I am not insane! You are! All of you are! I am the only sane person left on this planet! Because you are all under the influence of Pan, the flute-wielding god of the Pan-Americana highway, along which he dances and sings, luring all of you infidels to your death! You hear me, world!? Like the Pied Piper, you will follow in his muddy footsteps all the way to hellish Hamelin, engulfed in green flames and madness!
I am NOT insane!
Right! Right, right, right… Calm down now, Jeffrey. Everything is fine. Nothing is engulfed in green flames, okay… That’s just… Right! I will tell you my story! But you must promise not to tell anyone! Because if you do, I will cut off your ear and wear it as a necklace. Okay? I am not insane…
Right! So, first, I was this little girl. What? Yes, I was! I had long, blond hair and wore a blue dress with a white apron and everything! And then, one day, there was that freaky little white rabbit again, hopping along all hurried and stressed… So I followed him! And when he went inside his little hole, I followed him there too! And it went down… ALL the way down… And I went down with it… Down and down it went… Forever and ever…
Until POOF! I landed in a world so strange, so wonderful, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you! But I’m going to, anyway! So, listen up! I saw a grin suspended in mid-air, finest feline furry vanishing behind it. Where did you go, you little liar? Was it Cheshire? I saw a caterpillar smoking, blue onto his face, while mad murmurs floated from his lips in little puffs of pale and ghostly smoke. I ate some mushrooms and grew tall, and suddenly I saw, I understood it all! Hatters that were mad and sipping, eternal tea, forever biscuits, dipping, dripping… And then, then came the queen, all red and full of threat and dread, screaming, “Off! Off with that head and dead! Die you shall, you twat!” And so she did, cut off my head, and when I woke up in my bed, I cried and thought, “White rabbits, what’s with that? Rabbits should be green instead!”
Green rabbits, green, green… Like the jungle, so mean! Full of slithering snakes and hairy spiders, scary gliders into pits with bloody stakes, dead mates, and mosquitos, it’s this heat, this sweltering heat, feet are rotting, insects buzzing, biting, scratching; driving me insane, and the war the war the war…
It never ends it never ends… You must find the crazy king, they said, he’s hiding, deep in the jungle, you must go there, go and take his head! Off! Off with his head! And so I went, I went and did, because I’m soldier, oh so mean, in this jungle, green, green green… The king went mad, you see, saw the war and thought, no way, and he retreated, deep into the heart of darkness and the forests, they rose up, their roots soaking, buried in the mud, the swamp, the rotting, soaking, cut off their heads, soaking in their blood…
I love the smell of napalm in the morning. Let’s go surfing!
And when I found the king, mad as a hatter
deep in the jungle, oh so green
he caught me, caged me, and he
read me scripture
poetry, as he
cut off their heads
and then he set me free
so I could see
and tell the world
and I took my machete
dripping, tripping, and everything ceases
the horror, the horror, he uttered, he muttered
as I hacked him to pieces
After the war, I changed my name to Travis Bickle and went to work as a cab driver in New York. And I was alone, you know? I always have been. Loneliness has followed me my whole life. Everywhere. There’s no escape. I’m God’s lonely man.
June 8th. Saw a dog carcass in an alley this morning, tire treads on its burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face. The streets are extended gutters, and the gutters are full of blood, and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists, and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout, “Save us!“… and I’ll whisper, “No.“
Listen, you fuckers, you screwheads. Here is a man who would not take it anymore. A man who stood up against the scum, the cunts, the dogs, the filth, the shit. Here is a man who stood up! None of you seem to understand. I got some bad ideas in my head… You talking to me? You talking to me? You talking to me? Then who the hell else are you talking… you talking to me? Well, I’m the only one here. Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to? Oh, yeah? Okay. You see, Doctor, God didn’t kill that little girl. Fate didn’t butcher her, and destiny didn’t feed her to those dogs. If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn’t seem to mind. From then on I knew… God doesn’t make the world this way. We do. Now I see this clearly. My whole life is pointed in one direction. There never has been a choice for me. I’m not free. I was never and never will be. This prison is forever.
