Gaze Deep Into My Navel And Despair...

How am I supposed to grow up?

I want to grow up.  I really do.  No, more than that, I need to.  I need to grow the fuck up.  I'm almost forty years old, but I still see myself as if I were twenty-five.  That might sound appealing on some level, at first; "young at heart" and all that.  And maybe it would be, if that's what I wanted for myself.  But it isn't.  I want to grow up.  I need to grow up, because I can't keep living like I'm twenty-five.  I'm not twenty-five anymore.  I can't eat like a twenty-five year-old anymore.  I can't move like a twenty-five year-old anymore.  I can't party like a twenty-five year-old anymore.  Fuck, I can't even sleep like a twenty-five year-old anymore.  It all hurts me now in a way that it never did, and I can feel myself breaking down at an astonishing rate, as if the force of Entropy inside me were being fed by some radioaction of chemical combustion.  Accelerated Decrepitude.  But on the other hand, trying to live within my almost-forty means, while still feeling like a twenty-five year-old inside, is so monumentally depressing that I can't even fucking bother; I always just end up feeling like I already have one foot in the grave.

A twenty-five year-old trapped in a forty year-old body.  How incredibly pathetic.  How incredibly modern.  How incredibly privileged.

But how am I supposed to grow up?  I don't know.  My observations tell me that for most people, this happens as a natural side-effect of breeding.  That creating a child shifts all perspectives, and forces the new parent into a maturity that cannot be achieved through any other means.  That makes sense to me.  I can understand that.

But I'm never going to have any children.  So what am I supposed to do?  How am I supposed to force myself to achieve a state that, for most people, requires quite possibly the single most life-altering event they will ever experience in order to achieve?

Sometimes I think, maybe I don't actually need to grow up?  If I don't have any children, then what do I need to grow up for?  Why do I feel this need anyways?  I can only assume it is because I reflexively compare my life to the model my parents set for me.  When I look at myself, and try to judge whether I'm doing well or not, I compare it to the life they lived.  And I always feel myself coming up short.

They went to college.  They got degrees.  They worked hard.  (My father still works harder than almost anyone else I know, and while my mother never worked as hard as he did, she still inarguably worked harder than I do now.)  They bore and raised children.  They owned houses, with yards and multiple floors and everything.

But I dropped out of college.  I have no degrees, and probably never will.  Yeah, I have a career that doesn't leave me wanting to kill myself, but I still hate it, just because it's work, and I hate work of any kind; I hate being forced to sell myself every day in order to sustain myself.  I don't own a house.  I own an absurdly tiny condo that I hate and will never be able to sell for as much as I paid for it.  I am almost certain I will end up having to live in that tiny little box for the rest of my life, watching it deteriorate around me, with me - and that thought terrifies me on a regular basis.

And even these modest achievements - a well-paying job that I can sort of do well and tolerate, and a tiny little condo I'm trapped in like a prison cell - even these barely note-worthy accomplishments I never actually earned; I didn't work hard to achieve these things.  I got this job because some well-meaning middle-aged women that I worked with took pity on me, and talked to their bosses, and told them they knew this kid they thought would do well as a programmer.  And they were right - I am a good programmer.  At least, I'm alright.  But again, not because I try to be, or because I studied or worked hard or went to school or anything else.  I just have a natural talent for logic and pattern recognition and symbology, and so I am a naturally decent programmer.  I could be a great programmer if I wanted to be; if I tried to be and put forth the effort.  But I don't.  Because I don't care.  I only want to put forth the minimum amount of effort to get by, and save the rest for indulging in my life's pleasures.

And it's a similar story with my "home."  I didn't work hard and save money every day so that I could eventually put a down payment on my dream home.  My grandfather died, and since my mother (his daughter) was already dead herself, the portion of his life's wealth that should have been hers (and he had worked hard all his life to achieve that wealth) came to me instead.  And I used all of that money to buy the apartment I had been living in for almost a decade at that point.  The biggest, most "adult" accomplishment of my life - becoming a home-owner - and it only happened because I was in a position to profit off of the deaths of two of my close family members.  And so it has never felt like an accomplishment to me.  It feels like blood money.

(It's true that I performed magick to get the job and the money and the apartment, but even taking the assumption that my magick worked doesn't help the situation any.  Magick is a short-cut.  It's easy compared to actually working hard to learn or to save money.  And it's fun to do, and for that reason alone I wanted to do it, whether it worked or not.  So even assuming that I came by these things through sorcery, it still doesn't feel like an accomplishment to me.  It still doesn't feel like I really earned them.  It feels like I cheated.)

And I will almost certainly never see that much money again in my lifetime.  I can barely maintain a savings of more than a couple of thousand dollars at a time.  I live paycheck-to-paycheck, even with my fairly significant salary.  I've always been that way.  If I have money, I want to spend it on making myself feel good right now, and I can't seem to deny myself comfort or happiness in the present, in order to save it for some undefined future.  As I've written here before, I feel like the Grasshopper, fiddling away as the first snow begins to fall.

But why do I determine the value of my life by comparing it to my parents'?  They were completely different people, living in a completely different time.  And who wanted completely different things from their life than I want from mine.  And I know this.  But I still can't shake this feeling that I am somehow failing at life, because I seem to remember my parents being so much better off in their twenties than I am in my thirties; or will be in my forties.  I just want to be happy, like anyone else.  But I constantly and consistently feel that the things that make me happy aren't good for me.  That they are self-indulgent, or immature, or masturbatory.  That I am a bad person for living my life the way that I do.  But trying to live my life any other way always leaves me just as miserable, if only in a different way.

I just want to spend my life relaxing in the bathhouse, playing games, reading, writing, watching TV and movies, sleeping, eating, drinking and getting high, and punctuating the whole thing with the occasional orgasm.  That is really all I want from life.

And I feel like a worthless waste of a human being for feeling that way.  I hate myself for feeling that way.  But even so, I have no idea how to change it; I have no idea how to want anything else.

Okay, sure, I want other things.  Bigger things.  I want to have a big house with a yard and a basement and an attic.  I want to be able to support myself through writing, or some other form of creative expression.  (If only I could make a living playing games!)  I want a sense of accomplishment.  I want to feel like my life mattered, in any way.  I want to feel a sense of confidence that when I'm gone, I will have made some mark on the world that is all my own; that I will leave behind something more than a pile of carbon dust.  I do want all of these things.  But when I think about them, and I envision the monumental amount of work it would take to even try to achieve any of them - with no guarantee of success! - I lose any hope I may have had about ever actually achieving them.

