Suddenly I understand the meaning of the saying, "father dies, son dies, grandson dies" in response to the question "what is true happiness?"

What happens when the pages turn, out of order?

Flying over the timeline recreates the past as though there were some hidden plan to reach the present.

Although that to some extent is true, there also seem to be a few parts still missing.

As always, though, the path is dark from the present onward. There is nothing set in stone until the indeterminate point in the future where the unbroken path simply ceases to be.

Fascinating how alternate futures can be laid ahead as though illuminated by an infallible certainty that feels more true than reality itself... of course, the strength of dreams is confounded by the intrinsic weakness of a perfect ideal: the future is always an illusion based on incomplete information and substantiated by the ghostly grasp of free will. Free will is also highly determined by past experience and its accumulation of perceptual preferences in conceptualizing the present.

Back to step 2. Step three was obsolete before it could be fully realized... perhaps the foresight of failure is better than the full-blooded experience of it. Maybe it's a sign of a mind that has finally begun to simulate accurately... the odd part is that even the most whimsically prototyped plans -- no more tangible than draftsman's ink sketched on pages crumpled and quickly discarded -- contain the sting of a sculptor's interrupted wish to mould perfect forms from imperfect materials. The years of struggle to reach Step 1 quickly fall away when confronted by the possibilities, difficulties and uncertainties that await... if only prediction could be felt as strongly, without, as the sensations that flow from the hallucinations of night, within, unabashed and unseen by any but the dreamer.