Andrew Letter 46 -- Zoloft and Genny report July 29, 1992

 7-29-92

 

Dear Mom,

 

Hi there. It certainly was nice to get your letter, and to talk to you the other day. I really was feeling blue, and your letter really made me feel loved. I appreciate the care package; Zoloft, Stephen King and Feeling Good. I've gotten into the first couple of chapters, and it really makes sense (the therapy, that is). It is practical, not a bunch of that namby-pamby psycho mumbo-jumbo that I eschew. I look forward to using it if I ever have another depressing thought.

As of right now, I have been on the Zoloft for 5 days. If I don't level out pretty soon, I may have to decrease my dose to 25 milligrams. I am just too HAPPY.

Right now, I've got reason to be, though. Last night, I went on my first date in over a year. I met a girl (through the personal ads), and I really like her. I feel very comfortable around her, and she is a very open, warm, caring person. I AM IN LOVE. Well, we'll see. I have been lonely for so long, I'd probably give my heart to a shopping cart lady. I had even considered dating the clients where I work. Reason prevailed, however.

So, I've only met this girl less than 24 hours ago. We spent 2 or 3 of them on the phone, and 7 or 8 of them walking, talking and eating together. She is a very intelligent girl, especially considering she is only 20. And cute. She looks like Jodie Foster and Tatum O'Neil. And she likes me! I have to resist saying it is too good to be true because I don't want to make a self-fulfilling prophecy come to pass.

I am wondering, though, with this medication, if I would be capable of feeling sad if she were to chop off my hand with a meat cleaver. I'd probably just say something like "Oh, hey! That wasn't necessary, but no problem, I'll fix it. Let's see ... "

I have told key people at work to monitor my behavior, although telling my friend Brian was not a good idea. He tried to get my goat by commenting that I was "one speed, a hundred miles an hour, and maybe I should consider Quaalude to go with it." He just wasn't catching any fish.

My other friend. Mona just called. She's the one I have been confiding in at work. I had told her I had a date planned and she just wanted to check up on me. She is the Med Tech at the Manor, so she is keeping tabs on me, and plus, she is just a really nice person who cares.

I am just as happy as a clam. The little things that would irritate me, like traffic, or turning off a light or forgetting something and having to go back and get it, do not even raise my blood pressure. I may even become a productive member of society. It's scary.

One thing that concerns me is that I am already very skinny. I must weigh about 135. Down from 160. Now I realize that 135 was my drivers license weight in ‘84, and that I did have a beer belly that I was trying to lose from last winter. But the belly is long gone and this Zoloft kind of suppresses my appetite. And I am more active and burning more calories than ever. I am afraid I will burn up like a stick of incense and vanish into thin air.

But if I do, at least I'll be Feeling Good. I can only hope that I'll get as much accomplished as possible in straightening out my life before I have to go off of the drug. 

I feel like Charley or Algernon. Or like I woke up inside someone else's body. Someone who is happy, well-adjusted, smiles a lot, giggles occasionally and is completely unacquainted with malaise and melancholia. I can stop and be pensive and not fidget in my chair, but it seems that my mind is always going, thinking happy thoughts until the moment I conk out. I am just so motivated that I am worried that I may have to take a class or two just to have an outlet for this energy.

Now is the time for me to decide, as they currently registering. My life is uncomplicated right now, though, and I like it that way. I have time for people and recreation and do not like to crowd my schedule up. Now, this sounds more like the Andrew I know. Fun, fun, fun. No work, all play.

But I really think I should pursue writing as a goal. It just makes sense. If I get depressed due to genetic causes and am losing my hair from the same genes, should I not make use of the Writing gene in my makeup? I am not worried about it though, I expect it will be an inevitability. I just have to live a bit and experience life and keep gathering memories, so I'll have plenty to write about.

If I can overcome my fear of making changes, meeting people and doing new things, I will be content. Well, anyway, my little black flight recorder is going all the time, so eventually, I'll have to get it all out on paper.

I'll have to go now, it's getting late and I expect a call from Jennifer.

 

 

Love Ya--Andrew

 

 

P.S.  My posture is improving. I have stopped “slouching.” Oh, and I can play guitar just like Jimi Hendrix. Eh, not quite! Bye!

 

P.S.S. Disregard these statements. I was on drugs. Should I send the Zoloft back with Steve or mail it in a package? Depends on if you trust him with all that medication. Kidding, kidding, gosh...

 

 

Friends ('92 - Genny era love song channeling James Taylor)

 

Demons When I Sleep ('90s era possession)

Got to hurry. Much to do, little time. Its back. And I can't stop it, though I think I can fight it for a while longer yet.

Like, I forgot to turn the T.V. on before I went to bed the other day. Which I see now was foolish. Without the hypno-therapeutic trance-inducer pounding my eardrums, I realized a disturbing fundamental fact:

I hear voices.

Naturally they are subdued when I have real audio input. But in total, stark fluorescent silence, they come out in force.

So, I've always slept with the T.V. and/or radio on. This seemed like the lesser of two evils. I would be hearing voices, but they would be pre-programmed, FCC approved and filtered for the general public. So, instead of listening to Satan directly, I got the Government version.

Same shit, different tube.

