Le Momo

Le Momo

Insanity. Is it a clause or merely some odd aprehension that we spend most of our lives avoiding? I wonder that, gripping some shred of reality, attempting desperately not to lose my head in daily life. I despise mundanity. This digs in me a certain tie to those realms which aren't average. Am I going mad? I ask myself as things begin to fall apart, or am I subject to the same fears as all humanity? Is everybody simply kidding themselves into normalcy? I cannot answer these questions. I am drawn into a constant trap of not wishing to go mad yet experience a certain fascination for it. This drug which seduces me, that splendid drug with tastes of fire and glorius fury. My idols have been accused of being mad and being saints. Joan of Arc heard the voice of Mary calling her into war. It certainly led her to great things or perhaps her ruin, something far greater than the average human can ever know. Consider Saint Theresa, her side aching nearly constant, a burning sting from the thorn of angels. Whether what occured to these fair humans was the doing of divinity or their heads, seems to me unimportant. They acheived a being that is surely greater than most of us shall know. Let us consider Baudelaire. He was possessed of a unique madness that had less to do with serious illness or divine intervention, rather a dabbling in the darker arts of the mind. He drenched that body in the den of opium and wine, deep within the stink of chemical induced madness. His was a madness sought after, a language the mind devises with, as Rimbaud said, "an unraveling of the senses." Is this how we are to udnerstand madness? I would argue no. I am convinced of a certain logic to all insanity in that like a computer, once the mind is programmed in such manner, it is wired in that direct order. It is a pure logic devised by neurosis and imbalance, programming as it were. It is often ap[parently illogical because we assume all minds to work in the same manner our personal mind works. It is a false assumption that all humans think in the same manner at all. The processes may be the same, but no pattern is alike as no one can have precisely the same chemical, genetic, or psychological makeup. But what of going mad? What of the nervous breakdown? We are all capable of madness I believe. All it takes is an overload of the emotional or chemical systems with information. Breakdowns occur to those like Howard Hughes, suddenly and without reason, foreshadowed by slight pecularities of character but little else. I think we all struggle occassionally with these feelings, or perhaps it is merely my hope . . . . At any rate, I hardly feel connected to the world of normalcy and feel a certain empathy for the madman lying alone in the padded room. There is something more real to that than anything I can think of. In this world where we are barraged with images of the extreme(or so we are told), it is the true bona fide madman that we fear becoming. We ignore true symbols of subversion, instead latching onto the safety of constantly joining the crowd. At least the madman is a pure individual, truly wrapped in that realm of self, completely aware of that which we only hide.