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thedropkickmessage · 5 years ago

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Fisticuffs

I’m writing this not for any one person, especially that insomuch every one person that knows me thinks me insane. I can merely speculate on their thoughts of me, but with an educated guess I would think that they would consider me a madman, a drunk, or a drug addict. I am an addict, insomuch that I am chasing something with every hour of day and night, this I want them to know; but moreover I want someone to understand, if at all possible.

The first fight I was involved in, when I categorize thoughts and memories, was at a get together involving my old church. My old family church. But before I describe that, this thing I chase showed it’s face during a small accident. Such a small thing that bloomed into this madness that I can’t stop chasing, half in fear and half in fearful splendor.

In seventh grade, we had lockers at school like most. My locker number was 1137, and next to mine was a girl named Hannah. One day either I or she was running late, to hard to remember now, and as whichever one of us were scrambling for our papers and books, as she closed her locker door, struck me in the cheek with all her force of slamming it. It was not her door that hit, but rather her knuckles. I suppose I exclaimed, and furthermore I suppose she apologized for such an event, But I didn’t hear myself or her at all. Instead of hearing, I was seeing. It was as if some burning, terrible liquid had gushed into my eyes, causing prisms of wild color, and quadrupling every image I could see. Only, I wasn’t seeing the hallway of the school, but glimpsing what I could only comprehend (or poorly fathom, rather) as a wild void of images that seemed like some red negative, where Hannah seemed to be a sort of creature with an impossibly deep voice, and my hand wasn’t on the locker or clutching my bag, but was no longer there at all. I shook my head, and my vision was back, and Hannah looked very apologetic. At the time I supposed that I had blacked out, sure that no minor blow could cause a concussion of any kind, water had probably just teared up in my eyes. I think cartoons present this feeling as seeing stars.

Unlike any comedy or romance, I did never marry Hannah or fall in love with her, in fact I have no idea what even came of her. What I do know is that a couple years later, one Easter after church, my pastor told me I should come to his house, because a fight was coming on. I had no love or appreciation for boxing at the time; I had never stopped to think about such. But seeing as that was a time in my life where I was searching for and finding and defining my masculinity as every young man does in time, I sought as every young man does in time, to surround myself with with men in whom it was already defined.

I do not remember the match on television much, and it’s contents are not important to this writing. What is important, is that during either a commercial, or an intermission or for whatever reason or another there was a moment where the idea of sparring was brought up. Now, I was not the only young man or person at this get together, if memory serves well, there were quite a few. Somewhere along the line, a couple pairs of boxing gloves that were bigger than regulation size were brought up from a downstairs area, and soon there came the laughing and ha-ha-ing of the “boys will be boys” nature.

In all the laughter and excitement, mixed with the overall ruggedness of a boxing match and such, I easily got caught up in it. Some of the boys were older, and in so bigger than me, and I think pastor Jerry could tell what I was thinking, so he put the gloves on and told me to put the other ones on. There was a bit of cheering, and so happily enough I did. I want to be clear, pastor Jerry never tried to sock me. He would bat my hands away as I tried to jab. He also did this thing where he just held out the glove, and I would throw hooks at it, or knock it away. I cannot recollection why, as we rarely can with such silly things, but as he held his hand straight out, I darted forward, and in doing so ran right in his outstretched fist.

What came next was more pure and ecstatic than any addict’s plunge of the needle, any nymphomaniac’s orgasm, any gambler’s win. I never kept up with anyone who was there that day, and pastor Jerry is long dead by now, so no one could say what they saw me do. But with such vigor, and sweet taste on tongue, I can tell you what I saw, the best that I can.

I was shown something. I don’t know what allowed me to see it, or who, or whatever. What was shown to me bends all sense of reality, it shatters what we know about life, and shrinks even the largest earthly problems into infinitely infinitesimal iotas.

