This morning no one was at the house, even though I went to bed at 2am last night (I stayed up with Chad while he was working on his paper), I still woke up at the same time today, around 10:00am. Knowing no one would pass judgement, I went back to sleep until 11:30. At that point I went upstairs, poached some eggs and had coffee. They had no milk or cream, so I used chocolate milk, which was kind of weird. Now I have the whole day ahead of me with no plans and I've pretty much exhausted the job hunt already. I need to bring a check in for health insurance. That is something.
--
Since I have a little time and I am sitting here, comfortable on the guest room bed with Rambo, their Australian Shepherd, I figured now may be a good time to write a bit about my manic experiences.
1. The prednisone disaster: I was released from the hospital after a week of battling Crohn's disease with a bunch of prescriptions and a new lease on life. I would have to make some major changes to my diet and lifestyle. I was ready for this. Crohn's Disease had a major impact on my life the previous months, causing me to lose about thirty pounds, making me sleep about fourteen hours a day, giving me terrible stomach cramps every time I ate, I really couldn't do anything.
When I was got out, it was the end of Spring Break and I was ready to get back to school and back to my life. However, prednisone had a different idea. I was taking the steroid as it is a kind of miracle drug for Crohn's, it gives you more energy and helps your body regenerate faster, at least that is my understanding. For me, it also made my thoughts race. At first, it seemed under control. I was planning more than usual, putting together a schedule for myself and being very strict about my diet and taking my medication on time.
Next, I started having a religious sort of experience where I believed that in my head I had proved the existence of God. After this night of not really sleeping much, I returned to Santa Barbara with Jen, there was a point where I literally though her car had disappeared, when I told her this, she brushed it off as a joke--I couldn't really believe that!
When I returned, things continued to spiral, with a lack of sleep and more and more intense thoughts. There were moments where I believed I had come to the brink of death in my head. I had strange interactions with the internet, where I believed I was controlling or interacting with technology. I dialed a random number into my phone, and listened and swore that the message had the word Kennedy hidden in it.
The next morning, I walked to the bank, thinking I could make my account have unlimited money. It didn't. I then started to believe that I was invisible to everyone around me, even my roommates wouldn't interact with me unless I provoked them. I decided this was because they were all robots, made only to respond to humans, like aim bots or something.
I decided I needed to leave to join the secret society that had been trying to reach out to me through the internet, the Upright Citizens Brigade in New York. I started driving, I would go up to Danville, say goodbye to my dad and brother, grab of my stuff and leave. I thought when I got to New York all of my improv friends from college would be there living in the nicest apartments in the city and I could rotate living with each of them.
I was driving extremely recklessly, as I thought all the other cars were patrolled by robots. There was a point where I thought my car was driving itself. There were times where I gassed it to 110 miles an hour, then pulled into the median, which was dirt, and rolled to a stop. I went the wrong way up an on ramp. I drove into the middle of a field and busted off my side mirrors with a big metal water heater thing I had in my trunk. Then I kept driving. Eventually, I pulled off on the side of the road. I figured I got completely naked, someone driving by would know I'm not a robot and would pull over and take me into their secret society.
Someone did pull over, a hispanic mom in a minivan. Her kids got out of the car and I jumped into it. I don't think they were expecting this. I told them to take me to New York, when they said no, I started screaming. They called the police. I saw them pull up and I got out of the van, this was all part of the challenge I figured, to get the robots to take me to New York. The cops approached me and I refused to do what they were saying, until a guy came around behind me with his club, I was naked and afraid he was going to shove this up my butt, so I fell onto my knees and told them I had picked up a hitchhiker and he had raped me in my car.
At this point they became considerably less coercive and stuck me in the back of the cop car. I watched them from inside as they tried to figure out what the hell to do. There was four of them and it seemed like a regular comedy team. They had no idea what was going on, a naked kid who hopped in a van and started screaming, then said a man raped him and ran off into the fields. Should they go after the man?--or was that a ridiculous lie? Should they take me to the hospital, the police station? Should they go pick up my clothes first? I sat there for what seemed like forever while they made the one cop, wish I could remember his name, go do all the "bitch work" as I deemed it at the time of picking up my clothes and filing the report an everything, another cop drove me back to the police station while they tried to get in touch with my dad.
