Didn't think she'd actually do it. Did you …? OK, do you see anything...? How long before we should do something ...? And what ...? A dare isn’t a thing ...is it? I mean, it's not like we dragged her ass out here and threw her over. Maybe if we drop a bunch of bright float-y things we can watch where they go ...see where they wash up. I say we call 911. I say we get the fuck outta’ here before I pee in my pants. I think I just did.
Ferdinand and Miranda meet in one of the many canyons. He's shipwrecked and wandering aimlessly. “Welcome to the island of Tabula Rasa!" Miranda anounces. "If it's civilization you're looking for, well ... I'm afraid you won't find it. Just Prospera and myself. But she is very wise. A sorcerer you know. She says: ‘human beings are very adaptable’. It's kinda' her mantra. You’ll see. Follow me. We can go to the lagoon. The water is very healing. The mist is rising. Do you like Mangoes? We gather them ourselves. Come with me ...you’ll see." A mynah bird lands on Miranda’s shoulder ..repeating the words: “Pay attention ... Pay attention.” Prospera taught all the birds to say that … a reminder to be present.
I met David at the club after spending half the night with guys who did nothing but talk about themselves or try to impress me with all the money they make. I was feeling nearly spent and hostile and it must've showed. But we got into a soothing conversation sharing horror stories about what it's like looking for anyone authentic in places like this. After 45 minutes I was feeling kinda’ into him. But it sounded like he had an attitude about L.A. women and wasn't into me. So when he offered me his number I got kinda' spooked. I've never cold-called somebody I met at a bar before. Thinking out loud I must've blurted out something like: “I’m not sure I'll call you …but, I can give you my number.” He got up, said that’s OK and walked away pissed. I sat there with my head resting on the bar imagining how presumptuous that must’ve sounded: “Hey, here’s my number cuz I'm sure you wanna' call me a lot more than I wanna' call you." OK, I'm an idiot. I started slamming down a bunch more mojitos ...the bartender eventually called a cab.and when it arrived a bouncer kindly escorted me curbside. I ran into David the other night at another local bar and he said: “Hey, last time I saw you, you were passed-out and security had to haul your ass away." He went on to tell me that it served me right for being such a bitch and sucking all the life out of him. No, wait …what he actually said was: “it serves you right for being such a bitch and bringing other people down like you do.” He asked if it makes me feel better about myself and told me how I must get off absorbing other people's confidence or something. I’m still trying to Google what video game that comes from.
"It’s like, from the moment I could understand, I was taught to be afraid. ‘Don’t go out this door …you don't know what's out there’. Like I’ll meet a psychopath or disappear into an abyss or something. Now my partner of five years is giving me the boot and it feels like that door is the only one I can leave by.”
There are no delusions ...nothing separating Viena from the world-at-large. She presents a near-perfect adaptation to the psycho-social niche she occupies … ‘roadie for a punk rock band’. It’s populated by depraved junkies, fugitive outlaws, pure agave juice and several species of predatory reptiles.
"I got to the crosswalk and pounded the button until the light changed. My cell phone was buzzing but when I reached for it ...it wasn't there. I patted myself down but couldn’t feel it anywhere. I looked around and saw it laying on the ground. I picked it up, puzzled ...shrugged ...answered and the song Modern Love by Bowie comes pouring out. I put on earbuds and smile. I bow in gratitude to the deities of sound."
"Anxiety is deceptive. First it focuses attention, and then it clamps the brain into rigidity by obsessively replaying the most terrifying possibilities." (link)
Zoé suffers panic attacks. Faced with ordinary situations she freezes-up until she's released to run to the bathroom and hurl. She never knows the right thing to say. Her mother wishes she could be more like her older sister Colleen …a stellar presence in the family. Zoé describes it as: “Torture ...I’ve been miscast as an understudy to ‘Saint Colleen’. I can’t live up to that. I’m the sicko who pukes in the bathroom.” It sounds kind'a like performance anxiety to me. She says: "Whatever ...it sucks all the air outta' me and I can't breathe." She spends most of her waking hours working on an exit strategy. She dreams of hitting the road in a Ferrari with the top down and disappearing in a rush of air.
