Mind Play

"The creation of something new is not accomplished by intellect, but the playing instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the object it loves" - Carl Jung

Does a woman find her life in drugs for the same reason? I guess now my time as a user is all distant memory. In the moment, I found drugs a colorful arrangement of temptations for which I could play and be played with. I was not initially uncontrolled or completely dependent on the substances which I surrounded myself with. I found them an inlet to another state of mind or sense of emotion. It was much like the way I view artwork, granting it a power of influence great enough to arise various feelings. Art fails when it creates no alteration of it's viewer's emotion.

For a moment when I was eleven years old the world felt right. I had taken my first hit of marijuana and actually felt like i'd let it drag enough to feel that high. There is nothing in this world quite like the first puff of sweet, sweet green and the way her scent lingures. I think my interest in marijuana was out of curiousity at first. I was big into poetry then, too lazy to read novels, and I can remember it vividdlythat I'd been reading a book of Whitman when a friend passed the joint toward me. I inhaled, exhaled and thought for a few momemnts that I'd reached that point in life where it truly is as good as it gets. The next line I read was, "to be surrounded by beautiful, luminous, laughing flesh is enough," and it was on that day.

Later the weed I smoked was never good enough. I had smoked so much so frequently in a craze that my tolerance had built up and in many ways peaked. I could smoke in a circle of friends watching as they'd get high. I could smile, laugh and feel decently but I wasn't getting high anymore. I didn't feel anxious or paranoid and my laughter was not that of a mind on drugs. I thought about leaving and never coming back because I needed to find something that would make sticking around worth the while. It got to be hard to fly.

I suppose my first addiction was to pills. Opiates could kill me and not in the same context that they'd kill most users by overdosing. I am fatally allergic to them. I think I took ecstasy because I longed for that company of mind and would settle for the company of body which rolling brought. I needed to be with a lover those days and I never actaully knew what a lover was. Ecstasy was an entirely more complicated sense of awareness than just that of strangers and the contact which I desired from them. The lights were better; the music became enhanced. It created a surrounding that urged my body to move; to dance. I would breathe faster than I could think and often felt overheated. I remember a few times when there were sober, clean kids around just wanting to move and shake. They would offer water to users including me but too much water could be dangerous. In fact, everything in life seems potentially quite dangerous especially love and that is primarily what I was after. People's emotional lives are not linear like their waking lives. I wanted to find a source for all of the emotions of abandonment and loneliness I was going through. I figured if I had sex it was the most secure and passionate thing I could do. Instead, sex provided a certain numbness. It was that feeling of nothingness that made me feel tremendously uncomfortable and so I sought new medication.

Methadone is a prescribed drugused to suppress heroin addiction, often in amounts so high that hardcore junkies can harvest addictive qualities for it. I had a friend that was messed up on the needle and she never took the meth to get better so I took it because it was there and it was inexpensive, comparatively. I suppose it took about a week to become addicted and then it wasn't a matter of getting high, but being happy. Meth was one drug, one aspect of my life, that never wanted anything from me. I liked that for once in my life, I was the user.

LSD was a way to get away; it was a place I could visit and leave my body all together. I did some crazy things in this state. I remember taking showers fully clothed on a number of occasions and thinking I was somewhere very diffrent. Then I would lie on my bed or upon the floor drenched and wonder why I was so cold. It never dawned on me that I had just been in the shower. In many ways there is a part of me that went missing when I became hooked on LSD. I got caught up in discovering just how many areas of the brain are used for vision and I needed more than life to expand my line of sight. I'd hallucinate before I would ever consider closing my eyes. In some respects, I still feel this way only it is much more readily available to paint or draw than it is to take an acid trip. Now I can think back and it makes fair sense. I feel like I'm back on the right track but the reality of it is that I was not living then in this reality so I will never truly have those years back. It's just a memory of them which is difficult to take in sometimes.

There is a part of me that thinks this was crazy and irrational behaviour. I find myself thinking back on my life in the past only to discover that I've left every aspect behind without any hesitation. Every past relationship and many friendships, I have just taken off and figured the other individuals involved could use a little neglect seeing as I had endured a great deal up to that point. I guess, despite the loss of memory, rages and pits of depression which I'd gone through back then, I turned out okay. I might have a skewed way of laying it all out and I find myself restless with people more than I'd like to admit, but I have survived it and many people that care so much for junk like I did, don't survive. Twenty escasty tablets could have killed me and there were nights when they ought to have. I certainly don't know the reason that I breathe tonight, but for once, I can safely say that I'm okay with it. I'm a pretty damn thankful lunatic.

