The plank above the door reads “geisteskrank.”

This is not where he meant to be. That much he knows. The darkness seems to shift around him, shadows lifting and falling like waves before a storm. A hissing noise, not so much mechanical as the sound of a machine breathing, voices in the fan above him. There’s a small window in the door to his right, the door under the sign, a porthole, and he can see the dried blood smudged across it on his side, four lines that taper into nothing, left to right. The answer is just beyond that glass, but he’s too scared to see what may or may not be. And so he sits, propped against a wall of wooden crates that he somehow knows rises taller than the ceiling, shifting his hands and hips in the dark muck that may or may not be blood, may or may not be his own blood, wondering what to do next.

geisteskrank.

The scuttering to his left startles him, whipcrack of a head turning, and he thinks he hears himself ask who is there, but there’s no echo from the steel walls around him, nothing but the dry beating noises of a rundown engine from somewhere in the distance. And so he shifts again, the ashy sand sifting through his fingers, so dry, he left wondering if there is any water left anywhere in the world.

The bay window under the sign to his right, a large crack running it’s length, a river travelling north to south. Beyond the glass, a brilliant blue reflection of calm waters and a still beach. He sees her, walking alone, exactly as he will always remember her. Her shoulder-length hair bobs gently with each step, swinging alongside her cheeks and the sunglasses that cover the shadowy pools of near-black. He smiles as she moves, gliding across the white sands without a care, taking in the day and leaving a little behind for everyone else to enjoy.

He calls her name, and she doesn’t hear, or doesn’t respond. He knows that it is time for him to rise, to follow, to go after what he wants. He starts to rise, and feels the floor beneath him shift. The wall of crates is no longer behind him, but on all sides, wavering and groaning, the weight of impossibly tall wooden mountains trying to speak to him. He hesitates, breathing heavy and pupils constricting; she’s suddenly so far away, moving like a sheet of tissue caught in a light breeze, so slow but so far away. Between them, in the space where there was sand and ocean and beautiful summer day, there is a black grass that may be summer in shadow of an elm, or perhaps something else, something living and waiting for him to run across. The air shimmers, heatpulse rising to the sky. The sign above the archway is now blank, a wooden plank that says nothing but for him to remember what he knows, what he has learned, what he wants.

“Geisteskrank,” says a voice to his right. He turns, and there in the sunset light is a face that he hadn’t expected ever to see again.

“I didn’t sneeze,” he says. “I’ve got to be going, though. It’s time, right?”

“You’ll never be sure. That’s the best part. Oh, geisteskrank.”

“I didn’t -” and his denial is interrupted by a sneeze. The world turns blinding white, then fades to black, just like all good movies do.

Over the next weeks, I’ll be collapsing and compressing my material goods into the absolute smallest bundle that I can bear to do. The first thing on the list is CDs, weeding out duplicates and things that I can live without — which, having just looked at the shelf, is a ridiculously large amount. I always think that I’ve done a good job of anti-packratting my life, and then I look around…

There are a select few discs that I’ll be keeping — mostly the catalogs that I own. Everything else will be going the way of the dodo, so any of you that are looking to pick up some music, I’ll be selling off discs at dirt cheap prices. Price cuts for bulk, needless to say. Let me know if you’re interested in seeing lists, or if there’s anything you know I have that you want to claim in case it’s going out the door. There’s everything from rare metal and bootlegs to soundtracks and cheese pop in here, and it never hurt to ask…

Next week, books and trade paperbacks…

I like to think that in all of us, there is a dreamer. Not just the kind of dreams that you have when you close your eyes and hit the cherished REM state; not even the dreams that keep you moving through your years, reaching for something a little better than what you have. The former dissolve into mist when you wake, slipping through your fingers the harder you grasp for them. The latter are just as wispy, eventually drifting away into adulthood as you settle for what you have, the job that’s not quite what you envisioned, the significant other that falls short of perfection but at least she’s bearable, and still has sex with you once a week or so, and hey, she puts up with your poker nights and your leaving clothes strewn everywhere, so how bad can it be?

I don’t honestly know how many people even have dreams like the ones I still hold onto. They’re the dreams that drive the writers and filmmakers and comic book readers of the world. Daydreams, fantasies of being something bigger than life, superhuman, or maybe just more important than you feel. I know that these dreams come from being unhappy, from being insecure or lacking acceptance. At least, I know that’s true of me.

It’s why I read comic books for 30 plus years, why I still enjoy them when I can afford them. I think it’s why I was a fan of wrestling (stories of grandfathers aside — why else did I continue to watch until the last year or so?). It explains my enjoyment of summer popcorm action movies, and my reading choices.

There’s a lot of things that I really don’t like about my life. Don’t get me wrong; I accept my part in where I’ve ended up to date, and any responsibility that belongs to me for where I end up from here on out. This isn’t a fists-shaking at the sky and screaming for the reasons why, although I’m more than familiar with that urge. No, I’m aware and insistent that every action has consequences, and the only way to make your life better is to recognize those reactions and adapt your behavior.

