I am writing to you all simultaneously. Not everything I have to say is specifically about you, but you are important to me and I wanted to include you. It may help to think of what I have to say in metaphorical terms, an analogy. If you are from where I am from, you can also take it literally.
Years ago I lived in a world where several timelines rubbed together like strips of film from different versions of the same movie. I saw different layers of information. Rough winds of feelings and possibilities blasted through my head and heart. I often felt a sliding sensation, as though I had stepped onto a conveyor belt. Sometimes gravity started to behave differently. I moved through a realm of constant dreams and voices, trying to pull meaning from it. These are all translations for experiences I was never able to articulate to other people or find someone who related with them.
Having what feels like a fundamentally different experience of reality than other people around me was like always being in a glass box floating at the edge of other people’s vision. Isolated and not quite there. Being able to see too much information about other people made it hard to have lasting relationships. I didn’t give them a chance. I didn’t want to waste anyone’s time with a relationship that was already over in my mind.
I decided to fix it. I decided to change. I wanted to learn how to disconnect the other worlds and be normal. Over the course of a year or so, I followed instructions that came to me like old memories. Each step lead me to the next step. One step came from a trampoline (and, perhaps, from Trampoline). Through the use of LSD I was able to manifest my metaphorical operating system to disconnect and rewire things. It was like a light had been switched off and I came to an abrupt halt without knowing I had been moving so fast all this time.
And so life started to happen Now and there wasn’t any other sort of time. No other worlds blobbed over my vision. No freight trains of possibility rocketed past inches away from my head. I could focus more and be part of the world other people inhabited. I got what I thought I wanted. But something kept nagging at me, like a task I kept forgetting about. There was a banging sound inside me, faint and distant, against thick glass, perhaps underwater. Eventually, when I looked inside me, I discovered the banging was me, on the inside of the floating glass box. I hadn’t changed myself at all. I had just changed places with someone else.
Maybe it had been a mistake to disconnect myself. It’s hard to say. The amalgam of previous moments culminates in who we are now and all that. I just knew that on some level I was unhappy. I had sacrificed part of myself so that I could walk instead of floating like a weirdo. Despite my unhappiness, I was convinced that this was the only version of myself that would be accepted by my friends. One of you has Seen me before. You know how difficult it can be.
Sometimes you need to take the thing you’ve been making, the thing that isn’t getting better by adding more parts or twisting the knobs, and smash it. The parts that survive are the strongest and they can be reused for something else. Many years ago I jumped out the window of a very tall Las Vegas hotel. I did not survive. But that was the point. It was the only way to rebuild and keep living.
So a week or so ago I did mushrooms in order to receive the next set of instructions on how to undo what I had done. The metaphor was kind of funny and on point. During the trip, while I was in the bathroom, I pulled up my underwear. I saw the lettering on the waistband was inverted, as though in a mirror. A sticker that had been on one hand was now on the other. As I stood up I had the sensation of standing upside down on the ceiling. The quality of light had changed. I was on the other side of the glass. I went outside and looked at a new sky. And then the trains started running again and the winds started blowing. It comes in flashes now, a trip to the grocery store suddenly a challenging task of navigating pocket universes.
I was also given the next step in my instructions. At some point my fingers will turn into something that looks like a gun, a blue, glowing mystical barrel. I’m not sure what will happen, but I get the sense that part of me will die, like in Vegas, and I will move on with what is left. You’ve seen enough Doctor Who to know that these transitions are difficult but ultimately survivable. 😉
So that is what has been going on with me. I thought you should know. As for other recent developments that I have been processing, I’ve been of several minds.
I used to think that there was someone I was meant to be with, like a soulmate. If I was patient enough, I would encounter her. But maybe I’m not meant for anyone, or not just one person in particular. Maybe that is okay.
Come what may, know that I love you.