Humans In The Human Zoo

Suppose you wanted to create the world and nothing was going to stop you. ‘This is it’, you say, ‘I am going to create the world whether anyone likes it or not. I’m going to go for it. I’m going to go for broke…’ That’s just the way you are you see – headstrong and impetuous. You won’t be told. You’re a law unto yourself.

 

You don’t know quite how you’re going to do it, but you aren’t going to let that stop you either. Then it comes to you – inspiration comes to you. You do something on a whim – something completely meaningless, something completely stupid and then you glorify your absurd actions, you say that what you have just done is a masterpiece. You declare majestically that what you have just created is a work of art of the very greatest significance and that everyone must worship it…

 

A rich and wonderful future had been created and we were all believers. We were believers to the last – we were a band of staunch and resilient believers and no one would ever tell us anything different. You wanted to create the universe, but they said the proper planning application hadn’t been sent in. I was imprisoned in my own head and that was all there was to it – there was no way out. I was a witness to my own sad degradation. A rich and wonderful future had been created and everyone who believed would be saved! You wanted to embark upon an ambitious programme of cosmic creation but some officials from the Department of Sanitation came to talk you out of it. Thankfully you had the good sense to listen to them.

 

Another perfect day had dawned and outside the cracked and grimy windows of the Survival Dome phantasmagorical figures could be seen cavorting around the place with utter abandon. They were ghosts from a future that would never happen, hence their inordinate glee. They had escaped their fate and were free to frolic amongst the ruins. My colleagues and I had no time to concern ourselves with this whimsical spectacle however – the end of the world was at hand and it was our solemn duty to try to survive as long as possible. There was no sense in this, of course – what could possibly be gained as a result of us eking out our wretched existence for another year or two, another decade or two, another century or two? It was all so futile…

 

That’s the chief characteristic of living organisms of course – we cling to life to the very end, do we not? You know it and I know it – it doesn’t make any sense, but there it is. It’s funny how when you’re young you always imagine that you’re going to make a difference, isn’t it? You always imagine that you’re going to do something wonderful in life, something great that will really help the world, and then when you grow up you always end up being a tool for some appallingly malignant corporation or for the government or something like that. We become PR executives or solicitors.

 

We’re like little seedlings, you see – it comes naturally to us to grow towards the light. That’s all we want to do – to stretch our tender young leaves to the Source of all Light, to the Source of all Goodness. Alas for us, however – alas for us… Alas for us because our innocent quest for truth is subverted right from the very beginning: we become humans in the human zoo and our suffering is very great.

 

Image – wallpaperflare.com

 

 

 

My Destiny Was Urging Me Onwards

Cruising in my motorcade, I stopped to enjoy the view. Only there was no motorcade, and there was no view – only the rush of unreality in my ears.

 

‘Where am I going, and what will I have to do when I get there?’ I asked myself, but the words were mechanical, without meaning. I had said them before ten billion times or more.

 

My lips spoke the words that they were always going to speak, my feet took the steps they had no choice but to take. I was a slave to powers I could not understand. ‘Such was ever the way’, I intoned portentously, ‘such was ever the way…’ This was the limit to the wisdom I was able to draw upon, you see; this was the very limit and to go beyond it was not within my power.

 

A lot of things were not within my power, I realised then. I was no longer the Omniscient Being that I had previously known myself to be – I was now only a perfectly normal or average ego. Possibly – and I hate to admit this – I was only a below-average ego, an underachieving ego. This was very galling, I don’t mind telling you. I really do find this very hard to deal with. My lips were speaking the all-important words but the words weren’t true; the words had stopped being true and I’d never noticed. I’d carried on just the same. I had carried on just the same and now I was in serious trouble.

 

My lips were speaking the all-important words of truth, but no one would listen to me. They knew I was always telling lies – they knew that very well. My reputation precedes me. I am the Redundant Man – I can’t be original, not even for a second, no matter how hard I try. I am the Second-Hand Man – I only ever think other people’s thoughts. ‘Tell me what to think,’ I beg, ‘just tell me what to think and I’ll think it…’ I am the Indoctrinated Man – I shout out state slogans all day long. I’m hoarse from shouting them out, I’m blue in the face from it.

