So I'm listening to Astonishing Legends' new episode, The Vertical Plane Part 1, and I'm realizing something:
Rob and I haven't told you what this is about. He's barely introduced himself – I've over introduced myself – and those of you who are reading the script for what will be the show probably have no idea the goal or the point. Because I've deliberately kept Rob from talking about it.
But then I'm listening to Astonishing Legends try to articulate what they learned from The Vertical Plane, the book by Ken Webster, and I'm realizing that if Rob hasn't contacted someone before, someone like Rob has. And the more I'm listening to them, the more I'm realizing that the things that were going on with the author and those around him and hyperbolized versions of what's going on with me, and things start to click into place for me.
I think I've figured out why specifically I am called to this. Why Rob chose me – from what he learned about himself. Maybe even because of what he learned about himself during The Lesvos Serpent incident.
Maybe Rob isn't trying to teach you all anything and I've been looking at this all wrong. Maybe Rob is trying to teach me, and I am supposed to teach you. It would make sense why I've felt twisted inside out and like I'm viewing everything upside down.
It's hard to explain why something is happening to you and what it means when you're in the thick of it. With things of the para- or ultranormal sort, it can be impossible to sort out any sort of meaning – because maybe the experience isn't even for you, so maybe there isn't any meaning.
It might be time to talk about it. Because I can't even form the thoughts I want to express without couching them in my novel knowledge about novelty and the brain's experience thereof. But first – I want to talk about what Rob might be – what Rob's Powers That Be are... but I don't want to spoil anything. The story comes first to me. Even at the expense of adequately explaining what it's about.
So let's get the THC talk over with.
Drugs make you feel like you're better than who they are. We have decided, over the course of the last twenty-two hundred years or so, which drugs are good, and which drugs are bad. That's an inarguable statement. We decided for a long time, for instance, that tobacco was a good drug, now we're deciding maybe not so much. Maybe the tradeoff isn't worth it. Because there's always a tradeoff, right?
That's sort of how we want to believe we make our decisions about good v bad drugs, right? Which ones are worth the tradeoff. It's strange to me that we've unanimously agreed that pharmaceuticals are universally good – until they're not, individually – and natural drugs are universally bad. They all have their tradeoffs.
One tradeoff with THC is that it affects the novelty centers of the brain. What does that mean? I'm not entirely sure, yet – I'm only just ingesting this information, it will take me some time to digest it – but the gist seems to be that psychoactive compounds like THC make the consciousness believe that their thoughts are novel and exciting. Even when they're mundane or even insane.
The problem with drug consumption becomes when it changes your thought process from habitual consumption, right? That's how we argue bad drugs v good drugs. A person who consumes alcohol isn't an asshole, they're just an asshole when they're drunk, right? It's funny to lose control for a night – it's dangerous and problematic to lose control every night, to wake up and need to start losing control in the day to effectively lose control at night. That cycle, that's what we say is the problem, right? Well, what about when you don't feel like yourself sober?
I'm not projecting. I've been there – I'm not, now.
Maybe I need to reset. It's probably evident, and I'm sure I've said it ironically or contextually, but explicitly: I've spent a lot of my life closely monitoring my psychology. I learned to manage my depression in high school by staying busy. Writing, drawing – I was a prolific poet for a while – meditating, especially. I used to listen to a lot of music. Just drown the obsessive thoughts out with lyrics.
I have a lot of thought-threads all weaving around and over top of one another right now. A good writer would be able to weave these together into a narrative or something with a point. The problem is that many of my thoughts are abortive – because they aren't mine, because they're poisoned, because they're irrational, because I already know where they lead.
So what do you do when you feel like the drug is what give you your power?
That is what the question becomes. There's a myth about writers that we need the intoxicant to be productive. The truth is that many of us are consumptive personalities because there's something broken about us, some wound or some hole we're trying to fill with our words, our make-believe worlds, our obsession with other periods in time, or with whatever topics it is. Writing is an obsessive act, a prophecy which flows into us through a hole in our being and which we are compelled to vomit out.
It's magick.
What is Robert? What is this thing we're doing?
Who are the Powers That Be?
For as long as I can remember, I have felt this sense of inarticulate, indescribable, unlocatable dread. Unlocatable? Yeah – like, I can't tell where it's coming from or why I should be feeling it. It's like— Well, I wouldn't know what it was like until I heard people describing past lives or near death experiences – or really about how we incarnate in this body as a consciousness in the first place. But all of that, all of that, is a spoiler.
Before I heard people talking about these things, when I was still just a kid isolated from other humans in my childhood home(s), the dread felt like I'd been born with it.
A definition which uses the word it is defining is not an adequate definition. But how can I articulate the inarticulable? In maybe too wide an expression, it was like God had told me to tell my parents something when I made it to the other side, and all I could remember was that I was supposed to tell someone something and it was important. But I can't remember who told me to tell whom what.
