So last night I was talking with John about DXM, and how, though the ways it affected us were both very different, it still served as something of a catalyst to break us both free of certain mental prisons we had been stuck in prior to having experienced it. And I was thinking of writing about my first DXM experience, and how it changed my life forever afterwards (in a tremendously positive way).
But then, for some reason, I got to thinking about Sunshine, and... well... that's also a story that needs to be told.
And John, if you read this... I know you hated Sunshine and his patchouli-scentedness, but... you have to understand the complete story.
Sunshine was one of the defining elements of last year's Chuck's Farm. There are many, many such defining elements; he was only one of them. Chuck's Farm can't really be described in memories or vignettes; certain things just stick out in your mind. For instance, one of the defining elements of Chuck's Farm '06 was me, zwarked out of my mind on acid, DOB (I think that's probably what it was...), nitrous, pot, and probably heroin by that point, watching some dirty, middle-aged literal-hillbilly farmer angrily chasing a piglet around while calling it a "scrongly shittum".
These are the memories that last a lifetime. But I'm digressing.
The aforementioned pig episode happened on A Saturday At Chuck's Farm, as did Sunshine. The capitalization is justified if you've been there.
Friday Night At Chuck's Farm is as follows. You hit up the sketched-out, Howard-Stern-looking old head in the van for his ridiculously good quality acid (which, as I said, was also DOB the one year). You eat way too much of it, forget why you're in the woods (you're looking for firewood), listen to people making music that makes the universe give birth to itself inside your head, talk with your friends about the moon eventually just GOING AWAY and about the way planets smell, figure out a little bit more about why in the world we're all here on this miserable rock and how to make the best of it, and generally have a fantastic time while you're at it.
Then the Funrise occurs. The Funrise is John's way of not speaking about the sunrise, which heralds a number of dark and horrible things. Chief among which is the fact that eventually the acid wears off and you realize you're sitting in the middle of a goddamn field, literally 30 minutes driving distance from anything resembling a town, with maybe 7-20 of your close friends and probably about two thousand complete strangers, all of whom are on drugs, and many of whom are carrying guns.
And you also realize that with all the drug-taking and loud music and fireworks going on, you're not going to get any sleep at all for the second night in a row, and this is a problem when you remember that there is some sort of "Real World" out there beyond the borders of this bacchanalian anarchist utopia... and said "Real World" requires that you get up for work on Monday morning.
This is Saturday At Chuck's Farm.
Last year was no different. I spent the better part of Saturday morning and afternoon blissed out on my newfound serenity, having tangled with four hits of LSD the van guy said he had saved from 1968, from a Grateful Dead tour, and come out the victor. I have no idea whether or not this is true, but I do know this... it was STRONG. But, eventually, as my time without sleeping was approaching the 30-hour mark, and I had the strong, and later confirmed, suspicion that that time would double before I met the sweet embrace of sleep once more, I started to get the Saturday At Chuck's Farm Disease.
Usually this consists of thoughts of "why in the world did I do this, I'll never do this again if you let me out of here still sane" (even though you do it the next chance you get) and grandiose schemes to hitchhike to some form of civilization, before you realize you lost your debit card, you spent most of your cash-at-hand on things that made you see colors, and you'd still have 3 hours of transit time before you could sleep anyway.
It was in this state of mind that I met Sunshine.
Sunshine was a drug dealer. Or, as he put it, a "gangster."
A Hawaiian gangster, mind you.
I don't remember exactly how we met, except that he had somehow fallen into the gravity of the Magical Adventure Club 3000, as do all strange and wonderful things. I do remember staggering out of the tent after sunset, having drank a prodigious amount of scotch in a failed attempt at sleep. Gabe and Sunshine were sitting around the campfire, talking. I decided to share the remainder of my pot with them in the hopes that maybe that would put me to sleep. No dice, of course.
The sleepless horror that is Saturday Night At Chuck's Farm makes you realize one thing and one thing alone: all we have is each other. And if you didn't know how before, you learn to make conversation as if it was your last desperate hope towards sanity.. because it is. All you have to keep the nagging, post-acid thought-loops about how miserable you're going to be Monday morning at bay is the words and ideas of others.
So Gabe and Sunshine and I talked, for what seemed like forever.
I realized that whatever I had thought I knew about love and lust was mere child's play in the face of this bearish Hawaiian man's patchouli-scented animal passion for some girl whose dreadlocks "drove him insane". I think this is probably what John didn't like about him. (John?)
But then we started talking about DXM, and that's when things got really interesting.
Sunshine told me that he had taken so much DXM one time that he had started going up a flight of stairs, reached the top, and then, without any continuity whatsoever, found himself back where he started. He said that his life had split, at that point, into one reality that had kept going once it reached the top of the stairs, the reality that had gone on to find him talking to me at that moment, and another reality doomed to climb the stairs eternally.
And I knew exactly what he was talking about. I had been in a similar place once. I knew exactly what it meant for time to stop, to experience time as slices of static, unchanging moments, one cel in an animation after another, all totally disparate. I had experienced these "slices of time" both from an outside observer's perspective, and from within, trapped in bizarre, non-geometric entanglements with emotionless cyclopean anthropoid things, electric femininity, and inanimate objects, for all eternity. And for all I know, in some reality, some other me is still there.
