To the Cubby and Down the Rabbit Hole

The first day of school, the REAL first day; I was six and nervous as hell for first grade. I didn’t always get along with people so well, was somewhat bad, and stuttered like a son-of-a-bitch (another result of divorce, I suspect). School felt daunting and strange. I knew I’d have problems down there at the school that was right down the street from my two-storey house. Shit, we’re forced to go to school, they make us. Fuck. My deep disdain for adults began early and I had a problem with authority, already.

I stood outside of the house on the front lawn, that sunny and warm September morning, filled with anxiety and sense of doom. I gathered my strength and headed down. The adults controlled the show at this point. Damn. Life felt very unfair.

I sat in the classroom. Oh, Jesus, it was weird. All those little fucks; annoying and stupid. The teacher was scary; a short, mean, lesbian-looking woman with manly glasses and short, wiry ugly grey hair, with an angry, gruff voice. Shit. Yup, I was fucked now.

Well, as it turned out, she didn’t seem to have a problem with me. Phew! Thank you, Jesus, or God, or Satan, or Zeus, or whomever was willing to help me out. Grade one wasn’t looking too bad. Of course, with the mind I possessed, I knew that there were icky things to come. Yikes. Here we fuckin’ go.

I managed to get through the first day of school, relatively unscathed, at least physically. You see, when we’re children, we’re abused in so many ways. Basically, adults are evil and stupid; they’re drones, really, and they force us kids to do the stupid shit they did and jump through the same hoops. They’re always watching, testing, scrutinizing, hollering, judging, and criticizing us. They want us to be like them; damaged, fucked-up, drone-like, nice little tax-paying citizens, staying in line and following protocol. Bastards! Was I pissed-off? You’re Goddamned right! Am I bitter now, even though I’m a so called, grown-up? You’re fucking right! I have an imagination. I have more imagination than perhaps I can even fully express to you. It was almost time for the cubby to become the rabbit hole, and that was fine by me. I needed an escape. I needed to feel free in my own, little space.

Back in the cubby, I sat there, letting go and feeling good. I played and let my thoughts unfold. I easily drifted into the abyss that was my mind. I always liked being by myself, free to drift on the wonderful sea of MY ideas. I always felt like there was someone or something else there; nothing I could see, but a presence, nonetheless. I never believed in a creator idea, so I’m not sure what that presence would be. I suspect it’s simply my mind, conjuring up something strange, again. Well, good, that’s what I do now for a living, I make pictures, paintings to be exact. I sell them around the world. That’s pretty cool, I must say. I get to be alone and use my weird brain. They say I have a high-functioning autistic brain, formerly known as the Asperger’s brain. Asperger’s Syndrome, wow, what a pill to swallow. They recently decided to change it to high-functioning autism. Apparently, the former title offended some people. For me, this so called, disorder, causes me annoyance with EVERYTHING and causes me to think A LOT! Oh, well, such is this life, filled with bends and snares, turtles, and hares, as we head down the darkening Rabbit Hole.

Hours would roll by down in the Rabbit Hole. Mom or my sis would call me for supper and my trance would be broken and I’d head upstairs to eat. That was okay, as I always loved to eat. It was always simple fare in our house; Hamburger Helper, bacon and eggs, pork chops and veggies, hamburg and potatoes, you know, that sort of thing. I realize now that was good that mom fed us that stuff, real food. It gave me a healthy palette. To this day, I mainly eat real food, not much processed crap. I haven’t gotten a cold or flu in 10 years and I have no health issues.

I’ll attempt to describe my mind and the rabbit hole where I learned so much and where part of my artistic side was formed. In the Rabbit Hole, MY Rabbit Hole, it’s filled with bizarre, wonderful, terrible, and beautiful things. There are ghosts, goblins, angels, and devils. The Devil beckons and the soft angels fly around, all the while my mind keeps stretching out, limitless, an unbound reservoir for ideas that may end up on my canvas. Cool, huh? Not always…

The night; filled with terrors, the Boogey Man, monsters under the bed and in the closet. This was my time in my bed at night. I’d end up out on the hallway stairs, too scared to stay in bed. My erratic sleeping patterns started during this time. They continue to this day.

The Rabbit Hole began to creep around everything. I’d go for long walks of exploration, returning home, exhausted and full of water and mud up to my waist. The rabbit hole had been many streets away and down in a creepy and beautiful bog surrounded by twisting trees. Oh, how the rabbit hole steals time! Hell, I was a kid. I had all the time in the world, whichever world I chose to be in.

Flu! Shit, I got a bad flu. It put me in bed for five days, only able to eat toast and margarine with a glass of orange juice my sis would bring me. I even hallucinated. The creepy image kept returning; a man with a monstrous face that looked like the bottom of our toilet. I laid in bed, feeling like I may indeed die.

Ever have really bad nightmares? Mine started very early. You say that all children have bad dreams. Um, maybe not like mine. You be the judge.

My memory of my first nightmare went like this. It was basically my house, but it had been changed, altered to look bizarre and creepy with a man lying in a bed upstairs. He had weird tubes and stuff coming out of him and he was deformed. He was also very, very ill. As you can imagine, this was a very disturbing dream for such a young, imaginative fellow like myself. You know those dreams that slip away quickly upon waking? This one, as you can read, never even began to fade and never shall.

