Chapter Redacted: Parts 1-3 revised

 Context: I am considering writing a longer blog/novelette about my trip. Burning Man in particular this year created a succession of stories worth retelling: Here is a sample. Comments and feedback welcome.

Names with a * have been changed to preserve some anonymity.

Friday. (Part 1) Suspension

"Pretend that your wounds are exotic tattoos."
- Rob Brezny, Free Will Astrology

  The entire week I had been wrestling with the desire to visit our neighbors.  I had placed my tent structure facing the street and away from camp in way that blocked the wind but also was a deliberate attempt to invite interaction.  As such, I had a great view of the camp opposite my camp, Discofish (which has, in fact, a Discofish)   

Camp Dragon Dragon had a small tower that perched over the street corner.  I had passed by them numerous times during the week.  My interaction with them had mostly consisted of waving at them or jumping on a stretch of green astroturf they had laid out across the street after which they would spray you with water so that you’d “get off their lawn.”  This was a great thing in the intense heat of the day. Their entire setup was shaded netting over a steel frame and scattered with couches and chairs facing the street, like a dusty public living room.

 

 Talking to people isn’t that all hard for me.  Overcoming the initial fear of meeting a stranger is still a big issue though.  I had been making new friends all week, far more than a usual year at Burning Man. With nothing really going on, I woke up and walked over with my breakfast, and sat down among a collection of couches.  I met a few folks, re-met some people I had seen on the Discofish the night before, and found out some of them were from San Francisco and they universally loved our outlandish Art Car.  Someone made me a cup of coffee. I ate some sweets, and we chatted and bantered about.  Little did I know that this was some premonitory PR.

  After food, coffee, and regaining a general sense of humanity, I returned to my shade structure and thought about possible activities for the day.  After weighing the options I had a strong feeling I should see Prism*.  Our last conversation had not gone incredibly well.  The week before, we had gone from spending three of the last six days together and “I’m really excited to spend time with you.”  to “I’m feeling that I need to spend little to no contact in order for me to feel like our relationship is developing.”   I can go into all the interpretations of this, suffice to say my approach to relationships is a little open ended and I tend to pick incredibly strong willed partners who like their freedom, and this was not out of scope. I also didn’t feel like I did anything all that wrong.  But I did feel nervous about it, and I had spent the last two days doing some incredibly intense multi-hour group meditations on my own sense of worth, and my fear of abandonment.  If anything I was ready to ‘see Rejection as a Redirection.”

 It had occurred to me the night before that A) I knew where Prism was camped and B) I knew what her tent set up looked like, having watched her set up it in her warehouse the week before.  And she was supposed to be close, in walk in camping, which was a few hundred feet away.  Despite this, I hadn’t seen her since her arrival on Wednesday.  I wasn’t about to swing down to her boyfriend’s camp, hat in hand and ask where she was.  I just met him the week before and given Prism’s behavior I wasn’t sure how my presence was affecting their polyamorous connection.

  I rode over to walk in camping, and immediately saw her, getting ready in her tent.  We said a lot of things.  However, the end result went as expected.  Prism was struggling with fear of losing her boyfriend of three years, and our new connection, while sweet and full of potential, was coming with some unexpected overhead for her.  She decided to end the relationship.  I was sad, but at least I knew the result and my anxiety about our unresolved status went away.   We had tried, and at least we figured it out relatively quickly.  Only later would I reflect that while this was a fairly common occurrence, this was the first time in fifteen years that I was dumped on Playa.

  Despite the break up, and the sadness of it, I didn’t have any real hard feelings about it, and we made some loose plans to hang out together and run some errands during the first part of the day.  Fixxer (my default persona for burning man) got to work fixing some issues by borrowing a loaner bike from my camp so that we could do a quick ride, and stopping by Wonder Camp (we fix your shit camp) to see if they could manage a field repair to Prism’s bike.  They said yes, so our game plan was to ride back to my camp and drop off our bikes, then walk to her boyfriend’s camp to pick up her broken bike. We proceeded north up the street and Prism turned the corner.  

 

   I ran into something face first.  I slowed down on my bike, and looked around, dazed.  I was just following Prism, and she had cut through Dragon Dragon past the tower.  I had my hat down low and what I hadn’t realized was that a human sized ceramic mannequin was exactly the distance off the ground to collide with my right eye. And it was heavy, as well as being internally reinforced with rebar. The it had likely pushed my glasses my face, cutting down through the skin over my cheekbone, while the force of the blow had cracked the twenty pound leg off the mannequin.  After a quick consult with Prism over severity, we moved into Dragon’s living room, bleeding, while people started looking for emergency response gear.  I compressed it with some gauze and cleaned up the extra blood with wet wipes.

   Prism requested that we walk down to ER services, a few blocks away, which we did.  They had me fill out paperwork and gave me a paper wristband. I was calm, if a little embarrassed.  Prism sat a few feet away from me in a chair, visibly concerned.  The ER team put a bandage on it and told me to take the paperwork to Central Services, which was the primary response Triage, to get stitches.  I met Prism's eyes and saw something there. I walked over to her, told her I released her from any sense of obligation or need to take care of me. I could handle this going forward.  She admitted she needed to get her things done and left.  I told her I loved her and we picked up the bikes from Dragon Dragon and moved them to Discofish.