I don't know what's weirder.. that I've met a Hawaiian gangster named Sunshine... or that I connected with him on such a deep, existential level.
Life is strange.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
mottos and metaphors
I slept for 15 hours today; I got home yesterday at around 6, and progressively felt worse and worse, freezing and shaking, until I finally went to bed. With the aid of our good friend Benadryl, I slept till about 3 PM, stayed awake long enough to check Facebook and write an email, then went back to sleep until about 11. I still feel ugh, but the freezing part is gone. It's Benadryl time soon.
With my sleep schedule well and truly fux0red by illness and diphenhydramine, I've been up since 11, trying to get some writing done.
I've had several mottos over the years. A sad one, about 10 years ago, was "embrace pain, fear nothing." This was when I was overcoming the Void, mentioned in earlier posts. Running full-tilt into emotional states, regardless of outcome, seemed to be a good way to reintroduce myself to emotions again. And it was, I suppose, though I cringe to this day when I remember the almost childlike intensity of some of the more negative emotional states I found myself in.
For a while after that, my motto was basically "It's all meaningless anyway!" I was working on music I referred to simply as -> 0 <- , pronounced "zero", and which would later become The Happiest Sadist. I suppose I exposed myself a bit too intimately to some bad emotional states, since I had become, at the time of this motto, a tad.. shall we say nihilistic? It didn't help that I was doing first-plateau doses of DXM on practically a daily basis; I've noticed that a number of people who get involved with DXM develop either a fear of or an intense fascination with the concept of zero. In my case, it was the latter.
A happier, yet still somewhat off-kilter motto I developed sometime in 2004, following a string of unrequited love affairs, was the oft-used and generic "Carpe diem." This I followed to the letter. I still look back on this time with a bit of romanticism; it was freedom minus my previous nihilism, yet with an unfortunate undertone of unconscious self-destruction. I didn't really believe anything would work, but I had come to love life again, and felt that even trying to do what I loved was worth any pain and suffering produced by my actions.
I shocked, horrified, and awed people with my apparent callous disregard for my personal health, safety, and sanity, but I can't say I really *regret* much of this period.
I'd like to think that my outlook has matured over the years, perhaps as a result of the "carpe diem" phase I went through. It's no longer necessary to me to push anything; I'm content to let things go where they will.
What follows is an extended metaphor for my current view of the world. I don't relally have a motto anymore, per se.
Imagine you live in a large, classroom-type place with a myriad of other people. You are all separated from each other by unbreakable glass walls. You have no need for food, drink, or sleep. Instead, you sit at your desk all day, and atop your desk is all the art supplies you could ever need: paint, brushes, canvases, paper, you name it.
You have a choice: you can spend your days painting, or you can do nothing and amuse yourself however you will. You can try to entertain or be entertained by those in the room with you, but keep in mind that you will never be able to touch them or reach them in any way.
If you choose to paint, you also have to realize that at the close of every day, a horrible monster will come into the room and eat everyone's paintings. There is no way to prevent this. If your paintings are especially beautiful or meaningful, the monster will first make sure to deface or otherwise pervert your paintings before finally eating them.
If you choose not to paint, the monster may still come for you anyway, and you'll come to sometime later to find a tiny piece of yourself missing.
What do you do? Some in the room with you choose not to paint, and you watch them grow smaller and smaller, over time. Less human. But that's their choice. You have no right to decide for them, or even to judge them on their decisions.
Those that do choose to paint are continually saddened by their artwork being eaten and/or destroyed every day. Some of them, as a result, paint only scenes of violence or cruelty or ugliness, in the hopes that the monster will either find them unnecessary to deface or even pleasing enough to not eat. And the monster does take some of these paintings home to its unthinkable lair, but these paintings are typically so horrifying and empty that they appall anyone who sees them.
The way I see it, the only option is to paint that which inspires, that which is beautiful... if the end result is ultimately the same, if the monster is going to eat and/or mutilate your paintings no matter what, unless you give in to it and paint only the scenes of death and decay it loves... why *not* paint what is beautiful? Yes, it will leave you in the end. The monster will take it from you, belittle you, and then paint over it with horrible colors, perverting it into untold horrors... but you had it for a while. It was yours. You saw it, you experienced it. The monster cannot take that from you.
And anyone else that sees or experiences what you paint will have the same experience of beauty and inspiration that you have had. You will have brightened their lives, for a few minutes at least.
What else can we do? We're alive, whether we like it or not. Everyone else's mileage may vary, but I'd rather fill my life with what gives me hope and a sense of meaning than tool through each day waiting to die.
And who knows? Maybe if we all create enough beauty and inspiration, we'll somehow be able to drive the monster back someday. I doubt it, but I think it's worth a try.
As an aside, I suppose I do have a motto now. It's far less applicable to daily life, but it fits. I was thinking about it while trying desperately to get this one story done tonight.
The motto is:
"Writing fiction is REALLY FUCKING HARD."
With my sleep schedule well and truly fux0red by illness and diphenhydramine, I've been up since 11, trying to get some writing done.
I've had several mottos over the years. A sad one, about 10 years ago, was "embrace pain, fear nothing." This was when I was overcoming the Void, mentioned in earlier posts. Running full-tilt into emotional states, regardless of outcome, seemed to be a good way to reintroduce myself to emotions again. And it was, I suppose, though I cringe to this day when I remember the almost childlike intensity of some of the more negative emotional states I found myself in.
