All Text, Music, and Illustrations, including Paintings, Photographs, and 3D models, Copyright © 2022 by Jim Robbins.

Pounding Stone, bottom of Pine Flat Reservoir

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APT. 24

   In Apartment 24 you are told that you cannot leave due to some great danger to your health. Unfortunately, you lose your job and quickly run out of money to buy food and pay rent and so many other bills. The government sends you a check, which you use to pay rent for one month and utilities and a little food, but the danger lingers on and on. As you hang out in your apartment you discover that three people in your country own as much wealth as half of the population, and these oligarchs are able to find every loophole imaginable to avoid paying taxes. They control the politicians through campaign contributions. Over half of the government's discretionary spending funds the war machine, not on preparing for health emergencies. Since you no longer have a job, you don't have any health insurance, and you would go bankrupt if you had to go to the hospital. For your job, you spent years going to college, which has nearly bankrupted you. In Apartment 24, every night as you are falling asleep you dream that a huge monster is sucking the life out of you.

(You realize that you are still on the right path because in the corner of the room you find an old box containing Pendulum Dreams by Justin C....)

Pounding Stone, bottom of Millerton Lake

PENDULUM DREAMS:

Sociopathy 

   John, my son-in-law, and I stayed at a cheap hotel in San Francisco after my daughter experienced a stroke due to an AVM, or arteriovenous malformation. She was in the neurological intensive care unit (NICU) of the hospital for a long time. At one point, John and I strolled down a crowded street in downtown San Francisco looking for a restaurant, and an exotic street person rushed up to John and gave him a big bear hug, addressed John by his nickname, and blurted out, "It's okay. It's all love!" John anxiously pushed the strange man away, yelling, "You don't know me." The man then skipped away as if he were the happiest human being on earth. John confirmed that the man could not have possibly known him or his nickname. My daughter was at death's door seemingly every second of every day that she remained in the NICU, and by that point, she had nearly died numerous times from causes related to the stroke.
   To this day, I remain dumbfounded by the way the man comforted John, especially since at the time John and I had lived in Fresno, CA, for most of our lives, and we had never walked down that street in San Francisco before. At first I thought the man was a lunatic, but as far as I know no rational explanation exists for how the man knew John's unusual nickname or how he knew that John needed to hear that message.
   Fortunately, after many months, my daughter made a miraculous recovery. Strangely, even though I have witnessed evidence of the genocide of Native Americans all over the Sierra Nevada Mountains and I know that humanity could vanish from the earth due to climate disruption or nuclear annihilation or both, and even though I am keenly aware that a different John, last name Blackmore, has tried to murder me more that once, the exotic street person's inexplicable message still resonates with me.
   Before my daughter experienced her stroke, Blackmore had attempted to murder me a second time. My wife and daughter were again away on a trip, but this time I slept in my wife’s bedroom. That night I pushed a heavy chest against the door that accesses the patio and piled other heavy items, such as the TV, on top of the chest. I locked the hall door, and positioned empty beer bottles on the floor. Blackmore would not be able to enter without making a great deal of noise.
   His strategy the second time, in fact, was to make as much noise as possible to spur me into the hallway. He entered the house a different way the second time, through the back door into the laundry room, and from there he tiptoed through the kitchen and dining room, then loudly pulled open the door between the dining room and the hall. Within a matter of seconds, he pulled open the guest-room door and the door to my daughter’s bedroom. Then, I assume, he stood, gun drawn, waiting for me to appear.  Strangely, I knew the exact moment he realized that I was in my wife’s bedroom. An emotional current of homicidal rage, mingled with confusion and disappointment, flowed through the bedroom door.
   I waited to see what his next move was going to be since he had lost the element of surprise. He didn’t make another sound. He did not come around the outside of the house to my wife’s bedroom patio door. At some point he simply slipped out. Despite my efforts to be prepared, I had forgotten to charge the phone. The phone’s battery was dead before he entered the house. Once again I had no proof.
   The stakes had risen. At first he was determined to commit cold-blooded, premeditated murder while I slept. Blackmore, of course, would never attempt such a crime when my wife and daughter were home, but the second attempt revealed that he was now willing to resort to physical confrontation to achieve his ends, and the chance that others might learn of his maliciousness was no longer stopping him.
   Blackmore also probably had some reason to believe that I might suspect him. He no doubt went over every detail of his first attempt and at some point realized that I might have been sleeping in my daughter’s bedroom.
   I pretended to be oblivious to his nefarious intentions while striving to understand the mind of a sociopathic killer.
   He is obviously one of the most methodical and cold-blooded of killers, the kind who waits for years to let his plan unfold and lies in wait for his victim. He is willing to defer gratification to establish the most ideal conditions so that no one will ever suspect him.