I felt my spine, from the base of it up go cold, and in incredible ecstasy travel up into the base of my skull, into my brain. The world that we reside spilt, or ripped rather, and I saw inside it, the inner workings of it. Large, rubbery pegs turned and churned like clock works, and I realized that this place was just right behind our life, our existence. Realization dawned on me furthermore, that I had been shown this before, in a feeling that I simultaneously felt for the first time and had forgotten. Time seemed to have stopped completely in this swirl of moments and and images, thousands of prisms danced dances and twirls all around. I reached for anything remotely familiar, and saw what looked like a bookshelf with several books upon it. As I reached for them, even they came forward as a wall, and I realized what was behind everything all over again. I saw faces, dozens or more that didn’t look like faces, perhaps faces wrapped in rubber or some bright silica, nodding approval at my presence, seeming to welcome me into this new knowing. These faces, attached to tubes, wobbled left and right as they walked, like Russian Matryoshka dolls. I had time to understand that these beings were the keepers of this where, when I began to see images that weren’t prismatic, images that weren’t new, but images I already knew. I blinked, and in so doing cried, asking, begging to stay, while I heard cluttered noises, voices from the outside, and a strong, warbling from from inside here say “Not your time. You shall know in time. We are time. We are time. We are…” and suddenly, the only voice I remember hearing was pastor Jerry’s, telling his wife Lucina to fetch a glass of water.

For weeks after this event I strained my mind in every way possible to remember what I saw and felt, through meditation mostly but also trying lucid dreaming. However, as more and more time went by, I began to forget what I was striving for; instead of conjuring any vision or focusing on a feeling, it became more of trying to remember anything that happened at all, like a man who remembers that he had a dream while halfway through his day, and then eventually not at all. When anyone mentioned the get together at pastor Jerry’s, which was sparsely mentioned, my mind absorbed whatever was being said and that became the only memory as like scar tissue. A road being paved over a pothole in the mind and memory; forgotten.

In this I exercise my right to anonymity, fearing that anymore detail than necessary will put anyone at risk for ridicule. I doubt very much that with as little detail as I have given in this strange account that one could or even would try to seek out these events. Suffice it to say that I continued life in some poverty, focused almost solely on my education, and in turn spent two years at a somewhat podunk community college, where I graduated with honors in English education, and moved on to a better known university with considerable less honors, in a sordid kind. I myself am not too much a victim to a party sort of lifestyle, but was not impervious to its pleasures at all times. This aside, I managed to graduate a completely average student, but graduated nonetheless.

Even so, for a few years there was still a bit of a struggle to make ends meet. There were no immediate teaching positions waiting for me with open arms, and so I managed as a tutor for barely more than the minimum wage. I had no family responsibilities so to speak, but still lived on a paycheck-to-paycheck basis. After around four years I was offered a teaching position for eleventh grade, however in a different city. After learning that they would pay for me to move, I accepted the position. The school was located inner-city, where the success rate was low and the crime rate was high. Still, I thought there with some success for two years before my world was once again ripped at the seams and everything changed for good.

It is at this time, where I can explain, as best of my abilities, how things came to be. As before, I had no family responsibilities nor ambition, and still did not make too much money. So like any struggling person with little responsibility, I set a fair amount of my funds aside for alcohol. I have never been a drunk, in the sense of an alcoholic way; no, it’s relevance is that to pass time, I would frequently visit a bar that was located right outside of town, as so to cut down chances for any unfortunate run-ins with any student’s parents. Like any normal person, I tried my hand at getting laid, but there were times where I would go just to have a few drinks and listen to music, as a band would play a few times a week.

One day, instead of a band there was a solo show, a middle-aged man with an acoustic guitar. For one reason or another that I’m still not sure of there came some bad sound suddenly, the guitar stopped and there were raised voices. The man with the guitar was standing, chest raised at another man near a table. I barely had time to recognize any curses when there was the sound of glass smashing, men grunting and a woman yelling in that shrill, dumb way when she’s caused a problem that got out of hand. Others got up, and I realized with dull, growing amazement that there was a sort of brawl transpiring. When I saw the bartender jump over the counter, my stare broke and I started to help pull people apart, as I didn’t want the establishment to get into any trouble for selfish reasons. I managed to pull two couples apart, and while attempting to pull a man off of another, his elbow smashed into my nose. I had a chance to barely register the pain as I stumbled backwards, and reached back to brace my fall. Instead of hard floor though, there was a rush of wind blowing my hair forward with force and the gut-lurching feeling of rapid momentum. I wasn’t just falling backward, it was as if I had fallen of the face of the planet with weights attached to me. In my view, I saw the bar with its neon and bodies shuffling stretch grossly long, the white cinder floor stretched so that it was an infinitely-long stripe in both sides of my eyes. I moved with such maddening speed that the air was being sucked out of my lungs like a vacuum.

