I have never expected to have a long life, but I’ve always known that I was meant for something great, to have a life that would be full and important in some unknown sense.

I could not have imagined the opportunity for adventure my destiny had in store for me. My life’s direction was so far beyond what I could have foreseen as a child or teenager.

The responsibility of greatness weighed heavily upon my mind long before I could understand my suffering. My family history of emotional malady seemed one-dimensional – evident and inevitable – and I painfully waited for my turn for the demon to claim my soul as well.

Not content with a powerless resignation to what seemed like someone else’s fate, I began to dig. Seeking buried treasure is one thing: a known objective hidden in what seems like the proverbial haystack. However, searching for an answer that one cannot be sure exists within oneself, in a labyrinth of tunnels within the psyche, can feel impossible, except for one powerfully important variable: Faith.

To believe deeply in something so intensely and assuredly that no matter what tries to sway or dissuade from your objective, you cannot give up because it ceases to be belief and becomes an axiom for your soul, you know it to be true. There is no question when it is a matter of faith, and I knew a sinister answer was lying beneath my family’s common inherited torment. I also knew that whatever this truth was, it was woven deeply into the fabric of my lineage beneath any of our conscious thoughts.

As a teenager, recreational drugs helped me delve into the depths of my consciousness, making me aware of the profundity of the human mind and the latent potential of the unconscious within all human beings. I had always been vaguely self-aware of my “sixth” sense, a voice within me that provided me with astute intuitions at times but left me fearfully alone at other, equally important junctions. I began to seek out this voice within myself and outside sources.

In high school, I received an entrepreneurship award not because I particularly liked business or the idea of becoming rich. Still, I loved the idea of conjuring something from nothing without the subservience of working hard to make someone else successful on my shoulders.

Incidentally, my teacher’s advice to think outside the box and my penchant for self-prescribed pharmaceuticals led me to my first real job as a drug dealer. I realize now how fortunate I was to remain untainted from this venture and escape unscathed from a destructive lifestyle that should have claimed not only my life but my soul as well.

I only provided substances for a profit to degenerate spirits who craved escape from the emptiness of the life they were born haplessly into. Still, I later learned I was just a tiny expendable cog in an evil machine meant to keep all involved locked in the prison they were trying futilely to flee from.

Fortunately, my unconscious instincts, at the behest of my guardian angel, saved me from being drawn deeper into the diabolical conspiracy I unwittingly served.

The urgent desire for the truth behind my family’s illness kept me from ever (ab)using the products that I sold; I had much more pressing engagements for my mind.

Though I hated every minute of high school, several incredible teachers inspired me to pursue the answers I so desperately sought and never give up. I went to university for several years, though never officially, so I worked twice as hard as those who paid for their education.

While their purpose was for a degree or a career, mine was for the key to my own embodied mystery before it was too late and I ended up at the mercy of an invisible devil poking a pitchfork into my sensory perception of reality, like the rest of my family.

I was working against myself and the clock, since I learned in the many psychology lectures I attended and textbooks I devoured that the symptoms of the disorders that have plagued my people for generations usually have a severe onset in the late teens to early twenties. I felt that the only thing that could save me from the abyss that I had stared into and resisted since childhood was the correct information as ammunition and an unshakeable faith that I could fight this thing, whatever it was.

I had battled depression alone all of my life, refusing to allow the shadow to pervade my soul and cloud my vision from my objective, my destiny. I had many holes to fill: between the barely audible echoes of my murmuring unconscious and the countless works I found in the university library collections, I began to make real and invaluable neural connections within my mind.

Not being limited to any one degree program allowed my mind to wander like a dowsing rod and radiate toward whichever door it felt the answers lay behind. Studying at university is doubtlessly a self-directed pursuit, but my literal interpretation of this concept opened my mind to the university’s namesake: the universality of knowledge.

Knowledge is power, to be forewarned is to be forearmed, and I was frantically arming myself against possible attacks from myself, for all I knew.

Information is key to opening any door in the universe, seen or unseen, within or without. [“Within without, without within” – Coma] This is the “key” to a good education, the forest that many fail to see among so very many trees.

It was also the key that led my life almost seamlessly into private investigation as a legitimate career. Selling drugs successfully led me into a vast underworld of secrecy that my former life as a God-fearing altar boy would never have suspected; the scope of its depth would have been beyond my grasp.

