nervous breakdown

Tonight at 8PM someone will start a nervous breakdown. It took him some time to face it, but the poison is in him. It probably infected his soul on one of these dark evenings of fading winter and early spring, when the abuse of alcohol & cigarettes, the lack of rest and over-exposure to a braindead society opened a breach in his immune system. The long and motionless nights of a remote Kingdom took the fight out of him.

Actually he did try to fight for a little while. He took a ride to the mountains, read Strindberg by the chimney fire and played childish games with little fellows. He enjoyed short periods of grace, mostly at night when everyone had gone to bed, and there were nothing left to hear but the crackling of the fire and the burbling of the near river.
But even then, images kept flowing in his head of things that couldn't be undone, and a clear dividing line between the past and the future sprouted up from the ground. And now, for the first time, he chooses to give up the fight. Quietly. Consiously. Looking at it straight in the eyes. He surrenders for some time to the might of reality and its army of social rules, selfish individuality and ruthless materiality.

This guy spent his rolling twenties trying to fight his own fight, giving life the shape of his dreams. Writing, travelling and drinking, meeting people of various kinds, luring some to his disneyland, where nothing was important apart from art and inner feelings. Where Mickey Mouse could be your friend if he could play the piano, where Goofy could make you laugh if he didn't laugh at his own jokes, where Uncle Scrooge could be your man if his saloon was free for all, where Minnie Mouse could be your girl if you pushed the right button.

He won't destroy his disneyland. He still has faith in it, and hopes it will reopen soon. But for now, all he can see is old people repeating the same crap, teenagers worshiping nonsense, companies selling their products, accountants doing their job, girls kissing boys they don't love, boys leaving girls they do love, people judging other people without proof and without trial. And that's not a pleasant view.

Today in the tube, some young guy next to him counted on his fingers the number of girls he kissed and he said 25. He didn't remember their names, he didn't remember their faces. He just remembered they fancied him. The guy was (maybe) not stupid. He's was (maybe) not vain. He was just putting into practice what Camus wrote in the myth of Sysiph. He keeps climbing the mountain, going for quantity, and not for quality. And in a sense he's right. Quantity can't be tricky, and quality can.

The time has come for our friend for hibernating. Accepting defeat and getting prepared for the next battle. Finding himself a new skin for the old ceremony.