And so it came to pass that Gyorgy Yabu and Clyde Moyen Bucket decided to take care of Hellecchino and Chokepoint Piste. After all, things had gone on for too long as they were. They hired their own hero: Samson O’Merdé. Samson O’Merdé had once been a member of the Gorin Noshow but had become, with the group’s demise, what you might call a masterless retainer. Being on the out-and-out, more or less, Samson advertised in the papers, very simply: Samson O’Merdé, Have Gun Will Travel, telegraph peculiarmo and totalwreckaz. It just so happened that Samson was in Total Wreck and unemployed at the time he was contacted. Heroing and avengifying were a little slow at that time.
Samson rode a Brahma bull named Golu Devata mounted with a wrought silver Mexican saddle. He stood 6′4″ tall and weighed in at 285 lbs; nevertheless, he was very fast, on his feet, with his fists and with a gun–a specially crafted Colt .45 with an extra large Colt python real Sambar stag grips to fit his meaty fist, fluted and worked cylinder and a long Thomson Center contender barrel, the site a tiny svelte mermaid. Mostly for show, of course, as Samson was so strong that he rarely needed to indulge himself in pistoling. But, of course, he was a hero and truly into fixing things, though he did, it must be admitted, have a heavy hand. He was known to carry a 10′ club, a shillelagh that he used to knock bad guys down to the ground and make mince-meat of them. Which, of course, he was real good at doing. Samson O’Merdé had a reputation to out-rival the pistol whipping of Wyatt Earp.
His hair, a kind of dusted dishwater blond, stuck out in spikes from around his sweat stained headband, purportedly taken off of Cochise and, in honor of the Indian rebel, never washed in order to keep the originality in place. His face was dirt grimed from his ride across the semi-arid regions of Arizona, New Mexico and West Coahuila, which made the whites of his eyes and his great mouthful of white teeth gleam in the noonday sun and, to tell the truth, in the dark of night, which was enough to frighten off the most inveterate of spiritualists and ghost hunters, including James Randi, who, of course, admitted such things did not exist but ran anyway. He was a realist, after all, and the proof of the pudding was in the direct observation; he was known to say that he never saw a thing, though he saw alot of things he didn’t believe in.
Massive Schwartzenegger arms thrust out of the arm holes of his grimy leather vest; he wore no shirt in order to more advantageously advertise his masculine flat tummy with well-defined abs and his fine pectorals. He liked to shrug his massive shoulders and flex his deltoids and, while stroking his stubbled chin, his biceps. Levi Strauss had made him a pair of extra large, extra durable jeans that, over the years had become dirt-encrusted and frayed at the cuffs so they did not reach to his ankles, giving him the appearance of an overgrown Huckleberry Finn. His boots were simple brown leather. Although Samson O’Merdé wore a red polka dot bandana loosely tied around his neck, he did not carry one in his right rear pocket, the consequence of which is that he blew his nose by pressing on one nostril and breathing heavy out of the other. He also spit, great growling gutsy hawkings. He was an easy man to follow for any tracker.
Samson O’Merdé was a sight to behold indeed.
He also slurped his coffee and soup and ate with his mouth open. He burped upon consumption, smiling and noting, “That was good!” His mother did not raise him well. He said, “Amen” when he farted, usually by lifting his right cheek and bearing down hard.
His job was to save people from all sorts of discomfort and dysfunction, including Hellecchino, who was described to him as a little devil. In fact, Samson was there to save Yabu’s holdings and rid the Brazos River Basin of the people’s hero, that trickster Hellecchino whatever-his-name-is. But Samson was not told this part of the job. He was kind of single-minded; the less information there was, the more probable it was he wouldn’t become confused. In that everyone knew Samson had arrived, it is safe to assume Hellecchino knew, too. But this information, carried in glaring, glowing headlines in the Yabu Yeoman, did not change Hellecchino’s day-to-day goings-on. Or those of Buck.
