I have to do this

Am I dead?

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, as I just did, and I feel as though there is no temperature in the world. It doesn't happen often; so far, I think only 3 times in my life. The first time was the worst, because it was new.

I was in the army barracks and someone several floors away was waking himself up for a jump with an Adam Sandler comedy tape played at obscenely loud levels.. With all of the twistings and turnings of the buildings, and Sandler's already howling brand of humor (aurally, not comically), it sounded like some souls being tortured in hell.

As I said above, my body felt as though it and the air were exactly the smae temperature, that either it was 98.9 degrees out (possible since it was North Carolina) or my body was incabaple of feeling anything ever again.

This would, of course be because I was no longer living on Earth, and had entered Hell. It was about three in the morning and I sat there in my room, dreading the ambivilance of not knowing.

Really, either could be true.

I woke Thomas, my roommate and asked him, "Am I alive?" He looked at me, thought for a few minutes, said "Yes" and went back to sleep.

I stayed up till dawn, but I felt better.

The second time, I was alone. I had no one to reassure me I was still alive. It was in Massachussetts, in December, so the absence of temperature was not as easily explained away. I was alone in a house with only my dog to comfort me. He wasn't afraid, so I used his courage (or lack of fear) to keep me calm until daylight.

Tonight, my wife and daughter are asleep in my bed. It might even have been my girl's kicking and fussing that woke me up. When my eyes opened, Mk was crawling over my chest and whimpering in frustration that I had no boob to offer her. J called her over and gave her what she wanted.

What yanked me out of bed was Mk's foot pressing against my kidney, and the feeling that I had a parasite, the size of a cantelope, attatched to my side. Even though I am up now, and my eyes show me how that is not true, I still feel that sick acid death. That there is no warmth, nor cold in the world. That my existence, while a continuing illusion for myself, is nothing but that and I will someday (soon, I fear) be yanked back to that street in Berkely, with the car that just hit me on its side, the EMT next to me, trying to save me, and the blood slowly seeping out of my kidneys.

Acid

I just read Introspectre's blog talking about her first acid trip. It reminded me of my last acid trip:

During my adolescence I had a good friend who told me that I had to hit rock bottom, get to the point where I couldn’t escape myself at all, couldn’t put on another protean mask, and had to face “the eternal nothingness of it all”. I had no idea what he was talking about but he quoted Nietzsche and Hegel a lot so I thought he must be right. When I hit a low spot in college, I remember talking to him on the phone and telling him I had hit it. He asked me what was going on and I told him it was all about a girl. He scoffed and told me to get back to him in a few years.

Here is the chronical of my real low point, the moment where I reached absolute zero, and then proceeded to build myself up:

I traded a pair of shoes I had stolen from my uncle for four hits of powerful blotter acid. The shoes were too small for me, and, being on the streets of Berkely, acid seemed much more appropriate. I took two of the acid tabs, and sat down on the side of the street, continuing my typical routine of selling sheets of poetry I had written in college for a dollar each. Slowly, as the drugs began to take effect, somebody droped a shimmery piece of paper into my lap. On the paper were instructions for how to become illuminated. I read them over and over again, fascinated and becoming more elated with each reading. I wanted to begin the process right away.
I stood up, took stock of everything I was holding, and began to walk up Telegraph towards the University. The walk seemed to never end, I felt like I was walking up a steep hill in a huge blizzard. The bags I was carrying, with all of my possessions, seemed like they were just too much. I left them on the side of the street. All I had with me was a wallet and a handful of change. I felt liberated, free of everything, naked and ready to meet the world.
I wandered around the campus for a while, elated, almost dancing. I remember some brightly lit tennis courts and thinking that this campus was a temple to knowledge, one that I was forever banned from. I started to feel sad, excluded from the world. about this time, I blithely crossed a busy street, who knows where I was, and a car had to slam on its breaks to avoid hitting me.

Or maybe it didn’t stop in time and ran right into me.

I kept walking away from the street, but in the corner of my eyes, I sensed that there were a lot of flashing lights back at the scene of the accident. I felt like a bit of cellophane ripping away from a package. I knew that, like Orpheus, if I turned back toward my body (which was lying on the grounded, being tended by EMT’s), I would be brought back rushing into my body, experiencing all of the pain of the accident. But I chose to press on, ripping that last bit of fabric off, effectively ending my material life.

It was about this time that things began to get weird.

