“THE BARDO OF BEDLAM”
Words by KEATS ROSS
Illustrations by ERIC J. MILLAR
Self-Liberation through the Intention of the Peaceful and Wrathful Ones
Perhaps this should’ve come later.
If we were working within a usual narrative structure, hell, if we were being sequential and akin to the Bardo Thodol (Tibetan Book of The Dead) then this would not be the next level after “the moment of death.”
But Alas and alak: somatic reality is annoyingly non-linear as it is wholly sequential, and this luxury of “gusto” I seemed to have unearthed in the prior column, Bardo Of The Moment of Death, might just be…well, a mirage.
When conceiving ZOZOBRA (my allegory for rebirth using the Bardo Thodol and the New Mexican Territory circa 1893 as blueprints and literary map) I knew I couldn’t contrast the sequence of bardos to be linear once Slim had “died.” The fourth bardo is said to be the “bardo of the moment of death.” But such as life, in a way; climax can come too soon–hell, climax is on the regular. Gusto is ridiculed and softened as soon as it is brightened. It’s a burden all too familiar to us all.
After Dakota Slim succumbs to the crooked embrace of La Llorona in that first chapter, it thrusts him into the metaphysical.. the ethereal, the non-linear shake/shout…the vibrational blip of matter and matters. The second bardo is said to be one of Dreams. But let’s get this outta the way–the next bardo, to me, is the one of psychic detritus. Of regrets and misses. It is the Bardo of gettin’ good with what you done did when you done did it ’cause you done done did it. Maybe that’s a purely American thing, the need for retribution, but hey…
So this rebellious gusto I heed, the very one that makes me climb walls and jump of bridges, literally, can be a pharmakon so to speak. It can be the poison and the antidote. So how does one use a poison as an antidote?
HORMESIS
Have you thought about Hell? Think about the one place that would eternally make you suffer, make you hopeless. Ruins upon ruins of regret and mistakes and torrid affairs with an anti-grace. Where is your Hell? Where is your waking tundra of terrible?
Oh, mine? Thanks for asking… I had originally envisioned orgasmic biological stink and magma, never-ending bone rattling cold and short breath, I had often imagined it to be this Goya and Bosch fever dream of corruption and dysmorphia. Right? Probably the first place that comes to mind to most: limbs protruding from hollow souls, mangled and grabby out of the depths of lakes of fire, tearing you asunder, skin under skin under skin under skin… you know… the usual pizazz. But it’s not, no, it’s much worse and it’s very different for everyone.
I thought mine would be a cathedral of negative echoes, reliving regrets and hard lucked falters. I thought my hell was Phoenix, Arizona.
For years I was able to rectify a dark pact I made with the southwest, one that literally almost took my life by my own hand. I blamed the place. I ran away seven years ago and hadn’t returned, worried about the ghosts awaiting under that hot desert sun.
I’ve been meditating on Hormesis. It’s a toxicology term that psychologists translate into the infamous “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” An overarching theme to these times, no doubt, and I had found my poison and my antidote in Phoenix. Forgive me for not finding a way to utilize the mythical Phoenix within this metaphor as I’d rather not. It’s all just, it’s all just too damn on the nose.
But this newfound gusto, this rebellious courage I have unearthed, finally lead me back to Phoenix last weekend. Even with everything going on, I thought it best to dive headfirst into trauma–this time, I’d only need to get back from my sister’s second wedding this time around. You see, the first time she got married was the reason I had found myself in a year of sweltering hell.
And like a cosmic do-over, I was given a second chance. This time sans drugs, this time sans fear, this time with a ticket home.
Oh, and this time it was on my 33rd birthday.
Let’s pile the Jesus allusions in that metaphorical heap of NOT GONNA along with the Phoenix, shall we?
Before my trip, a friend recently gave me an Herbal Tarot reading. Mary sat with me while the cards were read and I found it to be an appropriate time to blather about my deepest darkest worries of drams that await me in Phoenix. Tarot is good therapy if you do it right. Forget about if they soothsee or not, only focus on what you see and things will unlock. This reading was all about me needing to snuff out the worry of my past coming to haunt me, that I’m away from it, that I’m new and should be proud and loud that I’m not who I was those many years ago. So this is me attempting that. How’s it going?
BACK TO THE BEIGE BEDLAM
The wedding was sweet. I was able to rekindle otherwise thought long-dead relationships with family members, I was able to bury many a hatchet. My plan was simple, fly in, über to the wedding, leave early the next morning. And so far so good.
Ha.
