I was in my bedroom not too long ago, changing into my PJ's and peering suspiciously at that sliver of dark between my bed and the floor where the monster is.
I'm not talking about my grownup bedroom and bed. I'm talking about the bedroom and bed I spent my childhood in, in what is now my parents' house, the house in which I was raised, in that town I bitch about. My PJ's--though I call them PJ's--were grownup PJ's, and they hung on my grownup body. There was no doubting my grownupness, physically, that is, and yet I considered the monster. The adult in me knew there was nothing but dustbunnies under that bed, fur from my mother's cats. The kid in me prevailed, and so I ran at the bed I'd had so very many nightmares in and jumped atop it before the monster could grab my ankles and pull me under.
I'm 32.
Magical thinking. It's what happens when someone has problems with mental illness. A regular kid may have suspicions about monsters under his or her bed, but mom or dad going under there with the flashlight quells their fears, and rational thought takes over. They do not see a monster under the bed, and so it is not there.
The mentally ill kid can never be convinced there isn't a monster under the bed. This is because the mentally ill thinks magically. This is usually a bad thing, because paranoia and magical thinking go hand in hand.
-If I don't do better at school, God will kill my mom.
-If I don't finish my homework by 9:12pm a tornado will come tear the house to pieces.
-If I'm not nice to my sister, the monster under the bed will eat me.
All the work I've done, hours, days, years of writing and research and thinking and therapy, and at 32 I still ran and jumped over the black sliver, because my brain was/is magical, and probably always will be. I laid awake for a good amount of time, thinking. I always do that. I thought harsh, paranoid things about myself, per usual, the unfortunate thing about a messed up, magical brain. Mean shit pours out. Just when I was about to berate myself into a migraine, I rolled over on my left side, took a look at the wall and laughed my ass off.
So often, we adults find ourselves cloaked in doom. The kid in us likes the frosted side.
I used to live in LA. I don't live there anymore.
I moved to this bizarre place in the desert, high on a plateau, caked with cactus. It's a place fittingly full of magic. Here there are shamans, mystics and seers (schizophrenics). Wild, feral beings who live in the woods and smell like ammonia. People claim to have special powers they don't seem to have. My neighbors have been "abducted by aliens" several times, and while I find their claims to be a bit odd, the shooting stars above us move in circles, so who am I to judge? The rain clouds that blow in from the north make 90 degree turns, right or left, at the city borders. Certain vistas make you dizzy, and later, make you shit your pants. Wild hogs congregate outside my door at night and oink into the morning hours. If you ask nicely, they'll leave. The view from my doorstep is profoundly beautiful. Tight spires of sandstone punching up into the pregnant clouds that hover at the city borders but never dare to cross them, spires that look like a cock's comb. My back yard leaks into one hundred miles of pure wilderness in all directions; its what you could consider a fence of sorts, to keep intruders out, or keep the crazies in. Depends on how you'd define it.
Strange things happen here. Synchronicity happens here. Things line up. Coincidences are common. People change here, rapidly, and for the better. This seems to be a place where the broken come to get fixed, and when repaired, they stay and join an alien sex cult and are audaciously and sickeningly happy about the odd life they lead. At least they're happy, right? Magical, childlike, happy, happy, alien sex cultists. They accept their magic brains for the "different" brains they are, and don't try to pretend they're like normal people who understand rational things. You ask them about mental illness, and they say, "Doesn't exist. Some people are one way, and the majority of people are the other way." Their acceptance of self is so complete. I want to be like them, without the alien sex cult thing, of course.
And yet, its really only the acceptance I'm lacking, which is why I laughed when I rolled over and looked at the wall in my childhood bedroom, upon which hung a painting I did in grammar school that won an award. My parents were very proud and had it framed for me. We put it on the wall, and it's been there ever since, collecting dust.
So what's the painting of? Well it's this profoundly beautiful cluster of sandstone spires like a cock's comb punching upward. It's my back yard. It's the frosted side of the often dry and boring breakfast cereal I call reality.
Posted by The Bunny at 10:31 AM