Between Shadows and Silence

A creative nonfiction piece done many years ago now, but one I'd love to restore and work on again, from some of what I consider to be my most fascinating psychological adventures growing up.

 

It’s perfectly silent in the outside world, where twilight has set in.  The stars have mixed with the distant city lights to create an orange haze that stretches over the dry hills of San Marcos.  The valley between the hills is ridden with a mixture of strip malls, subdivisions, and a peculiar field with a winding road that carries you to a place you never would think existed in one of the most populated cities in Southern California. 

I remember the first time the name Questhaven entered my ears.  I’d heard the rumors about it from my friend Carolann; talk of an asylum and a cult, and anything that would excite the mind of a morbid and listless teenager with nothing to do on a Saturday night but sit at Starbucks and lay back the frappaccinos.    My friend Amanda and I looked like drunkards, with toppled over shot glasses in the form of plastic cups, frothing on the edges with chocolate syrup that drained down the sides.  Of course, there’s no way we could stand to venture out in the back of my ’89 Benz or Carolann’s Toyota Celica.  To fit the atmosphere just right, Carolann plopped herself by the front door of the restaurant and phoned Brennon.  As a ringing tone could be heard, she thrust the phone against my ear and ripped away from me the frappaccino I was trying to finish off.  This was her friend, not mine, so why did I have to talk to him?

Sweet vengeance was extracted.  Phone picked up, and the callous voice of an elderly woman wafts through my ears.  “Hello?”

I make myself pant and get a forced soprano, seductive tone before I say delicately into the phone, “Is Brennon there?  This is Carolann.”

Her eyes go wide across the table, whites threatening to engulf her pupils.  The phone is wrenched out of my hand and I get slugged in the shoulder.  She struggles to catch her breath and cry out, “Brennon!  It’s me!  Crystal was playing a joke—we’re wanting to see if you can take us to Questhaven.  (pause)  Yeah.  We’re in San Marcos at the—”

Starbucks hangs loosely on the edge of her tongue.  Amanda’s next to take advantage of her.  With glistening, fiendish eyes, she shouts out, “W***e house!”

“W***e house,” Carolann repeats mindlessly.  She immediately smacks herself, glares at us and storms towards the far end of the restaurant, leaving Amanda and I very much amused and guiltless about our actions.  If this was to describe the mood of our evening, I should have recognized it at first for what it was—a group of teenagers thinking we’ll go have some fun, crack some jokes.  Never did I suspect that I would discover something that would both darken and enhance my perception of reality.

Oh, and to this day, Carolann never lets me touch her cell phone.

            We piled into the back of a CR-V along with Carolann and Brennon  as we went off to see what was supposedly the most, and perhaps only eerie destination in all of San Marcos.  As we drove down the ’78 east, looking for our exit, Carolann worked on creating the atmosphere by informing us of the history of this location.

            “Okay you guys,” she began, waving her hands to get our attention.  Her pale blonde hair fluttered over her face, her eyes.  She brushed it behind her ears before she continued to speak.  “The story is that the asylum and cult, the road leading to each of them, is haunted by a woman in white.  She lost her baby in this area years ago and supposedly rides around on horseback, looking for her, hoping to get her back”

            We exit the freeway and take a variety of side-roads.  I watch the strip malls come and go; watch the street lights dwindle until they, too, vanish and we’re left on a deserted, winding two-lane country road.  This is a rarity in So-Cal, as we have come to call it, and being as obscure as it is, we all fall silent as the night engulfs us into its shaded world of secrecy and mysticism.  The last segment of civilization vanishes when the paved road becomes dirt beneath our skidding tires.  The trees take arms on all sides of us, trapping us within the confines of our path.  There is no turning around until we reach the end of the trail, wherever that may be.

            Houses line the road, but they are few and far between.  I struggle to imagine what kind of people would live out here, so far away from civilization, where there’s little opportunity to support yourself.  The truth is, though, the only reason I gripe about them is because I envy them—they are not constricted in the way that we are in terms of how we live and what we eat.  Civilization is a type of confinement.  I am forced to recognize this as I realize how free I feel when I can no longer see the glint of city lights over the hills behind us.

            We pass by the cult hideout not too far up the path—it’s a massive stone structure, guarded by an iron gate.  To fend off the goose bumps that threaten to take hold of us, we find ourselves cracking nervous jokes.  Carolann asks if we can pull over and see if they’ll let us use the bathroom.  While Amanda and I are cracking up in the back seat, listening to her rant and antics, she sits up front with a straight face, eyes glinting with curiosity and enthusiasm.  She honestly wants to stop.  Thankfully, our driver, Brennon, ignores her and continues on.  We reach the token “Blair Witch” tree.  The etchings in the sides of it are probably from teenagers, just as listless as us, but the image of distorted figures and unidentifiable symbols is enough to lower the temperature inside our vehicle.