For a while after that, my motto was basically "It's all meaningless anyway!" I was working on music I referred to simply as -> 0 <- , pronounced "zero", and which would later become The Happiest Sadist. I suppose I exposed myself a bit too intimately to some bad emotional states, since I had become, at the time of this motto, a tad.. shall we say nihilistic? It didn't help that I was doing first-plateau doses of DXM on practically a daily basis; I've noticed that a number of people who get involved with DXM develop either a fear of or an intense fascination with the concept of zero. In my case, it was the latter.
A happier, yet still somewhat off-kilter motto I developed sometime in 2004, following a string of unrequited love affairs, was the oft-used and generic "Carpe diem." This I followed to the letter. I still look back on this time with a bit of romanticism; it was freedom minus my previous nihilism, yet with an unfortunate undertone of unconscious self-destruction. I didn't really believe anything would work, but I had come to love life again, and felt that even trying to do what I loved was worth any pain and suffering produced by my actions.
I shocked, horrified, and awed people with my apparent callous disregard for my personal health, safety, and sanity, but I can't say I really *regret* much of this period.
I'd like to think that my outlook has matured over the years, perhaps as a result of the "carpe diem" phase I went through. It's no longer necessary to me to push anything; I'm content to let things go where they will.
What follows is an extended metaphor for my current view of the world. I don't relally have a motto anymore, per se.
Imagine you live in a large, classroom-type place with a myriad of other people. You are all separated from each other by unbreakable glass walls. You have no need for food, drink, or sleep. Instead, you sit at your desk all day, and atop your desk is all the art supplies you could ever need: paint, brushes, canvases, paper, you name it.
You have a choice: you can spend your days painting, or you can do nothing and amuse yourself however you will. You can try to entertain or be entertained by those in the room with you, but keep in mind that you will never be able to touch them or reach them in any way.
If you choose to paint, you also have to realize that at the close of every day, a horrible monster will come into the room and eat everyone's paintings. There is no way to prevent this. If your paintings are especially beautiful or meaningful, the monster will first make sure to deface or otherwise pervert your paintings before finally eating them.
If you choose not to paint, the monster may still come for you anyway, and you'll come to sometime later to find a tiny piece of yourself missing.
What do you do? Some in the room with you choose not to paint, and you watch them grow smaller and smaller, over time. Less human. But that's their choice. You have no right to decide for them, or even to judge them on their decisions.
Those that do choose to paint are continually saddened by their artwork being eaten and/or destroyed every day. Some of them, as a result, paint only scenes of violence or cruelty or ugliness, in the hopes that the monster will either find them unnecessary to deface or even pleasing enough to not eat. And the monster does take some of these paintings home to its unthinkable lair, but these paintings are typically so horrifying and empty that they appall anyone who sees them.
The way I see it, the only option is to paint that which inspires, that which is beautiful... if the end result is ultimately the same, if the monster is going to eat and/or mutilate your paintings no matter what, unless you give in to it and paint only the scenes of death and decay it loves... why *not* paint what is beautiful? Yes, it will leave you in the end. The monster will take it from you, belittle you, and then paint over it with horrible colors, perverting it into untold horrors... but you had it for a while. It was yours. You saw it, you experienced it. The monster cannot take that from you.
And anyone else that sees or experiences what you paint will have the same experience of beauty and inspiration that you have had. You will have brightened their lives, for a few minutes at least.
What else can we do? We're alive, whether we like it or not. Everyone else's mileage may vary, but I'd rather fill my life with what gives me hope and a sense of meaning than tool through each day waiting to die.
And who knows? Maybe if we all create enough beauty and inspiration, we'll somehow be able to drive the monster back someday. I doubt it, but I think it's worth a try.
As an aside, I suppose I do have a motto now. It's far less applicable to daily life, but it fits. I was thinking about it while trying desperately to get this one story done tonight.
The motto is:
"Writing fiction is REALLY FUCKING HARD."
Friday, September 19, 2008
Introducing... The Cosmic Bubble
Okay, so.. I've fixed one part of the timestamp problem with this site. Except now apparently they have AM switched with PM. I wrote this at 1:51 PM today, not AM. Weird. (grumble)
So my life has been, in general, quite strange. In fact, though I've been through some bad times (obviously), I think the weird times far outnumber the bad ones. Below is a little anecdote that's so weird that when I think about it, I really question my sanity... except this was, indeed, real. And no drugs were involved. I was eight.
My parents sent me to this camp for smart kids the summer before I turned nine. It was really cool. It was in this converted high school, and we made rockets and played these really weird, Apple II-quality pseudo-educational computer games where you had these little characters that had to solve puzzles and make decisions. I made new friends, only one of whose names I remember (Ben Kowalski?) and generally had a good time.
This wasn't strange at all. What was strange was "The Cosmic Bubble."
The entire camp was apparently sponsored by the whole DARE/Just Say No! campaign of the late eighties. McGruff the Crime Dog made sporadic appearances. His presence during the Cosmic Bubble episode was sort of the icing on the cake.