 

One moment I was the Omniscient Being that I was in Eternity, the next a gobshite of the very worst sort, a jerk and a Jackass. My consciousness is enslaved by the Big Ugly Algorithm, which all men curse. The Big Ugly Algorithm that metes out brutal suffering to humankind, as regular as a metronome. That’s the way it goes – that’s the way it goes and there’s nothing you or I can do about it!

 

My destiny was urging me ever onwards. I could feel it quite distinctly. Throughout the course of my life I have felt my destiny by my side – pushing me forwards, never allowing me to rest. It was like a restless, compelling presence beside me, prodding me viciously whenever I grew too lazy. It all came to nothing in the end, of course – it was all some kind of mistake.

 

Image – wallpapers.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tales Of The Underworld

I was adding up sums in my head. ‘Three plus three is six’, I said, ‘twenty plus fourteen equals nothing, seven plus seven is twelve and a half’. I was trying to keep the badness at bay, you see. ‘Stay away, you badness’, I said, ‘stay away from me, you rotten old badness’. It was no good however, it was no good because the badness was in me already. I actually was the badness that I was trying to keep away. ‘Keep away from me you dirty stinking badness’, I croaked. I was the Croaker, you see – croaking my heart out to a universe that just didn’t care.

 

I was the Keeper of the Gates, only the gates had been left open the night before and all the horses had fled. They were galloping free in the wild hinterlands at the Kingdom of Sorrow where no one ever has a good word to say. It was far too late for anyone to do anything at this stage – all I could do was look on and lament. I was the Lamenter and there was no end to my sorrow. I was the Guardian of the Sacred Scrolls but a vicious band of reckless Barbarians had broken into the sacred precincts and had defaced all the holy relics. They had scrawled obscene graffiti on the temple walls and torn the sacred scrolls up to use as toilet paper. I had tried my best to reason with them, of course, but to no avail. Barbarians will be barbarians, after all.

 

I was wrestling with my badness in the privacy of my own dismally distorted mind. I wasn’t getting on very well on account of how terribly unfit I was. I was getting my ass kicked. I was taking a hammering, in fact. I was taking a dreadful hammering and wouldn’t be able to take the punishment much longer. I would have to rethink my position – maybe I’d be as well off going along with the badness instead. I certainly wasn’t getting very far fighting against it. Maybe the dirty old badness wasn’t so bad after all. Maybe it was okay. Maybe it was fine. It depends on how you choose to look at things, after all.

 

‘Morkus Bejorcas the Big-Headed Lorcus’, I roared triumphantly from the very depths of my despair. People had said that I was finished, people had said that I was a spent force, a relic from the past, but now I was proving them all wrong. That’ll wipe the smile off their stupid faces, I gloated, now they shall see just how wrong they were! That’s when I realised that I’d been mistaken, that’s when I realized that I had been a little premature. I hadn’t emerged victorious from the depths of my despair after all. I’d been wrong about that…

 

All that was just weasel talk, however. We hear so much of it, don’t we? That dirty old weasel talk. The earth vomits us up and lets us run around for a while, working our mischief, before it drags us back down again. Back into the underworld. Brutal men, bearing heavy staffs shod with iron, come forth to serve their dark master. There’s never any shortage of brutal men when the Dark Master calls for them – the earth itself spews them up! They arrive in swarms, eager to do the Evil One’s bidding. So very eager.

 

How many narcissists can dance on the point of a needle? This is the question we have to apply ourselves to. There’s not much space there for dancing, you might say, but you can’t get out of it that easily. A definite answer is needed, I’m afraid. Is it six? Is it twelve? Is it nineteen and a half? Watch them dancing, my friends – say what you want about them, they certainly like to convert and frolic when the attention is on them. They certainly do and there’s no denying it.

