audiobook
And that was when the whole thing shifted from this dystopian science fictiony thing into something more akin to Dr. Suesse. As if the human brain, fragmented or went into low-battery mode. Molasses of the mind. To slow. Into. Childlike reveries and dreams. And so pleasing.
The day outside glistened with a day and a half of rain. Good rain. Cold front too. Good.
He was sitting in his hovel on the cul-de-sac near the silver mine wishing he knew where his life had gone wrong. “What have I done?” he asked nobody. Raising his arms to the sky, he shouted, “Why me? Why now?”
An existential crisis. He needed god. Or a mom. Or at least a nurse maid. Someone to cuddle and comfort. A partner. A home. A hand to grasp at the exciting parts of life as well as the hard ones. He wanted his person.
As a child his person was not his mother, as was the norm. His mom was busy entertaining the city with the Gatsby-class in Austin, say 1962, the year his birth. A sister, ten years old, found him delightful and fun. His bond was with a sister rather than a mother. Nothing odd or uncommon about that. Just family dynamics.
But even as he entered the family scene, a sparkling bouncing bundle of joy, all was askew at home. The king was angry more than not. Mercurial and dark. Brooding. Fond of more than a few fingers of whiskey. The sister angel, Mary, sheltered him from as much of the rage as she could. She was fierce. A hippie antagonist. Against the Viet Nam War and for underarm hair. Against crew cut boys and into rope-a-dope hippies.
He was raised as a hippie.
He was raised in love, within love, without love. Love was the language his sister gave him before he could speak, before he could sing, before he could walk. The loveliness of his sister’s madonna smile was all of the universe and the galaxy and the infinity that must be god. He was in cosmic consciousness and celebration with his sister*. Like a circuit completed. Or two magnets, finding the right angle of approach. Pop. Attached.
As he grew into a fifth grader, his cosmic lottery number was called. He performed, in German, the lead roll in the Spring Musical. The whole school, all grades, had seen the show. The rush never left the boys loins. Even as he began writing this story, he can feel the tingle of hope and ambition.
He learned about loss.
His sister/mother/muse flew from the planet around his 22nd birthday. Christmas never sang again. She was dead. His known reality shifted and darkened forever.
Much of life, he thought, is about finding your goal. Making a plan. Finding your person. The order of those things is unimportant. But, they are darn hard to line up all at once. He learned to hold onto ideas for years and years, even when nobody was asking him to. He learned to remember things with vivid detail. This caused his brain to wire a slightly finer resolution. He could capture just a bit more light and color than most humans. It was his attention that did it. Hyperfocus.
He learned about the high-side of neurodivergent brains. How the bipolar mental health crisis is more of understanding and management, rather than a medically fixed brokenness. The target is something called hypomania. Just under mania. High, but not “hospitalization” high.
Quick Note: when using the word high I am most often referring to mental joy, not a chemically altered state. I will explicitly add any plant magic, when it forms part of the story. Damn, I really hoped I was writing a YA series starter novel. Guess not.
He began learning how to control his jetpack of the mind, his mania. Twice it landed him in the hospital. Wild fun and terror ensued, but those stories are not for this book. He took charge of his own navigation.
That’s when the fire alarm started blaring in the house with no power. Fk. Brb.
* well-articulated orgasms (left here, because the concept is so strong)
*cosmic consciousness and celebration with his sister
dig into the deeper meaning with the Cloud Pilots
> back to index: see dick run
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