Birthday (I).

A list of birthday wishes, precluding all barriers and improbabilities:

-For humanity to continue the relentless chase for knowledge. My instincts say there are some categories of learning so esoteric and abstract that they can probably never be grasped without the application of principles which are yet alien to us. As a non-scientist, I suspect that scientists are attacking questions at the edge of current understanding with tools which are stone-age in comparison to those required. Yet one day, thumping at the surface of a dilemma with an outdated instrument will lead to the insight necessary to produce a new means with which to attack. It is the consignment of certain people, then, to be disappointed; to bash away relentlessly without the consolation of triumph. This is the weight which pins you to the floor, that you speak of with a devastated love, yet without it you would float away.

-I want to appeal to dreamers to keep dreaming, even as you struggle to communicate those dreams. Such wishes, drawn from the very shaft of the soul, do not commit themselves easily to words. Speak of them only loosely, then, but never let the dream itself stray too far from your side.

-Don't fear to admit that the patterns formed in the brain are many times quicker than the oscillations of the tongue. And when the tongue beats the synapses to the gun and you stand, temporarily confused and embarrassed, don't be scared to admit that either.

-Realise the paradox that we face as a species: we pursue an infinite amount of knowledge in a finite amount of time. That is - one day, I expect our race to be obliterated. The odds of it not happening (again, my inner fountain of all knowledge tells me) are astronomical. And if we slalom around danger upon danger for the next five billion years, then we'll need to recolonise on a different planet before the sun's last gasps erase us.

-I wish for the abolition of all religion and all religious sentiment, but I realise that in the subsequent vacuum of irreligiosity, a more virulent strain of deity would spring up.

-Know that my inner fountain of knowledge is inherently flawed. Go to the bookmaker at once and place a bet on the human race lasting at least another five billion years.

-I want to believe that love lasts forever. I want to believe that it is a contract between two conscious entities which isn't revoked upon argument, or even death. If this is the case then we have no need for eternal life.

-I want to believe that I'll be here in another 12 months, writing more of the same, and that Bluefish will be upstairs complaining that I'm a bloody drongo who keeps very awkward sleeping hours, and that I should retire to bed now. So the warning goes, it is only another three hours (at the most) until her confused internal clock begins to wake me up again from the nap I had barely started.