In the Dreaming of Olde Fredericktowne...

Friday, May 28th  (last night of the full moon)

-8:39p - Sacrament: sick rose

-8:45-9:19p - ritually deconstruct altar, construct altar to Cthulhu

-9:20p - Sacrament: liao

-9:25p - all lights off, ignite altarcandle/Lya'o incense, take meditative posture of half-lotus, hands on knees in Kish mudra and engage mindfold

-~9:30p - decide to perform Battery Activation Meditation (routine chi-visualization ritual I often use as an opening rite; activates the power-centers, opens a Black Lotus at each of my tan-t'ien, encases me in a geometric energy construct that serves as both a dimension portal & a protective barrier, and finally centers me on the Axis Mundi) - sitting inside my construct, I feel powerful, serene, comfortable, safe, strong, secure, aware - hesitant to perform the last step for some reason - don't want to "break the bubble", which I've never felt here before - eventually I gather my chi along my spine and launch out the top of my skull and down my tailbone and out to the ends of creation until I am centered on the Pole of the Universe - something strange, different from other times; something I've never experienced here before - normally I feel god-like from this vantage point - but now I suddenly feel absolutely infinitesimal - instead of retaining my own perspective, as has always happened before, it seems as though my perspective on the Axis Mundi has shifted to the infinite universe itself! - I feel like I've shrunk to the size of a particle - and, yet, I also feel, quite distinctly, as though the ENTIRE UNIVERSE IS NOW STARING DIRECTLY AT ME - I shrink even further

-9:43p - Journal Entry: "mindfold - darkness, which had been comfortably enveloping me suddenly became oppressive and claustrophobic - I wanted out - then malevolent! - some thing was coming AT ME through the dark - trying to get into me - masses of black worms - tendrils IN MY EYES" [note added here: my entire field of "vision" inside the darkness of the mindfold was filled with the writhing of black tendrils - I quickly removed my mask and opened my eyes, and saw my new altar for what felt like the very first time]

-9:46p - JE: "almost as if in response(?) sudden overwhelming urge to masturbate myself before the altar - pleasure was overwhelming, yet remained flaccid throughout, even through orgasm and ejaculation - very aware that it was the mental image of my limp cock birthing millions of tiny tentacled blobs of slime that finally triggered my orgasm" [note: another experience unknown to me before tonight - afterward, felt slightly nauseous, kind of sticky & gross; wanted to take a shower] [addendum: realization as I'm writing this that I should have consumed this sacrament, as well!  a missed opportunity.]

-9:59p - JE: "decide it's time to begin my descent" [note: following this entry, I gathered my tools and got dressed - I wore the Silver Key on a ribbon wrapped around my wrist, and an ankh (for ghouls) on a chain around my neck - I filled my pockets with small sacrificial offerings from my altar, a few tools I thought I might possibly want or need along the way (bag of runelots for divination, iPod, etc.), and some basic practical items for the journey (water, phone, etc.)]

-10:29p - JE: "Begin descent." [note: after making this entry, I opened the blinds covering the window above my altar, letting the world back in, and letting it out onto the world - then I turned around, put in my earpieces and turned on my music (Aklo, "Unnameable" and "Beyond Madness", shuffle/repeat), formed both hands into the Kish mudra and began to count out the Seventy Steps of Light Slumber that begin the descent into the Dreamlands]

-seventy steps from my altar turned out to be the second to last step at the bottom of the stairs before reaching the courtyard of my building - was this the Cavern of Flame? - I waited - no, it wasn't - what now? - there is a secret door at the back of the courtyard; an iron gate that leads out into the wild of vines and weeds and giant, gnarled, hundred-year-old oaks hidden in the darkness behind the building - going through the gate is step 1 of the Seventy Steps of Light Slumber

