Sunday, November 12, 2006

The Outsider


He sits on the wall and drinks beer.
Solitude blends with the light but steady flow of traffic passing the house; the day’s fading light makes the small patch of grass glow like green tobacco in the bowl of the evening.
Listens to the voice of the town, sounds blended to white noise; the odd firework; the traffic.
Inhales the smell of imminent rain.
Thoughts wander where they will, unfocussed by the alcohol, unburdened by the weekend’s demise; follow the electric lines from light pole to transformer; the invisible source; the blind spot.
Old lady next door ventures out to collect Sunday’s junk mail. He sits still in order that she won't notice him; engage him in conversation.
[Weirdo]
Tries to fit himself into the big picture; tries not to imagine the lives of others.
His frame of reference is too small; his canvas cannot stretch to incorporate more than this fraction; this wafer slice.
All his dark foreboding, for once, seems not to hang on his hairshirt; perhaps the solitude or the alcohol have numbed the hooks; perhaps there's a little synaptic switch somewhere in his head that allows this moment 0f respite – a reset.
The smell of rain grows strong, ripping into his memories; a fine mist has begun to mark the tarmac black – ten out of ten for trying.

People are best left untended.

Society survives on the mythology of dead yesterdays.

Psychosis is no escape from reality, it is merely a darker view.

The future holds nothing that cannot be tasted today.

Shadow-play shadow boxing clever silhouette theatre of war child 21st century blues with uni-polar heart and iceberg feet of titanic clay; golem for ghost dance messiah.

The town grows quiet; blanketed in damp sobriety as twilight encroaches. The cars creep past with tail lights blazing; progress disguised as shelter.
He tries to imagine the occupants of these time capsules; these bubbles of isolation; he imagines their purposeful lives; their pride in the shiny objects in which they are cocooned.
There was a time when he did not doubt himself; there was a time when his arc was ascending.
Perhaps it will ascend again... perhaps in a different sky.
There was a time when he knew what he knows now but without the weight of understanding.
Beer bottle empty he climbs up on the music of the night’s descent, allowing a seed of optimism to enter through the opening between today and tomorrow.

7 comments:

Yodood said...

Psychosis is knowing we are alone in a world that condemns us for and tries to cure us of knowing it.

For what shiney object can there be pride or desire if we admit no one owes us the distraction of their envy or admiration from their own pursuit of the more lusterous yet?

Once again, my friend, you have expressed multitudes between your words - it is definitely a art well illustrated by Tanguy as well. If it weren't for the objects in the middle and the fact that I may have seen them all several times, I would have guessed Dali.

Anonymous said...

Great idea. I'm off to the fridge to open a couple of cold ones.

Anonymous said...

Your vivid imagery has opened a doorway to my own fears of which I have faced in my own psychosis. I felt my soul had been turned inside out and the ghosts in my mind were looking staight at me, clarity and madness at the same moment in time. I felt I was facing death but the angel of sleep helped me grow again. Through music and art I battle these demons, I will never forget how close to the edge I danced.

Garth said...

My apologies if the 'psychosis' line trivialised your personal experiences (not my intent at all) - I guess I was dredging up the Philip K. Dick model for this one... ie psychosis and schizophrenia being portals either to alternate realities or views of reality stripped bare.

Chandira said...

I think we've all been there, but some of us are more willing to feel it, or unable to block it out.

In many traditional spiritual paths, this is a 'necessary evil', a doorway, and through it comes much power, in recognising you survived something that others cannot. Modern pop-psychhology calls these people Shamans, but really, a Shaman is somebody none of them would really want to know.
People that have been through that are a threat to people that haven't.

And yes, Pisces, bats are cute. :-)

Anonymous said...

No need for apologies Pisces. I don't think you've trivialised my experience at all. I am pleased you can explore the mind in verse and It sparked a few memories of my own past. I never regreted anything that had happenend back then I was a free spirit and experimented with the far reaches of reality. I stepped too far but I would not class myself as a casualty of my wrong doing. I feel I have explored a part of me that needed expanding, I just should have used self belief and confidence rather than a chemical unbalance.

Yodood said...

The fear of psychosis is the same as the fear of anarchy you demonstrated in your next post. Reality is no more structured than nature or our natural selves. When our mind breaks free of the cultural, factual structure of society, and even language, original, non-verbal thinking appears to be a loss of ones mind, when in reality it is being freed. When I use tonefish76's chemical unbalance it is usually when my self belief and confidence have begun to be argumentative conclusions I need to dissolve, just as, when tripping, I cannot remain indoors with all the totally manufactured, endlessly explainable surrounding and must go a look at a tree, clouds, river to soothe the shard scars of artificial facts.

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