The Demon Lobotomist

The last demon dream was nothing compared to the one on the following night. It was as if the little bastard had an older brother who got WAY pissed off about me singing him to sleep the way I did. (And by sleep I mean a permanent state of residual ectoplasm under my shoe.)

My brother and I were in our front yard with my friend Matt discussing a situation Matt had just gotten himself into that made him into a fugitive. He had opposed some kind of terrifying authority like the police but with more supernatural or cosmic empowerment and he was hopelessly on the run. He needed our help. We agreed to help any way we could.

Just then, an unmarked boxtruck comes roaring up our driveway almost hitting us. Matt shrieks, "He's here!!!" as we dive out of the way. "Who's here?!" I screamed back.

Out of the driver seat leaps a youthful and sprightly fellow wearing a white labcoat and a head mirror. In his hand we saw the gleaming of a blade... it is a scalpel.

We are all frozen now as this fantastic character approaches us and begins to speak. He is charismatic and funny, as he speaks I find myself liking him, and I want him to like me. He explains to us quite apologetically that he has to lobotomize our friend Matt, because of the things he has done and laws he has broken, but that in the end it is really for the best and he explains why with flawless reasoning and we all believe him, even Matt.

My brother and I go inside, upon his suggestion, and wait for him to return Matt to us. We sit inside the house both pleased and happy with the way things seem to be going... even a little excited for this great thing that is about to happen to Matt. Sitting sedate in the dim afternoon light, I suddenly snap back into reality and think, "Who the fuck does this guy think he is!" This shakes Danny out of his state and he blurts out, "We can't let him do this to Matt!"

We know that we're up against something big and we know that by trying to stop the lobotomy we will incur the same wrath upon ourselves as well, but all I can think is that this person, or the institute he stands for, has no right to physically and mentally alter someone for disobeying a rule.

Danny and I each grab a baseball bat from the closet and head out the door. We rush out into the street and start beating on the sides of the boxtruck. We scream out loud, making sounds like native war cries. I can see that all that we are doing is making small dents and rocking the frame on it's axles. But it apparently it is enough to at least get the lobotomist's attention.

The metal siding of the truck melts away beneath our blows to reveal the demon lobotomist shaking his head  and looking down at us with an almost sympathetic expression as if to say, "Oh now look what I have to do to you."

Fighting ensues. A blur of confused violence and I lose track of my brother and Matt and where I am and what is even happening. I know at some point I realize I'm in way over my head and I'm bounding down hallways fleeing for my life only to hear the slow steady footsteps of the lobotomist approaching at the same slack, self-assured pace. Black claps of leather echoing coldly in the hallway telling me I can never stop running and he is always gaining.

I jump inside a bathroom and lock the door. I turn around and realize that the bathroom has two doors and I lock the other door behind me as well. I'm now standing between two locked doors in a small space just wider than my shoulders. Just then, the entrance doorknob is gripped and starts to shake with frantic, rabid urgency. I grab onto it and try to fortify the lock, just as the other doorknob behind me comes to life. Instinctively I reach across with my other hand to grip that doorknob when I suddenly realize that this is impossible for both doorknobs to be doing this. How could the lobotomist be too places at once?

I realize that he is, and he is so much more than anything I've ever dealt with. I recall my other dream within this one, how I sang a demon to death by reaching the silver note. I realize that this singing would not work here. This lobotomist was of another breed.

With arms outstretched, fully flexing, I hold the position and hear a small voice in my head whispering percussive prompts, "Stay. Hold. Wait. Tight. Twist. Hold." I realize, just like in the last dream, that the demon is shrinking outside. He is breaking upon my makeshift fortress. The same voice softly explains that sometimes the demon is such that you must hide and wait... you must know when you are outmatched and act accordingly.

I learned to be in rhythm with the demon and predict his moves. If I twisted right when he twisted left, our forces would cancel each other out, and the lock would be preserved. I did this with both hands knowing that if I kept my locks intact, he would eventually be worn down or leave. I protected my locks.

