Trepanation; Please, Put a Hole In My Head

"I can see clearly now the rain is gone1

I can see all the obstacles in my way."2

Johnny Nash3

The train is quickly pulling away from the station in Santa Anna, Ca. It lacks any wild west flair, yet somehow, still is totally wild. I am on my way to vacation for the weekend in Palm Springs, but first a detour. About 3 to 4 times a year I typically relapse on drugs. My drug of choice is heroin. Dangerous, illegal, highly addictive, and often deadly. Convincing myself that it is all worth it is easy, but finding a balance afterwards is not. Pumpkin, hands me my gram of black tar. A small south side mexican drug dealer with the word "Califa" tattooed boldly across his forehead in dark-green jail-house-font, Pumpkin often has fortune-cookie-advice that he freely offers up after each transaction. Today's nugget is "Suboxon, dog, don't leave home without it aye."4

Now I will go to a hotel room with some 'friends', and get high before I even begin to drive to Palm Springs (not that they'll let me drive). It wasn't always like this. I used to be just like my amazing children. Full of laughter, joy, hope -- racing towards the future with an enigmatic energy -- the brilliance of a shooting star. Now just shooting smack... So what happened? I began to recapitulate.5

Was it the economy? No, I've always been piss poor. Was it that I grew up without a father, because he was always in prison? Maybe, but probably not. Perhaps it was the relationship that I had with my mother. Violent, hazy, frightening, Oedipal... I think it was a mixed bag, but here's the real kicker, I'm not your typical addict by any means. I've never pawned my grandma's gold for a quick fix, or hit rock bottom and landed in prison for car jacking. I float in a purgatory between being and conceiving. Filled with an acute fear of the future, and a dire dread of the past. Totally afraid of death, yet purposely trying to die every day. I am the quintessential cliche of the functioning addict right down the drug and alcohol list of givens, and rarities.6

As an anthropologist by virtue I couldn't help but wonder how I
had become my greatest dig, the holy grail of sphinxes, but aren't we all? Some claim we're not getting enough copper. Others, that we're shifting into a new density. I don't know, but I just feel off, weird most of the time, you know? Quite often jaded, disjointed, removed, insincere, or freakishly serious about nothing important -- the glaze not being 'even' on my donut. The dust bunnies mocking me from the hall closet, those bastards...7

It gets worse, I own a rare bookstore. Can you imagine the sheer amount of bizarre historical pulp I'm subjecting myself to on a daily basis? Mountains of literature, painful, illuminating, wise, foolish, selfish, boring. A free for all. That's why I wasn't totally shocked when a customer brought up the topic of trepanation. How had I missed this? Yet there it was. Staring me down like 40 year old meth whore dealing cards in Henderson, NV. This was, in essence, the mother-load, and here is why:8

Do you know how many ducks in a row you can kill by drilling a hole in your head? In anthropological terms it's like an old incantation, a real metaphor at work. A bionic tattoo, a secret rite of passage that symbolizes not only the third eye, but a persons very willingness to crack open their head and let their soul out. I thought, I wonder who has pulled this one off, and found Amanda "Amanda Feilding, Countess of Wemyss (born 30 January 1943) is a British artist and scientific director. She founded and directs a charitable trust, the Beckley Foundation, which does research in the field of human consciousness. The Foundation also organizes seminars of world leading experts into the regulation of psychoactive substances on a global basis. She studied Comparative Religions and Mysticism with Prof. R.C. Zaehner at Oxford University and later did extensive research into Psychology and altered states of consciousness. She gained notoriety in the early 1970s when she performed trepanation on herself, about which she made a short cult art film entitled 'Heartbeat in the Brain', shown only to invited audiences. During the '70s and '80s she painted, and produced conceptual artworks to do with consciousness, which were exhibited at PS1 in New York and other galleries in the US. She also wrote ‘Blood and Consciousness’."9

Thanks Wikipedia... I was impressed. Aristocracy, intelligence, pioneering science skill, my kind of lady, but still, drilling a hole in your head is pretty fucking bold. That's right up there with sun dancing, or joining the Raelian revolution http://www.rael.org/, who have a very charismatic leader, and though he is in serious need of a new wardrobe designer and stylist, his vernacu-licious pearls of wisdom wreak havoc on the very fiber of language, and that has to count for something, and I quote "When you are you are... When you are you don't need to have, It's not bad to have when you are".10

Cryptic cult leaders. -- don't they just make you want to pry out your eye with a Del taco spork, indeed. If only I trusted sociopaths without feeling like a saddled lemming. So where does that leave me? Well obviously wanting to watch Amanda's film to decide for myself. Not necessarily if the procedure is worth it, but rather to play observer to her behavior before, during, and after the trepanation. To gauge what must have been going through her head. Perhaps witness visually if there is a shared twinkle in her step that reminds me of me. Or, a few friends I know.11

I wonder if all of my heroes that had prematurely blown their heads off, Kurt Cobain, Hunter S. Thompson etc. Really had only needed an emergency trepanation. The signs were all there, just in disguise. Thousands of years of self-mutilation, and vision quests condensed into the mere idea that your brain may just be starving for oxygen and telling you something by driving you completely batty. That inner voice, the ego, blah blah this, and that, all day every day. The internal muttering has become a cacophony of harpies and devils. There have been times that I have honestly considered seeing a priest to give me an exorcism, only to pull out the juicer and get my sugar levels right again, before kicking it in the sauna until I weep.12

