Disperation in keeping with the times

The more I see of the crazies in power the more tired and depressed I become, so much so that I feel there must be change soon or we'll all be in big trouble. Their stupidity is beyond alarming and is causing huge harm...

The ghost of my past turned into a passing euphoria that I wanted to know again. A day came when I realised it was all I could think about and that I wasn’t having any fun out of life and felt haunted.

I was then in a quandary for I had set myself a course to experience love again and yet my very determination to get to it was keeping me from it.

This was perplexing; especially after being told that my effort towards this would always be rewarded and that it was trying to get to me as much as I was trying to get to it.

I was thinking too much on it all and turning it into a problem it didn’t need to be and although I knew this, it had become a trap of thoughts that I was caught in.

From the bottom of my soul came the ache to be free and day after day it was there, reminding me not to give up and that the desert I was in was not real.

Many thoughts came, driven it seemed by my indecision in the place I was in that gave me no direction to get away.

‘Why do you climb this way amongst the trees of oppressive thoughts to grow in vain what you can’t be where you would live?’ became an endless mantra that I would catch myself saying to myself.

I had to unlearn somehow the beliefs that were causing this; but how to get out of my own mind that had me in its clutches and was so hard to leave?

Realising that I was in the prison of my thinking was the first step of a long road to freedom and it was one I felt I would walk alone and for the most part that became so. But help did come in many ways and without it the road would have been dark indeed.

Many times I would have turned back if I could have found a way to do it, but I knew the past wasn’t there anymore and lived on only in my memories that were becoming memories of memories until everything became lost in a doubt that they were ever real in the first place and that they were just subjective to any feelings that would come along while remembering them.

Even the darkness is subjective to the light when found, and perhaps like anyone else mine is unearthed in those moments when I become quiet enough and the illusion is dispelled enough and my consciousness is raised so I can see.

The question might be asked: why did it take me so long to find it when I was looking for it and it was in me all the time?

Perhaps Rumi has the answer to this: ‘it is not our job to find love, but rather to take away all the things that keep us from it.’

But love can also go, even though it never really leaves; perhaps it’s my understanding that waxes and wanes.

So I lived on the border where the sun was always shining and took my coffee in the shade and listened to others who had come so far with no way back to anything they would go back to.

Although my intentions used to take me to places big and small, mostly of little renown, I used to think that not for nothing does the world revolve for everyone; but I came to not think that way anymore.

And so the days passed in the hot heat and the windblown dust where the little askings were usually given so long as I didn’t dwell on them too much, and the turnings of the day were no big deal, and the sometimes passing smile of a stranger made my day.

And I thought that if love would ever find me again, perhaps I would say: it’s too late and I’m beyond that now, for it never did take too well anyway and was always a deep hurt when it left me; there’s only so much hurt you can take before you hide away.

They know how to plug into your fear and expand it and there’s no getting away from them once they get on your trail so I didn’t go out after dark. But sometimes you have to take a chance when you need something so badly you can’t wait until daylight comes for when there are others around to shield you from prying eyes, and nothing stays the same forever and even the best hiding places can be found eventually.

“Hello daddio,” they said and set to work relieving me of any sanity I had left from my previous experience with them.

Which was not a bad thing, all things considered, sanity can be such a heavy weight when the whole world has gone bonkers and you seem to be the only one with any sense remaining.

They left me howling at the moon as they went to find out how much I had revealed, their laughter resounding through the lonely streets.

But sane or not they took me back, for after all, I was the one that knew too much about the machine.

By inference you can be made to think how they want you to and is brought about with the subtle art of suggestion and absorbing of media directed at you.

For instance: the end of a movie comes that leaves you with the impression there are too many people on the planet and that they need to be culled for the betterment of those left; perhaps with the use of euthanasia vans for the old; forced sterilisation; vaccinations that give you the disease they are supposed to prevent; and so on.

If you haven’t woken up to all this yet then you are probably under the persuasion of one or more forms of influence that have you in their spell and won’t let you go.

The longer you are in this illusion the harder it is to see the truth of it all and the bigger the wrench it will be when or if you part from it and find your way out from it.

Some are more susceptible than others to mind programming and so will be under the influence deeper; and some have fallen so much into it that they have become a part of the system and may never get out of it, unless the fresh wind of clarity blows the fog out of their mind so they are able to see the spider-webs of the machinations everywhere.

So anyway, after I was hauled back I was taken for tribunal in front of the control sub-committee of the day that was mostly made-up of peach tree herbalists, two fine art students on a gap year who wanted to do something exciting and different, and some very old spaghetti westerners, and the speaker of course.

