Regret

I grasp wildly at straws but find nothing but handfuls of chaff – the same old chaff I always find. One minute I’m a superhero the next I’m a laughable dickhead cringing in unbearable awareness of my hideously mistaken  pretentions to greatness one minute I’m glorying in my godlike power the next I’m trying to find some kind of nook or cranny to hide in hoping that the craggy earth will take pity on me and swallow me up. One minute I’m a force of nature knowing no fear the next I am terrifyingly over-exposed looking for a hidey-hole to disappear into trying to pretend to be some sort of inanimate object so that no one will notice me I’m a garden gate I’m a broom handle I’m a dead branch of a tree which lies completely covered with moss on the forest floor and is overgrown by burgeoning ground vegetation I’m a small irregular-shaped grey stone lying by the side of the road I’m a tiny fleck of fly shit on the window pane I’m a blank face in the crowd you’ll never notice me only you already have you’re laughing at me for being so maladapted and pathetic and yet somehow ludicrously thinking I’m great at the same time. The whole world is laughing at me – I am the butt of every joke. Wherever people gather they are laughing at me. There’s no place for me to hide and so all I can do is sit in a corner and rock myself back and forth repeating my special words to myself so that nothing can harm me. I want so much to be part of things to be allowed to be there but I can’t I am always driven on by harsh voices ‘Get out of here,” they say, “we don’t want you here. You have to go somewhere else…” The spirits told me that I was contaminating the park with my presence and that I had to go that I had to leave they all ganged up on me haranguing and harassing me so that I was obliged, however reluctantly, to move on yet again. This is my story and I am obliged to keep on telling it until I can find someone to listen and say yes truly you are an outcaste amongst outcastes, one who is shunned even by the dregs of the lower worlds but no one will hear me no one will stick around long enough to hear my story instead the deteriorated spirits band together to harass and harangue me telling me that I must go, telling me that there is no place for me here. The angry crowd pelts me with rubbish which they have taken from the overflowing bins and skips in the street and they wave their sticks threateningly over their heads shouting angrily at me and yelling abuse and I know that it is time yet again for me to move on. It’s always time for me to move on. A weariness greater than anything anyone could ever imagine grips me like an iron vice on a workman’s bench but despite my weakness I have to get somehow to my feet and continue my pointless interminable wanderings. As I make my way out of the park gate I marvel that I could have fashioned such a reality for myself – out of all the multitudinous possibilities that are open to living beings, some with more suffering in them and some (presumably) with less, why did I have to choose this one?

 

 

 

 

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