The thing is this thing. I can almost see it, right? Like…like I’m pulling out of my skin, three-quarter top-down view, but I turn my head around and the scene changes, and it’s Freddie with his hand on my shoulder standing behind me saying, “I’ve been there brother, I’m sorry” like he knows. Maybe he does and I’m not imagining things.
Like the color wheel, early on you hear it’s red green and blue right? Then if you’re like us you go to cyan magenta yellow black and white or heaven forbid on to triple chains of 255 in hex if you're old-school, locking yourself to a perception of the universe in jagged stairsteps of color, 000 and fffing your way to a world that is totally devoid of anything resembling the smooth Roy G Biv transition of the visible spectrum.
One of the first things that you really realize isn’t an illness is when you realize that the construct that you consider to be your universe is actually composed of agents dispensed to control your existence and confine you to a point series of actions seemingly without pattern. I know that the deal behind the chaotic actions of that which we perceive to be reality is that patterns emerge period, our living breathing bodies are testament to the fact that in any chaotic system tremendously advanced patterns emerge and it’s all patterns, patterns patterns all the way down.
How many steps are in between your screen and the front door of where you are? If you don’t know either you aren’t home or you aren’t you if that’s your test method. One time I met a chick who told me, “I know the first three novels on all my bookshelves” as her control but it is whatever it is, and you pull back and it’s different, that second space where your screen is a tool and provides no enjoyment but wait and then you pull back further and Sarah’s standing in front of you and it’s all over it’s all “I don’t want someone who needs me” and anyway, “why now?” you ask as neon fractal tetris pieces blend together behind your eyes like the teeth on a zipper. It’s all in half-tone just-before-you-fall-asleep imagery, pulling closed-eye visuals from the endless black of felt-covered eyelids, and then it’s gone, it’s back in your body, it’s all breathing and skin and vision confined to a disgustingly narrow field.
Shit happens and I shake my head, ask Parker for the log so I can see spikes and shit, tracing curves and running this one shitty app that changes from domain to domain that some neckbeard off the forum wrote when he was an undergrad.
It’s Parker’s turn so I lock him down and boot him up, we run calibration and I’m telling him to name base geometric shapes, “red square”, “blue triangle”, “yellow circle”(which was really an octagon but circle is close enough). We already have a baseline but you know, it’s always good to adjust and anyway he’s really, really high.
So my fingers do this rote memory dance across the keyboard and switch panel, Parker shudders and sinks down, exhales and he’s in, phosphor waveforms red and blue, mixing down to green when the pattern’s right. I’m like, “OK, this is it” and punch him downstream, same wall. I can vaguely see what he sees, it’s abstract and way more fractal, he’s puzzling images together and doing the dirty work like he’s dreaming.
The thing is it’s always you, stuff you’ve done. Remember that one time you almost did that thing with that person, it was all dilated pupils and racing hearts and right there and you thought you’d die no matter which way it went down and more to the point you didn’t care? It’s like that. It’s like that all the time. And on the scope I see the vague outline of a hand in phosphor dots and swirling particle simulation, like it’s reaching down and Parker shakes it off and the scene changes only it’s frenetic and I only see snow. I open a patch and type a message off to him. He can send back but it’s extra hard and anyway my message was “Change to the sanctuary and I’ll pull you out”.
Parker dropped me like flatline and it’s jarring when that happens. It’s way better to get to your safe place, like mine is this garden, quiet and still with a little brook and a wooden bridge, blooming flowers and butterflies and clover and St. Augustine grass under a patchwork of elm tree filtered sunlight. I don't know what Parker's is, I never asked and he's kind of a mess, so I imagine if I did it would probably give me nightmares.
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