On Fire 11.12

I quit adding to this blog a week or two ago because I was sad. I guess it would be more accurate to say I quite because I was depressed. I was waking up in the morning thinking, “This is horrible.” I would then spend a couple of minutes pumping myself up, rationalizing, and generally smoothing things over. Then, I would get up and build a fire in the wood stove. Portland is already cold and I’ve been scavenging scrap wood and pallets to burn in the stove. Also I was flat broke.

I still am. Well, maybe not flat broke. My bank account looks more like a sloping rather than a flat line. A line sloping into debt.

So for the first week, I didn’t add to this blog because I was depressed. Last week I wasn’t writing here because I was on fire. Last week I was anxious all the time and I channeled that anxiety into productive activity. I couldn’t sit still so I ran. I scavenged wood. I applied for food stamps, then I applied for jobs. Every job I could find even the slightest pretense of qualification for in my resume, I applied for it. I applied to be a tow truck driver and I applied to be a security guard in the state mental hospital, but most of all I applied to be case managers and to work on crisis teams.

Yesterday I interviewed with a crisis team that works out of a homeless youth shelter and I did well in the interview. It was group interview – meaning all the candidates would interview at once. There were only two of us. I gave better answers to the questions we were asked. I clearly had more experience. When asked to describe a stressful experience at a former job the other candidate talked about working with an upset teen. I told a story about having a knife pulled on my by a psychotic client, then I told how I defused to situation. Then I told about how I continued to work with the client after he was discharged for the hospital.

I will be gainfully employed. I will be off food stamps. I haven’t thought about the cell phone all week.

10.28

I'm sick again. I have malaise as Z called it. Is that a medical term? It sounds like the name of a paint color. Well I'm all malaisey. So I called my mom. She was sympathetic. I got her sympathy and then I was done with the phone call and told her I had to go. I am not a space alien if I can call my mom.

I've been thinking that "the phone" must be some sort of fixed delusion, which is a term I threw around a bit when I was doing outreach work at Advocates, though I guess I couldn't tell you if that is a technical term or just something I made up. I've been resistant to trying to read up on mental illness in an attempt to diagnosis myself, because that just seems like exactly the sort of thing crazy people do.

And I haven't told anyone about the phone either, because how do I know they are not part of the "fixed delusion." That brings me to the problem that I've been a bit fixated with the past couple of days: the problem raised by Bishop Berkeley. There's a great summary of it on Wikipedia, and I couldn't state it more clearly. Here it is.

As a young man, Berkeley theorized that individuals cannot know if an object is; they can only know if an object is perceived by a mind. He stated that individuals cannot think or talk about an object's being, but rather think or talk about an object's being perceived by someone. That is, individuals cannot know any "real" object or matter "behind" the object as they perceive it, which "causes" their perceptions. He thus concluded that all that individuals know about an object is their perception of it.

To restate this in terms of my "fixed delusion:" If I said to someone, E maybe, "Do you see this phone? Oh, you do? great, me too. Why don't you use it to call Pastor and he can tell you that I'm a space alien." Even if I did all that, I couldn't know that the whole conversation was not part of my delusion: "all that individuals know about an object is their perception of it."

Even so, today I took "the phone" out of the box I stuck it in when I got to Portland. I walked down the street to a 7-11 all sneezy and snotty, coughing all the way. I went inside and eyed a costumer - a nice looking middle-aged lady. I shouted "Here you go!" and I threw the phone at her. She caught it. It would seem that she thought it was real. Then I yanked the phone out or her hand and said, "Oh! sorry!" Then I thought maybe she was a delusion, so I hip checked her into a display of planters nuts. They fell over. I figured the nuts were real. Then I ran out of the store.

Oh Bishop Berekely! this is exactly what a crazy person does. I wish I had gone a little further afield to conduct my expereiment. Somewhere more than a block from my new house.

I got another email from Z today. I miss her a lot.

10.25

I got an email from Z this morning. She told me about visiting the Abayudaya, a tribe of unlikely Ugandan Jews, not too far from Tororo. She’d only gone because some fellow Jews (though Z thinks of herself as a “jew” and not a Jew), collogues from the US were visiting.

How could she be on another planet if people visited from the US - I told this to myself, then felt ridiculous for applying reason to my delusion. Then I felt myself heavy-breathing. Because I missed Z. Because I missed having a partner. Because I’m trying to reason with some part my mind that is clearly unreasonable. Then I put on my shoes and went running up the side of a volcano.

