‘I am always right about everything’, I tell myself solemnly. ‘I already know everything, without even trying’. ‘This is very important’, says I to myself – ‘I’m obviously destined to do something with this gift. The world needs me…’ The world is a very confused place, to be sure – it is both confused and confusing. People – by and large – are addicted to talking (and therefore evidently not just ‘talking’ but thinking too) the most terrible bullshit, as you may or may not know. I’m not being funny here – I’m passing on valuable information. It’s actually very hard to realize that folk are continuously talking and thinking utter bullshit because you get used to it. You get used to it and think it’s normal…
I boast freely about all my wonderful boasting – I want the whole world to know how great my wonderful boasting is! I want them to know the greatness of my boasting and respect me for it. Respect is what we’re all looking for, after all – just a little bit of respect. That’s all I want really, under the mask of all the bluster and begrudgery, beneath all the toxic bravado and fake bon homie. Is that too much to ask? Am I being unreasonable here?
All I ever seem to get is disrespect, however – disrespect from every side. It’s like I’m a joke or something. Someone to be mocked and laughed at by any gobshyte who happens to come along. Mockery and contempt is all I know, but that’s just the type of world we live in. What else would you expect?
Right back at the very beginning of all things, the ‘dawn of history’ sort of thing, I had what you might call ‘a seminal religious experience’ – a vision that came to me out of the blue, as these things always do. I beheld my own ego (cowering in the corner as it was) and realised to my horror that it was the Alpha and the Omega, the Source of All, the Lord of Small Animals, Plants, Fungi and Suchlike. I realized that my Ego was in fact the Deity Itself. In the wake of this Supremely Joyful Revelation I started a new religion, as you might expect, and this was to prove very popular. It became big business, it became all the rage. It became ‘The Mainstay of The Dominator Culture’ – people wanted to talk to me on daytime TV and stuff like that. I was riding high, as you might imagine. I was however – as I was soon to find out – flying too close to the sun….
So then the next thing was that I was exposed as a fraud and liar. They said I set out to deceive people and lead them astray. My case hit all the newspapers. I tried to explain that God was always a fraud and a liar, I tried to explain that it had always been thus, right from the very beginning of human history. I reasoned with them, I went through all the relevant scriptures. God is duty bound to be a fraud, I told them. It’s the Age-Old Myth, I told them, said to be as old as time itself. It’s the myth of the Peddler God who peddles Cosmic Lies, the Media God who promises Ascension by All to the Higher Realms, Higher Realms containing Unending Entertainment. Of the very highest calibre. There are thousands of such myths, tens of thousands of them, so we have no excuse for not knowing about them. No excuse at all. We are being purposefully ignorant, obviously. We like being ignorant, clearly…
I try to explain, but the fact is that people are far more stupid than they might initially appear (as you’d know if you’ve ever had anything to do with them yourself). My case hit the headlines for sure, but it was all a sham and a mockery and the whole thing came to nothing just more time-wasting, if you take my meaning. Just another episode of time-wasting to add to all the time-wasting that is already going on! It’s enough to make you sick isn’t it but that’s just the world we live on. That’s the way it goes. That’s how the cookie crumbles. There’s not enough bullcrap in the world – obviously enough – so we have to throw in some more of it! To add to the utterly appalling amount that we already have to deal with. Pile it on lads, pile it on…
It’s a nightmare, of course. It’s a nightmare we can’t wake up from but folk will tell you that everything’s OK. Folk – echoing the laughable lies of their corrupt billionaire masters – say that it’s all good and that we should cheer loudly and be grateful and write lots and lots of stuff in our gratitude dairies to show that we’re properly grateful. But it’s not really good of course. it’s nothing but Non-Stop Psychic Effluence, Non-Stop Psychic Effluence of the very worst type. TheSatanictype, if you take my meaning. The bastards are taking the piss you see. They’re taking the piss big time but we’re too ridiculously full of ourselves to see it….
