As such, I have written long winded essays about my various triumphs both imaginary or real and many short fiction pieces describing theoretical physics and soviet history, vaguely. These are both loosely disguised metaphors that tie into the following passages, mostly because I have taken the time to suggest that they are so.
If I write, “Now I need socks,” the phrase can be taken in many ways. This is because English literature has painstakingly been argued that it could mean anything, based on the reader’s perception, not the authors intended meaning.
I sometimes try to prove to people that I came from elsewhere.
I often catch myself laughing at the claim that though I was born in Edmonton, I moved all the way to Western Canada from Whitby, England just to be one day away from London. Is this because I want to believe this myself? I fear that I have only been talking to myself, raising suspicions of insanity or gaping holes in these odd symptoms of brilliance.
People have a tendency to compare me to the mathematician in the movie “A Brilliant Mind.”
I am embarrassed by this comparison because I fear it is true.
I am clear-headed now, only a little shaky on the inside. I am glad that my mind has been shut down a little bit, that hibernation was just what I needed. I have a tendency towards psychosis or mania when things in my life get a little heady. So, dear reader of my work, I write to you from the Penticton Psychiatric Ward. This will be my home for a few weeks and that is why I am musing over the use of a dear-to-me name, Amor de Cosmos.
Can I righteously run in an election as this name? Is it best for me to resurrect the Rhino Party to do so? I want to do both these things. When I claim to be from somewhere else, a different universe or old-world city, is it because I want to convince myself of this?
I use the pen name Amor de Cosmos because I rightfully feel I can and should.
If it makes people feel like they were around last time I was, all the better.
I like the phrase, “usually described as a mad figure,” to open the floor to discussions about my favoured writing pseudonym. I do seem to be that person if you look at me. I have a mental health file. I tell myself that in the before times, while psychiatry was normally cured by full or partial lobotomies, that I was either chained to something by my family until the ills subsided or legislation was passed by my good friend the Queen of England suggesting that I may not be subject to that artefact of medical history. The former may be true, but I doubt the Queen had ever heard of me. Willy-nilly lobotomies are a thing of the past so I feel blessed to be in the care of a modern psychiatric wing. But I am running on a tangent here, so I suggest we find out where it is headed.
When I wrote the “Viewpoint of a Short-Circuited Iron,” I did not realize the similarities between it and that old animated movie, “A Brave Little Toaster.” I was entirely unaware of that throughout the writing and editing process but it leads me to think that it was either a congnitive dissonance, (my own brains refusal to bridge the similarities due to work put in to the story) or the idea that nothing can be brand new. Can my writing be without influences? I would say no, because then it would be jabberwocky, the form of English prose that is garbled nonsense without any real words.
So should I mesh all that I have read into one fanatical theory?
No, but maybe a column will help.
I only ever understand Pythagorean Theory briefly while I am asleep. This happened again last night. Instead of having one of those “Eureka” moments and running down the hallway in my underpants I just rolled back over and fell back to my slumber.
All day I have been trying to reach back into that dream consciousness to bring the strand of understanding towards me. All I could find is colossal blue whales flying in the sky or a job at a 24 hour store that did not have a working shave-ice machine. These are two moments that I vaguely remember but not the concrete understanding of a mathematical theory that I hoped for. These are options, and recording this thought brought me to the sort of psychological musing I have already touched on.
While I was asleep did I truly understand why a particular triangle can be measured? I can’t even be sure I know which sort of triangle the theory is discussing. Was it something that I really understood, or did I see that the rest of the book I was reading agreed that it was so?
I am only myself. The others that I claim to be are only recorded traits of me. I doubt they locked me in here because I believe that I am Amor de Cosmos. I have lived my whole life thinking that and am only on my second relaxing visit to the acclaimed Club Med. If anything it is my stubbornness using this pseudonym that makes me not bring it up to the nurses if prodded. The nurses are probably not even aware of that. So clearly, I invented the media and am a still around King of Spain.
