A., active Anderson

“Why?’ She nods. ‘She had everything: a family who loved her, friends, activities. Her mother wants to know why she threw it all away?’ Why you want to know why? Step into a tanning booth and fry yourself for two or three days. After your skin bubbles and falls off, roll in coarse salt, then put on long underwear woven from spun glass and razor wire. Over that goes your regular clothes, as long as they are tight. Smoke gunpowder and go to school to jump through hoops, sit up and beg, and roll over on command. Listen to the whispers that curl into your head at night, calling you ugly and fat and stupid and bitch and whore and worst of all ‘A disappointment.’ Puke and starve and cut and drink because you need an anesthetic and it works. For a while. But then the anesthetic turns into poison and by then it’s too late because you are mainlining it now, straight into your soul. It is rotting you and you can’t stop. Look in a mirror and find a ghost. Hear every heartbeat scream that everythingsinglething is wrong with you. ‘Why?’ is the wrong question. Ask ‘Why not?””

“Why does this work? It appears that with various conditions the packs have the effect of stimulating the activity of the lymphatic streams while at the same time enhancing the elimination of toxic substances from the cells locally where the castor oil is applied.””

“Lesh was intrigued. For someone like him, who at the time was not actively practicing music, that Pigpen and Garcia were going in this new direction was “a very exciting development,” he said. “I couldn’t wait to hear Jerry play electric guitar.” What was novel, after all, was precisely that: “Amplification of instruments and voices enabled nuances that once would have been lost in the noise floor to be clearly heard,” said Lesh, “and developed further in a seemingly infinite progression.””