It was Covid and I was sick again. 5 years ago, I was battling a nasty case of psychosis. My family and I had moved into a split level in Walworth County Wisconsin. The 6 of us crammed into a 3-bedroom home on the southside of the lake. The faux wood floors complemented the vinyl siding and cream-colored paint crawled up the other half of the walls. The exterior was reminiscent of most midwestern split-level homes built in the 70’s. But my idea of the standard middle American home might be different. I’ve heard that Midwesterners assume that everywhere is just like home.
I was staying on the bottom floor; it was large enough to hold a twin bed and my teal futon. It was bought from Ikea and assembled the same day by my sister and I. And when I dropped out, I told her it was because tuition was too high. And I told other people all sorts of things; the truth is something didn’t feel right. That’s how I make most of my decisions. I tend to just feel them out. Like the decision I made, the one to return to the deli, that felt right.
I was working in a Jewel-Osco just over the border in Illinois that summer, and was for the most part unbothered by Covid. We had a pretty standard deli uniform. A black jacket, pants and non-slip shoes. I loved the chefs’ jacket; it fell just short of my unfinished tattoos and just over the top of my grey or navy corduroy floods. The chicken blood never washed out and it stained them a shade of maroon. My sneakers weren’t non-slips; I wore a pair of blacked-out converse that my dog would eat scraps off when I got home. And when I got home, I had a routine; routines help. I’d smoke weed a bit before turning on The Midnight Gospel created by Duncan Trussell or turn on a YouTube video about aliens and psychics or psychic aliens.
I can’t tell which fueled my undoing faster, the weed or trying to learn about the esoteric. The nonsensical is attractive to people trying to escape their own lives. It’s almost as attractive as philosophy for those same reasons. I don’t know if Camus was right but trying to live a meaningful life is nonsensical. Maybe just as nonsensical as the esoteric. However, something still doesn’t sit right with me; I think Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch is a good example of the crisis in Philosophy. The movie is a series of vignettes critiquing art, narrative, revolution, subjectivity, almost everything. It attempts to demonstrate rebellion against an apparent meaninglessness throughout the series of vignettes.
The whole thing feels oxymoronic; Anderson attempted to construct a meta-narrative about struggle, with the closing newspaper, the death of a rebel and a painter who can’t contend with the creation of something deemed valuable. Anderson thoroughly explains that meaning is not in the end result of that search but in the struggle itself. But the movie comes across as a platitude; his stylistic choices make struggle seem effortless. It is not in fact as effortless as Anderson depicts it to be.
I’m glad Hollywood tried something new but it’s a hard movie to watch. The French Dispatch’s attempts to tackle nuance with grace come across as vain and confusing. Grappling with subjectivity in a space where directors are brands and their audiences a solid investment doesn’t tell me anything to me other than Wes Anderson has no imagination. I feel bad that he probably feels the dissolution of his own subjectivity; I know it’s a painful experience. But we don’t need a rehashing of the postmodern, we need an imagination of the future. Like the tangible things we can do, driving for local mutual aid networks or god forbid universal healthcare. We cannot define the future only a past we do not want to repeat.
And you’d think that after 2 previous bouts with psychosis I would’ve learned my lesson. Maybe I would’ve stopped smoking weed or begun taking medication. Nope. I sat on the teal futon with a dab pen in one hand and half a mind in the other. The other half was hallucinating. I don’t really know how to explain my hallucinations. They were never like in front of me. Maybe they existed on some other plane of being.
Just to demonstrate, I’d like you to imagine an apple. What popped into your mind’s eye? Maybe a red apple, a grayscale apple or no apple? There’s medical terminology to explain the difference. Some people have aphantasia, or the absence of internal visualization. The only way to describe my hallucinations was hyper-phantasia on steroids. As if someone was showing me something. And that something was me in another life. Maybe the afterlife.
From a thin green window in my mind, I saw myself perched on a curb, with cop lights flashing as someone was clearly talking to me and I was wearing my work uniform. The corduroy pants illuminated in blue, red and the warm glow of a street lamp. I noticed myself as he noticed me, the recognition on his face will never escape me. I still know he was about to point at me as if the cops with their boots firmly planted on the ground would be able to see me too. Like I was some evidence of an alternate reality. I can’t explain it but there was a knowing.
His face doesn’t remind me of myself anymore, my cheeks have filled in and my knees don’t look like they might snap. My tattoos are covered up or colored in and I have bags under my eyes from someone who will take time out of there night to smoke a square but won’t call their friends often enough. I still have the car and the corduroys stained a different shade of maroon and the memories of sitting on a balcony in the City of Chicago, wondering why people jump.
And I will never forget the process of coming down from a place that high was a pain akin to a leap of faith. Long sleepless nights in motels and mirrors playing tricks on me. I would stand with a mirror to my front and one to my back as my consciousness dissolved both directions. It’s only the type of circular logic that happens when infinity and a certain stubborn kind of stupidity start to loop back around. I still can’t listen to Bummerland by AJR, I’m not entirely sure why I like the song. And I can’t tell you why I still love corduroys. 4 months of jagged memories later and I found myself admitted to a residential treatment facility. It was another 6 months of treatment before I admitted that I needed help. Even though I don’t have visions, that search for meaning still haunts me.
Things felt right when I thought I might own a house someday. A split-level with old carpeting that had greyed. And maybe one day with grey hair I’d be able to look out at a lawn wondering what I’d forgotten about my youth. The only reason I’m still looking for meaning is because I can’t imagine a better future. So maybe someday in the next life I’ll find myself surrounded by cops, under a yellow street lamp, with blue and red flashing lights, probably screaming about how everything’s collapsing around us.