Hell Is Empty
Page 23
While completing Book Three, I cut off the end of my finger during a psychotic episode, hoping against all forms of logic that it would bring me good fortune. The incident came at one of the lowest moments of my life. My divorce was nearing its finality and I was fighting my student loan officer over allegations that somehow I’d used up all the loans available to me. It felt like the universe was screaming at me, but I couldn’t figure out what it wanted. A couple of weeks after my finger incident, a portable light post nearly decapitated me. I had been standing right below it trying to crank it down seconds before it fell. It felt like the universe had its boot to my neck, more directly. I realize to some that sounds mad. But there’s a fine line between madness and clever. And like Boris Yeltsin once said, “Never approach a yak from the right flank, unless you have a fresh walnut in your left hand.”