            I’ve almost forgotten about the asylum, and Carolann reminds me of it when we reach the end of our trail.  A chain-link fence prevents us from going further, but there’s enough space between the trees for us to turn around.  A lone, one-lane dirt road leads further south, to our east, and she explains that over in that direction is where the asylum is.  I see it, a structure with light flickering in its windows atop the highest hill in the valley.  It’s strange for me to think that there are people, at this moment, who are confined there, perhaps suffering, confused or distraught.  I wonder what kind of people exist within those walls, and what brought them there—what made it so that we are on the outside, looking in at them.  I’ve always been fascinated with the criminal mind, and I do not find the insane to be very much different in the sense that both are locked away, out of the reach of society.  What is it that is different between us?  Sometimes, I’m horrified with the thought that I may not be different from them… and I just haven’t realized it

yet…

 

 

            Fear is a potent agent in controlling human behavior, and it has more power over me than peer pressure could ever dream of possessing.  There is only one emotion, one agent that takes more precedent in my mind, and that is the concern of ridicule.  My fear of the creatures that live beneath the surface of the Pacific is overpowered by the thought of my family taunting me endlessly for not joining them in their kayaks. 

I try to take my sandals off and make a mad-dash for the shore, across the scorching sand.  My mother immediately criticizes me, telling me I never know whether or not I’m going to want something on my feet.  I look at her like a loon—I’m only going off shore for a bit.  There are no islands or caves in the immediate vicinity, so I won’t be stepping out of the kayak and therefore will not need my sandals.  This strain of logic is lost on her.  To avoid an argument, I slip on my sandals and cross the burning midday sand, dragging my kayak behind me by a sturdy rope.  I stop where the waves lap against the shoreline and wince.  What a fool I am; I gripe about the hot sand but recoil at the icy ocean water.  I never understood what it was about La Jolla, how the water could always be so cold.   My kayak slides with ease of the sand and into the water.  I walk with it out until I’m submerged up to my waist before I lift myself into it with utmost caution.  Should anything be off-set with my balance, both kayak and I would go tumbling over.  So much for avoiding ridicule, should that be the case.

            I’m in and, with paddles in my hands, I begin to work my way through the surf to get out to the open ocean, where its choppy waters beckon me.  The sense of accomplishment when I realize how much strength I have in me to fight against the surf is indescribable.  I’m on top of the world!!  Er… ocean.  Yeah, that’s it.  I lose my nervousness about the creatures in the ocean as I become cocky and press my luck.  This isn’t a deep ocean kayak, or so I’ve been told, but let’s just see what I’m capable of, just for the thrill of it.  If I bothered to turn back, I would see the shore becoming a thin yellow line, the people like specks of dust on a painting.    Where has the world gone?  I am all that is left in it.  I could cry out now, but my voice would be swallowed alive by the wind before it reached land.

            I never know when to stop pressing my luck; a swell comes upon me that I’m not prepared for and my balance is off-set by just the slightest bit.  With a kayak, the slightest bit is everything.  It spins end over end, and I’m dunked out of the kayak, into the ocean.  At least no one was close enough to see it.  Hopefully I will avoid ridicule.  There’s only one problem, and I have just become aware of it as I try to flip the kayak over and climb back into it—my right foot is caught in the rope, which is wrapped around the straps of my sandal.  I try to struggle with it, but the idea of floating completely vulnerable amidst the vast pacific is unnerving, to say the least.  I cut my losses and start to swim towards shore, pulling the kayak with me by its tangled rope.  Salt clings to my body; I can feel it crusting over my shoulders as the pacific sun bakes my skin.  It’s not long before the specks in the horizon start to take the form of humans, but it’s still too far away for me to notice distinct details about the masses of people that line the shore.  Just when I think I’m in the clear, a swimmer’s worse nightmare occurs.

            A shadow passes beneath me.  I think it’s the kayak, perhaps a shadow created from the affect of the sun hitting it and the angle that I’m approaching shore at.  That illusion vanishes when the shadow begins to move and circle around me, and I realize it’s an object large enough to swallow me three times over.  I have always prized myself in being control of my life, my mind, and my actions, yet at this moment, I don’t know what happened to my consciousness or where it vacated to.  Random thoughts enter my head, regardless of my control.  Wonderful.  I should have gone for the ridicule, or, The second I make it to shore, if I’m lucky enough to make it to shore, I’ll throw my sandal at the first person who looks at me funny.  For some reason, I cannot vocalize these thoughts.  My vocal chords have constricted inside my throat and are now paralyzed.  It’s not my mind telling my body what to do, but my body reacting regardless of my will.  My legs continue to kick, my arms continue to pull me forwards, and I think to myself, look as much like a human as possible.

