a one hundred and third story...'jackson's mind'

Jackson had a problem.  He didn’t have a prostate tumour, or a sty in his eye, he didn’t have chicken-pox, or - God forgive - small-pox.  Jackson’s problem was that he believed he was surrounded by self-interested twerps.  The self-interested twerps he had in mind were human beings, perhaps even people such as you and I. 

Jackson had a brain injury.  It wasn’t the kind of brain injury where he needed to wear a cast made out of plaster of Paris, nor was it the kind of brain injury that required any sort of surgical intervention, although in the past doctors, in their infinite wisdom, might have considered such a procedure in Jackson’s case. 

Jackson’s case, however, was complicated.  It was impossible to quantify, it was impossible to put under a microscope and take notes on.  Jackson’s problem, or brain injury, was largely a product of his mind.  His mind was a pretty lonely mind.  It had not often enough experienced sharing, loving, or indeed kindness of any sort.

Jackson’s mind had come to think that human beings were self-interested twerps in part because it was jealous of the ease at which other human beings appeared to share their minds, and often, it followed, their bodies, and so on.

Had Jackson’s mind not been so worked up about the self-interested twerps with whom he shared his small area of planet earth, Jackson’s mind might have been a little more aware of the incipient irony in its consideration of others, as well as more open to the very sharing process it felt so frequently left out of and pretended, in some strange quirk, that it was somehow above.

However, Jackson was not above anything whatsoever, in the same way the self-interested twerps were also not above anything whatsoever.  Jackson, as well as the self-interested twerps, had neither wings, nor winged-sandals, and as human beings Jackson and the self-interested twerps could not even breathe under water, run very fast, or indeed defend themselves without firearms, electric fences, pesticides and vaccinations against practically any other living organism on their planet.

But Jackson’s human antecedents, as well as the antecedents of the self-interested twerps, had developed over time in their individual and/or collective minds, the idea that human beings were of a higher consciousness than the other living organisms on their planet, living organisms that for the most part they ran away from, or indeed killed and ate out of fear, and the idea of safety in numbers.  Whole forests of trees had been given over to reinforcing the higher state of consciousness in the minds of all human beings, and a load of beeswax, a whole load of lead and graphite.

This was where Jackson’s problem stemmed from – his brain injury, if you will.  And it was all because his mind had become so unruly and corrupted that it seemed to Jackson separate from his body, and his earthbound existence. 

Books, of course, were largely to blame, and some of the things that Jackson’s antecedents had written in them.  Among the main culprits were antecedents including: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Descartes, Jean Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger (who, admittedly, took it beyond the extreme!), and Carl Jung.

While there were no pills, ratified surgical procedures, intravenous drugs, or it seemed other self-interested twerps that would be able to cure Jackson and his mind, Jackson’s mind in particular could have done with remembering that it was an inevitable and irreversible fact that he was surrounded by self-interested twerps, since all the self-interested twerps were animals, only with furniture and clothing to disguise them. Therefore, the apportioning of any blame was an irrelevance.

Moreover, Jackson’s mind could have acknowledged that in the chest cavity of Jackson’s body, there was a heart, which kept Jackson’s mind running, and Jackson’s mind could at least be a little bit thankful!

And in being a little bit thankful towards Jackson’s heart, Jackson’s mind might then think more about Jackson’s heart and what it else it was capable of, and be a little more pre-disposed towards being thankful to someone else’s heart, or something else outside of Jackson’s mind which, after all, had become so unruly and corrupted as to cause Jackson his brain injury.

And in going outside of itself, Jackson’s mind might yet have recognised the incongruity of its very own state, a realisation which could trigger Jackson’s mind to sublimate, thereby healing itself.