I sat in the police car the entire time. Finally, when the cops got in contact with him, they decided to take me to the hospital, they of course, were going to make the cop that had done all the work earlier drive me all the way to the hospital in Salinas, which was about an hour away. When one of the other cops told me that I said, "Hey, that one cop (I remembered his name at the time), he's like, your bitch huh?" The cop laughed and said, "Yeah, I guess he is."
That cop drove me to the hospital, where I admitted that no one had raped me because I had forgot that I made that lie up. I was admitted into the hospital in Salinas and taken into a room in the front of the hospital to be monitored. There was a big camera in the corner of the room, where people had thrown wet paper towels to try to cover it up. They gave me a sandwich, but I thought it was a test and didn't eat it. When I went to the bathroom, I thought it was a test not to contaminate water with my urine and peed on the floor.
Some asshole nurse kept coming by and provoking me and making me scream by opening up the door a little bit then slamming it shut, he knew I wanted out. There was an old man in a Giants baseball cap that didn't work at the hospital and for some reason was just sitting outside my room. I had no clue what he was doing there, watching me. I came to the conclusion that he was God. He was watching me, seeing if I could pass this test. I got up and decided I was going to run out of the hospital, still naked. I tried to run but when I did the old man stopped me and then a nurse came and helped. Then they put me in another room tied down with leather straps. This was when I thought I was done for, I pulled and squirmed and tried to get out but I couldn't. The more I felt trapped the more upset I became, until they came in and sedated me until I passed out. When I woke up it was the next morning and the straps were off and my dad and brother were there. That last night had been more scared than I ever had been in my life. Even the next manic experience, which ended terribly, would never feel as bad as being strapped down, unable to move in that hospital bed.
I somehow convinced my dad to let me go back to Santa Barbara, with my brother watching me. The very same day, I called all my friends from improv to meet in a room on campus and then tried to get there, I felt a heavy weight on my left side, like in a dream where it becomes hard to move. I took off all my clothes, this time for the purposed of getting the weight off of me and jumped into some girls van in Isla Vista and told her to take me to that room on campus. When she told me she was taking me to the police, I once again thought, "Great, they'll bring me there." Instead they locked me in a tiny little room while I screamed and my muscles spasmed in what I thought was my body trying to pull itself into a loop.
They brought me Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara, where they gave me a spinal tap and essentially put me under for an entire day. At some point I woke up and tried pulling all the things they had attached to me out and run out of the hospital and they had to sedate me again. I was there for a week, which was how long it took for me to myself back together somewhat. I would take the next quarter off from school and live at home with my dad.
2. New Year's 2008: I've actually written about this one before, some prose that I was trying to make a book out of, so I'll just paste it in.
The first night was at the cabin in Tahoe. I went up with a couple buddies right after the new year to relax, play cards, smoke weed, have a couple beers, build a fire pit, pee in the woods, all usual fare for a recent college graduate. I remember starting to doze off on the couch, but when I tucked in I just couldn’t manage to fall asleep. I just kept staring and thinking, my thoughts racing, wondering: Holy fuck, what the hell am I going to do? I am paying rent in Santa Barbara, I am camping and I have no job when I go back because I quit the one I had at the end of summer to finish school.
Here’s my original plan: If I get back down there, I can get my job back at Chili’s, where I worked for the last year, live downtown or well, close to downtown in the Mexican barrio, literally across the train tracks, and freeway from downtown, and take my last class at city college so I’ll finally receive my diploma. This is where the thinking should have stopped, but it didn’t. That is something I could pull off.
Over the night though, I have hours of thinking time, to slowly develop my idea in my head. Finally after hours of thought, I decide I need to go to sleep. I’ve tried everything. Maybe I should smoke more pot. I toss off the covers and carefully back down the steep staircase. It is still warm in the cabin from the fire. As I come down, Rob notices me. He jolts and looks almost intensely awake instantly.
“Hey man, I can’t sleep, think I’m going to smoke another bowl.”
“Man, I can never sleep, like maximum six hours a day you know?”
“Wow, I usually sleep a ton, like nine or ten hour nights.”