They gathered us together one day and told us we were going to experience "The Cosmic Bubble!" I was a strange child, world-weary and cynical, having, just six months earlier, had a recurring nightmare that scarred me for years. I was used to idealistic People In Charge being continually disappointed by our generation's apparent inability to get along with each other at that time. In second grade they called us to an assembly in which they made us all sign the "Declaration of Interdependence" which I guess they thought would have enough of an impact on us to make us realize we were all one and/or make us stop our inane, pointless battles. No dice. We were beating on each other during the assembly.
I thought "The Cosmic Bubble" would be something like that. I was very wrong.
No, instead, they led us all to a series of corridors in the school where the lights had all been turned out, save for intermittent strobe lighting. The corridors were lined, somehow, with plastic sheeting along the floors, walls, and ceilings. We were, essentially, walking through a vast network of plastic tubing, similar to the scene in E.T. where they're walking between (I think) the van they're using to transport E.T. and the NASA building. I can't describe it any better than that.
Worse, they had somehow installed some sort of fan system that caused the plastic tubing to periodically expand and contract, as if it were breathing.
So.. picture this, if you will. You're eight years old, you're in a bunch of darkened hallways, lit by the eerie, staccato glow of strobe lights, and the walls, floors, and ceilings are breathing.
Oh, and to top it all off, while you're having this near-hallucinatory experience, McGruff the Crime Dog is wandering around, muttering vague warnings about drugs.
This whole experience left enough of a mark on me that, nine years later, during a fever hallucination, I saw McGruff coming for me. He was apparently quite incensed that I had been stealing vodka from my parents' liquor cabinet.
If my "Cosmic Bubble" experience was at all typical, it's kind of unsurprising so many of us have gone on to experiment with drugs.
So my life has been, in general, quite strange. In fact, though I've been through some bad times (obviously), I think the weird times far outnumber the bad ones. Below is a little anecdote that's so weird that when I think about it, I really question my sanity... except this was, indeed, real. And no drugs were involved. I was eight.
My parents sent me to this camp for smart kids the summer before I turned nine. It was really cool. It was in this converted high school, and we made rockets and played these really weird, Apple II-quality pseudo-educational computer games where you had these little characters that had to solve puzzles and make decisions. I made new friends, only one of whose names I remember (Ben Kowalski?) and generally had a good time.
This wasn't strange at all. What was strange was "The Cosmic Bubble."
The entire camp was apparently sponsored by the whole DARE/Just Say No! campaign of the late eighties. McGruff the Crime Dog made sporadic appearances. His presence during the Cosmic Bubble episode was sort of the icing on the cake.
They gathered us together one day and told us we were going to experience "The Cosmic Bubble!" I was a strange child, world-weary and cynical, having, just six months earlier, had a recurring nightmare that scarred me for years. I was used to idealistic People In Charge being continually disappointed by our generation's apparent inability to get along with each other at that time. In second grade they called us to an assembly in which they made us all sign the "Declaration of Interdependence" which I guess they thought would have enough of an impact on us to make us realize we were all one and/or make us stop our inane, pointless battles. No dice. We were beating on each other during the assembly.
I thought "The Cosmic Bubble" would be something like that. I was very wrong.
No, instead, they led us all to a series of corridors in the school where the lights had all been turned out, save for intermittent strobe lighting. The corridors were lined, somehow, with plastic sheeting along the floors, walls, and ceilings. We were, essentially, walking through a vast network of plastic tubing, similar to the scene in E.T. where they're walking between (I think) the van they're using to transport E.T. and the NASA building. I can't describe it any better than that.
Worse, they had somehow installed some sort of fan system that caused the plastic tubing to periodically expand and contract, as if it were breathing.
So.. picture this, if you will. You're eight years old, you're in a bunch of darkened hallways, lit by the eerie, staccato glow of strobe lights, and the walls, floors, and ceilings are breathing.
Oh, and to top it all off, while you're having this near-hallucinatory experience, McGruff the Crime Dog is wandering around, muttering vague warnings about drugs.
This whole experience left enough of a mark on me that, nine years later, during a fever hallucination, I saw McGruff coming for me. He was apparently quite incensed that I had been stealing vodka from my parents' liquor cabinet.
If my "Cosmic Bubble" experience was at all typical, it's kind of unsurprising so many of us have gone on to experiment with drugs.
Monday, September 15, 2008
the void makes its first written appearance!
I don't know where this came from, or why I decided to share it. It's a bit bleak, but it's all true, and it does have a happy ending. I promise.
Also, Blogger apparently is off by 6 hours. To figure out when I've written things, take the time the entry is listed as, and add 6 hours to it. For example, this will probably say I posted at 11 PM. It's actually 5 AM. Weird. I don't know why I find it important to inform you of this but here it is, anyway.
****
There came a time, January of 1998, to be exact, when I woke up one morning and realized that the Pavlovian anti-feeling conditioning I had been inflicting on myself had been entirely successful. I felt nothing. Nothing at all.
And the realization was so horrifying I spent the day twisting and turning on my bed, desperate for some scrap of emotion to feed me, something to give my life some sort of color or meaning, finding nothing. I wasn't happy. I wasn't sad. I wasn't angry. I wasn't content. I wasn't anything at all.
