I never thought I’d see the day when I wouldn’t know my own mind again. The years I have fought for it, for clarity, for reason, for my own being and now it is a great useless blob of slush and I can’t make it do anything.
It feels like escaping from abuse all over again, separating the core of my own being from those who seek its harm and crawling out of that long dark tunnel to find out if I even exist.
This is bad, really bad. All my big talk about democracy. In order to fight for democracy you have to know what you’re fighting for. If you don’t know what you are fighting for you might just as well piss up a lamp post for all the good it will do.
When I write the letters I do it with as much clarity and understanding as I possess to lay out the issues in as plain and clear a way as I possibly can, as I am humanly capable of.
Ask me to write about the referendum and what you’d get is this. Shit. I hardly dare open my mouth about it though I’ve tried and I feel shamed by my ignorance. People I admire and trust, I’ve lost trust for, and where I see the deliberate sowing of confusion I feel nothing but contempt and anger.
I tell myself it’s just a vote, right or wrong does it matter that much? Well, yes, actually it does matter.
One of my favourite quotes is from Robert M. Pirsig in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, “And what is good, Phaedrus,
And what is not good—
Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?”
When I find myself wanting to ask, needing the reassurance of a mind better and clearer than mine, I know I’m in trouble. This is truly awful.
Keith Lindsay-Cameron