I light a bowl and take a big bong load. So does he. We are sitting on the couch, I am rapping on about where I am in life and what I am going to do next, even though he never really asked. “I should buy Nintendo games in bulk on ebay. I should buy the cheapest system, currently N64. The prices of Super Nintendo and especially Nintendo are now rising as originals become more rare. I could eventually open up a store that sells classic gaming consoles and games. For now I’ll look on ebay for bulk N64 sales, price each game and each individual item, decide what is a good price to bid, scoop them up and resell them, all through ebay. That is something I might be able to pull off. I’ve decided this is way better than working at some fucking stupid job, this way my destiny is all in my control.” Rob is kind with his smiles and nods.
I head back up stairs and manage to get a few hours of sleep.
The second night I am in San Francisco at Paizis’ apartment on Petrero Hill. I look out at the ball park and the Bay Bridge from the kitchen table and writing down stocks I might like to invest in, Apple, Google, Vizeo. Forget the fact that I am about four thousand dollars in debt. I just had a two thousand dollar credit card come in. I figure I’ll have shit together before that fills up. My stomach is hurting. You see, I have something called Crohn’s Disease. I still don’t understand what the fuck it is or why it happens, but it makes my stomach hurt. It is probably a mixture of things: a poor diet, lack of exercise, God saying fuck you for being alive. We all get a little of that. I stay up all night lying awake on the couch.
I look around the apartment and feel like I am in the future. Like how I thought the future would look when I was a kid. Every thing is sleek and angular, the room is devoid of any comfort, but in a cool way, a way that makes you feel like you are rising above the dirt and grime of the world on the ground floor, like the Jetsons. I stay up all the way until dawn, my thoughts maddening.
The next day Paizis, his sister and I walk to Golden Gate Park where we throw a Frisbee and go to the observatory in the De Young Museum. I buy a book called The Poet’s Guide to San Francisco. The cashier tells me that she writes poetry and but that it isn’t online and I let her know she should post it, as I would like to see it.
When I’m short for Bart a nice old woman taps on my shoulder and lends me a dollar. She has a gentle disposition and she and her husband seem happy seem surprised to run into such kind, young people. There is softness in the air and the world feels wholly a part of me.
I go back to Danville and my brother is at my Dad’s with a bunch of his friends. They partied the night before while my dad was in Arizona, enjoying a vacation with his girlfriend. At this point I am really tired. All I want to do is get some sleep. The last couple days had been strange and wonderful. It was time to celebrate the New Year and go back to Santa Barbara, but first I had to sleep.
It was loud in the house, footsteps running up and down the stairs and down the hall. I told my brother I would be in my dad’s room and to stay away it because I really needed to sleep. He said fine and stayed pretty quiet. My attempts to create a perfect environment for sleep didn’t work. I lay on my dad’s king size bed, surrounded by pillows, wrapped in the fluffy down duvet, the blinds pulled tight, my pajama pants on, my teeth brushed, flossed, my body showered, my socks off, water by the bedside, my cell phone on silent, every thing is quiet, empty, I am alone. Completely alone with myself.
My mind starts wandering…
I am driving to the top of Mt. Diablo. The New Year is eight hours away and when it comes the largest terrorist attack ever perpetrated is going to occur on US Soil. All car computer systems are going to be taken over by hackers and it will cause them to crash. Yes, I know, computers don’t control all cars, but enough of them are that it will cause an accident with almost any car on the road. Only being on the top of Mt. Diablo would I really be safe.
I fantasize as the clock strikes midnight and all of the airplanes explode, illuminating the night sky like the millennium fireworks show. This is going to be bigger than just a terrorist attack, I think. This is going to pull at the whole fabric of our society. This is going to tear us apart from the people that we love and the places where we grew up. I need to go to my Aunt and Uncle’s, I think. They are well connected. They will be the only one’s that can save me, fly me out of the country to somewhere safe. Eight hours until the New Year, just enough time to drive to LA and make it to an airport.
I can do it. I turn the car around and get on 680 south. 680, to 580, to 5 south, to the 405, exit Sunset. I dial 911 and throw it out the window of my car and step on the gas. Here I come. The radio is static, I turn it up loud and listen for any signal. The freeway is the machine, the car is the machine, the radio is the machine. We are in the machine floating down the river to Los Angeles, the heart of the blinding lights.