-I count my steps through the dark, leading along the path from the gate and out into the gravel lot behind the building - there is a large, ancient, rectangular hunk of shattered concrete embedded in the middle of that lot for no apparent reason, and the seventieth step places me square on the South side of that block, facing North, looking directly at the gate leading out of the lot, and exactly in the middle of a 2' triangle formed by three intersecting cracks in the concrete - when I step into the triangle, the music crescendos and the chittering sounds grow louder and more insistent - this is the Cavern of Flame

-I stand waiting in the middle of the empty lot - I am in darkness, but I can see the cars and people on the street not fifty feet in front of me - none of them seems to notice me - despite the security of the darkness, I feel open and exposed - I become aware of two large, columnar shadows suddenly flanking either side of me - I don't want to look directly at them - tall, shadow-black, man-shaped, arms folded over chests, wearing headdresses - Nasht and Kaman-Tha - am I worthy to proceed? - I stand waiting, waiting, under the weight of their gaze - why am I sweating? am I starting to shake? - cold rush of fear - I look to my right, directly at... Kaman-Tha, as it turns out - then to my left: Nasht - I am left alone - stepping out of the triangle is the first of the Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber

-counting out my steps toward the gate at the N end of the lot, I am suddenly aware that I am about to walk out onto the street, in public, walking in an odd and stunted way, with both of my hands rigidly held in what, to anyone else, is the middle-finger sign - I think this might arouse a bit too much attention - I jam my hands in my pockets so that I can continue to hold the mudras without being so obvious about it - now, with my hands jammed awkwardly in my pockets, and my staccato off-kilter walk, I feel as though I look like someone doing a very bad job of trying very hard to act nonchalant - this becomes especially tense when, around steps 450-500, I have to walk directly through a party of people that has spilled over the stoop and onto the sidewalk - I cannot hear any of them, am acting VERY weird, and have to walk right through the middle of everyone, very aware that I am interrupting everything and everyone is staring at me - I just continue counting - 523, 524, 525...

-at step 600, reach a crossroads - to my right is an alley - I feel very strongly that the remaining 100 steps lead in that direction - however continuing ahead of me, I know there is a sacred spot I've been to before; should be about a hundred steps away - which way do I go? gut feeling or intellectual curiosity? - usually I'll go with gut, but that alley looks like it leads into someone's backyard; I really don't want to get caught trespassing in someone's yard, right now, do I? - better proceed fwd instead

-at ~step 660, reach the gate of a public park, wherein lies the most potently magickal natural setting in my neighborhood - surely the Gate of Deeper Slumber is in there - but there is a large sign drilled into the gate - have I ever seen it before? - it says it is illegal to be in the park at this time of night - seems no matter which way I go, I'm going to have to commit some type of crime in order to reach the Gate of Deeper Slumber - there are a lot of people about on the street - no way I could walk in without being seen - how long have I been standing here, staring at this gate? - ... - ... - I can't do it - I guess I failed this attempt - nonetheless, I hold my mudras, and cross the street counting down the last steps, until I reach the seven hundredth

-10:45p - it feels wonderful to release my hands, roll up my sleeves, take a drink of cold water, and walk like a normal person again - am I in the Dreamlands now? - I don't know - decide to just start drifting

-L onto W. Patrick - "Crystal Row" - all the yoga studios and Reiki treatment centers and naturopathy clinics - never realized before, but all of these buildings are old *houses* - this has been a business district my whole life, but looking at it now, I can't help but see the residential neighborhood it was a century or more ago - these huge, old, Victorian "homes"; what would've been "mansions" back then - some of them still fitted with gaslight - how sinister and imposing they seem to me now, as never before - what horrors and atrocities had been birthed within those walls a hundred years ago? - how oddly out of place it seems to me now that they should all be housing new-age wellness centers! - like an amusement park built from the ruins of a concentration camp

-R down a street I've never seen before - lined with several multi-story condominiums I hadn't known were there - road makes a 90* bend to the R, and I follow it - end up in a back-alley that ends at a T - L, another alley - follow that to a crossroads where R looks like it leads out to a road - I take that R and end up... on the opposite side of Baker Park from where I just was up on W. Patrick. - I'm about a mile to two miles away from where I'd first turned down this street - ??? - how can that be?? - I'm on the other side of the fucking CANAL for fuck's sake! - how did I get to the other side of the canal without crossing a single bridge?!