I recognized someone else trying to articulate it in Tool's song Rosetta Stoned, when he says, “Overwhelmed as one would be, placed in my position / Such a heavy burden now to be the One. / Born to bear and read to all the details of our endings, / to write it down for all the world to see. / But I forgot my pen. / Shit the bed again. / Typical. / Strapped down in my bed, / feet cold and eyes red. / I'm out of my head. / Am I alive or am I dead? Sunkist and Sudafed, / gyroscopes and infrared, / can't remember what they said. / Goddamn. / Shit the bed! / I can't remember what they said to me. / Can't remember what they said to make me out to be a hero! / Can't remember what they said.”
I've felt like I need to talk about it my whole life, but haven't had any means. And we don't really appreciate what discouraging a child does to them, long term. I'm not being hyperbolic – gods, I wish I were! - when I say that literally everything I was curious about as a child I was discouraged from learning about. Anything I said aloud. I want to be a Paleontologist. “All the dinosaurs have already been found.” I want to be an archaeologist. “Everything there is to learn about history has already been learned.” I want to hunt serial killers. “All the serial killers have already been caught.” I want to work with and help adolescents. “No one needs your help.”
These are in quotations because these are words that were said to me by authority figures.
I wish it were just my family. I still remember the devastation of being told not to ask any more questions by my teaches in grade school, in middle school, in high school. How many corners was I put in and told to do math and be quiet? How many times was I told not to sit at the front of the class anymore? How many teachers did I give up on and just study independently of their classes, in front of them? How many teachers noticed or cared more than to give me my Ds and Fs?
Everyone assumed that I was a lost cause. Everyone has always assumed that I'm a lost cause. How do you not come to believe it yourself?
So, for the longest time I just decided it was my lot in life to shut up. That my observations were no good. That my questions were unwelcome.
But what if everyone is wrong about you because everyone is literally wrong about everything? It wouldn't be until what came next that I realized that they are.
So, for the longest time, I just decided it was my lot in life to shut up. That my observations were no good. That my questions were unwelcome. Round about fourth grade, I gave up on schools and teachers as authorities to care a lick about.
I gave up on trying to preserve my intellect, as I saw avoiding intoxicants, in my mid-twenties. Around 25, as fate would have it. And I started enjoying being poor. Which means drinking. To excess. On the regular. It means going into debt to consume alcohol. It means eating Wendy's every day until you're a bloated pig and the self loathing you've been taught to feel on the inside is what you look like on the outside.
I'm not talking about this because I think I'm at all unique. I'm one in 7 billion poor children and adults all over the world. I have a burr in my ass about something I saw Joe Biden tweeted this weekend. Something to the effect of, 'No more cutting taxes for the rich, we're going to buffer the real Americans, the Middle Class!' The only problem with that is that there is no Middle Class. Hasn't been since 1969, motherfuckers. WAKE UP!
Lol. That's what I'd say if I were someone like Stonekettle and wanted to maintain a facade of righteousness, but were really just a catfish.
But, really – you want to fix this country? Support the poor.
We are only as strong as our weakest link. Our colonial forebears knew this. So long as we let our countrymen fall into and stay in poverty, the longer we allow the wage gap between those with enough to survive comfortably and those unable to survive without mounting debt— So long as we allow that gap to continue to grow (at all, let alone at the astonishing rate it's growing today), the closer this nation and frankly this world civilization of which we have been a part since 1969 are to their inevitable collapse.
I am not the only person who lives in a desperate situation, emotionally and financially, because they were born to it. Because they had no other choices available to them. We treat poverty like a punishment. No matter how far we get from the religion of our ancestors, we keep their biases and bigotries around.
Free Will. Pah. But we're going to have to talk about that someday, too. That's what I'm trying to talk about!
I'd give up trying to be anything other than a server. I've said that. You've probably read it.
Until I started taking acid regularly. And smoking THC regularly.
I have gone from feeling like I have something to say and no one wants to hear it so it doesn't matter if I figure out what it is or how to articulate it – to knowing no one wants to har what I have to say and feeling like I don't care anymore. You know— They tell you when you're writing anything, no matter what it is, that if you want to reach the public you need to write at a third-grade level.
You have been written to at a third-grade level for so long that you resent being made to think. Or maybe you don't and I'm underselling you and that's exactly why you're here. Please, stick around.
You need to hear the things I have to say. You will be better for hearing them. Even if I'm not the best at getting them out. I could certainly use difficult words to hear myself.
I am responsible for you in this as much because I have chosen to accept that responsibility as because I was born compelled to it. Definitely don't think me for it. I would live as you do: taking what I want from the world because it has been my privilege to do so – if I could. I cannot.
But—
A parent does not tell their child that they are wrong because they do not love them. A lover does not correct their partner's worst behaviors because they resent them. This should not be the case. Spare the rod and spoil the child. This is the way of the world.
Spoil the child. As in how vegetables spoil. Have you ever come back to your refrigerator after you've forgotten about leafy greens for a considerable time? Spoil as in to make rotten.
This is not a metaphor to take lightly.
I mean, overuse the rod and you get – and Pepin – so, you know. Moderation in all things.
Without constant good-faith critique, we are doomed to rot on the vine.
God, today's Log is a mess. And you're no-doubt thinking – well, get sober (or get pulled over), asshole, and have a cogent thought that doesn't trip on every cross-thought you come across.
Fair enough.
But what if that's the game I'm playing?
And what if then I have nothing to say?
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