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UPDATE: 6-14-2005
Welcome to my little corner of cyberspace. I realise cyberspace is a big place, and that, if you found your way in here, you probably already know who I am. At least, what my online personality is like.
I'd like to use this place to show you parts of my personality other than those you may have already seen. Those of which only some of you have even guessed at and which I myself have only barely hinted at.
While my cyberspace personality is more like myself as a writer, there are many interests I have which I have not explained through my writings in cyberspace. Many of these I have elaborated upon in my writings of books, however it is unlikely that any of you who are here have or would ever read any of these.
This place will serve as a haven for my beliefs, and for my rational arguments substantiating them. Some of these will border of mysticism to many of you, while others will border on astro-physics. Many of you know that I am a conspiracy theorist, but few of you know the full history of the universe as I understand it. All of these types of writings and more will you find among these web pages.
I'll try to just keep this blog of news about my personal life, and confine new writings to the forum.
As many of you already know, I am 27 years old, live at my mother's house and collect social-security disability cheques every month from the US federal government for no better qualifying reason than that I am on the record as having had a mental illness since before I was eighteen. This has led to several out-breaks, which have resulted in four institutional hospitalisations since 1999.
Since being perscribed Lamictal in 2003, I have been able to maintain an even-keel as far as my moodwings go, and have not suffered any more of my extreme, prolonged depressions. I have lost wait since I stopped taking Depakote and am feeling better these days than I have in a long time.
I've also made several friends in the past couple years, and they are all very important to me. Damien, Buck and Calvert have a reggae band called Trial By Stone, and Simeon plays drums in an experiemental metal band called TRON with Chris and McNese. TBS has a show coming up soon at the local rock gym, and TRON had a blow out show last Sunday where people asked them for their autographs. They are planning for a September tour around FLA with the other bands on their label.
All in all my life is going rather well now. I am finally beginning to feel content. I am satisfied in my writings, both past and present, and feel comfortable retiring from my writings on magic and mysticism for the time being. My last book was the conclusion in my fiction trilogy, and now I am just taking some time off to gather new thoughts. This site will, hopefully, help me do that.
So, let me tell you a little about my life so far.
I didn't speak until I was three years old. And then I spoke in complete sentences. The first of my deep and long-lasting depressions began when I was about six. My mother had gone to Africa with her father, and I had been left alone for a week with my father, a distant and sarcastic man, with serious control issues. I am unclear what happened during this period, but I know that after then I was deeply depressed and became distant until, by secondary school, was almost completely dispondent. I lamented for a long-lost childhood love, and all of my hoodlum friends through books at my head and called me gay.
One day we were all having lunch together in the cafeteria and got into a food fight under our table by stomping on ketchup packets. Our teacher for that period's class, Mrs. Caylor, who was clearly psychotic and compulsive herself, took us out into the open air walkway and began screaming at us. "How could you have done something like this? What were you thinking?" Just then another teacher came walking by, who happened to be another teacher in the gifted program that taught the members of our class. "What are you doing?" she scolded Mrs. Caylor, and promptly took us all into her class room. Although our lunch period class had ended, we were told to stay there so that we could continue to be lectured. "Why did you do this?" the teacher asked each one of us. I was last in line. "Because I hate myself and I want to die," I answered sarcastically with a snear.
Wrong answer.
I was escorted to the office of the school resource officer, where I waited until he got back from his lunch break. He questioned me as I looked tearfully out the window at freedom, and then left the room, telling me not to use the phone. I immediately got up and started dialing to call my mother and let her know what was going on. The officer burst back in and put me in a choker hold until I put down the phone. I spent the rest of the afternoon curled up on the bathroom floor. After school had ended, the secretary at the front desk finally called my mother, who came just as the officer was transporting me to his vehicle to escort me to the local hospital for an interview with a social worker psychologist.
After speaking to me with only her clipboard, the state psychiatrist informed my parents (both of whom were there by now) that I was diagnosed with a chemical imbalance in my brain, a defficiency of the neurotransmitter seratonin. I was taken to a psychologist once, sometimes twice, a week following this time, and homeschooled for the following year. The public school's out-of-the-home education proagamme had me reading Travels with Charlie by Steinbeck for an entire semester.
In highschool I fell deeply in love with my best friend's girlfriend. Michael had been my growing-up friend and lived down the street from me most of both our lives. I knew I was in love with her from the first moment I saw her. The summer of 95. I remember it like it was yesterday.
