My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

I wish hadn’t been so afraid when I was and I wish I were braver right now. Of course, these are not brilliant or unique wishes, they are wishes made by flawed men. Nevertheless, I add my words to theirs. I’m back in the hospital with lots of time to think.

So, I’m starting this week a bit of a hole, as I spent the weekend in the hospital with a wicked stomach bug. It was an unpleasant experience, that much is certain. As silly as it may be, whenever I do have to go in, a part of me wonders if I I’ll get out again. Apparently, I did! This time they gave my body something it didn’t enjoy, and I swelled to three times my normal size. My head was so puffed I couldn’t move my face. I’m certain Tiny Elvis would have made note of me. I’m finally out, back to my usual body-mass, a little tired, but ready to get things done.

So, Thursday I went to see The Wackness and it was pretty good. It wasn’t the best movie I’ve ever seen, but it sparked quite a bit of thinking in me. It’s about Luke Shapiro, a kid just out of high school, selling pot in New York City during the summer of 1994. One of his clients is a psychiatrist, doctor Squires, they trade pot for therapy. Luke also happens to be crazy about the good doctor’s step daughter. I’m not really here to review the movie, except that I did like it overall and I’m glad I saw it, despite the following really unfortunate line, “I see the dopeness in everything, and you just see the wackness.” Still, as bad as that line is, it struck me as true.

I’ve been there, I’ve lived that line so many times. I’ve tried over and over to convince someone that things will work out and life can be something great, but they don’t really buy it. They see problems, obstacles, endless disaster. Trying to talk someone out of that is fucking exhausting. It wears you out until you start to buy it yourself. I should have told her how I felt, rather than hide it. I was just always afraid of losing her, of not being what she needed. 

I actually went into the movie pretty down on myself, like I was kind of a fuck up immature failure. I’ve been fighting that idea for awhile, fighting it and losing. Then, sitting in that dark theater, analyzing that movie and myself, I slowly started feeling better. A big theme was self-medicating through pain; drinking, drugs, sex, whatever. Anything to escape the shit that life can definitely bring. I liked drugs to escape, and when I drank it was less to permanently escape than take a temporary vacation from things that scared me. Either way, being numb isn’t the answer for me. It’s anyone’s choice, but it’s not the one I’m making. Being numb only prolongs a bad situation. I quit the drinking not because people told me to, or to please anyone. I quit because I realized it took the fight out of me and I can’t afford not to fight.

I’ve also realized that I’ve spent too much time fighting the wrong things and feeling bad because I haven’t been winning quickly enough. The life that I want isn’t crazy, or wrong and it’s definitely not impossible, but I felt like a failure because I’m not there yet, I’ve stumbled. Lately I have felt really bad, probably worse than when I got home from the hospital in ’07. About a month ago I got the idea that I was failing and felt that it was entirely my fault. I’ve been really down about it, lately crying about it if I thought about the last few weeks too much. I’m not proud of this, but I have to write about it anyway. I’d sob and say to myself, “Wow, you fucker. Look at yourself. What are you doing? You totally fucked things up.” Watching that movie and thinking about something a friend said, I realized that I’ve done so much to change my life in the last three years and it’s okay to stumble so long as I’m honest. I’m not a failure until I quit trying to have what I want. Three years ago I couldn’t sit in the van by myself without having a massive panic attack. I couldn’t go to a club, or a concert without freaking out. I didn’t leave the house without someone from my family. I’ve changed all of that and more. I’m 27 trying to do things my brother did at 18, but he was expected to do them. He just had to pack some bags and go. I wasn’t necessarily discouraged, but I wasn’t encouraged either. Nobody expected me to have or even want a different life. That I’d want a lover, my own space. Yet, that is exactly what I want and I have been rearranging my entire life to have it, and I’m doing so with a deck that is stacked against me. The idea that I’m too slow or a failure just isn’t right. I started 2007 in a coma, spent months in the hospital. I lost the ability to talk, not gradually like everything else, but abruptly and totally unexpectedly. I lived all my personal nightmares. I’ve had to make so many adjustments, but I make them. I know people who would have handled what I’ve handled far worse than me. I haven’t quit, I’m not going to quit, but I no longer feel afraid to make mistakes and be honest. 

The Wackness didn’t change my life, but it started a train of thought that ended in a good place.

It’s raining here, grey and wet outside. Water beats against my windows, and I watch it fall. It’s a soothing, melancholy rain, perfect for writing or quiet contemplation, or both. For me, it’s both. It reminds me of things that make me happy, and so I watch it fall.

So, here I am, watching Olympic boxing after 3 AM. I’d never normally watch boxing, but since it’s “Olympic boxing” I feel compelled. It’s better than Goddamned Nick at Night. I haven’t slept since fucking May, which doesn’t really make me, oh, what’s the phrase? At ease? Contentedly at peace? Something like that. I’m thinking about my limits lately. Like, how much… trauma? unwanted-change? anguish? can I take before I chuck it all in and start wearing sweat-pants all fucking day? I’m kidding, but I’m serious too. We all have limits, physical, spiritual, emotional, everything has a ceiling. A person hits their physical limit and they die. A person hits their emotional limit and they start crying for absolutely no reason, they quit talking to people. Maybe they want to die. Everybody has the potential to break beyond repair, we all have Rubicons to cross.

