Pyramid Song

"I jumped in the river and what did I see?
Black-eyed angels swam with me
A moon full of stars and astral cars
All the things I used to see
All my lovers were there with me
All my past and futures
And we all went to heaven in a little row boat
There was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt"
--"Pyramid Song", Radiohead

Lately, a recent memory began replaying in his mind. At the beginning of the year, he had been invited to celebrate a friend's birthday at a dinner and flamenco show in Los Feliz. He was still taking several blood pressure pills at the highest dosages, making him faintly and pleasantly dizzy on a regular basis.

Evening came quickly and early, so that by six, it was already pitch black save for the orange lights coming from street lamps. He had not eaten much during the day, nor had he drank much alcohol in the prior months. Yet the stress of driving in an area foreign to him increased his craving for a shot of whiskey and a beer. Also, he was using his doctor's advice that a moderate amount of alcohol was good for his heart as an excuse to start drinking again.

Several of his friends were already at the restaurant, which was almost as dark as the outside, its wood interior dimly illuminated in red and orange. They had all decided to order a pitcher of sangria, and he decided to also order a beer. He made short thrift of the beer and finished a glass of sangria rather quickly.

Within the half hour, he began to feel rather warm. His heart was making a hummingbird beat. It felt like he was breathing through smoke. He started seeing flashes of color and stars in the corner of his vision. He excused himself to go outside to grab some fresh air. Every so often, he had felt this claustorphobic response which dissipated after a few minutes in the cool air. He had no reason to expect any differently.

One the friends followed him outside to make sure he was OK. He reassured the friend that he was perfectly fine, and that he just needed to sit down. Then he was on his back, opening his eyes, his friend saying, "It's OK, man. Just rest. You passed out." He actually felt better than he had in months. His mind was clear. He felt refreshed. Eventually, he went inside, watched the flamenco show and had dinner. "Don't pass out" became the running inside joke among his friends.

There was a significance to this memory that he would later tell only to his high school friend a coast away. There was no subjective transition between setting himself down to sit, reassuring his friend he was quite alright and then opening his eyes, his back on the concrete walkway. Apparently, a minute or so had passed. And yet he felt no passage of time while his brain decided to shut down briefly. That minute period was a nothingness--no consciousness, no thoughts, no dreams or hallucinations. There was not even an awareness of a nothingness. This is when he realized that he did not fear his own mortality. If there was no awareness, this nothingness, even with a brief deprivation of oxygen to the brain, then what was there to fear?

He would come back to this memory in the couple of months after that friend's birthday dinner, when he was barely able to cope with a broken relationship that had ended several months previously. It was the closest to the edge that he had ever been. It is the fear of whatever lay in that undiscovered country that kept most in his position alive, that fear outweighing whatever pain was being felt. But without that fear, the emotional calculus changed--to know that the alternative to that paralyzing sadness was a nothingness so complete that you were unaware of it. But for better or for worse, he valued the feelings of this friends and his family more than his own. It would be selfish for him to take that step. He even thought about his cat that had grown attached to him and only him, plaintively yowling for a scritch behind the ear, the rub on the tummy that would never come. This pulled him back.

He got help. Eventually, he learned how to deal. He went through the motions. He had met people who exited as quickly out of his life as quickly as they came, and because this did not bother him (in fact, he had a palpable sense of relief whenever this happened), he was convinced that he had lost the ability to feel that spark of potential, to feel smitten. This, he believed, was not a bad thing. It made life simpler. Soon, other factors in the emotional calculus became greater. The warmth of friends, a late lunch at a Santa Monica pub with the cool ocean air drifting through, good thoughts that kept him tethered.

And then, about a month ago, another friend invited him to happy hour at a cozy Hollywood bar to meet some friends of friends. This was not unusual. He expected to go out, go through the motions of chatting with new people, then go home and watch whatever he had Tivo'd quickly forgetting the names and the faces of those he met. But a small thing happened. Maybe it was a smile, or a sustained glance, or having his jokes being laughed at. Maybe it was none of those. But there was a small feeling which he thought was dead, and suddenly it mattered if he saw her again.

This scared the shit out of him. With the spark comes a good chance that it will become extinguished. Simplicity becomes chaotic. He knew himself very well, and knew that he, in all likelihood, would fuck this up.

And when he didn't fuck up the next few times he saw her again, it gave him a feeling of hope. Maybe he could escape the past. Maybe he could let go and move on.

But unfortunately, this coincided with a very bad anniversary. Maybe it was self-sabatoge given certain admonishments about the age difference, or given that he was not wholly over the other relationship. Maybe it was just pure stupidity. But as he predicted, he fucked it up and fucked it up royally, mentioning that other relationship on the one time they hung out without others. He acted too intense instead of just being.

Like the other women in the past few months, she exited his life as quickly as she came in. Unlike the other women, he regretted this.

His emotional calculus began to change again. That feeling of spark, that feeling of being smitten was now inextricably tied with that feeling of frustration, helplessness and sadness. He didn't know which was worse--that most of his friends thought "Shit, how is he gonna fuck this up?" whenever he met someone, or that he never disabused them of this notion.

He began craving whiskey at 11 in the morning, a pack of Malboro Reds. He had to hide himself from certain get togethers so as not to make her feel awkward. He tried to be proactive, to keep the calculus stable by taking selective serotonin inhibitors. He tried to remind himself of other short-lived situations like this, the memories of which he barely remembered.

This doesn't change the fact that he's not out on the weekends, that he had to stay home yesterday night.

The signifance isn't just this most recent incident, but the likelihood that this incident will be one of a long, inevitable sequence of friendly correspondence filled with potential turning into silence. The significance is the return of that memory of the incident from earlier this year, that nothingness so complete you aren't even aware of it. The significance is that each further sequence will lead to a tipping point in his emotional calculus.