These poems stretch over two years of my life, during which I struggled to understand who I am and what my purpose in my life as it is now close to end. These poems are full of angst and sometimes utter despair and sometimes just blind absurdity, but they always led me somewhere, to a place new within my consciousness that I did not know existed. They are a conversation with myself, whomever that is. The characters are the residents of my imagination to which I turned because my rational empirically minded self could not give me the answers that I needed. I did not find myself, but neither in the end did I lose it. Between doubt, loss, and redoubled effort, there the self exists. No one can say s/he found it, but if one looks with care and willingness to face the ugliness and the beauty within in an honest and sincere fashion, one has found something new and sustaining. Maybe that's the best we can do.