Following Charlie

If I follow the stream of utterances coming from Charlie when he’s raving like a lunatic; I can sometimes pick up a tread of coherent thought. This morning it went something like this (edited for sanity):

“Americans are psychopaths!”

“They’ve got the mentality of high school jocks!!”

“Their idea of getting ahead is self-promotion and putting other people down. Pumps their head full of artificial well-being.”

“Look at facebook, man .. it’s a campfire of vanity. In other parts of the world they’re using it as a tool for revolution. We’re using it as a tool to avoid dealing with the rest of the world.”

“It ain’t look’n good for Ron Paul either. He’s a truth-teller, you know that..? His opponents are a bunch of jocks. They’re going around saying he’s too extreme. Think about it, man. What are they saying ..? They’re saying the truth is too extreme ! They know voters prefer the comfort of phoniness to the cutting edge of reality !!”

“Listen to this, man ..says here: ‘a group of Korean monks, practicing Sunmudo, successfully repelled a Japanese invasion during World War II. The Sunmudo master said it had nothing to do with show-of-force and everything to do with balance. Practicing martial arts for show is a deterrent to balance ..and balance is what’s necessary for success’.”

“Doncha’ see, Bill ..?”

“We’re fucking doomed, man ..!”

Mr. Charlie

Continued from [link]

In a fit of paranoia, Charlie fled Seattle in a stolen SUV ..and wound up in the Bahamas ..arriving by plane he’d stolen somewhere in Indiana. Charlie’s no angel and he’s definitely not a pilot. But he taught himself to fly by playing video games ..listening to aircraft VHF frequencies and watching planes take off and land at an airport near the slough where he lived. He was charged with taking stolen-aircraft on joy rides across eight states. He crash-landed once near Bonners Ferry, Idaho ..but made it to the Bahamas ..where they busted him riding a stolen skiff into Romora Bay. Charlie has a history of amnesia, neuro-cognitive impairment and untreated PTSD. He was dumped on the streets by psychiatric techs and immediately surrounded by Seattle police in a case of mistaken identity. Things quickly went from bad to worse when the charges went from malicious mischief to armed robbery. It was enough to flip a paranoia switch that told him he better get out of town ..and just keep going. He escaped from a halfway house. After his arrest, a movie studio bought the rights to his story, which Charlie immediately used to repay his victims. After considering his history, the judge called it a case about ‘the triumph of the human spirit’ and put him on probation .. releasing him back to the custody of the psychiatric community.

5-HT Charlie

Charlie takes a whopping dose of over-the-counter serotonin (5-HT) every night before bed. Says it gives him vivid dreams that he’s able to remember during dream-work therapy the next day, which pleases his therapist.

“He says I’m making progress ..I should be finished soon.”
“Have you told him about the 5-HT ..?”
“Hell no, I don’t want to get disqualified.”
“Do you think it’s helping ..?”
“Hell yes, I wake up much more alert ..I’m keen for the rest of the day.”
“Ever notice things that may not be there ..?”
“Well, yeah .. doesn’t everybody. Don’t you see man, that’s precisely the kinda’ shit I’m afraid of ..something like this coming-up and sabotaging my progress.”
“Just keep in mind what you’re taking is a neuro-transmitter in the brain.”
“No it’s not ..it’s a neuro-enhancer!”
“..only in it’s absence. I think a better word would be neuro-regulator.”
“WTF are you talking about ..?”

I did my undergraduate thesis on serotonin and how it helps maintain a steady-state of consciousness. It keeps signals that are ‘out of the ordinary’ from reaching the brain and producing hallucinations. At night, it drops to levels where we experience dreams [link]. So naturally I feel like I gotta’ share this knowledge, and go “Charlie, the 5-HT you buy is bogus. It may look the same but it doesn’t act the same as natural 5-HT. It doesn’t filter unwanted signals ..but tells the body to shut down 5-HT production, which opens the floodgates. That’s why your dreams are so vivid ..and why they continue during the day.” To which he replies “Bullshit!! Nobody really knows how it works ..” and I go “Well OK, suit yourself man ..but it helps explain what got you into this mess in the first place [link].”  Charlie slumps down in his chair looking deflated and I feel like Mr. know-it-all who just ruined his trip.

