Mr. Cordyceps’ eyes are burning. It’s not chili pepper residue, that was too long ago. He had an eye infection recently, maybe that’s back. Or maybe he got some toiletry product in his eyes this morning, he was in a great hurry and that contributes to accidents, as we all know.

He  has been trying to be fair to people lately, and to listen to them and pay attention to them because he had sort of painted himself into a corner there, socially. Perhaps as a result of that, people don’t seem like such idiots to him lately. At the same time, he remains convinced that there is always at least one idiot in the room; likewise, that projection plays a big role in how he sees the world.

So he has this growing fear that he’s  the idiot.

Well, ‘fear’. Who knows? You know that guy, the guy who leaves inappropriate comments on facebook walls and comment threads here and there, which are supposed to be funny but fail to hit the sense of humor in the group of people who frequent that wall or blog or whatever?

On the other hand, shit, you have to talk to people and risk a few jokes not working, Mr. Cordyceps thinks.

He struck up a conversation with someone recently. Mr. Cordyceps almost never does that. Strike up a conversation. But he was somewhere and instead of leaving, as he usually does, when the regular business was over and it would theoretically not seem too weird to leave, he stayed because everyone else was, in little groups, talking. His conversational gambit was to say to a woman, apropos of nothing, ‘so do you think we only dream at night, or do we dream all the time and just not realize it during the day because we are too busy thinking and perceiving and so on?’ because that was what had been on his mind, how our brain functions, and how there seemed to him to be subconscious routines running at all times to remind him that he was forgetting something by raising his anxiety levels and so on.

Like, the feeling that you are forgetting something important? Where does that come from? And ideas that pop into your head, and metaphors – what produces them?

They had a great conversation, sort of. It lasted a long time but didn’t feel like a long time. Mr. Cordyceps didn’t have to say much. Once, the woman actually had her hands around Mr. Cordyceps’ throat, throttling him, to illustrate a point.

So, pretty great, all in all.

Learning by doing, Mr. Cordyceps tells himself.

Fake it till you make it, he says.

Practice makes perfect.

Perhaps.