Gospel & Universe 🎲 Almost Existential

Cloud Illusions

One unfortunate side effect of Corey's medication was that he could see clearly now the meaning of life. Now that the dark clouds of his youth had disappeared.

The cancer had spread to Corey's central nervous system and was working its way into the pathways of his reptile mind. It was sending him all sorts of data of which he'd previously been unaware. For most of his life Corey imagined himself in control of his actions. He imagined there were solid reasons for the things he did. Big theoretical reasons. Reasons he'd thought through, decided on, and put into place with his own will. His own free will. But now he realized that all of that was just wishful thinking. He had been listening to too much Rush. Too much "Free Will” and “Tom Sawyer."

But now they only block the sun / They rain and snow on everyone / So many things I would have done / But clouds got in my way

He now saw that his thoughts and feelings and elaborate philosophies were created by the trillion snaking circuits and electrical impulses that lay hidden within the myelin sheaths. He now saw that there were physiological reasons beneath the psychological world of both his practical life and his fantasies.

Yet this new meaning of life was even more than this. He now felt that he was rising above the fantasy of control and the fact of the neurons and the mental circuits. He now felt that these new facts were the basis of a Higher Reality, one that his imagination was previously incapable of imagining.

Look all around, there's nothing but blue skies / look straight ahead, there's nothing but blue skies

The facts were but the empirical upon which was erected the etherial, a realm of quintessences he was just starting to understand. He now saw clearly, crystal meth clearly, that his old version of reality was only a stepping stone to something Higher. Unbeknownst to him, he'd been climbing the Platonic Ladder.

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In the course of Corey's medication he was forced to smoke a lot of marijuana. Even more than he used to smoke when he was young. Back then, he and his friends had to cough their way through tubular bell joints and jumping jack flash bowls before contemplating the deeper meaning of a symbol on a Led Zeppelin album.

Now with the new strains of pot, he took a single toke and was in The Clouds of Knowing. 

Rows and flows of angel hair / And ice cream castles in the air / And feather canyons everywhere

Back then Corey didn't appreciate the full range of sense sensations or what they meant. Strawberry Fields then meant NEON RED STRAWBERRIES. Now he saw the green leaves, the sturdy stalks, as well as the stems and seeds that (contrary to what Cheech and Chong told him) he did need. He also saw the roots and the fields they came from. He saw the gardener: a stout lady in Keswick with arthritic hands who picked the strawberries while dreaming of making love to a Spanish sailor she met in one of her epic James Joyce fantasies, where he heard her say, 

and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another

for the gardener with her arthritic hands was really a molly in full bloom;

Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels / The dizzy dancing way that you feel / As every fairy tale comes real

There was Nature in her fingers, God, Yes, Flowers, Yes, this was a series of affirmations more potent than any philosophy she learned at Saint Mary of the Sea, as she repeated the exact words, drawn from her memory of living print:

and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

The sailor had her pinned up against the wall and was grinding the words into her ear — coño lo quieres — as fishermen shouted their sales-pitches on the far end of the beach. This wasn’t just Close to the Edge or Tales from Topographic Oceans. This was Magnification, Going for the One, Keys to Ascension. This was Yessongs.

Corey saw everything — the naked women, the green bowers, the trembling old hands, the holy incense rising from the bowl, the rough sailor pinning her against the wall. Coño, ella lo quiere. He saw the bright red strawberries, and how it was all connected. He saw the scope of life, and for this reason he saw its meaning. He could see the forest and the trees, and the sun rising above it all. He could see that it was going to be a bright bright bright sun-shiny day.

This was the final trick the cancer played before it worked into Corey's cerebral cortex and made him completely insane. 

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