Read Online Imago Bird by Nicholas Mosley - Free Book Online

between the two bundles of hay that seemed to exist only in my imagination.
    I did not want to ring Sheila now: not especially, I think, because I minded about the man in white overalls, but perhaps because I minded about not minding.
    Depression, I think, is not so much a feeling as a sort of impression it would be better to have no feelings at all.
    I can hardly remember this now; with all the profusion!
    The work that I was supposed to be doing in preparation for a university was philosophy. I tried to read my books in bed. I held them on my stomach as if they were shields that might protect one part of my body from another.
    The philosophy I was reading was that of the sceptics: who held that one explanation of something was likely to be no more valid than another: whose favourite words were ‘perhaps’ and ‘possibly’ and ‘maybe': who thought that it was necessary to ‘suspend judgement’ for the sake of mental health. They considered anyone who thought himself capable of conclusive judgement to be mentally unbalanced. I found this philosophy encouraging: but did not quite feel, at the moment, that I had found the right way of demonstrating mental health.
    I would think—How exciting it should be that there are no better reasons for the sun to rise rather than not rise every morning! That as I lie in bed, I equally may or may not fallthrough to the floor!
    â€” Especially when the sun always does rise every morning: and I never do fall through to the floor.
    What philosophers who were not sceptics were saying, it seemed to me, was that although they agreed that reason could not make final judgements, yet nevertheless we had to live as if it could; so our lives were ridiculous anyway.
    So the only question that remained was whether or not we faced this.
    One could spend so much time ruminating upon these things that although one might be incapable of getting out of bed, at least one was not worried by all the things that Uncle Bill and Mrs Washbourne were worried about—such as whether or not oil was getting through to Africa, or who was getting what percentage of which money.
    I would wonder about all this with the books that I held balanced on my stomach seeming increasingly to cut off the top part of my body from the lower.
    I knew—Then my lower part, yes, begins to lead a life of its own; to wake up and moan like a baby; finally to scream and yell as if it has been left too long without food.
    Then I would think—But how can I feed it? What is this need, when I am on my own, that stops me reading interesting things like philosophy?
    I had a small store of pornographic literature in my room which I kept in a box in a cupboard. It lay there like some great spider; which every now and then came out to feed when either I, or it, was hungry.
    I had had a conversation with Dr Anders about this. She had said ‘Why are you ashamed of pornography?’ I had said ‘Because it makes me feel ill.’ She had said ‘Why do you read it then?’ I had said ‘Because at least I know where I am, when I feel ill.’
    I had wanted to ask—Don’t other people find that?
    â€” Because like this their tensions have run out? they are in their mother’s arms again?
    As I lay in bed I would make efforts to join up the one half of my body with the other. There was a feeling like a rugger scrum composed of my head and my groin. This particular Sunday—the one after the Friday I had talked to the man in white overalls with Sheila—I thought I should try to jump out of bed and do something practical like go down to Uncle Bill’s study and see whether or not there was a hole in the ceiling caused by his pistol going off. But according to the Sceptics, how would I know, even if there was a hole, that it had been caused by a pistol? And according to psychoanalysis, how would I know that I was not in fact thinking about masturbation?
    Dr Anders had