cotton candy

The last thing i want you to think is that my life and work is like cotton candy, saccharin and schmaltzy, that everything worked out just fine.

A critic might say that I tell my story in a way that is excessively sentimental, gushing, or over-the-top emotional, and it all gets pieced together in the end, and does so perfectly in a way that is unbearably unbelievable. Even more, it is a sacreligious attempt to be Christ-like, bla bla bla, heaven this, heaven that. And then, I tell people to “serve” in the way that I do, even though it is totally unclear how to measure up to the model that I think everyone should model themselves after. Walkfor.world? How does one even begin to do that on such a grandiose scale?,Or if it is on a local level, is it ever enough?

I am sweet, yes, saccharin even. I can definitely be schmaltzy, but I am also dark, and if you want dark, I will give it to you…I just can’t stand someone calling me fake sugar.

I hope I cause Western civilization to have a nervous breakdown. That is a dark imagining that I keep in my back pocket as motivation, harnessed and ready to shoot off to the anonymous masses.

I know, I know, you are so tired of me talking about suicide, suicide this, suicide that, but I have to tell you that my life is not saccharin or schmaltzy. I’m not operating in hea7en2, blissed out like I am permanently on heroin. Heaven is a matter of perception, and I’m not seeing it most of the time–to be honest.

I have these feelings.

I feel like in the next ten minutes I will fill up a tub, get a knife from the kitchen, slice twice, and watch it turn scarlet. Sounds pretty basic? It’s terrifying. More than feeling like I am throwing away my own life, I feel in the passive voice that my life is being thrown away by a force I cannot contend with. I feel so small and infinitesimal in those moments of total nervous breakdown. Sometimes, the feeling and situation presents itself as an offer I cannot refuse. This isn’t new. I have been dealing with these feelings for some time now. It doesn’t go away. Suicidal ideations are a constant battle for me, is that sweet enough? These ideations became serious attempts four distinct times, so ideations to me are seriously scary, not just bad thoughts.

This carnival includes a rollercoaster and even though the zigzagging tracks guide the passengers through their experience of terror, and having controlled and channeled their fears, the carnival delivers them safely back to the entrance intact and ready to go again.

My life is a mystical rollercoaster (but I don’t want to go again!). The mystical rollercoaster and the divine eye book that tells the story of Peter’s life…I am deeply sorry if it comes off as saccharin and schmaltzy, excessively sentimental, gushing, or over-the-top emotional. But there’s nothing sweet or sentimental about nervous breakdowns, and even if I bounced back, deep down for me, it was not a happy ride, and I don’t want to go again!

I refer you to all those moments when I carried the mental burden of the “suffering of the world”. Over-the-top emotional? That’s what pushed me over the top. For me, it was not a tremendous accomplishment to jump for world, or something ludicrous like that. Have I retrospectively weaved this event into a story of heroism that can be described as “gushing”? Gushing is a good word to describe the overflowing pain within my mind, and if it seems exaggerated it is because you didn’t imagine it, you cannot suspend your disbelief because your range is so narrow.

“Sour hour” or “happy hour” or a real cocktail mixture of the two? I would like to prove to you that my work is not just happy, full of fake sugar, and fake sentimentality, with something really “unsweetened” that has no happy ending, and doesn’t make me look good, if only to prove to you that I am not full of myself, full of fake sugar.

I live with my parents, I don’t have a car, I don’t have a job, I have just a few friends, I am pre-diabetic, I have almost no money besides welfare (…I live with my parents), I am trying to learn Spanish, but am really bad at it, I’m impatient with my grandmother who is 98, I have scared away a lot of people who I care about, not much on the horizon besides a visit from my brother and his kids, I miss my wife, I miss Purity, I think what could have been, and I drink too much (everyday). I love my mama, I love my dad, i love my brother, i love my grandmother, my cousins, aunts and uncles, i love my nephews and niece, but these days my love is limited in this way–to them.

