“Light by Laura” Andrei Riabovitchev
Hero; n. 1. A fool, properly motivated.
a. Said fool, fortunate. ~ Hero’s Dictionary
I have decided to write the thing I have most not wanted to write. It was not an easy decision to make, for reasons that will become abundantly clear. One does not go around and say the things I am going to say.
Not if one wants to be taken seriously. This is not a problem I have had for the majority of my life. I do not mind not being taken seriously. The fool’s role is one I accept. I make no bones about this. I still accept that role.
Except life forces one to be serious. There are few things more dangerous than a serious fool. This is where the wise step in, if all things are going well, and the fool is lucky.
I got lucky. No, I’m sorry. I am lucky. Fortunate. Always have been. But not in the way you might think.
I recently had a very good friend of mine, a friend I had known since I was a teenager, a friend I spent a good deal of my misspent youth with, a friend who taught me a side of life I would never have known if I went to UC Berkeley, a friend who taught me the ways of addiction – a friend who succumbed to his own addiction and died of liver failure as a consequence of alcoholism – this friend, who was very fond of saying:
“Fuckin’ Hero. You’re like a cat. You always land on your feet.” This was his way of saying I was fortunate. Except I am not. I am not fortunate. At least, not in the way you might think.
I am looked after. That is different.
I have always been looked after. In one way or another. When my parents failed at the task, I found surrogate parents in the library and in the pages of comic books. I learned to look after myself. Except, of course, I did not. I’ve always been looked after.
Even after I left home, I found someone to look after me. Friends. The Army. Girlfriends. Wives. I whittled down the number of people who looked after me.
Friends drifted away. Wives got divorced.
Until I married Toni Smith. Dr. Toni Hero. My wife of 25 years. She has looked after me for those years and a couple more. Not only that, she accepted the role of step mother to a son that was not her’s.
A son who became wheelchair bound and dependent in ways we both were to learn. She did this with grace, skill, and love. Our son, and he is as much her son as anyone else’s, is a testimony to what selfless love can achieve. And she continues to do this.
He is worth it. An amazing human being. One who continues on his own path, one he chooses. He is 31 now and long since a grown adult. We are fiercely proud of him and the independence he has achieved for himself.
I am fortunate in this. But this is not what I did not want to write about. This is preamble, a bit of personal history and therefore context. This is not the fortune that I allude to in the dictionary entry on my last name.
For the last 11 years or so, I have been using my degree to mortar the gaps in my education. I slowly stopped reading fiction, or as much anyway, and shifted the focus of my self imposed studies. I like to learn. I did not stop just because I got a master’s degree. In fact, I used that degree to learn more effectively.
My wife provided me with the space, security, and ease within which to pursue my curious nature and my need for self improvement. She did this even though judging eyes saw me in a lesser light because they did not understand. I care not, generally speaking, what other people think of me. There are exceptions to this, obviously.
I have always wanted to be a writer. I never could figure out why I wasn’t one. Teachers told me I was gifted. Friends said the same. Lovers as well. So. Why?
I didn’t have anything to say. It was just that simple, in the end. And I did not want to be a copycat or derivative. I thought originality was King and without it, why bother? I was wrong of course.
When I started what was to become my living book, it was prompted by politics, I thought. My horror at what our country was becoming. Had become. I thought that was what prompted it. It was and wasn’t. It was Trump.
That man used to send me into fits of rage. I don’t do rage. For personal reasons. Then the pandemic hit.
Then the thing that I don’t want to write about happened. It was transformative. Literally.
Three and a half years ago, an event happened to me that I like to call,”The incident.” It was completely out of character for me and without prior history. I shall do my best to describe it, first in terms of what an “objective” viewpoint would say, and then from my “subjective” viewpoint.
I was having an online conversation on facebook with a friend of mine who is a clinical psychologist – this was not by accident, I made sure he was accessible for reasons I won’t go into now. What is important is what happened during this online conversation.
The medical diagnosis after the incident was “spontaneous hyper mania without prior history of depression or bi polar disorder.” My online friend saw me spiraling upwards and texted my wife to leave the house and call the police. This was the correct course of action. Not because I was a threat but because my wife was not the right person to deal with this situation. And she needed to not be in the house, just in case.
Just in case I went the other direction. I was either going to rise that afternoon or fall. I chose wisely. If I would have fell with the same depth that I rose, the police would have found a much different scene. One my wife need not have seen.
The police came. A lot of police came. I was charming. I was funny. I was engaging. I was utterly and completely compliant. No reason for me not to be, I had already had the lion’s share of my experience by then. My wife informed me recently that it took an hour for the police to show. I found this interesting as that was not the time flow I experienced and the event is vivid in my mind to this day.
