Some of my fondest memories involve creative combinations of decriminalized substances shared by close friends. Afternoons spent ineffectually redecorating a friend's house to the tune of Russian 00s pop punk and Crystal Castles, dancing, and stopping only for microwave pizza 10 hours into an accidental fast; nights spent at strangers' houses, getting introduced to the same people over and over again as they forgot who I was, and finally getting kicked out in the morning by somebody who couldn't remember the word for “exit”; the quiet moments right before dawn when my multi-stranded high faded into drowsiness, and the sunrise lasted for days.

What I miss, really fucking miss, beyond the obvious, is the feeling of having a singular desire, a need so all-consuming that chasing it requires no effort. We always do what we want, but rarely is that also what we crave, aspire to, or need. Addiction shrinks your world until there is nothing left to object to it – but what's left is beautiful thing, if only for a moment. Our distal, long-term ambitions usually conflict with our near-term cravings and instinctual reactions, and the result is that most of our lives are spent in waiting. Most of time, our days are meaningless and entirely disconnected from our values, but we hope that somehow they will assemble themselves into years worth remembering and a life worth living. Addiction takes out the trash, it erases all superfluous action, dawdling, all wait, it ensures all you do serves a master plan, and reminds you of the all-important truth that today is the best day of the year.

The sanest years of life may well have been those where I risked the most. I can barely remember the last three years of my life, all repetition and fear. When I got clean I fell ill for entirely unrelated reasons – suddenly, I was no longer in charge, my risk-taking no longer defined my life. Over time, I developed existential vertigo, I began dreading every crosswalk, every dark corner, and eventually every morning. I relinquished every claim on my fate, I was too scared to move. Everything became an opportunity for loss, – of safety, of excitement, of life, of self – so I tried to shield myself until there was nothing left to shield. I deprived myself of all I couldn't stand to lose, so when loss came anyway, I had nothing to show for it. That's been the state of things for a while.

I wanna live like an addict again. What addiction accomplishes through a narrowing, I will do through a broadening. “Holistic addiction,” there's a suitably new-age-y term, maybe it'll catch on. I don't want to pacify internal discord – if I am to be consumed by desire, that desire must be so encompassing that no part of me escapes the lust. Addiction ensures its own survival, it allows for internal divergence only as long as this divergence doesn't prove fatal to it. I welcome discord with open arms, and whatever consumes me will be forced to answer to this multiplicity. It must do away with doubt, allow me the pure, righteous moments of certainty that fuel every worthwhile quest. And it must not be too pretty, too good – I demand obsession and hysteria from anything I call an addiction, it must drive me to fail my fellow man and lose sight of decency, to sacrifice more than I can spare, and sleep only when my knees buckle.

There is also this: addiction externalizes the search for meaning. My actions felt divinely inspired when I sought a high, but what I sought made me passive – the goal was to sit back and watch something happen to my consciousness, to the entire world, doing nothing at all. I was in the driver's seat until I arrived. There is place for that, there is a place for every human thing, but I need to stir to consciousness pot myself. Passivity is the death of wonder – we create as much as we discover, and when we lie back and wait for life to happen to us, we ensure our half of the conversation is white noise, and the world has nothing to respond to. The world won't be beautiful until it finds a friend in us.

I must be a creator if I am to be an addict. It is just as well, inspiration is always a high, though not every high is inspired. If I write this piece or that story, that is all very well, but authoring the day, that is the ultimate act of creation. We are forever seeking life – we read tales, and watch them, and play them, we tell them, we hear about them. It has been said that story is a metaphor for life, but it is life distilled, stripped of numbness and use. It is no accident that storytelling is the foundation of all art. Alas, a creator isn't worth his weight in dirt without a muse – it seems I must go and live.

Then it is almost noon and steaming oats And dousing my senses in Sencha green Almost breakfast on Avenue J But skip the milk and hold the schmear

Then I whir with thoughts I forget

And night creeps up to me real quiet and slow Dead hour softens my sparsest wit Halts the cabs and the meetings And the truth and men and tomorrow And before I know it I am a beginning

For a time there is time, Yes, For a time.

#poetry

My impressions divide. I wonder after my fellow man, I see myself in a dazed terror, yanked from my day, too fast to panic, falling in the street under a mellow sun. I wonder if I should move, and where to go, and if I should leave the house this second, and whether to take the stairs. I wonder where my loved ones are. I look out and think it strange that the buildings are unmoved, and the ants have so happily returned to theirs trails. I wonder how many lives have changed, and how, and whether the phone call reached right people, and who they are, and if someone has already died alone. I also feel a quiet thrill.