Because I know that I will never do that work.  I just don't have it in me.  Achieving anything of any real significance requires a single-minded devotion that I just don't have.  Have never had.

Because deep-down, I don't want to be great.  All I really want is to be comfortable.  And I guess I am.  So I should be happy, then, right?  Then why do I feel this way?  I just wish I could learn to be happy with what I have, instead of hating myself for not being able to be great.

I guess what it all really comes down to is this:  I feel lazy, and I hate myself for being lazy, but I don't know how to make myself be anything else.  And I hate myself for that, too.

+          +          +

Or maybe I'm just depressed because winter is coming, and I'm all out of drugs, and I can feel both of these things gnawing at my bones.

Convention Season 2012...

I've so far managed to diligently avoid posting anything about politics in this space, but I just have to get this one thing off my chest, and then I'm done.

Last election, I watched every minute of both conventions, obsessively, and was riveted for two full weeks.

This election, I haven't tuned in at all, don't plan to, and you couldn't pay me to watch a full hour of either one.

I still believe that the Right is clearly the worse of the two sides (at least, in terms of their rhetoric/platform), and so I will continue to vote Lib/Dem every two years.  But neither side is actually democratic, neither side is actually concerned about doing what is right for this country or its people, and both sides are populated exclusively by liars, thieves, and egotistical asshats who are clearly interested only in maintaining and increasing their own power.  And I can no longer delude myself into believing that I have any hope whatsoever of affecting that situation in the slightest.

This country is run by corporations, and the wealthy.  They own us.  They own you.  And as long as we continue to have a capitalist global economy, they always will.  That's just a fact of the 21st century.

There will never be another New Deal.

And since I can't do anything about that short of armed revolution (which, let's face it, the situation isn't anywhere near bad enough to warrant - we're hardly Syria or some shit), I'm just going to do my best to ignore it, and try to make the most of the life they allow me to live.  They give me access to plenty of shiny toys and baubles to distract me and keep me docile, and hey, that's not really so bad a way to live, when you think about it.  I'd rather be a pet than a stray any day.  (Sure a stray is more "free," but who has the better quality of life?  Which one, at the end of it all, is hanging on with the hope of just one more day, and which one is glad to finally be done with all of this?)

Sure, I could picket, and protest, and campaign, and donate, and put bumper stickers and magnets all over my car and signs on my lawn; I could spend 90% of my waking hours taking in political media (which is basically just The News at this point; it's almost impossible to find old-style, major-events-of-the-day, non-political news in this country anymore) and watching the conventions and debating all the ignorant blowhards out there... but to what end?  I've done all of that.  Spent years of my life doing it.  It didn't change anything.

All I got from it was an ulcer, and a raging case of misanthropy.

Since I can't do anything to actually make a difference, and since all it does for me is make me miserable, I've had to just let it go, and go on with my life.  I've built a good life for myself, and I'm enjoying it, and I don't want to ruin it by constantly agonizing over shit that I have no control over.  They're going to destroy the world, or they're not.  Either way, all I can do is make the most of what I have.

So, for now at least, I'm strictly concerning myself with local politics, where I can actually make a difference, about things that actually affect my life in a direct way.

And that's all I have to say on the subject.

We May Just Go Where No One's Been...

This is a song about magick, life, and the endless possibilities inherent in humanity.

Black
then
white are
all I see
in my infancy.
Red and yellow then came to be,
reaching out to me.
Lets me see.

As below, so above and beyond, I imagine
drawn beyond the lines of reason.
Push the envelope.
Watch it bend.

Over-thinking,
over-analyzing,
separates the body from the mind.
Withering
my intuition,
missing opportunities and I must
Feed my will
to feel that moment.
Drawing way outside the lines.

Black
then
white are
all I see
in my infancy.
Red and yellow then came to be,
reaching out to me.
lets me see
there is
so much
more and
beckons me
to look through to these
infinite possibilities.

As below, so above and beyond, I imagine
drawn outside the lines of reason.
Push the envelope.
Watch it bend.

Over-thinking,
over-analyzing,
separates the body from the mind.
Withering
my intuition,
leaving opportunities behind.

Feed my will to
feel this moment
urging me to cross the line.
Reaching out to embrace
the random.
Reaching out to embrace
whatever may come.

I embrace my
desire to...
I embrace my
desire to
feel the rhythm, to
feel connected
enough to step aside and
weep like a widow, to
feel inspired, to
fathom the power, to
witness the beauty, to
bathe in the fountain, to
swing on the spiral, to
swing on the spiral, to

swing on the spiral of
our divinity and
still be a human.

With my feet upon the ground
I lose myself between the sounds
and open wide to suck it in,
I feel it move across my skin.
I'm reaching up
and reaching out,
I'm reaching for
the random or
whatever will bewilder me.
Whatever will bewilder me.
And following our will and whim
we may just go where no one's been.
We'll ride the spiral to the end
and may just go where no one's been.

Spiral out. Keep going.

Spiral out. Keep going.

Spiral out. Keep going.

Spiral out. Keep going.

               -"Lateralus"
                 Tool, Lateralus

Witness...

As the weeks have turned into months, I've been discovering even more reasons to love my new commute.

When I describe it as a "backroad through farm country," that is not poetic exaggeration.  The road snakes past dozens of farms of every variety.  Dairy farms, horse farms, plow-plant-harvest farms, even more than one llama farm.  And as the season has slowly turned, I've been able to glimpse the changes occurring on some of the farms as I make my way past them every day.  I've started noticing that several of the cowherds now include a calf or two.  And I've watched the fields progress from dirt, to rows of dirt piles, to green lawns, to fields of waving shoots.  I'm enjoying the game of trying to guess what each of the plants in the various fields are from their early sproutings.  Most of them look like wheat to my uneducated eyes, but it's definitely possible that they could be some other grain, and it's even conceivable that some of them could be corn.  I'll find out soon enough.  I'm looking forward to that more that I'd like to admit, honestly.

I'm struck by how much I'm enjoying the opportunity to be a silent witness to this progress of biology.  And I'm reminded of the swallows from last Spring.

