He tried to see how long he could go in that fixed position, no need for distractions or a change, just how long he could go without thinking, without caring, none of it mattered, repeat.
But was it really that beautiful? Was it even worth it? How good actually was this? And how much better was it than the alternatives? Were they any less risky? Physical danger appeared to be a recurring issue. How safe was he? Would it have been any safer over there? Well the answer to that, if he was to believe popular opinion and everything he read and heard, for which perhaps there was quite a lot to be said, was a thoroughly resounding “yes”.
The fact remained that Whitetrash had never been forced to come here, it was completely his own decision and he didn’t have to do any of it at all and the ones who genuinely did care, completely and unconditionally, just wanted him to stop all this nonsense and go back. They just wanted to worry less that’s all. So did he really have to go back?
It hadn’t taken long to start thinking and caring, just not about what he’d previously expected, now it appeared necessary to worry about the future as opposed to lament events of the past, an equally disconcerting activity and highly similar in the emotions it manages to conjure up. Negative memories seemed to affect him in very much the same way as potential future traumas. Could it be that all this came under the same basic heading? One that, for the purposes of clarity we might call “FEAR”? If he could just manage to ignore it, maybe he could actually get over it, forget it completely, realise its irrelevance and the fact that most of the time it wasn’t even true anyway.
It suddenly dawned on him that he wasn’t strong enough for this, very few people were strong enough for this, which was, of course, why most people didn’t do it. It was absolute stupidity! To stay for a considerable length of time out here surrounded by all these dangers was an act of pure recklessness, as if he didn’t even know what “reck” was.
What’s more, these people, the ones who thought and then communicated those thoughts for the purpose of being universally understood, almost always came to a sticky end. It was slightly more dangerous a business as it was perhaps given credit, only slightly less in fact than being a stunt man, at least in this case you started small, worked your way up to mastery, and even then there was safety equipment. What then was the psychological-self-analysis-and-spiritual-exploration-for-the-purpose-of-public-consumption equivalent of a crash helmet and fireproof clothing? There seemed to be no real way of working himself up to this, he either did it, or he didn’t.
And what was he hoping to achieve from all this anyway? Because he now realised that whatever it was, it really was not worth it. The average man, that’s what he should be striving for, wife, children, job. Average behaviour was the right course of action and this particular specimen appeared to be rather a large deviation, relatively speaking that is. Had it ever occurred to him that he might be ever so slightly neglecting his homeland? Was he that convinced that “Culture is not your friend”? Quite selfish was it not, to turn his back on the society that produced him and the camaraderie of collective life? But then again did he ever have that? And if not then why should it be such an issue now? It was wrong and he knew it, it had always been wrong and it was for that very reason he was here, doing this. He should have known more than anyone that it wasn’t easy doing this, but then again would it be any easier doing anything else? It would have been quite hard not to do it, in fact it was all pretty much impossible to avoid. What exactly do you do when you appear to deviate so far from the average man that at times your very being comes across as one great gross error?
Was close communion with nature really the answer? Was there any value whatsoever in these insights? Were they even insights at all or just different theories that can never be proved right or wrong? Did every self-organising system in nature have its own unique vibration and was it really so important that he should know? At the end of the day that was what happened to people like that, after a lifetime of doing exactly this they realised it was all a complete waste of time. So it seemed the only thing left for Whitetrash to do may well have been to go back and put his complete faith in everything.
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