Subject To Change Final by Maine College of Art

Subject to Change By Pat Dubis

Interior Posters

4-47

Beginning Middle End Bonus

4-15 16-27 28-39 40-47

Exhibition 48-56 Writings 57-89

Just want to take up this page to thank everyone who supports me emotionally and accepts me as I am in my divine, imperfect, humanness. I love you.

Beginning Poster One

Creating a list

of vocab, I started to get those creative juices flowing, and to start forming language around this project. Which, as of right now, my goal was to try to help people form skills around sense making in todays interconnected world. I had been researching Qanon, and post-truth philosophy to find out more about how people are processing the world around us.

“With no plan, and just a few photographs” The process on this poster was an interesting exploration into digital art making that I ended up continuing throughout this project. With no plan, and just a few photographs I broke down said photographs into transparencies and textures. I layered these over each other continuously until the proper ethereal, existential emotional quality was reached.

The self is an infinite

subject. This poster attempts to cause the viewer to question themselves and their place in the world. Hopefully causing them to see themselves as more than they were yesterday or the day before.

Final 12"x16"

Beginning Poster Two

My exploration

of truth continues but this time through a more typographic, experimental lense. I started with just the type exploration then created some visuals that I later layerd over the type. Reading

more about post-truth made me realize that most people believe that post-truth is largely a negative thing. However, because of my experience with my mental differences, I started to develope a differing opinion. Maybe by

accepting our descent into post-truth, we can more quickly develope skills, and ways of thinking that don’t perpetuate the more negative sides of post-truth reality. Commonly seen in conspiracy theory groups like Qanon.

Demonstrating the two

differing sides of truth, the final poster is a two sided piece. This idea of lifting up and looking behind print pieces would carry through to the end of the project in the form of my exhibition.

Final 12"x16"

Beginning Poster Three

With a similar

theme to my previous poster I wanted to demonstrate the looseness of truth and the fact that truth could change at the drop of a hat. All it takes is one new discovery that nullifies all of our previous beliefs, catapulting us into a new reality. For many, that discovery of a brand new reality is being made everyday thanks to the internet and the multitude of “facts” to choose from on the internet. Using the same repetetive, digital collage visual language, I communicate this extreme dissemination of information and the subsequent collapse into chaos because of this. In the age of man made dominance over nature, returning to the simplicity of symbiosis with our planet is of the utmost importance to counteract this chaos of competing truths.

“All it takes is one new discovery that nullifies all of our previous beliefs, catapulting us into a new reality.”

The final piece

demonstrates typographicaly my ideas surrounding truth, and the breakdown of truth into another contradicting truth.

Final 12"x16"

Middle Poster One

Ideas surrounding the

intersection between nature and human developent in the age of the Anthropocene is what this piece demonstrates. That being the point in human history where the line between what is natural and what is not becomes increasingly blurry. This is turning our world upside down, and causing a climate crisis as we all know.

“The New Religion”

is what the text on the white ribbons reads. It is a reference to Carl Jung’s proclamation in The Red Book. For me, in the context of this poster I’m suggesting a type of personalized, individualistic religion that promotes self growth and exploration. This being the point of Carl Jung’s Red Book. By doing this self work, and becoming more conscious humans we might be able to save our planet. At this point in my process for this

project I’ve gone off the rails and entered a space similar to the space I create while making these posters. I don’t know where things are going, and there’s something exciting in that.

“At this point in my process for this project I’ve gone off the rails” Final 12"x16"

Middle Poster Two

As I went further

off the rails I started to explore the concept of “the mystery” which is brought up a lot in Christianity even though the basic philosophy of “the mystery” has been lost to most Christians. It is about realizing the

sheer infinite in everything, how there is so much we don’t know, and knowing the wonder in that. The spiral pattern is an example of a fractal found in nature. It is infinitely repeating, and a symbolic representation of the endless process of living. All of us are metaphorically walking down this spiral, toward the mystery of the unimaginable.

“... how there is so much we don’t know, and knowing the wonder in that.”

In my process for this

specific poster I needed a way to make it appear less flat so I layered the photograph, below, over my composition. This gave the poster a great texture, as well as some depth found in the shadows of the photograph.

Final 12"x16"

Middle Poster Three

The journey

through this poster was a long one. I couldn’t quite figure out what I wanted to talk about for a while but eventually landed on the Japanese phrase, mono no aware ( 物の哀れ) vaguely meaning awareness of impermanence, or an empathy toward things.

Impermanence is topic that interests me a lot as it is universal and something we all share in equally. Whether it’s natural or human made, it makes no difference. I wanted to demonstrate this concept through a chaotic landscape that is reminiscent to me of entropy. I think this poster is the most overwhelming

visually out of all of my posters. I think it’s because death and impermanence are such overwhelming as well as important topics to talk about.

物の哀れ

Appearing as if the space

depicted is being scratched, stretched, and torn apart, the final version furthers the concept of impermanence. It’s in your face and it’s loud, making it hard to ignore. Final 12"x16"

“It’s in your face and it’s loud, making it hard to ignore.” 26

End Poster 1

Changing it up

a little, I decided to make a couple posters horizontal just for variety. The process going through this poster was also a long one. I left and came back to this a number of times because I was never quite happy with it. I eventually landed on a version I was satisfied with though. Content wise, this piece is about how all moments blend into one another, and how the past and future doesn’t exist. It’s all the same moment. Happiness won’t be found in the future because once you get to the future it’ll be now. What everyone seems to be looking for, at some metaphysical level, can be found right at this moment. Though it is easier said than done.

Emotional type,

and the blending together of two different environments are featured. Through this, I highlight my own struggle with staying in the moment with the knowledge that nothing else exists other than now.

“all moments blend into one another,”

Final 16"x12"

End Poster 2

In this next horizontal

poster collage I wanted to talk about how little of the universe we can actually interact with, and how little we know in general. Rumi, a 13th century poet and mystic said, “You are not a drop in an ocean, you are the entire ocean in a drop,” And with that, this piece becomes a kind of paradox, because even though we can only observe a droplet of the universe. As Rumi said, inside that droplet is also the whole entire universe. This is because the patterns and intelligences that construct our world are present across everything seen or unseen.

Now, visually

I wanted to make this piece a little bit more calm than the others while still staying the same general aesthetic range. Different natural environments blend into each other, showing everything is connected by

the evolutionary intelligence present in all things. The type is less experimental and the hierarchy is fairly simple making this piece a kind of oasis away from all the chaos of my other work. Final 16"x12"

End Poster 3

Taking the longest to

create, this is one of the more important posters to me personally. It is about me, and my emotions surrounding my mental differences. Those differences caused me to experience psychosis for the first time two years ago. Since then I’ve struggled with delusions, as well as other issues stemming from that initial break from reality. This created a very deep seeded fear of insanity within me that I wanted to express with this piece Now that I’ve been able to talk out my fears to a therapist, I’ve been able to move past this fear of being crazy. I did this through analyzing internal conditioning from society and culture that taught me that experiences out of the ordinary are unacceptable and that because I experience reality a little differently from most people, I’m a danger to them. This was internalized ableism and since working through this conditioning I’ve actually become more confident in myself than I was even before my psychotic break.

The piece talks about my fear

of insanity, as well as the extreme invalidation that comes with that label. It shows old pictures of myself before my break, with the darkness of my mental illness closing in around them. The dead bird shown, represents change and the terrifying death of a previous version of myself. The eyes represent an uncomfortable self-awareness in my role as the observer, observing the disintegration of who I thought I was.

