I Don't Wish To Inhabit

From The First Place Of Liquid Darkness, Within The Second Place Of Air And Light, I Set Down The Following Record With Its Mixture Of Fact And Truths And Memories Of Truths And Its Direction Toward The Third Place, Where The Starting Point Is Myth.

The Strain Of Constant Adaptation To So Many Fearful Events And Discoveries Is Already Too Much To Bear With Sanity; One Has To Keep Pretending To Slip Successfully Into The New Mould; A Time Will Come When The Tailored And Camouflaged Mind Breaks Beneath The Burden; The Stick Insect In Our Brains No Longer Cares To Resemble A Twig On The Same Habitual Human Tree In The Mere Hope That It May Survive Extinction.

He Sees The Land Of Meaning, And One Path To It, And The So-called “normal” People Traveling Swiftly And In Comfort To The Land; He Does Not Include The Shipwrecked People Who Arrive By Devious Lonely Routes, And The Many Who Dwell In The Land In The Beginning.

[...] A Morass Of Despair Violence Death With A Thin Layer Of Glass Spread Upon The Surface Where Love, A Tiny Crab With Pincers And Rainbow Shell, Walked Delicately Ever Sideways But Getting Nowhere, While The Sun [...] Rose Higher In The Sky Its Tassels Dropping With Flame Threatening Every Moment To Melt The Precarious Highway Of Glass. And The People: Giant Pathworks Of Colour With Limbs Missing And Parts Of Their Mind Snipped Off To Fit Them Into The Outline Of The Free Pattern.

Every Morning I Woke In Dread, Waiting For The Day Nurse To Go On Her Rounds And Announce From The List Of Names In Her Hand Whether Or Not I Was For Shock Treatment, The New And Fashionable Means Of Quieting People And Of Making Them Realize That Orders Are To Be Obeyed And Floors Are To Be Polished Without Anyone Protesting And Faces Are To Be Made To Be Fixed Into Smiles And Weeping Is A Crime.