An accidental exorcism

Introduction
When I visited Ali in the hospital three years ago, she was talking "word salad". Shattered splinters of ideas burst from her lips as she bounced around the visitors' room, unable to find a safe place to provide the gravity from which to begin and end a thought. It was as if her mind had been smashed by some mysterious storm as disconnected fragments seemed to be carried forth and scattered by the force of some invisible wind.
While at the time, the doctors couldn’t diagnose her, it sure seemed to me that she was tripping. As time passed, the Respiridol did its job and kept the endorphins away from the frontal lobes of her brain (where they didn’t belong). Heavily medicated, she began to formulate and speak in uninspired sentences. Not her former style. She'd been a storyteller, a poet.
[Endorphins should bring pleasure in the right amounts and correct vicinity of the brain, but when they get into the front, they can cause psychosis. I thought of the misplaced endorphins like splattered paint; or sparks of creativity that can set fires when not tended correctly, or as what happens when people screw around with each other, never mind with drugs.]

She said from the start that something had taken over control of her mind.
Of course, no one took this seriously.
…I owe her a huge apology.

An Uncanny Intervention

I’d prayed hard for a blessing to allow whatever it was (spirit or image) to emerge from her tortured brain and evacuate her wracked body…. I’d read in The Folklore of the Jews [Angelo S Rappoport] that dibbuks come out on Wednesday and Saturday nights. But this happened early Sunday night: She’d fallen asleep in her bed. [I knew the meds helped her to go unconscious but I didn’t fear this time that she was wasting her life.]
Trained in substance abuse counseling and hypnotherapy, I’d finally mustered up the courage to discuss the possibilities of hypnosis for contacting intruders from the spirit world, if indeed there were any, as I’d begun to suspect after my discussion with the Rabbi. He'd said, Oh sure, he believed in possession; the bible was full of documented cases. I didn't want to hear that, recalling my own feelings of being intruded upon by unseen presences, first under the influence of drugs, and another time after delivering a child in the hospital. But as I researched the topic one thing that I read was how Jews put objects around birthing rooms to protect new mothers from just that kind of phenomenon.
Only after my Zen teacher had told me that as far as evil spirits went, a person had to believe in them to see them, did I decide it would be in my best interest to stop believing.
But when the opportunity arose that Sunday night, I’d only meant to help her to sleep less fitfully. To speak softly to her unconscious, of safety and loving protection and of calling upon the light and the archangels to bring rest and untroubled dreams. For, since the events leading to her hospitalization, she claimed her sleep was always fitful and terrifying.

