I was trying to make some freedom for myself in my mind. “Make freedom, make freedom, make freedom”, I said. Or rather my mind said. Or I said. I’m not sure which. But no freedom came. I was trying to make something interesting happen in my mind because my mind was stagnant, because my mind was stuck. “Make something interesting happen, make something interesting happen”, I said. Or my mind said. I don’t know the difference. It was one or the other, anyway…

But nothing interesting happened. There was just me trying to make something interesting happen. There was actually nothing happening at all. Absolutely nothing. Zilch. Nada. Not a thing. Just me and my mind. Just me trying to make to some freedom for myself in my mind. Just me trying to clear a bit of space for myself. Get some kind of initiative started. Some kind of new and interesting angle on what was in reality terribly dull. Horrifyingly dull. “Is this so very wrong”, I complained bitterly to no one in particular. “Is this too much to ask for? Why does everything always have to be so hard?” But I had gone through all this before. The words I had just uttered were not fresh. They had been lying there in my mind a long, long time. Like fish left to rot in the hold of a trawler. Like a bucket-full of stinking old mackerel heads.

I had asked these questions (and others like them) many times before. These words were not new and I knew this even as I went through with the tired old business of speaking them. The words turned into ashes in my mouth even as I spoke them but I spoke them anyway. They tasted old. They tasted as old as old could be, as stale as stale could be. They were as dry and lifeless as a five thousand year old mummy just exhumed from its tomb. But I came out with them anyway. Or rather my mind did. My mind came out with them. My tired old my mind which kept doing the same old thing over and over again like a rusty bicycle wheel spinning in a ditch. The same old thing, the same old thing, the same old thing, the dame old sin, the dame old sin…

My mind was stuck. Or I was stuck in my mind, whichever way round it was. Stuck, stuck, stuck. Stuck, stuck, stuck. Why was I so stuck? There was no freedom in my mind, I realized then. Not even a little bit of it. Not a whiff of it. Not even the pretence of freedom was there. “Why is there no freedom in my mind?” I screamed out in the hideous sterile privacy of my own world, the world my mind had made for me. But there was no one to hear it and I had heard it all before. The words were dust in my mouth and I spat them out. I felt like I had been chewing on the mummy’s toes. The one that had just been exhumed. The more I chewed the drier it got – I couldn’t summon the saliva to spit anything out. The dryness was contagious – my whole mouth was mummified, my jaw, my face, my throat. “It’s the mummy’s curse”, I said, but the joke was old. So very, very old. So old that it decayed the very moment I came out with it. It spilled out of my mouth in an advanced stage of decay before I had even finished saying it. I was coughing up dust every time I tried to speak.

“Why is this happening”, I found myself asking for the ten zillionth time. “Why do I have to be so stuck in my own mind? Is it too much to expect that some little tiny bit of freedom should come my way? The tiniest little drop even?” But there was no one there to hear my complaints. Only me. Or only my mind – whichever it was. “Thanks a lot for making this stupid sterile world for me, mind” I raged vindictively, feeling the black tide of toxicity rising inexorably within me. But at the same time that I tried to point the finger of accusation at my mind I knew that I had only myself to blame…