Charlie

Sitting on the deck sharing a bowl with Charlie. I’ve always felt safe doing this even though I don’t have a medical marijuana card. My neighbors aren’t that close, and besides ..they’re pretty cool. I haven’t met the new neighbors across the creek yet. When I mention this to Charlie ..he freaks. Now he’s imagining a surveillance operation and starts outlining a plan in the almost-certain event that they start to move in on us. “We can hurdle a wall or two ..carjack Richard’s SUV ..drive to the harbor ..commandeer a boat ..sail out into the channel ..then head for open seas. It should work.” “Why would they have us under surveillance, Charles?” He looks at me in disbelief and explains how it’s not uncommon for con men to infiltrate the police department to enrich themselves by taking advantage of asset-forfeiture laws. While I don’t disagree about asset-forfeiture laws ..I tell him I think it’s a bit of a stretch in my case. Now he’s looking at me like you would a naïve child. “Bill, you really outta’ get a medical marijuana card ..save us both a lot of aggravation.” I’m not the one who’s aggravated, but I don’t say anything. Charlie’s not just a conspiracy theorist ..he’s a true believer ..and he’s definitely one to act on his beliefs. Paranoia has always been his default response.

The prophesies of Charlie

I think Charlie is trying to convince me he’s a prophet. He doesn’t come right out and say so because he knows that might sound bogus (even though I’ve never denied the possibility of prophesy). So he is going about it indirectly. He begins to narrate a series of recent events, in a telling manner, hoping I will reach that conclusion myself. He knows suggestion is more powerful than direct assertion. First he tells me that his mother is psychic. When his sister lost her car keys in the park, his mother emptied her head of all preconceptions and strolled randomly through the park until she came to a stop. When she looked down by her feet, there were the keys. Now I don’t doubt this story ..but I do believe he’s planting the suggestion that he inherited psychic abilities. Earlier this week he goes into a psychic/head shop. When he asks the owner what time the next bus is due, a female customer overhears and offers him a ride home. It turns out she’s an aspiring actress and tells him she can foresee a future where he finishes writing his screenplay and they meet again. Astonishing, he says. He tells me he is actually planning to write a screenplay but never mentioned it to anyone. I believe he’s offering evidence of supernatural forces at work. The next day he enters a rare coin shop owned by a friend and buys an ounce of gold (for around $1,300.00). Before he leaves, his friend throws in an extra coin for free. “Man, nobody does that ..ever” he says “..unless they see the end of times.” He goes on to say “Bill, I think it would be a good idea for you to put more gold in your survival kit. ..you’ll sleep better at night.” Now he’s recommending that I act on these forces. Then he tells me not to be alarmed, but he has experienced a profound breakthrough recently. More like a series of epiphanies actually. He predicts a tsunami hitting the coast of California, much like the one that struck Japan. He tells me that, as a   “psychologist” ,  I must surely know that society treats its prophets like psychotics. He recommends I organize my neighbors in the canyon and begin sandbagging and building retaining walls in anticipation. I tell him I’ll think about it. Skeptic that I am. Interestingly enough, he never once said he was a prophet. Although I came away with the impression he did. Implications are far more convincing than direct assertions. He got me to conjure-up this one by myself.

Rational Charlie

I admit, I don’t subscribe to a rational model of man. I believe we’re hybrids. Part logic, part emotion, part visual, part verbal and part many other qualities, some of which we don’t even know. We make our way more by heuristic than analytic reasoning. Most of our brilliant discoveries have come from seeing the relationship between vague and loosely connected ideas. Albert Einstein, for example, came up with his theory of relativity only after letting his mind wander [link]. The real world is multi-dimensional and sloppy by nature.

That’s why I had to cringe last night during dinner. Charlie has an insatiable need to be right and a contentious way of dismissing anything to the contrary. In addition, he holds people to standards that no one can meet, not even himself. He scrutinizes other peoples’ speech for statements that he can prove false ..and then points them out as though they’re character flaws. This can lead to some pretty rough exchanges. For instance, when I heard Cindy say “I am moved by things I don’t understand.” Charlie responded “What things, specifically? ..and how can you be moved by something you don’t understand..?” I felt her statement rang true. We’re all creatures of appetite and don’t always act with perfect information. However, I felt Charlie was suggesting “you’re a fool for not behaving in a more rational manner.” Later on in the evening I heard her say “As desires enter me, a picture is formed in me as to what will answer that desire.” Charlie goes “Too passive. You say ‘Desires move into me’. Lacks responsibility of a choice. Furthermore, a picture is non-verbal and external to one’s true nature.” For some reason that’s where I felt compelled to intercede. “Just because she’s speaking in a passive voice doesn’t mean she acting in a passive manner, Charlie. Besides, visualization is primary to human nature while language is subordinate to it. Why do you think the graphical interface made Bill Gates a billionaire ..?” Now he tells me he was trying to impress the lady and I blew it for him.