My new place in Portland is blocks from Mt Tabor. It is beautiful and steep and hard to run up.

Last night I slept at the house S and L, two people I know from a year I spent at Arcosanti, found for us to rent before I got here. I guess technically I was squatting. The last two night I slept and E and S’s place. I was very welcome to stay longer, but I wanted to be in my own place.

When I got into Portland a few days ago I decided to forget about the ass-phone, as I’m been derisively referring to it in my mind in an unsuccessful attempt to minimize how terrifying I find it. I didn’t say anything about it to anyone. I put it in a box.

10.22

I had a lot of blood in my stool this morning. But I’ve had blood in my shit for years now. I’ve been to the doctor’s many times about it. I would worry about it to Z. I tried to make her look at the blood. She refused politely enough. After my second “scoping,” the doctor told me I was fine. Though she couldn’t find it, she was 99 percent sure that I had anal fissures. She said I had a “very tight rectum,” that she could feel how tight it was when she put the scope in. It must have been so tight that it was causing my stools to cut my rectum. I should not “hold on to my stools.”

I got in the car and started driving. Normally I would worry about my anus all day. I’m not worried about it now. The phone I shat out is still in the Ziploc bag in the passenger’s seat. Maybe that’s why I’m hallucinating a telephone, because I’m obsessed with my bloody stools, or maybe because of that accidental sex with Z. That makes sense. I’m scared that it is going to stop making sense. What happens if I start doing things that hurt people?

I’m picking up a wireless signal from the Big Sky Motel. I’m in a restaurant attached to a gas station called Durango’s– or at least that’s what it says on the coffee cup. I’m in Superior, Montana. It’s alpine here. There are wispy white clouds all in among the pine trees. It smells like pine trees and gasoline. I stopped so I could use the bathroom and check to see in my ass was still bleeding. It’s not. I’m a narcissist

I was sick right when I got back to the US and jet lagged and slept more or less for two days. When I got up I turned on the television. CNN was showing live footage of a weather balloon. They said that a child was somehow trapped in the balloon. It was flying over a field. It was stupid. So what if that boy is in there. So what if he’s dead. I though “we don’t care about that boy.” This is on TV because we care too much about ourselves. We think our lives are too valuable.

I climbed up a big butte on the outskirts of Tororo. There is a cell phone tower on the top. The butte is huge. It is a huge presence in the town. Everything there is called The Rock (the Rock Cement, the Rock High School, etc), named after the butte. The cell phone tower on top is guarded, I found, by a shirtless man with a Kalashnikov named Patrick. He was happy to chat. He said he had 12 children. He asked if I was married. I said yes, though I wasn’t, because everyone there called Z my wife because in Tororo if you live together you are married. I told him I had no kids, and I said 12 kids such a big family, unheard of in the US. I was trying to flatter him. He looked proud. I went on lavishly saying 2 kids was a lot of kids for the US. Then he asked me, “but what do you do when they die?” with only two kids you will be childless soon, that was the implication. At least two kids are bound to die in each family. What do you do?

I am a narcissist. I am unduly worried about my anus. I am unduly worried about my mental status. I think about all the women in the villages who dropped to their knees and held out their hands to me and refused to look at me and all their orphan children and all the dying women, who told me they were dying, and then begged to feed me even though the brother’s and sister’s orphans were lying in the shade of their huts with distended bellies. I think about the woman I saw on the side of the road as I was walking home from Z’s clinic one afternoon. I only saw her out of the corner of my eye. First her feet, then her naked legs, then her fuzzy black pubic hair. Her legs spread open. I didn’t look. People walked past and didn’t look either. Was she dead? Naked with her legs spread? Did I hallucinate her?

10.21

Maybe I’m in a fugue state.

I remembered that article and found it this morning, but didn’t re-read it because A: it will describe what a “fugue state” is in such a way that will prove that I am not experiencing one and that means I have something that is not temporary or B: it will describe in such a way that I will realize that this is exactly what I am experiencing and it is horrible.

This morning I wanted to call my mom. I also wanted to call Z. She’s a doctor. But we agreed not to talk. I didn’t call anyone. I picked my car at the garage and started driving, but only after I put the shit-phone in a Ziploc bag my mom’s cookies had been in so I could take it with me.

I put it on the passenger’s seat to remind me that I had really gone crazy and hadn’t just imagined that I had gone crazy. And I guess to demonstrate that I was still crazy. Occasionally I touched it through the bag. I didn’t use it to call Pastor again.