Following this I fell into the deepest depression of my life. She had moved away in 96, and, in shellshock following a particularly powerful panic attack in 1999, when I drove up to Indiana to talk to her, she finally told me that she didn't love me anymore. I think that in the past few years I have come to accept this, and to move on.
I began my writing career in highschool, as well as my fascination with esoterica. In highschool I penned the first book in my detective trilogy, and for Mike's wedding in 99 I wrote the second installment. My two years at college I wrote essays and poetry at a feverish pace, and have since written over 1500 poems. In 2001, I wrote the Formal System of Metaphysics. In 2002, the Metaphysician's Desk Reference. The MPDR was published in 2003 on 1stbooks, which has since changed its name to Author House. My local metaphysical gift shoppe/book store sold out all its copies of it Christmas of 04.
Throughout all this time I continued my private research into the esoteric, the arcane, the mystic, mythic and magical. Studies of systems of magic, which are often based on numbers, have contributed a great deal towards my ability to understand idealised, archetypal, and metaphysical theories in math and science. My last book on the subject, the Tree of Death and the Qliphoth, 2004, will, however, hopefully remain the last. None of the manuscripts I have thus far preapred on the Atlantean Calendar have not met with my satisfaction and I would prefer to simply retire from philosophy altogether.
Anyway, that just about brings us up to date on my life history. I'll update you on how it's going and if anything particularly interesting happens here. So cheque back. And cheque out my pages too. I'll probably be on the forums every day, so if you want to talk to me directly you can do so there. If you need to email me you can find my addy in the bookstore. Anyway, thanks for stopping in. This is benpadiah, signing out from his very own little corner of the internet.
-ben
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UPDATE: 6-16-2005
I have been feeling introspective alot lately. Tonight my mom accused me of not helping out around the house, and blamed this on my spending all my time on the computer. She said that I only spend time with my friends to do drugs, and that I was "going down that path again."
I have been worrying about some of these things myself for some time. My friends now are all in bands, like my friends who I used to hang out with, when I used to do nothing but sit around and smoke pot. (I'll return to this momentarily.) I worry alot that I am not being productive, or that I am being excessively anti-social, or that I am emotionally, and psychologically "stuck" at some age, or in some situation, or in some kind of pattern of behaviour.
Even when I was doing nothing but smoking pot all the time, I was still being productive. I had to quit my addiction to video games in order to find some outlet to express myself. All my friends played music, but I cannot. I once learned guitar, and have self-taught some piano, but I have no internal rhythm. I turned to esoterica and my sketchbook.
My circadian rhythms are all off. I sleep during the day, while most people work. I am awake during the night while most people are at rest. Probably a dopamine defficiency. Easily treatable. But then, What Is Normal? It's normal for me to be this way. I want to be this way. And herein lies the breakthrough.
I am sick because I choose to be. I choose to be "not normal." I choose to be anti-social. I choose to be "sick." I choose to do things that others view as self-destructive. I like being different. I like telling the secrets that "normal" society thinks should be kept to one's self. And alot of those aren't about me. So I must be "crazy." I must be "sick."
Because if it was not self-inflicted, then it would be either only environmental or genetic. If it weren't that I were sick, then it would be that I had been molested by my father. If it weren't that I had been molested by my father, then it would be that it were a "genetic" trait. What does a "genetic" trait mean in modern society? Family history. A family history of alcoholism, of abuse, of anti-socialism, of social unacceptabiity, of "sickness." None of these things is sick. It is not a "sickness" that one man should beat his child, another man molest them, or even that a third would disapprove. None of these things are "sick" or "well." Only dominant or recessive. But this is not genetic. It is only behavioural, the will is its origin. The free will which sparks human individualism. We think of these as "sicknesses" because we think of society as "alive."
If society were "alive" would it mean it were out of control? Because that is what being alive means to me.
It seems important from the point of view of civilisation that the individual be kept under control. Increasingly researchers are opening our eyes to the fact that it is this which is the motivating factor guiding and behind whatever set of values any particular culture might adopt. Culture, while important to the free expression of the individual of what is really goin on, is, nonethelss, basically taking it in the ass from society, from politics, from government, from institutions, from organised religion. And that is what is really going on. There is a top and there is a bottom.