At this point I realized

that all of my posters so far have stemmed from my initial experience of psychosis and the real life lessons I’ve acquired through attempting to work through my complex problems. From this place in time

in the project I decided to make my thesis as a whole about my experience with psychosis, my engagement with my mental illness, and how living in an interconnected digital era has affected that mental illness.

Final 12"x16"

“... the terrifying death of a previous version of myself.”

Bonus Poster 1

This piece is

about a persistent delusion that I experienced very strongly after my initial break from reality. Since working with a therapist, it has become less persistent and resides in the back of my mind only sometimes showing itself.

My initial plan

was that this was just going to be for me, and I wasn’t going to show it because it’s about a very personal topic. So, I didn’t document my process for this poster. However, I obviously changed my mind so I’m going to show what I can and talk about this a little more than the other posters.

At first it showed it’s face as a fervent belief that I had met my soulmate, the one person perfect for me. However, this didn’t line up with reality after verbalizing my overwhelming feelings to the individual. I didn’t lose the belief though. The delusion progressed into a more scary belief that I was telepathically communicating with her. At the time I felt like she was a part of psyche, and I expressed this with a drawing shown on the bottom left. At that point in my personal development I was still scared to ask for help so this continued for a long time. It eventually culminated into a breaking point where I thought I merged consciousness with the individual becoming something new, with no memories of who I was

before. This only lasted a few minutes but was very terrifying none the less. That experience triggered me to finally get help after struggling with my delusions for a good two years. Getting help allowed me to build up new understandings of the individual in my head. One of those understandings is the concept of the Anima, which Carl Jung came up with and is what this poster is ultimately about.

The poem by T.S. Elliot was sent to me by Claude while I was working on the poster. I added it because I thought it related to my thinking at the time. This line jumped out at me, “That is not at all, That is not what I meant at all.”

Final 12"x16"

The Anima is defined by

Jung as the female aspect of the male psyche however I redefined it for myself as ones idealized perceived opposite present in the psyche. It’s a universal archetype, one that is subconsciously present in each of us but for me became conscious through my mental difference. For a time I engaged with the delusion under this understanding but I eventually moved away from perceiving my delusion like this. It just didn’t feel quite right for me at least. When the delusion rarely pops up nowadays, I just observe it as it is and it eventually leaves my mind. A little more simple.

Depicting a kind of mental

landscape, of chaotic layers and textures. At its core this piece is about trying to uncover the true nature of my delusion through just throwing ideas at a wall and seeing what sticks.

Bonus Poster 2

Starting out as an

attempt to do a more positive piece in order to counterbalance the other more emotionally heavy pieces. This final poster ended up being about a topic, that I think about a lot. That

being duality, black and white, as well as what’s in between the black and white. I collaged, and edited until I got that pinwheel shape, and from there I pretty easily created a yin-yang type image which made me go down the conceptual rabbit hole of duality. I then decided to make this poster without typography in order to better communicate ideas surrounding duality by showing instead of telling.

“It is near impossible to completely understand this chaos” 45

Being an attempt

to show how duality works, the two circles show the very simplistic black and white understanding of the world. An example being that there are bad guys, and then there are good guys with very clear

boundaries between the two of them. However if you look in between the black and white you find complete chaos. This is the true nature of reality as I understand it. It is near impossible to completelyunderstand this chaos but it is possible to observe

it objectively. Then from this place you might get glimpses into seeing order where before you saw chaos. This is called non-duality and at a deeper level within this poster, it is what I’m attempting to communicate. Final 12"x16"

Exhibition Process

As ideas swirled

around in my head, I decided on what I was going to do for my final exhibition. I was going to collage my posters on a wall and attempt to get the viewers to physically interact with the wall by lifting up and looking behind posters, removing posters, or ripping posters. Doing this would uncover various secrets which at this point was just writing. My hope was that as people explored my work, they would get to know me more as a person, creating a connection. Something that I struggle to make with people partly due to my mental difference and social anxiety. My delusions of telepathy and merging consciousness could be seen as just an attempt by my brain to make a connection with anything even if it’s fake. Connection is the most important thing, and it is something that people who experience psychosis in general struggle with. Just because we feel and know that our experiences are very difficult to understand.

For me all I wanted for a

long time was just to be understood which is impossible even for people who don’t experience psychosis. No one knows what it’s exactly like to be you, and by working through this issue I came to terms with that fact. Instead of wanting to be understood completely, I decided to shoot for my own complete acceptance of myself as I am. That desire led me here, to talking about my mental illness and past openly. In hopes that by being myself through my art I can accept myself a little more.

And hey, everything I just

said doesn’t mean that attempting to get to know people is pointless just because you can’t get to know them completely. I’m pretty sure physicists (the good ones at least) are aware that they will never fully understand the universe. It doesn’t mean there’s no benefit into trying to understand the parts you can reach. Creating a connection is beautiful no matter how small or large. This all might seem terribly obvious but it wasn’t that clear to me for a super long time.

In my process for this

exhibition, I began expanding my materials to include this clear paper. I also began experimenting with prompting people to interact with it.

Expanding the materials

even more, I added different weights of paper as well as more writing, QR codes leading to music, and stickers.

“Creating a connection is beautiful no matter how small or large.” 52

Within the final exhibition,

I chose to simplify the interaction portion a lot. Removing the QR codes, and keeping it completely analog (except for the Ipad) makes the viewer stay with the exhibit. longer. As a lot of my writing I included in the exhibition was also present in this book, I opted instead for a lot more hand written notes taken from my journal in order to make the writing less redundent. The stickers I created were also removed only because aesthetically they were less succesful than the posters. So, instead I sprinkled in a lot more loose posters for participants to take home.

Attacking this more like

a paper sculpture collage I tried to make as many interesting shapes with the different kinds of paper as possible. Creasing, twisting, folding, and rolling the paper allows them come off the walls, adding dimensionality. A lucky aspect of the space I was given, is that there’s an air ventilator directly above it blowing out air onto my pieces. Making them wave in the wind, subsequently making the exhibit more dynamic and drawing more attention to it.

“Creasing, twisting, folding, and rolling the paper allows them come off the walls”

Writings Poems, essays, and stories. Things I’ve written from Jan 2021 to May 2021.

Rotten Fruit This is one of the many autobiographical perspectives that describes my experience from August 28th 2019 to Now. I wrote this mostly for myself in an inspired, manic state. I wanted to go through in writing the events and perspectives of my life these past couple years. It was healing for me to do this, and although I think I would change a lot of what I wrote I want to keep it how it is. I think some of my mental differences, or mental illnesses show through and I think that’s interesting. As well as uncomfortable.

It was late august

and I took a train to Portland to visit some friends. I had a backpack, and my skateboard. Getting off the train, I began to walk to my friend’s apartment building. I would have ridden my skateboard but my backpack was throwing me off balance. I felt like a poser carrying the skateboard under my arm. On the way I met a homeless man who had some nice leather boots, I didn’t ask him where he got them from. I regret that. I gave him a granola bar, which he told me he’d have for dinner later. I wished him well and went on my way. Continuing my walk, I felt a sense of the archetypal pilgrimage. Muslims, at least once in their life, must make the journey to Mecca. (Oddly synchronistic considering the name of our school.) However, this is just the external appearance of an internal spiritual pilgrimage. What would my personal, modern day pilgrimage lead to? That night, on the eleventh floor of an apartment building looking out a window, a heat lighting storm was occurring. Watching the blue lightning streak across the sky I felt a sense of something beyond myself. Beyond my control. Beyond anyone’s control. I asked my friends if it was okay if I took some LSD, 58

