Reflections of a Time-Traveling-Kung-Fu Monk; pt. II

In my short story from ten years ago—ten years ago this summer or maybe this October—the protagonist, who was nothing like me, stood at the edge of a cliff in America after having returned from New Zealand, where he learned martial arts from monks. There was some kind of nonsense about Jungian theory about myth and the idea of the return to humanity for the hero after having defeated evil and ascended to the gods. At the time I knew nothing of Jung or his ideas (outside an entry level community college course in psychology). In fact I thought the idea of the collective unconsciousness was laughable. However, there I was writing about ideas that existed for thousands of years though I had never heard of them, so I guess Carl Jung had schooled me.

Though later I started coming around to the idea of some kind of socialist, collective thought as I toyed with theories of the mentally ill. This was after I had returned from New Zealand and after I had stopped talking to the girl whose skirt I wanted to get up. I hypothesized that those society called mentally ill where those who had simply evolved and escaped the collective unconsciousness. It seemed perfectly acceptable to not want to have any connection to the rest of the world when you see the madness that is humanity. In the short story, the protagonist recounts a number of encounters with the villagers below the monks’ temple that justifies the conclusion that people are stark raving mad.

There was the man who laughed while his four-year-old son finished off the last sips of beer in the father’s discarded bottles. And then there was the man who heard a street preacher talk of Jesus Christ, and so he decided to be save and dig up and destroy his marijuana fields. The man turned to me and asked my help for destroying the crop. The protagonist agreed and the two dugs of the fields while listening to Bob Marley. Then afterwards the two lit fireworks in celebration of Guy Fawkes Day. Though the protagonist was never quite sure if the celebration was in favor of the anarchist trying to blow up parliament or his discovery and execution. Another man, Maori with a full moko, invited the protagonist into his home. The Maori recounted in the one-hundred-year-old home that had no electricity and though it was noon day it was pitch black inside the home about his youth and how he had fallen into affiliation with a criminal gang. The protagonist, once his eyes had adjusted to the dark, noticed that a good portion the floor boards were missing, exposing the dirt underneath the home. The maori finally found the strength to leave the gangs and repent of his ways after seeing Hulk Hogan wrestle on television in 1984. He thought there was nothing that represented more strength than the Hulkster and his nation of Hulkamaniacs.

So the mentally ill simply lay outside the collective. They seek new stories and new tales to create and be inspired by. Of course, after ingesting a number of prescribed narcotics (not all at once but at their prescribed times and amounts), I understood that such a notion of living outside the collective was pure rubbish. As I further studied the mentally ill, I came to discover that they all suffered the same delusions—not always created with the same symbols, but nonetheless the symbols always pointed to the same desire. And so I ceased to be mentally ill. This was after I lived with the monks and after I wrote the short story ten years ago this October, so the short story was filled with numerous demonstrations that the protagonist suffered from a messiah complex. My bout with the Ultimate Fighter Cowboy Hick also happened after the fight with mental illness, and embracing such delusions as mere chemical imbalance is what gave me the strength to knock him out with one punch. I had realized I had wasted a number of years in self pity which had denied me from exploiting life, or in other words, I was pretty pissed I had denied myself gratification of the flesh because I thought it would interfere with my destiny to rise up and save the world. So I was filled with pure anger and testosterone, I punched out Cowboy Hick (who thought such a bout between Western strength—Cowboy Hick—and Eastern discipline—me—would be a billing that would bring in much money as it capitalized on his fame and my legendary status as a kung-fu-time-traveling monk) with a single punch and then spent the next seven years engaging in the most vile acts of sin with women of the night and women with no shame.