Charlie

Charlie was convinced aliens were following him disguised as policemen. It was part of plot to take over by snatching people one at a time. He hasn’t seen his friend Michael since the night of his DUI arrest. Charlie managed to bolt out the passenger door, but it was close. Tonight he decided he’d been waiting, crouched in fear, long enough. He got in his truck and, with the stereo blasting, circled the neighborhood trying to flush ‘em out. When an officer arrived Charlie successfully outmaneuvered the unsuspecting alien with it’s own gun, then called 911 for reinforcements. But it was a trick and a whole regiment of aliens showed up instead. That’s when he knew it was Armageddon time. He took off his clothes, sat on the pavement, looked up and patiently waited for rapture to come and take him away from there.

Charlie

Charlie has always shifted back and forth between homelessness and rent and responsibilities. Like many, I suspect he gets tired of living one way ..and seeks refuge in another. He sorta’ fits my theory about the cyclical nature of human settlement. He’s a Vietnam vet ..went to college on the GI Bill ..worked as a landscape and irrigation foreman ..and head chef at a resort in Encinitas. He took medication for hyperactivity during childhood and suffers post-traumatic stress from the war. He gets easily bored if he stays in one place or job for too long. Last spring he found a grove of wild bamboo growing off the LA River near Boyle Heights. Using his landscape and irrigation skills, he fashioned a kind of oasis. “It’s a place of serenity ..” says another local transient. Since then, Charlie’s been supplementing his income by fixing broken toys he finds in the detritus of West LA ..then selling them at flea markets in East LA.

Charlie II

It’s my nature to try and make sense of outwardly irrational behavior like the kind that happened with Charlie last night [link].

Information, rattling around the brain, is followed by a process that clears waste from the transmitter-sites (synapses). There’s a maintenance-network (glial cells) that picks-up whatever chemicals are left behind by the re-uptake process. A milliseconds delay in that action is long enough to produce a gap in transmission. A few gaps can lead to false impressions ..too many gaps .. hallucinations and delusions. It’s the nature of the brain to fill-in missing pieces, which often goes well ..but it is based on a principle of probability ..inserting the most likely, but not necessarily the most accurate, elements of a missing scene. This may distort events ..or momentarily launch them in another direction. The brain is self-correcting however, and can usually recover ..unless too many gaps occur consecutively. Then these excursions begin to create a story of their own. When fabrications get superimposed on actual events ..other people’s actions appear distorted and confounding ..facial gestures are skewed and incomprehensible ..voices blend and words and phrases arrive out of sequence. Suspicion mounts ..creating anxiety that only exacerbates things by accelerating the process of mis-information. The first sign that things aren’t going well is an outburst of non-sensical speech. The way to tell if they’re kidding, or not, is by the sight of sweat ..sometimes accompanied by clenched fists. When others don’t know what to expect, they get concerned. When they re-direct their attention .. breaking with the ongoing chain of events ..it looks like a bunch of faces looming up and bearing down on our sufferer. This can create panic. Panic is often met by the arrival of police officers, which can create a disturbance so charged that it shuts down consciousness .. until the next thing to appear are doctors, with masks and syringes, holding you down while trying to coax a more tolerable stream of events into place.

I realize that nothing I write in these boxes contains anything close to the boundlessness of life .

