Mind

The mind is an eccentric device. It can process all of your thoughts – all of your psychology – in a complex network of signals and graded to action potentials. It allows you and I to twist complex ideas and make us see things that no one else can see. We use it to fight, to defend, or to embrace, and we take all of that for granted. Had we lost our ability to access our mind, life would hide behind a retardant mist and we would no longer have the power to control the world.

But I am not interested in your shallow desires for humanly control – that’s not why I’m here.

I’m here to tell you what happens when your mind is fogged.

Can you see me?

That doesn’t matter. If you can’t see, you can hear. If you can’t do either, you can touch. At the very least, you can taste me. Whatever it is, hear to my plea.

It’s nothing but a cyclone really. It’s a cyclone of thoughts and perceptions that no one else would dare to understand. Why do people intoxicate themselves with calamity and molecules just to bring this sense of convolution into their minds? Why did I try to spin it faster, in that case?

Trouble is appealing. It’s the flick of lard on your tongue – it lights every sense of taste in your tongue and it brings you an indication of nourishment. It also clogs up your heart and kills you when you get older. So why do we bother? Why is adulteration some measure of human acceptability and credential to be a better person for yourself? Or for other people?

Love becomes old. You’re all filled with fire when the flint touches, but keeping the fire alive can become taxing: all of it requires labour and work. Sometimes the fire goes through some Northern winds. Sometimes the fire is smothered by the slip of an ice bucket. Sometimes you realise that people stopped attending to it and it’s on its last flare before extinguishment. Why ignore it, then, if it brings you heat and housing?

Fires are immobile until they cause trouble.

What is really so exciting about one spot that sits in the middle of evergreens with a panoramic view of the river? What is so exciting about keeping that fire alive to pretty much keep you – or whoever else that needs it – alive?

Fires become your life once your ignite it.

You never realise how cold the world becomes until you sit yourself beside a fire and can finally dream.

You dream of angels. You dream of mermaids. Sometimes you dream about love. Sometimes you dream about the dead. And sometimes, you dream about your eviscerated heart and lung falling from the balcony of your 21-floor building.

And then you wake up with a bottle of spirits in one hand, and a fire extinguisher in the other

All this time you never realised that the fire had begun to die. Wasn’t someone there with you too?

You try everything. You throw twigs. You throw leaves. You even decide to cut down trees and throw it in the fire. You throw your life into it.

But it still continues to die.

Sadly, that’s when you realise that that was what your life was – just a little flare in the ground of an expansive, lush foliage of misconception and silence. Wasn’t that a little too late? Maybe the flame will relight again from the glowing embers. Or so you pray to your returning God for.

When the flame is gone.

That’s when you stand up.

And ask.

“Which way do I go?”

And you go.

It’s do or die, my friend.