  I found the core Fish crew and asked if I could borrow the Guppy, which was a electric tricycle tricked out in colored fur.  Flintlock* volunteered to go with me. The pain level was low, like a 2 out of 10, but shortly after she suggested an escort to the ES (Emergency Services Tent, which was for more serious injuries), I felt a stabbing pain closer to 5 up the right side of my head, and a little dizzy.  Was I concussed? Would I even be able to tell?

The Guppy provided us a quick transport down the block.  ES was relatively close in any case. Flintlock dropped me off and I skipped the triage area with my paperwork and wristband and went directly into the air conditioned tent through an actual door.    

I’d never been in the ES.  The first aid station in 2011, yes, when someone jabbed me with a piece of fence post. But this was a palace compared to those set ups.  This was a self contained field hospital. It was pretty well set up, with a center row of chairs facing the walls, and against the walls, makeshift cots and adjustable chairs for people.  A quick survey revealed a few people likely in various stages of dehydration sickness while a few people wore arm slings or had bandages over lacerations.  Pretty typical day at Burning Man, based on discussions with my EMT friends, who volunteered their time every year at the event.

  An EMT eventually came and examined me, and filled out additional consent paperwork.  I was eventually graduated to a doctor.  Lynn* was a 2 year resident out of Las Vegas and worked the ER room.  This was her first year at Burning Man, She had a received a free ticket in exchange for her volunteer work this week.  She said the experience working triage was worth the trip alone.  At first she thought I didn’t need stitches, but then she pulled at the wound and the clot came out.  We put the bandages back and she went to get equipment.  Lidocaine in, a quick burn, four stitches, and a tetanus shot, and I was up and out.

 I walked home this time. Not a long walk, maybe 20 minutes at the most.  As I walked up the 4:30 Radial street a small art car passed me. Since it was going the same way I ran up behind it.  The car stopped at an intersection and I jumped in.  Five younger adults greeted me.  I asked how they were doing and the responses varied.  One of them said they were having a problem with Eddie. I asked who Eddie was and they pulled out one of the Vinyl Elephants from the Guild Workshop by the Man, then put the toy away quickly.  I realized everyone on this cart was frying.  The guy sitting next to me was having an especially hard time.  I asked him if he wanted a playa fortune from the small book I carried in my pocket, and he held out his hands.  

  “Yes, I need someone to tell me who I am.”  I hesitated. Reading palms is great but more intense than just giving someone an inspirational quote and a picture.  And this guy was on LSD! The last time I did anything even resembling magic around people on acid, I lost a friend, who subsequently told me that he never wanted to me to practice “witchcraft” around him again (I’ll get into this story in a later chapter).  I was also extremely drained from the morning’s events and doing any kind of improvisational divination like this generally left me tired.  I can do two or three on a regular day, I had no idea if I had one left in me to give.  I tried giving him the book. He seemed reluctant. I told him I could do book or hands, he said hands. Hands it was.

  His life line was the strongest line on his palm.  His mind and love line were decent, but nowhere near as developed.  He had issues with love addiction.  He had a strong talent for leadership and his fate line indicated some fortune with that, as well as roles where he interfaced with people. He had very strong protector lines.  I compared it to his left hand which indicated a more balanced energy but one that struggled with sadness and depression.  As I placed my fingers in each place on his palm, the surrounding circle of people got incredibly quiet.  At each statement I made I would hear confirmations from the group, or from him.  For them, Magic became completely, utterly real.  

  At some point we had turned off the main road and into a side street.  We parked in front of a camp and several people got off to explore the camp.  I wrapped up my reading I asked him how accurate my reading was.  He said 100% accurate.  We hugged.  His lady friend immediately asked me to teach her what I just did.  I told her some of my history and how I was taught by my mother and her friend, an actual Gypsy, but that I was reinforced by book learning.  But no, she said that she saw me “reach into his palm with my fingers and draw out strands of energy.”  Oh boy.  

  We were interrupted by her returning friends from the camp. “Guys, there’s a man over there who is suicidal and just stuck two knives into his legs.”

Friday (Part 2) Never Sleep Again

"Everything flows and nothing abides; everything gives way and nothing stays fixed."

• Heraclitus - As quoted by Plato in Cratylus, 402a

“Guys, there’s a man over there who is suicidal and just stuck two knives into his legs.”  

  Being the only sober person around, I immediately jumped off the art car and hustled over.  The young woman followed me.  I could see a man sitting on the edge of a platform.  He was leaning over, one hand on his head, like the thinking man.  Two ¾ to 1 inch surgical steel gauges with handles were pierced through the meat of his upper thighs. Blood was streaming out of the holes.  He was covered in piercings, so I assumed he had just pierced his legs.  I asked if he was okay.  A friend (presumably) who was sitting nearby in a hammock said he was fine, he had just done a suspension.  She was going to give him 20 minutes and if he wasn’t responsive she’d take him to the ER Tent.  

