The Short Stories Of Mila Strictzer (14) Then, wooosshhh! He flew through the clouds in like a millisecond. But he realized that he had. The walls were moving by very fast to his either side. He was not scared. His mind was reeling, darkening and fading at times, brightening and intensifying at other times. Then, splash, he dove into an ocean like a diver with his hands tight together, pushing out the water out, away from him. He hit the water with such force that he flew downward under for ever and ever, it seemed. But he knew a little about the ocean. He knew at the bottom of the ocean is the abyssal plains. They are very far down, as far as the Titanic dropped. He sailed down, into the darkness of the waters…suffocating him. He hit the ground and rolled over on his back and smacked his bare feet into the muddy bottom and pushed back up and against the force of the water. Mila slowed as he fought against the pressure above him and then he had to hold his breath. Now he reached up and paddled his arms, scrambling, trying to make it up to the surface and air. He fought and fought the dark waters, the currents and the resistance until, "Pppaahhhhh!" He sucked in air deep into his lungs. Mila, now he saw his mind reaching for a place. Some kind of a space. There was an army there, an army of orcs and every other beast of J.R.R. Tolkien. The army was advancing forward, moving toward his existence. So he screamed at the blue sky above him, then he saw his mother. She was sitting in a rocking chair in a hotel in California, rocking the night away silently. Alright, I’ll tell you what I want you to do. Spin Your Head Around In A Half Circle Then, and only then, will you see just how powerful your mind is. Power, pure power. Do you remember when Spock died? Not a Trekkie? Well, I am. Doesn’t matter, anyway. Here is what he said, now listen, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few…or the one. Live long and…prosper. Jim." Jim was Captain Kirk. I just wrote out Vlad, The Impaler just then, by accident, whoa. Holy shit. Well, well, my sincere bad. Vlad was Dracula in history, he was this guy in Croatia or somewhere that kept the Arabians away from Europe, the modern anachronism would be Saddam Hussein, who keeps the Persians out of Arabia, so they just let him kill whoever and however he wants in peace. Just let Vlad impale in peace; he ran these long, wooden rods (maybe he had a thing for long, wooden rods) up the local’s asses, spikes of pine wood, right up the ass until the wood spikes would split their heads open. Anyway, so Spock obviously took one for the team, without question. But, to me, his real message was to live long and prosper. That is what all we human beings must do. And our dreams will take us there. There was a time way back before time began, before the dinosaurs and the fishes, that there was nothing. It is not an exact place so don’t go try to measure it. Just flow with it, go with it, for that is the only way to get there. The only way to stay there, if you can get there, is to never question where you are, never doubt yourself. Mila was there now, in his dreams. He had been here before and he did not fight anymore. Have you ever listened to a crow call out as it flew by overhead? It cries out to something; some thing. Listen to a crow’s cry one time, just one time. Let your mind go first and then listen. It will speak as deeply as you will listen. It will talk to a voice inside, your voice, and it will say whatever your voice will listen to. The crow is crying out for that thing inside you, your voice, it is calling you. The crow’s shrill cry desires to enter into a pack with you mind to let the cry enter your soul. If you can, you can let it and it will sure as hell go there, to your soul. Now you have to be careful, though. For you can loose your life fucking around with your soul. Consider your soul a possession, like a spouse. You can loose it, if your not too careful. I don’t care how secure you think you are about your soul or your spouse, you can loose either; there are other forces at work here. And while we may get another spouse, you don’t want to loose your own soul, no. Mila was listening to the crow now in his dreams like he always did, he loved to. He thought he could change his feelings this way or that to send a message to the crow that was speaking to him by way of listening to his feelings. We can listen to the wind, too. The wind on the prairie hollows through the background music with amazing clarity, if you can hear it. Just sit on your front porch one time and listen to the wind rustle the corn stalks. Hear each section of the stalks rustle, then hear the whole field rustle as one. Believe not in the sky, call it hooplah if you wish. Mila was alone in the desert with a wise man, say a medicine man, and he could understand what the wise man was saying. The desert stretched on as far as Mila’s eyes could see, it was all flat and full of small rocks. There were some higher plateaus and hills