Caesar of my Cerebrum
Jamilo Rutabaga slumped against a large pineapple, and thought. Boy, he had been thinking about thinking for a while, but now he really got down to it. Thankfully, the giant fruit farm off the I-253 on the way to Brigford, GY, was the perfect place. Secluded. Surreal. Safe.
“I can’t tell sometimes what is real and what is just put out there by my active mind,” Jami mumbled to himself, while unwrapping the tin foil of his avocado and trilby baguette. “I know what happens in a day, but then my mind suggests what may have happened and I become trapped in a world of maybe’s. It’s exhausting. It’s sickening. It’s…making me a warzone.”
He crunched down on the day old bread, and green mooshy moosh oozed out, as a chunk of red onion fell to the leafy floor. It was a good sandwich. Jamilo had got the blender working again last night, so he really ground the shit out of his grandfather’s trilby and was able to sprinkle it evenly over his guac, no problemo. However, eating guac in the eyeline of a giant avocado, over to his right side, felt odd. Similar to having a forkful of scrambled eggs while stroking a chicken in a battery farm. The avo’s blemishes turned from a palid classic grey to a more fiery orange the more Jami munched on his guac, incidentally and accidentally composed of one of the avo’s not-too-distant cousins.
Between mouthfuls he spluttered, “So, I know what happened this morning. I woke up, baked my quiche, smothered it in onion butter, and went down to eat by the fire with Aunt Lasombrolait. Chatted a bit, (price of fish kinda conversation) and realized I was late for my brother’s birthday walk, so put the quiche down on the tiles for Rover to finish. I grabbed 2 prozestapin for my nerves, wolfed ‘em down with some OJ, then left the house and walked to the walk. I did not, repeat did not, take more than two, following the advice of my aunt who stressed that that could lead to a “failure to discern what is real and what is fantasy.” But fuck! I have exactly that problem!”
Jamilo’s anger started to simmer like a slow-cooked, over-cooked ratatouille. His tiredness, his delirium, was building to a crescendo.
“I am in a pyrric war, trying to convince my mind that “all is good. I didn’t fuck up. I didn’t take too many pills, nor did I poison my friend’s dog, send dick pics to my boss, or burn the apartment”. But he won’t have any of it. He is tough to be convinced that I’m safe.”
Jamilo searched inward for scraps of empathy, for a bit of the old ‘benefit of the doubt’. “Maybe I should appreciate his obstinacy…I mean, I love his alertness, his sense of duty. I guess he’s not meant to be convinced, but stay on constant lookout like a seaman manning a crow’s nest on an Atlantic crossing.”
As Jamilo thought out-loud and munched his baguette, a cooling breeze swept through the farm. The pineapple, sturdy but voluptuous, enjoyed the refreshing gusts as they gently tickled its sharp leaves. It was having a solid year, plumping up nicely, and giving off a sweeter than usual mist that was pleasantly intoxicating to passers-by.
“Maybe I should just listen to some Radiohead and be present….” Jamilo acted on this one, jumped up from the pineapple floor and rummaged in his Eastpak. Plugging in his battered headphones to his iPhone, he tried to mellow to some Radiohead on Spotify.” It works for a few minutes, but he suddenly gets a combative surge to fight back, to punch out.
“I want to win though, I don’t wanna just “let it go, man, live in the moment.” This isn’t Woodstock, this is my head, my very personal civil war. If my mind keeps pinging out these redundant suggestions, well he should pay for it! How else will he know to stop, to be a bit more pragmatic for a change, without some accountability.”
What began as some casual verbalizing of thoughts, turned into a tantrum for a now riled up Jamilo. He had gone to the fruit farm for space and peace, but his mind crowded all that out regardless of where he went. Even if he had tried to re-enact Dr. Zhivago’s long walk back alone through Siberia, Jamilo would feel like he was rushing to an 8:30am meeting in Midtown. No peace without without peace within. Could be dismissed as classic self-help middle-aged bullshit, but it was ringing true for him right now.
“Well, this isn’t working. I can’t beat my mind this way, this will cause more bloodshed. And I gotta change this music! I only chose Radiohead because it seemed like what someone of my demographic (19, white, college-educated, democrat) should choose but Thom Yorke’s one note high voice is making me even more angsty. Anyway, I wish I could take my mind out of my self and really have a heated exchange with him as a separate being. I would push him to “Shut up! Leave me alone! Be your own person, with your own fears, and incessant pessimism. You don’t respect me, you don’t empathize or meet me halfway. You’re a narcissist!”
Jamilo knew this didn’t seem productive to ‘bully the bully’. But he wanted it to, he wanted to fix things the old-fashioned, “manly” way. Have a punch up, stand up to your bullies, and smash ‘em down. That what his dad had always told him to do. “Stand against than the tyrants among us, boy”, he’d say during family Sunday lunches.
Next to the pineapple was a bunch of giant asparagus, which unfortunately had seen better days. Weeks even. The common mold of these large vegetables, Solpicrackus Novelumbi, was taking hold of the stems of these poor creatures, as green fur was starting to ooze out. The poor veggies secreted an odor of day-old asparagus wee, which to some visitors was strangely alluring, but to most was quite a turn-off. Nonetheless, seeing it decay like this was strangely beautiful. The mold was fluffy, cushioning, and the way the stems lost their turgidity so gradually looked like an old person slowly getting into bed for the last time, lifting up each leg with such attention and precision.
The smell was getting a little too much for Jamilo, so he decided to leave soon and check out some other fruit around him. Not before a little lightbulb moment occurred in this session of self-care.
“I know, I’ll change the hierarchy in my head,” he started, devising his plan methodically. “ I can do that, that is within my control. From now on, I am the benign dictator of me, the Caesar of my cerebrum. I welcome advice from all corners, and one of those people happens to be this voice of caution, of danger from my mind. He can offer up suggestions, make observations, and ask that certain things are reviewed, sure. But if I dont take it onboard, if I do not engage, then the advice doesn’t reemerge in the same form or other twisted ways. I decide not to act on it, so it dies. I can do this. Because I am Caesar, and my mind is a pleb of drone bee mediocrity who needs to pull rank.”
Jami sauntered through the fruit farm, pleased with a potential positive step in his quest for peace.
