I was smoking away on my special pipe. Smoke the special pipe, smoke the special pipe, smoke the my my mind told me with the greatest possible urgency. I was puffing away puffing away for all I was worth, puffing away like a pure lunatic, puffing away like a fiend. My face was going purple with all the puffing. My hair was standing on end. Smoking to special stuff the very special stuff in my very special pipe. All of this was occurring within a hallucination of course smoking the special stuff that was in the bowl of my special pipe was causing me to hallucinate madly, feverishly, insanely, and the outcome of this feverish hallucinatory process was smoke this special pipe, my mind told me sternly, and yet I knew all along that my mind was a hallucination that came out of the glowing bowl of my pipe. Smoked the special pipe, smoked the special pipe came all the echoes in Istanbul in all of a sudden tumble. Came all the echoes, came the echoes, came the e3choes in a sudden. My ego was clearly fragmenting, which is a thing that often happens to me when I get carried away by my smoking obsession and start smoking my my own smoking. Smoke your own smoking my mind advised me, taking the form of a cliched elderly psychotherapist belonging to one of the older analytical schools. My mind – which was at this point in the proceedings thinly disguised as an old-style psychoanalyst – peered at me over a pair of steel rimmed glasses. You have regressed back to a primal infant modality he informed me, you’re caught up in a bout of pathological incest fixation and you think everyone else is sick when really it was it was you all along. Something will have to be done, of course, the austere authority figure which was my mind told me, in the severest of tones. he was the headmaster of my dreams and I was in detention for ever. You’re very sick indeed, he informed me. It’s a dangerous situation, he told me it’s perilous for everyone. You’re a very sick person. You are possibly the sickest man on the whole planet right now. Words just can’t describe it. You are so sick it’s a national crisis. The emergency services have been called. I smoked faster, realising that I needed to smoke faster, realizing that I needed to integrate the contents of my my psychosis. Smoke faster, my mind urged me, smoke faster and that way you might just be able to stem the evil tide

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Out of the rich creamy euphoria – and I’m talking about the genuine Primo Quality Stuff here, which we in the trade call ‘the Cream of the Cream’ – anyone at all, irrespective of their personal skills or talents – can create a compelling and completely satisfying fantasy life. We in the trade like to call this ‘the Cream of the Cream’, the rich, deliciously creamy euphoria that we all love so much – anyone at all, irrespective of the very best fantasies can be created and effectively maintained and the reason for this is that euphoria of this special premier-quality product can create and maintain a richly-compelling fantasy life – a fantasy life fit for a king and you – irrespective of your personal skills, worth or talents – can create a compelling and completely satisfying fantasy that anyone would be proud of and I’m talking about the genuine ‘Primo Quality’ Stuff here, which we in the trade called ‘the Cream of the Cream’ . The very best fantasies can be created and effectively maintained and the reason for this is that euphoria of this special premier-quality product supports and gives backbone to any egoic fantasy – irrespective of how inadequate (or perfectly lame) it may be. Create a fantasy life fit for a king and for the reason for this is that euphoria of this very special quality supports and augments and maintains a richly-compelling fantasy life – a fantasy that any

Suppose you’re bored, at a loss, disconnected, alienated, fed up and so on and so forth – all that kind of stuff. You just can’t get motivated anymore – you just want to stay distracted all the time, in your sterile little cocoon of self-distraction. You would stay there forever if you could but of course you can’t. That’s just not possible, as you yourself know only too well. No, that’s not possible, as you now realise only too clearly. You are about to be kicked out of your nice safe little cocoon and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. You are being turfed out, you’re being unceremoniously evicted into the outside world and the outside world isn’t a very friendly place! Not to you it isn’t, at any rate. It’s very far from being friendly as far as you’re concerned – it’s just about as unfriendly as it could get.

You’re making a scene, of course – you’re making a big ugly scene of it. For all the good it’ll do you. You might as well go quietly but you won’t. You will never do anything quietly; you would never do anything the easy way because that’s just the way you are. Why do it the easy way when you could make a scene and drag it out for as long as possible? You’re bored, fed up, listless, at a loss, and all the rest of it. You’re not very happy about the cards life has dealt you and you’re letting the whole world know exactly how you feel. Not that the world gives a damn about how you feel because of course it doesn’t. The world doesn’t give a shit.

