Maelstrom of Thought

Maelstrom of Thought

By Tony Caldwell



         Jack was a thinker. 
         That wasn't to say that other people hadn't been thinkers.  People he knew, people he didn't know, dead people, surely.  People much smarter than Jack had been thinking long before he came along.  Artists, scientists, writers, poets; they all had to have thought at one point or another.  But none, not one of them, not even one one-billionth of one percent of these people thought quite as much or of as many things as Jack.
         These were men and women who were all very talented, all amazingly intelligent and dedicated to their fields and interests.  And kudos to them, by God!  To have one subject, one straight line, one calling and one flawless or only slightly flawed way of processing one's thoughts honed over the course of their lives.  Jack envied them.
         Jack could never focus on one thought alone.  Why?  Too many other thoughts to think, of course.  Good thoughts, bad thoughts, happy, sad, ridiculous...mad...  Jack's mind was a mental cocktail party to which everyone from the scummiest, panhandling beggar to the richest businessman in the world was invited.  A cacophony of improbability and chaos, simultaneously slop-drunk and stone-sober, incredibly high and unfathomably low, burning hot and freezing cold, hideously ugly and knock-out gorgeous.
         The tycoons mingled with the psychopaths, the psychopaths with the priests of various religions, real and imagined (for weren't they one and the same?  Weren't they?).  Loose women stood in the corners, tapping the glass of clear bowls, where swam winking fish of every color, all floating to the rim.  Some for a peek down the cleft of the women's breasts, some merely entranced by the way their friend managed to float belly-up on the surface for so long without coming down for air.
         “Neat party trick, Jim!”  They would say (and wasn't it a party?  It was, after all.) as the women pursed their ruby-red lips and pressed them against the glass, and two more of their fishy friends tried to out-do Jim with their own upside-down floating trick.
         Across the room, a catholic priest crossed himself, while also moving his other hand in front of the crotch of his robe to cover the blasphemous tent that threatened to pitch itself beneath, as he watched the loose women begin to sensually caress one another.  This was, after all, no place for such lechery...
         Or was it?  For what was there here to stop a man from fulfilling a desire, no matter his faith or social standing, if he was so inclined?  The cops?  No.  They were at the bar, trying to conceal their own collectively small campsites which hung uselessly beneath the guns on their hips, likely there to compensate for said useless appendages.  But were they for compensation?  Truly?  There were plenty of women (especially those that stood in yonder corner, so loose that their very limbs seemed to toy with the idea of coming unhinged from their sockets like faulty mannikins) that would be happy, elated even, to grasp any of those trouser-pistols if given the chance, no matter the caliber.  No, they weren't for compensation.
         Perhaps they wore the guns out of habit; a routine, everyday thing they were used to?  No, couldn't be.  Even a sports referee doesn't get between the sheets in bed with his whistle  around his neck.  Or out drinking, for that matter.  They were wearing those guns for a different reason.  Perhaps...yes!
         Defense, safety, protection.  Maybe from the psychopaths.  Or not.  More likely for the wolves.  For there were wolves.  And not only the kind that fool and deceive from beneath a cleverly tailored sheep-skin.  The hungry kind.  The FAMISHED kind.  Along with, of course, the well-fed ones, who laughed inwardly at the woes of their brethren.  They all stalked patiently in the shadow of the band-stand.
         Ahh, yes, the band-stand.  For there was music here.  All music.  All genres.  Because variety is/was the spice of life.  All manner of artists, living or dead, were here in this room, giving melodious sound to the muted organization of souls.  Buddy Holly, Kurt Cobain, Little Richard, Bach, Beethoven, Janis, Jimi, John, Jerry, Pink Floyd, Garth Brooks, Michael Jackson.  They were all present and all wonderful.  Their music gave a calm to the smoke-suffocated mess that was the room, and the notes and octaves carried off into the sky (there was a sky, yes?  Yes, there was.) like a fond memory, drowned in a (Black?  Blue?) purple blanket of star-strewn darkness.  For it was night-time, wasn't it?
