Kundalini and Me Part II

There's been a long saga with this Kundalini stuff. There were several more times when smoking weed brought out an uncontrollable episode and I lost consciousness. During one of these times, I kept snapping out of it and would find myself being extraordinarily present and funny. I would writhe on the floor, but then shoot up and start playing an imaginary trombone, and then I called a chunky guy and his skinny best friend "Jay and Silent Bob" (which we had somehow never thought of) and then I demanded they get me water because they, unlike me, weren't "having an awesome near death experience right now!"

When I was a junior the experiences started being more intentional. I could "control" the energy flowing by adjusting my thoughts in a particular way that is kinda hard to explain. At first just "thinking about God" (whatever that means) triggered the energy. But as my concept of God became more nuanced so did my ability to allow this energy to flow. The flow always had a mind of it's own though, I just let it do it's thing.

The day after this started I ran around in the rain "looking for a priest," cause, you know, I thought I was Jesus or whatever. When I finally found one, shaking hands with the worshipers after the 11:50 daily service at the Naval Academy, he seemed only moderately interested in helping me. You'd think being soaking wet and insisting that you needed to "talk to a priest!" would get his attention, but he merely said that he was "busy that day, but he could" and I QUOTE "pencil me in for sometime next week." I let him pencil me indeed, and blew him off.

After missing classes all that day because I was considering dropping out and joining a seminary (hey, Tom Cruise thought about it too, okay!) I tried to relax in the college library. After "being led" to the book that said "just what I needed to hear!" I started having tremors I couldn't control and called my most "out there" friend. She spoke in tongues over me and was fairly convinced that I was possessed by demons. Since I think Kundalini bursts are expulsions of unprocessed traumas, stored as energy in the physical body, she was probably very right in a sense. I did not infect any passing swine that day, happily.

Anyway, it's come a long way. This is from an email I sent my friend eariler this week who has experienced similar things. One note, I've been going to a "Cranial Sacral" healer who helps with the energy flow from your sacrum (lower back) to the base of your head. It's been a long road of feeling crazy and acting bizarre in private (but often in public) to get to the point where that makes perfect sense to me, and I feel a whole lot less crazy after a session with him. I've only had two sessions so far and this occurred at the second one:

Hey, -------!

... I don't think my back pain is really anything but kundalini issues, and a conflict between higher and lower self type things. It did originate materially from a car accident, but nothing really showed up on x-rays as "wrong," but there has been tension and energetic blockages ever since (this language would be very foreign to me at the time of the accident).

In my last cranial/sacral session I had some fun imagery I wanna share with you. So my spine was a long field, but it had been torn up like a WWI battlefield. A tall fence with barbed wire stretch across a portion, roughly at the level of my stomach, and here was where messages were being passed from one side to the other. A messenger arrived with a letter from the lower half. He was a relaxed, lethargic cut up, the kind you wouldn't trust around your pocket watch or sister, but a good chum all the same. After he delivered the letter he pulled out a soft pack of cigarettes and smoked one, looking bored. I read the letter, and though I didn't see the words (the observer "I" couldn't read it but the I in the image I think could), energy flowed up and down my spine and I convulsed  forcefully (which really isn't that unusual of a thing for me, tho it weirded out the cranial/sacral guy pretty good). It became apparent to me, thru this letter, that this war was only one sided. The lower half was never trying to attack the upper half, but the upper half, thru busy-mindedness, was keeping the traffic from the lower side from getting to the upperside. Thought was the weapon of choice for the upper half, and the lower half was only fighting to defend itself. This little letter was jus a sliver of information, exchanged through a barbed wire fence, but it was a big deal for me. Peace wasn't just possible, but unavoidable! The deliveryman stubbed out his cigarette, rather unimpressed by my epiphany. It was if he was saying "realizing that this war's unnecessary isn't the point. The point is not just to "make peace," the point is to go into business together."

Fun stuff, right? When I feel a blockage there I still see that guy, who kinda says "This is all you man, we're not attacking anyone."

