I had been preparing for the main event’ for many years (ever since I was knee-high to a brine shrimp, in fact), but then when the time actually came for action I fluffed it. I fluffed it good and proper. I made a complete horrible mess of things. A very bad mess of things. ‘So it goes’, I told myself philosophically, ‘so it goes, so it goes…’ I was paying unconscious homage to Kurt Vonnegut. I had been preparing for this moment since further back than I can remember but when the moment finally arrived I made a complete hash of it. A complete and utter hash of it. I tried to be philosophical about this too of course, as one does, as one necessarily does under these circumstances. ‘Never mind’, I told myself glibly, ‘it probably wasn’t that important anyway…’
When people stand next to me it feels as if they are actually in my head – I get claustrophobic, I get panicky. I run shouting incoherently through the streets, viciously cursing at anyone who gets in my way. Screaming vile abuse at them at the top of my voice, howling out my resentment for all the world to hear. I have learned a lot during the course of my life, including a good many things most people never have to learn, but none of it did me any good in the end. When it came to the crunch I was just another witless freak running down the street, roaring his head off, hollering and screaming like a dumb-ass fool.
Just another freak, just another ‘screw-up’ freaking out in the street, shouting and roaring stuff that even they don’t understand, never mind anyone else! If you were to come up to me and ask me what exactly my issue was I wouldn’t be able to tell you. ‘Prepare for the event, prepare for the event’, I told myself determinedly, trying to get ‘one up’ on the situation that was about to unfold. If you were to ask me what event it was that I was trying to prepare for I wouldn’t be able to tell you, however. I hadn’t a clue. And if you were to ask me how exactly I was going to prepare for it I wouldn’t be able to tell you that either. I hadn’t the foggiest notion and that of course makes a lot of sense when you think about it – how can you prepare for something when you don’t know what that ‘something’ is going to be? That’s something of a conundrum, wouldn’t you say? It’s a conundrum we all have to cope with one way or another. Not that there actually is such a thing as ‘coping’, of course. That’s the biggest lie of all.
That’s life, though. That’s how life is. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that if life itself is the conundrum, then how can any all the bits and pieces that go to make it up be any LESS of a conundrum? Even the simplest, most of apparently straightforward components of life will sooner or later show themselves up to be absolutely perplexing, absolutely confounding. It’ll hit you one day (if it hasn’t done so already). It’ll hit you one day and then you’ll be the one running down the road, shouting bullshit that no one – including yourself – understands. Everyone fluffs it up in the end you see, and that’s the big secret they don’t want you to know. Everyone makes a hash of it sooner or later, no matter how highly trained they might claim to be. That’s just the way it is, after all. That’s just the way things are and so there isn’t really any point in fighting against it. You’re just being a dumb-ass if you do that…