The power comes from those in power. Those that control the power have the power. I imagine the lights and the internet and the power plants and the oil and the fire turning off and the people coming out of their homes and shaking their neighbors hands and the police never come and the military never comes and those that kept telling us we are addicted to fossil fuels saw the money facet that flows into their pockets turned off and we would see who the real addicts were and who was addicted to what. They are addicted to that faucet, that faucet made the river that is floating me down stream.
I put on Justice, Cross, as this a biblical moment. The booming base and and shaky buzzing synthesizer penetrate to the middle of my conscious. This is death and rebirth, I think. I have no idea where I will come out on the other side. On the hillside I see big candles arranged in a giant cross. I drive into the Altamont, the end of free love, the end of the most beautiful pure existence any American had ever seen, when the Rolling Stones headlined a Woodstock style concert in the large yellow rolling hills of the Altamont. The Hell’s Angels were hired for security and the whole thing was one bad trip.
I see a large cross, carved into the side of the hill. I’m not a Christian. I’m not even really a believer, but sometimes it believes in me.
My car is being controlled. I am flying through traffic like it’s a video game race. My friends are here! They are controlling me, waiting for me, directing me to you, if I can only let go of control and just listen to the universe. I am cutting and swerving, slingshotting through traffic, I’m being controlled from above. Traffic is pretty heavy, but with help fro the divine, I can still make it on time. I get passed the Altamont and swing my car sharply, moving over to the I-5, my back right tire bursts. It happens closest to the exit of Mountain View, California, the home of Mike Garner’s parents. Mike is a close friend of mine. It must be a sign. Maybe this is where all my friends are, controlling me to come to them.
Pretty clever, I think. I pull off and drive my car over on to the side of the road on both sides of me are flat open fields, the Mountain House suburban community looks to be about a mile down. I sit there, waiting for my next sign. An old farmer pulls up in a Jeep Cherokee to get the mail; I am parked right behind mailboxes for many of the farms in the area. I take my keys out and throw them on the floor of the car.
I get out and shut the door. I am in the middle of moving apartments in Santa Barbara and most of my possessions are in my car, but I don’t care. I am about to be reborn. I am still positive of it. I walk up casually to the Jeep.
“Hi there, sir. I got a flat and I’m looking to get over to Mountain House, would you mind taking me down the street?”
“No, that’s fine.” He says, barely noticing the engagement. I buckle up as he creaks his way back into the driver’s seat.” For a minute I am in another life that I never lived. It feels like a deep sigh.
“What do you think about what is going on in this country?” I ask.
“I think it’s terrible.” He says. “I think it’s terrible what’s happened to his country.” He pulls over at my stop and I take out my wallet. I hand him my driver’s license. I tell him to take it and remember me; he tells me that I should keep it.
“I’m going to leave it on the seat.” I tell him, with some weird sentimentality in my voice. He looks at me strangely and I start walking into the neighborhood. I don’t have my phone; I have no idea where this house is. It will come to me. I will be directed there if I let myself be guided. I’ve been taken this far.
The entrance loudly proclaims, “Mountain House.” The roads carefully curve, the lawns are watered, the grass is cut, the blowers are growing, and the houses are warm. There is a New Year’s barbeque going on in a garage. I wander over. “Hi, there! Do you know where the Garners live?”
“No, do any of you?”
“Sorry, I drove all the way over here and I my cell phone is off, I have no ideas which house is theirs.”
“Yeah man, I don’t know if we can help you, good luck though.”
“Thanks. You guys look like you’re having a fun. Do you mind if I have a beer?”
“Sure.” They say, handing me a Heineken.
“Thanks.” I am overwhelmed by the openness of people. I pop it open with my keychain bottle opener and start sipping away. “Well, I guess I’ll continue the search.” I walk off, going by the pool, the elementary school, getting lost in the maze of streets and perfectly planned parks. I am lost, I am far away from my car, which has a flat, I am more determined than ever to get to Mike’s, it is getting dark, I am running out of time until New Year’s, I need to be with them by then.
I need to get on a computer, I’ll find someone on online and get Mike’s number and give him a call. When I have the idea, I look over to the house closest to me. That must be the one. I walk to the door and knock. A young blonde woman answers with an attentive look on her face. Her husband is on the computer. “Hi there, I am trying to find the Garners.” I step inside, I see the look on their faces turn from that of happiness to those of horror for a brief moment, but the smiles return, fake this time. They have a clean and sterile but mostly empty home.
