It is not immaterial that madmen were included in the proscription of idleness. From its origin, they would have their place beside the poor, deserving or not, and the idle, voluntary or not. Like them, they would be subject to the rules of forced labor. [...] The necessity, discovered in the eighteenth century, to provide a special regime for the insane and the great crisis of confinement that shortly preceded the Revolution are linked to the experience of madness available in the universal necessity of labor. [...] Until the Renaissance, the sensibility of madness was linked to the presence of imaginary transcendences.

— Michel Foucault (Madness and Civilization)

You have known your vessel is flawed, so why not take some of the control back? Start a new system up with a madness program, version 2.0. It would seem that there always happened to be a part of your person you didn’t understand. A condition in your heart where you cannot lift heavy things without falling flat on your face and laughing. Everyone else seems to scowl and curse. There appears to be no control—but why shouldn’t there be? Why can’t you, say, start twitching your neck every 15.3 seconds? A nervous tic motion of the head, to the left. Or furrow your brow when another someone says belong/start/help/sale/eat or any number of other things. Or run a little circle around your temple with your pointer finger when everything feels disastrously sane. Knock your head against walls, tell everyone to “Fogeddaboudit.” Just leave places where and when you want to.

But to become mad, to understand madness, we have to also see that this routine is taxing. Like anything else, if you are to feel mad you must practice, practice, practice. For you are mad, you have just learned very much to control it. You know what you know and there isn’t a way to unlearn it, but you may accept, with madness, that this is not real. Say it to yourself: It’s okay, this isn’t real. Don’t you feel better if not significantly worse? It’s okay, it’s been said by people things get worse before they get better. You would trust them, wouldn’t you? This is not real.

And this phrase, this one simple phrase carries a lot of weight—as simple phrases do. In fact being mad is to know the importance of onephrase. How others, any others really, may pass on through and how one specially chosen phrase may mean a whole assortment of things. And repeating it to yourself in the shower or on the bus is a good way to build significance. Which is another step on the path to madness, talking to yourself while others can hear. It is the most socially daunting and sometimes, anxiety-wise, demanding of the to-be mad, but repeat it to yourself: this is not real. You may wish to skip the social utterances until a later period in the madness regime also, if you do so wish, because this is your madness. Not that you are special, you are only special in the way certain bodybuilders are special—it’s strangely a similar routine.

So work on those calisthenics and physical twitches—don’t worry, you’ll get them down. Sometimes you can practice by pacing anxiously or clasping your jaw or in other larger physical actions, such as spending a whole day hunching slightly or spontaneously letting your neck muscles go limp. Try to follow with your eyes your own head as it bobbles around in the breeze. And remember: if madness was easy to pick up, everyone would be doing it.

And don’t think of madness as a very freeing lifestyle choice, as, in its strictest terms, the world is defined into even more pronounced strati. There is a reason most are locked up: the world will become so comprehensible that you will start receiving an overwhelming sense of freedom, a tetherless tie to what the idea of freedom could be. A world without strengthened proposals and routine . . . but you’re not there yet. To continue, you must work mentally hard as well. You must, as a means of understanding, chase after boredom with a measuring stick. Start to worry about the sickness you have put yourself under, whether this will be a way to make you happy. In which you will tell yourself: you are more happy when you’re unhappy—when you know you are slightly happy you can only be jealous of your unhappiest self. Madness is knowing that there is not much to gain in the first place, and you must believe this.

And after a while your madness will help explain much, like how that dripping faucet plinking in the sink always sounds like a tiny voice whispering in your head‍—a voice that you can never quite understand what it’s saying. As you go to turn the faucet knob tighter for the fifth time, you will see a reflection in the knob’s small handle and see the small person that’s been inside all along. So monitor your madness diligently. Watch for things askew, but do not attempt to fix. That 3 on the side of your building that’s turned and looks more like a W? Do not turn it, just watch and watch and think and think. And know the difference between madness and other maladies. Example: a crazy person will yell, scream at you on the street. Yet you are quiet, not saying a word for ten years—now that’s madness. However, most people cannot say nothing. So say the same thing like a fool. This is not real.

Start walking late. You start walking at 2 a.m. to make sure most people are asleep. Yet you are still consistently surprised by the lack of foot traffic. Aren’t others afflicting themselves with madness? You know they have been. Walk—look in lit windows and down basement corridors. Look at the people empty in front of things and passed out on couches, light still flickering on them. Stop and look and deviate. For whoever coined the phrase “curiosity killed the cat” forgot to mention that the the un-curious cat dies too. Also: was a bore. Gone mad now you are sure you are not boring to yourself, even though madness is oftentimes very boring. So walk and fight your pragmatic self as you have been doing. It is a full night and starting to be cold. Instead of turning and going home where you know you will be warm, trudge ahead. Pull your arms to your chest and let the sleeves of your sweater blow in the breeze. Feel the warmth of your own straight jacket, and fight the thought of how sane you will feel once you are home.

Your legs are getting numb, so in their walk they have taken a mind of their own. Feeling detached from your torso they pull you forward and forward. This makes you stumble and laugh in your mad laugh. You walk and think of the lake. It’s only a couple more blocks away. If it’s winter and frozen over, rub snow on your face and remember what it is to cry. (For the to-be-mad in arid, dry climates, there are “heat stroke” and “mirage,” but, if you are truly committed, move north‍—it is no coincidence that there are a great many Russian madmen.) You come down a sloped walk to the lake. You smell the sweetness of the air mix over the waters of the lake and sweep at you. You see the crescent moon and feel your aloneness, and breathe for what feels like only the 2nd or 3rd time. You walk down to the edge of the water and shiver in the now strong breeze. You are maybe no longer mad. So you fight for it. Stick your face in the lake. You have forgotten to take your hands off your chest. You have no balance so you fall in. You splutter, but you can stand. There is an initial shock, but you slowly realize—now that you’re in it—that the water is warmer than the breeze, that the breeze chills your wet clothes.

You crouch, lip grazing the water, and you hear some voices sing to you from the lake. You hear and know their song. You know that you must be mad, hearing this. The songs come from the rocks in the middle of the lake, big rocks, like planets in the solar system that is the galaxy of this dark body of water. You have heard them before, but not like this, never like this. Inspiration, a precept of madness. The siren song pulls you out, the bodily mass of the rocks acting with a gravitational force, a current gently pushing at your feet. Swirling you inwards. You think of how you know this song. How you know its pull, how you have been warned against it. You have heard tales of its avoidance, and the honor in it. Yet you float silently closer, listening. Maybe being dashed on the rocks isn’t so bad. The song building steadily, the heavy beat of a dying star.

You are now coming to notice just how bitterly frozen you are. Your jaw actually starts twitching, your teeth chip at each other. So you stroke your arms and think how mad you are to be out in this lake and yet here you are paddling your legs and pulling tighter and tighter, trying to stay afloat. So, you stop, stop completely, turning your ear towards the rocks and try and listen. This is not real.

Of course a truly sane person might just imagine this—real or not—and think happily that this means madness. You shouldn’t have to worry—often people train for many useless things. And as you get older and only walk in the daylight because you take pride in knowing what it is you see coming, as perhaps later you walk across the well manicured prairie with a destination in mind, the smell of rich grass bouncing on your tongue, you’ll get to remember that time you tried to go mad, and this time you’ll notice that this has already happened. Old and new become arbitrary distinctions. But that mad wind, the wind when it blows under your nose and smells like the second or third time you’ve ever smelled it (it always smells this way) the breeze reminds you . . .