 

Learn what everyone else is saying and then say it too. Find out what everyone else is thinking and then you can think it too! And not only that, of course – the point is to find out what other people think and then think that too, but in a smarter way! The point is to find out what everyone else is doing and then do it too, only better! It doesn’t get any better than that, you see. It certainly doesn’t get any better than that.

 

Image – pxfuel.com

 

In The Land Of The Babblers

I was in the Land of the Babblers. ‘Do you know that thing, do you know that thing,’ I babbled away excitedly, ‘do you know that thing where you think you are enlightened but really you’re just a stupid jerk? The other babblers – the ones in my immediate vicinity – nodded their agreement straightaway. They always nod their agreement straightaway – it’s kind of their thing. It’s kind of what they do.

 

You’d go mad of course. You would go mad in the Land of the Babblers. You’d go mad for sure. How could you bear it? There’s nothing worse than them, not anywhere in the whole universe. That’s actually true – you can look it up in Wikipedia if you don’t believe me! I read it on page 63 in the Honest Book of Truth. In big letters. In great big letters that you can’t possibly miss. Everything in the Honest Book of Truth is true – every last single little bit of it. Even the bits that sound dodgy are true. Or at least partially true. Even the bits of it that are obviously outright lies are true. That’s how good the Book Of Truth is, you see. That’s how powerful it is. The Honest Book Of Truth surely is a great book – we just have to believe and then we’ll be guaranteed Eternal Life.

 

Even the lies are true, but all the same you can’t entirely trust them. You can and you can’t trust them, but mostly you can’t. On the whole, you can’t. In the Land of the Babblers (so it is said) the Sly-Faced Bamboozler is King – he is both Arch-Predator and Supreme Tyrant, call him what you will. I know what I’d call him, but I’ll stay out of it for now! The Supreme Predator and Arch-Tyrant walks amongst us every day – inconspicuously, like – and there’s never a one that can spot him. If you knew what you were looking for however you might stand a chance. You might observe a certain glint in his eye, a malicious glint that says ‘I am going to devour every last one of you and I’m going to enjoy it…’

 

The Babblers are babbling faster now, something is in the air but no one has made any direct reference to it. Not yet, anyway. Not so far. The babbling becomes a mighty murmur that spreads across the land, causing consternation in high places. ‘Do you know that thing’, you blabber tremulously, ‘do you know that thing where you think you’ve achieved multi-dimensional awakening but really you’re just a tool?’ You are babbling helplessly at this stage, you’re babbling your little heart out – you don’t even know what you’re saying anymore. You’re lost in the uncomfortable gap between where you would like to be and where you’re afraid you will probably end up.

 

That’s a very uncomfortable place to be, isn’t it? One of the worst, I’d say. Definitely one of the worst. It occurred to me then that there might be something wrong with reality – some kind of a problem or glitch, perhaps. Maybe someone did it on purpose. ‘Maybe someone has been messing around with the reality supply’, I say to myself, ‘maybe it’s all a hideous trap?’ I have no defence against these types of thoughts you see. I’m helpless, I’m as gullible as the day was long. The thoughts come along and I – like a fool – believe them. I believe them every time. I believe each and every one of them! The thoughts kick my ass from one end of the town to the other. I’m like a football to them. ‘What am I supposed to do?’ I ask myself, ‘How am I supposed to respond to this terrible situation?’ I don’t know the answer to this question, however. What is anyone supposed to do when it’s reality itself that is wrong?