-disoriented, I walk to the nearest bridge and cross the canal, then work my way back to the other side of the park, to where I'd been just a few minutes earlier [note: realizing now that it never even occurred to me to trace my steps back in the direction I had come - ??] - the path leads me through the park, following the canal - the water is black, and stagnant, and smells like a marsh - it is full of flies - I stop and sit down beside it to gag on the smell for a few minutes - doesn't take long before I'm actually starting to retch, so I continue on my way

-at this point, my wife begins txt'ing me from her night, and we continue to txt back and forth for the next couple of hours, until she goes to bed - the experience feels somewhat like getting a phone call from the other side of the looking glass

-TXT-Received: "Where you @, baby?" - Sent: "Dreaming"

-11p - finally free from the park, I am shocked to discover that the entire ordeal, everything from the seven hundredth step on, which seemed to last for hours, has only taken 15 minutes

-TXT-S: "How did that year only last 15mins?!"

-leaving the park, I cross Bentz and head E down W. Church St. - the mansions lining this street are pre-revolution, colonial - by American standards, they are ancient - if the houses on Crystal Row held hidden horrors, these ancient estates bled and screamed with unseen atrocities - every edifice seems to leer - every shadow has fangs - every well-tended topiary squats lifeless, like flowers in a tomb - I can hear screaming children being raped and sodomized - a young nigger slave girl's gurgling wails of uncomprehending terror while she watches as her infant is viciously carved from her womb - the sickening snap of bone - the sharp sting of a whip - the sloppy wet sound of vomiting - the smell of blood and shit

-then I come to the churches - this is Church St., after all - they've been built upon and added to and refurbished and renovated so many times through the centuries that they look modern now in comparison to the brick mansions all around them, even though they are technically much older - these are the "famous" Seven Clustered Spires of Olde Fredericktowne - standing on the street I look up to the top of the spire above me - from the smoky blackness above, I see the image of a dozen gargantuan tentacles free-falling out of the sky - they land squarely on the church, absolutely demolishing it in an explosion of brick and dust - I look down the street and see another mass of tentacles descend similarly, crushing another huge old church on the other side of the street - then the first mass of tentacles to my right lifts up into the sky almost as quickly as it came down, and I see it come down again, further down the street than the second mass but still on the same side of the street as it was before, again crushing another building - I realize now that these are limbs of some Thing that is *walking* down Church St. - every step utterly destroying some giant old stone building like a toy model - it quickly stomps off into the darkness at the far end of the street, several blocks away - I decide to follow it

-PIC1 - What long-forgotten tomes of ancient occulted knowledge are held hostage by the insidious Mr. Marshall Etchison??

-11:12p - JE: "reach the funereal [sic] home on Church St.  it begins to rain.  no... mist"  [note: an enormous gothic mansion, the first time I visited this funeral home was to view my mother's body; this fall, I was back again, in the same room as a matter of fact, for the funeral of my wife's father - as I stood there staring at it, contemplating the width and breath of that horrible old building's place in my life, the air suddenly became wet - at first I thought it had started to rain, but then I looked down the street and realized that a mist had rolled in off the canal]

-turn R down Carroll Alley - past the post office - the stench of manure - end up on another bridge crossing the canal again - decide to turn L and head E down the canal towards the other side of town - quickly reach the end of the renovated "garden/shopping district" area of the canal and keep going, past the art museum, entering into the "flat, wide open river of concrete with a sewer running down the center of it" portion of the canal walk - suddenly notice there are marks covering the concrete here - no, wait; paintings - the entire expanse of concrete has been marked off into a grid of squares - each square is numbered - some of the squares are filled in with paintings - a couple indicating classes of schoolchildren - a couple apparently done by (and to promote) local civics organizations - a few of them simply artistic - I imagine that people must be purchasing the rights to paint these squares - but why? - it begins to rain in earnest now; silent lightening strobes the sky - a few of the painted squares grab my attention

-PIC2 - this square was apparently painted by Ms. MacGregor's 4th grade class - the knowledge of the Horrors Beyond the Stars has already infected our young!

