Growing Up, Letting Go and Knowing Where To

     A word about the evil empire and then back to it.  Being strong with the force and being strong with oblivion are more alike than it might seem at first blush.  Both conditions cede control of the conscious will over to another power.  The Star Wars power was an unnamed state of being wherein one lets go the consciousness of self and becomes in tune with a benevolent force that exists both within and without the individual.  It at once makes the self and the universe richer, more complete.  Something in us longs for union with it and something in us resists.  The former is a complete mystery to me and because I need to name it I call it God.  The latter is also a mystery but is more familiar, it is self-absorption, self-destruction, the hubritic need to control the forces of the universe with our tiny little minds.
     We (I imagine most of us) see how foolish this is and yet we persist.  We cling to our will, trying to force the mysteries of the universe into an order dictated by the boundaries of our own beings.  It is difficult for us to accept that the order is not a part of us but that we are a part of it whether we will it or no.  We can be dragged to it: a trantrumatic child in a futile fight, or we can give ourselves over to it and achieve the bliss we long for.  Of course it is not this simple, though I wonder if it is for angels and saints.  I have fought the universe armed with whiskey and the like and lost again and again, learning nothing from my failures but anger.  I have set this anger on the world without me and failing there too have given up the fight, I have gone blank.
     Pogo said, "I have met the enemy, and it is us."  The evil empire is within, oblivion helps us to forget this for some moments though the crash is hard.  Back to the topic.
     My sister recently returned from her annual trip to the Berkshires where she swims in art.  She told me of a revelation (though she did not call it such, it was one to me).  She talked about working to let things go, saying something like she had been trying to gather and hold on when she should have been trying to jettison.  There is so much that we cling to, that clings to us, it keeps us earthbound.  My mother used to say, "Let go and let God."  Yes, but easier said than done.
     Some things stick with you.  Forty years ago or so Jimmy Toomey, who had been a smoker and a grand stoner and likely a pretty hard drinker in his day too, though I have no evidence of this last, told me he had stopped all of it.  I was amazed and impressed and wanted to know how he had done it.  He said, "It just fell away."  I figured there was more to it, I knew he had done Transcendental Meditation or something with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and I figured there was some sort of secret understanding he could not impart to the unenlightened so I let it go.
     Well obviously I did not let it go because here I am thinking of it still trying to understand.  My mother had a theory that we are bound to keep reliving experiences until we learn from them what we are meant to learn.  Mostly this was a way of explaining why the same bad shit (my word, not hers) kept happening to us.  She also said that we had a choice to learn the hard way or the easy way.  It was her opinion that I had chosen the former, she was right.
     The point of all this is that I have let drop the shield of booze I used in my battle with the universe and am feeling some discomfort at times now but am learning that the universe which I thought sought to buffet me is really seeking embrace.  Could this be the path to sweet oblivion?
    

Forgetting, Remembering, Forgetting Again

     So I was adrift.  Waking in the morning, feeling good for an hour or two after coffee, washing, shaving, working, coming home and watching the clock, waiting for the time to come when I could return to the temporary oblivion of sleep.  Whiskey helps.
     There were times, often, when I weighed the options: do something, do nothing, don't choose.  I could not think of any reason for this ennui other than the usual reason for ennui: I stopped doing, then wanting, then being.  There were moments when I saw some hope, when I heard a song that took me away, when I was at church, when the morning and the coffee and the sky and the birds all sang in me but these were moments without substance, I could not see that they were the unasked for blessings that abound for those in tune.  Again, I don't know why I forget what I sometimes have known, why I forget entirely what it is that tunes me.
     While forgetting is the cause of my having gone astray it is not the first cause; it is a passive symptom of my own personal original sin: knowing what makes me happy and what makes me sad and choosing the latter.  (I am working on a theory of individualized original sin for those who believe in God and such things. A perfect God could have made perfect beings but decided not to.  If He/She has gone to this much trouble to make imperfection, perfection being the norm, then it seems reasonable to assume that He/She has made many different types of imperfection, hence a variety of original sins.  But I haven't really thought this out yet and besides this has gotten far too heady and off the topic for me.)
     Empirical evidence:  most mornings when  I woke up and for most of the day, often till the end of work when I was driving home I was resolved not to drink booze, then various discomforts psychic and physical convinced me that what I needed was a dose of medicine: Jameson 12 year old is very fine medicine indeed and whatever wrinkles remained could be smoothed out with a bottle or two of Guinness extra stout and for good measure, as well as to secure sleep, some red wine, then sleep, repeat.
     Looking at what I've written it is clear that even the most obtuse observer would be able to formulate a preliminary diagnosis for my ennui saying, "Well that's not a good way to live, maybe that's your problem." or such like.  And in truth, I often thought to say such myself but the allure of oblivion was strong in me which sounds like what was said of Luke Skywalker, the force being strong in him but my gift was unlikely to help me defeat the evil empire and besides I didn't have the energy.
     The evil empire:  Having grown up in the sixties, I was born in 49, I knew all about the evil empire that scooped up people my age, disproportionately black, and sent them to kill Asians in rice patties.  I took to the streets, to guerrilla theatre, to sit ins, to teach ins, to rage against the machine, which is now a band that won't let the Republicans play their music.  I had a cause and a purpose, we had a cause and a purpose but it went terribly wrong, ultimately sex, drugs, and rock and roll no matter how delightful were not enough.  We lost our way and those who believed that ass-kissing obeisance was the righteous rite of passage until they too rose to become the ass that was kissed eventually took over, i.e. Karl Rove et.al.
     So I knew what to fight but was too lazy to do the heavy lifting.  How this all came about and how I eventually returned to the fray will have to wait for another day as this is as long as I would like it to be today.