7834. BELOW THE WATER LINE (pt. 170)

BELOW THE WATER LINE 

(pt. 170)

A lot of things along the way caught my

attention. I knew I wasn't like other kids,

at least in many of my ways and approaches,

and because of that I had to  -  in a way  -

overcompensate so as to come off as pretty

much OK. It was difficult, but  I worked at 

it. After the train wreck, a few things required 

attention. I used to get, every Friday, wicked

and debilitating migraines; no idea the why of

the schedule either, but Friday was the day. My 

mother used to keep a blue ice-mask in the 

freezer for me to wear  -  like The Lone 

Ranger, or Batman. It fit over my eyes, 

and strapped around the back. Freezing 

cold, and filled with what appeared to

just ice-blue water. It was cold, but it

covered over the pain, right above my 

eyes, forehead area, mostly on the right. 

Pounding. I'd leave school early if I felt it

coming on strong, or, usually by 2:30, it

was time to leave anyway. I'd lie down on

the couch with this mask on, and eventually 

pass out  - just maybe a deep, two-hour 

sleep, and I'd awake and it was gone. And

then, the other thing  -  and this still happens 

to this day, whether driving, reading, or doing

nothing at all  -  I'd get a rotating black sphere,

swirling, broken, jagged and circular lines,

across my vision, from usually the right side 

down and in a few minutes it would blot out 

my vision. Couldn't (and can't) see a thing 

while it slowly rolls, swirling and brightly 

blinking, across my field of vision (both eyes) 

towards the left, usually. No pain, just maybe 

15 minutes of blindness. You know, it was 

Warhol who said everyone would get their 

own 15 minutes of fame. I've got news for 

that guy  -  I've had my fifteen minutes of 

darkness for years. There's nothing for me

to do but step aside and sit it out. Over the 

years, people I've worked with and stuff 

have thought I was nuts. 'Doctor, doctor, 

doctor', was all they ever said. I'd chuckle

and just put down my stuff and wait it out.

To me that's called Faith. If you don't believe

Faith can change circumstances, then what it's

about anyway. I'm a snake handler for God.

Bring that snake over here.

-

My mother, because it was Friday, with 

these headaches, was always trying to stuff 

me with egg salad sandwiches, for late-lunch 

or tide-over headache snacks or something. 

No meat, all that Catholic crap. I don't eat meat 

anyway, but that's adult stuff. For years after 

this, I hated egg salad, wouldn't go near it at 

all. Now I like it again. And then, one day when 

I was about 11 maybe, these headache things 

just stopped. Entirely ceased. Like DNA 

encoded RNA changes  -  decoded. Done.

I always tried to take sustenance from 

belief systems of my own, credence from

personal faith  -  stuff gleaned from special

moments of enlightenment or even revelation.

Yeah, that's all true. Everything's already out 

there, done and prepared. All you need to do 

is find the clarity needed to recognize and then 

grab it. That takes an open channel to the Deity.

Like not eating meat  -  I don't not eat meat for any

special do-good motives. It's because of cruelty.

I feel for the slaughtered animals in the sense

that they get slaughtered by corporate situations, 

filled with chemicals, poisoned and bludgeoned

by idiot monster workers with blood on their

hands. The meat is already poisoned, for the

profit of the corporations, before it's even dead

and before we see it. It's horrid. If I knew I could

raise and slaughter (which I couldn't) by own

natural, unadulterated meat, I wouldn't think

twice. But meat for greed, poison for profit.

No thanks. Money is the Devil's, and the

Devil's is profit. Now I'm paraphrasing here, 

something I read, by someone whose name 

don't matter. It was about belief and the way

things wear down and pass away, and come 

back again, recirculated and reformulated : that's

an example of Paganism, maybe Buddhism too.

Accepting change through Nature and the way

of things. Not looking for a story to explain this

or a legend to believe in or a place to go where

I can learn about this. I am already here. The

horizon speaks to me in my time of need, sharing

the ultimate story of the moment of change, I

accept the horizon for what it is. This is my 

religion, and it doesn't include poisoning or 

bludgeoning animals for profit so that you 

can then poison people for even more profit. 

Just a personal feeling there....

-

I always have looked for moments of 

enlightenment. Even in Avenel; they existed. 

Holding a girl's hand, just for a moment, 

or smiling back at someone. Being nice. 

Helping. Nothing exceptional, just ordinary

moments of everyday grace. The one time 

I was really really bowled over was when 

I was about 16 and saw this thing in 

Central Park, NYC, right behind the 

Metropolitan Museum of Art. My girlfriend

and I, along with two other people, had

gone into the city, just to hang around, and

we got up to the park on the westside, 

decided to take the long transverse walk

 across the park to the eastside, over to the

east 80's where the museum was along Fifth

Avenue. We got towards the rear of the 

museum and there it was  -  Cleopatra's 

Needle. It ripped the heart and soul of 'Me'

right up through my throat. It actually spoke

to me, man, as if I'd just last touched it two 

weeks ago. It erased all time, all eras, but 

rang so true to me that I felt the instant

connection of time, of some weird and

reincarnated selfhood alive through all the

ages past. It lifted me right out of my body.

I was stunned. If time and self have a tuning

fork buried deep within the essence of each

of us  -  that cosmic oneness of all Creation  -

this rang it. Cleopatra's Needle is from 1450

B.C. It's an obelisk  - from the Greek word

meaning 'to skewer'.  The central idea of an

obelisk, classically, is that the 'elevation'

measures ten times the width of their base.

I do not know if this one actually conforms 

to that, nor do I care. It's tall. It's massive. 

It's strange, and its covered in (slowly 

eroding, fizzing away in the NY pollutants) 

hieroglyphic markings memorializing some 

litany of conquests. There's a large diagrammatic

translation of it, with a concise history of things

about it, at the base, in English. It's got beautiful

railings and finishings. Totally enchanting. It's one

of a pair commissioned in 1450 B.C., to originally

grace the city of Heliopolis, honoring the Sun God

Rah  -  probably a forerunner of all our later God-

versions of tribal and War gods. Like Jahweh too.

All the same. Caesar Augustus, in 10 B. C. ordered

it, and its second, mated, version (they were usually

always made in twos and erected at the adjoining

sides of temple entrances), floated down the Nile and

erected in Alexandria, at a temple built to honor his

adoptive father, Julius Caesar. In 1869, Ismail Pasha,

the beleaguered khedive of Egypt,  offered the 

monument to the United States as a symbol of 

friendship. It was a nightmare to transport here. 

Its obelisk mate went to London, and in 1877 

was erected next to the Thames. In Central 

Park, it took 12 years before the obelisk could 

be erected. 69 feet high, 220 tons. Whenever 

I feel the need for that fiery breeze of fervor 

to sweep through me once again, and to 

reinvigorate myself and re-create my own

Reality, I return there. Just something

about it. Having nothing or little

to do with Avenel.
-
That's always been just the way it goes with me.
I've managed to eke out a means of living outside of time
and, mostly, outside of the usual concerns and responsibilities
that normally just hang one up. You stay invisible, cloaked
 instead in a personalized raiment of right, and convinced of
only the rightness of what you are doing. Man, if you can't do
that, for yourself, if you can't even recognize the essential
motivator you 'you yourself and you' as it were, than you
should just leave town. There are already fifteen million
mixed up stooges in the line leaving. Might as well just
join them if you cannot make yourself right to yourself.
If Avenel was in the old-time wild west, I knew I'd have
been lynched a hundred times already : lack of respect,
insubordination, rudeness, and  -  most important to me  -
Truth-Telling. 'Yes, we hung that bastard because
all he kept doing was trying to tell the Truth.'