the dreamer recognizes they are dreaming. When the area of the brain that is usually off during sleep is activated the recognition of dreaming occurs, the dreamer must be careful to let the dream delusions continue but be conscious enough to recognize them. It’s a process some people theorize as the space between reason and emotion.
The zombie is also in this kind of space between reason and emotion - and more. Ask any high functional zombie - or a recovered zombie - and they will tell you right away that life was like awaking dream. Boy howdy. Though for some it is a nightmare beyond language.
In a general sense, for me it was cool in zombieland. For example, I could sit in one spot all day and look at light changes on the wall with absolute fascination until night fell. Another time I dipped my hand in blue paint again and again and covered a white wall of my apartment with hands. Though I admit at one point the hands became menacing and threatened to consume me, later they were again benign, even able to sing me to sleep through little mouths on their palms.
I guess now that I’m thinking about it, zombie state is also a good deal like hypnosis or meditation. In hypnosis or meditation, you shift awareness from the physical world and enter the deeper world of the subconscious. Sometimes this makes your regular body go numb. Neither zombies nor hypnosis/meditation folks are freaked out by this. In zombieland, when you are so relaxed your mouth feels lax as water and your muscles drop down into the warm flush, you are going somewhere important of the mind. Down and deep. Into the world of dreams.
But another tricky thing about zombieland is that in the dimension of dreams you might experience body distortions, vibrations, or weird shaking. The key was not to panic. It didn’t
mean you were turning into a Quaker. It was normal. It meant your body was ready to “go” where your mind was taking it. It meant you were going on the nod.
And there is no such thing as time. No past, no present, no future. Or else they are all there at once. So the slowing and slurring of language, the heaviness in your legs, the oddity of your hands turning to giant leaden balls that swing slowly from your arms, the big wad of pillowcase in your mouth, these are all body modifications needed to go where you are going. Though I distinctly remember things going better when I did not leave the apartment. I had, for lack of a better phrase, night blindness and dumb girl head out in the world. Plus there was the problem of legs and arms.
Or maybe I saw the world for what it was, no place for a girl like me. Why not … leave?
There were other, not cool times. Like the time I woke up under an overpass with my face against asphalt in a pool of my own vomit with my pants down around my ankles. Or the time I woke up in some blond and blue-eyed Karate guy’s bed with leather twine around my neck. Or the time I fell from a second floor balcony and cracked my head, the woman with the latex gloves touching my forehead in the ambulance saying, “Lidia, can you still see me? Stay awake for me, Lidia. Good girl.” She looked like an underwater white octopus lady. Pretty though.
I’m a strong bodied person. And the thing of it was, the things I thought would kill me in my life, maybe even the things I wished had, didn’t. What, I distinctly remember thinking, did I have left to lose? Crossing the blood-brain barrier. The mind body barrier. The reality dream barrier. All that euphoria filling up the hole of me. No pain. No thought. Just images to follow.
I was a zombie for a spell in Lubbock. In Austin. In Eugene.
It wasn’t epic compared to the other wounds in my life.
Rehab and relapse and remember all start with the letter R.
What It’s Not
THIS IS NOT ANOTHER STORY ABOUT ADDICTION.
It’s not The Heroin Diaries and it’s not Trainspotting and it’s not William Burroughs and it’s not a Million Fucking Little Pieces , OK? I’m not
The zombie is also in this kind of space between reason and emotion - and more. Ask any high functional zombie - or a recovered zombie - and they will tell you right away that life was like awaking dream. Boy howdy. Though for some it is a nightmare beyond language.
In a general sense, for me it was cool in zombieland. For example, I could sit in one spot all day and look at light changes on the wall with absolute fascination until night fell. Another time I dipped my hand in blue paint again and again and covered a white wall of my apartment with hands. Though I admit at one point the hands became menacing and threatened to consume me, later they were again benign, even able to sing me to sleep through little mouths on their palms.
I guess now that I’m thinking about it, zombie state is also a good deal like hypnosis or meditation. In hypnosis or meditation, you shift awareness from the physical world and enter the deeper world of the subconscious. Sometimes this makes your regular body go numb. Neither zombies nor hypnosis/meditation folks are freaked out by this. In zombieland, when you are so relaxed your mouth feels lax as water and your muscles drop down into the warm flush, you are going somewhere important of the mind. Down and deep. Into the world of dreams.
But another tricky thing about zombieland is that in the dimension of dreams you might experience body distortions, vibrations, or weird shaking. The key was not to panic. It didn’t
mean you were turning into a Quaker. It was normal. It meant your body was ready to “go” where your mind was taking it. It meant you were going on the nod.
And there is no such thing as time. No past, no present, no future. Or else they are all there at once. So the slowing and slurring of language, the heaviness in your legs, the oddity of your hands turning to giant leaden balls that swing slowly from your arms, the big wad of pillowcase in your mouth, these are all body modifications needed to go where you are going. Though I distinctly remember things going better when I did not leave the apartment. I had, for lack of a better phrase, night blindness and dumb girl head out in the world. Plus there was the problem of legs and arms.
Or maybe I saw the world for what it was, no place for a girl like me. Why not … leave?
There were other, not cool times. Like the time I woke up under an overpass with my face against asphalt in a pool of my own vomit with my pants down around my ankles. Or the time I woke up in some blond and blue-eyed Karate guy’s bed with leather twine around my neck. Or the time I fell from a second floor balcony and cracked my head, the woman with the latex gloves touching my forehead in the ambulance saying, “Lidia, can you still see me? Stay awake for me, Lidia. Good girl.” She looked like an underwater white octopus lady. Pretty though.
I’m a strong bodied person. And the thing of it was, the things I thought would kill me in my life, maybe even the things I wished had, didn’t. What, I distinctly remember thinking, did I have left to lose? Crossing the blood-brain barrier. The mind body barrier. The reality dream barrier. All that euphoria filling up the hole of me. No pain. No thought. Just images to follow.
I was a zombie for a spell in Lubbock. In Austin. In Eugene.
It wasn’t epic compared to the other wounds in my life.
Rehab and relapse and remember all start with the letter R.
What It’s Not
THIS IS NOT ANOTHER STORY ABOUT ADDICTION.
It’s not The Heroin Diaries and it’s not Trainspotting and it’s not William Burroughs and it’s not a Million Fucking Little Pieces , OK? I’m not
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