I woke up with a start in my bed, a crazy buzzing all over my skin. Terrified and squirming, I couldn't shake the feeling that maybe that bathroom was a real battleground... maybe it was the last safe place in my head  from an invading entity who was trying to enter me in my sleep.

Demmmmon Dreammmms

    Last night there was a demon in my dream. I felt a pair of soft palms slide up my back and shove me gently toward the sliding glass door. My brother and sister come rushing up behind me, panic-stricken and hellbent on exiting the house. We all collide in a confused tangle of limbs and deflecting shoulders. Again I feel a soft push  from a pair of invisible and disembodied hands.
    Deafening terror seizes me as I grasp for the sliding glass door and yank it open. I turn to the blank space of the dining room and attempt to address the demon directly but my voice is stopped up as if with phlegm. I begin to aspirate, my throat clogged with dull, black clay, yet somehow I manage to cough up the word "Jesus". This just barely clears my throat enough for me to rasp, "Demon, leave this house immediately!"
    We all three stare at the opening to the back yard and I growl... "Demon, Leave."
     The door slams shut.
     Shimmering, diamond eyes blink at me as the light flickers.
     Anger now instead of fear as I suddenly realize what must be done. Stepping into the center of the room, I see my own figure from without, a figure that seems suddenly taller as he raises his right hand high above his head, palm inward. After inhaling deeply, I let out a sudden, ascending melody that wavers and sputters out again like a wounded bird trying to take flight. This is it I think, this is the way... I clear my throat and begin again. A melody erupts smoothly and flawlessly to an uncanny, supernatural frequency and holds, maintaining at a volume and pitch that seems to hiss cold, metallic and shrill like the edge of a blade. My voice takes on qualities that seem both angelic and machine-like at the same time, resounding now with strange harmonic accompaniment.
    
I cannot see this, but I feel the demon shriveling at the sound of my voice, shrinking like a tumor. It takes all my strength and focus to carry this song to it's end, knowing full well that this entity must be dissolved to bits lest he regain strength. I persist.
    There is a sudden breaking, the way resistance gives way when overcome, and I stumble forward just a step. There is a smear of white paste on the wood floor.

But the magic is in my skin...

Psychic synchronicities abound in multiples daily now. If I've learned anything from these strange coincidences in the past, then I should know that change is on the way. And by change I do not mean merely physical or material change (yet in that respect I may have some clue as to what), but more importantly... a change of perspective or some new mental structure is crystallizing.

So many little miracles are happening all the time and we are hardly paying close enough attention to notice them. Finally I am slowing down enough to see the  little clues suggesting the interconnectedness of reality everywhere I look, and in return, it appears as if some kind of intelligence is waving at me through the seeming randomness of events. Is it my own psyche projecting narcissistic nonsense? Or is my consciousness effecting the randomness of the apparent chaos around me and self organizing coherence?

Today at work,  I  started thinking about a conversation I had with a woman about Jesus and the Devil at a show we played a few nights ago. I thought to myself, I ought to write about our little discussion. It wasn't more than five minutes after thinking this when I heard someone requesting to sit in my section and be served by me. It was the same woman.

My nights have been long the past week... I have been spending them with an old book on philosophy I read in high school called Sophie's World. There probably isn't a more important book to my development since the Bible, yet I hadn't returned to it in almost ten years. Two days ago I picked it up again. At work the following day, a filmaker/author named Heath Jones whom I admire and who often frequents the diner, introduced me to his young daughter whom I had never seen or met in the year or two that I have known him. Her name was Sophia. She looked up at me and said jovially, "Hello Matt."

Sophie says hello.

Maybe I'm a schizophrenic with a positive outlook so it's of no consequence. This is always possible too. But when I pick up a book it's talking about the same thing that I was thinking about, or someone was just talking about  the thing on my mind as it plays on the the T.V. simultaneously. Last night I read in Sophie's World about Logos and the early Greek philosophers Parmenides and Heraclitus. Taking a break from that book, I switched to another book I have already read by Daniel Pinchbeck called 2012:The Return of Quetzalcoatl. As it happened, the pages I crossed within the next ten minutes happened to touch upon Parmenides, Heraclitus and Logos.

