Turtles All the Way Down: Chapters 6–9

The Instagram contained no real pictures, only quotes rendered in typewritery fonts with soft-focused, crumpled-paper backgrounds.

The way he talked about thoughts was the way I experienced them—not as a choice but as a destiny. Not a catalog of my consciousness, but a refutation of it.

But I wondered whether Davis had really quit the internet entirely, or whether he’d just decamped to some farther shore.

Instead, I got stuck searching his usernames and variants of them, and ended up meeting a lot of people who weren’t my Davis Pickett—the fifty-three-year-old Dave Pickett who was a truck driver in Wisconsin; the Davis Pickett who’d died of ALS after years of posting short blog entries written with the help of eye-tracking software; a Twitter user named dallgoodman whose blog was nothing but vitriolic threats directed at members of Congress.

He had some huge real estate deal downtown that devolved into multiple lawsuits; his former executive assistant and Pickett Engineering’s chief marketing officer had both sued him for sexual harassment; he’d been sued by a gardener on his estate for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act; the list went on and on.

Morris’s website described his company as “a boutique law firm focusing on the comprehensive needs of high-net-worth individuals.”

“Russell Pickett is a straight-up megalomaniac.”

Fifteen years ago, the government had set aside all this money to clean up the White River by building more sewage retention pools and expanding this tunnel system that runs underneath downtown, diverting a creek called Pogue’s Run.

Fifteen years ago, the government had set aside all this money to clean up the White River by building more sewage retention pools and expanding this tunnel system that runs underneath downtown, diverting a creek called Pogue’s Run.

“Life is not something you wield, you know?”

“And he was obviously a person. Like, what even makes you a person? He had a body and a soul and feelings, and he spoke a language, and he was an adult, and if he and Rey were in hot, hairy, communicative love, then let’s just thank God that two consenting, sentient adults found each other in a dark and broken galaxy.”

“Just be honest with Dr. Singh, okay? There’s no need to suffer.” Which I’d argue is just a fundamental misunderstanding of the human predicament, but okay.

I was trying to look at Mychal, trying to hear the clamor of the hallway, but I wasn’t there, not really, not deep down.

I knew Mychal well enough not to actually die of mortification, but only just.

I had a highly hypothetical conversation with the tip line, and they said that the reward is coming from the company, not the police, so it’s up to the company to decide what is relevant, and that the reward would only be given out after they found Pickett.

“Crook gets caught. We get paid. I don’t see why you’re waffling here, Holmesy.”

I remember when I told her that I sometimes imagine ripping my middle finger off and stomping on it, she said, “Because your pain has a locus there,” and I said, “Maybe,” and she shrugged and said, “That’s not uncommon.”

“Has there been an uptick in your rumination or intrusive thoughts?”

“Has there been an uptick in your rumination or intrusive thoughts?”

“You’re right that self isn’t simple, Aza. Maybe it’s not even singular. Self is a plurality, but pluralities can also be integrated, right? Think of a rainbow. It’s one arc of light, but also seven differently colored arcs of light.”

“You’re right that self isn’t simple, Aza. Maybe it’s not even singular. Self is a plurality, but pluralities can also be integrated, right? Think of a rainbow. It’s one arc of light, but also seven differently colored arcs of light.”

“Do you feel like your thought patterns are impeding your daily life?”

...I’m not a human person so much as this disgusting, teeming blob of bacteria, and there’s not really any getting myself clean, you know, because the dirtiness goes all the way through me.

Like, I can’t find the deep down part of me that’s pure or unsullied or whatever, the part of me where my soul is supposed to be.

We refer to it with catch-all terms, like crazy or chronic pain, terms that both ostracize and minimize.

We refer to it with catch-all terms, like crazy or chronic pain, terms that both ostracize and minimize.

Nor do either of those terms connote the courage people in such pains exemplify, which is why I’d ask you to frame your mental health around a word other than crazy.

Nor do either of those terms connote the courage people in such pains exemplify, which is why I’d ask you to frame your mental health around a word other than crazy.

“Have you recently taken antibiotics?”

Davis was leaning forward, listening intently.

He was smaller than Mychal, but he took up more room—Davis’s gangly limbs occupied space like an army holds territory.

After a while, I heard my name and snapped into my body, seated at Applebee’s, my back against the green vinyl cushion, the smell of fried food, the din of conversation pressing in from all around me.

Through the walls, I could see the whole kitchen suffused with gold light.

The light cast an eerie glow up onto the windows of the terrarium that reminded me of pictures of the northern lights.

We kept walking until we reached one of the oblong sand bunkers of the golf course.

Davis started talking about the stars again—as the night got darker, I could see more and more of them, faint and wobbly, just teetering on the edge of visibility—and he was telling me about light pollution and how I could see the stars moving if I waited long enough, and how some Greek philosopher thought the stars were pinpricks in a cosmic shroud.

After I said all that, we were quiet for a long time, until finally he said, “My mom was in the hospital for, like, six months after her aneurysm. Did you know that?”

It was a rustic cabin with wood paneling everywhere, high ceilings, and an astonishing variety of animal heads on the walls.

His hair was greasy and matted to his forehead, and up close he looked pale, almost translucent.

I looked up at the sky as I ambled toward Harold, and thought about the stars in Cassiopeia, centuries of lighttime from me and from one another.