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Mental Health
If it isn't working apply more pressure
[ 5 minute read ]
'Trust in me' Kaa, the Indian python to Mowgli
On Monday, a plumber helped me to understand that I am not so feeble in mind than I was beginning to think I was. Right there is a problem, isn't there? If you think your mind is feeble then you can't believe yourself. If you think your mind is fine, then you can't believe it either because you are probably biased.
'How are you?'
'I'm fine; it's all those others out there that make things difficult.'
Oh dear!
My neighbour surprised me last Summer when I handed his girlfriend/live-in carer an undelivered package that the post-person couldn't fit into his continental style letter-box; the type that is stuck to a wall and is only about four inches / 10cm deep. She is my neighbour too, but I am not sure if he sees it that way.
Gruffly, he said, 'The postman is too lazy to go through the gate and deliver it to the right address, even if he could be bothered to find my address. They don't care. They are just clumsy and lazy!' I snatched the little flat package back from his girlfriend. I didn't mean to, I was just 'in the moment' and assumed that she would understand that I needed it as a 'prop' in a demonstration. She understood and waved my apology aside.
'It is marked "Do Not Bend" and your letter-box won't allow it to go in without bending it. The delivery person was being conscientious.' Cherry, his girlfriend, nodded and murmured an agreement, but more to herself and I suspect involuntarily. I suspect she didn't want my neighbour to notice her in that moment. Luckily, I think, he didn't.
Before my neighbour could start stubbornly braying again, 'Hee Haw! Heeeee Haw!' I turned away and went back inside my home.
That moment was seared into my head. It occasionally rises up and I run my attention over the memory, and feel for any new growth or appendages. So far, I have found none. However, it does form part of how I perceive my neighbour. And with that perception, comes a tiny glimpse of a distant reflection, in a muddy and partially shrouded mirror; that leans against a tree in a misty forest, which in turn is behind a circus, a funfair and an amusement theme park; of how I perceive myself.
If the cap fits, wear it
I have done so much for all my neighbours... so much... so, so much. I have helped them and given them gifts, given them gifts, so many...but when I ask for their help they just shrug their shoulders and say they don't know what to do. I am not asking for their help. I can finish it myself. I was only testing them to see if they would help.
If I add all the snippets of, unwashed and unsorted, weird but noted, recent episodes I have witnessed, into a tombola and draw one out, it emerges unchanged. By itself, it is only a jigsaw piece. If I set my imaginary tombola machine to let three, four or five pieces out at a time, I get to recognise, not the people in the episodes so much as I recognise myself in pseudo episodes, that resemble the past episodes. But, I am convinced my nearest 'strange' neighbour who hates the world, but really hates himself yet doesn't know that, is inadvertently using his spirit to wear me down and bend me to his way of categorising the world. Everyone is an idiot, right? 'Er....I think so?'
A while ago, I was stung by a wasp multiple times and I got an allergic reaction. I overdosed myself on anti-histamine so I could breathe properly again. I was on a long-awaited forklift course and there was no way I was missing any of it by nearly suffocating. The overdose made my mind simple. All the information I previously had was still in my head, but it was as though I was drunk; I made odd connections in my mind and because I believe myself, freely expressed my dopey opinion.
'You're an idiot!' This was said to me with such confidence that the statement was true he did not expect a rebuttal. His sentence was deliberately constructed to mean exactly that.
'An idiot?' I asked.
'Yeah!' It was then that I realised that this guy was confident that I had heard people tell me I am an idiot before, in fact, many times. He was confident that I would just accept it as being fact simply because of the high frequency it had, in his imagination, been expressed. No-one had ever called me an idiot. But his observation stuck in my head, just as it should. Many people do think I am an idiot, and an idiot would not recognise themselves to be an idiot. I would certainly cross the road to avoid meeting myself, I know that! Yet, I was called an idiot by someone who thought that I was wrong to think my leather jacket was a leather jacket. 'It's plastic!' he cried. Plainly, the manufacturer mistakenly spelt 'plastic', '100% L-E-A-T-H-E-R' on the label.
The plumber said she would take a look at my bike with me. She is someone I have never had contact with before. She doesn't know me. She, with her weight on one side of the bike and me, with my similar weight on the other, wrestled with the front gear-set and pedal. You will get a kernel of an idea of how much weighted force we applied when you understand that I weigh 90kg /198lb or 14 stone 2 pounds in old money, and hear her response to my earlier question:
'Do you know much about bicycles?'
'Do I look like I cycle? I hate exercise!'
The situation did not change. We had applied substantial force and still the front gear-set and pedal resisted.
'WD-40', we agreed. Yup. Lubricating oil that has a freeing effect as well. Now then, she didn't call me an idiot, but she did ask me how much the bike would be worth once I had spent £32 for new parts on it.
'Nothing,' I said, 'Maybe £32 if I never ride it, but I would never get that, though.'
I can't help thinking I need to apply a 'most robust' approach towards my bike. As it stands, it is an unworkable piece of scrap metal that, deconstructed, may have some useful parts.
'I am right, I know I am. It is all those others who are wrong! So many others, so many.'
'Lie down, neighbour. Tell me what is troubling you. You don't mind if I take notes, do you?'
