I took a nibble of the muddler, and I was muddled fine and fast. I was as muddled as muddled could be. I took a sip of the fuddler, and I was fuddled before I knew it. I was as fuddled as fuddled could be. I was as fuddled as fuck…
‘I’m muddled out of my brain!’ I cried out excitedly – ‘I’m as muddled as muddled can be…’ I am muddled in the morning and I’m muddled in the night. I am muddled the whole time – I don’t know what it means not to be muddled.
I was too muddled to know what I was saying anymore – too muddled by far, too muddled by miles. ‘I am the one who shouts in the dark’, I expostulated grandly, ‘I am he who wallows gloriously in the dismal slurry of his own confusion’.
‘I am he who…’ I whispered sorrowfully, losing my thread entirely at this stage. It had never been much of a thread in the first place, but now it was gone entirely, leaving me out on a limb with nowhere left to go.
‘I am he who, I am he who…’, I breathed out, having run out of things to say. I’d reached the end of the line and that was that. There was nothing more I could do.
I’d lost my bearings and was all adrift in a stagnant sea. I was tied to the revolving wheel of my constantly recycled thoughts. Nothing new ever happens here – my life had softly collapsed in on itself. It had quietly imploded and no one had noticed.
Auspicious one moment, ominous the next, the clouds track across the sky like a solemn procession of strange heraldic animals. The sight signifies the end of all things, I realize. ‘I’m sad to see you’, I whisper, ‘but I’m also glad.’ ‘I’m so happy to see you’, I whisper again, after an indeterminate length of time, ‘but I’m also very sad…’
When I look down at my arms and legs I see to my surprise that my body is made up of tendrils of clammy fog. There’s nothing solid about me at all. Before very long the sea breeze will come and blow me away.