Of course, the first thing that I think is that on some level I must have known that both of these books talked about these philosophers and concepts, being as how I've read both of them already, even if on a conscious level I had forgotten this. The natural conclusion would be that some part of me, my subconscious perhaps, was leading me to read these things at the same time. And immediately I ask, is this no less a miracle?

If we are to accept that the subconscious works is such subtle ways, utilizing and weaving practically forgotten knowledge, and we take seriously the Jungian notion of collective unconsciousness... well, then we might have a new context in which we see these strange occurrences called coincidence. Might they not be evidence of the subtle weaving of an even larger, all encompassing Mind? Is it not possible that on a micro level such as the case of my mind leading me to read two books that align with the same concept, that it might also occur on a macro level, where people, things or events might be brought together for some greater subconscious purpose?

Bah! But what's to come of it? I don't know. If it's not all hogwash and there is meaning to it, then what, what, what should we do? There aren't any clear mandates from the great Mind, that coherency that elusively slips in and out of focus. In the end, the only response I know to give is that of wonder. I am amazed by it and I recognize it, and I have noticed that this response of wonder, this recognition, makes the synchronicities appear more often. And it just may be that this wonder is the most important response we can feel, because it reminds us that this life and this world is sacred and worthy of our full attention. I could hardly think of a more important mandate than understanding that.

Yeasayer- "Ambling Alp"

Reintegration

My favorite kind of dream is the death rehearsal.

Today my nap was rudely interrupted by astral indigestion and a glorious epiphany that got mostly lost again on the way back to waking consciousness (as is usually the case).

These things are impossibly hard to record, and words are impossibly weak, but I will try to mark it down anyways:

I will say that I was floating somewhere in my bed but under my covers was a sea of stars and moons and planets. In this twinkling, cosmic space scape I began having a conversation with myself, speaker to listener.

But first I must point out that I felt completely weightless and strangely clean, as if I was me in pure form, without all the baggage of my superficial thoughts and identifications. This was confirmed by the speaker (who was me) who began saying something like, "This is the you behind you, the seer, the awareness that is always there while you are alive and that survives death when the ego and body pass away." Simultaneously an image of consciousness flashed in my mind, an analogous display of my awareness as being a stream of flowing blue iridescent water filling and flowing through a particular shape or vessel, that shape being my human form as I knew myself in the world. The speaker says, "That container is your body and the shape that the water takes within it is your ego or your sense of self. Death destroys the body, and therefore the particular shape that consciousness had as it was flowing through it ceases to exist as well... however, the consciousness itself... the actual part of you that is aware and observing, that returns to a larger flow of consciousness and you realize, or remember, that you have always been so much more than that temporary shape. What you thought of as yourself was only a small part of a much larger identity that you had forgotten."

Again, a flash of understanding as I suddenly imagined how the flow of consciousness was funneled or injected into the incredible smallness of the human form. I also understood that it was a willful choice of consciousness to do this, knowing full well that it would forget its own identity and be confused, once isolated from the whole. This was a brave and adventurous endeavor on behalf of consciousness and I felt a reverence for every living thing which in turn, included myself. This was followed by a feeling of legitimate pride, not the ego self-congratulatory type, but a healthy feeling akin to self-worth. I realized that by just existing in the human form, I have been accomplishing a brave and powerful feat. This was true of everyone I knew.

This is what I get for reading all the weird books and spiritual texts that I do. They would obviously inform my dreams at some point. Nonetheless, to experience such things so lucidly, as more than just concepts, well that is something to behold.

Reintegrating with the whole, the reunification of consciousness, if it happens like this, seems to me to be very similar to what Christians view as going to Heaven: ultimate and eternal communion with God, reunion with loved ones, and full understanding of the nature of things.