Emotions give our lives direction. We wake up with certain feelings that color our day. Our entire lives are a shifting tapestry of words and actions, both caused by and causing emotions. To eliminate emotion entirely removes any semblance of pattern or meaning to these tapestries. Life becomes a set of routine tasks, blobs of paint thrown randomly onto a canvas, no rhyme or reason connecting anything. You live one moment to the next, you do what you're told because there is absolutely no reason at all to not do what you're told. Dislike what you're doing? So what? You don't- you can't- like what you're doing, either. Pain is gone, but so is pleasure.
If you think it impossible for a person to eliminate all feeling, you don't know me, and you don't know how far I'll go in order to prove a point or win a battle. I realize this narrative is a tad dark; there is a light at the end of the tunnel, however. Be patient.
I found myself unable to live in an utterly emotionless state, so I began the process of deprogramming myself sometime during the following summer. By the subsequent winter, I had regained a good portion of my former emotional capacity... but I still remembered what it was to be without feelings at all, and could slip back into that when the situation called for it.
The benefit to this came about perhaps a year later. To my utter delight, my grandmother had gone completely off the deep end, deciding to sell the house in which she kept us all prisoner. I was ecstatic.
One night, I was up late doing AP Chem and AP Calc homework. I was sitting in the living room, the contents of which had been stripped bare of furniture and the meager furnishings that had been present in it. There had never been carpeting in it, save for a strange, ovoid rug in the center of the room. This was gone. It was essentially me, a couch without cushions, and a table lamp sitting on the floor.
I was in my little corner of the room, surrounded by the glow of the lamp, contentedly working on my homework, my thoughts repeatedly drifting to the girl I was making progress with at school. At some point, my grandmother stomped/shuffled into the room. She feigned an expression of concern.
"Are you still up?" she asked. I smiled blankly, slipping effortlessly back into the feelingless void.
"Yeah, I'm still trying to finish this," I said, cheerfully, indicating my work. She mulled over this for a second, and her expression changed, becoming more a portrait of her inner workings; sly, calculating.
"Are you sure you're not.. upset over anything?" She said this with such an undertone of hope it was hard not to laugh. I knew exactly what she wanted. She was scanning my face, looking for a reaction. She wanted to see pain in my eyes. She wanted me to tell her how I didn't understand what was going on, how I was afraid of what would happen, afraid of not having anywhere to live. Then she would express mock sympathy for me, and tell me how it really wasn't her fault, it was my mother's. Her hands were tied, you see. If my mother had just been more cooperative, she would never have had to do this, didn't I understand? And all this would go on amid a slew of ghoulish, pseudo-grandmotherly clucking and tutting.
By "cooperative" she meant obedient. Broken. She wanted to see me hurt, afraid. And she wanted to twist the situation such that I would blame my mother for my fear and pain. She wanted to erode, distort, and dissolve the relationship I had with my mother. She wanted to humiliate her by sending us out into the street, hopefully with my sister and I blaming our mother for it. This would be her revenge against the ungrateful child who had dared to defy her some thirty-odd years earlier.
I knew the game. I had seen her try to achieve it for the past seven years. I hadn't let her win then. I certainly wasn't going to now.
"Nope!" I said, smiling winningly, carefree, the picture of innocence. "I'm not upset about anything." Her eyes probed my face, looking for weakness. She could detect a smile held half a second too long, or with too much or too little force, and use it as a trigger to fly into a rage. She found no incongruities in my facial expression; the void was serving me well.
"Are you sure?" she asked again, smiling hopefully. Her eyes, hungry, desperate for pain to feed on, did not match her smile.
"I'm sure!" I told her. I shrugged. "I have to get back to my work, now." Mystified, she nodded, murmuring things I'm sure were meant to sound supportive, and set off back to her room, periodically looking over her shoulder to catch me in a moment of weakness. She found none.
A few minutes later, she came back, this time bearing a Coke from the hoard she kept in her room. My family had, some years before, been so poor we had trouble putting food on the table. My parents fed us three meals a day, but we were only a hair's breadth away from being far worse off than that. I remember eating a dog biscuit once. A good portion of suburban America has no idea what it is to go to sleep dreaming of food.
But she always had enough to eat: boxes and boxes of cookies, donuts filled with all kinds of delicious sweetness, you name it. Knowing we were... not starving by any means, just hungry, unsatisfied by the amount of food we were able to afford... she would attempt to lure my sister and I over to her "side" with her delectable poisons. The price was listening to her litanies of hate about my parents, stories which were blown completely out of proportion so as to make her into the hero and my parents into sadistic monsters bent on oppressing her. Often enough, the stories were not just falsely represented, but entirely fabricated. I can truthfully say I never took the bait.
But I recognized what her bringing me the Coke out of her secret stash meant, and my heart filled with elation even through the numbness of the void.
She was conceding defeat. She had recognized, even though it took seven years in the making, that she had no power over me.
I had won.
She had come into my life and warped and twisted and eroded everything in it, and no one could do anything to stop her. For seven years, I had burned with resentment over this, over how utterly and completely wrong it was that someone so small, so fundamentally pathetic, really, could have so much power over people like my parents and my sister, who, despite any differences we may have, are immensely strong people firmly on the side of good.
And yet I had finally won against her. I cannot put into words how I felt.