Not much of a hero these days, but ready to turn it on, patiently waiting.

You’re right, I have tried to turn lemons into sickeningly sweet lemonade, but that is the only thing I can do to heal the physical and mental pain I have suffered through.

I tried to tell a story. I attempted to piece together the events of my life honestly in a way that would make sense to a general audience. For the sake of the story, sometimes I exaggerated, sometimes in a way that made me look good, but also in ways that made me look worse than what actually happened. The vast majority of the time the story captured the actual truth, the stark reality that transpired. Of course, that comes from my limited perspective.

My journey through madness was experienced with radical subjectivity and a certain objectivity at the same time. There are so many examples I could point to, but I don’t want you to think I have cherrypicked one…and to make it dark because the light for you is too schmaltzy.

I was in Baton Rouge staying with my parents after living for several months in Barcelona writing the first two parts of the ‘story’. I was buying spectacles at the Mall of Louisiana, observing this particular epicenter of America. I saw and imagined what was in store for these largely overweight, exorbitant consumers buying buying buying in a capitalistic world, all of them privileged compared to most.

I’ve never shared this and i Don’t know why, but it seems relevant somehow. I was coming home from the mall in the shiny new nissan infinity car my wealthy aunt gifted me, and I found myself at a red light (you know how much I hate red lights). This red light was situated near a massive police station. In this situation I burned rubber as I accelerated through that little light of hellfire (red) just in time to make it all the way through the intersection before it turned green. I did not attract any attention from the police, thankfully, and i Don’t know what I would have done. Police chase? Maybe so, I was ready for anything at that stage.

You see, that could have been a source of pride, a little saccharin to weave into my fabulous but unrealistic tall tale. If I was intent on bragging surely I would have included this act–willing to disturb a hornet’s nest of policemen. I do a lot of self-blaming for the red light in Louisville, Kentucky that I didn’t pass through. Here is an unlocked example of how I actually carried out the same phenomenal action when I was charged to the fullest at a different part of the journey. Here too, I intentionally challenged the police. I never gave myself credit for that. I didn’t add sugar to this part of the story and this is not an exagerration.

Having avoided the police, I drove at wild speeds back to my home, I was on autopilot. I went home, fixed myself a cheese quesadilla (not a burrito or a hamburger, but a quesadilla!)…grabbed a butch knife from the kitchen and settled into the bath that was already halfway full…and you’ll have to take my word for it (or not…see below) but I sliced like a butcher chopping meat, twice on the left, once on the right. Not a little incision, but rearing back–slashed and slit.

I was ready to die. I felt no fear. I had the courage of a soldier going blindly into battle, willing to die for something greater. I realized when the water had turned dark scarlet, that I didn’t have to die, I had to make an agreement to myself and to GOd. There would be light and there would be dark, and if I was to get out of the bathtub I would knowingly walk with peace, but also endure great darkness, pain, and suffering. I got a choice. Life with all its trappings or death and the absence of pain. I thought about it and agreed. I felt no sense of relief, I was willing to get in the tub and I was willing to get out of it knowing that the darkness would be all-consuming in many moments of suffering to come.

That has turned out to be true. Just a few days ago I thought I wouldn’t make it through the night, that GOd would give me an offer that I could not refuse. The pain felt so deep that there was only one way to overcome it, I could only choose oblivion over absolute suffering.It felt like no choice.

I don’t think I portrayed these moments so graphically anywhere else in the writings.

You don’t like the saccharin and schmaltzy of my story? Here I give you the sour, the stark reality of my mental and physical pain. It did not make sense to include all these details because ultimately it is quite depressing. I tried to balance truth and inspiration, white and black, light and dark. Admittedly, the balance wavers in places, sometimes a little less truth and little more inspiration, a little more white and less black.

I face the challenge of taking my own radical subjectivity and making it as objective as possible. I think this whole issue will be less important soon as something as simple as a photograph will record the ‘truth’ and ‘objectivity’ of the events that I describe.

