MENTAL MEDICATION: CURE FOR LIFE'S FRUSTRATIONS I was in Warm Springs a second time because of a disastrous relationship that had ended in a suicide attempt: I had fallen in love with this chick, Virginia, (we called her Virgin; she was an early mourning Madonna). I went out with Virginia Plane a couple of times during the summer but she was too good for her old friends once she moved to the Invisible College, where you could get anything that you wanted excepting Virginia..... Her divorce had screwed up her mind, she probably drove her husband to it as she is a manipulative woman who can't deal with anyone as they really are. THE HYPOSTASIS OF THE ARCHONS We got into a major argument when I found out she was a Creationist; I had received an A+ for a paper I wrote for Bill Wimsatt's class in Evolutionary Epistemology: Cognitive heuristics are identical with adaptive heuristics. Life is a Thought-process. Thought is alive. The All descends from the Void through the mediation of archons. Atom-stacking is now feasible. But as Wimsatt says, Epistemology is much more fun than Ontology. She shut me up by changing the subject. For all her sensual makeup, delicate blush, eyeshadow, mascara, she remained totally asexual--for this I had lost half my vision: Everything merges with the night. LEARNING TO FLY I had come over to her dorm, Morton Hall, expecting the Salt of Wisdom or a little hot nasties. I'd just been gone for a month to the Mayo Clinic for yet another surgery on my eyes; had nearly lost my sight entirely when I fell down some stairs immediately following my release from the Hospital. Following the accident I'd made an emergency visit to the hospital; after Dr. Ouspenski examined me I was put on total bed rest. I couldn't move around, couldn't walk the halls looking for cute nurses or the last great American whale; the only thing I was allowed to do was go to the bathroom. Which I did heartily. I had to give up smoking cigarettes as the nicotine was keeping the bleeding veins in my eyes from healing up: I saw the world through blood oozing down from the inside of my eyeball, a gray haze that omened to be starless and black. All this time I'd been faithfully writing the Virgin love letters; when I got home I'd discovered that she'd been having a sordid affair behind my back--I kissed her then, demanding equal rights, professed my undying and shining love for her, like the swift-horsed sun, asked that she love me, too. My hands were hot for a face and for a night--she immediately pulled away, telling me I think it's time to call it quits. Don't come around here no more; I don't want you coming up to my dorm; I don't want you calling me.... Never to unfasten her lovely bright clasp at night.... Desire... Desire... She had escorted me to the desk, then walked away in silence, not even casting a backwards glance. I had cried all the way home. There had been a slight drizzle; it had turned to rain. I hadn't been dressed for a downpour; I was drenched when I finally arrived at the Space Capsule, but I didn't change my soaking clothes: I sat there, wet and weary, consumed with Love and Death: The window like clarified stained glass siphoned away my energy, my vital spirit, my precious bodily fluids: The Spirit of Gravity reached up from the Earth as grasping jellyfish tentacles which sucked like a vampire's kiss; they bent at right angles, coming greedily clutching into the window to draw me to death through the windows of some Church of the Poisoned Mind. I had to kill myself. I had to die. Love was tearing me apart. I had remained in dark obsession for hours as my mind divided into voices discussing my impotence, my stupidity, my utter worthlessness; I could hear the voice of God: God was evil, yet another voice telling me that I had to die. Crucifixation. (sic) Eyes convulsing from too high a dose of haldol, suffering excruciating anxiety attacks, and still schizophrenic and suicidally depressed in spite of a drug salad of five medications, I finally had gone to the window. I pulled it open; looked out. The ground was a dizzying depth below me. I stuck one leg out and balanced on the ledge. There was a monster on the loose, just sitting there watching: Its name was Gravity. Virginia Plane, where are you now--don't you know we can't fight alone against the monster? I teetered on the brink, then leaned forward, fall- ing....The Abyss surrounded me like a womb: I was an abortion. They say this is a medical advance. I'm sick of the Virgin. I still haven't found what I'm looking for. I'm sick of myself. I'm sick of you. I'm sick of it. Bi-bi-bi. No more turning away from the coldness inside.... For a moment I was weightless, then in an instant of pain I collided with the Ground of Being. I lay there, rosy blood like Rivers of Dawn in the dark, still, trembling, a thing that cried out in the night. As a psychokiller I've died many times. I died in dark alleyways. I died in sewers where Yog-Soggoth offers blas- phemous