which they were okay with and agreed to watch over me as I did it. This decision would have a way bigger impact on myself and my life than I expected. This trip was by no means my first rodeo. I was confident, and took 3 tabs, 80ug each. The beginning was extremely uncomfortable as my body released pent up anxiety. The ceiling was an infinite, boiling ocean seemingly symbolizing all my anxiety that was now coming to the surface but other than that everything else was quite normal. It was reality as I knew it, and it was uncomfortable. Social anxiety filled my mind, what were my friends thinking about me? I remember resting my head on my friends shoulder for a split second before anxiety pierced through my brain. Quickly lifting my head from their shoulder, I felt awkward and delirious. I couldn’t speak. My friends went to bed and as I hugged one before they departed, my intense social anxiety dissipated. I began to relax and remembered that my friends cared about me. I looked out the window, at the sky and city below me. Planes were continuously coming in and out of the Portland airport, they’re lights blending into and becoming one with the dancing starry night sky. A smokestack blew out smoke into a swirling pattern, as I blew out smoke inhaled from a pipe stuffed with cannabis. I felt something click within me, a connection was made that wasn’t there before and it was realer than anything I have ever experienced. In my ego disillusioned state, I felt my consciousness as a part of the whole collective consciousness of the world. Truly indescribable but the fun of indescribable things is describing it. I was that smokestack, I was the stars in the sky, and I was the plane taking off into it. I felt myself as just a slice, and as the whole at the same time. I felt God or the Universe as myself and it spoke to me. I was on top of The Mountain looking down at my whole entire life, past, present and future. The Universe was now conversing with me through my mind. It had been with me my whole entire life I realized, and it had been leading me to this moment. The only moment. It answered my questions about life, and I was satisfied with each and every answer. (I don’t remember much about what it told me) I felt a love like no other, I felt confident, and I felt anxiety free for the first time in a very long time. I knew everything was going to be okay. I texted my Mom, “I’ve fallen in love with the world, so I’ve fallen in love with myself.” she 59

responded with, “That’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever said.” Many strange things happened that night and the days that followed. Almost too many to remember. I didn’t sleep that night, and as the LSD faded from my system something remained. A state of consciousness that I had gained which was separate from the LSD. Whatever I perceived, I felt an enormous amount of love, the sky, a random person on the street, my friends, a coffee cup, and music that I normally didn’t listen to. I was hanging out with a group of people, and as I felt my social anxiety bubble up again I watched it for the first time. I looked around at the group of friends and perceived their different energies intuitively. I saw us as a whole, social organism each individual with their own social role and I saw my own. I became comfortable in myself for the first time in my life, and I recognized my “role” as an introverted listener. My social anxiety dissipated as I realized this, and I enjoyed being my true, quiet self for the first time in a long while. I was no longer trying to force myself to be like my extroverted friends. This strange state of consciousness stayed with me for days, and I describe it as true unconditional love mixed in with many delusional beliefs including that I had access to all human collective knowledge. I slept every other night and barely ate thinking that my body had become so efficient that I just didn’t need as much food or sleep as I used to. The healthy confidence I had slowly turned into a delusional overconfidence. I made up stuff on the spot, and became obsessed with the number 3 saying that, that was the secret I had uncovered. I projected my experiences onto others and believed that everyone was having the same experience I was. When I realized that my experience was isolated, I began explaining it like Plato’s Cave. I had escaped the cave metaphorically, and no one around me would or even could understand me because they were still in the cave. This led to an argument with my friend, where I was being admittedly a little condescending toward him (okay, maybe very condescending) saying that he would eventually experience what I experienced. Basically saying that I’m the goal. Which he retorted with, “Pat, you broke your brain.” He refused to acknowledge my delusional belief that my consciousness had risen to the highest level and for that, in hindsight, I am eternally grateful for. 60

I internalized my friend’s rational fear very deeply. From that point onward I began to come crashing down to the earth though I don’t think I ever truly came down completely. I began to realize that the general perception of this experience was that I had lost my mind. I was crazy now, and I could never take that back. The very beautiful, personally meaningful experience faded and was replaced with the overwhelming, socially driven fear that I had permanently broken my mind. I talked to my doctor at the time about this experience briefly, and she told me that I had probably just experienced a psychotic break. She recommended I see an addiction counselor which I laughed at, knowing that LSD was the opposite of addictive and was actually showing promise in treating addiction in a lot of early trials. Though you can definitely abuse LSD I believe I was using it responsibly at the time. Anyways, she also recommended that I see a psychiatrist which I repressed immediately. I became the LSD horror story that we all hear about but honestly it wasn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. The horror story narrative didn’t feel complete to me. At the same time, the story that I had become “enlightened” didn’t feel complete either. So here I was with a broken brain, that could now talk to the Universe as well as other entities anytime I wished, that felt other people’s emotions as my own, that got hints about the future that actually came about, and that was terrified that I had gone crazy. I didn’t entirely believe that I was enlightened and I didn’t entirely believe that I was crazy. I was in a limbo between one truth and another. I had lost any sense of concrete reality, and had entered one devoid of any objective truth. I could describe it as The Void. Back then I was friends with a talented visionary, who entered my mental space and told me she found me alone in an infinite field of darkness. The Void back then was a lonely, disconnecting place of divine, ego driven specialness. Part of me was still on that delusional peak, with no one around. No one to relate to, and no one to talk to except for the entities in my head. I had a delusion an individual was my soulmate, someone who I could connect with completely. Something that didn’t line up with reality at all after talking with the individual about it, and something that ended up sending me even further away into The Void. Who knew enlightenment could be this depressing. I held onto the 61

hope that they would come around to me eventually for a very long time. I think at a certain level this delusion helped me in many ways. “Even if it’s a lie, it doesn’t mean that it can’t be a beautiful lie” is the way I think about it now. From the point of my “soulmate” rejecting me I started to become very isolated, and had many doubts about my experience, myself and reality. I went through the entirety of my junior year and the first half of my senior year trying to get out of this place by myself. I kept up with school to the extent I always had, and no one was the wiser. My parents didn’t know I had “lost” my mind, I told very few people, and was terrified of judgment. I began a journaling practice to catalogue my experiences, and through this I began to piece back together my mind. I engaged in my delusions about my fake soulmate and through this engagement I learned a lot about romantic relationships. I began to realize that expecting a new or potential partner to be perfect is extremely unfair to that individual, but I think this is something we all do to an extent. How can you expect someone to be perfect when you yourself aren’t? I began to unlearn a lot of conditioning that was put on me by society and previous, toxic romantic relationships. I began to value freedom, where before I found myself consumed by jealousy. I began to value unconditional love, where before I couldn’t help but pick apart the faults in my partner. External beauty became less important to me, and I learned that growth, not perfection is something to be sought after. How strange it is I somehow learned how to better myself through my delusions. The scariest self help book out there. Despite this, the fear that I was insane slowly consumed me. Culminating into a breaking point where I forgot who I was and thought I had merged consciousness with my previously mentioned “soulmate”. This wasn’t the case and was an extension of this desperation within me to connect to someone intimately, to be understood. After this experience I broke down and called my Dad telling him that I had been experiencing psychosis, and was probably schizophrenic. I explained to him briefly what had been going on with me and after some very uncomfortable conversations with both my parents I began to receive professional help. Though at this point I had realized that modern psychology had gotten something wrong about schizophrenia, or at least my schizophrenia. I knew 62