-PIC3 - suggestion: skip lines 5-7, instead going from line 4 ("We are more than") directly to line 8 ("...life") - re-read - what is it saying now?

-PIC4 - in case the image is unclear, this block of stone displays the message "the stars eat your body." - someone PAID to write that there - I feel simultaneously wigged out and a growing affection for my hometown - this phrase would repeat in my mind for the rest of the night

-I follow the canal until it goes under E. Patrick - turn R and head E down E. Patrick - wife is txt'ing me again - we have a small chat back and forth as I walk - going back and forth from staring at the bright screen to trying to find my way down the dark, unlighted street is disorienting me - every time I close my phone and look up, it takes what seems like forever before I can begin to see anything again, and every time I get a new text it feels as if the screen's light is going to burn out my eyes - I end up taking a dark side street I've never been down before - I take a couple of turns this way and that [I don't remember exactly] - I have no idea where I am anymore - suddenly, I find myself in a housing project I've never seen or heard of before - there are more people out here than anywhere else I've been so far tonight other than the heart of the bar/restaraunt district downtown - every single one of them is poor and black - any of them could have ended up here after being forced to move out of my neighborhood after my wealth magick had succeeded in gentrifying most of downtown, starting with my neighborhood - and here I am taking a stroll through the middle of *their* neighborhood, their home, in the middle of the night - and they are all looking at me and it is obvious that I do not belong here - I'm hoping to walk through the project and out the other side to who-knows-where, but I get to the end of the street and it empties out into a huge cul-de-sac of project buildings - there are people everywhere and they are all staring at me and I am The Outsider and there is no way out - and now I have to turn my back to all of them, only the sounds of madness in my ears, and find my way back out - I can't hear them, I don't dare look back - I'm lost and don't know how to find my way out of this maze - but I remain calm, keep walking, and make the Voorish Sign to appease any deranged savages or gibbering creatures that may accost me from the darkness - eventually, I find a side-alley that cuts through two backyards and leads me back out onto E. Patrick - a few blocks further down, I take a R down a street I know very well, but have never known the name of

-~11:55p - TXT-S: "I'm starting to limp." [note: three days later, I am still limping - if this is the beginning of some transfiguration, I am not amused]

-~12a - down this unnamed street, I find a small church that I have never seen before - how many hundreds of times have I been down this street?  how could I never notice this church?! - I realize just how many fucking churches and chapels I have seen over the course of the night - it seems like every street I've been down has at least one house of christian worship - often it's an actual house that has been converted to a chapel, but just as often it's a huge, stone church, bordering on "cathedral" - why do we need SO MANY CHURCHES in this town??

-TXT-S: "There are churches EVERYWHERE!"

-reaching the end of that unnamed street, I suddenly realize where I am

-~12:10 - TXT-S: "Wait... this is... South St.?"

-realizing I've ended up back on my "home turf" as it were, I feel the pull to return home - I'm exhausted and my nerves are shot - I'm soaked in sweat and I'm out of water, and I have to piss like a camel - I send the street names in txt's to my wife as I make my way out of the mists and fog of my dream, and back to the more stable footing of the "real world"

-~12:15 - TXT-S: "East"

-~12:20 - TXT-S: "Carroll"

-~12:25 - TXT-S: "All Saints"

-12:29a - JE: "home"

