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Despondent by my own hand

[4 minute read ] 

My family ate our pet ducks. At least they were pet ducks in my mind. The chickens, being chickens were just egg-laying animals with feathers that the foxes liked to savage. At least that was what happened in my mind; because I was told that was what foxes do. I wasn't bothered about the chickens but the ducks? They were different. To be honest, I don't remember eating duck; it probably would have just tasted like a strange chicken to me. Certainly, my parents never asked us kids what 'Quackers' tastes like. I do remember my sister crying one week because her duck was missing and then our brother's duck had gone a few weeks later, and then a bit later there were no more ducks. I took it on the chin, by the time the last duck, my duck, had disappeared I had come to realise that ducks simply vanish; it is what they do. Sometimes we had pheasant; at least I remember seeing braces hung; but they probably just tasted like strange chickens to me.

 

I am vegetarian now; have been for a long while. I used to believe that eating red meat makes people violent, or brings out their violent tendencies and I didn't want that to happen to me. Eventually, I gave up eating meat completely. I did experiments; eat meat for a while and don't eat meat for a while. I seem to be super-sensitive to my mind and body. If I ate meat it felt like my blood was similar to old engine oil; gloopy sludge and full of grit and stuff. I had bad dreams too. If I didn't eat meat it felt like my blood was like, weirdly, washing up liquid; slippery and lubricating. You know, if your head is stuck in railings your parents don't drain the car engine for its oil, they reach for the washing up bottle. I think cleaner and clearer if I don't eat meat.

 

A long time ago, I started eating vitamin supplements; cheap ones. Most people are skeptical of cheap ones or even expensive vitamin supplements. The supplements work. I might guess that my mental agility is 30% more springy than if I have no supplements. I also don't eat much processed food. I don't eat yoghurt and pro-biotics. Maybe I should, but most of the time I have too much mental activity to deal with anyway, so I have to take a break every now and then. Yesterday, I ate a £1.10 Pepperoni pizza from ALDI to calm me down. Of course, they taste really bland so I 'souped it up'. That expression was probably last used in the 1970s to mean 'tuned' in a funky way when a car was mechanically improved to go faster. Anyway, I added tomato puree, and vegetable oil, basil, ground ginger, mushrooms, frozen mixed vegetables and cheese, and baked it. Tasty!

 

Even the small amount of pepperoni on an ALDI pizza is sufficient to clog my mind. Today, it is slow and clumsy, and instead of there being a wide panorama of envisioned opportunities it is a polluted stream in a Mumbai suburb outside a Fast-Fashion textiles factory. My liver is a rubbish tip with scroungers clambouring over it for anything of even the tiniest value. If I had a gauge that showed my mental proficiency I would be tapping it and it would still say 60%; but that means that most of the horrors that jump out at me pretending to be interesting thoughts every day are today barred by the clogging pollution. 

 

Most of my thoughts are turned away. 'Not today, we are closed! There is a technical problem. Come back tomorrow. Get back!' They dissolve and many of the important ones get caught in the press and can't get forward to show their pass. They don't get a stamp of approval. 

 

Outside of myself, I watch from an upstairs window and see the crowded thoughts. I shall clear my desk and go home early having done no work. Only the normal function of my mind and body shall be attended to. The books on my doorstep yesterday shall be glanced at but I shall not make coherent notes. The something that came through my letterbox last night shall be unread and my overfull bin in the living room / office shall refuse the 'thing' when I toss it there. It will bounce off the top of the heap and land on the floor, like empty toilet rolls on a bathroom floor it will remind me of my laziness.

 

Despondent by my own hand, I shall again vow never to eat meat again, even though I know I am dishonourable because I shall forget. There will be another day when an irresponsible idea is given charge of my shopping and its friend will take the same choice out of my freezer days or weeks later and tell me to cook it.

 

       'Look! This will be nice!' No it really won't.