Madness Needs Direction

Madness needs direction - I've not a doubt in my mind about it. Madness must be tamed with a gentle whipping that corrects the act like a lion in a circus. Madness needs a cigarette in the morning before the day begins, since the day would be wasted did it not begin with joy; the joyousness of drawing deep into our lungs a puff of smoke for the iron horse that continually holds the power to bring soothing, to bring ease, to bring calm into the revolting state of existential dread. The morning smoke brings purpose to an otherwise meaningless curiousity that we all too simply label as life. And our purpose is death, or at least that's what it becomes. We age - graciously or otherwise - and learn to be less concerned with all the atrocities that this thing called life brings about. Or we don't learn this, and we delve deeper, we seek further the blackness, or the psychotic absurdity that is the will to live and to survive. I smoke the morning smoke, not because I'm a punk rocker defying authority, nor because I believe that good health and the enemy of natural endorphins are something to be shunned or ignored, good health is a healthy choice. I smoke the morning cigarette, each and every morning, in an attempt to partake in the devastatingly tricky game of accepting my inevitable fate, which is of course, death. It comes to all of us, and it makes us all the more mad knowing it. Whether old age, cancer, or being struck suddenly by a passing bus, it comes to us. It makes us mad, this is the reason for insanity. Love is a losing game, she said, but I say that to live is a losing game. This madness needs direction. Us curious ones are like the puppy without a leash, a dog without an owner. We wander the streets and look into the shop windows and see the things we can't afford to buy, we then resolve the nagging curiosity by staring into the sky and pondering the cosmos, the great abyss, as if that is going to solve it. I've been like the lost dog. I've stood on main roads and watched the headlights barely miss me as I contemplate no longer whether fate or luck is at work. It's fate that I was mad enough to stand in front of the cars, it's luck that they narrowly missed me. I write. I write because madness needs direction. I strum and I bash at the strings of my guitar as I sing my heart out when I've drunk too much red wine, because madness needs direction. I spend the last of my money on booze, or what little I have on a gamble, because madness needs direction. I sit here in this bar, spending my money and writing this story and listening to the bar room chatter and my headphones playing and staring out the window and smoking cigarettes because madness needs direction. And I had no where to be today. I see the lady outside pushing a trolley full of parcels she's collected and a baby strapped to her chest and her toddler following along. She has direction. The men who don't mind drinking in the mornings continue their chatter and all of our days go on. I think I'll go and have a cigarette.