You must understand, he said, we are fighting a war on all fronts. We are fighting a war from behind, from the sides and from up front. The past and the future are both tough wars to be fighting simultaneously, but they are not as tough as the present, he said, because the present is a two sided war in itself. It has two arms and they each take it in turns to help you and to hinder you. The present, he said, is like a one person arm-wrestling match; it is one that can never be won. In the present there are no champions, only in the past. Do you understand this? I said I did, though naturally I didn't. You look confused, he said, I think you have not understood me. Let me put it this way, and he started to expound upon a new metaphor that left me even more confused. Oh never mind, he said, it does not matter anyway. All that matters is that we continue in the way we have always continued. Life is continuity, however much it may seem to be otherwise. Look at me, he said, I have hopped around the globe, making mistake after mistake, and all have led me here. I have learned less than I should have from all of those mistakes, but still, I am here, due to continuity, and you are too, and we must continue to be here for as long as we can, until the end. Do you think about the end?, because I do, all of the time, every thought I have is, as it were, dressed in the dark shadow of demise. It sounds grim, I know, but it is not. It is a very well dressed shadow, in raiment of the finest cloth and a style completely its own. This is why we should not fear death, he said, because it has style and the courage to be itself.