A Stamp to Mail My Mind Away Chapter 10 "What do you really see?" (C)2022

 

10. “What do you really see?”

 

Nothing left but darkness. The kind of darkness that sticks to you. It is a wreck that you’re about to get into. No avoidance. BRACE YOURSELF!

NO. Don’t brace yourself!

If you do you’ll break something. Break it in a way that’s difficult to fix. Maybe unfixable.

“Let it go! Scream it. Let it go. Then start lowering the volume of your voice. Bring it to a whisper. Bring it to a mumble. Bring it to a sigh. Bring it to a breath. The breath you take, “Breathe the world in: all the angst. All the memories. All the answers you really want to know. The answers that you have convinced yourself that you need to know-is the only way you’ll be happy.” Told it. Hold it. Hear your heart beat faster from the lack of breath. Then breathe it out. Breathe God in. Know it now through not knowing now. Just “Be.” And then. No then. On an eternal now. Nothing is left but everything.

….missing text…and when l returned.

 

  

Face reality, or “Nor” the reality I created for myself that I didn’t have the capacity to see or endure.

 

Carlton dropped me off at my stepfather and mother’s garage apartment. It was at that instant, that time of night, morning before the first sun’s ray of the day. Didn’t know how I got up the stairs. I noticed that the word the front door that I never kept locked. The word that looked like they were drawn with a finger in fancy cursive writing. My mom or stepfather must wrote it on the door. Able to be seen because of the caked on dust and dirt. I wiped the word off the door. Then the word “guest” came back visibly. The house I stayed in was behind their house. Their house faced the road. Outside of my apartment were green lights on poles. The greenish glow that shined upon everything had a strange seemingly supernatural illumination. I would later learn that a cadaver has a greenish tent.

 

Somedays I am a teacher. Somedays I’m a student. Somedays I am a lesson.

 

My reality, I surmised was created out of things that were out of my control. And I thought it was cool to think and tell people that the devil was after me. It was July 6, 1996, or that’s what I would say, was the date that my car was shooting flames from the underneath the hood to the ground. No, it couldn’t be because I didn’t put oil in the engine. No it wasn’t because I trashed it out. I couldn’t seem to get a job either. I assumed the people in town hated me. No, it had nothing to do with alcohol seeping from my pores because I had been up all night drinking. Using the money that my grandparent’s gave me. I also smelled bad because I wasn’t taking regular showers. The only television station I had was the Trinity Broadcasting Network. This self-inflicted compromise with my reality. No steady job, no hope, infinite sadness. It seemed the only thing to keep me that kept ,e where I thought I needed to be was getting drunk or high. I’d write and play music on children’s keyboards that my friends gave me. Also had that cassette four track recorder and Boss Dr 5, that my mother bought me. A Boss Dr 5 was a music machine that a user could create, what seemed to be unlimited digital instruments, that had four tracks and a drum track. You could create an entire album with the Boss Dr 5.

 

My floors were littered with dirty clothes, half empty beer bottles, cigarette butts, pizza boxes, uneaten food. I was smoking three packs a day and drinking almost non stop.

 

I couldn’t go in the army now. I thought they would know that I did acid by giving me a spinal tap. Or they would check my blood and urine.

 

What was I to do?

 

A few hours later, I was at the recruiter’s office, “I decided not to go. I’m going to do an album and I’ll be rich and famous.

PSI PHI 1996

” One can interpret what a place is about by what’s on the walls, or think that they- (I would know what it was about.) On the walls, that surrounded, the four desk of the Army recruiters, were the examples of, what I would later learn, The Army’s tenets: Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Self-less Service, Integrity, and Perseverance, with pictures of soldiers doing soldiery things. Things like folding the flag, saluting, doing obstacle courses. Also there were pictures of soldiers in civilian clothes, then army clothes. There were empowering quotes on the wall. Three of the recruiters were still in active duty. Except for retired Sergeant Major Ingram. The thing on the wall, that was the thousands of dollars in bonuses and educational benefits. The mantra of The Army at the time was “Be all that you can be.”

 

Be all that you can be? Yea right, I was afraid, at the time. I was afraid of losing my identity-that was just an excuse so that I wouldn’t have to face my fears. What sort of identity did I have? I expected them, especially Ingram to beg me to go in.

Continued to BE...