But as proof you can find my scars in other places, and one must know from reading the ‘story’ that I couldn’t have possibly made it all up. I have heard someone say that it is a story that will make you believe in GOd. If it is successful in achieving this transcendent kind of spiritual transformation it is because it resonates as ‘truth’ in one way or another.

If I did make any of it up it was to express how it was felt by me at that moment in time, bending truth because the reality was inconceivable or easily misunderstood. The things I carried within me were actually darker than I could possibly express. A coherent, forward-looking, and progressive narrative did require a little sugar.

.ME

I am a flawed human animal. I am a flawed judge of reality. I am flawed spirit–with an indirect connection to you, to yours, and to GOd. I hope you are encouraged by a walk for the world, but not discouraged about how difficult the task of serving something greater actually is. Heaven and hell. I hope I do both extremes justice, I hope if you balance it all out there is a little more light than darkness. Finally, I’m disappointed that it all feels like fake sugar and over-sentimentality. I kind of took pride in how dark I can be, but I get that even the bad bits got wrapped up into a narrative with an ending that feels like a birthday cake.

The birthday cake has three layers of ice cream, vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate, and in preparation for the big day, it was put in the large refrigeration overnight. Come birthday the next day it was taken out and tragically it was frozen solid and couldn’t be cut. It was my birthday and I still remember the disappointment. I think I burst into tears.

A lesson to be learned: this world is frozen solid and we cannot enjoy it until it completely defrosts.

That is my answer to your criticisms: you are right, especially at this moment, I am saccharin right now, and that is indeed premature.

There is too much sweetness in the ‘story’. Life is sour, serious, and tragically real. Some layers of ice cream defrost faster than others. Until the cake is completely unfrozen there won’t be a happy ending for any of us. Unless we make it happen, there will be too much sugar and we won’t be motivated to do the hard stuff. It is the world’s birthday and until everyone gets a piece of the birthday cake everything will not work out just fine. If I told my story in a way that is excessively sentimental, gushing, or over-the-top emotional, and it all gets pieced together in the end, and does so perfectly in a way that is unbearably unbelievable. Even more, it is an attempt to be Christ-like, bla bla bla, heaven this, heaven that…

Then, put the book down, and get to work.

PS.

If you don’t like sweet things the story will probably not amount to much, and it may seem like none of it is urgent, timely, or pressing because it hasn’t even started yet, it was impossible to begin with. But even the fiercest cynics could not totally dampen the small fire that has been lit, but I do understand your reservations.

Personally, I think it is important to read my story. I hope that people will open their minds to a new perspective, and when we do this together it will be more than a book, it will be a ritual. A ritual is something we can practice and do together, a story we tell and retell around the ancient campfires where fire was first invented.

The Internet will be the fire and we will come together to harness it in a way that includes more than excludes, that encourages more than discourages. Everybody is entitled to their own version of the tale that they can share with the people they love and the people they don’t but who need to hear the story just as much. This is not a slow classic for the ages, this comes hot and fast albeit clumsily, and it is relevant now! We need to collectively invest ourselves in the story at the same time for any of it to work.

I have laid bare my vulnerabilities, the inner recesses of my mind, the darkside, and admittedly I am indeed very flawed, perhaps not the hero you thought I was. My life was a story. I didn’t write the story. I lived the story and I wasn’t even aware that it was happening, not beyond the steps toward peace that I climbed one by one. But I kept falling backwards and that was part of the story. I don’t want to be a sugarcoated protagonist that saves the world. That story has been told in a multitude of ways. Just think of me as an example, God made an example out of me, and the purpose is to learn from our failures and strive for what we are all capable of…love. It is love that is urgent, timely, and pressing, and only you can imagine how to carry that out.