  I immediately turned with my new friend and we walked back.  The important thing was to explain to the other kids that everything was okay, and I tried giving them some context.  I still don’t know if they understood.  I couldn’t complete the reading but I told her to find my camp (she would the next day) I was exhausted and in absence of anything pressing I had to focus on self care.  This may seem simple but in a way it wasn’t.  This was Fixxer walking away from two people who were in obvious need.  I just don’t do that.  But I had to put myself first.  If anything that was the lesson of the day.  I’d been diverted twice already.

  I did pass by Dragon Dragon and checked in.  One camp member commented “If it had been anyone else it might have been problem, but it was you!  We like you!”   Funny then, that I had only decided to meet them that morning.  Premonitory PR.  I also found the mannequin’s creator, Marquis.  We talked about the morning and she expressed how at peace I seemed with everything.  I explained a little bit about the synchronicity of the day, and I wound up gifting her my own Elephant Toy.  When you see the toy, you’ll immediately understand what I mean.  Both in the obvious context, and in the artistic context. The story behind Nibru is a little complicated, and it really only comes up because I was part of the story, and I actually created some Nibrus of my own.    

“Beginner Artist enters ConceptArt thinking it's DeviantArt and made up of similar artists when in reality it's populated by industry professionals and serious students. The new artist, known as "divinenibru" also thought that his little activity, based around other artists drawing their interpretations of his character named "Nibru", was awfully unique and worthy of everyone's time..

Faced with a possible tartlet armed with a drawing made on lined paper, the jaded denizens of ConceptArt expected the obvious; zero participation with some light flaming leading to the eventual closing of the thread.

it all started when Wesburt decided that enough was enough. Rather than mock the new user in customary passive-aggressive fashion, or direct them to ConceptArts's activity center, Wes did what no professional had previously dared; he joined in, becoming the first disciple and honorary templar in the church of Nibru. Like a true Nibru knight, he kept the trademark lined paper.

With one of their own taking the plunge, the art dragons of CA spread their sparkling wings, opened their gaping maws and unleashed a fiery barrage of professional-grade art based on a high school kid's doodle of a stitch-faced, MacDonalds-endorsing sneaker-wearing emo wizard with a doughnut on his head scrawled on notebook paper.“

Source: a (somewhat facetious but basically accurate) summary on https://encyclopediadramatica.se/ConceptArt#The_Legend_of_Nibru

I made a couple Nibrus, but one in particular I may have put a little too much into it. I paired the Nibru concept with Ganesh, giver and remover of obstacles, and I also put something I wrote when I was my young teens in therapy about how I felt during my parents fighting, abuse, and break up, and how I thought it was my fault, that they didn't love me.  In effect, I linked this Nibru to my feelings of abandonment and self-worth. 

  Prism made an appearance and I introduced her to Marquis.  We chatted for a bit, then all went our separate ways.  Prism had some scheduled activities that she wanted to do, and I really just needed to sit down and take care of myself, eat, rest, handle my emotional and spiritual state.  

  DiscoFish was a bustle of activity.  Keg was going to get to drive the Fish, during the day no less.  This was a big deal for two reasons.  Firstly, the Fish generally was a late night activity and we hadn’t gone out during the day all week, and secondly, we were going to run Disco!  You would think this would be obvious but we’d already had some intense ontological discussions on the nature of Fish’s mission and the type of crowd that the Fish would attract given the type of music that we played.  Several distinct factions had formed themselves around their respective genre preferences already. This year’s music had actually been great so far, better than previous years.  But really, not that much Disco.  

 I got in a quick rest and packed my things and got ready for the evening.  When the Fish rolled out, I was on it.  We were running a couple different disco playlists, mostly composed of classic music.

 The afternoon was beautiful with a gorgeous sunset.  A topless woman in bondage gear made the fish’s stage her home for the first half of our run as we took the fish out into deep playa. We had a quick pit stop, and various people got on and off the bus.

  At some point a man on a bicycle pulled up to us and directed us towards a group of people.  For whatever reason, we were playing “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” on the tracklist.  We had arrived at a Playa Wedding and we were playing one of the groom’s favorite songs!.  Just another bit of playa magic.  At some point someone from the party ran up to me and wrapped a wristband around my left wrist (a blue twin to the one Prism wore from Nowhere Burn).  Mine said “Never Sleep Again.”

    There was drinking.  I ran the small bar inside of the fish for a while, and the Chocolate Stout flowed freely.  I gave people playa fortunes.  I met a trio of Saudi women, and this was their virgin year.  One had a shaved head and the other wore a Hijab.  Like the Chinese group, I can only imagine what sort of culture shock they were going through, but they seemed to be having a great time.  Apparently Paris Hilton was on the bus as well, though I didn’t see her.

  As the playa darkened, the playlist shifted, and started hearing some music I was fond of.  And in a specific order that struck a chord.  I asked where the playlist came from, and was told it was a disco playlist off of Spotify.  In fact, it was MY playlist that I had given to the fish crew approximately 5 years previous, and as far as I knew had never seen play.  

