You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The Troll.
Why does the Troll live under the bridge? Because he can.
Under the freeway, in the dark slimy crevice, far from the light, he resides. Under the bridge, in the corner by the spiders, he sleeps. In the stairwell, in the darkness, covered by a layer of anonymity, he dreams his convoluted dreams.
From the outside looking in, the Troll would seem to lead a lonely existence. At first glance, The Troll would appear to be sad and desolate and angry. He bites the heads off salamanders and eats baked beans stuck to a can. How can this be good?
By normal standards Mr. Troll lives on the periphery of what is normal. In a world where light and warmth and good are the variables of judgment, Mr. Troll is an experiment in a petri dish lost in bad dream.
Some facts about the Troll are indisputable. He is a dirty faced, foul mouthed, stinking horror of disgust. He can no sooner change his spots than Paris Hilton can teach calculus. No matter how many come to his aid, he is lost. No matter how many blankets you bring him, he will shiver. No matter how many AA meetings he attends he will fall asleep with alcohol on his breath.
The Troll lives in a dripping sewer pipe where cold isn’t just cold, it’s wet and filthy and coated in a layer of toxic goo. He sleeps on a cardboard mattress. His comforter is a plastic bag full of packing peanuts.
The Troll doesn’t just live in hot, he lives in a broiling stench of carcasses and fermenting filth. His world is wall papered by graffiti and mold and desolation.
His alarm clock is the roar of tires on a highway in the pouring rain.
To the lady in the Mercedes driving by, her windows up, her doors locked, the Troll’s life would seem like a black hole of futility. From the outside looking in, the Troll is a wobbling, soulless carcass, meandering through a day with no beginning and no end.
But the Troll has a secret. He prefers his life. He likes his bridge and his filth and his matted hair. He has options. He has seen the hand that helps and he pushes it away. He prefers his shopping cart full of tin cans to that of a warm cot and the light of the good book.
Nobody tells Mr. Troll how to keep his slovenly mess. There is no Mrs Troll to tell him to take out the trash, no momma troll to tell him to floss his teeth, no Dr. Troll to order him to wax all that matted fur off his ass.
The Troll is unhappy we think. Just look at him. He’s a mess. A legion of do gooders will travel to his lair and preach to this billy goat gruff of stammering insanity. They will judge him using their own guidelines for what life should be.
Is the Troll crazy? Or is the Troll exercising his free will?
The Troll is free to do whatever he pleases whenever he pleases. He is a hitch hiker on a highway with no speed limits. He is a train jumper on a locomotive filled with mental instability and demons that only he can see. Nobody asks the Troll for a commitment, why bother, it’s not part of the Troll lexicon.
Is the Troll a prisoner of existence or is the Troll sailing a sea of freedom headed for where ever.
I’ve talked to the Troll. He is unintelligible, blabbering languages from worlds unknown. As I walk into the bog, into the darkness of filth and stagnant water, I wonder; am I the intruder?
The Trolls eye’s are glazed, seeing me through a neural net of crazy. Perhaps he sees the features of my face, perhaps he just sees my form, a molecular shape, a smell of humanity that he recognizes from a birth long ago.
The Troll den smells of urine and fecal matter. The Troll’s lair is filled with piles of clothes that are saturated with rain and mildew. The Troll’s den is a camp fire and pile of plastic jugs, empty baked beans cans, and liquor bottles fermented in an unregulated basement somewhere in Prague.
The Troll snarls at me like an animal. He considers attacking, but usually keeps his distance, preferring to protect his domain, to be left alone, to live in an isolation that his code requires.
Perspective is an interesting thing. As we stand there and look at the same thing, I wonder what we see. Does he see a life of gold while I see a life lost?
There is a lesson in the world of the Troll. Two life forces can be in the exact same plane of existence, see two different things, feel two different things, need 2 very different things.
For one life force to try and exert power over the other life force is a questionable tactic in a cosmic game that comes without a play book.
Free will? To the Troll? To You? Whose to say?
The Troll: Is he Crazy? Is he sad? Is he laughing at us?
Life’s Crazy™