This one is technically a madwoman (sic), mad enough to qualify for an award. I have never seen her outside of a 20 ft stretch of road, and never seen that stretch of road without her for quite a few years. I can safely hypothesize that she rarely, if ever, has ever left that 'home' of hers. Usually, she is seated majestically on the footboard of one of the parked two wheelers. Her usual position is with her nose stuck up in the air, preening herself in a manner that can be described as regal. I saw her in conversation today, apparently with thin air, but practically with an entity she believes to be quite real. I think she considers herself to be a queen, and most of her routine conversations involve commanding mere minions to do her bidding. It doesn't quite matter to her that no such minions exist and that she lives off discarded food and is the object of hundreds of critical glances daily.
Gives me a feeling that she is much happier than most of us are. While its true that that her existence is quite unenviable and pointedly useless, she lives in a world where she is far better off than many of us who lead lives which have some 'point'. While we trudge through our daily share of miseries, she floats through them; for as far as she is concerned, they don't even exist! What put her into this condition must have undoubtedly been very traumatic, scars that deep which refuse to heal don't form easily. We human beings are surprisingly resilient. That given, she is probably far better off in her make believe world than she would be facing up to what has happened to her. After all, her reality is just as real as yours of mine. Isn't all reality ultimately what me make it out to be?
Of course, all mad men don't end up with the same kind of luck. Many of them spend their lives fighting with themselves (physically, literally), shouting abuses incessantly to an invisible enemy who won't leave them alone, and reliving some past incident that leaves them dithered. A strange way for the human mind to work. It makes you crazy when it can't take the pain, but only the lucky ones leave the pain behind. The others must simply live with it, not even understanding what it is that they are living. Or whether they are living.
Just so much for craziness, I'm suddenly detecting a lot of symptoms of it in myself! Heck, aren't we all; I just have a little more of it!
And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.
-Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
All of us sane people are the ones who are truly insane. And those we call insane, are dancing only for they can hear the music of The Maker...