‘Special moments’, says I to myself, ‘special moments in which you realise that you are in fact the Chosen One’. Special moments like these are so very special you see, they are so very wonderfully special. I can’t even begin to explain how special they are…
I was all wrapped up in my very own special bias-confirmation fantasy of course, and that’s why I was feeling so good. So very good. There’s nothing like a BC fantasy to make you feel all warm and cosy inside, is there? It’ll get you there – it’ll get you there every time! And this was no ordinary bias confirmation fantasy either – it was a very special one indeed. This was the Deluxe Version.
I was posing with pop stars, I was hanging out with A-list celebrities and all that kind of stuff. All that cool kind of stuff. Living the kind of life the average person can only ever dream of. Leading the kind of life that I can only ever dream of. Fervent self-worship is the name of the game; fervent self-worship is my middle name. Etc, etc, etc, etc… Blahdy blahdy blah, blah, blah… It’s the usual bloody story and I’m sure you know it as well as I do. Of course you know it as well as I do.
You have heard it all before, of course. It’s old hat at this stage, wouldn’t you say? Of course it is. I was thinking of the average sort of life that people might lead, if they happen to be the average sort of a person, and then I thought of the sort of life I myself aspire to live and I realised that I could never settle for anything less. I would never be content with mediocrity now, I could never return to the life I had been leading, which had been particularly mediocre. Shamefully mediocre, in fact. One then gets to know ‘The Taint of Ignominy’, which is the taint that you can never hide…
Once greatness has been tasted then there’s no more appeal in the second best unfortunately, and that’s how it is with me – having tasted greatness I can never rest until I find it again. This is my fate. This is my fate and you know how it is with fate, after all – you just have to accept it, don’t you? You just have to get along with it as best you can. You have to accept being the Chosen One and all that sort of stuff.
I was posing with pop stars, rubbing shoulders with A-list actors at international award ceremonies, hanging out with all the movers and shakers. I was hanging out with all the fabulously glamorous celebrities from the fabulously glamorous world of show business. ‘This is the life’, I tell myself earnestly, ‘you couldn’t make this shit up – no way could you make this shit up…’ It was all about those special moments, you see – those special moments that make you feel so warm and cosy inside. Moments of distinction, if you know what I mean. Moments of personal validation. Those moments when you know that you’re living your best life. Those moments when you know it beyond any doubt. You can congratulate yourself then, you see. Only thencan you congratulate yourself. Only then can you be worthy, only then can you accept the adulation and praise of your peers. Only then can you know that you have truly ‘achieved’…
The Bloody Old Amoeba is on the ascendant again, so it would seem. The bloody old amoeba is always on the ascendant, wouldn’t you say? When wasn’t it? The BOA Is the undefeated world champion, you see. Damn right it is – it has never been beaten… It’s the champ for sure…
Its victory was complete a very long, long time ago, you see. Its victory was total, its victory was irreversible, its victory was complete in every respect. None now are there who are true – all serve the worm, whether we care to admit it or not! And generally we don’t care to admit to it. We don’t care to admit to anything of the sort, naturally enough. Who would want to admit to that?
Our great discovery (our great breakthrough, you might say) are the devices that allow us to make our lies become true. This is the Great Promise of Technology, would you not agree? Can you honestly say that this is not the case? Once we had achieved this then there was no looking back – there’s no way back from this you see. There’s never any way back. No true way at any rate, no way that isn’t a lie…
This is what the Amoeba gifted to us, do you understand? This is its gift to us, its legacy. That anything can be true as soon as we want it to be. All we have to do is declare a lie to be true and it is! Just like that… This is the world we live in you see – an ersatz world where anything we want can be true, but where nothing actually is. Especially not us. Least of all us. For sure not us.
The eyes in my head have seen many things – too many to tell of, in fact. Far too many. The eyes that are not in my head have seen even more things, but of those things I may not speak. Of these things I may not ever speak. Unless I choose to, of course. Unless I choose to.
