Almost Died on 95
This story goes back to the night before. I was hanging out in Palm Coast with the good folks (my great new friends!) in and associated with the band Carl in the Cosmos. We were talking about psychedelics, and someone brought up the horrific Salvia trip. The room erupted into mutual cries of hatred for the drug and everyone at once attempted to describe their hellish trips. I was right in there with them talking about my 20 seconds of hell when Mike joined in said. "You got to embrace it, man. Just embrace it."
I was mildly impressed at that moment because anyone who could embrace the end over end, slicing, twisting, out of body confusion of the salvia trip must be of some frame of mind.
That night I had the strangest dream. It was unbelieveably lucid and it had a very unsettling reoccuring element that has lately haunted my sleep and been quite disquieting. I was sitting on my brother's computer, looking at myspace (even in my dream- I'm ridiculous) when a hideously suffocating presence filled the room. I have felt this presence before in my dreams and it has always presented itself as a malignant force seeking to strangle me or do some other terrible kind of harm (I once dreamed that this same figure approached me in my sleep to touch my head and give me cancer). Whenever this presence makes itself known in one of my dreams I also feel this intensely real sensation all through my body somewhat akin to being electrocuted.
I have a friend who experiences similar dreams and she calls them night terrors. A Christian going through this ordeal would believe this to be a demonic attack, or perhaps if they're really narcissistic: a battle with the devil himself. I'm not a Christian anymore but I sometimes think that this presence in my dreams is linked to Christianity in as much as I was raised and trained so heavily by the church on such courses of spiritology, demonology, spiritual warfare and the presence of satan in the world. I have come to understand that whenever I come face to face with this hideous presence I am really dealing with a psychological force or construct inside my own mind which was created by the people who educated me when I was young. Being that this figure comes to bring death, absolute fear, and the terrifying oppressiveness of pure evil, I believe that this monstrous incarnation is the ultimate projection of my childhood fears, my fear of death, and my fear of the unknown.
It is no surprise to me that in my dream last night, while I sat on my brother's computer, that this terrible presence was coming from behind me from the closet door. I have lived in the same house my whole life, and when I was young I always had an irrational fear of my walk in closet, a fear of monsters and the unknown. I would always insist on closing the closet door before bedtime, which naturally made things eve worse because I'd never know what was actually behind it: letting my mind run wild.
The familiar electricity started coursing through my body along with an overwhelming fear that paralyzed me in my seat. In that moment I heard, echoed from the real world and earlier that night, Mike's voice saying, "Just embrace it, man. You got to embrace it."
I did. I let myself go. I surrendered my body and mind to this flow of terror and evil and death. I felt myself being lifted, turned around and brought to my closet door. Only this time there were two closet doors. My closet door straight ahead and a new closet door on the perpendicular wall beside it. I'm old enough to know now that my closet is my closet; with pants and shirts and coats that I wear when going out and on with my mature life. But what was this other door? Was it the same closet door from my childhood? The door I saw when I laid in bed terrified?
I reached for the doorknob and turned. And woke up.
I was riding on the way to school that day and I thought about death. I wondered if death came on to a dying person like a presence rather than an absence or ebbing: I wondered if it came on sort of in the way it did to the protagonist in Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro".
Thinking of death made me think of my life and I began to have the strangest deja vu of eight or nine consecutive events, places and eras in life. I wondered to myself if this was a slow version of what the dying get: a march through seasons and feelings, times and events.
As I left my classes that day and began my trip home from Orlando, the rain had begun to fall. I talked to my father briefly on the phone in traffic and told him that I was about to hit SR 50 and it looked like rain so I better get off the phone. I buckled my seat belt.
By the time I hit 95 it was nasty. The rain was pouring so hard that I eased back on the gas telling myself not to go over 55mph. I gripped the steering wheel hard and focused hard. Even though I was totally aware, totally conscious and in control of my driving I felt my back tires let go of the road and the back of my pickup began to turn sidelong down the highway. As I started spinning in circles down 95, I thought of my dream and of Mike's voice from the night before saying, "Just embrace it."
