I watched on, amazed and dismayed, at the wretchedly, dismally sad spectacle of my poor mechanical life – I honestly couldn’t believe how appalling it was. ‘No!’ I cried out at myself, ‘what are you doing, you total fool?’ ‘No, you utter fool,’ I shouted tempestuously, ‘wake up you, you utter idiot. Wake up before it’s too late…’ It was all just a recording. however. Everything is all just a recording and I know it as well as the next man does. Amazed and disappointed, I watched on as the dismal spectacle of my life unfolded, with grim inevitability, in front of my very eyes. ‘Is there anyone who I can blame for all this? I wondered. ‘Or do I have to shoulder the full responsibility for it?’ For this charade, for this mockery of all that is decent? Amazed and disappointed doesn’t cover the half of it. ‘Who can I blame, who can I blame?’ I asked myself bitterly as I stumbled blindly through the desolate inner wastelands of my own soul. Who indeed? It’s the habit of a lifetime, you see and that’s no easy matter. It’s no easy matter to go changing the habit of a lifetime. You know that yourself. You know yourself that it isn’t. ‘No,’ you shout out, ‘don’t do it! Don’t enact the habit because you know it’ll do you no good in the end…’ But you just can’t help it you see and that’s the whole problem right there. ‘It’s the habit of a lifetime,’ I told them, ‘it’s the habit of a whole lifetime so what do you expect me to do about it?’ Amazed and dismayed, I looked on. There was nothing I could do about it at this stage anyway – things had gone too far. ‘Things have gone too far’, I told myself, ‘they’ve gone too far and yet they haven’t gone far enough…’ From where I sit I can see the crows asleep in the treetops. They look like they’re sleeping any way – motionless jet black silhouettes set against a pale blue sky. I wonder if they’re dreaming and – if so – what they were dreaming about. What kinds of things. What type of things. It’s the habit of a lifetime, you see – wondering about this, wondering about that. Intense hieroglyphics scrolling slowly down behind my closed eyelids – they were filling me full of arcane information. I didn’t understand a word of it, of course. I never do. ‘What will the future bring?’ I wonder, ‘will it bring wonderful new things, or will it just bring more of the same?’ It’s just a recording of course. It’s just a tired old recording, as I have said before. It’s the habit of a lifetime.