I remember things that I have seen in the dim and distant past, when time itself was still young, and consequently still somewhat unsure of itself. Would it go this way, or that? Should it continue as planned or should it turn round and go back? Should it never have started in the first place? Some say that this was the First Mistake, the Original Mistake, the mistake from which all other (lesser) mistakes follow…
In my mind’s eye I can recall the sight of a mighty army that stretched out from horizon to horizon like a limitless swarm of ants. There was no end to this swarm – there was no beginning and no end – and above them flew the banners and pennants of The Maggot. Fluttering proudly in the wind. Those pennants spelt our doom and everyone who beheld them knew it. The was the Battle at the Beginning of Time, the battle that would decide things one way or the other.
Men gazed upon those banners and their hearts quailed within them. The blood ran ice-cold in their veins. They gazed upon the Emblem of the Maggot, rampant on the field of blood red, its pallid, defenceless body belying the invincibility of the Awful Force it represented. Soft is the maggot, soft and squidgy and easy to crush, and yet no one can overcome it. No weapon can harm it. It seems to us weak and yet its victory was always assured, its victory was assured right from the very beginning. None may conquer the Worm, after all…
In the past, if you were to run around the streets shouting that you have a microchip implanted in your brain then before very long the police would pick you up and bring you to the nearest psych hospital. There you would very possibly be detained under the mental health treatment act. That’s how it used to work, and I think it made sense to most of us. These days if you were to go around shouting out that you DIDN’T have a microchip in your brain then you’d be lifted by the local law enforcement agents and incarcerated in the nearest state detention centre before you can say ‘Captain America’. The option of going voluntarily wouldn’t come into it. All of this is because they want to control you, of course. It’s always because they want to control you.
The controversial amendments to the 2030 Public Safety Act allows social workers working in state correction facilities the use of new and highly experimental behavioural modification software packages for repeat offenders. It is explained to us that repeat offending means that you have committed the offence more than once. If you can’t take responsibility for your behaviour, then the state will! No one sees the irony here you see – the irony being that the state is the ultimate criminal, the ultimate abuser… Society will get inside your head and control the hell out of you faster than you can say ‘Jack Frost’. It’ll distort your whole life for no good reason at all. It’ll make shit of your entire life and you’ll be far too screwed up to realize.
That riot police who pull you on the street certainly don’t see it – their job is to enforce the law, not reflect on the appalling absurdity of it. If you break the law people are going to be shocked, people are going to take against you. There might be unpleasantness. Trust me on this one. If the law is reversed however (so that it becomes the exact opposite of what it used to be) and you break the new, reversed Law, then people won’t know what to think. You’ll have them over a barrel. With the new, reversed law it becomes a crime not to commit a crime.
We are – I think it’s fair to say – an entertainment loving folk. More than just this, it could be said that our lives are at this point nothing butentertainment. It’s important to understand this, you see. It is critically important. The atoms of entertainment are your own projections. You are emitting them yourself from special transmitter unit that’s hidden in a hidden place deep in your brain. It’s the Projector Box and it mustn’t ever be damaged. The Projector Box projects you and it projects your world and so if anything ever happened to it then time would erase itself and it will be as if you had never existed. That’s not the same as being annihilated you understand, because there was never anyone there to be annihilated in the first place. It’s a Double Negation, it’s ‘the negation of the negation’.
No one must ever find the Projector Box. It must never ever be brought to light. Your enemies are searching tirelessly for it of course. Your friends too. They’re all searching tirelessly for it. They want to find it so that they can have total control over you. You – on the other hand – have to keep yourself constantly entertained in order to keep on existing. You’re a junkie. You’re locked into it – that’s the one and only way you can exist! That’s the deal, you see – the deal is that you have to keep on distracting yourself from the horrible fact of your life being so empty because of all that self-distraction. It’s a bad joke.
