Insanity

comes in two basic varieties: slow & fast.

The names, anxiety, agitation, they don't tell you much.

Velocity.

There is too much perception, and beyond the plethora of perceptions, a plethora of thoughts about the perceptions and about the fact of having perceptions.

Take a thought - anything, it doesn't matter.

"I'm tired of sitting here." A perfectly reasonable thought.

Here's what velocity does to it:

First, break down the sentence. "I'm tired." Well, are you really tired? Is that like sleepy? You have to check all your body parts for sleepiness and while you're doing that, there's a bombardment of images of sleepiness, along these lines: head falling on a pillow, head hitting pillow, Nemo rubbing sleep from his eyes, a sea monster. Uh-oh, a sea monster. If you're lucky you can avoid the sea monster and stick with sleepiness. Back to the pillow, memories of having mumps at age 5, sensation of swollen cheeks on pillows and pain on salivation...stop. Go back to sleepiness.

But the salivation notion is too alluring and now there's an excursion into the mouth. You've been here before and it's bad. It's the tongue. Once you think of the tongue, it becomes an intrusion. Why is the tongue so large?! Why is it scratchy on the sides? Is that a vitamin deficiency? Could you remove the tongue? Wouldn't your body be less bothersome without it? There'd be more room in there. The tongue, now, every cell of it is enormous. It's a vast foreign object in your mouth.

If you don't think about it for a second, it gets a little smaller. But thinking of it makes it big again. Why is it scratchy on the sides? Is that a vitamin deficiency? You've thought these thoughts already but now these thoughts have been stuck onto your tongue.

All of that took less than 30 seconds and there's still the rest of the sentence to figure out and all you really wanted was to stand up.

Repetitive thought.

Here comes the I'm-no-good thought. That takes care of today. All day the insistent dripping of I'm no good. Panic. Repetition.

These thoughts have no meaning. They are idiot mantras that exist in a prearranged cycle. Repetition blunts them. They have become background music.

Oh to stay awake for days, the mind racing, pacing, clicking, cracking, thinking, and again, making to-do lists again and again and again, breathing heavily, not sleeping, pacing, thinking and on and on and on and on and on and on and on on on on on on on..............