Stories of Eternal Return of the Same: A Poem in Perfect Iambic Pentameter is an interactive poem by Maxwell MacArthur exploring ideas of mental illness.
Please enjoy your stay. There is no way out.
(link-goto: "Begin", (either: "Roller Coaster", "Zarathustra", "Girl", "Fire", "Ghost", "House", "Men", "Jack", "Towers", "Tides"))I like to think it happened in the past,
But in my mind, the thoughts of it amassed.
They [[caused]] me to recall the thing that I
Was witness to, now everything’s awry.
So now I look upon the ocean tides
And see them like they’re roller coaster rides
Which people ride on for amusement’s sake
Cause they don’t know exactly what’s at stake,
For at the end they either go to Hell
Or go to ride the Holy Carousel,
Though even they begin to pass away.
“This cannot be reality,” I say.
[[Next->Zarathustra]] I like to think it happened in the past.
The reachings of the episode are vast,
Though not in space but rather vast in time.
It causes me to miss out on my prime.
Now, when I see the Holy Carousel,
I cannot help but sense the awful smell
Of Zarathustra who says “God is dead,”
And I can’t stop [[believing]] what he said.
Unable to become a Super Man,
I’m begging Zarathustra, “Make a plan,”
But even he begins to pass away.
“This cannot be reality,” I say.
[[Next->Girl]]I like to think it happened in the past.
I’m sick of Zarathustra’s upper caste,
But when I look on Zarathustra now,
I only see a girl who won’t allow
Herself to feel the things she needs to feel.
She feels as if it’s fake, like nothing’s real.
Not wanting help, yet wanting help, she cries
As if Niagara falls flowed from her eyes.
She puts a happy face on to avert
Our [[eyes]] away from places where she’s hurt.
Now even she begins to pass away.
“This cannot be reality,” I say.
[[Next->Fire]]I like to think it happened in the past,
But thoughts of it are keeping me aghast.
I feel that it will only grow from here;
It’s like a demon grinning ear to ear.
Now as I see the girl, I see a fire
That burns around myself as to conspire
For I cannot approach it without [[burns]]
And when I reach, the conflagration turns.
It burns down all and I am powerless
To conjure up a way to manage stress,
But even fire begins to fade away.
“This cannot be reality,” I say.
[[Next->Ghost]]I like to think it happened in the past.
I like to think the fallout will not last.
Now, looking on the fire, I feel a ghost
Within myself, within the [[innermost]]
And darkest places of my broken soul.
I feel as it begins to take control.
I want to take control back in my hand,
But do not know if it will go as planned.
I can’t go through with it. I live alone
And feel my feelings have become a stone.
And now the ghost begins to pass away.
“This cannot be reality,” I say.
[[Next->House]]I like to think it happened in the past,
But memories of it rise up, contrast
Against the flaming tongues of [[Pentecost]],
And make me feel that everything is lost.
Now, having only been there once at most,
I look within myself to view the ghost,
But only see a house outside of me.
I want to get inside, but have no key.
The house looks down and says that “God is dead.”
Is Zarathustra living in my head?
But then the house begins to pass away.
“This cannot be reality,” I say.
[[Next->Men]]I like to think it happened in the past,
Although the sky is always overcast.
I don’t know if the sun will come back out
Because the house is causing me to doubt
If I will ever see the sun again.
Now when I watch the house, there’s only men.
They’re speaking [[gibberish]] and I don’t know
Just when my mind will start to overflow.
I realize now they’re speaking in a code
And putting cameras up in my abode.
Now even they begin to pass away.
“This cannot be reality,” I say.
[[Next->Jack]]I like to think it happened in the past,
Although the aftermath is unsurpassed.
I try to see the men, to see what they
Are doing on this awful, horrid day,
But when I look at them I only see
The one named Jack who’s always here with me
Because when Jack was nimble, he was quick,
And burnt himself upon the candlestick,
But when he tried to go more slowly he
Could not contrive the meaning from the [[tree]].
