I know now what I have to do

Content Warning: Discussion of violence, hospitalization, & portrayal of de-realization.

Milenka Berengolc

2019. Reading from the larger work I died a million deaths. 6 minutes 36 seconds.

A voice speaks:

I know now what I have to do. I leave the magazine there on the counter, and I run out of the diner, down the stairs of the 86th street station. I’m leaning on the door as the train shakes through the dark tunnels. Then the people, the seats, all disappear from view and all I see are vibrations. I’m writing all I hear in my head, going at great speed, the letters large and free, crossing over the red lines of my notebook. Suddenly, I feel a deep compassion for all people of this earth. I write “7 Wonders of the World, the samovar, the tea of China, of Japan,…” I’m the female second coming in the New Age of Aquarius. I am here to unmask us. It is a bit like, well, Shakespeare put it this way – “All the world’s a stage…” Or think of the Wizard of Oz. Remember the part (the key is remembering) when Dorothy wakes up, and she recognizes her cousins, her aunt? and they were too the lion, and...

I get off at 42nd street. I see the tall gray building and The New York Times in large letters. I swing the door open, and a guard gets up from behind the desk, and sees me. Radiating love. “It’s Sunday,” he says, “the offices are closed.” My words spill out, desperate to convey the urgency of my mission. “Don’t you understand? The world has to know. I’m here to save it.” He doesn’t make fun of me or dismiss me. “I believe you,” he says gently, “but you’ll have to come back when the offices are open.” He believes me. What would my therapist say?

I imagine my mother as she throws me over the balcony, I fall four flights and hit the pavement. The story in the magazine shows a photo of the little girl’s face. I’m sitting at the counter, drinking coffee and suddenly, I recognize myself. That’s me crushed, ecrasee there on the pavement. I run out the door of the diner.

Shall I acknowledge my magnificence? Hah, I say this with petulance in my 5th year on this planet. It’s by default that I came through this vehicle. I yearn, no I can only hope then to satisfy and assuage you my readers in this regard (le beau visage).

I dial the number and Varda my therapist picks up. I tell her where I am, and she says calmly, “Go to the nearest hospital”. Shall I tell you that I am in unbearable pain? I cannot form words. My legs give way under me. I can only point with one finger and draw in the air. Can’t they see that that my legs are giving way? It’s my third eye that it has tunneled into another space, another dimension slowly expanding, one universe within another, a space red, and then of many colors. My left shoulder and my arm are tightening and heavy now and I have to concentrate on the hard bridge to the keyboard and type. They have me join the circle. I recognize the song they’re playing, Carol King “You’ve Got a Friend”. They’re holding me up by the hands.

Soon, I am led to a bed. I collapse. Je m’ecroule. I’m swallowing some kind of pills and I surrender. I welcome it. A deep exhaustion has overtaken me. I fall, fast asleep. I dream I am in a hyper-reality. I turn the key. I hear the drawer opening. I know with a deep conviction that I have solved the mathematical equation to the drawers of the Sphynx – the mystery of all time. Startled, I sit up in the dark, repeating the equation over and over so I won’t forget it. I sense another body, a faint figure in the bed next to mine. My notebook is full of symbols, numerological equations and spiritual symbols found throughout all cultures of the world. They hold such profound meaning. I feel a heaviness in my body, my head. Later on, the meaning… What is the word I am looking for – Yes the word meaning recedes like a balloon deflated with the prick of a needle. The way an intense discussion loses all its power once the head clears itself of the weed, and one is left bemused, amused. And which hospitalization was that? The second one?

[ A page turns. ]