Metalcarver

So now you're old, you're wise, you're smart

You're just a man with half a heart

You wonder how it might have been

Had you not cast your fate to the wind

- The Sandpipers

I just never figured that I'd be the last man standing

There is a road, no simple highway

Between the dawn and the dark of night

And if you go no one may follow

That path is for your steps alone

-Hunter -  Garcia

So here I am, coming up on 74 years old, and only now am I getting the merest glimpse into the immensity of what "WTF" actually means.

I live in a world of cartoon characters. Each dressed according to the appropriate super-power. I don't know the rules so I try to lay low.

But no matter... The algorithm feeds on significance.  If you don't have any, you're safe.

I saw hell once.  It was a huge convention center, very brightly lit, but so big that the distance where walls should be are black.  And there was a sea of motorcycles and other beautiful machines of every conceivable kind, small, fast, big, or tough.  And there was a thick crowd of people in front of each and every one.  And they won't talk.  And you can't quite get through.  You can't see, you can't touch, and you can't get out.

People are strange when you're a stranger

Faces look ugly when you're alone

Women seem wicked when you're unwanted

Streets are uneven when you're down

J. Morrison

Seem like every time you stop and turn around

Something else just hit the ground

Broken cutters broken saws

Broken buckles broken laws

Broken bodies broken bones

Broken voices on broken phones

Take a deep breath feel like you're chokin'

Everything is broken.

Dylan

Then I got old enough to finally figure out that when you are down, it's because you are thinking about something that you are powerless to change.

The one saving grace of a gearhead is that once you get the damn battery to hold a charge and that bendix spring finally does it's job and the starter pinion engages the flywheel gear, and the rings seal well enough to suck on the carburetor that's clean enough to mix air and gas and a coil that can boost the voltage up to where you get a spark across, ...  then you have a situation.  A situation is something that you can deal with.  Unlike plans and promises which are more like farts that you would like to drift away, a  gearhead has proof.

I've been left for dead before but I still fight on

Don't wait up leave the light on

I'll be home soon.

Chris Smither

This is the point in the movie where the camera pans over waste and destruction, bodies, offal, broken trees, and there's a twitch.  Maybe just a scratching sound, but something moves, there is life...

Then William Henley slaps you in the face, shoves you into the chair, and makes you read this:

Invictus

William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance,

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbow’d.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.

And that means absolutely nothing when you are at the bottom of a pile of shit and you can't move or breath.  Still, it's something to shoot at.