When the weed hit me, it was an eye-opening experience; I could understand why people did it, risked arrest for it, and wrote poems about it.

It was a total escape that required next to no work from the participant. Take the drug, forget yourself for a while, and everything’s great. Until the stuff wears off, then either take more or realize how shitty things had become again. I suppose I had a fairly solid grasp on my mixed-up life, or at least I had come to accept it as it was, because I never had the urge to go further.

When the ride ended, I got off, went home and reflected on the trip.

My case is unusual, however, since most who employ the method of dope as a cure for their dissatisfied malaise lose perspective between the real and under the influence, wishing to remain in the latter.

The “most” I refer to is a lot of people, for one substance is quickly replaced by another. Remove coffee from a caffeine addict or cigarettes from a pack-a-day smoker and observe their behaviour. It is human nature to seek enhancements to existence, however fleeting and detrimental the perceived ‘benefits’ may be. [Addictions Poem]

For me personally, I didn’t and could not find what I was looking for with substances (believe me, I tried), and I knew this from the outset.

My addiction took the form of something I could use indefinitely, or for as long as my memory held out.

No drug could make me smarter, although I found occasional experimentation did make life enjoyable. Marijuana is the only substance I have abused, and I refuse to call it a drug, but the police disagree, unless they’re selling it. Then it’s a job perk, an unofficial bonus.

My disgust for the establishment increased exponentially when I learned the extent of the hypocrisy that went on behind so many stately, ornate doors. Some of my best clients were the same women and men who harassed harmless pot smokers with powdered noses and syringes in their pockets. I enjoyed the profit I made from these people’s wanton pleasures and the benefits of doing business with a powerful, well-connected society. Still, I realized that my luck had held out long enough, so I cashed in my chips and made a career change into private investigation.

Getting my P.I. license was no trouble because I had a contact high enough up in the Corrections Department Investigative branch who processed the documents quickly at my request. At the end of his workday, we made an off-the-record trade, and that day, I became Nick Savoy, Purveyor of Information.

I decided to name my organization (of one) Ananda Investigations, after a Sanskrit word loosely meaning bliss or pleasure, as in the elation attained at the time of a brain snap or ‘eureka’ moment.

Incidentally, anandamide is a chemical produced and released in the brain to create an euphoric state of mind. I never bothered too much with the typical boring investigative routine of fraudulent insurance claims, cheating spouses and paper-serving for law firms.

Ananda was to focus on more interesting (and engaging) assignments like corporate espionage and deep cover infiltration (interpersonal break and enter). Of course, I had to start small to establish a reputation as an honest spook, but my mental Rolodex was full of shady characters with plenty of disposable income to spy on each other.

I soon started making a very comfortable living. I could hone my emotional chameleon act, since I had learned long before that people were just complicated locking mechanisms that required the proper pressure exerted expertly to yield desired results. I was excellent at manipulating people, and being paid for a legal exchange of information was almost too good to be true. I lived to know as much as I could learn, and being a freelance consultant was a perfect arrangement for me to let my imagination soar.

A small one-room office downtown was a sufficient safe house that served as the base of operations; I would also set up and use other spaces for more clandestine projects. With the money I was making, I outfitted my operation with all the high-tech gear required for illicit data gathering.

Starting Ananda put me on the global radar of all sorts of intel groups, some of whom sought my services as a ‘Consultant’ while others considered me a threat to their respective agendas. Nevertheless, few would have guessed that Ananda was only one person and his network.

I have always lived in shadows, where I felt safe despite the usual fear of dark places.

There was always a tingle in the hair on the back of my neck when danger was near – my inner eye saw it coming – and that was how I managed to stay one critical step ahead of my assailants, whether they intended to arrest or kill me. I was like a cockroach that they just couldn’t step on, and it was satisfying knowing that now I was trying to serve justice rather than obstruct it.

Ironically, my purpose in life had taken a 180-degree turn: to expose those whose secrets I had once helped conceal.

In addition to being a spy for hire, I used the mobility of my work as an opportunity for travel and exploration to inspire my artistic pursuits of poetry and photography.

Mysteries always had a way of finding me, or vice versa. I have never been able to accept facts or events at face value: my burning curiosity has never failed to submerge my life in ever-present undercurrents impossible to ignore.

My persistent overanalyzing has prevented me from being misled into believing utterly false thoughts commonly accepted by many, an obsession with the relativity of truth as an eternal, pervasive concept.

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