Just as I had time to think that my lungs would deflate and fold upon themselves, my mind implode and my vision go black, I suddenly and completely stopped moving, every molecule instantaneously halting. If anything moving with such speed on earth stopped as abruptly, it would surely be ripped to shreds or flattened. Instead, I simply floated without moving in blackness, and my inner-monologue was gone. I was unable to form any thoughts. As I stared forward like a movie-camera, there was a sudden burst of purple light, that pulsed upwards in a tube, and moved quickly through to the tips of hundreds of dozens of sprawling branches, and again, pulsed from base upward to branch tip hundreds of impossible miles high. With each climbing, sprawling pulse my spine pulsed also, in tandem with the tree. Suddenly, I was allowed one thought, that I should not be allowed to see this. With this, a warbly, wet, metallic voice spoke, “There was always room, for you are you, and we are we.” I understood this voice to be taking up the entirety of every space of every universe imaginable and on, and also in my heart and mind. I was not allowed any other thought, and only heard once more, “There was always…” and suddenly I was rushing forward, past the impossible neon tree, past everything that has ever been named and everything that has not, with such speed I was able to squeeze my eyes as my spine and mind threatened to explode, I lurched forward with someone holding my hand. It was the bartender, pulling me up, thanking me. Some overhead music was playing and there were considerably fewer people inside.

I know that my words cannot explain or paint even a fraction of what I mean to tell. At best, you can only barely imagine through my details of these encounters. What I can express better, I think, is the importance I understood this to be. Because after this last encounter, I remember the feeling I had forgotten, this underlying knowing that I had been shown something like this before, that something had chosen me, from an entire universe of life, only because I am I. I simultaneously understood the insignificance of our day-in lives and strifes, and the purpose of my entire existence and the importance of it. I can only speculate why I was able to remember, perhaps it was my age, I cannot be sure, I only knew that I had a separate revelation: every time these Others had shown me the gift of their existence, it was due to being hit or struck in some way. With this, I moved ever closer to where I now am. Where I’ve met with you.

I did not go back to work. I knew now my destiny, and knew that children will always be taught, in one way or another by someone or, maybe even each other. I had no fear of lack of funds, simply because I knew that where I needed to go, where I had been invited, there was no need of such. First, however, there were a few mistakes made.

I know my tone will sound different here, but I’ve been writing this for some time now, and I’m desperate. After I realized that it seemed to me to be blunt force that allows me to visit, I tried many things. Do you know how hard it is to get someone to hit you? Sure, at first I tried to hit myself, but it doesn’t seem to work. Over and over I would smash my fist into my face and nothing! Then, as I sat to write part of this, I slammed my face into the table, two times. It didn’t work, it must be something to do with energy from another person, it’s all I can think of. I would go to bars and try to pick fights, but people just look at you strangely when you beg for someone to hit you, they look at you like you’re some writhing, pitiful drunk. I tried to join a karate class and a boxing class, and both take money to join and I’ve tried to tell them that I won’t need money there, not once I get there, and they just shoo me off, laughing or thinking of me mad. And so I’ve walked these streets now, and did you know that there are a sort who pay for the homeless to fight, nearly to the death? Bum fights they call them, and they’ve let me fall into the presence of the ones, oh I’ve seen things that I’m trying to tell people, because it isn’t just beside this existence, no, it’s behind it, right behind it, just maddeningly out of reach, and I’m afraid that if I do not get there soon, to that where where I am destined to go, that they will no longer let me in, that my window is closing so soon and suddenly, and maybe if pastor Jerry were still around he would hit me, but he’s been dead for years and so now I go around hitting people, just so that they will hopefully hit me back and I killed one homeless because he would not hit me hard enough so that I could go back permanently. It was his fault that he wouldn’t hit me hard enough, if he would have only not stopped then he would still be alive. I feel them calling me, beckoning me and no one else can hear it, and so I’ve written this so that you know that there is something else here, and yet I know you can’t understand.

The only place that I can think of that I know the beatings will continue is a jail, a prison. That’s where I will take my leave, and feel the pulse of the life-tree, and see the Other Ones and know of my true fate, and They won’t care whatever crime I commit tonight because it is They who beckoned me, and like the students I left behind, the ones in this world, the world that you live in will care only about yourselves and take care of yourselves one way or another, while I will finally go home.

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