I noticed that, if I sang very softly, I sounded a little like Elvis. Especially when i sang Amazing Grace. It was the most beautiful music I had ever made. I knew at that moment that I WAS Elvis, that my death had allowed me to remember myself, and rejoice in who I really was. Moments later, I also realized that I was Adolph Hitler, that I had killed millions and millions of people out of fear and hatred. I couldn’t stand to exist anymore.

I walked to a church in the neighborhood. I don’t remember the neighborhood but I know that it had Wesleyan written on its name somehow. The acoustics in the gallery outside the church were incredible, I began singing again and started to feel better. I knelt down in front of a stained glass window, which had pictures of bees on it (and also my name) and bowed my head. My forehead was resting against the pavement when I realized I was just another cell in a huge hive of existance. My sense of will was entirely an illusion.

After resting there for a while, I returned to Telegraph avenue. Most striking were the Muslims, in the suits and red ties handing out pamphlets. I felt they were agents of the devil and crossed the street to avoid their attention. On the other side of the street was a nice looking man with long dreads. He was holding a newspaper with what looked like some pot folded into the bottom of it. He told me he could get me anything I wanted.

I told him I wanted to be his student and reach illumination. He told me he could help me if I followed him right that second. We got onto a bus, and rode for a few minutes toward Oakland, and, when we were close, we stopped at an ATM and he told me to take all of my money out. I had about three hundred dollars left in an old account, which I emptied and gave to the guy. We then continued all the way to Oakland, where we waited on a very dark corner. The guy, whose name was Monty, told me to “just keep walking” in a very urgent voice. I felt an impending sence of danger and the hair rose on my neck. But I continued walking slowly, so as not to arouse any attention. Monty joined me a few minutes later and he seemed much more animated and happier. A few seconds later a non-descript brown sedan stopped in front of us and a white man with dirty blonde hair and a wispy moustache opened up the door for us. Monty got into the front seat and I sat in the back.
as the wispy moustache man drove off, Monty pulled out a crack pipe and smocked a rock. He offered me one but I remembered the first (and last) time I had ever smoked crack and politely declined. After he and whispy had each smoked, we pulled in front of a seedy looking house. Monty warned us not to look to the left or the right, and to go straight to the back of the house. As we walked in, he told the occupants of the house that we were his students and no one should talk to us. He closed the door on us and left us in a small room filled with mattresses. I sat patiently waiting but whispy was visibally agitated. After a few minutes he knocked on the door, asking to be let out. Monty opened the door and we were all sitting together. Monty was sharing his crack with the whole group and calling himself “crack monster monty”. Whispy guy really needed a hit badly, you could tell that Monty was enjoying being the one holding the drugs, and the power. At one point, he wouldn’t let the only girl take a hit unless she sucked his dick. He held off letting her smoke just long enough so that they both knew that she would have done anything he wanted. Then he laughed and said he was just joking.

Several more hours passed; Somehow I ended up driving whispy’s car down the freeway. We had one flat tire, which I drove on for who knows how long, then another flat tire. At this point Monty was trying to convince Whispy to sell his car (actually his mother’s) for crack. The tow truck man wouldn’t let Monty or me ride with Whispy so we took a subway back to Berkely. By this time, it was about dawn and the acid was wearing off, I took one more tab, and gave the last one to Monty. We went to his halfway house where he showered and met me outside and we went to a school playground where he smoked the last of his crack in a special pipe stuck up his sleeve. When the noon bells began to ring, I felt as though the magic spell wore off. Monty had promised me a whole lot of things which hadn’t happened. When I pointed this out, he whined that I hadn’t reminded him. I decided Monty was the devil, and, since I hadn’t recieved anything from him greater than what he got from me, I was free to go. I also remembered that, in the bag I had left on the street, was all of my poetry.
I got up, took stock of my situation, which was that I had absolutely nothing but a fake ID (Monty had procurred it during the night), the clothes on my back, and a quarter. I walked down to the nearest bus stop, paid the quarter for my ride down Telegraph and began to whistle. That was the utter bottom. It has been uphill ever since.

Small Talk

Today, as I was taking my daughter for a morning stroll around sunny Portland, I walked past a man in an orange reflective suit and a hard hat. We had the following exchange:

Man: God bless you, my brother!
Me: Hey, how are you doing?
Man: Blessings upon myself!

The fact that, in that exchange, he seemd like the wierd one has been bothering me all day.

Opening volley

Well, I don't really know what I'm doing here, but I'm going to try out this here blog stuff. So far, I have no grand scheme or strategy. I'm just going to throw some stuff up against the wall and see what sticks. I hear the internet is quite the coming rage. We'll see.