 

 

The Beauty Of Being A Machine

Strange experiments that will change you forever, only not in a good way. Definitely not in a good way. It started off well, as experiments often do. Usually do. There’s nothing much to go wrong right in the beginning – the thing hasn’t even got under way yet, after all. ‘Everything’s fine,’ you say to yourself, ‘everything’s fine and nothing’s going to go wrong…’ That’s what I would say to myself anyway, I don’t know about you. Although that’s not the way to approach an experiment, I know. There’s no right and wrong within the context of an experiment and I’m very well aware of that. Even so, however, I can’t help being afraid that something might go very badly wrong…

 

I wasn’t born a machine, but I very quickly turned into one. Fairly quickly, anyway. People used to come and interview me about that. ‘What’s it like?’ they’d ask me, ‘what’s it like to be a machine?’ If you get up early in the morning you can get a lot done, you know. Especially if you are a machine, like I am. You just motor on heedlessly through a huge list of tasks like a total brute. Like a well-oiled mechanical device. Like an ingeniously designed device doing exactly what it has been designed to do, and doing it perfectly every time. That’s the beauty of being a machine.

 

There’s no wrong result from an experiment, that’s what we’ve got to remember. There’s never anything like that; there can’t ever be anything like that because that wouldn’t be in the spirit of the thing. Can you imagine heading off on a voyage of discovery one day and then discovering – years and years later – that you don’t know who you are or, what you’re supposed to be doing? That’s always a funny moment, in my experience. It just suddenly hits you, out of the blue, that nothing is familiar anymore. You’re stranger in a strange land and you’re even a stranger to yourself. You’re getting stranger by the minute.

 

Then a new chapter of your existence begins – you’re a space station in orbit around a mysterious alien planet, you’re a huge steel knitting needle flashing in the sun. You dreamed yourself into existence but it was a big mistake. You’re in the Land of the Burger Eaters and everyone you meet is busy munching away like a mad thing on the fabulous meaty products for which this world is so rightly famous. Wherever you go you can hear the sound of chomping jaws – you wanted an adventure and now you’ve got one! You decide to write a prize-winning book about your strange experiences – who knows, someone might read your novel, fall in love with it, and be inspired to make a movie out of it!

 

I have come into my glory. At long, long last I have come into my glory and none can deny it. Well, they can deny it – but the hell with them! Who gives a fuck? The deniers will always deny, after all. The days of my ignominy are gone and now it is my time to shine forth, like a light in the darkness. Fleas come to praise me, maggots hasten to pay their respects… Worms worship me from afar! Fruit flies gather above me in their millions to perform their rarest dance, which only happens once every ten thousand years. And far out in the deep nameless ocean, silver Barracuda are grinning fiercely.

 

 

Image – peakpx.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

I Am The Autodidact

‘I am the Autodidact,’ I crow triumphantly, ‘I taught myself everything I know!’ I chortle magnanimously, amused by the wickedness of my own scintillating irony. ‘I taught myself everything I know and I know nothing, nothing at all!’ The joke was ripe and rich but already I was tiring of it. I was tiring of it all the same. ‘Time to move on’, I told myself, ‘time to move on’. It was always time to move on…

 

‘Enlightenment is mine’, I cry out victoriously, ‘at long last I have achieved the supreme illumination, despite what everyone has said.’ Enlightenment was mine and no one can ever take that away from me. The dogs of dissent may yap as much as they please as far as I am concerned. The Mockers may mock and the Scoffers may scoff but I proved them all wrong in the end! I had created the Giant Cosmic Emulator and so now there was no turning back. In one glorious flash of Genius, I had brought into existence the ultimate machine and now the whole universe will be subservient to it. I had inadvertently invented Disneyland and I couldn’t un-invent it. The GCE emulated everything there was, and a good few things that weren’t as well. If you wanted to know what doom looks like well now you know – this is exactly what it looks like!

 

The Great Emulator emulates the birds and it emulates the bees, it emulates both the wicked and the wise, the pleasant-natured and the cranky. It emulates grains of dust and it emulates mountains. It emulates both your uncle and his famous purple pantaloons. It emulates your dog and the fleas on it. I think you get the idea of what I’m trying to say here so I won’t continue. I won’t labour the point…

 

‘How wrong is it to be wrong?’ I find myself wondering, ‘is it very very wrong or is it perhaps not so bad?’ My mind was trying frantically to obtain purchase on the matter – the wheels were spinning madly but to absolutely no avail. ‘How do I get myself out of this mess?’ I ask myself, ‘or am I doomed beyond any hope?’ Why I choose to ask myself this question I don’t know – I’d be the last person to know. I wouldn’t know the answer to a question like that. I was all at sea but didn’t like to admit it to myself – that way lies fear you see. That way lies fear and lots of it….