Cyndl is a film-fanatic. She has more cinema-graphic experience than anyone I know. “I’ve seen some really obscure shit” she likes to say. So when Catherine and Stewart came to visit and started asking for suggestions, she didn’t expect them to like all, or even some of the films she suggested. But she didn't expect them to find every single one objectionable. According to Cyndl they were like:
"Birdman …a waste of 90 minutes. Orphan Black …sheer fantasy. Films by Millennials … teeny-bopper bullshit. And there was no way Stew was going to watch a ‘chick-flick’ (when I mentioned something by Sofia Coppola). So I gave up. This morning it occurred to me …it wasn’t about the films. What I saw was something going on between them, I mean, it’s clear Stew was prepared to find fault with anything I said. Makes me think he was going through me - to prove to her - that there really wasn't anything worth watching out there. So they might as well be watching football, which is really what he'd rather be doing in the first place, which is an issue with Catherine - she hates football. It's why they were looking for something else they could watch. A compromise. Only it wasn't his intention to actually find anything. He made damn sure of that. It was subterfuge.”
Juno was hyper-musical from birth. Songs activate a larger portion of her brain than most. While attending a ‘Widespread Panic’ concert, she was rushed to Johns Hopkins suffering what they call an ‘aural seizure’. She was highly animated and having perfectly lucid conversations with people who weren’t there. Her brain waves were moving to the beat of a rhythm previously unseen. It was an experience she describes as: “Rapture. Like a hole had been punched through the night and a phosphorescent glow was pouring through. Everyone was immersed …connected …transported.”
“We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.” - Anais Nin
It was 2007 and I was able to re-connect with college friends and former lovers on social media. People I thought I'd never see again. Suddenly I felt transported as though no time had passed. They hadn’t really disappeared ...they were still part of me. That’s when I realized I hadn’t grown as much as I thought. After 15 years the same feelings of reckless abandon and lust took hold. After 2 hours of mainlining Sara's blog-site ...my pupils were larger than dimes and my mind was a blast crater. I had to go back to California.
16 year-old Johnny enjoyed a 2-year relationship with his High School English teacher, Laura. She was pretty and young-looking and he was in love. He fathered her child and wanted to marry her when she got out of jail. Now they share an apartment and custody of a two-year old boy …and they’ve found means of support. Quite a feat for a fry-cook and an unemployed teacher. He successfully sued the school district for allowing this to happen. As twisted as this may sound, it does illustrate an example of healthy psychological development: 1) He successfully resolved the age-old conflict between sexual readiness and social/cultural prohibitions. 2) He overcame financial hardship posed by limited employment opportunities.
Bailey was born in Independence, Ohio. When she was six years old, her mother died in a car accident; Bailey entered the foster care system, staying in a succession of homes for the next five years until she was placed with a stable foster family that intended to adopt her. Bailey lived with them from age 12 to 16; but became a ward of the state again when her foster mother discovered she had been sexually active with both her foster father and sister since day one almost. Bailey identifies as fluid. She entered the sex trade drawn to the illusion of ‘family’ it projects. Although she’s well-paid, I’m not sure it’s the ‘stepping stone’ to bigger things that she thinks.
I walked along the strand until I felt the sun starting to fry my brain and passed out somewhere on the sand. I woke up in bed, alone and confused, because I don’t have a bed or even a room. Someone is knocking on a door. I feel the numb aftermath of marijuana and ’ludes. My mouth is dry, and my throat feels like a dusty staircase. My body is sticky and when I run my fingers through my pubes, they feel damp and clumpy. The air is stifling and reeks of warm beer, tequila and weed. There’s a bong and empty sleeping bags on the floor …the bong is empty too. Someone is knocking on a door and I expect to hear them yelling soon. The police in Newport aren’t too friendly, so I look for another door. I open the only one I find and there’s a guy standing there looking just as confused as me ...and I realize I forgot to put on clothes. He says he’s looking for Jacqueline, and asks me if this is 14-something Bay street. I tell him he’s got the wrong place and point him in a random direction. I close the door, listen to his footsteps go down the wooden stairs, then grab my jeans, a better-looking shirt, and head back toward the strand.
"We are ghosts of ourselves …and of other people … and all the ghosts appear perfectly real."
We are ephemeral images in my head ...reproductions that on the surface appear to be inseparable from what passes before my eyes. We are the ghosts standing over my shoulder as I write each line.
