There is enough treachery, hatred, violence and absurdity in the average human being to supply any given army on any given day - Charles Bukowski

Like most people, there have been a few times in my life that I lost it - meaning emotions just took total and complete hold and rage just engulfed me. Criminal lawyers call it temporary insanity and that is why there is so much violence in the world.

But what about a fictional character like Hannibal Lecter, a murdering serial killer psychopathic who goes about chopping up his victims and eating them - to the music of Mozart with a heart beat rate that is as normal as if he were eating apple pie with Ben and Jerry’s ice cream instead of reacting like he had just killed someone, was behaving like he was just out riding his bicycle in the park and feeding the pigeons?

Well I saw the movie and never really got it. That is until one day, very recently, when I felt completely in control of all my faculties and my heart beat was normal and constant - and yet I felt like grabbing this particular person’s hair, dragging her to the mirror and then slamming her face into the mirror and yelling at her. And I am so confident of this; I will even say if my brain was being scanned for activities - it would also be normal.

You see I planned to call a friend who was in the Thai government and ask him what should a former key philosopher of the Red Shirts like me do when it came to finding work. That is because being a former Red Shirt, who wrote openly under his own name, I had a lot of enemies. And these enemies had been calling up people I was to go and work for, and telling them not to hire me.

Well before I could call this friend up, this other person called him up. And she told my friend not to take me too seriously because I was half-full - meaning I was crazy; and that when I talk about enemies, she really doesn’t know if I am imagining it or is it real. She says she never saw the enemies I talk about. “Just brush off the guy,” she told my friend.

Well, like Hannibal Lechter, when I learned of the news, I felt “oddly” in complete control with no abnormal emotions when I think about what she did.

And yet I felt like dragging her to the mirror and screaming at her to look in the mirror and think about what she had  just told my friend-because it is ust scum like her who are my enemy who are keeping me from working.

I never called that friend up for advice; and I never dragged that girl to the mirror and yelled at her. I calmly told her that she owed me a big apology. She said sorry and that it was her fault because she has an inconsiderate big mouth. I forgave her off course and we are still the best of friends.

But the scary fact really is: I felt for the first time in my life, that I have the capability to be as truly insane as that fictional character Hannibal Lechter.