A Schizophrenic’S Notes

By Thomas Griffith

I could have written stories, fables, anecdotes, etc., like so many authors have. But when I am reading fiction, I often wish I knew what the author was really trying to say. I didnt want a long distance runaround. Rather I wanted the plain and simple directions to the destination s/he had in mind. I dont believe the genius is in the details, but in getting the message across. So I wrote down what I know, not what my imagination could spin or weave with it. I tried to be clear and to stay on the subject. I tried to be lyrical, heavy and familiar.
In this book, A Schizophrenics Notes, I often write about inner space, and the risks inherent to connecting with others, or of failing to connect with others, with our inner space. As much as I would have liked to have given the reader a handle or steering wheel to hold on to, that didnt happen. I certainly dont have a handle. One of my favorite lines in my writing is a Buddhist one, The way that can be described isnt the Way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 12, 2011
• ISBN: 9781469135489

Book preview

Copyright © 2012 by Thomas Griffith.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2011962378

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4691-3547-2

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4691-3546-5

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4691-3548-9

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Contents

Systems

Stages of Consciousness Realms of Self & Vacuum

Stages of Growth

Quartettes of Evolving Magnitude

Dualities

Contrasting Wavelengths

Animals

The meek

Seagulls morphing into Cosmic Consciousness

Family fall out morphing into amazing animals

Black flowers or Taking care of number 273

Symphony Match Seller

Turning the corner

Evolution and creationism

The heart

Music

The lyricist’s credo

Sex and the psyche

The Shadow knows

Supply and demand

Personality

Being labeled the word you

Atmospheric Equilibrium

Are you experienced?

Brinksmanship

Chip away at the stone

Self among others

Alone

Paying out dues

Please allow me to introduce myself

Nothing’s Happening

Nothingness

Hellfire

Status in Darkness

No Man is an Island

Span the gap

Aftercare

Stage fright or Braking the ice

Forging a Path

Bomb Children

Infant Sorrow

Got to get down to it

Children of the lie

The captive

Child abduction/rape/murder

Something’s Wrong

Selflessness vs. terrorism

Outside the box

A broken mirror

The End

Quality assurance or Aptitude test

Grandfather Fire

Systems

Stages of Consciousness       Realms of Self & Vacuum

                (With drugs, games and trips some semblance of inner space is maintained. Work walks the fine line of how much we are ready, willing and able to give, get real, reach out and let go. When we are a control freak, or cop out or have a dark side we really have let ourselves go and are messing up like clockwork. The body, appetites and senses are total departures from inner space.)

Stages of Growth

Quartettes of Evolving Magnitude

Dualities

Contrasting Wavelengths

Animals

The meek

1

My father told me

when he was young

flocks of doves

flew in the sky.

He went on to say,

you could walk over to them

and pick them up

when they were on the ground.

There are no more doves,

but pigeons are similar.

The reason there aren’t doves around anymore

is because they were gathered off the ground

and killed and eaten.

It’s like alcoholics say, easy does it.

2

Pigeons are scavengers

on dirty city streets and environs.

They are hosts to many deceases.

If they were eaten

they would cause sickness and maybe death.

They must have very well developed immune systems.

I believe that attribute is the flip side

of the stress they must feel

from courting danger the way they do.

I’m scared to walk my city’s streets.

I am proud that I listen to my fears

because I believe that is the basis of survival.

But if pigeons can walk the streets,

then I should be able to too.

We could learn a lot from animals.

I don’t believe they are idle props or worthless mechanisms,

or are the bazaar creation of some capricious creator,

and are at our disposal, for us to do with as we please.

I believe animals are evidence of

the transcendental nature of intelligent design,

without which nothing would last.

3

I don’t imagine the meek have no fear.

I imagine they exists in inner space

which is a mysterious struggle

beyond time and form.

And that they view their environs

as being totally out of their control.

They do the best they can,

and realize that beyond that

they are powerless.

I believe the meek don’t want a world to start

where we are the random

victims or beneficiaries of

pain and suffering.

I.e. your loss will be my gain,

and visa-versa.

Seesaws are in playgrounds for children.

I.e. you go up, while they go down, or visa-versa.

The meek’s existence is harder than it has to be

but it also promises to be more rewarding,

although they don’t hold their breath

waiting for it to come to them.

They paved a road in gold

to keep the dream alive,

and thereby keeping the inert nightmare

from engulfing the universe.

Seagulls morphing into Cosmic Consciousness

Part One

1

I live in an efficiency apartment

on the 10th floor.

I have a balcony, but not a bed room.

Below my balcony are streetlights and parking lot lights.

I live very near the ocean.

There are lots of seagulls.

Seagulls have been living on the shore

for millions of years.

The seagulls roost on the lights.

They are safe from people and cars there.

Seagulls bump others seagulls off the tops of streetlights

in some sort of ego-dominance game

that they play all day.

An airborne seagull will swoop down

on a roosting seagull and bump it off the streetlight.

Physical contact is never made.

One departs as the other arrives.

The incoming seagull always wins.

There is never any contest.

The incoming seagull clearly and powerfully has the momentum on his/her side

and would easily knock the roosting one off if it were to stay.

The roosting seagull never puts up a fight,

but always takes to flight,

and gives up its place on the streetlight

as easy as a-b-c, 1-2-3.

Actually, on very rare occasions

the roosting seagull holds his or her ground.

I imagine the winner feels quite proud.

I imagine the loser feels quite diminished in stature,

and is left to wonder what went wrong.

2

Choosing flight over fight

is a smart choice.

We all are easy to kill.

I’d rather be

a live chicken

than a dead duck.