“I just felt something switch.” I tell them. I flick the light switch. “Something just, changed, something is happening and I need to find the Garners so I can be with my friends. Can I please use your computer?”
“I know where the Garners live.” The man calmly tells me, getting up from his seat, he guides me out of the house, reciting some directions I can only now assume were the directions out of the neighborhood, the whole time pointing at an one story house straight down the street. It is dark but Mike’s house was one story and their weren’t a lot of them in the neighborhood. I knew what he was getting at.
“Thanks.” I say. The house is dark. It looks empty, but I will get in there, I have to before midnight. I knock on the front door and ring the doorbell; there is no response. I will get in; I have to get in. I hop over the back fence; I look through the back window and bang on it, no response. The stars in sky in look brighter than at any time in my life. I see all of the planes and satellites flying through the air, I watch they float in an array of brilliant colors.
I imagine at midnight everything in the sky will explode from a terrorist attack, lighting up the clear night sky like fireworks.
I am naked, standing by the back door. My clothes are spread around the yard, hat, resting on the concrete by my feet. I buzz the doorbell of the ominous metal door in the backyard. I am buzzed in.
In the house, it is dark and empty, I don’t see anyone, are they in the basement? A loud figure appears in the shadows. “What the fuck are you doing here?” I take a punch just above my right eye, I keep standing as more appear and I take punch after punch. I fall to the ground; the back end of a broomstick hits me repeatedly in the face, on the forehead, on the back of my eye. They push me into the laundry room. One of them says he is going to get his gun to shoot me. I want to run, but where would I run, into the street naked? Into the backyard to get my clothes, to be hunted down, bloodied and bruised? I sit on the dryer and wait for him to come back and shoot me in the face. I wait and I wait and I wait, to die. He never comes.
I finally get up, not knowing what else to do and walk out into the garage. They are in there. I press the button to lift the door and start to walk out into the streets, naked. They kick me out and just as I do a police car pulls around. I run over to it, crying. I fall down on my knees in the grass. They cuff me and put me in the car, stuffing me in the back seat.
I hide from the men as I see the cops line them up against their Lincoln Navigator. A cop comes to wait in the car with me; she sits driver side, smoking a cigarette. “I never want to see any of them again.” I say. “I never want to see any of them again.”
A cop comes back and hands me my hat, “Is this yours? We found it in the back yard.”
“Yes.” I say. It is a trucker hat from the Topaz Lodge, with a salmon on it. “This will remind me that this is actually happened.”
The police see me walking naked, out from the garage of the house and get out of the car. “Stop!” They yell at me. I do. I am crying. They probably came because a neighbor heard the screams coming from inside the house.
“I’ll do whatever you want!” I tell them. They come up behind me and put handcuffs on me and lead me to the car. When they put me in I just keep my head down. I see them line up the three men against their Ford Navigator. Eventually a cop gets into the car.
“They got you pretty good.” She says as she lights up a cigarette. “What were you doing there?”
“I was looking for Sandy Garner’s.” I tell her. “I never want to see them again. Please just make sure I never see them again.” I never do.
“Don’t worry.” She says. “We’re calling the ambulance for you right now.” I lay in the back seat cuffed while she smokes. I start feeling the need to escape.
“I need to get out of here.” I say. “Extradite me to Paris or Amsterdam. I can’t afford to go to the hospital.”
“We can’t do that.” She tells me. “Don’t worry, you’re going to be just fine.”
The ambulance pulls up about ten minutes later. The team gets out with a gurney and loads me up on to it. “Do you know your name?” They ask.
“Chris.” I tell them. “Take me to Amsterdam. I can’t afford to go to the hospital.” They all look at me with disdain except for one enlightened young man named Steven. “Why Amsterdam?” He asks?
“They have good health care there. I could go to France too.” I say, making sure to give them options.
“Why do you want to leave your home?”
“I don’t like what’s going on in this country.” I say frankly. “I think we need a new president. I hope it is Barack Obama, but maybe it could be Barack Obama, then Hilary Clinton, then Ron Paul, if he’s still alive.”
“Ron Paul is very different from the other two.”
“Yeah, but I trust them all.” The rest of the ride happens in silence. Maybe this guy can help me get to Amsterdam, I think.