Sometimes, it’s a nice thought that things might just reboot, that you might be able to start over, taking all the lessons you’ve learned from all your mistakes and applying them in a fresh and unknowing situation. It’s a world where all your sins are erased from memory, and you get that one last chance to be everything that you’ve realized that you wanted to be. No one holds anything from the past against you, because for one small moment, you’re reborn as a blank slate for the world, and maybe you’ve made enough mistakes that you can live out the rest of your time without making more.

When I watch LOST, I imagine that everyone who watches can see part of themselves in one of the characters. We want to think that maybe we’re tough and quick like Sawyer, or charismatic and a natural leader like Jack, or that we can turn our lives around for good like Sayid. I doubt anyone sees themselves in Charlie, or Boone or Shannon (because, fuck, they’re corpses, and how much fun is it to dream you’re dead?), or one of the nameless faces in the background of every episode.

If you hit the deserted island with 40 other impossibly attractive people, what would you change about yourself? Would you manage to finally stop being a manipulative person, no longer pulling other people’s strings to get what you want? Could you stop hurting other people due to your own greed and self-centeredness? Would you carefully watch the words coming out of your mouth, stopping the lies and the pettiness and all the negative traits you’ve recognized in yourself over the years, and start becoming the person that you have always dreamed of being?

Or are you one of those that believes that we are who we are, and no amount of self-awareness can ever change that, no matter what we hope or dream?

And if you find that you are able to change, are you doing it because it’s what you feel is right, or because it’s what other people want from you? Does that even matter?

And you say, be still my love
Open up your heart, let the light shine in
Don’t you understand I already have a plan
I’m waiting for my real life to begin
-Colin Hay, “Waiting For My Real Life to Begin”

I think what I hate most about living in this head from day to day is not really knowing a thing about who I am, not believing the good things about myself and not being able to embrace the rest because it’s not what people want to see or hear.

It’s a pretty horrific confusion to have inside.

I’ve heard repeatedly that one of the reasons I should quit smoking is that I will get my sense of taste back. It’s never been a very motivating factor to me; those that know me are aware that I’m both a picky eater and a survivalist. I’m rarely a fan of eating; food goes in when I’m hungry, and it’s really only enough to make me not hungry. If it weren’t for the need to eat to survive, I probably wouldn’t. I do, if rarely, really appreciate a good meal (it requires a really fine and out-of-my-budget chef or a unique experience for me to really stimulate the taste buds). So it’s not that I don’t enjoy food — it’s that people insist on putting onions and celery into every single recipe in the world.

Last night, though, I had an experience with a simple burger and a side of steamed cabbage. Fascinating, really how much taste some things in the world have. The burger wasn’t any real surprise,except that I was suddenly eating in 3D — the only comparison that I can offer is to wander around for 20 years with a gray filter in your glasses, and then remove the filter gradually but in stages. It’s intense. Seriously, not unlike eating while on LSD — every taste was distinct and separate in my mouth, but together. I could identify each and every one, even through the blend.
Oh, and I’m no longer on the fence about mayonnaise. Keep that shit off my sandwiches in the future, thanks.

Of course, taste doesn’t walk alone. Why couldn’t my vision have cleared up, or maybe my hearing gotten even more intense? That would have been cool. But no, what I find is that I’m smelling things more clearly with each passing day, and I have to say: no, thanks, but the thought sure is considerate. It could be worse, of course — I could be in New York, smelling dead bodies and urine (apologies to Bill Hicks). But discovering that your coworkers wear too much cologne (or haven’t showered since January) is not the best way to celebrate kicking the habit.

Also, as much as I love it, cabbage smells like Irish death. If they cook this shit that often, I can understand my ancestral alcoholism.

“A drunk man’s words are a sober man’s thoughts.”

Just something that I’ve been thinking about for a while now.

I have more to say, but not yet. First, food. It’s amazing how hungry you get when you quit smoking.

It’s also amazing how much things smell. And by smell I mean not so good.

I’m not really a heavy smoker any more. I only go through two lighters a day now.
- Bill Hicks

Actually and honestly, I think I’m handling the non-smoking thing okay. I get a little cranky here and there, but it’s a familiar feeling, that short fuse reaction that you have to really stand ready for in order that it doesn’t slide away from you. Quick moments of stress flare up and out, and things aren’t as meaningless and unimportant as they should be.

The real problem that I’m having, I suspect, is the caffeine plus smoking getting cut at the same time. For the past two days — maybe three — my thinking is getting totally strung around itself. Night time is better than day, but neither is particularly easy.

My working theory is that the massive amount of caffeine that I was taking was serving to keep my ADD in check — Ritalin is speed, and so hey, why not? Not to mention that I suspect there to be a tie between ADD / ADHD and depression and bipolar disorder (totally not a scientific theory, by the way); all the shit in your brain is tied together, like it or not. I find myself unable to keep a straight thought for more than five minutes at a time, at best. The post from earlier today? It didn’t come out of me quite so surreal. I mean, yeah, it did, but it seemed perfectly normal and fluid when I wrote it. I’m finding notes to myself all over my desk that I don’t remember writing — some of them are in Latin, which I haven’t touched in years. It’s a little disturbing — in the “found a $20 in the jacket I haven’t worn since last autumn” way, not the “i’m holding a bloody condom, an icepick, twenty Viagra, and a crack pipe that’s still warm, but I can’t recall the last forty minutes or my daughter’s name” way.

