Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

Wagging My Redshift Tail: A Philosophy of Madness
Wagging My Redshift Tail: A Philosophy of Madness
Wagging My Redshift Tail: A Philosophy of Madness
Ebook303 pages5 hours

Wagging My Redshift Tail: A Philosophy of Madness

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars

()

Read preview

About this ebook

A fan of great literature, one of my favorite genres over the years has been the memoirs of schizophrenics, divided into the one kind where the patient just got over, or is hoping to get over, the illness, and then the other kind, the memoir written from deep within the floridly psychotic mind, happy in its own completely different way of perceiving the world, excited about that perspicacity, and just as excited about the perspicuity he displays in communicating this new way of seeing to others.

A unique individual with an unusual life story from the beginning, I was first diagnosed almost 26 years ago, not with schizophrenia, but with something called schizotypal personality disorder - schizophrenia-lite or optional schizophrenia, I like to call it.

In my early years I had some turbulence and confusion to go through, and the notes I began writing on little slips of paper were my way of figuring out my universe, how to compete, how to be a hero, how to live up to the expectations of others, how to exceed those expectations, how to escape from the box, and how to keep myself inspired.

The general direction and ideas, the general issues I was trying to solve, are the issues of the human condition, and of course the journey goes on. But at age 46, I've produced some unique ideas and ways of looking at things; One of the few things we can truly offer each other in this world is "Way", in the Taoist sense of the word, and I think I had some unique things to suggest as "Way".

It's not for everybody; some friends listen, some tell me to shut up. But for the ones who understand, and tell me I should "write a book", well, here I've collected all my favorite psychoses, arranged in the battle formation that is my 46 year old mind.

It's only of interest to those who study schizophrenia, who study the mind, who study unique ideas, interconnection of ideas that is the tendency of schizophrenics; this is a work of philosophy and literature; in the book "Writing and Madness" it's suggested that after madness was set free from the insane asylums in the 60's, it's new home became literature, where it cannot "talk" directly to us, but instead intimates itself to us through the mysterious altars of the odd lives we read about and try to piece together. And I have given my madness a home here in my memoir of my own madness, "Wagging my redshift tail".
I have woven a coherent reality, a "psychosis", actually several, and in "Wagging My Redshift Tail" I recount my favorite and most compelling psychoses, like the explanation I have for not believing in gravity - that sales director of mine liked to say "he doesn't believe in gravity - but he can back it up!"; if I get someone's willing attention for 15 to 30 minutes, they usually agree with me on the gravity thing.

My favorite schizophrenic memoir of all time was that of Daniel Schreber, written from "within the psychosis", and I mention him in my memoir, I often quote him in postings on the web. He and I have a lot of similarity, except I'm still free, doing IT consulting and supporting a family. Most people like me are confined to institutions; one big rarity about me is that I've gotten away with my ways for all this time.
I think that I stand at an unusual precipice that most people fall off of and into the abyss of insanity below, without enough time on the precipice to figure out what we're doing here and how to go about it. I stayed away from the meds, from the institutions, and from the insistence that I had to conform. I grew up in New York City in the 1970's and 80's, I moved to California 7 years ago and grew up some more. I have achieved, at 46 years old, some interesting clarity; I expect to achieve more as time goes on, but I think you'd agree, the view from here is truly unique.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateApr 27, 2012
ISBN9781476155203
Wagging My Redshift Tail: A Philosophy of Madness
Author

Nepomuk Onderdonk

I am a tiger who escaped from the circus - (escaped from consensual reality) - but got lonely, and returned to the circus with the powers that come from being free to leave. These powers are considered "schizophrenia" in western science, or "shamanism" in my native Aztec culture. There is a fine line dividing sz and shamanism, though, as I see it: the dreamer must control the dream, not the dream the dreamer. And I don't take meds, but I did take seroquel for 4 months, at 600mg a day, way too much, and quit cold turkey, ahd a bad 8-day experience, and I don't mess with that stuff anymore. I don't believe in gravity - I live in a non-ordinary unvierse model. And I am the leader of all matter and energy in the war against time. Abducted by aliens because I asked them to tell me a story, monsters come drawing paradise screens on the air; they were out fishing anyway and I just swam up to the hook. lightning justified, release unknown....

