Wednesday, 17 April 2013

My head is a mess of thoughts and clouds



So here's the lens cap open
A thousand images distortion free
Trapped in a billion pixels
It's just the tear in the fabric of me.

He stood outside the imagined house and observed the scene. For him what made it all really interesting was the knowledge that at any moment everything, all he was, all he stood for and had built could just come crashing down. He imagined that crash, what it might look like if it happened. The first cracks, the slow motion collapse, the sounds of things breaking, the creaks and the splintering. All those elaborate constructions reaching a critical point of loading and that point being overtaken by consequence and action. Pings and wisps of dust fly out milliseconds before the bursting point is reach. Structural failure. Then it happens, a cacophony, an explosive chaos, like a orchestra being hit by a tidal wave, an earth quake in a clogged up city centre, a thousand punches in a thousand faces. Recoil and tremor, explosive criss crossing fragments and great slouching balustrades and buttresses falling in the sick syncopation of destruction. That would be his life, come the day, the hour and the comprehensive doom.

He thought about the opera “Carmen” by Bizet. The stupid Don Jose, run down and grounded by the tempestuous Carmen, an exotic gypsy girl who leads him away from his military career and family with disastrous consequences. She loves the toreador Escamillo, a sin too far for Don Jose who overcome by jealousy and passion stabs Carmen whilst in the background Escamillo receives the applause of the bull fighting crowds. The thought of normal and extravagant human behaviour, the extremes and the unreasonable. How they might be like puppets, more puppet than people sometimes. Willing participants in the fatal collapse, bringing it all on, sowing the seeds of destruction whilst building some solid illusion. Songs and dancing and lights and costume, the contrived drama of all relationship and humanity. You will pay dearly for your passions if you allow them their full vocal range. Never getting better or easier just getting...

Then he was back at his own situation, still turning himself inside out to be the strange sum total of some kind for his appetite of sexual perfection. Like an operatic performance, pomp and drama and song carrying archaic language in which to frame all that useless feeling, bloated and pretentious as if it was incapable of standing on it's own. He thought more, he considered himself and the worth and merit of gaining knowledge and holding opinion. How useful is any of and what difference does it really make? You can have knowledge and informed views but all the effort and turmoil of sustaining such a position is pointless if they are not shared or exercised. There in your own head striving only to be placed in an intellectual bubble, alone and aloof and impotent. It makes your position no better than that of a dumb ignoramus, contributing nothing. It was an unfortunate debate, a one way street of conjecture, a spiral. He realised this for the thousandth time he was stuck in a loop of an unresolved perpetual and perplexing issue. The ultimate worth and value of knowledge and the point of study.

His head was sore with it all and he moved to the lounge. There on the far wall there was a large drinks cabinet. He poured four fingers of malt whisky into a crystal glass and sat down into a battered arm chair and began to sup on the drink. Outside, through the glass he saw a robin in the garden. It hopped from branch to branch in the hedge. It cocked it's head back and forwards jumped a little higher and sat on the window briefly making eye contact with him. He took and deep draft of the warm liquor. It seemed at that same second as the warm alcohol hit the back of his throat the little bird winked and twisted it's beak into a cheeky little smirk. He heard a voice in the back of his head, “you'll be ok, trust me.”

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