of piled rock, both in the distance not too far away, but it was just the medicine man there with Mila. He talks, therefore he speaks. And what he said. What he said. Maybe I’ll tell you what he said, maybe. I don’t want to spoil his words, I may not be worthy. You may not be worthy, either. Why would any of our puny lives of cars, bars and movie stars know more then his ancient wisdom? Somehow I don’t think so. Alright, I’ll tell you but be silent now and listen, really listen. The medicine man reached in his bag of tricks and pulled out a pipe and lit it up and handed it to Mila and said, "You want a toke, cracker boy?" Well, of course, Mila said yes. And Mila pulled some smoke into his lungs from the pipe and it tasted funny. Soon the powerful medicine took effect. For that was what it was, medicine for the mind. You think you need some? "You will see back into time, there are some beasts there, they seem to be demons from hell, covered in spikes and breathing fire if they so desire, but they are not from hell. No, they are from the beginning of time." "This smoke tastes funny like." "The smoke is the breath of God. You have to be able to handle it, can you handle it?" "I think I can handle it." "Good. Good, because it will soon overcome you, like a man standing in the desert wanting water. Are you sure you are prepared?" "Yes, I think I am prepared." "Well, then, go with it." "I am going with it." "Tell me what you see." "I see some pillars of stone, in a deep green garden of wild flowers that are part of a labyrinth and I see myself trying to find my self within the maze, and also wishing to, once I find my self, find a way out of my prison." "Very good." "Now I see myself as one fish in a school of fish, darting with the pack, spinning around over myself, thinking I can’t do that kind of a movement, but when I feel the pack with me, the school beside me, with me, I am feeling as if I can do this thing, anything, blindfolded. I can do this, I can follow the pack with ease, feeling no pain, reeling and rolling with the contortions of the whole school. I worry about my body, though, but not much, like it is in the distance." "Yes, yes, you are good. Continue, cracker boy." "Alright, next I see myself on another planet where everyone lives in the clouds, because they are all very light weighing. They are like Elves but even lighter and never sleep, they talk by the fire about all the ages of old lore. They never sleep but somehow it is okay. I don’t see anything more there." "The vision may be fading now, then." "Nope, no it isn’t. I see some men trying to wake me from a deep sleep, like a coma. They are my family and they are reading to me, talking to me about, well, they’re talking about me. That is what is waking me up, they’re talking about my own past, because it is stirring images in my mind about my own life and these people know me almost as much as I do, so they can conjure up images. "I see an image of when I was young, going through my father’s clothes in the closet and I see his old army uniform but it does not belong to my father because he was not in the army. It belongs to a great writer, Ernest Hemingway; there I said it. It’s his hospital guard uniform. I am not blunting the thing. "Back the fuck up, everyone, this is just between him and me. I feel every single sentence that you write. Every single one. And then I want to say more and more and more. You went further into what I want to be, an artist and a damn real man. But I went further into where you wanted to go, war and the unknown. Yea, you know what I am talking about. So, my man, let’s just meet in the middle. Well, I will meet you in the middle. You can do as you please. But I know I will find you there. "Anyway, we soldiers (I know you fought in a war, not as a soldier), we soldiers always speak of the unknown with pride and mysticism. I finally realize what I knew all along, this one thing, buried deep within one book, within one story, within one line of thought: "You are my master." And that is what Mila saw in his dreams one night. He woke up and went downstairs and got some cereal for breakfast because his favorite thing to eat was Captain Crunch. Mila lay down in his bed, it was late now but he was not tired. He had had a few beers but he was not drunk, just a little buzzed. The beer made it a little better anyway, kind of slowed things down somewhat instead of firing every single barrel with precision timing, sequencing. He could not fight that, anyway. He loved to hang out with his friends but it was like an escape for what he knew was to come. The voices. Mila stared at the ceiling. After about a minute of anxiousness, he felt them arriving. It is hard to explain but they came from all corners of his mind, all at once. Some loud, others very loud, some whispers or quieter then a whisper. All were overpowering, daggers to the brain, and if only one thing can be made clear, it should be made clear that they could not be turned off. There were