In Mexico, they call it Subirse el Muerto, “Dead person on you”

by duncapher

I walked with the dogs around the pond and I took pictures of all the last bees and the butterflies. The weather is changing and the bees are disappearing. But on nice days, on days like this, sometimes they come out again, and they tend to the flowers, the few flowers left out in the cold, tougher than the early frost. Just last week, worlds were changing – and now they’ve all changed back again. Where will they be, next week? Where will I be, again? I have been there before, wherever it is. Unless it is somewhere new. I am not sure I should like to try new things, not anymore. I am not sure I am built for it.

I try to keep the material world material. I try to keep an eye on my things, to count up and admire my things, because it is good to like things, it is good to like what you have, if you have anything, and it is too easy not to like it at all. I try to be happy that I have a gun, and I try to sleep with it under my pillow, and I try to walk around my house with it loaded in the middle of the night, in my slippers and underwear, acting like a little boy. I try to read the books, and I try to play my instruments, and I try to watch my gigantic televisions – I try to do the things I love, and to love them while I do it. I try to appreciate my pictures, my curtains, my comforts, my toys. But I am shitty at it! I would be a master of the material world, if I could keep it all material – but it slips from me, or I from it, into a plane ethereal, immaterial selves. I see time pass; my failures. My successes slip by my peripherals; I hardly knew them.

What next, I ask. What next. How about the Parthenon? I light a match on my grafts of my ankle and light my crooked cigarette. It is bent. I tell myself it still works. But it doesn’t. Something doesn’t pull just right; something’s funny in the drag.

Let’s talk about the presence of evil. I have been in the presence of evil – and it was terrifying. Two years ago I woke up from a twisted dream into a pale and twisting blackness. I was lucid, my thoughts marbleized like marbleized streams of ash and oil. I could not move. I did not know if I was breathing. I did not know anything at all, except that I was awake, still alive, and there in my room, or some place like my room, held down, or not held down, but unable to move. Unable to think of the motion of move, the meaning, the notion. Total blankness – paralysis. But it didn’t feel like paralysis. It felt consummate, and in a way – evil. There was an evil in the room. I was breathed on by a vacuous blackness of pure evil. It was on top of me; I could not feel it, not through nerves – but through the cold, direct presence of reality. Other realities. A great and terrible evil, personal and strange-faced, wickedly whole. I could not scream, nor would I; I was beyond all screaming. Flight and fight are reconciled, everything is shackled and pushed to the back of the closet; darkness reigns; screams of fire turns to steam, slowly pressurizing. I could not blink; I could not run; I could not fight it off, face to face with it, exposed and freezing cold, basted in a sweat and bloating. It was pure evil; I wanted it off of me. I wanted to be left alone. Leave me, leave me please, I cried, I prayed, I demanded, screaming, spitting blood, if I could spit blood, if blood moved within me; blood, it did not rise. I remember praying fiercely, or willing with all of my will to be done with it, to be through with this evil, to overcome – or to be overcome. I was white and dying. Something was killing me. Something closed in on my throat; dust settled into my eyes. I said to it – Ah! Ah! but nothing slipped past my lips, my pale and frozen lips, not even dust, not even a warmth.

Soon I was absconded from the presence of evil, I do not know how, and I was coming to consciousness, the sun in the sky, as though life were anything normal.

It was the most ridiculous thing, the most absurd and peculiar thing in the world, and I tried not to take it seriously, to even doubt that it happened. I let myself know it was nothing, not even a nightmare. It was barely a dream. I let the matter go. But somehow I was changed from it, because somehow, though disbelieving the whole incident, I still believed in evil. That is – I found myself believing in evil. It was as though I had known it forever. It was there, deep-seated, not there, promiscuous, unclear. It seemed obvious, dramatic, and something to be respected, something to keep secrets with. I felt a thin layer of numbness under my skin, seeping inward. I knew about evil. How did I know? I couldn’t account for it. But I knew about evil. But no, it was not knowledge. It was something prime – indefinable.

And then one day I read somewhere about sleep paralysis. Sleep paralysis! Was that what had happened to me, one night? How cheap! How insignificant! And how regular. I didn’t think it was sleep paralysis. But it was sleep paralysis, and it is not uncommon. And though known in the west by its sterilized name paralysis, the rest of the world knows it as something more terrible. It is known as the substance of evil. I was surprised to read about evil, about my own evil, well-known – in fact, known the world over, and for all of human history. The Old Hag, the demonic visitation; Incubi, pressed on our chests; Mara, the mare, the succubus, too; the voice of Satan, the old Djinn, itself; the ghost on the bed, kanashibari, shaman of the Black; am I, then, a shaman of the Black? Because I have experienced blackness, and I overcame it, and now I know wholly the depths of the black.

So that is it, then! I was not alone. I was simply suffering from an instance of sleep paralysis.  I was simply being held down by ghosts! Yes – the presence of evil. So that was at all – it was real, then.

Well, what now? So I have known evil. Who hasn’t, after all? But yes – sleep paralysis – that is what is meant by a Nightmare. That is what that is. I have only had one nightmare; and it was more than enough for me. I may not survive another one.

What next? The city is asleep tonight. I am reading H.L. Mencken. I like Mencken, because he knows the truth about New York City – that it is, that it is dreadful. Him, the little boy from Maryland. Yes – Mencken was onto something. I am onto it, too. I am too clever to be caught up in such lousy delusions. I know what is good in the world, and I know where to find it; in the place where I cultivate it, where it cultivates itself; the home in the country. That is, in a garden, where one cultivates gardens… Country boys. Yes – such is beauty. Such is the state of the world as we live it – and it is quite viable. Such is perfection, subtle in grandeur, though pure.

It was in my bed in the vale of the country, here in the very same bed that I sleep in at night, where I had my nightmare – and it is where I overcame it. I am overcome for it. The south – it overcomes you. You feel it, or you die without it. You die in a city, deluded, unwell. You die in the presence of evil or without it; but it kills you, nonetheless.

I don’t mean that. I like the city. I live in a city myself. Well, I don’t. But I have, and I would, if I wanted to. But I don’t want to. So I guess that I do mean it, after all. Well – I don’t mean all this talk about evil, about death. No, there isn’t such thing as evil, not really. It’s just a phenomena, a symptom of the clinical curiousity “sleep paralysis.”  Nothing to worry about – move along now. That’s all alien abductions are, too. Hallucinations during sleep paralysis. And medieval witches. Sleep paralysis – it explains away the world!

Terrapin soup comes to mind – Mencken loved his terrapin soup. If only Maryland were the place it was some hundred years ago – that would be something. I’d go eat terrapin soup, too. I’d probably settle down for the rest of my life, contented so. I’d probably eat more pears and cheese, or if I didn’t, I would not feel bad that I didn’t. I’d probably get pretty drunk, and I probably wouldn’t break my spine on the roof of a car.