As for the actual deprogramming process, in which I had to re-learn how to feel feelings... I shall not describe that here. I have taken up too much of your time already, and the telling of it is better suited to another story, anyway. Suffice it to say that it was, without a doubt, the most unbelievably painful process I have ever experienced.
I have read that the reason heroin withdrawal is so nightmarishly painful is that your body has essentially forgotten how to manage pain. It has become so used to its opioid receptors being stimulated that it has decided to cease stimulating them itself. And so, when the artificial stimulation ceases, practically every stimulation causes pain; the body has no means of calming stimulation anymore.
Imagine this on an emotional level, and you'll have an idea what I'm talking about.
But what I have in my life now has made it all worth it. I have people from all walks of life who care about me, and vice versa. I have strengthened bonds with my immediate family for having suffered through the dark times with them. And I have come far enough through the lingering darkness to have had friends and even lovers in the years since.
So many people out there have far less than I do, and, knowing this, I would gladly repeat the whole mess over again if, by some miracle, I could take them to where I am now by doing so.
<3.
Also, Blogger apparently is off by 6 hours. To figure out when I've written things, take the time the entry is listed as, and add 6 hours to it. For example, this will probably say I posted at 11 PM. It's actually 5 AM. Weird. I don't know why I find it important to inform you of this but here it is, anyway.
****
There came a time, January of 1998, to be exact, when I woke up one morning and realized that the Pavlovian anti-feeling conditioning I had been inflicting on myself had been entirely successful. I felt nothing. Nothing at all.
And the realization was so horrifying I spent the day twisting and turning on my bed, desperate for some scrap of emotion to feed me, something to give my life some sort of color or meaning, finding nothing. I wasn't happy. I wasn't sad. I wasn't angry. I wasn't content. I wasn't anything at all.
Emotions give our lives direction. We wake up with certain feelings that color our day. Our entire lives are a shifting tapestry of words and actions, both caused by and causing emotions. To eliminate emotion entirely removes any semblance of pattern or meaning to these tapestries. Life becomes a set of routine tasks, blobs of paint thrown randomly onto a canvas, no rhyme or reason connecting anything. You live one moment to the next, you do what you're told because there is absolutely no reason at all to not do what you're told. Dislike what you're doing? So what? You don't- you can't- like what you're doing, either. Pain is gone, but so is pleasure.
If you think it impossible for a person to eliminate all feeling, you don't know me, and you don't know how far I'll go in order to prove a point or win a battle. I realize this narrative is a tad dark; there is a light at the end of the tunnel, however. Be patient.
I found myself unable to live in an utterly emotionless state, so I began the process of deprogramming myself sometime during the following summer. By the subsequent winter, I had regained a good portion of my former emotional capacity... but I still remembered what it was to be without feelings at all, and could slip back into that when the situation called for it.
The benefit to this came about perhaps a year later. To my utter delight, my grandmother had gone completely off the deep end, deciding to sell the house in which she kept us all prisoner. I was ecstatic.
One night, I was up late doing AP Chem and AP Calc homework. I was sitting in the living room, the contents of which had been stripped bare of furniture and the meager furnishings that had been present in it. There had never been carpeting in it, save for a strange, ovoid rug in the center of the room. This was gone. It was essentially me, a couch without cushions, and a table lamp sitting on the floor.
I was in my little corner of the room, surrounded by the glow of the lamp, contentedly working on my homework, my thoughts repeatedly drifting to the girl I was making progress with at school. At some point, my grandmother stomped/shuffled into the room. She feigned an expression of concern.
"Are you still up?" she asked. I smiled blankly, slipping effortlessly back into the feelingless void.
"Yeah, I'm still trying to finish this," I said, cheerfully, indicating my work. She mulled over this for a second, and her expression changed, becoming more a portrait of her inner workings; sly, calculating.
"Are you sure you're not.. upset over anything?" She said this with such an undertone of hope it was hard not to laugh. I knew exactly what she wanted. She was scanning my face, looking for a reaction. She wanted to see pain in my eyes. She wanted me to tell her how I didn't understand what was going on, how I was afraid of what would happen, afraid of not having anywhere to live. Then she would express mock sympathy for me, and tell me how it really wasn't her fault, it was my mother's. Her hands were tied, you see. If my mother had just been more cooperative, she would never have had to do this, didn't I understand? And all this would go on amid a slew of ghoulish, pseudo-grandmotherly clucking and tutting.
By "cooperative" she meant obedient. Broken. She wanted to see me hurt, afraid. And she wanted to twist the situation such that I would blame my mother for my fear and pain. She wanted to erode, distort, and dissolve the relationship I had with my mother. She wanted to humiliate her by sending us out into the street, hopefully with my sister and I blaming our mother for it. This would be her revenge against the ungrateful child who had dared to defy her some thirty-odd years earlier.
I knew the game. I had seen her try to achieve it for the past seven years. I hadn't let her win then. I certainly wasn't going to now.
"Nope!" I said, smiling winningly, carefree, the picture of innocence. "I'm not upset about anything." Her eyes probed my face, looking for weakness. She could detect a smile held half a second too long, or with too much or too little force, and use it as a trigger to fly into a rage. She found no incongruities in my facial expression; the void was serving me well.
"Are you sure?" she asked again, smiling hopefully. Her eyes, hungry, desperate for pain to feed on, did not match her smile.
