Mess and Transcendence I: The sandwich-maker and my mom

(It occurs to me I might have told this story in abbreviated form on this blog before. I don’t remember and don’t feel like searching back right now. It’s in my head again, so it’s coming out, even though it’s another mess-pants-acid story. Not that kind of mess.)

Another silly mess, another transcendence. I had had a terrible head flu for well over a week. Upon doctor’s orders, I’d been filling myself with cough syrup w/codeine which made me loopy, anti-viral medication which made me incoherent, and some other medication I forget. It was near the end of my penultimate semester of college. I had work to do, papers to write. The incoherence would have driven me batty if I had been coherent enough to know it. I tried writing my paper on Spinoza, Berkeley and Leibniz. I tried writing my paper on some foul literary criticism I’ve apparently blocked out. The maps of notes I’d scribbled toward the final products looked like highly disordered pantries. I set them aside.

My face burned with fever on the inside, was whitest pallor on the outside. I tried to go to my Greek class in which we were translating part of The Odyssey. I walked through snow, I sat in my seat, I looked at the Greek I had translated, to refresh my memory. Learning by neurotic repetition was my modus operandi. I knew the translations, but still I went over them at least twice the night after class, at least twice the next day, and again just before class. This day those curling letters spoke nothing to me. I had no idea what they meant. I panicked. Frustration formed as tears in my eyes. I worried this incoherence was permanent.

Still minutes before class was to start, I returned my books to my bag and trekked across the hall, teary-eyed, and told my professor I couldn’t do it. He looked at me with big obvious eyes. It was clear I had no business being outside. I walked home, though I don’t know where the energy came from going either direction. Mind over matter. I do that.

Days passed. I couldn’t eat. I didn’t even want water. I lay there fevering on the living room floor. My then-boyfriend (G) brought me a small clear plastic container full of lettuce and told me to eat it. I didn’t want to but he said it would help, so I balanced a fork between fingers and ate.

Soon I was sitting upright and resumed work on those papers. My brain was routing clearly again. It hit me: I feel good! I feel great! Nobody was home, so there was nobody to tell. I was about to explode with it. Finally (G) and a friend of ours (J) walked in. I raced into the living room and shouted, "I feel good!"

"What you need, then, is a good hit of acid," (J) told me.

I laughed with suspicious eyes, my lips pressed together with both disbelief and curiosity about the remedy.

"No, really," he said. "There’s nothing better to give that final kick to the sickness out of your system." He pulled a white tab out of his wallet and held it out to me.

This is also the friend who gave me a convincing and rather Shakespearean monologue about the benefits of smoking when I decided to give that a whirl.

I stood there as before, thinking. Obviously it sounded like a bad idea. But I was open to possibilities I hadn’t considered.

"Ok," I said. "But I told my boss I’m coming back to work tomorrow, at 8:30 in the morning." I counted the hours. It was early evening then, so that would be plenty of time to trip and then sleep. "That should work, though."

"You should have two then," he advised.

Hm. "Ok."

I popped the white tabs in my mouth and we set off. We had to go to (J)’s house to retrieve more white tabs for him and (G), stopping at Subway along the way for some dinner. My brain, having been sick and medicated for the past week and a half, was soft wet and wide open for the chemicals. The stuff seeped in deeply and immediately. I had a terribly slapstick time ordering my 6-inch veggie sub on wheat. At each utterance of ingredient I exploded with laughter. "Everything is funny," I told them. The sandwich-maker was not fazed.

We returned home, another friend (K) joined us, and the Aleister Crowley tarot cards appeared. The light in the room was dim, and I was in a roiling colorful space made into the sofa chair. I watched the three of them pulling cards and talking about the Vast. I realized: I was incapable of speaking.

The phone rang. (G) went into the bedroom to answer it. After he was gone for several minutes, I said to my friends, "I’m glad he got that. I feel like I can’t speak. I can’t talk right now."

(G) called from the bedroom, "It’s your mom."

(For some reason this is becoming much lengthier than I imagined it could be. More later.)