I sat on the corner of the bed and eventually said, ""Ali, don’t wake up; just listen to me." She grunted from under the weight of drugged heaviness, speaking with difficulty,—just a glimmer of recognition.
"Ali, I want you to stay asleep but I want you to listen and answer me from your sleep, OK?"
She grunted again and I understood she could navigate her voice to the surface, even from below where she lay like a stone on the bottom of a well.
"Ali, I want you to tell me what you are experiencing, OK? Just a couple of words."
She moaned.
"Are you feeling peaceful?"
"No."
"OK, it’s OK. I want you to listen to my voice and let it soothe you, let yourself ride on it while you sleep. I am going to bring you with my voice to a place where you can see or feel or hear, the peace you deserve…. But I need to know what you are experiencing."
"Shadows."
"What color?"
"Gray."
"OK. I want you to call a golden light to you."
She shifted fitfully, as if uncomfortable with my instruction.
"Ali," I said, "stay asleep and tell me from your sleep what’s going on."
She mumbled something incoherent. I spoke louder to her, like a person does who wants to ask a sleeping person something, like where the car keys are, and she responded typically like that person who grunts a few syllables and continues to dream.
And that is how it was.
She must have been ready.
Thank God she could do this, entertaining the possibilities or reporting to me from one dimension to another, but then again, we'd always had a deep connection.
"Ali," I said, mentally holding our connection up to the light, as if it were the only reality , "Do you see it? I want you to pull the gold light to you."
"No."
"What do you see?
"I see gray. A Shadow."
"Alright, then, I want you to let a warm glow replace it."
"Uh huh."
"What’s happening? What do you see now?"
"A gray pole with a dot over it, suspended in the middle of space."
"OK now, I want you to call a golden light to that place instead and tell me when the light changes, OK?... Ali?"
"Uh."
"What do you see?" I’m almost shouting; she half-sleeps in a heap.
"I see dark fog. I don’t like it here. It’s cold. It’s over the pole, a mark."
"Ali, call the archangel of loving kindness, Michael, to you now. He can protect you, feel him come to you on your right side."
"I see a blue light."
[Blue, I later recall from the book by Rappaport, was the color of spiritual perception and protection. Furthermore, I read that it was that same archangel, Michael, whom the ancients called upon to cast out evil spirits.]
"Blue? What kind of blue?"
"It’s deeper than the ocean and bigger than the sky."
[I know now I’ve reached her spirit, I remember the poet. The one who loves.]
"OK, good. I want you to let go into that blueness. You can float and be renewed in that blue light. It is freedom."
Her neck tightens and I can see the pulse quickening and she says, "I don’t know hot to float anymore."
"Remember the many times when it was safe. You would dive. And you could skate as if you were flying. And you could jump-kick so high, when you wanted to... I want you to do that kind of letting go now.
It is here for you, it never went away. Even though you went away, this freedom was always here, waiting. It is love and can hold you. Don’t hold on, just be held now, like you’ve done many, many times before."
"OK," she says resolutely [the good child].
"How do you feel?"
"It was here all along. You’re right. She breathes deeper now, relaxing like she’s on a raft. [I remember her and I swimming and the sweet smelling air of summers past.]
I say, "This is the truth. It’s the only truth. It’s where you come from, honey. It’s where you return to. It’s this light that is spirit, you can bask in this and be completely safe and surrounded in this. You are loved. You always were. You always will be. Long after the trouble passes, you will be here and you can come here now and come here again and again. Memorize this feeling, and breathe deeply, imbibe this place and let it heal you. Let this light fill your body and surround you in its safety."
She says, "I forgot. It’s true . Yes. This place."
"Honey you can come here whenever you feel afraid. This is what is behind daily life. Your soul is pure no matter what happened. You are pure and you are in the light and in the light no harm can ever come to you, now or ever. "
"I see that."
"Where are you?"
"I’m floating….It’s really OK. It always was."

A few minutes pass. Her eyelids move more rapidly and she says this:
"Tova, there’s a crazy ass spirit inside me."
I’d not anticipated this but here it is; a most peculiar blessing. So I say, "OK, Ali, I want you to stay asleep and let the spirit talk to me."
I am about to make some kind of argument to let this happen but Ali says, "He’s interested in what you are saying. He wants to talk."
[I don’t find this reassuring, but I am optimistic anyhow.]
"Oh. OK Ali, here’s what I want you to do: Stay asleep and let him speak through you, to me, OK?"
An affirmative grunt….
Her eyes open. Disoriented, a hollow light from deep in those eyes seems to wash over me like a searchlight in mist. It seems that whatever this is, whether it be a split off part of her personality or indeed a spirit, it is confused and frightened. Also, the phrase, "somnambulistic trance," comes to my mind, as I witness how someone can be sleeping and appear awake at the same time. [Rather like sleepwalking, I remember my brother would sleepwalk and it seemed very bewildering, as if his spirit were lost and looking for its contents in all the wrong places.]
"Who are you?" I venture into this shadowy atmosphere with masked uncertainty.
"Enz." Hollow answer.
"Ens?"
"Enz."
"Spelled E-N-Z?"
A pause, then this: "I’m Ali."
"No, you are not Ali. You are a spirit who is in Ali's body. You don’t belong there."
"She knows he is a spirit," Ali chimes.
"OK. Let me speak to Enz, then."
Eyes searching, hungry, groping. I feel a young man’s presence, perhaps age 19. I know this is all projection on my part. Uncertain of nothing, I only have a hope of effecting some change in Ali's unconscious so that she can believe she is in charge of her own fate.

"What are you doing here?" I command the situation, a shot in the darkness.
"I’m Ali."
"No, you are not. You are in Ali's body. Your body died. You don’t have a body any more. You belong in the light, the sprit world, not here. You are wasting time and hurting my friend and yourself by clinging to her. You must move on. It is the law of life. Look up. You see the light? Go into the light, where you belong."
Ali 's eyes look up, the head nods. [ Am I playing God? I don’t care if I am, if it works.]

