New Zealand literature has no one like Keith Hill. Always surprising, a genuine original. - Roger Horrocks THE MODERN DILEMMA Having spent a lifetime of Western privilege doing the limbo while jumping over my knees I feel it is my right now to proclaim I consider myself short-changed. During hours spent stopped in rush hour queues I have meticulously catalogued the disparities between what people heap on their teaspoons and the unnamed ghouls that slink past their windows at night. I will try to keep it short. But there is no way to make it pretty. I begin by stating the obvious. Everyone is so distracted by abstract nouns -democracy religion economics freedom biology sexuality orientation identity status fashion novelty literature- they don't notice what is really going on. I refer to the modern process by which the machinery of civilisation inserts a straw into the brain extracts the juices then pounds what is left to form an attitude a person a career a place in jail. How do you stop the juice being extracted from your brain? Some consider such questions a category error arguing being overwhelmed with doubt has for too long been misconstrued as evidence human beings possess a soul. Others petition the ancient prophets' God who wrote all his bestsellers millennia ago and has long since succumbed to writer's block. This has left modern humanity perplexed. We are each now a troubled mind staring out through the sockets in our endoskeleton eyes roaming like searchlights across the bumps and crevices of the world. Only the undaunted few dare look down to observe their toes hanging over the ledge below which yawns the precipice that separates life from death. This is not a sight for beginners.