No Off Switch

I wrote but did not post a piece called Bifurcosity about my life’s work rolling its anthropomorphic eyes at me. It started like this:

When I first openly admitted I was dual natured, I was told the proper word was nonbinary. I later discovered the term Two Spirit, but was told using it appropriated indigenous culture. The Indian/Hindu Sanskrit term for third gender, tritiya-prakriti, pretty much nails how I feel, but it non-lightly trips from my lips.

So I’ve been thinking back to when I first met the word Bifurcated. We immediately took to each other; we understood where the other was coming from, as folk used to say back in the ‘60s, a match made in literary Valhalla. For I am indeed bifurcated in all things manifest, intellectual, psychological, and metaphysical. Forked, divided, gone off in two different directions, simultaneously traveling both the road more and less taken. Hence, I cannot not see both sides of an argument, especially between men and women. Ditto possibilities and potentialities, sensibilities and sensitivities.

I mentioned my “Don’t be fragile. Never let yourself be fragile” internal mantra in a recent Turtle Musing. More than a mantra, it’s actually a creed, for fragility leads to vulnerability, vulnerability to self-doubt, and self-doubt to dumbasfuck thought patterns, decisions, and subsequent actions, none of which is likely to generate a positive outcome. And yet... my birfurcosity can imagine a fantabulous result from its 30,000-foot-high perspective. So let me state this for the record and to remind myself one more time: that expansive, skyborne view comes at a cost I am not prepared to pay... at least not when I’m in my earth-bound mind.

All of which testifies to the fact that I don’t do life right and never have. Admitting such a thing aloud brings more corrections, of course, but that’s only because said guardians-of-all-that’s-right-and-good are grounded in a reality to which I do not always have access. How many times have I said, “If only I were someone other than who I am, my life would be so different”? More than I can count, that’s for sure. And hence my current state of affairs, for as I’ve also immeasurably repeated, I am equally dumbasfuck as I am brilliant in my own teensy, tiny realm.

I also did not post a piece while I was experiencing “cardiac incidents,” as I called them, during which I was gasping for air and clutching my chest, just like in the movies. That short article went like this:

When it’s time to make a major life change, the cosmos doesn’t hold back, at least not with me. Since I received the message, “Stop cockblocking the universe,” events have conspired to remind me of a message I received back in the seventies. At some point, we must all come to terms with our abilities and responsibilities, our sexuality and our mortality.

Ergo, as I face my mortality, I want to talk to you about Ghostwriting Psych 101, life’s fundamental truth.

All humans believe their perspective is right,
their motives are pure,
their agenda is reasonable, and therefore
their actions are justified.

Realize, this doesn’t mean people don’t change or grow. Of course they do! But no matter how much they learn, whether they stop/start being a bigot, join/leave a religion, see the light/spit in the wind—whatever the case, in all cases—they will still believe their current perspective is right, their motives are pure, their agenda is reasonable, and therefore their actions, aka behaviors, are justified.

This is not especially true for those whose perspective is deity centered—it’s merely also true. Whatever the perspective, wherever we’re coming from... whoever we are, whatever we are... our heart of hearts believes we’re right. Even if our perspective is so mono/self-focused we must needs stand in the center-stage spotlight at all times. Even if we secretly know our perspective is wrong or hurtful to others. Doesn’t matter. Ghostwriting Psych 101 is unavoidable human nature.

Religious, educational, political, and psych-oriented institutions and practitioners are illogically (or perhaps purposely) dedicated to aligning people’s behaviors to fit the reigning flavor-of-the-day’s perspective. It gives them a sense purpose and an even greater sense of superiority, which people love since Ghostwriting Psych 102 recognizes that homosapiens are complex, complicated, and self-contradictory—my bifurcated self included.

All formal philosophy and scriptures aside, since our species’ dawn some people have been fodder, some herding animals, some warriors in constant search of battle, some gentle, consoling folk, and some—through sheer force of will based on their Ghostwriting Psych 101 perspective—hoarders. Owners. Stand-abovers. Legends in their own minds. And nothing can change that reality.

Nor can anything change the fact that we who are fodder are also prone to Ghostwriting Psych 101 and historically, we’re the ones who lead rebellions and revolutions.

Were life meant to be peaceful, my friends, life would not exist.

Then, a week ago today, I had a heart attack. And Kata, against my implicit demand, created a GoFundMe. I didn’t want him to pin his hopes on something I figured only seven or eight people would likely respond to. I’m not exactly a national figure. I haven’t survived a tornado or had my child get mowed down by an insane/in-pain warrior. I’m just me, a bifurcated guy trying to be a mensch, trying to help as many people as I can before I shuffle off this mortal coil. (Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1).

So when donations started coming in, I copy-and-pasted the blurb Kata wrote since I was unable to brain and barely able to breathe at the time, and sent out a few emails of my own.

The word I’m looking for is staggering. If’n I were the wee-ist bit sentimental, I’da been bawling my eyes out. But I lost the ability to cry decades ago, and I’m “not graceful, not gentle, not romantic,” as my husband once put into song. But that doesn’t mean I don’t fucking appreciate every single penny y’all contributed for my well-being. Thank you, thank you, from the bottom of my defensively cynical heart.

The one itsy bitsy fish bone I have to pick is everyone’s incessant advice to relax, take it easy, not keep pushing myself.

How do I do that? Unlike Data, I do not have a turn-off switch. Oh, my internal switch goes off every day, at which point neurological exhaustion makes me relocate from my computer to my laptop. But I only stop braining on particularly bad days. Ya know, like this last week.

But I can’t stop. I don’t know how to not brain, to not bulldoze, to not push myself to the limit, to the very edge of that precipice. So while I’m pissed as hell at how weak this stupid event has made me, I’m still putting in a few hours every day on reconfiguring GPDP for today’s students so more ghostwriters can help more people fulfill their literary dreams. It’s what I do. It’s who I am. It’s my reason for living.

So yes, I’m sleeping 15 hours a night and dosing two or three more times during the day. And I’m taking the meds I should be taking and making sure I get up and move every now and then. But I’m also here if’n you need a question answered, an issue deconstructed, or a concern addressed. It’ll just be a little bit, ya know, slower. I may run slightly out of breath. But I’m still on the right side of dirt.