-Mike

Kundalini and Me Part I

Kundalini is sometimes referred to as the source, the energy behind everything. Sometimes it is described as a bunch of snakes that live in your lower back and that spread evil throughout your body. Once you start to realize that "evil" is just your word for the parts of your true self that you don't like, things start to go more smoothly. The phenomenon of having energy shoot through your body, typically from the base of your spine to your head, is highly praised in Eastern mysticism. It also exists in Western esoteric traditions, from the Aeneid to Harry Potter you can find super-rational experiences involving snake imagery, writhing on the floor, talking in tongues (or parseltongue). You also find this stuff pretty common place in charismatic churches. The real root is in human physiology, it owes nothing to any specific tradition or worldview. Here's my friend talking about his experiences with Kundalini:

I had a big kundalini awakening time, and I would experience very powerful energies flowing up my spine, and making me lose normal sensory consciousness when they flooded into my head.  I didn't have major blocks I don't think, but certainly some areas of my finite being less developed than others.  Initially I had quite a body / mind split.   That gradually broke down, with some pretty intense experiences over the years.

It can seem like a battle between higher and lower self, and I suppose in a way that's what it is for a while.   But really it's just surrendering one's sense of self into ever deeper layers of one's own being.   They're all simultaneous; it's that we choose or come to habitually experience one tiny layer of that (usually a very superficial one) as ourselves, as constituting what we are, our identity.  Getting less attached to that brings a lot of relief.  But the finite "I" is also useful, part of the world, part of the beauty and game of world-experience.  Be it, and watch it at the same time.  Then it does less damage.

I'm going to post a journal entry of sorts that I wrote about five years ago. This was my first encounter with Kundalini, though I had no idea that's what it was. It was quite traumatizing at the time, and it would be a few years until I managed to have a controlled release of the energy. Here is the full text of that first encounter and the events leading up to it. I've changed some of the names to protect the innocent.

I came home from the clinic and grumbled my way up to my room. The week had been bad. The whole month had been flavors of bad. It was the Wednesday before Christmas, and I was stuck in an irreconcilable funk without a trace of the holiday spirit. The previous day I had lain back on my psychologist’s sofa and dredged feelings about my parents and my girlfriend to my surface with a smooth and sincere diction I’d never been capable of. Usually everything came out with a bite of satire, a pinch of humor to soften the sincerity. But everything had been building up and spiraling to this week.

My parent’s would be moving to Mexico in June, a month I knew would arrive quicker than ever in my life. I still hadn’t found a place to live for my last month of school before graduation. I wondered what the odds were my parent’s wouldn’t make it to my graduation. It didn’t seem too likely, but suppose someone got sick, my graduation wouldn’t be the priority. Besides, they’d seen my brother graduate from his private school two years earlier, seen one, you’ve seen them all. Mine would be much longer than his: my public senior class had 500 students while his high school had only 200 total.

I was physically sick at this point, too. For the past month I would struggle through the weeks, but I felt a drain, as if someone had pricked a hole in me, leaking my life’s fluid quicker than I could replenish it. Mornings I would wake up unrested, my back aching like it hadn’t since a month or so after my car accident (which was now a full year ago). I would live for the weekend to recover, doing less than I ever had. I began a tradition of refusing to do anything on Sundays except go to the gym and read. But this soon wasn’t enough. Finally one weekend came where I nearly passed out while driving my girlfriend back from the movies, and my mother had to pick me up from her house. It was the first time our parents met. It was quaint.

And there was this thing with my girlfriend at the time, ----. But this thing was really only me, and maybe the most depressing of them all. With all my previous girlfriends, at some point (always early on) I developed a mindset that prevented me from enjoying what we had together. I would second-guess my attachment. Doubt their looks. Care too much about my friends’ opinion of her, and of us. A wall would grow between us and there was nothing I could ever figure out to do except break up. ‘I really, really like you, [I think].’ ‘I love you [*].’ That asterisk in the quote made me feel like an asshole when I neurotically broke up with her a week later.

