TinYAP 033 — Where Are We?

You might think it should be a simple matter to know where we are, but sometimes it is not so clear as we might like.

We have mentioned Shutter Island in earlier posts, so perhaps you are now familiar with the dilemma of the protagonist of that story.

We identify with that character strongly.  It is easy to believe we are in a very similar situation, it is easy to believe we have been locked away for ‘the good of society’ or ‘for our own protection’.

Of course this is absolutely true in a metaphorical sense; we keep ourselves isolated by habit, a matter that has caused us a lot of stress and grief in the past, and which may still do so now.

Shutter Island is a very scary story, as we may have already mentioned…

We sometimes tend to be solipsistic in our views; part of the terror of Shutter Island is that it reinforces our sense of our own madness and makes it seem more possible that we are alone in our own minds with no other company than ourselves.

How or why this may have happened we cannot say, so let us begin with what has happened?

We sometimes seem to believe we may be in some sort of vast hospital, mental, or other…

We do not always believe this, however when we do, that hospital might seem something very futuristic, or somehow in the future of the present moment, 201306222055 PST.

Here, we appear to be in our apartment, a modest 2 bedroom affair we share with Tina and Sid.

If Tina and Sid are real persons, then all is well.  However, in the hospital Sid and TIna are some sort of fictions we have created in some of our minds.

If we are truly psychotic, as we believe we are, then it is reasonable to believe we may really be in a mental hospital, and that neither Tina nor Sid may be real persons.

So how far back might our trail of hallucinated people lead us?

Also, if so many people in our life have really been hallucinated, then what might have happened that required us to build such an elaborate escape mechanism as we must then presume our current apperceptions to be?

One possibility might be that LSD is responsible.

We have certainly used quite a lot of LSD.

Of course, we have always thought LSD was more helpful than malign.

Given the degree to which we feel as if we really must be insane, perhaps we were mistaken about that?

One reason we might believe we are really locked away in a mental hospital is that it might explain the difficulty we have talking with anyone from our past, even though mobile phones have sewn the world together more tightly than ever.

So where did our madness begin?

Have we always been mad?

We have noticed that our memories are always suspect; we have seen how false memories may seem to arise in other people, so we have to believe that we can create our own false memories as well.  Of course, if we are mistaken about our perceptions of other people’s false memories, wouldn’t that have to be because our own memories are then somehow mistaken?

So it seems we may have left ourselves some sort of dubious, complicated way ‘out’.

Anyways…

One thing we must wonder if our hospital perceptions are true, is did we kill someone?

We can imagine a long trail of bodies, a very long trail indeed.

We have already admitted to killing our father, albeit we believe no one finds the story credible.

Might we have also killed our mother?  It seems likely, albeit we can still ring her up on the telephone; that is, if that really is our mother on the other end of the line.

Our madness scares our mom, but according to her, she was afraid we would do something dreadful to her since our childhood.  She suggests mischief, mayhem, and murder, but admits few details aside from one clear notion that we might lock her in the bathroom.

Of course, we might not yet be locked away, that part may still be in the future.

We may never yet have killed anyone, those bits may only be in our imaginations.

Might we kill someone in our future?

Have we really ever killed anyone?

We do not know.

We remember killing ourselves many times; many, many times if things really are as we might like to believe them to be.

If, as we maintain, we can kill ourselves over and over, then it stands to reason we may have killed many other people as well.

There is often this moment on the long slide to suicide where it seems reasonable that if we hurt so badly we wish to die then we may as well make our life count for something more by killing someone else first, someone who might best serve the world as a corpse, some villain or monster who creates too much misery, pain or terror just by living.

But how much is too much?

If we can apologize for George Bush, Saddam Hussein, or the devil, perhaps no one really deserves to die.

In the end, we may only have killed ourselves, but we doubt it.

Nonetheless, we are pretty sure there are no circumstances in which we might be fairly tried for murder, unless, of course, we really are locked away in a mental hospital, in which case, whatever might be considered real by our doctors may indeed include murder for all we can know at the moment.

But who would we have killed? and why?

We suppose we might have been anyone; but of course, the one person we might be most afraid of having killed would be Alina.

It is far easier for us to accept that we might have killed our parents, than it is to accept that we might ever have killed Alina.

<Pokes at psychosis> ah but YOU are not telling are you pet?

So if we did kill Alina, then we would have to guess that it happened that afternoon when we merged with her and we shared each other’s bodies.

Of course, if we really did kill Alina then, then there is a perfect ellipsis around the memory; we remember we were never closer to Alina than in that extraordinary moment, we were naked together, but entirely chaste, another day drawing each other, only this time we were tripping.

We had certainly tripped before, presumably Alina had tripped before as well.

The day ended on a strange note however, Alina had become scared when our bodies seemed to get swapped.  She briefly acknowledged what had happened but then did not want to speak about it.

Understandable.

We were excited by what had happened, swapping bodies was something out of science fiction or perhaps fantasy, we were disappointed that Alina did not want to discuss it, but we did not want to make her uncomfortable so we dropped it.

Of course, if all of our memories are suspect, then perhaps Alina never really died at all?

There are times when this seems possible as well.

But it hurt us so very badly to lose Alina that perhaps anything we can put between ourselves and our pain is somehow reasonable?

But where do we go from here?

Can anyone really know?  And if so, how can we trust them?

We simply do not know.

Nor is this yet another paradox, but only more of how things really are…

Enjoy!

Love, Grigori Rho Gharveyn,
aka Greg Gourdian, Falcon, Chameleon, Roger Holler, etc., et al., ad infinitum, ad absurdum, ad nauseum, ha-ha, ho-ho, hee-hee…