Cheshire (Have You Ever Spoken to Someone Who is Mad?)

A little monologue I drew up channeling the Cheshire cat one night back in 2010. I figured it was a good way to start off this Writer's Cafe deal.

I wonder, young mistress, if you have ever spoken to someone who is mad.

Not someone off their rocker, nor a man on the edge.

No, I mean someone who is truly, irrevocably, and all-encompassingly mad.

Someone who finds delight in delusion and contempt with the commonplace.

Someone who sneers are the social normities of the generations gone bye and wonders why he himself has not simply given up on keeping track of them all together.

For the world, in and of itself, is a tangled ball of yarn hurtling through a seamless void of ink and sorrow.

One that tries ever so desperately to stick to an order while constantly becoming more writhing with each entropic step towards chaos.

Someone who is mad is more than accustom to this- he has come to accept the fate of all things to be violent, chaotic, and rather uninteresting when it comes down to it.

You see, there are only so many ways to die, easily outnumbered by the many, many ways for one to live.

A man who is mad imbibes the cosmic energies of the world and the void and finds within them a yolk of strength that warms his very heart and seeps vitrol into his soul.

He has, in short, accepted that we all will suffer like the universe and its inevitable heat death.

A man who is mad does not taste, nor smell, nor touch. No, he is a man of someother sense- a sense of otherwhere and whisltbegone.

And within these visions and sensations a tactility comes across space and time and speaks to him in a tongue that no muscle could ever hope to imitate.

To him, in his addled brain and mal-aligned consciousness, it tells him that he is no more and no less than any other man.

And he is no more or less right in his conception and measurement of what the world really is or what it means.

For you see, a man who is truly, indistinguishably mad, Alice,

Is one you would never once suspect in a multitude of lifetimes.

One you will never, ever find.

For, if you ask a passerby the meaning of everything, I don't think they'll be able to tell you.

They'll squabble with you over pieces and bits of the answer, yes.

And they'll flounder at the thought of comprehending the true enormity of the question you just posed.

But they'll never find the answer.

Because those who are mad are not those that with indignity try and tell you that the answer is out there and that they are seeking it.

But instead those who do know.

And dare not whisper the truth.

Not. One. Word.

Author's Note

Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated! Thickest skin there is, folks.