So I shot that fucking pimp.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
And since now everyone seemed to think I was the crazy one, they threw me in the loony bin. With that fucking Nurse Ratched at the helm. Oh, how I hated that bitch. Cold, passive-aggressive, running her ward like some stiff, stuck-up female version of Hitler himself, man! I just wanted to play cards with Billy, Charlie, and the Chief, you know? Smuggle in a drink, maybe… and some girlfriends… hell, I actually did take them out one day! Remember? Hell yeah! Me and a bunch of the guys, we stole a van, and we went fishing! And I told them, I told them they should stand up, you know? Stand up against that rotten system, against that fucking Ratched… Stand up! Yeah, man…
I’m going to escape this place one day. I’ll rip that freaking fountain off its base and hurl it through that window! And me and the Chief, we’ll go to Canada… But first, we’ll have ourselves a little going-away party! Ow, come on, have a drink with us! We have plenty of time…
But the next morning, they caught us all lying all over the floor of the ward… They locked Billy in his cell, after which he slit his throat. And then something just snapped, you know? I wanted to kill that Ratched bitch, and I did. I grabbed her by the throat, and… and then… I was in this room… where they put these things on my temples, and a tube in my mouth for me to bite on… And when they flipped the switch
3.14159265358979323846 9:22, Personal note: When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun, so once when I was six, I did. At first the brightness was overwhelming, but I had seen that before. I kept looking, forcing myself not to blink, and then the brightness began to dissolve. My pupils shrunk to pinholes and everything came into focus and for a moment I understood. That day, I had my first headache. Failed treatments to date: Beta blockers, calcium channel blockers, adrenalin injections, high dose ibuprofen, steroids, Trager Mentastics, violent exercise, cafergot suppositories 264338327950288419716, caffeine, acupuncture, marijuana, Percodan, Midrine, Tenormin, Sansert, homeopathics.
No results. No results… 9: 29, Restate my assumptions: One, Mathematics is the language of nature. Two, Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers. Three: If you graph the numbers of any system, patterns emerge. Therefore, there are 93993751058209749445patterns everywhere in nature. Evidence: The cycling of disease epidemics; the wax and wane of caribou populations; sun spot cycles; the rise and fall of the Nile. So, what about the stock market? 10:15, personal note: It’s fair to say I’m stepping out on a limb, but I am on the edge and that’s where it happens. My new hypothesis: If we’re built from 261931188171010 Spirals while living in a giant Spiral, then is it possible that everything we put our hands to is infused with the Spiral? Something’s going on. It has to do with that number. There’s an answer in that number.
[In front of the bathroom mirror. Pushes a live power-drill into the side of his head]
12:50, press Return
happy birthday Euclid…and everything went dark. Again.
What? Did a burning plane engine fall into my bedroom? No, it didn’t, did it? That can’t be… And was I there when it happened? I’m just asking because… Well, these last few days, they’ve been mighty strange, I’ll tell you… Do you know that feeling where you’re not sure if you’re awake or still dreaming? When you dream, there are no rules; people can fly, anything can happen. Sometimes there is a moment as you are awakening when you become aware of the real world around you, but you are still dreaming.
You may think you can fly, but you had better not try. Yeah, but… What I mean is… In between that, you know? There’s this… sort of twilight of consciousness, in which… I don’t know, man… In which bunnies exist, alright! Big, talking bunnies like my man Frank! I’ve been seeing him everywhere, and he keeps telling me all this weird shit about how the world is going to end in exactly 28 days…
And then I flooded the school… I burned down Cunningham’s house… And still, I… I wasn’t quite sure if I was awake or still sleeping throughout the whole thing, you know? It was weird, man… Like you’re somehow sleepwalking through your own life…
So, I danced. I danced with the rabbit in the pale moonlight. And then I shot him in the eye.
Did a burning plane engine fall into my bedroom? No, it didn’t, did it? That can’t be… And was I there when it happened? I’m just asking because.
I think I’m dead
everything is really weird now
I don’t like it anymore
where is… where am… how did I…
I was in Vietnam. With my unit, we were attacked, and… I escaped into the jungle, but… Did I get stabbed? I’m not…
I think I’m dead
I’m in the subway now. New York City. The year is 1975. Did I just see a slithering tentacle from under that homeless guy? No, I didn’t. I’m a postal worker, and I live in a rundown apartment in Brooklyn with my girlfriend, Jezebel. I miss my family, especially my son, and I’m having these weird visions… Hallucinations, people’s faces getting all scrambled up – it’s scary, but I don’t know what to do… I don’t know where I am or who I am, exactly, or… everything is strange; I can’t… get a grip…
I think I’m dead
I wake up in a different world, where I live with my wife and son; they’re fine, I’m fine, everything is alright now, but…
Did they give us drugs, in ‘Nam? Is that what happened? Did they secretly slip us something, something weird, and did it make us all turn on each other?
why is there a white rabbit here?
and who is this Pan character? And what of his flute?
singing and dancing, the brightest of lights
everything is engulfed in green flames, and
I think I’m dead
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