Time flies and it also crawls and there’s not much we can do about that. We’re at the mercy of it, after all! We are at the mercy of time and that’s all there is to it. Like it or lump it, type of thing. Time rushes and it dawdles and it twists and it turns. It’s taking us on a trip and we have to let go along with it no matter whether we want to or not. Come with me, come with me, time says. It whispers and it roars, it brays like a jackass and hoots like an owl. Sometimes it never stops talking and at other times it never says a thing. It is time I’m talking about or something else, I wonder? Am I losing track of myself? It’s the most terrible thing ever, to be a mechanical doll person in the mechanical world – you shouldn’t think that there’s anything worse because there isn’t. You see your arms and legs move but there’s nothing you can do about it. You’re dancing to the beat of someone else’s drum, only it’s not so much dancing as shuffling. You’re shuffling dismally. You’ve been an inmate of the sacred institution of your own mind too long and it’s made you shuffle. It’s broken your spirit. You’ve been obeying rules too long now you’re shuffling despondently to the beat of your own lame thoughts. You’ve been following procedures too long and now you’ve come unstuck. You’d be happy if you knew how but no one ever told you. Your own thoughts are telling you stuff, one thing after another, and you – gullible as you are – are falling over yourself in your hurry to believe them. Tell me some great stuff thoughts, I say, tell me some great stuff. The game soon wears thin however. I was in a strange space and no mistake, it occurred to me. My mind-body identity was a dystopian robot and everything I said was psychobabble. I was drowning in an ocean of psychobabble. I’ve been institutionalised by my own mind far too long. I ought to have known better but somehow I never managed to never get around to doing anything. I failed to act. What can I say – my attention was elsewhere. ‘What on earth were you thinking about?’ you ask  incredulously, ‘you just sat there and let it happen to you!’ I don’t know what I had been thinking about of course, I can’t remember that. Nothing in the least bit significant anyway – you can be sure of that. It’s not easy finding things to be sure of but that’s one of them. ‘That’ll learn him’, you’re probably thinking. ‘That’ll learn the bastard. Why wasn’t he paying attention, after all? Why was he wasting his time thinking nonsense thoughts the whole time? What kind of stupid behaviour was that?’ Yes I know you are judging me. You’re thinking I shouldn’t have wasted the whole of my life up to this point thinking nonsense thoughts like a dog chewing on an old bone and that if I ended up being institutionalised by the thinking mind then it’s my own fault. I’ve got no one else to blame, obviously. I can only blame myself. That’s what you’re thinking, I know. ‘Serves him right’, you’re probably thinking. ‘Serves the bloody bastard right’. That’s all very well but where’s the compassion? Where’s the compassion in that, that’s what I want to know?