A Certain Abject Consciousness

For me, freedom is innately, and inexorably, connected to standing apart from myself. I am both my own jailer and my liberator. I shudder at the thought of such control, but self-control is the welcome alternative to the imposition of control by others. I have to acknowledge its scope in my life.
I have, throughout time, identified very closely with the captives, whether they have been criminally, or psychiatrically institutionalized, or socially, or politically repressed. I have identified just as strongly with the freedom people who refuse to live by someone else's dictate, who cannot be censored in their motivation, their intention, or their style. This identification is rooted in my experience of, both, suffocating boundaries and boundless freedom. Neither fits into the mainstream of life, by choice, or circumstance. Some would die to be free of confinement. Others are just thrilled to live.

It is not the particular ideologies I identify with, but the fact that they move beyond the mainstream in one direction or another. I have always preferred the side roads to the thoroughfares. Even though the main road might be more accessible, it is also the route where I would most surely experience psychic depravation. Peace, for me, is to be found off the map, in places where the call for conformity is least pronounced, the places where individuality is least likely to sound an alarm. The environment where I can best follow my inclinations, and my Muse, without the scrutiny of the politically correct, the guardians of the status quo, the arbiters of all things acceptable and all things deemed to be reviled. Everyone who travels down that road is different to one degree or another. It is that very difference that puts them there. An inability, or refusal, to adjust, or a certain abject consciousness, determines for us the route of least conflict, of least resistance. The back roads, the alleyways, the mountaintops, the canyons.



It is there that I meet people who know me intuitively, who seem to know who I am, where I've been, and why I'm not lined up in the commuter lane.
It is there that I find the glove to fit my hand. It is where I find my ability to breathe.

If this just proves to be a glimpse into my own personal psychosis, I don't mind. There's really only one psychosis, that I know of, and we each just chew on a different piece of it.

This just happens to be mine.