What's the name of that tune, tinkling away on the musicbox in the back of my head, today?
A downside of withdrawals is that marijuana used to cancel my dreams. Now the floodgates are open, I dream all the damned time, and what's worse, I remember them all.
This means regular cameos from foresaken family, longlost friends, and-- joy --my deepest anxieties.
Today it was The Anxieties taking center stage. In my worst years of PTSD, when my obsessive-compulsive tendency was at its peak, no art survived very long. Anything I found satisfying & worthy of love one day might not survive my perfectionist tendencies, come the next.
This was, of course, a form of self-destructive behavior. Self-mutilation, even. Because I don't self-harm anymore and I've lost the taste for suicide. But a drawing can be sundered and burn, which satisfies the old death drive, dunnit? It's all very dramatic & gauche, and I am not proud of any of it.
Growing up seems like the thing to do before turning fifty.
So: dreaming myself as Dennis Hopper, struggling to ink a piece in public then wigging out and publicly shredding the work... As unsubtle as christ and all his miracles.
I woke feeling utterly disgusted and not a little self-reflective. That is not who I am anymore. Some part of me was that, and some part of me still only recognizes that programming. I had hoped to leave that self-indulgent skullfucker back in Atlanta.
Ah well.
I suppose the Dennis Hopper dreamsuit was because of the ongoing research binges as I build PROMISELAND. I hit a few snags this morning when it became apparent that my chronology is utterly fucked and most of the geography in my story doesn't line up with the timeline & the cast. It's frustrating trying to fit all the details together, even though this story's meant to be fictional & the characters are all supposed to be expy versions of real world personalities. It's that perfectionist streak.
Of course the other part of dreamsuiting up as Hopper is that Hopper "sobered up" in the 90s-- which meant he quit drinking & snorting & popping pills & mainlining, restricting himself to a working actor's diet of coffee, cigarettes & marijuana. California Sober, they call it.
I have been California Sober ever since my skull fracture. Not that cocaine or most any other hard drug factored into my life. I would drink, now & again, but outside of the occasional Guinness & well whiskey booze was never my thing and I had no patience for drunks because my father was one, and I spent a solid decade babysitting them when I was working at a pool hall. The only form of alcohol I showed a weakness for was wine: I could neck a bottle of red all by myself in under half an hour.
I tried not to do that too often. (During the pandemic lockdown it happened fairly often.)
Weed was, above them all, the greatest weakness. Weed was what kept me functional and together, living in Atlanta. I'd never really smoked it before my time at the pool hall, but if I'm honest marijuana was about all that kept me from going totally bugfuck over that ten to eleven year span of propping up my adopted family of fuckoffs. When you're the only guy who never shows up hungover, never calls out sick, never dragasses through a shift, well, it grinds. It grinds superfine. So marijuana, once I'd officially Discovered its utility as a tool for focus & motivation, marijuana became my best friend and number one lover.
The dependency became official once I realized it kept my dreams at bay. Because the dreams are insidious. Nobody knows their way around your skull like your Shadow, my friends. And my Shadow wanted to kill me and made every effort, when I was very young. It's the impression left by my father's hands on my throat and the look in his eyes as he stared into mine while he tried to make me die. My Shadow is all the bad code left behind from my upbringing.
Weed kept the Shadow on the other side of a locked door. Marijuana kept it from crossing the threshold or trying to creep over the transom. Or at least, that's how I thought of it. Now I recognize that the Shadow was high on my supply, and the Shadow's the one today who so badly craves a toke.
So there. I've named it. That's the name of the dumb tune tinkling away on the tinny li'l music box back of my skull: My echo, Dennis Hopper, and me.
They say you can't get addicted to marijuana. Fuck them. Humans can become addicted to anything.
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