Psychosis Goes Shopping

psychosis goes shopping

Awareness, Awareness, Awareness

There's a little breeze in the air. From a hundred yards I can smell the sea, and beneath the call of the seagulls, comes the low rumble and crash of the timeless, effortless waves. Life has a bright edge, sparkles, my senses speak to me. Sense beyond sight and sound. The air is alive. I am alive. And God is in all. Society and their doctors prescribe me happy pills, fast food and decomposing fruit sugars to numb and obscure, monotonous circuses of triviality and trauma to distract and captivate. But I know better. The wind is in my face as I head towards the front. Air blown clean across the ocean, riding up with the Atlantic, occasionally delivering the remnants of a Caribbean hurricane. When it's kicking up a gale and the tide is in it resonates through your feet, to your guts, your genitals, you can taste it – wear it, but not this evening, the breeze is gentle and sporadic and the sea no more than grumbling. Clouds and Chem-trails are scattered, morphing across God's great canvas, diffusing the sun to a shimmering red globe. Extraordinary shapes and patterns radiate across the heavens, the sun casting a blood tinge across the iron-age hill fort, now buried beneath time and nature. Syrupy waves guide the sun's remaining rays from our mother's pregnant horizon unwaveringly towards me: glistening rust across the blackening sea. As old as time, and unique in every telling. Unfortunately, in our modern hectic world it's not quite dynamic enough: not enough happens, it's too slow, there's no hero or villain, no violence, no fucking... and the end is always the same. True, death is always the conclusion, but the beauty is in the journey, not the conclusion. A fact lost in our modern world, determined to vanquish evil and live happily ever after, in eternal light.

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Seagulls crowd the sky above the castle. Air currents make particular patterns where they encounter the town's history and geography, and morning and evening most particularly, as land and sea exchange temperatures, the gulls take advantage of flight without effort as a joy in itself. Why Jonathan ever wished to be other than a seagull I cannot imagine: such graceful, effortless fliers who brave the gales, fighting then surrendering to the wind in some glorious dance with their maker: long after the lesser fliers have dived for cover. They'll also be riding the currents long after this crumbling relic of a few generations past has had its stones cracked by flower and root and been beaten to nothingness by wind and rain: if the sea does not claim it first. I can watch them for hours, in harmony with themselves and their environment, honing, savouring their God given talents. Yet around town, all people acknowledge of the seagulls is their nightly rampage through carelessly placed rubbish and their calls of excitement at the start of a new day: long before most humans want to face its pressures and tribulations. Towards the sea, from the castle, stands a monument to death: the names of heroes or murderers cast for history, to be lamented or idolised annually, with Britannia pointing her bristols like cannon towards the sea, as if to deter all would be invaders. Stark white poles punctuate the front, from which bits of coloured cloth swirl and flutter. Symbols of identity and isolation, of power and persecution, of prejudice. Of stupidity. Of brainwashing. Lies to die for. The putting green and crazy golf have long since been deserted by the mac wearing, umbrella clenching grocks, but beyond that sits the pier. And although the tourists have gone, they have been replaced in magnitude by eager young university students. Not eager for the university, you understand, but for the first trip away from home, armed with a student loan and what is rather dishonestly labelled freedom. Gambling machines, pizza bar, pub and club, the pier is a favourite haunt of those who believe three years uni on a plate is more entertaining, rewarding and enlightening than adventure, discovery, experience or even finding a job. It's weird, every year, according to statistics, the ability of 10 and 11 year-old kids to read, write and add up deteriorates. Yet, through some extraordinary transformation, by the time they finish secondary school they are producing the highest grades in history! You'd think, wouldn't you, given these remarkable statistics, the government would be beating an enormous drum and singing the praises of their outstanding schooling system from the roof tops – and tower blocks? Except they're not: which suggests rather than budding geniuses, 2