And if this is true, maybe it can be said that Hell or purgatory at least, is something like that process of watching the you who you thought you were being burned away, which would likely be an excruciating or terrifying experience, especially if one was extremely attached to that particular shape one had assumed throughout their life. (With this in mind, one might view the senility or dementia of old age as being a kind of blessing in disguise, the preparation for such a process, a kind of graceful disengagement from the self.)

The most important part of this dream that I am left with though, is that feeling of demarcation between what you might call my spirit and my soul (to use terms from the Christian cosmology.) If I sit right now and concentrate, I can still feel, if just briefly, that baseline awareness beneath all the outward thoughts and associations that comes with engaging with the world and the human condition. I imagine both life and death would be easier if you could achieve this state of awareness regularly.

“Please Lord give me strength
to be nobody
’cause I am not my thoughts.”

Akron/Family

Anonymix 1

1. The Circulatory System - (Drifts)
2. Starflyer 59 - She's The Queen
3. Syd Barrett - No Good Trying
4. Candy Claws - Catamaran
5. OOIAH - OOIAH
6. Lost in Lava Town - Seat of Wisdom
7. Four Tet - Clouding
8. Sean Lennon - Dead Meat
9. Yoko Ono and the Plastic Ono Band - Moving Mountains
10. Bear in Heaven - Drug a Wheel
11. Radon Moon - Secret Space Invasion (Demo)
12. Entrance - Stranded in a Clearing

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?ktzhmmw1gmi

Diner

It has happened before, often when a storm or fog rolls in and the roads empty of cars and the streetlights shine weirdly in the hazy dark outside. Customers stop coming and soon the restaurant is completely empty. Standing inside Denny's looking out, I begin to feel like there is no other reality beyond the dimly lit parking lot, as if the very ground ends abruptly into black nothingness at the edge of light. It is in these conditions, where I can trick or convince myself, that I have died and am now in some kind of middle world... a spirit trapped in purgatory or some strange no-place.

Leaning against the counter, I think to myself, this is all there is or ever will be... any thoughts of home or my after work life I imagine as being just dreams or some long ago memory... the only reality is this diner and I am a ghost trapped inside.

I have played this little mind game more than once. I played it tonight when those strange storms came through. And more than once I have thought, maybe there is some truth to this fantasy. Maybe my overextended employment at Denny's is some kind of penance or sentence that I have been ordered to carry out. Maybe I am paying for certain sins of my past. Perhaps it is a Karmic balancing in this life as opposed to the next, or maybe I am being purified before I move onto the next stage of my life.

The diner is a strange place to be stranded. It has a special loneliness that can only occur in places of transit. Because, when it comes down to it, a diner is most often a place one eats out of necessity and not mainly for pleasure: it is a place between places, not usually a destination. There are always exceptions, but this is the general way of things.

Tonight a shade from the past came to visit me. His sole reason was to see me and visit with me, but there was an unnerving air about him. We chatted across the table for a while when finally he says, "You know, I never saw you waiting tables... is this where you thought you'd end up?"

Leering faces of old friends, lovers and enemies have been paraded before me for the past three years of this job. Even in some of my closest, oldest friends, I have detected a sinister gleam and gloating flashing behind their eyes. A hissing suggestion of, "And you thought yourself so special..."

I have been a right bastard in my day. So much pride and stupidity in my youth. I thought myself a savior. I thought myself a genius. I thought myself above so many people. Maybe it's that pride that's being burned off.

Perhaps my stay in purgatory is drawing to an end. I have to stop now and work hard to remember the person who I am paying for, because that person is no longer me. So much change has acted upon me and in a lot of ways, I am a different person altogether.

All of these thoughts swirled around me today as I cleaned the back dining room, preparing to go home for the night. Catching my reflection in the window I thought to myself, but how much longer do I have to stay here and repay my debts? And immediately the thought: as long as you think it takes.

Because in the end, it was always my choice to stay.