‘What does it mean to be free from the cobwebs of thought, those thick and ropey cobwebs of the mind that keep us hemmed in under the cover of their perennial darkness?’ I asked myself. ‘What does it all mean?’
I didn’t know what it meant for me to be asking myself this question. I didn’t know where the words came from and I didn’t know what they meant. I didn’t know why I was speaking them in the first place, to be perfectly frank. I was in a dream. I didn’t even know if the event in question – the event of me asking this question – even happened or not. I simply couldn’t tell.
And then of course the next thing was that I couldn’t tell whether I had actually had that thought about whether the event that had just happened really had just happened or not or whether I hadn’t. Maybe I had never had the thought but had only thought that I had. I could have been mistaken. I didn’t know for sure whether this in turn was a true thought or not. ‘Is it a true thought that I really did think this thought?’ I wondered, and then straightaway started to wonder whether I had really just thought that. ‘Did I really just think that?’ I asked myself, the perplexity slowly starting to build. I was poised on the edge of a frightening precipice, trying desperately to climb back onto some solid ground.
The cobwebs of thought, the cobwebs of thought. Blowing slightly in the breeze, festooned with the filth of ages, untouched for hundreds of years. Gathering to itself all forms of corruption, all possible forms of degradation and horror. Bad things of all description. Blowing ever so slightly in the unwholesome breeze that issues forth from the unclean depths. People are freaking out about the new content, so they say. They’re freaking out left, right and centre. They’re freaking out like crazy, they’re jumping up and down going ape-shit about the wonderful new content that the content providers have provided. Isn’t it great they say. Isn’t it so very great. Their minds are controlled by psychic parasites of course, and that’s the problem here. That’s always the problem, when it comes right down to it.
The dirty old cobwebs of thought are all I can see. ‘What does it mean to live your life underground, in the unwholesome depths, never seeing the light of day?’ I ask myself. What does it mean to be suffocated under a veritable carpet of dank and unwholesome thoughts, suffused as they are with the filth of ages, the horrible filth of ages? It obviously doesn’t speak of anything too good, I reflect sombrely. It obviously doesn’t betoken anything joyful, anything light-hearted, anything that might be construed as being reminiscent in some way of happier times. We mustn’t forget those happier times. We must hang on to the memory of them for all we’re worth and – if we can’t do this – we must at least try to invent some.
I had wondered down here in search of new and wonderful content, content the like of which no other human being had ever come across before, only to find myself in this unspeakable underworld, this vile netherworld that we all know so very well. There is no new content down here of course, only the wretched filth of ages, only the clammy cobwebs of thought hanging down like dank and dusty blankets wherever I look. No longer could I muster the strength to continue to push through them. No longer was I able to continue with my foraging, my continued search for new and varied content. I had reached what was clearly a dead-end.
‘What does it mean to languish under the oppressive weight of my own dreadfully stale thoughts?’ I ask myself. What does it mean to be mired deep in the unspeakable filth of ages, what does it mean to feel the last remnants of life being sucked out of my lungs by some dark force. I’m afraid to breathe in case I take any more of the corruption into my body. The corruption which I am surrounded by on all sides. I’m afraid to breathe. Things are bad now but who’s to say they won’t get worse? Things can always get worse, as you know. You might look back on this particular moment as the happiest time of your life. Maybe it will turn out to be just that. Maybe it will. Who’s to say, after all?
It’s all about the content, you see. Content you just can’t get enough of – rich content, fruitful content. Content the like of which no other human being has ever seen. It’s a revelation. You can’t get enough of it. And then the next thing is that you’re floating, you’re floating like a weightless zephyr high above your own conceptual horizon. You’re floating free from thought’s malicious web and it occurs to you that the confused and fear-filled life you had been leading down there no longer seems in the least bit real to you. None of it seems real. It is as if the whole experience had actually never happened – you only thought that it had.
