Dishonest Joe they call me. Dishonest on account of the fact that I have never said a true thing in my entire life; dishonest on account of how I can’t say a single word without it being a lie. Dishonest on account of how I have lied to myself about every single facet of my existence and yet despite all this lying there is something refreshingly honest about me and that is because I’m so consistent with my dishonesty. I am very consistent indeed – I am a miracle of consistency. You might think that sometimes I might sneakily tell the truth just to confuse people but I don’t. That would be bad form. That wouldn’t be cricket and I do have certain standards in life. In my own perverse way, I am a man of integrity.

If you had a boring life and always had boring, predictable thoughts would there be a method in the internet to make you to be able to be less boring, I wondered? Is this perhaps why everyone goes on the internet all the time? This was of course one of my typical ‘boring thoughts’. I have this thought – or one very much like it – tens of thousands of times per day. I’m a machine for thinking boring thoughts, I thought to myself. I am forever treading the same narrow and well-worn path only it isn’t a path because it doesn’t lead anywhere. It’s a garden path that I have created for myself and as soon as I wake up every morning I start walking it. That’s what I do instead of living – I have my own little thing that I do, I have my own little garden in my mind and that garden has a little old path in it. I call it the ‘Magic Roundabout’.

‘Why would you do this to yourself?’ you ask but you already know the answer. I go around and around in a loop every day because I’m afraid of what might happen if I don’t! I’m afraid of the bad thing happening and that’s why I have this little thing that I do instead. It drives me mad with boredom but at the end of the day it’s infinitely better than what I call ‘the feared alternative’. There is a payoff for every behaviour however, as we all know. I’m condemned by my own hand to bore myself senseless every day with my own pestilential bullshit but the payoff is that I never that I get to be safe in my own private universe. They will never find me here you see, and that thought gives me the confidence to carry on. They’ll never find me here you see, and that thought gives me the confidence to carry on. The confidence to carry on running, that is. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that paranoia isn’t a bad thing. Don’t ever let them tell you that.

Some people think that confidence comes from having white teeth but I know otherwise, I know that confidence comes from having an unassailable bulwark to protect us against all the unspecified enemies that we may or may not have. ‘Thine enemies will seek to harm thee with their weapons’ – isn’t that what it says in the Scriptures? ‘Thine enemies will pursue thee down the street, shouting angrily and loudly and waving above their heads the dread weapons with which they intend to harm thee.’ So it says in the Scriptures and it’s an actual truth too – that’s what I have come to realise. It’s an actual truth. ‘What a terrible thing it is to have enemies who are trying to seek you out so that they can then harm you,’ I said to myself, ‘what a terribly comfortless thing this is’.

Your own mind will rise up against you as an enemy in the Bardo realm,’ it also says in the Scriptures. I think it does, anyway. ‘Instead of recognising the horrifying apparitions as being the projections of your own mind you will be overcome by terror and flee for all you’re worth’. You will flee unceasingly, you will flee forever. You will flee forever but your pursuers will find you out wherever you go. They will hunt you down unerringly. They will find you wherever you go and this knowledge terrifies you even more – if that were possible, and it is possible because there are no limits to fear! You think things are bad now, I warned myself – but you haven’t seen the half of it. You haven’t seen anything yet.

I live in utter and complete terror of the feared event. You can see the terror in my eyes. You can see the naked fear there – fear as a revelation, fear as an all-consuming reality. Fear as a final reality. The jaws of fear never stop chomping and the belly of fear never ceases to be hungry. The belly of fear never stops rumbling – rumbling like thunder. I am trying as best as I can to outrun the feared event (which is the feared event where my enemies finally catch up with me, the feared event where the wrathful deities finally pin me down and confront me with the horror of my own wickedness) but this event is of course utterly inevitable. The terrifying unerring enemies which pursue me so very relentlessly are the projections of my own mind, after all…