  I don’t know about you, but there is a moment when you are pretty tipsy, and you’re listening to your favorite songs on an incredible state of the art sound system, and you’re singing the lyrics happily - that was my moment.  (later, I would hear from a few people who came by that they loved the songs that night, that people didn’t play things like that on the playa… )

  Now my heart was full.  And I was drunk.  At some point, I wound up on the stripper pole of the fish, stripped down to a red furry loincloth complete with striped tail, dancing to “People are Still Having Sex.” as we headed back into the city.

  Right outside camp, we experienced a clunk, and fish jolted to a halt.  Apparently the attachment between the stage and the bus snapped off while I was on it, but no harm was done.  The stage was detached and rolled away, and the crew wandered off for a bit.  There was some discussion about taking the fish back out but after our day I was fine with packing it in.  I took another nap.  Then I woke up, hearing the Fish start up again.  And decided fuck it, I was going out again.  

  We went out with no front stage, and instead of a pole, we hung a lyra from the Fish’s “angler”.  The trip out was kind of a blur.  I remember coming back and declaring to Flintlock that I was maybe an 8.5 out of 10 in terms of how drunk I was.  She disagreed, telling me it was a 9.8 out of 10.  A few minutes later I came back and told her I had done an self-Diagnostic and I agreed with her assessment.  Then I threw up.

As Flintlock puts it:

   “I was walking you to your tent from the fish when you were super drunk, and you wanted to show me the spot where you ran into her.  We walked over to the spot so that you could recount the incident and then we saw her lying on the ground.  You showed me the broken leg, and then you got onto the ground and gave her a giant bear hug wrapping your arms and legs around her, kissing her on the cheek and apologizing for her broken leg.  You and she had a whole conversation about the incident and you "made Peace" with her.  I had to separate the two of you to take you back to your tent so you could barf, but you held her and rocked back and forth hugging her for a while.”

  As far as I can recall, this is the first time in my life where I blacked out, since I have no memory of the hugging incident.

Saturday (Part 3)

We shape clay into a pot but it's the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want.
- Lao Tzu

   I was up early.  I was regularly getting 3-5 hours of sleep a night with a short nap or two, but my body was handling it.  No exhaustion or immune system hits.  I mostly took it easy around camp that morning, deliberately taking it slow and focusing on self care.  My beautiful camp mates manifested a feast - eggs and hash browns, and coffee, and I sat in a chair by the main group, still feeling drunk, and wondering when the hangover would hit.  It never did.

  I was interrupted by the young lady from the palm reading experience.  Apparently she had tracked me down to my camp, and brought a friend.   We'll call her Nefertiti* - she was a therapist who worked with psychedelic care on the side.

  So, I guess here is where I tell you that I'm a witch. Yes, with an initiation and everything.

  The story is that my mom was really into the feminism proponent and pagan practitioner Starhawk back in the day, had a copy of her book, The Spiral Dance, and was doing wiccan circles and hanging out in shaman teepees and who knows what else in the backwoods and college gatherings in the late 70's early 80's in Santa Cruz.  All good.  I was raised to sing songs to the moon goddess, to play with fire, and how to meditate and get centered at a very early age.  The whole Christianity thing was interesting, I didn't really know too much about it (kind of like as a Christian you might have a vague idea of Judiasm or Hinduism).  I mean I sang in the Christmas choir, I knew the basics, but I didn't really GET the idea of the bible until I went to catholic school in my teens.

  The point is I was raised weird. And I believed in Magic, and Leprechuans, and I thought that Dragons were real and one lived on the West Side of Santa Cruz by Steamer Lane.  My parents didn't really encourage me one way or the other but you know when your mom is casting spells and reading palms for people you kind of just accept it as a fact of life.

  So this leads me back to the questions Nefertiti was asking me.  Again, she was insisting that she seen me do "something" with her friend's palm and she wanted to know what I had to say about it.

  On my facebook page when it asks about my religion I just put "Really, Really Geeky."   For me to talk about this I have to set a frame of reference and it gets really stupid really fast.  I don't believe that leprechauns and dragons are real anymore, but I do believe in Magic.

   I think Magic is about your intent.  The universe (whatever we refer to the material world) is just this infinite space and even with our best tools we can only perceive a slice of it.

   I subscribe to the Robert Anton Wilson Camp.  This guy used to be an editor for Playboy Magazine and he used to collect letters from people who would write to Playboy about all the various conspiracies that the US government was involved in.  They would throw it in a pile called the crank file.  At some point he took the crank file and started writing a book with some of the wackier theories in the file.  That book expanded into the novels that became "The Illuminatus Trilogy".

   This is a tough book. It starts off as a fiction book and then it gets weird.  It directly references world events and places, and has a narrative, but in places it uses a "stream of consciousness" writing that was made famous with James Joyce's Ulysses.  The worst part is, when you read it, it will actually change the way you perceive the world.  This is far more disconcerting than it sounds.

   The best example is that the book claims that the number 23 is an enigma number and that all kinds of spooky events and incidents can be traced back to this number.  This is all well and good when you're reading.... so you close the book and go back to your daily business...

   And then the number 23 starts popping the fuck up EVERYWHERE in your REAL LIFE.  This is not a drill, this is a real fucking thing that happens when you read the book.