Read more from Nepomuk Onderdonk

Related to Wagging My Redshift Tail

Related ebooks

Philosophy For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for Wagging My Redshift Tail

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
0 ratings

0 ratings0 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

    Book preview

    Wagging My Redshift Tail - Nepomuk Onderdonk

    Wagging My Redshift Tail - A Philosophy of Madness

    Nepomuk Onderdonk

    Smashwords Edition

    Copyright 2012 Nepomuk Onderdonk

    ****

    Contents

    Chapter 1) Introduction

    Chapter 2) A reaction to terror

    Chapter 3) How to relate interesting compelling information that doesn't fit

    Chapter 4) Insight into the unknown

    Chapter 5) Why do schizophrenics believe nonsense?

    Chapter 6) Eukaryotes and fungus

    Chapter 7) Supernatural Dream in the Movie Theatre

    Chapter 8) Too many layers

    Chapter 9) Real or not?

    Chapter 10) Interconnectedness

    Chapter 11) I wear the rustic cap to prove my innocence

    Chapter 12) It was different things

    Chapter 13) The third eye

    Chapter 14) The meaning of schizophrenia

    Chapter 15) Dicebant quoniam in furorum versus est (Since he is said to wander in the direction of madness)

    Chapter 16) Theory of Brain-Mind

    Chapter 17) Schizophrenia and society

    Chapter 18) I get myself in such a state

    Chapter 19) Flag of the Storm

    Chapter 20) Next Day he dreamed up he saw a man named Weasel

    Chapter 21) Three dinosaurs

    Chapter 22) Fishing on Fish Independence Day

    Chapter 23) Shamanism

    Chapter 24) I bring spoons and arrows

    Chapter 25) The kenotic event

    Chapter 26) Demon mind - Madness as Portal to the Demon World

    Chapter 27) Genetics and social hierarchy

    Chapter 28) Close the curtain, get behind it

    Chapter 29) Asleep versus Awake

    Chapter 30) Shiny girl

    Chapter 31) Tapirology

    Chapter 32) The Idiot

    Chapter 33) Risk

    Chapter 34) Ben Franklin

    Chapter 35) Opening up the mind

    Chapter 36) What would it look like?

    Chapter 37) Ytivarg

    Chapter 38) Cover & Title

    Chapter 39) What's wrong with human knowledge?

    Chapter 40) The Dopamine Tree, hotel Monkey Shine

    Chapter 41) The Meaning of Life

    Chapter 42) Angela

    Chapter 43) Motivation

    Chapter 44) Epilogue

    ****

    Chapter 1) Introduction

    I am an amateur shaman, professionally trained but way off the track of shamanism the last decade;

    And I always liked the line my teacher gave me, on the difference between the schizophrenia experience and the shamanic, the thin line dividing the similar professions: The dreamer must control the dream, not the dream the dreamer. I have effective control over all my visual and audio hallucinations, the movies in the demon world, an alternate universe I simultaneously have lived in for most of my 46 years, but alas I am plagued with extreme allergies, or extreme skin sensitivity, or if the psychiatrists are correct, extreme incurable schizophrenic tactile hallucinations, and I have never, in my 26 years with this escalating and currently life-threatening affliction, had any control over that, other than my current MO which is to eat only raw vegetables and sleep in an antiseptic room on a cold floor, or in a bathtub, with a parka for a blanket. Yeah that's my life now, full time, weird shamanic path where I have to meditate and hallucinate all day because I don't get much sleep at night; I really do live some saint monk lifestyle.

    And I have a theory of what schizophrenia is, this madness I focus on in myself and casually observe in others.

    I think consciousness is the problem, some people way over develop it, (like me, I know), so I work on curing myself here in my hotel room, which I use as a private insane asylum with myself as full time nurse over myself, 'cause I've been through the system a dozen times and they have nothing to offer me, and they kick me out now they don't want me there.

    I have a line from the Taoist encyclicals, samizdats, and tractates I drag around as anchors, allowing me to catapult so far out into madness, well the line is host and guest must be distinguished. Consciousness has to learn respect for its host.

