Displacement

Some distant chronicler will note that along the way, I left sealed notes concerning people with odd appellations. Who, for example, is Wolfberry? Who on earth was Trivandrum?

The answer to these questions, and many more, is that in some sense they are all figments of my imagination. I should hate to think that people might think of them in a way wholly informed by my strange imaginings. But, on the subject of 'strange imaginings'... well, I was once accused of using 'smearing innuendo'. Well, read through the whole blog and see if you can find any. No longer constrained by gentlemanly civility, I will say outright that there is none here.

Rather, I suspect that some people are prone to projection, a phenomenon in which people tend to attribute to others the habits of mind and body that they themselves possess. Then again, it might also be displacement, a phenomenon in which people tend to pick on harmless victims so as to disperse their rage (and other negative affect) towards objects which are dangerous or untouchable.

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Notes:

1. I have given many of my associates odd little names like 'Wolfberry' or 'Trivandrum'. I do this because I am genuinely fond of them despite my shortcomings and theirs. Haha. On the other hand, should I have accidentally referred to any specific person as 'Grand Inquisitor', I would probably not have meant it kindly.

2. This is my 1200th post! Wow, it's been a long journey indeed.

Twitch III

I woke up this morning to grey and leaden skies. Nevertheless, the sun did come out, and the impressive petitionary skill of the Flyhalf was on my mind on this issue of the theurgic invocation of sunlight on dreary days. But this was not the issue and I must apologise, dear reader, for the peripatetic peregrination which I have undertaken. To get to the point: I was woken up by a twitch.

You will recall that I have made two previous entries on this twitch. Well, this one was truly worthy of the word. With an insistent series of acute tugs upon the ligaments of the fourth toe (from phalanges to metatarsals), I was yanked (oh, such an ugly Americanism) from the soothing arms of Hypnos through the roiling kingdoms of Morpheus and into the cold light of day.

Like a baleful Banquo banqueting, the accusatory fifth toe glowered at me from its perch of superiority. I had emplaced it upon a stack of cushions through the night, like a member of a squad of watchmen. It had decided to repay my trust by calling upon its neighbour to feed me a false alarm. Or so it seemed.

Seized by desperate and sudden fear, I sat up. Throb, throb, twitch, twitch. Was it healing? Was it something more insidious? Was a former student, fresh from the halls of Baccalaurea, planning an excruciating revenge? No. It was the morning of my Roentgenisation; for I was about to receive sufficient radiation for a negative image of the right foot's bones to be formed on plastic film. Evidently, the digit in question was not happy and was registering its protest through the offices of my subconscious.

With great determination, I sank back into sleep – only to be awoken by the alarm clock scheduled for a time not five minutes after. Breathing subvocalised imprecations at the powers of the Night (subvocal, for Ratri is powerful), I got up, placing gentle pressure upon the right foot and increasing this pressure laterally. Cowed, the delinquent digit finally deigned to keep its twitchy counsel to itself.

And thus, I awoke.

Twitch II

The last time I felt the twitch was not such a long time ago. At that time, the charming belle dame sans merci suggested I write something like the Lost One had written, with resonances of Poe and Lovecraft.

For the last few days, the twitch has grown. It has a life of its own now, all-consuming and hungry for gold medals. I can imagine it now. The 100 micrometre twitch. The 110 millimetre hurdles. The triple twitch. The short putt. It is still a small toe in our perceptions, but it thinks it is Gojira. It is a komodo dragon thinking it is draco splendens horribilis.

My twitch gathers strength to itself. Its neighbours look askance at it, worried that somehow the runt of the litter will inherit the kingdoms of the plain. The twitch smirks, knowing that the 'twitch' is merely a contraction, a contraction of 'toe' and 'witch'. It holds nude midnight rituals when I am not watching, baring the unbareable and laughing nastily beneath its veneer of foot spray.

And it has taken to blogging too. I was shocked to find this entry here. It thinks of this blog as its 'diary'. How terrifying! Don't the little things of this world have better things to do than commandeer blogs? I am tempted to think of it as a dictator in a single-party state, but that would probably legitimise it.

I have no choice. I must put up with it, even as it slowly drives me insane.

Twitch I

That last toe keeps twitching. It is a random thing. It is coming back to life, which was not truly dead; that makes it seem like some horror out of H P Lovecraft. But it is not; it is only my toe.

And there is where the horror lies. It began on 20 October 2007, when the aptly named Gabriel Agbonlahor poked Manchester United Football Club in the eye by scoring within a few minutes of kick-off. For this Gabriel, while not blowing the Last Trump, had effectively played a trump nevertheless. MUFC would overtrump and win 4-1 that evening, but I was the big loser.

As the crowd erupted, so did I. In doing so, I left my seat, tripped over a chair leg, regained my balance, watched the replay of that goal, and discovered to my great consternation that it had been a bad trip. The chair leg had remained caught between my last two toes long enough to wrench the last one out of its socket slightly and, as I was later to discover, fracture the longer phalange almost (but not quite) cleanly across.

This story has been told often and to many who have inquired. I think of it as a football-related injury.

But the horror of it, the long hours of waiting in the time-compromised hospital, the first sight of the x-ray, and the crrrickt of the fracture being reduced – these were nothing compared to the crawling agonies of a foot coming back to life through the stages of its failure as a member of the supporting cast. Or the casted support. There is something odd about that toe now, as there is with all entities who have died and been reborn. They are not quite right.

And the first sign of this lack of rightness, this failure of rectitude, is the twitch. It keeps me up late at night (although not much). Any kind of twitch is unnatural, and this one more than most. I have thoughts of the toe seceding and just not being there when I awake, like the fabled Gingerbread Man.

Notes From A Battlefield 001

Taking it easy. Watching my fellow soldiers cut down to the left and right. In the midst of the battle, everything is in slow motion. My old war wound aches. But I still think being a platoon sergeant is better than being an officer cadet promoted to a captain or major through battlefield attrition. Watching them fall is sadly amusing because the impact of the battlefield is to numb one's finer sensibilities.

After a while, everything is funny. You have become psychotic. You are suffering loss of affect.