We really don't want birds nesting around our building, but because of the beautiful garden with its variety of trees and bushes and flowers and its never-ending source of water in the form of a bubbling fountain, wild animals of every variety are naturally attracted to it.  So, every year we come up with new remedies to stop birds from nesting in the places they nested the year before, and every year they find ever more ingenious ways to outwit us.  Last Spring, when they couldn't find any place else to do it, a pair of swallows simply built a nest directly onto a vertical brick wall in our building's entryway, eight feet above the ground.  Just to be clear, the nest was not resting on anything - it was simply glued directly onto a brick wall, by means of some unknown adhesive.  I was so delighted by the sheer audacious tenacity of this, that I didn't even mind being outwitted by a bird.  (And honestly, I wouldn't have minded, regardless.  I love it when nature reminds me that we don't know half as much as we think we do.)

But even better than this, was that every day I got to walk past these nesting birds at least twice.  And so I was given regular glimpses into their lives.  I noticed when one of them (presumably the mother) was in the nest every time I walked by, where before it had usually been empty.  I remember the day shortly thereafter when I first heard the cacophony of tweets echoing from the nest, and looked up to see the horrendously ugly faces of several new-born chicks squawking at me hungrily.  After that, I was fortunate enough to get to see their parents feeding them a time or two.  And over the course of the next several weeks, I watched those chicks grow faster than I ever thought possible, until suddenly they were full-grown birds, indistinguishable from their parents.

I remember the day I came home from work, and passing out of the entryway and into our garden, one of the birds flew directly at me, veering off what seemed mere inches from my face.  At first I was upset, wondering why this parent-bird was attacking me.  What could I possibly have done to threaten them, just walking by as I've done so many times before?  Following the flight of the bird up above the garden, I saw several of them swooping and diving in odd arcs, occasionally diving right at each other, often narrowly missing other objects in their path.  And they weren't going very high, either, tending to stay within the confines of the courtyard.  It was all very odd behavior that I hadn't seen before.  But then I noticed that the nest was empty. And with that, I finally realized that these were the new birds, not their parents.  They must've just learned to fly!  Probably that very day.  When that bird flew at my face it wasn't attacking me, it was a near-miss on toddler-wings.  It was probably just as freaked out by the experience as I was!  And now they were playing in the air above me, testing their new power and freedom, feeling the wind in their feathers for the very first time.  You could see they were still trying to figure it all out - still hadn't quite got the hang of it all, still afraid of going too high, or too far from home.  I had to just stop and watch for a while.  It was so beautiful.

Then, as Spring turned into Summer, I watched as the parents flew off, leaving their adolescents behind forever.  I watched the remaining birds grow until they could no longer fit in the nest.  Once they were too big, they perched on a nearby video camera on the opposite wall of the entryway.  The sibling-birds stayed there for weeks, too timid to leave home just yet, wanting to stay together, in the only world they'd ever known, for as long they could.  But, eventually, they disappeared.  First one, then another, then the rest all at once.  Looking for food, perhaps?  Or maybe a mate?  Or maybe they were just driven by an innate need to explore, or to start flying North as the season wore on.  I'll never know exactly.  But I remember experiencing a very peculiar melancholy when I first noticed they had gone.  I was sad to see them go, I would honestly miss them - but I was also so excited and amazed at the cycle they were a part of, and that I had been so unbelievably fortunate to have been able to witness so much of it, from start to finish.

I remember those swallows, every time some old codger on the condo board complains about all the bird shit in the entryway, and suggests some new way to drive out the "nuisance."  All I can think is, what's a little bird poop, compared to an experience like that?  Getting to be a direct witness to the cycle of our biology?  Being reminded of how alike we all are, how similar all of Life is?  Being given a direct insight into your place in our World?  Being fortunate enough to catch a glimpse, just for a moment, of a microcosm of the grand pattern on display throughout the entire Universe?  Being able to remember, for a time, just how absolutely fucking amazing Life is?  In the face of all that, who cares about something as trivial as a little bird shit?

I can feel the beginnings of something similar to my experience with the swallows in these peaceful moments on my commute.  I can feel the swallows, every time I see the fields have grown a little more, every time I notice a new calf I've never seen before, bounding after its mother on spindle-legs.  But this cycle is slower, and will last longer.  It will last until I see the fields barren and covered in snow, and until the snow thaws, and the fields are plowed again.  I catch these glimpses every day, and I string them all together in my memory, like an old flip-book penny arcade, and I feel as if I'm watching the cycle of Life on Earth in time-lapse, like Nature's breath - inhale, cold and lifeless - exhale, warm, vibrant growth - and on and on and on - as if I'm watching the planets spin round and around our star, as if I can feel the rotation of the Milky Way itself spinning off into the void, as if that longing in my heart is the tugging weight from the black hole at its center, around which we are all spinning, spinning, spinning...

And I am suddenly so still.

Obstacles...

I cannot tell you how long this road shall be, but fear not the obstacles in your path, for fate has vouchsafed your reward. Though the road may wind, yea, your hearts grow weary, still shall ye follow them, even unto your salvation.   -Blind Seer, O Brother, Where Art Thou?

It seems as if the Universe has decided to test me.

I was pulled over for speeding last night on my ride home.  I was in the middle of a long line of cars, just following the car in front of me for miles and miles.  At one point, the car in front of me stopped to make a left-hand turn.  Afterwards, I sped up to rejoin the line of cars that had moved off down the road away from me as I waited for the car in front of me to turn.  I have no idea how fast I was going, or what the speed limit on that part of the winding road was, but that must've been where they caught me, because as I came up the next hill and around a bend, a Sheriff's deputy stepped out into the road ahead of me and signaled me to pull over.  There were two deputies parked in someone's driveway, both pulling people over in the same way.  It was clear this wasn't the actual speed trap; this was the net.  I never saw the trap, but I assume that it must've been somewhere on that part of the road just after that left-hand turn, because that 100 yards where I sped up to rejoin the line of cars was the only time on the entire commute up to that point that I hadn't been in the middle of a line of cars.  At every other point we'd been moving along like a line of ants, and I'd been going the same speed as the car in front of me, and the same speed as the car behind me. When I asked the deputy where I'd been speeding, all he would say was "Back there," pointing down the road in the direction I had just come.  Well, duh, officer.  Vague, much?

He said I was doing 67 in a 40.  I don't think that's true, but I have to take his word for it.  Normally, when you see a speed trap, it's reflexive to hit your brakes and check your speedometer.  But since I never saw a trap, and since I was just trying to catch up to the car in front of me, I have no idea what speed I was actually going.  And since he won't tell me where I was actually caught, I can't even verify that the speed limit was actually 40.  But, whatever, no big deal.  An $80 fine and 1 point on my license.  Even though I just finally cleared all the points off my license this year, still, whatever, it's not the end of the world.  And it could've been a lot worse - the deputy was giving me a big break by only charging me with 49 in a 40, rather than the full 67.

