Wysiwyg
Created | Updated Apr 18, 2007
In the beginning there was that.Then light was shed on the matter and it changed into this. That is the first precept: What seems to be is not always so. Understand; the that you are seeking may not actually be.
The second precept: There can not be a second precept as seeking it contravenes the first precept. In layman's terms, do not be unduly alarmed. Whatever you do is going to go tits up at some stage so you might as well accept it and just get on with life.
It’s all in your mind.
That’s what they say, not in so many words; not so straightforward and up front.
They say,
Stress can do funny things, or,
Of course we’re none of us getting any younger. Take these three times a day. If you have any problems, experience any heavy drowsiness or headaches, call back straight away. They’re usually very reliable. Give them a couple of weeks to work in. Oh and try and take more exercise.
But it is not all in my mind. I ken my own heed. I may do stupid things, that don’t mean I’m stupid. I know the difference between hallucination and tangible reality. I’ve had me some of both.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not slating the medical profession. I guess it’s just that, when someone like me goes to the doc’s, it’s as a last resort. I’ve basically been nagged there. I have no alternative. I have, in the back of my mind, the nightmare vision of guinea pigs or laboratory rats. I have the idea that, the mind is as much of a mystery to the average specialist as, the birth of the universe is to the most eminent physicists; they have an idea that such must be so but, they’re not quite sure..
Of course your average quantum physicist can come up with fancy math to quantify a theory. There are no such numbers to sum up the mind.
And what seems to be the problem then Mr Burras? Doctor Thomas glanced at his screen. Frank. How’ve you been since your bypass then, that was, nearly four years now. Everything ok?
I said, I guess so. Nothing really to speak of. Nothing to do with my heart. My problem is more... I don’t want to put ideas into your head. What I’m trying to say is, You see... If I say, for instance,
Doctor, I’m seeing things. Not just shapes but things: people and objects. I sometimes interact with them. I mean, if I say that, then straight away you’re looking for the catch. What’s his game? That’s the thought I think you may have. You may think, He’s probably a bit loopy but... how much and...? Sorry. You see the thing is, I didn’t want to come but Silvi, well you know my lovely and adoring wife, she insisted!
Doctor Thomas levelled his gaze. I thought a flickering smile traced his top lip.
I've noticed the smile before. I mentioned it to Silvi. I sometimes feel he's having a laugh.
Would you like to talk to one of my colleagues? Someone a bit more in tune with current thinking on such matters. I know someone who might...beat... possibly be of some help. Jonathan Marsh he’s a top man. I’ll have my secretary arrange an appointment. It may be a couple of weeks. How long have you had these... beat ... events?
If I said, Well Doctor Thomas, at this present moment in time: I can quite clearly see a man wrapped in a white sheet. He sits cross-legged in the middle of a dusty street. He is pouring something out of a container. The liquid cascades over his head and shoulders. It’s not shampoo. I think he will set himself on fire again. I can hear his breath. I can feel his breath. I can smell the gasoline. He appears quite calm, quite sanguine.
If I said, for as long as I can remember, I would imagine the good doctor may well have doubted my sanity.
So to save him trauma and me frustration, I say, For a good while now and they are becoming much more frequent.
He smiles, I’ll do my best to move things along.
I thank him, walk out of the consulting room then stop on the threshold. I glance over my right shoulder as the flames take hold.
We were having some friends over for dinner. A nice couple in every way and, as they were both quite attractive and lesbian, I always look forward to their company. A bit too obviously, according to my darling Silvi. I have never been physically unfaithful but my mind is a slut. Sat next to dark-blonde Lynne and opposite brown-eyed Susan, my filthy mind played out the most lecherous of after dinner scenarios to be re-imagined in some future moment of masturbatory fantasy.
The conversation floats along with my only input being a laugh or pithy interjection as, with all tanks full, my autopilot sails the good ship Frank Burras through the calm seas of pleasant company.
Frank will know. Lynne’s hand was on my right forearm.
That was the week that was. What was the girl singer called?
Millicent Martin.
That’s right. Did you know there’s a plaque on the front of the Chian Scheu restaurant? David Frost once ate there.
I would think he’s probably eaten everywhere.
Lynne and Susan had just returned from China. One of the most amazing journeys they had taken part in, they said. They’ve been everywhere and are not so easy to impress.
The man is eating. Nothing strange about that. So were we. He is however, suspended in mid air over the table He rocks back and forth while chewing on the quivering body of something that may have been fish or reptile. I smell the stench of mud and faeces and raw flesh.
Silvi said, You look tired.
That means, I think you’ve had too much to drink or stop playing with yourself in company. Make yourself scarce.