How great it would be if only everything could be great! How truly exceptional that would be. How truly. You have come to realise that this can never be however, and the knowledge is very bitter to you. Never was knowledge so bitter. You’re off form, you’re out of sorts, you’re as cranky as hell and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. There’s nothing anyone can do to make your day better. No Sir there isn’t. You’re just going along for the ride (as they say) and what a ride it is, huh? Fun for all the family, as they say. It’s a nightmare you just can’t switch off. It’s a nightmare with no off button.

One moment you’re bored, listless, disgruntled, cantankerous, out of sorts – chewing over the cud in your grubby little cocoon and then the next moment you’re wishing you could have it all back. You’re wishing you could be back there in the old cocoon. You didn’t know how you good you had it. No one ever does. You didn’t realise how very lucky you were to have your very own sterile private reality bubble to fart about in. Within which you could do all meaningless bullshit as you wanted and still feel like a bloody hero. Within which you could (and did) talk shit to your heart’s content. Those were the days, my friends – those were the days. Consequence free bullshit, which is just the way you like it. And you never appreciated it. You took it all for granted, fool that you are. And still are.

You’re bitter towards yourself on this account. Very bitter. You’re downright toxic. Super-toxic. Of course you are. You’re mean and cranky and you can’t find it within yourself to move on. No way can you move on. You can’t see the bigger picture – you can never see the bigger picture. You’re permanently deluded. You can’t find it in yourself to give yourself a break – quite the opposite is true, in fact. You won’t ever let up. You’re going to punish yourself relentlessly every step of the way and no one can blame you for that. You had it coming, after all…

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I was trying to make things be real. “Make it be real, make it be real”, I screamed tremulously. I had become a broken man at this stage you understand. I’d been pushed too far and yet – at the same time – I hadn’t been pushed far enough. I had made mistakes and plenty of them. I had made mistakes that I had sworn I would never ever make again, and yet I make them all the time! I don’t do anything else but make them. I don’t ‘learn from my mistakes’, I am my mistakes, if you see what I mean. If you get my drift. I am the mistaken and the mistake is me. There’s no undoing it however, there’s no fixing it – that’s what I was going to learn, at some vague and unspecified point in the future. I was going to learn that the mistake which was me couldn’t ever be undone. I was going to learn that the more you try to straighten it out the worse it gets. That’s learning for you. That’s  real learning – the real deal, not like that phoney-ass ‘university type’ learning. Which – as we all know – is pure garbage. Which – as we all know – isn’t worth shit. “Make things be real, make things be real”, I scream impotently. And there’s nothing worse than hearing some poor fool screaming impotently, is there? There’s a really annoying whine to that. I’d lost my grip you see – I’d lost my grip and – consequently – become a nasty hollow echo of myself. Which was – I must tell you – not a particularly pleasant feeling. ‘Not ideal by any means’, as we might say. Then again, when push comes to shove you have to make do with what you’ve got – in my experience. Don’t you just hate people who say, ‘in my experience’? Wankers. They’re pathetic wankers who are always trying to validate themselves by talking even more bullshit. Bullshit on top of bullshit. “I am the master of all I survey”, I comment dryly to myself, in real time for once.  I surely AM the master of all I survey and all I can survey from here is shit – shit as far as the eye can see, shit all around, shit to the north and shit to the south. “I am heir to Endless Realms of Shit”, I tell myself grandly, “and no man may come between me and this Foetid and Malodorous Domain”. Reasoning thus, my spirits rose phoenix-like and I became indomitable. “None shall gainsay me”, I croak triumphantly, my voice cracking and quavering with pride – “no one shall gainsay me for I am the Supreme Master of All Shit Things”. In my heart of hearts however I couldn’t help wondering if my narrative was a bit askew. I couldn’t help wondering if perhaps I was fooling myself, which is something I do rather a lot. I couldn’t help wondering if all the Shit Things weren’t perhaps the Lord and Master of me.

