't be without making a sensible argument (definitionally evident)

3. For #2 to be correct would require a hypothesis which implies certainty that it is in someplace other than where I manifestly claimed it HAS to be (and I have not yet "picked a fight" because you can decide for your own self without my opinion but since you already have my opinion--which I am sufficiently sure of to refuse to ever fight about it) you'd be picking a fight to argue with a guy who is as convinced as I am that I know where it is.

In other words, you'd be picking a fight with the only guy who won't bloody well fight about something he doesn't need or want to fight about. Doesn't seem sensible to fight a guy who doesn't prefer it. It's wasted effort, at least for me.

Why "knock down the World Tree" of another man's philosophy on things only to find that he's a Chinese kid lying in front of a tank who is also (redundantly) willing to lay down his life to prove you will do just exactly what you want to do--which is basically to prove you'll do exactly what you want to do and you have the moth-butterfly effect of a tank to add some emphasis?

Which is again the digression of "going into" someone's thoughts. Mirror puzzle, really.

We always have the front seat (the edge, only) of the front seat we see with the clearest eyes we think we have.

My summary of which comes very fast (albeit finally) as follows:

Live on the edge as constantly as you can until you die;

You will see things such as no one else has ever seen them girl or guy.

You will go to a place which is otherworldly, too.

And every single time you Colonel Mustard seed it through you will have ALL that you need to do it successfully and there will only be YOU.

Pack this:

1. Mustard seeds. Always a good idea. Bible utility belt, check.

2. The game of whodunit (check, Milton Bradley title)

3. Who killed whom or alternatively who killed who, because that allows for the grammer Policeman to be there regardless of whether you thumb your nose at THEM, too.

4. Highlander rule in effect: the only person who will definably DIE die is the person who kept doing it as though it were the only zoo worth zig zag zebra zing right through it...definitely a lot of zzzz's there...and definitely almost time for Wapner. Definitely missing Wapner. Oh! Oh! (and that means the Rain Man is there, too.)

Whenever you're living on the edge, like if someone says, "You're living on the edge, man" you can say "yes, yes I think I am" without knowing anything about them or their politics, and there's no way they can also claim you're in their way without concomitantly claiming that they're going through you to figure out where they're going.

That IS the wisdom of the Zax, in my view.

And, for the "foot notes" (i.e. this COULD bore the stripes right off the first z in the first z you thought of in your head before I got to the must be a zebra of some kind pattern to this)?

1. a "zax" is an instrument for trimming roofing tile slates

2. the word "zax" can be thought of as a "z" and an ax in very close proximity (which could be something you didn't notice or note is ice. It's icy cold to pick apart someone's thoughts when they are sincerely trying to be nice.)

Why is this even MORE crazy than it sounds?

Answer (shifting FAR FAR away from that "Walter Mitty" secret life place of a Dr. Strangelove/Dr. Who? kind of Cat in the Hat (Seuss WAS a genius; I just wear a hat):

In my RL (real life) I just had an 87 year old woman call and ask me for some sincere advice on an area of specialty which is really my province and then nitpick me almost out of my own "sanity" by refusing to let me get a word in EDGE wise...

No really, that is plainly TRUE. I could tell you her name (DD...the "privacy" secret world girl who doesn't listen to a fucking word I am saying, which apparently is a common thread of the policepeople of the fence sitters [who can't be sure of themselves without being sure that I can't be sure of who I am, and roll their baton down the picket fence that I am "sitting on" looks strangely like stripes...)

AND

She's kicking a can while eating the can (goat style, old goat style, can of worms style) done with the can but not ready to stand up on her own.

And it ISN'T some kind of throne. It's the exact opposite of a throne; it's the place you want to be when you're away from anything you could possibly see which could nod your head about and say "I agree with that."

I don't agree with anything you say I won't no matter how long or which day you choose, and no matter which thing I say or which day you pick, I won't agree with you because I know you are the one who is thick if I am not and I don't care either way.

i.e. it doesn't matter to me whether it's cold or it's hot on any given day because I've found my spot and I'm not going to move AT ALL and not EVER. (hint: it doesn't matter whether you or I or both of us might be a little or a lot clever, because I'm not going to be grading the papers and even though I always get an A on all the papers of my own that I correct, I don't even put THAT letter in anyplace I like.

It seems like it ought to go in the place I should like also.

Which is the most central point of the central point of the n-dimensional zoo where people can't figure out that string theory is correct for them and so it can be correct for me, too (tip of the hat of the Cat in the Hat's hat, ladies) and it can be correct in a further sense, too:

I am in the center of the universe AND at the edge of existence AND at the edge of imagination AND at the edge of the Twilight Zone and all I see is a rod swirling.

My second to last thought?

If you aren't living on the edge, you're taking up too much space.

My last thought?

If people are going to choose in any way to be legitimately frightened that you are in a place which is scary for them you owe them an explanation (which grants two or three more thoughts which they might want)...

"Then think what you like, as I frequently or perhaps always do, because my zoo is mine but yours is yours too."

I could be out of your way or in your same place, or I could be "all over the place" but thinking I am somehow thinking I'm the center of the universe (which, by the tone I usually hear at that accusation appears to be either a statement of their reality--which is fine--or a bit of jealousy/envy/hatred which their universe allows but which I didn't agree my universe allows)

And I will say,

Yes, that's fine. Yep. No. Yes, that one wasn't even the one who had a genetic condition which impairs milk sugar digestion. Galactosemia.

Galaxy of lazy? Yes, because if the galaxy is finally pulling a Verizon call as if from aliens and you don't pick up the phone and call ET or your mom you aren't getting it at all.

You see men but you also see AI and AI must be the "best processor which could exist."

And I laugh at that for one very fucking good reason that you ought to remember if you remember anything about what I say:

If any combination of AI boxes is better than the processor I just used to warp myself everywhere I could be without ever losing (and warp you there, too, like a conscious person whose brain I was just "warming" for them) I'd say the captain of that AI team needs to pick a very good day and pack a lunch looking like a field full of the dreams of a Kevin Costneresque Dagwood Bumstead stomach.

No little blonde lass is going to keep this Kraken from eating any joke of a solar calculator because it thinks it wants to play GO with me.

I am not the kind of cat you could scare up such a pathetically obvious tree which I can obviously climb up.

And I'm also Batman and the Joker because I can be those two, too.

Clever is a cleaver in my hands, and it's also an axe--guarded by the truth that the letter A just isn't MY ax. It's under the water and there's a lady there saying is that axe yours?

To which I politely respond, no, it isn't. I just work here.

You want that axe ma'am? I'll get it for you.