In the air, all around us, a mighty crackling, potent and continuous, very near, very powerful, and very loud. Can you feel it, in the air all around you? And the smell of that air, fresh and clean like the breeze following a rainstorm, so delicious and invigorating it is by contrast as though we'd been cooped in a musty, mildewed basement for weeks, months, years, lost track long ago. No matter now. The very air is charged, electrified, and like conduits we conduct it between ourselves, bouncing from one to the other, in a myriad of forms, like an amazingly choreographed yet unrehearsed dance -- and there is laughter, such laughter, and bright recognition, crackling between and connecting us. And as I stood upon the solid ground, as it seemed narrowly escaped from the receding tsunami, I turned my gaze to the furthest side of the shore, as far as the eye could see, and beheld a vast, tall tower, crumbling rapidly and mightily, burning as it fell, and clinging to the pieces breaking off, as if to a life raft, were millions weeping and gnashing their teeth with despair. Utterly bereft were they, and without mooring as they hurtled into the vast, cold sea, each clutching their shattered remains of the edifice destroyed beneath, whose buckling had plummeted them into the inky, briny deep. Some vented the final dregs of their rage and fury as they fell, but the light had been snuffed from their eyes, and their words rang hollow with involuntary resignation. Some nameless impulse of the heart beckoned me toward pitying them -- and indeed, I almost did, almost could -- but alas, I beheld all too clearly the unmistakable impress of their own fingers working feverishly upon their misery, carving sanctuaries for their brokenness and erecting shrines to their imaginary martyrdom. They had toppled this edifice themselves from the sheer weight of their excess, and somewhere deep inside, they knew it. These would not so much as lift their eyes to the glorious crackling r...