"I'm sure!" I told her. I shrugged. "I have to get back to my work, now." Mystified, she nodded, murmuring things I'm sure were meant to sound supportive, and set off back to her room, periodically looking over her shoulder to catch me in a moment of weakness. She found none.
A few minutes later, she came back, this time bearing a Coke from the hoard she kept in her room. My family had, some years before, been so poor we had trouble putting food on the table. My parents fed us three meals a day, but we were only a hair's breadth away from being far worse off than that. I remember eating a dog biscuit once. A good portion of suburban America has no idea what it is to go to sleep dreaming of food.
But she always had enough to eat: boxes and boxes of cookies, donuts filled with all kinds of delicious sweetness, you name it. Knowing we were... not starving by any means, just hungry, unsatisfied by the amount of food we were able to afford... she would attempt to lure my sister and I over to her "side" with her delectable poisons. The price was listening to her litanies of hate about my parents, stories which were blown completely out of proportion so as to make her into the hero and my parents into sadistic monsters bent on oppressing her. Often enough, the stories were not just falsely represented, but entirely fabricated. I can truthfully say I never took the bait.
But I recognized what her bringing me the Coke out of her secret stash meant, and my heart filled with elation even through the numbness of the void.
She was conceding defeat. She had recognized, even though it took seven years in the making, that she had no power over me.
I had won.
She had come into my life and warped and twisted and eroded everything in it, and no one could do anything to stop her. For seven years, I had burned with resentment over this, over how utterly and completely wrong it was that someone so small, so fundamentally pathetic, really, could have so much power over people like my parents and my sister, who, despite any differences we may have, are immensely strong people firmly on the side of good.
And yet I had finally won against her. I cannot put into words how I felt.
As for the actual deprogramming process, in which I had to re-learn how to feel feelings... I shall not describe that here. I have taken up too much of your time already, and the telling of it is better suited to another story, anyway. Suffice it to say that it was, without a doubt, the most unbelievably painful process I have ever experienced.
I have read that the reason heroin withdrawal is so nightmarishly painful is that your body has essentially forgotten how to manage pain. It has become so used to its opioid receptors being stimulated that it has decided to cease stimulating them itself. And so, when the artificial stimulation ceases, practically every stimulation causes pain; the body has no means of calming stimulation anymore.
Imagine this on an emotional level, and you'll have an idea what I'm talking about.
But what I have in my life now has made it all worth it. I have people from all walks of life who care about me, and vice versa. I have strengthened bonds with my immediate family for having suffered through the dark times with them. And I have come far enough through the lingering darkness to have had friends and even lovers in the years since.
So many people out there have far less than I do, and, knowing this, I would gladly repeat the whole mess over again if, by some miracle, I could take them to where I am now by doing so.
<3.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
I thought I was going to sleep. I was wrong! Hello insomnia! Here's a story.
****
He thought back to everyone that had wronged him, and forgave them.
Another part of his mind, buried, cold, reptilian, hissed its displeasure at this foolishness, this pretentious Jesus trip. But he had listened to worse from it, listened to it, and, to his continued shame and regret, had even acted on these still, harsh whispers of venom.
"How," the voices continued, "do you even presume to have the power to forgive anyone? What is this 'forgiveness' you speak of? So you 'forgive' those who have caused you such suffering, such distress, such pain? So what? The pain is still there. Have you forgotten?"
"It doesn't matter," he answered the voices in his mind, "for I have learned from my suffering. If I were as boastful as you say I am, I would say that I cherish all such opportunities for growth. But I avoid pain like anyone else, often unfortunately at the cost of more pain to myself and even others. But everything I have endured has benefit, for I can use my knowledge to help others avoid suffering."
"Such pretty words," the voices spat, their alien clangor now more apparent with the rise in volume. "But you forget something. You claim you have forgiven others for the pain they have caused you, as if that meant anything. But what about the pain you have caused others? How can you, in your arrogance, presume to 'forgive' anyone else for causing you pain, when, in all likelihood, any 'injustice' you felt was done to you was merely their way of getting back at you for having caused them suffering? How can you simply ignore this?"
"I cannot," he said, simply. "I wish I could undo everything I have done to others. But this is not within my power."
The voices hummed with malevolent intensity, moving in for the kill. "See? You are weak, pathetic. You speak of forgiveness, some magnanimous gesture. Oh, how great you are, you who can deign to 'forgive' those who have merely sought to repay your own unkindnesses. All your words are empty. You are a child pretending to be king. What power have you? Who do you think you are? What unbelievable arrogance possessed you to believe you had the right or the power to forgive anyone else? Where would you even get this idea?"
"Because I forgive myself." The voices were silent for a moment, frightened, then resounded again, more dissonant than before.
"What difference does that make? How can you presume to 'forgive' yourself, you who have caused so much hurt in the world? What incredible pomposity! Let the world see you as you are, bloated on your own feelings of self-worth, your delusions of grandeur. How can you dare 'forgive' anyone?"
"Because they are human, just as I am. And in the end, our mistakes don't matter as long as even one person exists to gather up the fallen threads of our lives and weave them into something new. We are all experiencing life in all its awful, ridiculous, horrifying majesty. We are all billions upon billions of electrons hurtling into one another, creating sheer novelty for the joy of it. We are all whirling madly, ecstatically, through this insane dance of life, terrified, rendered speechless by the beauty of it all. Mistakes? There are no mistakes, only different threads in the pattern of life."