“Did you see the headlines, Hellecchino?”
“Nope. Never read the paper.”
“A hero’s come to town. One Samson O’Merdé.”
“Yup. I know.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“Nothin’.”
“I guess me neither.”
“Good guess.”
But, of course, such whimsy could not go on forever. Especially as Samson O’Merdé was also a big talker. Amongst the Caramboleros he would show his prowess at dodging that he got by way of his mother heaving things at him as he sat around the fire minding his own business. He was truly amazing. Bologna and Cologna Shrievalty set about learning his moves. Everything and anything of such ilk would come in handy in the line of duty. But the fun and games could not go on forever. So it was that Gyorgy Yabu called upon Samson to do his bidding, though it happened on a day that Samson was going to market. Not so much as to buy anything, though he did need a few things, but because he had heard that this Hellecchino character he’d been brought in to contain liked to frequent the weekend farmer’s market.
Gyorgy Yabu stood on his porch waving a yellow envelope before his face as Samson waltzed through the yard and up the stairs to the veranda.
“Where’s Golu Devata?” he asked.
“I left him tethered to the old oak tree. I’m walkin’ into town today.”
“Going to market I hear.”
“Yup. That’s right. Just like this little piggie.”
“Well,” said Yabu waving the envelope more threateningly, “I have a letter for you to deliver to George Meseems.”
“But I have planned my business at the market.”
“Be that as it may, you must. And if I say you must, you must. You are, after all, my hero.”
“Well, if you say I must, I must.”
Yabu handed over the envelope.
“Don’t wait for an answer. Just deliver it and get on with your business.”
“Okay, boss.”
“Hurry on up about it, now!”
“Right you are.”
Yabu gave a great sigh as Samson sauntered out the Hacienda loco plátano gateway.
“There’s an aura about that man,” he said to Clyde.
“Yes, sir. I’d say there is. Good thing, too.”
Well, on his way into town, Samson met up with an old woman sitting on the side of the road. She waived at Samson, calling him to her side.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “How can I help you?”
“My name’s Sally. Sally Godown.”
“How do you do. My name’s Samson O’Merdé, Hero Extraordinaray.”
“Yes. So I’ve been told.”
“You’ve heard of me, then?”
“Of course I have. Who hasn’t?”
“Yup! That’s me.”
“Well, I want you to take me into town to buy nine pounds of butter.”
“I can’t do that. I’m on an errand for the boss. Mr. Yabu.”
“I need you to do this. You don’t know who I am.”
“You told me. You’re Sally Godown.”
“That’s right. And I don’t walk nowhere. I ain’t walked anywhere in 30 years.”
“My, my.”
“So you must carry me into town to buy my nine pounds of butter.”
“I have an errand to carry out.”
“I say you just and you must. You are a hero.”
“Well, if you say I must, I must. Hop on my back and let’s get a move on.”
Sally hopped rather more sprightly than might be imagined onto big old Samson’s back and off they loped into town to buy nine pounds of butter. Which they duly did. And Samson brought Sally back and dumped her on her roadside stone.
“I sure hope that butter don’t melt, Sally Godown,” Samson said by way of departure.
As he continued on his way, he met a foxy kind of character. Mr. Sossel Cheeseparings. A man with a pointy nose and a smooth voice and a long lapping tongue that he kept swiping around his chops as if he couldn’t get all of the sweet stickiness from off his thin lips. He was not very tall and kind of built like a svelte pear.
“I say there, big foot,” he hailed Samson. “What is that you’re carrying, eh?”
“It’s a letter. From Gyorgy Yabu to George Meseems.”
“Is it now. Well. . .I say.”
“What do you say?”
“I say. . .do you know what’s in it?”
“No. It ain’t my position to know. I’m just the messenger.”
“Ahh. . .messenger. Can’t be shooting the messenger now, can we, eh?”
“No.”
