I lost my mind

City of Angels Peter Gabriel: I grieve

Dreams.  You remember those?  Some ever flow and ever change.  They can adapt.  Then there are those of another fashion.  The piercing dreams that lie in the subconscious while our conscious lies to us.  One continually strives to bask in the sun while the other… well… it casts doubt on our power, shunning our truth as it prefers the comfort of darkness.  Perhaps driven by shame, perhaps motivated by fear it turns deaf ears to the visions desperate cry of life.   Or is it the other way around?

It matters little.

I lost my mind a few weeks ago. 

Don’t worry, I had lost my mind before, twice to be exact.  I have this thing.  My brain has two occupants within the same house.  One is a hopeless romantic forever breathing life.  The other is a cynic filled with his cold calculations.  Maybe it’s a Gemini thing, maybe it’s an Andy thing, or maybe it’s just a human thing.  Who knows?

It matters little.

All I know is that a house divided against itself cannot stand.  The first two crashes were complete: Catatonic.   The fist break came after two years that cold unsympathetic one known as reality.  Memory of her words, her laughter, her eyes, the trace, the promise served as a cloak I used to wrap myself.  A protected refuge to serve against that heartless shrew known as reality.  Her sharp tiny teeth ready and eager to nibble away at your dreams until the tapestry is little more than ruined rags.  Evidences against my created world would be refuted with a laugh—a smile.  Like a hopeful yet crippled pilgrim at Lourdes desperate to be hoisted into the healing waters one last time, or the child at Christmas  who had so longed for a gift that was so precious he told no one.  He hoped that it would show.  He believed it would show.  Santa would know… Santa would know… but the gift never showed up. 

It matters little.

Anyway, the first time the delusion and grandeur of the dream world had grown too great.  It was a contradiction of her own words that brought the crash about.  It would have had to have been this way.  It would have had to have come from her mouth:  I probably would have made an excuse for it anyway else.  With the hanging of the phone the crashing of my mind had begun.  I don’t know if it was due to the rush of all rising and racing, or the fact that so much was clouded in the collapse, my brain only allowed tunnel vision.  A method of survival no doubt as my brain only allowed me to think of the next step.  That was all.  But I had to see her, perhaps to seek an answer, perhaps so that she could twist the plunge in person.  Well I saw her, she was socked… and I was informed that she had other things to do.  After a pathetic plea for one last kiss, and before my world went black, I discovered that the dry staked soil voraciously soaks up blood pouring fresh from an obliterated heart.  Or was it from the obliterated mind?

It matters little.

The second time I had grown, and so had she.  As both knew that some wounds never heal, initial steps were cautious.  Rejoicing in a resumed friendship they pretended not to notice how their hearts were made complete.  And they were happy,.  Well that is until the vicious shrew known only as reality showed that all was impossible.  Yet perhaps because I am a Scot, maybe because I’m Texan, or mainly… because I am me, there is no challenge I love more than impossible.  Impossible is only an opinion, an option that I could not, would not take.  She brought me light, she brought me life, she made me young again… or was it whole again… ahh well…

It matters little.

Most important she gave me my voice.  Like a Don Juan I wrote.  Narratives, stories, poems, anything to woo her.  And it worked.  Or at least she was kind enough to let me think it worked.  That was all well and good, because regardless of which, I wrote.  She read.  The pen would move and hearts would swoon.  But, as before, it was brought to an end.  This time were the words “I want to be your friend” and I believed.  I think she was being honest, but who knows…

 

It matters little.

So I continued to write.  Either stories, or narratives.  By the way… the self-serving mirth mired narratives were horrid.  Okay… well really they were good.  Combined with passion and talent, works lamenting a lost past or a dying devotion that are usually the handiwork of beginning authors and poets were honed to a perfection.  I could move hearts with my work.  I even moved hers.  I continued to hold out hope that she would be true and that we might remain friends.    Well, then I had a talk with her.  In a last moment of transparency with me I heard th soft sigh of a piece of her dying as she told me goodbye.  I should have left it at that… but I didn’t.

Anyway… it matters little.

 The second time I went crazy was when I saw her in a car with another guy.  Or it could have been the time I was totally unsuspecting to see her that I saw the sharp angles of her face half hidden in light, half in shadow.  That is when I turned mainly to poetry.  I felt the narratives had little to offer.  The loathing self-drudgery created in the hoping to catch glimpse of a nirvana.  Causes laid out in the hopes that she might provide a cure.  Simple formula.

Don’t believe me?  All you have to do is try to stare at the slight upturn of the pale bloodless thin lipped Jim Jones.  His eyes hidden behind the thick black lenses of shades, he watched his believers listen to his plea and despite the collapse of their children still cast adoring looks.  Standing on ground already strewn with empty stained paper cups, they took partook of the Guyana Kool-Aid.  They provided him a narrative and he… well he had provided them with an answer.

But perhaps this isn’t a good analogy.  But the narratives stuck one in the past.  I wanted the dreams of the future not merely to trod on the bones of dead men again and again.  So where to turn…  Poetry!    Poetry is a good form as the author can say his truth in such a way as to generalize it to an emotion all can see, or so obscure it that he can grin like a mad hatter.  But I was good.  Though I may have been only writing to a shadow while I cast my messages in a bottle to a seething sea in the hopes that they might find their intended audience.  Maybe she read them.  Maybe she didn’t.

It matters little. 

Anyway, to get back to the story…Tuesday two weeks ago was when I went mad.  While maybe in the past I could blame it on her…  this one was different.  I knew it was me, but I didn’t know what was the cause of my malady.  I couldn’t understand it.  I had a good talk with her, I had done nothing but listen to her.  I had had no expectations.  I was glad to have her back as a friend.  But then… I spoke with another friend later that day.  He did what I do, what some others do, heck it’s what made Columbo famous apparently in his 70’s series.  That whole trick of keeping the most important thing until the very end of the conversation… “Oh and one more thing.”  With us it was aobut her.  A slight revelation in a passing phrase where I picked up that she was doing to him the same exact thing she had done to me.

It matters little.

As Sunday passed into Monday my mental sky became more overcast.  My mind became clouded.  My body became clumsy and erratic.  My emotions became dense and confused.  At first I had no idea what was going on and it scared the heck out of me.    I was in the middle of a book and I couldn’t follow the story or think clearly of anything is when I realized that I was losing my mind.  Well when I realized that, I knew I still had some of my mind left, so I had better think of what was provoking my madness.  It is when I realized that my subconscious was desperate in its struggle against the advancing offensive of my conscious.  She hurt, just as I.  She felt, just as I.  She was merely playing her game.  For her it seemed the elation of reconnection would slowly be overcome by the guilt of her new acceptance until the outsider was cast out.  Perhaps that is all I had been, or perhaps I had been too true.  In the end we are two desperate to avoid talking about the elephant in the room that prevents any semblance of seeing me seeing her as her and she seeing me as me.

It matters little.

For in the end, she gave me my words, she gave me passion, she made my heart whole, and she gave me love.

And that matters a lot.