The Occur-real

A talent for madness: Defending the reality of the heart against the testimony of the world.

November 21, 2017

The voices in my head are called thoughts; they don’t come from the outside, they don’t belong to someone else—they are mine. I built and formed them so gradually, wonderfully, enchantingly, completely contradictory to one another, such that even a third cannot refute them with any visible or tangible evidence of being completely wrong. Eerie! And once, I loved playing with them, letting them create entire novels, poems, tragedies, and comedies; once… I read them and listen to them at the same time, looking into their countless eyes completely coldly, numbly, because I know the story they tell, write, and create will become just another in a series of… "imaginary stories." Enough! I command them to stop, then I pause, wondering: what is the point of all this? How much madness is proportional to a single levitation? And why can't I fly if my thoughts have such wonderful wings? I interrupt myself once more with a loud curse that echoes in my ears and wonder about the meaning of any curse. In vain. I find no meaning.

​Being mad is the ability to use your own intelligence to convince others not to see what is happening around you and within you; it’s the same with falling madly in love. Is there anything more beautiful or crazier than thoughts that bleed for an "I love you" that doesn't exist even when spoken or written? Because "I love you" was never a word, nor an act; "I love you" was not a thing or an event, a sensation or an orgasm, but something nothing less than madness. Those who wish to understand will succeed; those who do not will convince me to briefly believe them that "I love you" was, after all, just a word.

​Every madness actually begins the moment something ends that could have, for instance, lasted—had we stayed just a second longer where we are not now. And that constant, painstaking rewinding of the film and melancholic observation of possible scenarios that never happened, because of which thoughts speak in capital letters or very clear, harsh, commanding tones: "If only I had..." Isn't that flying? Who convinced you that you cannot think that it didn't happen the way it happened in the eyes of the whole world, rather than in the eyes of your feelings? You are the one who feels and you are mad, but at least you firmly defended the scenario that could have happened, just as this already occurred one played out. I don't know if this word [Dogodjen] even exists, but I certainly like it.

​Being mad or madly in love is not for everyone. It is a talent. A rare ability of people who, despite everything, continue to believe their own madness regardless of judgments, criticisms, or even the well-intentioned advice of others because... what do they know about the feelings in my body when they wear their own skin and can never touch mine, not now, not ever.

​The voices in my head are thoughts that never forced me to do anything crazy, wicked, or selfish, and that’s why I resent them—because I cannot attribute my own madness to feelings. Then, no one would believe me that the mentally ill suffer from being madly in love, which, when translated into words, means that being madly in love is the ability to use your own intelligence to convince others not to see what is happening around you and within you. The image in someone else's eye will never be able to see the way you see, and that is the beauty of it all, because only then do we prove that we are all mad in the eyes of others who do not see their own madness.

Since I've been a waitress my whole life, I feel like I must have a tip jar even here.