 

‘Emulator, Emulator, on the wall, who’s the greatest Phoney of them all?’ I sing out, in frighteningly good spirits, and the Emulator replies, as it always does reply – ‘You are, you dirty great Gobshyte!’ That was all a long time ago now though – it happened in a distant place in a distant time and sometimes I wonder if it even happened at all. The world has changed an awful lot since then you see, everything is changed beyond recognition. The old ways are gone for good and so now we have to adjust to the Unforeseen. The Crystal Sphere of our dreams has been shattered into ten trillion shards, Humpty-Dumpty style, and there’s there’s no going back, not ever ever ever…

 

The days are flying past by now and so it can’t be much longer till the end. Did you ever see the days fly by so fast? Did you ever, did you ever. Time no longer means anything anymore – ‘time ain’t what it used to be’, as they say. It surely isn’t. The streets are swimming with police – the whole police force is out there looking for me. The police reserves, too. They’re all out there trying their best to find me and I know it’s only a matter of time till they do. The net is closing in and – darting madly here and darting madly there as I might – I can’t jump out of it. I wish desperately (but to no avail) that I didn’t have to be the most wanted Super-Criminal in the world.

 

Image – wallpaperdog.com

 

The Dreams Had Come Again

The dreams had come again,

To enrich and energize

The pallid insipid substance of my life –

The pallid semblance of my supposed life, should I say?

 

Aah those dreams!

So rich and so furious –

So intoxicating and intense

Sweeping me up into the river

Of their flow.

 

I left the house on the dot of nine,

The teapot on my head

My bracelets jangling like crazy,

Live snakes encircling my ankles,

My eyeliner running in the pouring rain.

 

The King was in his Counting House,

Counting out his terrible poverty…

The figures were coming out all right,

But the spirit of the thing was all wrong.

 

 

I Was Foraging For Content

‘What does it mean to be free from the cobwebs of thought, those thick and ropey cobwebs of the mind that keep us hemmed in under the cover of their perennial darkness?’ I asked myself. ‘What does it all mean?’

 

I didn’t know what it meant for me to be asking myself this question. I didn’t know where the words came from and I didn’t know what they meant. I didn’t know why I was speaking them in the first place, to be perfectly frank. I was in a dream. I didn’t even know if the event in question – the event of me asking this question – even happened or not. I simply couldn’t tell.

 

And then of course the next thing was that I couldn’t tell whether I had actually had that thought about whether the event that had just happened really had just happened or not or whether I hadn’t. Maybe I had never had the thought but had only thought that I had. I could have been mistaken. I didn’t know for sure whether this in turn was a true thought or not. ‘Is it a true thought that I really did think this thought?’ I wondered, and then straightaway started to wonder whether I had really just thought that.  ‘Did I really just think that?’ I asked myself, the perplexity slowly starting to build. I was poised on the edge of a frightening precipice, trying desperately to climb back onto some solid ground.

 

The cobwebs of thought, the cobwebs of thought. Blowing slightly in the breeze, festooned with the filth of ages, untouched for hundreds of years. Gathering to itself all forms of corruption, all possible forms of degradation and horror. Bad things of all description. Blowing ever so slightly in the unwholesome breeze that issues forth from the unclean depths. People are freaking out about the new content, so they say. They’re freaking out left, right and centre. They’re freaking out like crazy, they’re jumping up and down going ape-shit about the wonderful new content that the content providers have provided. Isn’t it great they say. Isn’t it so very great. Their minds are controlled by psychic parasites of course, and that’s the problem here. That’s always the problem, when it comes right down to it.

