Another day, another opportunity missed. I was sitting on the bus and listening to a man speaking in pure schizophernese. He was sitting right next to me. He sat next to me and he proceeded to tell me about the sunglasses he'd just got for five dollars. He said they were good because they were blue. "You go into a bar and black, they just don't work." Everything, or almost everything that he had, seemed to have cost 5 dollars. He ranted on about all sorts of things, about how potatoes contained sulphur that made them look like angels. How they were putting "particles" in the International Roast instant coffee. How he had a pack of cigarettes that contained traces of cocaine and morphine. "A prety good pack." After I got off the bus I realised I should have asked him if he had any contact details. Probably he wouldn't have given me his real details, nothing about this person was real, although in some ways he was more real than any of the other people there or in any place. On the off chance that I might have got a phone number from him, I'd have got back to him and put my videocamera on him, his parents, his carers, his shrink, everybody. I really wanted to know who this person was, I wanted to know what the factors were that comprised this person's world. I wanted to ask the psychiatrist about what his long term prognosis was, whether there was any chance that he might ever return to the reality that the rest of us inhabit, if there was any kind of employment he could do. He had to have someone who was looking after him, a family that was wealthy enough, as he was neatly turned out enough and well-groomed enough and he wasn't that young. He must have been around 50, although psych conditions tend to age a person. Anyway, I know I'm no fiction artist, but documenting what goes on out there is something I can do. Shit I wish I were a Dateline journalist, that'd be the job for me. I need to do something that I can believe in. Teaching is alright at times, but.......

Anyway, pass the SSRIs