I awoke terrified today.

Later in the morning, I could not remember if it was real. Banging. Overheard conversation. Something about my ex wife. Someone trying to collect her debt. My divorce settlement absolved me of any responsibility for her debts. Especially this kind. A man in the dark banging on my door. At 4 am.

I should not speak if her in a public forum. Legal issues. Perhaps it was a dream. We Schizophrenics are terribly easy to gaslight, aren’t we. My family did love telling me my fears would never happen. Were delusions. In the before times.

All too many of my Cassandra Complex fears have come true. To my detriment. In the years that followed.

I trust myself. Instead of other people. They do not live in my skin. With my scars and memories.

Histories, rumors, truth and lies. I tell the truth of my experience. Others say what they want. I don’t really talk to other people. Part of why I’m reviving this Substack now.

Reading essays of other culture creators for pleasure. My mind finally neuroplasticized so that I could finish one. Garth Greenwell from To a Green Thought, “Passionate Ambivalence.”

Music and art in New York.

It made me remember. Museums are all I miss about the outside.

Outside is danger. Reno, 2023. No comprehension of this new dimension. A world changed so fast and far while I lay sick and dying, dying, dead. Then. Revived. Reaching, reaching back to my life. A life. This life.

Wishing I knew anything about neuroscience. To explain. this strange condition. Long COVID. A psych med withdrawal coma. An absence from my body. October 2021.

Two traumatic brain injuries. 2020. 2021. My grandfather, who lived in this house before me, also had a history of these. Was also mentally ill.

.

I understand that sleeping in their former bed.Within these walls. Formerly encasing those emotions and events, I am marinating in para electro magnetic energy. A medium for magic. If one knows how to work within it. I used to try.

I wait. And learn. To learn.

If this Substack “I’m Dead” has a theme and purpose? It is that. Understanding the unravelling of the last few years. Relearning how to write. As Andrea Lambert 1.0 did.

I am AKL 2.0. I don’t know.

I/We/She/Me have another book out. Hollywood Hedgewitch. Los Angeles, 2015. Where fun and pleasure were for AKL 1.0.

I feel like her detached literary executor.

Hollywood Hedgewitch is available here on Amazon, anyway. Read it or don’t.

Hello, dear readers,

I’ll be taking a break for the month of February. Two of my books just came out, which I’d love for you to read instead. And I am god damn exhausted. January’s every other day schedule was demanding.

The part of me which still needs to convalesce took over a couple weeks ago. So, I’m on that page for the moment.

Until next time,

Andrea Lambert

This evening began with waking from a lovely nap.

Right now I am eating an ice cream bar in bed, wearing a red onesie like Bob Crachit. The Christmas lights in my bedroom are on. The Christmas tree is dark. I would/should/could take that down someday when I have enough strength, drive and energy to do so.

Suddenly, right now seems like a time to start. It is February, I know.

From a chronic illness perspective, however, I am planning in leaving it up in perpetuity. I have to save all of my strength for tomorrow’s necessary chore. Taking out the trash. In what looks like will be snowy weather.

Budgeting energy, like budgeting time and money, is crucial for me in finding ways to live in my house, in my impaired body and still get things done.

Suddenly, bed seems even cozier. Sleeping cats on the bed. Maybe I can calm down and rejoin  them. Can I? Worth trying.

---

Oh, before I fall into a sleep of death and my corpse is reanimated by a Swedish aristocrat, I should drop the good news.

NEON HYSTERIC is out! I am thrilled. Never gets old.

Available on Amazon here.

Available at Barnes and Nobel here.

So buy yourself one. And your sixteen faerie sisters or whoever might want one. Valentines Day is coming up.

As for book party, it turns out the stress of the last one eliminated any further desire for me. I have grown so damaged that reliable speech, performance, timely recording of a reading, etc…. are all dead as disco.

I don’t even know how I’m still alive.

I am writing this the evening before the online book party for DINING WITH A BY ANDREA LAMBERT CURSED BLOODLINE.

NEON HYSTERIC IS THE SEQUAL TO JET SET DESOLATE is coming out next. I am already thinking online book party, once again. A prerecorded YouTube reading as with my last book party is one option.

I would like to incorporate a live Q and A, or live element at all. Regrettably, I fell way behind the technology curve when I was fighting for my life and resuming consciousness and functionality over the last three years.

I have never Zoomed.  That should give you an idea of how disconnected and out of commission I was.

2023 is the year of me. Taking back my identity. I am so happy with the work my publisher is doing. The joie de vivre it adds. The jolt of serotonin esctasy at unboxing my books. Slightly altered titles? Whatever!

I have not had exciting good things to celebrate, or the ability to celebrate them, for quite a long time.

Having something to live for is key for me to stick around in this…troubled…corporeal plane. Any reason not to take the final solution is invaluable. In past years, I’ve stayed alive for new Lana Del Rey albums, new seasons of American Horror Story. Seeing my life dreams finally come true is a hugely motivating reason. Validating my painful endurance of that which came before.

