i haven't been stoned since i was 15 or 16. floating on a limpid, tremulous cloud of flu confusion, i bathe in feverish sweats, disjointed thoughts, hot baths that leave me limp and bright eyed, white faced and hectic freckles, adrift in another perception of time and sensation. on impulse i spin in my work chair and my life moves in panels of a comic strip: the messy laundry and toys on the floor, the bookshelf stuffed with books and papers, the open bathroom door with one white towel laying like a tongue, a disheveled bed, the pillows, the computer. a small, hoarse dog barks over and over outside my window as if it were personally offended at the sunset. the house is silent, my husband has taken the kids for dinner. everything that has ever happened to me seems as if it might have been a dream. so i realize the birth of existentialism was from the flu, not a reaction to Christianity or Catholicism in America. simply a reaction to the reality that our entire perception of life can be as easily filtered and altered as dropping down colored screens before a slide show. drop, red. drop, blue. all connectivity to our surroundings in this life depends on the brain, not the self behind the brain. so the only things that matter are what we decide matters. once a person is unloved, their ability to float through the window of the house of the physical body and become untethered to all morality or connection with other human beings awakens. the two great states that wound are deep hurt and deep disconnect. sometimes when i am out with other people i feel like Sherlock- that i can see in the faces and bodies and movements and dress of the people around me their innermost states, as clearly as if they looked up at me and said ' Today I cried for an hour this morning. My kids hate me and I am an alcoholic and I hate myself too. I never fit in my family and they hated me for it. I have never felt safe. Sometimes I just want to die. ' i smile at this man with my heart in my eyes and he smiles back with such a frank desperation that it is all i can do not to cry there in line. what do we owe each other? nothing. everything. in a time in my 20's i thought i loved ayn rand. i thought nothing mattered the way we understood it to. i had not gone to further college and had not been exposed yet to many of the thought and spiritual and humanism leaders that would later influence me. i felt such shamed horror when i realized that ayn rand was so wrong, i wrote about it in my diary, my stupidity and the ease in which i assumed someone else was right, simply because of their reputation or import or effect, the way i gave up, so easily, my own beliefs and critical thinking. looking back, i am proud that at least it only took me months to realize this. i see how we fall into gangs and cults. we need packs. we need our pack. we need the breath of our companions and their chests rising and falling to remind us what we are. to keep us human, tethered to each other and to these bodies we are given while we are here, to meaning.
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