Diary of a Drug Fiend

342 The Diary of a Drug Fiend not an independent and conflicting unit in this com- plicated chaos of machinery, but was, as it were, the reason. for its assuming its actual appearance in preference to any other. And as the night went on, the enormous complexity of the vision co-ordinated itself. There was a sensation of whirling and rising communicated to the entire universe of my thought. A sort of dizziness seized upon my spirit. It was as if a wheel had been set in motion and gradually increased its pace so that one could no longer distinguish the spokes. It became an indefinite whirr. This feeling invaded my entire consciousness little by little, so that it was reduced to an unchanging unity; but a unity composed of diverse forces in regular motion. The monotony devoured consciousness so that my waking sleep merged into true sleep. The strangest part of the whole experience was that I woke up an entirely new man. I found myself en- grossed in abstruse calculations, loosely knit together, it is true, but very intense, with regard to an idea which - had not entered my mind for months. I was working out in my mind a plan for constructing a helicopter, the invention of which had occupied me deeply when I was out of a job. It had been driven completely out of my mind by my becoming heir to Uncle Mortimer’s estate. As I regained full wakefulness, I found myself extremely puzzled by my surroundings. In fact, I could not remember who I was. The question seemed in some extraordinary way to lack meaning. The more I regained consciousness of myself, of Telepylus, and of the immediate past, the more these things became unreal. The true “I’’ was the mathematician and engineer working on the helicopter, and the interval had been an elaborate nightmare. I threw it all off like a retriever coming out of a pond with a stick in his mouth, and bent myself to my work. I was disturbed by some person or persons unknown kissing me on the back of my neck, and