Medicine

It's a pity, to me, that before people learn to think philosophically, the world becomes habit. It makes me wonder if people might somehow lose the abilitiy to wonder about the world - the great mystery.

I have always desired an inquiring mind, this paired with an enigmatic world. I don't think I have ever gotten used to the world. Is it habitual? Yes; more or less. I wake up and fall asleep. I attempt to have meals throughout my consciousness. I meet people, maintain employment and have interests. In this sense, I am living. However, I refues to join the apathetic and indifferent. In this sense, I am being.

I have been thinking a great deal about medicine and health lately. Perhaps it is that my dear friend is visually dying in front of me. Perhaps it is some innate reason, already inside of me; my loneliness, maybe. What baffles me most is that there is no satisfactory explanation for it - no assurance that a person who thinks clearly will be able to live contently under the influences of some perscribed stability.

Medicine is perhaps the art respected by all men in all times. When socratic irony fails, it is drugs that work. I don't think of my flaws as mental or physical imbalances, but rather a belief that nature has gone off-course. Health, likewise, requires more than a sound body and a sound mind. It takes moderation of all things, harmony and a healthy lifestyle.

I also consider 'right' and 'wrong' and how these play a role in medicine. I have a pretty good understanding of them by society's definition. If a man lies, cheats, and steals is it right? No, not by society's standards. Is the man happy? I don't know, yet I suppose that he is and therefore pass no judgement. This is much like my inability to speak up in relationships about the parts that may cause my restlessness and insecurities. It may not be healthy, but I think it's habit. People accept the love they think that they deserve.

I suppose I used thought to participate in life. I wonder too much, maybe, about one small detail in great depth until I feel like I comfortably understand it. This letting the quite that results from thought, put things where they're supposed to be. This saves me a great deal of talking aloud with other people. I figure that the world is much too old for us to talk about with our new words anyway. It sets me up for disappointment, so I just assume pretend that my lips are chapped to the point where talking hurts - remaining mute.

This is, perhaps, the same reasoning that differentiates those drugs and medication from god and spirituality. With religion and theory, people observe everything in unison and harmony; with drugs and medication, they become a part of it.

One of my girlfriends told me the other day that I'm "maniacal". I grinned, shrugged and suppose that places me in the lightly sinister category with all other subterraneans with their maniacal overtones, and I don't feel so bad.

A plague with a dangerous tongue

I think I would rather hear someone has died than the diagnosis that they are bound to. It's like slapping a big warning on someone's body that warns they're a disappearing act. I'd rather she just dies and be gone instead of watching all the health and happiness flea from her body and soul. It's not glorifying and even the strongest person cannot defeat this deadly plague that is the human condition.

My good friend invided a group of girls over for our usual wine themed "Ladies Night". It was the regular type of get-together that we have everytime; sharing laughs and stories. Only last night was interrupted by a heavy undertone. All night we could see there was discomfort in her body language and physical pain at certain times. Almost the ache of a heavy soul. She shared with us last night that she was diagnosed with esophageal cancer about three months ago and by her check up with her doctor earlier yesterday, it is evident that the illness has begun to spread. Like wildfire, this is a grotesque killer, only now it is personal and has pried its way into the very body of one of my greatest friends.

This friend, is a gorgeous and generous person in both body, intllect and passion. There is not one person more qualifying for me to carry on in the impression of. I have many friends that I consider to be good people and by Mother Earth, god or whatever superstition it is that we name our religion, I am blessed to have encountered. She is beyond a blessing in my life. It is a simple task for a friend to offer a ride or come by occasionally at her expense to console a friend druing a crisis; however, it is a completely more emotional connection to take in someone (as she has done with me and vice versa) and say virtually, that "Hey, I am not going to go away. I am going to be here when it's invonvenient for you - invonvenient for me too" I think in most ways she is my rock - that person that I can lean on no matter where I am or what the problem. I used to figure that she would be a girlfriend at my wedding day, proposing a toast. I figured she would be around forever, to help me shop for children's clothes and pick out a good school if ever that day came as she'd already gone through it with her children. Unfortunately, cancer is day after day replacing my wonderful friend and likewise, taking over my own body and mind, replacing it with sadness.

The weight of her physical pain is above me. The weight of that choked up feeling you get when you need to tell someone face to face something but can't - that she is going to have to deliver this statement not only to myself and our mutual friends, but to her children, her family, her lover. I cannot even imagine telling someone that you are going to die and there is nothing anyone can do. I have seen this disease take over the lives of friends and family memebers before, people who's lives were throuwn into mine by biology, work, or educational decisions. She is someone I searched for. I made it a point of getting to know her and love her as a friend and mentor and now she is going to die.