   Now, you can get into a couple of camps on this.

a) It's pure randomness that 23 is popping up, and it's coincidence.  It's not testable in any case
b) 23 IS the magic number and it's everywhere (Michael Jordan's shirt, omg!)
c) Somewhere in between where it's real and it's not real.

   Wilson's point of view is that he's a skeptic, he will always be a skeptic, but he's no atheist, and he's observed some weird stuff in his life and he's happy to concede that we can't really understand existence.  He writes a whole book about the "Inquisition" which is essentially about the dogmatism that has driven our understanding of science in the direction it already has, while ruining other legitimate scientists' careers.  He uses this as a cautionary tale.  It's not about the evil conspiracy of science, it's about normal people getting caught up in their own beliefs to the point that they can't see any other view. His goal is  "To try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone but agnosticism about everything."

   Personally I feel like we are biologically pre-disposed to create patterns (akin to Cognitive Bias) , and this is both a gift and a curse. The point is to notice its power.  If you tell me 23 is important then the number 23 will start to go higher and higher on the importance scale.  Maybe I wouldn't even notice it consciously but if I see the symbol in my field of vision I will certainly be more sensitive to it and THEN see it and THEN attach meaning to it - which reinforces its importance - whereas previously I would have never seen it.  It's like when you buy a Toyota and suddenly start to see Toyotas everywhere.

    In Wilson's POV, it's always about catching yourself in the act of observing.  Of being aware that reality is what you observe, and realizing that if you can have any number of beliefs, at least create one that's cool and works for you.  Pronoia and the Church of the Sub Genius share some DNA with the movements he started or was more than casually involved with.

   The other guy that I'm majorly influenced by is Stuart Wilde.  Wilde gives no fucks, he's like the Noam Chomsky of the New Age circuit, simultaneously pissing people off with wild conjecture and yet nailing incredible insight to the wall.  Hideous and fascinating all at once. One of the many ideas Wilde propounds on is that the universe is basically in a quantum state. Like with light that simultaneously exists as a wave and a photon, there are elements of the universe that don't actually exist until someone comes along and observes them.

  Wilde is into manifesting shit.  Basically creating the reality that you want with your intent.  You observe reality and it CHANGES itself to fit your intent.  And honestly, I can buy into this, (with a healthy scoop of skepticism)  Maybe it's biological, maybe it's magic, I can't say.  But I can tell you that when I was dirt poor and wanted a book about making money in the self help section of the bookstore his book about manifesting money literally fell off the shelf in front of me.  And that's not a singular occurrence. According to him, multiple people have written to him about his book falling off the bookshelf in front of them. Spookyyyyy..

The book worked, btw.  As well as the second one that randomly showed up in my life at an unexpected place... but that's another story.

The last bit I want to talk about is Synchronicity.  Basically it's when something happens, you get a bit of data in your existence, and then later something else comes along that reinforces that data.  (The problem that humans generally ignore non-reinforcing data)  

In any case, 23 could be an example.  

My creating a little plastic elephant with a stitched eye and then getting stitches right beneath my eye, in a place that I've injured several times in the past, could be an example.  

My walking around the playa realizing I needed to get over my sense of unworthiness and then having a complete stranger scream out randomly aloud " there's no such thing as Playa Magic.

There's no such thing as Playa Magic, you manifest your own reality,

YOU'RE WORTH IT, YOU'RE WORTH IT, YOU'RE WORTH IT."
I meannnnn, that could be an example.  

The extension of the idea is that if Fate is real, can you actually control of the effect?   To use a simple analogy, if Life is like a deck of cards, can you stack the deck without touching it to make the card you want come to the top?  I can't really say.  I certainly can't prove it.  What I can say with certainty is that you can arrange yourself, your mindset, to play the "game of Life" as if that card were going to come to top.   When it actually does it will sure as fuck seem like Magic to everyone else.

  If that seems like a cop out, well, I stick to what I think is plausible.   Back to Nefertiti, who has now heard all this and seems disappointed.   No ability to rewrite someone's DNA has manifested itself at this point. 

  She asked me to her palm read again, which I did. I did explain that during parts of the read, I was consulting my intuition, and that possibly I was reading something off her, but I wasn't conscious of it.  Wilde called it "The Etheric", positing that we are connected by energy out to about 40 feet and we actually do affect each other. I personally think if anything like the Etheric is true, it doesn't have a range.

  I wrap things up with Nefertiti and say goodbye.  I don't really know what to say - she seems really excited by the Etheric idea, I give her my default address information and name and she says she'll find me, and that we'll trade book names.

*****

I am Cast Afloat on Dark, Deep Water.

August 2009.

It’s much too early in the morning to be driving 90 miles an hour on a moonless, empty mountain highway. I take the curve at an even 70, my tires clump-clumping against the inner median as the car struggles to reassert its momentum over physics. A part of me notes the risk; dismisses it. My ex-wife and lover checked into the emergency room. And not even a city hospital, but a backwoods mountain hospital. Her friend on the phone just told me she had her fourth seizure, and stopped breathing. She’s stable, but did she take brain damage? Is she going to die? I am about to lose my closest friend, again?

