The Man Who Knows Everything, Part 1
Created | Updated Oct 21, 2018
The Man Who Knows Everything, Part 1
So this is Wednesday or is it? Maybe it's Thursday and by some bizarre coincidence, they've put the clocks back by a day? Is it a Leap Year? What is Wednesday anyway but an artificial construct, created by somebody as crazy as me? Maybe they're not crazy though? Am I crazy? I could be I suppose but how do I know? How do I find out for sure? What is the criteria for measuring insanity? Is talking to yourself a sign of madness? Am I talking to myself now, just because nobody is visible in my vicinity? Do voices in your head reflect imagination or telepathy? Do I know the answer to anything for certain? Does anyone?
I used to think the sky was pink but somebody told me it was yellow? Do I believe them? How do I define pink? What do they mean by yellow? It's all comparative isn't it?... Or is it? What if that door over there is yellow to me but red to someone else? What if all the street doors seem to be all the same colour to me but other people see them as multi-coloured variations on a theme? I suppose I could ask them how they perceive the colours but they could lie, couldn't they? And if I asked them directly, if they saw the same thing as me, they could say yes but it may mean something totally different to them, than it does to me. Apparently the Japanese have 83 different meanings for the word yes and none of them mean 'yes' in English. Of course I could be wrong and it might be 43 or even 42 (Where have I heard that number before and in what connection, one wonders? Maybe I haven't heard it before, just imagined I did? Isn't memory wonderful? I sometimes wish I had one!).
Yesterday upon the stair
I saw a man who wasn't there
– me I suppose!'
I'm a 'Nowhere Man' but then again, maybe I'm not – just I think I am. Who can tell? Certainly not me.
My wife used to say I was a strange one...or did she? Was I ever married? I don't think so. I have no memory of it – only of having lived alone, on some vast plain, with nobody else around for miles, if at all but maybe I'm wrong on that. I seem to be surrounded by people and houses now but am I? It certainly looks like it but how can I be sure it's not an illusion? Maybe life really is like 'TheTruman Show' or 'The Prisoner' and I'm caught up in some vast conspiracy, aimed at confusing me. Then again maybe I'm deluding myself and it's not. How can you tell? Can you tell? Am I just a figment of my own imagination or somebody else's? One day I may wake up and find out I don't exist. Still that’s much like any other day for me, isn't it?
Nothing bores me, more than me. I question everything because the universe is more fascinating than I am. Prancing around in front of others, pontificating as though every speck of dust on my nose hairs, meant something really, really important – that kind of thing gets really up my nose, in no small respect, if you know what I mean. I used to be like that. I was a prince or something like that...or maybe I wasn't. I've got an active imagination, with no foothold on reality, my teacher used to say. I'm pretty sure I had it once but it was the drugs that really blew my mind or was it enlightenment in that ashram? Who knows, it was all so long ago or so it seems. Maybe it was yesterday. Who can tell? Where does the past leave off and the present begin? Am I really here, wherever here is? Is here, here – does it exist or is it a mental projection of a place I once knew or wanted to know? Is it imagination or memory? Who am I to ask anyway? In fact who am I? I seem to have asked that question recently. Did I though? Does that mean I have a memory or is it that my imagination is misleading me again? Oh God, I never seem to resolve anything or perhaps I do and don't realise it? How could I tell? I need to keep taking the pills. What are pills anyway? Do they work because of what they are physically made of or because of the effect you're told to expect and then believe in, so thoroughly that your mind makes them work? Do I really know the answer to this? No. Do I have any pills? No.
It looks like it is windy outside. Is it? Am I outside? Looking at the evidence and considering the premise, I'm not sure I am. Am I in the premises or are the premises in me? I don't know and could be wrong about anything and everything. My university professor once said that you can't be sure of anything but whether he meant 'me' specifically or anyone in general, I never did find out as shortly after he was dragged off to the local mental asylum, claiming 'they' were out to get him and you couldn't trust anyone as 'they' are all over the place. The proctor of the college I was in, said I was all over the place too and sent me down shortly after. Funny old world.