            Faces start to appear on the individuals on shore.  I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, to ruin everyone’s day with a shark warning, but apparently there’s no need.  When I get close to shore, within the area that people are wading in—and I’m judging the water is about twenty-feet deep here with the ocean floor gradually slowing upwards—the shadow turns and vanishes.  I had sparked its curiosity, but thank goodness I sparked nothing more.  I don’t warn the beach, I don’t ruin everyone’s day because no one else was as stupid as I was to get that far out at sea. 

Throughout the day, my mind is being eaten at; a scan of my brain would reveal a piece of tissue torn asunder, holes ripped throughout as if a cannon had been fired at it.  All these are the injuries caused by my curiosity that incessantly pesters me to know whether or not my fears at sea were justified.  When I get back home, I log onto the internet on my computer before anything else; showers, unpacking, washing kayaks have lost priority to this one thing.  Salt still clinging to my skin, my hair radiating the potent stench of sea and fish, and I can still feel my limbs wiggling, freely exposed to the clutches of the water.  As images of great white sharks load up on my screen under a list of La Jolla’s wildlife, everything falls into a vivid image, and I suddenly realize how lucky I am to be alive.

            Looking back on this day, there’s a lot of details that don’t make sense.  As I dragged the kayak back across the sand, I didn’t feel the compulsion to throw my sandal at anyone despite what I told myself.  In fact, I didn’t feel the compulsion to do anything but take a seat in grains, soaking wet from the ocean dripping off my skin and bathing suit, and catch my breath.  My family asked where I was all that time, and I explained to them I tipped my kayak and had to swim back to shore.  To this very day, I have never told them about the shark, and I don’t know if I ever will.  I cannot explain what would prevent me, except for this foreboding feeling that grows inside of me.  Is it the shame of being vulnerable?  Is it the fear of being ridiculed?  Maybe it’s something worse—maybe I can’t come forward to them because I’m crazy, and it took being out in that ocean, away from civilization to realize it. 

T.S. Eliot wrote, “Between the emotion and the response falls the shadow” in his poem, The Hollow Men.  I used to wonder what he meant by that, but as I think back to the inability I had to control my body and my reaction, something about it makes an eerie sort of sense.  I went to sleep that night, thinking of the shadow that clouded over my mind that day, and how incapable I was of controlling myself.  It was a restless evening, followed by a morning that couldn’t have come soon enough.

 

 

            The city lights are painful to my eyes.  There are times where I cannot sleep and I find myself sitting awake in the earliest hours of the morning, when the rest of the world has gone to bed and I’m left alone to fight a vigorous yet futile battle with insomnia.  It happens to me all too often that it’s become a daily part of my schedule—I plan my mornings with the assumption that I will not sleep the night before, that way I can accommodate my activities accordingly throughout the day.  Now, I just like to sit in my room with the lights off and think.  I could be at a computer, trying to weave together my thoughts of everything and everyone, or I could just be playing with an idea.  The simple truth is that I’m only looking for a way to shut out the world—to make the shadows and silence become one, to where I cannot see nor hear anyone, and that I know what true solitude tastes and feels like.  Some could call it a kind of self-inflicted confinement, but at least when I’m alone, I don’t feel listless, because I’m free to start and end something at my leisure.

            This night, I turn out the lights my mind can still not find rest.  I sit in front of my computer with a blank word document open and my fingers hovering over the keys, but never quite going the extra length to make contact.  I close my eyes and let complete darkness envelope me, waiting to see where my thoughts desire to wander to off their own accord.

            I’m transported to the outside of the Meadowbrook Mansion in Rochester, Michigan, where the entire field is painted with fresh snow.  Everywhere I turn, there’s powder being pushed up in the air by the wind, or resting softly against my skin.  My breath becomes a visible cloud upon the night sky, spreads out like a bubble and dissipates into the air.  No traces are left of it to show that it was once there.  The snow keeps coming down, landing peacefully upon the ground.  If it would be my wishes, I would go and collapse in it, to just let my back rest on it and have all of the sky come down upon me.  I think of it not as confining, but as rejuvenating, to be left alone to figure out the world.  As I keep my eyes closed, I try to think of how my desires to disappear might deem me crazy, to be confined in a state of pure solitude, to be able to do nothing but think and focus one’s thoughts, one’s head.  I wonder if everyone is like this at heart, and only the people deemed “mad” or “crazy” have the courage to do so.