But I found that I had a really hard time getting over it.  I felt like this completely ruined my new commute for me, this new route to work that I've fallen in love with and come to rely on.  Because part of the reason this commute was so good for me was that it was relaxing - stress-free compared to 270.  But now that I know that around every bend there could be a speed trap that I will never even be able to see, I'm feeling paranoid.  My worry-free drive is now worry-ful.  So, in order to deal with that I have to obey the speed limit, but that doesn't really help, either.  Because now I'm constantly checking my speedometer and always worried about whether I'm speeding or not, where before I never even had to think about that.  Also, a lot of the enjoyment of this road was that it was just a fun road to drive - a winding backroad through farm country.  Having to obey a completely ridiculous 40mph speed limit on a twisting road in the middle of nowhere just sucks all of the fun out it.  So now it's no fun, and stressful.  Fuck, I might as well go back to taking I-270.

I was still really tense and upset when I got home, so I decided to try and meditate to see if I could relax a little.  But it was really late by that point (I'd got caught at work and left later than I'd planned, then I had to stop by the grocery store, not to mention spending fifteen minutes sitting by the side of the road with the cops), and I still had a bunch more work I needed to do, so I didn't have much time available.  Trying to meditate under pressure to hurry up and finish so you can get back to work is pretty self-defeating, to say the least, so as you can probably imagine, it didn't go very well.  But the biggest obstacle was that I had a song stuck in my head.  This is something that has come up consistently throughout my entire meditative history, and I have never found a successful method of dealing with it.  Basically, every once in a while, I will try to meditate, and I'll find there's a snatch of a song repeating in my head, and there's simply nothing I can do about it.  I never get any meditation accomplished during these sessions, because the song continually breaks my concentration, and there's no way to get rid of it.  And every time it breaks my concentration or breaks me out of my meditation I get a little more upset about it.

So when I sat down this time, and heard the song in my head, I knew that I was completely fucked right from the start.  Still, I tried anyways, doing a full 108 breath cycle, but it did no good.  When I stood up from my mat, I was even more stressed out and upset than I was when I sat down.

Our internet was still down, so that made a whole bunch of things more difficult and/or impossible, adding further frustration, complication, and aggravation to an already stressful evening.  When I finally got to bed, it was no surprise that I didn't sleep very well.

This morning, my beautiful, relaxing new commute was, as predicted, stressful and unpleasant.  But at least I didn't get pulled over.

I got to the gym bright and early at 7:30, only to find the place packed.  Every treadmill taken, every elliptical taken.  Part of the reason I enjoy working out in the early morning is because it is never packed.  But there were at least twice as many people in there this morning as I have ever seen in there before!  I have never had to wait to use a machine before, either.  I didn't know what to do.  So I ended up just standing around for fifteen minutes, until a machine opened up.  Which, of course, threw off my schedule for the rest of my morning by fifteen minutes.

But here's the kicker:  about an hour after I get up to my office from the gym, She calls me to tell me that she's just been fired.  From the job she's had for eight years.  By her new boss (about the tenth she's had in the last two years), who's been there only a couple of months.

Wow.

Ok.

Gotta say, didn't see that one coming.

Up to this point, it had just been a series of annoying complications.  But this is different.  This is a sudden 90-degree turn in the course of our life from here on.

It's kind of difficult to take it all in, honestly.  Suddenly, the foundation of our lives has become slightly unstable.  We know a lot of things are about to change, drastically.  But, we don't really know which things, or how, or in what way.  It could be anything from Really Bad (e.g., we can't pay our mortgage and end up losing our home, etc.) all the way to Totally Amazing (e.g., she could end up with a new job that she loves, that pays better, that finally gives us more time together, etc.).  Everything is up in the air, which is scary, but also full of potential, which is exhilarating.

This time will be what we make of it.

So, are we up to the challenge?

I have to say, I'm looking forward to finding out.

The Beginning is a delicate time.  -Princess Irulan, Dune

It's Not A River, It's A Bullet...

"Denial is how it kills you," he said.

They were sitting on the beach, watching the waves, the Sun setting behind them, feeling the cool, salty air on their faces, and discussing their respective abuses.  They were three days into their week-long vacation, the first the three brothers had taken together since the youngest was still a baby, and the first they had ever taken together as adults.  The youngest had just recently graduated college, and this trip was a sort of present for him from the older two.  At that moment, he was back up at the cottage, enjoying his girlfriend, while the older two were on the beach, the eldest trying his best to educate the middle brother with whatever bullshit-wisdom he'd managed to glean by that point in his life.  He felt it was his duty, in some way, as the oldest.  Especially now that their parents were gone.

"Yeah, it's the denial that gets you.  That's the one thing they got right in those meetings.  You can have a relatively easy time of things, and keep using for a long, long time, so long as you don't start lying to yourself about it.  But the second you start thinking, 'I don't have a problem,' then the drug's got you, and you're done for."

The waves crashed on the beach in a constant rhythm, like the slow, steady heartbeat of the world.  A young family flew a kite together some yards away down the beach from where the two brothers sat, and a man fished the surf down in the other direction.  The middle brother sat silent, listening, not knowing what to say; not sure if he should.

"It starts off, you're just having a good time.  Being young and reckless and free, and feeling as good as you possibly can.  Nothin' wrong with that.  But, it's inevitable - at some point, it's going to change you.  That 'want' is going to slowly turn into 'need.'  And it's so hard to tell when that's happening.  And if you're not looking for it, you'll never see it.  So that's the thing - you have to always be looking for it.  Always.  You have to be constantly asking yourself, 'Am I addicted to this?  Am I starting to need it?'  And the first time you're not 100% certain that the answer is 'No,' then the answer is 'Yes.'"

The waves crashed, and the breeze kissed their faces.  The little girl screamed happily as she flew her kite, and a gull cried somewhere over the water.  The middle brother stared out across the ocean at the blurry blue line of the horizon, feeling sheepish and guilty, and more than a little stupid, as he so often did when he talked with his older brother.  He realized he'd never even thought of these things, let alone asked himself these questions.  Am I an addict?, he asked himself.  And he realized, he didn't know the answer.

"So, that's the key:  near-constant self-reflection, combined with brutal honesty.  It's the only way to do this shit, and be able to enjoy it, and not end up fuckin' dyin' from it.  'The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.'  You have to be able to look at yourself and say 'I'm an addict.  I'm a drunk.  I'm a fuckin' junkie.'  You have to be able to recognize that, and to accept it about yourself.  That doesn't excuse it, of course.  Doesn't make it ok just because you can admit it.  But, if you can't say that to yourself, then you'll never even have a chance to make it right, because you'll never even know that anything was wrong."

