A very deep scar can become numb beyond its edges. A grafted piece of skin loses sensation. If they're touched lightly enough then nothing is felt; fingers jumping from bank to bank. There might be a far-off prickle, and pressure will be felt by the muscles beneath, but ultimately it is a hole - a dry ravine, a ragged canyon, or something man-made and deliberate.

A body is meant to be closed, we are all contained within walls. But any wall can be damaged to the point that it will never fully seal. And a window can be curtained, but it will never be a wall.

There is a subtle dichotomy between people who are alone: there are those who are alone by choice and those who are forced into loneliness. Because loneliness is an entirely inward experience, this distinction is up to the lonely individual to define for themselves. However, it is difficult for anyone to tell whether they prefer loneliness or if loneliness is something that prefers them. How does someone decide, in the empty chamber of their own mind, whether their loneliness is a hole they have dug for themselves, or whether it is a hole dug by others in which they have become trapped? And does this distinction matter at all if a life is to be a lonely one regardless?

Those who prefer to be alone may find comfort in their own predictability and mistrust the chaotic unknown of the other. Alternatively, they may prefer to be alone simply due to prolonged practice and steady acclimation. Loneliness could be devouring them piece by piece but this pain may be as irksome to them as a fly is to a cow, or they may attribute the pain to something else entirely; either outside or within. And the quest to cure what they misattribute the grinding pain of loneliness to will keep them occupied until their death.

Those who feel trapped in loneliness may be just as acclimated to it as those who choose it, but the wounds torn into them are deeper and more numerous, leaving more of them exposed. Under harsh sunlight their bones will bleach and in the path of icy winds their lungs will freeze solid. The most they can hope for is to learn to endure the pain, because it will always pass, and they will slip once more into the craggy greyness of an acclimated discomfort. They spend their lives in knots, knowing the source of their suffering but being unable to detangle themselves from it.

In contrast to the mutable and inward experience of the lonely, the perception any individual outsider has of the lonely person is static. The experiences of a lonely individual can have no bearing on the outsiders' perception of them simply because the barrier of loneliness is all that an outsider can observe. And so the outsider may see a pitiable, cowering creature, or a stoic figure to be pedastled, or a sneering and despicable misanthrope. And this perception belies the outsider's conceptualization of loneliness: as something to fear, something to admire, or something to scorn.

Sometimes I have this overwhelming feeling that I am a solid chrome cylinder slotted inside my skull. When I try to envision my body I see the cylinder and only the cylinder. I'm a highly specific cylinder with very precise proportions, so you couldn't substitute a can of soup or paint for me, but I'm still a cylinder within the void of a skull and nothing else.

The only way I can imagine translating this into an Arthurism is for him to feel like the pole impaling a carousel horse. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that it's not the same at all. As a cylinder I merely sit there, but the carousel pole has a purpose. It's overlooked, unappreciated, and is entirely beholden to the whims of a mechanism beyond its control, but it's undeniably important. An unimpaled horse would topple pathetically to the ground. It must be impaled to function and to put forth the illusion that it's beautiful and daring and dangerous.

Arthur is the pole and Joker is the horse... And I am still a very useless but highly specific cylinder.