5. Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.

I have a problem.   (curse that infernal love)

But before I can go into that, I have another problem to share with you: 

In the true spirit of taking a step backwards, even describing the first problem is problematic. 

I have a third problem: without resolving the first problem, I feel unable to write here, in this 'blog', at all.

And yet, here I am.  Writing in this blog.   At all.   How so? Very cunningly, I can assure you.  You see, as well as a propensity for taking a step back, I also have a humble capacity for thinking ahead.  In truth the problem has been, if not resolved, then at the very least tamed.  I have a moral duty - for reasons that will doubtless remain obscure to all but myself - to explain the solution to this problem.  But not just yet.  In the meantime, I'm forced to write in a style of arrogance and ill-conceived self importance.  A style, I hasten to add, which is entirely only half founded.  

We have taken our steps backwards, you and I ('when the evening is spread out against the sky'), and now, to balance the equation I have taken a giant leap forward.  What you now read before you is the future.  The New Me.  I stand at the finishing line of life, still fresh from the race, and thumbing my nose at the asthmatic bundles of flesh who lay scattered in my wake.  

This tells us two things:

1) My arrogance, if left unchecked, knows no bounds (unless accompanied by an equal number of leaps), and 

2) I shall forever remain as charmless as the day I was born.

On reflection, (1) is really just a subset of (2), which leaves us with (3).  Did I not mention (3)?

3)  If this is the future, then prey God the future can be changed.

In a moment, I'll leap back into the present, with the rest of you (we'll both just have to learn to cope.   Or you could stop reading.   Please don't).  I'll jump into a present me for whom arrogance is only a treacley veil over the elephantine well of insecurity and mixed metaphors, and not simply a God-given right, like the me of the future erroneously believes.

But don't worry:  forewarned is forearmed (so, a little below the elbow, then).

Knowing what I now know, and with a little luck - and Al - on my side, maybe I can still set right what once went wrong.

Oh, Boy!