-being home again felt like being tightly strapped into the most comfortable bed ever made - I showered the slime off myself, got dressed in a more relaxed and normal outfit, and at 1a went to catch last call at my local and get a pint and a shot of whiskey before the night was over - I felt I'd earned it - couldn't really interact with anybody much in my current mental state, so I passed my time by reading up about the city of Kish online while I drank (apparently, it is the first city we have record of after the Great Flood, etc.), and for the next couple of hours after

-~4a - began the coming-down process  - rest of the evening progressed relatively "normally" - nothing unexpected or unusual - eventually drifted off to sleep about 6a - no dreams I could recall



-in hindsight, I don't think I made it INTO the Dreamlands that night - but something was definitely different - maybe I was skirting the edge of our Dream? - what happened? - perhaps I lost the path somewhere along the Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber?  was I not judged worthy in the Cavern of Flame? - either seems possible/plausible

-CONCLUSION:  this experiment must be repeated - try a different path for the Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber? - try the same path but follow it to its conclusion this time, now that I know where it goes? - what do I need to do to ensure worthiness at the Cavern of Flame? - READ DREAMLANDS STORIES - STUDY DREAMLANDS!

Gibbering in the Dark...

Journal - Saturday, 5.22.10

Why do they keep coming at me through her??

Going to bed last night, about 3a; wife had gone to bed a couple hours earlier. Room was dark, just a few shafts of sickly green-yellow light from the streetlamps outside peeking in through the closed slats covering our windows, casting everything I could see in the room a dark purplish-black. I was standing next to the bed, getting undressed, and I heard my sleeping wife behind me... giggle.

Slightly startled, I turned to see if she was awake, but she seemed to be sleeping peacefully, just as I'd expected. I turned back around and finished getting undressed, when I heard that soft giggling from behind me again. I turned back around and leaned over the bed to get a closer look at her face this time.

It's hard to describe. The dark was playing tricks on my eyes, for sure, but I also know what I saw. There were two faces, and it kept switching back and forth between the two. It was as if, every time my eyes would adjust to the darkness and register what I was seeing, her face would change again and my eyes would have to adjust again. And it kept going back and forth that way, so that my eyes seemed to be constantly trying to adjust and register, and her face seemed to continually shift back and forth between two very different visages.

The first was exactly what I would expect - her peaceful, sleeping face. But the other one... Her eyes were half-open, and she was looking up at me from under those heavy lids. Her face was split nearly in half by a huge, toothy grin. Picture Jack Nicholson in The Shining ("Heeere's Johnny!"), and you've got a bit of an idea what I was seeing last night.

Haltingly, I asked, "Are you awake?"

"Ur sidge a sumber gu bik cha verml."

"What did you say?"

"Ur. Sidge. A. Sumber. Gu. Bik. Cha. Verml." She/it spoke slowly and loudly, enunciating each syllable as though talking to a retarded child, or a foreigner from another land. As though she/it was actually saying something. But it was just gibberish! Nonsense.

Right?

Then she giggled again.

At this point I (hesitantly, I'm not afraid to admit) took my Silver Key from my nightstand, secured it around my wrist with the key in the palm of my hand, made the Sign of Kish, and climbed into bed next to her.

There were two more moments before I feel asleep. At one point I was terribly startled by a short, sharp, very loud sound like a small girl giving a quick cry of pain or fear from behind me, sounding like it came from directly next to my bed. No clue what that was. And then shortly after that, my wife began to snore very resonantly (which she never does). I wasn't disturbed by her snoring, but after a while, I started to hear...something...in the "echo" or resonance of the snores. I don't know the correct word for what I'm trying to describe here, but it wasn't the sound itself that she was making, but in the short seconds after the sound as it was reverberating around the room. (Perhaps aided by the resonance coming from our whirring ceiling fan?)

I didn't want to hear it. I tried not to. Oh, gods I tried. But once I first recognized it, suddenly it was as if I couldn't hear anything else.

I swear to you, in the echoing snores of my wife reverberating through the dark of our bedroom, I heard... whispering.

My Silver Key...

