On the drive in, the-they-of-NPR is talking to a woman who was deep into a recently busted cult.

She seemed very educated and reasonably literate, normal in the usual ways, middle-class, and so on. But somehow she got sucked in by pretty promises of self-knowledge and living a successful life, if only she’d … be a cultie in something called Nexium (I think. I thought that was a pill for something, but it’s not important.)

Apparently she had the cult leader’s initials tattooed on her “pelvic area” and that didn’t raise any alarms inside her mind … but what finally did it was that the cult admins asked for the deed to her house, and that freaked her out enough to bail. They came for her assets, and that, that was enough, to finally slap her metaphorical face just hard enough.

So I started thinking about the fact that I’ve never gone down a road like that, and never done a lot of things that are commonplace in the modern world, like taking prescribed substances for my mood swings or anxiety or nominal autistic tendencies or … much of anything.

In other words, a lot of the strategies for coping with the madness of modernity never held much appeal to me, including the strategies of religion or head meds.

One of the reasons why, as I thought about it, kind of shocked me.

This isn’t a fully developed thought, just an intuitional lightning strike, perfect for spilling.

I believe that I’ve resisted a much bigger and pervasive cult and this is the cult of the normal.

Because what most people take for granted as normal seems very culty to me and it always has.

Part of the reason that it’s been so extremely hard for me to deal with the events of the last few years is that I’ve remained the person I always was, taking no shit and refusing to believe the things that ordinary people find self-evident.

I was able to do that because I made my peace on the fringes.

In radio certain kinds of eccentricity are advantages.

As a webmaster, a non-standard aesthetic was not entirely impermissible.

In libraries and little schools, for a long time, a lot of the people around me, co-workers, patrons, students, teachers, sometimes even bosses stood apart from the norm, and accepted (either grudgingly or occasionally with delight) rebel ways, a taste of anarchy, contrarian opinions, competent slacking.

The world has changed in that regard, and the change is really hard on me. The little schools have changed, and not for the better.

A lot of people joined the cult of the normal, and seemed to embrace an extremism of normalcy. Maybe they got on the right approved drugs. Maybe they grew up, or woke up and smelled the instant coffee on the advice of Ann Landers, or … something. I don’t know.

Everybody wants to tell you how woke they are, but more than ever before they look dead asleep to me.

Back in my day, children, I was voluntarily surrounded by actually awake peoples, and not zombie cultists of capitalism and Empire.

I didn’t know how good I had it. I took poets and manic-depressives and flower children and nerds with shimmering intelligence for granted, thinking they’d always be the minority but that they’d always be around.

I miss ’em bad, from my fringe in the corner of the green quadrant.

Their absence doesn’t make me lonely enough to become a cultist though.

I’m marching forward with a clear mind and unaltered qualitative principles, and sometimes a stabbing pain that starts deep in my shoulder and shoots right up to the top of my skull.

This is my body trying to cope with the pain in my mind.