Slip-Sliding Through a Mad Mind

Oh, how I wish you were close by, so that I could sit with you, talk with you, letting it all spill out like suspicious fruit from a dangerous cornucopia, telling you my strange not so strange ideas of grand conspiracies that will bring down the world.

I would talk on and on perhaps concurrently exhausting you and your patience with me.

I do know you love your silences, the absence of other humans in the same room, your ritual solitude. I love these things myself, but for me, too much of a good thing can be poison, and I may settle for the wrong companions in a moment of weak loneliness, or jump from a high place.

What if I was to allow the words to escape the chamber of my mind where they are safely locked away, and one of them heard me? You see? You see? How close I get to the breaking point….

And I fear you’d turn away from me in disgust because I talk too much. You would say, "listen to this, have you ever heard of this band?" as you put on a loud piece of music whose appeal escapes me, and I blurt out, "got any Satie?" and ruin it all.

Oh, and I think of our writing. Yours is careful and under control. You know just where to put the punctuation marks…oh, god, it does make me wish I’d been a scholar instead of a dreamer in school. All those little rules utterly escape me and you know all of them. I feel in awe of this.

I have a crazy indifference to sounding sane sometimes when it’s flying forth, and don’t care how it comes out. You, on the other hand, construct. I spew like a fountain, or a girl caught unawares by a friend telling a joke, when she has a mouthful of soda pop.

You build.

When you tell me about something you’ve read, you’ve understood every word on the page. You’ve given it deep thought. I pluck data haphazardly from inelegant sources, the Internet, tabloids and pulp fiction, often imagining I know the meaning of it all. Your comprehension puts mine to shame, I sadly confess to you here. You are the intellectual; I merely act the part.

"All the world is a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and entrances; each man in his time plays many parts."

Oh, I could sit at your feet staring up at you like an adoring hound, and learn so much, with an air of innocence disguising my abysmal ignorance. But if you uncovered the sham, if you found me out…. I can imagine the cold withdrawal coming down over your face like a curtain that may fail to rise again. Oh dear. Oh dear.

Perhaps I should eat this little orange colored pill. Maybe I should wait.

But then, I still my yammering voice, my dismayed heart, and I remind myself of two things: First - While you might enjoy being a learned king for a while, the crown would weigh on your head eventually, and the job would become onerous. You’d want to toss it off, and start to laugh. Second - We are friends. We love each other. And if you laughed it could be because I made you do it, and if you got too tired from it all, we’d just curl up on the floor and have a little siesta.

Like dogs.

There is nothing evil, or even strange afoot. The world is a wonderful place. Repeat one thousand times, and call me in the morning.