from my knowledge that I had gained from engaging in my delusions that there was something more here than just an illness that needed to be suppressed. My Mother really didn’t take this well, which I understand completely as she is a nurse. Imagine being a parent, and having your kid call you telling you that they think they have schizophrenia but they don’t want to take medicine for it. Terrifying. I found a good counselor who shared in my spiritual beliefs and told me I wasn’t alone in my experiences nor in the fact that I felt pharmaceutical medicine wouldn’t help me. Many individuals who have experiences bordering with schizophrenia do the exact same thing I do and think the way I do as well. In Carl Jung’s Red Book he catalogs his own psychotic journey through realms of symbolism, myth, and delusion. Something that I found all too familiar and comforting. I just want to be very clear here, that I don’t think every Schizophrenic is like me. Every individual is different. My symptoms are fairly mild, and non-violent. I can also function very well, which is really the most important aspect. Other individuals may actually hear real voices telling them they’re a piece of shit or to hurt someone. If that were the case with me I’d definitely take the anti-psychotic medicine but it’s just not. You could look at it like a spectrum between meaningful, spiritual experiences and the more classical schizophrenia symptoms that are extremely debilitating to people who have them. I am somewhere in between, bordering on schizophrenia, but also engaging in something that the DSM calls a spiritual problem. This category of spiritual problems was added by the transpersonal psychologists to stop the pathologization of meaningful spiritual experiences but sadly these are mis-diagnosed to this day. The problem with this, is that if a psychologist doesn’t believe in the validity of spiritual realms of existence then that whole spectrum I outlined above all becomes debilitating schizophrenia. “He’s just paranoid that the Universe is talking to him,” or “Why would the Universe talk to him? It’s just a grandiose delusion.” The individuals who invalidate these things have no knowledge of these consistent spiritual dimensions that we have been accessing for thousands of years. Many of my more meaningful experiences line up with the progression of awakening in Tibetan Buddhism. If I was born in India I would’ve gone to an Ashram 63

to study their spiritual traditions. If I was born in an indigenous tribe, I would’ve become apprenticed to their medicine man or woman. However I was born in America, where we are the masters of the universe, where we believe we can know everything through rationalism, where if it can’t be measured it doesn’t exist, where our recognized spiritual “masters” molest children, and where I’m labeled as a schizophrenic. So, what can I do but adopt the label? I’m a borderline schizophrenic. I believe in spiritual dimensions which literally anyone can access if they put enough time into it. Though I don’t think everyone should because of the risk of psychosis and the lack of proper spiritual infrastructure within America. You absolutely don’t have to believe what I believe and just for the record everybody is talking to the Universe all the time. What else could you talk to? So why do I think I know what’s going on more than some professional psychologists? Well, they don’t have the illness. Schizophrenia can only really be understood through direct experience. In this way it is very similar to psychedelics. Something I’ve learned is that if you mention you’re experiencing delusions, or hearing voices suddenly everything else you say is null and void. You as a person becomes completely invalid. So, why would a rational, materialistic psychologist believe someone who talks to the Universe and actually gets good advice? They wouldn’t and they would discount the advice too. Many spiritually minded borderline schizophrenics get traumatized by the rational mental health system because of this. Rather than being listened to, they’re told they’re crazy and being told you’re crazy when you have a fervent, logical belief based in a shared, though not often accessed reality, is traumatizing! It’s professional gas lighting. I’m very clear minded most of the time, although I do get dunked into delusion sometimes, I come out of it. I analyze it using the skills I’ve learned over time, I learn, and I move on. There are nuggets of truth within my delusions to be harvested, like the little circle of yin in the yang. Truthfully I couldn’t come close to the knowledge that psychologists have about how to engage in talk therapy effectively, or about all the different mental illnesses. I couldn’t be a therapist. However professionals know next to nothing about schizophrenia and they really don’t know much about the brain either. They have no idea how Schizophrenia comes about, it’s all theory and most of the knowledge they do have comes out of an abusive mental health system that originated in the 40s. Where people who 64

experienced reality differently were persecuted no matter what the nature of their delusions were. The treatments back then were tantamount to torture. People with mental illnesses were seen as weak, and if you were found experiencing a delusion you would get beaten or lobotomized. Today the torture isn’t in the system, but the general disregard of valuable, meaningful human experience is. What helped me the most was just being able to talk to someone openly about what had happened to me, and the strange things I believed in. My counselor did that for me, and still does that. He affirms me, repeats what I say back at me and somehow I see it from a new light. Through him I began to learn to trust myself again, and though some days are worse than others I can say with confidence that I do trust myself. I am willing to admit where I am lacking in intellectual knowledge, something I learned from truly believing I knew literally everything. So, at the end of the day I know, I know myself better than any psychologist could ever even hope to know. I am a functional human being, who has their faults and places to grow in. I am capable of holding a job, and going to school. I’m scared of the future and what it might bring. I struggle! But the struggle is so, fucking worth it. I’m a wandering, pondering, beautiful, delusional, mystical, egotistical, trippy, newage hippie whose identity is ever changing, and who no words can ever truly describe. They say that you come to know enlightenment by its fruits, and though I don’t think I experienced true enlightenment, and though the fruits I received from it were rotten, the seeds were pure. And after planting them, a sprout has begun to grow. This is where I am now, with a little metaphorical sprout growing out of my head. If things get worse I’ll let you know, but right now they seem to be steadily getting better. Not in the fast, delusional way similar to the mania I described in the beginning but in the healthy way of incremental growth. My sprout could definitely wilt but if I’ve learned anything from being in the disconnecting, darkness of the Void. Friends are something to be cherished, and held onto because they are the ones that will water your sprout when you just can’t. One day at a time, one step at a time, one moment at a time. That’s all it takes and from my experience, the Universe takes care of the rest.

Lilies on the Mountain A Symbolic Story Once upon a time

there lived a boy, or was he a girl, whatever. They fancied themselves smarter than the rest, thought themselves good, and pure. Became obsessed with the unknown, and how it can become known through imagination of sorts. They would climb and climb and climb that mountain, seeing the world as it is. Imagining that this is how the people of antiquity saw, how they believed, and how they became. They sat on that peak for a week, a week of love, beauty, and grace. A week that they couldn’t explain even if they tried. How lovely, they thought, that I could find everything outside of myself within. How perfect, that my eyes have been cleansed in order to do the great work. How sublime, I hear the angels sing. They sang, it’s time to go now oh sweet, confused child, It’s time to see the mountain from below. A push from behind, an unknown source, tumbling down through the bushes and rocks. Landing at the bottom, they see the peak with themselves still on it singing and frolicking like a fool. While at the same time, bloodied and bashed. Now split in two. One forever on the peak, the other forever in the creak. Which is real, which is fake? This thought forever beats their mind, brutalizing, abusing, but out of love it promises. It’s the Universe! This must be part of it! I see now! They say, each time their head gets pulled out from underneath the water. A flogging of delusion, and a flogging of love all the same. Time to take 15, lunch break, Uncle Sam says stepping away from his flogging duty, throwing a towel to his victim. Dry off, eat a sandwich, get some coffee, have a cigarette but be back here at 12 sharp. Yes sir, they say. I’ve almost got it, just a little more time they mutter to themselves pulling out a cigarette with some weed in the tip. Just a little more, they light the end. 66

Uncle Sam laughs, shovelling potato salad into his mouth, when will that delusional man child learn, when will he realize he’s gotta give in to me at some point. He’s gotta get a job, get a wife, get some kids, meet that bottom line at a respected company. He’s gotta be afraid, he’s gotta be wealthy, he’s gotta be empty, he’s gotta be addicted. This is just how the world works, and if he’s not with it he’s out of it. He’s crazy, insane, deserves a shock through the skull, and a good two hour upside down spin in a chair hanging from the ceiling. Fucking freak, why can’t he be like the rest of us. Why can’t he be content? I’m going to hold him under the water for a few extra seconds next time around. They stamp the butt out on the ground, the slight high is the only thing that gets them to start walking back over to Uncle Sam. They glance up at the mountain that now feels so far away, they see themselves sitting and waving from up on high. Anger strikes the heart, the needle that pops the balloon filled with the poisonous gas of wrath. They grab a sizable rock and look at Uncle Sam. Another fantasy? Uncle Sam asks, what do you think will happen if you kill me. You need me the same as I need you. I need nothing they say, striking Uncle Sam in the skull, it crumpling like an aluminum can still filled with soda. They threw their pack of cigarettes on the lifeless body, and started climbing the mountain once again. Wrath still flowing through their veins, they took step after step until a pain in their knees started to come to fruition. They stopped to inspect them. A fungal rotting had started to take place, a decomposition of flesh. It smelled like lilies. They sat back, and thought of their other self on top of the mountain as their leg started to dangle and break off from their body. They slowly became numb to the pain by some grace of a god. Maybe dying isn’t so bad? They thought to themselves, since I am not really dying. I am still alive on top of that mountain. Every moment is a death of something, and every moment is the birth of something. From where I am, slowly becoming one with the ground where I lay, on the side of this gorgeous mountain in spring, death and birth seem awfully similar. Separation is the greatest delusion.