I subscribe to the theory that roughly two-thirds of what I experience is made-up – based on mixed memories triggered by what's in front of me. Since everyone arrives at this moment from a different past, we can each have a different take on what's happening now. Collaboration helps narrow things down a bit – but I suck at that, which places me somewhere on the fringe. I’ve learned to compensate by going along (biting my tongue, smiling and nodding at the appropriate times). I haven’t been committed yet. There’s a fine line between experience and delusion. Delusions take place when the gap between the present tense and the past events it triggers gets so wide that I have to start making shit up in order to bridge the two. And into that gap go the most frightening things. That’s when I start to mistake a rope for a snake or a smile for the mythical Wildebeest. Sometimes I see alligators in the bathroom. Those are the times I smile the most. Takes the edge off. But then my actions start to veer dangerously from what I think …and the errors compound daily.
Megan is credited with being the first person to make contact with extraterrestrials. She replied to a query on Tinder one night by saying: “Well, I’ve been told I look pretty ...for an alien.” Over the next hour and a half she received more than 260,000 requests from the constellation Centaurus alone.
Jay suffers from delusions and experiences frequent bursts of ecstatic energy. She also has hyper-erotic disorder that she deals with by working in the porn industry. There she is able to channel her ecstatic impulses into performances of the highest caliber. When not working she packs high-dose marijuana suppositories in her vagina. They help level the load between gigs ...provided she doesn’t wind up in a psychiatric ward again. She admits she’s not your typical ‘porn chick’ and I believe it. Though she cannot always tell the difference between what's real and what’s not ...a reliable supply of pummeling sex helps her stay grounded. Judge for yourself (video interview).
If anyone knew the truth about Beth Risk’s home life they’d send her mother to jail and seventeen-year-old Beth God knows where. She protects her mother at all cost because with her, she has the freedom to do whatever the fuck she pleases. (Mei Melancon as Beth Risk)
Somehow we feel the political party most dedicated to dealing with foreign invaders (the Republican party) … would also be the best party to handle the spread of infectious disease (Ebola). It’s a myth along the lines of the ‘association fallacy’ in logic (the one that goes: 'John’s a good physicist …so he must also be a good auto mechanic'). I saw this at work during the 2014 election when I noticed how quickly the Ebola outbreak disappeared after the Republican Congress came into power. Also after the election, I heard an overzealous Republican from Montecito proudly proclaim: ‘Now we outta’ drop an Ebola bomb on ISIS …straighten them out too.’
The floors where Terry lives slope either one way or the other ...and the doors don’t sit right … cold air rushes in at night. “It used to be a surfboard shed” she says “but I don’t complain, the rent is cheap and I can hear sea-lions barking.” We’re eating cereal and drinking licorice tea on the wooden porch in front of the house that's in front of the shed where she lives. I see surfers covered with tattoos staring at us from across the street. Terry tells me to ignore them ...they’re usually tweaked. Say’s her neighbor Julie’s probably been bad-mouthing her again. I ask about her mother. “She's relentless …keeps tellin’ me I dress in skid-row fashion …going out to dinner is slow torture …she keeps bitching ‘bout the way I eat …says I got absorption problems ...probably not getting enough lithium in my diet or something.” I laugh and say “You mean calcium?” She goes “Yeah, that could be it ...kinda’ hard to tell when I stop listening.” I tell her lithium is a mood-stabilizer. She goes: “It’s probably lithium then ...” and we laugh. Later we go see Juanita who makes killer quesadillas and appreciates it when Terry tutors her kids.
“The strangest thing about this is that a thought can go on and on circling your mind, that you can’t stop obsessing over it, that there are no brakes to apply to things you no longer want to think about. In normal life, you distract yourself — pick up a newspaper, go out for a walk, turn on the television, phone somebody up. You can throw your mind into a sop, trick yourself into thinking you’re all right, that the thing that’s been haunting you is resolved. It won’t work for long, of course — an hour, two hours if you’re lucky — because nobody’s that stupid and because these things always come back to you when you’re once more idle and distractionless. In the small, dark hours of the night, when you’re being rocked into blank-mindedness on a bus. The problem with being like this is that you are constant prey to these exhausting cycles of thought.” - Maggie O'Farrell