 

 

            Amanda and I could never keep away from that trail in San Marcos.  Every time I return to California for a visit, no matter how much time passes by, I’m compelled to return to it, as if it’s beckoning me with a supernatural power.  This time, we took my friend Genny to expose her to our place of solitude, where we can act as we wish, talk as we wish and think as we wish.  No where on that trail can the city force upon us what we can and cannot do.  If we want to pull over and ask the cult to use their restroom, we very well should.  There’s always that apprehension of what will happen to us, the danger that we put ourselves in, but what’s the point in living in this world if you don’t open yourself up for all the possibilities that could happen to you, both good and bad?  If I hadn’t exposed myself to the water and my fear of sharks, I might never have been prepared for what it’s like to lose control of your mind.  That has, in fact, become a valuable asset throughout my life, to know when it’s time to think and when it’s time to not think.  I have to know when it’s time to act and when I need to refrain myself from acting.

            “Between the motion and the act falls the shadow.”  T.S. Eliot’s voice enters my thoughts when I reflect upon how we pass out of the trees and make our turnaround at the foot of the road leading up to the asylum.  On our way back, we notice a truck parked off in the trees to the side of the road.  As we pass by them, they pull out from behind us, without their lights on.  I glance in my rear view mirror and vaguely can make out the outline of their vehicle from my break-lights reflecting on the bumper and hood.  My heart starts pounding against my ribcage, and I can hear Amanda and Genny’s breaths quickening.  As if the passengers in the truck were working to ensure that complete terror gripped us, they flash their brights at us without warning.  My entire care is illuminated, and for that split second, my consciousness retreats, leaving my body alone to react to the situation.  The three of us are exposed to the world for the frightened silhouettes that we are, with the truck’s lights serving as a spotlight.  I have to remind myself, as I struggle to take control of myself, that this is no play—this is reality, and our actions and reactions are on display for the entire world to see.

            The truck follows us for a good ways, turning its lights on and off to induce a state of pandemonium inside my car.  I slam my foot on the gas pedal and barely avoid sliding off the dirt road, into a ditch.  When we reach civilization, which is to say the first stoplight, we start to relax.  Somewhere along the way, in all my reckless driving and my panic to get away, we lost track of our stalkers.  Only after the moment passes do I realize that any sane person would have called the cops to report that incident, or that any sane person probably wouldn’t have exposed themselves to that much danger.  I suppose that answers the age old question, because not only did I willingly expose myself that day, but I do it time and time again, and will continue to every time I make a visit back to California.

            I do my best to make Amanda and Genny relax—I start laughing, telling funny stories and crank up the stereo so that Evanescence blares in our ears.  I can no longer hear quick breathing escaping from their nostrils and lips.  I don’t know if it’s the music that has drowned out the sound them, but I can still feel my heart beating against my ribcage.  It will take a long time to calm down from that.

            As I get done from dropping each of them off back at their respective houses, I make my way home, and my hands are still tingling from the anxiety of the evening.  Only when I’m left alone to my own thoughts behind the wheel of my car do I realize something—as the lights blared upon us, illuminating us and exposing us, Amanda screamed for a quick second and then fell silent.  None of us said a word.  I wonder if any of them, too, found their minds and bodies in conflict with each other.

            I can only somewhat shed light onto the answer of my question, which is in reference to the differences between myself the inmates of the asylum.  I was on display for the world for just that one, quick instant that the headlines blared over me; they are always caught there, sitting atop the hill for anyone to gaze upon.  Is it possible to be conditioned to be reproached by society and feel the intense heat of its taunting gaze?  Does that mean that the people in the city are sheltered?  They’re all one single face, blended in with the faces that stand beside them.  Their actions meld with the actions of everyone around them, as if they’re all duplicates of one person that I’m gazing at on a distant beach.  While they remain there, they will be protected from exposure.  When I felt exposed, that was when my mind was most out of control.

Even taking the risks that I did, the exposure and danger it cost me, I wouldn’t restrict myself to a life of uniformity.  There’s too much beauty in the function of the human mind that’s sacrificed as a result of trying to blend in with the crowd.  I can’t say whether or not the people in the city are even conscious of making the decision to hide from exposure.  I was unaware of what sort of world I was projecting myself upon when I ventured into the sea alone that day.  I couldn’t understand what I was missing out on until I forced myself into another mindset, forced myself to try to understand the thoughts and behavior of another human being.  It is too heartless an act to criticize someone who is unaware of their mistakes, so I keep my words sealed behind my lips and my thoughts confined to paper.  I wish I could explain this to Amanda and Genny, or even Carolann and Brennon, but I think I’m too crazy to say it cohesively enough for them to understand what I mean.

            I think I’d like to rewrite T.S. Eliot’s poem.  If I did so, I’d make a line that says, “Between the silence and the thoughts falls the shadow”.  As I get ready to go to sleep, I lower the blinds and close my door.  It is quiet and, for the moment, I am at peace.