After the Rain Fiction?

It was a dark and stormy night,

and my life was about to be over. Betsy had just left me in a flurry, saying “I can’t do this anymore Ben,” and “You’re just not the man you used to be,” and “I can’t even touch you now, I loved you once but since this change began... I’m just not sure if I can go through with our marriage. I’m sorry.” That was that, and she left into the ominous, thundering night. I was alone, and what that woman said one month ago was coming into fruition. A quiet panic was starting to set in as I remembered the events from 30 days ago. I woke up one morning just ecstatic, the happiest I could be. I almost felt light, like I could float away into the clouds. The sun’s rays were shining on me, and I felt their warmth penetrate me. “Just what is this feeling,” I wondered, I had never felt anything like it. I looked out my window, and onto my 33 acres of beautiful, lush land. The caretakers were planting thousands of white roses for my wedding in a month. The leaves on the trees swayed in the wind, rustling intensely, almost like the sway was them waving at me, and the rustling was them saying “Hello, beautiful day isn’t it? It’s for you! It’s all for you!” slightly taken aback I realized with acute awareness that those thoughts were almost implanted in my mind. Almost like the trees were talking to me. “Ridiculous, I’m playing tricks on myself,” Suddenly I heard a scream, as if saying those words triggered something. A red rose hit the window where I was looking out of, dripping with blood, the wind forcing it against the glass. I stared at it for a moment, the blood streaking across the glass, and the sun shining through it. A red beam of light struck my face, dust dancing through it. I snapped out of the daze I suddenly found myself in, and looked out the window trying to figure out what had happened. Two caretakers were guiding one back to the main house. The one seemed to stumble as she walked. I quickly got dressed and went downstairs. 68

I found out a large gust of wind blew a rose from one of the caretakers hands, and the thorns streaked across another caretakers eyes rendering her blind. She was now sitting in a side room, wailing. I decided to go try to talk with her, and see if I could do anything to ease her suffering. I knocked briefly on the ornate, wooden door and entered. The wailing stopped immediately and I found the woman with a bloodied cloth covering her eyes seemingly looking right at me. I felt a deep uncomfortability, and a thought came bursting into my mind, “Run, run, run.” I ignored it, and pulled up a chair in front of her. I had to be a good employer in this situation. I spoke, “Hello, madame I must thoroughly apologize that an accident took place under my…” “HA, accident. You know what happened,” she seethed “It’s all your goddamn fault I can’t feed my children anymore, and you know it!” blood was trickling out from under the cloth. I didn’t know what to say, it was my fault? “How is it my fault a rose robbed you of your vision?” I asked her in a calm voice, my thoughts were racing. “Strings of fate, every decision you make affects everything else. Every thought you have affects everything else. Nothing was going to happen today until you came along, ignoring the trees. By night my profession is a fortune teller, and it seems that one type of vision was traded for another kind. My eyes were a beautiful brown that glistened yellow in the sun, I could look at a person’s face and tell them exactly what they needed to hear in that moment. Now I just see one thing. The deaths of everyone I know, including you.” She was almost screaming at this point, blood continually dripping down onto her white jumpsuit. “I curse you for this! I curse your life, and everything you have worked for. You will die in one months time, alone, cold, and remembering this conversation, you will recall what I am about to tell you… Sitting in my leather armchair, the rain was beating against the glass of a window across from me. The wind bending it slightly inward with each gust. My gas heat stopped working that day so I started a fire in the mantel. As I remembered what the blind woman had told me, a freezing sweat started to run down my back. I couldn’t move, I felt the shadow of death behind me and I was terrified. I remembered all the times I wronged someone, all the times I held back from paying my employees to save money, all the times I didn’t listen to my fiance. 69

Vividly an image entered my mind of a scene when I was 20 years younger in grade school, kicking a classmate of mine in the stomach over and over again. My friends and I were taking turns on the poor child that lay bruised on the ground. The bruised boy seemed to look at me in my thoughts, and said with lips moving in a ghostlike, ethereal fashion “The deed is already done, your fate is already sealed, the witches of time lost to memory are looking at you now through their shadowy crystal orbs. You will become adrift in the sea of experience never to return to the body you now know. Why didn’t you listen to the trees?” It seemed like the memory pulled me into it and I was now inhabiting the scene from 20 years ago. I was kicking the boy like I was really there, although I couldn’t control my body. I tried with all my might to stop, but I couldn’t. On the ground, the boy was laughing and coughing up rose petals between his hysterical cries of righteous pain. Or was it cries of joy? I wanted to cry, I wanted to scream and run away. It was like I was a runaway train going down the train tracks of my life. The sheer mental anguish led me to spring up from my leather chair, screaming and crying. Not even realizing I was back in my house 20 years later, I broke down on the ground. Crumpled in the shame of what I did. I held my head, kneeling on the floor. I squeaked out “What’s happening?” The sheer panic, and the mess of snot running out through my nose made it hard to breathe. Quick, shallow breaths, and the sound of my stuffy nose trying to take in oxygen were all I could hear for 15 minutes. “I’m a horrible person, I deserve death, the worst death in fact.” A log shifted in the fireplace and sparks flew up through the flume. The flying, red sparks almost looked like bloody rose petals as they drifted upward. I slowly walked over to the fireplace in a dazed stupor. “I should’ve listened to the trees, I should’ve listened to the trees.” Betsy was now driving back to the house, through the rain with a psychiatrist and a priest in tow. She wasn’t sure which to consult so she brought both. About a month ago, her husband to be had started talking about a curse of some sort that was put on him by one of their employees. He had become distant, and lashed out at her often. Betsy got a horoscope every day so she was aware that more goes on in this world than meets the eye, but she was also aware of psychotic 70