In that moment I let go and embraced it. As I spun into the wet median I saw the traffic from the other lanes rushing toward me: the cars, the lights, the semitrucks were all a blur and I thought surely I'm done. But strangely I wasn't scared. I was ready to die. In fact, I was relieved. I thought about my every trouble, obligation, my schooling, my pain, my desires and insecurities: I thought of how they would no longer be of my concern. I was ready to die and I was thankful for the time that I had, but I was also tired from that life and somewhat relieved that I would no longer have to endure the "impossible concentration" of always being aware.
I thought these thoughts timelessly, it seems to me that I couldn't possibly have had the time to think so much in such a short duration, but it was as if I stepped out of myself and time. Everything was zero gravity and slow motion. I saw my cell phone lift and almost seem to float into some dark corner of the cab.
I came to a halt on the median, just a foot or so off of the highway facing the headlong traffic. The music that had been playing the whole time seemed to rush back into my reality and I turned up the volume knob and propped my feet up on the dashboard. I was just fine, and I must admit I was and am happy with this turn out.
I'm glad Mike told me to embrace it, because I did and I gracefully spun until I regained control. Sometimes I can't help but wonder at a pattern in the events that play out. I'm prone to think it's Jungian syncronicity. Whatever it is I'm thankful to be alive. Strangely enough as I write this, it just so happens that I'm listening to the new Modest Mouse album for the first time. I really can't help but smile knowingly when such coincidencental lines surface while I type away, "The weather changed for the worse, it came down on us as if rehearsed" and in the same song- "Someday you will die sometime and somehow something's gonna steal your carbon". And the next song that followed it:
"Well, it would've been, could've been worse than you would ever know.
Oh, the dashboard melted, but we still have the radio.
Oh, it should've been, could've been worse than you would ever know.
Well, you told me about nowhere well it sounds like someplace I'd like to go.
Oh, it could've been, should've been worse than you would ever know.
Well, the windshield was broken but I love the fresh air y'know.
(The dashboard melted but we still have the radio)
Oh, it would've been, could've been worse than you would ever know, oh!
(The dashboard melted but we still have the radio)
Oh, we talked about nothing which was more than I wanted you to know-oh-oh-oh-oh.
Now here we go!
Oh! It would've been, could've been worse than it had even gone
Well, the car was on blocks, but I was already where I want.
(It was impossible, we ran it good, we ran it good)
Why should we ever even ever really even get to know?
(It was impossible, we ran it good, we ran it good)
Oh if the world don't like us it'll shake us just like we were a co-oh-oh-oh-old.
Now here we go!
Well we scheme and we scheme but we always blow it
we've yet to crash, but we still might as well enjoy it
Standing at a light switch to each east and west horizon,
Every dawn you're surprising,
And the evening was consoling
Saying "See it wasn't quite as bad as"
Well, it would've been, could've been worse than you would ever know.
I was patiently erasing and recording the wrong episodes
after you had proved my point wrong,
It wasn't like I'd let it go, oh-oh-oh. Oh-oh-oh.
I just wanted to catch the last laugh of this show.
Yeah, it would've been, could've been worse than you would ever know.
Oh, the dashboard melted, but we still have the radio.
(The dashboard melted, but we ran it good, we ran it good)
Hard-wired to concieve, so much we'd have to stow it
Even needs have needs, tiny giants made of tinier giants.
Don't wear eyelids so I don't miss the last laugh of this show.
(The dashboard melted but we still have the radio)
Oh, we could've been, should've been worse than you would ever know.
(The dashboard melted but we still have the radio)
Well, you told me about nowhere well it sounds like someplace I'd like to go-oh-oh-oh-oh.
Now here we go!
Well we scheme and we scheme but we always blow it
we've yet to crash, but we still might as well enjoy it
Standing at a light switch to each east and west horizon,
Every dawn you're surprising,
And the evening was consoling
Saying "See it wasn't quite as bad as"
Oh it would've been, could've been worse than you would ever know."