I know what to do if she’s incapcitated– I’ll have Joe fax me a copy of her paperwork from my file cabinet. I still have rights. I’ll have to call Michelle, to verify. I’ll have to call her family… do I have Phil’s number? I’ll have to call Lauren… CLUMP CLUMP CLUMP. Tires hitting the center median. I sigh. I try to clear the thoughts out of my head, which I do. But it still leaves a sinking, sick, feeling in the pit of my stomach. I am getting a stress headache too. Thank god I am still on New Zealand time and running on pure adrenaline, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to drive at all at 2am in the morning. As it is I’m likely to crash and burn at the speed I’m going.

I get to the hospital Emergency Room in record time. They ask me my relation. I debate saying “ex” before the husband – would they keep me from seeing her? – but I can order the paperwork and it’s the truth so I stick to it. The nurse lets me in through the door with a buzzer.

The ER has such a familiar smell… the strong, ubiquitous disinfectant of hospitals. I know this smell too well, from picking up my mom from her near death experiences, and I always associate it with anxiety. I wonder what sort of psychic stain all the worried family members leave in an emergency room, over time. I wonder how the people manage working here, in this womb of blood, pain, and sometimes death.

She is on her side, with an IV and various heart meters. I can’t read the heart meter myself, I mentally make a note of this gap in my knowledge and file it away for later. I want to know the rhythm of my loved ones when they are in danger. She looks ok. Skin tone is okay, breathing okay. I sit down next to her and call her name. She opens her eyes and looks at me – she can’t talk yet – she is still on the sedative, but I think on some reptilian brain level she recognizes it’s me, her lips move in the barest hint of a smile, and she relaxes visibly a bit. I give her my hand and she holds it close to her chest, and back she goes into her drugged sleep.

I wait for the nurse and doctor to address me. I know they have a job to do, I am the intruder, the extra body in the way. Eventually the nurse tells me she’s doing okay, she should be alright, but she did have a fourth seizure in the ER, that she stopped breathing, that she turned blue, and they had to give her Dylantin and Atavan, which knocked her out. There are not saying prognosis until they get results back but we know the drill. It’s unspoken. No breathing means no oxygen. No oxygen to the brain means possible brain damage. Won’t know until she’s awake and the drugs are off the system. ….if she wakes up, screams a tiny voice in the back of my head. I clamp that one down mercilessly.

When I get up to use the restroom she wakes up, and she falls asleep again when I hold her hand. On some level I suppose it’s romantic, the shining knight with the sleeping princess, except, of course the horrid reality of it. When I’m sure she’s asleep I check her head for bumps and her body for bruises – she’s okay. She was complaining of a cyst, and when we were on the phone earlier she was worried about hitting her head after the first seizure – there was blood on the floor afterwards.

Her first call to me missed me by 20 minutes, I was in the wrong room, playing Magic, when the phone rang. (phone is not leaving my side again for the next month or so, now). She got me on the third try, and she had enough time to tell me she had a seizure, that she left blood on the floor, that she thinks it’s from her head (her head hurts), and that she’s scared. She says the last two like a mantra. Her head hurts. She’s scared. Any question that would lead to another answer leads to numb silence. She can’t complete a sentence with me on the phone. I don’t know how to comfort her. Then she starts seizing again. I still haven’t seen her in person when she does it, she’s only done it over the phone with me now, but it’s still intense.

Epilepsy experienced by the observer is frightening, any way you look at it. One is very conscious of one’s complete inability to affect the outcome in any way. All you can do it make sure the person seizing doesn’t hurt themselves fatally. She is having a tonic-clonic, the famed “grand mal” seizure you see on television. Except they’re acting. Badly. The sound she makes – it sounds like a large, angry man has grabbed her by the throat is just throttling her, hard, quickly. She’s gasping for air. She’s probably convulsing now. The phone hangs up.

JD, her roommate calls me back almost immediately on her phone. She is convulsing. I calmly walk him through this. No, don’t call the ER, she’s doesn’t want to go. Sit her down against the wall or have her lay down. Blood out of the mouth is normal, it’s her biting her tongue (blood on floor explained) Let her seize until she can talk again. If she seizes over 5 minutes we call 911… – this goes on for about 4 minutes until – for reasons no medical text can explain why – she’s done. But she’s still recovering. It takes her about 10 minutes to say anything coherent other than “Wait a minute”… I tell her I love her (I do), I tell her to hang in there.

I’ve had two seizures myself. The first, I tripped over a chair when I was drunk and landed eye-first into a solid wooden chair. I got up, dazed, told everyone I was fine, sat down in the chair, and went into convulsions. An army medical vet was on the scene and checked me out – I barely remember it happening. I had my second in a car. The experience was excruitiatingly painful and I thought I was dying. I don’t feel like these experiences bridge the gap between us – but I like to feel like somehow, I’ve gotten a window into what her life is like, what her daily fear is of… and it scares the shit out of me.