What! Miss out on a threeway lesbian love fest?
Of course it never happens. Silvi would tell me if the three of them were engaged in some lascivious licking, lapping and lewdery, surely?
A twin funnelled cargo ship blows up. It must have been torpedoed. One minute it rolls lazily in the swell then a there is a blinding flash of light. The blast fans my face and coils of black smoke wreath up into the night sky. I smell burning oil and wood, steel and flesh. I hear the screams and moans. Laying alone on my bed upstairs I hear the cries.
Stress: what is that? Without stress we would not be human. It is part of the urge to survive. We must be on our toes, ready to fire at the first command. Sprint to safety and live to see another dawn. Without new encounters we would fester. Without fear and excitement, void of dreams of terror and beauty, we would be empty shells. So when does stress become a bogey and not a blessing? If we experience that which cannot be explained should we take pills or drink to blot it out? So what is going on?
Actually it was much more,
WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!!!
When you’re a child, who do you tell? In a household fraught with any sudden crash of temper, where do you go?
I did what many children did. I went further inside. In retrospect, this was probably a bad idea. Perhaps if someone with a more disciplined mind were to undertake the journey, perhaps then there may be some sense made of it all. Alas, I’m all we’ve got.
The first time, I guess I was ten or so. The shrinks have all the hormone and puberty answers; none of which really fit the bill. It was a time, I recall, when I was unsure. I was afraid. I dreamed of bogeymen. I talked to imaginary friends and fought invisible foe. The gun doctor was just one more. I dreamt I was taken to a doctor’s surgery. The doctor peered at me through bottle lens spectacles. He rubbed his stubbly beard. Then he shot me through the knee with a six-shooter pistol.
I awoke in agony.
When I had eventually convinced my parents that this wasn’t some scam; after my father made me stagger down the hall until I passed out, I was taken to hospital.
I could hear them talking in the far corner of the ward. The words floating like bubbles in the air. Each bubble held a symbol trapped inside. As I deciphered each one they burst and fell to the floor.
There’s no way he could have done this laying in bed.
After a doctor and the matron had spoken at length and with some force to my father, I was discharged with a bandage around my right knee. I was taken back home and told to stay in bed. After that, things were never quite the same. I would catch my mother staring at me then, realising I had caught her eye, she would look away as if she were ashamed. My father did not look at me at all. I knew I must’ve done something to anger him.
I was confined to bed for some time; it may have been weeks or months I cannot in all truth remember, whatever the length it seemed interminable. Then one day, the sun streamed through the window, birds sang and I caught the rich aroma of baking bread.
Salt water surf foams over black sand; crabs scuttle, lug worms burrow while black-headed gulls swoop low to land in a flurry of flapping wings and screeching calls, then strut across the beach. The relentless tide brings more flotsam and jetsam onto the shore: bottles, plastic cartons, lumps of wood, a body.
My mother came in.
Come on you can go outside today.
This one stuck. I sat in on the baked grass lawn in the back garden as, inch by inch, the sea inevitably swept the foetid carcass further onto the beach as if the water wanted rid of it. The gulls come screeching down and stalk forward.
It’s difficult at times to focus on what the majority of others perceive. School was a bit of a nightmare when a young girl is pleasuring herself in the seclusion of a darkened room. A breeze flutters the curtain and she is briefly caught in the moonlight. As Pythagoras is taught in the classroom, a baby is being battered to death against a rough stone wall. A woman screams as a blackboard duster strikes my head.
The sea somehow never retreated too far so that each new swell pushed and rolled the body further onto the beach. Hordes of crabs scuttled over the corpse retreating with each swell a second before they might be crushed under the flopping carcase. As the waves retreated the crabs returned to tear and rip at the festering flesh. They raised their claws in defiance at the black-headed gulls flapping and squawking overhead. Flies swarmed, drawn by the stench of the black and bloated intestinal mass.
One day I woke and there was nothing. My bedroom was empty of everything except the furnishings and me. It took a while for this to sink in. I’d gotten used to whatever was, was. Sometimes, I slipped up and somehow, gave away the tricks my eyes and mind were playing. It was put down by others to my being only one step up from a retard. I failed miserably at school and was only barely aware of the fact.
The next day I was back to normal and as usual, at first eye-open, there was a stain on my retina. The image might be anything leftover from anytime: a bird in flight, a house on fire. At least once a day a horse might leap overhead, sending me ducking for cover or, sycamore seeds would suddenly spiral down as a snuffling wild boar bursts through the thicket.
I freeze and can only stare into burning red eyes.