Ali says, "You hurt his feelings."
I am amused. He, this supposed spirit, is apparently delusional, for want of an earthly identity. There’s something poignant and even funny about it. [We are in the pre-sleep realm of absurdity and metaphor and meaning.]
"Let me talk to him again," I say [as if I have the authority to navigate worlds, a dangerous game and one that can cause insanity when a foot gets stuck in each realm, as I well know.]
"I’m Ali."
"No, you are in her body but that is not the same as being her. You are intruding. You are ENS and you need to go into the light and be with other spirits who can give you the love and help you need. Now go back on your own path, stop wandering and find peace by leaving here. You deserve it. You can’t find help here because this is not your home. Here you can only be rejected and more hurt as you hurt others. You have to go now."
"Yo," he blurts, "this dude’s in her yo;. Who can do not. You no can do. Uh huh, I dig this one; she digs me. She an me are tight like family…yo you, don’t know what your talking 'bout, man. You get out, yo stranger; you flip her out."

"Don’t give me Jive, Ens. Your body is gone. I know what you’re doing and your time is up, it was up long ago, buddy. You have no right… You’ve got to GO."

The eyes widen. Look at me. Then to the parrot, a white Cockatoo, perched beside me, head cocked in interest, sitting upon Ali’s knee.
"No, you can’t enter the bird, not me either. You don’t belong here. You have a home. Look up into that light. There are beings there who want you to join them, who can give you what you need. You must go home now." [I have no idea if any of this is so or if it can work.]
"No. I can’t."
"You must."
An emphatic "NO!" and the eyes close. I fear I am losing contact.
"Ali! Tell him he’s got to go."
"You gotta go, man…. He won’t go. He’s afraid."
"Enz," I intervene, "Look up. At the light."
The eyes open, roll up to the top of the head, look.
"Do you see it?"
Nods.
"Go up into that light, " I say. "You can start over. You can be forgiven."
Ali’s eyes… look at me, doubtful, says, "I can’t."
"You must. It’s not too late. If you go up into that light you will be met by others who can help you. Look, there’s nothing for you here. And every second that you squat here you’re making it harder not just for her, but for you. You’ve got to move. It’s this being stranded here, that’s tormenting you and it’s tormenting my friend too. There is absolutely nothing to gain and even more to loose by sucking up her energy. You do yourself more harm here the longer you stay."
I continue improvising: "It is the law of life that says you can not live off of another. It is immoral and cowardly and you can be courageous now and just stop doing it. You will be forgiven." [I have no idea if he will be forgiven. I would be the last to forgive him, if this is the case, anyhow.]
"Look, you have a path, but you have to let go of Ali to find it and to get the help you still deserve. It’s just waiting for you. Look up." The eyes roll up again. The hollowness there that I perceive [or perhaps project] seems to fill with a new recognition. Tears begin to stream down Ali’s cheeks. "GO!"
"I have to work something out first," Enz protests.
"The things you have to work out aren’t here. You need to go work them out where you can. The longer you stay the more to work out and it isn’t here that you can be forgiven and released from those things. Release my friend NOW and stop harming her as well as yourself."
More tears flow. "I need to ask Ali to forgive me first."
I feel impatient, desperate. "She forgives you, now GO!"
"NO. I HAVE TO WORK IT OUT WITH HER."
"Ali," I intercede, "tell him you forgive him." [I say this while wondering how the Hell she can ever truly forgive such an invasion, if that's what this is.]
"I forgive you Man. Now Go." Ali says this like a pissed-off older person to someone stupid and pathetic. Yet she sounds resigned at the same time. But all I feel is pride towards her. I sense a wisdom that has finally arrived, a maturity I’d not anticipated.
But nothing seems to change. After a while, Ali tells me that Enz is stuck, unable to make the first move. I don’t know what I can possibly say or do from this place of outrage and impotence [a place, it occurs to me, in which my friend struggles interminably].
Then, the most unexpected feeling of love for this strange entity, this spirit boy who is attached to Ali, fills me with a rushing sensation that is uncanny, overwhelming. I feel as if an electrical charge is revving up my heart and opening wings of compassion in me I couldn't have formerly imagined. I feel as if I may as well in this moment be this spirit/boy's mother. And I know that it is even possible to transcend loathing beyond the most difficult thing to accept in this earthly life—and it is towards something as intangible as a stray spirit asking for forgiveness. I am in awe of the power of caring to transcend barriers. It is a sacred moment, a most peculiar blessing that I am somehow given over to bestowing upon this menace, this being, this unwanted guest, this taker. My mind is filled with a great irrational love for this presence that is at once, no longer a possible metaphor for some split-off part of Ali’s psyche. It is a being and it is here in this room and it is out of choices and wants to go home and I am like a midwife who would assist it back to that other realm that is its home.
It is he, Enz, whose spirit, lost and frightened is so terrified of letting go, not mine. I am not afraid, why should I be? I know in this instant he is real and I know that I am real to him as well.
"Ali gets all of the opportunity," he complains, weakly, sheepishly.
Ali, in the background, laughs.
[This was her complaint about others since she became sick with delusion.]
"Listen, ENZ," I say, "If I am just a human in a body, and I can feel this much love for you after what
you’ve done to my friend for the past three years, can you imagine how much more love you can get when you go to your own people in spirit? They’re just waiting! Go! Up into that light!

