It’s 16th April 2009; this isn’t right; I should not be feeling like this every morning watching the news, all this death with rotting flesh; it’s not like I haven’t seen it all before. It’s an everyday thing, death, murder, rape, war; there’s always more, corruption and fraud.
It’s sad and depressing just thinking like that, an everyday thing. My mind is not well. My mates have been showing concern about me, and I’ve noticed.
I’ve lost a few of my so-called friends on social media because of my blogs.
This is not a good sign.
The only reason I joined the site six months ago was to promote myself as a deejay promoter. I thought I should just go to A&E at Euston General Hospital to see what the doctors say.
First of all, my thoughts on a plan of action are, Pop in the pub, check out my mates in my local.
The Edinburgh Cellars, the largest Edwardian pub in Newington Green, didn’t have a garden, but a large function room was around the back of the boozer. I thought I’d just see how my friends react to me.
From time to time, I do some work at the Edinburgh Cellars as their carpenter, deejay, and promoter. As a result, I’d say I’m popular with a good few in the area in connection with this pub.
I can’t afford to go anywhere else, and as always, the landlord has a slight hang-up with black people but tries to bless him. He declares he’s hard up for cash, or they’re a hard business team, Simon and Neil, partnered landlords, and more likely hard business people.
Funny enough, I don’t know much about Simon’s past when he took over the pub, but he was a slim white guy who liked to be bossed around by his girlfriend, and he had a soft, gentle persona who was easily misled.
As for Neil, as time passed, I learnt that he was an ex-accountant who liked to use cocaine. He was very arrogant, self-centred, and loved himself.
In one of our conversations, I had with Neil, he did mention, ‘My father is racist.’
His comment raised my eyebrows, similar to Spock with suspicion. I was guarded as if I were a soldier guarding Buckingham Palace. I stood to attention and was a cautious Sunday driver who needed bifocal glasses.
Just after the evening rush hour, I decided to go ahead as planned to see the doctor. However, as I made my way down the main street to the pub. I noticed my mate’s new Audi convertible belonged to an old friend, Tom Moore.
A stubborn black Mancunian living in East London, he’s generally a straightforward, in-your-face, to-the-point guy if you rub him up the wrong way.
He exhaled a deep, thunderous voice with an intimidating persona, a tall stature, well-built, and a good laugh when he had a wee drink. Usually, he’d phone before passing by to see me, but not on this occasion.
Above the rushing city traffic noise, I could hear him shout, ‘Where are you going?’
His greeting was rude, with a deep northern twang to boot. I shouted over the traffic noise, ‘The pub, you coming?’
He waved me over to cross the bustling panic of the busy traffic to his car. Sure enough, I did the green cross code bit, approached, and entered the leather-wrapped red interior.
Just as he started up, the heavy-ended rumbling engine, vroom, vroom, vroom. He explained how a concerned school friend, Edwin Blair, lives in Manchester. He asked him to pass by to see how I was doing.
I’ve known Edwin since I was eleven years old. To understand his persona, you must know that he was the captain of most team sports in school. He’s always a calm, composed leader of men.
**An Awakening of the Mind**
Tom took me to the hospital after a drink in the pub as we cruised with the traffic down the busy highway of Euston Road. I felt a heavy, warm swelling around my mind.
It was overwhelming, like a liquid had been injected into my brain. It forced me to sit further back in my seat. I had to hold my head with both hands; there was no pain, and it was amusingly pleasing. Like I were watching Robin Williams in Morning Vietnam.
My mind was filled with an elixir of an indescribable sensual pleasure. The only way to express or imagine the sensation is the subtle feather touch flow of warm water over my mind.
I declared, ‘Tom, I know everything, oh my word, my brain feels like it’s dancing.’
I’ve never felt such a feeling before. Ripples of waves were running over my brain, tingling my senses with joy.
It felt as if my brain was jumping with excitement and laughter at the unknown. A perplexed, husky voice reverberated when Tom answered, ‘You all right, Eggy?
Which way do I turn?
Eggy, which way?’
I looked between my fingers, holding my head, to see we’d just passed Warren Street Tube Station heading towards Camden. The traffic was moving quickly, and Tom was getting a bit flustered, not knowing the local area.
I replied, ‘Take the next right and right again.’
At that moment, I lowered my head and added, ‘Tom, this is unbelievable, oh my word, Tom. I know everything, oh my word. Tom, how am I going to tell seven billion people this?
Oh, my word, Tom, oh my word.’
After that, we parked the car and saw the doctors at Euston General Hospital to explain my thoughts concerning humanity’s plight to survive, creationism (the last chapter in A Philosopher’s Vignettes).
I tried to tell the doctor how I broke my left leg in 1993, then I offered the other cheek and received a broken jaw when I was in prison in 1996. They didn’t get it or understand what I was saying.
Reading the expression on the doctor’s face, I thought I was talking sense, but the doctor and his medical team looked puzzled. Their faces suggested they were questioning themselves.
Why have I come to the hospital to talk about my stress at work, society’s philosophy of survival of the fittest, and my thoughts on creationism?
The doctor proclaimed, ‘You’re fine; you can go home.’
What was I to do?
Half the things I was expressing to the doctors are thoughts I’ve never had the time or inclination to think about. Only when I’m mentally ill, so it seems.
This is the second time in my life that I’ve had a mental health problem. The first was back in 1993.
Tom drove me home, and the last thing I said before leaving the car was, ‘Thanks, Tom, for the ride and your concern. See you when I see you again.’
Then, I went home and wrote the following edited version for my blog on 16th April 2009.
Helpless hands
I’m out of work, nothing planned, just leisure at my pleasure, no fun, a cost my budget could not stand.
So, I stay home instead and write a line before bed, hoping we don’t see the dead, the sacrifices made just to get fed.
Yet I stay awake at 6 a.m. to take in the news at 8, stressed because I can do nothing.
Starving hands, flies in their pans, no one’s love is at hand, what can I do?
My head is in my hands.
John T. Hope
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