Don Mann: Focusing on my Craft

Friday, Oct. 31, 2003 - 2:19 p.m.

My life is a room full of drunkards, a basement filled with the mundane babblings and incessant twittering of the inebriated. The glass is empty in my hand and yet I don't know where my drink has gone. As my body loosens up and my vision turns from a sharp single to a blurry double, the phantoms of the drunks multiply, their voices raised in a howl to some pagan god I haven't yet seen invoked. My fist clenched, I stumble, hoping to find someone as outraged as I about the situation, someone with ideas and plans for the future of our people.

It is then I encounter the sobers.

The sobers sit alone in the corner, as they scoff and ridicule every move of the drunks, themselves sipping on some unfermented beverage (sans liqueur spiritueuse) I approach, masking my stumbling with slow motion, my mind too focused on controlling my feet, not focused enough on controlling my facial expressions. I realize then that I must be wearing the visage of a soulless zombie, the living dead fueled on alcohol and desperate for some kind of resolution. I am seen, and should be honored because the sobers took the time to stand up to point and laugh at me, a rare level of recognition given to only the lowest of asses and idiots. My tongue stumbles over the words, my mouth slathers and slurs the sounds while my brain screams the phrases over and over like a siren in a closet, the noise enduring and presiding over rational thought. At last, I find a soft place and rest my body. My mind is working overtime, still over-alert and perked, whilst my body acts of its own accord. I am suddenly forlorn.

My thoughts and emotions no longer have bearing on reality. All I know now is sorrow, and flashes of my past and every individual moment I was hurt tear through my brain and stab my mind's eye. The melancholy creeps like a massive gloved hand, soft and comfortable am I in its palm, until it crushes with the uncanny force of a junkyard car press. My train of thought is derailed, a penny on the track sending 40 cars full of screaming passengers careening through empty space and condemning them to terror. I grip what seems to be a blanket, and shroud myself with it. In my mind's absence my body has grabbed another bottle, one which now lays empty on the floor beside my makeshift comforter. I realize that this nightmare has just begun, like a four year old staring down the first drop of a rollercoaster feeling his insides curl and twist. I can only hang on for the ride.

Delve Into The Past - Onward Into The Future