We are all on the run from the very same nightmare. You can trust me on that, too. We’re all of us running, we’re all of us fleeing, from the Exact Same Nightmare and yet we’ll never talk about it. All in the same boat, all in the very same boat. You’re a bluebottle trapped in a jam jar on a summer’s afternoon – there’s no way you’re going to escape but you don’t know it and your lack of awareness makes you optimistic. You’re constantly ‘hoping’ and that hoping keeps you going. It keeps you going just fine…
Suppose you’re just too greedy for the old ‘sleepy stuff’, that wicked old stuff that makes you dream your life away? What then? Suppose you’re addicted to it? Suppose you’re hungry for it all the time, supposing you can’t ever get enough of it? What then? You’re burning the bottom clean out of the pan and you know that’s not good news. You’re going to have to get a new saucepan and there aren’t any. They stopped making them a long time ago. Civilization has moved on – we’re all living on the cloud now. Everything’s turned into code, and bad code at that…
We’re all guilty of the same crime but that doesn’t stop us despising each other for it. Boy do we despise each other! Despising each other is how we blind ourselves to our own gross culpability and there’s nothing worse than having an awareness of one’s own gross culpability, there really isn’t. Reality is a funny thing, wouldn’t you say? How do we get away with being such appalling fools? Suppose you had to say something pertinent about reality or else you’d be fed to the crocodiles, what would you say? Well, you could say reality is a bit like this, reality is a bit like that. Reality is that thing which we all know very well to be real. We learn about reality at school. People we know might tell us about it. Reality is trending on Google search right now as it happens – everyone wants to know about it. Tell us more about reality, they say. Tell us all about it. Folk are jumping on the bandwagon because they’re good at that.
Suppose you were famous but no one had ever heard of you? What then? Suppose they ignore you to your face? Would you be angry or would you be sad? Would you perhaps have an out-of-control rage attack? Suppose the ‘in-crowd’ refused to have anything to do with you, suppose they mocked you, suppose you were publicly humiliated? The more frighteningly degenerate and dishonest we get the more horrifically vicious and unprovoked we become on our attacks on each other, and this is so obvious that there’s no need for me to try to prove the point to you! You know it as well as I do. The more we sink into the foul-smelling mire of our own personal unconsciousness the more we vilify and castigate our neighbours for doing the very same thing that we’re doing, and such is the path that has been mapped out for humanity. Ours is an ignominious fate, to put it mildly.
‘I don’t take the licks I dish them out!’ I roar out ferociously, trying to cunningly turn the tables on my adversary. Trying cunningly to be cunning. It wasn’t working though – I was only living my own fantasy and my fantasy had run out of steam. It was a poor beaten-up kind of a fantasy, like a tin of baked beans that’s been run over by a truck. ‘What’s wrong with my fantasy?’ I ask myself morosely, ‘it used to be so much better than this…’ This becomes my new song and I sing it all day long. What’s wrong with my fantasy – it used to be a Rolls Royce saloon and now it’s a crushed tin can! This becomes ‘my new thought’ and I think it all the time. I think it every hour, I think it every minute. It’s as if asking the question alone itself can save me! It’s as if restating my shocked incredulity at the failure of my fantasy to hold water can somehow (miraculously) solve the problem. Moral outrage is the only tool I’ve got left in my toolbox so what am I to do? ‘I’m the only tool left in my toolbox’, I realise glumly, and the only thing I’m good for is making complete and utter fuckup of everything.
I am the unerring instrument of my own destruction I realise, but at the same time I also realise that this is the one thing that one can never truly accept. I need to find a good CBT therapist it occurs to me – I need to turn this dirty old thinking around. ‘You need to turn this thinking around,’ I told myself, ‘you need to turn the negative into a positive’. This becomes my new song and I sing it all day long. I sing it in the morning and I sing it in the night. I sing it at strange times. ‘You’ve got to turn that negative thinking around boy,’ I sing to myself, cruising at altitude on my newfound optimism. It was no good though – not really. I burned the bottom out of that particular pan a long time ago. I’ve burnt the bottom clean out of it. It’s like trying to ride a bicycle that’s got no wheels; it’s like trying to ride a bicycle that’s got no wheels and – as if that weren’t bad enough – with the bloody chain fallen off it too. Lying there buried deep in the nettles.
