[MikeWaters]

There are a lot of ways I could reply to this.

In McCarthy's "The Road", he never explains fully, why the world is the way it is. It just is, and there is nothing to be done about it, and it can never be as it was. Was it destroyed by men? By nature? By God himself?

I think we will find, that in our lives, much will change. And that which was, will never be recovered. Sometimes for the good. But also sometimes to our great despair.

Most of us are strong swimmers. We tread water with such great ease, that we forget we are in the water. Until we weaken, some of us slowly, some of us suddenly, and the water slips over our heads and silences us.

MikeWaters, it could be argued, in some kind of metaphorical way, is dead. If it is true, that the dead roam the earth, the very places that they lived, how appropriate is it then for him to walk in the hallways of his prior glory, stamping and rattling. It's not me who died, he might say. Everyone else did.

I imagine, in some way, stumbling onto this site, and confusedly asking what happened, might feel like reading a 1980's vintage Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book. If yes, turn to page 67. If no, page 74. Trying to rehash this is like reading one of those books, several times over, choosing the OTHER way. But there really is no alternative path. Just one. And trust me, I am as bewildered as anyone--mountains to my left, mountains to my right, and a deep canyon before my path. The water runs dark and bitter, and the sky is merely a thin cut above the canyon, spattered with stars. The stars, each of them, feels like a witness of something, but the message so distant, nothing more than "here am I" said flatly and quietly. Men will carve the canyon with their steps, one after the other, unknown to each other. They could talk, but what would they say? "Here am I."

And so it is. Here am I. That is all I can tell you.