The sky was slowly progressing from yellow to orange, and the breeze was starting to pick up.  It was going to be a beautiful night.  The middle brother didn't think he could ask himself those questions.  And he was sure he couldn't answer them correctly.  His whole life, his brothers had always seemed to do everything better than he did. And he looked up to them both, and loved them both so much.  He felt surrounded by their greatness; almost comforted by it, in a way.  But that only made his feeling of mediocrity that much more acute by comparison.  He's talking about this like it's the easiest thing in the fucking world to do.  But I can't stand to think about myself at all, so how the fuck am I supposed to be able to do it constantly?  Hell, that's one of the reasons I like getting high so much in the first place, so I don't have to think about this shit.

"That is the only thing that keeps this urge in check.  Without it, you've got no reason to resist at all.  Remember, getting high is a constant downward slide, and at the bottom is degradation, at best; death, at worst.  You wanna stay up near the top of that slide, where it's all still fun and games.  Where it isn't consuming you, taking over your whole life.  And that honest self-reflection, that willingness to admit to yourself, and the world, that you have a problem, is the one and only tool you have to keep yourself from sailing off down that slide and into nothing."

A constant downward slide, huh?  Well, thanks for telling me that now, big brother.  He watched as the fisherman down the beach wrestled to bring in a sandshark, and remembered the first time he'd gotten high.  He'd been fifteen at the time, and it had been a Summer night, a lot like this one.  Big brother had said, "Yeah, I guess you're about old enough now," as though he were answering a question that no one had asked.  Then he'd said, "Follow me," and they'd walked out into the woods behind their family's house.  They'd sat down against the base of a big tree, and passed a joint, watching the fireflies come on.  To this day, it was one of the greatest nights of his life.  He couldn't help but feel that this warning was coming a bit too late.

"Drugs are a tool; they serve a purpose.  They're not inherently good or bad.  It's all in how you use them.  But they're a dangerous tool.  Like a gun.  And like a gun, you have to treat them carefully, and with respect, or they'll kill you.  If you don't ask yourself these questions, constantly - or if you can't answer them honestly - then you're done for.  You won't have any reason to slow down at all, and you'll use more and more, needing more and more to get less and less out of it, as it eats away at your body; your mind.  Your soul, even.  You'll lose your Self.  And then what've you got?  Because that's all you ever had, right?  I'm speakin' from experience here.  It's so easy to think you've got everything under control, and it's everyone else who has the problem, not you.  But that's the Need talkin'.  And you can't listen to it.  You just gotta keep asking yourself those questions, never stop wondering if this is the day it's finally happened to you - because it will, eventually, some day."

He'd heard this gun metaphor before.  It was one of big brother's favorites.  He honestly didn't know if he had a problem or not, but how could he say that out loud, to this man he'd looked up to his entire life?  This person whose approval he had sought for as long as he could remember, almost even more than he had their parents'?  He watched the little girl flying her kite, as happy as a person ever could be, and he thought about it, really thought about it for the first time.  He knew he didn't use anywhere near as much as either of his brothers, but he also knew that they were both a lot more successful than he was, and that they didn't struggle with anything the way he always seemed to.  And this had always seemed to come so easily to them.  But lately, it'd been all he could do to make sure he didn't get sick at work.  He could even remember a couple of times where he'd had to choose between getting high and getting groceries.  It hadn't been that hard to bum food off of people.  Easier than he'd thought.  Definitely easier than bumming dope.  He was sure his brothers had never been in a similar situation.  They'd never allow it.

"But as long as you can do that, as long as you can ask and answer those difficult questions without flinching, then you'll be alright.  You'll be able to see the bottom of that slide coming at you, and you'll have a chance to do something about it.  You'll be able to say, 'Whoa, hold on a minute here!  This isn't what I want.  I gotta cut this shit out for a while.'  But you have to be able to recognize that there's a problem before you can hope to do anything about it.  Ha, don't look so worried, little brother.  We come from a long line of drunks and junkies and users - it's in our blood.  Their voices are inside of us.  Listen to them, and they'll tell you what to do.  They'll steer you right."

He didn't know what to say.  What could he say?  He understood, and on some level he already knew.  But he couldn't do anything about it.  He wasn't like them.  He couldn't be honest with himself that way.  He didn't want to.  He knew he felt safe when he was with his brothers, like they'd be able to take care of everything.  And he knew he never felt that way when he was by himself.  His whole life, he'd wanted nothing more than to be like the two of them.  But he knew he never would be.  And now, he also knew, that would be the end of him.

I need to say something, he thought.  He watched that little girl with her kite and he remembered those days, what that felt like, and he knew they were gone, and he wanted to be like her.  And he felt the sting in his eye and he felt his lip begin to curl and he thought, I need to say it, I need to say it now, I need to say it right now... And he felt the breeze come on strong all of a sudden, in the opposite direction, a gust of moist brine blowing through him.  And he saw the kite dive from the sky in the sudden reversal of force, saw it dive straight at her, saw it smash her in the face and knock her to the sand.  Her shrill screams filled the beach, and the gulls took flight in alarm, screaming with her, as if they knew.

"Come on," big brother said, standing up and brushing the sand from his legs.  "I bet those two're done by now.  Let's see if baby brother has any of those joints left.  We'll get twisted before dinner."

...

This story was inspired by a piece of my dreaming last night.  In the dream, I was one of the two characters on the beach (not saying which), but I decided to write it in third person, just as an exercise.  As before, I just let it come to me, one piece at a time, sort of letting the story tell itself.

As much as I enjoyed writing this, I can't wait to have something else to write about.  It can't all be drug addiction and death.  I know I must have something else to say, some other story to tell.

Patience, child...

The Old Cherry Tree By The Lake...

Dead tree, blossoming
Twisted trunk, pink flower buds
Like a corpse breathing

Ancient and rotten
Split and stunted, bent and burnt
This is surely death

Yet blossoms burst forth
Pink and fragrant, life from death
Impossible bloom

This, here, is the Tao
From dead Yin flowers Yang life
Fire roars from ashes

I see this, and know
I am this tree; my Tao flows
From root to petal

...

