I have more essay in me than i have beer, so this effort will contain more sobriety than “en vino veritas,” maybe· It is not clear exactly when i took my first swill, but it was in the company of family - a family that contains manifest alcoholics on both sides of the trunk, immediate and distant· I possess all my limbs and a modicum of health for a 64 year-old insofar as i can ride a bicycle and conduct the facsimile of a cogent conversation; know this, as a child my sister would describe my yammerings as coming from “Odd Todd·” Whether this unfortunate characterization contributed to a disconnect that is generally accepted as one aspect of substance abuse, or was her chide, simply a poetic endearment from a now estranged member of a family estranged to itself - who knows· What i know is i like my sister, and it took years of therapeutic resistance and spiritual-soul-searching to embrace this understanding within the deeper regions of my being· How can i extract enough beneficial meaning to share from drinking - a behavior that is at once “in the crosshairs” of civilization’s current social engineers, while simultaneously as ancient to our species as 7,000 BC, or for the religiously oriented, more than 3 times our life in Christ¿ I don’t know, but i think i’ll sip some more beer and ponder·
I have personal experience with many of the beastly assertions made about drunkards, nor am i proud of those lapses in my practical reliance on common decency, but to be honest from what little i’ve been able to fathom about my own demons - those creatures that have surfaced while under the influence, are pale compared to that beast that haunts dreams i am too terrified to recall upon waking· That same beast i have found has, and employs, power to subjugate the very essence of my self - that same self who rails at the oppression of my fellow human beings then cowed into tacit acceptance of the destruction of our home planet. Were i a free man, or drunk, it would be more than an unarmed outcry - “please no.” How is my well-socialized barely discernible fb protest any different than that drunken derelict left to feed out of the gutter of waste our civilization leaves to the less fortunate? I understand the inclination to pour on top of enough, and i am moving further away from that irrational pull toward excess, but i am luckier than many· I like to drink, i do not like harming myself, either from habit, ecstasy or mindlessness· Even better, i relish the opportunity to help others, however it took many decades of my life to understand that i cannot help anyone else, until i have helped myself·
I write with the hope my experience might help someone to ease their own suffering - the paradox being one must first understand one’s own suffering to be able to feel another’s, and not to heap paradox on paradox, but what Leonard Cohen said once, “I could not feel so I tried to touch” confused me until i seriously delved into my own miasma· What if the courage-in-a-bottle, or en-vino-veritas our kind obviously uses to breech the walls of isolation, however fake that might sound, was taught as a tool for introspection? For example, just now i investigated online my own fairly consistent drinking habits to find that my habits expose me to certain moderate drinking risks; i am also living in a poisoned terrain, having been inundated by Agent Orange using my tax dollars to make the world safe for democracy· Krishnamurti once declared “it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” The people i am surrounded by, have lived for 50 years with residue and the commensurate health effects from this heinous act of ecological genocide· My own nation committed this despicable cowardice and to this day thwarts every effort to take responsibility, rectify and make restitution for this savage act; I would describe that as profoundly sick· I share this not to excuse personal responsibility for choices i make, but to add perspective about behaviors that are considered logical and illogical by ostensibly responsible authorities about right and wrong·
What of the profoundly mystical underpinnings of the drinking class? This morning, now on the other side of the world from where i lived less than 2 weeks ago, i encountered a used book seller who12 years ago had relocated to the small town in which i now reside· Unbeknownst to me, the day before, i’d passed the small street where his shop is located and only came to learn this when i’d returned home to research book sellers for the community· As i rode down the alley this morning searching for what i hoped would resemble a book store, i was vaguely aware of a character bicycling some distance in front; i pulled into an overhang with the proper signage and parked my bike to find a rumpled fellow parking his bike while inspecting who had just trailed him to his closed shop· Once pass introductions, and he had determined i was not in any rush to spend money, he explained he wasn’t open until 9 and it was time for his morning ablutions· I politely excused myself to the porch to ponder the irony of waiting outside a bookstore with nothing to read· As it happens, the character in question explained how he had sold his last condos in the same city i had just left; where we had both grown up and have yet undiscovered friends in common - an exhilarating coincidence· Shortly we were joined by company, and i learned that etiquette in this particular expat community includes shots of Tequila - a normal aperitif for many parts of the world· i was unable to resist sharing about this essay in progress plumbing my own drinking habits in particular and our species’ in general·
That truth is stranger than fiction is fact, but to conceive a more synchronistic example of what i value about the inexplicable that surrounds altered states, i can not· I do know i am not the first human who has turned his hand to wringing sense from what is senseless about stupor, and lets face it, stupor is simply a matter of degree whether it be out of a $2,000 bottle of “Liquide Pour Les Riches Puants” or my personal favorite “Mad Dog 2020.” Nor is alcohol the only substance on the planet capable of inducing stupor; look at what opulence has done to the normally sober elan of the ruling class, talk about your drunk driving - these effete fuckers are driving an entire planet and all of its inhabitants off of the cliff of life· I guess the only question remains is whether we, the passengers, are so high on digital ecstasy to even notice or care that our planetary vehicle is accelerating headlong into an inferno of death and destruction so severe, that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki explosions would be preferred to what our power drunk leaders have concocted for our future· William Blake said “The road of excess leads to the Palace of Wisdom · · · you never know what is enough until you know what is too much.” Mr. Blake in his mystical prescience did not conceive of a world so lost to itself that in one breath condemns the solace of drink, while in the next breath shackles an entire planet’s wrist to a +/- 5v Tower of Babel that repeats one thing in every language - “buy this, and you will be saved.”
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smoking - the sonnet
i stole cigarettes at age eleven
little did i know what they’d steal later·
at the time it felt something like heaven,
sixty years later, i’m a self hater·
the smoke still rises, the damage deeper
but i persist, though i am no phoenix·
at its heart is fear, so i learn to peer
into a reason born of a bad mix·
blame has no role, for it is mine alone,
while hope rises and vanishes like smoke·
i’m not alone - but feels it to the bone·
it is good that freedom's mine own to stoke·
the question remains, free from what, from whom
‘cause with or without, we all face our doom·
jts 07/26/2019
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
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