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Cogitating Quicksand
Medication hadn't worked, meditation had been a mistake, and now I found myself resorting to extremes; surgery. The procedure took six hours, cost several thousand pounds and there was a one in five chance I would be left a vegetable but in the end I pulled through. When they unwrapped the bandages from my neck I had a dual status selector switch installed in the base of my neck, right over my cerebral cortex.
I was eager to test it out so I rushed out and sat at a bus stop, peering round at the people either side of me, hoping one of them would try and strike up a conversation. I waggled my eyebrows, gave encouraging glances and even coughed a few times but nobody was going to take the bait; they were probably terrified I was the sort of person who started conversations at bus stops.
Finally after a few hours I made eye contact and knew, just knew that this was the guy. He walked straight up and sat down beside me.
"Afternoon mate. Y'know, I was just saying to myself this morning when I got up that it was the perfect day to..."
And I threw the switch. My body remained upright but my eyes dulled and all spark of life disappeared. A rictus grin and blank expression held my face in place and an automatic nod and grunt response kept up my side of the conversation.
Eventually he finished and thanked me for a most agreeable conversation, stating that often people at bus stops seem hostile and so rushed and it was a pleasure to meet someone who had the time to spare. When he was out of sight I flicked the switch on again.
Success! Whilst my mental capabilities had been switched off to external stimuli and focused entirely inside my head I had discovered two missing elements from the periodic table, developed a plan for a more humane mousetrap that also de-loused, de-fleaed and housetrained the mice, and I'd come up with a way to stop dogs from licking you awake in the mornings.
Now I just needed to find situations where I could flip the switch and get serious thinking done for hours, maybe even days at a time, but where? Who? What? How?
That was when God smiled and my mother called, demanding that I spend the long weekend at her place.
May. 2.2007