The Park pt. 2 cuz Ray rightfully wanted details.

I can't believe I am putting this in writing. I can't believe how real these memories still are. I just want to grab my former self, my "crazy" self and love her, show her calm and surety and peace. Read below for details about me and Prospect Park and Paranoia/Psychosis.

I imagined I was running from random people in the park. There was a walking bridge through a woodsy area full of leaves on trees and the ground. I loved walking ON it, but more interesting was to walk the path that went BELOW it. And just stay under it and listen. Especially when oblivious people walked near. It coulda been a WWI (or two?) shelter - the randomly-shaped square stones, the tunnels of light on either end, the loneliness of that spot. It was so me. Or how I imagined myself: tragic, subtly and unwittingly gorgeous, worn, torn, overlooked, fatigued, solitary.

I read near the pond - Things Fall Apart. The mood of that book was my mood. Inevitably depressed. Like the main character, I was gradually less able to control my rage and violence. I had a sharp heat in my chest at all times. The pond waters cooled that a little, though. The air was fresher there and persuaded my heart like city smog could not. I could cry alone and sometimes loudly.

I though people were chasing me sometimes. In the park I could take paths that would throw them off, camouflage me, wind me back to solace. I had a whole scheme in my head of why I was being chased and watched. The FBI wanted to study me, the child of a former civil rights lawyer living in the city of the upcoming huge KKK rally. Really it was just a whirlwind feeling that told me I was picking up clues about being under surveillance. I would imagine my roommate having secret phone talks about where I went when I left the house. I thought it interesting in my dementia that I went to the park. In retrospect, that would have been the least interesting place for the feds to follow me. Just grass and trees and joggers. I laugh in awe of how my mind jumped its wires and still convinced itself of its sanity. Also amazing is the impact these thoughts had on my breathing, my heartbeat, my emotions, my physical reality. I wish I could comfort that fear-consumed young woman in my memories. I wish she could have remembered peace and joy and known that THAT is truth, that it is unnatural to live in hard, hateful paralysis. That suspicion of everyone and everything does not make you a smarter person. Even now I come out of milder panic states and marvel at the contrast between my "sane" mind (relative peace, joy, love) and my horrid delusions (sheer and utter fear).


So does that paint a better picture, Ray? I'll keep working on it. It gets hard to go back there and to put these sensations and false knowings into words.

Love,

Kali

The Park - for my show on mental health & spirituality

The Park

When nothing else made good sense, Prospect Park was safe. Green, sienna, gold too, in that season. I hid there and wandered; treks and pseudo-adventures helped me escape and explore my twisted mind.

The space was large enough for a girl to lose herself comfortably. But it was contrived enough not to scare me when I did just that. September-October-Northern-Fall felt panicked to me, everywhere insane except on park grounds. I would've lived there if I had thought I could.

My mixed states - paranoia, anxiety, disapproving self-image - always expanded and exposed my vulnerabilities. I was powerless to nature's warmth. That was good. I was over-influenced by people and their "energy". That was usually distorted and frightening. Refuge became the browning trees, the autumn color palate, the pond, the old cement building that hovered over it. I was anonymous and cherished in the same moment. My chest stilled a little there, even my most frantic consciousness.

My childhood friend even walked with me there once. She wasn't selfish then, or vain, or in denial like usual. Her demeanor softened. She nobly attempted to accept and make sense of my antics. She was secretly challenged just to maintain her own life, despite being nearly miserable herself. At least that's how I see her as I look back on that era. Maybe I've distorted the past - maybe she wasn't holding in the hurt I would have known had I lived her life. Only she knows for sure.

I tend to forget that everyone isn't as sensitive as I, or necessarily as reflective. Therefore, all people may not feel the agony of their wounds or the heights of bliss that I do. Perhaps they're capable of it, but it seems we need an unexpected emotional jolt to re-open that kind of feeling in this day, time, place. More folks are trained to be modern, with-it, so to speak. But coolness carries the burden of closing off to our inner-tender, those raw responses to life we supposedly came to the planet with as babies.

I really have little sense of what's what when it comes to this. I just know my own perception is highly attuned to EVERYTHING, imagined or not.

to be continued...