Normal is what everyone else is and I am not. I saw my third dead person today. Smiling with a horrific grin frozen on his face, I saw him lying next to his car. I came up on the wreck, and realized I was The First One on the scene. That would make the third time I came upon a wreck and been The First. That isn't normal, and that's why I think they should make a First One club, made up of all the unlucky people who came upon on wreck and been the First One. Thinking about something like that isn't normal either, which says a lot about me. I'm not normal. One the other hand, I'm not ab-normal either. Just a little off, which makes me realize that I am probably really quite sane. It's sane to realize you are not crazy. It's also sane to know that you are crazy. That Catch-22 thing. So I ask, what do crazy people think about themselves? Do retarded people know they are retarded? Perhaps, they realize that they are normal ones and everyone else is abnormal. It can correctly be said that almost everyone in the world has an abnormality about them. Maybe they have three nipples. Maybe they see Gnomes. Maybe they can calculate huge strings of numbers in their heads within seconds. All these things are abnormal, in a relative sense, so the majority of people are abnormal. Which means that the norm is abnormality. Which means the normal people are the few, and therefore they are the ones who have the abnormalities. The pendulum swings, meanings change, and the world has to right itself again. Little wobbles in the Earth cause things like droughts, and sometimes Ice Ages. Little wobbles in the human language cause people to be committed, or martyred, or canonized. By "human language" I mean, of course, whatever language people happen to be speaking at any given time in any given place. I might speak English, you might speak Dutch, that guy over there Maori but we are all speaking the human language, which is to say we speak with our mouths, our minds, whatever you want. We are all human, more or less, and we all basically think alike. By alike I mean we all have the same damn neurotransmitters firing here and there, and sodium ions leaping about and we think Gee, that tree is pretty, or Gee, I would really like some caterpillars and some cow blood to drink. Different thoughts, different goals, but the same damn neurotransmitters. Whether we want filet mignon or cow blood depends on cultural or geographical influences. To someone in Rapid Falls, cow blood may seem a strange thing indeed to drink. Someone in Tanzania may find cucumbers soaked for 6 months in vinegar a strange thing to eat. Hell, I find cucumbers soaked for 6 months in vinegar a strange thing to eat. But it would be unfair to think of cow blood or cucumbers or anything else to be an abnormal thing to eat, because remember, we are all abnormal. All of us. Except me. Why? Because I see the truth, I see the path, I see all things as they really are. I am enlightened. I realize that everyone is abnormal, and they are abnormal because they think they are not. Therefore I am the normal one. I see what everyone should see. I see the Gnomes. I see my third nipple. I see Buddha, sitting underneath his Pipal Tree, scratching his elbow waiting for enlightenment to come. I am the only one who sees this. I am what everyone else is not. I am sane.
---D. Kirtap Noshtims, Nassau, 1998

(Brett Smithson, ®2000, All Rights Reserved.)