So, I was sleeping rather peacefully, as they weren't in the room, when I start feeling the heaving in my chest, like someone was using my chest cavity, breathing through me. I could feel and hear voices clambering in what seemed like a multitudinous arrival.

One by one, demons, seeping in through my pores, my mucous membranes, my bronchi, were announcing their names, titles & job descriptions along with their arrival times. Some were disheveled and complaining, others seemed cheerful enough.

After the last few stragglers entered in I guess I dropped off to sleep. Or I woke up. Whichever it is, it is the one I am currently living in and writing from.

I barely had time to fill out my time card.

I had something really important to say, and now I can't remember what it was.

Goodbye.

The Particle Lapse ('90s era enlightenment)

Of the 27 times that I have been sucked up into the partical lapse, the last time was certainly the scariest. I normally am given a warning of some gentle nature. Once I was watching televixen and I was told by a gleeming pair of dentures that my turn was next. I smiled knowingly. "Your turn is next" was an old adage of the coffee room. You were going to get the axe. History.

So, I bundled up my soul and got ready for the escalator, the chair-lift, the steamship (to take you across to the Entrance of the Clouds), then the ice boat, the trolley car, the tube tunnel subway car, then the incredibly long wait in the refueling station. I was ready for the 86 hour trip. But, to get to the Highest Court, it is necessary to commute this great way.

Anyway it seems like a science fiction story even to me, when I ponder it late at night. Then I usually get exhausted mentally and fall asleep. Not something I care to do much of these days. In these times of so many mirror dimesions with rubbing compound and earwax, too many of us still base our little worlds on just the obvious.

There's ever so much more to be seen but the obvious. My entrance into the Next Life told me that. It wasn't meant to be fair. There was nothing in the part-icles of ice that clung to our beards on the ski-lift. Not one express written anything, not even a warning lable saying "You tear off this tag and you are going straight to mutherfuckin hell!"

So, I said, onward and upward. Hi dee ho.

So I kicked off my shoes and put on my travellin' sandles. Given to me at one of those spiritual traffic crossings where a School Guard jumps out in front of the traffic for you.

So it was with our first trip. I was seeking an alternate dimension within our own, and LSD seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Mild fever came over my body and sweat glistened in beaded patterns on my forehead. I screamed. It did not matter.

There I was. And there I wasn't. I had achieved Non/Being. It was gratifying and terrifying. Give me more or none of it. It was like junk. A powerful weight of peace on you, heavy. So much was the traffic of souls going on that I had no inkling of before.

Blurred images of batteries being painted by some Mexican for sale to his relative.

Blackness.

Total and complete blackness, for two days and nights.

Fabulous nights.

At the Tropicana.

chnk--

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ zz z

Friday, July 3 1992, the morning I had an epiphany (or maybe I was just super high)

Dear Day,

You suck. And now there's too much light. And I can't stand anything right now. Ok, so I've got a few problems, so put me away. At least then I won't have to be responsible anymore.

Enough. Self-indulgent childish rubbish! So, what deep things have you discovered, my blue eyed son?

All right, I’ve been keeping it a secret. I have some real inside shit on the, um, running of the Universe. Yeah. It's definitely not your average 3 foot, wading-only, no diving thought. After all this buildup it has to fail miserably. Yeah. But I found out, just before I sat down, no, after. And then I smoked some pot.

With a vengeance! I was wiping away hostilities from 1992, some painful thoughts from today, Friday, July 3, AM. They were bad thoughts, they needed killin'. So I lost some math skills in the process. So, indeed! I really wasn't goin' to use them anyway.

So I killed these bad thoughts and in the process there was this leftover space in my head. Four centimeters, I think. Anyway, it wasn't being used, it was just sitting vacant, ready for a blinding revelation of wisdom (which I do get by the way, believe it or don't). It is at times like these when they come. You know, when your brain is between channels and you just let the static play at full volume.

Suddenly, a voice (James Earl Jones, to be precise) says unto me: "Hey, you. On the couch. Drop that pipe and get thee to a typewriter for I have words to speak unto thee!"

Before I could even get up he just started talking, like I'm supposed to be getting it all down. Yeah, right. This supernatural voice doesn't know me very well.

Ok, so one thing stuck in my mind as being important. I forget what it was, but it's the reason I'm sitting in front of the typewriter. Oh, yeah.This voice, God, or Satan or some radar-connected intergalactic being revealed to me THE REASON WHY THINGS HAPPEN.

I don't believe you've caught the super relevance and interconnected significance of this magnitudinous statement. Hmmn. Maybe I won't tell you what it is. You don't seem impressed enough. Well, ok, since you beg.

It's all very simple really. The reason why things happen is so that later, when there is a dull moment, say throughout an eternity, you'll have something to have a good laugh about.

You’re sitting there, in heaven, in the front office, you know just chit chatting with the Staff. It's shift change or something. A couple thousand years go by between each breath. The conversation got old, oh, a few millennium ago.

Then someone cracks a joke, “Hey, what about that time you went fishin' and the mosquitoes almost ate you alive.”

“Yeah. And the next day, when I opened up the camper and…”

“Yeah, yeah. You've told it 14.82 million times! They followed you into the house. Like the terminator. And got you. It's funny. Ho. Hum.”