And so that could be considered my biography, but please, if it ever comes up, do not sir me Raul Duke. It was a misnomer. I usually wind up in some sort of psychiatric can when I think like that. It was not the drugs that made me Amor de Cosmos, for better or worse. I should mention that every time I drink mushroom tea I wind up in this sort of situation. It has been the cause of much of the rabble surrounding my mental health file. I should know better by now, it is a waste of time.
I was once told by a naturopath that my brain was basically on mushrooms anyways. This seems true. It explains, he suggested, why I cannot take them without the drug effecting me long term. It also is interesting to note that I feel that they will clear my manic states up when I take them. As a side note I still believe that they are represented as the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the Bible. I also feel the tree of life is Marijuana. It seems like an honest interpretation, so no note can show my beliefs better than reading the story of Adam and Eve.
So dress well and dress often. I get to scribble for a living. I was asked recently if I paint and I said that it was not something I did regularly. I explained that my thoughts are better transposed in words that other people can read and not in the abstract art they appear to me as. I find that if my thoughts are rather bland and literal than I paint abstract drawings, otherwise my obscure thoughts should be changed into paragraphs and such for everyone’s benefit.
I want to write for a living. This suggests that I want to but I don’t. Both are somewhat true. The phrase places it out of my reach. I think this is important and can be taken in rightful persuasive context with the idea that people know that I live simply in a town called heaven and not the actual place. When I was asking if this was the spot I should have known better.
It was a silly cry for help that was not taken seriously by my friends. But it is easily forgivable, I have obscure thinking friends. Birds of a feather flock together, you know.
Because my youth in Summerland could be mistaken for a youth in actual heaven I feel partially ashamed. It is important for me to think that these are balanced by the trials in my later youth until now. That is the balance of this privileged universe. We live in a land of plenty and I feel guilty. I am 25 years old very soon and hopefully I am now responsible enough to keep myself in order. I love order because it seems unattainable for me. I am the personification of Jabberwocky.
But my character is back. I was on a heavy sedative for five days or so and slept uncomfortably the whole time. So maybe the other characters are back. These are my inner child. I was admitted here because I was certain that I had a daughter that I had ignored for the first two and a half years of her life. Everyone has an inner child that is begging for attention and everyone has the insight of the opposite sex. This in an idea that can be written as: “Those who choose they do not suffer from delusions repress them, making their delusions stronger when they fight back.”
I have gained much insight into myself in the care of the ward and am rather glad I took those mushrooms, by and by. It isn’t worth the hassle and I fear that if I mention that I am thankful for the mental work mushrooms have caused me they may keep me here longer. If I tell others that the characters that write my stories are anyone other than myself my friends and family get worried. That is the way it is, because they are simply myself or different aspects of my own thought.
The child is still but a twinkle in my eye.
And I cannot wait until she is real.
So now that I have proven that it is entirely possible that I am who I claim to be using this pseudonym, I jest: Why is everyone John Lennon last time?
And old friend gave me this funny note that I cannot take credit for. “Alas,” he sort of said, “I want to take everyone who thinks they are Jesus and put them in a building.” It would be an interesting party. I would invite David Letterman for one floor and Jay Leno for the other. Conan O’Brian could host the whole star-spangled gala. Everyone wants to be a celebrity; it is just hard to prove that you are one.
But even proving that I am who I claim to be is hard to grasp. I may have just practiced writing enough to have the clarity (*eh-hem*) of Amor de Cosmos or musical virtuosity of Hector Berlioz. To be fair, I can’t be certain that I am the latter, I just really like that name and it seemed reusable.
At risk of causing a theological debate, I think that eventually everyone realizes that they are simply still around in situations. Once this is rendered baffling, we start to trust the magic that lies in this world. Science is beginning to prove that this world is more like the old mysticism every day, which is my favourite post-modern thought. So we are back, it seems, to the original musing…
Can I run for election as a free-thinker and resurrect the Rhino Party of Canada?
Of course I could. This is a free country. One of our running platforms is in debate right now, as we may annex a Caribbean Island. The time has never been better. I doubt I could run using a pseudonym, so I would have to legally change my name to Amor de Cosmos again. And I consider the fact that I have before.
So maybe I should.
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