Read Online A Mad and Wonderful Thing by Mark Mulholland - Free Book Online Page A

layers of nonsense, thinking they’re great thinkers; quoting on and on, in a way that would make a healthy man sick, the works of Descartes or Berkeley or Hume until it all becomes a thick soup of labels, mathematics, models, laws, rules, geometric extensions, astral planes, disembodied souls, and all the usual stuff men can’t help adding. That’s what academia can do. That’s what men do. Like everything else, Cora, they tear the arse out of it. It’s a search for enlightenment, but most wouldn’t see light if you stuck a rocket up their arse and shot them off up into the Sun. They are blinded by the study of the very thing they are looking for.’
    â€˜Maybe you’ll figure it out, Johnny. Maybe you’ll discover who we are.’
    â€˜I have to tell you, Flannery, that’s an unlikely occurrence.’
    â€˜Did you not want to go to college?’
    â€˜Not really. School just wasn’t my thing. To be honest, I couldn’t wait to get out. It’s not universal, that learning-at-school thing — not by their rules, not at their schools, not for me. School, college, career: quick, quick, quick. Everyone seems to be in such a rush. Like a mad rush to nowhere. It seems to me they all end up against a wall and they don’t know where they are.’
    Cora watches me as I lie back on the Dunn & Co, stretch my legs, and place my hands behind my head.
    â€˜All too fast, I’m taking the slow road,’ I say, looking up to her and adoring that arc of perfection that runs from jaw to neck to shoulder, before looking again to the sky. All in its own good time , my dad says. And you know something, Cora, he’s right on that one.’ I pause, and then continue. ‘People are funny, aren’t they? Most settle for mediocrity, and wrap it around them like a comfort blanket. And those who recognise this can be just as bad. Many are away with faeries altogether. And the path between the two is a narrow path.’
    â€˜What path, Johnny-boy?’
    â€˜The path between mediocrity and delusion. Enlightenment — the holy grail of the philosophers, although it doesn’t burn too brightly around here. My old friend Bob called it a rope — a rope to pull you up the impossible mountain. Maybe he’s right. Why not? Mind you, he wouldn’t tell me where the ropes are, the old fox. He probably had a few stashed away in the back shed.’
    â€˜Do you miss him?’
    â€˜Yes,’ I say. Well, I couldn’t tell her everything — like that I still talk to him. She thinks I’m weird as it is.
    â€˜So how do you know stuff? You seem to know a lot for a carpenter.’
    For a carpenter ? I like that. ‘I don’t know anything, Cora, not really. I have a self-service approach to education — a pick-and-mix free from medals and ribbons.’
    â€˜How does that work?’
    â€˜Learning isn’t exclusive to schools and colleges.’
    â€˜No, but they are good places to start.’
    I consider her argument. ‘A fair point, Flannery. I’ll give you that.’
    â€˜You could go to college after your apprenticeship. You must go, if you want to or not.’
    â€˜That’s what my mother says about eating vegetables. Anyhow, that’s not my intention.’
    â€˜What is your plan, Johnny?’
    â€˜I don’t have a plan, Cora.’
    â€˜You must go.’
    â€˜Yeah, well, let’s see about that.’
    â€˜Will you go?’ she presses.
    â€˜Do I have a choice?’
    â€˜No. You never know, Johnny, perhaps you’ll find your own Plato’s Academy.’
    â€˜This is Plato’s Academy.’ I wave an arm into the air. ‘I’m not sure men cloistered behind walls ever get that.’
    â€˜And women?’
    â€˜That’s different. Women get it. Malcolm X said that he’d put prison second to college as the best place for a man to go if he needs to do