A shot is fired. I start to run then, in sudden panic, I dive to one side.
In the school sports-day, three-legged race my partner’s left ankle snaps.
The second precept: There can not be a second precept as seeking it contravenes the first precept. In layman's terms, do not be unduly alarmed. Whatever you do is going to go tits up at some stage so you might as well accept it and just get on with life.
It’s all in your mind.
That’s what they say, not in so many words; not so straightforward and up front.
They say,
Stress can do funny things, or,
Of course we’re none of us getting any younger. Take these three times a day. If you have any problems, experience any heavy drowsiness or headaches, call back straight away. They’re usually very reliable. Give them a couple of weeks to work in. Oh and try and take more exercise.
But it is not all in my mind. I ken my own heed. I may do stupid things, that don’t mean I’m stupid. I know the difference between hallucination and tangible reality. I’ve had me some of both.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not slating the medical profession. I guess it’s just that, when someone like me goes to the doc’s, it’s as a last resort. I’ve basically been nagged there. I have no alternative. I have, in the back of my mind, the nightmare vision of guinea pigs or laboratory rats. I have the idea that, the mind is as much of a mystery to the average specialist as, the birth of the universe is to the most eminent physicists; they have an idea that such must be so but, they’re not quite sure..
Of course your average quantum physicist can come up with fancy math to quantify a theory. There are no such numbers to sum up the mind.
And what seems to be the problem then Mr Burras? Doctor Thomas glanced at his screen. Frank. How’ve you been since your bypass then, that was, nearly four years now. Everything ok?
I said, I guess so. Nothing really to speak of. Nothing to do with my heart. My problem is more... I don’t want to put ideas into your head. What I’m trying to say is, You see... If I say, for instance,
Doctor, I’m seeing things. Not just shapes but things: people and objects. I sometimes interact with them. I mean, if I say that, then straight away you’re looking for the catch. What’s his game? That’s the thought I think you may have. You may think, He’s probably a bit loopy but... how much and...? Sorry. You see the thing is, I didn’t want to come but Silvi, well you know my lovely and adoring wife, she insisted!
Doctor Thomas levelled his gaze. I thought a flickering smile traced his top lip.
I've noticed the smile before. I mentioned it to Silvi. I sometimes feel he's having a laugh.
Would you like to talk to one of my colleagues? Someone a bit more in tune with current thinking on such matters. I know someone who might...beat... possibly be of some help. Jonathan Marsh he’s a top man. I’ll have my secretary arrange an appointment. It may be a couple of weeks. How long have you had these... beat ... events?
If I said, Well Doctor Thomas, at this present moment in time: I can quite clearly see a man wrapped in a white sheet. He sits cross-legged in the middle of a dusty street. He is pouring something out of a container. The liquid cascades over his head and shoulders. It’s not shampoo. I think he will set himself on fire again. I can hear his breath. I can feel his breath. I can smell the gasoline. He appears quite calm, quite sanguine.
If I said, for as long as I can remember, I would imagine the good doctor may well have doubted my sanity.
So to save him trauma and me frustration, I say, For a good while now and they are becoming much more frequent.
He smiles, I’ll do my best to move things along.
I thank him, walk out of the consulting room then stop on the threshold. I glance over my right shoulder as the flames take hold.
We were having some friends over for dinner. A nice couple in every way and, as they were both quite attractive and lesbian, I always look forward to their company. A bit too obviously, according to my darling Silvi. I have never been physically unfaithful but my mind is a slut. Sat next to dark-blonde Lynne and opposite brown-eyed Susan, my filthy mind played out the most lecherous of after dinner scenarios to be re-imagined in some future moment of masturbatory fantasy.
The conversation floats along with my only input being a laugh or pithy interjection as, with all tanks full, my autopilot sails the good ship Frank Burras through the calm seas of pleasant company.
Frank will know. Lynne’s hand was on my right forearm.
That was the week that was. What was the girl singer called?
Millicent Martin.
That’s right. Did you know there’s a plaque on the front of the Chian Scheu restaurant? David Frost once ate there.
I would think he’s probably eaten everywhere.
Lynne and Susan had just returned from China. One of the most amazing journeys they had taken part in, they said. They’ve been everywhere and are not so easy to impress.
The man is eating. Nothing strange about that. So were we. He is however, suspended in mid air over the table He rocks back and forth while chewing on the quivering body of something that may have been fish or reptile. I smell the stench of mud and faeces and raw flesh.
Silvi said, You look tired.
That means, I think you’ve had too much to drink or stop playing with yourself in company. Make yourself scarce.
What! Miss out on a threeway lesbian love fest?