“How do you know that letter isn’t telling Mr. George Meseems to kill you, hm?”
“Why would he?”
“Because if Gyorgy Yabu says he must, he must.”
“Is George Meseems a hero, too?”
“I dare say not. Why “too”?”
“Because I’m a hero and if I must do a thing, I must do it.”
“Is that right now?”
“Yes. It is.”
“I suppose it must be a good idea to know what it is you’re carrying around with you.”
“I know that! I carry my pistole and my shillelagh.”
“Yes. I see that’s a great club. How about the envelope?”
“It’s not mine.”
“Don’t you want to know what’s in it?”
“I can’t be opening it.”
“I can. And I can read.” And Sossel Cheeseparings took an extra long lick of his lips.
“Can you?”
“I suppose I must.”
“Well, then, if you must, you must.”
“That’s right. We’re both heroes.”
Samson handed over the envelope and the foxy gentleman licked it open and began reading it.
“Oh, my. Oh, my oh my.”
“What’s it say?”
“You’ll have to catch me to find out.”
Sossel Cheeseparings lit out of there faster than an otter sliding down a mud bank. Samson O’Merdé lit out after him. He had a job to do and he was not one to shirk his duty. Sossel Cheeseparings ran on and ran on and ran on and ran on and Samson ran on and ran on and ran on and ran on after him. They ran on across the mesquite and the dusty plains and across piss-ant creeks until, finally, Sossel Cheeseparings tripped over a gopher and dropped the envelope. Samson O’Merdé picked up the envelope, apologized to the gopher and continued on his way to George Meseems to deliver Yabu’s message.
George Meseems didn’t even bother with an acknowledgement. He just took the yellow envelope and shut the door in the messenger’s face. Didn’t matter to him that Samson O’Merdé was a hero.
Well, Samson was late getting to the farmer’s market and he missed catching up to Hellecchino and so he lumbered on over to the Baron’s Roadside Inn tent and sat down to rest and recoup. It was there, with a beer and a side of beef before him that Hellecchino caught up with him. He watched Samson wading into his beef like a sounder of boar for a moment. Then he sat down opposite him and to one end of the table to escape the juice and saliva, necessary appurtenances to tearing into BBQ beef ribs. Lots of newspaper on the table beneath the plates and a damp dish rag for Samson to wipe his hands and mouth occasionally. He was persnickety about the cleanliness of his glass when he drank. A dirty, mouthed-up rim bothered him no end.
“Say,” said Hellecchino. “I hear you’re a hero.”
Samson did not bother to finish his mouthful, answering back around his cud.
“Yup.”
“I’m interested in heroes. I never met one.”
“Well, now you have.”
“Samson O’Merdé. Peculiar, Missouri and Total Wreck, Arizona. Have Gun, Will Travel.”
“Yup.”
Samson swallowed, wiped his greasy hands and mouth and sucked down a half a mug of beer.
“How many of them you put away?”
“More’n a dead Quaker.”
“He drank a gallon in an hour.”
“Yup.”
“You eat alot of dead cow, too.”
“Yup.”
“Vegetables?”
“That’s woos-ass food. I’m a man.”
“Ooh. I can see that. You a big ‘un.”
“Yup.”
“Tell me, then. What kinds of heroic things you done?”
“How many days you got?”
“Oh. . .I’m not busy. But just pick the salient ones.”
“That would involve the giants from up north.”
“Like Paul Bunyan?”
“Who’s he? Never met him.”
“He was a big ‘un, too. Had a blue ox.”
“Nope. He weren’t one of the baddies I did in.”
“So, tell me ’bout ‘em–if you don’t mind.”
“Nope. I don’t mind.”
“Good. Oh, Baron? Would you mind refilling Mr. O’Merdé’s glass and bringing me some lemonade?”
“We ain’t got no lemonade.”
“Well, what do you have?”
“Beer and whiskey and milk.”