They check me into the hospital and put me in an observation room. They bring a paper, attempting to check me in and get some of my information. Because I don’t have my ID, they are having trouble identifying me. They bring me a bunch of papers, I just draw a straight line on them. I get up and get some paper towels and put them on my face.
The tall thin old man in a giants ball cap walk by. I look at him and he stares back. He tips his hat and moves on. Finally, the nurses are fed up. I wont talk to them. I tell them I like Steven, the guy from the ambulance but he is back on the job. I give them my dad’s phone number. A police officer calls my dad and arranges for me to be dropped off in Mountain House, where my car is still sitting. He takes me and leads me to the police car. On the road I see a train of police cars followed by ambulances and fire trucks. “There’s going to be a terrorist attack.” I tell him.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He replies frankly and calmly. We drive by werehouses for Carl’s Jr., Best Buy, Pepsi, and Kraft. I feel like we are driving through the ether, the subconscious of corporate America. I fall asleep. In my dream I am in a hospital in Paris, the doctor calls my name, “Christopher.”
It is my father. I am back in Mountain House. He is home from Arizona. “You came home.” I say.
“I made plans to leave after you called me last night. I knew something was wrong.” He is with my brother.
We get into his car together, headed for San Ramon Valley Emergency Medical Center. “We need to take you to emergency.” He says.
“I’m sorry.” I sob. “I don’t know what to do. Should I go to AA? I don’t know what to do.”
“If you want to that’s your choice.” He says. “Do you smoke pot?” He asks.
“Some. Maybe like fifty times.” I lie.
“What were you doing out there?”
“I was trying to find Sandy Garner’s.”
“You know, I talk to Sandy Garner sometimes.” I still don’t know what this means. But he said it. I don’t think he knows Sandy Garner, my friend’s dad, but I guess it is possible.
We enter the emergency room and I sit in the office with a doctor who scribbles on a note pad. He asks me where I was going, if I wanted to hurt myself or others, if I was doing drugs. I tell him no to everything. I smoked some pot.
I get admitted into the emergency room. They put a partition around me. The buzz of the air conditioner is ominous, humming through my entire brain.
“Christopher?” The nurse asks.
“Yes.” I reply.
“Hi. I’m going to ask you some questions.”
“Were you taking any drugs?
“No. Some pot.”
“Do you want to hurt yourself or others?
“No.”
“Do you have any thoughts of suicide?”
“I already answered these questions.”
“Christopher.” My dad says firmly. He is sitting in the corner of my partitioned area, trying desperately to hold it together. My brother’s gone home.
“No.”
“Okay. We are going to keep you here for a little bit and get some x-rays. Okay?”
“Okay.” She leaves.
My dad shakes his head back and forth. “You don’t know how to take care of yourself.”
“I’m sorry.” I cry. “That air conditioner is annoying.”
“Just try and rest.” He says.
I listen to that blaring hum and eventually doze for a moment, until I hear people shouting and hollering outside. I wake up quickly. Someone is banging on the emergency room door. “What’s happening?” I ask, scared.
“A man in here had a heart attack. His family wants to come in, but they won’t let them,” my dad answers.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.” The banging and hollering stops. They take me for some x-rays, asking me to lay on the sterile table under the giant radioactive camera. They put on their goggles and jackets and stand behind the glass as they aim it at my head.
They bring me back to my partition and a doctor approaches me. He gives me some medication, which I swill down with some water. I try to sleep but mostly just lay with my eyes closed. I hear the nurses wishing each other Happy New Year. I get up from the bed open my curtain and walk out into the emergency room. “Happy New Year.” I tell them. No one even turns. It’s like I’m invisible. I go back and lay down. The x-rays turn out negative, no concussion. It’s 2008.
3. El Salvador: I already gave some insight into the lead up on this one. I thought I needed to get to El Salvador to have a baby before a certain date or else the world was going to end. I spent the night before at my uncle's house and when I walked downstairs and saw 1984 and The Road on the desk in the guest room, I took it as a sign. I had been thinking about 1984 literally all day, it was quite a coincidence, I knew it would be a struggle, like in The Road to get to safety. I sold my guitar at Guitar Center for a few hundred dollars and tried to get a same day passport so I could get a flight to El Salvador. The same day passport place couldn't get me one that day, so I decided to drive.