And if society is actually what is IN CONTROL, does that mean it is out of OUR control? Does that mean it has FREEDOM?
I think that if Jesus Christ were alive today, he would definately be branded as being "mentally ill."
But I am not Jesus Christ. Because I can do something he couldn't. I can choose to accept being seen as "sick." I can even choose to be "sick" because I know this means nothing to me. I can choose to not rebel. Because that's all saying "I choose" really is: rebellion. Free will is only a fad. The latest in a history-long series of historically unimportant "hot-button" issues. Masons, Catholics, it doesn't matter who cooks them up. In fact, "who cooks them up" is itself one of those very same philosophical "hot-button" topics. There is always Christ antithetical with Mammon, and the entire history of civilisation has been nothing but the struggle between the forces of "good" and "evil," between dominant and subordinate, nothing but one long synthesis, a thesis on sin.
But as I said, I am no Jesus Christ. Christ was against civilisation: he wanted to deliver a "New Testament," one of utopian peace and brotherly love. To accept that there is no such thing as "sick" or "well," that we all die, and that civilisation is only based on control... these are issues which still cannot be considered even now. It is too important to the dialectic that there must always be some "Christ" figure standing up against the social dumb-show. Once upon a time the anti-christ was Napolean, now it is Hitler. There is no anti-Christ, because there is no "Christ." There is no dialectic because there is no need for any such thing as "history."
You see, I am a utopian I believe in all the same things Jesus believed in. But they killed him. And Kennedy, and King. They kill anyone who stands up against them. They kill Muslims and, when they need to, even Jews. I am even a trans-topian. I believe that utopia need not be accomplished in our lifetimes. That it can be put off until the "right" time. No rush. And again, I am not Jesus. I don't feel particularly inclined to being killed for, what I coonsider to be, no good reason.
Now, there are alot of other transtopians around. But many of them are Atlanteans, who believe that we had better get a move on if we're going to have a utopia, there might be an ecological disaster soon. If this were the USSR, there would be a department of ecologists, and it would not produce ridiculous short-term rumours about "global warming" like the modern ecological scientists of the USA do.
Jesus blamed Society. I don't. Because I know, deep down, that everything is as it should be. I am "sick" for a reason, and it is reasons I choose. So I can thank God that I'm sick, should I never be "well" again! I may prefer to have the time of my life alone, because it's alright with me if I am anti-social. "Anti-social" is "sick" so I must be "sick." Likewise, I can be a utopian, a socialist. I have that right.
No, I don't blame society. I thank the lucky stars I have free will enough to accept that there is nothing in this life I'd like to change. I am content. I have achieved "serenity" and I have done so with myself.
-ben
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UPDATE: 6-20-2005
YAY! I am pleased to announce the following two pictures of my room! YAY!
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They're large pictures, so sorry if they take a long time to load.
-ben
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UPDATE: 6-23-2005
Although everyone I know would disagree with this statement: I feel it is rarely that my views are taken seriously, and even less often that they are believed. Mom finally agreed with me for the first time a year or so ago about one of my more bizzare theories, that a skin discolouration on my back might have been caused by yoga. Almost six months ago, JM (teknorat) became the first person to agree that, at least from my point of view (however altered by drugs it was at the time), it was possible that I had literally seen myself in a certain movie.
Other than this, no one has wanted to give me so much as an inch about any of my wacked out notions. Usually my mom attributes all of my more askew ideas to either drugs, my mental illness, or both, and my friends still laugh at my communist leanings. A friend of a friend, Saul, who had gone to Tennessee to advocate for the release of accused Satanic ritualistic killer Damien Echols and the West Memphis Three, actually went so far as to call my writings in the MPDR "dangerous." I would think they would be "dangerous" only on condition that: A) they prove true, and B) they violate the sanctity of someone with power to keep them secret. Otherwise the only danger I could perceive would be going broke from writing about topics which no one is interested in.
I got drunk last night and forgot my medication this morning. Everything seemed super annoying today. The local server went down and I had no internet, so I went and bought a used book of collected writings by Marx and Engels for $10. I am running out of money for the month. I realised something else, which is probably only because of the alcohol and lack of medication. I am VERY lonely. I miss my ex-girlfriend SO much. Right now I am so depressed I could break down in tears. I just want someone to understand me.
