Excerpt

As I was eating I was thinking that just yesterday I was praying for a heart attack to kill me. I was afraid of being electrocuted as a terrorist. I thought I was going to drop dead, off the planet, into eternity and judgment. Now I breathed easier, private mind, private life, no connection to terrorism. As I so often questioned death, I wondered what awaited me on the other side. How would I be judged? What would be the verdict? Certainly Anna and Larry were going to Paradise where my mother waited but would I qualify? Or would I be judged and condemned to live another life. Maybe be reborn as an ant and always be working, working. Or be reborn as a dog and not be able to hold my bladder and bowels and be hit in the face with a newspaper. Or be reborn in a war-torn country and suffer famine or slavery. Or be reborn into my own life to live over again and not make the same mistakes. But maybe Id make other mistakes and have a worse life. The fifteen years of torture Id endured were over as long as I never smoked another bit of pot and got enough sleep. I couldnt let Brians tears manipulate me into throwing my sanity away like some excess baggage. My soul was in the cross-fire of schizophrenia and I never wanted to hallucinate again or suffer another delusion.

I was not stronger than pot. It was a mighty foe that would defeat me every time. I could not hold onto my sanity without effort. It was frail and fragile and delicate. It needed constant care and nurturing. I was so lucky that my insanity only lasted a day with the pot yesterday. It was all so real. It was another world, another universe. In that universe I was at the center and everything revolved around me and conspired to kill me. Here in the sane world I was given the privilege of living my life in freedom from fear of condemnation. Most people dont know what condemnation is. Marijuana and lack of sleep drag me down into the pit of damnation. I dont want to feel damned ever again. And Ill fight the holy fight of redemption through sanity for the rest of my life.

I had felt I had a personal relationship with the senators who condemned me. But thank God they didnt know I existed. I wondered who the Whore of Babylon was. Would she be revealed in the future? Mixing theology and politics I was wide open for speculation. All I really cared about was that I wasnt her. I had stolen, I had lied, I had cheated. But I didnt have the blood of prophets and saints on my hands. Yet its funny, in a very sad way, how once you assume the crimson hands of blood guilt, even when proved innocent you never quite feel clean again. Your soul is darkened with that place in Hell where you deserved to go and even sanity cannot remove that place in Hell from your consciousness. It becomes a part of the internal landscape of what you deserve, even when you know that sanity says you dont belong there.

I finished my dinner and washed my plate.