individuals who experienced illusions. Which is why, in the back of her Ford was a priest named Father Damien and a Psychologist who went by Mr. Mason. Father Damien remarked, “Classic possession case, I’d say. The victim gets thoughts almost put into their head, they become melancholic, and then they either end up killing themselves or someone they know. Quite simple really.” “That’s utter bullshit, there is a rational explanation for everything priest” Mr. Mason retorted “In the case of the psychotic, it is not a matter of some ambiguous force controlling them. It is probably just a case of the individual not getting enough attention when they were younger. I see this happen more with women than men as men have a stronger mental constitution. However it does happen with particularly weak men. Sadly, he will probably end up in a mental asylum. Tell me, Betsy, was your fiance raised by a female figure? His mother or grandmother perhaps?” Betsy half wanted to ram the car into a tree killing them all, but she refrained. “No, I don’t think he was.” “Ah well, how is he in bed then?” “My god, is this really relevant?” Betsy stated, very confused, scared and regretting getting any help at all. “It actually is!” Father Damien said like he had just figured out a puzzle, “Sexual activity before marriage opens one up to Satan, in fact living with each other at all before marriage could do the same.” He put that last part snidely. A groan from Mr. Mason sounded through the car, as they turned a corner onto Betsy and Ben’s private road leading to their house. In the distance they saw a light, and as they got closer they realized that the light was a fire dancing across the roof of their house. Betsy, seeing this sped up, tears starting to form in her eyes. “Please no, please no.” She whispered to herself frantically. The two men were silent. She slammed on the brakes as close as she could, the car slightly ramming into the front staircase leading into the house. She got out into the rain, sprinting to the hose by the garden subsequently dowsing herself completely. An unexpected sheer, clear focus took over her mind as she sprinted past the two dumb struck men up the staircase into her smoking house. Holding a handkerchief, also soaked, over her mouth Betsy ran through the now smoke filled mansion, searching for her fiance. The fire was on the upper floors, and she had a feeling this fire did not start by accident. She ran up the stairs, screaming “Ben! Ben! Ben! Where are you?” 71

I awoke from a strange dream to God’s tears pouring down on me through the open sky above. I attempted to move and couldn’t. Suddenly I realized the situation I was in with an acute clarity, the ceiling had collapsed on me, and I couldn’t feel my legs. The right side of my torso, head, and my right arm all felt like someone was slowly peeling away the layers of skin. All around me were flames, the only part that didn’t was where I found myself. It was like a hurricane of flames with the eye of the storm being me. The final words of the blind woman came into my mind... “This is how you shall die Ben,” She said, muddy spit flying out of her mouth and onto my face, “You will feel the flames of hell, but they will only touch you briefly. You will feel the weight of your actions in life, but they will not destroy you completely. These things will not kill you, what will is the fact that you will murder one who you love.” She broke out into a fit of hysterical laughter, “I’m seeing your face as you watch her die, it’s a lovely feeling this.” I got up intensely, pushing the wooden chair I was sitting in back a couple feet. I looked at her briefly with a wild look in my eye and walked out of the room hearing her laugh and howl with glee. As I remembered this, I also recalled that I was the one who started the fire. I knocked the hot coals onto the floor. “Ben!” I heard Betsy’s call faintly and felt my heart sink even lower than it was. “Please God, please unknowable father in heaven, kill me but spare Betsy. I love her with all of my filthy heart and soul. I love her so much!” Uncontrollable, hot tears streamed down my face differentiated from the cold rain from the heavens. Then a little girl in a school uniform was sitting on top of the debris which pinned me. She seemingly appeared out of nowhere, being no more than 7 years old. I couldn’t pin an ethnicity down on her, she seemed like she could be from any part of the world. Long black hair almost touched my nose, the smell of petrichor filled it. Her eyes peered into mine, and I saw the whole entire universe within hers. Galaxies upon galaxies inhabited her pupils, she smiled like the day and said calmly in a voice that could have been anyones, “Neither of you have to die, and I can heal the sickness in your mind.” I had no idea what to say, who was this? The only thing I could muster was, “Please, help us.” 72

“In order for me to do that, you must first recognize yourself,” A raving confusion consumed me, recognize myself? I know myself completely, I have for as long as I can remember. It’s a riddle, something within said. I couldn’t breathe because of the smoke, let alone think. “Ben!” Betsy’s voice was growing louder. I had to figure this out, I had to. Looking at the girls face, it seemed to shift from one person to another, never settling on an identity. She looked masculine at one point, and feminine at another. Her smile stayed the same. I looked into her face and for a brief moment I thought I saw my father. The scene from 20 years ago came rushing back to me, but I was not kicking the boy on the ground. I was the boy on the ground being kicked relentlessly by a steel boot. Inhabiting the memory fully I felt the sting of each kick, and I tasted the dry dirt on my tongue. I looked up and I saw the face of my drunken father and his friends. I pulled myself away from the previously sealed away memory with all of my might, and I was back into the burning room. The girl was still looking at me almost in an inquisical way now. I realized that I had never beaten that boy, and before this moment I loved my father for raising me with all my heart. For so long I had felt the enormous guilt of something I didn’t even do, for so long I hated myself, and for so long I had felt this weight that just now I felt fly away like a morning dove. I knew who this girl was, she was me. As I thought that, all at the same time the fires around me died, the girl disappeared as quickly as she came, and Betsy came flying through the door yelling “BEN!” Tearing through debris trying to get to the one she loved. I smiled, tears of relief were now rolling down my tired face alongside tears of excruciating pain. God had stopped crying at least and clouds above my head were parting, revealing a full, starry night sky. I started to close my eyes. I heard sirens in the distance and feeling an even deeper level of relief I started to slip into unconsciousness. I had survived.

Revelations of Isolation Poetry Within the loving ashes of my dear is the place I once called home. Within my life is a future I don’t know. Within time is the wonders of space, within a phoenix are the embers of my love. I don’t know how I got here but I did. I’m looking around and I see the world, I look within me and I see the world. Derivatives of this moment Cherries for lunch Many moments pass But none reach me I am lost in a blitz I am found the next morning With a headache and no paper to turn in Why do I do this? I ask myself. I know better, I can do better, I can be better. You can always be better always, better and better and better theres no fucking end to any of this. Theres no fucking end. Maybe everyone else is just better at life than me? Maybe my time here is limited by my stress and depression. I think I’m crazy. I know I’m crazy. Do I? Anyways … back to life I guess after this, procrastinating till I can’t disassociate any further away from the reality of my situation. It’s like getting cornered. You wake up one morning and you feel it, I’m fucking crazy. I’m fucking crazy. And It gets the better of you, but it’s not you. Or is it? I’m fucking crazy, I’m fucking crazy. I’m worried it’s really going to get the better of me one of these days, I’m worried 74

my life won’t last as long as I expect. I’m worried that tomorrow will come, with it’s trauma and revelries. I hope I get going along with my life, I hope I matter to someone. I hope if tomorrow does come, it comes with beer, I’d probably change my mind about it. Maybe I could even make friends with tomorrow. Maybe I could even make friends with you? I swear that’s all I want to do, then I get a glance. I think,”that glance was quite peculiar,” and it’s all downhill from there, suddenly everythings a sign. A sign for what? Loneliness I think, desperation? The remnants of a neediness that I am aware of yet can do nothing about but watch. Fuck off, it’s not me. I am left waiting for a moment that never comes, a feeling like I did something wrong and a knowledge that I’m fucking crazy, right? Is loneliness craziness? Is the wind my breath? Is thinking about you late at night a sin? I’m creepy. And self-aware, how do you pull that off? Oh you know voice in my head, I’m fucking crazy. The wind of my thoughts are loud. Is anything a sin? Does anything matter? Does the living ghost of your past self make you angry? Do threes make you uncomfortable? I’m running from something, what is it? I’m running toward something too I stayed up all night and listened to the wind howling It rattled the windows, and lifted the trash bin lid Slamming up and down like an experienced percussionist I’m running from something, laying in my bed listening to this Eyes wide open, trying not to think about tomorrow or the day after Day after day of complete and utter bullshit day after day of coming in and out of delusion. Now it’s night and I can’t hear my own god-self I haven’t meditated in two days I haven’t masturbated in one It’s morning now I smoked pot and drank last night instead of writing a paper I listened to Allen Ginsberg, and Alan Watts I laughed, and I was moved Why is that bad? Why am I guilty? Why should I be in a pit of my self pity 75

