Apt: 'Bodies Sive Eidolons'

Hey, everybody, everywhere has got a tater tot pressing hashbrowns into her potato jacket, all the time. But is that the story or specifically other-than-story? Sometimes there's a thing to be learned, and sometimes it's just so much noise. But okay. I will.
Perhaps it's the reverse of what I thought: So action is the horse and theory is the cart, but I've always had to plan carefully what I do, and liked to think I was a rational being, worth being reasoned with, and if you leave it to the horse's judgment, she'll stay out in pasture until afternoon and you'll get lost on the road to Kilkenny, and never even get to market by nightfall. Yes, I know the other thing is true, too.
But action wasn't what that period of time was about. I had lost my identity, and not for the first time, and hoped to reassemble it in a more stable manner, starting with confirmed empirical observation of my current disposition.
I believed that doing things, and showing them to reasonable people would net me reasonable advice on how to proceed with my presumed goals, as my training had been based on cool-headed, reasonable critique. I wanted to know the answers to the questions I was asking. Why choose him as a cipher? There were things he knew and things he hinted at knowing, and why not, I had to start somewhere. I did try to check the provenance, examine the hallmark, as it were, but he was resistant. I am not incurious, but I want to force nothing. Given the murky nature of my own origins, I was willing to let this pass, after all.
"You're NOT NORMAL!" He'd yell in my face. Relieved that there was suddenly something to learn, I'd ask for an explanation. But he'd refuse to explain just how he meant it. It seemed a condemnation. I'd be relieved we were through, but he'd start talking to me again the next day, despite everything, telling me something either kind of sad or nonsensical, and throwing a little tantrum when I did not laugh, but was sad and quizzical. Finally, I told myself that words would come out of his mouth while we were in proximity to each other and there was nothing I could do about it, nothing I ought to do about it, it was of no consequence. Myself, words mattered to me, but in this unique case, they couldn't. As someone helpfully explained, he was "Cuckoo." Oh!
He seemed to think this was the funniest thing in the world, but I am my own standard of "Normal." I've assumed everyone else is just like me. I see now I've put too much truck in consensus, but still, how am I to judge?
I see: If you try to apply the polemics of a fighter to the ever-finer-grit polishing necessary to remove the burrs from precision-machined pieces, the tolerances go all to hell.
One thing I assume is true for everyone is that we all have a great deal more to say than we're saying, but after so many false starts, we all wait to see if we've really got a listener. And still we choose the story carefully to match the audience.