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Farting angrily in the night, the bad things roam restlessly around the fields that surround my house. I can’t see them but I can hear them – I could hear them coughing harshly from time to time, letting out mad yelps and making strange bubbling noises. I could hear them all too well as I lay there cowering in my rickety bed, pulling the bed clothes around me, trying not to get too afraid, trying to keep a cool head.

“But what is too afraid?” you ask, “what sort of a thing is ‘not being too afraid’? How exactly would you characterise such a state?” You’re mocking me, of course – you’re laughing at me for being such a pathetic worm of a man. I’ll let it pass though – I won’t rise to the bait. I’m not a trout, after all! No, I’m not a trout. I’m an eel. The eel is my spirit animal, it is my totem. If I had a flag (or a coat of arms, even) then it would bear the insignia of an eel rampant on the field of sludge. That would be my proud banner.

The night creatures terrify me and I’m not ashamed to admit it. Well, I am ashamed it but when fear becomes too great, when it goes past a certain point, then all considerations of shame, and the need to cover it up, disappears. As I’m sure you yourself know only too well. Then, there is only naked blind fear, careless of what it has to do, careless of what indignities may become necessary. That’s how it always is when terror grips your innards – no thought is given to the question of how much of a fool one may appear. One does what one has to do, no matter how graceless – or downright shameful – it might be. That’s the freedom fear gives us.

I know you’re probably thinking that they weren’t really any fearsome creatures roaming around restlessly outside my house, making vile noises as I lay in my bed quivering with terror. I know you’re probably thinking that it was all in my head, that my fearful mind was simply imagining things. You’re wrong, though. The rational mind always tries to explain things away – that’s how it disguises its fear. That’s why the rational mind is so harsh, so quick to judge – because it is in denial of its own abject fear. That makes the everyday mind cruel, you see – that denial makes the mind unspeakably cruel. Fear has a lot to answer for, my friends.

Fear either makes us into monsters or worms, I guess you could say. It’s either the one way or the other, isn’t it? I may be a worm, but at least I’m an honest one! It is of course a bit sad the best thing I can say about myself that I am at least an honest worm, writhing around in sheer unexpurgated terror in the dead of night but that’s how it is, I’m afraid. And I really am afraid. I have no other way of consoling myself, no other way of repairing my self-esteem. I’m simply making do with what I have available.

In my dreams I am no bed worm but a Mighty Eel, writhing sinuously (and yet at the same time powerfully) in a great stagnant pool of brackish sludge. This is my Kingdom. Never mess with an eel, my friends, never mess with an eel. The eel is King of the Deep. The eel has magical properties. It feeds on poison, on toxins, but comes to no harm. The Eel King thrives and grow strong where lesser creatures would perish. It swims through filth and suffers not. It eats what is not wholesome and yet it never become sick. It rejoices in conditions that would horrify any other creature…

I am undergoing mitosis, I realise. I am nearing the hour of my transformation. All my life has been leading up to this moment (although having said this, I have to admit that this could be said for any moment). My whole life was leading up to this moment but I overshot in my excitement and so it all came to nothing. I couldn’t control my own momentum and before I knew it the moment was gone; before I knew it the moment was behind me and I was catapulted headfirst into a life of nonstop surreal stupidity. “It might be a life of nonstop surreal stupidity, but it’s my life of nonstop serial stupidity,” I told myself bravely, from the comfort of my crumpled and malodorous bed.

