Hands

It was my hands. Those fleshy tools attached to the house that was my fresh and unfamiliar body; the haunted corpse. I could feel that writhing animus at the tender age of three. I could perceive with my mind when her eyes raked her raised hands that she was and that I was alive.

At the time it was not like enlightenment, or in any manner akin to the transcendence of the physical spaces. I was horrified having become simultaneously aware of my immortality and my current crude, limited and beastly status. Night was the most harrowing of experiences, being alone and aware that I am cut apart from myself. I found peace in the daylight where I could meet other eyes and little hands and where I could trust larger hands to provide dissolution of the perceived separation between myself and myself.

But trust, I quickly learned, must bend in accordance with the measure of strength and integrity housed within other animated bodies. To place yourself in the hands of others requires more than faith that they will consider your well-being as significant as their own. This knowledge gave way to flaring nostrils in my hunt for integrity. If I didn’t smell its scent in waves as readily as other animals find blood in the air, you did not receive my trust. It was an act of self-preservation and a need to save my mind and to explore the height and depravity of my corporeity at a later date. I would hide it within myself until I found someone to find me out and help me temper that visceral drive.

In dreams, though, I did begin to explore. I scapegoated the church. The separation of church and my state allowed me the ability to experience hell without realizing I was experiencing myself. I was five-years-old.

Cabinet

"My throat feels scratchy. I think I'm coming down with something."

"It's just 'cause you've been out in the cold."

"So now you can diagnose my ailment through meteorology and small talk? I didn't know you were that good, Doctor."

[foreshadow]

See No Evil

"Is this a friendly universe?"

"If reality is a helix of winding possibilities then God is the axis it revolves around."

"I'm scared."

"Have faith. Or have experience."

"In?"

"God is a deaf mute, waiving torches at the blind."

"Are you speaking to me?"

"I am."

"What should I do?"

"Action is the enemy of thought."

The Horror (of Dr. Kun)

"Wrah!"

There goes a molar.

"Ghungh!"

Another.

Janey Goldberg's gums are sore and bleeding, the victim of Daniel Kun's experiment in dentistry.

Strong girl.

There's a mushroom inside Janey's fridge. It has spouted limbs. It has emancipated itself from its frosty tomb, and it is on the hunt.

[010-3341-8296]

"Hellow?"

Janey, I'm here to save you.

"Christ, who is this? Christian?"

I'm a mushroom.

"Where are you?"

Hell Wounds, Heals

My head is a bloated slug. My stomach screams for nourishment. I will be OK. I have to pee, but I can hold it, I will hold it. The human body is a selfish animal, but it falls in line eventually. Fresh wounds heal fast, and the first quake hits the hardest. When the aftershocks of pain and bodily yearning become less pronounced, like a struck cymbal, acceptance -- but not agreement -- sets in. Two hours ago I would have drunk my own urine for refreshment; now, I wouldn't take a sip from a Gatorade bottle if it were offered to me. Deprivation is an exercise, a discipline. And a drug.

I'm writing this in the present tense, as though I'm still confined, which I'm not -- I was freed two years ago. Or maybe it was three years ago. But there is truth in my words that transcends tenses. In my case, I was imprisoned in a Thai jail for drug smuggling, a crime for which I was, ashamedly, guilty.

Lesson: learned.

I'm not one to exploit my hardship for fame...but I would sell my soul to exploit it in the name of art. I suppose I'd have to dress my story up quite a bit for it to be accepted as such, but that's something I do pretty well. I'm a magician! Now you see it, now you don't.

The simplest truth is that writers are the best liars. It comes with the trade, and it attracts all manner of miscreants: folks looking to reinvent themselves in black ink. And I get that. Because human language is synonymous with redemption. Truth is in typing.

I've eaten bits of concrete because nothing else was available. I pretended they were cookie crumbs. Also have I enacted plays in my mind -- Tennesee Williams, Shakespeare, David Mamet -- to pass time, to satiate myself. For the soul requires nourishment of the imagination that rice or bread cannot provide. Its fuel is time, passion, experience, and too many x-factors to count.

One day, if I ever get out of this damned cell, I'll try.

I'll try.

I'm trying.

Amalgam

On this shrunken globe, men can no longer live as strangers.

-Adlai E. Stevenson

10th Mountain : 05/23/03

May 23, 2003

Before coming here, I thought I'd heard it all. It's hard to believe the things men feel the need to confess when faced with the potential threat of death. I can't write them in here, in good conscience and for the sake of military clergy privilege, but I wish I could.

We arrived in the mountains a couple of weeks ago, and the stress level is pretty palpable. My superior suggested that I keep a record of my experiences out here, not only for the memory, but also to help process some of the stuff that goes on. I don't know though. I've talked to some guys who say there's a lot you wish you could forget. It's tempting to worry, but I know that God is with me all the way. A couple of the guys are faithful servants, so that's pretty comforting.

10th Mountain is what they call us.

Mark 11:23 ~ For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.