But with ---- it’d been different. I never had these doubts. I attributed it to our unusual amount of harmless time together at the beginning. It’s a time that can only exist before serious sexual tension exists, and every conversation seems innocent and underscored by the song "Getting to Know You." We scared each other with our similarities. To explain our connection, I would tell people about how the previous year, when we were in the same Spanish class. We didn’t know each other, and never spoke, but at the end of the year when we had to give a presentation en Espanol sobre uno celebridad, we both did Pedro Almodovar. When the listener asked who the hell Pedro Almodovar was, the gravity of this coincidence was only further confirmed.

But my feelings of doubt and guilt, of self-loathing and lack of communication, that had been the summation of every previous relationship, for whatever reason, they arose that week. The weekend before, after I nearly passed out while driving, I’d spent the weekend alone and at home. This shouldn’t be a big issue; everyone needs time to recover. But to me, so unconfident, so used to spreading myself thin between friends on the weekends, my lack of visitors to see me get better was a stab in the heart. And though she nursed me the night before at her house, and told me she would come over if she could only get a ride, ---- was among them, and my wall was built.

So coming home from the walk-in-clinic, my second time there in a week, I closed my door and thought in silence. My diagnosis had been Lyme Disease, confirmed by test results, and cured by a month of antibiotics, it wasn’t that big of a deal. I sat down even though it hurt, the first round of antibiotics had been shot into my ass cheek. The pain was sharp, but my mind was dull and I ignored it.

---- and Jen came over so I could edit a video for them. It gave me some problems, but I’d tackled much worse. The whole time they were there, I was half dead. The video didn’t amuse me, even though parts of it were genuinely funny. The sight of ---- on the screen annoyed me, even though her acting was much better than I’d expected. Her actual presence filled me with a familiar and noxious confusion. I told myself that unless I had true feelings for her, I could never feel this strongly. But hugging her or having her sit on my lap while I chopped up their scenes was not something I wanted to do.

The girls left about nine-thirty, praising me as their savior. I gave ---- a hug I felt was necessary, a "keeping up appearances" kind of thing. She knew something was different though, and she had been as cold to me as I was cold to her.

I fretted about my room; I should be getting ready to sleep soon if I wanted energy for tomorrow. But my mind was racing, I felt like an asshole. I wanted to refresh in a way that a Wednesday night’s sleep is incapable of.

I called Dan and within fifteen minutes he was packing a bowl down in Mitchell’s old room.

Who Mitchell is is a whole other story. Suffice it to say he lived with us, but now didn't.

The room was eerily bare, white furniture, as if it all had been white-washed. The spit had not been cleaned off the mattress, just wiped.

The décor seemed as if the room had once had been consciously styled (perhaps with an amateur and shallow attempt at serenity), but it gave the impression that a violent encounter had taken place here. The damage was thoroughly repaired, but the few articles of the room seem to be thrown in place only to imply that nothing had happened. The bed was made, but only because it was never used. The only chair was missing its cushion. The only table in the room, the one on which the weed was being packed into the Roor, was totally bare, but thick with dust.

I asked Dan if he still wanted the number of my Psychologist’s office so he could talk to somebody. I’d offered the number a week before, the last time we’d hung out. That had been the first time in a month. I hoped he would talk to Dr. Robbins or whomever about how all he did these days was smoke weed with people who wanted him for his bong. Dan said he still wanted the number.

We went out around the corner and Dan took the first hit. I wasn’t saying much. Usually I would make jokes; I didn’t like the mood being mechanical. Smoking weed like medicine, with that kind of regularity and lack of novelty, that meant you had a problem. I was smoking about once a month, usually without seeking it out, just being in the right place with the right people.