The eyes close. The body tenses. Relaxes. Goes limp.

"He’s gone", in a barely audible voice.
She then sleeps for twelve hours, un-fitfully, for the first time in years.
*********************************************************************
Afterwards:

The next day she reports no nightmares. Only a feeling of being drained.
It has been 5 weeks. There have been no incidents of psychosis, no voices, no damning messages, no threats towards her from inside. She has cut her anti-psychotics in half without incident. She is now driving and working for the first time. She is in this world.
Now I await with trepidation the deeper work she will be forced to do: forgiving what of her youth has been given over to dark forces.

:
Another 5 weeks have passed and she is completely off the anti-psychotics with no psychosis reported. She just got a raise and is seeing a couple of old high school friends she managed to locate, each week. She remains fearful of relapsing and doubts her ability to go back to school. She says she sometimes feels safe, particularly when she is "being responsible". She still isolates often and sleeps a fair amount, but doesn’t report nightmares or awaken me in terror, although she feels she still goes to a Hellish place sometimes at night. [Don’t we all….]


Protections
While there are, in fact, forces out there we may be vulnerable to, it is also true that there is nothing that moves through you, either loving or fearful, that is not worth investigating, but only if you can do so from a distance. Cling to the goodness that underlies all of existence if you can learn to detect it before you investigate the phenomenon of the mind and body. first you have to find a center within yourself that is calm and from that center, begin to wonder at what you experience on top of that, the comings and goings of thoughts and feelings in your mind. I know this is a practice that takes time. It took me decades to really be able to access it within moments but it’s there for me like a good drug without the hangover effect. Get addicted to knowing yourself and what arises in your mind, with a loving attitude of kindness. Develop a strong image of light and let it imbue and surround you so that there will be no place for the phantoms of the darkness to hide out within you.
They are frightened and have unloaded their own cowardice upon you. They, like us, need the light for relief and they will only find that by leaving your body and going into the light above where they will have the possibility of new movements and thoughts and of being forgiven and healed of their compulsions to live off of others. So don’t be selfish, don’t be a masochist even if you’ve become accustomed, acclimated to your pain that at least has let you know that you are alive and not dead like them.
Tell it to go now. Close up your house. And clean it daily or hourly with your big heart that has more love than fear available to it for love is our source and the only force towards which we ultimately must return. refuse to accept negative damning thoughts about yourself. It is only a matter of time before your brain will readily run the new software of your self knowledge which will retrieve to you the fragments of the mind you left behind in your flight into and then from the unknown.




Hebrew names
Recently, I told Ali, "The Rebbitzin (rabbi’s wife) suggests you take a Hebrew name. She says it will conduct the spiritual energies towards your self for your healing," or, as I think of it, the retrieval of fragmented mind particles, [the shamans call it the soul but in Judaism the soul is always intact].
"She has given you the name "Maier" which means, "light." The Jewish mystics say that the resonance in names are able to carry on their backs the spiritual healing of prayers and blessings to those who bear them. I myself am one of many who’ve changed their names and since can attest to the truth of this. It is as if those who think ill of us can’t find us, not even to send us their imagined forms of us. We seem to have erased the audible passages that names carry and which can seem to evoke the dead past. In less understood Jewish folklore, it is said that the "devil" can’t track a person once the person changes name, but I know of no authoritative Jewish teaching that acknowledges any devil. So to me, it means that the devil is a metaphor for those who think poorly of us, their energies, thoughts, and words. Which fits in well with the Jewish wisdom that you can do the equivalent damage to taking a person’s life by smearing a reputation.
She rejects my offer; wants to be "regular", recognizable to herself, I guess.