Charlie

An unexpected turn of events occured at the poker game this evening. Charlie stood up and slammed down his cards, one by one, shouting (in beat to the rhythm of the slamming cards) “This ..is ..not ..the ..hand ..I ..was ..dealt ..Goddamn bunch of thieves!!!” This shocked the shit out of us. Brian went looking for his bat, while I go: “OK Charles, tell me whose hand you think it is ?” He bellows “The cards I had went up to 0.732 ..these are only around like 0.53” I had no idea what he was talking about. I looked at his cards ..queen of hearts ..seven of spades ..two of diamonds ..they did look random, which is kind of like a 50/50 proposition. I thought about the winning hand he had a while back ..a full house. “Charles, you’re thinking about a hand you already played.” He goes “No fucking way, Jose ..” spraying food everywhere “..not even the same ballpark ..but let me tell you something ..I am foursquare against these goddamn revisions and .. hey, what the hell’s inside my mouth (mouff) .?” “Doritos” I tell him, hoping feedback might help him feel a little more grounded. It was a little too late. We took the mountain roads back to my place, with the top down, freezing cold ..but hoping it would put psychological distance between home and the scene back at Bri’s. I even offered to give him my share of the winnings. He had no idea what I was talking about. I thought it best to leave it that way.
 

continued here~>[ link ]

Crazy Charlie

I’m driving to South LA to lead a writing workshop ..helping kids learn to keep a journal about events in their lives. It’s held at the rec-room of a park that gang-bangers claimed for themselves in 1989 ..and still do. However, things change. Some gang-bangers make it to middle age and get tired. Especially if they have kids whose only role-models are their gang-banger dads. It was at a juncture like this that Charlie arrived ..or more accurately .. got dumped by county psych last year. He woke up with a sawed-off shotgun in his face .. a steel-toe boot crashing into his groin and someone screaming: “Git da’fug up ya’muthafuggn piece’shit honky ..yu got rent ta pay ..or y’ain’t nevah pissin’ the same agin ..” He got up in a field of scorched earth ..felt completely disoriented ..and wondered if the clinic had been bombed. Being short of change, he kicked into survival mode. “I got pot ..!” he bellowed ..while his brain went searching for someone who did. “Yeah muthafuggah ? .. Where.” Yeah, where is a good question, he thought ..like where the fuck am I. He got on a cell-phone, stolen from a psych-tech ..dialed the number of a successful buddy of his from back in ‘Nam ..and two kilos were dropped off at the rec-room ..with a street value of over $5,000. This took the edge off things ..and Charlie made new friends. He hung around for awhile.

Continued here  ~>[ link ]

Crazy Charlie

Continued from here ~> [ link ]

Charlie is a scavenger by nature. He found nets to hang on the rusty hoops. He started a kitchen in a storage room ..using food he scavenged from around the ‘hood. He made gumbo out of mostly bean dip, potatoes and Doritos. He served gang members, homeless people as well as former members of the middle class who’d been jobless for so long ..they were living in their cars. He listened to stories about mothers who got killed .. kids who got abandoned .. drug-addicted fathers .. cruel and unusual punishment ..schools that offered no hope ..jobs that had disappeared ..and a place with no malls, YMCA or colleges. They needed something to hang on to so they seized the park. Probably the only sense of community they ever had. They did have incredible stories to tell about overcoming some pretty major trauma in their life. So Charlie started writing them down. Then someone suggested he put them in a grant proposal. That caught the attention of City Council women Jan Perry ..and the floodgates opened. Money began to arrive, Charlie recruited gang members to re-build the playground ..restore the gym floor ..plant grass for a football field ..and even build a concert stage for local rap acts. It was like re-hab for the old gangbangers. Now they have karate classes ..aerobic classes .. and football teams. And when they saw how much money could be made by writing ..they set up a writing workshop. Charlie has since moved on ..but I can still hear the echo of his footsteps around here.

Crazy Charlie

I’m lying on the roof, looking up at the stars ..when I get a get a call from Charlie who's underneath a bridge .. in a tent community by the L.A. River. It’s a place he knows well, which concerns me because it’s probably the first place they’ll look for him. “Nah” he says “..it’s terra incognita.” I try Googling it with no luck. It’s like wild kingdom down there. He spends his time sitting in squalor behind a wall of cattails .. reading and repairing his bicycle ..while freeway traffic rushes by overhead. His new lady friend ‘Musgrove’ prepares coffee while he plans his next destination. I tell him he sounds awfully comfortable for a man on the run. He says it’s OK, people down there come and go ..no one really knows who you are ..but everyone takes care of each other. He tells me there’s a string of communities like this running up and down the river. Some really reek ..but others are almost picturesque. He says he wants to go to one where, he hears ..elderberry and willow trees grow wild ..and you can watch the egrets nest. I tell him he ought to write a travel guide to the swamps and waterways that run below the city of L.A. They’re sort of a blank spot that most people either miss ..or glimpse from an overpass ..then instantly forget.