prayers to obscene gods. I died every time the Republicans won an election. I died in the shadow of the Statue of Bigotry. Set them free.... Consciousness Void, I felt myself becoming Man again. As the mystical process of entification continued I saw in a Mirror of rain-puddles that I wore a lizard costume and emerald makeup: I was the Salamander, the archetypal progenitor of the human species crawling from water to land. Some eldritch spirit was bringing me back to life by making mad, shattered, random, abandoned love to me. I stared into the violate eyes of a whore-thing from beyond the stars and saw that she was Night....It was an incestuous love: I was her Son, the Androgyne. I am Day; I have killed the Father and married the Mother. Sensual passion in the arms of a siren. Don't touch me; I'm a real live wire. Heroine, be the death of me!!! Then the siren vanished as paramedics bound my legs. I was rushed by ambulance down highways where Indians lay scattered, bleeding, been brought here to Warm Springs...a Church of Madness without the Virgin. When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me--in a moment of despair I turned from Gnosticism to redemption through pain: I prayed to a Hypostasis who was the One who compensated the Trinity, making of it a Quaternity. I was a Jung American. I wished I could swim like dolphins can swim.... THE BRIDE STRIPPED BARE The casts had been off my legs a few weeks before I met Sophie Rosencruetz: From the very first instant it was mood-swing time: Depression disappeared like Man-the-Driver down the autobahn; manic hypersexuality told me: In the name of Love, One thought in the name of Love.. Soph-kid was black and had a shaved head--she was a New Wave musician. Our love became a funeral pyre....She was suffering from a major manic psychosis when I met her playing Sorry with Carla on one of the cafeteria tables. She was busily taking notes on everything going on in the Hotel Gonzo, being held here illegally against my will; she was going to write a book on loony bins, even though I assured her that they didn't sell--I had written one myself; it had lain battered, bleeding on the Limit. In the midst of the natural beauty of Montana she was a beauty herself: Star-woman, blasting off to the moon. Glitter-girl. Tight blue jeans. High heel boots; their restless rustle. Red eyeshadow, green mascara--you'd think she'd know better. But Knowledge is a deadly friend when in the hands of the last temptation. She was uncontrollably manic, constantly moving around, talking to everyone, talking to herself, chain-smoking Marlboro Reds, flirting with me....Mania is an imbalance of norepinephrine; when it moves into the hypothalamus it affects sexual drive. Men were inevitably attracted by her beautiful bodanon; she took advantage of this to tease and flirt with anyone who came within ten feet of her. "Marriage? You wanna?" "I was a heavy pothead before being committed...illegally against my will--don't you think Philip K. Dick's Galactic Pothealer is the best-ever title of a science fiction novel...?" she asked as Carla shouted Sorry! and moved one of Sophie's pieces back to start.... "I've met a lot of potheads, acid heads, crack burnouts, PCP people, dopers of all sorts in mental hospitals. When I think of all the time I'd spent myself sailing submarines; I wonder how much of my own illness was due to the atomic reactor....I understand you're with a band. Don't you play for Cowboys on Acid?" Sophie said, "No, I'm with Apocalypso, but they found a new vocalist/guitarist to take my place since I got in here....You wanna hear me play?" She started playing space reggae on the hospital's acoustic guitar, an instrument she shared with L.B., who was more into jazz fusion; she was the greatest thing since Iggy Pop and had a voice like Dixieland playing on the Ferry: I said, "Besides every record Roxy Music ever made, I've also got most of the Ferry solo albums. Fight for a sign of the times. "We were made for each other." She was about to kiss me, an Angel of Harlem in a wilderness of pain, when Big Nurse came to chase her to her room: Sophie had been restricted to her room every other hour because the staff considered her hypersexuality "disruptive." L.B. had the guitar now. Rootboy requested an oldie; the sounds of Magic Bus filled the cafeteria like an organ a church while I waited patiently for Sophie's release, smoking a prescription U-boat. Only the immanent threat of blindness had finally convinced the staff to let my ophthalmologist write up a prescription for dope. Marijuana was used as a tranquilizer in mental hospitals in the 19th Century, perhaps now is the time to begin experimenting with its stereoisomers as tranquilizers...but the staff would hear none of this; if we have to use marijuana it's only because this is an emergency. I talked to the wind. My words were all carried away. # End of file Press RIGHT ARROW (#6 key) of the numeric keypad to load the next file.