Misfits #4: handle with care

Pre­scrip­tion: care. Take it when bar­ing your soul. You swal­low the sugar-coated tab­lets read­ily enough with a glass of luke­warm water, each placed fresh every morn­ing on your grate­ful tongue, when you are fight­ing fierce to pro­tect your inner core from the harm­ful effects of mere exist­ence. Thus, you must increase the dosage all the more when skin, bone and scar tis­sue fall apart, dis­in­teg­rate and sep­ar­ate, and sud­denly your soul can smell the pois­ons, the putre­fac­tion, the pollution.

Take two cap­sules of care, three times a day before meals, or as dir­ec­ted by a med­ical professional.

I don’t know why. Is there s a shared sign, a stabbing sen­sa­tion in the back of the throat that leaves you for gasp­ing, too breath­less to com­pre­hend? A real­isa­tion. I see into too many people. I should mind my own. I too read­ily believe that I can glimpse the soul’s tell-tale entrails leak­ing through open pores. See­ing what I shouldn’t see. Don’t want to see. Not for my sake, but for theirs. Yet I thank the shad­owy spir­its and the ghosts of my own cre­ation that we are not all the same. There is strength through our diversity as well as our sim­il­ar­ity, echoes and non-echoes.

I want to know, just as much as I don’t wish to know a single word. I have heard too many uncer­tain voices on these hiss­ing air­waves, elec­trical bliz­zards, snowstorms of static, and by now sense should have made me selfish. I’m sure that if we star­ted, we could share until we were blue of face, hoarse of voice and tired of eye. Against my bet­ter judge­ment I encour­age you to unfurl the rope lad­der, climb down to the bot­tom of the well and hide, beck­on­ing me in beside you. Cramped in eternal space, we crumple then we crease. We whis­per deep into the dark and through the day that has sud­denly made night out of a round wooden roof, star­ing into our private patch of empty as we make the brick-lined black­ness our co-conspirator and confidant.

Should we, instead, lie in open fields, stare at lim­it­less skies and believe that a sun that doesn’t make us ache for four walls, reas­sur­ing claus­tro­pho­bia and our own private breaths truly can exist? Do you know the way?

Comments: 14

    eye­lids!

    andre | 04.30.07, 18:57

    pic­nic hampers
    pimms
    &
    scrabble

    annie | 04.30.07, 20:02

    famili­ar­ity, warmth and com­fort in the walls, yet the desire to wish to be set free in the openlands?

    pills provide such plastic care; real care con­tains com­pas­sion, under­stand­ing, and the two per­sons com­ment­ing above me.

    Miles Away | 04.30.07, 23:21

    Andre — blink blink stop.

    Annie — Where? Down the well? Or in the meadow? Or both?

    Miles Away — Famili­ar­ity, warmth and com­fort, yet the desire to be set free make for such awk­ward cous­ins, don’t they?

    And my thanks for under­stand­ing go to the two per­sons above you, as well as your good self.

    An Unreliable Witness | 04.30.07, 23:34

    Mr Wit­ness: the fam­ily to which these cous­ins belong and their pla­cing in the world may add to the con­fu­sion, how­ever there’s no reason why they can­not co-exist with con­sid­er­a­tion, each for the other. As long as they both under­stand. And as long as each aspect of per­son­al­ity and wish has respect for the other.

    Miles Away | 05.01.07, 00:13

    What ever happened to the Moth? I’ve been think­ing all day about that tale you once told about the Moth. Did he live, make babies, or did he die? You never fin­ish any of your stor­ies. It’s so annoy­ing. Most of the time I haven’t a fookin’ clue what you are on about. Why can’t you just write some­thing proper for a change? With a begin­ning, a middle, and an end? You know the sort of thing I mean: today I went to town with my friends. We went for a dead posh meal. Then we went home again. I love my friends. They are great.

    Plus also, can I come to the pic­nic with you? I like pic­nics. Though I am not play­ing strip Scrabble. Oh no. I remem­ber the last time we played it. I was bloody freezing.

    andre | 05.01.07, 00:27

    Erm, going back to nature, liv­ing in the woods, that kind of thing…

    Ariel | 05.01.07, 03:24

    Miles Away — I think my co-existing forces need some rela­tion­ship training.

    Andre — You’re right. I need to be more con­ven­tional. I need to write posts about doing home dec­or­at­ing and vis­it­ing DIY stores at the week­end. And also, as regards the Moth, please watch out for the soon to be released second chapter: ‘The Moth Returns: This Time It’s Personal’.

    Ariel — Yes, almost that. Though regret­tably I am in love with my home com­forts too.

    An Unreliable Witness | 05.01.07, 06:18

    I’d like to be set free within my famili­ar­ity. Until that hap­pens it’s plastic care on a grate­ful tongue.

    Beau­ti­ful piece.

    Angelalala | 05.01.07, 08:38

    Oh bug­ger, are my entrails show­ing again?

    Clare | 05.01.07, 09:50

    i want to stay in the well

    Peach | 05.01.07, 10:57

    Mr Unre­li­ably Esquire: Pic­nic — oh in lush green mead­ows, near a weep­ing wil­low that flows del­ic­ately in the breeze by a bab­bling brook or mean­der­ing river

    I’ll bring the pimms & the pic­nic hamper
    You bring the Scrabble board
    Andre can bring his flow­ing locks

    annie | 05.01.07, 11:23

    By a river the dragon­flies dance, birds sing and bees hum and soon you doze off lying on the grass and for­get all the struggle it took just to get there in the first place.

    seahorse | 05.01.07, 13:26

    once the co-existing forces have accep­ted that they’re not the only force in the world, and stirred up a bit of a fight with an unsus­pect­ing dormant force in a bid for free­dom, things can go a little smoother for a while…

    it can still be hor­rendously dif­fi­cult though if two forces are pulling in polarly oppos­ite dir­ec­tions, which to fol­low, one can per­haps only guess and see what the out­come is…

    [this is by far one of my favour­itest posts…]

    miles away | 05.02.07, 09:16

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