Of course it never happens. Silvi would tell me if the three of them were engaged in some lascivious licking, lapping and lewdery, surely?
A twin funnelled cargo ship blows up. It must have been torpedoed. One minute it rolls lazily in the swell then a there is a blinding flash of light. The blast fans my face and coils of black smoke wreath up into the night sky. I smell burning oil and wood, steel and flesh. I hear the screams and moans. Laying alone on my bed upstairs I hear the cries.
Stress: what is that? Without stress we would not be human. It is part of the urge to survive. We must be on our toes, ready to fire at the first command. Sprint to safety and live to see another dawn. Without new encounters we would fester. Without fear and excitement, void of dreams of terror and beauty, we would be empty shells. So when does stress become a bogey and not a blessing? If we experience that which cannot be explained should we take pills or drink to blot it out? So what is going on?
Actually it was much more,
WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!!!
When you’re a child, who do you tell? In a household fraught with any sudden crash of temper, where do you go?
I did what many children did. I went further inside. In retrospect, this was probably a bad idea. Perhaps if someone with a more disciplined mind were to undertake the journey, perhaps then there may be some sense made of it all. Alas, I’m all we’ve got.
The first time, I guess I was ten or so. The shrinks have all the hormone and puberty answers; none of which really fit the bill. It was a time, I recall, when I was unsure. I was afraid. I dreamed of bogeymen. I talked to imaginary friends and fought invisible foe. The gun doctor was just one more. I dreamt I was taken to a doctor’s surgery. The doctor peered at me through bottle lens spectacles. He rubbed his stubbly beard. Then he shot me through the knee with a six-shooter pistol.
I awoke in agony.
When I had eventually convinced my parents that this wasn’t some scam; after my father made me stagger down the hall until I passed out, I was taken to hospital.
I could hear them talking in the far corner of the ward. The words floating like bubbles in the air. Each bubble held a symbol trapped inside. As I deciphered each one they burst and fell to the floor.
There’s no way he could have done this laying in bed.
After a doctor and the matron had spoken at length and with some force to my father, I was discharged with a bandage around my right knee. I was taken back home and told to stay in bed. After that, things were never quite the same. I would catch my mother staring at me then, realising I had caught her eye, she would look away as if she were ashamed. My father did not look at me at all. I knew I must’ve done something to anger him.
I was confined to bed for some time; it may have been weeks or months I cannot in all truth remember, whatever the length it seemed interminable. Then one day, the sun streamed through the window, birds sang and I caught the rich aroma of baking bread.
Salt water surf foams over black sand; crabs scuttle, lug worms burrow while black-headed gulls swoop low to land in a flurry of flapping wings and screeching calls, then strut across the beach. The relentless tide brings more flotsam and jetsam onto the shore: bottles, plastic cartons, lumps of wood, a body.
My mother came in.
Come on you can go outside today.
This one stuck. I sat in on the baked grass lawn in the back garden as, inch by inch, the sea inevitably swept the foetid carcass further onto the beach as if the water wanted rid of it. The gulls come screeching down and stalk forward.
It’s difficult at times to focus on what the majority of others perceive. School was a bit of a nightmare when a young girl is pleasuring herself in the seclusion of a darkened room. A breeze flutters the curtain and she is briefly caught in the moonlight. As Pythagoras is taught in the classroom, a baby is being battered to death against a rough stone wall. A woman screams as a blackboard duster strikes my head.
The sea somehow never retreated too far so that each new swell pushed and rolled the body further onto the beach. Hordes of crabs scuttled over the corpse retreating with each swell a second before they might be crushed under the flopping carcase. As the waves retreated the crabs returned to tear and rip at the festering flesh. They raised their claws in defiance at the black-headed gulls flapping and squawking overhead. Flies swarmed, drawn by the stench of the black and bloated intestinal mass.
One day I woke and there was nothing. My bedroom was empty of everything except the furnishings and me. It took a while for this to sink in. I’d gotten used to whatever was, was. Sometimes, I slipped up and somehow, gave away the tricks my eyes and mind were playing. It was put down by others to my being only one step up from a retard. I failed miserably at school and was only barely aware of the fact.
The next day I was back to normal and as usual, at first eye-open, there was a stain on my retina. The image might be anything leftover from anytime: a bird in flight, a house on fire. At least once a day a horse might leap overhead, sending me ducking for cover or, sycamore seeds would suddenly spiral down as a snuffling wild boar bursts through the thicket.
I freeze and can only stare into burning red eyes.
A shot is fired. I start to run then, in sudden panic, I dive to one side.
In the school sports-day, three-legged race my partner’s left ankle snaps.