-ben
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UPDATE: 6-26-2005
well, folks, I've spent the last few days either drunk off my ass or passed the fuck out. Right now I feel like complete shite.
This seems to me to happen in cycles. Mom disagrees, or rather, says "why can't you cycle and just not drink?" The drinking is definately neither random nor under my control. It's a cycle.
When I run out of pot, I drink. If I can make it through the drinking, I either end up getting more pot, or not needing it. I have always thought of my drinking as like coming in for a landing after being regularly high for any period of time.
And there's a big difference in my personality when I'm drinking as opposed to when I'm smoking pot. When I'm getting high regularly, I'm pretty inspired, and, while I give off weird vibes to those who don't know what's up with me, I'm more or less kosher in my behaviour.
When I drink, though, things always end up going south. Then, once I sober up long enough to notice, I always have to go around explaining I was only drunk, and didn't mean what I said or did, and apologising for things I don't even remember.
This is a pretty shit state of affairs. If pot were legal, I could smoke it all the time with more or less impunity. To me, I see it as medication, as it treats my depressions and my mood disorder at least as well as, if not waaay better, than my perscribed medication has ever been able to. Alcohol, on the other hand, wouldn't even be a necessary recreation for me, since I certainly don't enjoy either drinking or being drunk, both of which I am completely confident are doing irreperable damage to my brain and to my chemical imbalance.
Sure, all this sounds like I'm making excuses for the choices I make. But these aren't choices any more than being homosexual is a choice. For example, if you've never tried homosexual sex, you aren't really choosing to be straight, it's just your default position.
Personally I like choice, and value my freedoms very much. I try to be thankful for alcohol even being legal, and to at least appreciate the political reasons why marijuana is not. It might not benefit me, but I have to hope that it is all for the best, and, even if I disagree with the reasons for it, I like to think the world is a better place now than it would be otherwise. I think I'd go crazy these days if I were as idealistic as I used to be.
-ben
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UPDATE: 6-28-2005
I came to a very important realisation tonight.
I HATE MYSELF.
This explains so much. Why I drove my girlfriend away. Why I ocassionally simply lose every friend I've made. Why I turned to metaphysics and looking outward at astrophysics rather than inward at my own personality.
People hate me. They don't want me around. They can sense how deeply I feel my self hatred. They want to make it strong. They don't know the difference between love and hate, between pleasure and pain. As long as my emotion is passionate, they will admire me. Even if it is only my own self-hatred magnified.
People have always teased me, always laughed at me. In my face, screamed that I will not amount to anything to them, and told me I never change. Compared me unendingly to the father of my flesh, and never once respected my own personal god-hood.
They prey on my insecurities at my most vulnerable moments. They condition me to believe it is all my own doing. Blame the victim.
I don't think I will ever get over hating myself. I don't see why I should want to.
I hate my body, and destroy it with cigarettes. I hate my brain, and destroy it with drugs and alcohol. I hate my philosophies, and destroy their potential by indifference. I hate my life, and I pray for it to end. One day it will. And after that I honestly don't care.
I don't believe in heaven, in hell, in God, Satan, Christ or Mammon. I don't value money, no matter how much people try to convince me I should. I part with it as soon as I can, so I can meet their expectations of a "fool." I believe in the limitless freedom for definition of the self. And I hate all I have consumed by the expansion of my consciousness. I hate the above, the below, the abyss and ylem. I wish that none of them, or me, had ever accidently existed.
You people, whoever you are, who read this. You're going to read it and worry. You'll read my blog, my personal journal entries, and see a progression between them (that does not exist), a downward spiral (that is not real), part of an emotionally cyclical illness (that is all in your own head). But you would have found something else to worry about otherwise. You only worry when you want. About who or what you want. You worry because you want to. Not because you should.
I will continue to exist, probably even after death. Even if I didn't know how to maintain my consciousness without my physical form, I would probably continue to exist after my physical death purely of spite. Like Dostoeyevsky's character in Notes from Underground.
But for now, I will continue to exist. In spite of all of your misplaced concerns, and in spite of your secret wishing for the final adventure which hides behind your cowardice. In spite of each and every person I know, who secretly loathes me, and is bored by my self-loathing. Whatever you truly feel for me I feel ten trillion trillion trillion times as much towards you. And I see through you.
-ben
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this information is all © 2005 Jonathan Barlow Gee
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