The Fall King

 

I am the Fall King 

regal, autumnal 

covered in the 

reds and golds 

of sharp-shaped

leaves yet crowned

with rounded ones

that glow in 

the magic hour.

***

The Caves

In a cave I may already be dead,

prematurely placed under the 

earth to wander in darkness.

I’ve had a long held fear of

being buried alive, yet the 

cool silence called my name.

As a teen we explored one 

hidden under a tree on some

farmer’s land, lowered by a rope.

I wore snoopy sunglasses just

for fun, as if it wasn’t dark 

enough, proving nothing.

Another time it was water-

filled passageways, clinging

to the walls, my flashlight lost.

Yet we continued on with 

only one flashlight between us

suppressing a flickering fear.

And then that time of crawling

flat, the ceiling touching my back 

squeezing me out of existence.

But then in the end there was 

always the sun to return to 

and warm us back to life.

***

“Where the Ditches are Deep”

This was a fascinating case I saw in the hospital several years ago of a man in his 30’s who had no previous psychiatric diagnosis, but had likely suffered from a psychotic illness complicated by drug use for most of his adult life. He was unique in the sense that he used drugs to see “real things” which to me sounded like hallucinations and paranoid delusions. When these types of things occurred apart from drug use he took that as further proof of the objective existence of the things he was seeing and experiencing. It was enough that he was perceiving them for it to be true and in the story below he seemed to suggest that other people saw these things too.

***

In his own words: 

When I was a little boy my mother would invite people over and do drugs with them in our house. They would start acting weird. One guy would be peeking out through the curtains and say “there’s someone out there.” Another one would be on his hands and knees trying to pick things out of the carpet. I wanted to know if what they were seeing was real. So when I got the opportunity as I got older I started using all kinds of drugs to try and see what they saw. I was not trying to get high. I wanted to see for myself if what they were seeing and experiencing was real. I want to tell you about something that happened to me so you will understand.

I was in a barber shop with some friends, well it was a tattoo shop, and Homey had some spice. He took a hit and then passed it to me. I took a hit and then passed it to Walter who was applying a tattoo to a woman customer’s leg. He then passed it back to Homey. Something changed and I saw Walter’s face looking down in shock at the work he was doing as the tattoo lifted off her leg and evaporated like smoke. He was real shook up and laid down his inking gun. He left the shop quickly and I followed him because I had seen it too. It was real. I found myself outside in a dark place where the ditches are deep.

I walked down the street and turned right at the corner. From there I could see my Grandmother’s back porch and my uncle was sitting on it. As I approached he was looking at me but not saying a word. The door was open next to him as if he were waiting for me to go in. I walked into the house and it felt like a dark form had followed me in. My Grandmother became upset and said, “What did you bring in here with you?” I suddenly felt like I was a little boy again and was in trouble, like she was going to spank me or something.

Then I noticed her little dog and I saw it transform into a snake creature and rise up. It came at me and I put my hands together like a fist and smashed them down onto the floor. The mirror, a glass coffee table, and the picture frames on the walls shattered from the force. It was real. I saw it myself. My uncle grabbed me and tried to hold me, yelling “What is wrong with you?!”

***

The most striking thing for me in this story that he told was his description of the dark place where “the ditches are deep.” This seems to me to be a telling metaphor of someone struggling with mental illness - whether depression, anxiety, or the inability to distinguish reality from unreality. In my psychiatric residency at Walter Reed it was described to me by a young African-American woman on the inpatient psychiatric unit who said it was like being trapped in a nightmare where “I don’t know what is real and what is not real.” Everyone goes off the road at times but for some the consequences are significantly more catastrophic. The ditches are deep indeed.

Cries in the Library

 

The baying of a wounded beast 

is simply the peripatetic cries of

a child in this largish library.  It 

must be in the vaulted main hall

as it echoes and resonates then

winds through porous spaces of

of rows and rows of books lined

on metal and wooden shelves to

find me sitting at a table with a

copy of The Martian Chronicles.

I wonder at its wounding, what 

makes it cry so inconsolably.

Maybe a trip to Mars would set

the child at ease but I’ve heard

it’s not the kind of place to raise

your kids, in fact it’s cold as hell.

Well, maybe just a journey in the 

safety of one’s mind then, OK?

But the ability to read is still far

off in this unhappy child’s future.

***

Anne says “Write at least one page per day”.

