I haven’t needed sleep in a few endless nights and days. I am doing an art project. Something that feels very self worthy. This is a shrine I am making to my old self before I lost every bit of the identity. I am having all these mini funerals to honor who I was. I must be waking up again as a new form of entity. I have woken up many times in a new persona from my past or future in another layer of the dream world. I have been depressed and self protective/loathing for 3-4 months since going homeless and being taken in. This week and a half I must be all the way past dead and beyond. I was going through my chaotic and disorganized computer files on my laptop. So many projects and notes that are half done or have no trace of congruence to anything I can remember. Feeling like trash. Terror trash. I can’t wake up.
Then I find an alternate operating system in my hard drive. I boot up with it. It is pristine and clear. So carefully configured. So meticulously customized. My old Linux set up from before the breaking point. All my files are nice… On the surface… as I dig. I find archives of truncated data tables. Hoards of salvaged partially glitched images from data recovery of broken adolescent childhood. The deeper I dig, the more hidden chaos I uncover from the past. I was always hiding this madness. But I’ve always been brilliant too? Why did I stop eating. Why did I become paralyzed? Why did I both see and feel aliens remove my internal organs while I was crippled with doom and simultaneously saw and felt nothing? What happened to me?
Now I’m beyond the grave danger I faced in death. I wake up alive, but it’s not breezes and air. It’s my mirror. My shadow I must fetch my shadow. I feared this would be me today. I knew since toddler days the rays of light I saw were also particles and sounds. I knew I’d be smelly and alone. I knew I’d be a wanderer in a cave of mind. I knew I’d walk the line between good and evil. Waking dreams told me everything I needed to know.
Long story I know. Can’t make an ark without a backdrop. I was once a computer website technician. Self taught (self aware universe.) And I did good things. I was 16. I had escaped foster home. I left school. I completed my diploma through the mail. A friend’s older brother helped me get in with a job working on websites. I thought it was a joke. I had made flash games about my friends and put them on a geocities webpage with ms paint and photoshoped stalk photo comics. That was my resume. I was obsessed with skateboarding and computers and drawing. 6 years later I was still the only person who knew how this company’s software and web servers worked. I was also the in-house graphic designer, print maker, and lead phone tech support. I was eventually paid 50 cents over minimum wage. I was obsessive compulsive about the jobs I had at work. I’d stay all night sometimes. Fixing every bug and writing tutorials to train new employees. I did not know any programming languages. I just KNEW how to follow patterns and logic and what to do. I spent hours after work reading blogs about work related topics having no clue what I was learning but soaking it in anyway. I hated my life. I quit. They didn’t believe me.
Then she killed me. The first time. First “Love” is the shattering of psyche. Not since the violent war days in the hell of my young childhood did I hurt so much. She could touch me and burn me alive. I’d die with her. I’d do anything. I met her and blasted my brains out. She wouldn’t take no for an answer. She stole me. Tossed me about for 2 or 3 years and I had to end my life to leave. While I was falling for this trap I set out for knowledge and challenge. I studied physiology, biology, anatomy and kinetics. I became what I thought was a healer and a structural body worker. Licensed Massage Therapist. I thought this would lead me to be humble, gentle, yet honored and respected as an artist of a science. I went into debt which I still fail to completely pay back today.
This became my new persona for nearly 7 years on and off at 3 locations of work. I served hundreds of thousands of sick people. I spoke with detached empathy and non judgmental presence. For 5-9 Hour days or nights or weekends. My schedule was never regular. I worked for the worst companies that paid me like a slave. I tried to work on my own but couldn’t afford the start up resources and couldn’t keep consistent income. I became somewhat of a psychotherapist and a physical therapist. I did everything I possibly could do to provide education, and healing to every one of those people. I was becoming them. I was seeing things. I had so many visions and extra sensory input that I had to make use of. I would find myself embalming the dead in a tomb. I would be sending them off to sea in caskets. They would thank me for the most relaxing and therapeutic 2 hours of their life and leave. I was dying. I cut back on work. In year 7 of this persona I met with a new age type therapist who my mind told me was a sorcerer for 6 months in which we spent sessions of time leaving our bodies and uncovering truth burred in the past. I received many visions and out of body experiences and became a totally different person. I can’t begin to describe the things I saw and experienced. Now is not the time.
Since then,
Things ended badly 2 more times with work and partners in love.
Many little things lead up to to great shifts. Many details are revisited as we spiral outward on our journey toward our last death.
I am making sure not to leave the lights behind me.
I don’t know who I am right now. I’m in the middle of another transformation.
I have pursued my heart’s dreams and acted out symbolically the web of my soul’s story.
I have been a performance artist my whole single life. I have died thousands of times, not, in the physical literal sense, but an ego death, a mental breakdown, a dismemberment.
I have no hard clues. I make up the game as I go. I am working on a making a personal expression website. Re-learning my old knowledge of esoteric computer commands. coding it in a txt editor like the old days. It is digital sorcery.
I’d like to share some images I found recently that were lost bits of artwork from the time period while I was leaving my digital tech life and going through school to learn physical healing.
They have secrets. I don’t know any of them. All I can do is make a website and upload the things I find. For now. I may have another future in the information age. I know it’s the apocalypse we are seeing today. I know there is destruction and genocide going on now. I know the only beauty in life is truth. I know the artist’s role is to tell the truth.
Maybe this will share an emotion.