Touch

by Claire North

is my belief that the process of getting drunk is a cushion to the actual reality of being drunk. Bit by bit the mind grows accustomed to swaying room, burning skin, churning stomach, so though every aspect of your physiology screams, poison, poison, it is the gentle and pleasant acquisition of the state that prevents the experience from becoming a thoroughly vile event.

Everyone needs a hobby, and everyone was mine.

A blink of the eye, and all things change. Consequences are only for the ones who stay behind.

Under communism mental health was easy. Depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or, worst of all, the manifestation of any views contrary to those held by the state were simply the expression of a diseased mind best kept isolated from the body politic. To be ill was to be at fault.

You, said the state, you who weep when you look upon the harsh truths of this world, see so clearly the lies that people tell–you have done this to yourselves. And so must be thankful for whatever little mercy the country throws your way.

It is not beauty, in an eye, a hand, a curl of hair. I have seen old men, their backs bent and shirts white, whose eyes look up at the passers-by and in whose little knowing smiles there is more beauty, more radiance of soul, than any pampered flesh.

I have been them all, and all of them, as I regarded myself in their mirrors, were beautiful.

There isn’t enough time in a life to find out if the other guy’s better is better than yours, cos you’d have to lose everything you have to find out for yourself. In the old days our fathers dreamed of bringing liberty and prosperity to the whole of the human race, of building a perfect society, and somehow that became a dream of a bigger car and a bigger front window and our neighbours making apple pie, apple fucking pie.

In the land of the free you are free to say whatever you want, regardless of whether you have anything to say.