Every morning I try to unlearn the universe.
It is like a yoga exercise to escape the irons of knowledge.
In 63 years your head fills with so much *******.
There must be a method for purging the excess.
So far I have not been able to discover it.
I will keep trying because I want to see things fresh.
I want to hear babies cry and Mozart exhalt for the first time.
I want to enter a woman anew like a baffled 15-year-old
discovering a pleasure from which he will never want to escape.
I want to forget my over-remembered  life.
I want to rediscover the salty taste of women.
I have been everywhere and am out of destinations.
I ache for the pain of a question lacking an answer.
I want to go to war again and relearn a sense of terror.
I want to experience the baffled euphoria of first love.
I want to reclaim my sense of wonder from jaded life.
Imagine the utter joy of hearing again birds for the first time.
Unlearning is so much harder than learning.
I fear not enough years remain to unknow this burden.
But I must keep at it with a vigor no longer possessed.
It is morning again in the heart of Mike Essig.
And every morning I try to unlearn the universe
simply so I might know the bliss of learning it again.