Drama Monologue Velocity vs. Viscosity

Drama Monologue Velocity vs. Viscosity

Insanity comes in two basic varieties: slow and fast.

I'm not talking about onset or duration. I mean the quality of the

insanity. The day to day business of being a head case.

There are lots of names I guess: depression, catatonia, mania,

anxiety, agitation. They don't really tell you much though do they?

The predominant quality of the slow form in viscosity.

Experience is thick. Perceptions are thickened and dulled. Time is

slow, dripping slowly through the clogged filter of thickened

perception. The body temperature is low. The pulse is sluggish. The

immune system is half asleep. The organism is torpid and brackish.

Even the reflexes are diminished, as if the lower leg couldn't be

bothered to jerk itself out of stupor when the knee is tapped.

Viscosity occurs on a cellular level. And so does velocity.

In contrast to viscosity's cellular coma, velocity endows every

platelet and muscle fibre with a mind of its own, a means of knowing

and commenting on its own behaviour. There is too much perception, and

beyond the plethora of perceptions, the plethora of thoughts about the

perceptions and about the fact of having perceptions. Digestion could

kill you! What I mean is the unceasing awareness of the processes of

digestion could exhaust you to death. And digestion is just an

involuntary sideline to thinking, which is where the real trouble

begins.

Take a thought - anything. I doesn't matter. For example - I'm tired

of sitting here in front of the nurses station. I perfectly reasonable

thought. Here's what velocity does to it.

First break down the sentence. 'I'm tired' - well, are you really

tired, exactly? Is that, like, sleepy? You have to check all body

parts for sleepiness, and while you're doing that , there's a

bombardment of images of sleepiness along these lines: head falling

onto pillow, head hitting pillow, Wynken, Blynken and Nod, Little Nemo

rubbing sleep from his eyes, a sea monster. Uh-oh, a sea monster. If

you're lucky you can avoid the sea monster and stick with sleepiness.

Back to the pillow, memories of having mumps aged five, sensation of

swollen cheeks on pillows and pain of salivation - stop. Go back to

sleepiness.

But the salivation notion is too alluring, and now there's an

excursion into the mouth. You've been here before and it's bad. It's

the tongue: once you think of the tongue it becomes an intrusion. Why

is the tongue so large? Why is it so scratchy on the sides? Is that a

vitamin deficiency? Could you remove the tongue? Would your mouth be

less of a bitch without it?