Icarus of Brooklyn - A Spiritual Quest Gone Wrong

191 Pages·2012·1.09 MB·English

by  Matthew Alper

ICARUS OF BROOKLYN
Matthew Alper
Copyright Matthew Alper 2012
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part
of this book may be reproduced without the publisher’s written
permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.Printed and bound in
the United States of AmericaLibrary of Congress A publication of Rogue
Press; 826 President Street, Brooklyn, NY 11215
For any questions or to purchase books: [email protected] To
write the author:
[email protected]
www.icarusofbrooklyn.com

Cover Concept & Design: Matthew Alper Illustration: Margeaux
Lucas : www.margeauxlucas.com

ISBN-13: 978-0-9660367-2-5

“Icarus is a treasure, an epic tale—beautifully written—of the expansion and
conquest of one's own mind told with humor and humility that is impossible to
put down. As Alper skillfully guides the reader through this universal, yet deeply
personal quest for ultimate meaning, he meets his biggest fears—simultaneously
forcing us to meet ours. Icarus is an inspiring and highly entertaining story, not
just a book really but an experience with astonishing transformative power. Any
teenager, adult, atheist or spiritual seeker who opens this book will not be the
same person at closing it—guaranteed.”
—Julia Perch, MD, Princeton University Medical Center “Bold, Innovative,
Triumphant! Siddhartha meets One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. A must read
for anyone who’s questioned the meaning of existence.”
—A. Sadwin, MD, Chief of Neuropsychiatry, U. Penn

“A philosophical rollercoaster ride that will make you think, laugh out loud and
cry all in one sitting. In a word, Brilliant!”
—S. Harney, Ph.D., Baruch University
TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART 1: CHILDHOOD

Chapter 1: Consciousness
Chapter 2: Death
Chapter 3: God
Chapter 4: Infinity
Chapter 5: Dreams
- The Trees
- The Scales
Chapter 6: Limitations
- Tower of Babel
- Leap of Faith
Chapter 7: The Dawn of Reason
- The Tall Tale Heart
- Death of a Ghost
- Hocus Pocus
- Breaking the Code
Chapter 8: The “Me” Game

PART 2: ADOLESCENCE

Chapter 9: Reluctant Believer
Chapter 10: Philosophical Explorations
- On Organized Religion
- On Souls
- On Evil
- On Free Will
- On Paranormal Phenomena
Chapter 11: Age of Confusion
Chapter 12: Drugs and Meditation
Chapter 13: The-Thing-In-Itself
Chapter 14: LSD

PART 3: ADULTHOOD
Chapter 15: Angst
Chapter 16: The Bad Trip
Chapter 17: Deterioration
Chapter 18: Suicide
Chapter 19: Hospitalization
Chapter 20: Recovery

Epilogue
PART ONE

CHILDHOOD

“Man finds himself in the world, or has been thrown into it, and as
he stands facing the world he is confronted by it as by a problem which
demands to be solved.”

—Nicholas Berdyaev

“To question all things; never to turn away from any difficulty; to
accept no doctrine either from ourselves or from other people without a
rigid scrutiny by negative criticism; letting no fallacy or incoherence, or
confusion of thought step by unperceived; above all, to insist upon having
the meaning of a word clearly and precisely understood before using it,
and the meaning of a proposition before assenting to it; these are the
lessons we learn from ancient dialecticians.”

