2

30JAN2010

We’re on the correct side of the pond now.
I woke from two nightmares, one about the House in God’s Country and the apple tree in the yard; the other about being in the Army and the same House in God‘s Country.
I remember in the middle of the night, being suddenly awake for awhile. I remembered some bad early memories and some from my adolescence. There was an easy clarity that I hadn’t experienced in a long time. Then I fell back asleep.
It was like that scene near the end of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind where Jim Carrey is still inside his head, at the house on the beach at Montauc. It’s the night he first meets Kate Winslet. She’s asking him questions about the memory, and he’s answering them honestly.
I got high on pills with Murc___ and House, on the day of the briefings. I only took 8. So I only got very very relaxed. _At what phase are you at?_ I asked Murc___, who was more sensitive to the pills. We kept meeting outside over cigarettes, exchanging notes and knowing smiles.
(evening) Took 16 this time, instead of eight. I played cards with Boyd____ and his platoon. I shot the moon somehow, even though I was high out of my mind and could barely stand. I didn’t even mean to, and certainly didn’t do it on purpose, but everyone was very impressed, as if I were a fast learner at cards.
My functions became like lead, my sense of balance gone, and I had to be careful not to be too loud.
_Independence over free._ I said to SGT F___. When he offered me laundry detergent of his own so I wouldn’t have to buy some at the laundry mat. House almost fell out trying not to laugh.
The building, insisting, accosting me. I’m raging high, standing still in the dark outside the laundry mat, looking across the way at a building that reminds me of an abandoned one in God’ Country.
I’m here in this place, again, this place, I remember, but don’t remember, can’t quite remember. It felt like the building was accusing me, confronting me, insisting a day of reckoning.
_I will be here long after he’s grown old and died,_ it said, referring to House, who had stepped out to check on me. And I thought back at it: _Okay._
(next morning) Woke up high.
It’s like how Picasso says true drawing is one in which the object is drawn from at least three angles in the same drawing. That’s what my eyes are doing. Everything physical comes sharply into focus, then shifts, then turns, then goes back to the first way of looking at it.
It’s timeless in this place, where the building was accosting me. I don’t know how far into that place I have to go before the reckoning is complete. All I know is that this place is between me and me getting my Life back.
I read the part of the Invisible Man where he is high and runs into the old woman. He asks her what freedom is. She says she don’t know, but figures it’s when you can hear your true voice in your head.

__________

　
I’m in the throes of one high after another:
Everyone’s pretending. The two words just keep reiterating themselves in my mind, over and over.
That’s how an UnReal world and a Real one can exist simultaneously. The main reason other human beings began pretending and then forgot in order to escape their pain was because their pain was rooted in crimes they had committed.
Like how I had killed Tre___, my best friend when I was little. But I don’t want to remember that all the way right now.
The high has my mind spinning: They massacred each other, fought thirty years long wars, they murdered each other supposedly for ‘the gods’. Religion is the ultimate form of pretending. That’s why religion became so strong back then, during that part of history when we stopped sleeping with savages.
Savages were the next step after animals that humans evolved to. But savages were like a cross between Apes and Humans, they all fell within the two extremes.
It was the Celts, my ancestors, who had to pretend the most, because they had committed the most crimes. They thought it was so great to be ‘evolved.’ The Native Americans on the other continent had seen it the opposite way, they saw how the world was already dying, just like everything else in Nature.
Everyone was very Soul like back then, because their life expectancy was still so short, only it was longer than before, but most were going to the side of the Devil or going to the side of the Religious Pretender, few were going to the side of the Soul.
(That’s why Devils go to Hell, because they choose to die and get orgasmic that way. When they die their soul actually does die. Huh.)
(This is why nerds -- the really really smart kids -- love comic books, because those crazy stories with groups of people call ‘The Religious Pretenders’ or ‘The Devils’ actually have an inherent strain of truth in them.)
With each new person I deal with while being high, I think, _Do they suspect?_ But then it turns out they just wanted to tell me about how many times they had to stick their battle buddy before they could draw blood with the IV needle, or they wanted to tell me how long it’s been since they’ve taken a sh-t, now that this side of the pond‘s food is so different.
I recognized the feeling of relaxation in my shoulders from the morphine trip I was on that first night in the hospital.
Everyone’s just pretending. It’s so obvious when I’m high, and see all three angles of them at once, but I don’t understand why they’re all pretending. I’m not pretending, and don’t want to be a pretender. I’m Real, and would rather die than be otherwise -- that’s why you’re here in this place, I think to myself, that’s why you have to see that they’re all pretending.
(night) It got old. Just turned into a list of symptoms. Will you remember? I wonder to my self. Will you remember this time, so you won’t have to get high again? Just remember that they’re all pretending, remember it until you can recognize it when not high.
(next morning) Still high, off one dosage of 16 pills. It’s been days.
Went to lunch with House, this time at an American fast food court instead of the chow hall. _You got to be careful with that stuff, man._ he said. _Weed -- you can be high for days and still always come back down -- but that stuff you’re on, it doesn’t work that way. You go too long and you’ll never go back down._
It actually was starting to freak me out, how long it took to come back. I would look in the mirror and try to do it with mental vibes: Come back come back come back godd-mmit, Let me go. Let me go. I’ll Remember this time.
Ralph Ellison is home in this place. The timeless place. He’s in this place but he’s not inebriated. He’s here along with his Western-conditioned mind, reconditioned back to Reality.
It feels like whenever I get high I’m taking a class -- Topic Unknown.
Along with the building accosting me there are things -- a wooden bench, the leaves from a tree, the rocks in the grass. All implying that it was me doing it, that I was what was wrong, because of how I see myself. You can only see the world truly when you see yourself truly. The building, the bench, the leaves, the rocks, they said: _And vice versa._
I wanted to sit inside. We were at the laundry mat. _You’ve got to be careful, man,_ House was explaining to me. _All this stuff you’re getting high on, it’s all illegal. You get that? And the closer we get to home, the more illegal it is. You got to understand this. All this is illegal._
It’s like the whole world is dead already. Something about Ellison’s book. Something I can’t quite understand but can see clearly when I’m high.
The building, it was accosting me in the Soul Place. What does that mean, the Soul Place, what the f-ck does that mean?
It was like the high kept implying it could be better. That this was just a hint. I know because of June 1^st that I could only get the affects of the high, without actually being high, by getting my mind right.
The Secret History by Donna Tartt alluded the kind of situation I’m in now, shifting but not asleep, shifting to the point of reckoning with insanity. Shifting used to be about dreams and sleep and the wake-world. Now I’m shifting while not asleep.
I just didn’t want to do any damage, either sexually or incidentally. I can’t remember why this is so important to me. I remember the supposedly innocent ignorance of all the social workers, the concerned citizens, the church goers, walking in and out of my life.
_So you’re done with that stuff now?_ House asked me.

__________