Happy Late Night, my Darling,
I hope your week is off to a good start, and this morning I did see a post about Dreamhouse, for an upcoming concert in October, so I am glad the work continues, and also you are probably still working on all the stuff you shot for them on tour last month. I will look forward to seeing the end result(s). :)
Just now I saw the picture of the James Grilled Cheese T-Shirt............
That is classic and perfect for him. No one else could wear that shirt and have it mean something, haha. Ultimately they could merchandise it...... :)
Today a typical workday for me. All is quiet on the Pearl and Kobi Front as I write. They are both asleep. Boy was that Rams game ever a bust! Yeah - sports, I know - but SB, the debut game from our long awaited home team was downright terrible. The Rams were awful, and worst of all it was against the hated Forty Whiners, who they should have creamed. Instead it was the other way around. Oh well, they've still got 15 weeks to turn things around and try to win a game or two!
I had a quickie Aliso hike at 3pm, just long enough to get some pix of The Cool Spider Web Tree, which I discovered on Saturday when I didn't have my cam with me. But I noted the time - 3:35 (just like my guitar) - and I made a point to be back today just before that time so I could capture the same quality of light. It was great, like the spiders of Aliso were saying, "hey, here comes that guy again. Let's build something really cool for him". After all, I am making them famous. :)
Well, I want to examine the amnesia I, and likely others, had at the conclusion of the 1989 experience. What I am discovering, in writing about 1989 these nights, is that because I am tired at this time of night, and because 1989 is a subject that requires a ton of focus, I find that I wind up not being as concise as I wanted to, or not saying everything I had planned to say in a given post. I jump around a lot, and that is because the subject matter is gigantic. In 2006 I likened it to trying to lift up a blimp with just your two hands. No matter what angle you lifted from, or how you tried to hold it, you'd fumble because it's so big.
Telling this story is similar. I mean, I already wrote all about it in 2006, but that was a very focused effort that took six months of writing, for up to eight or ten hours a day. I still have all the details in my head, but because there are so many - probably thousands - it's hard for me to have them in focus all the time. Part of that is the nature of the amnesia itself. I can recall to memory all of the memories I've already recalled, but I can't keep them on the surface all the time. Some I have to think really hard about.
Anyhow, when I go on my walks lately, in the early evening, I think of what I want to write about, and it's all very clear to me, the structure and order of what I want to say. But then, by the time I am able to actually write - when the workday is done and everybody is asleep - then I am too fatigued to get the story out the way I wanted to. So it comes out in bits and pieces. That's all I wanted to say.
My Amnesia : it was the weirdest thing. Some people know they have amnesia. In the classic cases (so they say) a person shows up somewhere, at a house or police station or the hospital, and they can't remember how they got there, or sometimes even who they are. That might be just the way it happens in the movies, I don't know. But with my amnesia, I didn't even know I had amnesia. In other words, no more than a few days after the experience came to an end, I went to a movie called "Sea Of Love", which was released in America on September 15th, 1989. I have always believed (though not known for sure) that the experience lasted 12 days, and this includes best estimates for time lapsed during various events. Therefore, using that estimate, the 1989 experience ended on September 12.
So, that means that a mere three days later, I went to a movie (with another person), and I had no idea - zero - of any of the things that I have written about. No memory of being kidnapped. No memory of the initial event. No memory of the incredible, monumental, horrific and bizarre things we witnessed at the Wilbur Wash, no memory of Howard Johnsons, or the Ex-Neighbors.......no memory whatsoever of almost two weeks of what I will call "supernormal" experiences, i.e. experiences outside the norm of anything resembling everyday life. Also, they were horrible, horrific experiences, one following the other, but I know I've already said that.
But that's how total my amnesia was. I had no idea I even had amnesia. In other respects, I was fine, more or less, at least as far as I remember. The only odd thing that had happened, and I wrote about this in my book, is that one day - a date I estimate to be around Tuesday September 12, 1989, but which may be approximate - I distinctly remember waking up on the couch of our living room at 9032 Rathburn. It felt like I had been asleep for a long time, and I was groggy and slow to move, slow to get off the couch. My muscles were a little stiff. I remember that the light had a green cast to it, like my eyes were adjusting.
I remember getting up on one elbow and sitting up on the couch.
The main thing I remember - and I will never forget this - was that I was super thirsty. I mean, like a man looking at a mirage thirsty. And what I did, when I got off the couch, was to go to the refrigerator in the kitchen. We always kept a gallon jug of ice water in there, and it was full. I remember that it was a hot day, as it often is in September in the Valley, and I was thirsty beyond belief. So I took the gallon jug from the fridge and a started to drink, and I wound up drinking a good portion of the gallon of water. I couldn't get enough, and I just kept on drinking.
I must have been very dehydrated.
Sometime in 1998, when I was able to pinpoint the timeline for the events of 1989 (the year was uncertain to me until then), I remembered this "awakening" on the couch in vivid detail, and I knew it was my "wake up point" from the 12 days.
Right after I finished drinking all that cold water, I made a phone call. I made the phone call because I knew something seemed strange. Not "totally weird", but just off.
What I felt like upon awakening, besides groggy, stiff and thirsty, was that I'd missed out on something.
That was a strong feeling. That I'd missed out on something that had happened.
Nothing weird. Just "something". A feeling that I'd been asleep and had missed out on something.
No one else was home that I could ask.....
And so I went straight to the phone after putting down the jug of water, and I called someone. It's not hard to guess who, though we aren't naming names. I called this person because I was wondering why I was feeling this sensation of loss, of a loss of time, and I wanted to ask if something had happened.
I also wanted to ask what day it was, because I realised I had no idea. But the phone rang and rang and nobody answered.
I think I realised that it was after 5 O'Clock and that the person I called was probably off work already.
And so, still confused, what I did next was to walk up the cul-de-sac at the top of Rathburn. Then I turned left and headed for the nearest LA Times newspaper box, which back then was in front of the Northridge Library, one block away.
I put a quarter in the box, opened it up and took a paper out.
I did so because I wanted to know what day it was, because when I woke up on the couch I had no idea.
If I remember correctly, the paper said it was September 12, 1989.
And that is how I came out of my amnesia.
Four days later, on September 16th, I went to "Sea Of Love". And I had no idea anything was wrong, or that anything unusual had happened in my life. ////
That's all for tonight. I will see you in the morn, Sweet Baby.
I Love You. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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