Do you ever get the feeling that you’re just hanging around for no particular reason? Do you – perhaps – ever get the feeling that you’re just ‘putting in the hours’? That you’re just doing time? That’s me – I’m hanging around, I’m putting in the hours. I’m doing time in the illusion realm.

I’m doing time in the illusion realm and I myself am an illusion. What a bummer, huh? What a pisser. What a royal screw-up. What’s my crime, you might ask? How did I end up serving a stretch in the illusion realm? Have I been a bad lad, I hear you ask? I must have done some bad stuff – you don’t end up doing time for nothing, as we all know. What crime do you have to have committed in order to be serving a life stretch in the illusion realm? I know you’re thinking that it has to be something very bad. Did I do a bad thing? Was I very evil in a previous life?

I’m doing time, no doubt about that. I’m doing serious time but I can’t tell what it was exactly that I did to deserve the sentence. I honestly don’t know. I guess you could say that I have committed the crime of believing the illusion to be real! It’s a kind of instant punishment – an axe falls down on your head the moment you have a particular type of thought. The prison solidifies around you the moment you think whatever it is you think. The illusion realm solidifies around you the moment that you think something is real. You make it real with your thinking and you can’t think your way out of it again. Of course you can’t think your way out of it again – how can you think your way out of the prison of thinking? Answers on a postcard please…

 I’m sure you’ve cottoned on to the sort of thing that I’m talking about here – we all know the prison of thinking don’t we? We’re all of us inveterate thinkers. Motley crew of old recidivists that we are. We’re all in that old prison. In that old prison. Doing time. Of course we are. What kind of a damn fool is going to suggest that we aren’t? We’re all guilty of the very same crime. By definition we’re all guilty – we wouldn’t be here otherwise. We would be hanging around in the pointless way we are if we hadn’t. Hanging around in the bloody old illusion realm. Of course I know that some people like to pretend that they aren’t hanging around pointlessly. They alike to act like they’re busy. They like to act like they’re doing something important stuff, vital stuff. Vital to what I don’t know. Vital to the game they’re playing.

I can’t blame them though. The ones who act all busy and important. You know the ones. They are the ones who are always rushing around doing this ‘stuff’ that they like to think they’re supposed to do. You’d have to feel for them wouldn’t you? The poor bloody bastards. They just don’t want to face to to the fact that they are illusions doing life in the illusion realm! They don’t want to face up to the awful truth of the matter and I for one don’t blame them. I don’t want to face up to it myself. The only difference is that I really can’t be bothered to make an absolute prat of myself pretending to be busy, pretending that I have important stuff to be doing. I haven’t the heart for that sort of godforsaken benighted undignified tomfoolery.  Why would you do that to yourself? Designing prisons that are ever-more intricate, ever more convoluted; conjuring up better and better torture devices…