3

I feel sorry for animals.

They don’t have food, clothing or shelter.

They don’t get close, care or love.

They die alone beyond the outskirts of infinity.

We hate to be treated like animals.

4

There is one seagull in particular

who often sits on the streetlight closest to my balcony.

It doesn’t make the boisterous and robust calls which characterizes seagulls.

It constantly makes very plaintive and anguished sounds,

high pitched and sharp, brief, but over and over.

I have come to the conclusion it is having a particularly bad trip.

I listen to it. I try to feel for it. It makes me wax sad and wise.

If everything felt that way

no one would bother to come to be alive,

much less try to love.

But it is a necessary, if not unexpendable way of life.

If animals can cope with what they have been given,

then so should we.

I wrote the preceding verse almost a year ago, in the fall.

I have listened to that seagull cry for the whole time since.

I don’t know how to reach it to comfort it.

This crying seagull has come to try

to get other seagulls involved

in its bad trip.

I will approach others, making its cry.

Others seem interested in it for a moment,

and then turn away.

Then the crying seagull repositions itself

so the other has to face it.

Others seem to have acquired sympathetic vibrations with it

but don’t want to get

too deep, cosmic, pure or weird with it.

They don’t fight it or laugh at it,

but they clearly try to get away.

In the last month or so,

there is another seagull

who occasionally tries to join in and harmonize

with the crying seagull.

They cry together.

It doesn’t last long,

but I am glad the seagull has found a friend.

This seagull seems to have established itself

as a distinct personality or case

in the eyes of the other seagulls.

5

I have noticed the seagulls have sex a few times.

The males squawk and flap their wings in euphoria.

A few months ago I noticed a couple of seagulls

make a daily habit of sex.

The male would really get into it,

squawking and flapping his wings.

Then I began to notice that later on,

the female seagull of the couple

tries to get in the male’s face,

and to make it receptive to her perspective.

The male turns away from the female,

and the female repositions itself

in the male’s face.

This scenario would last quite a while.

But this relationship is all over.

The couple has broken up

and gone their separate ways.

Part 2

1

The Earth is for the relatively few

who’ve chosen the less traveled path.

Infinity is big.

There are an infinity of universes the size of ours.

Mathematicians realize no number can express infinity.

They postulate than knowing the highest prime number

would give us an inkling as to the magnitude of infinity.

The highest known prime number has 12 million digits.

It would take a 20 volume encyclopedia to write it out.

Considering that we can’t begin to wrap our minds around infinity,

it is safe to say that considering the size of infinity,

that a very small percentage of it find their way to a place like Earth.

So we have to understand that life on Earth is a treasured privilege

and isn’t an attic filled with toys to be played with, broken, and thrown away.

Rather it is an rare and golden opportunity to experience

the spiritual and the beautiful as being necessary to all of our survival

and not as subjects to be studied in text books.

2

Further, we should appreciate if not worship the way

the sacred has met the challenges of fate

and made them endurable here.

Faith and grief are of the essence. A selfless passion

to reach the other side and be like a light in the darkness there.

We are not born with the capacity to be those ways.

They are like making time go backwards.

There is no success, the crisis always has been, is, and will be.

Fate is infinite.

And infinity is eternal.

The Earth spans the gap

between fate and eternity.

It is hard to feel humbled enough

in regard to the Earth.

To be without the Earth would be unspeakably tragic.

The Earth means everything to us.

We should till the soil

and tend the fire.

It is hard to hope we’ll ever be worthy of the Earth.

3

Animals have it harder than it has to be,

because we have to figure existence out on our own,

or the truth and reality won’t stick to us

like the fat that sticks to our own bones.

Experience is the best teacher.

Reality is that we can only take what we make.

The truth is that it is the nature of free will

to take an awful lot more than we make.

The two ends come a far cry from meeting each other.

So we need to intervene in the ensuing crisises.

The animals’ survival mode shows us the way

to get down to the bottom and stay there.

But only we have the intelligence to get the job done

and the willpower to persevere in the struggle and mystery

of putting the broken pieces back together.

We can’t be shallow, stupid and lazy.

4

They say, you can’t get to Heaven by doing good works.

When I die, I want to go where

the people got there

by doing good works.

They say, you can only get to Heaven by admitting you don’t deserve it.

When I die, I want to go where

the people got there

because they deserve it.

Family fall out morphing

into amazing animals

Part One

1

I am very estranged from my family,

as are most mental patents.

And ultimately the fact is, I would rather be

in a state psychiatric hospital than with them,

which is why I accepted being sent

to such a place to endure my episodes of temporality.

It is hard to make that change

when life and love turn cold and strange.

2

When I was a child my mother used to point out

in Brueghel’s painting of the Fall of Icarus

how no one noticed his demise, when he crashed into the sea.

His fall into the sea came on the heels of his delusions of grandeur

that he was going to fly to the Sun,

when the wax he used in the wings he made to fly there with melted,

because he didn’t take into account that

the Sun’s heat would increase as he approached it.

So when his wings failed he became helpless

in the face of the Earth’s gravity.

He fell to his death.

My mother told me then,

that was the kind of scenario that was going to play itself out for me when I grew up.

My mother particularly noted to me,

that there was a farmer in the foreground of the painting,

and a ship in the vicinity of where Icarus’ landed in the sea,

neither of which noticed Icarus’ plight,

and if they did, they weren’t moved to intervene.

The painting depicts a rather complex set of ideas

which deserve to be intelligently discussed and learned from,

rather than to be treated as black humor or fear mongering.

3

I have never confronted my loved ones

with what they have done to me that hurt me and let me down.

In a way I am frightened they’d just might