Voices of Unreason

By Richard Davidson

I followed a whimsical breeze onto the site. At first, it was all I could do to share previous musings I had slathered out in lonely times gone by, and that was OK, but it wasn't really giving, now was it? So I taped up my heart the best I could, and dripped comedy onto the empty white page, watching it slide down slowly, oozing into a convenient little puddle at the bottom.

"Oooh!"

"Do more!" said the wretched excesses, who slowly turned into flesh and blood people; people who could wring more meaning out of a momentary excuse than I could find living in all the attics of Brunswick after a hard night drinking.

Soon, they formed a life of their own, and a web community that spoke to me like no other.

"Be more," it encouraged thoughtfully, "show us there's something in there besides twisted rhythmns of nights wasted on shallow pleasure."

How I wished to live up to its languid breathings. How I wished to be something of substance; something one could care about after the pudding is gone, but before the night watchman lets out the cat. How I longed to be that rare leader that didn't send his men to die in the cold squalor of youth; instead a beckoning thoughtmonger of purple and green, towering over the shimmering summer heat like a wayward firefly.

And there it was.

A perfect replica of my raging nuance, calming the waters like a conjurer's trick; a splash of oil from an old man's cane.

"You'll never finish it," they taunted, only joking a little, and secretly hoping I would, and then deep within myself I found the answers, one by one, in ancient codes that would etch themselves upon a stranger's psyche.

With all the bravery of an earnest pug, I retched my sordid abuse onto those hollow walls, and soon found a technicolor nightmare that was exsquisite in its infantile glory. I had done it, written the masterpiece that would make me rich and famous, all in the time it took to sober up a waterlogged Yak, and still, the resounding of the silent keys in my temples left me craving the coolness of ripe cucumbers in the autumn panic.

I wrote my little masterpiece, and faded away, soon to become a disant memory in the wishes of those who had grown and moved to far-off countrysides, filled with the nostalgia they would fail to recognize until far after it was just too late.

A new group of yelping foreigners would soon take root, all too willing to share each adventure with strange and dangerous neighbors, as the writing slid back off the walls, and down into the sewer of perpetuity, awash in the juices of violent storms gone by.

But of those paths now grown over with ivy, who has wandered them has felt both pain and beauty, and have spent countless hours wondering if there's really any real difference between the two.

And so dear host, and countless comrades, to you I give my all, and beg your leave. I will never thank you enough, and can only count on you to share my deepest desire for us to grow, and find that truth that eludes us, every one.

I have never left, and thus cannot return.

And on each fine day of finely lit dew, I will cherish each of you and wish you well.

And so it will go

on and on.

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