Is Susan Really A Bat?

Paranoia

Part 28 of 30

I feel like I learned something like this at the state university, although it’s been so long ago that I can’t remember the details.

There was a theory or speculation questioning whether what we see is reality in any real sense (whatever that’d be) or if the things we see are completely different, right down to shapes being utterly different, etc. If you think about it a while, it makes sense, but we’re very resistant to it because "reality" appears to be a given. Our hands feel something, we jump to conclusions. Like the story of  the blind men feeling up the elephant. He has tree trunks for legs, a necktie for a tail, and a sturdy windsock for a nose.

The theory -- a naysayer’s dream ever there was one -- is that every assumption is to be questioned, because we can’t be sure what reality is. I would’ve taken the professor on, but my vocabulary was pretty limited around smart people. But I still could’ve gone out on a limb: “Uh, professor, I notice that you express your thoughts with the same words we use. If everything is to be questioned, don’t you think you ought to come up with a vocabulary that isn’t part of the same farce? And your clothes appear to fit your body as though it’s shaped in such and such a way?” Where should the questioning begin? "What do the clothing know about your body that my eyes are missing?" OK, enough of me flaying the guy to no profit. Because I actually flunked that class because of other issues; honestly, I skipped all the tests on the theory that the tests, though required were actually not required. Which would be more true to the spirit of the class. But according to the professor -- against his previous scruples -- the tests were actual tests in the traditional sense!

Our guy in the graphic has something of that mindset going on. And probably all of us have been there a few times. It hits me occasionally, out of the blue, that I think things are the complete opposite of whatever everyone else thinks. It might be tricks with my eyes; I can’t make out what’s right in front of me. For me it's a serious side effect of paranoia. Your senses just go wacky, or perhaps they’re indeed fine tuned according to what reality really is. Even if that's the case, I’m still happier when reality goes back to its good old false self. Because I have most of the rules of that reality memorized and anything new I'm forced to "learn" I’m automatically against. If not because I can't accept its reality, but on general purposes, I'm just too mentally exhausted to accept new things.

I know I’d hate it if someone mistook me for a bat. And Susan here must be the same. “Look again, Buzz, does it really look like, does it really feel like she has a furry face like a bat and little beady eyes and a bat-cave that she returns to every night? You know where she is, right by your side, not hanging in a drizzly cave with the occasional bat flitting by.”

Join Me for Paranoia Week

I'm inviting you to join me here for "Paranoia Week," June 2 through June 8. I know you'll like it, if you like the thought of a guy on the wrong side of "forces" that may or may not exist. Even now, I'm feeling jittery thinking of it. Saying, as I just did, the forces may not exist means only one thing, I'm a goner. I'm nervous about the descent, let alone the myriad terrors I know are there.

Speaking of the descent, that's what I'll be doing tomorrow, so I won't be here June 1. I'll be going down into a full-bore paranoid fit, which takes a lot of stewing, mixing it just right, and letting it work. Only one day, you say? Yes. Like you, I've heard of many other "Paranoia Week" bloggers who've stewed for an entire year or more. They go the last mile -- sweat lodges, hot compresses, new age music, reverse yoga, etc. -- and what they come up with is quality. But I don't personally have that much time to waste, and, again, with just a day, I guarantee results.

Like I said, I'm getting jittery just thinking about it. There's a lot of annoyances on the way down, the inner sounds (and pain) of things snapping and sparking, almost like we're some kind of machine. Next, there's a vast silence, as aspects of the Self are being disconnected, in particular your thoughts talking you out of it. Then a comforting grayness, stretches of grayness. You can be quickly lulled into a dangerous complacency here. You need to keep an eye on the edges, looking toward your ears, to not slip off the edges, like on a slick highway. At the edges are chthonic aspects of the personality that, given a chance, would bite your head off.

I'm recalling the last time I passed that way. How well I remember these heavy mildewed curtains from old vaudeville stage shows. Past lives that think they're here and now. Queer performers line the hallways, stagehands fluff sandbags, electricians man quaint old light fixtures. A lot of the snapping, the electrical phenomena, is from them. The performers look extremely dangerous. Their fingernails are extremely long, and their throats are stretched beyond normal, as they try to keep in voice, expecting any moment to go on stage. They don't know it's been close to a century. If they actually sung it'd come out screeching.

There's another place along the way, a place to mention. It's a place of utter bleakness, darkness. But tied to a post there is a donkey I call Desi. He's a cool donkey, the nicest creature you meet in the land of paranoia. The rest -- I can't get into the rest -- the Hall of Unwashed Broken Mirrors, the Pavilion of Things Found in Sofas Personified, the Cavalcade of Good Monks Gone Bad, whatever. It's all evil. The only good I've run into is Desi the Donkey and the spirit of St. Rita of Cascia, the saint with the big scar on her forehead. This wonderful Bride of Christ reaches out to me, and I realize her precious message, treasuring it in my heart: Paranoia is good for your pores.

Oh, no, I'm having second thoughts! I shouldn't do this! I know I'm going to look like hell when this is over, good pores or not, and much of that remains forever. I'm 61 and look 80, thanks to this. Now, if I live, I'll come out looking like a maniac, and older. I'll have someone else's heavy clothes on, some monk I'll spoil. I might have those horrible looking woolen half-gloves, with my fingers sticking out. When they see me -- people -- they'll see a maniac, and even though I'll cry out, hoarsely, "This isn't really me!  This isn't me!" no one will listen. Who would listen to a battered, torn, worn-out, and haggard, dragged out, dragged down, buffeted, beaten, and bruised maniac?

But here's my vow -- which I hope I can keep, because if I can't, my soul is lost! -- I vow this will be the best "Paranoia Week" ever. Ever.

He Paid For Companionship

REALITY:

Clint married Maude back when Maude was a cool name. He did his best over the years, always faithful, and accepting what she offered, leading to child #1, #2, #3, and #4. The children all survived.

She had her good qualities, being completely in tune with his past. They had the same memories and pretty much the same interests. To all appearances, they were the perfect couple.

But his eye wandered, although thankfully it was just his eye, not any other body part. At one point he was tempted, arguing that sex was the same as shaking hands, only with different body parts.

Eventually, he and Maude, in their 80s, died, remarkably only three hours apart, showing their complete soul harmony. They died and the newspaper wrote it up like this: "Clint and Maude died together, basically a double-ring funeral."


ALT REALITY:

Right when it came time to marry Maude, he left her at the altar. He'd had a premonition of what was to come, life as a grind with just one woman.

How much more adventurous it'd be to pay for companionship. They're always up for it and seemingly more than willing. He wakes up, sees a receipt on the pillow, which goes into his book of memory.

Years of this -- a different woman every time, although once in a while he'd cycle around to the same one -- kept him pretty well satisfied. And his wallet lean as new, in certain respects.

Then came a time, in his mid-30s, when he noticed some of the well-known symptoms, what they whisper about venereal disease. Obviously, somewhere there was a clinker in the mix, which had made her way into his bed and trusting arms. Or could there have been two with a cross-pollination thing gone bad? Sex has its moments...

Clint died, and the newspaper noted that he had paid for companionship over the years, and now he had paid for it indeed, dying alone, leaving behind a number of unlived years (he was 55, so we're talking around 30 years).

The undertaker sent his brother the final receipt.