My medication has been making me very lethargic lately. If I can imagine what the Buddha's desire-free enlightenment must be, it has to be some sort of medication haze such as I feel after taking my Loxapine. I sit and drink tea, hardly able to think with the cement block that is my heart, considering, yes, I'll just lie down on my bed for a moment, yes, my bed is cool and lovely. I once went to a Chinese herbalist who treated schizophrenia. He said the problem schizophrenics have is too much fire in the heart. He gave me a little potion to take away the fire from my heart. I can really see how right he was: when I'm psychotic my mind races, I am excitable, I feel a terrible enthusiasm. I never really took much of that potion he sold me, but ended up throwing it away. Never know what these herbs will do to you. My medication is probably no better for you than that. My doctor wants me to get regular blood sugar and cholesterol checkups, as my medication can cause diabetes and heart disease. It can cause weight gain, but it can give you these diseases even if you are able to avoid getting fat. No, schizophrenics don't live long. The average age of death in the state hospitals is in the low sixties I think. And even if I do grow old, how will I fare then? I already have urinary incontinence, tardive dyskenesia, tremors, nervous ticks, terrible balance, dizzy spells, lethargy, and I sleep 12 hours a night. What will my old age be like, if I'm like this already? And so I rise up in the morning, lift the coffee cup to my lips, take a slow swallow as my Adam's apple lazily bobs up and down; and I tell my cat about the dream I woke up from, something about lying terrified in a large house, knowing a murderer lurks in the next room with a knife. And I say to my cat, "What do you think? What do you think? What should I do today?" But I don't really care for an answer: I know what I'll do today: I'll do what I do every day: let the day slip by as I sip tea and chain smoke, going from thought to thought in a haze of confusion, chain myself down with my pills and capsules now and now and now; and never, never, never awake to anything that resembles Life; for though I breathe, I am not Alive in the sense that the poet will use the word. I am the Concrete Man, and I have no Life in my eyes.