Crazy Charlie

Charlie taught himself how to fly an airplane by playing video games on the computer. So, when the time came, he got food and supplies from other people’s houses ..boots and camping gear from an army surplus store ..night vision goggles out of a nearby fire station ..and a Cessna from a hanger outside of Renton, Washington. He landed hard on a forest road near Bonners Ferry, Idaho ..actually cracked the fuselage. Then he called me on a stolen cell phone to ask where I thought he should go next. I’m like: WTF Charlie ..are you joy riding or something ..? Are you trying to get away from somebody ..? (I’m thinking it could be anything from pissing off a neighbor to causing a riot). He says they picked him up in Seattle on a ‘malicious mischief’ charge (which could mean anything) ..then told him he was a suspect in an armed robbery case. Suspect ..? He doesn’t carry a gun ..nor does he remember threatening anyone. But it was enough to flip a paranoia switch that told him he better get out of town ..and just keep on going.

Continued [link]

Further investigation

Continued from [link]

That fall, I returned to school with a topic for my ‘senior thesis’ ..I wanted to find a ‘neuro-scientific’ basis for hallucinatory experience. My academic advisors were pleased ..it seemed like I was doing something ‘grounded’ for a change. However, I had another purpose in mind ..I wanted to describe the benefits of the ‘peyote ceremony’ that is practiced in South American Indian cultures ..and suggest how it might be a useful way to understand the behaviour of people like Charlie. I was also beginning to detect a cycle in my own life. It fluctuated between a need for order and stability ..followed by fits of rebellion against order and stability. I think this cycle is universal ..and I thought that the Indian cultures had found a less destructive way to deal with it.

Humans crave information and novel experience. Our senses are receptive to an infinite number of possibilities. However, the higher brain centers are designed to narrow-down these options in order to give us a stable state of consciousness. The peyote ceremony is, in a sense, a ‘guided’ exploration into alternate states of consciousness. The active ingredient in Peyote disables the filters of the brain and allows more sensory information to pass through ..which results in an experience of extra-ordinary reality. The peyote ceremony ends with a period of guided ‘re-entry’ that allows participants to integrate these extra-ordinary experiences with the reality of everyday life. I wanted to show how these guided peyote sessions could serve as a model for treating mental illness (without the peyote of course) .. and how they could also prevent the ‘crash-landings’ ..and reduce the havoc that characterizes recreational use of hallucinogens in the US.

In the end, my instructors liked the ‘neurological-model’ I described ..however, they didn’t think much of the case I made for the virtue of peyote ceremonies. One of them did ask how much of it was based on personal experience.

See for yourself ~>[Senior Thesis].

Crazy Charlie

While other members of my peer-group were spending summers at the mall ..I was hanging out with my college buds in Laguna Beach ..it had a cool point-break and was ‘the place’ for mind-altering recreation. So, while followers of fashion were racking up credit card debt .. I was sitting on the beach soaking up the elements. One evening ..after a day in the surf ..we were sitting around a fire. I remember watching Charlie ..standing in about two feet of water .. calling to somebody out there ..like waayyy out there .. yelling: “Can you hear me ..?” “Can you hear me ..?” “Yeah ..I thought so”. Then he fell to his knees and hollered “Caam uhrn” (which I later learned meant ‘thank you’ in Vietnamese). I asked my Compañeros what Charlie was on. They said ‘nothing’ ..because they knew better than letting him near anything that might contribute to his condition. But, at that moment, I would have given anything to see what he was seeing ..because he looked so tuned-in. He was living with something I didn’t have ..calm in the face of the unknown. After that, my own ‘training’ ..dealing with theories of ‘rational behaviour’ ..seemed like a web of vague ideas .. real life passed through it like water ..the only thing keeping it together was .. vanity. Here we were trying to help people overcome their delusions ..when I couldn’t even tell what kept me from accepting my own delusions as real. I’m not so sure there’s that much difference between ‘delusions’ and my own ‘simulated’ view of reality.

