THE FOREST OF WORDS

There once was a little boy who loved words so much he spent all his time in the forest of words, where words grew instead of trees. The little boy would pick words from the forest and press them into his little book where they made lovely patterns and formed sentences and paragraphs. One day the little boy got lost in the forest of words. It was a very confusing place and he could not find his way out. The little boy's beloved words were not much help. Some of the words said 'come this way' and other words from a different direction said 'no little boy, come this way'. Some other words that were in the forest didn't make much sense at all but the words that did make sense seemed to want the little boy to go in circles, around and around and around, forever. The little boy knew that he could not rely on the words to get him out of the forest. 'If I follow the words I will never get out of here and I might die', said the little boy to himself. The little boy felt betrayed by the words that he loved. He was very upset and missed his family and his dog very much.

Then the little boy had a very clever idea. 'I know', said the little boy to himself. 'I will leave a trail of shite and that way I will know if I am retracing my steps and going back into the forest'. Then the clever little boy pulled down his britches and deposited a tiny shite on the forest floor. The little boy continued to do this as he made his way through the forest. When he saw a shite or smelt one nearby, the little boy knew he had doubled back on himself and he would change direction. The little boy did not run out of shite because as he made his way through the forest the little boy picked and ate the words that grew there. Then the little boy would shite out the digested words, a bit like most people do when they are talking but the little boy made the shite come out of his little bottom instead of letting a load of shite pour out of his mouth.

The little boy eventually found that he was not in the forest of words anymore. This was not because the little boy had found his way out, oh no. This was because the little boy had eaten all the words in the forest and turned the forest into a big heap of shite that the little boy stood atop. This was the biggest heap of shite that ever was and from the top of it the little boy could look out upon the whole world. From where he was standing, the little boy could see words everywhere, telling people to do this and that and confusing them and playing tricks on them. The little boy called out to warn the people below but it was no use. The little boy could not be heard from way up on the mountain of shite that had all come out of his clever little bottom. This made the little boy sad and he began to cry. The little boy cried and cried and his tears made the shite soft and the little boy began to sink into it. 'Oh no', said the little boy, 'I am being swallowed up by my own shite', and so he was and the little boy was never seen alive again.

The mountain of shite then calcified in the hot sun and became so hard and stiff that the people of the world were able to build upon it. The people built a library on the shite and named it after the little boy who had vanished to where they knew not. They put all kinds of books in the library that had all kinds of words in them that said all kinds of confusing things. Little did the people know that the little boy would not have liked this because the little boy had learned not trust words and had decided that even shite is more dependable; as long as the shite doesn't go soft and swallow you up.

One day, the little boy's dog was sniffing around the mountain of shite and began digging a hole in it. The little boy's dog then discovered the little boy's skeleton and started to chew on the bones until the little boy's father discovered the dog and shot it in disgust. Then the little boy's father wept over the little boy's remains and later he wrote a book about the little boy's life and the book was full of words and do you know what readers? Yes, that's right. The book was a load of shite.

The End!

PIECES OF OLD SHITE ON THE ROAD

I have no great fondness for the corporeal form. All the sleeping and waking, breathing and eating, discourse and intercourse, working and earning, all the usual stuff indulged by necessity or beloved by others is lost on me. I find it all a tremendous effort. I've irritable bowl syndrome too and I get wet when it rains. The mental constriction of existing as a single entity and being regarded as an intellectual/psychological individual is also tiresome. All the associations and memories and memories of associations can get very complex. It's enough to give you a complex. What I'm building to here is an admission. The admission that I'd rather be a load of ideas than an actual person. I'd quite fancy being a cloudy emanation of flashing concepts, a nebulous exudate of lightbulb moments, floating around, seeping imperceptibly forth, descending on heads, going in ears, giving people notions to enact. I'd find that preferable to getting up every morning, plugging in the heater or opening the window, trying to stay warm or keep cool. That stuff's not for me. Not being me is for me. Being a non-being who inspires other beings is for me. People could see the rolling mist of sparking ideas, crackling and drifting in their direction and they could say 'oh, it's ideas time'. They'd put their thumbs up. It'd be grand.

It's not that I credit my ideas above other people's or anything else. I just credit my ideas above myself. I've never been one to credit myself for my ideas. I just get ideas, like the rest of you. Some good, some bad, some OK, none mine. Ideas do not come from people. Ideas come to people. People just happen upon ideas, like they happen upon pieces of old shite on the road and step in them. Ideas are just pieces of old shite on the road and you don't take credit for the shite on your shoe so don't take credit for ideas. The only thing you can take credit for is the way you act upon/actualise the ideas you get, just like the way you can credit yourself for wiping shite off your shoe. The deftness and conscientiousness of your efforts are uniquely yours but the initial inspiration is not yours. You don't create the ideas you get just like you don't do the pieces of old shite on the road you step in. At least, I hope you don't do the pieces of old shite on the road you step in. If you do do the pieces of old shite on the road you step in then that not only means you are a very unusual person but also that the analogy I'm labouring here will be harder for you to grasp.

Anyway, to inconclusively conclude this conclusion I've come to, yes, I'd like to just be the ideas floating in the heads of others and seeing what those others do with me. Yes, I'd like to just be the pieces of old shite on the road wondering how people will wipe me off and scoop me out of the grooves in the soles, gouge me out of the corrugations in their souls. Yes, I think it'd be better to be the pieces of old shite on the road than the person who steps in them and has to wipe them off, again and again and again and again. Sometimes there are so many pieces of old shite on the road you can no longer see the road. It's enough to make you wonder if there is even a road under all the pieces of old shite at all or is it all just an idea...