My sister. What a bitch she could be. We fought a lot, even often coming to blows, usually ending with me mistakenly punching her in the tit. She’d get this horrible, pained look and yell to mom who was usually upstairs, that I hit her on her breast. She would say she was afraid it would give her breast cancer. It never did. Me being five years younger, so shorter, my fist would usually end up connecting with her tiny breast. I tell you the truth, she provoked me, a lot. Such it goes with the sister and brother in my world. Her boobs never got very big, which became a source of sadness and frustration for sissy, later. The mind of the young woman must be a difficult one.

My devoted girlfriend. I’ll call her Helga. She was beautiful with long, thick, light blond hair, big blue eyes, and flawless soft pale skin. She fell absolutely in love with me. I was a good-looking guy; tall enough, somewhat muscular build (I had a weight set), light brown wavy hair, and greyish-blue eyes. She was good for my self-esteem. We’d slow-dance downstairs in her playroom. She was an only child, so her parents bought her a lot of cool stuff, like stuff for her groovy playroom. She had a nice record player, all the latest records and best songs. It was a great experience for a young lad. She was my steady, but others would come sniffing around later. Such are the experiences and lessons of the Rabbit Hole.

My eyes were closed; I lay on my single bed on my favorite flannel sheets, those Sesame Street ones from the ‘70’s, a quality product of that wonderful decade. You’d be hard-pressed to find such quality these days. Actually, the lack of good quality these days is deplorable. It makes me sad, almost on a daily basis. Yes, maybe I think and scrutinize too much, but such is the Aspie brain and reality or unreality of the Rabbit Hole. Hang on tight. Muhahahaha!

Night was here again. The night was always a challenge with my imagination running wild and amok, the thought of the bad man or monster in the closet. Damn, the closet door is open a little. I better get up and close it. No, I don’t want to. I didn’t. I lay there on my beloved, comfortable and comforting Sesame Street sheets. There was Big Bird. I loved Big Bird; so big, kind and innocent. I faithfully watched the program every day. It was a huge and helpful part of my childhood. God knows, I needed the positive influence, the feeling that the characters were friends, and the general vibe of lovely innocence. This is when I began to put a green protective light around myself. It helped. It was the most beautiful emerald colour.

That damned closet! Shit. I gathered my rather large and unnatural collection of small, stuffed animals around me on the bed. To a point, they protected and comforted me. My imagination was such that the animals were alive and hell, we were all together! It was better than nothing, believe you me. Into the eerie zone of night, the blackness, the velvet bitch with her ghouls and goblins. Fuck.

I ended up sitting out on the hall stairs, somewhat tired, depressed, lonely, and wondering why, oh, why am I always afraid of the dark. I sat there, my head in my hands, and closed my very young eyes. The expanse of my over-active mind stretched out and out. Colours, weird shapes, swirling, twisting, people in my life, already seeming like strangers, even family felt like aliens. How terrible, you’re thinking, a young chap, feeling this way. I was only 6 years old, and yes, it was pretty awful. Let me tell you how rough it was. Whenever I’d try to sleep with my sister, she’d make me sleep on the floor. I would be able to fall asleep, but would snore, and she’d kick me out. Whenever I’d try to sleep with my mother, she’d usually say no, but when she said yes, she didn’t like it and had a cold attitude. Welcome to the very lonely and confusing life of a little boy that existed in the Twilight…I mean, Rabbit Hole.

When you’re a kid from a divorced home and your family is the shits, you naturally look for solace, safety and forms of joy. Joy can come in seemingly strange forms like bullying some smaller male friends and clowning around at school. Many a class I’d spend with my little desk and chair outside in the hallway at school. Great! In the hallway at home and in the hallway at school! Yeah, I was doing great.

I must introduce the Helpers from the Rabbit Hole. The Helpers showed themselves quite early, I was 6. It’s a damned good thing they did. I realized it then and I realize it now. As a somewhat interesting side note, some fans of my art feel that these Helpers still visit me to this day and help me paint. Whatever the case, I say thank you to them! They were about all I really had when I was little.

The Helpers, as best as I can describe them, are ghosts or entities of some sort, are either products of my crazy imagination, or they’re real. I think now that I don’t really give a shit if they’re imagined or not. They kind of saved me on many occasions.

Often, when I was young, I’d walk quite far from home, wandering, exploring, and seeing what I could see. I loved being outdoors and in nature. I also loved being by myself when I did these things. I enjoyed relying on just myself; no one to ask, answer to, wonder about, or oblige. I would end up in some wet, Spring bog, surrounded with old, twisted trees that seemed to call out to me. I loved seeing birds, the natural smells, the look of the thick mud on my feet. I liked the serenity and freedom of it all. This need for freedom would follow me my whole life, which comes in handy when you’re an artist.

Now, the cubby hole is just my mind, the rabbit hole is whatever I want it to be, and my strange and running imagination is rabbit food. How very succulent.

I’ll end this story by saying that I still put the green protective light around myself. I guess I never really grew up or cashed in all of my innocence. I thank my hidden friends for this. After all, who could provide such a gift, but spirits from The Other Side.