“Oh, gosh. I don’t do milk. Carries tuberculin virus and other crudities.” Hellecchino sighed deeply. “I suppose it’ll have to be whiskey. Bring the bottle.”
“Are you sure you kin handle it?”
“Why, of course. It’s 50% water, ain’t it? You don’t mind I drink whiskey while you guzzle beer, do you, Mr. O’Merdé?”
“Nope. Whatever yer poison is.”
And so, they got down to it.
“The first giant had one head–”
“Don’t they usually?”
“Nope. The second one had three.”
“Oh, my!”
“Yup. Anyway. This giant had been raisin’ hell up around the lumberjackin’ camps and they called me in ’cause they was losin’ not only lumber but lumberjacks and flapjacks. An’ you just can’t have that. So they called me in and I went up there and I brandished my shillelagh, knocked the giant to the ground and made mince-meat out of him. And then I put my food on his neck and I bawled at him, ‘What’ll you give me not to kill you?’ Well, that giant began slobberin’ and droolin’ and begged me not to kill him. ‘Oh, please, oh please. . .don’t kill me, Samson. I got this here magic flute. You blow on it and it’ll make whoever dance more’n the girl with red shoes and you ain’t gotta be so violent no more.’ ‘But I like violence.’ “Okay. Then you can dance ‘em to death.’ ‘Sounds good to me.’ So he give me this here magic flute.”
Samson pulled out an ocarina. A wooden sweet potato looking thing on a string round his neck.
“Let me see that a minute,” said Hellecchino kind of bouncing around on his bench as if he was looking at an archeologist’s dream.
Samson unslung it and handed it to him.
“You be careful with that. It’s magic.”
“Wow! So, go on with your giant taming.”
“Well, the second giant was up in the hills stealing sheep and shepherds. This giant had three heads.”
“Three heads!”
“Yup. And I went up there and I brandished my shillelagh, knocked the giant to the ground and made mince-meat out of him. And then I put my food on his necks and I shouted at them, ‘What’ll you give me not to kill you?’ You shoulda seen those three heads cryin’ out in three part harmony, justa beggin’ for mercy. ‘Oh-ooooh! Spare me and me and me. Don’t kill me at all at all at all. I’ll give you my jar of iocshlainte. Me too. Me too. It’s magic. It will cure whatever injury you get. All wounds. . .mortal, immortal, civil, financial and military.’ I got that here in my pocket.”
“You ever have to use it?”
“Nope. But you never know. Always be prepared.”
“Well. You’re some hero. I’ve never heard of a hero like you before. I suppose the bad guys, if they hear you coming, just get up off their asses and take to the hills.”
“You got that right.”
“It’s a good thing I got your tootler thing here.”
“Why’s that? You’ll be givin’ it back,” Samson held out his great big paw, BBQ sauce dripping off of it.
“You don’t want to go blowing your own horn. Better wipe your hands off.”
And as Samson was doing what he was told, Hellecchino began blowing a jig on the ocarina. Lo and behold, as he was looking directly at Samson, Samson began to dance. Hellecchino got up from his bench and moved out into the road and Samson danced along with him, stirring up dust devils with the worn down heels of his boots. Hellecchino backed down the road and out into the mesquite-ridden plains, drawing the dancing O’Merdé giant after him, twirling and jumping and waving his arms like a deranged ballerina. Hellecchino led him on a merry march all the way to [the entrance to hell] where he had him do a merry two-step and a Charleston and then danced him right down into the bowels of the earth.
After the noise of Samson’s twisting descent faded away, Hellecchino went back to his chair atop the cinderblock house.
“You didn’t take his magic iocshlainte?” asked Buck incredulously.
“Nope. I figure he’ll be needing it to assuage his pride.”
“He’s bound to come looking for you, Hellecchino.”
“Yup. Heroes are like that. Just don’t know when they’ve had enough.”
