Alien

I wanted to see how micro-dosing psybicilin would affect my writing, so I grew my own and moved my heavy fingers on a backlit keyboard. *Later, I would come to realize that what I took was more than a micro-dose, and it’s better to have them in capsules. Avoids the nausea. The literal kind, not the Sartrean definition. That kind stays the night.

At the low points of the nausea and dizziness, I can almost fool myself into thinking that I have the high under control.

At these ebbs, I take the opportunity to formulate sentences to help match my racing thoughts; and I can only remain grateful for autocorrect. After just a few minutes of typing I already feel the strain on my noddle arms and the urge to lean on something.

I’m under trees. Along a city park where I just walked past a hairy south Asian man who touched his face as we glanced at each other. A sign of his self-consciousness, or of mine in notice it and now writing about it? A cool alien rush bleeds over me, vibrating my skin. I’m quickly distracted by the large shrubs towards me and catch myself finding it silly to wonder on the details of their perfect foliage. Complex. Patterned. Natural.

Wild Ceilings.

It’s getting darker. Which calms my nerves but the now very noticeable street lights feel oppressive and unnatural. They force me to only watch the path laid before me. A fine technology but not made for mad men with alien eyes.

I stand over a bridge that oversees an avenue streaming with black shiny cars each filled with stories I’ll never hear. A chubby, white ginger fellow is actually riding a unicycle past me.

I decide to turn back towards home when I saw a brown baby bird clinging to the side of the building. I couldn’t really believe it at first. I waited a few seconds and realized it was disabled in some way, and a wave of sheer pity fell over my bleeding liberal heart. Then I heard an overhead chirp of a beautiful cardinal, presumably its mother. I drew from wisdom and corrected my view on the baby bird by realizing that some beings are born weak. I backed off and let nature take its course. My Eastern roots remind me to offer the dignity for the family to take care of themselves on their own terms. This forever fights with my westernized socialization which asks: what can I do to help you, stranger? A crude analogy but it’ll do for now.

The colony.

Upon entering my home, I felt alien and hideous but I didn’t fight it and began typing on the illuminated letters of my laptop. I thought of my tropical houseplants that have been forced to yield to my pots, engineered hardwood floors and white walls. Beyond them through the living room window, I see trees more free and majestic in an adjacent park. None of them care about me or anything I do.

I hear my wife in her elevated office preparing her documentary for the sound mix. But what my alien ears hear is none of this but rather a voice of a woman and then man talking about another man — a man named Jordan Peterson. I felt the impulse to objectify these two words: jordan, peterson. Jordan. The river Jordan. The country. Arabs. The “Middle East” for Europeans, the home-desert of the Semites. The divinity for the Abrahamic believers. Peterson. Son of Peter. Peter — a biblical name yet again! I thought it peculiar and endearing how all of this, these words and stories mean so much to them all. So much that they would kill each other, their nature and themselves for it.

The cookout.

My dizziness reminded me of a Rumi idea — something like: the drunk feel the movement of the spinning Earth which overwhelms them. A reminder of their feeble monkey-bodies — so the unwise but powerful men ban it and equate it to Sin.

But the free soul of mine won’t submit to a powdered wig, suit nor turban that claims superiority or authority over what goes on in my head. I’ll nod at the office when the fluorescent lights are on yes, but these systems of earthly construction mean nothing to the part of me that is everything.

I hear that woman’s voice again. It’s a soft quiet voice, that my human parts remember. Tammy Peterson. I repeat the words: tammy, peterson. A funny thing for a woman to take a man’s name, I thought. It’s a willful erasure of her father’s history, which in turn erased another mother’s father’s history. I think of my own mother, Pari Kaveh and how she kept her name and I’m happy she did because it’s a Persian name. Iranian women typically keep their names. The alien says: none of this matters. It’s but a game you’ve invented, and you play it with yourselves. It’s not real, child-monkey.

The surfing edge of the psybicilin high is a bit too much to ride this time. So I splashed a bit of bourbon to help blanket that alien dialect.

A familiar, non-confrontational sound is welcomed. OK Google, play De La Soul. I began to move around and chew on salty nuts to help lull the nausea. The human sees the alien as a xenomorph, and the alien sees the human-me as insecure, lost hypocrite that places his child thoughts dead centre in everything he thinks about — however trivial.

Clearly the alien has a lot to teach me, even though I can sense it could care less in doing so. More to come.

Part of a micro-dosing writing series. Follow this account to not miss the next entry.