Thursday, August 24, 2006

Ballad of the Flexible Bullet


Last night I read a story by Stephen King called the Ballad of the Flexible Bullet.

So far in all my years of reading never has a story been able to impact/influence/raid my mind the way this did.
Mind you, the overall experience was not exactly pleasant, but its definitely worth sharing.
(Have taken the liberty of adding things to the gist to enhance reading pleasure)

The idea is:

Let us assume the mind to be an edifice, with normal airy compartments, the better the adjusted the individual, the better the circulation within the mind.
Lets call it the MindTower.
Every MindTower comes with a small sound proof padded room with a stark steel table, on top of which lies a loaded revolver.
There is an Enigma in Madness.
All of us have a penchant for madness. Go back to the times when you stood on the ledge of a high-rise and wondered how would it feel to jump over. All fatal risks, physical or mental, makes us wonder how would it be to take it on by the collar.
The degree of wanting to take on the risk, differentiates the degree of the mental health of the individual.
Personally the Russian Roulette is very dear to my idea of enigma..
The thing that we laughingly refer to as Reality, is something that even the most well adjusted being is hanging on to by a greasy rope.
Lets now try to define the journey from Reality to the Padded Room within our MindTowers.

For every instance we feel like doing something mad, like killing a co driver on the road, wondering whether death by suicide would be more courageous than death by disaster, or thinking just how would it feel to hold the loaded gun against your temple and ruminated on the consequences...
Scientifically these are a few of them:

-Either the bullet would harmlessly trace the arc of the skull and come out from the other side
-Or, it might dangerously embed itself onto the brain and render one blind, albeit alive
-Finally, it may do the kindest thing, that is kill the person.

For instances of insanity, parts of yourself disintegrates and gathers in the Padded Room, where lies the gun with the flexible bullet.
The flexible Bullet is the bullet of insanity. Individuals may come out unscathed by temporary madness or may succumb to its luring temptation eventually. When the disintegrated part reunites within Reality the MindTower is unharmed by the Flexible Bullet.
However, when the reunion happens in the Sound Proof Padded Cell, the Flexible Bullet has bombarded the MindTower. Statistically speaking this is when the perception of Reality for is no more a Normal Curve but is Skewed.

Sanity is not a state of mind. It is the greasy rope which each one of us are hanging on to.

So shall we play the Russian Roulette???