they are little more than automata, programmed to supply the required answers, and conform to expected behaviour. Namely, know what boxes to tick, establish a debt chaining them to the structure, piss away three years and leave knowing nothing of the outside world, barring what financial, corporate and political authorities deem appropriate. And they too will leave with the greatest marks in history, with their cascaded 2:1s prostituting them to the structure. I'd wager not one of them knows education comes from the Latin verb, educe. What a terrible waste of youth. But even they can be stopped, albeit briefly, by the inexplicable display of the starlings, swarming in their thousands over and around the Gothic spires of the Old College as dusk approaches. Sweeping up into the breeze to be carried this way and that in swirling clouds, before eventually settling for the night on the rusting, guano caked rafters, supporting the prefab pier, singing, or chattering with a gusto to challenge the disco. And leaving carelessly parked cars liberally splattered with bird shit. Term is now almost a month old. Freshers no longer create slalom like pavements every night with their liberated drinking and eating habits. Excesses are limited to the (extended) weekend and puke piles little more than occasional. A combination, one assumes, of acclimatisation and the student loan not being quite the fortune it had first appeared. Still, there's always the interest free overdraft, so generously donated by the banking community. After the pier the promenade opens up into a wide walkway, and a good job too. The ever hungry sea is eating at the shoreline, and as storms rage, it is prone to spitting stones and sand clear across the promenade to pebble-dash cars and flower beds. As a consequence it seems more beach than pavement for a goodly percentage of the winter months, despite the Cnut-like efforts of yellow jacketed workers. Tuning from the sea I head towards town and shops. On the whole, useless shops, fashion and finance, trivia and funding, most now closed barring offie and take-aways. The supermarket never sleeps. Fluorescent light shines its presence. Security, arms folded, shoes polished, looking miserable and threatening in equal measure guards the door. The door opens with a cold whisper to reveal cellophane wrapped wreaths from SS (Sub-Saharan) Africa - sinking beneath the weight of Western usury, for a debt which never was theirs..

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The newspaper stand greets with its trivial and fearful headlines. Tits and glam and cynical, meaningless declarations of peace and righteousness without qualification from monsters: parroted unquestioningly by their press. Hitler wanted peace, one only had to submit to his terms. Not a ruler throughout history has claimed otherwise. Liars, without exception. For it is a truth without stating: no one can impose their peace: peace is found only in oneself. Yet, this elephant, nay, fucking whale, remains invisible to all: barring the perpetrators and profiteers. Truth from a world stood on its head, where peace means war, understanding is outlawed and strength has mutated from “turning the other cheek” to knee jerk violence against pitiful, unmatched opponents. Terrorism... immigration... violence... crime... recession... inflation... global warming... some pages in, beyond the stories laced with fear and identification, less newsworthy items. Far away tales without geopolitical and economic consequence, at least not immediately for their readership. It will not do to associate doubling rice prices for consumers with the causes and consequences for Asia and Africa: where people die without headlines, for want of rice or water or a penny – a dozen 9/11s every day. Popular trivia... and sport, where prostitutes and mercenaries, enhance the wealth and egos of corporate business and the idle rich, and, as since Roman times, distract and pacify the herd. The names have changed, but it's still a circus just the same. One, big, fucking, circus. We don't buy newspapers, they disturb us. But bread is another matter. Mustn't starve, just because Africans have to. Beyond the newspaper stand a cornucopia awaits, far surpassing the imagination of those empowering the gods, whose palates were sated with grapes and wine. Before us all manner of out of season, out of climate delicacies, most unknown until a generation or so past. Beans, peas, chillies, avocados... from Kenya. Brilliant! Millions starving yet their generosity towards civilisation knows no bounds. Well, not those who starve, or slave, but their whoring rulers who must spread their cheeks and gobble the cocks of the IMF&Co, for their crystal, air-conditioned palaces. Africans do not starve because there is no food, there is plenty of imported food for the wealthy. They starve because they are poor.

