"Jacob's Ladder" Syndrome
Ever feel like you've exceeded your expiration date?
In the movie “Jacob’s Ladder,” (WARNING: spoilers of a 34 year old movie forthcoming) the main character finds out in the end that the last few years of his life have been a long, end-of-life hallucination. He actually perished some time ago, but his consciousness struggled to come to awareness of his situation; hence, the extended “life” (really an illusion) and its eventual dissipation into nothingness, once he finally comes to terms with the truth of his circumstances.
This is, of course, a shocking and compelling “twist” ending to a movie, but over the years I have come to see it as something more than that. Instead, it aptly describes a particular state of mind and soul, wherein one can’t escape the sense that he has, so to say, exceeded his expiration date. Such a one isn’t sure why he is still around, and can’t escape the notion that some “mistake” may have been made. Or perhaps, as in the movie, his consciousness has for some time been naught but a series of elaborate hallucinations?
This perspective could be reductively labeled “depression,” but it is in fact something altogether more all-encompassing. It doesn’t just mean feeling “down” or “low,” but rather feeling as if one’s very existence is unreal. It is characterized by an intimation of having departed from the solidity of the tangible and tumbled into the malignancy of a maladous mirage.
It is a state largely characterized by an alienation so extreme that it has even morphed into a state of depersonalization, wherein one can’t even relate to— or identify with— himself, much less anyone else.
The only solution, it seems, is to distract oneself, but how? Where can one go that will restore, or at least convincingly replicate, one’s sense of being one of the living, alive amongst the rest of the living? What can one do to trick one’s mind into conceiving itself to be real again, even if only for a brief interval?
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JLS (Jacob’s Ladder Syndrome) is rendered all the more incapacitating when the realm in which one finds oneself still dwelling— though, again, the sufferer of this malady doesn’t feel like his existence is anything other than a tarted-up void— also gives off a tedious whiff of blatant absurdity?
It is discombobulating enough to sense that, due to some inexplicable cosmic bungle, one has remained alive past what ought to have been the date of one’s death. But when one finds that the entire world seems to have lost its own moorings; that, which each passing day, things seem ever more hopelessly lacking in sense, to the point where one is tempted to suspect that those Mayans might in fact have been right about the world ending over a decade ago. Maybe, in fact, the real world did end in 2012, in spite of appearances to the contrary…
But… if both you AND the world are only pretending to still be alive, what then? Do these two factors in fact cancel one another out, the same way that two negative numbers, when multiplied together, create a positively-oriented product?
If, that is, both yourself and the world ought not be here, then do you and the world not in fact, in spite of appearances, belong together, just as a turtle belongs in his shell, or as a bullet fits snugly into the cartridge case of a pistol?
Andy Nowicki is the author of several books, most recently The Insurrectionist, Muze, and Love and Hidden Agendas, as well as the just-published The Rule of Wrath. Visit his YouTube channel.
This a great write-up, Andy, thank you. A veritable "banquet' for thought. Hope this doesn't sound too "juvenile" (I think we're close the same age), but I thought of the very large Marvel comic book from the late seventies or thereabouts, that I had (Fantastic Four), of Galactus, showing up to consume the Earth. On top of the Twin Towers, no less (!). But the High Evolutionary (an out-of-the-blue character) had a battle with him there, and galactus pulled a trick maneuver and sent him to the Micro-world. However, Galactus, upon feeding himself of all the Life Force on this Earth, was himself tricked, as the world he consumed was a duplicate, created by the High Evolutionary, so that Galactus basically got sick as hell and went off pretty much with a bad case of gas. I do NOT want to belittle your article with that very lengthy anecdote, by *ANY* means... but I am going to definitely find and watch that movie (spoilers be damned). Would you say that such might be the reason for the "entropy" and deep malaise that seems like a suffocating haze upon us all? I know that around the approach of 2012, I was very much a "prepper" (always have been, sort of). But then..."nothing" happened (?!). I'd been pretty well sure that the Tenth Planet, or Dark Star was incoming. I'd kind of even "hoped" for it. I do sometimes wonder if, well, the "Anunaki", or whomever, perhaps did, indeed, come along and caused such a trauma that we are sometimes living in such a strange age that even as almost anything is now possible, technologically, it could at any moment be wiped out with the push of a button, after the turning of three keys by guys in a sub or silo. That's a sobering thought, indeed. Seems like a collective Life Force has been sapped from this world, for whatever reason, for quite awhile now...Might just be my "mid-life crisis", who knows? lol Much to think on, I really appreciate it, Andy. Love your Work, truly do, like your interviews when I can find them as well. Ghosts in the "machine" that 'Im typing on right now (?). Thank you, Bruder.
Interesting. I would have thought of Donnie Darko in relation to this, but that's the implication of the weird ending of Jacobs Ladder? I guess the notion is he had a compressed time hallucination brought on by the BZ in the last moments before death?