I took my hit. For the first time I used the Roor correctly. With one hand I held the inch thick glass neck, lighting the bowl with the other hand (the lighter was the red safety lighter from my kitchen). I sucked it in deep, the smoke felt like nothing after going through the dirty water at the bottom, and the freezing December air kept it cool, too. I lifted off the bowl and though I couldn’t see it from that angle, I knew the remaining smoke had swirled magically up the throat of the bong, and into my lungs.

Dan told me that was a big hit. “Wow,” he told me. I was glad it impressed him. I knew it took a lot to impress him. I paced back and forth on the stone flanking next to where we were. A failed garden of sorts. Not a major eyesore, just a reminder of things unfinished around here, other things taking priority. I tried to breath deep, but my lungs seemed to have a limit, like smoke was still swirling down there. I tried to judge my highness and lost attention to what I was doing externally. This usually took at least a couple hits and fifteen minutes. This was less than one minute.

“You want another?” Dan asked. I shook my head and opened my eyes wide to explain, No way, I’m high. Like, this kind of high. He’d been there for all my experiences of being too high. Maybe in his company I felt secure enough to challenge myself. But this would be different.

“Man I gotta finish this myself,” he muttered, clicking the damn confusing safety lighter. He didn’t sound too upset with having to finish the bowl.

I saw a car moving into the Hershey’s driveway off over a slight hill and across the street. Or was it leaving? If it was leaving that was better, or maybe worse. They would drive closer, but, if they were going in, they’d be closer to a phone, would they if they call. But it could be the daughter, she had college parties, but could they really see a light? The human eye can see a match strike fifty miles away on a clear night, but this night wasn’t that clear, and why do I know that? But who cares about matches? No one cares about seeing a match. But this is a lighter, suppose we’re just smoking cigarettes.
“You alright, man?” I was muttering and pacing and unaware of either.
Yeah, lets go inside, neighbors shit.
“Ok,” he eyes me, “just let me finish.”
I’m not sure if I waited for him and we went in together, or I went first.

I hit my head on the floor. It flew up onto the wall. My head and body are half under the thick white beam of the bed’s frame. I smack my face onto it, gashing my lip, blood and spit landing on the ceiling next to an air vent. Dan stalks over in his blue coat he always wears, his while hair white as light like always, brushed down like always. Mike? He touches my chest. Are you alright?

I hit my head on the floor. It flies to the wall. My mouth smacks the beam. Blood lands next to the vent. Dan touches my chest. He asks if I’m alright? Floor to wall to beam to ceiling to Dan to floor to wall to beam to ceiling to Dan.

And this loop loops and loops and loops and loops. Still frames, short flash images. A turning motion. These things happen over and again, but this can’t be happening because it’s so terrible. This will be such a big deal.

I smash my own mouth again and again on the bed frame, I’m hurting myself, my blood lands next to the vent on the ceiling, but each time is the first time. I’m in this cycle and I’ll never escape. Snap shots, floor, wall, beam, ceiling, Dan. This motion of turning, spinning, I scream. I scream and kick and fight, I want out. I want more images. My head hits the floor then wall then the bed beam, my blood lands on the ceiling and Dan sees if I’m alright. So I kick and I kick and I breath and I breath and I breath fast and fast and I’m up off the floor.

The scene has changed. I’m sitting on the bed, Dan is on the phone.

“Yeah, I’m with Lacy, and we… smoked, and now he’s flipping out.”
Mike? Calls another voice. It’s my mom. She’s back from picking my brother up at the airport. Mike?! The door to the basement opens and I slide to the ground again, right next to the wall where I hit my head. There’s a hole, but its hand shaped, not head shaped. My back is to the beam where I smashed my own lip. My mom. I climb on the bed. My breathing deepens.

The door opens. ‘Mike? What’s going on?’ ‘I just… came in and he was sleeping, Mrs. Lacy.’ ‘Mike?’ She rolls me over. ‘Look! His face is all swollen! What’s happened? Were you boys getting high? You’re not in trouble! I need to know! I need to know! He’s on medication for Lyme Disease! What were you boys doing, Dan?’ ‘I… I…” Dan doesn’t answer her. She shakes me and speaks to me. Getting high. Getting high has such a weird connotation to me now. We were the dregs of society, the understomach, Reefer Madness had nothing on us.