See, that last part? The funny part that’s reasonably indicative of my humor? That took me twenty minutes to put together into coherent English.

Thank god for Bree, screaming at me when I mention needing a cigarette. Tough love, kids, is where it’s at with addicts. We don’t fuck around, and neither should you. She emails me:

You can get through this, you know. You’re a tough cookie.

And I know this. It’s a point of pride for me, that I’ve made it through everything I have in my life and emerged relatively unscathed. But it’s nice to hear it from her. Because from my point of view, I’m not a tough cookie in her eyes. I’m a whiny little bitch — I swear, that’s all she ever hears. Richard’ll probably back her up on that (if you do, son, I know where you live…). But it helps. Every little thing does.

I do wonder how long this sort of thing is going to last. I can handle the cravings — hey, ADD is good for that, at least. And I haven’t really felt physically ill since yesterday morning (although any day now, I understand that I should begin coughing up large chunks of things that people thought we lost forever, like my left and right lungs and perhaps even archival footage from some Disney cutting room floor) — I’m certainly glad to be let down over that expectation. But this brain fuzz — it’s like my head has turned into some sort of echo chamber with laser light show and Expressionist painting generator, and while that might be entertaining to watch (and admittedly live in), it makes functioning rather difficult.

Almost difficult enough to break my rule about trapping myself under the weight of psyche meds. But not quite.

As long as I can get some writing done here and there, and pull it together long enough to do the occasional bit of intense work, I think it’ll be okay. But only for another week, tops. After that, I’m going back to smoking the meth. Because who among you can honestly say that you would rather have a handsome set of choppers and all your hair over the ability to string a few words together?

This is some brilliant stuff — little people and desserts.

No, not those little people. Everyone knows they’re called mini-men.

Too many complaints about how sweet and nostalgic I’ve been lately have led me to think back upon what brought me down this road to who and what I am today. It’s not a particularly exciting tale, for the most part, but one worth sharing, perhaps in the hope that someone out there might glean from my story a bit of useful wisdom.

I was brought into this world in the fall - November 4, to be precise, 1383. It was a hard time for my parents and my 17 older siblings; money was tight, the crops had been turning in poorly for the past four seasons, and my poor father had recently contracted a disfiguring (but slightly comical) round of gonorrhea from the local bathing pool. It was indeed fortunate, though, that I arrived when I did, for my birth made my immediate family eligible for Scotland’s long-forgotten “Party of 20″ lottery — which we won! Imagine the odds of actually taking home all of that money; I imagine that the McHenry’s still fume over the loss.

But wait! There’s more of Ask, and ye shall receive: the history of me, part I: turning points….

“all of the flowers
all of the flowers i gave her
she burned them
burned them”
- Type O Negative

Birmingham is a really small town. In some ways, it’s the perfect game of ‘Six Degrees’ — sooner or later, everything in this town starts connecting, a wickedly beautiful web that draws together everyone and everything in it.

There was the lawyer and musician, some twenty or so years my senior, who I met when he was a client at TapeSouth. He later went on to do a lot of work with Daniel, and it was at Daniel’s home studio that I talked to him one day about his days in California, some of which were spent building a commune — a commune that my ex-wife’s mother was living at.

There was discovering that Melissa was originally supposed to have attended RLC with me instead of her zoned high school. And even having missed each other there, finding out that we attended the state finals of Trumbauer (a high school drama competition) together. Aside from becoming my wife for a while, she’s also easily one of the most naturally gifted actresses I’ve ever met in my life, and stars in Muckfuppet.

One of favorites, though not smacking of coincidence as much, was Maria. She lived next door to Jen, after our divorce in ‘94. I moved in down the way from both of them in the spring of ‘96 (Jen and I have always remained friends — not always close, but never, thankfully, the sort of bitter enemies so many ex-couples become), and although I can’t remember how it happened, or why, Jen decided to set us up on a date.

But wait! There’s more of Nerds in Love…

Like a hero I’ve always seen you even though I would never say
And through the years, the laughter and the tears,
it’s you who were strong in the right and the wrong -
a tribute to the world that blood is thicker than water.
-Steve Vai, Brother

This is James, although you might find it easier to refer to him as The Dairy Queen. I do. I’m not entirely sure why that is, but it makes me chuckle, and I think it might you, as well.

I have other pictures of him that are probably horrifically embarrassing. For twenty dollars, I’ll send them to you. Copies, of course. They say a picture is worth a thousand dollars, and I’ve got bills to pay, baby.

But wait! There’s more of He Ain’t Heavy. He’s My Brother. But one day he will be huge….