A Stranger There

“I was feeling like a stranger in a strange land.

You know, where people play games with the night.”

Somewhere Down the Crazy River, Robbie Robertson

Is it true of all writers, or is it just me and Robbie who feel this way?  When I walk through this life of shadows and light, passing others along the way, do they think as I do? 

That the real world is just a place I have found myself in, possibly by accident, and that I must seek to understand it?

That I am like an alien on my own planet out of step with those around me?

Do we have the same thoughts alone?

These are simply more questions for the darkness, when all other thoughts of every day life have slipped away and only the need for answers remains.

That, and the sound of the clock ticking the moments away.

Supposed restful moments when I am supposed to let go of the daily grind, of the stresses and strains that come from just living, and let the peace in.

Peace?  What peace?

This is the time when my mind comes alive.

This is when all the questions my subconscious has been simmering away on all day come to the surface with nothing to stop them.  When every answer leads on to another question and nothing is resolved.

Sleeping tablets help.

Sometimes.

In the short term, and when the mind comes back with questions to be answered, it returns ten-fold.  The drugs don’t work, as the song goes, they just make you worse.

It’s as if the tape keeps running, and the mind is put on pause, but the reel is still going when you re-press play and runs quicker to catch up.

Drinking helps.

Sometimes.

It gives the mind a buzz and numbs it to the questions demanding answers.  It makes the questions sound like fun, like anything is possible and nothing really matters.

Wow, really ploughing through the song titles tonight.

Anyway, the drinking seems to help because it opens up the tangled writer to slowed down thoughts, therefore easier to deal with thoughts, and allows her to think of creative and amazing answers during her drunken period.

So creative.

She reaches for her pen and paper to get these wonderfully creative thoughts down before they escape for good.

She follows her train of thought into the tunnel and writes down everything she sees there in the darkness.

This is so good!

When she wakes the next morning, she will have all the answers she has ever wanted about life, the universe, and everything - and they won’t just be the number 49!

Or so she thinks.

The cold harsh truth of the matter is that when she does wake the next morning, she can’t even face a glaring piece of paper, let alone read what’s on it.

And after a wasted day on the sofa watching some cheesy American teen drama, she finally feels able to read what she wrote the night before.

And marvel.

In jaw-dropping wonder.

At the complete load of bull-crap she wrote.

Drinking didn’t make her more intelligent.  While it was killing off her brain cells, it fired haphazardly and made her think that what she was writing was inspired, just before the grey matter died a painful death.

Never to return.

But at least it pushed her into the right direction, in a manner of thinking.

Writing helps.

And for those of us who write to understand the questions, the demons and the angels inside our own minds, writing not only helps, it becomes a necessary way of life.

A way of answering some of those questions.

A break, at least, from the need to answer some of them all.

I have always written to understand the world I live in, and the world inside my mind is no different.

My mind may be a strange land, but at least I am not a stranger there.