I looped again. Short bursts of images. My mom comes in. I now see my brother is behind her, not approving, acting like he has to deal with this all the time. ‘Boys??!! Getting high?’ Dan doesn’t answer. ‘I neeeed to know!’ ‘Comon, Dan, tell us!’ My brother chimes in like a British cop. ‘We’re not here to get you in trouble!’ It gets weird and theatrical. Boys getting high? I gotta know? Common, Dan, won’t you tell us? These are the same images, looping and looping. I’m spinning on the bed, shaking my body, they’re grabbing my arms. I’m a prisoner, being carted off, this can’t be happening. My mom finding out? That would be terrible, the worst, this was going to be nothing, just relax. So then, this isn’t happening… If I accept it, let it go, let it flow, it’s all just a show. Boys getting high? She grabs one arm and looks to Dan, over-the-top, what is she, on Broadway? I gotta know! My brother grabs the other, his face unshaven, he thinks its cool, Dan won’t you tell us? This happens again and again but I fight less each time. Dan won’t you tell us? I’m fighting less each time. I give in.
It’s black here. Everything in this ream exists in ticks. Little mechanical acoustic ticks of life. Ticks around a circle, because it’s all really a circle. I fight to one direction because it’s all I’m taught to do. A thought is a tick, and an action is a hundred. Tick tick tick, I spin around clockwise. I’m back on the ground. I hit my head on the floor. That’s a hundred ticks. I’m hurting myself, this is insane, this is what crazy people do. But that’s only worth one tick. I hit my head on the wall. A hundred more. We’re fighting fine. I smack my lip on the bed rail. That’s one hundred and five, five extra for the blood on the ceiling. Dan asks if I’m ok. Those ticks don’t count in my realm, only in his. I’m spinning again on the ground, floor wall beam, floor wall beam, these are my only thoughts. My only possible images, sounds, ticks (whatever the fuck those are), the only things that are real to me. I try to jump out of this spiraling trauma. Floor wall beam. Floor wall beam. And I think...

This is what craziness is. I will never get out of these three thoughts. As hard as I try, this is the rest of my life. People who sit and shake all their life, convulse and mumble, these are the kind of thoughts the have. And I think...

The only thing keeping me here is my will to fight. I can give up. Here, for eternity, hitting my head on the floor, then the wall, then the beam, is what hell must be.

I spin back and feel the floor rise past me. The visuals of the room dissipate and I’m existing only in my world of ticks. Though I’ve decided to stop trying, my body subconsciously doesn’t quit. Like how your body stops you from drowning, it doesn’t let me give up that easily. I give just a few more ticks clockwise, these being my last living efforts. Then I ease backwards.

I don’t see images but I live in their emotion. Backwards through my life. I can’t really be in them, otherwise life would be worth living, worth more than just Floor Wall Beam, and I tick back and back further. I can see what the ticks are now. They’re little flower petal shaped things, around an enormous epicenter, and I can see the places that are left. There’s only four. What’s beyond them is impossible to know. Another universe, with its own laws of physics. It’s impossible to know how it works because all the ways we know this realm exists don’t apply to that world. Is it death? In a sense. Is it life? No one knows.

I tick down. Three left. Two left. One left.

I’m fighting, shaking, violent, in the arms of my brother. My close to his, face, closer than I’ve come to him in years. My body is simply terrifying, and for the first time I consciously vomit. My legs are stretched out on the floor and my torso is twisted upright. There’s more than one puke stain on the floor, but I’ve only thrown up once? “Are they coming?” My brother calls out. I must be such a scary, inhuman sight.

The outside door to the room opens. I stretch my head out to see who it is, and it’s Dave. That’s who Dan called? Dave ? I see his bead type thing, sort of a seven o’clock shadow, much better than my brother’s. My brother’s, that I’m so close to. Closer than I’ve been in years. I feel another heave and I puke on my feet. ‘Who are you?’ My brother implores. ‘Get the fuck out of here!’