—John Stuart Mill
ONE

CONSCIOUSNESS

I don't remember the exact age—sometime, I imagine, between two
and four—but only that it was at night, while alone in bed, that self-
conscious awareness emerged in me. I was lying on my back, my head
comfortably ensconced in my pillow, my eyes closed, when I became
aware of an unfamiliar sensation, as if floating through a dark ethereal
landscape, one which, interestingly, seemed to exist somewhere behind
my closed eyelids, somewhere inside my own head.
How was it that I could experience nothingness? What mysterious
chamber had I stumbled upon? I became anxious. Perhaps I’d best open
my eyes before I go somewhere from which there is no return. Usually,
when encountering something new, I was escorted by my mother or
father. But there was no escort here. I was clearly on my own. Though I
was hesitant to go any deeper into this strange void alone, my curiosity
overwhelmed my fears and compelled me onwards.
As I continued my journey inwards, deeper into the pitch darkness, a
speck of white light appeared. Then more lights of differing shapes and
colors materialized, dancing about, randomly morphing from one
geometric pattern to the next. It was exhilarating to have my own
personal fireworks display going on between my ears. Apparently, there
existed a world within me that was just as dynamic, if not more so, than
the one outside.
Enjoying the curious fanfare as it whisked across my internal screen,
my mind alighted to a bold new question: where was this light show
coming from? Though the images seemed to be generating
spontaneously, as if of their own volition, I was fairly confident that
whatever these impressions were, they were coming from somewhere
inside my head. As if having intuited Descartes’ “Cogito ergo sum” [I
think, therefore I am], it dawned on me that the mere fact that an inquiry
into the nature of this new inner reality was taking place meant there had
to be an enquirer, some active agent directing the investigation. That’s
when it hit me. I was simultaneously the investigator and that which was
being investigated. I had become aware of being aware. It was here that
the spark of self-conscious awareness ignited in me, and a new inner
dialogue was born. “I,” meet “me.” “Me,” meet “I.” So “I,” what do you
think of “me?” “Me,” any thoughts on “I?” All in all, I believe both were
equally pleased with the other for having finally bridged the gap that had
thus far kept them apart. The entire experience only served to make me
all the more curious as to what it exactly meant…to be.
Exalted by my own mental metamorphosis, I quickly sat up in bed
and gazed down upon my hands in awe and wonder. I opened them. Then
I closed them. Then I opened them. It was all me. I was concurrently the
operator and the machine. My eyes welled with tears. The world around
me, which, just moments ago had little to no meaning or context, was
suddenly the world according to me. I, Matthew, was born.
Perhaps out there, in the world of others, of grown-ups, I was just a
small and insignificant nobody. In here, however—inside my own head
—I was the indisputable king. Cognitive autonomy! Here was a place to
which no one had access but me. I felt the pride of a pauper who
unexpectedly inherits a throne, a kingdom I could call my own.
Little did I realize, however, that heavy is the head that wears the
crown.

