All my life I have been imprisoned, frustrated, dogged by common-sense, reason, memories, desires and – greatest bug-bear of all – understanding and being understood. This is an attempt to express my rebellion, to say ‘Good-bye’ to all that. It is my wish, I now realize doomed to failure, to write a book unspoiled by any tincture of common-sense, reason, etc. (see above). So although I would write, ‘Abandon Hope all ye who expect to find any facts – scientific, aesthetic or religious – in this book’, I cannot claim to have succeeded. All these will, I fear, be seen to have left their traces, vestiges, ghosts hidden within these words; even sanity, like ‘cheerfulness’, will creep in. However successful my attempt, there would always be the risk that the book ‘became’ acceptable, respectable, honoured and unread. ‘Why write then?’ you may ask. To prevent someone who KNOWS from filling the empty space – but I fear I am being ‘reasonable’, that great Ape. Wishing you all a Happy Lunacy and a Relativistic Fission. …