The situation commander spoke to my wife when I was safely in the ambulance and taking my trip to the hospital (we’ll get there). He told her, “I wish all my calls were like this. He is the nicest most agreeable man I have ever met.”
I get to the hospital. They test me. Extensively. Normal. Fine. No covid. No tumor. No virus. The staff psychologist comes and asks me some questions. I tell him what I did and how. I tell him I am a genius. I mean it. Without pride or shame. At the time, it is simply brute fact. I tell him, it happens sometimes, during a pandemic.
The skepticism on his face is palpable. It’s ok.
My wife, a primary care physician, is concerned. The things I say during the incident are not things a scientific materialist secular humanist would say.
These are the objective viewpoints of those around me during the incident.
This is neither the time nor the place to describe what I saw. But I can describe what happened to me. I took three years to make sure. I studied my little tookus off to make sure. I went to the very best sources, to make sure. I wrote the Nostos of Peratae Bogomil, Hero’s dictionary, and Aphorisms, Apothegms, and Axioms as a way to translate the experience.
Am I sure? As sure as one can be when they participate with the ineffable.
Here is what happened to me. I quite accidently walked the path of the ascetic mystic for years. I engaged in deep introspection, also known as omphaloskepsis, I cut myself off from the outside world, as much as one can in this society.
I experienced individuation, enlightenment, and a mystic experience all in the span of a conversation over facebook and for well over two hours afterwards.
The Buddha said everyone is one conversation away from enlightenment. I had mine. It took 54 years of life before that of course. And all the people who taught me along the way. I did not do this by myself. I take no pride in it. I know where it comes from.
For me, a great deal of pain. Suffering. The acceptance of my shadow and all that means. I have been a bad man in the past. I have been a good man in the past. I choose to be a good man because I know how to be a bad one. I have been choosing it. I will continue.
I am not special. Many people have had this experience to a greater and a lesser degree. People spend their entire lives seeking it. It happens to them. Or it doesn’t. It happens to people who aren’t seeking it. It happens to dreamers. It happens to poets. It happens to scientists. And philosophers.
It happened to me. The medical community does not recognize mystic experience as a causative for mania.
My wife believes I am suffering from mania. She has reasons for this. I just gave a good one. I have not had another experience of the nature I have described since the incident. One only experiences individuation once.
I have experienced states of heightened awareness and consciousness. I can do this if I reach for it. A number of months ago I did so for personal reasons and a high stress environment. I over reached.
I lost quite a bit of weight. Stopped sleeping as much. Wrote more. Practiced my guitar more. Walked my dog much more (it’s good for him, he is a lab and needs to lose weight).
It is driving my wife crazy. She has anxiety and mild OCD issues. My “mania” is causing her to be more anxious, her anxiety is causing me to be more “manic”. My microphone is too close to her speaker and vice versa. Not good feedback.
I do not necessarily agree that I am manic in the manner that the medical textbooks describe. But that is what someone who is suffering from mania would say, isn’t it? I am very invested in what is so. The truth as best as I can discern it.
My wife has strongly suggested that I see someone. I have agreed. I did so without rancor or regret. I have an appointment in just a couple days. I am not afraid of losing creativity, if medication is called for. If a writer is what I am to be than I wish to do it honestly and not at the whim of imbalanced brain chemistry.
If that is what it is. If. I am not convinced.
Moreover, I am someone who is apt to take matters into his own hands when it comes to matters one can take into their own hands. Which I did.
I claim the right to attempt to heal myself first. Before I fall under the tender ministrations of a nurse practitioner who will reach for the prescription pad.
To that end, this last Friday, I ingested what Terence McKenna called a “heroic” dose of golden teacher mushrooms. You know, the magic kind. I adumbrated this move in the tale I am telling.
It had been over 31 years since I had taken a psychedelic stronger than cannabis. I made this decision consciously. As I did Friday night. I am a skilled practitioner of omphaloskepsis. I meditate. I know my own mind. I have spent a lifetime putting it together and taking it apart. I did so again last Friday night.
I did not do this for fun. I do not condone the use of psychedelics for the uninitiated. Especially for youths under the age of 26 or 27. I did not take this advice when I was young. I took acid before I was old enough to drive.
This was a foolish thing to do with my history. Or so it would seem. I took a calculated risk with my sanity, is how some will see this.
I don’t. I’m looked after. I’ve known this for years. Much longer than three and a half.
So why do I write? Why am I writing? Finally? After all this time?
I have something to say.
And that is this: Please allow me to introduce Athena Mathilda Hero. She is my anima. The image above is the image of my anima. The whole image, not merely the figure in the center, although do not discount her.
She is mighty in battle. As befits one with her first and last name. She is eager to make your acquaintance. She has been waiting for a very long time.
57 years, in fact.