I float back down to a world of fours. It’s all spoken in a computer binary sort of sense, but variations of the number four are used instead of ones and zeros. And these Fours attempt to explain the world, and they rise and crescendo and fight against the brutal oppressive world of life and it’s obstacles.

Throughout history great thinkers of the world of Four have attempted to make life less of a mystery and misery for other Fours out there. The peasant Four. The middle class Four. The monarch Four. Some Fours think you need to obey the system, follow the rules: and some Fours have died very happy Fours with this as their motto. Some Fours believe in a higher power, and this god-Four is the Four one should listen to. Some Fours say fuck the ruling class! Fuck god-Four, fuck working Fours, and most of all, fuck the monarch Four. I approach the end of my life as a Four, it’s been an expedited journey, and now I’m going to die an old and educated Four. I have total group consciousness, every Four that’s come before me has passed on their knowledge, and it’s my job to analyze it and find out what it’s all about.

We spin down, down a vertical cylinder with balconies, each filled with Fours, all screaming their philosophies, chanting, rioting, living in the glory of their ideas. Be quit and sappy, and Four, you be happy! And the god-Four following Fours weigh in their opinion, as I sit in the center, my Four fingers under chin, deciding what is the correct way of Four life. And then the ‘FUCK THE RULING FOUR!” party chants in their ideals, a subculture they’ve accumulated, turning balcony to balcony into rowdy sailor-like Fours.

But then Shakespeare Four makes things very beautiful, and combines many Four ideas, and spins them down to me from a balcony above. Its a little far away, but it’s not so far if I try. It’s within reach. And I do it.

 “Can you speak to me?” I’m still on the ground; I’ve puked more than I remembered doing. “He’s unresponsive.” My brother has changed bodies with a black man in an EMT costume. Police officers stand by the door, their presence doesn’t radiate helpfulness, they want a crime to solve. “Did you take anything else?” The medic is talking to me.
“Yeah,” the police officers now have something to ask. “We don’t wanna get you in trouble or nothing, it just helps us help you. You know what I’m saying?”
I puke again.

I fell unconscious again. My thoughts were unmemorable, except that it again was hard to come fully awake. The level between being asleep and alert was a bleak fissure, where I was sure I could lose my soul, or maybe just die.

The next moments were snap shots with immeasurable amounts of time passing between them. I was in a wheel chair riding the elevator of my house. An EMT standing stoic behind me, possibly a police officer as well. But definitely my brother, my brother holding a deep bowl with a towel in it to catch the spill, holding it beneath my head to catch my vomit.

Then we descended the front steps of my house. Why we didn’t use the back or garage door, I’ll never know. Men held the back and sides of my chair while my brother extended the puke bowl under me gracefully like a ring bearer. I could tell he was annoyed at his inconvenience, but motivated to fulfill his self-enlisted task to the best of his ability. I remember being embarrassed even while this was happening. Embarrassed for all this attention, all this medical assistance and heavy lifting. All these people making judgments about me and my family. I felt embarrassed for all their thoughts and all their effort. All of them except my brother, who was walking backwards down the front path of the yard, awkwardly holding the puke bowl, getting in the way of the medical professionals as he paused to wipe the sweat off his own forehead. I wasn't worrying about how his night was going.

Then I was put up into the ambulance. At some point I had been strapped to a gurney. I had not been aware of this. A new EMT put his hand on my chest. “What else did you take, buddy?”
“He won’t tell you,” said another EMT. “He’s in some kind of state. I dunno what it is, but he won’t tell you.” I didn’t know who this second man was, no more than the first, but he seemed to have made some serious observations about me. It was as if we’d spent some lengthy time together and I’d been a real stickler about letting him in the know.

“You sure, Buddy? You don’t want to tell me what it was?”

