Soon after graduating from college, I
came face to face with two important facts. The first was that I was a drunk,
and the second was that, despite my education, I had no marketable abilities or
particular skills at all. I didn’t know how to address the latter condition,
but had been given, along the way, some idea as regards the former, so checked
myself into in-patient rehab for the month of October, 1989, and promptly got involved
with one of the networks of support available* upon my release. It was nearing
Christmas when this next thing happened, and it was such a subtle thing that it
may very well be no thing at all. It is tempting to dismiss it outright, as it
seems almost entirely owing to my state of mind at the time and was very likely
a misperception of something quite ordinary. I was in a very jittery and
not-sane frame of mind in those early months of sobriety. If you can imagine
the psychological equivalent to having your entire body covered in scabs, and
then the scabs all suddenly torn away, leaving only burning nerve-endings and
raw, bleeding flesh, yet for all this still being infused with a giddy sort of
blind optimism and near-infantile level of self-absorption, then you might
appreciate the state of mind I inhabited. I was at the very least capable of
interpreting things in a skewed sort of way.
But what I saw, while looking out the
back window of my parent’s two-storey house, overlooking the neighborhood hills
perhaps a quarter mile away, in addition to the seasonally-appropriate
festooning of colored Christmas lights, tucked in amongst the other houses in
the densely-packed and tree-lined suburbs, was a wall of red-orange light. The
area of light itself was about the size of a house, though it did not appear to
have any roof or any adjoining walls to form a regular structure. There wasn’t anything
to it except for a large, flat rectangle which glowed evenly throughout, though
not intensely, and with that same glowing orange-red that I recalled the
glyphic L-shaped object having, from my sighting at age fourteen, as well as
the (then) more recent Madeleine-cookie airship. This is a very particular
shade of orange – richly luminous, seemingly alive – and if it is possible for
a color to indicate by its shade, its saturation and intensity, that it is
somehow itself intelligent, then that is what this shade of orange-red does and
did. This wall of light wasn’t up to anything; it was simply planted there,
amongst all the other lights. Except that it seemed way too big and way too
even. Seeing this put me into a particularly anxious state. I called my mentor
in the “program”**, telling him what I thought I was looking at; that I felt
that if I went to it – which for some reason it seemed like I was supposed to
do – I would be made to drink (since
that was my greatest, and genuine, fear at the time – that something beyond my
control would make me drink, which
maybe sounds ludicrous, but actually kind of isn’t). I expect my friend thought
I was ordinarily newly-sober insane, but he was able to talk me down from my
state of near-panic, and convinced me that I didn’t have to do any such thing.
And though it was still several days until the holiday, and the neighborhood
lights otherwise remained until Christmas and New Years, I know that by either
that next evening or soon after, the large rectangle of orange light was gone
and did not reappear.
Some few years later, I had another, very
subtle kind of sighting that occurred in a similar context. I’d been afraid to
go to a small meeting*** at a hospital in Ballard (a neighborhood in north
Seattle), one that I knew would be sparsely attended by those in alcohol and
drug treatment at the hospital, and even more sparsely attended by other, sober
members from the community at large. So basically, I expected I would be on my
own if I went, and if I went, it was expressly to be helpful, if I could, to an
unreceptive and resentful room of people who were more or less held captive. I
did not want to do this. In fact I unreservedly did not want to do this. I
battled against my sense of obligation all the way. But in going, as I
approached the Ballard neighborhood, the hospital, and my increasing dread, I
remember noticing in the sky overhead, hanging at what seemed a really high
altitude, a small silver shape, bluntly cylindrical. It was so high, and so far
off, that it was hard to see it as more than just a smudge, but it hung there, and
for the duration that I watched it (several minutes) it stayed pretty much in
the same place. At the time, I thought it must be a blimp or balloon – although
I’d never seen a blimp or a balloon up that high before. This was at many
thousands of feet into the hazy sky. I checked its position often as I drove through
and eventually found a parking space alongside the hospital. In some corner of
myself, I imagined that seeing this thing was an acknowledgement that I was
crossing an important threshold, in being willing to confront my fears and
work, ostensibly, for others’ benefit, even though I didn’t really believe that
the object was anything all that extraordinary at the time. And as I sat in the
meeting, which itself was quite unremarkable (what the hell had I been so
afraid of?) I looked sometimes out the window toward the grayish sky, and was
still able to see the object overhead. It’s position was just such that from
where I sat, I could look straight at it. The funny thing about this memory is
that I have the impression that the sky was simply crammed full of objects at
the time… This was a regular fantasy of mine from that period, that objects –
seemingly ordinary objects: helicopters, airplanes, blimps, whatever – were
just about everywhere in the sky above the city, that it was almost more
crowded up there than it was down in the busy streets. I don’t know what it was
about the sky on that day that gave me that impression. Maybe it really was
crowded with airplanes and helicopters and blimps and balloons. Except that how crowded could it actually get?
*Forgive
the cagey wording of this statement. The “network of support” is one that
everybody knows, and that I, frankly, have no trouble with naming and
associating myself with. The network itself however contains within its
literature of very strongly suggested traditional practices, as regards
its public relations philosophy, the imperative that members not publicly
identify themselves specifically as such in media like for instance this sort
right here. This is as much for the good of the network as it is for that of
the member.
**See
above. Trying to describe this very specific state of mind and context puts me
into a position of playing perhaps somewhat loosely with the concept while
keeping to its letter. Yet to describe events without this context renders them
almost entirely meaningless. I.e. "I saw a dot up in the sky" – and,
yeah, and, so what?
***Etc.