TWO

DEATH

From these first glimmerings of self-awareness, I yearned to
comprehend the nature of all that was within and without me. Every night
as I would lay down to rest, I was bombarded by a kaleidoscopic
maelstrom of reflections and sense-impressions. But as curious as I was
to learn more about the world, solving the riddles of the universe could
wait. After all, what was the rush? Nothing in life was going to change all
that much. No one was going anywhere. I had all the time in the world to
figure stuff out.
For the time being, life was a beautiful celebration with me as its
radiant star. That’s what happens when you’re the firstborn son to loving
parents who come from four equally loving Grandparents—immigrant
Jews who, from such disparate reaches of the globe as Poland, Argentina,
Russia and Israel, all converged in Brooklyn, New York to eventually
have me.
And yet, amid this loving environment, this virtual Garden of Eden,
I sensed that something was not quite right with the world. Although I
couldn’t put my finger on it, I had an uneasy feeling that Paradise was
somehow tainted by some menacing glitch.
It started with little clues dropped here and there. Furtive glances
from my parents during the airing of some tragic news broadcast; hushed
whispers while driving past a cemetery; words spelled out as an
ambulance sped by; all pointed toward something dark and foreboding I
could sense my parents were trying to conceal from me. As much as I
tried to eavesdrop on anything I perceived to be a clandestine
conversation, I still couldn’t figure out their secret...and then came
Bloopy.
Every so often, my father, craving a Nathan’s hot dog, would gather
the family for a spontaneous nighttime drive to Brooklyn’s own eccentric
wonderland, Coney Island.
“Who wants Nathans?” he would bellow into our rooms.
Within minutes, my mom, my dad, my sister and I would be in the
family station wagon on our way to Coney Island. Eating our hot dogs,
we’d stroll through the park bathed in sensory overload, an outlandish
blend of the macabre and the absurd.
Of the various arcade games I sometimes got to play, my personal
favorite was the one in which you had to shoot a high-pressured water
gun into a ceramic clown’s mouth causing the balloon that was attached
to its head to fill with air and explode. I liked this game mainly because,
even against the occasional adult, I still had a chance at winning.
“Ooh! Can I play?” I beseeched my mom, knowing not to ask my
father who was much less inclined to yield to my frivolous whims.
“Sure,” My mom predictably replied as she reached into her pocket,
“What do you need, a quarter?”
“Play what? What’s going on?” My father inquired, always a step or
two behind me and my mom.
“He wants to play the balloon game.”
“You mean the one with the...? Oh no, no, no! Uh nuh!”
“Wha...?” I looked apprehensively up at my mom.
“Don’t worry. You can play.” She reassured me.
“I said no!” My father held his ground.
Agitated, he pulled my mother aside to confer with her in private.
Though it was my father’s intent to shield me from hearing their
conversation, it was usually too heated at that point for me not to.
“I said no!” My father reasserted his position.
“What’s the big deal? It’s a harmless little game.”
“Harmless, my ass! You know exactly what happens when he plays
that game.”
“What? He has fun?” My mother sarcastically replied.
“Fine! Go ahead. Let him play. But you deal with the
consequences.”
“What consequences? You’re nuts!”
An hour later, back at home, my father’s prophecy held true as the
four of us stood gathered in the bathroom, me and my sister’s eyes welled
with tears, as my father held a small plastic sandwich bag filled with
water and one dead goldfish out over the toilet, all the while giving my
mother reproachful looks.
The prize for winning the balloon game was generally a live goldfish
housed in a tiny plastic sandwich bag. Only problem was: the poor
critters never once made the trek home alive. From the moment it was
handed to me, it was just a matter of time before my new friend was belly
up, and I was in tears—precisely what my father was trying to avoid. As
a result, there we stood, looking down into the toilet, me waving
mournfully goodbye as Bloopy got flushed to his watery grave.
Even though I had lost goldfish in the past, somehow Bloopy’s
departure had a more profound and lasting effect on me. I kept thinking
about how vibrant and healthy he was one minute and then a lifeless
corpse the next. I couldn’t help but to keep replaying his inert descent
down the toilet in my head. What did it all mean?
And then one night, while lying in bed with the family cat Frisky,
“Frisky whiskers. You’re my best friend, and you’re going to be my best
friend forever and ever and ever.” I whispered into her ear as she lay
curled next to me. I repeated the phrase, “Forever and ever and...,” when I
suddenly found myself inexplicably gripped by an unspeakable horror. I
wanted to scream but found myself paralyzed, unable to breathe, the wind
knocked out of me.
Frisky would not be my friend for ever and ever and ever. Not even
close. Why, she could go at any moment, just like that...just like Bloopy.
Because it wasn’t just Bloopy. It was all of us, every single living thing
out there. Doomed! Just a matter of time before we were all belly up and
flushed down the proverbial toilet.
My brain zapped and sparked. I thought I was going to pass out. I
needed help. I needed Mommy.
“MOMMM!!!” I scooped Frisky up in my arms and went half
screaming, half crying down the stairs and into the kitchen where my
mother was doing dishes. I stood there in the middle of the kitchen
holding Frisky in my outstretched arms, hyperventilating, my face
swollen, covered in a potpourri of phlegm, saliva and tears. My mother
turned to me, startled.
“Matthew, what’s wrong?”
I just stood there speechless.
“Did you have a nightmare?”
Still unable to speak, I nodded in the negative.
“No? Then what is it?”
“It’s...it’s...”
“What?!”
“It’s…Frisky.”
Concerned, she knelt down before me to get a closer look at the cat.
“Why do say that? She seems perfectly fine.”
“Well, she’s not!” I wailed.
“What do you think’s wrong with her?”
“She’s...she’s...”
“She’s what?”
“She’s going to...,” I was unable to say the word without puking up a
little on my Captain America pajamas.
“Oh, Matthew!” My mother ran to get me a wet cloth while Frisky,
now with some fresh vomit on her head, went scrambling from my arms
and out the kitchen door. I stood quivering as my mother wiped me clean.
“She’s going to die.” I finally spit it out.
“Who is?”
“Frisky.” I sobbed.
“What are you talking about?! Why would you say such a thing? She
looks fine.”
“But she isn’t! She’s going to die!” I bawled.
“Why do you keep saying that? What do you think’s wrong with
her?”
“I don’t mean now.”
“Then what?”
“I mean one day.”
“One day?”
I nodded in the affirmative.
“Matthew, what kind of crazy talk is this?”
“It’s not crazy. It’s true.” Or so I suspected. “Isn’t it?”
Unprepared for such a question, my mother just stared at me.
“Why are you asking me this?”
“So it is true.” More sobbing.
“I didn’t say that. Now will you stop this nonsense.”
“It’s not nonsense!”