I woke and the clarity of the moment; the waking hurt.  As though I had been stabbed and the punch, the blow had been dappled by the reality of the red that pulsed through my fingers.  The dream that was now fading as fast as sand sliding through my fingers had been alarming. Yet now all that remained was gritty feel.  It had brought me to the disconcerting reality that no matter what effort, will or luck had found you (or found you wanting): we were all of an oneness destined to run through the maze. Whilst we might all each enjoy the verities and wiles of a different labyrinth; the bottom line was that we went in, we went round, and then: we died.  The rat died. We were as rats in a maze.  It had unsettled me; the notion that it was all of no consequence. The possibility that the matrix could be more than a celluloid conceit; that our souls might live outside of this prosaic existence where we all bounce from one wall to the next all to no great effect.  This magical thinking disturbed me.   I had to get back with the lab rats: re-immersion meant self- preservation. I had to get with the programme.

My mind was busy; it wouldn’t quit. A stream of thought, a ball-race: a clattering of ideas seemingly chasing each another twenty-four seven.  A density, an overlapping: each idea a small glistening tessarae.  Shiny, exquisite: its luminosity keeping me from my sleep, distracting me from my work. And yet each counterfeit its brilliance fading as it is bought from the pool. Its fire a sham its beauty a hollow imitation of its burgeoning promise. And the speed of it – that was scary – each idea holding on to the other’s tail in a macabre conga.  A conga that seemingly got faster and faster bunching up around the corridors as it left the main hall. The ideas were running away from me now.  Moving so fast that I only see many of them as they disappear around the corner as I move to catch their tails.  Trying to pull the beggars back so that I might identify the beast: the nature of that beast.

The delusions were pretty scary too. Feeling omnipotent: a gradual building up of: “ I can do all, I can be all”.  Feeling like a monster in your belly: coming from your core.  Building up like a golem from within:  from insecurity - to surety. To absolute surety and self-assurance.  The big I am, the big I can. 

It was all right most of the time; lying dormant like some beggar at the beach well covered with lithium sand. Only it would then surface when most inconvenient: when it could have the most disruptive effect.

I have read on more than one occasion that genius and madness have shared the same host. But there must be a need for caution.   That is, whilst allowing the sensation to build and to harness its strength also means struggling with and against something that potentially has the power to fuck you over socially and hospitalise where others - if not yourself - can bounce off of the magnolia walls.

 I’ve been there and definitely don’t want to return. In fact chasing a high is a bit like falling for someone extremely dangerous – then trying to get away with only a brief dalliance: like fucking a stranger who has the infinite capacity to fuck you up for good.

But I digress and with such passion, for I am forgetting that which now concerns me, consumes me, eats me.  The wrath that rides hard upon the high like a voracious succubus. She mounts when frustrated by the delay between idea and action, when the words topple over one another as though erupted from a wardrobe in a sweaty game of sardines. She drives ever onwards when the mind stutters to frame the correct utterances: when the genius is palsied by an inadequate main frame.  Harder and harder the bitch rides; her frustration pouring through foul and strong with loathing. She is bitter, possessed with spite and loath to all unfortunate to fall into her path.  To personify something so vehement in the third person will seem a cop-out to unhand the stick that beats me but in truth when I am stricken in such a rage it is as though I have been taken over.  I am often entered first by an irksome trifle which then takes a hold:  its poison spreading as though madness had entered by a serpent’s tooth.  Its poison then moves swift to my mind until all is of it; until it must have forth spilling from me: thick with nasty, thick with bile. Marking with anything that will hurt, anything that can wound.  Even as you are doing it, are in the middle of it, you can’t stop. It’s as though possessed by its power you are ripped up by its maelstrom and torn along by it. At its height the power that it pours in to you is exquisite; a piquant pleasure that your rage can cause so much chaos, so much pain.  That you have that power is a heady draught. And for what, and at what cost: that you are able to wound those who care.  They are but sheep that feed a monster; ripped by the jaws of it, devoured its heedless maw.

And then remorse. Sitting spattered by that lousy all encompassing hate of self.  The cold dawn realisation of one’s complete lack of reason. Slapped by it; its flavour acrid and chill passing over and throughout one.  Tears catching and the terrible frightening mad urge to hurt: to hurt physically as one does emotionally, spiritually.  To span that chasm as a token to the pain that one has caused.  To put down that with has found within you a host.  To take out those demons which you have allowed to have risen within you.  That you have failed to contain; maybe they have slipped their leashes this time because of your negligence or maybe you were just foolish enough to think they would ever stay contained in the first place.  Yes, maybe the latter.  Sometimes that is the scariest thing that chilling realisation that whilst for all intents and purposes as you go through ninety per cent of your existence normal; this is for you just the surface of the lake.  Which is fine until the monster cuts the surface and then you are a mad, insane, not to be trusted. It is just this realisation that is perhaps the most grounding thing that one has to live with.

Why target those our closest?  Not their proximity, although that nonetheless remains a factor. No, it’s because they are the only ones telling the Emperor it might be a good idea to put his tackle away.  The only ones who see that which is awry and who then question, who call to account.  When we are celestial they are the one with hands sore from plucking feathers. The acquaintance sees a vibrant mood, the stranger a voluble character, the lover sees the erratic, the moody: sees that which is hard to contend with.

And so now I am a ship pitching on the high seas: at the mercy of all strange and violent tempers.  Turbulent is my nature, and inconstancy my refuge. Sedatives try to dull and stabilise – cast over the mood as though to calm the bird intent on damaging flight. But their effectiveness is inconsistent.  Too little and it has trouble reining in the high; magical thinking creeping through the fug: whispering, imploring.  Too much and one has difficulty coping with anything other than basic motor functions.  When I must rummage in the mental scrabble bag for every word, must kick-start every thought and sentence it is evident that day-to-day working routines are going to be hard to sustain. And so it goes on damping down the mystical blanketing with the prosaic, so that the inspired becomes merely functional. One’s mind slows, eating only when hungry not cramming itself, stuffed to the gills.  And then this is when I preen my coat, brush off my whiskers and follow the most optimum route to the nourishing snack happy to be no more than I am: content in that knowledge.