July 18, 1994 I am at the world's largest shopping mall, the Mall of America in, I'm not sure, either St. Paul or Minneapolis. This place, let alone my situation, is positively surreal. The section of the mall where I write is a grand hive of bare gray girders rising up to the geometric rectangles of glass which make up the ceiling. On the floor below is a combination of garden and amusement park. A two story high 'Snoopy' dog balloon leers at me from the opposite wall. A roller coaster whizzes by where I sit on the third story. Colorful carousels, swings, and merry mixers whirl amid the gray and green. There are literally hundreds of stores, restaurants, and theaters. I walk through noticing the clothes I would like to wear, and the gifts I would like to buy. I am in the world's largest shopping mall and I do not have a penny to my name. The entire situation leaves me feeling even more disconnected than I felt before. I know that the woman I love is mentally deteriorating and there is nothing I can do to help. The Orgy members are in New York waiting to begin our work and I am here lost somewhere in middle America. The contradiction baffles my mind. I wander the mall, my expression that of a deer standing in the middle of the road staring blindly into the headlights of an oncoming semi-tractor trailer. The swarm of people in the mall fills me with a stinging sense of loneliness. I ogle the beautiful young women; white, black, Asian, Latino, French Canadian whatever they are around here -and I feel threads constricting in my chest. I want so much to speak with someone. I wish to call Sasha but cannot afford the long distance call. Behind me three Latino girls laugh noisily, sending chills through my intestines. They speak in Spanish. For all it does me they could speak Bantu in reverse because I am outside their laughter. Their mysterious words heighten my alienation. Every day I feel more removed from life's events even as I am inundated with experiences. I feel nausea. Nausea that this swarm which disgust me so, is also what I long to be a part of. I desire humanity itself. I am a voyeur of my own existence. Each day I reside more outside the flux of life. In some ways this is the price one pays for detachment. Look inward and the material world becomes a colossal dream. I peer around the mall and a myriad of faces flow past me. A homely white girl carries a tray of tacos. A tall man in a cowboy hat walks with a short woman wearing a Bon Jovi T-shirt. Two college-aged Asian girls dressed in all black pass by immersed in their own chatter. An elderly woman guides her husband who struggles with the challenge of walking. Three white kids dressed like homeboys carry skateboards. A man balding on top, with long curls falling from the sides, reminds me of a new age musician. Two young black men in muscle shirts escort an overweight blonde woman. A Moslem family, the children and father wear Western clothing and the mother is veiled with only her eyes showing. Teens in tie-dyes hold hands smiling like monkeys. I view every race, every color, every size, shape, religion, culture, creed, the beautiful, the monstrous, the rich, the poor, lonely, vain, blind, obscene, deaf, dumb, insane, paraplegic, autonotromic; they're all here, gathered together to pillage this grand bounty of materialism. I stand to get a better look at them. I ask, how many of you will murder, rape, or steal? How many hide hate beneath their brow? Who of you knows how to love? Who will change the world? Who will die tomorrow in a fiery car crash? How many of you are wife beaters, child molesters, depressed, compulsive, perverted, obsessive, artists, fakirs, geniuses, scientists, philosophers, vagrants, cancerous, dying of AIDs at this very moment? How many in samadhi? How many born again through Jesus Christ or the blessed virgin Mary? If I could only know what lies behind your glazed, apathetic, catatonic, sanguine, beautiful, quivering eyes. What desires lurk in your secret hearts? What delusions rule your most private thoughts? Here we are, the rulers of the world. God's greatest creation. The future of all earthly life resides in our hands. The existence of all future generations hang precariously on the decisions we make. When I look at you, should I be filled with trepidation or hope? If I could only look inside you just once and know there is humanity there. Do hearts pump? Do glands excrete? Do souls seek ascension? Can't you see I stand before you with flesh torn open, corpuscles throbbing, and nerve endings pulsing with every vibration you emit? But they walk on by. I am invisible or they are blind. Look into my eyes just once and the story would be told. The music from the mall speakers whisper sweetly, "ignorance is bliss." It is a forgotten melody but I know the lyric well. The tune is pleasant to the ears and they turn their heads with a simple thought, "He is an aberration. Best forgotten and put out of mind. There is shopping to be done, movies to see, children to feed." Below, the carousel spins. I am surrounded by humanity but I am alone in an isolation more complete than any solitude could ever deliver. It is an isolation of the spirit. Each morning I awake in my car with the sun shining into my eyes. As soon as I awake a single thought runs through my mind, 'just kill yourself.' Not once but repeatedly. On bad days the voice comes at night or in the afternoons. The voice which haunts me does not mean I have given up yet. Even amidst this suffering I long for life. In my diffracted ego, beside the voice urging my self destruction are other voices. One proclaims my genius. Reminding me that I am capable of anything if I just do it. These two voices are the extremes in a cacophony of naysayers, cheering squads, wagging fingers, purveyors of ancient wisdom, urgers to childish impulses- and I am floating in the stratosphere, the grand mediator of this treasure of psychic babble. I give the voices free reign to be as creatively insane as they like, and I attempt to listen like an attentive father and pick and choose what I have the most use for. But at night when I lay my dreams down to the play of the unconscious it is the two extreme voices that speak the loudest. "Just kill yourself. Nobody cares." "You're a genius. You know what destiny holds for you." "Just kill yourself." "You're a genius." "Just kill yourself." "You're a genius." "Just kill yourself..." 
The Apologia is a part of Caeser Pink's novel The Murder Of The Holly King. To get your copy and read the full story click here 
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