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-rememberedΒ Β 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.