luck of the manic

Crazier things have happened. You might say it was free-spirited or fancy-free. A one way to ticket to Russia with only a few bucks in your pocket to work for a company you know next to nothing about in a country you have never been to. It’s a free-spirited action that might not belong just to the manic person buts it’s a sign you’re heading that way.
The manic snowball slowly rolls on. After a few months I’m surviving on next to no sleep and less food than a well-fed bird.
The first time I notice that my mind is changing is a flash of insanity while I’m riding in a cab. I look out at the buildings and the construction and think with pride, “ Look what my people have done, My empire is making progress towards its ascendancy.” The thought passes and I dismiss it as some flashback to earlier episodes.
I spend two hours on New Year’s Day making patterns in the snow with my foot, thinking that these symbols I have drawn somehow hold the secret to the meaning of life.
But these flashes remain just blips on the radar and I’m hardly alarmed.
By the time summer comes I’m still there in mind but the rash decisions are coming thick and fast. I give all my savings to a friend who’s starting a business and when the time comes to go to England to work for the summer I’m broke. Weeks later I’m berated by my landlord , “What kind of person comes to a foreign country with no money?” An insane sort of person, that’s who. On the day I fly out I lock myself out of my apartment and arrive at the airport late. Luckily the flight is overbooked and I’m put I’m in hotel for the night to fly the next day.
There’s a saying – the luck of the Irish. There should be another- the luck of the manic.
My room adjoins the room of a beautiful girl from St Petersburg and after a stroll in Moscow in the evening we retire to the hotel and share each other’s rooms.
Though nothing significant happens, I’m still left with that guilty dirty feeling in the morning when we have breakfast.
Things suddenly start to accelerate and the first outward signs start to show. I chew the ear off my neighbour on the plane and I don’t think they have a minute’s peace on the long flight from Moscow to London.

Like an Indian brave

I'm setting out again like a young tribal offspring questing. Not lost in the wilderness, but gathering the space within me by running through the night where my dreaming self has cried before. Now my tears of euphoric desperation mingle the worlds of my dutiful self and my seeking self.
As I run through the night my long hair gives me a horse like quality. In my running sound-the dark enhanced slap of my barefeet against the footpath, I find a spur. I can't stop running.
I've fashioned a note for my girlfriend. There's a simple red outlined heart there somewhere. In this state I'm a sucker for potent symbols. All their synedochal power, harnessed from the memory's lapping force against the plane of consciousness, collects and transmits to me the same way that... There is no same way. It is the most powerful concoction we take. The combination of mind and reality, the fuel that fires art.

Manic is a feverish activity. A malaise of the mind where the gaurdian of behaviour who stands watch in our brain has left for a cigarette. Normally he uses a sieve to catch our fantasies and sloughs them off into a dish that will later be shaken and tossed to use for dreams.
As he drags on his cigarette the manic mind is overtaken by the fantasy. That's why periods of lucidity can occur while manic. The guardian returns to do his job, but not for long and as things progress the breaks get longer. That's why later that day I can give a coherent explanation of my actions to the police when i am found outside my friends house with an axe ( I was just going to chop the wood which of course had to be done right there and then)

I stop outside her house and deposit the letter. I arrive but feel no sense of destination reached. There is always another mission to be done. The thoughts race from idea to idea and before i am finished on thing i am already thinking about the next.
It's three am in the morning. The streets, a backdrop for cast of one, are mine. Its too late for the returning late shift and too early for the departing early.
With the thrill of the night in me I set off again. A man in a security van picks me up on the main road. He sees me dishevelled and barefoot and takes pity on me. For me, it is a adventure with a denizwn of the night Perhaps he will teach me his crafty ways. When I am hiring guards for my personal royal guard I shall appoint him chief of transport. In awe of his grasp on life, his dominion over the seedy side, I sit beside him and bask in his glory.
He's just driving home.

A journey through the manic minefield

Some recountings of times when i was manic. new Zealand might be a small country but there's plenty of room for manic misadventures. My favourite scene is the result of a cross country ride on a farm-bike to the coast where the promised maiden rode past me on her white stallion and i took advantage of her generosity by stealing down to the seaside bordering her property and took some mussels from the rock pools.