I raced to the airport with minutes to go that Sunday. “God’s day,” the day I was born, the day of no rest. Through an uncanny and brutal cosmic buggery I had missed my flight. And the kicker? I would have to stay another night. But how? I couldn’t go back to the family, I left it on great terms, and any more time with them was more time to sully. “Oh no,” I thought, “I had avoided downtown Phoenix, I had skirted the ghosts of my pasts, and yet, here I am, having to stay another night…in downtown phucking Phoenix.”
I had soothseen this. 10 years ago I wrote a song about the frustrations of escape. Especially escaping Phoenix to Portland. I’ve realized this to a symptom of a personal hell, the almost-exit-but-no-cigar. Dakota Slim foretold my 33rd year with one of his Hymns:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=werRjWUcP4U&w=560&h=315]
I checked into my roach motel early. I had managed to find one on the outskirts of downtown, away enough to make it a hassle to walk down memory lane and close enough to the airport to split quick. I must have laid in that hotel bed for hours, TV buzzing nonsense in the background. And as I jerk’d and jostled around, I would stare deep and dark into the stucco’d roof– “Fuck, I’m going to have to go to downtown. I can’t escape this. I shouldn’t.”
So the first day of my 33rd I walked. 2 miles. 2 miles among the desert detritus to downtown. The boiled and buckled abound. The bungled and the botched. Beige Bedlam. Hollow eyed, garish and sunburnt shrieks and horrors from the zombified deserters abound. Some carrying their possessions still wrapped in the cellophane from the local jail.
I remember my jail time. I recalled Gabriel Hart mentioning that “anyone who romanticizes jail is a fucking moron.” I fully fucking agree. My short stint in the downtown Phoenix jail was a hell for me. That was a level of, anyway. Sort of the Apex. Well, that and the hospital.
Ambulances stutter by in the blinding light. No homes in sight, well, none formal anyway, just junkyards upon junkyards. I was reminded of the aimless. I was scared of the aimless. I thought at one time that I would never leave this place. I thought at that time that I was this place. I promised myself I would never show Mary this part of town, I would never walk amongst these memories with her in tow. I was glad she wasn’t with me.
Okay. I’m doing this. I’m going to start hard. My first stop: The apartment where I almost lost my life. Twice, really.
Boy, did I side-eye everyone I walked past. My ego knows no bounds. It’s as if I expected there to be an APB out on me, ready and waiting to give me “what fer” upon my return. But time has a way of leveling things out. And by leveling, I mean obliterating.
As I turned the corner to my old street I took a deep breath. I recalled the beige bedlam I conducted upon that street. Torrid bouts of dope and detox. Violent episodes that left me crooked and raw. Boots to the head. I recalled the ambulance that saved my life. And then I saw it. Or rather, I didn’t.
It was gone.
The entire complex; three buildings, two levels of torturous memories. Gone. The only empty lot on the whole damn street. I sighed. My ghosts have been released.
And then I decided to complete my walk. Hit all the old haunts. And one by one, they too, were gone. The record store I had hung out in. Gone. The shack I lived behind the cafe I worked in. Gone. The arts district that was the epicenter of whatever good I managed to cull in those dark times, gone. Everything emotes little deaths. Everything eventually fades asunder. Who the fuck did I think I was to feel that my echoes still laced these places? I was an itch, an annoyance to an otherwise vibrant, if not troubled, community. The moment I left was the moment they rebirth and probably spent little to no time pondering my absence.
Why did I put so much powerful sorrow into the place? Ah… hell is not a place. It’s a palace. A palace in the mind made of personal moral corruption. A palace with monuments to all the horrors and mistakes and self harm that live and haunt on long after the real things dissolve.
I had found my hell, and it lives with me always. I wasn’t happy to see that the Phoenix of seven years ago had died, I wasn’t happy to see the lumbering gentrification that all but eradicated it’s existence and I wasn’t happy to feel a part of it’s demise. But I am relieved to know that my pains and pressures had little to do with the place, and everything to do with me.
When I arrived home back in Portland it was snowing. And I didn’t feel any better. I should’ve, I suppose. But I kind of felt worse. Perhaps I relied too much on Phoenix to entomb all the bad, discarded and hidden personal terrors of mine. It felt easier before. Sure, I’m better for it. But not before I fever dream the hell outta some dark desert detritus.
Time to burn.
NEXT WEEK: PHOENICIAN DETOX, THE MOVE, THE EXORCISM & THE MUTANT
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=werRjWUcP4U&w=560&h=315]
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