I’m just an ordinary everyday sociopath, I began. I’m just an ordinary everyday sociopath, so if you would kindly refrain from giving me a hard time. My voice whines. I don’t know what you expect from me I really don’t. Muttering to myself, grumbling away to myself all day long. Blowing sticky saliva bubbles without meaning to. I’m panicking and there’s this voice in my head telling me not to panic. It’s the voice of the panic speaking to me: the panicky voice, the panicky old voice of that old, old panic. Stay calm now, the voice tells me. Stay calm now, whatever you do… It’s not a very calm voice though, I can tell you. Muttering and grumbling, muttering and grumbling. What’s the mutter with all this panic I asked myself and the voice that was telling me not to listen to the panic was also the panic and the voice was telling me. But that was only the panic talking, I realised. Don’t listen to the panic, don’t listen to the panic, don’t listen to the panic, I told myself in tones of the most deadly earnestness but then I realised that that this was only the panic talking too. By now the panic had developed many different voices: one of them told me act like you know what you’re doing, act like you know what you’re doing, act like you know what you know, over and over again. Yet another voice chips in warning me don’t give in to the panic, don’t give in to the panic, don’t give in to the panic. And then there was another voice insistently drilling into my head saying don’t listen to the voices don’t listen to the voices whatever you do don’t listen to the voices.
So anyway what I learned from all this is that the voice telling me to do the thing – whatever ‘the thing’ may happen to be has come about as a result of my own mental entropy. Because of the amount of mental entropy that had built up around me (my own personal entropy) I had become a figment of my own imagination – a joke even to myself… The panic was starting to hit me big time at this stage. I had to pull something out of the bag. Pull something out of the bag, pull something out of the bag, pull something out of the bag, I started to tell myself, riding the crest of a wave of pure freaked-outness, but then I realised to my horror that this was only making things worse. I am a person I told myself. I’m a person. Be a person, be a person, be a godamn person, I told myself but it wasn’t working. It wasn’t coming off right and all of a sudden I started to freak out on top of my original freakout. It was a double freakout. I didn’t know what to do – it just wasn’t coming to me. Be a person, be a person, be a person, I told myself but it was no good – it wasn’t working. Do person stuff do person stuff do persons stuff I ordered myself with the utmost severity but it just wasn’t happening. It’s no good just telling myself to be a person and do person stuff I realized then – I had to fill in the blanks myself! I had to tell myself exactlyhow to be a person and that was precisely what I didn’t know. Throw me a bone here I told myself give me at least something to go on would you but nothing was forthcoming – I had drawn a blank.
‘Bring on amazing’, yaps the promotional literature, ‘bring on amazing because amazing is good’. Amazing is always good – that’s what’s so amazing about it, of course. So – yes – bring on amazing! By all means, bring it on… Roll out amazing because amazing is so great. Bang the drums and blow the trumpets. Shout out loud for the sheer boisterous joy of it. The promotional literature is never wrong, after all.
