THE PEN IS MORE PORTABLE THAN THE SWORD

 COLD CALLERS

Out with the dog this morning, we took a different route through the woods to make a change to the usual scenery. He seemed to know where he was going or maybe he was trailing a squirrel. When we started to go deeper into the trees, I started to question what exactly it was he was looking for until he sat down in the middle of a pile of leaves like he hadn’t really been paying attention himself and was now lost.

He just sat there looking at me like I was the one who should have known where we were going all along. It was easy enough to trail back the way we had come but I sat on a fallen tree to scratch his head and think about the day ahead. 

He was more than content to sit there with me, so I ended up on the tree longer than I intended. Some twenty minutes later, the conversation I was having inside of my head turned into a discussion. There was me but there was also somebody else. Every good idea I had for being creative throughout the day was questioned and shot down in flames. Every fire I started was extinguished. I couldn’t figure out what was going on but that’s no way to live.

When the demons of doubt take up residence in your soul, it’s hard to evict them. Such a thing has happened to be before and I was two years in the wilderness trading punches with them, the end result being neither of us won anything, we just got tired.

They can be arrogant in the extreme. I figured I would sit here a little longer and watch them.

Know thy enemy.

I threw a thought into the arena about a book I was building up to write. A simple, short book that shouldn’t have taken long to put together because most of the hard work had been done behind the scenes and over many years. I didn’t even have to strain to hear them whispering among themselves.

“What’s the point? Nobody will be interested."

“You’re not even a very good writer. You call yourself one, but are you really?"

“Wouldn’t you rather be doing something else?"

And so the badgering went on. It’s hard not to listen to them when they are inside your head doing exactly what they have been trained to do but I gave it my best shot and with time, I got to grips with it, sat and watched them whispering among themselves without taking too much notice of the things they were saying. On closer inspection, it was as though they were reciting from a script. A script that worked for anybody who cared to listen. The ultimate in cold calling sales techniques. It made me feel cheap - the fact that I wasn’t special enough to warrant a specific attack on my creativity.

Then again, this is what they are brought up to do. It’s their specialty.

Much like a creature from Doctor Who, in the few instances I tried to focus on them, they disappeared, as if they had never been there to begin with. As though they weren’t even there at all. 

I gave the dog some more attention behind the ears and thought about this some more. How to deal with them? It was the insides of my head after all. Who was in charge here?

When I looked closely at the relationship, it didn’t appear to be me.

How many of them are there out there? I couldn’t be the only one under attack, though sometimes it seemed like it. I had to think about this closely before deciding this also was a big part of their bag of trickery. They had all the bases covered - as indeed they should. They had been honing this game since the dawn of man. I can see the wavering hand of the man about to paint a buffalo on the dry wall on the inside of a cave, his mind changed in an instant by his own callers only to have a friend take his place, paint the buffalo and leave him wondering what the hell just happened to his idea.

The two friends discussed this. One asking if the other had not heard the voices in his head and the other responding that no, he had not - he was far too focussed on the job in hand to listen to anybody regardless of whether they were in his head or standing right next to him. There was a buffalo to paint. Whatever needed to be said about it could be said after the event and not during. This made a lot of sense to The Painter Who Didn’t Get To Paint but still the voices persisted, telling him in the aftermath that the buffalo now imprinted on the wall was far superior to the buffalo he would have come up with anyway.

And so it continued across the millennia with only a brave few souls being brave enough to wait them out and muscle them into silence. There were others but those others were looking the wrong way through a two way mirror. All of the drugs, drink and whatever other substances there were available only acted to silence them. The demons were still very much alive and kicking - and extremely patient, waiting for the mist to lift before they started again.

After all, they had nothing else to do. 

They were focussed on the job in hand.

I came back to myself on the log. There’s a time to live in harmony and there’s a time to fight for your life. I came to understand that a day we hand over to the demons, is an extra day in the bank for them and one less in the wallet for yourself. I gave the dog a last rub on the chest and we headed for home. A fight needs preparation and no distractions in the shape of dogs and squirrels. We had all come this far.

Another hour wasn’t going to make any difference.