‘Do you actually KNOW what it feels like to have your mind fascinated by trivia?’ I feel like screaming. ‘Do you actually know what that feels like?” I have the strong intuition that if I do open my mouth then I would screech like a total freak so I keep my mouth tightly shut. I bite my tongue. ‘Do you actually KNOW what it feels like to have your mind hypnotized by every single nonsensical detail that comes along’, I wanted to scream. I didn’t scream though – I kept my mouth shut. I bit my tongue. It wasn’t the right place for that. I was in a sacred space. I was in the dojo. I was in the meditation hall.

 

This must be the most exquisite pain there could ever be, I decided – the pain of being permanently fixated (if not actually crucified) upon meaningless inconsequential details, details that don’t matter to anyone – or shouldn’t do, anyway. The pain of being helplessly hooked on the banal narrative. And have it matter so very much to you. Tears of self-pity sting my eyes and I blink furiously in order to clear them. ‘Run, run, as fast as you can,’ sang the voice in my head, taunting me. I knew I was never going to catch that little gingerbread man as he ran and skipped down the road, mocking me as he went. A fresh crop of tears come to my eyes – tears of frustration this time. I  bite my tongue again to stop myself from screaming out in a torment of pure unendurable frustration.

 

I was stuck fast to my mind with the ultimate adhesive, the strongest most powerful glue ever created. I was stuck fast to the nonsense generator and it was having a field day. It was running me ragged, running me into the ground. ‘You touch it you stick to it,’ laughed the voice. ‘Touch it and you stick to it – that’s the way that it works around here’. I was touching everything in sight. ‘Touch it you buy it’ screamed the voice, and my shopping trolley was full to overflowing. Full of rubbish I would never need. Full of rubbish no one would ever need. I was belting along down the aisles, throwing stuff into the trolley as fast as I could. Chucking it in there. ‘You touch it you buy it,’ yelled the voice again and my trolley couldn’t have been fuller. Full of unique one-time-only special offers. Once in a lifetime offers – never to be repeated….

 

I’m lost in the long lonely shopping aisles of my mind, wandering around like a ghost. Wandering like a lost soul. Lost forever, hopelessly lost, frighteningly lost. I’ve fallen head-first into a barrel of the ultimate adhesive – I’ll stick to any rubbish that comes into my head. Is this the ultimate form of misery, I wonder, or is there something worse? Should I count myself lucky that I don’t have the worst form of misery to contend with? The really bad type? I’m getting tired out at this stage – fingers of pure fatigue are probing deeply into my psyche, squeezing and pulling the insides of me. The eyes are dropping right out of my head now, the effort even of existing is too much for me. If you can actually call what I’m doing ‘existing’, that is. Which I somehow doubt that you can…

 

Then the moment of insight comes and I realize that I have up to this point been seeing everything wrong, seeing everything backwards, and that the capering sneering little gingerbread man is me. I am that vilely annoying little freak, running and skipping like an intolerable fool. I am Satan’s Imp –  yipping and yapping and yipping and yapping and yipping and yapping and mouthing off like a vile jackass all the while, full of laughable illusions regarding my own immortality, whilst heading the whole time to certain disaster….