Grumble....

Well from Mumble to grumble isn't a long way.
He sat in front of me, looking preoccupied, far away, shifting his head in a way reminiscent of a certain movement disorder and he looked at me vaguely after I had called out his name a couple of times. And then he started, sad unhappy and almost whiny. It were these people he said, who had nothing better to do in the past few years than talk about him all day long. In various languages, but always about him talking about whatever he does, about whatever he thinks, critical, irritating, and unceasing. Minute by minute, day after day and year after year. They could see him and whatever he saw via cameras in his eyes and he could hear them by way of a speaker in his head. And he was quite sick of them, after bottles of alcohol, packs of cigarettes, and drugs galore, they were there, they were real and they were a pain. In that one moment, maybe a fraction of a second, I sat in his place and felt what he felt and I was terrified.