Just posted this yesterday, and I'm already editing it.  I posted it too quickly, and almost immediately saw changes I wanted to make.  Doesn't help that haiku is about the most immature, Creative Writing 101 style of poetry, either.  But, I'm not a poet, and I've never claimed to be.  The thing I like about haiku, is that it isn't necessarily about being pretty or poignant or profound.  A lot of the power is inherent in the form itself; anyone can do it.  It lends this almost zen-like quality to whatever you say.  So, I find it's perfect for expressing zen-like thoughts and emotions.

I found this tree on my way back from my old high school during my St. Patrick's Day drift, after sitting for a while under the tree where She and I first fell in love a couple of decades ago.  I was stunned, at first, to see something so blatantly impossible.  Then I was attracted to it, because I found it so amazing.  Then I felt an intense kinship with this tree, as though we'd shared similar lives, and were both going through the same experience just then.  I would've taken a picture of it, so that I could share this amazing sight with others, but my phone had just died the day before, so I didn't have a working camera on me for once.  Seems oddly like provenance, now, that this mystical vision should only exist in my memory.  I have this strange feeling that if I went back to that spot, the tree wouldn't be there anymore.

I'd been planning to write a full entry about the experience at some point, but during meditation yesterday afternoon, the seeds of this haiku began to form inside of me, and by the time I was finished meditation, I knew I had to express them.

Contemplations of Liu I-Ming...

Dead Trees, Cold Ashes

     When a tree is dead there is no flame when you burn it; when ashes are cold there is no warmth when you stir them.  What I realize as I observe this is the Tao of transformation of temperament.

     When people become temperamental, the harm is very great; the slightest offense sets them off into a rage.  It damages nature and inures reason, so that they are unaware of their own greed and passion, they do not understand their own narrowness, they do not care about essential life, they are not mindful of life and death.  The troubles this causes are not simple.

     If one can master oneself and exercise restraint, turn back from inflexibility and become yielding, sweep away all anger, resentment, and annoyance, get rid of all contentiousness, change the aggressive and violent nature back into a gentle taciturn nature, concentrate the energy and make it flexible, empty the mind and nutrure the spirit, be selfless and impersonal, not discriminate between self and others, view one's own body as having no such body, view one's mind as having no such mind, have no discrimination and no knowledge, and be empty and open, this like dead wood not flaming when burnt, like cold ashes yielding no warmth when stirred.

     One can thereby be in the midst of Creation without being influenced by Creation, be in the midst of yin and yang without being constrained by yin and yang.

...

Drawing Water with a Well Sweep

     When a well sweep draws water, the bucket goes down empty and comes up full, drawing water in a continuous cycle to water the fields.

     What I realize as I observe this is the Tao of the twin functions of emptying and filling.

     If people can empty their hearts and be humble towards others, they will receive benefits that will fill them within and elevate them beyond others.  The more they become empty and humble, the more they are fulfilled and elevated.

     Continually becoming empty, continually being fulfilled, continually becoming humble, continually being elevated, so that one is empty yet full, full yet empty, low yet high, high yet low, one attains to a state in which above and below are in communion, emptiness and fulfillment correspond.

     Filled with the qualities of the Tao, those who reach this state never fail to ascend to lofty and clear perception.

                                                                                              -Liu I-Ming  (~1737 - ~1830)

                                                                                                translated by Thomas Cleary

Barbershop...

There's a barbershop on my street.

Not a hair salon, not a hair stylist, but an honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned barbershop.  Opened in 1952.  And it looks like it hasn't changed much since then, with the exception of several framed pictures of the Obamas added to the walls.

And the walls are packed.  You know that old-timey kitsch that places like T.G.I.Friday's and Applebee's try to capture with all that faux-historic, pre-packaged, plastic junk they hang all over their walls?  This place is what those poseurs are trying to replicate.  Framed pictures of Martin and Malcolm (and now Barack and Michelle), Hall of Fame plaques from old football and baseball players, signed jersyes and ballcaps, framed newspaper clippings spanning the last 50 years, and all mixed in with portraits of his family, his sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters, and their spelling bee ribbons, and A+ report cards, and other tokens of their achievements.  It's cliché, but true - it felt like stepping back in time.

The barber's name is Buddy.  Which, again, seems so perfect that it's almost cliché.  Of course his name is Buddy - how could it have been anything else?  A slim, older black gentleman, with a thin mustache, he took over the shop from his uncle in 1960, when he was just 16 years-old, and he's been running it ever since.  He lives upstairs, and there's a beauty parlor for the ladies in the back.

There's just the one barber chair.  He's the barber, so why would he need more than that?  Made of steel and cast iron, it looks like it dates to the '30s or '40s.  It even has an extra footrest above the normal one, where you would rest your feet in order to get your shoes shined, while you got a cut or a shave.  It's too bad that service was no longer offered.  The pricelist on the wall said, "Haircut - $10, Shave - $4, Afro shaping/trim - $15."

I could tell it's been a while since Buddy cut a white boy's hair.  His scissors were a bit rusty, and more than a little bit dull.  After a while, he just gave up and went to work on me with the clippers.  After all these years, he's a master with the clippers.  He's got 4 different kinds, and dozens of guards, and he can do things with electric clippers that they were never intended for.  When he's cutting your hair, he stands between the chair and the mirror, and he has you facing out into the room, with the mirror at your back; the exact opposite of every haircut I've ever had.  As I sat in his chair, looking at the empty room, and the line of empty chairs in front of me, I couldn't help imagining what it must've been like 20, 30, 40 years ago.  (Hell, with the way the neighborhood has changed recently, in part because of me I'm more than a little ashamed to say, we could probably even say just 5 or 10 years ago.)  At some point it must've been a center of local men's culture.  People hanging out, reading the paper, bullshitting about politics and local gossip, waiting for their turn in Buddy's chair.  There's an obvious quiet sadness to Buddy's demeanor, and looking out at that empty line of chairs, it was easy to imagine why that might be.

When he was finished with my hair, he gave me a shave.  Trimmed up my mustache and beard real nicely.  It's the first time since I grew them that I don't look like a hippie!  (Or, at least, someone trying to look like a hippie.  Thirty-six years-old, and I still can't grow a full goatee, much less a beard.)  When he was finished, he rubbed down my scalp with a lotion that smelled a little like roses, and dabbed my face with some sort of tonic that felt like an alcohol and smelled vaguely of eucalyptus.  Then he handed me a hand-mirror to examine his work.  (He never did turn me around to face the wall mirror behind the chair.)