A page of prose, just for practice.  Keep on writing, keep on writing, keep on writing.  Ok, that’s cheating but I’ve still got a long way to go.  Anne Lamott said I should do it and that’s enough for me, but she didn’t say how to do it exactly.  Well, she may have said something about using memories but I don’t remember exactly.  Ho boy, I’m in trouble.  

This brings to mind a line from STATION ELEVEN that I love dearly and hits deep: “I remember damage”.  By the way, I started a new paragraph and I’m not sure if that’s cheating because it creates a blank line with no words.  Oh well, on we go.  What damage can I remember?  

The first thing that comes to mind is when I was four years old and we were living in Knightstown, IN.  We had some people over from church and there was an adult male who I really adored for his warm smile and encouraging tone towards me.  I think he was a bit older than my Dad.  We were in the front living room on a couch with other kids, probably his kids, and I had the honor of sitting on his leg like a bench as funny things were being said, people were laughing,  and I was in the sweet spot of feeling loved and accepted.  And then it happened.

I unexpectedly let out a four year old’s fart which surprised me because I didn’t feel it coming.  This man’s expression went from warmth and humor to anger and disgust in a split second as he lifted me out of his lap, “Oh you stink!”.  It was so sudden and so shocking I felt tears welling up and I ran out of the room, devastated.  I just couldn’t believe he would respond like that.  I’d never even seen him frown before.

Maybe this was my first experience of the loss of innocence in a wider world.  Sure, I knew my Mom yelled and was upset with me A LOT, but this man was something different or so I’d believed.  Some time later as an adult I told this story to my Mom and she said “Well, you did fart in his lap”.  But even so, I think about how I would have handled that situation and I’d like to think I would have made it into something humorous; something that would not have embarrassed the child or made him feel bad about himself.  It’s important to keep in mind that young children are emotionally fragile to a great degree and look to us adults to embody a kind of goodness, positivity, and stability in the world, not going off half-cocked.

So that was a memory and one of several pre-kindergarten ones.  I’m still writing and the bottom of the page is getting closer but not as close as I thought it would be after sharing that memory.  Do I need to find a second memory?  How about the time I was three and our back yard flooded with about two inches of water?  The grass stood up straight with the  support of the water and made the most peculiar of sensations on my chubby little feet as I walk-waded through it.  I could see the sky and the trees reflected in it like a giant mirror laid out flat.  It was magical, but this was also the house that held a scene of horror and it was a house we did not live in very long.

It was a summer’s day and my Mom’s Mom was visiting us.  They were going to take my older sister to the store with them and I wanted to go as well.  I was at the end of the hall in the bathroom when I heard the front door close and realized I was being left behind.  I finished my business as quick as I could and then threw open the bathroom door and ran down the hall as fast as I could.  I made a hard left at the front living room and barreled towards the glass storm door.  I hit it hard with both hands and instead of it opening  the glass shattered and I flew through it and landed on the concrete porch.  They came running back to see what had happened and found me sitting there amongst the broken glass with my arms cut and bleeding.

So that was that and this is this: one full page of writing under my belt for today.  And now that I think of it there are numerous memories of me getting hurt growing up from any number of ill-conceived actions and misadventures, but that is writing for another day.  

One page!  Done!  Thanks to Anne Lamott and “Bird by Bird” for helping make it so.

***

The Pandemic Blues

 

September 2021

These are stressful times and people deal with stress in different ways.

For some it is basically intolerable and so denial is used in great measure to hide one’s self away.  “Ignore it and it will go away.”  The problem with this is that there are real dangers that will not disappear if we don’t look at them and pretend they do not exist.  This is how one potentially sleep walks off of a cliff.

With so much insecurity and uncertainty in times like these there are also those who look for absolute assurances and certainties to steady their boat (it’s very similar to denial in that they are mostly illusions we create).  Everything becomes black and white.  One must be all right while others are all wrong.  It is easy to become impervious to any counterargument or information that contradicts our chosen absolute narrative.  This seems to be particularly true when it comes to our present political divide.  

It can be reassuring, but it is also intellectually lazy and opens one up to being unnecessarily ignorant.  And in the case of a pandemic, possibly dead.

***

Reading Anne Lamott

 

The hat, the cup,

the letter to Mom

The iPad, the book,

the lack of some-

thing to say, can 

Anne lead the way?

“Bird by Bird”

that’s the word.

Something she said

or so I’ve heard.

***