Now even Jack begins to pass away.
“This cannot be reality,” I say.
[[Next->Towers]]I like to think it happened in the past,
But thoughts inside my mind are racing fast.
I look to Jack for guidance. What is seen?
Two towers, one of blue and one of green.
The problem is that I’m a person who,
Not seeing any change between the two,
Cannot [[tell]] which one’s real and what is fake.
Or maybe both are true and all’s at stake.
A tower falls. The other one is real.
Both towers now stand side by side and kneel
For even they begin to pass away
“This cannot be reality,” I say.
[[Next->Tides]]I like to think it happened in the past,
Obscured by some arcane [[iconoclast]],
But towers kneeling side by side remind
Me of the time when neurons were refined.
However, when I look at blue and green,
It’s only ocean tides that can be seen.
The tides come in and break my castle down
Then leave me searching sadly for my crown.
I know I should begin to build again,
But I don’t see a purpose in it when
I know the tides begin to pass away.
“This cannot be reality,” I say.
[[Next->Roller Coaster]] Siddhartha Buddha walked the middle way,
But on the sides is where I seem to play.
No good or evil lives inside my mind.
No yin, no yang, no sin has been refined.
Whatever has been done in history
Will be below the sun in misery
Forever more until the end of time
And then again, repeating like a rhyme.
Transcending space and time with greatest ease,
Siddhartha Buddha looks at me and sees
A man who’s stuck in three dimensions now,
But who can break away if he shows how.
[[Continue->Caused2]]I once heard the story of an ex-Mormon girl named Jenny whose parents, along with the entire world Mormon population, went missing. Strangely, so did her ex-Mormon brother Jason. In his apartment she found a manuscript that presented itself as an ethnography written for an intro to anthropology class and told of Jason’s dealings with a cult in their city called the True Believers who believed that they could attain anything they wanted through meditation and ritual. It presented as satirically critiquing cultural anthropology despite it being obvious that Jason knew little of the subject. Jenny vowed to find her brother and went on a nationwide hunt for him. She started by looking in all the Mormon meeting houses which lay empty after the Mormons went missing, then moved on to searching the temples. When she finally found Jason, he was not himself. He had been deluded into believing that the only way to bring back their parents and the rest of the Mormons was a blood sacrifice like the ones practiced by the True Believers. He was taken to the hospital and the Mormons were never found.
[[Continue->Caused3]]No Mormons, Mormons, then there’s none again,
And Jesus lives in space without a sin.
How many times must Jesus come to Earth?
How often must there be a virgin birth?
If I escape the third dimension will
I still be ill, or free from what is shrill?
Our sin makes Jesus come another time.
I don’t know if there is escape from rhyme.
[[Continue->Roller Coaster]] They say, “No eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue,
No body, and no mind,” but we were young.
We did not know that these ideas weren’t new;
We did not know that there’s no meaning too.
[[Continue->believing2]]I once heard the story of a man named Truman who saw angels. He knew they were just hallucinations, or thought so anyway, but the medication that his doctor prescribed to heal him of the hallucinations didn’t work. In his search to rid himself of the angels, he met a man who claimed to be the devil. Truman followed the so-called devil to his commune where he met a man who saw Buddhas flying around all the time. Truman promised Maxwell, the one who saw Buddhas, that whatever happened, they’d get rid of their visions together and neither would be left behind. The devil told them to correct the behavior of another cult member named Art. When putting him through the ringer, they discovered that this man would always see Ahura Mazda standing in the sky with suns for eyes and wearing the stars as a cloak. “Good job,” said the devil, and Truman went into the devil’s innermost chambers alone. The man who saw Buddhas was furious, and thus the commune went to war. The three men see their visions to this day.
[[Continue->believing3]]The ubermensch, who lived forever, died.
He went to Heaven and was out of pride.
