The pensum is laid upon us at the moment of our birth — the reason for this pensum, if there is a reason, is beyond our understanding. It is therefore not a question of guilt or innocence (the infant neither innocent nor guilty, no more than the old man on his deathbed) but of acknowledging and investigating ignorance. Recapturing the condition of this ignorance is impossible but a necessary prolegomena to writing. Writing examines the ignorance of consciousness: it describes the reasonless pensum and the occasional, rare amelioration and relief from its punishments. This pensum and suffering are the last things the writer wishes to acknowledge. They render the compulsive nature of his writing futile (an additional dimension to his own pensum). And yet that is all that is left to him to express. It elucidates the experience behind the all-too-human cry of “Why hast thou forsaken me?” But there is no listener, no being to respond to the question. As the writer who recites and reconfigures these words, this question (the most radical question he can ask), has no reader, except himself.