The second EMT who claimed to already have some kind of relationship with me just shook his head. Well I wasn’t gonna let this smart ass define me so I told the first EMT what was up, even though he felt obliged to address me as buddy.
“I didn’t… take… anything. Just weed. I only smoked weed.” The buddy EMT stared down at me concernedly.
“I told you,” said my critic. “He doesn’t tell you nothing.”
I was next in another dream or delusion but I can’t say what, and I only know because I remember rousing from it, difficultly.

I felt cliché as it occurred, but also affirmed in a personal belief that clichés get a bad rap since they’re usually true. The first things that faded into focus were the lights. Decisively white, and then color saturated everything in the room, giving life to my torso, my legs, my bed, the technicians, the nurse, the policemen, and my mother peering in the doorway with a look that was so concerned it caused me pain. And then there was the doctor. Slightly robust, rough shaven but kept, slightly tired but alert, concerned but not worried, he simply had an air about him. The florescent light seemed to favor him, and his white coat looked to be made of the purest cotton, bathed hourly in the deepest regions of the Ocean of Clorox. I imagined taking big metal scissors and simply snipping his presence out of the stale and critical background, and carrying him around as a two-dimension life form, concerned and knowledgeable, a beacon of educated authority. The rest of the room seemed to have a similar respect for him, because as he examined me, felt my palms and shined a light in my eyes, they did their tasks more quietly, or else stopped entirely. He patted my shoulder and I never saw him again.

The cops asked me again: what else did I take? I told them I only smoked weed and if I took anything else, I wasn’t aware when I did it. It was hard to tell them I hadn’t done anything else, I felt like a liar while I was telling the truth. I had to think about how to form my words so they sounded as convincing as possible: a sure sign of a liar. Even despite my state, this had always been a problem for me though, sounding convincing while telling the truth.

Later, a cop who had been with me the whole evening came next to my bed. “Now, I don’t care at all about what you’ve been saying before, we’ve got some things to clear up, so we can help you.” He was holding something his hand. “We found this with the Marijuana, or near it actually, it was on the ground. Wanna tell me what this is so we know how to treat you?” He held out a tiny pink tablet with numbers stamped into it.
“I don’t know.” I sounded like such a liar. How do you sound natural? Why do I need to sound natural? I’m telling the truth.
“Were just trying to help you.”
“I’m telling you, I didn’t take anything else.” I was slightly defiant. This seemed to work.
“Well, we’ll find out what this is, and we won’t be pleased that you didn’t tell us or nuthin while we were trying to help you.”
“I don’t fucking know what that is! If I took it, I wasn’t sober!”
“Alright,” This came from the male nurse or whatever standing at the other side of the bed, tending to my tubes and IV. His voice sounded like he was used to douche bag rookie cops trying to bust kids for pills they didn’t take while they were still barely recovered from serious trauma. “That’s enough talking, his heart rate is still very, very high. It’s been at one-fifty since he got here, and that was,” he looked at the clock and then to his watch and just whistled a sigh. “His blood pressures  is one-eighty over a hundred. I’m going to see what we can put him on.”

The cop retreated to his stance beside the door, his arms crossed. I looked at him strain his birdy neck and blink his sallow eyes.

I noticed my shirt had been cut up the middle. It was my shirt from the Dispatch concert in Madison Square Garden. I remember placing that shirt on with a certain wariness. Wariness should always be attended to.

My mom came in. It wasn’t the first time she’d been in, but it was the first time I could remember. You need to calm down, she told me, deep breaths, she told me. She told me they’d almost lost me that night. They really almost lost me. She asked me if, if, if I’d been trying to hurt myself. I told her I didn’t, I didn’t, and I thought I didn’t sound quite convincing, like I was lying, but she was my mother, and she knew this meant I was telling the truth.