Here's what Feilding and other advocates believe "that trepanation allows greater blood flow to the brain by altering cranial fluid dynamics, thus revitalizing brain metabolism to its more youthful level, present prior to the fusion of the cranial bones. Recent research carried out by Feilding in collaboration with Prof. Yuri Moskalenko has provided evidence in support of this hypothesis. This is part of a larger research programme investigating how intracranial dynamics change as we age, and what can be done to increase cranial compliance to help limit some of the detrimental changes associated with aging. Through this research, a new, non-invasive means of assessing intracranial dynamics, ‘The Moskalenko Method’, has been developed by Moskalenko, Feilding, et al...13

"Feilding ran for British Parliament twice, on the platform 'Trepanation for the National Health' with the intention of drawing attention to the fact that its potential benefits should be scientifically investigated. 35 years later this research is taking place at the Sechenov Institute for Evolutionary Physiology and Biochemistry, St. Petersburg." Pretty far out stuff, but certainly plausible.14

Trepanation is not a lobotomy. There is no intrusion into the brain, or breaking of the sack that holds and protects the brain. Merely the removal of a small symmetrical chunk of your skull hopefully before you bleed out. I don't actually believe that you can bleed to death being trepanned, but it's a strong possibility that you may think you are going to while it's all happening. Head wounds tend to be impressive squirters, better even than some of the European chicks I've dated.15

The day that your mistress becomes your psychiatrist, your job a prison, your government, the warden, it's a day not so much unlike today, or any other. Your existence poised precariously
between Darwin and Jesus like morning wood. And it's not that I'm depressed or I need Prozac, or St. John's Wart. It's a feeling that has always been there to a certain extent. A presence inside of me that's different than the me the world sees. Like a mushroom trip that goes from steadily bad to monumentally life changing, this feeling I got ain't cutting it, and has become a drag.16

I've turned into the voice of reason with a secret. A closet case soothsayer praying for Godzilla to lurch up out of the Surf in Venice Beach, and smash his way towards Hollywood,one avenue at a time, at least we'd have something to do. A challenge to solve. We'd have to stop Godzilla. I know it sounds crazy, but I think something like that, a Gordian knot to untie tends to be just what the doctor ordered for a Mid life crisis, individually, or on a society level that involves an entire generation.17

I did some googling. I can't make a film about drilling a hole into my head. Some guy just finished one. I hope it's good. It better be. It's at http://www.holeintheheadmovie.com/ and it's a hoot. Very entertaining and enlightening. I guess going through the motions of contemplating the trepanning was almost enough to banish some of my inner demons, as if they knew what I had in store for them. I was going to squeeze those elephant sized poltergeists through a pea shooter right to Uranus.18

Sure, their movie blows away any chances I have of doing a live trepanation on my self, and winning the oscar next year by squeaking past Ben, and Matt's Good Will Hunting II, The Hunt For Intelligent Life, Again. No offense guys, but how 'bout them apples? It all makes me think that perhaps we do pick our life, and parents, and challenges before we are born. I bet we attempt to see just how far we'll stray from believing in god just to laugh at our doubts when we get to heaven. Where the sun always shines, and ghosts eat gold and diamonds when Sizzler shuts down it's all you can eat salad bar once a week to clean the holy ectoplasm out of the ethereal urinals.19

I haven't decided whether or not I'm going to go through with it. I should. I want to, but then I think about my miserable luck, and how if I did trepan myself. I'd be the one in a million unlucky ass-hat that had a barrel of bricks land on his noggin on the way to his personal physician's office to check on his handy work's healing. They'd say "Well if he hadn't put that hole in his head, he would have made it". Humpty Dumpty comes to mind. All of the kings horses and all the kings men couldn't put him back together again.20

Which I think is ironic, they were probably the same pricks
that pushed him over the ledge. Maybe I'm like John Lenon to the extent that I don't need a third eye physically opened because it's already astrally open. Perhaps life is supposed to hurt -- to remind us to stay on our toes just in case a giant radioactive lizard ever does surface. Deep down inside I want to believe that people can do the right thing without boring holes into their heads, but I'm a dreamer, and I can make mistakes even if God, and his die hard followers, cannot.21

At 35 years old I am blessed with a healthy family, and a decent intellect, and personality. It's not hard to appreciate what I have. It's just hard for me to trust the men we've elected to represent us. Even if I'm a convicted felon that's never been allowed to vote. I believe in love, less government,
and our right to grow whatever we want to put in our own bodies, and or do what we want to our own bodies aslong as it's not hurting or perverting the innocent. Technology is not making us nicer people, and believing in Jesus certainly isn't going to free Palestine, or keep Iran nuke free.22

Often I wonder if Hewy Lewis ever did find a new drug, and perhaps that's where he's been for 25 years. If so, and if he's reading this, Hewy? call me at 1-800-God-Damn. Otherwise, I'm going to go ahead and try huffing pure oxygen, and if that doesn't help. I'm going to flat bottom drill myself into some kind of Utopia, before I get Alzheimer's and space out on what was crippling my spirit to begin with.