The Testimony of Charles Manson... Continued

Wrong is if you haven't got any money. Wrong is if your car payment is overdue. Wrong is if the TV breaks. Wrong is if President Kennedy gets killed. Wrong is, wrong is, wrong is you keep on, you pile it in your mind. you become belabored with it, and in your confusion.... I make up my own mind. I think for myself. I look at you and I say, "Okay, you make up your own mind, you think for yourself, then you see your mothers and your fathers and your teachers and your preachers and your politicians and your presidents, and you lay in your brain with your opinions, considerations, conclusions." And I look at you and I say, "Okay, if you are real to you it's okay with me but you don't look real to me. you only look like a composite of what someone told you you are. You live for each others' opinion and you have pain on your face and you are not sure what you like, and you wonder if you look okay." And I look at you and I say, "Well, you look alright to me," you know, and you look at me and you say, "Well, you don't look alright to me," Well I don't care what I look like to you. I don't care what you think about me and I don't care what you do with me. I have always been yours anyway. I have always been in your cell. When you were out riding your bicycles I was sitting in your cell looking out the window and looking at pictures in magazines and wishing I could go to high school and go to the proms, wishing I could go to the things you could do, but oh so glad, oh so glad, brothers and sisters, that I am what I am. Because when it does come down around your ears and none of you know what you are doing, you better believe I will be on top of my thought. I will know what I am doing. I will know exactly what I am doing. If you ever let me go before you kill me. And then I don't really particularly care anyway, because I still will be there and I will still know what I am doing. In my mind I live forever. In my mind I live forever, and in my mind I have always lived forever. I am only what you made me. I am only a reflection of you. I have done everything I have always been told. I have mopped the floor when I was supposed to mop the floor. And I have swept when I was supposed to sweep. I was smart enough to stay out of jail and too dumb to learn anything. I was too little to get a job there, and too big do to something over here. I have just been sitting in jail thinking nothing. Nothing to think about. Everybody used to come in and tell me about their past and their lives and what they did. But I could never tell anybody about my past or what my life was or what I did because I have always been sitting in that room with a bed, a locker, and a table. So, then it moves on to awareness: how many cracks can you count in the wall? It moves to where the mice live and what the mice are thinking, and see how clever mice are.

charles manson testimony continued