how can i define a state of which i was once so afraid? i read everything i could about it, fearing i'd go off the deep-end, especially in college when i felt so alienated from my body. i'd look at my naked self in the mirror and be appalled! i still find it odd i'm so much an animal (blood, flesh, and bone) with a consciousness that flits about the universe like a butterfly.
i have had a few insights into the loss of control. for example, an adult acting like a four-year old, dancing, singing, sticking her hands in a potted plant and throwing dirt all over the place, that's exactly what insanity can look like. catatonia another matter, the stillness of the dead. and a child running out of the hospital into the street terrified, the input of stimulae way over the top.
apparently i get 4 billion items of information hitting my eyes every second, and i can manage forty. i need a screen to be able to cope. every successful person seems to be able to meditate or walk themselves out of this level of stress. i don't know why some people can't. it takes a certain amount of self-discipline and a presence of mind for me to land on my feet after a set-back.
i remember sliding off the road driving down the mountain in the rain. recently logging made the surface slip as ice. barely able to maintain control, i steered my vw bus into a stump, keeping from rolling over. but i was stuck, over two miles from town, night coming on. in this day before cellphones i had to make a quick decision. my brain focused and i realized i'd better walk to town and call a tow truck.
what struck me at the time was how fast my brain worked. usually i have a terrible time making decisions. however, i came almost instantly to a conclusion. i realized i must have reserves to call upon in an emergency. had i been mad i can't imagine what would have happened. growing old enough, i realize most people's personalities don't change unless they've been brain damaged.
how much trauma do people need to go off the rails? a serial-killer lacks empathy, and a truly insane person can't identify with anyone but his or her self. to be encapsulated in a totally private world seems to be one symptom of craziness. and when it comes to democracy, i shouldn't be surprised of those devoted to cruelty in the last election.
americans live in fear of losing their jobs, if not their minds. and any threat from a foreign body feels like an illness. push this far enough, and you have a population on the edge of madness. the great irony, of course, is babies are a form of mass immigration and those fearing foreigners may populate themselves out of house and home.
and now, can we define sanity? i suppose it means realizing i do nothing on my own. thousands have created and run this airplane in which i hover over the earth. and without a certain logic i'd never get where i'm going. in dreams i give up control while my body actually paralyzed so it won't sleep-walk. and if i acted out my dreams, where would i be then? alone?