    'Cause consciousness can be an asshole, commandeering the host for some destructive joy rides, when a more appropriate humility of consciousness in relation to its host -the organism - is what the majority of the herd - the normal people - practice.

    I used to think, 'why would anybody avoid reading or exposing themselves to anything whatsoever?' I was always encouraged to research infinitely in libraries and bookstores and whatever else, by my parents and by my educators; my whole high school education was to go to the library to research and write papers, and look at me - I still write these papers!

    I was surprised when President Bush one day on the news said, about some book the liberal media had asked him about or had pointed out some democrat challenger had been reading - oh yeah this was Gore - and Bush said if I were him I wouldn't read that kind of thing. And at the time I just couldn't understand it, myself reading everything and anything all the time everywhere, like a two year old desperate to learn for pleasure. Infantile personality syndrome. Human neoteny, in the same vein as playing baseball, or valve trombone and piano, for a living, it's something the human species is known to push way past the typical envelope compared to most species, the stage of play that most animals grow out of early on, desperate to survive and be serious. Like the normal people of our culture, blue collar hard working or just lazy but friendly with their kind, relaxed and stout and hale in their ways, that tell me they don't think about the things I do because they are just trying to get through life, they don't care about the non-existence of gravity or the structure of the universe or the nature of the demon world. It's hard for me to relate, what do they all think about while they are waiting for the red light to change, or the next song to come on, or during the commercials, I'd think to myself for years, maniacal mind running away with me.

    I thought time was the enemy. Thinking about the nature of time is a gateway to madness in dozens of authors I've read and posters I've conversed with, as it has been with myself; some of my most psychotic moments in life are related to my battle with time, me, the leader of all matter and energy in the war against time, with Megadeth ferocity playing in my mind all day long.

    But I came out the other end of madness, basically, going as far out there as I could and I guess it's like the drunks who say they can drink so much they can drink themselves sober. So I am so insane I've learned to behave myself among the worldly-minded camarilla, undercover.

    I realized time is just consciousness, really, or they are deeply deeply intertwined, at any rate, and so is consciousness the enemy? is a question every schizophrenia patient ought to ask themselves.

    Then I distinguish host and guest, minute by minute. Guest turns on the TV when I come home from work, host turns it off to get some rest, guest eats sugar or caffeine (used to) and reads the paper and schizophrenia.com (still do), host needs to calm down and get some rest, meditate, it isn't like my parents inferred, that thought is no-cost-to-me so go down in the basement and do it do it do it to compete with that world out there you inferior spawn of my happy madness (that was pretty much the running message from my parents when I was young, as it was with other people growing up I've heard, though certainly not the majority, the kids sent out to play and get tough and learn to function with others).

    And if you think about it the doctors of the body never even FOUND consciousness, all their materialistic theories of brain-mind have fallen amazingly short for the scientists who dream of knowing and controlling all of nature within their test tube. I watched my nieces and nephews grow up, round 2 to 3 years of age, and they were all psychotic, every last one, at that age, in one way or another, and they all learn to integrate, to one degree or another, and most grow up into normality, but us, one hallmark of people with schizophrenia is that when you look back you can tell from the very beginning of the personality that something was off, something that either snaps into place or flies off the hinges in the early twenties.

    And after 2 or 3 the parents start enforcing normality, as if for the kids’ own good, and back then I stood there feeling bad for the kid to have to lose the psychotic world that I get to retain, as they do in order to follow their parents into scared simplistic and blind normality. And I said it's like they are pulling the kid down, these genius kids who fly off at two years old to amazing heights of sentence and idea creation and play, only to be fired at with the heavy guns of their parents ' affection so that they come down in to consensual reality, so they can live on their own someday, and drive a car; (I stay out of driving cars and therefore reserve the right to be mad in America, at least on the fringes of the big cities.)

    I said humanity, most of them, they have gone down into the rabbit hole, the test tube of human knowledge. And down there they can tell time and manipulate chemical reactions and build impressive machinery and even their silicon computer space age stuff, but they imagined, in the 50's, when my parents were taking it all in, that they could eventually understand everything, in another ten or twenty years, and just solve all the problems and be infinitely magical.