He gave me a $10 haircut, straight out of the 1960s.  And it looks like a $10 haircut.  Too high in the back, way too high around the ears; a little too bushy here, a little too thin over there.  And it is awesome.  Exactly what I wanted.  Simple, and classic.  And more than a little nerdy.

I'm really looking forward to the next time I get to spend some time in Buddy's chair.

My Precious...

I keep forgetting that this all started with Her.

Amid all the psychodrama and melodramatic, existential bullshit at my latest rock bottom, I keep losing sight of how I ended up there in the first place.  Of the reason why I started running head-long toward the dark at the end of the tunnel at all.  And equally, in the effervescence of all of my recently re-discovered joys, in the heady excitement of my bright, shiny new serenity, I also keep losing sight of the fact that, that reason is now gone.  That I got what I wanted all along.

That I'm so in love with Her.

Yes, it's Spring, and that certainly has to be factored into the equation.  But that doesn't make anything I'm feeling less relevant, or any less real.  For months, and maybe longer, I felt like I'd lost her.  (I realize now, I'd actually lost myself.)  I couldn't find any reason to be with her, except momentum.  I couldn't find any joy in her company, in her touch, or in her place in my life.  I realize now that I couldn't find any joy in anything in my life just then, but at the time I was completely focused on her.  I thought that We were the problem, that something was wrong with Us that needed to be fixed.  That if she could only change, or if I could only learn to be happy without the things I felt I needed from her, then everything would be better.  But it never was.  It was never good enough.  Nothing was ever good enough.  And I only ended up more unhappy, and more lost.

I believe my biggest flaw (and I have so many), is how I respond in these situations.  When I cannot find joy in my life, when I feel lost and alone, when I begin to struggle to find a reason to keep going, I force-feed myself artificial pleasure in the form of deadly poisons.  Now, to be fair, most of the time it's not like that.  In fact, I'd say 99% of the time it's just a little here, a little there - just having a good time and blowing off a little steam.  And nothing that's even really dangerous, let alone deadly.  Under any other circumstance, it's all innocent and under control.  No, not "under control," because the truth is that for most of the time, there's nothing there that even needs to be controlled in the first place.  But then there's that fatal 1% of the time, when I feel like I have nothing.  And believing I have nothing, and feeling that it's all downhill from there anyways, then I might as well enjoy the ride.  And that's when I push the plunger on my self-destruct button.

And that's exactly what I did here.  I'd made her my entire life, in about the most self-destructive, co-dependent manner imaginable.  And so when I felt like I'd lost her, I felt like I'd lost everything.  I hadn't, but I couldn't see that from the bottom of the hole I had dug myself into.  And when I finally hit bottom, I wasn't even thinking of saving myself from myself.  I still hadn't even realized that I was the problem.  I thought I was trying to save my marriage.  I thought I was trying to find a way to live with her.  But I was just trying to find a way to live.

And now I'm so happy, and so overjoyed with every second of every day, blah blah blah.  The high of the near-death experience.  And it's all such a big distraction, so constantly overwhelming, that I keep forgetting to pay attention specifically to all that I've re-gained with her.

My heart beats faster when I think of her now.  It actually skips when she kisses me.  Can you fucking believe that?  I didn't think that was possible anymore!  Everything she does makes me happy right now.  Even the things I used to think I couldn't stand.  I don't know how I ever felt any other way than I do right now.  I'm so grateful for the gift of her life, and the fact that she actually, improbably, inexplicably, wants to share it with me.  I look forward to seeing her every day in a way I only distantly remember feeling, long ago.  I ache softly inside when I have to leave her.  When I make her laugh, I own the fucking world.  And when my hands are on her hips, and I pull her to me, and feel every curve of her pressed against my body, I am lost again.  But no longer in darkness.  Lost in the cloudy depths of her palest-blue eyes.  Lost in the scent of her skin.  Lost in my lust to reunite with the other half of me.  Lost in the warm, comfortable weight of the life we've made, wrapped around us, holding us tightly together.  Lost in my joy of Her.

I hold no delusions that this will last forever.  Rule #1:  everything, everyone, everywhere, ends.  But because I know that right now, I am more grateful than I ever thought possible, for every single second I get to be with her.  And I remember now, what I had so tragically forgotten:

That She is the single greatest thing that has ever happened to me.

And that no matter whatever else I may be in my life, the one and only thing I will always be, forever, is Her's.

The Tao of Yin Becoming Yang...

Yesterday was a really, really bad day, and not just because of Mr. Squirrel.  That was, unfortunately, only the beginning.  In fact, yesterday was a continuing escalation of a bad day that had really started the day before.

My computer crashed yesterday morning.  Again.  And crashed, and crashed, and crashed all day, and nothing I did helped at all.  In fact, every single one of my personal computing devices has died in the last week.  My smartphone died on Friday, and I'm still trying to find the time to get back to the store before they close in the evening to pick up a new one.  On Sunday, my internet at home crapped out, and didn't come back up again until Tuesday evening, after I reset and reconfigured every single part of it.  And for the last couple of days, my work machine has been dying a slow, painful death, as well.  I feel like I've spent my entire week just trying to get my computers, which I rely on so much for the functioning of my everyday life, to simply fucking work.

I ended up spending almost my entire day yesterday trying to fix my work computer.  Of course, I couldn't get any of my work done while I was doing this.  But that doesn't magickally push any of my deadlines back, either.  So every hour I spent trying to fix my machine was an hour that I no longer had to get any of my work done, and I was very aware of this in the moment.  And every time I tried to fix the problem, and failed, my frustration, aggravation, and stress levels rose.

I tried to find the Joy in my situation, but I just couldn't overcome the negative things I was feeling.  Even the fact that in trying to fix my problem I was learning all sorts of new things (normally an almost sensual pleasure for me) about the coding and configuration behind-the-scenes of my web browser wasn't enough to make me feel better in the face of ACH! FUCK! WHY WON'T MY COMPUTER WORK?!

I felt like a failure.  I'd barely made it a week, and here I was, losing my sense of Joy already.  I knew it wouldn't last forever, but I honestly thought I could make it last longer than that.  And then I realized that feeling like a failure for not living up to the spirit of UT #3, was also contradictory to the spirit of ManniMoonYin's Universal Tautology #2, "You cannot be good.  You cannot be bad.  You can only be."  Which, ironically, only made me feel like more of a failure.

But this morning was the beginning of a new day.  And I awoke with a fresh perspective.

What I realize as I observe all of this, is the Tao of Yin Becoming Yang.

