She looked better than she had before she’d gone -
the third employee from my workplace to spend time in a mental institution since October - she looked happy, looked like she’d been losing weight and was actually taking time to worry about the whole ‘personal hygiene’ issue.

She said she was happy, she said that now she only needed to look into her daughter’s eyes and that was all she needed - a young girl, twenty-two maybe, sweet in her own way, the sort of person that, in a just world, should be another uncomplicated and happy spirit -
she said she was happy; but she didn’t stop talking there.

Her utterances were only a step up from word-salad, not half-baked thoughts, this was barely warmed mysticism - music as the universal glue, the need to listen to the ‘right’ music, admonishing that I and one of my friends understood because we had the fire inside, everyone has the fire inside - and as the words piled up, as she kept wandering off from her desk to find someone who would listen and understand, the unhealthy glow of her eyes became more and more evident.

I think she knew that she was losing her audience, and she tried to explain; she told us that they’d tried to reprogram her, she said -

“I’m not the anti-christ, I just believe in self-fulfilling prophecies.”

And then back into music - “You have to listen to the music” - “My friends are teaching me the history of rock ‘n’ roll.”

A tragic figure in a doorway, convinced that she’d seen something important, some lesson had arrived in her life and she only wanted to share. The trouble was that she couldn’t, not effectively at any rate; what came out was flushed and fevered, in a fervor she tried to make us see - sadly she just came off insane.

At first it was funny; you have to have a certain, somewhat twisted, sense of humor to survive in my job, and this image of the young girl spouting quasi-mystical gibberish was the perfect distraction from the monotony of work. It turned tragic fairly quickly, when I caught the conviction in her voice.

She sang on the porch at break, loudly -

“I’ll just sing, I don’t care what anybody thinks”

- she sang. But in the midst of the fervor you caught the smell of fear, saw it clearly in her wide and uncomprehending eyes.

Drugs took her there, I know not which, although I suspect some strange combination of mushrooms and meth, mushrooms because she’d told me about those, meth from the behavior leading up to her intake at the institution. As I played about with facts and speculation, I thought of all those fringe characters I’ve known thru the years, chasing premature enlightenment with substances long claimed to cleanse the doors of perception: I thought of the half-mystic image/idea/dreams that form the patterns of my belief; if that is not too terribly strong a word to use for this fragmentary collage that I use as a quilt on terrible evenings;

I thought of the revelations that wove the quilt; I thought of all the places I’ve been, all the things I’ve seen, and the things that took me there

i’ve put in some time out of mind
i’ve read my Castaneda, and McKenna
and maybe that’s ultimately the difference
maybe it’s the fact that i have been as far out of my head as I ultimately feel the need to go, and have always stood guard against the knowledge that the mind has been known to be fragile; maybe it’s because I took my walks out to the periphery with some specific sort of goal in mind; maybe it’s because I was doing something other than just running or looking for kicks; maybe it’s because I was blessed with an upbringing that has allowed me to assimilate all manner of odd and occasionally contradictory input;
maybe i’ve just gotten lucky.

I don’t recommend that anyone do drugs. (I state that knowing full well that for most of you reading it’s probably a closed issue, and that a good solid chunk can relate to the sweats and a shuddering spine) I have my list: I’ll never try heroin, cocaine (in any form) or methamphetamines, I’ll never again take a pain pill unless I’m actually in pain (it goes on, but that’s ultimately irrelevant.)

But I also know that some portion of my person has been formed - - -
I know that I’ve learned things - - -
Ok look; there is something out there that you can really only see, and experience (ok, well maybe the eastern mystics did it, maybe Christ or Muhammad got it, and maybe even right now there is someone in the world who simply sees it as it is [all i know is that the closest i’ve ever come to seeing the world as a place of exquisite symmetry was when i was {just fucking say it} hallucinating] but if that’s true, what does this say about the world, and what does this say about us) on drugs.

Work yesterday passed as a series of flurried conversations regarding behavior: the gamut of opinions was represented, from scornful mockery to genuine concern. All she wanted to do was explain something that had moved her; flush with a revelation that felt terribly important, she played the fool and invoked the retribution which awaits everyone who wants to speak the truth.

i don’t think she’s crazy
i think she saw something that she wasn’t prepared to see
maya (two links in that one)
split open a crack
and the essence smiled

which is something some people are simply not prepared to see

I drove past her on the street today, pushing her baby in a stroller;
she looked happy.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006 at 10:04 pm and is filed under indiscriminate, music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.