I was counting my chickens. ‘One hundred and one chickens, one hundred and two chickens, one hundred and three chickens,’ I counted. The chickens were only in my head, however; all of them – all untold thousands of them – were only in my head, and there was I counting them all like some kind of damn fool…
‘How great is reality?’ the keen young market researchers wanted to know, brimming over with ingratiating smiles. ‘How great is reality? Is it – [A] Very great, [B] Quite great, [C] OK, [D]reasonably OK, or [E]pure crap.’
‘There’s one chicken’, says I to myself, ‘and – by jingo – there’s another…’ There was a whole long line of chickens and – what’s more – they were all mine! The chickens in my head were all mine. They continued to walk by, and I continued to count them off, never missing a one, never missing a beat. I was safe and sound in my very own Toy Universe, you see – it existed only in my own head and it went around and around in circles forever. The chickens kept a-coming and I kept a-counting them and that’s what keeps the whole thing going. That’s the whole trick right there.
‘I’m trapped in a perfectly loathsome fantasy that came out of my very own mind’, I cried out then, suddenly aware of the sheer horror of my (purported) existence. ‘I’m trapped in a fantasy that has gone bad, a fantasy that has turned evil, and now I’m powerless to get away from it!’ This dark and unwholesome fantasy has me in it’s clutches and it is dragging me down to my inevitable doom. I’m doomed in my very own fantasy! Not how it’s supposed to work out, is it?
I am unanimous in my own lifetime – everyone agrees with me straightaway, no matter what I say. Folk automatically follow my lead. I’m a trendsetter, I guess you could say. I agree with me straightaway too – I agree with myself without question. I don’t even know what I’m talking about half the time but what the hell, right? Who gives a shit? I’ll believe in any bullshit just too long as it’s the right man coming out with it. ‘Give that man a medal’, I’ll cry out, waving my hat in the air. ‘Give that man a bloody medal…’
There are people going around saying that I’m not all that I’m cracked up to be. They’re trying to present me in a bad light – ‘He’s nothing but a crazy chicken counter’, they’ll tell you, ‘he goes around counting chickens in his head the whole day long. You can’t believe a word he says! I’m wise to them now though, you can be sure of that. I know what their game is and I’m going to put a stop to it, all in my own good time.
Things are good, but at the same time they’re bad – if you know what I mean. I’m in top form, raring to go, but at the same time I’m like a total bastard. I’m like a living antichrist. A crucial thread has come loose in my jacket and the whole thing’s starting to unravel. A stray chicken got past me when I wasn’t looking. My life is significant and real, but at the same time it’s a tissue of lies. It’s a toilet roll of lies that I can wipe my ass with every day. The lies will stick and the truth will have to go underground! It’s the same story that anyone will tell you, if you get them half a chance. No more and no less. My advice however is to keep on walking: keep your head down and keep on walking and that way you won’t have to listen to them…
