My Head Confuses Itself With My Mind
It’s a sobering day when you realize that you’re not going to storm the gates of the world at the front of a vanguard of heroic compatriots, assured of your victory of vitalism and virtue over the stalled momentum of the progress of the old ways. When you admit that it’s all a big mess, bigger than you, bigger than anyone. When you consider that you have to settle for being mortal, human, weak and irrelevant.
Most people aren’t foolish enough to let themselves be deluded that they are somehow special. Not special like everyone’s special, but special like only a very, very few are special. Not that I can think of any examples … from history or real life. Not that that ever stopped me.
One in a million. One in six billion. One of six billion. One of a countless number of incidental life forms, only I can recognize myself in a mirror, and somehow that matters, but I don’t know why. And I can see the future, or one of them, but not the one that will happen, not usually. Hell, I can’t even remember the past accurately. How could I remember the future?
I used to take trips without ever leaving the room. Without even opening my eyes. Without falling asleep. Just float away into the biggest space ever imagined. My imagination. And there, I was who I was meant to be. And who meant it? Only me. I meant myself to be something more. Or expected.
Why is reality so unimpressive? Why is it so dull when it’s good, and awful when it’s interesting? Why is it all just a way to kill time, before time kills me? I don’t have overactive emotions, not the right kind. Not the enthusiasm, the anticipation, the hope and happiness and lucky sureness that it’s all for the best in the best of all possible worlds. I’ve imagined a lot better. Bad luck for me. Imagination is just a lie, after all. Sometimes it’s worth the trouble, but other times, it’s not worth a damn.
I worry that I was wired for a simpler age, perhaps a darker age, a more ignorant age, a more brutal age. My own success will be my own failure: to tear off the veil which hid the machinery, following in the footsteps of much greater and more dissolute minds. There are no great spirits whose interests are tied up with ours. If they’re there, they certainly don’t care. And if they did, I still wouldn’t. They’d be just as much victims of fate as anyone, anyway.
There are lots of toys to play with. Lots of lies to listen to and believe in for a short while. Lots of dreams and nightmares to while away the hours. Lots of chemicals with which to manipulate the brain and modify the awareness as required, to provide false pleasure, false confidence, and false enthusiasm enough to get us through another day. Some of those chemicals even come with the standard package. Sometimes all it takes is the right lie repeated. Other times, just the right button pressed. But each hit is a little weaker.
It’s possible I may simply be cursed, albeit in a most banal way. Cursed with the ability to get used to things too quickly. To adjust to the new status quo too readily. The need for perpetual change, lest I stagnate and decay, adrift in my perpetually malaise. A sort of developed immunity to novelty. Or an addiction to it, to which my head quickly develops greater and greater tolerance, tossing me back onto the wet, grey beach of stark reality, the cold wind of despair chilling my pallid flesh.
The contrast is being turned down. Turn it up, turn it up, turn it up. But the dial’s reached the end and fallen off. Just sit down for a while. Drift away in the mist. Stare into the snow. Bury yourself in the sand. The tide will come back in eventually. Just sleep. Sleep like all the others. What else is there to do?