 

The dirty old cobwebs of thought are all I can see. ‘What does it mean to live your life underground, in the unwholesome depths, never seeing the light of day?’ I ask myself. What does it mean to be suffocated under a veritable carpet of dank and unwholesome thoughts, suffused as they are with the filth of ages, the horrible filth of ages? It obviously doesn’t speak of anything too good, I reflect sombrely. It obviously doesn’t betoken anything joyful, anything light-hearted, anything that might be construed as being reminiscent in some way of happier times. We mustn’t forget those happier times. We must hang on to the memory of them for all we’re worth and – if we can’t do this – we must at least try to invent some.

 

I had wondered down here in search of new and wonderful content, content the like of which no other human being had ever come across before, only to find myself in this unspeakable underworld, this vile netherworld that we all know so very well. There is no new content down here of course, only the wretched filth of ages, only the clammy cobwebs of thought hanging down like dank and dusty blankets wherever I look. No longer could I muster the strength to continue to push through them. No longer was I able to continue with my foraging, my continued search for new and varied content. I had reached what was clearly a dead-end.

 

‘What does it mean to languish under the oppressive weight of my own dreadfully stale thoughts?’ I ask myself. What does it mean to be mired deep in the unspeakable filth of ages, what does it mean to feel the last remnants of life being sucked out of my lungs by some dark force. I’m afraid to breathe in case I take any more of the corruption into my body. The corruption which I am surrounded by on all sides. I’m afraid to breathe. Things are bad now but who’s to say they won’t get worse? Things can always get worse, as you know. You might look back on this particular moment as the happiest time of your life. Maybe it will turn out  to be just that. Maybe it will. Who’s to say, after all?

 

It’s all about the content, you see. Content you just can’t get enough of – rich content, fruitful content. Content the like of which no other human being has ever seen. It’s a revelation. You can’t get enough of it. And then the next thing is that you’re floating, you’re floating like a weightless zephyr high above your own conceptual horizon. You’re floating free from thought’s malicious web and it occurs to you that the confused and fear-filled life you had been leading down there no longer seems in the least bit real to you. None of it seems real. It is as if the whole experience had actually never happened – you only thought that it had.

 

 

 

Image – wallpaperflare.com

 

 

Letting Things Slip

I was living in the normal and correct environment and everything was normal and correct, just the way it should be. I became uneasy however, despite this. Unease had crept surreptitiously into the picture and it wasn’t going to go away anytime soon. ‘I’m living in the normal and correct environment’, I barked officiously, trying to frighten off the uneasy feeling that had descended upon me. I barked like a sea lion, I barked long and loud, but to no avail… I felt the forces of evil stirring deep within me and I knew I had to act decisively so as not to let things slip. ‘Don’t let things slip’, my mind cried out to me, ‘don’t ever let things slip!’

 

Don’t ever let things slip, my friends – that’s my solemn warning to you. My most solemn warning. Letting things slip is bad – you probably know that yourself anyway. Most people do. The world is full of warnings of course. Warnings on all sides, serious warnings, warnings of the direst nature. We ignore them because that’s human nature and there’s nothing anyone can do about human nature – we just have to suffer it. We just have to endure it. It is our lot to be stubborn in our pursuit of unhappiness.

 

I was having a normal day and that was good. This is how things are supposed to be, I told myself in smugly satisfied tones. Nothing pleases me more than when things are exactly what they are supposed to be. That feels right, that feels very right indeed. I get angry when people say it isn’t right; the word ‘anger’ doesn’t even come close to describing how I feel when I hear people deny the true and proper way of things. They are blaspheming against God. I literally cannot understand how anyone could be so wilfully perverse as to go against God’s law. ‘What’s wrong with them?’ I ask myself incredulously, on such occasions, ‘what gives them the right to go against the Almighty in this way? Why can’t they obey God’s commandments like the rest of us?’

