It felt like a spider creeping across the fabric of my thoughts, each spiny leg
probing my consciousness; but what it sought, I had no idea. I sensed great intelligence
in the creature and could not help but meditate upon the question of its origin.
Might the creature have journeyed from some distant galaxy and crawled inside
my head to feed its curiosity about the human race? Or was there a more sinister
motive for it inhabiting my mind? My thoughts ricocheted off memories of science
fiction movies where aliens came to Earth with treacherous intent. Such thoughts
caused me to notice my antiperspirant's failings.
After a few weeks, I had grown accustomed to the creature's presence and hardly
noticed its probing. Then it began to spin webs of invasive thoughts.
Initially, the intrusions were barely noticeable, a slight sense of color decorating
a scent, taste accompanying sight, gentle sounds induced by the act of touching
smooth objects, quite pleasant sensations, not unlike those created by intense
memories. Recognizing the spider produced these sensations, perhaps in an effort
to understand my thought process and open communication channels, I attempted
to go about life as normally as possible. But soon the sensations became pronounced
to the point of being debilitating, and I was forced to sit for hours at a time
while wrapped in a web of brilliant colors, surreal sounds, odd tastes, and feeling-intense
smells.
At times, pain forced screams from my throat; at other times, I screamed in ecstasy.
Then, after three days and nights of such treatment, the sensations ceased. I
ate and attempted to rest. But knowledge that the spider still crawled in the
attic of my mind consumed free thought. What would it do next? The question gnawed
upon my consciousness, became a mantra dedicated to terror.
Slowly, over a period of months, the fear subsided and my life regained a semblance
of normalcy. Cheer pervaded my conversations with the nurses, and I was again
able to grasp the essence of a patient's instability quickly and efficiently.
Yet the spider remained. It was as if I could see him crouched in a dark corner
of my mind, waiting to pounce. Pounce on what, toward what end? It would be some
time before the answer presented itself, and yet longer before I understood.
The first whisperings of an answer came while I was perusing "Black Holes
and Baby Universes," a book left lying on the arm of a chair by one
of the institution's patients. As I appeared to have no more patients awaiting
my attention,
I picked up the book and began to read. Minutes later I was staring off into
the trees on the other side of the fence. The book was wrong, I did not understand
how I knew this, but I knew. For more than an hour I scanned the text. It
read like a children's fairy tale, interesting, yet bearing little resemblance
to
truth. During the next days, other books began to strike me as being absurdly
childish in the principles they postulated.
I kept my views to myself, for without a sensible alternative to offer for those
expressed y the world's foremost scientific minds, I would appear foolish in
the extreme-perhaps even insane-were I to dispute them. I was however, possessed
of a certainty: The spider was now communicating with me. I began a series of
meditations in hope of opening myself to the knowledge I perceived the creature
desired me to have. This proved to be an unrewarding avenue.
I read all the philosophic texts I had scorned during college and became adept
at discovering flaws in both principles and proceeding logic. But truth remained
an elusive flower, blooming somewhere in the desert of my ignorance, always just
out of sight. I began to distrust the correctness of my diagnoses and became
consumed with the idea that all my work to date had been little better than that
of the witch doctor and shaman of antiquity. I began to hate the spider.
What man can find love in his heart for the one who points with the finger of
truth toward a life spent dedicated to foolishness? All the years of college,
all the years spent lying awake in an institutional bed thinking about the difficult
cases. For what? To be shown it was all worse than useless.
I refused meals, lost weight, paced like the animal I now perceived myself to
be. My patients seemed to be losing faith in me. The nurses watched me with concerned
eyes. I considered leaving. But where would I go? There was no place to hide
from the spider and the horrid doubts injected into my thoughts. I decided to
stay and fight on the ground I had trod for two decades.
Headaches. Vomiting. Seizures. After two months, capitulation.
The morning after my surrender answers began to trickle into my mind. Within
days, the cornerstones of a unified system of thought were firmly in place, and
upon those principles I constructed theories from the information fed to me by
the wondrous spider. It all made perfect sense. The theories, belief systems,
and empirically based knowledge of humankind were flawed because they were based
on the sensory perceptions attained within the bounds of a three dimensional
universe. Some of religious leanings conceived a realm of spirit. Well done.
However, those concepts failed to consider two other dimensions that lie beyond
human senses. And without a comprehensive understanding of these, all theories
concerned with ultimate truths are doomed to wallow in a murky pond of ignorance.
In all humankind, I alone hold the key which opens the door to inter-dimensional
perception. I alone can open that door and stroll the corridors of truth. And
now, as I lie here upon the crisp white sheets of my bed listening to the puttering
engine of a lawn mower, only one question yet wanders the sacred halls of my
enlightened mind: How might I convince the nurse to remove these straps?
Tim Alexander
25989048
U.S. Penitentiary
P.O. Box 1000
Marion, IL, 62959