Alienus Tempus - Intro & Chp 1 (draft)

Alienus Tempus - Intro

It’s said that when you are in the throes of mental illness, when you are truly crazy, that you are unaware of what the reality of the situation is. That you are totally immersed in and absorbed by irrationality and delusion. So that must indeed settle it then. I am not crazy. Somewhat confused, possibly. It can be difficult to distinguish between the two worlds each of us inhabit. A KOINOS KOSMOS and an IDIOS KOSMOS, the shared reality and a personal reality. There are those that think that when the IDIOS KOSMOS tips the scale then you are crazy. I would like to say that is a possibility, but would also argue that if your KOINOS KOSMOS is not in alignment with your IDIOS KOSMOS then you simply may not be balanced. You are missing part of the picture. Too much of one or the other is either neurotic or psychotic, depending upon which. I have a healthy dose of IDIOS KOSMOS and should be balanced, but I am not. There has been an assault on my faculties and for some reason, I am not in control as I used to be. There is Another… another me, that seeks to restore balance, but in doing so, has shaken the very fabric of my reality, and I would argue, the KOINOS KOSMOS, as well. Except that it is  hidden, but in place. Occult. Waiting for the opportunity when its’ interest would be best served. This potent anamnestic force, similar to the one which one science fiction writer referred to as VALIS, must have considered June 23, 2002 such an opportunity.   

 Chp 1 - Moby and Dick/ 6-23-2002

Twigs, leaves and branches blanketing the road from the recent storm snapped and popped beneath the tires of my '90 maroon Daytona as we crept along Mulberry street. Tammy and I had left our daughter, Sarah, at my mother's house in Dexter, Missouri the night before. We had just watched a couple movies sixty miles north, in our home town, Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

We had watched Spiderman II together, and I stayed for "Minority Report". Tammy said she’d pick me up after the movie and left. She won't watch, read, or discuss anything that pertains to Tom Cruise, even Steven Spielberg. I guess you could say it's my fault. After the movies, I took Tammy to her mother’s house in Clarkton, and I went riding around in Gideon, only three miles away. All three towns, with the exception of Cape, are in the Bootheel of Missouri. Although I grew up in Gideon I didn’t go there often, and when I did, it was only for a short cruise which often left me reminiscing about the many houses we had lived in during the eleven years we had lived there. The few friends I could claim had abandoned the town long before.

My mother, Alice, bingo raging in her blood, left Sarah with my sisters, Whitney and Cheyenne. Sarah was riding a purple tricycle with pink tassles on the end of the handlebars. I rolled the window down to wave at her and as we pulled up to 827 Mulberry Street she squealed and peddled next to my driver’s side window. After I left the Daytona I squatted and she jumped into my arms. I held her tightly and stood up with her. “Hey, baby girl. I missed you so much”.

Whitney, Cheyenne, and some blond girl with shorts too high were talking to my brothers, Jason and Justin, and two other bare chested boys. They were all huddled near a yard swing next to the old white, decrepit bungalow.

"Hey, Bub," Whitney said. "Have you met our friend? His name is Moby Dix, but we call him Moby Dick, you know, like the book?"

Well, call me Ishmael, I thought, while trying to suppress a grin. I gave a brusque nod to Moby Dick. He may have been white, but I didn't see what was so great about him. Did they not think I’ve heard that type of umm… innuendo before? If they were my daughters. Well, I didn't want to get into it at that moment.

After a few minutes of small talk, Sarah, Tammy and I left for home. Driving down broken branch road, I thought, "Moby Dick, huh?" In my minds ear I began to hear a song that used to play on the radio all the time. But I hadn’t heard it in over two years. What was it called? I had the tune, but no words to match it with.

After turning left onto Business 25 I glanced at Tammy, "Do you care if I turn the radio on?"

"Sure, go ahead.”

I pushed the faded black knob, last tuned to a preset station.  I leaned back in the seat then immediately sat up straight and looked at Tammy. The song that would not go away in my mind was actually playing. There was a male and female vocalist and they were singing about going down to the “east side”?

"Tammy," I said. "What's the name of the group that plays this song?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "I'm not sure, but I think it's that guy Moby. He's bald and does a lot of electronic and dance music."

Naturally intuitive, sometimes to my chagrin, I immediately saw a picture coalescing. It was as if a few vital pieces of a puzzle had just been “intelligently” maneuvered into place.

As there is not much to do in the Bootheel, except to see our family we hardly went south of Cape. Even rarer was it for me to go to Gideon, and when I did, hardly ever I spoke to anyone. Earlier that day, while I was riding around Gideon, I did see someone I knew. I’ve seen him walk in the same area before and never stopped but this time I did. I talked to Philip for a few minutes and then left. The topic of conversation has been lost to me for years.

And then there was the meeting with Whitney’s friend, Moby Dick.

Then there was the precognitive event with the song on the radio. I discovered later that day that the song I heard, first in my minds ear and then tuned into when I turned the radio on, was “South Side” by the artist known as Moby.

The second movie I had watched alone was called "Minority Report", based on a short story by the late science fiction writer, Philip K Dick. How could I not connect these events? See how it works? It was significant that I spoke with Philip earlier that day, and that we met “Moby Dick”, and then the precognitive sense about the song by Moby. Moby was the tie that bound Philip and Dick. And it was “confirmed” by my hearing “South Side” in my mind then turning the radio on and both Tammy and I hearing it immediately.

To complicate matters even more, or possibly shed some light on the situation; I felt a pull to watch “Minority Report” because of a tenuous but important connection I had made from the movie “Vanilla Sky” I had watched not long before. The movie starred Tom Cruise, thus my “direction” to watch “Minority Report”. (I speak more about this connection later in the manuscript)

This inevitably led to my pondering the author's middle name. What did the K stand for? Would I find relevance in his middle name, as well? This was definitely Jungian synchronicity manifesting. It had to be, with everything else that had recently occurred. It's like my own IDIOS KOSMOS had been altered from what it once was, in preparation to receive this information, from what I believe had in part been delivered through the KOINOS KOSMOS. It seemed to me there was some sort of master mind controlling the way reality works i.e. “Space and Time”. This couldn't have been just me. Certainly there was some outside objectivity to it. Either that or I truly was crazy.