Gospel of Aum Dada 5: sanctum sanctorum

And then there was the summer when thoughts ran away with themselves, as well as the spoon, the dish, the dog, the moon, the cow, the fiddle, the cat, and I felt as if I were a bystander watching a parade of pesky androids, humanoid engines like swarms of motorized lawn mowers normally so singular and domestic becoming multiple and outlandish, increasing logarithmically as if directed by Alfred Hitchcock himself until they even broke from his control and ran off in all directions randomly and vigorously but without any malice, and there was nothing I could do but watch this larger thought roll in like an unattainable tidal wave emanating from the unconscious depths of New Moon Lake, recognizing its size and shape and chaotic demeanor and knowing it was named panic! And all the other thoughts were swamped. And I, myself, was swamped. Panic was everything and everywhere. Panic was king. Panic was country. Panic was panoramic, pantheistic, a panoptical panoply of pandemonium and pang!

My mother recognized the monster, having been attacked by one called agoraphobia for almost all her life. My father knew it all too well, having lived next to one like it for the entire length of his marriage. Both tried to talk me down as if I were standing on a cliff about to jump. I couldn’t tell them not to worry. There wasn’t any cliff. Panic had destroyed that as well.

But it slowly dawned on me, for after all I still existed, there I was and here I am, that I wasn't who I thought I was, nor were all those submerged thoughts really mine. And I wasn’t even this overwhelming wave of panic. They were something separate from the core of what I was. And so I rested in that sanctuary, almost pleasantly schizophrenic in my comfort as I watched panic roaring like a freight train turning toward tornadic fury with a Kansas concentration, and waited for it to leave for some other state.

Something cracked that summer but it wasn’t me. I emerged for the very first time, popped my head out, looked around, and waited for the time to be right to be. Maybe I even chirped a little tune.