Where are my ceilings, my Rubicons? I don’t know, I really don’t. I feel like I’ve seen them, taken a visit to say, “hi!” It’s frightening sometimes, to see my limits. I don’t know sometimes if I’m getting weaker or stronger. It’s difficult to know. I suppose a person doesn’t honestly know their limits until they’re bleeding in the bathtub. Still, if I sit back and look inside, there’s something in me that won’t quit without one Hell of a fight. I just worry sometimes that it’s round twelve and that part of me is behind on the score-card. I don’t aim to lose, I don’t intend to go down, but sometimes, when I’m alone in my head, I wonder if my aims and wants matter. Every fight has a loser, I don’t want it to be me.

So, I finished reading The Tyrant by Michael Cisco and I couldn’t have been more impressed.  It’s the story of a brilliant fifteen-year-old girl, crippled by Polio, a graduate student revered for her work with ectoplasm. The stuff of the afterlife. Being so renowned, this girl, Ella, is invited to assist in an experiment that could change the way the world sees death. It’s an experiment with an epileptic man with unheard-of mental abilities. Through deep trances, he can project his consciousness not only from life into death, but even a state of possible life, the place before one lives or dies. For the experiment he descends into death, sending back both data and visual images displayed on lab monitors. Ella sees what he sees, and ultimately what he becomes. In life he’s a sad, cryptic man, but in death he’s brutal and vicious. He’s the Tyrant. He’s the man Ella loves. As for the experiment, it has unexpected and devastating consequences for the world of the living.

It’s difficult to fully describe this novel, it’s so different from anything of its kind. It’s not the kind of story that one can explain from point A to point B, it’s not full of characters who explain everything to the reader. At its core, it’s like riding a flaming tour bus through the world of human nightmares and beyond. It’s a little reminiscent of The Sound and the Fury in that it’s narrated in a stream of consciousness. Forget punctuation marks and neat paragraphs. Through his prose Cisco captures the essence of nightmares, he puts them into words. For a good section of the book Ella sees through the Tyrant’s eyes and we see through hers. We see things vivid and strange, beautiful and hideous. Scenes shift from place to place, just as they do in sleep, a flood of imagery. We see the fiery pits of Hell, people chained together, taunted and tortured ceaselessly by demons. We see cities in which the dead slaughter the living. This book isn’t a quick read, Cisco’s writing is so rich and decadent that one can’t devour it quickly. This book takes a little patience, it asks a certain amount of focus, but it’s definitely worth it.

So, I’ve taken on the services of a lawyer. I could pretend to say that I’ve hired a lawyer to handle financial and estate planning, naming medical surrogates, various practical things. However, really, I’m mostly just really looking forward to coldly saying the phrase, “you’ll be hearing from my lawyer…” I also imagine I’ll get to go around killing people, my lawyer being there to dispose of the bodies and what-not. I’ll also consider getting into starting a sex farm for sex hookers.

It seems that John Travolta and I are very close to being close personal friends. That’s right, we share the same dentist, Doctor Jonathan J. Bromboz. I had no idea when I woke up this morning that fortune would shine upon me so vividly. The very tools that had polished John Travolta’s pearly whites were sterilized and perhaps used to make my smile so bright today. Really, one could even say that in a sense, I practically French kissed Vincent Vega. Okay, I will say it, I practically French kissed Vincent Vega. Yes…

Back in the day, when I breathed through a mask and talked, I had a very unique laugh. When something was really funny I’d laugh without a sound, save for a hissing rush of air blowing out of my mouth. That was it. Now, however, with the Passy-Muir valve, my laugh is something completely different. Apparently, my natural spontaneous laugh is an eerie self-perpetuating, maniacal chuckle that, to put it plainly, sounds very much like Heath Ledger’s Joker. I’m not trying to sound that way, it’s not an affectation. I genuinely sound like the Joker, his conversational chuckle that starts, builds and eerily trails off.

Just listen to the beginning of this video… that is how I laugh.

A few days ago I saw a fantastic and hilarious movie called, Things to Do. It’s about a guy who, for reasons we learn later, leaves his spirit breaking office job in the big city to return to his parents’ small-town home, which is depressing in its own way. One day he’s watching some “teens gone wrong” day-time talk show and the host says that to be happy in life a person has to be organized and have goals, advice our protag closely follows. He creates a Things to Do list, a list of anything he wants to do, but has never done. Then he tackles the list with the idea that it will help him find his place. I’ve been seriously thinking about the same issues, so I’ve also begun a Things to Do list page, linked at the top right corner of the blog. My list is public and dynamic. I will add things as I think them up and cross them off as I do them. I’m making it public because of a post I read on Ecstatic Days by Catherynne M. Valente. She posted about writing a novel in 30 days, but the part that really struck me was about how it’s important to make goals public because it’s so much easier to quietly fail in private. People are welcome to join me in tackling the list.

Here’s the list so far:

Spend a day theater hopping at the movies

Go sailing

Have a home and a family of my own

Stay in a dive hotel in a city like New Orleans or New York

Go on a post-trache trip without my family

Ride a riverboat

Visit the Canadian side of Niagara Falls

Visit a New Orleans cemetery

Ride a Greyhound bus

Write a novella

Go to a shooting range

Fire a gun with a switch

Camp at the Grand Canyon

Spend an entire night on a beach with a woman I love

Sleep at a New England bed and breakfast