Might As Well Be Here Now

I am locked in a small cell with an open door. I am afraid to look outside for fear of being confined even more. Suddenly I take a risk. I run outside and I jump in the air. I breathe in the sky and think if I'm caught I don’t even care. But I am caught - and locked this time inside a very small box. I hear the top close. I hear the sound of the locks. I cannot move. I cannot breathe. It feels like something Satanic. I am losing control. I am near the edge of an unthinkable claustrophobic panic. When suddenly I relax and fall into some inner space Where I feel safe, quiet. No fear. No fear at all in this inner place. Now I am grateful for the tormentor who is forcing me to see. The way out of the box is to stop fighting, let go, and just be inside of me. I realize now that I am awake but not moving because I want the dream to return. Instead I am getting up to go to the bathroom to forget what I just learned.

These days my most interesting work is with Disability Rights North Carolina. I am a volunteer member of an advisory group called the Protection and Advocacy for Individuals with Mental Illness (PAIMI) Advisory Council. This group is  comprised predominantly of people with mental illness or family members of people with mental illness. The group helps set direction for Disability Rights NC which is the unofficial conscience of our state's system of services for people with disabilities. I am very proud to be a volunteer with this group. The website is www.disabilityrightsnc.org.

Recently I have been having recurring tornado dreams, very clear, full of fear dreams, not quite sure what they mean dreams. They are similar - each with an ominous tornado dragging chaos as it gets near. I watch the tornadoes approach from a window in my basement in total awe-stricken fear. The tornado arrives and hits hard like a battering ram. It hits so hard that I wake up breathing heavily and wondering where in the hell I am. I lie there wondering what is this dream really trying to tell me? Is this about a tornado or something even worse that I won't let myself see? Over time the tornado dream has become pretty easy to figure out. It's not the tornado. It's the fear. The fear is what the dream is about. The fear of the unknown, the subconscious fear of what's going to happen next. It's the fear of the future that I face in a fully conscious context. __________________________________________________________________ PS: I have not had a tor...

Some time ago a good friend, Hugh, asked me if I would participate with him in a parapsychology experiment at the Rhine Research Center in Durham. Hugh explained that the Rhine Research Center was a reputable institution that studied consciousness and parapsychology. He told me that he had been recruited to be a subject in an experiment to determine if pairs of creative people who knew each other could communicate telepathically with greater success than pairs of random people. Hugh was (and remains) the most rational, pragmatic, and honest person that I ever met. Therefore, I was not surprised when he candidly told me that he thought the proposed experiment was bullshit. He thought the entire idea of mental telepathy was unproven nonsense. His motivation to participate in the study, he said, was to help disprove the ridiculous hypothesis. The content of the study and Hugh’s skepticism were enough to motivate me to participate. The study required an initial meeting at the Rhine Researc...

Would you regret shooting a man you never met right in the eye then watching him die then wrapping him in a sheet and throwing him in the ocean without even a sense of mixed emotion calling it an operation done with surgical precision as if you were some kind of physician trained to heal instead of calling it an assassination by a covert Navy Seal Do you ever question if you were definitely the good guy and that your prey absolutely deserved to die? No judge, no jury, no clear understanding of exactly what he did but one side was certain that he was a demon even though others were screamin ' that he was a hero who had been redeemin ' the lives of many others killed by the "great Satan" while the governments on all sides kept placatin ' people with bullshit explanations of who was right and who deserved extermination Do you wonder if the whole story is a a matter of perspective? Cause we used to give him money to carry out our directive When he killed Soviets wit...

I don’t write poetry because I don’t know how to connect with anything that really matters right now. I don’t write poetry because my brain tightens up, even as I’m trying to get it loose and in that state of mind whatever I write sounds far too obtuse. I don’t write poetry because it requires a depth of feeling that can hurt and leave me staring blankly up at the ceiling. I don’t write poetry because I prefer to repress feelings that real poets struggle to express. I don’t write poetry because it requires me to admit that much of my self image is really full of shit I don’t write it, read it, see it, or feel it. I put all my effort in trying to conceal it. Still, sometimes when my feeling state safely submerges, a poem from some weird place spontaneously emerges. I do not willingly write poetry because it’s just too risky I wouldn’t be writing this one if it wasn’t for the whiskey.

My mother will be 87 years old on Ground Hog's Day. Being her age and living independently isn't easy, but she maintains a great attitude. At least, she does when talking with me. She sent the following email message to all of her friends on New Year's Eve. Her message is a partial answer to the question, "What's mental health?" I am glad I am on her email list. TO ALL, WISHES FOR A SAFE AND HAPPY NEW YEAR. BE THANKFUL FOR YOUR BLESSINGS - LOOK FOR ALL THE POSITIVES AND NEGLECT THE NEGATIVES.