When Jesus asked him how he lived his life,
He said he lived it full of pain and strife.
“Transhumanism may be what we sought;
Incomprehensibility was wrought,
For what's the point of life if no one dies?
With nothing after death, we live our lies.”
[[Continue->Zarathustra]] From circles within circles there will rise
Sumeru till the end of time. Arise!
Arise, and see Sumeru as it dies!
For in Sumeru are a million lies.
Sumeru, hear me as I canonize
One hundred thousand million trillion lies,
For gate gate paragate dies
When in my suffering I agonize.
[[Continue->eyes2]]Jesus might be real. Or, he might just be a figment of God’s imagination. Now let me clear something up; there was certainly a man who lived in ancient Israel called Yehoshua, translated as Jesus, who taught religion, was baptized by John the Baptist, and crucified by Pontius Pilate. As for that, there is no doubt. But was this Yehoshua equal with God? Some say yes, some say he didn’t exist. It’s as if there’s no middle ground.
[[Continue->eyes3]]Alright, I will admit it; I don’t know
If Mount Sumeru ever lied, although
I sometimes wish it did because I want
To meet my friends in some decrepit haunt
And see the world again and one more time,
Although, this life is but a pantomime.
[[Continue->Girl]] I once dreamed of a park in Oregon.
A river flowed therein and numbered one.
Within a house within the park I stood
And saw katanas in a stand of wood.
I had the dream again and one more time,
And then the dream repeated like a rhyme.
[[Continue->burns2]]I once heard the story of an atheist named Burnham and a priest whose name was John. Officer Burnham was patrolling the neighborhood of John’s church when she saw water flowing quite quickly from underneath the church’s door. She got into contact with someone from the church, that someone being Father John, and together they entered the church. They found the statue of mother Mary crying.
After this the church was defaced and bombed all the while some folks believed it was a miracle. They drank the water flowing from the statues eyes claiming it would heal them, but a disease broke out and the only common denominator was that the folks who were sick all drank from the water from the statue.
Through it all, John lost his faith, but Burnham saw it as a miracle and converted to Catholicism.
[[Continue->burns3]]I used to think I knew what dreams would mean,
But they mean nothing if you cannot glean
A meaning out of life and death and such.
So as it turns out, I don’t know too much.
How can I know a thing? My mind is wrecked;
I don’t know what I can, with all respect.
And if a schizophrenic cannot know,
How can a neurotypical bestow
Cognition onto anybody more?
This is the day that knowledge hits the floor.
[[Continue->Fire]] The beach is somewhere east of where I am,
In Eden maybe; I don’t give a damn
If Yilané are cast out from their caste,
Because their Spirit’s an iconoclast,
But me, I’m not a Yilané at all
And if I’m left I think that I would fall
Into depression or into a rage.
I want off from this cybernated stage.
[[Continue->innermost2]]I was transported back to 1844 where I was in the audience of a Franz Liszt concert. I had never seen anything quite like it. Liszt was bombastic and the crowd was cacophonous, roaring rightly and growing in sound as the piano swelled under Liszt’s tutelage. Women threw their clothes on stage. The woman next to me showed me her necklace which was a vial of Liszt’s coffee dregs.
And the men were obsessed too, though they didn’t seem to know why. I heard one yell out, “My, a handsome man and a wonderful performer,” then look around as if hoping no one heard.
Through all the discombobulation, cacophony, and pandemonium, I felt no thing, nothing but disconnect. It was as if I, the one thinking and feeling, was separate from I, the one watching the concert.
Then Liszt stopped. He turned and looked at me.
“Sir!” he said, “Yes, you there. What is it I can do to make you enjoy this as the others?”
I said, “Transform yourself into Puff the Magic Dragon” and by the time the sentence was over Liszt was gone and in his place was a Warship, but I still felt the disconnect. The Warship then began to play Moonlight Sonata with trills and arpeggios where there aren’t any, but I still felt the disconnect.
