Tom hears voices, or specifically the Voice - the god who punishes disobedience, but rewards with transcendental illumination. I reflected on the irony that the mental health system which supposedly cures him, and fails at so many levels in the process, actually creates a worse disorder in his personality; and I loved Tom for his delight in nature, wry detachment and determination to survive the random help of professionals, family and friends.
I am triggering.
White ribbons crackle and burst before me, the ecstasy of ore, a rage of light, and I understand, I accept my annihilation as a blasphemer of the profligate universe whose orphan, Earth, mewls cruel power, and whose pontiff, the Octopus God, whose names are Malamock, Nicor, Kanaloa, the Foundation Spirit, who yet is the thing itself, grips me like these iron bench struts, pulling at this concrete, at this land. Oh Britain! My island! You are not Christian rock you are ancient sea-spit and we owe our lineage to the crawling ocean, the Octopus, a force far older than the Mother, Tyr, Grim, Frig, the devil or his tormentor and yet for his torture, for the burning of my hand, I have touched the centre of all things and felt the golden light- oh! The world gathers itself and looms, the pulsations constant, my ribs and spine and blood and feathers melting in the heat, and I whisper goodbye to Tess across the rain-drizzled street, to the kindness of one man helping another with a crate of toppling vegetables, my chest bursting open with love, and I cry out and someone on a motorbike turns to witness me and is gone as the others gaming the pavement re-affix their attention and I realise I have frightened them the mangling, oh the mangling, that my final act made fear, yet they could never understand this crystal terror, now that He is everywhere, now that I am falling...
A constellation of black holes gulps me down into the deep volcano as a syringe pops balloon animals full of blood in some dream that peels itself apart.
My mind rains to pieces.