When I got into TJ I bought a map to direct me down, got insurance for my car, etc. I saw the signs that listed the exchange rate of the Euro and dollar and was sure this was a sign, that when they matched up perfectly, it would be the beginning of a war between American and Europe and the rest of the world. I saw strange signs about getting free pesos and had a man in government garb clean my windshield, there were many signs about "The Americas", all the latin American countries coming together as one. I was sure our government was hiding this impending war from us.
On the drive to Mexicali from TJ, I drove along the boarder and saw many factories and empty white trucks. I'm sure a lot of this was for the drug trade. I kept driving and eventually got lost on their incredibly twisted and strange highways. I came to a point where the road became dirt and they were literally paving it out in to nowhere. For some reason, there were still quite a few cars on this road. There were also desperate looking famished men walking down the road with jugs of water. It all came a little bit to close to The Road. I got scared and decided to turn around, when I got back into the US things changed drastically, here is the last correspondence I had with Kim, it was after this email she told me we shouldn't talk anymore...
I wanted to let you know I'm okay. I got home from the UCLA medical center today and haven't really been able to email. I had a good conversation with Jen tonight. She told me you were worried I would be mad at you, but I'm not, at all. I know you had my best interests at heart. Roads in Mexico are really hard to navigate, so after driving for a while I got scared and turned around. I hadn't been sleeping very well the days prior and when I crossed the boarder back into California it was like crossing through the gates of hell into heaven. I was treated to an incredible visual hallucination of California in a utopian future, hopefully it's where I go when I die. K-Earth 101 the oldies radio station here in LA was playing for my entire ride and it seemed like every song was playing just for me. The fog was rolling in right along the beach and all of the buildings were architecturally stunning. When I got back all my friends were here for me, trying to figure out where I was and were very worried. I decided I should check myself in to UCLA medical center and went with Jace the next morning. They kept me there for a week.
I feel kind of selfish for trying to run away like that, I did it for love, but it was a foolish thing to do, especially putting myself in danger like that. My family and friends were really great to me. The doctors can't really pin down a diagnosis, as much as they want to. To me, it was a mystical experience. They found no drugs in my system and my blood test came back clean. The good news is I was able to have a straight forward talk with my uncle and Dad about where I am in my life and what we can do to make it better. Sounds like they are going to help me with some bills and keep me afloat while I look for a job more suited to my sensibilities. My uncle is also paying for me to go see a therapist and a gastroenterologist, so I should be able to take care of some lingering health issues I couldn't take care of on my own and he is going to help me out so I can stay in Silverlake. Thank God for him, I feel really lucky.
They have me taking an anti-psychotic medication right now, it's main side effect is weight gain, they said I may gain about twenty pounds, which is the exact amount of weight I'd like to gain. Apparently, if I am adamant about it they will transition onto something else and then off meds completely if I'm doing well, which I'm sure I will be. They also told me never to smoke pot again, so even though I'll never say never, I'm going to listen to their advice and not do it for a long long time and when I do it will have to be with extreme moderation. The doctors at UCLA were all really great, it seemed like quite a benevolent place, so I kind of have to trust them.
This experience taught me a lot about the power of perception. I still think I was able to visualize the world in the forth dimension. Earth would have two very similar sides, the one we are on and another more heavenly side, separated by a big sea of lava serving as the equator which the sun rotates around, each side has it's own moon and Earth would once again be the center of the universe. Sounds kind of crazy, but I believe we will go to that other side when we die and if we have good karma we will end up on the right side of that gate. It makes me wonder if when they perceived the Earth as flat, it actually was so. I also learned a lot about the importance of water. That might sound stupid, but make sure you are drinking lots!
...I don't believe this anymore, or most of the things I say in here, about coming off meds, about pot, except for the water part. That's definitely true.
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Well, that's it. If you have ever wondered what it was like to be in that place, now you may have a better idea and now it is time for me to go make something out of this day.
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UPDATE
I just showered and groomed myself up real nice. The whole time I was thinking about that message I sent Kim. I can understand why she wouldn't want to talk to me to some extent after that. It must have been hard to see me not really present. At the same time, Jace explained it like, "We all knew what was going on, and that Chris didn't really believe the things you were saying." or something to that extent, so maybe I should get a break. I don't know. I can see it both ways I guess.
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