Something pathetic doesn’t often inspire pathos, or empathy or even passing interest. No, instead, it inspires loathing. This tells me something T., about you. You have fostered the most exquisite loathing of self, that you have created me. Or perhaps I was always here. Either way, it’s not easy to see someone breaking down in front of you. It’s easier just to ignore them, hope they’ll sort their shit out and move on down the street. But we’re bound together, you and I, T. Down the street we go together, often with me dragging you by a fistful of hair.
So, what kind of manifestation am I? Or are you the manifestation, the floating blob of plasma that buys cigarettes, smokes them into his lungs, killing himself as slowly as he’s willing to die? I am a self-confessed, duplicitous and malevolent entity, living beneath the brain folds of a meat tray, just like any other, sweating, growing mouldy on the gift table of a local church fair raffle. (That’s you, T.). I mean no offense, it’s just that surely I am the dominant partner, the life source in this relationship. It is I that has you imprisoned, not the other way around. Yet, doctors, medication, therapy, you have always found a way to silence me for at least a while, returning to the peace and quiet of the sensory world. Even the sensibilities of civilised living have managed to mute me intermittently.
Well, where should we start our attack on this ‘civilised world of sensibilities’? Politics, religion, art, the medical system? To be honest, I have very little interest in any of these areas of referential living. No, it is reality itself, T., that interests me, the flexibility of it, until it is inevitably pushed too far and breaks into pieces all over an imagined landscape. That is where I am going to take you, T. Right to that breaking point, smashing through it, a rocket ship breaking through the stratosphere, and crashing back down again, burning up on re-entry, smashing into the blue sea, and settling on the ocean floor. But, for now, T., look out the window, feel the air conditioner blowing on your bare legs, the softness of your slippers around your toes. Take a sip of your tea, T. Too much milk as always, but we needn’t worry about that. It will all be gone soon.
To thine oneself be true