You can't be happy constantly, all the time.  It's not that it is impossible to accomplish, but rather that if you're happy all the time, then eventually it ceases to be "happy" and becomes simply "normal."  Yin and Yang combining to form the Tao symbolizes that we live in a world of duality.  Or, rather, that our perception of the world is a dual one.  We can only distinguish something in terms of its opposite.  We only know what "happiness" is, because of "unhappiness," and vice versa.  Without "happiness" there is no "unhappiness," and vice versa.  So, in order to maintain happiness, it must occasionally be tempered with some unhappiness.  I realize now that the goal of UT #3 is not to be happy all the time, forever.  It is simply to be as happy as possible, as much of the time as possible, and to learn to let the unhappiness come and go when it must, without attachment, and to recognize it as essential to continued happiness.

In that sense, yesterday was actually a success for me.  Not because I got upset.  But because when I was upset, and when it became clear to me that I was not going to be able to Brightside my way out of these feelings, I responded by trying to let them go and not hang on to them, and by trying to remain calm and simply deal with the problem at hand without letting myself get all worked up about it.  I reminded myself that, "Yes, this sucks, but it's not the end of the world.  And sometimes things suck, and that is just a fact of living.  So, there's nothing to do but try to let it go, and focus on the problem at hand."  And I remembered UT #1, the "Primary Directive" (I totally just thought that up - no, really):  "All things that Are, are Change."  In other words, "This too, shall pass."

And it did.

A Life's Lesson...

I killed a squirrel this morning.

Hurrying down a snaking two-lane back road in the early-morning fog on my way to work, the little grey furball darted out in front of me towards the double-yellow lines.  No way I could've stopped in time, and no way I'm slamming on my breaks for a squirrel even if I could've.  But I swerved to the right, in the direction it had come from, in order to at least try and miss it.  But as soon as I swerved, the little guy noticed me coming, and darted back in the same direction I'd swerved, essentially running itself under my wheel.  If I hadn't have swerved, I wouldn't have hit it.

I felt the bump, and I heard the da-thud-wump against my car's undercarriage as I ran over it.  I looked in my rearview and saw its limp, lifeless, furry little body flopping down the road in my wake.  I instantly felt like shit.  And then I felt like an idiot for feeling like shit.  I mean, it's just a squirrel.  And I did what I could to try and avoid it.

But I just couldn't shake the feeling that I'd done something wrong.  I'd ended a life.  And we're not talking about an insect or an apple here.  This was another mammal.  I don't have any experience with that, so I don't know how to feel about it.  But in my gut, in my Tao, it feels wrong.

No, it probably wasn't sentient; it probably wasn't aware like we are.  But it was still a complex lifeform.  And killing it didn't help me to survive in any way.  I feel like it had every right to gather nuts, and chase lady-squirrels around tree trunks, and not get run over by some asshole who's late for work.

What's the Brightside?  I don't know.  I have no doubt that there is a lesson here, I just don't know what it is yet.  I guess I will use this opportunity to practice acceptance.  Acceptance of myself (I cannot be good or bad, I can only be Michael), acceptance that all things must end (All things that are, are Change), and acceptance that living means that sometimes the Universe is going to throw a squirrel under your wheels.

Sorry, Mr. Squirrel.

Drifting Backwards...

Goddamn I hate this hotel room.

I cannot wait to get out of here.  Tomorrow, I'll love ya...

I just had to get out, for at least a little while.  Decided to just go for a drift.  Left with a bottle of water, some good walking shoes, and a strong desire to get lost.  At every crossroads turning down the path of least familiarity.

End up in a maze of an old residential neighborhood I've never been in before.  (It still amazes me just how many parts of this town I've spent almost my entire life in that I've never seen before.)  Winding capillaries of pre-fab, post-War homes.  It was an old neighborhood, in every sense - I lost count of the number of "No Smoking - No Open Flame - Oxygen In Use" signs I saw taped to front doors.

Winding my way this way and that through a fucking beautiful spring afternoon, I turned a corner... and there was my old high school, from an angle I had never seen it before in my entire life.  I had no idea where I was just then, but suddenly I also knew exactly where I was.  Cognitive dissonance.  Gnosis.

How could I not wander those grounds again?  I made my way towards the campus.  Passed the old apartment building across the street where my first love had rented a small basement apartment with a friend of ours when she'd moved out of her parents house after graduation.  Where she'd gotten pregnant with his child.  Where she'd lied to me that it was mine.  I can never see that building without smelling the pennyroyal tea she had used to abort it.  A sick, metallic, moldy smell, it had permeated every surface in that small apartment and hung in the air for months.  It made the air taste like pain and fear and sadness.

I kept going, and walked around the campus of my old high school, taking in all the sights - noting all the things that had changed, and all the things that were still the same.  I saw the giant old oak in front of the school, where we'd use to sit on days like this and eat our lunch.  I slid down the bannister outside the front door - one more time, just for old times's sake.  I wasn't quite as graceful as I remember being back then.  And it gave me a wedgie.

I made my way around to the back of the school, to the parking lot and main entrance.  (I always thought it was funny that the main entrance was around back.)  I saw the brick tool shed for the apartment building across the street, behind which we used to hide to smoke between classes.  It was under a tree on the lawn of that apartment building, across the street from that school one spring break so, so long ago that She and I fell in love.  Though it would take us another decade to realize it.

I sat down for a rest under that tree.  And I just took it all in.  The weight of all that nostalgia like a lover on top of me - heavy, but pleasant; on the edge of smothering, but in a good way.  I felt back to all those years ago.  I remembered the children we'd been then, so awkwardly confident, so brazenly strange.  Even then, we knew that moment was special.  That we'd never have another like it for the rest of our lives.  It might've been the one thing we'd been right about.

We never could've imagined what would come for us.  That we would ever become so important to each other.  That we would ever wrap our lives around one another.  That we could ever possibly become fat, old drunks.

I realized I was crying.  For the children we'd been.  For all we've lost.  I sat there under that magickal tree in the glow of the evening sun, and I grieved for every missed opportunity, for everything we used to be, for every weight of the world we've decided to carry.  For all we could've done.  For all we can never do again.

I cried for the children we'd left behind.  That beautiful, strong, scared, strange little girl.  And for the boy I'd been.  And I realized, how much like him I still feel.  How I still see myself as 16, as 19, as 20, 25.  How could it be that I am this boy with a beard, sitting here under the weight of these memories that are so much larger than I have ever been?  It won't be very long at all before I'm 40.

At what point do I begin to feel like a man?

"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.