She is able to talk now – We are figuring out what to do – she tells me she doesn’t want to go back on the meds, she was dialing off her “herbal tonic” and this happened. I tell her she’s had two seizures (she’s didn’t know) and I want to know if I can have JD take her to the hospital. She tells me no meds. Call the number on the medical bracelet. Then she start seizing again. JD calls the number on the bracelet. Fuckers tell him to call 911. Or maybe they’re not, what expectation did I holding for a med bracelet company anyway? I tell him to drive her to the ER. Then I pack, get in the car, drive 150 miles from SF to Ukiah. Google says it’s 2 hours to drive. I make it in one and a half, minus tire rubber from the median. The universal laws of physics bend to my will and the cops are all looking the other way.

In the ER, I try to pass the time. I draw, badly. I try to read a book, but I am too tired to comprehend. I sit and stare at her for a long time. It would be really easy to start analyzing, poring over our relationship, finding places where maybe, somehow, I could have changed the outcome and she would never wound up here. But I’ve learned (from experience) that’s a futile exercise. My mind, remains, thankfully, blank, and I’m only left to deal with vague anxiety.

The docs have pumped about 2 liters of water into her and eventually she wakes up, asking to pee. We have to get her out of all the wires – she’s looking really uncomfortable. I man handle her over to the toilet and sit her down, pull down her underwear for her, and sit with her as she pees. We were never shy about that sort of thing, it’s even less of an issue now. She stands up and, using me as a prop, she leans into me and gets her underwear back on. I look in the bowl and see the bloody culprit of the seizure – she’s on her period. This happened the last time she went into her period, too.

I help her back to bed and she’s complaining of her wet underwear – I guess in the run she pissed herself, so I get her out of the underwear and help the nurse get her into new clothes. She is shivering a bit and I ask her if she wants a furry blanket. I brought one, cat hair and all, but I know it will keep her warm. She smiles. Her eyes crinkle a bit, and she says “yeah” like one would a drawn out sigh. I get the blanket, get her snug in it, and she passes out again. She will remember none of this conversation.

It’s 6am. She sleeps through a loud boisterious hospital shift change. I get a new nurse (male) that she won’t remember either named Skip and we talk about her situation. She’s on this herbal tonic. She’s trying to see if she get can get off meds completely. The nurse, while being empathic, lays outs his feelings on the subject. Herbs can be great. But herbs also have differing doses depending on time of year picked, quantity, quality, essence, location etc. This is benefit of manufactured drugs is that you know how a dose will work, generally. He says he sees epiletics on herbal medications all the time in his emergency room. He’s also seen them seize into vegetable state.   Thanks, like I didn’t already know.

When she wakes up, nurse and the doctor try to explain this her. She cries. She doesn’t want to be on Dylantin, it causes oestoporis. Atavan sucks, she wants Lamictal if anything. But the local health insurance won’t cover Lamitcal. When the doctor goes away she turns to me and says, fiercely. “I am not going on fucking medication.” I tell she can do whatever she wants. But I tell her she scared the living shit out of me, and I thought she was going to die. She does not remember any of this, does not remember Skip, doesn’t remember me getting her home, sleeping in her bed.

She doesn’t remember waking up, her asking me to watch her while she showers in case she seizes again. She doesn’t remember me filling the tub, sitting her in it, and scrubbing the sticky pieces of tape from the IV and electrodes off of her body. She doesn’t remember as I rubbed the washcloth over her toes and fingers, and rung the warm water off down her back. She doesn’t remember getting up to use the computer. She does remember laying downstairs with me, thankfully, on the carpet, in the warm afternoon. I keep repeating the same conversations with her, about how many seizures she had, how she almost died, about how the docs said she needs to be on meds. She keeps telling me she doesn’t want to. But after I leave, when she has to sleep on her own, she will call and tell me that she’s scared to fall asleep and possibly seize. We agree she should get back on the meds then.

I think the blessing, and the curse, of this whole scenario is that she can’t remember how bad it actually was. Yes, her body feels like she ran a triathalon and her tongue is a slab of ground beef… but her head doesn’t hurt. She doesn’t remember, she doesn’t remember calling me on the phone in a panic.

“I’m scared…. My head hurts…”

“It’s okay baby, it’s okay…”

“I’m scared…. I’m scared…”

“It’s okay, I’m scared too….”

The Bridge is Love

The last time that we spoke, we sat in a cafe and talked about his plans for the future.  School, job,  his depression.  It was a conversation that we'd had several times before.  All of us had goals that we struggle with, the unending pressure to reach the ideal image of ourselves at some point in our lives.  He had been fighting an uphill battle to reach his goals for a long time.    

We finished our meal, shared a hug, and left for home in Albuquerque. A few days later he threw himself off of the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge near Taos, New Mexico.  

Grief is such a mysterious emotion to me.  What is the evolutionary purpose of desiring something it's not possible to have back?  And yet, we're all fated to feel that emptiness, where memory is a dagger, dealing pain, one slow slice at a time. 

I've done what I could to cope.  I've honored his memory through ritual, through sharing with others, planting a Japanese Maple, years of therapy, and yet still... 

One morning I woke up, and he was in the kitchen, cooking, as if nothing had happened.  I ran up to him, tears in my eyes, hugged him, welcomed him back from his trip, and we talked about life, philosophy, the latest books he'd been reading.  Then I woke up, and realizing it was a dream, uncontrollably sobbed in the arms of my lover.  