Abstract danger is incredibly exciting. Oh, the romance of speeding across the country in rusted Harley, the fun of risking health and security, knowing you can lose it all. Nobody I know has ever lost health, security, or “their all.” They have had strokes, lived on benches, watched their children die. Abstract danger is a high stake, importance, contrast, aliveness, it is what gives a choice its meaning. Concrete danger is merely tragic.

There are times when the symbolic importance of an event seems almost at odds with its details, when abstraction seems very far from fact. From afar, I can almost see the strange beauty of it all, I’m left with only the impression of humanity. I look at the dots on the streets, and briefly, I know each of them intimately – late for school, leaving an interview, phoning a friend, planning an evening, mourning mother, drinking, celebrating, disintegrating, paying off a debt, being a better father today, buying that laced bustier, tiring, trying, striving – they pay me no matter at all.

“Today, a dreadful thing sounded through my door, fear and wounds in terrible injustice, and the world kept spinning, never pausing to weep.”

“Today humanity pounded on my door.”

I don’t know which is true.

#chronicle

#poetry

This poem is a few years old, I stumbled across it in my old “lunch poems” folder.

#poetry

The quiet desperation of my youth Watches the children From the balcony, laughing, And wonders if tomorrow arrives.

Now I wait for the prophecy of my memories To dissolve the brutal physicality of today.

#poetry

And lacking the essence of anything

But very modern and often brown

And public

And I wonder what I think about that Or if I do

I think about my skull and flail

That it is there and it is bone

And still the air does not care

About my skull

And I

Less alive today.

#poetry

Learning the youth of other men

Who strained the virgin years

Of life untold

Never owing hope a second's worth

Of intermission.

To the virtues of tomorrow

I give nothing today

But all thy hours unclaimed

And by the circle I fly

But wherefore am I

And is it yesterday already?

I grow old.

I grow old…

#poetry

Yesterday I hitched a ride to the outskirts of my homeland; I needed to retreat away from sorrow and death and familiarity – naturally, I wound up driving out with a terminally ill family member. We were confined to each other for the duration of the trip, and despite our best efforts to stave off meaningful conversation, we eventually spoke of his illness – metastasized cancer. He is carefully hopeful – I, on the other hand, rushed to call his condition terminal . But what destroyed me was the way he spoke about his death – like it was his, an experience that belonged to him. It was like watching a puppy get kicked by his trusted guardian and get up to greet him. In him I saw the ghost of Christmas soon to come. The rest of the journey was silent. We reached our destination late in the evening and had a long overdue dinner in a corner bistro; he had a decadent, shellfish and fried fruit gourmet dish, and I had a phobic, grilled vegetable and whole pasta bowl. He ordered dessert, and I stared out the window. We slept in the decaying beachside apartment I now write from, and he left in the morning to receive his first round of treatment.

When I rose this morning I rose to go in search of booze – I left my life to leave myself as much as the world, and casual, seasonal alcoholism seemed a great hobby to that end. I walked into the first tourist-supermarket I saw and made for the booze isle. Too Anglo-Saxon for vodka, too young for good wine, too old for cider, too gay for scotch, too straight for tequila, and with too cheap a liver for fruitier options, I left the choice to chance. I turned a corner and grabbed the first bottle that presented itself – “Carl Jung – De-Alchoholized Rosé.” I put it back on the shelf and grabbed a Malibu. I returned to the store a few minutes later and bought the damn thing. When the man who coined “synchronicity” – meaningful coincidence, the a-causal but meaningful linking of events – comes to you in the form of a WASP-y liquor label and tells you not to do drugs, kid, you listen.

I am not a natural optimist – that Malibu is sitting in my fridge – I do not wake up with an urge to smell the flowers and hug my neighbor. I expect the worst and prepare for it well; I admire the great spectacle of life from the corner chair by the emergency exit. Thoreau agreed with the luminaries of today that it is by truth alone that we are made immortal – but his truth was not the one we pray to, it belonged to him and no other. The entirely unfalsifiable notion that divinity and meaning are baked into existence, that the world is composed of symbols and synchronicities, and the truth belongs to the spirit isn’t one I’m naturally inclined to believe. But here I am, feeling only the buzz of a night poorly slept.

#chronicle #jung #synchronicity