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Poor as defined by those who control the world's value structures: the value of money, the value of resources, the value of guns, and the value of people. Black people being worth less than an avocado. How fortunate westerners are civilised. Would it not be horrible to be worth less than an avocado, or a mange tout? or a lily? “BUY ONE, GET ONE FREE!”, or so says the “Special Offer” on the teabag display: Empire juice. Once imperialists slaughtered cultures and populations over this delicacy, then kept it under lock and key. Now, clueless consumers idly chuck their special offer amongst their other liberated items. For growers no longer control their harvests, or their land; this is now in the hands of the free market, aka global capitalism, so the darkies can no longer hold civilisation to ransom: for what are after all, just leaves. Tea, coffee, chocolate... all liberated from the darkies. The wonder of neo-liberalism, colonialism by the back door, yet with a fraction of the effort. And sugar, backbone of culture, built on slavery, processed into food, fermented into alcohol. Sugar, synonymous with profit and poverty and great, great power. The power that built the Tate. The power that keeps sugar exempt from health studies, whilst ballooning the careless, ignorant and unwary. Sawn off above the knees, raw cartilage stands to attention in rank and file as the quasimodo bodies of 'value' chickens completely fail to present uniformity. Once, a chicken was cut at the ankle and its legs neatly shoved up the tattered remnants of its arse. Now, they are brought to maturity in little over a month, so their bones don't develop, their legs are like jelly, and as a consequence, they hobble around on their knees as their distorted bodies are pumped full of growth hormone. It leaves burns and scars across their immature knees, so the evidence is removed with a saw. Value: they do not mean value in terms of life, just financial. Fast food, to be shovelled unconsciously into ever expanding guts spreads similarly along the shelves. Time saving, labour saving, thought saving, flavour enhanced conglomerations for the isolated and overwhelmed. Trough food to be nuked during the adverts, stretches out before us, towards factory dairy. Product upon product, luxury upon luxury, aisle after aisle displaying abundant varieties of all manner of exotic fancy. We cannot imagine wanting for anything: preserved in jars, tins, vacuum packs, ice, or dried and magically transported from goodness knows where.

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Beauty products, beauty products, beauty products, for the impossible dream. Promising security and generating fear. Airbrushed perfection smiles wrinkle free illusion to undermined insatiable egos: masks and creams for the enslaved and insecure. The promise of youth in the lie of image: where age is disease and no sacrifice, be it whale or foetus, is too great to obscure the affliction. Madness, but hell and damnation hold not a candle to age and death for the Enlightened generation. Cleaning products, cleaning products, cleaning products, poisons in all varieties. Generating fear and promising security. Contaminating environments and undermining immune systems in their futile attempts to obliterate nature. Promising surfaces so alien even bacteria cannot survive: to be flushed into the water supply. Germs they call them, another weapon in their arsenal of fear, to which the bewildered herd cling for security. For, as with all pretend security, the objective is not safety, but manufacturing fear and soliciting identification. Alcohol, alcohol, alcohol: decomposing fruit sugars, rotting to poison. Physical, cultural, spiritual poison. Most noxious and unnatural of drugs: but most beloved by authority: for, unlike natural herb, alcohol comes without creativity, reflection, mind expansion or spiritual awakening, or Love. CDs and DVDs from years, decades past hawk themselves to the queue. Ageing artists, fortunes amassed long since, and their corporate owners attempt to tempt. Copyright lies, destroying the meaning of art, perverting artists to prostitutes and greedmongers caring for fame and fortune above creation and sharing. Charlatans. We know Bob cared not for profit but for sharing, Bob wanted us to listen, to understand, to unite: to Love. He had to die. Africa is a farm, a resource: couldn't have some meddlesome little nigger disturb the merchant's party with his songs for the savages. A unified empowered Africa is their worst nightmare. The queue is populated by budding, outsize Einsteins, Ipod isolated with cellulite flesh rippling from stretched tight outfits sewn by someone else's kids. Supporting various studs, bolts, tattoos, bottles, cans making ready for the weekend and their 'freedom'. Freedom to feed, freedom to fight, freedom to fuck: casual gratification in anonymous association. We stifle a nauseous blend of hunger and distaste stirring our reptile brain. How carelessly, how superficially they are enjoying life, knowing nothing of starvation or 6

