František Kupka: The Crazies (1899)

"They possess only the strangest of strange attractors."

It's never what they do to themselves or to me that bothers me so, but what I tend to do to myself in their presence. It's as if their superpower lies in compromising better angels, defying reason and logic to garble even the worst of intentions. I cannot get my reactions straight. I feel furious before I acknowledge that they cannot help themselves, that that's the crux of their disease. They cannot help themselves, and I cannot help them, either, so I'm rendered helpless. If I didn't care, this couldn't ever hurt me so much, but I can't seem to help but care. Therein lies the whole game, with me competing on both teams. I wrestle with myself, with my own damning demons, while they seem blithely unaware of the calamity surrounding them. If pressed, they always blame the innocent. If charged, they can't help but plead not guilty.

They violate underlying covenants without acknowledgement. They cannot see what their presence does to others or what it goads them to do to themselves. They are the beneficiaries of ten thousand little charities, but they cannot see or even acknowledge these attempts. They must remain oblivious, tangled up in their own surreality, which does not seem to conform to anything I can recognize as real. Their delusions are not imaginary to them. Their convictions seem wholly justified from their perspective. Even their perspective fails to qualify as recognizable as such to anyone else. I feel steadfastly and cruelly ignored in their presence, as if I didn't exist, just as if I didn't matter. It's all about them, but it also becomes all about me to me when they render me invisible in their presence. I smother unacknowledged.

It seems an affront to decency more than any simple inability. It seems especially cruel. It's never merely a matter of anything; nothing resolves the continual churning. Yes, the universe might well be out to get us all, perhaps especially you. No, my imminent demise does not usually keep me up nights. The threat seems muted to me and apparently immutable to you. You cannot seem to turn those feelings off, so you can’t even enjoy a supper. Some affront will blunt the effort. What was intended to celebrate togetherness blows up in our faces again. The bitter accusations seem to come from nowhere, blindsiding me and my bruised better intentions again. You will be inconsiderate during and inconsolable after, and never get around to apologizing for ruining another's might-have-been. Our history together sums to might-have-beens.

The distance might not resolve anything for you, but I am coming to believe that I can do nothing for you. I once thought that your survival might depend upon my protecting you. I would hover, watchful and wary, seemingly ready to deflect any threat. Except the threats always came from within. Your imagined enemies never mustered any actual threatening activities, yet your reactions to their absence seemed to confirm their presence, though they never were actually there. Your defender was left opposing air, for there was never anything tangible there for me to protect you from. I eventually caught on that you inhabited a wholly different world and that your physical presence was little more than illusory. You no more stood before me than I could stand before you. You seemed capable of seeing right through anything I might perceive, and I proved myself just as capable of being unable to perceive anything about your world.

Distance might be the only effective medicine. We must live our lives with minimal physical interaction. I never had the medicine I needed you to need from me, and that misconception's all on me. I was never your Don Quixote, though you most certainly might have always been my windmill. Lord, preserve would-be saviors, for their hearts seem too big for their bodies and therefore useless in this world. They might most benefit from studying heartlessness, lessons probably best delivered inadvertently by their CrazyPeople.

Love takes many forms. One of the strangest can be easily mistaken for indifference. It was always one of the hardest won, gained only after many trials and even more errors. It appears to be a withdrawal, but it contains more intimacy and understanding than any of the more readily recognizable kinds. It no longer features heartfelt poems or roses or chocolates, or even best wishes, in the knowledge that even the least of those too easily turn into their opposite when encountering CrazyPeople. This love might be best measured by distance, for separation defines the hard-won depth of feeling and the only resolution capable of containing its caring. CrazyPeople and their families best relate to each other on quantum levels, their connections unperturbed by distance. They possess only the strangest of strange attractors.

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