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Last night I did laundry and thought about God for awhile. Wondered if we ever really stop believing the religions we're raised with, what counts as a religious belief, and what people's brains are like when they're raised without a religion. Wondered if everybody has some sort of system for trying to understand existence that is perhaps defined in their own heads, but that they never express in case people make fun of it. Or if they just don't think about it until some crisis comes along, and then come up short with any sort of spiritual what-have-you, and then grab at the nearest belief system that makes them feel special. Or if there are people who are always fine with the idea of a universe daily descending into increasing entropy from an original organisation that arose in a completely random way. Wondered if Jung's idea that extended analysis and a healthy connection with the unconscious could really replace the role of religion in men's lives made sense, and if therefore religion really was some sort of expression of the collective unconscious, or if that's just navel-gazing, revoltingly self-centred nonsense consciously or unconsciously designed to line the pockets of therapists like the pockets of the Church got lined.

Then I did stuff, got sleepy, went to bed, and read more of A.S. Byatt's The Game. Not my favourite by her, I've decided. Maybe I should have read it without reading her biography - seems like a portrait of her crap relationship with her sister (also a novelist, Margaret Drabble - don't know her from Tuesday - anybody read her?) and I think I just possibly might know which character is meant to be A.S. Byatt and which character is meant to be Margaret Drabble. Nothing wrong with that, of course, and the writing is still silkily beautiful and the character portraits crystal-clear, but it's making me a little uncomfortable. I feel the same way when I read something I've written and see a little too clearly whose soul I tried to steal. Of course, A.S. Byatt being A.S. Byatt, that theme - the ripping-off of a person theme - is central to The Game, which ends up creating a feeling of a mirror held up to a mirror and a little eternity within, making it (so far) a very neat little package of a book. Just not my favourite.

I'm freaking the fuck out today. Stir-craziness. I need a beach, some mountains, or a forest. NOW, fuck. When I don't get such things, I end up thinking about God and A.S. Byatt and her sister too much.