On the agenda for the committee among other things was the subject of me brought back from the far eastern reaches, but more about that later when my turn would come.

“Miss Julia, you have the floor,” said the small voice of a little lady in a tiny space all to herself who we shall know as the speaker.

“Hoo wee,” said Miss Julia taking the floor. She fluttered her eyelids at her new boyfriend who smiled back at her.

“I propose,” said Miss Julia in her big committee voice put on for the occasion, “to suggest that even though and because etc we are here, perhaps in the greater scheme of things our dreaming is what we are to a greater extent than previously known and though there are old suggestions to argue otherwise we are now in the dream of our making and nothing can be done to change that or denied us in such. Therefore it would be prudent to be careful of what we dream in case we dream ourselves out of existence.”

“Hear-hear,” said the committee as one and pulled the ripcord to expel Miss Julia for her outrageous words. Her boyfriend dived after her with a ‘whoopee’ and so the gap year students had their dream fulfilled.

And then it was time for the coffee break. An extremely important rat man with hair down to his knees pushed the squealing coffee cart through the swing doors into the auditorium where the committee was gathered.

They silently watched him with suspicion as he limped along and gave each of the committee a cup of coffee and a biscuit. A bell on his cart rang at his every limp and was the only sound in the place until he was finished and pushing out of the swing doors and then the committee all, began talking in their voices and coming on like an old phonograph record winding up.

An hour went by as they enjoyed themselves with one lone smoker putting his head out of the window to puff on his pipe that kept going out in the torrential rain.

The gavel banged and everyone shuffled back to their seat, reluctantly and I woke up and couldn’t place where I was.

“I see that the professor is up next. You have the floor professor,” said the speaker.

“Thank you very much,” I said and hobbled on with a touch of arthritis and still sleepy from my nap.

“I have a message, if somewhat delayed, but better late than never,” I said and began my message: ‘we are the ghosts of all that could be and we want to come back from where you have hidden us.’

“Thank you professor for your message, but I’m slightly perplexed as to what this has to do with anything,” said the speaker slightly perplexed.

“Well nothing really I suppose, I just wanted my five minutes of fame and to deliver the message,” I said, not sure it had got across.

“I see, and what shall we do with you professor?”

“I have no idea,” I said, wondering if I should have.

“In that case you are fined one hundred dollars and a month’s pay and we’re taking your car for good measure and you’ll be on probation until it is deemed fit to let you off,” said the speaker banging the gavel signifying it was done.

I went back to my seat relieved at such a light sentence, my touch of arthritis forgotten in the moment and completely awake now.

“Bring on the ghost,” said the speaker and the ghost was brought on in chains.

“What have you got to say for yourself?” demanded the speaker expecting an answer.

“I want to go home,” mumbled the ghost from its misery.

“Speak up,” said the speaker through a bull horn.

“Tell us a tale,” shouted someone from the audience.

After more mumbling from the ghost who still couldn’t be heard a microphone was placed in front of it and then all its broken sighs could be heard plaintively bewailing their fate.

“Enough!” boomed the speaker. “Make an effort or back you go to your dungeon.

“She was going seventeen candle-power to the dozen and getting nine out of nine for her efforts which is really saying something until she fell off and then she got zero.

After a good cry she picked herself up gracefully, but without all the gold in the world for bribes she could never win, so she went in the park with an ice cream and gurgled to the swans for an hour and then she went home to bed.

And that’s the story of the fairy queen who danced swan-lake by candle light and rode her motorbike too fast through the bushes without any lights on and daydreaming she was somewhere else. I swear this is so for all I’m worth,” swore the ghost for all it was worth.

“Yes, well, not sure what to make of that,” said the speaker and turning to the gallery said: “Thumbs up or down?”

All but one turned their thumbs down and the ghost was dragged back to the dungeon with many wails and beseeching for freedom.

“I think that about wraps it up for today,” said the speaker. “All regrets by post to anyone who will listen.”

There was some applause and much scrambling to get away for another day.

I walked out into the rain and felt free and as I disappeared into the city I saw the speaker drive past in my car and I felt it was a small price to pay to escape the clutches of the machine.

Image is mine but is also on shutterstock here https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/shadow-on-wall-1354693214?fbclid=IwAR0xFChxLT0b289CcpgfZ2BIxYyQIcoAqkkOsLi_IRQp1IobgzG1X08KkEc