I miss him. Especially this time of year, around the anniversary of his death, and around our shared birthdays. He's getting harder to remember now.  His touch, his smell, are stronger than the visual memory I have of him.  It's hard to remember his voice.  I miss the feeling, curled up next to him.  

My old housemate and I talked about him. I asked how he copes with it.  He said that he believes that he lives on in us, in the gift of the time that we had with him.  He changed us.  We changed him, making a mark in that chapter of our shared experience, even if, ultimately, it wasn't enough to change the end of his story. 

In 2016, five years after his death, I drove out to the gorge.  It wasn't my original intention to be there on the anniversary day, but that's how it landed.  He would have appreciated the synchronicity of it. 

On the high plateau, you could see long fields of scrub extending eastward to white capped mountains in the distance.  Cutting through the plateau was a river, which after years, had slowly worn away the ground beneath and created the gorge deep below.  Across the chasm was a bridge, and before the bridge was a lonely car park.  My intent was to honor him, leave a wooden rose out on the span, say a few words.  As I walked out, I thought I felt him then. 

I taped the rose to a strut in the center of the bridge.  I found that didn't really have words.  I still don't now.  There's just the loss, the chasm, the long drop away to the ribbon of water below.  I thought of him then.  I closed my eyes.  When I opened them, snow was falling, a gentle, windless dusting, all around me.

"There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning." 

- Thornton Wilder  

Andy.

I found out Andy died this morning.

This Saturday morning I got up a little after sunrise to head into the hospital for an appointment.  I walked out the front door and two men with hauler trucks had just driven into his driveway.  I did a double take.  Asked them why they were there.  My suspicious is not unfounded:  There have been a rash of house break-ins lately, our own house was broken into, and Andy's door doesn't lock well so it's usually open.  It's an easy target. 

The older of the two men said that the occupant had died.  This shocked me a bit.  Hadn't I just seen him?  Definitely in September.  No, they said, he'd died a long time ago.  They were told to grab a few things like pictures and send them to the family out east.  Everything else was getting hauled away, presumably to the dump.

The last time I saw him, Vlad and I had just left the house and he was in shuttle with two workers. We helped them break into his house actually, because the gate had been locked.  He didn't seem to recognize us or hear us very well, and he looked really different.. emaciated.

So Saturday, I sat outside my house, watching the two men figure out the parking situation.  Tried to text Vlad and his girlfriend.  Went back into the house and woke them up.  Confirmed that yes, Andy had died a few weeks ago, Vlad hadn't had a chance to tell me.  I was furious.  Left the house and slammed the door (in true, Deane style).

Grabbed the steering wheel.  Couldn't think of music to play.  What could encompass my grief and frustration right now? 

Loneliness kills.  Over the past two years, this little data point keeps floating up to the surface of my consciousness repeatedly.  Loneliness kills.  We are three times as likely to die from complications resulting from emotional isolation than we are from cancer alone, heart disease alone, cigarettes alone.

Andy was a smoker.  Honestly, Andy was pretty bizarre.  A loner, even when his partner (lover, wife? I never knew) lived with him.  He wandered around the neighborhood in a tattered bathrobe that looked like it never knew the inside of a washer.  Frequently, spittle would fleck the sides of his unshaven face as he talked with you.  Taller than me, he kind of loomed over you,  his balding hair sticking out of the sides of his head, wearing glasses, cigarette dangling loosely from a finger.  The avatar of the crazy next door neighbor

Most of my interactions with Andy revolve around sharing a wall.  All that smoking lead to a massive amount of coughing, and we heard it throughout the house.  He also had a habit of letting the television run 24-7, and you could hear the ambient noise (but never the actual words) of whatever show was playing in the background.

That wall.  My schedule over the years has been erratic.  I'm up late, up early, and the sounds behind the wall effect how well I can sleep.  The coughing didn't bother me.  But the crying...  Andy had a habit of crying out in his sleep, frequently.  I know he served in the military, but I never asked him about it.  To be fair, I've never reached out much to my neighbor on the other side of my house, it's not Andy in particular.  We just never had a lot in common.

Around the time his wife died, he asked me for help putting a computer together and trying to get his printer to work. He was working on a sort of collage, an orgy of nudes that he'd pulled from clippings.  I showed him how to create his own email account, gave him a brief description about how google search worked, turned off the safe search function (he wanted to look up porn) and tried to advise him on how to find friends and family through the internet.  I wasn't able to hook up that printer though.

Years back, before I ever moved to SF, my experience with MMO's inspired me to say that the internet as a social tool would have a huge effect on people's lives.  I was right then.  I look at my family members and see them reaching out to each other, their friends, connecting.  My mother has hundreds of connections through Facebook that share her interests in cats and bone cancer, and is constantly chatting w people all over the world.

Andy didn't know how to Google Search.  He was from a different era, and one with a different expectation of men as well.   In the end, his interactions were mostly with health services.  Strangers, mostly, who didn't know him.

He died with no friends, and no family nearby, in his house by the ocean.  I think this is what strikes me to the core.  That loneliness.  His awkwardness in reaching out, juxtaposed with his obvious desire to do so.

The house behind the wall will be silent now, at least for a while

The song I put on?  Carry On.