The voices retreated, sharp staccato snatches of malice. "What of the Holocaust? What of any of the other horrors and monstrosities mankind has visited upon itself and the world? You dare to write these off as some poetic drivel about creation and how there are no mistakes?"
"No," he said, listening as the voices crouched, waiting to leap for his throat. "It is only how I see it. I have no power to stop such things. All I have power to do is recognize myself as human, as is everyone else. I have the power to rid myself of hate for others, and for myself. And as long as I can draw breath, I will continue to do so, regardless of what I may experience."
Hissing, the voices drew back, unable to challenge a declaration of will such as this.
****
He thought back to everyone that had wronged him, and forgave them.
Another part of his mind, buried, cold, reptilian, hissed its displeasure at this foolishness, this pretentious Jesus trip. But he had listened to worse from it, listened to it, and, to his continued shame and regret, had even acted on these still, harsh whispers of venom.
"How," the voices continued, "do you even presume to have the power to forgive anyone? What is this 'forgiveness' you speak of? So you 'forgive' those who have caused you such suffering, such distress, such pain? So what? The pain is still there. Have you forgotten?"
"It doesn't matter," he answered the voices in his mind, "for I have learned from my suffering. If I were as boastful as you say I am, I would say that I cherish all such opportunities for growth. But I avoid pain like anyone else, often unfortunately at the cost of more pain to myself and even others. But everything I have endured has benefit, for I can use my knowledge to help others avoid suffering."
"Such pretty words," the voices spat, their alien clangor now more apparent with the rise in volume. "But you forget something. You claim you have forgiven others for the pain they have caused you, as if that meant anything. But what about the pain you have caused others? How can you, in your arrogance, presume to 'forgive' anyone else for causing you pain, when, in all likelihood, any 'injustice' you felt was done to you was merely their way of getting back at you for having caused them suffering? How can you simply ignore this?"
"I cannot," he said, simply. "I wish I could undo everything I have done to others. But this is not within my power."
The voices hummed with malevolent intensity, moving in for the kill. "See? You are weak, pathetic. You speak of forgiveness, some magnanimous gesture. Oh, how great you are, you who can deign to 'forgive' those who have merely sought to repay your own unkindnesses. All your words are empty. You are a child pretending to be king. What power have you? Who do you think you are? What unbelievable arrogance possessed you to believe you had the right or the power to forgive anyone else? Where would you even get this idea?"
"Because I forgive myself." The voices were silent for a moment, frightened, then resounded again, more dissonant than before.
"What difference does that make? How can you presume to 'forgive' yourself, you who have caused so much hurt in the world? What incredible pomposity! Let the world see you as you are, bloated on your own feelings of self-worth, your delusions of grandeur. How can you dare 'forgive' anyone?"
"Because they are human, just as I am. And in the end, our mistakes don't matter as long as even one person exists to gather up the fallen threads of our lives and weave them into something new. We are all experiencing life in all its awful, ridiculous, horrifying majesty. We are all billions upon billions of electrons hurtling into one another, creating sheer novelty for the joy of it. We are all whirling madly, ecstatically, through this insane dance of life, terrified, rendered speechless by the beauty of it all. Mistakes? There are no mistakes, only different threads in the pattern of life."
The voices retreated, sharp staccato snatches of malice. "What of the Holocaust? What of any of the other horrors and monstrosities mankind has visited upon itself and the world? You dare to write these off as some poetic drivel about creation and how there are no mistakes?"
"No," he said, listening as the voices crouched, waiting to leap for his throat. "It is only how I see it. I have no power to stop such things. All I have power to do is recognize myself as human, as is everyone else. I have the power to rid myself of hate for others, and for myself. And as long as I can draw breath, I will continue to do so, regardless of what I may experience."
Hissing, the voices drew back, unable to challenge a declaration of will such as this.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Welcome to my new blog. This is intended to be a collection of stories, fictional and otherwise. If you want generally whiny personal updates, check here.
In person I'm often incoherent, unable to sort my thoughts into a logical progression. I'm continually trying to get my point across, but the stories I tell tend to be rambling and pointless, often stopping somewhere in the middle because I've already told you the end and I've suddenly remembered some vastly important detail that changes the entire story.
I've been writing since forever. With writing, I have the time to sort everything out. I've lived a strange, strange life and I think there are stories to tell out of this that need telling.
That's not going to happen via speech, however, unless you like disconnected, homeless-person-esque narratives.
I should be sleeping now because I have stuff to do later but I wanted to post this and see what it looked like.
In person I'm often incoherent, unable to sort my thoughts into a logical progression. I'm continually trying to get my point across, but the stories I tell tend to be rambling and pointless, often stopping somewhere in the middle because I've already told you the end and I've suddenly remembered some vastly important detail that changes the entire story.
I've been writing since forever. With writing, I have the time to sort everything out. I've lived a strange, strange life and I think there are stories to tell out of this that need telling.
That's not going to happen via speech, however, unless you like disconnected, homeless-person-esque narratives.
I should be sleeping now because I have stuff to do later but I wanted to post this and see what it looked like.
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