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Back in The Days before Time Began – when some things were well known but other things were as of yet still unknown (and would probably remain so) – we took a vote, myself and the other Elder Gods, as to whether there should be such a thing as existence or not. We voted overwhelmingly against it of course, being of one mind in this regard, but later on we lost our resolve. We went back on ourselves, we went back on our original decision and voted to allow it as a trial run, just to see how it worked out. That’s what we said to ourselves anyway, in a foolish attempt to prove to ourselves that we are being prudent and responsible and so on. Once we had voted it in however we were stuck with it – we couldn’t get rid of it again. We’d made our bed and we were brutally compelled to lie in it. The problem was that once we had learned the filthy habit of existing we couldn’t then – at that late stage (after the event, as it were) – turn around and unlearn it. That’s a story you’ve probably heard before, I’d say! I’m sure there are all sorts of examples of this sort of thing – one-way valves that we pass glibly through, talking incessantly as we do so, speaking hideous nonsense as we do so, getting carried away with the heady intoxication of the lies that we ourselves were telling (being deeply enamoured, as we were, with whatever flavour of bullshit it was that happened to be trending at the time) only to discover – very shortly afterwards – that we had lost everything that had actually been any good in our lives. We had become helpless addicts, addicted to existence in all its forms and yet despising it at the same time. Very much despising it. ‘Suppose you opted for a certain type of existence,” I challenged the other members of the Council, “and you were the lowest of the low, devoid of even the slightest trace of self-respect, having lost even the little bit of good that you used to have back in the early days, before the rot set in, would you curse time for playing you false?” My challenge rang out with great clarity in the Sacred Hall of the Ancient Proto-Gods, but no one took any notice. No one paid any heed to me. I was well known in those days for my empty histrionics – I was a Failed God, an experiment gone wrong. I had made some wrong decisions and I was too stubborn to admit it. I was too cowardly to admit it – I was full of fear but I wouldn’t own up to it.

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When I eat Biximeds!^TM then all seems well in the world. I’m enjoying the deep rich flavour of a premium product, a unique award-winning formula which combines the benefits of a tried and trusted family favourite with a deep, rich flavour of a world-beating formula. The deep rich flavour of a premium product that says so much about you, the deep rich pungent flavour that lets you know that all’s well in the world.

It’s very important to have a world-beating formula, very important indeed. That’s the first thing to understand. They’ll always ask you that you see, they’ll always ask you if you have a unique, world-beating formula. That’s the first thing they’ll ask you and you’ve got to have an answer on the tip of your tongue. You’ve got to have that solution right there in your top pocket and be ready to go at a moment’s notice. That’s the only way they’ll take you seriously. That’s the only way you’ll ever be taken seriously…

I’m always building things with my mind – that’s something I’ve noticed over the years. Building these stupid things. I might think that I’m doing nothing, I might think that I’m just chilling out, that I’m ‘hanging out’, or whatever, but really I’m as busy as fuck, building all sorts of things with that overactive mind of mine. Building this, building that, building the other – I don’t even know what I’m building (or not building) at this stage. I haven’t a clue as to what’s going on, to be honest, and – when it comes down to it – I’m not sure that I want to. All my instincts are telling me to look the other way and I’m a pretty instinctual guy.

It’s not just that I’m not sure if I want to know what’s going on, come to think of it. I know I don’t. That’s Pandora’s box as far as I’m concerned and there isn’t a person anywhere on the whole planet who hasn’t heard about that box. Folk have been talking about that old box, and how you should be especially careful to never open it, not even by a little bit, for thousands upon thousands of years. There’s stuff going on in that box that you just don’t want to know about, trust me. The kind of stuff that will keep you awake at night, that kind of stuff that you might catch a momentary glimpse of and then spend the rest of your life wishing wholeheartedly that you hadn’t.

If only we could turn back the page, right? If only we could, if only we could. If only the universe were designed like that. But – as we know – it isn’t. There are things out there that are truly disturbing, things that you really don’t want to know about. That’s a given, that’s a fact of life – I’m not telling you anything you don’t know already. But the really bad shit – the kind of super-bad shit that you really don’t want to know about is all on the inside. That’s kind of the point to the little story I’m trying to tell. That’s kind of what I’m talking about here. Or at least I think that’s what I’m talking about – more or less. That kind of thing, anyway…

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They call me the Despiser.  They call me that on account of how I go around despising people, having contempt for people. That’s my hobby, you see – it amuses me to go around despising the people that I meet. Having pure contempt for them. Well, I’m not amused as such, you understand – that’s just a turn of phrase. I’m not really amused at all. It’s not as if I find anything particularly  funny about my situation, because I don’t. As a rule, I don’t see that much to laugh at in life, when it comes down to it. I am well known for not getting the joke.