I continue to reach for her, in spite of her pushing me away.
I ask her, "don’t you know that love is stronger than fear? And haven’t you heard in your recovery program how you are only as sick as your secrets are large." All of my noise just makes her cringe, or so it seems.
But still, I’m thrilled to take her back so that with her timely releasing of fear, she can be safe enough to re-invent himself, and become her own person in the world. Then she can say I don’t know what I’m talking about.

Before:
Three years ago she took two handfuls of peyote; or perhaps it was mushrooms: her story has changed. She tried coming down in the psyche unit of the hospital in Northampton, or was it the one in Holyoke? I too, am clouded with the vague film trauma lays over memories.
I was in Berkley at the time because her father was, well, never mind. He’s OK now. I want to stay friends. It’s not a secret in the same spirit of paranoid or delusional omissions. It is simply, that as a Jew it is incumbent upon me to help raise up holy sparks. I married a holy spark. But we both caught fire.
[Love is dangerous. It makes us care much more than reason would have us commit to and thus extend ourselves beyond reasonable and sane limitations.]
My ex-husband and I made a huge thinking error when we allowed our feelings to dictate our actions at the cost of reasonable constrictions.
It was a swing from one cultural extreme to another. We over-reacted to the 1950’s materialism. That earlier option seemed deadly boring.
Now, insanity is not boring. And while that never appeared a reasonable option either, it was a white water river we all seem to have stumbled into with our backs turned to reason.

Conclusions

Watching her consumed in invisible flames. I had been bursting with waters of experience. I, intimately familiar with Hell.
I was once reduced to rubble, then found something incredible and shining rising out of the ashes. But the same fire that is the unfathomable internal life, is a spiritual essence, that without guidance, moves the self in strange and unpredictable ways. And if you don’t respect fire’s power, it can suddenly spread wildly, burning a virtual hole in your psyche, that eventually crusts over with depression and delusions. It destroys that essential although illusive thing, we call, "me".

The ancient Egyptians claimed that all healing is in telling the story. I encouraged my friend to please drop the secrecy and "just tell me your story. Take me to the place you visit; show me the one who visits you. And let’s have a look at that damn squatter in your mind."
I knew that she felt this request was neither simple nor typical (i.e. "not natural"). I guess she felt she'd he’d had enough brain probing to contend with already.
Accusing me of prying, she would jump up nervously and run out of the room as if I were her captor, which I’d almost believed in those moments. Yet I’d just wanted to offer her my map out of Hell: A way to unlock oneself from fear’s formless grip.
Fighting invisible judges and tyrants all alone, is a drag. And, knowing the system, I thought I could maybe help her to negotiate for a more reasonable sentence—even clemency!
Here’s how: First, you try to understand the nature of vapid enemies. Then you can disarm them. The phantom is a shadow that disperses if you only shine a light of inquiry upon it.
Or, if you don’t wish to inquire, try demanding a gift from your demon.
Her answer, again and again, was that it’s not that simple, this place where she was caught was not so easy to access and even if it was, it is difficult to escape....
But I believed she’d been caught by the webs of her own imagination, after being set in flight by drugs.
She then set in the ice of a fear; frozen by whatever it was she thought he saw there.
"Give me that damn thing!", I'd wanted to say, grabbing away the hot poker of self-criticisms that burned her but did nothing to break the ice. I knew she was only trying to preserve her pride in that ice.
For three years, secrecy kept her frozen along the river of life’s flow.
She’d try to hide, suspended amongst wrong ideas about the nature of that which we humans call "nothingness", "the void" that told her that her life was over. [Condemning thoughts hold a person like patriotism holds a soldier, to the other side of life, which is not death, but delusion.]
"It is a force," she’d tell me, a force that seemed to have a strangle hold on the mind. It didn’t matter to her if it was based in shadows and lies because, she’d insist, "it is a force, nonetheless".
But I felt, whatever the source of this force, alien or chemical, that we don’t own our stories.
I wanted to say, "Just give me the truth. I can handle it. Have handled it. Stop colluding with this invisible intruder by allowing him to silence the vitality that is you, and will get you past this….
It’s hard to be calm when I notice your eyes darting back and forth, you, listening to an internal voice arguing that I am the enemy, not to listen. You can hardly hear yourself think amidst the clamor of its rage.
Hell, I wanted to say, you don’t have to lie down and die, just because it threatens to destroy both of us if you give its identity away, if you say the words that are true . It is a hoax, no more a power than that hiding coward in the wizard of oz, Oz himself is, hiding behind the curtain now of your own mind."

