wild nights

I had an interesting evening yesterday. After hanging out with some people from work at Fuel, a relatively new Caribbean-themed restaurant/bar, I rode my little bicycle right on home to make some dinner. About 10 minutes after I sat down on my couch, though, I started feeling incredibly strange. Then I began trembling uncontrollably. Then I got extremely cold. Now, my house has exactly two window units, and it’s almost always warm, which doesn’t bother me, but it’s not the kind of place that gets chilly without some serious AC crankage and a cool night. So I was surprised to have sweatpants on, a blanket over me, and still be cold. Quickly realizing that I was perhaps coming down with a fever/flu/mystery disease, I decided to go to bed and sleep from 10 pm until 7 am, when I had to go to work. I turned off all of the air, put an extra blanket on, and tried to go to sleep.

I fell asleep, but did not really sleep; instead, I woke up every 45 minutes, feeling like I was dying of too much heat, having bizarre visions. Yes, visions. This happened to me once in high school, when I was laid up at home with a fever during the day. I put on Pink Floyd’s The Wall because I was bored, and proceeded to have strange altered states while my head felt like it was going to explode. So it didn’t completely take me by surprise, but it was still a supremely weird night. Most of the night, I thought I was calculus. Not that I was doing calculus, but that my body and my essence were the formulas and expressions and tangents and the like. This may have happened because I’m reading a novel set in the late 17th century and involving Isaac Newton, Leibnez, the Royal Society, and things such as alchemy. Riveting, I know. (Aside, it’s actually pretty good: Quicksilver by Neil Stephenson, Volume I of the Baroque Cycle.) So Ive been having weird thoughts about science, mathematics, and 1675 London. And all night I was calculus. Bizarre. But interesting.

It’s things like that that make me think it would be interesting to try crazy drugs, or camp out in a sensory deprivation chamber for a few hours. Most of the time I’m so literal, not given to daydreaming, at least when I’m focused on a task. So when my mind goes a little crazy, in my dreams or fever delusions, they really interest me as an altered state, as a way escape the humdrum literalism of my everyday thoughts. LSD anyone?

Elvis Rocks. Don’t Hate.