poverty. It is another world: an excuse for ageing pop-stars to have a party, and get pissed: with 'Guilt Relief' annually, to opaque the cause, and have a party and get pissed. While the blood hacked from African children seeps from mobile phones and mp3 players, oozes between fingers and drips to the floor. A never-ending tale of redundancy and unit failure means the blood will never dry: and why the Congo, richest country on God's earth for resources, must remain as its poorest in the eye of prospector and profiteer. In a year or so, these geniuses will be out on the treadmill, filling some useless, pointless job, in finance or marketing or services or... what? Jobs with any material value have long since been outsourced to labour camps in the Thirdworld, the 'developing' world... GOD! The developing world? Heaven forbid that this is their goal: this study in carelessness and arrogance, captivated by image and sensation and ego, knowing nothing of genuine value, alienated from nature and destined for conformity, studs removed, hair combed to convention: attempting to pay off a student loan before they die. Cashier, bleached hair, hair like straw smiles a smile before blipping barcodes. “Plus ten Richmond and two cans of lighter fluid please”, we ask. “Only one per customer”, says regulations. In our most exasperated manner we ask, “Do I look like a terrorist or solvent sniffer? Petrol is a great cleanser.” Cashier smiles an unsmiling smile but sells them all the same. “One moment”, we say, fumbling in the bag. Flipping out the pointy red nozzles, we puncture the bases and wedge them upside down in the corner: where the cotton has frayed to almost nothingness. Standing, we hold forth a paper representation of value: of Other: of God. Inflation beyond expression: just as these paper pounds had once passed for silver, sterling, when money had representation: before it became entirely a belief system. Now it's 0s and 1s zapped around in hyperspace by western markets, transferring value between individual and corporation, as usurers carve out their flesh. Above and behind the tills Big Brother silently watches, seeing all: well, almost all.

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“Bye now”, we smile. Swishing the bag towards a teabag pyramid, promising two dead Africans for the price of one, as we turn towards sanity. Along the rows of celeb culture mags, where, smiley, stretched tight, chemical filled faces of minor stars, refusing to age, promise to be friends and calm fears, of happiness in consumption and meaning in image. More circuses for the sad and lonely. We lean the bag against the newspaper stand for one moment, tear the cellophane from the cigarette packet, pop the top, screw the silver paper and extract a cigarette, before moving towards the exit. At this moment the following shopper, post purchase, looses footing on the oily floor and crashes flat on its back, with a 24x party pack swiftly following, into a vast, wobbling stomach, prompting whoops and laughter amongst onlookers and queuers. Other shiny shooed shoppers sample the slippery surface creating multi-coloured fountains of consumables, further escalating hilarity and increasing mayhem, and firing security into action. Action being, a strange backward forward walking, as once performed by Michael Jackson, only without the flailing arms and the “woahh” noise: or the resultant bundled heap of limbs now decorated with fashion mags and teabags. Laugh? The captivated audience appears besides itself with jollity. Just as always when authority exposes its own stupidity. We light the cigarette. Winded whale is impersonating an upturned turtle as security attempts to stand, only for its well lubricated shoes to dump it straight back on its arse, causing an unexpected “oomph!” further fuelling the enjoyment and exultations of the turbulent crowd. Consumables and consumers litter the floor as the humour starved herd elbow for a view. Looking down, the bag is exhausted, time to depart. One drag is enough, we don't like prerolled cigarettes, full of nasty chemicals, for shooting nicotine to the brain, and boosting artificial burning. We expel the smoke, blowing ash from the shiny bright tip. Glowing, it falls to the ground. Not a big flame, nor hardly racing, but still, sure and true. We turn on our heel and head for the seafront. The newspapers will undoubtedly elaborate. Almost dark now, looks like a clear and moonless night. Perhaps after supper I'll head over 8

the bridge and down through the marina. Past the blackberries and rose hips: rotting, ignored, superfluous, and on to where the light of civilisation only dimly pollutes. There is a peace among the time worn rocks that upon occasions one finds elusive in our modern, liberated world. There, with nature, and the timeless, effortless waves as company, I shall delight in heaven's unfathomable symphony and wonder upon the truth of creation, and my personal insignificance within.

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