         It was.  The moon(s?) hung in the sky like a watchful eye, observing the party.  Or perhaps it was a longing eye?  For it, too, was invited, but chose to stay home like all of the other miserable shut-ins who had received invitation letters and promptly thrown them in the trash (or ate them, if you prefer?  Only to painfully void them later and relish the feeling, because pain was the only way these poor people knew they were still alive...still able to feel...anything.).  And why not?  Why would the moon attend, only to likely be judged for the pallor of its skin or the craters on its face, rather than the beauty in the way it shines through the dark night?  It would rather stay in, alone, and cry its dusty, sparkling tears until morning, when that great glowing orb called the Sun would summit on a new day and gently pull yonder weary people from their sleep.  If they ever did sleep.
         There was something happening here.  Of course there was.  Things were happening everywhere around.
         Another fish went belly-up.
         Too many things.
         The commander-in-chief toasted his glass with Satan, who in turn toasted with Mother Theresa, who toasted with Marmaduke (who's glass was precariously balanced between the pointy, Great-Daney ears atop his head.).
         Never too many things.  Because here, there was no such thing.  Here in the depths of (un?)(sub?)conscious thought and the foggy realm of imagination, a small room like this could grow as large as the universe...no...even LARGER.  For MAN may one day comprehend the universe entirely, but MAN will never comprehend the thoughts of man.  Ironically, that is only for the universe to comprehend.  What a great cosmic joke.  Utter insanity by the standards of men who have the audacity to dub themselves 'sane' without giving the random, yet unbelievable precision of the infinite void so much as a word in edgewise.
         “Listen to me,” those 'sane' men warble, “You aren't allowed to think that way.  Thinking such thoughts is dangerous, Jack.”  Jack?
         Oh, Jack!  The thinker!  The man of the hour!  Was he a man?  Surely he was but, what else?  A loose woman?  A wolf?  A bowl of belly-up fish?  The moon?  The answer?  Yes.  Yes, Jack was all of these things.  Why?  Because Jack was a thinker.  And thinkers ran the world.
         Thinkers that think the right thoughts, that is.  Sadly (Happily?  Regrettably?), Jack did not think those thoughts that were deemed acceptable by the 'sane' men.  Or rather, he did.  And deeply.  Too deeply, in fact.  So deeply that he needed to pile other, less acceptable thoughts around them like a fortress in order to cope, until finally, the 'sane' men told him that he was the absolute antithesis of 'sane'.  IN-sane.
         So while the right thinking thinkers out there ran the world under the watchful (longing?) eyes of the 'sane' men, Jack would settle for running this world.  This world of sobbing moons and endless music.  And he was fine with that.  Not exactly happy.  Just fine.
         Another fish goes belly-up.
         The president shakes hands with the loose women.
         The priest fidgets in his robes.
         The moon(s? No, just one tonight.) wipes away a tear.
         Jimi wraps up 'Purple Haze' and sets his guitar on fire.
         It was ending.  Dear god, it was all ending again.  This was the worst part of the night.  Jack always fought so hard to keep it from happening, but it always did.  How long would he have to be away?  How long would he be exiled from this wonderful place this time?  Eight days?  Twelve?  A year?  Oh, God, please no.  Not that long.  He never wants to leave.  This is his world!  The world that he, not a right thinker, not a wrong thinker, but a TRUE thinker has been given dominion over.  And yet every time he must lay back and watch it disintegrate; watch it die.  His world; the place he is accepted, loved, ignored yet observed without expectation except to be there.  To be present. 
         He feels the pain.
         The sky of the weeping Luna begins to melt like running paint on a black canvas.
         The moon itself begins to crumble and fall, racing its last shining tear to the ocean of pain below.
         A gunshot fills the air and Kurt falls to the floor dead, clasping the smoking gun of one of the cops who were not compensating.
         The starved wolves begin to feast on his corpse. 
         The well-fed wolves scoff at the thought.
         The fish bowl cracks.          
         The loose women finally fall in pieces to the floor.
         The priest, unable to resist his urges any longer, mounts one of the pelvises that has slid across the floor to him.
         The tycoons count their money.  What else?
         The psychopaths...are eerily silent and calm.  They understand what is happening.
         Jack is screaming.  Jack is crying.  Jack is watching his world rip asunder and collapse into itself.  Jack...Jack...
         Jack?
         ...