Journal - Thursday, 5.20.10

One of the very first group-rituals I ever performed was a Dreamlands pathworking, in which Nyarlat-hotep gave to each of us our own Silver Key to the Gate of Dreams. Since that night, my Silver Key has become one of the most used fetishes of my magickal career.

Last night, I took my Silver Key from my altar and wore it to bed. And dreamt for the first time in recent memory. (I don't usually remember any dreaming I do. Sleep is a short blankness in between periods of consciousness for me. My own petit morte, if you will.)

It was a nightmare. Incredibly vivid. Again, it wasn't the typical eldritch horrors I've come to expect, but it still left me feeling quite unsettled.

It started with the discovery that my wife had been cheating on me for a quite a while. When I confronted her about this she sneered, "Well, sometimes I need it in the fucking ass and he can do that for me!" (I don't think my wife has ever actually sneered at anything her entire life.) The rest of the dream was the slow, dawning realization that my wife was nothing like the person I've always thought she was. My wife is a sweet, patient, compassionate, and very loving woman - in the dream she was a raging coke-whore. She was constantly yelling at me and calling me names, or alternately ignoring me completely, throwing tantrums, and more than once she laughed to the point of tears at the pain and anguish she was causing me. I spent most of the dream chasing her around, trying to get her to stop... being that way, but the more I pleaded with her, the worse she got.

I remember, towards the end of the dream, finding her in a flop-house down the block from our apartment building, sucking off a group of guys for some crystal. When I dragged her out of there, she shoved the crystal into my hand. (Just a bunch of loose crystal, no baggie, like trying to hold onto a handful of crushed glass shards.) When we got back to our building, there were a bunch of cops hanging around the entryway for some reason, and I had to sneak by them with the crystal in my hand, terrified the entire time that she was going to tell them and get me arrested.

I also remember that our building was *off*, somehow. It was definitely our apartment building from waking life, but nothing about it was exactly the way it really is. Some things were a bit bigger than they were supposed to be, some a bit smaller; some things weren't pointed in quite the same direction they really are; some doors and windows that were supposed to be there weren't, and there were doors and windows that were only there in the dream, as well. There was nothing I could point to and say "There! That is not supposed to be like that - it's supposed to be like this!" But the whole place, normally so comfortable and familiar, felt slightly strange and alien.

So, again, it wasn't getting eaten by a giant, tentacled alien, or being transported to another plane of existence by a grey-skinned, faceless man with bat-wings, but I would still definitely consider this a mythos-colored dream. I was forced to confront the madness of having the thing most precious to me in this life taken and twisted into a monster before my eyes. I woke up very agitated by the experience, and I've remained slightly nervous and anxious and just generally unsettled all morning because of it.

My wife's kisses somehow just didn't seem as sweet this morning.

May Day Dawn Hippie Magick...

I've always had a fascination with the ocean.  And for me, the sight of the Sun rising out of the ocean at dawn is one of the most beautiful and magickal experiences a person can have.  Every vacation as a kid, I would try to get up early enough (or stay up late enough) on at least one day just so I could see it.  It's simply amazing.  Witnessing that majestic sight, it's easy to understand how we came up with an idea like "god."

This year, my Temple was lucky enough to be able to host the IOT's North American section's annual national meeting at the beach.  As soon as I found that out, I knew I had to present a Sun-rising-from-the-ocean ritual of some kind.  When I found out that the meeting would fall during the Walpurgisnacht (MayEve)/May Day holiday, I had my idea.

Solar rituals are, kind of by definition, pretty hippie-dippie.  And so's the beach; just something about being at the beach makes you want to light a campfire, grab a drum, and pass a doobie.  So, almost by necessity, the ritual I wrote was pretty hippie-dippie, too.  But I really, really fucking enjoyed it.  Not all sorcery is about black robes, midnight, and demons, and it's good for us to remember that from time-to-time.