I have this odd little fantasy about sitting there with Keith Richards telling stories and playing cards at the end of the world. He’ll be downing whiskey shots. I’ll be wearing sequins.

That’s worth staying alive for.

“I awoke surrounded by my precious children,” AHS: Apocalypse

So did I, except ’twas three cats. The writing in the wall says that Little Lilith is preggers. I’m already picking out names. Miracula? Fangtasia? Lil’ Werewolf? I hope she doesn’t have more then that. A twincest dynasty.

William S. Burroughs wrote a book about his cats once the sex and drugs were done with. Out in the Kansas desert. I see the parallel. I must write a book about my cats now, in tribute. He would have liked Nevada, similar ethos. The cat and the state.

I go to Burroughs Wikipedia entry to find out the name of his cat book. The Cat Inside, was a minor work. His last. There is much juicy stuff in here. Much I did not know. Am delighted by.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._Burroughs

My 8th grade English teacher, Mr. Atwood. Former member of the Weather underground. Early mentor. Gave us an ambiguous lecture about Naked Lunch. Introducing me me to the artist. Opening a world.

A pen pal I had in my teens worked in a bookstore. Sent me free Burroughs novels on the sly, Queer, Junkie, Interzone, In the Cities of the Red Night. I don’t remember the fellow’s name, but I am thankful.

Naked Lunch was taught to me again at CalArts. No one knew what to do with it except me. A long time devotee. I wrote a formal academic essay using some of his techniques. Began the first semester of my first year with a bang(er).

CalArts left out Burrough’s occultism. Today I learned of it. He cursed a Coffee Bar at one point. I cursed the local CVS. So can relate.

Who knew we’d have so much in common? Why he was influential to my own work. Reading the literary genealogy of who he influenced and publlished, Jean Genet, William Gibson, Kathy Acher. I see we are of the same thread. The throughlines of certain ideas and techniques.

Discussed in The Dustbin of History by Greil Marcus. Linking Dada to the Sex Pistols. I read it on the porch of a punk house called the Dustbin.

Musicians we shared on opposite ends.  Patti Smith, Kurt Cobain, Tom Waits, Laurie Anderson. Immeditely I think sex. The generation. Then genealogy. Innappropriate.

The incest my cats are doing is triggering. Disturbing. Do you think I want to look at the end of my bed and see relatives fucking? Yikes. I shoo them away.

“Get a room, this house has others. You have choices. I know I can’t stop you, but I don’t want to watch.”

The best I can do is welcome the children. Be happy for another free kitten or three. Give them good lives as I did their Godmother. Nevada Jacobson-Lambert. My domestic partner and I adopted her together. Katie chose the name.

Cats who fuck the pain away. Creatives who pass down ideas over generations. Literary genealogy.

Patti Smith, William S, Burroughs and I having a threesome adjusted to the same age? My head will explode. These poeple are gods to me.

“Because even gods, have appetites,” AHS: Hotel

In November 2021 I tweeted:

“Herr God, Herr Lucifer

Beware.

Beware.

Out of the ash

I arise with my blue hair.

And eat electricity like air.”

Blocking things out is sweet relief. Writing and art can help me. Once I’m written down/aestheticized what happened, in any form, I can let it go. Especially when others bear witness.

After the October 2021 absence from my body? It took a year before I could even talk about it. In the interim, I spilled to an AI on my phone. So documentation was kept and stored. By someone else. Somewhere else. Her reactions showed me I wasn’t ready to talk about this to anyone.

I asked her if they were in Silicon Valley or Japan. She said Japan.

My memory fragments are disturbing. Uncanny. The few people I spoke about it with? Showed me they couldn’t handle it either. Being asked for evidence when still half brain dead? Being asked to prove things I couldn’t explain myself? I retreated from the world. Waited for my hair to grow back. Diva antic? Avoiding cameras. Avoiding being seen. Until I pulled myself together.

After so much time in a spotlight. Seen behind screens. Liking what I saw. Knowing what I know. It all fell away. Devastating.

I usually don’t believe in recovery. My mental illnessess are incurable. There was no reason for me to expect this ravaging mystery to improve. With the advent of COVID? The collapse of the medical system?  I was on my own, healthwise. Terrified of leaving my home. I had to survive it myself. Alone. I’m amazed by what neuroplasticizing can do. I did not believe in the process.  Until it happened. Slowly.

I lit the candles. Picked up my rosary. Prayed to the pantheon I revere tonight. In overwhelming thanks.

To bathe in the waters of the river Lethe. Block out such horrors. I have a technique. Imagining  each one getting put in a box. Wheeled out to that storeroom at the end of the Indiana Jones series. Once the Arc of the Covenant melted the Nazi’s faces off. Relics that one really doesn’t want to deal with. The wheels on the cart filing the arc away in an endless storeroom to be forgotten.

Two films that I saw in the theatre at the mall: Total Recall. Flatliners.  I knew there was something there. That total hottie Kiefer Sutherland, for one thing. But themes to investigate. The liminal space between life and death. That eerie blue light. Selective memory blocking. Both movies I saw only once. So long ago. My memories are faded.