I am a state-registered precog. I have the gift of precognition – I know what I’m going to think before I think it, in other words! I see it all before it happens and there’s sod all I can do about it. I just have to watch it unfold. This is my gift, you see, but it is also my curse. Mainly it’s my curse – to a very large extent it’s my curse. Pretty much I have to say that it’s my curse. No one knows the tedium of what it is like to be me, I reflect. No one could imagine how hard each day is for me. No one knows just how absolutely dire my existence is. Or perhaps they know alright but perhaps they’re keeping quiet about it. Perhaps it is their choice not to say anything – that could be true too. Anything could be true really. Anything at all. Or nothing. Maybe nothing’s true and reality’s a lie. Or maybe that’s a lie too, like everything else…
It’s a case of chalk and cheese really isn’t it – both so different and yet at the same time not the same. The same, but also different. But nevertheless the same. Only not really. As I sit here in my secret laboratory I can discern numerous murky shapes writhing in the thick white smoke that fills the alchemical flask in front of me. The smoky shapes of strange mythological beasts fight with each other, tearing at each other, each struggling for mastery. Losing body parts and then regaining them again. Getting ahead and then getting behind again. Winning and then promptly losing again – engaging in the Eternal Struggle. Engaging in the Eternal Struggle because that’s what we all have to do. There’s no escape from that, is there? There’s no help for it.
To stare for too long into the smoke inside the alchemical vessel is to risk a major psychological disturbance, and yet I have to know. I have to know what the portents are telling me. ‘What are the portents telling me?’ I ask myself out loud. with the utmost solemnity, but no answer comes. That’s the usual way with portents, of course. Rarely are they of any actual use. Certainly they are rarely what they’re cracked up to be.
Things were different this time, however. The portents were now speaking to me loud and clear. Indeed they were, indeed they were. To be sure they were. ‘Speak to me O portents’, I expostulate in a quavering, tremulous voice, and to my great surprise the portents do. One of the murky mythological creatures pauses briefly in its life-and-death struggle with a serpent made of swirling dark fire and winks cheerily at me. ‘Don’t worry good buddy’, it informs me in a kindly tone. ‘Everything is going to work out just fine, you’ll see…’ It winks at me again after uttering these words of reassurance and promptly resumes fighting with its neighbour. As I stare on in a state of horrified fascination, the two figures commence to rend and tear at each other in a furious burst of energy.
Needless to say, I find myself being far from convinced by the optimism that had been so freely expressed by the magical creature that I had inadvertently conjured up. It struck me as being almost flippant or supercilious in its attitude. It almost felt as if it were mocking me, as if it were poking fun at me for being such an inept and useless practitioner. One way or another it has put me out of sorts, let’s just say that. A jarring note of dissonance has appeared and I have the distinct and highly uncomfortable feeling that things aren’t going to plan…
When I look closer still into the milky contents of the flask in front of me I can see that I am there in it too, fighting for my life amongst various miniature heraldic figures – sphinxes and gryphons and salamanders and centaurs and what have you. I am fighting for my life but failing. As I look yet closer again into the miniature world that is set out in front of me I can see to my dismay that I am not so much ‘fighting’ as trying desperately to escape from the monsters that are attacking me. Trying my very best to escape, but not succeeding. Being beset on all sides. Being torn into shreds of smoke in front of my very eyes. I need hardly point out that I find this vision most disturbing. ‘What am I to do?’ I ask myself dolefully, ‘What can I do to help myself?’
The truth is being revealed to me as I watch and the truth that is being revealed is that I myself am there inside the alchemical vessel, struggling for my life, being torn to shreds by elemental monsters that are made entirely of smoke. The horrific truth is that I am being continually devoured by implacable magical forces that I myself have brought into being. I am the serpent that devours itself, I realize. I am Adech. I am The Protokaryon – the first who is also last. I am the Slayer of Enemies. I am he who is both Everything and Nothing. I am the Self-Eater, the Tormented One, the Mutilated Anthroparian…
Image credit – Urban Street Art Animals, Kante Meister, pinterest.com
“Another day, another dollar,” I say to myself delightedly, rubbing my hands together in glee. The world was brimming over with wonderful possibilities and I for one was determined to get my fair share. Or maybe more than just my fair share if I was quick enough. If I was quick enough and sly enough, which I unashamedly am. They don’t come any slier, I can tell you!
