Daily Archives: March 21, 2014

I’ve never done nothing

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Don’r worry, that’s not a double negative. I haven’t taken leave of my senses or my grammar.

However, in order to explain why that is and why this is such an important statement to make in my life right now, I am goinh to have to go back to the beginning, which in this case is therapy.

I know, here I am talking about therapy on a Friday. Quelle shocke. But today’s session was special. The doc helped to a really profound revelation, and I just have to memorialize it here in order to help it really sink in.

It started out with me making a remark that I need to forgive myself if I end up doing nothing all afternoon.

My therapist pointed out that even calling it “doing nothing” was attaching a negative label to it.

And at first I didn’t get it. it didn’t click.

Here’s me : *poit poit* Well, technically, I guess….

But after a few more times around the mulberry bush (did I mention my therapist is a weasel?), the penny dropped and I got it. I really got it. And the it I got was a really great it. In fact, I think it is one of the best its I gotten this decade.

Because I’m an it-getting. No really, I am!

Alright, enough soft shoe shuffle. What I realized is that he was absolutely right. To say I did nothing is factually inaccurate. I didn’t do nothing, I did a bunch of things. I played video games. I listened to podcasts. I read. I fed my mind. And most importantly, I thought about stuff, and that is one of the most important things I do.

In the grand computer of life, I am a processor. A thinker. And I am not ashamed to say that I have gotten really, really good at it over the years. This constant processing of input is the source of my creativity, my insights, my ideas, and my depth of mind and personality.

Just by being alive and awake, I am doing something. I am processing. I am thinking. I am distilling understanding from the bumper crop of information that this age provides. That’s a long way from nothing.

The outdated diseased part of my mind says “Well yes, but you did nothing productive. ”

Well who the fuck says I have to be productive? Why isn’t it okay for me to just be me? Who is the overlord demanding I produce like a factory hen? Society? Well then fuck society.

Fuck society, fuck pressure, fuck self-judgment, fuck the whole goddamned system. (Imagine that in a Jack Nicholson voice. )

Fuck everything that stands between me and the true glory that I deserve. It all has to go. I am ripping out piping, knocking down walls, and dumping dumpsters full of detritus down the drain. I don’t give a shit about having something to replace it with. Whatever function it performed, it did badly anyhow.

And I am confident that, if the function it performed is important, I will grow a new, clean, optimized system in its place, and everything will be better off in the long run.

There is truth to the idea that you have to destroy the old to make way for the new. I have always resisted that idea, as I am by nature a conservative person and that idea always seemed just like an excuse for barbarity and chaos to me.

But it is absolutely true. Sometimes, you have to throw out everything and start over. Even the oldest forest can benefit from the occasional forest fire. And I am so ready to destroy all the bad machinery in my head. I am through with slow reform and I am ready for rapid reset.

The machine is broken beyond repair. All you can do now is dispose of it and start from scratch again. Take what we have learned from the flaws of the old machine, and build a shiny new machine without them.

Or maybe that is just my crazy creative brain talking. I have been reading this interesting article about the kind of mental malfunction that leads both to creativity and insanity.

Turns out there is this structure in the brain (yay brain science!) called the precuneus.

The precuneus is the area of the brain that shows the highest levels of activation during times of rest and has been linked to self-consciousness and memory retrieval. It is an indicator of how much one ruminates or ponders oneself and one’s experiences.

In normal people, this brain bit is only active when they are completely at rest. But for us crazy creative types, that fucker is on all the goddamned time.

Holy shit, the constant blaring radio of my thoughts has a name, and that name is precuneus. I have lived with it for it so long that it took the article to remind me that it is there.

And a lot of us brainy types have wished we could turn our brain off for just five fucking minutes sometimes. Especially when trying to sleep. It is not hard to imagine how this unending cycle of contemplative thought could result in a very tired and depleted brain, which in turn would lead to depression.

It would also fit neatly into my idea that people seek out ways to press the reset button on their brains. Whether you are a Tibetan monk trying to achieve nirvana or drinking a fifth of Jack while listening to Nirvana, you are seeking the annihilation of consciousness that comes from, for example, ECT.

Press reset on the brain, and that prenuceus shuts the hell up for a while, and your head is no longer a massive echo chamber for its constant emanations.

To be honest, I would really like to know what that is like. But I am pretty sure there is no such thing as elective ECT. You can’t just pop into your friendly neighborhood ECT booth and get your brain rebooted on a coffee break.

More’s the pity.

Well that’s it from me for today, my faithful readers. I don’t know what I will do next. Maybe I will flop down and play with my tablet. Maybe I will go watch some TV. Maybe I will hit my head against the wall exactly 187 times.

But whatever I do, I know one thing :

It won’t be nothing.

See you tomorrow, folks!

FICTION : The Color Of Night

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February 19, 2027

All my preparations are complete. The latest round of rat studies produced rats with the fourth type of cone (what I call the “yellow” cone for now) in both eyes one hundred percent of the time. All the rats are strong and healthy and show no obvious signs of distress at their new condition. I therefore now consider my retroviral concoction to be a complete success.

Now on to Phase II. I have secured, by mostly legitimate means, the necessary anesthetics, and I have turned both anesthetics and retroviral cocktail into easy to self-administer eye drops. I have borrowed a medical bed to monitor my condition while I slumber and the eye drops do their job, and I have made sure I will not be interrupted during the procedure.

All lies in readiness. I have only to return home, put two drops in each eye, and settle down for good long nap.

This is the moment, Andrew. The moments when we step across the threshold of destiny and enter the pure clean light of glory, fame, and out rightful place in history as the geniuses we both are.

