Stuck In High School!

After 37 years, I am still in high school. It is a mystery to me how this has become my life. After all I do not know if being stuck in high school is the epitome of the American dream or a nightmare. Maybe I am repaying a karmic debt from a past life or maybe I am paying penance for the things I have done in this life- what ever the case may be, I am still stuck in high school.

I am currently sitting in a history class while students are taking a written examination that I designed with the intention of making test taking entertaining. Occasionally I hear small explosions of laughter as students read some of the more comical questions that I have inserted in between the more serious ones- “how many times a day did Abe Lincoln masturbate?” For the most part the room is so silent that I can hear the hum of the freeway which sits just behind the school. I am the Teacher of these students but at the moment I feel like them- stuck in a place that I do not belong. I am always perplexed by the similarities that I find between myself and my 15 and 16 year old students. It is true- I am twenty years older than most of my students but like them I am still pre-occupied with sex and what I am going to do with my life. It is as if a large part of me is yet to grow into this thing I often hear referred to as maturity. I feel as if I have never left high school, my body has aged but my spirit or soul is still stuck at 16. It is a difficult phenomena to explain- but as I sit here writing in my notebook and my students are taking their examination- I feel strangly equal to them. It is as if we should all just be friends and ditch school.

When I was in high school, the first time, I was an apparition. You could see my physical body but my soul was some place else. I was stoned most of the time and Teachers only knew my name because I was the tall lanky guy in the back who never spoke and was seen by all as being weird. At school dances I would get drunk on liquor that I stole from my fathers bar and stand in a corner trying to spy on couples who were making out. Sometimes I could be found lying in the school hallways, broken down into an agitated state of tears crying out “get me out of here!” I did not read a single book nor did I do more than was asked of me. I was preoccupied with blow jobs and death and not once did I get a grade that was higher than a C. My father had to pay off the principle to let me graduate after 6 years of high school.

Now some 20 years later I am still stuck in high school. Somehow the fury of the fates or divine consciousness has managed to transform me into a Teacher. It is like a great magic trick that has been performed in front of my eyes. The trick is on me and I stand there trying to figure out how the magician has created the desired effect. I am perplexed and can not seem to come up with an answer. I am in a state  of absolute dis-belief. How did they do it? It just makes no sense.

Dream Time.

Understanding the laws of nature is easy when you do not believe in them. Law is another word for man/woman-made. Anything man/woman-made can not possibly comprehend the incomprehensible ways of nature. This is why when I am on a walk and it starts to rain yellow and red daisies, or when I come across an insect with long wings that repeats the word “fear,” I am not surprised. I take it all in without critical judgment because I know that there is little that my human mind can comprehend when it comes to what is really taking place in the natural world. When a book begins to turn its own pages, blades of grass begin to play violin sounding solos or a stream is filled with dark chocolate- how can I argue that something unordinary is taking place. My daily ruminations speak to me of hidden worlds and I am the least surprised when rationalism breaks down. This is why when I was sitting today in a warm sulfur spring and an indigenous looking man appeared on the ledge- I was unafraid.

There are all kinds of characters that hang out by the sulfur springs. Junkies, johns, bums, hobo’s, prostitutes and car salesmen on their lunch break. At the time I was alone and certain that this was no ordinary mortal. I could see the trees through his gaunt chest. He told me that I must challenge myself to think in dream time. “I do not know what you are talking about,” I replied. “I know…. this is why I tell you,” the apparition said with a triangular smile on his transparent face. “You see me, only because you can now see in dream time, if you are always seeing this way- your heart will not be as tormented by the whims of your mind,” he said moving his elongated fingers over my head. Everything inside of my skin went numb. When I came through I was floating in the stream while chunky pieces of sulphur floated past me like scraps of plastic. I tried to stand on my two feet but the water was too deep. I clamored my way to the shore where I found my clothes and a towel. I sat on a tree stump and listened to the deep sounds of wilderness that reminded me of the plucked strings of an oud. I looked around for any kind of shape that would resemble the indigenous spirit that I may have seen and was happy to see what looked like a yellow squirrel flying across the tree tops. Clouds gathered over head hiding the shape of the sun and I smelled the damp scent of approaching rain. As I began to make my way back toward civilization I was surprised by nothing that had just happened. I was only given hope that rationality was possibly a fools tool used to comprehend the incomprehensible phenomena we know as life.