Solitary Confinement

Solitary Confinement

Go for a walk. It’s like a tattoo on the inside of my brain. “What to do when there’s nothing in the entire world to do which you can give enough effort to care about.” Walk is probably step two or three, though. First you have to waste time doing stupid things in the desperate hope that something will come from them. Like sleeping. Or trying to sleep.

Still, I should look on the bright side. Apparently. That the more permanent means of destroying the absolute antithesis of anythingness is still lower on the list than the other things, possibly at about step four. Hello darkness my old friend. Can you take me away from having to think?

It’s funny that I’ve got that tattooed on my brain. Like a self-destruct mechanism. In case of self-realisation push button for instant peace.

But I don’t. I go for a walk.

By the way, going for a walk is the worst possible idea. All of a sudden you can put your legs on autopilot and let them take you. You don’t have to think about it. You don’t have to enjoy it. You just do it, and then all you can do is admire the scenery and think. No distractions.That’s what life is about, really, and that’s why people don’t like walking anymore. There aren’t enough distractions in walking. You need to stop being aware and just let the world lull you. Sensuality is the frantic effort to stop your thoughts turning in on themselves.

So, why do I do it? Maybe it’s simply a start-up process for reaching step four, something which will let me read over the instructions inside over and over and over and over again until I have the goddamn balls to face up to the final solution. I could be working my way up to committing suicide, not just walking it off.

You gotta understand, this is what I’m thinking right now. As I walk. That’s brains for you. Rather than thinking about doing it, I’m imagining talking to someone about it. The human mind is inevitably and helplessly willing to preserve itself at all costs.

Well, I guess you’re a person I have to talk to now. Hi. Welcome to the inside of my head. Ignore the emergency instructions, they’re for my use only.

I’m sorry it’s a bit sparse. I don’t usually let people in here. They always clutter up the place, or they leave ideas lying around. I remember those days… I’d open my mind up, and the world and his kids would come along and pour their trash into it. I was a Marxist ten years ago, a neo-republican a few years before. A romantic before university and a modern humanist afterwards All those cover-ups, like paint on a canvas so we can pretend it’s not blank through and through. “Let’s give life a meaning.”

I cleared out my head a long time ago. I get lonely with all the silence, sure, but it’s better than pointless distractions. Nothing’s not kind, nothing won’t feed the world or balance debt or capture the beauty in a raindrop, but nothing’s true.

I’ve made my mind my own mind again, without anyone else thoughts in it.

And that means… that I hate it.

Huh.

That’s an odd way of looking at it. After all, my mind surely has to be the most personal thing that can exist about me. Without the world inside it, it seems empty. But that can’t be the world’s fault, if I don’t let it in.

No. Sorry, lost track of myself. The point is the world hasn’t got anything to offer. There’s emptiness inside and outside. We are living in a world of total “...”, and that’s it. I know that. I’ve know that because… because I remember what feeling alive was like, and I know it wasn’t like anything.

I know? I knew, I mean. Then. I suppose the thing about everything, though, is that it changes. I… can’t know… for sure, anyway… if life has something to offer unless I try the offering.

Not to mention, there are a lot of offerings here. What if, what if some of them aren’t just ashes in the mouth. What if I could find something worth more than a husk in my mouth?

Maybe I am wrong. Stuck in this head, in these eyes, does seem a lot a like a prison. And it has been a long time since I tried looking without putting bars in the way. The funny thing is, I’ve always had the key. The key to the key was wanting to use it.

You’re a quiet lot, aren’t you, imaginary people. Still… maybe having you listen was helpful.

Owen Passmore