I could never have done this without you, dear brother. For that, and so many other things, you have my unending gratitude.

When next I wake, I will see the world as no human being has done before.

What a brave new world that will be!

February 22, 2027

Sorry if the length of time since my last message to you caused you worry, dear brother. Rest assured, I am quite well. My flawless formula did its job with smooth perfection and I awoke from my fateful nap feeling perfectly well rested, with no pain in my eyes or neurological impairment.

It just took me this long to update you on my condition because there has been a few minor complications.

When I awoke, I discovered that, to my bemusement, my carefully constructed “color neutral” sleep room was now, to my fresh, eyes, a riot of color and radiance. Curlicues and rosettes of vibrant, scintillating hues covered every surface, and the air seemed filled with a glowing fog of prismatic splendor.

It was all quite overwhelming, and I spent an hour just sitting there, letting my mind adjust to this new kind of input, and enjoying the show.

When I was ready, I took out my personal tablet, quite ready to write to you immediately and tell you of my success, only to find that my trusty tablet’s display was a riot of mottled, seething dots to me now, with no more sense or meaning than a multicolored Rorschach test.

How silly of me to have failed to anticipate such a simple thing! I had to smile at my own foolish hubris. Luckily, as I slowly and carefully explored my apartment in order to give my new eyes fresh input to discover, I slowly attuned to my new inputs and today, after a highly productive adjustment to the color settings on my tablet, I am back in business and ready to document my findings, and of course, to write to you, my dearest brother, and tell you of my adventures.

Tomorrow I shall leave my apartment for the first time since the procedure. I anticipate fresh splendors anew.

February 23, 2027

I am a fool, dear brother, a damned stupid fool, and I have only myself to blame. How well I remember all those times you warned me that I was too reckless, too bold, too thoughtless, too prone to wild enthusiasms for my own good. How right you were, my brother. How I wish I had listened to your sage advice.

My life is wretched now, dear brother, and I have only myself to blame. My adventure in the world outside my apartment was a abysmal failure, a nightmare of disastrous revelations, and I know now that I am truly damn’d by my own hubris.

For example, you know how much I love the sunshine. I was always the skylark to your night owl, and for me there was nothing more glorious than a bright and cloudless day.

Well now, I loathe the sun. Natural light is the enemy, and its wide spectrum rays are evil itself. Anything lit by the sun now looks gruesome and frightening to me. The colors seethe and pulse in such a way as to turn everyday objects into menacing, dazzling blobs. The very air seems charged with violent menace when that harsh, disgusting light is in the room.

Speaking of disgusting, I now find it nearly impossible to eat. No food is its proper color in my chromatic hell, and even something as simple as a glass of milk looks like it has been used by a mad painter to wash a thousand paintbrushes.

But I can handle the food issue (one can always eat with one’s eyes closed). But people…. oh Andrew, the people.

People now look like blotched and diseased monsters to me. Shadows leap all over their faces and, thanks to my new eyesight, I can see their internal processes as glowing neon colors sliding across their skin like snakes made of mud.

I don’t know what to do, dear Andrew. You cannot rescue me from my own folly this time. The process is quite irreversible. Any attempt to eliminate the new cones would leave me blind, eyeless, or worse.

But would that be so bad? I must confess to you, dear brother, that part of me wants to put out my eyes like poor Oedipus. Better to be blind than to live in this psychedelic hell, whispers this voice. It would be child’s play to prepare a solution that would painlessly and permanently blind me.

And then I would be free.

Pray to Allah for me, dear brother. I need his guidance now more than ever.

February 24, 2027

Rest easy, dear brother. I have made my peace with my new condition, and will not be following Oedipus’ example after all.

What saved me was the night. At the height of my misery, I looked out the window of my apartment into the night sky, and what I saw nearly froze my soul with wonder and awe.

I saw a sky filled with glittering, shimmering angels where stars used to be. They danced and spun for me, as beautiful and evanescent as rainbows, and there were thousands of them. The sky you see is nothing but a pale scattering of diffuse baubles compared to the splendors that now fill my night time. I can see stars invisible to the human eye, and I can see the visible ones so well now that I am almost tempted to become an astronomer.

To me, the stars are now beautiful beyond compare. The moon is as brightly colored as a child’s ball. Even the night sky itself shimmers with delicate aurorae. What is too intense in the day is elegant and subdued in the night. Even the people look better under the light of the moon. And at night, there is no cruel sunshine to create foul phantoms out of thin air.

At night, there is only the cool soothing light of the moon and stars, or the wonderfully limited spectrum of electric light.

So now I am an night owl like you. I sleep through much of the day, and read in my bedroom for the rest. Through considerable experimentation, I have managed to make my bedroom once more neutral and calming to my eyes, though no doubt to you it would be quite jarring and garish. It is my safe haven, my sanctum, my island of sanity in a world driven insane by my foolhardy experimentation. In that room, with my color-adjusted tablet, I feel safe.

And when the sun sets, I am free. I roam the streets, drunk on beauty and sensation, smiling at the flickering monsters that speak like human beings, and feel more alive and at peace than I ever have before. Sometimes I just sit on a park bench and stare up at the night sky, and drink in the wonder and the bliss that it brings.

I have passed though the eye of the needle, brother, and come out the other side changed for the better. Gone is that frantic restlessness that used to drive me. Now I feel serene and beautiful all the time. I feel like I am glowing.

I look forward to seeing you soon when you return to Earth, dear brother.

But forgive me if I can only meet you at night.