Am I mad? A 2 year old question yet to be answered for me One that everyone has asked themselves at least once One that beats my mind everyday Why does it hurt me so? Why does it matter if I am mad? Madness comes for us all in our dreams Madness in a way is like death Death in a way is like life Life in a way is madness It’s that chaos that can’t be controlled That love that can’t be bound That un answerable call for meaning In a world devoid of it or at least that’s what They want us to believe Meaning with any real depth is outlawed Ostracized, it’s the real madness to them It’s seeing this moment as greater than the last When it’s all the same moment. It’s always been great, even in the pits of death greatness can be found. That’s real meaning! If you can see it in death You can see it anywhere Where is the meaning in scrolling through Images that only make you angry? Where is the meaning in reading words of Tragedy when you know for someone else they’re comedy? Where is the meaning in reading words of Comedy when you know for someone else they’re tragedy? It’s in there but it’s not the meaning you’re looking for Its roots are in love, but it bares its teeth in hate Esoterically its all love Exoterically its all meaningless So and so SLAMS so and so, 76

Watch now to see how and why But you won’t be satisfied So you watch another, read some more about another issue Maybe that one will show you what you’re looking for Maybe this one will get you so mad you’ll do something about it So you go out and you get mad at someone else who’s also mad For the opposite reason though Screaming at each other, spit flying. True love I think it is You go home thinking, wow that was meaningful I really made a change today, in myself and in the world I’m a better person because of my actions today So the world is a little bit of a better place too What makes you think the world wants to be a better place? Fuck off, its all a dream we all wake out of one day It’s just a layer though, in the infinite onion of the universe Mother earth is just one step along the way She loves us, she’s always here She isn’t angry She’s a patient broad, she knows we’ll all kill ourselves in 50 years Then in another 1000 things will be more or less back to when we weren’t on the planet She knows this, she’s not angry She accepted her death about 4.5 billion years ago when she was born She’s just concerned for us, is the deal Imagine having a 4.5 billion year old sugar momma She’s just worried about us, wants to give us some meaning if we’re open to it She’s experienced too, not into that drama shit the younger planets are into Sure they may be boiling hot, and flowing with magma But can they give you advice? Mother earth gives great advice You ever hear the one about the flower? We can’t hear it but we can be it We who are afraid of death 77

We who gasp at a differing opinion We who fuck away our real feelings We who smoke to run We who smoke to find We whose love is narrowed down into a few moments of rapture We who murder each other out of fear, and insecurity We who are always searching But don’t know what for To those people, I love you, you are my kin, the family I fantasize about The one’s I wish I could hang out with, smoke a few rolls of cannabis Talk about the universe, and its whispers of sweet nothings Eat good food, share in the air we are so afraid of, see each others lips move And know this is it, this is all there is, nothing more My madness is eternal, as is the love I found Madness and love Go together like water and sugar They get all mixed up And then you lay it out for hummingbirds and ants to drink My madness is my pain My madness is my insecurity My madness is my guilt It flipped on me It’s gone now, dissolved At Least for the time being Peace.

Dialogue with God Fiction? I met God once in a tripped out, manic state. I asked ... “Is anything truly evil?” It responded, “What do you think?” “You’re God, you tell me.” “I could say the same thing about you.” “Huh... what’s the proper way to live life?” I had decided to change the subject. “I don’t understand the question.” “You’re quite useless, aren’t you?” “Now you’re getting it.” “What? Okay who got it right, the Catholics or the Buddhists?” I was starting to get frustrated. “What tastes better, vodka or whiskey?” “... I’m leaving you.” “How?” “Through the back door.” “Good luck with that.”

Delusional, Mystical, Magical, Fool Poetry

A single day became two because I don’t need sleep anymore A single carrot became a meal because I nourish myself just through the energy of the universe A single person became everything because I am god A single thought became yours because I am telepathic A single feeling became everyones because I have unimaginable control A single number became my sermon because there is no other way to explain it A single butterfly materialized out of nowhere, because I have a job to do A single flower is the whole point I can’t seem communicate A single person knows everything through knowing nothing A single metaphysical tether keeps me from disappearing forever. I’m just floating a ways above my body which is acting on its own. Something else inhabiting my earthly form causing trouble and growth My friend deeply afraid of insanity, I laughed, saw where he must grow and told him One angry car ride later where we screamed at each other and belted pink floyd together We hugged and went on with our lives. I had read his mind. A single girl destroyed this reality and pulled me back down to another. And I became afraid of myself, like my friend who I had laughed at I wish I could go back so I didn’t have to live with this stranger So I could feel the bliss of knowing again So I don’t have to feel the things i’m feeling now So I could have some semblance of certainty So I could see you again in everything I do So I can feel the connection between my mind and the world 80

So I can become lost and never return to this perfectly fucked up world of my own creation But that won’t happen because I’m stuck in this spot that I’ve always been in Trying to make sense of a place I barely know of a person I barely know The one I did know got lost or destroyed a while ago The reality I knew I can barely remember now. What was it like, going about my day without this uncomfortable awareness? Going about, mooching, cheating, manipulating, and lieing Doing everything for myself, with the goal of myself What is it like now? It’s like a table cloth perfectly got pulled out from underneath a fully set table I looked at the wooden table I previously couldn’t see, and saw my true identity I mistook the still present cups, plates, silverware, and food for the table itself. This was incorrect Clearing that table is the next part Each cup is a delusion I must face Becoming a true magician with each dirty fork I throw into the sink, Becoming a true fool with each plate I ignore, not in the mood to eat dry salted turkey today I’m in the mood to look at the clear part of the table, ignoring the rest of the work I still have to do

Beginning and End Fiction?

Life is a strange thing. What is and what is not is a blurry line determined by perspective. My life has been happening for as long as I can remember. Though it takes many forms, it’s always the same. Beautiful, ephemeral yet eternal. The object, the plant, the person, and the spirit all share in pieces of me in varying sizes and consistencies. They are the singular and I am the plural. I have been every tree, but at this moment one story of one particular tree stands out to me. It wants to be known, the story, through words that are so rarely expressed in this particular way. No where else, is life going down in the way it is right now. Every bit of it is special, and meaningful in one way or another. Nothing is out of place in the order of things, chaos and destruction are needed for life. Death is eternal as well as life. What is dying is being born. What is growing is dying and in the year 2057 there isn’t a whole lot of growing going on. This was the year the european, intercontinental nuclear war began. It was the first of its kind and in one day 1,233 nuclear missiles were dropped from Russia to Great Britain. A man named Forrest, had just climbed atop Mount Everest. It was a clear day and as he looked out upon the landscape from above the clouds, he noticed just how barren it had become over the past decade. There were splotches of green but most was gray, or black from the wildfires that had spread to this region. In the far off distance a large, sickly yellow wall of smog reached up toward the heavens. “How much the world has changed,” He said to himself, in order for him to even climb this mountain he had to be smuggled past the nature preserve guards. No one, across the globe was allowed to interact with nature out of fear of human pollution. However, something about climbing Mount Everest had always been on Forrest’s mind since he was a child and had first heard about it. He remembered in a VR program from school he was guided up the mountain by the first explorer who had ever done it. He got to the virtual top, and looked out across a beautiful, sparkling, white landscape with green in the distance. A clear, blue sky above him. At that moment Forest knew he had to get there himself 82