The Fate Article
December 7, 2009 by shikejianMost “in the right place at the right time” stories are stories out of context. They are non-sequitors of life. In life the good outcome is an earned one. The situation out of which it comes is not necessarily edifying; however, the experience, the process has more worth and therefore more is applicable to the rest of life. Out of context right time-right place stories are one-time occurrences with minimal effect on subsequent life and they are only end results. Like taking a test: the next day, we forget the knowledge we needed to pass it. The “right place” in my story was a horrifying situation. It was, nevertheless, the right place to have been to get to the good end.
I am manic-depressive. In Japan, the medication that worked to control my depressive symptoms was taken off the market. I had to revert to an American prescription that was of inadequate dosage and, I later learned, wrong. It should not be surprising that my condition (depression) worsened. I suffered through four years of mild to moderate depression, putting up with it because I had done so my entire life and so it wasn’t anything new–until I crashed. I crashed in a big way. I had a mixed-type episode that started out bouncing up and down every two weeks and then mutated in short order to daily catastrophic changes of mood from feeling good to deep depression. This had never happened before. But both of the mood swing effects were known to me, so I attempted to ride it out. As I had so many times before.
My behavior became very uncharacteristic and erratic. It–I–became socially inappropriate. It’s difficult to cry out for help when you don’t know what’s happening. You are disoriented one moment and stone cold sober the next. You put the two together on a daily, even hourly basis and there is only disorientation: which situation is the right one? You have no control of your emotions. You have no control of your life. You have no impulse control but a lot of guilt. You begin to doubt yourself. You have to rely on others’ reactions to assess your functioning–and you don’t trust them.
But my supervisor at the university, an American, knew I was manic-depressive. I told him. He said, “Ah. I understand.” He did not. After a year of dealing with me, he interpreted my uncharacteristic behavior as no more than the real Jimsecor I had been covering up until the opportunity arose to show my true, perverted colors. Along with university officials, he turned me over to the Secret Police.
Now, you say, he’s paranoid. Secret Police? The stuff of fiction. The stuff of schizophrenics. Don’t need to read any further!
We read about the Secret Police in other countries and we believe what we read but when they surface, when someone speaks about having “met” them, suddenly they become a figment of the imagination. Not real. He’s crazy. He’s paranoid. That’s exactly how they protect themselves: by the very psychiatric condition they work to effect in their victim. After all, who will believe a paranoiac? You’re sick, Secor. People don’t do such things. Catch-22. Abe Kobo wrote about them. He called them “friends.” The Secret Police in Japan are more of an insidious culture police now, not the rabid fascists of the pre-war and war years. But they do work in conjunction with the “real” police.
Inappropriate behavior is unacceptable in Japanese society and there are very specific rules and such an individual needs to be taken out of society for fear of contamination and there are no mitigating circumstances to behavior. No motive. Behavior is behavior. End of argument.
By the time I figured out what was going on, I was had. I had become a well-prepared Skinnerian rat. They began their brainwashing by drugging me and preparing me for future behavior modification techniques. First the medication, the hypnotics. They started on me in a semi-conscious dream state of awareness. I could hear. I could not open my eyes. I got lost in the sensory input. It was wonderful. Just what was needed: a malleable subject. Then the information that I was being watched and that I should obey or bad things would happen followed by an example of punishment. Then the offer to help me out of the quandary they’d put me in. Aren’t we good to you? We’re only trying to help. We want to help you. We’re your friends. And then, when trust had been effected, traitorously destroying the confidence.
Hard hitting manipulation. Leading me on. Teaching me behavior and then, when learned, punishing me for it–or not giving me the expected stimulus/reward. Not allowing sleep. Clips and pops in the walls. Vibrations in the floor. Sensory hallucinations just for me, for when my fiancée was visiting, these intrusions were absent.
