Don't ask me: I'm a stranger here myself

‘Prior to the twentieth century, persons suffering from mental illness were thought to be “alienated”, not only from the rest of society but from their own true natures’

(‘The Alienist’ – Caleb Carr)

I have always felt alienated (Perhaps everyone feels the same – they just don’t write about it)

Like I have wandered onto a movie set, and someone has just thrust a script into my hands. Everyone else is a professional – they know what they are doing. I am an untrained amateur – and sooner or later they are going to find me out.

I sit and study the people in here. Are they all alienated?

Take that untidy, shambling figure over there. What strange union created him; what animal lust, what fierce uncontrolled passion. Or was it loving tenderness, two souls uniting in sublime intimacy. Perhaps it was all of these.

(would it help to know, as Laing puts it, whether you were born out of a good fuck – or a bad fuck?)

But that apparition over there: what complex cocktail of blood runs through his veins; what unknown genetic forces combined to twist that double-helix, the DNA code – the blueprint for his life on this planet.

A white-coated figure has gone over to talk to him. But he doesn’t seem to be listening; he is lost in some reverie of his own…


Someone is tugging at my arm. Oh, it’s doctor Singh. How long has he been here. I didn’t notice him walk up to me… I must have been lost in thought.