I think I started crying an hour or so in the drive because I was feeling really lonely, but maybe I started crying because Montana is so beautiful. I was thinking that when I started crying. I felt like I was listening to a song I love and really getting into it, but I had on a book on tape, which I wasn’t listening to. God I miss Z. I feel really anxious.

Today, I kept thinking that I was going to loose control of the car. Also when I was going down a steep hill a truck came barreling down fast right behind me and only changed lanes at the last minute. I thought he was going to kill me. Then I thought about what my life might be like if I really did just have a psychotic break. I thought, up until now, I’ve always thought about my life in terms of what it might become, what might happen to me in the future. But now, if I’m really sick, I’m going to think about my life in terms of what it had been up until now. I’m crying right now. That seems narcissistic. Or is it crazy? Is that what I'd do if I was crazy? Sit in a hotel room in Missoula MT and cry? Fuck it. I’m going to let myself cry.

I started this new blog because a few days ago, before I left MPLS, I ran into one of my parent’s neighbors, the father of a kid my age. I always really hated his son. He was an asshole. The dad was an asshole too. The neighbor said hi and then asked me about Z and why was I home, what happen to Uganda. I was confused. He said my dad had emailed him my blog address – the one I had been writing in Uganda – and he’d been reading it. I really didn’t like that.

I haven’t told anyone about this blog. I didn’t put my name on it. I was going to tell people – Z maybe and a few others who might be interested, but now, no. It feels really nice right now to write here without anyone to read it. I feel really lonely and really anxious.

The drive was beautiful today. I took pictures as I drove in spite of everything. There were all different kinds of mountains. Blue ones with snow and brown rocky piles with pine trees. I saw a lot of horses. Plenty of horses. I pulled over and watched a brown one chase a white one in a fenced in enclosure.

10.21

It’s 10am and the shop hasn’t figured out the car yet, but I don’t care about the car. I think I lost my mind.

I shat out a cell phone in the middle of the night. It is still here this morning sitting in the wicker potpourri basket in this fancy hotel. The phone is covered in shit. I wipped my ass again this morning and it was bloody.

I know better than some people what crazy is like. Right before I left for Uganda I ended a two year stint as a case manager – every client had major mental illness. I remember talking with Greg about his psychotic breaks. He could remember much better than most and he was always bring it up. He was always cheerful and happy to chat about it. He would bring it up and laugh. “I thought I would be perfectly fine in the dumpster because I was some sort of holy prince or whatever. Ha. Ha. Ha.”

I went to bed drunk last night and woke a 2am and shat. A long hard shit. Then the shit started ringing. I could see the telephone inside it. I reached into the toilet with my hand wrapped in TP and answered. It was Pastor.

Pastor was our mechanic in Tororo. He fixed our secondhand motorbike that broke all the time. I watched him straighten the front strut by laying the bike on its side and beating it with a long thick pipe. He was my friend.

“Hello Mr. Cot,” he said. I could hear the broad smile on his face over the telephone.

“Who is this?”

“This Pastor” He said with a thick and jolly Japadola accent.

“Pastor?”

“Yes Mr. Cot.”

“Where are you calling from?”

“Hmmmm. Difficult question.”

“You don’t have a phone.”

“hmmmm. I do have phone.”

“Ok. Fine. What the hell’s going on? Is Z. OK?”

“Mr. Cot you are on a different planet. You have been there few months. I wanted to tell you before, but I never got around to it. Too busy with the motorbike.” I asked confused questions and he elaborated. I hung up on him and told myself I was dreaming and went to sleep.

I looked in the call register on the phone when I woke up. I called the number that called me in the middle of night. Pastor answer and confirmed everything me told me last night. I never went to Africa. I went to “an outer space planet – Z is still there.” And I am not in the USA. I am on yet another planet. I have lost my mind. And now I have shit on my face and hands. My own shit. It rubbed off the telephone. And now there is shit on my keyboard.

10.20

It felt great to drive through Wyoming. Wyoming is even emptier than South Dakota.

As I left this morning there was fog in Rapid City. It cleared as I climbed up into the Rockies. It felt like I was really up high because the clouds were very low in the sky. It started snowing when I dipped into the valleys throughout Wyoming and every 100 miles or so I would stop to pee on the side of the highway then climb up on top the Uhaul and look around.

I went passed Pierre, South Dakota yesterday, which is where Ben died. I’m glad that if he had to die he died in a place like Pierre. When I saw the sign for the turn off I felt my chest tense up. I had almost rerouted through North Dakota to avoid Pierre, but didn’t. After that initial chest-tightening, I felt fine though and didn’t think about it.