Instead of focusing on all of this and addressing the physical and finacial struggles that lie ahead of her, she just mobilized everything she has - her spirituality, emotions, intellect and the remnants of her physical strength. She said to me in an effort to keep my tears back once everyone else had left, "Mel, the world is sickened; it isn't just me. There is pollution of pollution threatened with AIDS, racfisms, homelessness, all kinds of pain and illnesss. Cancer is just one point. One art in my body and it's just an art that is bigger than my body can handle."

I cried the whole way home and took miles of backroads just for something to do - someplace to go. I couldn't figure out who to talk to because I can't make this any better. I suppose that's why this is here, lying in the depths of cyberspace, with no direction. I, too, lacking direction.

The way things really are

It used to be that I'd find a great guy and share an extraordinary friendship which over time became more emotional and eventually developed into an intimate relationship. My dating history is not by any means an extensive list of haves nor have-nots; however, a small list of painful memories and opportunities which introduced me to some marvelous individuals along the way.

When I met Lucas the circumstance were entirely different than they had been in the past. He and I both in a location, physically, we did not frequent and, emotionally, we could not by ourselves comprehend. It was an unusual evening and in retrospect, I am still very fortunate that our paths crossed.

Sometimes, I feel as though it shouldn't be this hard to keep our relationship alive. It shouldn't be this hard to smile, but I'm beginning to see that the mountains not only tower in physical height but in defeat, once again. My head is like a kite; my thoughts tied on a string dragging behind me in magnificent visibility. I guess on my end, I'm just too afraid to give up. I'd love to figure out what's wrong with me (although I wish modern medicine wouldn't direct toward perscription bottle solutions). I'd love also to believe that he'd never let me go. I want to believe that he'd fight till his dying day because I know I would. I've been searching the eyes of everyone I meet to find signs of him and an offering of reason as to why everything is suddenly feeling so uneasy. I'd fight whatever it is that's causing this trouble in mind if I could only realize where it all began. It's my life?

Picking up the telephone is perhaps the most selfish act I've had lately and now it's one of habit. I'm doing it in part because I am, quite honestly, curious as to what's happening in the receiving location. I'm also making calls because I need to feel the person on the other end. I've been in a cold state of mind lately - part of me ready to say my good-byes and a bigger part believing that I have no one to say good-bye to. I feel like this beautiful place I've been has been in a fog of surrealism leading me to believe there's been emotion and love where there hasn't. I'm in a position that's far beyond tears and the hope of a disappearing act in a crowd of faces I wouldn't recognize.

Blissfest and other hippie bullshit

So here I am in Northern Michigan, once again, and it's the weekend of the Bliss music and arts festival. I guess to a lot of my friends and colleagues this is a big deal. It's like Rothbury had a little baby in Good Hart, Michigan. I've gone before and I'm not sure that I'll go again. Besides, it's sort of dubbed a 'hippie' festival now and I think somehow the definition of being a hippie has changed drastically since its origin.

I guess the term hippie means basically a person who is opposed to many of the conventional standards and customs of society, especailly one who advocates extreme liberalism in sociopolitical attitudes and lifestyles. I get this. I feel like I fit pretty well into that all natural liberal attitude.

I think it can be defined in many ways - having long hair in the 1960's meant something very diffrent that in does now. Then, it was a statement against the war. As people were being drafted and sentenced to a likely death in Vietnam, it was more a trend, it isn't really a philosophy like John and Yoko made it out to be back in the counter-culture days. I guess in my mind the modern age of 'hippies' isn't much like its 60's ancestors. It's a soul and life philosophy above everything else. Choosing to support local business or music, over corporate ones. Buying organic, harvesting your own food, political activism, meditation - everything externally simple and internally rich. Instead of man v. nature, it's about the power of co-existing; hemp clothing, plant based diets, alternative medicine and so on. Seeking to live in harmony with the Earth and those around you without confrontation and conformation.

I hope that if people are going to cling to this sterotype of being a modern hippie; they do, in fact, understand the mentality that all those civil activists that started this movement lived and breathed for us to know it to this day. The biggest part, I'd say is becoming the change that one wishes to see in the world. In order to start a revolution, you've got to first be the revolutionary.

So, to those of you setting up your hammocks and hanging your tapestries this weekend, you won't see me. If Bliss really is about following your own personal 'bliss' it wouldn't be slapping a price tag on Mother Earth, music or art. At any rate, to those of you going; have fun, you dirty bare-footed hipsters.