“Yes, yes, yes,” I say to myself, my eyes full of dollar signs and my heart full of avarice, “all these wonderful possibilities belong to me and no one else, and all the dirty lousy unworthy ones will have to do without”. They don’t matter anyway you see because they are only losers, and no one likes losers. Even God Himself doesn’t like losers, as is well known. He has nothing but contempt for them and that’s only right.
It must be right if God says it is, after all. That’s how come it gets to be right – because God says that it is! Whatever God says is straightaway rightand all other things are straightaway wrong, and you’ll get punished for doing them. Vengeance is mine, says the Lord. That’s how it is when you’re God, of course. You can have things whatever way you want them – how could you be God otherwise? How could you be God and yet at the same time have to follow rules? It’s your show after all, and so you can do what you want with it. It’s your party and you’ll punish the creatures that you have created if you want to, right?
I’m counting my chickens, you see. I’m counting them for all I’m worth. I’m in the chicken-counting business and you can be sure I’m taking it all very seriously. “Count the chickens, count the chickens, count the chickens,” I urge myself, my voice hoarse with conviction. “Jump to it now”, I call out excitedly, giving instructions to myself, barely able to contain my enthusiasm. I was onto a winner a winner and no mistake. Things can only get better, right?
You bet they can, you bet they can. Counting the chickens, counting the bloody old chickens. I’m in fine fettle today it occurs to me. The best fettle ever. There’s never been any fettle that was finer, in fact. This was the finest fettle you’ll ever come across. The only way is up, as they say. I’m playing a blinder and there’s no one that can stop me. I’ve hit the final furlong and there’s a clear run ahead of me. I’m home and dry, I tell myself. Life’s never been better.
A dark thought suddenly comes into my head: nobody can stop me now but that doesn’t mean that they won’t try. They could be trying even now, I realised. Even as I speak, there could be those out there plotting to subvert my carefully laid plans and get there ahead of me. This thought is like a thunderbolt – it hits me out of the blue and I find myself filling up to the brim with the very blackest rage you could ever imagine. It is so dark and so ominous that it even frightens me…
Even as I sit here, obsessively counting my chickens (as I am wont to, as I am prone to), they could be ahead of me. They could be stealing march. Outsmarting me, outflanking me, outmanoeuvring me. Taking me for a sucker. Taking me for a big gormless dupe. Talking behind my back. Plotting my downfall, hatching schemes that spell bad news for me. All of this strikes me in a flash, turning my world upside down, throwing me into a maelstrom of confusion.
I let out a curdled scream of pure rage and frustration. I let out such a scream as you’ve never heard in all your life. I can guarantee you that. Absolutely I can guarantee it. It is horrible, thwarted scream such as you have never heard. Never heard. It just bursts out of me, and I didn’t even know it was in there. I am as surprised as anyone, I promise you. More than just surprised, I am horrified. I am horrified beyond measure. I am horrified beyond measure, and that – my dears – is the story of how evil came into the world, back right back at the very beginning of all things…
When I’m in a tricky situation – a situation that I don’t know how to handle – I always ask myself this question: “What would my old friend ‘Psycho Bill’ McNally do in a situation like this?” Straight away, this thought calms me down. It causes the mindless panic to subside within me. What would Psycho Bill do under these circumstances? And I think we all know the answer to that! By God we do.
My spiritual guidance counsellor was losing patience with me. “For fucks sake Nick”, he ranted, “don’t you realise that the thinking mind is basically Satan, and yet you keep on playing patty-cake with it? How many bloody times do we have to have this discussion? Are you some kind of complete fuckwit, or what?” I hung my head in shame – I was a spiritual failure, and I knew it.
Maybe I should write a book about the phoney crappy life of a spiritual failure, I thought to myself. It could be a best seller. Look at the shyte they published these days, after all. More to the point, just look at the type of self-indulgent bollocks people come out with when they publish their ‘long-awaited memoirs’. Their unbiased and truthful accounts of what great and meaningful lives they have lived. You know the sort of thing. The elation which I had been experiencing all of a sudden left me and I felt sorrowful. All of a sudden I felt despondent. Things didn’t seem nice any more. I was – I realised – utterly exhausted by my own loathsomely offensive bullshit.