If you have a better orientation and attitude to the world and a stellar new take on love, then, put the book down, and get to work.

https://allforall.work

jlOr give it another chance and bring to bear and share all of your valuable opinions:

…this is not saccharin. Just one more hint of darkness to combat your sour attitude towards an unintended sweetened story. Sometimes I feel bat shit crazy. I feel like a mental patient unleashed into the world with no conception of reality. I want to connect to other people, I want to connect to God, but all I feel is that I am caught in a web of insanity that doesn’t make sense. It seems I have based my life on something that is intangible and scattered. I feel like I have permanently wrecked my mind, and far from insight or perspective, I feel crazy. I go to group therapy and I feel like I am crazier than all of those mentally ill people combined. I wonder if I have schizophrenia, or at the very least, schitzo-affective disorder, but I can’t outthink those categories. If a moment of insight comes and I fully realize the insanity, I will descend into the fog once more, it is a state of mind that is quite frankly terrifying…my brain doesn’t work! Please God help me. You are the only one who can offer me respite from my profound confusion. I know that you, God, are there for the meek above all others. I take refuge in that. Should I have gone into that much detail in a story that is above all, a celebration of humanity? It is too sad. You bring out the sadness in me, if only to disapprove of your blase and emotionless commentary. Your response to the portrayal of my story as saccharin and schmaltzy is an underestimate of how dark it gets around here. My current state of affairs are not in order. I am barely holding on just as everyone else. This is just the beginning…if you want I can make it darker, or not, it will come quite naturally. The world is quite dark and getting darker and chaos ensues. Born with a silver spoon in your mouth, I bet your life is a spoonful of sugar. If you really claim to want something real and raw, what is it that you are really asking for and why? A respite from the cotton candy you are eating with guilt like your life is made of pure sweet air. Maybe that’s where your critique comes from…maybe your life is saccharin and schmaltzy? And you want something deeper, more profound, something unsentimental, all emotions restrained? Don’t wait for me, check out the world and be in the here and now. It is plenty dark, isn’t it? So don’t ask me to make it any darker than it already is.

Should I have gone into that much detail in a story that is above all, a celebration of humanity? It is too sad. You bring out the sadness in me, if only to disapprove of your blase and emotionless commentary. Your response to the portrayal of my story as saccharin and schmaltzy is an underestimate of how dark it gets around here. My current state of affairs are not in order. I am barely holding on just as everyone else.

This is just the beginning…if you want I can make it darker, or not, it will come quite naturally. The world is quite dark and getting darker and chaos ensues. Born with a silver spoon in your mouth, I bet your life is a spoonful of sugar. If you really claim to want something real and raw, what is it that you are really asking for and why? A respite from the cotton candy you are eating with guilt like your life is made of pure sweet air. Maybe that’s where your critique comes from…maybe your life is saccharin and schmaltzy? And you want something deeper, more profound, something unsentimental, all emotions restrained?

Don’t wait for me, check out the world and be in the here and now. It is plenty dark, isn’t it? So don’t ask me to make it any darker than it already is.

Sometimes I feel bat shit crazy. I feel like a mental patient unleashed into the world with no conception of reality. I want to connect to other people, I want to connect to God, but all I feel is that I am caught in a web of insanity that doesn’t make sense. It seems I have based my life on something that is intangible and scattered. I feel like I have permanently wrecked my mind, and far from insight or perspective, I feel crazy. I go to group therapy and I feel like I am crazier than all of those mentally ill people combined. I wonder if I have schizophrenia, or at the very least, schitzo-affective disorder, but I can’t outthink those categories. If a moment of insight comes and I fully realize the insanity, I will descend into the fog once more, it is a state of mind that is quite frankly terrifying…my brain doesn’t work! Please God help me. You are the only one who can offer me respite from my profound confusion. I know that you, God, are there for the meek above all others. I take refuge in that.

Don’t wait for me, check out the world and be in the here and now. It is plenty dark, isn’t it? So don’t ask me to make it any darker than it already is.