Jewish Mystical Teachings
There is a Talmudic story about a Rebbe Akiva who entered a mystical garden called Parnais with three other sages. It is said that, of the four of them, only he went in peacefully and came out peacefully. Apparently they all saw something they could not explain there. Perhaps it was some kind of divine visitation.
Indeed it was a presence. The explanation called God, fit in those biblical and prophetic times when people’s beliefs seemed reasonable, when visions were not delegated to the insane. Think of this G-d as you will. Or don’t think at all and feel instead the power that is life itself. When Akiva came out he became a great spiritual teacher. The others all had problems integrating whatever it was that they witnessed, into their daily lives. Perhaps it was a weakness of body or a family problem or a decision of some import, that threw them, but whatever it was, understand that it takes a strong container to hold great secrets. One sage went mad from the encounter.
Another sage became a skeptic a non-believer. He, like my own brother, the famous critic with a hardened heart, as far as I can tell, has learned it seems to intellectualize and minimize all that he can not see. For, it seems he most fears her mind and her mind has become a razor sharp weapon against imagination and visions. Her weapon seems to have some relation to me, as having cut that small hold in her heart he has, and thus he can’t hold on to feelings of love, it seems. Of course this is my own interpretation.
The third sage died. The force he encountered in that garden must have scared him right out of this world.

My friend always was a live wire, before her descent into the mind with its demons. But Spirit is fire and contained, it is a powerful source of light and warmth. Perhaps you invoke fire’s residue when you ingest the spirit of plants you haven’t the constitution or guidance to process. And if so, to do that is to pave yourself a nice deep rut into Hell.

If You Don't Believe It, You Won't See It
I was sitting in meditation when the old fear of
phantoms raised its head again and intimidated me.
Later I consulted my Zen teacher about my fears,
asking herif he believed in possession. He said,
cryptically, "...let’s put it this way: you have to
believe it to see it." He didn’t say you have to see
it to believe it. I caught his drift and adopted that
advise because seeing it or sensing it did me no good
at all, just frightened the wits out of me and interfered with my thinking. Adopting that stance helped me refrain from engagement in the most terrifying and time-consuming experiences of my life.
But that same denial failed to help me take you seriously when you yourself began making claims of feeling or being, controlled by some external being or force.
So now I am choosing another tactic although denial did its job well for me for many years. While there are, in fact, forces out there we may be vulnerable to, it is also true that there is nothing that moves through you, either loving or fearful, that is not worth investigating, but only if you can do so from a distance. Cling to the goodness that underlies all of existence if you can learn to detect it before you investigate the phenomenon of the mind and body. first you have to find a center within yourself that is calm and from that center, begin to wonder at what you experience on top of that, the comings and goings of thoughts and feelings in your mind. I know this is a practice that takes time. it took me decades to really be able to access it within moments but it’s there for me like a good drug without the hangover effect. get addicted to knowing yourself and what arises in your mind, with a loving attitude of kindness. Develop a strong image of light and let it imbue and surround you so that there will be no place for the phantoms of the darkness to hide out within you.
They are frightened and have loaned, or unloaded their own cowardice upon you. They, like us, need the light for relief and they will only find that by leaving your body and going into the light above where they will have the possibility of new movements and thoughts and of being forgiven and healed of their compulsions to live off of others.
So don’t be selfish, don’t be a masochist even if you’ve become accustomed, acclimated to your pain that at least has let you know that you are alive and not dead like them.
Tell it to go now. Close up your house. And clean it daily or hourly with your big heart that has more love than fear available to it for love is our source and the only force towards which we ultimately must return. refuse to accept negative damning thoughts about yourself. It is only a matter of time before your brain will readily run the new software of your self knowledge which will retrieve to you the fragments of the mind you left behind in your flight into and then from the unknown.