...Jaysus 

...what an awful notion

...I'm going back to bed.

THE BIGGEST SHITE EVER IN THE HISTORY OF SHITES

Remember that incontinent old circus bear they used have? Remember its blunted teeth and the way its claws had been pulled out? Remember the dry manky shite stuck to the fur at its rear? It used move around really slowly looking pathetic. It was different on the poster, standing on its hind legs at full height, roaring, snapping free of its manacles. It looked fierce in the artwork but not in real life. They used leave it tied up outside, even in the rain, remember? Remember how we used throw sticks at it and run away when it raised its head to look at us? As if it could do anything. Remember how sad its eyes were?

Crowds used react funny when it entered the ring. They were expecting the monster from the promotional material but what they got was this shambling shadow of an animal. Alberto would taunt the beast and it would open its jaws (as it had been beaten to do) and Alberto would stick his head in its mouth. Remember? We used laugh that he risked being sucked to death. Sometimes the bear got its moves wrong and Alberto would lash seven shades out the thing with his crop. It was difficult viewing. Alberto was vicious. A vicious drunk. There was never much clapping from the audience at the end of the bear act.

Alberto resented the rest of the performers. He used bully them. The women and dwarves got it worst. Alberto liked to make them feel inadequate because they actually had talent and this made him feel inadequate. Alberto knew he was dependent on the bear and he knew the bear was fading. The way he used beat the thing, it was like he wanted it to die quicker and hasten the whole charade to an end. Maybe there was something about the bear that reminded Alberto of himself. I think that was a theory one of the clowns had or maybe it was the pretty acrobat girl that said it.

Anyway, the bear didn't die, did you know that? No, it actually outlived Alberto. Story is, Alberto got really drunk one night and started kicking the thing and asking it to stick up for itself. To do something. He was laughing and saying the bear was a joke, that it could do nothing. He kept spitting swigs of vodka in the bear's eyes and laughing - swigging and spitting and laughing until he finally fell over into an inebriate heap. The other performers just watched, doing nothing to help the bear because they feared Alberto.

Although they didn't help the bear, the other performers didn't help Alberto either when the bear did the one thing it could to avenge itself on its cruel master. Clawless, toothless, arthritic, the bear is said to have lumbered over to the semiconscious Alberto and sat on the man's head. Then the bear took a shite, a huge shite, a massive shite, a really unbelievably colossal shite. A shite that was described by one onlooker as, 'the biggest shite ever in the history of shites'. The bear crapped on Alberto's head and remained squatting there, pinning the struggling man down and causing him to choke to death on bear shite. No one did anything as Alberto's limbs gradually ceased flailing and he left this world. Then there was silence. The bear looked around at the gathering and, for a time, everyone just looked back. Then someone broke the silence and soon enough everyone joined in. I heard it was the biggest applause that bear ever got.

WORTHLESS

Looking back over my life one day, I realised I’d made a muck of it. An unmerciful shit of it no less. All the retrospection left me with a profound feeling of worthlessness. ‘Worthless!’ I roared at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. I decided that there was nothing else to do but go outside and throw myself in the bin.

Being a worthless git, I went and jumped in the bin that had all the stinking food scraps in it. ‘Good enough for me’, I said to myself, ‘sure, if I’m any type of rubbish, I’m this type of rubbish’. The food scraps came in handy actually as I found myself feeding on old banana skins and sucking the marrow from cold chop bones in the days I had to wait until my collection.

Eventually the bin men came. I heard their lorry and then I felt myself being lifted up. ‘This one’s heavy, there must be some sack of crap in it’, I heard a bin man say. ‘You’re not wrong’, I replied and then suddenly I felt myself being dropped to the ground. I tumbled out of the bin and looked up. I saw two astonished bin men and then crawled back in the bin and called out to them to carry on but they wouldn’t. They refused to throw me in the back of the lorry with the rest of the rubbish. I even offered them money but they refused and drove off without me. So, there I was, not even good enough to be rubbish. Below rubbish. Sub-rubbish. What do you do with that? What’s more worthless than rubbish? Then it struck me. The only thing more worthless than rubbish is shite and you flush shite down the toilet. So, delighted with my realisation, I went indoors, stuck my head in the bowl and flushed. It didn’t work. I tried again. It didn’t work again. I tried loads more times but it was no use, the toilet wanted no part of me. I was too big. I wasn’t even good enough for the jax. Jesus, there was no end to the rejection. Seriously, what was I supposed to do with myself if I wasn’t even good enough for flushing down the jax? I mean, the jax takes shite. I was even more worthless than shite. What, on God’s earth, is more worthless than shite?

And then it struck me. There is something more worthless than shite and it is with this sub-shite that I realised I must dwell.

It wasn’t easy getting myself elected to the Dail but elected I eventually was and now I sit here in constituency surgeries telling people I can’t help them and that my hands are tied and asking them how their Aunty Mary is doing and if they saw the match and taking the odd back-hander and so on and so on until eventually I’ll draw a big fat pension. A big fat juicy pension. Oh yeah. Turns out being completely worthless isn’t that bad after all.