EXCERPT Where you see chaos, I see order. Where there are events, there are
patterns. And I recognise them. That is what I do. That is who I am.
My childhood was satisfactory, my youth ordinary, until that fateful day
that they subjected me to an IQ test for a university grant. I had not excelled
at school; as a matter of fact I just got by with the barest minimum of
attention and attendance. Then I took the test and everyone believed I was a
genius.
You can only go into two directions from there. You either become
brilliant enough to dazzle everyone including yourself into believing that you
can do anything, or you can become the loser that never lives up to his
potential, and whatever you accomplish then is but a shadow of itself.
If you fail to even make that choice, you are stuck with a limbo
personality. You embrace the Eastern Way to dispose of it altogether, only to
find yourself alienated and susceptible to suggestions.
A pattern is neither good nor bad. It simply is, beautiful in its own
right.
A personality is a pattern. The man sitting right opposite me had a
disturbed pattern. The empty page on my notepad vouched for my current
inability to make sense of it. His eyes moved in zigzagging motions, following
an irregular geometric shape that excluded my location by design. You can
always tell when someone has been subjected to an overload of something, be that
emotions, impressions, or questions. This man had been pushed over the edge
recently.
They had found him naked in the woods not far from our institution.
Because of that, they had assumed that he was one of our patients already. The
blood all over his body didn’t prompt them to hand him over to the police first.
He had not spoken a word since he was admitted. That is why they got me
involved.
Whatever it was this man had experienced, it had scared him off his wits,
every gesture and facial expression was constricted into flight. He was running
from something or someone. He was beyond hope of escape. Not much to go on,
but it was a start.
| 