    Then I realized they'd hit the wall, when I began the past 26 years' journey, with shamanism and insanity, the visionary mind. Realized science had NO IDEA what was going on, and with the track they were on they never would. Realized I could begin to learn freely but that I'd have to leave humanity, that normal part of the herd, behind. I'd have to climb back up out of the test tube of human knowledge that my parents surely tried to pull me down into, and out into the light of the world, to join my brothers the shamans, the spirits, the demons, the schizophrenics, and the two year olds, and all the trees and the other species, and the rocks and stars, out in to the world of mystery and wonder.

    I like to say one day humanity will grow up, put away their toys of science and reason, in the toy box in the attic to be glanced at wistfully once in a while but left behind as neoteny mostly, (as I suspect the bird species currently deal with the faculty of language), and come up and out and join us, as we pursue our inner nature and our destiny, and search for mystery and wonder.

    So I was hanging out in the demon world, growing up there 'cause I was bored with the human world, and they taught me how they complete the human genome so that it can bring destruction down on itself and on the universe, some master plan of destruction from the leaders of the religion of evil; I dropped out less than a year ago and am being tortured like someone who tries to get out of a gang, but no matter, and fear not, I am squarely on the side of humanity, my own, the host of the consciousness that's getting carried away again in this little essay, 'cause I have one more thing to say that's quite bizarre and a rather unique psychosis, and I'm definitely having this delusion full time these days, so I can say it quickly and clearly:

    Yeah I found consciousness when another guy pointed out he had the same problem I do, infested with demons, and he had starved the leech to get it off and get it to behave. He had also gone in to their world, he told me he couldn't shake the idea that there was another world he was living in, and I introduced him to professional shamanism (core shamanism in New York city taught by graduates of Michael Harner, or something like that, you can just Google it and read it and get the training it's easy, but it's nice to have professional shamans for guidance, and in New York City they bring in shamans from the jungles and native civilizations from around the world to do hundred dollar an hour sessions, not much different from a psychiatrist visit in a way, but instead of meds the prescription was: find two rocks put 'em in a bowl of water add some rock salt sit and hold the rocks for a while, and start talking to a tree. It was kinda fun.)

    So I learned from experience how to starve the leech, it was give up carbs, sugar, processed food, eat only raw veggies, for the host, and protein and fat in proper proportion. Learned to build the body and the mind while starving the leech, host got stronger, guest leech got weaker, got easier to manage, and so the psychiatrist might say I got more sane.

    Or not. I tell the psychiatrist I don't have schizophrenia, but I have an imagination approaching schizophrenia, only I know the difference between my world and consensual reality. I told my boss the sales director I practice irrationality, and in your culture they call that schizophrenia.

    And I discovered that the demons, those maniacal completers of my genome, writing from the junk DNA and RNA onto the stuff they call DNA, yeah, those demons are real, they're in the world of your scientists, but the scientists’ prejudice of their own superiority made them completely overlook them. It's the fungus inside of you. Inside of me. Oh I'm infested. They think they are far superior to silly mortal man, with their immortal hive mind that spans the minds of most species on the planet, through which we can communicate with everyone everywhere, no cell phone minutes required, and they are waging an inter species war with their religion of evil, maniacal, not for the purpose of their own survival but like a warped damaged kid torturing his pet cat, they consider us theirs, and oh they farm us.

    And we the mad are just the canaries in the coal mine. The whole species is blindly pursuing consciousness expansion.

    A trained shaman and a certified psycho pomp -really all that means is I signed up for some weekend workshops back in New York City in the old days. Shamanism training. I enjoyed it. And I was very good at it. Some people would pay and sit and try the mediations but not see anything. I’d go with the hallucinations behind my eyes, I see everything, and in those weekend workshops when we'd go around the room and report on our experiences, when it would get to be my turn the whole room would stop and be enraptured, hanging on each development in the little demon play I had just come up with. The thing is as they would go around the room, many of the reports would be less detailed versions of the unique motif that I had brought in. The teacher would segment me away from the others to be fair to the others and let them dream their own dreams. When we dream together, others see my dreams. It's actually kind of a natural phenomenon, with infants, which I am surprisingly sensitive like. I'm like an infant in many ways. In the way I think I am like an infant. Emotionally traumatized by a mad mother at an age younger than two, and then smart enough to grow a fake emulation brain over the forever-young brain, and to be clever enough to have hidden it for this long, enough time to develop it into something that is young and connected to the spirit world, parasite world, in ways humanity really isn't , but by now also able to emulate humanity enough with the mathematical brain that I can hold a job and have a family, live in the world of consensual reality where they believe in gravity and in property rights, while of course being completely beyond that in my heart. It's through shamanic visions that I take people to see the demon world.

