Three of them in a row running right up against the midnight that presages Friday.

The dreamlike obsessing is mostly made of a question I’m asking myself about myself–whether deep down I’m the badass peace militant I’d like to believe me to be–or whether the real Alex always hedged his bets because he’s a canny bet-hedger in his soul.

During the pilgrimage I started to joke a lot, about what would be the smart thing. The savvy way to proceed. This path here, for example, would be the smart thing, I smirked. The punchline was always the same. “Why start now?”

Because I’ve always been brilliant, but I’ve never done the truly smart thing, according to the rules of ruthlessly canny intellect as defined by my culture.

I’ve no-shit broken the noses of people who were physically threatening me or someone I was sworn to protect. Even more often, it didn’t have to go that far, because my roar and my rush are weapons that seem to terrify average mortal punks.

But when it came to the real enemy, Systemic Authorities in various guises, I always walked a fine line between rebel posing and model worker, movie outlaw and good boy.