[[Continue->innermost3]]It seems to me that Lisztomania
Is just the same as schizophrenia.
I promise that I do not mean offence,
But they’re the same in this: they make no sense.
[[Continue->Ghost]] O Arjuna! O Arjuna! You fight
Against the evil people for the right
To go upon your throne and have your seat,
But it’s your family fallen in defeat.
Although the Lord sits by your side in war
He does not interfere, just as he swore.
Though he is here to guide you through these times
And help to rid you of your families crimes,
It’s up to you to do what must be done
And rid the evil ones below the sun.
[[Continue->Pentacost2]]There once was a man named Sam who had schizophrenia. Schizophrenic Sam would perform the same liturgy that he wrote every day in order to benefit his self. He really thrived with structure which is true for many. He also liked to share his liturgy with others, sometimes even performing it in a kind of congregation, which gave him a great sense of community and belonging. One day, he realized that churches did the same. They each have their own liturgies, their own rituals, and give their congregants a sense of belonging. Schizophrenic Sam thought that those were the reasons people enjoyed church and were ultimately the same reason people kept going back even though the church asked for money from them.Then, the church would tell them what to believe and they’d believe it. Schizophrenic Sam would never do such a thing.
Sam was sitting in a church one day as he found the phenomenon endlessly fascinating and the priest began to speak of God and the Soul, so Sam went to the priest and asked him how he knew all these metaphysical principles were true. The priest said that God reveals Himself.
Oh, thought Schizophrenic Sam. It seemed to Sam that when you brought people in with promises of structure, predictability, and a sense of community, you could make them believe anything.
Schizophrenic Sam had no reason to believe in God or a Soul and the priest hadn’t given him one, so he continued in his unbelief.
[[Continue->Pentacost3]]O Arjuna! O Arjuna! You fight
Alongside no one for your very right
To sit upon your golden throne in joy
And so it is your duty to destroy
The evil symbolized by family ties.
Relying on another isn’t wise.
There’s nothing but material in life,
Which causes many suffering and strife.
I think that my philosophies aren’t wrong,
So, to the Lord, I’ll sing a different song.
[[Continue->House]] When lying in my bed at night I hear
Tomatoes that are evil coming near.
That’s not a phrase I thought I’d ever say,
But I’m still learning in my special way
To parse what’s logical and what is not.
Forgive me if I’m coming in too hot.
[[Continue->gibberish2]]I’m going to make a statement.
The universe has a beginning and that beginning is the Big Bang. Since the universe has a beginning, it must have an end right? But if the universe has a beginning and an end then it must have a middle because everything from stories to lifetimes has a beginning, middle, and end. Nothing has just a beginning and an end without a middle.
So we’ve established that the universe has an end. That means it must have a beginning as everything with an end has a beginning. After all, how can you end if you’ve never begun? But what connects the two? Why, the middle of course. So we know that with an end, there must be a beginning and a middle.
Of course, we already knew the universe has a middle because we’re living in it. It’s not the end of the universe right now is it? Of course not. And we’re way past the Big Bang. With a middle comes a beginning and an end. Consider this: how would we know where the middle is without the endpoints that are beginning and end? Thus, because there is a middle, there must be a beginning and end.
My favorite shape is a circle. Why do you ask?
[[Continue->gibberish3]]And now it came to pass that I knew not
That, logically, deductively I thought
Inductively and paraductively,
And antiductively considered me.
Exductively, I wondered if I should
Misductively consider what I could,
But, interductively, I did appoint
The thing I shouldn’t. Do you get the point?
[[Continue->Men]] The twisted tree makes shade for many years
For lumberjacks have cut down all its peers
But left the twisted tree that had no use,
When in reality it was abstruse.
There’s one in town whose name is crippled Shu
And many who have seen him misconstrue,
For he needs not to work or go to war
And from the food bank he receives much more.
Now, Hundun never acted sullenly,
Although his death came brief and suddenly.
