Have you ever stared into the abyss and all you saw was the abyss staring back at you? You know now it was probably unreal but then you knelt before the god of light riding at the speed of dark, shedding pearls of uncertainty to form a garland of doubt around your neck.
It's a whole other world in here.
PART ONE ....On an all-time high?
This event I am about to relate is mind-bending. It rocked my world. When I took a walk on a yellow-brick road, I came to a fork. I couldn't decide which way to go until I heard the ghost of Yogi Berra, "WHEN YOU COME TO A FORK IN THE ROAD, TAKE it! So I did. I took the fork in the road.
Does anyone here remember the sixties? If you can remember them, the man says you probably weren't there. Do you remember the first time you got high? l mean really high. Not the marijuana type high. That's for sissies. I mean the kind of high in which you really don't know what's going on. what is real or unreal. You know, just an ordinary, superstar scary type of high!
Let me tell you about the first and last time I dated LSD. Some friends and I decided we would try some acid. We met with two dealers known as the Deputy and the Beast. The Deputy was the dealer and The Beast was the enforcer.
We purchased some LSD from The deputy, placated the Beast and relocated ourselves to a party in a local frat house. It took a while for the LSD to kick in. but when it did, it scared the hell out of me. I was lying on a couch, watching revelers fill the room with sexual energy, when I reached under the couch and pulled out a long knife covered with blood. I didn't show it around for fear of the consequences. To be safe, I threw the knife deep under the couch.
I was mystified when I later discovered that my bloody knife was, in fact, a rat-tailed comb It was all so real. I believed e knife was real.
The knife was a real part of my unreal reality.
Our world was fraught with things that weren't there and when we got home, the three of us sat around supposedly "enjoying" the LSD; but, I was scared because I was a teacher and I could see, etched on walls of my mind, a headline Teacher takes LSD and fries brain. I was getting upset and I grew very nervous until someone said: "Relax, the drug has got a hold of your brain and it will go away". That made sense. I relaxed and enjoyed the trip. I took the scenic route. The one peppered with snippets of real unreality. I can laugh at it now, or maybe cry, but I never took a trip again and that should say something.
Part Two: Reality is an illusion
A hallucination is a perception in the absence of external stimulus that has qualities of real perception. Hallucinations are vivid, substantial, and are perceived to be located in external objective space.Psychosis can be a frightening word that many people simply don’t understand. But what does it really mean? In Parkinson’s disease (PD), what your doctor calls psychosis usually starts with mild symptoms, but these can have a big impact on quality of life. Healthcare providers usually refer to these symptoms as "Parkinson's disease associated psychosis." Psychosis can vary from severe confusion (disordered thinking) to seeing things that aren’t there (hallucinations) to believing things that are not true (delusions),
Back to the future. I am alone in the house and asleep when a noise in the living room wakes me up. I go and find two people sitting in my chairs. One is a man in Goth makeup. The other is a woman who resembles my daughter. They both are staring at me. I try to talk to them but they continue to stare. I demand that they leave the house but they continue to stare so I go and get a ski pole from the bedroom.
Their stare is relentless, so I hit the woman with the ski pole. She doesn't budge, so I threaten to call the police. This gets the man's attention but the woman just sits and stares. She refuses to leave. Gothman says, "I'm going" and he goes into the back yard. I say to the woman, "You better get out of here. The police are coming". I call 911 and the operator sends the police. I go out to the backyard to tell goth man and he says "let's go back in". We return and there are other people there. The woman keeps staring but now she has two friends with her: a man and a woman. They are friends of mine. They are staring. The man is my oldest grandson. I say "where is Sara?" (his mom). He says "I don't know" and then clams up. I tell them all to "get out!".
At that point the police arrive. I tell them I have Parkinson's Disease. They begin to question me. The female police person gets on her radio and heads outside. The male officer is obviously experienced. He asks me my birthdate and other personal questions. The female officer returns, speaks quietly to her partner but I hear her say "He's clean, just one speeding ticket". That was my record.
Somehow the people who were staring at me had gotten into the back yard. I say, "let's go look in the back yard". The police hesitate and I go out alone and I see the "starers" and I tell them "the police are here". At that moment I see a police cadet band. They climb over the fence and start to play. They move toward us and I think they must be background noise for a police arrest. They disappear when the male police officer comes out. He tells the "starers" to leave. They all do except the women. The boyfriend is on one side of the fence and she is on the other. When the police return, the woman is suddenly not there anymore. I look over the fence and the woman has joined her boyfriend on the other side of the fence and they are talking to the police.
I can see the neighbours watching.
I go into the house to watch through the window. I turn around and the police are inside. They ask me some other questions and then they go.
I curse the system that allows people to break into one's house without consequence. I hear the police officer make a telephone call to my eldest son and then I zone out. When I come out of it, my daughter-in-law is speaking on the phone. The police say to her "we are leaving. He will be OK. He is just a little confused". I am somewhat angry that they should write me off as a little confused. I say to them "I thought I made myself perfectly clear". They laugh and say, "You were anything but". My daughter-in-law helps to calm me down and the next thing I know I am lying on the couch talking to her. It suddenly becomes clear to me that I am stoned from the Parkinson's Disease and maybe the drugs I take. I say to my daughter-in-law, " I think that was a hallucination" but only half believing. In minutes all of my children come and I fall asleep.
The two stories are true. I know because I was the main character in both. I would prefer to never encounter another because I'm not absolutely sure we aren't all living in a hallucination now.
"It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously."
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(H.L. Menkin)