I despise people in general and myself in particular. I despise myself most of all because I know what I’m like! You may not know what I’m like, but I sure as hell do. I’ve got a fair idea, at any rate. I’ve known myself for rather a long time now, you see – too long, some might say – and I have yet to surprise myself by doing anything nice. Let’s put it like that, shall we? Why not, after all. Why not put it like that…

I even despise my own despising; I despise my own despising with a passion and that leaves me with nowhere to turn, as you can no doubt appreciate. Nowhere to turn, nowhere to turn. But everyone has to have somewhere to turn, you might say to yourself, but that’s where you’d be wrong. You would be wrong in this case at any rate. You’d be wrong in my case. You’d be dead wrong.

They call me the Insect Man on account of how I have a jointed exoskeleton, antennae, and six legs. Chances are, if you came across some sort of creature with a jointed exoskeleton, antennae and six legs it’s going to be an insect. Not always though, that isn’t always the case. It’s not universally true, just generally so. It could just be a hallucination you see. It could be a larger-than-life hallucination that came out of your very own brain and nowhere else. Your very own super-treacherous, super-devious little brain. Fake friends in a fake world you see – fake friends faking it for all they are worth in the big fat fake old world!

I’ve never known a world that wasn’t fake, now that I come to think of it. I’ve never known a world that wasn’t a lie. Drifting restlessly from one fake world to another, finding nothing to sustain my interest, finding nothing but more and more of this infernal pestilential fakery. There is a time to lie and a time to tell the truth (or so we’re told) but I have yet to come across the latter. I have yet to find myself in a situation where my core instincts weren’t telling me to lie my damn head off! ‘Lie you stupid bastard, lie!’ my core instincts keep telling me, ‘Lie as hard as you can you stupid useless twat, lie as if your very life depends upon it…’

Like a bastard, lie like a freak. Isn’t that right? Isn’t that what your core instincts keep on telling you? I would presume that it is, at any rate. I presume as much. We can only infer what it must be like to be someone else, experiencing what they are experiencing, feeling the emotions that they do, making the rash decisions that they are making. We can only guess, we can only guess. I have yet to have a day in my life when I wasn’t lying my goddamn head off, lying fit to burst, lying like a complete out-of-control gobshyte. I know nothing else, you might say. I know nothing else but my own interminable lies. I take this as being perfectly normal of course. I assume that it’s the same for everyone.

Am I right in this assumption, though? I sometimes wonder if I’m right about this. Sometimes I get to wondering about it. ‘Perhaps it’s not the same for everybody’, I say to myself. Maybe it’s only me that’s like this. At times like this my thoughts turn against me and I become dreadfully agitated and ill at ease. I become troubled in myself. The thought ‘Am I an complete and utter freak?’ pops into my head. It tries to get my attention by flashing on and off at high speed. After a while I generally calm down, however. Eventually I calm down, to some extent or other, at least. ‘Probably everyone goes through this’, I say to myself reassuringly, ‘probably this is a perfectly normal thought process…’

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My mind was sitting in the corner, knitting. It was knitting a giant shapeless sweater with which to cover the whole world. All you could hear was the endless ‘clack, clack, clack’ of the knitting needles. The racket of it was unbearable and I was feeling very irritated. ‘Fuck you, mind,’ I said after a while, ‘can’t you ever stop knitting?’

We don’t get on, you see – me and my mind. We don’t see eye to eye at all. Usually, we just sit there sullenly at opposite ends of the table glowering at each other, seething away inside, emitting bad vibes the like of which you can’t possibly imagine. The atmosphere in the room would be foul beyond belief, if the truth were to be known. Toxic isn’t the word for it, toxic is a wholly inadequate term for what used to go on between me and my mind back in those days. In short, there was some serious bad shit going down and there’s no point in me sitting here trying to deny it to you.

‘Perhaps the two of you should have gone to see a therapist,’ you interject archly, trying your best to be tactful. ‘That would have been the responsible thing to do.’ It’s obvious to me however that you’re assuming it’s all my fault, which everyone always does. They take one look at me and assume that it’s all my fault. I’m the innocent one in this story though – I was totally innocent of any wrong-doing and all you’re doing is victim-blaming. ‘Well, you must have done something wrong’, you say glibly, ‘or else why would all of this happen to you. It doesn’t happen to normal people, after all…’ Stuff like that never happens to normal people so if it happens to you then you know for sure that you’re a freak! How can you possibly deny it? When bad stuff happens then it must be your fault so you should just suck it up…