His friends tried boring holes upon his face
And these were cause for him to end his race.
[[Continue->tree2]]A man went fishing. Casting out his net, he caught many fish. But when he brought his net back in and gathered up the fish, he kept the net for it still had a use. Not only could it be used to catch fish again, but it had a myriad other uses as well. It could be used as decor. It could be sewn together to make a blanket. It could even be buried and used as fertilizer to grow wheat that could then be fed to cows who, when they die, after many years, become oil that fuels a factory to make a new net.
[[Continue->tree3]]Zhuangzi woke to find himself a bird,
A hummingbird who couldn’t speak a word,
Not Chinese nor the language of the wild,
Because his beak had simply been defiled.
Zhuangzi, you’ve forgotten words, so now
Please let me have a word with you, but how?
You cannot speak and cannot eat. What’s more,
You cannot ever wish to go to war.
Your choices have been taken from your rule,
And is it possible that I, a fool,
Who’s choices have been taken from him too
Is able to philosophize with you?
[[Continue->Jack]] A people spoke a language that they knew
And willed to build a perfect avenue
To Heaven where they’d be just like their God.
They never finished it and went abroad
To places where they’d speak another word.
The lines between the people never blurred.
[[Continue->tell2]]I once heard the story of a woman who joined a cult that worshipped the ancient Egyptian gods. The charismatic cult leader prophesied that the gods were returning soon. Of course, he was lying. By chance, however, the Egyptian gods did in fact return. The cult leader fled but was pursued by the Sultan, a man who’s daughter was inducted into the cult. As the leader fled, he discovered the news that the gods had returned in Egypt and slowly deluded himself into believing he wasn’t lying, that he really had prophesied the return. The Sultan followed him all the way to Egypt. On the plane he met Hatshepwa, a man who was cursed by the gods to live forever.
In the distant future lived a woman fed up with the authoritarian society under which she lived. The society was run by the Egyptian gods who had returned. The woman discovered, however, that the gods were holograms. It was a conspiracy.
[[Continue->tell3]]If gods are just a false conspiracy,
Are words in verse and stanzas poetry?
And is the seven times one thousand plus
One hundred thirty nine still worldly thus?
Although, to do philosophy, you must
Delusionally have ideas to bust.
[[Continue->Towers]] The one named Man was sitting underneath
The tree of knowing good and evil’s teeth
Although he was no dentist, but he thought
That he’d be God just as the serpent taught.
But he was not, though ever since that time
We’ve all been searching for a paradigm.
[[Continue->iconoclast2]]What is it that we’re all searching for again? Was it meaning? Ok, thanks. Sorry I forgot it’s just that I was busy speaking with Avalokiteshvara about how to close the portal to hell that resides in my living room, searching for the other five chosen ones each of which has been tasked by her to close their respective portal, and looking at plane tickets so I can fly to India where she has been reborn to meet up with her and the other chosen ones all the while trying not to be killed five times by my coworkers so that I don’t die.
Wait.
It seems the current zeitgeist is one of finding meaning for oneself, but what happens when meaning is thrust upon me?
Sisyphus stands at the bottom of a mountain with a large boulder. He knows what he must do. He leans into it with all his strength and begins pushing the boulder higher and higher up the mountain. Why? The Gods told him to. There’s a reason and a purpose, he just doesn’t know it yet.
In this retelling, there are no Gods, only voices in his head.
The question is whether or not Sisyphus is happy.
[[Continue->iconoclast3]]From Adam to the tower to the day
When Israel left Egypt with a fray,
And forward to today, we’ve always been
On lookout for a terminal amen,
But, Adam had a meaning given him.
Now simply put, it said to not bedim
The light of God by eating from the tree,
But then he ate. Now down through history,
We’ve all been searching for a meaning for
We can’t accept a meaning we abhor.
It seems to me that we abhor the thing
That’s forced upon ourselves, like worshiping.
[[Continue->Tides]]