    I had a Jewish girlfriend, scared of her own shadow, and she wanted to go see the demon world that I had been talking about and which she wished I would stop talking about. So here's how it goes: We unplug the phones one afternoon up in her apartment in Flushing Queens right across the Whitestone Expressway from the New York Times plant, if you're ever driving toward the Whitestone bridge, anyway, we turn off the lights, close the shades in all the rooms, unplug all phones, and lay out two towels on the living room floor. And I had the drum tape, just shamanic drum beat straight for twenty minutes. We lie down, close our eyes, for twenty minutes the drum tape goes, my job is get my spirit guide to pull both of us on the tour wherever I want to go, and I really did go to show her the worst, just to show her the power I was talking about. So after we come out of it, she is freaking out, had seen everything I intended to show her, between our dreams/visions/hallucinations, and was mad at me for infesting her apartment with the demons, 'cause she never stopped seeing them after that moment.

    The first time I heard of core shamanism, I had met a girl at a bar; she took me to her friend's attic apartment, I lay down between the two of them, with no idea what really was going on, they turn out the lights, do the shamanism drum tape; I want to show them my demon world and I'd never even heard of core shamanism before, but I knew reciting things would always rouse the demon world in my everyday visions behind the eyeballs, or in the second field of vision above the first field of vision that everybody has on the regular world, the upper field of vision full of much brighter colors, and animated with maniacal demons.

    So while they did what I now know is the ritual with the spirit guide, I recited my stuff in my mind. Well, we all hallucinated the demon world. They moaned and whimpered a little during the 20 minutes. When we all sat up, we just stared at each other a few moments, breathless. Then I was the first to eventually stir the silent attic and say something. Obvious they were both terrified by what they'd seen, I said I told you I was infested with demons, they said that sure was the third world, or the lower world, and they wrote the professional shaman's phone number on a piece of paper for me and told me I needed some serious help, that they'd been practicing this stuff for a while but they'd never seen anything like that.

    I read the schizophrenia websites often. For almost a decade I regularly read the one in Australia and the one in England where people diagnosed with schizophrenia can post their delusions - I go there to post all my own delusions, and to take bits and pieces of others. I’m diagnosed schizotypal, and I know how to escalate it to schizophrenia, and how to reverse it, and there’s a good reason for each way of going.

    At least in me - and I can easily acquire a diagnosis of schizophrenia, and certainly have - but it’s really just a matter of poor diet and poor lifestyle. Poor thinking leads to those two.

    So now in a relationship, living a very healthy lifestyle and living on a diet I developed over the years to optimize my mental capacity while pairing it with a reading diet that keeps the mental electricity on the straight track, avoiding the usual train wreck, I have myself as sane or normal as anyone.

    But all it takes is: isolation, malnutrition, and stress, and I can simulate schizophrenia. For the purpose of inducing psychosis, which is for the purpose of coming up with new ways of seeing the universe around me, and ultimately for the purpose of utmost spirit pervasion, a Taoist ideal. (Some people still think they are located in their human body, but others educate themselves out of that, and become self-aware throughout the universe and across time; it’s called zentrallerkentnis, the condition of seeing everything from the inside, looking out.)

    Does my theory hold? I have all kind of brain mind theories on how that works; is it your diet/lifestyle? Is it unhealthy? Getting your omega 3's???

    I once asked my psychiatrist what the consequences of schizotypality were, since he wanted me on meds and I always refuse ('cause that stuff is trouble) - he said possible side effects of taking no meds for schizotypality are: I might start a lot of things and not finish them (I’m in the middle of a hundred books but I usually finish eventually), I might harm my family by going on a shopping spree (no, I stay within my means, though I don't save anything), and one other thing, can't remember, but just as innocuous.