Continued ~>[link]

Crazy Charlie (continued from below)

He beat the rap ..the cops just wanted to know if he was OK ..or if they were dealing with a homicide or something. The driver had no idea who Charlie was ..he’d picked him up hitchhiking. Now, I’ve known Charlie since I was in college ..when he was a Vietnam vet going to school on the GI bill ..and I was a kid fresh out of high school without a clue. Charlie was studying psychology because he wanted to understand some of the things the army had put in his case file before he was discharged. I told him I’d like to see some of those things too. So, one day he brought it to school for me to read. It said things like: “..subject suffers from unresolved Oedipal complex and separation anxiety ..which accounts for distrust of authority.” I thought; man, this sounds medieval ..it has no relevance to modern-day psychology ..and makes no mention of ‘post-traumatic-stress’ ..which, I suspected, was a lot more relevant to Charlie’s case. I may not have known much back then ..but I could clearly see that Charlie was still fighting a war.

Crazy Charlie

Charlie was in a car crash yesterday. Now the police are looking for him so they can charge him with leaving the scene of an accident. He was hurt ..broke his arm in fact ..but he still managed to walk away. I asked him why he didn’t just sit there and wait for the ambulance like anybody else ..he wasn’t driving ..so, it didn’t matter what condition he was in. He tells me he went to Macy’s ..put on a new pair of Calvin Klein underwear ..then took a cab to the hospital. What the fuck ..?! He goes: “Shit man, my shorts were all ripped up ..my mother told me always make sure I’m wearing decent underwear just in case something like this happens ..there were holes in my underwear, man ..I couldn’t let nurses see me with holes in my underwear.” “Gotcha ..now look, I’m not contradicting your mother or anything, but I do believe a broken arm beats holy underwear in this situation.” He goes on and on ..and I go uh huh ..uh huh ..uh huh ..you were holding ..uh huh ..I see ..uh huh ..by the way, what kinda’ medz they give you ..? He shows me a bottle of codeine and a bottle of valium. Apparently he was pretty shook when they saw him ..he’s still pretty shook. I took the bottle of valium .. shook a couple into my hand ..then put them in my pocket and gave it back ..boy did he howl. Look, I said ..we’re going downtown ..I’ll vouch for your mental condition ..tell them that you’re guilty of nothing more than following your mother’s advice ..they only want to get a statement ..I guarantee you that they’ll drop the charges and stop the chase; otherwise, I’ll give you these back ..deal ..? Deal. OK, wow ~ there is nothing worse for a paranoiac than to be pursued in real life ..it confirms their suspicion about all those other times.

Rabbit hole

I met Crazy Charlie in college ~ that’s also where I learned that hallucinations don’t always appear as people who aren’t really there ~ no, hallucinations are more subtle than that ~ they often don’t rise to the threshold of sight ~ most of the time they stop at the auditory centers ~ so, hearing voices of people who aren’t really there is a lot more common ~ I experienced this directly by participating in LSD sessions ~ LSD mimics psychosis by lowering the threshold for signals arriving from the senses ~ as well as noise originating from the mind ~ making music sound more persuasive ~ mixed up with people who looked more melodic ~ it could heighten feelings of euphoria ~ leading me to believe I was making all kinds of fascinating discoveries ~ or intensify feelings of dread and anxiety ~ which I could manufacture just as easily on my own ~ so I quit ~ I discovered that I had an aptitude for languages ~ which I probably picked up overseas ~ so I focused on language learning ~ not necessarily ESL ~ more like ‘hemispheric lateralization’ ~ I narrowed it down to reading comprehension ~ then phonemic awareness ~ my progress was going in the direction of increasing specialization ~ taking a subject and exploring it in depth ~ my friends and family thought I was crazy ~ they thought higher education was supposed to be a process of expanding horizons ~ so they used to ask me what else I was doing besides examining relative clauses ~ and they were right ~ higher education does expand your horizons ~ just not the way you think ~ the deeper you go into any one thing ~ the more connections you see with everything else ~ like, for instance, when Alice went down the rabbit hole ~ it didn’t lead to a tunnel ~ it opened up to the rest of the world ~ the one inside of her childlike mind.

Crazy Charlie

Crazy Charlie, how do you do ~ I see ya’ stylin' down the avenue ~ all rosy red and electric blue ~ it don't matter whatcha' do ~ calamity's out there waiting for you