The thing that happened to you in the first place is quite bad enough anyway of course but then you realize that none of that shit would have happened to you if you hadn’t been a freak and that awareness is the icing on the cake, so to speak. That takes it to the next level, as you might imagine. You start to turn in on yourself when that happens – ‘your pain is your shame’, sort of thing. The lessons are there for all to learn – “It’s wrong to be wrong, so we’re told. It’s always wrong to be wrong so just don’t do it. Just don’t do the wrong thing – how hard is that to understand? It’s not rocket-science, is it? It’s right to be right and it’s wrong to be wrong and there’s nothing else we can say about it. It’s a mistake to make a mistake so just bloody don’t.

It had seemed like a good idea at the time and yet I had known all along that it had been a mistake. I just couldn’t accept this however and so I pretended to myself that my life was normal. I pretended every day, year after year. ‘My life is normal,’ I said to myself. It just wasn’t true however – I had made a mistake and no one wanted to know me after that. No one wanted to know me before that either, come to think of it. They knew that things weren’t right – they could tell things weren’t right just to look at me. The trapped look in my eyes, the strange sibilant hissing I made instead of talking, the way I’d suddenly start panting for no reason. I should have known better, of course. I did know better, but I was – all the same – quite powerless to avoid my fate. I carried on anyway. I carried on regardless. That’s the way it always is with fate though, isn’t it? There are two sorts of people in this world, we could say. There are those who are powerless to avoid their fate and know it, and there are those who are powerless to avoid their fate and like to pretend otherwise…

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‘Should I continue to go along with it?’ I ask myself, ‘should I continue to pretend that it is all real, that I am real, and all of the rest of it, or should I just stop pretending?’ Suppose that it were possible somehow to get time out from your life, so that you could go off and make a fresh start and do something less tedious this time, something that doesn’t take quite so much grinding effort – would you avail of this unexpected opportunity (and certainly it is unexpected, for how would it not be?) or would you stick with the rigmarole of your habitual existence and ignore the moment of freedom that has just dawned? We pretend that our daily rigmarole is real, do we not? We tell ourselves that it is both real and very important. We’d get upset if someone said that it wasn’t. ‘If you don’t tell then neither will I…’ I say quickly, seizing the chance to avoid being crushed by the wheels of justice as they grind inexorably on. The least said the soonest mended – or so I was always told at any rate – and the thing is that I’ve said far too much already. I’ve said it all and there’s nothing left to say. It’s no good me trying to take it back you see; it’s no good me trying to take it back because it’s already out there. As large as life. Everything’s already been done and so there’s nothing left to do apart from taking a seat on the sidelines and watching. That’s the defining moment of my life, you might say – the moment where I get to watch everyone else have a great time. Or not, as the case may be. ‘Why does life have to be like this?’ you ask yourself, ‘why does it have to be like this and not some other way? Some other better way.’ Our lives grind on, do they not? Our lives grind on and on, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, whilst in the depths of our being we can’t help wondering what it’s all in aid of. It’s the Force of Entropy of course, that’s what it really comes down to. We never spot it until after the event, as it were. We never spot it until it’s far too late. It creeps up on us over the years, it creeps up on us with the greatest of stealth and then – when there’s exactly zero chance of us being able to do anything about it, it wallops us. It lands on us, it crushes the life out of us. The crushing force of precedence. I did it once and so now I’m going to do it again. I did it ten thousand times and so there’s nothing for it but do it again. I’ve started and so there’s nothing for it but to carry on. I have to see it through to the end. Only it never does end, does it? Be honest now. Just this once. It never finishes (which would at least be something) but rather it drags on interminably. It doesn’t have the decency to end itself, as I believe Sartre was at pains to point out.  It just degrades. It winds down bit by bit, getting slower and slower all the time, but it never stops. Will we ever get there, we wonder? Will we ever get to where we’re going. Only of course we weren’t actually going anywhere. We were never going anywhere. The bus has run out of petrol and so we (the disgruntled passengers) have to complete their journey on foot. We’re disembarking from the stranded vehicle and we’re milling around aimlessly, unable to orientate ourselves, unable to keep up the pretence anymore, the pretence that we know what we’re doing, the pretence that it actually makes sense to us.

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