I was a victim of the All-Devouring Generic Reality, I realised. That was the plain truth of the matter. I wasn’t to blame at all – the All-Devouring Generic Reality had sapped my essential essence quality, leaving a dead husk, leaving me no more than a hollow grinning sham. I had been lulled into a state of utter and complete stupidity and now – far too late – I had caught a glimpse of just what a hideous fool I really was. It was not a nice moment.
Not that it was my fault though, as I believe I’ve just said. Not that it was my fault. How are we supposed to know, after all? It’s not as if anyone ever warns us. They don’t teach you about this in school, do there? You bet they don’t.
I was trying to make the effort. “Make the effort, make the effort, make the effort, make the effort, make the effort, make the effort…” I told myself. I was trying my best to make the effort – I was bursting myself trying to make the effort but I just wasn’t getting anywhere. Despite all my straining. I was drawing a blank, making a totally ridiculous spectacle of myself. I was a failure at trying, I realised. I couldn’t try for shit. I was a fake Trier. In fact, if the truth be told, I was only pretending to try.
Life’s not happening to me – life is happening to that grinning, smirking image of me, it’s happening to the diabolically corrupt image of me that was given to me by Satan himself. Life is happening to that grinning, disgusting fool, not me….
How I hate that vile stupid image, how I hate and despise it! It’s a horror that affects me without respite, day in, day out. It is a suffering that is visited upon me on a daily basis, and – try as I might – I cannot rid myself of it. I can no longer rid myself of this malevolent puppet of Satan that pretends to be me than I can rid myself of my skin, or my bones. It’s stuck to me. It’s stuck fast.
We are invited to identify with nonsense and we do so, we do so most obligingly in fact. We do so without being asked – we do so with great alacrity, because it’s expected of us. Even the thought of disappointing our invisible audience is painful – you know you couldn’t live with the guilt. It would get you down. You would hate yourself forever…
Life doesn’t quite reach me, you see. It never quite gets as far as me – I can feel it ‘falling short’, as it were, but I never get to taste the thing itself. The flavour eludes me – something’s going down but I couldn’t tell you what it is. I couldn’t tell you what it’s about. It’s gone before I get there, it’s gone every time.
Gone before I got there, missing the boat every time. Missing the bus, missing the party. Can you blame me for being so bitter? Could you bloody blame me? Can you blame me for being the rotten miserable way that I am? “Oh, don’t be so negative”, people say, “you’re always coming out with the negative vibes. You’re uncool, man…”
They are worried that I’ll jinx things for them, you see. They are scared that I’ll bring them bad luck and so to protect themselves they have to denounce me as quickly as they can. They have to denounce me so as to show they’re not like me, so as to show they’ve got nothing to do with me. They have to distance themselves from me by instantly denouncing me in public, making sure that everybody hears. It’s a time-honoured ritual and I’m kind of OK with it, however. I no longer take that kind of thing is personally as I once did. It’s their own fear and it’s their own ‘fear ritual’, so what’s that got to do with me?
It was only a dead thing that thought it was me (if you take my meaning). it thought it was me, but it wasn’t – it wasn’t anything. it was only a dead thing. I found this kind of sad, kind of piteous – only not so much when I actually thought about it. Not so much at all. ‘Good enough for it’, I said to myself then, with grim satisfaction, ‘that’ll learn it…’
‘I wonder what real life is like’, I wondered to myself. ‘I wonder what it must be like to be actually alive? That really must be something…’ My mind was working away like crazy, trying to work it out. Running around, running around – running around like some kind of mad thing. Running around like some kind of crazy spinning top, spinning away frantically all over the table. Running here, running there – running all over the shop. In the end it will fall right off the table and that will be the end of it.