in the physical world and now here he was. Though it looks completely different than what it had looked like in the VR program, he was here. The once snowy year round mountain was now snowy for a very short amount of time. At the height of winter in the area. Though we just know that because of the calendars. All of the seasons started to blend into one at a certain point. The once blue sky above him, was now a light, blueish gray with spots of darkness from where the atmosphere was eroded away. Whenever the sun was out it was hot, and when it was night it was freezing. Just for Forrest to be able to be alive on top of this mountain he needed a skin tight atmosphere suit of the highest quality. He had saved up his government allowance for years to acquire one. At that moment Forrest saw a flash of light that would’ve blinded him if his atmosphere suit didn’t automatically adjust light sensitivity. Then there was another flash, then another, and then another. They kept coming, each one like a flashbang of the greatest magnitude that covered the whole continent. Then the flashes died, what was left were hundreds of sinister, pure white mushroom clouds. Each one growing out of the ground, reaching for the sky. Far below him he saw trees getting razed, as a shockwave from the consecutive blasts raced in his direction. Forrest didn’t know what to do, “Am I going to die?” he asked no one. Well at least he had climbed this mountain, the mountain of his life. As he thought that, the shockwave reached him, and though he died immediately, painlessly. Forrest saw from a third person perspective his body, get half disintegrated and blown off the peak of Mount Everest at unimaginable speeds. Forrest followed his body’s trajectory from the top of the mountain, through the clouds, and finally it landed in a brown field miles away from Everest. His skeleton shattered but the force of the fall indented the ground enough that all his various pieces stayed together. Broken but together. There, Forrest rested along with his ghost that felt attached to his previous body even in the state it was in. There Forrest watched as nuclear bombs continued to fall across the globe, none reached and destroyed his body though. Ten days after the start of the war, it was over. It would’ve continued if there were people alive to launch the millions of bombs that still remained. Barren, and empty the planet was still here. Broken and battered, it’s beautiful life was gone. 83

Here Forrest watched for thousands of years, it seemed it was his job. To witness the world in this state. There always had to be a witness. A witness to death, and a witness to the life that follows. A thousand years after the extinction nothing occurred. In the next millennium were great volcanic eruptions that covered the continents and reshaped them. At the end of that one, a great rain flooded the planet. A millennium later a sprout began to grow on a fertile spot of land. By the end of those thousand years, new life emerged from the ocean and began to repopulate the planet. 20 thousand years after the extinction, Forrest was in the place his body had landed all those years ago. His body was long gone but he knew at the same time that it wasn’t because in that same spot a tree had begun to grow with green flora emerging all around it. He knew that tree was him in a certain sense and he knew he had seen all he needed.

Place Poem I walk up there sometimes down the cracked pavement of my driveway I leave my house to see her the leaves, the trees, the red tailed hawk that always says hello I follow it and it leads me to what I desire the swirling vines around branches, slowly killing the trees a cardinal perched within the vines a nest beneath it’s feat, babies taking a nap when I walk up here I think I see everything

Color Poem Looking up through the mesh of a tent newborn leaves wave and dance our neighbor is chain-smoking and yelling at his kid the most electric green, I can’t see it All is the grey of the smoke all is the dark tears of a child I don’t know all is the red anger seething out of our neighbor the light blue of the sky tries to comfort, I don’t hear it the brownish grey trees sing to me songs of purposefulness a turkey emerges from the brush and gobbles at the man red pouring out, yelling, screaming I’m laughing the green of the leaves smiling the blue of the sky silence returns brown as the soil our neighbor decided he didn’t like camping all that much leaving a trail of red and grey I’m left in the residue but emerging in-between from a new perspective my newfound friends patting me on the back 85

Face Poem In ones face i see lips that curve down in a way thats all too familiar I’m pretty sure I’ve drawn them without knowing a thousand times the kind of eyes that make you look away the kind of person that makes you wonder what can you tell from their nose? from the way they laugh? and the way their face contorts during conversation A serious look, intensely listening can you tell what their life’s been like from the way they lean their head against the window? Lips pursed, confused What does it mean? I’ll just have to ask.

Object Poem Looking around many a thing I see what makes a thing a thing is it its thingyness? it’s apparent lack of something we apparently have? a specific arrangement of atoms or is it waves? or is it strings? or is it nothing? Is an object just a dream of someone long ago? its substance as ambiguous as me if that’s the case and an object is as me as me is, what is it? I am a self, an object is nothing that animate Even though I could not be I without something that is not I In which case it could be that objects are just me

Why I Write What I Write Writing hasn’t always been my favorite. My Mother used to be an english teacher, as well as my Nana. They always valued language, grammar, big words like pretentious. I always struggled with the structured stuff, the cite your sources, the 5 sentences to a paragraph, the five paragraphs to an essay, all those specific ways you’re supposed to write. I failed so many spelling tests it wasn’t even funny, I just didn’t care. I always preferred the casual, the relaxed, the do whatever you feel like man there’s nothing you can do wrong here kind of thing. I started journaling from a young age, my mother gave me my first blank book. I lost the habit for a while but when my mind vanished into a cloud of incessant spiritual delusions, I started journaling again. It was the only way I could get out all the internal chatter that I just couldn’t express to others. Now, writing is a lover of mine. Writing is my camera, moments or memories I don’t want to let go of. Writing is my magic wand, I create, I transmute, I channel. Writing is my therapist, I let loose my interior and figure it out as if my guts have been splayed out before me. A random man hands me some simple, step by step directions on how to put organs back into a body, I skim them quickly and get to work. Writing is connection, and community. It’s sharing a reality with someone, a world you created. It’s unexplainable magic. It’s a portal to another dimension, my own dimension with all it’s weirdness and gore for some reason. Gore is just the dramatization of death. In a fictional scenario It makes death more palatable. If it’s unrealistic, you know it’s not real. Real death fucking hurts. 87

I think death haunts everyone, it’s that thing that’s always around the corner. It’s the only thing that’s certain. I guess I try to make peace with it through a lot of writing, and through all the subtle deaths that get carried out throughout the day. La petite mort, is the french phrase meaning, the little death and it is used to describe an orgasm. I think if an orgasm is the little death, then the big death is just the orgasm of life. In both scenarios we have a gruesome face on, all contorted and awry but behind the scenes… phew some hot stuff you don’t even want to know. Not like I know anyways. Embarrassingly and surprising enough, i’m a death virgin. The real kind of death anyways. The first time I took acid I watched my body disintegrate. I was scared. The second time I took acid the world ended and I died. I wasn’t scared. The third time I took acid I died for a final time and I was scared once again. This final death was a metaphysical one, it released the trappings of my perceptions and enraged the beings trying to keep me down making them obvious to me. A help and a hindrance but from society’s perspective psychosis. I had broken my brain, and my destiny was now a mental hospital or the streets. Fuck that, I’ll write. Fuck that, I’ll work through it and become more than I was yesterday. Yesterday you were lazy, and today you’re lazy again. Aren’t you concerned? No, not really. Yesterday I was lazy and I felt bad about it. Today I’m lazy and I love my laziness. Tomorrow I’ll be lazy again but maybe I’ll pretend to be a productive person for a while, you never know. You’re a weirdo. Oh, believe me I know. I’m super self aware except for all the stuff I wish I was self aware about. 88

Aren’t you concerned about what other people are going to think if you write all this stuff down and show it to everyone? I don’t know man, and I really don’t care. I used to, but I figure if I can’t be myself openly how can people who might enjoy my company figure out if they enjoy my company or not? All I really want are friends, and lovers. Connections. I want to ramble, and rant, and rave about this fucking weird ass life. I want to go off the rails, because why else would there be rails to be on. To get to your destination punctually? Eh, fuck that. There are so many unexplored grooves, paths, ways of seeing and being, an expanse Immemorial of meandering down indescribable corridors with life expunging all its loves, difficulties, and raptures and all with no rails to hold onto. No safety net except for the death of all we know and ever hope to know. Phew, I thought this was serious.

Subject To Change Final

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