Borde vara längre

He called it an echo chamber. The empty organ inside his chest which had nothing much to do other than pump acres of blood around his fragile limbs. Things entered the chamber, bounced around a bit, got amplified by the odd corners and came back … changed. But still the same. Like how a person you knew ten years ago is still the same person, but yet vastly different. It’s in the amplification. Ideas, thoughts, reasons, he said they are all corrupted by the echo chamber. It’s just strumming along, humming the tune it wants, ignoring all the shouting the brain does to soften the beat. That is what he said. The man who said it was strange in a way, at least metaphorically so. He was sort of jumbled, all of him. The speech, the gait, the hair, it was all just jumbled together. It sounds strange, but it wasn’t. He said everyone is just a walking jumble anyway, and I think he is right. Words hath no meaning but what is given them, he said. He cackled when he said it. The cackle actually was weird. It was an actual cackle, like you get in books describing movies and television. In real life no human has ever cackled, but this man did. Often and plentiful. I have a feeling most writers describe characters this way; larger than life and truly unique. The man said he’s not unique in any way. Except for the tongue. That truly was exceptional. He used to do tricks with it when his ankles acted up during the cold weather. It was often cold around the man which wasn’t so strange given he was mostly put outside, with the dogs. He was not good with dogs. It’s a punishment, he said. Not good with dogs but still be put together with them was a punishment for crimes most unduly heinous, he said. He only cackled when he had something clever to say, or something he found funny, which could be anything. He wasn’t the sort who wanted to be improperly put with people seen as having a dependable sense of humor, he cackled. Sometimes he was ironic, and he was masterful at sarcasm. He used to use it to convey a great sense of dread whenever that great tongue of his played around those swollen lips. Unrepentant, he shouted when he sat there outside with the dogs he had no wish to admit he generally liked. Unrepentant, and ungainly. At least the last part was true, he confided in me once. I was sat with the dogs as well sometimes, but I mostly went along with it so I could learn more from the man. He was the oldest member of the group, he used to say. I knew for a fact plenty of people were older than him, but he was a stout liar, he hinted at times. That tongue really was something else. And the eyebrows were a sight to behold where sights where to be beheld, which the man explained were at most times and places, in fact. Age is a strange thing, a liar and time makes clowns of everything, usually at an appropriate time. He was good at explaining things. Once he explained why trees where what they where, and I never quite forgot what the explanation meant even if it was not quite what he intended to impart: they were where they were because they were what they would have been. He was proud of that knowledge, or at least he would have been if he knew I had taken if from him in guile, as it where. He liked the word guile. And hue. He said hue is an almost meaningless word outside of context, which he said was not the case with most words. On this account I probably disagree with the man, which I’m not proud to say. Not proud at all. He sat with the dogs.