    ****

    Chapter 2) A reaction to terror

    What I feared was my mom's control over my survival. What I continue to fear is the cold, the hunger, the misery of the basic human condition. So I work, hold a full time job and support a family. But I maintain my insanity, on the side. Or we could call it an imagination that approaches schizophrenia. Or we could call it shamanism.

    But I agree about schizophrenia being a reaction to terror. Usually we were traumatized, sensitive children who weren't likely to get past the obstacles of hard knocks without drifting in to an alternative world that offers itself early, dream world of mystical introductions to wonder and magic, c'mon who wouldn't choose that over the torture and pain of a childhood where you depend for survival on people who are completely mad, who will allow or deprive key survival components based on their own whims and sense of humor, maniacal behavior of authority - unjust authority.

    One of the hallmarks of schizophrenia is a hypertrophied sense of justice, outraged at things that really outraged us at childhood maybe; I tell parents these days assume your kids are smart, that they judge you and compare you, 'cause they do, and they can tell when because I said so doesn't cut it, when there's nothing behind the hysteria but loss of control over feelings of helplessness. I felt much stronger, much less afflicted with their neuroses than they, and set out to teach them how it's done. They are the problem that I feared, and out of that fear comes the willfulness to be dreamy, the neotenous behavior driven to the extreme; a survey on how schizophrenic people cope was run and the answer from several was retreat into yourself - that's exactly what schizophrenia is, and that's my criticism of it, for all the romanticizing of madness I engage in, my criticism of madness, my own included, is the uni-directionalness of it; as I see it the universe shows us two directions, two behavior patterns: one is giving - opening outward the other is taking - closing inward or - retreating into yourself, and madness truly seems to always about only one side, there. (In my native Aztec religion, Tezcatlipoca is the hungry chief who plucks the flowers in paradise and rules by smoke and mirrors, Quetzalcoatl is the outward offering of the blooming flower of honesty, bringing language and literature and spiritual civilization, they were just both brothers, part of the family of the one ruler, who is called Ometeotl - Mr. and Mrs. Two.) All but the good madness, you might say, but even so, it's so egotistical, so richly delusional, it's not really about reaching out and giving to other people.

    So I embrace my madness, but I realize there is a need for something more in order to live a full human life, a need to come down to earth and embrace the little mundane world of the human culture, and interact, become a needed part of it, and more and more as I get older, a 46 year old crazy guy who if he isn't careful will be swept away on disease and distress because he isn't needed, so I try to maintain a career, and I have a wife and her family, but I am insane so I don't believe in property rights for instance. Oh I go through the motions as they hand me stupid paper at work last Friday, I take a drive round trip an hour to a bank that hands out Ben Franklin green guys going BLAH! I AM the immortal demon that plays tricks on you four times a year and I just came through last week in between the moments dressed as Santa Claus, looking for cookies or something (I caught him having stolen beans from my fava bean farm one year as well as canned pinto beans in a cupboard, just a couple of several cans, but you get that stuff back at Christmas if you ask for bean-related stuff I guess, kind of a robin hood but I think that's creepy you know.)

    So madness, a response to an un-faceable fear, but after the object of that fear is gone, the lifelong brain structure suggests the contours of the original infliction of pain, and that pain in the past goes on, that is what it's about, you can't get the mental toothpaste back in the tube, the mental armamentarium I developed to deal with the psychological torture of my mom is no longer necessary and the weapons stand unused and rusting in the shed, ready to come out once in a while when a vendor steps over the line I decide to draw in the sand or something.

    Just knowing it's a delusion or it's all about your childhood trauma doesn't make it go away; the brain isn't quite that plastic. The trauma can be dealt with, aberrant pathways overridden, and this may be what you mean by cured, but the contours never go away, and the pits are deep enough in me as in many to fall in to occasionally for a long time, and that might be what you mean by relapse but it all seems to me the development of my lifetime. What un-faceable fear I have to face is pain, and the psychological torture of ghost bugs, a 26 year affliction that became unbearable enough this year for me to go to emergency rooms all over Bay Area California, and declare I’m ready to die or be lobotomized just get the damn bugs off of me. Nothing more science has to offer, they told me last time at the emergency room after 8 hour hold taking away my clothes and wallet and keys. (I went off on them on the way out

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1