What was I thinking, then? And I told her why I was feeling down, and why I wanted to relax, and just relax. Because they would be moving to Mexico. Because they hadn’t bothered to tell me they were putting the Christmas tree up. Because she didn’t tell me what she thought of my play I wrote and nearly had to force her to read. Because she didn’t tell me I was good in the school play. Because we were incapable of saying I love you. These were only the reasons that included her, and they made us both cry, and we wept beside each other, her holding my arm, being careful of my IV.

The nurse returned and put a medication into my drip. It gave me the most comforting, organic sensation any drug has ever given me. My body was sinking down into water, luke-warm and huggable water. Like a satin daydream. And before I fell asleep I said to my audience:

“No one thinks it’s possible, or that I’m telling the truth, but I did it. I OD’d on weed.”

My mom drove us home at four in the morning. Wherever I was in the hospital was I was never technically ‘admitted’, so I couldn’t stay the night.
“I’m sorry,” I moaned. “I’m so sorry. This isn’t me.” I moaned.
We rode in silence.
“How many people were watching when they put me in the ambulance?”
“When?” asked my mom, turning back after a pause, to look at me lying in he back seat.
“When they put me in the ambulance in front of the house, on the street. I remember a lot of people looking and watching.”
My mom didn’t answer for a bit. “Huh?” she sounded concerned for my sanity.
“Like, like where Mitchell’s ambulance was. I remember all the people watching him when they put him in there, standing by the stop sign and along the street.”
“Were you there for Mitchell’s? I thought… that was me and Will. Your father was in Mexico, not that it would happen if he were home.”
“Yeah, I like… saw it from my window I think. And I came down. But earlier tonight, were there a lot of people watching? Did the neighbors see me in the street? Was the fire truck here for long?”
She gave a pause again, and again turned back to look at me. She was drained and driving back from the hospital at four in the morning, and answering questions she found crazy.
“No, what? Your ambulance was parked in the driveway. They didn’t even turn their lights on while they were on the street. There was no fire truck for you. It was just me and your brother, nobody was watching.”
The back seats of the Prius felt softer after I learned this.
“Good.”

Shamefast in Bed

I sleep late in the mornings, and shame is often the only thing that gets me out of bed.

My body hurts a lot in the mornings. I tell myself I'm meditating, or something like it, while I'm, lying there for hours. It never makes me feel any better, but I do the same every morning. The definition of insanity, doing the same thing but expecting different results. Has anyone with a Ph.D actually every made that statement?

They say memories are stored in your body. If its not literally true, there's at least a trigger for memories and emotions all over my body. Don't touch me.

Tolle calls them pain bodies. They hover over our physical bodies like neurotic auras. It's the programming from past trauma, from memories we hold onto because they're too painful to process (or maybe even too pleasant to let go). Maybe it all comes down to shedding your pain body.

I want to rise up, to prove I'm great, to say "fuck you" to the girls that wouldn't fuck me. This draws up some energy, stirs up the reserve tanks, and I'm on fire. But that doesn't come from the source. I think this just adds to my pain body. Or if it doesn't add to it, it certainly doesn't lessen it.

Is there a self sustaining god in me that knows what he wants? That's headed somewhere real? There's too much violence in the question "is God in me?" "God" in the singular, that's too competitive for me. I'm fine with with just a god. One specific to me, he doesn't even need to be omniscient or omni-anything, he just needs to be stronger than I feel.

Who am I besides my poor adjustedness? What if there is a victory attainable in life? As miserable as I feel in the mornings, it's the most I feel my body sometimes.

There's an old bitter voice that says I can never let go of this pain. It says life is a compromise between misery and ecstasy. The voice is both Greek and Christian. "Integration is impossible, and the more discerning beings know this. Give up. Join us."

But dancing, just beyond my sight, are those who live on pure light. They don't acknowledge the victory they've attained, most of them. Maybe they were born like this, forever free. If they worked for it, it seems like memory of that has been taken from them them -- it's unnecessary. We don't need credit for becoming what we were always meant to become, and in truth always were.

What strange beings are these? So far beyond the Platos and the Strausses and the Lewises.

I think Leslie Knope is one.