And just like that, one more.
This
time, I’m 11 and lying on the floor at Gerald’s place. Gerald wants to jam, and I just want to
relax. The television is on, and I’m
halfway into what’s going on onscreen.
This is the first time we’ve gotten high, using some of his brother’s
stash that Gerald has clandestinely appropriated, weeks ago. The idea is to determine, on the basis of Ronnie’s
reaction, or lack thereof, whether it is safe to try any…and then wait an even
longer period to see if Ronnie forgets entirely about the missing weed (or
never notices it missing to begin with).
We have just felt safe enough this morning to try it out, because we know
Ronnie has gone to Austin. We haven’t
yet discovered that he is planning to remain there.
There is this clear brain feeling, this certitude that this moment will be long remembered with absolute clarity, that it will be some kind of watershed instant in my early life. And, indeed, it pretty much has been; of all the sudden reminiscences I’ve been plagued with these few years, this is perhaps the most common, the most familiar. And that’s weird, because there’s literally nothing else profound about the memory. Although the feeling of first THC intoxication is indeed a watershed moment, the feeling doesn’t lend itself to remembrance the same way that setting and conversation do. The morning slips away, fragmenting into the most banal sort of lazed-away hours, each with nothing special to recommend it other than what my cannabinoid receptors are telling me about how great everything is.
“Pick up your axe,” Gerald commands.
I gather myself for a spell, to compose an awe-inspiringly witty response of appropriate gravity. I want to convey to him, as pithily as possible, how comfortable I am right now, how much effort it will take to pick up my axe, how much more effort it will require to get into whatever guitar lesson you’re about to foist on me, and how little fun I’ll have in the attempt, especially with regard to how much comfort I’m currently experiencing. The floor and I are, like, really into each other right now. The guitar feels great just where it is, and if were I to jostle it in order to play, it would become irritable and uncooperative.
After a few moments of introspection,
analysis and word selection, I clear my throat.
“Fuck off,” I say, settling further into the floor.
In retrospect, this might also be the first time I ever swear.
“Pick up your axe.”
“My axe likes right where it is. It just wants to be. I want to just be.”
“Whatever, faggot.”
I close my eyes and flip him off. Although I’ve lifted the middle finger before, this is the first time I’ve ever let anybody see me doing it, the only time I’ve ever actually expressed, to another person, the inherent profanity in the gesture. So I’ve just cussed twice, in two different ways, according to my own standards for use of the F word. I’m clearly careening out of control. Lock up the women.
And that’s the moment. It’s followed by several more of similar triviality, and those are followed by more. But none have the same luster. Memory has focused just on that first event, and lost interest in the rest.
I guess that’s the final clue, because now I think I make some kind of sense out of things. I don’t know whether this has all along been the intent of whatever is dredging these memories up for me, but I don’t really question, either; if there is a reason why I keep catching random glimpses of the past, then this is as good as any other possibility.
The events I’m remembering are absolutely inconsequential in and of themselves. They’re the kind of signal that can be hidden in a person’s psyche for years, under the watchful third eye of powerful telepaths, without alerting them to the associations between them that the subconscious is realizing. If this realization comes as a slow process of gradual accumulation of understanding, then you may have years and years of introspective regard for their emergent significance, and can plan, subliminally, your psychic offensive against the alien telepaths. You’ll never know til the last minute what you’re going to do, and so neither will they. Or, alternately, you can take the time this process gives you to work on shielding your mind from outside influences.
I clamp down immediately on the memories themselves, flooding my forebrain with entirely undifferentiated minutiae of the last twenty years of my life. I’ve gleaned what I need to, for now, and I need to generate noise to cover the unconscious processes that have been set in motion by the realization. I know the flag to look for, now, when dreaming up old incidents or wondering what the most recent epiphany might mean. Every one of these memories is adjacent to a memory of some kind of seminal Ryry event. What my subconscious means me to remember, in every case, is that adjacent content. With one exception, that is: the most recent. That memory is of getting and being stoned for the first time. There is nothing prior to or following that memory that has the slightest significance to my current situation; but as recent events have demonstrated, everything psychic about my life seems to have begun right there, right then. It is the only memory in the bunch that is relevant in and of itself, irrespective of, in spite of, its utter banality.
In this case, and in the case of every memory I’ve so far examined for proximity to these memory visions, the significance is that I changed to a measurable degree during the event. I stood up to a bully for the first time (and suffered the consequences); I stood up to my parents for the first time (and suffered the consequences). I took a dare. I faced risk. I got braver, to the point where my friends had to reappraise me and my potential utility in various shenanigans. These are all times when I did something unexpected. Times when I was original.
In each incident, I committed some kind of act of rebellion against myself, and came out of it a different person. Getting stoned at Gerald’s is the meta-example that nucleates all the rest: I didn’t just get high for the first time, but I also used vulgar language for the first time. If I were to chase the memory down further, I’m sure I would find still higher-order examples of autorebellion.
My problem now is that I didn’t come to this realization gradually. It hit me hard, just now, not ten seconds ago, in the interval it took to compose these words. The first few seconds were expended in silent, solemn recognition of what the revelation means; the last couple have been spent in silent, solumn regret that I left a three-second window between the moment I realized something important, and the moment I took action to prevent its being compromised.
If any alien telepaths have hacked me already, and were paying attention just now, then they know as much as I do about what I just realized.
Even if they haven’t, I can’t pursue this line of thought any further until I’ve shielded myself somehow. I need to get back into meditation in a big way. Find some way of dwelling on something without consciously worrying at it. Generate some kind of wall of separation between myself and any listeners. Block out intruders. Attenuate any emanated signals. Wrap my head in foil. Whatever it takes.
But if they have, then there’s probably not a damn thing I can do from this point onward, in my entire life, that will have any bearing on history. If they know what to look for now, they can mine my entire head for data any time I don’t have powerful defenses up. Any time I’m asleep. Any time I’m drunk. Any time I’m doing anything at all other than sitting on the floor in lotus position. Which means that, quite possibly long before I do, they’ll have figured out what my endgame is, and they’ll have successfully defended against it. Humanity loses, and the planet goes to the bad guys. I've just neutralized myself, recused myself from the field of battle, and left it to the apathetic, ignorant masses to extricate themselves from the situation.
This is why I hate thinking.
