Musings of the Mad - Volume 1

I’m afraid.

  There, I said it.  I’m afraid, and I don’t know what to do about it.  I fear for my life, for my sanity, for my very existence.  After all, what am I but my mind?  What are we all but mind floating about inside the meat of physical bodies?  If I cease to think do I not cease to be?

  These white walls that enclose me, that make up my entire world as they have for so long, are a fine example of what awaits me, I think.  Featureless.  Simple.  Clean.  Sterile.  So pure as to wash away any meaning, any importance, any contrast.  What is light without dark?  Nothing.  It simply is. 

  Would I change anything?  I do not know, to be honest.  My memory is thankfully crystal clear, replaying all of the senses of a given moment as though it were just happening.  Being able to relive the things I’ve experienced keeps me sane in this sea of desolate white.  The warmth of a smile at first meeting.  The grip of a handshake when a deal is struck.  The arch of a woman’s back at the moment of purest climax.  The glint of confusion at the moment betrayal is discovered.  The dimming of the light in the eyes of a victim as life leaves through whatever means I have created.  For me to change these things I would not be who I am.  I would likely not be in this soft white prison awaiting oblivion, but what would I have done or seen or experienced to make up for what I would lose in turn? 

  No, I think not.  Life is the sum of a series of experiences.  Should someone live to be a hundred years old, if they spent those years safe at home, hiding away from the world and the people in it, they did not live at all.  I have barely seen thirty summers, and yet I’ve lived a dozen lifetimes as counted by the average man.  While they were not always comfortable, or certain, or even pleasurable, they were there.  I was there.  I have been alive and alert and in the moment since some of my earliest memories. 

  That is why this place is the ultimate penance for me.  Nothing happens here.  Secured as I am, I cannot even undertake the joy of movement.  I do not eat.  I do not drink.  Even the release of bodily waste is automatic and impersonal.  The temperature never varies, the air never stirs.  No strange or different odors waft into the room. 

  I sleep, I dream, and I remember.  These things keep me sane.

  Don’t they?