My world through someone else's voice. Part II.
//
Main:
The hallucinations have started up here. I thought moving away from home would help, since it was a new environment, a new place. Back home, all of them were rooted in locations; the albino rats in my living room, the dwarves that would lear at me from rooftops, the girl in the playground that always looked at me in silent terror when the dogs tore her to shreds. Those of you that don't know what I'm talking about probably think I'm crazy, but those of you that do know what I'm talking about know that I'm crazy.
Now, there's a shady man that stares at me from behind the department store. I think he's a drug dealer, but it doesn't matter since I know he's just a hallucination. I know that if I don't want him to be there, then he's not. But, whether he's there or not, he's still staring at me.
Now, right now, this very second, there's a calico cat sitting on top of my TV cleaning itself. You need to understand that I can't see my TV from where I'm sitting, but I can still see the cat. There are also maggots in my toilet and shadows just on the other side of the lamp. You'll just have to take my word on it.
None of this actually happened, but it's truth.
I needed to get out of my apartment, I needed to leave for a few hours, but no one is in this town. It's like no one lives here except me. It might be true, even, if not for the occasional ambience of sirens or peeling out cars or the yells of drunken frat-guys, all at once on some nights. There's no one. Not a soul. Not even mine. I didn't have any money for cigarettes, so I went out with what was left of my bad vodka to find a bench to sit on and finish it off. After all, there's nothing like alcohol to make you feel nothing. When I got to the bench I sometimes frequent at night, though, a man was there. Homeless, broke, dirty, and quite obviously out of his mind. That was all secondary to two distinct facts about the situation: he had cigarettes and did not have alcohol. We became quick friends.
I told him about the hallucinations, about how they were starting up here, about how the wall behind him was bleeding, about how I could see him rotting from the inside out and he sat in silence for a moment, finishing my cigarette while he finished his. He told me two things. First, he said, I couldn't have been acting as crazy as I thought I was because someone would have mentioned it by now. This is a good point. Second, this one was important, he said, and he wanted me to remember it so I said I would. He told me that the whole world was backwards, that it wasn't that I was crazy, it was the rest of the world that was crazy. He told me that everything I was seeing was real, it was the other stuff that was illusion. He told me that you create a rational, structured world with peers and money and governments and war and orgasms in order to cope with the fact that the world, the really real world, was so fucked up and chaotic. He told me that this wasn't a deteriorating mental state, but a true moment of clarity. He told me that my mind was the center of the universe and that he would know because he's been there.
Of course, I would say that the whole thing was wrong. Of course a hallucination would tell you that it was real; what other form of self-preservation does it have? I would say that the whole thing was wrong, if not for the fact that I left with a bottle of vodka and came back with an empty bottle and a pack of cigarettes.
He was right about everything, I realized, I just hadn't understood him. Everything was real because my mind is the center of the universe, because everything I see, everything I hear, everything I smell, even everything I taste, is part of me. That's what he meant by "being there" because he was there. He was me just like everything is me. And, even if I'm just crazy, I'm still up a pack of cigarettes.
Quote:"Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine."-Arthur Eddington
Main:
The hallucinations have started up here. I thought moving away from home would help, since it was a new environment, a new place. Back home, all of them were rooted in locations; the albino rats in my living room, the dwarves that would lear at me from rooftops, the girl in the playground that always looked at me in silent terror when the dogs tore her to shreds. Those of you that don't know what I'm talking about probably think I'm crazy, but those of you that do know what I'm talking about know that I'm crazy.
Now, there's a shady man that stares at me from behind the department store. I think he's a drug dealer, but it doesn't matter since I know he's just a hallucination. I know that if I don't want him to be there, then he's not. But, whether he's there or not, he's still staring at me.
Now, right now, this very second, there's a calico cat sitting on top of my TV cleaning itself. You need to understand that I can't see my TV from where I'm sitting, but I can still see the cat. There are also maggots in my toilet and shadows just on the other side of the lamp. You'll just have to take my word on it.
None of this actually happened, but it's truth.
I needed to get out of my apartment, I needed to leave for a few hours, but no one is in this town. It's like no one lives here except me. It might be true, even, if not for the occasional ambience of sirens or peeling out cars or the yells of drunken frat-guys, all at once on some nights. There's no one. Not a soul. Not even mine. I didn't have any money for cigarettes, so I went out with what was left of my bad vodka to find a bench to sit on and finish it off. After all, there's nothing like alcohol to make you feel nothing. When I got to the bench I sometimes frequent at night, though, a man was there. Homeless, broke, dirty, and quite obviously out of his mind. That was all secondary to two distinct facts about the situation: he had cigarettes and did not have alcohol. We became quick friends.
I told him about the hallucinations, about how they were starting up here, about how the wall behind him was bleeding, about how I could see him rotting from the inside out and he sat in silence for a moment, finishing my cigarette while he finished his. He told me two things. First, he said, I couldn't have been acting as crazy as I thought I was because someone would have mentioned it by now. This is a good point. Second, this one was important, he said, and he wanted me to remember it so I said I would. He told me that the whole world was backwards, that it wasn't that I was crazy, it was the rest of the world that was crazy. He told me that everything I was seeing was real, it was the other stuff that was illusion. He told me that you create a rational, structured world with peers and money and governments and war and orgasms in order to cope with the fact that the world, the really real world, was so fucked up and chaotic. He told me that this wasn't a deteriorating mental state, but a true moment of clarity. He told me that my mind was the center of the universe and that he would know because he's been there.
Of course, I would say that the whole thing was wrong. Of course a hallucination would tell you that it was real; what other form of self-preservation does it have? I would say that the whole thing was wrong, if not for the fact that I left with a bottle of vodka and came back with an empty bottle and a pack of cigarettes.
He was right about everything, I realized, I just hadn't understood him. Everything was real because my mind is the center of the universe, because everything I see, everything I hear, everything I smell, even everything I taste, is part of me. That's what he meant by "being there" because he was there. He was me just like everything is me. And, even if I'm just crazy, I'm still up a pack of cigarettes.
Quote:"Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine."-Arthur Eddington