Normally, I'm not very happy with the rituals I bring to the national meetings, but this time I was so pleased with it, I felt I needed to share it with my you, my readers.  Both of you.  ;-)

I hope you enjoy reading it even 1/10th as much as I enjoyed performing it.

May Day Dawn Ritual.  (Google Docs)

April 20th is NOT a "holiday"...

I know I'm in the minority, but I tend to take the word "holiday" in its literal interpretation, as a "holy day."  There is something special about that day that separates it from the rest of the regular calendar.  We give it a higher estimation in our reckoning of our time here in these bodies.  Also, "holidays" are always celebrations of something Good.  The Bad things we commemorate with "memorials" or "rememberances", but never with holy days.

And because of my peculiarly literal take on the concept, I have always had a hard time celebrating 4/20 as a holy day, even when I was regularly meditating at the altar of The Bowl, The Bong, and The Cannabinoid.  It just seems so...base, to me.  It'd be like having an "Eat Junk Food and Jerk Off" day and calling it "holy" or "special".  Just seems wrong, somehow.  Admittedly, of all the different ways of poisoning ourselves for pleasure, that really is the only one that could even come close to deserving it's own holiday.  (Can you imagine a Smack, Crack & Crystal holiday?  How about a Nicotine day?  Though I do tend to always be sure to have a drink on Repellation Day.)  ;-)  It's definitely the least of all of those evils, but it's still technically an evil, so why would we want to celebrate it?

But I still do celebrate it.  (Though I celebrate in a different way now than I used to.)  I celebrate it because a "hippie holiday" of getting stoned and laughing your tits off is SO MUCH BETTER than all of the other things this day represents to so many people.

Hitler was born on April 20th, and so this is a holy day, indeed, to thousands and thousands of monsters with human faces who poison our species with violence and hatred.  Taking their holiday away from them, as the catholics took xmas from the heathens, can only be a Goodness.

Two of those monsters in particular chose this day eleven years ago to stage a massacre at a Colorado high school.  They brutally murdered children, and they had fun doing it.  And they were just children themselves.  And they chose this day specifically because it was Hitler's birthday AND because it was the "hippie holiday;" they wanted to attack the "peace & Love" crowd that they despised so much, and they wanted to re-brand the day and turn it into something horrifying.  And, unfortunately, they succeeded in doing just that for hundreds of families.  I don't want to give them the satisfaction of doing it to me, too.

So, no, it's not a true "holiday."  But I don't think that matters much, in the end.  Taking a day of tragedy and horror and turning it into a celebration of joy, even self-destructive joy, is still a Goodness, and one that I will continue to take part in, for as long as I can.

"Sicilians are great liars..."

Oddly enough, "Drug addict" and "President of the United States" share one thing in common. Both titles, once earned, are yours forever, and can never be disowned.

I am a drug addict. Whether I use or not, I will always be a drug addict. The only difference between me and the sad sacks you see on shows like Intervention, is that I'm good at it. I am a smart, and successful drug addict. Those unfortunate people are ignorant, and weak, and they just seem to run headlong off the deep-end as quickly as possible. They don't have the knowledge or the will to keep from being completely consumed by their addiction, so they just go straight up in flames. It's not their fault (usually); it's just how things turned out for them. But I'm smart, and strong. And I have the intuitive understanding of addiction that can only come from being raised by a family of drug addicts. I am a GREAT fucking drug addict.

I'm still killing myself. Obviously. No different from those pathetic zombies on the TV; not in the end. But see, I know what I'm doing. I know how to make it laaaast. I know how to keep it from killing me too quickly, so that I can continue to use. Make it take as long as possible so that I can suck every single molecule of meaningless, masturbatory bio-pharmacological bliss out of it before it inevitably kills me.

THAT is the mark of a great addict. Exerting only just enough control to keep it going, to make it last, but not enough to stop. "We called him 'Mother Superior' on account of the length of his habit." Too much control and you quit, and the fun's over, and you live a long, boring life of wishing you could get high; too little, and you end up dying of the DT's in the gutter before you ever even get to live.