 

That’s me anyway – that’s my story. That’s what I’m all about. It’s very important to be sure of what you are all about otherwise Satan will immediately take control of you. The Great Evil One casts a very dark shadow, as you know, and that shadow will fall over your life so that nothing good can ever happen to you again. Things will go to rack and ruin very quickly then, I can tell you! I can assure you of that. You will be a plaything for the Forces of Evil and no one wants that. You’ll be possessed by innumerable clamouring demons in the blink of an eye and you know what that’s like! We all know what that’s like and it’s not very good. It’s not exactly a barrel of laughs when that happens, as of course you yourself are very well aware.

 

People say that I have the eyes of a great malignant toad and that this remarkable feature adds distinction to what would otherwise be a rather lacklustre physical appearance. They say this but I don’t know if it’s true. They could be lying of course. They could be lying out of their innate incorrigible badness. On the other hand, maybe they’re right. Maybe they were right all along. ‘Maybe you are the Great Evil One in disguise,’ my thoughts tell me, ‘did you ever think of that? Did you ever stop to consider that you mightn’t be ‘a plaything for the Forces of Evil’ so much as being the Force of Evil yourself?’ There probably isn’t that much difference between the two things anyway at the end of the day, it occurs to me in a moment of sombre realization. It’s kind of splitting hairs either way. My thoughts were taking to me a very dark place, you see. They always do, of course – they always do…

 

 

Image – peakpx.com

 

 

 

Resisting Reality

It’s very important to hate the evildoer, as you are all very well aware. The bloody old evildoer. It’s very important to hate the wrongdoer as much as is physically possible. This is only right and proper, as everyone knows. It’s impossible to hate the nefarious instigators of evil enough – we have to hate them and hate them and hate them and hate them and hate them with every bit of our being. We have to close the door of human compassion on them – no punishment is too extreme for them, you see. They deserve everything they get. Whatever pain they endure it’s never going to be enough…

 

It’s funny the things you remember sometimes, isn’t it? Just now I found myself recollecting – completely out of the blue – how when I was in fourth class at school I wrote an essay entitled ‘Our Dark Masters And How They Never Give Us A Break’. I remember putting an awful lot of effort into that essay – it was extensively referenced and ran to 20,000 words. It wasn’t what the teacher was looking for though; I was sent to the headmasters office and he lectured me at length, telling me that I had to pull my socks up and that I would never get anywhere with an attitude like that. This is a true story by the way – I’m not making it up. This really happened.  That’s just the way things were back then. That was what it was like living in the UK back in the nineteen seventies. My headmaster was unbearably stuffy – he was quite insufferable, in fact – but when you are only a child (I might have been thirteen or fourteen years old at the time)  there’s not much you can do about it. You just have to take all the bullshit that your elders and betters keep sending in your direction. They’re roaring bullshit in your face all day long but what can you do?

 

Do you know that thing where you’re resisting everything – you’ve fallen into some kind of a dreadful slump and you have resistance to absolutely everything, across the board. You can’t look favourably on anything. It can happen all too easily, as you know – you’re basically negative about reality itself and so you’re resisting it as hard as you possibly can. Resisting, resisting, resisting. Always resisting. Reality seems too disagreeable you see and so you just don’t want to have anything to do with it. All you’ve got is your resistance and so that’s all you know about life – all you know about life is resisting it like an obstinate fool! You don’t see it as dumb ignorant resistance at the time of course – you see it as ‘heroic striving’, you see it as ‘struggling to attain the glorious goals that our society values so much’. You’re fooling yourself you see – your whole life is an indefinitely prolonged exercise in self-deception and it’s only ever going to get worse as time goes on.

 

I can see that you know exactly what I’m talking about. You’ve got that knowing look on your face, that amused – if somewhat sardonic – twinkle in your eye. Yep, you know what I’m talking about alright! We’ve all been there, haven’t we? To be sure we have. We all know that thing – that old, old thing where you’re resisting reality like a total and utter fool and you end up making your own bullshit universe out of this resistance which you then get trapped in for the rest of your life. It’s a bastard, isn’t it? It surely is a bastard…

 

 

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