Watching me always. Following me everywhere with great to-do and lots of cars and motorcycles. I took walks at 2 AM to get away. No one in his right mind does that, takes walks in the middle of the night in Japan. So I had to be crazy, unsocial. They followed me on my nightly trek to the local temple. They followed me to and from work, even to the point of making sure that only they and I were on the same coach of the train.
Entering my apartment and moving things around just enough for me to know that something was not right but not noticeable enough for me to point to it. Until later, when I began to look during those moments of lucidity. Adding things, like an extra glass of warm coke. Drugging my drinks–there is an entire weekend that is gone from my mind after drinking a coke that tasted funny. Infiltrating my classes. And then pulling back, stopping all manipulation til I felt comfortable–only to begin the attack again.
Paranoid. Your paranoid, Secor. Crazier than a loon. People don’t do these sorts of things.
But of course. That’s the whole point. Only I knew I was paranoid and I knew it was not my paranoia. I was familiar with my paranoia: it is an overactive suspiciousness and blame. It was part of my depression, which didn’t happen in the summer, only from October to February, like clockwork. In March and April, I was usually slightly high, hypomanic. So I knew something was wrong. So these couldn’t have been delusions. You believe delusions. You don’t know they’re distortions. To be delusional is to believe the delusion is real. I knew what was happening was not normal. I kept diaries. There were no hallucinations. These sounds and voices were not hallucinations. They didn’t tell me to do anything. I remember once half-waking up to somebody putting something in my ears. I was able to “hear” better after that. High pitched, irritating ringing that never stopped, not even at night. Nothing other than disruption, for it worked to amplify the sounds around me, especially voices. White noise.
I remember. That was one of my survival techniques: remembering. But of course, you were paranoid, Secor. You don’t remember correctly. Catch-22.
My writing saved me, too. They apparently had never dealt with an artist before. Not a foreign one. I wrote all the time. I wrote about my orientation toward life, the world about me. I wrote about them. I wrote about me and what I felt like inside. I wrote about the disturbances–and the inconsistencies. The mistakes in their judgment. Finally, my intelligence was useful. Finally, the Scientific Method of careful, diligent, deductive thinking was applicable.
My disease saved me because they didn’t acknowledge it. I always had a piece of me watching me. I had always had, waiting for the horror of the clockwork cycling 4-5 month long depressions.
And I began meditating again. That’s when I started visiting the temple. That’s when I knew I could escape for a time. Find a respite from the assault on my senses.
My entire life became getting alone. Shutting them out so I could think. But they had gotten me so I doubted myself. I didn’t know whether my motives were mine or theirs. My inability to talk to others was exacerbated to the point that I was afraid to go shopping because I would have to speak to the shopkeepers–and they would know! I didn’t want to be ostracized even though that’s what the Secret Police had done to me anyway. Spread rumors. They had isolated me and then they had watched me to keep me isolated. I had lived in isolation before. Isolated from my family while in the same house. But this was a heightened, more insidious kind of isolation. It was not self-generated.
I called my friend, a psychiatrist who ran a psychiatric hospital. There, I would find some solace. He said I would be free to move about, go off grounds. He said he would call me back the next day. He said, “The police won’t be here to bother you.” I had not mentioned the police to him. I mentioned them to nobody. I didn’t want to be labeled paranoid. After all, I couldn’t point to them. They were there, of course, and my life in hell only worsened. They had me at close quarters. I’d called him before. They’d gotten to him. My phone was tapped. I’d thought so but this was the proof.
My drive to get alone, nursed by writing and meditation, led me to searching out an isolated place where they couldn’t get close to me. Physically close. I’d discovered walking and that my walking caused some hysteria because I walked aimlessly, without warning. So, while at Dr. Fujii’s hospital, I took walks. Every morning. Long, circuitous walks. I was able to watch them watch me. I led them on wild goose chases. Once I lost them. Usually, though, they were right there. Behind me. In front of me. Beside me. They even called in the real police when I went into busy downtown to the pharmacy.