I want to live as long as possible. But I also want to feel good as much of that life as I possibly can. I know, in the end, that I'll die screaming. But will I regret the choices that brought me there? I mean, honestly - doesn't everyone scream when they die? Still, the greatest addict who ever lived, was still just a fucking junkie when you get right down to it. How am I any different?

We're defined by how we live, not how we die. (Unless you end up winning a Darwin award.) I never felt a need to be great. Never had any desire to change the world, or "leave my mark" for future generations. I just want to live my life with as little pain, and as much pleasure, as I possibly can. And so, every day, I get up and walk that line between living well and dying young.

I'm not sure where it's leading me, but the view is breath-taking. On both sides.

If it doesn't hurt, it isn't Love...

If someone cannot devastate you, then you don't Love them.

Ok, you might love them a little, as in liking-them-more-than-anyone-else, but you don't really *Love* them. Not reflexively-die-for-them Love. Not opening-yourself-completely or trusting-absolutely Love. That kind of Love, what all the poets call "true" Love, can only exist along with the possibility of extreme emotional distress.

Once you lay yourself open like that, losing yourself completely in someone else, then you have handed that person the power to completely devastate you. That's a huge part of what Love is: laying your heart in someone else's hands and trusting that they won't hurt it. And when they give you their heart in return? Well then you can begin to understand how a bunch of balding monkeys rutting in the dirt could come up with an idea like "Heaven."

Or, less poetically, Loving someone is, in large part, about giving them a portion of the responsibility for your emotional well-being, and trusting that they won't abuse that power or otherwise fuck it up and hurt you. And the totally absurd thing is, THEY ALWAYS DO.

It's inevitable. There's no way to avoid it. Once we fall in Love, that person IS, inevitably, at some point, going to torture us in ways that we could never have imagined before. It's not necessarily intentional. (Sometimes it is. Some people are assholes. Hell, some fish are assholes. Just simply a fact of life as sure as the turning of worlds.) It's just that, as with pretty much everything other than "food good" and "pain bad", we aren't born knowing what to do. If we're lucky, by the time we fall in Love we've managed to figure out how to basically work our own hearts without too much difficulty. But how the fuck can we know how to handle someone else's safely? We've never done it before. And everyone's heart is different! There's no way we can get it right on the first shot. We have to learn how to take care of that heart, specifically. And we can't do that without learning what's Right and what's Wrong for that heart. We've got to make mistakes in order to figure out how to NOT make mistakes.

And those learning-mistakes to us, are emotional traumas to the ones we Love; leaving life-long emotional scars in the person we cherish more than any other human being alive. And by Loving them in return, by opening ourselves up to them and making ourselves completely vulnerable and open as only truly-Loving another person absolutely can, we allow them to scar us in the same way. Sometimes worse.

But funny enough, we don't seem to care. We keep putting ourselves in the same situation over-and-over-again, anyways. Ever since we invented the word "Love", we have sought it out obsessively and without reason, and regardless of consequence. Is it just biology? Are we just crazy? Is it something more? Or less? Is it some basic make-up in our psychology that demands to be expressed, or is it simply that the chemicals in our brains that shape our bodies into a particular binary form somehow demand to be exercised? (I.e., testosterone + estrogen = orgasm.) Fuck, I don't know, maybe it's just me. I've been slit-my-wrists, suck-a-gun-barrel miserable for about 80% of the last month because of Her. (If we go back 3-6 months, up that to 90%.) But that other 20%? Oh, gods, what a 20%! There's never been a greater fifth of a whole in all of man's experience! And I would die a tortuous death a thousand times before I let you take that 20% away from me. Just the memory of the seemingly endless joys Her Love brings me makes it feel as though any amount of pain is more than a fair price to pay.

And I think that's what it comes down to. At least for me, anyways.

In the end, 20% of Heaven, is worth 80% of Hell.

And then some.