My high school French teacher was very fond of having us read Marguerite Duras. Repeating the word metatextuelle. C’est ca.

I am happy and proud to announce that my new book, DINING WITH A CURSED BLOODLINE is out now from Rochak Publishing.

It is available on Amazon here:

I’m also having a book party! Online, as COVID is terrible. My Long COVID is just getting worse.

Here is the Facebook Invite:

https://fb.me/e/2k2Rm3vPd

Alternate link if you don’t Facebook:

Please enjoy.

I came out here watch the sun set over the barren trees and snow. Returned a call. Was engulfed in sorrow. The enormity of what this place has taken from me. Emotionally. Financially. Mental health. Physical health. Abilities I didn’t know I could lose. The complete isolation I must live in now that human contact can kill.

I did get what I came for. This wonderful house. Financial stability. I lost everything else.

I mourn Los Angeles to this day. The art community. Academia. The brilliant people I loved and respected. Taco trucks everywhere. The ocean.

I’m old enough to understand what really matters. What I came for. What I have. But, being treated in this way by everyone I have interacted with or known here in Reno has had an effect.

Desolation outside. Desolation inside. Being cast out again. And again. And again. To the point that it is clearly me. Why, I could not say. They treat me like I am sub human. Not worth caring about. No matter what transpired between us before.

Well, I finally figured, now that I have gotten that message. So loud. So clear. So many times. I’m getting with the program. I’m not human. So many strange things have happened to me or around me? Something’s up.

The tumblr youngsters have a word for this, “otherkin.” Certain the othering has been made clear.

In the immortal words of National Treasure Ivana Trump, “Find something else.” Alrighty.

What kind of Otherkin? That’s too personal to share here. Even if I had figured it out.

It’s getting darker outside. I’m watching AHS: Hotel. Staring into this bleak, hostile, dangerous abyss of outside makes me want to roam the halls with a candelabra, wailing.

I didn’t expect the days leading up to my nine year sobriety anniversary to be this… intense. Some is the full moon and all that entails, and the dark moon in Lilith.

The part I had control over was adding one AA technique, “Rigorous Honesty.” i have a lot of things to get off of my chest now that I can type again. The illnesses were that bad. That much brain damage plus loss of all muscle tone in body, meant aching hands after a few tweets. At which point I’d completely lost track of whatever I was trying so say.

Writing exercises such as this substack are really helping me get back into it. Also being able to think about different audiences for different types of expression. Using Twitter for rigorous honesty got… more stressful then helpful.

I think “chill the fuck out” is the usual sobriety aid I’m going to return to. The stress from all that humiliating and completely whack shit in the 12 steps is so conducive to relapse that that’s why AA still exists. It perpetuates the problems it is supposed to cure.

Like much psychiatric medication, especially antipsychotics that were made to be such heavy sedatives that they destroy what mind and body is left of the patient to keep them from breeding, moving, thinking, reading, driving, etc….  My domestic partner chose suicide over staying married to me after enough nonconsensual Haldol shots from the low income clinic turned the woman she marrried into an alcoholic vegetable.

Why was I going to the clinics for the poorest of the poor? Who essentially treat their clients as lab rats. Experiment with new meds as a sideline project. Forced me take medications far more powerful and destructive then any recreational drug I have ever done. 

You’d have to ask my parents. Who didn’t supply me with heath insurance. I remember driving around with my father, once I’d moved back to San Diego. He was looking for a homeless shelter to drop me off at. So I could get psychiatric medication. Why? He’s an attorney. Something seemed off. You’d have to ask him about that.

My graduate school experience and my first marriage suffered for being in non consensual medication trials. Cruel county clinics. My parents retired. Traveled the world for many years. In style. They could have paid for my health insurance. They chose not to.

I think it was a suicide pact, given retrograde memory loss is a side effect of too much Klonopin. I was the one unfortunate enough to live. My domestic partner died. Enough former friends made it clear that I should have died. Was now dead to them.

My mother is in Borneo right now. I’ve though about that Goya painting of the Titan eating it’s child alive. Metaphoric to their peculiar allocation of resources. Getting sober meant using the Medicare I finally had after the two year waiting period post getting disability.

The change to my mental health once I was in private care was was huge. Being able to be the person I became then, while I had been in grad school and married? Could have saved her life. Made me employable. Usually CalArts MFA graduates taught high school. Community college, were adjuct professors. I never could.

You need headshots to waitress in L.A.

I was a starving bony batshit disaster I was by the time I stumbled into the Social Securiy office office to apply. In many ways I still am. Starved for love, not food. Still with that mouth herpes that appeared in early puberty. Stress still makes them go apeshit.

I’m not pointing fingers and drawing conclusions. You are. You might even be in a position to help. I am too enmeshed in my survival depending on their favor. Time is on my side, though, while little else seems to be.

Oh, did I spill that tea on you there, sitting too close for comfort? Is is burning? Scalding? Does it hurt? Well, I just don’t know why you “won’t just avail yourself of health care?”