But I found my place. About 50 yards from the roadside in the middle of several rice paddies in the middle of the city I found my solace. Sitting in the middle of a pathway between paddies, I found a place where they could not get near me. I watched their followers in their vans and cars and motorcycles go up and down the deserted street. They were not farmers. Farmers invariably drove pick-up trucks. They stopped to watch. I waved and smiled. I had finally gotten the better of them. Peace!
I carried my pen and tablet with me, moving through a fog, a fog that distorted the world, to my rice paddy haven. Every morning early I spread my jacket on the damp ground and sat down. I wrote. I watched the world around me, particularly the birds, the herons, symbols of long life. And I meditated, finally alone without fighting to find the space.
Out of this horror, out of this fear, out of this feeling of weakness because they had managed to control me, I found my life. I found out who I was and what I was here for. I found that spider web-thin thread at the core of my being that they had not touched. I realized they could not touch it. Me. They had ripped away the social markers of identity, the cultural crutches of identity, the masks we hide behind, and bared the real me. I felt like an electrical cord had contacted my skin and I was so very tender from the flow of the current, on and on and on. There was no off-switch. They had flayed me and left me flailing in a vacuum filled with what life they wished to give me. Took away from me. I was scared. I was confused. I was psychotic. I could not think. I could not make decisions. But I found myself. I found my life. It had been there all along. That little bit that knew all of this was wrong. I could think.
When I found myself alone, I experienced that life. There was just me. In that moment, I found I could make decisions. I found that no matter how distorted they had made me, I was stronger. But, too, I knew how weak I was–and that was the major point. I knew what I could tolerate. I knew my breaking point. I knew how easy it was to be had. How easy it was to have control taken away from you. I knew what it was to live and to have life taken away. To die psychologically. I discovered how tenuous “I” was. Because of the invidiousness of the Secret Police, I came to understand me and life. They would be furious to know that their best efforts at destruction actually brought about epiphany.
Back in the States it took me three years to recover. They followed me there. I got so distressed at not being believed that I began notating, in my journal, what was going on. I have photos showing my apartment before and after their intrusive little games. I set things up. I protected myself by sending the lot off. I sent out manuscripts so what was another envelope to them?
I was more shaken than ever because I hadn’t been able to escape after all. I watched myself being sick. I watched myself healing. I watched myself becoming more and more capable of thinking. I sat in my rocker and stared out the window at the birds for two years. I read books when I couldn’t remember what I’d read from one paragraph to the next. I realized there as no sense in fighting it. That fighting only made things worse. So I rode the wave of sickness. I rode out the medication that didn’t work, that only made the situation worse. But I never lost the touch of that thread I’d found in the rice paddies. My raison d’etre. I knew what I was here for. What my life was about.
The experience was terrifying and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. But if I hadn’t been in Japan and if I hadn’t met the Secret Police, I’d still be deluded and lost and out of touch with myself, as most people are. Until you’ve been taken to the very edge–physically, psychologically–you have no idea who you really are or what you are truly capable of. This kind of learning stays with you, like Hammurabi’s code.
But being in this right place at this right time has had its downside: I have PTSD. I have nightmares. Certain social situations evoke panic and confusion. Reading John LeCarre can trigger the PTSD. He’s one of my favorite authors. But knowing I’m so afflicted, knowing where it comes from, knowing how it manifests itself, I continue growing because each time I confront them, the symptoms and occurrences lessen.
Psychologically I died and was resurrected in the middle of a rice paddy.
I continue meditating. I continue writing. By writing I teach. That’s what I’m here for. I would not trade this time with the Japanese Secret Police for anything. This was being in the right place at the right time without any doubt. It was about time my long search for identity and meaning took shape. At 46 the opportunity was handed to me on a silver platter, like Salome her St. John. I had no choice but to take and eat. And like Cassandra, nobody believes me.
Tags: japan, manic-depression, paranoia, police, PTSD, secor
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