Dear Brilliant Readers:

Silly Charlie went off his medication when Sang died. It was a typical grief reaction. We understood.

And so began the downward spiral. It was a slow downward slide—this time. In fact, the depression surrounded him so slowly—the angle of the decline was so slightly descending, day after day after day—that Charlie didn’t notice he was heading into a psychological wind storm.

Luckily, we caught this crisis in time. He will be back on medication by Monday. He has a psychiatrist appointment in the late afternoon–which he will be keeping!

Soon, hopefully, finally, all of his hesitation and anxiety and depression will melt away, and he’ll get back to writing whatever the hell he wants to.

Until then, he sends his love from deep inside the fog. He asks that you do not pray for him, please.

Thank you.

The Management

Genesis 2010:01

And God said, let the Earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. He even created bacteria and viruses, to attack and kill these living creatures. God was kind of a douche back then.

After finishing his perfect creation, the dolphin, he decided to have some fun.  He took some spare parts that were lying around his garden, and he made himself a pet—two pets, to be precise.

And just for shits and giggles, God said: let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Note: God talked about himself in the plural back then. Too much weed, I bet.  But he was still a young God. Cut him some slack, for His sake!

So, anyway, God created humans last.  He told them they were “in charge” of all the other creatures. He just wanted to make them feel good. He told them they were the most specialest ever.  Yes, even though the other creatures were stronger, more agile, and even smarter [Viola! The Dolphin!]—it was his little monkey-like pets that he favored. At least, that’s what he told them. He wasn’t always a douche.

In fact, in this case, he had very wise intentions.  He knew that the humans could never be given any real power. They would just fuck  up the Earth. So he created certain limitations and obstacles for them. He suppressed their knowledge and self-awareness with a magical spell. So long as they didn’t eat from his magical tree—the tree of knowledge—they would remain his adorable ignorant pets forever, just the way he liked them. They were so cute.

But God screwed up, of course. He was boastful back then. He told them about the tree. He forbade them from ever eating the fruit from it. Never ever eat those Me damned Apples, he told them. Then he left them alone.

Well, apparently, God never took Psych 101. He probably should have taken a parenting class, because, obviously, as soon as his back was turned, the human’s noshed on Apples. They’re mammals. It’s their nature.

And then all hell broke loose. God lost his temper. I mean, he completely flipped out. He was so enraged, in fact, that he never considered just resetting his creatures. I mean, come on, I can reset my computer to its default state, and Steve Jobs created that.  Surely God had the power to fix this error.

Instead, God cursed his pets. I know, kinda douchey.

The female would bleed every month from her most sensitive places, and the poor male would have to work. ::groan:: Yes, he would have to work the land for survival, the poor guy, while she would hemorrhage…every month…for five days. Oh, and she’d also have to endure the agonizing reproductive process. How’s that for gender bias?

God was a rampant sexist back then, too.

So, just like that, and without so much as a trial, God told his stupid humans that they were on their own, and he threw them out of his garden.

And just as God had predicted, they fucked up the Earth.

»Read More

5-16: 01 – Life is Suffering

Deep childhood pain burned emotional pathways down to your human core. You tell yourself that, being poetic. You like to think of yourself  as cracked by pain—fractured and porous. You imagine your psyche as a field drought soil—cracked in a trillion spider webbed vessels.

You have suffered so much. You made it to adulthood on the planet Earth. Therefore, you have known humiliation and loss. You hate the word “therefore.”

You have lost so much, despite trying not to. You tried so hard. You couldn’t have tried harder. No, you couldn’t.

You limped along. You stayed alive. You stayed alive at times when you absolutely didn’t want to. You tried to kill yourself with cigarettes. You tried to kill yourself with alcohol. You tried to kill yourself with work, study, achievement. You stayed alive, somehow. You were lucky.

You didn’t slice open your wrists, or suck on a gun muzzle, because consciousness is always better.  You realized that when you started blacking out from panic. Your stress levels were so high, that your brain turned off—said the second guessing doctor.

You returned from non-consciousness to full consciousness, over and over and over again. Waking up was always joyful. The world was more alive to you after each attack.

Your consciousness became your most valued possession. You wanted to understand it. You started paying it more attention.

Slowly, the joy of it all—the burst of a moment into a mind that was dead, the particulars of the moment that you used to ignore, sounds, smells, textures—filled all those cracks in your psyche. You felt the joy of being awake down to your human core, because your suffering had burned those emotional pathways long ago. Now you just relax—fully notice the moment—open to its ordinary beauty, and you’re home.

Suddenly, you’re grateful. You’re grateful for your suffering. You understand the interconnectedness of it all. You understand that you can only feel joy this deeply, because you were tortured as a child. You see it so clearly. You understand it in your abdomen. You feel a deep unburdening. You cry.

Chapter 6: From a Fairy Tale

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Once there was a boy who had his heart broken young. You can blame his father, or his mother, or the public school system, or the sadistic other kids, but none of that matters; the point is, this guy had never been un-heartbroken. You see, he was a product of his culture. He was the tightly pixellated picture of American normalcy.

On the surface, he was an adorable kid. He was plump, a little chubby, but not obese. He had rosy cheeks, and long eyelashes, and dark brown penetrating eyes, and glasses. He had worn glasses since he was three.

Four-eyed Sammy, they called him: his family and the other kids. Fat four-eyed Sammy, they called him. They used to laugh at him.  And he was one of those really sensitive kids, the kids who become artists and teachers, so he cried. They picked on him for crying. It was just vicious circularity.

He was lonely. He spent a lot of time imaging adventures. He spent a lot of time reading and watching TV. They both shaped him. He loved to read Robert Frost. He loved the Dukes of Hazard and the A-team. He named his yellow bike the General Lee. He created an imaginary organization of spies; he called it the X-Team. He liked the Duke boys for their confident swaggers; he loved the A-Team because of his father.

His father was a vet of the Vietnam conflict. The war had devastated him. His dad had been sprayed with something called Agent Orange. He didn’t know what that was. No one ever explained it to him. What did that mean?

It was his professor friend, Bruce, in college, who finally told him. The chemical infected his chromosomes. It was in his father’s body when Sam was conceived. So, it was in Sam’s body now. His kids might be deformed, if he chose to have any. He would likely get cancer, glaucoma, high blood pressure, and diabetes. He is another Vietnam casualty.

I’m so sorry, Sammy.

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