There is a deeper reality than the reality of rules, I said to myself, but even as I said this I felt somewhat shaky, somewhat unsure of myself. The words sounded fine, no doubt of that. These were fine-sounding words alright but man cannot live by words alone. Man cannot live by words alone I told myself solemnly, hoping to reason myself out of the mess I’d walked myself into. That’s another fine mess I told myself. Another fine mess. Seconds turned into minutes and minutes turned into hours and the hours turned into the beats of some dreadful drum. The hours turned into the relentless ticking of a terrible metronome. Time itself became the prison, and I the prisoner. Isn’t that enough to do anyone’s head in? I asked myself, bitterly bewailing my fate. How is anyone supposed to cope with this? There is a deeper reality than the reality of the ticking metronome I told myself bravely, but even as I said these words reality itself started to give way. Reality was fragmenting I realised. Reality itself was coming undone, fault lines racing with frightening speed through everything I could see. Nothing escaped, nothing could escape. What was the point in existing, I wondered. What sense did it make? All around me reality was breaking up into sparkling pixels, nothing substantial anywhere. Just an infinite array of pixels stretching off in every direction like some sort of giant spider’s web. I’m lost in Pixel World, I thought to myself – a numb sense of horror spreading slowly through me. Like an ever-widening stain on a white table cloth. Only I wasn’t because I was nothing but pixels too. I was a bunch of pixels in Pixel World and I was slowly coming undone. I’m stuck in the Plastic Doll Phase I screamed silently but I wasn’t – I gone way beyond that. ‘What comes next?’ I wondered then and my question was taken up immediately by thousands upon thousands of chirping crickets. What comes next? What comes next? What comes next? chirped the crickets. Everything I thought was echoed back instantly at me and yet I couldn’t stop thinking, my mind frantically racing looking for an escape. I was in a hotel room and the air all around me was full of flying ants, millions and millions of them. They were swarming. It was the rainy season. I had to be careful to keep my mouth shut or else I would end up swallowing them. They were so many of them that I could barely see more than a few feet ahead of me. The floor was hidden under a thick carpet of swarming ants in the process of losing their wings and they crunched under my feet as I walked. Then came a solemn procession of toads – those terrible toads with their eyes like jewels and their warty skin. I remembered those toads so well. I realised that I was reliving my life all over again and that before very long I would be a child again, lost in fantasies. I would be a child all over again, lost in a world of my own…
There is a deeper reality than the reality of rules, I said to myself, but even as I said this I felt somewhat shaky, somewhat unsure of myself. The words sounded fine, no doubt of that. These were fine-sounding words alright but man cannot live by words alone. Man cannot live by words alone I told myself solemnly, hoping to reason myself out of the mess I’d walked myself into. That’s another fine mess I told myself. Another fine mess. Seconds turned into minutes and minutes turned into hours and the hours turned into the beats of some dreadful drum. The hours turned into the relentless ticking of a terrible metronome. Time itself became the prison, and I the prisoner. Isn’t that enough to do anyone’s head in? I asked myself, bitterly bewailing my fate. How is anyone supposed to cope with this? There is a deeper reality than the reality of the ticking metronome I told myself bravely, but even as I said these words reality itself started to give way. Reality was fragmenting I realised. Reality itself was coming undone, fault lines racing with frightening speed through everything I could see. Nothing escaped, nothing could escape. What was the point in existing, I wondered. What sense did it make? All around me reality was breaking up into sparkling pixels, nothing substantial anywhere. Just an infinite array of pixels stretching off in every direction like some sort of giant spider’s web. I’m lost in Pixel World, I thought to myself – a numb sense of horror spreading slowly through me. Like an ever-widening stain on a white table cloth. Only I wasn’t because I was nothing but pixels too. I was a bunch of pixels in Pixel World and I was slowly coming undone. I’m stuck in the Plastic Doll Phase I screamed silently but I wasn’t – I gone way beyond that. ‘What comes next?’ I wondered then and my question was taken up immediately by thousands upon thousands of chirping crickets. What comes next? What comes next? What comes next? chirped the crickets. Everything I thought was echoed back instantly at me and yet I couldn’t stop thinking, my mind frantically racing looking for an escape. I was in a hotel room and the air all around me was full of flying ants, millions and millions of them. They were swarming. It was the rainy season. I had to be careful to keep my mouth shut or else I would end up swallowing them. They were so many of them that I could barely see more than a few feet ahead of me. The floor was hidden under a thick carpet of swarming ants in the process of losing their wings and they crunched under my feet as I walked. Then came a solemn procession of toads – those terrible toads with their eyes like jewels and their warty skin. I remembered those toads so well. I realised that I was reliving my life all over again and that before very long I would be a child again, lost in fantasies. I would be a child all over again, lost in a world of my own…