feelings, too. But, sometimes, the feelings were not as bad as the voices. Feelings could even be welcomed as a distraction, something to focus on in order to drown out everything else going on in the room. Because there was something going on in the room! And if there was any doubt, it would soon be made clear that something was going on. One feeling had been the same all his life. It was like being in a huge, wide-open, vast space. But there was something else. The space was strong and squeezed Mila all the way up to the ears, to the edge of his head, his consciousness. Still, it was not a horrible feeling, just an overwhelmingly curious one. As if to be forced to be as curious as a man might be and then push it a little farther. Choppy water, for sure, but with some effort by an advanced swimmer, easily swimable. Then, as he got older, Mila was able to master that one particular feeling, control it. He would walk out as far as he wished into the dark space, take a small jaunt into an unknown part, turn around and go back home to his mind. The voices he could not control. They had control over him, hands down. They made him panic, get over-anxious, run away from paranoia, hide in the darkness, avoid people, and a slew of other strange behaviors expected of a crazy person. Yea, fucking Mila Strictzer was crazy, no doubt about it. A paranoid schizophrenic is the correct term, I believe. Before he went away, he asked me to tell you about the voices. Everyone always wants to know about the voices. It used to be that hearing voices was very unpopular. Not the case, anymore. Now there’s songs about hearing voices, everybody thinks they hear voices. I seriously doubt if people hear voices all the time or the world would not function. Furthermore, anyone who has ever heard voices will never claim to have. Why? Because, simply put, the voices are, in a word; stupid. I am only doing this for Mila. I really don’t feel like doing his dirty work, either, but I always believe when a buddy asks you for something you should do it for them, no matter what it is, if you can. And I think I can do this. I will say one thing. Shit people say about, "Oh, my God! Those eyes are staring at me! I am so scared! It’s a monster!" Monsters come to children. And then they go away. What Mila was experiencing was easily, far more terrifying. Mila was experiencing himself. So Mila looked up at the ceiling, a little buzzed, you know. Then, he saw, even though his eyes were wide open, that he was inside a space. Not the same space as the feeling, but a space, nowhere near as large and open as the feeling one. Like a room, with walls. To his left, almost underneath somehow, a person started talking. What he said made no sense but I suppose it sounded like, "Stupid aholeing why talk to me, speaking, squeezing, speaking in a speakeasy, common now, swim in one ocean, pink, pink, the ocean of Suzy Q is enough to boot…" Like I said, never makes any sense. But the drive to be curious about what is said, to figure it out, is unavoidable. While it was talking, another started up in his room within a room, "Jim, over here…" it was low at first, then a pause, and then it had Mila’s attention, "Jim! Hey! Jim, Jim, Jim!" Then that one stopped. Others started like that, all as distinctly different as the other was, they were different sounding, until there was a chorus. Mila was awake the whole time, but like a man is awake while a knife is being pushed into his stomach, trying to stop it, reacting against it, and dying from it. Mila yelled in his head to stop, but like being raped (I guess) they would not stop until they were done. At that point, the voices had him. Now his emotions, his own feelings, his personality; all had been effected. To Mila, it was always like a battle. Maybe that is why he eventually died. Sometimes, he might do something that another person would say is crazy. He didn’t do crazy things on account of any other person, no matter what that person might think or say to other people. He did it on account of being driven crazy. I know it’s a difficult concept to grasp. I’m talking like bolting up, out of nowhere, running downstairs and start cooking some bacon and eggs at two in the morning, all the while saying things like, "Alright, I am going to cook some bacon and eggs now, just like in the old days..." and Mila would continue. When were the old days? There were no old days and Mila knew it, too. But, again, he was not talking to anyone else in the house. He was talking to the voices. Well, not really talking but reacting, or rather, taking some action. He was trying to go somewhere that they could not go to, trying to be something they could not be, and somewhere and something were to be only found back in the old days. Well, in a panic situation, where were the old days? About as close as Mila could get to the old days was cooking bacon and eggs. Those were the old days, ah! For the rest of his life, I know I already said Mila died, but I am talking about for the