The Madness Is There, And

Madness Is Not What It Seems. Time Stops. All My Life I've Been Obsessed With Time, Its Motion And Velocity, The Way It Works You Over, The Way It Rushes You Onward, A Pebble Turning In A Brook. I've Always Been Obsessed With Where I'd Go, And What I'd Do, And How I Would Live. I've Always Harbored A Desperate Hope That I Would Make Something Of Myself. Not Then. Time Stopped Seeming So Much Like The Thing That Would Transform Me Into Something Worthwhile And Began To Be Inseparable From Death. I Spent My Time Merely Waiting.

I Have Never Been Normal About My Body. It Has Always Seemed To Me A Strange And Foreign Entity. I Don't Know That There Was Ever A Time When I Was Not Conscious Of It. As Far Back As I Can Think, I Was Aware Of My Own Corporeality, My Physical Imposition On Space.

I Am Often Drawn To What Appear At First To Be 'dark' Or 'difficult' Subjects, But Which, Upon Further Examination, Are Always And Only Reflections Of The Ways Human Beings Attempt, However Clumsily, Badly, Or Well, To Connect With Others.

At Times It May Seem Worse - Harder, At Least - To Live Through The Despair Of This Loss Without The Temporary Comfort Of Our Addictive Behaviour. We Cannot Drown Our Sorrows. We Must Face The Fact That We Don’t Know, Really, Where We Are, How We Got Here, How Long The Pain Will Last, Or How To Move Past It. That Uncertainty May Be The Most Painful Part Of Not Knowing A God: No One Is There To Reassure Us That A God Will Take The Pain And Confusion Away. We Simply Don’t Know. And We Have No Way To Numb Ourselves Or To Forget The Condition We’re In.

All Of Us Carry Around Countless Bags Of Dusty Old Knickknacks Dated From Childhood: Collected Resentments, Long List Of Wounds Of Greater Or Lesser Significance, Glorified Memories, Absolute Certainties That Later Turn Out To Be Wrong. Humans Are Emotional Pack Rats. These Bags Define Us.