   His first attempt to murder me in my sleep was partly stealth, partly the act of a predator who has weighed all the risks before attacking, and partly cowardice. The second noisy attempt revealed a hint of desperation, a willingness to risk confrontation while maintaining a distinct advantage. He is of course aware that I dislike the thought of owning weapons of any kind.
   At some point he committed himself irrevocably to deception. He must have realized that he might need to play a part for years while attempting to create greater intimacy with my wife, all the while never disclosing his real intentions. He dedicated himself to a total compartmentalization of feelings to accomplish his ends. He had to always, always present the kindest, most thoughtful side of himself even as in secret he was becoming more and more engrossed in carrying out his homicidal plan.
   I am no psychologist, but I believe I understand a sort of primal motivation. As someone who is well aware that nature is red in tooth and claw, Blackmore no doubt prides himself on being stealthier and more ferocious than his prey, and I mean prey, plural, because I believe that I’m not the only one.
   He owns seven rental houses, but one of them is full of his junk and several others are in disrepair. He is a hoarder, his own house a disaster-area overflowing with newspaper and styrofoam and cans and bottles and numerous odds and ends that he has collected over the years.  He no doubt in his own mind has a clear system of organization, but an insistence on this system long ago resulted in a horrific, unrelenting disorder. A great deal of junk ends up in his unrented houses as well, and I’m betting that bodies can also be found on some of those properties. You do not have to be a genius to figure out that his houses reflect a chaotic inner state. In various attempts to assert control he no doubt has murdered other people along the way.
   I must confess that at first I only tolerated him because he kept helping my wife and family, and unfortunately, since I have a chronic illness and never make enough money, I easily became duped by his phony generosity, especially since I considered him a comrade in our fight to protect the environment.
   Signs of his deviousness should have alerted me. Blackmore is married--yet my wife has become the object of his devotion. He apparently has acted the perfect gentleman around my wife, in all but two instances. He once commented about how my wife’s blouse revealed too much cleavage, a comment that my wife vehemently objected to. He also asked my wife to act as a surrogate mother for him since he and his own wife remained childless. He proposed using a turkey baster to make my wife pregnant. My wife and I of course found the idea totally absurd.
   In retrospect, I should have decked him and demanded that he never show his face around my house again. But Blackmore had at other times seemed so rational and had done so many things for us--for my wife--over the years, and he had also accomplished so many positive things for the community through his activism that I felt sorry for him. His “turkey-baster" proposal remained an embarrassment for him that no doubt became the trigger for a homicidal rage. He did not like to feel embarrassed around a man he considered inferior. Embarrassment no doubt also made him feel inadequate and out of control.
   The first time Blackmore tried to murder me, one of the most chilling sounds was a sigh: He sighed immediately after he cocked the gun and stepped into the guest room, just before he discovered I wasn’t there. The sigh revealed excitement, satisfaction, relief, as if a pressure valve had opened for a moment: the almost sexual excitement of total domination, the ego satisfaction of proven superiority, the relief of successfully realizing his obsessive homicidal goals.
   I have searched the mountains for Native American village sites for almost twenty years, but I never contemplated the motivation for genocide before Blackmore attempted to murder me. From what I’ve experienced, I now believe that the motivation for the systematic extermination of an entire race is similar to the motivation of the sociopath who kills in a calculated, methodical manner.
   Several weeks after Blackmore’s first attempt, I explored the bottom of a reservoir at the confluence of a river and a creek.  Cockle burrs blanketed the otherwise denuded slopes. A faint dirt road snaked through a Native American village site, close to the pounding stones, between the dark skeletons of oaks and sycamores, all of which had remained under water for over sixty years. At one point Blackmore and I at different times had fought the cultural and environmental devastation caused by dams, yet that had not created any real basis for comradeship. Instead he viewed me as a threatening rival, similar to the way the early settlers of European descent must have viewed the Native Americans.
   The early settlers must have felt afraid of the unknown surroundings and the Native Americans who were far more knowledgeable about the environment. A sense of vulnerability must have at times overwhelmed those early settlers. Unfortunately for the Native Americans, the settlers had better weapons and enough fear to fuel their undeclared war day after day, year after year, until they finally cleared the region of the Native American presence.
   Unlike other species, which use violence as a means of survival, killing in self defense or when hungry, humans often exhibit a twisted type of maliciousness, providing an array of meanings to justify violence, usually for emotional, social, religious, economic or political reasons, a self-justifying behavior which is almost as common for social groups, political institutions, and religious organizations as it is for individuals. The overwhelming fear of being out of control sometimes leads to a vicious cycle; in recent times, for instance, governments have stock-piled weapons of mass destruction that can destroy the world many times over. The more destructive the technology, the greater the fear, and the more terrifying the weapons become.