Also yesterday, I detoured through the Badlands. They come out of nowhere – just like the Grand Canyon does. Unexpected. The first big outcropping I saw – you come around a turn and see the pink and tan marshmallow formations cut into the empty plain – I grasped.

There was construction on the driving route through the park grounds. I was stopped by a flagger so that a digger could slowly make its way in front of me. The Flagger came to my window to chat with me while we waited. She was Native. I’ve seen Natives all day. Natives and the badlands. It makes you think about what the Country might be otherwise.

I’m drinking a bit of beer as I type and it’s gone straight to my head. I’m in an Applebee’s and I haven’t eaten since breakfast. The car broke down in Billings, Montana and it took all afternoon and evening to sort out a mechanic and a hotel. I’m paying through the nose for the hotel, but I can walk to the shop from there.

The Applebee’s is across the street from the hotel. My waiter has an accent like a cowboy. He seems apologetic when he says anything. “I’ll take your order.” Hangdog cowboy.

10.19

I got up at 6am just as my parents were headed out to work. It was still dark and cold. I put a Ziploc baggie full cookies my mom made for me in the passenger’s seat and headed South on 35 for 70 miles until I reached 90 West, which I will stay on for 1,400 miles give or take.

I watched the wind farms in Southern Minnesota turn into the empty yellow pastures of South Dakota, which looked pinked through my sunglasses. I started taking pictures and making little videos that I imagine I will post here soon.

I stopped for lunch in a town called Plankinton. 2 block main street, court house, bars, gain elevator. I came into one of the bars for lunch expecting – I don’t know – saw dust on the floor. Instead I found leather couches inside and wireless internet. I got my laptop from the car and logged in to my email. I saw R. was online.

I meet R. at a month long artist residency in Vermont shortly after I meet Z. I was enthralled with Z. at the time, typing out messages to her at night on my laptop in my studio, planning a weekend with her Montreal. I couldn’t think of anyone else when I masturbated. I told this to R. We were fast friends.

In the South Dakota bar I update R. saying that I’m back in the US, thenI asked her if anyone had ever accidentally had anal sex with her. I accidentally put my penis in Z.’s anus in South Africa. Things had been a little tense between us; I was leaving in less than a week. I figured I would break the tension by having a loud fuck. It was going well. I was being aggressive, then I accidentally fucked her butt. One or two strokes, but still, she and I both found it arresting. I got in the shower feeling like like a screw up, I couldn’t even fuck away the tension. After the shower she and I had sex again – a kind of it’s OK, these things happen sort of sex. A few days later I left. As soon as I got home Z started writing to me about how sad she was. I hadn’t expected that.

I got back into my car and started driving again. The pastures turned into open range. Occasionally I saw black steer eating. The yellow grass still looked pink through my sunglasses. I feel like South Dakota is empty. I’m sure people who live here would disagree. South Dakota is exactly right for me right now.

10.18

I spent the last three months in Sub Saharan Africa with Z. – almost all of that time in a little town called Tororo in Uganda, close enough to the Kenyan boarder that you could see the rain coming and say, “It’s raining in Kenya.”

I’ve returned to the US without Z. I’m in MPLS. Z. is in Tororo and I’ve been getting emails from her telling me how sad she is. I didn’t expect that. She has made choices in her life that have required that she be the only skipper of a lone boat.

How do I feel? Out of place. I was sick on the airplanes coming how. I started vomiting in Entebbe, Uganda and stopped three continents later in JFK, where I also lost my hat. I just turned around and it was gone. I had bought that hat with Z. in a little town in Mexico from an adorable woman in the market who demonstrated the hats ability to retain it’s shape after being crushed. She crushed it in her tiny hands and made her round face crush up at the same time. I bought the hat to protect me from the African sun.

It’s autumn in MPLS. Z. told me I would feel out of place when I came back and I had said “No. Especially not considering we had spent two weeks in South Africa before flying back to Uganda” (I got on a plane the next day bound for MPLS).

I am walking down the street. I try to remember the dirt roads in Tororo, the mud huts and the children, the market where I spent so much of my time walking around, sitting and talking with people as I drew their portraits with watercolor pencils. The two places are absolutely irreconcilable. Either they are two on different plants or this one planet is so much stranger that I had ever imagined.

Tomorrow I will start driving to Oregon. I don’t think I will make it all the way through South Dakota. My aim is to reach Rapid City by dark.