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.
I used to grant myself many favours, back in the day. Many, many favours. Too many favours. Nothing was too good for me – I indulged myself terribly. I indulged myself disgracefully in fact and – as you might expect – I became entitled and insufferable as a result. I became obnoxious and people didn’t like me anymore. Well, they never had done, if I’m to be honest, but you get the point. The point being of course that I was an obnoxious person and that no one liked me.
I was playing a game with myself, a light-hearted party game, you might say. A fun game. It was that game where you have to ask every person in the room what their most special thing is, their most special thing of all. “It’s me!” I reply enthusiastically to my own, somewhat ritualistic question – “I am my own most special thing, no one else!” I jump about then, clapping my hands delightedly, doing my little dance, shouting “It’s me, it’s me, it’s me – I’m the most special person!” I dance and I caper and I clap my hands together until eventually I get sick of the game and wander off to do something else instead.
It’s easy to judge, isn’t it? It’s so easy to judge but at the same time you know it’s the right thing to do. Judging is good and you shouldn’t feel bad about it – who are they to judge you for your judging, after all? What right have they? I was in search of the secret of immortality and eternal youth, you see. I was an esoteric student, a earnest seeker, like the guy in the Tarot Cards. Plodding on in the darkness, in an unassuming way. Stumbling occasionally because I can’t see where I’m going. Wearing a cool looking monk’s hood. That’s what I call a cool look, my friends! A very cool look indeed. I am an esoteric seeker, I said to myself importantly, unsatisfied by the cheap and tawdry inveiglements of a crassly materialistic society. This is another game I like to play, just in case you haven’t guessed!
Play the game boys, play the jolly old game. Play it for all you’re worth – which might turn out to be considerably less than you expected! To be sure, play it for all you’re worth -what have you got to lose, after all? It does get awful wearisome sometimes however, I must confess. The game that is. It gets appallingly wearisome and when some brain-dead jerk pipes up “Play the game boys” you want to hit them in the head with a length of steel piping. To be sure you do and you’re not ashamed to admit it either. You’d give them a good solid crack in the head that they won’t forget about in a hurry and that’s no lie. Playing the game snuffs out your life spark you see. It’s an addiction. Playing the game always stops at your life spark. It hollows you out – it hollows you out so bad that one day you discover there’s actually nothing left of you!
It’s a game I invented myself, you see – I call it the Me Game. It’s a kind of solitary game, I guess – a bit antisocial perhaps, a bit ignorant, a bit isolationist, but what the hell? It’s every man for themselves so what are you going to do? So anyway there I was playing the game as usual, playing the jolly old Me Game the same as always, when all of a sudden I realised to my horror that playing the game too much had caused me to lose all my essence-quality and as I realised this fact I felt myself imploding in slow motion. I felt myself caving in on myself, amidst a cloud of choking dust.
I’m in the Funhouse having fun. Having a great time, as you might expect. Having a whale of a time. Whaling it up like a boss. Giving the finger to the man. It’s all fun and games in the Funhouse of course, only sometimes not so much. Sometimes not so much at all. Sometimes the Funhouse can turn out downright spooky, full of echoes and unexplained creaking noises, full of feelings of loneliness and despair and suchlike. Feelings that roam around dolefully, rejected and reviled, turned away at every door. Condemned to walk the weary road until the end of it all, until ‘The End of All Days’ comes. Hypnotized by the sheer horror of your experience, unable to believe that this is actually happening to you.
The terrible weary old road, huh? How well I know it. How well you know it too. How well we all know it. It’s the weariest thing ever, it’s the ultimate grind, the ultimate in doleful tasks. There’s never anything more doleful, just as there was never anything more futile and that’s not mere hyperbole, I can assure you! Absolutely it isn’t. How frighteningly sinister that weary old road is – it would give you no end of nightmares. You wake suddenly in the dead of night, drenched in ice cold sweat, drenched in clammy fear sweat. You know the dream had been bad – no one needs to tell you that – but you can’t remember any more than this. You remember the horror but not the content. You’re sitting there on the edge of your bed, shaking. You were dreaming about your time in the Funhouse…
Does it define me to say that I am a person who appreciates the finer things in life? Does it define me to say that I don’t share the same crass interests and vile obsessions as the ‘toxically unconscious masses’? ‘Well,’ says I, ‘if that is so then I shall most gladly accept that definition, the accolade, because it is nobler in the spiritual realm to be noble than it is to be a dirty good-for-nothing scumbag. Because it is nobler in the eye of the beholder and all that kind of craic. You get what I’m saying, I’m sure. Everyone always gets what I’m saying. It’s a gift of mine, I guess you could say. They always get me. People, that is. As soon as I walk through the door they get me. Yes my friends – if having a taste for the finer things in life defines me, then so be it! That’s all I can say. It’s not ‘all’ I can say, obviously I can say other things too, if I wanted to. It’s just that I don’t. I was spotted early on in life as being somewhat unusual, somewhat atypical. I was spotted as being atypical and then beaten soundly for it. Properly beaten, that is, not just given a few slaps on the wrist. Or whatever. Or however it is you might like to put it. A poke in the eye with a rancid gherkin. Soured chicken livers served with the very finest camomile custard. That’s the ticket isn’t it? We’re all famous here you know, every last one of us. Towering figures you could say. Mighty Avatars of the Age that is Yet to Come, the Age which is only just Dawning. You know the age I mean, I am sure. Of course you do. I was spotted for not being the same as the others and beaten. Beaten soundly, and with gusto. Great gusto. That’s how it was for me, you see. That was the type of life that I had back then and I never once complained. I never once complained because I never knew any better! Being beaten every day for being different was the only life I knew and I accepted it without question. Until this one fateful day, that is. This one fateful day that changed everything forever. You know the sort of day I mean, I’m sure. Days of longing and horror, my friends – first comes the longing (for the wonderful terrible thing) and then comes the horror that unfolds with grim inevitability when we finally win the prize for ourselves. The horror persists like an evil smell. It lingers like a fart you do not wish to be associated with. It has the most uncanny ability to stick around, an absolutely astonishing ability. Definitely, nothing good would ever stick around that long! It would be gone before you could say Jack Robinson. It would be gone before you could say ‘How’s your father?’ It would be gone before you even got a chance to introduce yourself. You’d be left standing there gormlessly like a big fool with your mouth wide open. You’d be left standing there like the big Gorm that you are. Rehearsing the lines that you will never get to speak. Because life has moved on and you haven’t…