rest of what was his life, Mila felt as if he was catching back up with his self; himself. He had once been a person, Mila could remember when…but that individual, a favorite army term, Mila loved the army because everybody was third person, or first person. There was no second person, no trying to chase your mind after a concept-the concept itself was there, right there, in your face and in the army Mila was shown exactly where it was. For example, here’s what they said in the army that Mila liked: "There is no question, you are the problem, private!" "Why don’t you hit your face, now!" Now here was a question, but was it a question? No, it was a demand, there was no question. Mocking the very concept of a question, bravely challenging uncertainty with bravado! "You are about the most sorry fucking sack of dogshit that I have ever seen in my entire life!" See how, well, first there is not even any conjunction, only you are-clarity for clarity’s sake. But the entire life is summed up, ‘that he has ever seen’, again, for clarity, but more important, no chasing loose concepts, and all done on purpose! Soldiers even talk in the same language, like it all rubbed off on them, all the clarity and sanity rubbed off on them and that is how they talked. There were rules how to talk and the rules were followed. There were concepts how to act and what to say, when. And it was all followed. Ah, the army, there Mila could rest his mind in peace. But back to Mila. It was also difficult to do simple things, like pushing a sled uphill in a dream, how it seems easy but as you start to push in the dream, the body starts pushing, too, until both the body and the mind are pushing together in the dream; sometimes I wake up then. Walking across the street, something seeming so easy, is very hard. Because Mila looked around all the time for the voices, see, when Mila was actually walking, subconsciously, he was watching because he was scared of them from before. But the problem was, he did not realize it at the time, as he was crossing the street, walking. So then, he was faced with the dilemma of why he was so scared. He did not know. And that, in turn, scared him, alone. See what I am saying? Anyway, Mila could not do easy things. Plus, he was forced to listen to the voices. What else is there? Not a whole hell of a fucking lot, I say. I mean, I am doing this all for Mila, you know, my old buddy. I feel his pain, man. You may not, but I do. He was all fucked up in the head. It’s sad but it’s real. But Mila kept fighting on. What he did not realize, though, was he was fighting against his past. His past. He could never get anywhere because, it’s not that he was fighting himself; his self, it was that he was fighting his past. So how could Mila win when he was always fighting his past? We all know the answer. And if all he was doing was always fighting, well, one thing is for certain; he had not won anything yet. So Mila could never be that person he was once. Or ever hope to be something else. It is like a gap in the fossil record. First, they found an ancient skull, fine, and then another one, but nothing between then and the more modern skull that they found. So all we got is these two skulls, one is this and one is that. What happened between to make this that? Most people, they would conclude that that was almost certainly this, at one time, so, perhaps, most people conclude that that either had to one) totally be created from this, who knows how-we don’t know from who without the fossil record, like I said-or, two) or that is not this, like there is no relation whatsoever. Something in between happened, totally unrelated. But I am getting lost in the minutia. I am simply saying Mila was never a person again. Could never be. I will say it one more time, Mila was never a person again. What I am talking about, that, is a person, yes, but that was not Mila in any way, shape or form. Mila was left forever left chasing a person, forever trying to fill in the gap, to add water to a 1/3rd full cup, which had a leak to the cup, which could never be filled back up again. That is why I am glad the fucker died. That may sound cruel, but I don’t give a fuck, I’m glad he is dead. Sure, he accomplished some things and he’s a survivor but fuck him! Fuck him! Because I am that. That’s right, I am that, no relation to Mila Strictzer! Can’t even be proved in the fossil record. There’s probably more to say to this book, but I am done, I am tired and I am done. Its time to move on-in a big way. Sure, I’m sorry I don’t have a complete fossil record like everyone else does, as that, but you know what? That is not a bad thing, in fact, that is a good thing and I quite satisfied with that. And besides, the army taught me one more thing. How to not give a fuck. I give exactly, precisely, two shits and one fuck. That, and my writing. Not a bad combo. Bottom line, with those two, I can live with it.
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Copyright © 2001 Mike Strozier |