   Serial killers are often physically, emotionally or sexually abused as children and grow vengeful against a particular group, such as African-Americans, Native Americans, women, gays, or Hispanics, and they often target members of a group indiscriminately. Individual sociopaths and sociopathic groups tend to target others who are different, blaming them for causing negative feelings or circumstances. Some sociopaths have a predisposition for calculated, “instrumental” violence, which they direct at an individual with characteristics that trigger feelings of inadequacy or fear.
   One of the most common causes of hoarding is obsessive-compulsive personality disorder--whose sufferers exhibit traits such as trouble finishing projects, difficulty throwing things away, exaggerated conscientiousness, and perfectionism. They constantly experience the sense of being out of control, so they hoard to address every possible material contingency.
   Blackmore is articulate, intelligent, and interesting. The sociopath often has an abundance of charm and wit and may also appear friendly and considerate, attributes that are superficial. These personal qualities blind people to a personal agenda stemming from a profound feeling of inadequacy.
   My wife once told me that Blackmore had been deeply scarred by a cruel father and had remained powerless to protect a vulnerable mother--so it was logical for him to feel a subconscious desire to destroy men and protect women. Blackmore’s cruel father left him feeling vulnerable: He could neither protect his mother nor himself. He must have often felt inadequate in the eyes of his mother. Any man who triggered that feeling of inadequacy could easily become the target of a hidden, homicidal fury.
   At one point Blackmore might have experienced the excitement of an assault where he was completely in control, an experience that propelled him over the edge to commit an act that would give him the ultimate sense of control: murder. The sociopath understands a crime’s seriousness but nevertheless experiences such a rush that he risks the consequences. If he has gotten away with murder, he continues to develop confidence, which motivates him to continue to seek the same excitement and sense of control.
   As an activist, Blackmore has often undermined men who have gotten in his way, but he has earned the trust of my wife through seemingly limitless generosity. His unflagging kindness could not make my wife feel romantic love for him, however, which only made him resent me even more. Whenever we had problems with the car or around the house, my wife called Blackmore, and he would come running, but she would never offer to pay him back--in any way. This no doubt satisfied his unconscious need to be the hero for the female and to belittle the male in his own mind--without of course ever openly expressing his disdain.
   Over the years, he developed a persona that makes him appear to be the most rational of human beings as a way to hide the fear and chaos in his soul, for he has proven to be one of the most calculating and treacherous and deceitful of men.
   At one point, my wife and I experienced a rough patch and separated for several months. Blackmore must have considered my absence his chance to fill the void in my wife’s heart, but being married himself, he had to be delicate about it, and because he is calculating and methodical, he took too long. My sudden return must have unbalanced him, triggering old feelings of inadequacy. At that point, no doubt, I became his enemy for life.
   The spiritual path is not for pussies. On one hand, you see the best in people. You know the magnificence, abundance, and harmony of the human spirit because you have experienced it in yourself.  And you know that everything is profoundly and inextricably connected. On the other hand, you know the fear, guilt, shame, or sense of inadequacy that can make a person or group or society turn on you. Because of your sympathy and understanding, you have no desire to harm another person. Because of your heightened awareness, you know when someone is harboring a hatred for you that is motivating him or her to find every means imaginable to destroy you without being detected. Because of our fear and our deadly technology, as a race we are a few seconds from midnight. Even so, as a spiritual person, you can do nothing but establish and maintain harmony in your own sphere.
   Truly a force to reckon with on the mental level, Blackmore attacks every problem, from fixing a toilet to influencing the political system, in a methodical manner. When it comes to matters of the heart, Blackmore has used the same method, calculating every move. Consequently it had taken him years to set up the circumstances that would lead to the perfect murder, using a business method perfected by Howard Hughes, first treating his adversary like a friend to gain trust and then destroying him. I’m guessing that at least five years have passed since Blackmore first began developing his plan, and in the process, his heart has simply continued to grow blacker. By focusing on committing the perfect murder, he has been channeling pure evil into his heart, transforming himself into a deceitful, cold-blooded killer, not a lover. Even if he succeeds in getting rid of me and winning my wife’s affections, the wheel has been spinning in the direction of evil for years; it would, at this point, be impossible to make it suddenly stop and spin the other way. Blackmore has destroyed his own ability to love. He has undermined himself, which of course is little consolation to me.

Go on a different adventure.